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Mr. Dane Rue, Director of Plato Memorial Museum and President at Lettingwell House Museum, has been part of the organization for ten years. He became a museum director, which was his childhood dream. His passion is early American history and he focuses on bringing history alive for people. He believes that discussing issues and solving problems is important, as many issues from the past are still relevant today. The museum uses various forms of media to communicate with visitors, including newspapers, radio, television, and social media. Mr. Rue uses a laptop and smartphone regularly, but doesn't have a tablet yet. He got his first smartphone in grad school. Good afternoon. I am now about to interview Mr. Dane Rue, Director of Plato Memorial Museum and President at Lettingwell House Museum. You've been at Plato for nine years, I mean at the Lettingwell for nine years or so. Ten years actually, yes. I first joined the board ten years ago and I'm currently the president of the board. I'll be coming off the board this year after ten years of being a part of the organization, but it's been a big part of my life. That is amazing. And you've been here for at least six years, but maybe more, seven? Almost seven years. Yeah, and you've been director for at least maybe four years, I would say. A few years now, yeah, that's correct. How is it to be a curator or director of a museum? It must be something interesting. It sometimes doesn't even feel real. No, and I'm being serious because ten years ago when I first really started getting involved with Norwich history, and I had just started grad school, and I was thinking about what I wanted my life to look like in the future, and I thought, well, maybe when I'm in my 30s I will have a chance to become a museum director. And it happened, so I'm doing exactly what I hoped I would be doing at this stage in my life, but sometimes it still doesn't even feel real. It's just a privilege to come to work at a place like this every day. You know, it's funny you said, because that was one of my questions. I wanted to imagine how it would be for, especially growing up, that you would want to be in this particular situation as far as being a director of a museum, because as I told you, my mother took me to museums all the time as part of our culture. I'm from Harlem. I'm uptown, west side, and she would take the subway and go, and I said, my goodness gracious. And as I got to learn and really be enthralled by museums, I started to see what her passion is about this, and I would consistently go. That's why I went from ARRP to the Wadsworth just last week, because it was something that was free. Okay, the first question I have for you is, what's your passion? I read that you're an expert in early American history, which is your passion. Let's talk about some of your educational background and some of your dreams and things that you've wanted as you've gotten older. From the time you were a child, on up, it got to this point. Certainly. I can remember at a very early age being fascinated by history, but what really started it for me was that my parents would take me and my sister to sites like Williamsburg and Gettysburg, and we'd go to these places, and I have very early memories of doing that. One of the things that I've talked to a couple different times where I've talked to people is, where I grew up in Groton, we grew up right near Fort Griswold. Oh, yeah. The major Revolutionary War battle site. There's a cannon up there that's not a Revolutionary War cannon. It's like a turn-of-the-century, 1900s, probably Spanish-American War era cannon. Yeah. But what was interesting about the cannon is that it was first fired on July 3rd, 1898 or 99 or something like that, and July 3rd was my birthday. So my dad would say to me as a kid, you know, they fired this cannon on your birthday because they were doing it for you. And I'm five years old, so I didn't really understand, but I thought it was fun that, oh, that cannon was fired on my birthday. So I always thought about that, and as I got into high school and really started to become interested in history, I knew I wanted to study history in college, so I enrolled at UConn Avery Point, and I did their American Studies program for four years. And I lived in Groton, so I was five minutes away from campus. Oh, that's perfect. Exactly right. It was a really ideal setup. I didn't end up going up to stores, but I did all my four years at Avery Point. And that was very special because you got to learn history at the local level. Oh, yeah. That's important. Well, it is important because when I talk about learning history in the classroom, you're learning a very specific curriculum that's written by not necessarily your teachers. It's written by a number of higher powers, you know, far beyond any of us. But what's interesting is what I do on a daily basis here at the museum and things that I talk about and lecture on, I didn't learn any of that in the classroom. Oh, that's interesting. I learned it coming to museums. I learned it outside the classroom. So from when I really got my career going, I said, I really want to focus on bringing history alive for people and getting them to learn the history that they didn't learn about in the classroom. Oh, I got you. That's important. It is. And that's really what drives me to this day is coming right back to the stories of people that were not necessarily the George Washingtons or the Thomas Jeffersons, but regular everyday people that make a difference in the community. You know what's so funny? When I talked about the American Revolution, that means that your historical background goes all the way up until the modern day time, events that may have happened and occurred during that time and before that time, like 1950s. We're talking about things like after World War II. And then going forward, we're talking about Black Lives Matter all of a sudden, Me Too movement, all those things that have occurred now going way back. There's a connection between all those. Well, there is. There is a connection because we're still talking about issues today that were issues of discussion 250 years ago. Amazing. Can you imagine that? And you can talk to a number of different people and they'll probably give you different answers on how well we've done over the past couple of centuries. But we're still discussing them. And that too is still important because at the end of the day, people do have to come together to talk about issues and solve problems. And it's tough to do, especially tough, I think, in today's day and age. But issues back then, 250 years ago, people were writing articles in the Norwich Packet about the necessity of abolishing slavery in Connecticut. That's amazing. I was going to ask you about this, which I am going to do, the Norwich Packet. Never heard of that one. Yep. That was the first newspaper in Norwich. That is big time. Because I was looking things up for the big boys, Boston and New York. But the Norwich area, which I live in now, I happen to love Norwich. I walk around here all the time. Yeah, I do too. And it's a place that, to me, it's peaceful. I have New Yorkers that come up here and they don't want to... I said, are you taking your vacation up here? And it's because once you have a car, they learned all the different places, going to Rhode Island, coming back here, different things around here. They find the food places. I said, that's not the country. I said, no kidding. Everybody thinks it's the countryside because they're from the city, the big city where I'm from. I said, no, it's very peaceful. You can hear crickets at night and hear the birds in the morning. It's beautiful. Believe me. I agree with you. It's a nice place. And they recognize that. They recognize the atmosphere. They say, man, you've been blessed by the House of Pears. Yeah. That's the way the guys went. That's right. So right now, what forms of media do you utilize at this time? The newspapers, radio, television, social media sites? Really everything. The museum specifically relies on all forms of media to communicate what we do and to communicate with people who visit us and engage with us. So we do pretty much all forms that you can think of. And that's important because especially nowadays, people are so tuned into digital media. Absolutely. More than ever before. I mean, newspapers are trying to survive. Yeah. I think that's a good question about that. Even the big ones are struggling. Yeah. They're struggling. You know why? Because there was a transition time when people started, and even the big papers started thinking about going to digital. But having that paper in my hand from growing up, the daily news, the fourth grade level newspaper, which we had to use in high school, I enjoy reading a paper versus opening my tablet or looking on TV all the time. I get the bulletin as much as... It's only 75 cents in some places. And I said, you know what? This is not the best newspaper. I'd rather have the day, but it's still something that I happen to like. Oh, yeah. There's something to be said about having a tangible connection to the paper. Yeah. And that's why it's important to list factors. So what devices do you utilize on a regular basis? I mean, do you have a smartphone, a computer? Do you have them all the same thing? Yep. I use my laptop, my smartphone. I never had a tablet before. That's one thing. I might have to get into at some point, but not quite yet, I guess. That's right. But it's good because you're now up... It took me until 2019 to get a smartphone. I had a little flip phone, but I wasn't really into that... Everybody's on their phone. I mean, the students are like this. I've had students working right next to each other like we are. And I said, are you guys communicating with each other? And they look up and they had to laugh. They said, yeah. I said, why don't you just talk to each other? Well, I'll tell you a funny story about smartphones is that I was a holdout for a while. And I'm only 34 years old. I remember when I graduated high school in 2007, that was the same month that the iPhone just debuted. It just came out. We didn't have smartphones until then. No, that's right. And I went without a smartphone for a really long time. Most all of my friends had already were either on the iPhones or some of the early Android phones. Not until grad school did I actually get a smartphone. And that was a Windows phone. That was even more interesting. That is interesting. That's right. But I held out for, I guess, as long as I could, I guess, for someone in my generation. Yeah, I got you. That's right. Because somebody offered me, they said, Mr. Briggs, you got to get with the 21st century. You got that little smartphone. I said, well, this isn't the 21st century. I have one person that still has their smartphone today. All right. During the time of the American Revolution, what were the various sources of media? That's a fabulous question. And I'll start off by saying that before the early 1770s, there were no newspapers in Norwich. We didn't have newspapers until the early 1770s when the Norwich packet started being printed. And even so, newspapers weren't printed every day. They were printed probably on a weekly basis. That makes sense. Yep. And you could only get them in some of the bigger towns and some of the bigger cities. Like some of the really small remote areas are not going to print newspapers. Yeah, there's too much rule. But being at Leffingwell for a long time, we talked a lot about what life was like back then. Yes. Yeah. One of those things is, well, how do people know anything? Like, well, how do people communicate information? It's very simple. Word of mouth. That's right. Thank you. It was all word of mouth. And obviously, people wrote letters, and we had a means of distributing and mailing letters and getting written correspondence to people. But people would gather, and they would share information word of mouth. Leffingwell House used to be a tavern, an inn and tavern. And you did three things. Anytime you go to an inn and tavern, you have your ale, you have your smoke, and you share the news. That's great. That consistency of conversation was very important. It was important, because when you're talking about an era such as the onset of the American Revolution, there's a lot happening. There's a lot of things happening in Boston, in New York, in all of these areas that surround Norwich. And people are talking about this news and information. So they have to rely on that face-to-face communication. And they gather in places like taverns or the public squares to talk about the information. In fact, on the Norwich Town Green, not too long after the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, they erected a Liberty Pole on the Norwich Town Green. And then there was a little tent, like a little crew tent next to that Liberty Pole. And I forget exactly what they called it, but I'm going to call it the Speech Tent. And what that was is that when it was your turn, you could get in front of that tent and you could talk about whatever you wanted to talk about. And your audience was whoever was in front of you. That's amazing. You know that? Yeah. Because word of mouth actually seems to spread faster than so many other forms of communication. Oh, sure. There's people and businesses out there where they rely on word of mouth, as far as their advertising goes. There's no better publicity than good publicity from people that talk good things about you. Yeah, you know what's so good about that is that when you go way back, if you're talking about thousands of years, even in the Bible, if they knew that Jesus Christ was coming, he would get there and the crowds would hold up because word of mouth told them, he's coming, he's going to be here. Even with the apostles after. So that, you're right, there was nothing like that before. And then the newspapers. The newspapers that came, you said the 1770s for the Norwich Packard. The other newspapers must have been in big towns. Did any of them get traveled or somebody would bring them? I was just in Boston. I got a paper about this. Yeah, you could bring it. You could bring in publications from other places. In fact, in England, where the printing industry was far more robust at that time, here in the colonies, they would import publications that were printed in England. So they know what was going on there. In fact, I have one in my personal collection that's called the Gentleman's Magazine and they printed them in England. And it's exactly what you would expect from just a magazine. They talk about various political, social, scientific issues. The issue that I have, it talks about Benjamin Franklin and some of the, I guess, crackpot ideas that he had that these British doctors were talking about and saying that he didn't know anything that he was talking about. But it's just so fascinating because when you really get down into it, people back then were not that different from people today. Exactly right. We're talking about the same types of issues and we're talking about it using very similar means, but it wasn't that much different. Yeah. The difference is now we have more technology, but they were growing technology back in those days. All right. What was the behavior of the newspapers? What I mean by that, did they have an inquire type? Because you mentioned magazines, which is interesting. Yeah. I'm thinking, did they have an inquire, did they have ones that gave biased information, corrections, misconceptions? And it was all the news that's fit to print is what I'm asking. Oh yeah. So you certainly saw that. Maybe not exactly in the same sensational vibe as maybe the National Inquirer that you'd see today. But back then, people would write anonymous op-eds and they could praise or disparage whoever they wanted or whatever issue they wanted. Yeah. They did that. That was a real thing. And you know what's so amazing, like you said, nothing has changed. Everything comes forward and things are doing the same politically. People are getting out misinformation, all kinds of things. And what I want to ask about that is something called direct effects. And that was on the New Columnist. Were they passively accepting the media messages that exhibited predictable reactions to their messages? Was it something that people reacted to? Oh, I believe that. That kind of thing. There certainly was that. And that speaks to the power of print media and media in general. One of the reasons why groups of people like the Sons of Liberty were so effective in communicating was that several high-profile members were either printers or they were connected to people that could print the print information. And so you would see a number of examples. Even going back to Paul Revere had done a famous cartoon after the Boston Massacre that's now considered a very early form of propaganda because the way that he is describing and visualizing the British soldiers shooting at the crowd in Boston, it didn't really unfold that way. But when people are looking at this, they're going, all they're seeing is they're seeing armed soldiers shooting unarmed civilians. Unarmed civilians. Exactly right. And that is enough to stir the emotions of anybody. Oh, yes. They knew what they were doing. I mean, this isn't by accident or anything like that, but they absolutely would use it to their advantage. That's important. You know why? Because in history, you learn that Crispus Attucks was one of the first people that were killed in there. I says, wow, these guys were involved in this too? Yeah, because they wanted to be able to be involved in the revolution against the British. That's a very important factor. Number five, speaking of newspapers, do you believe that they are still relevant with the internet and so many other sources of media? Do you read newspapers, electronic or often as your major source of news today? I do. I still, I don't have a subscription to newspapers, but we do have digital access to local newspapers. And it is important because whenever I go on my social media, my social media is mainly people I'm connected with and that's it. I try to filter a lot of the noise that kind of comes from all sorts of directions. But I do get into the local newspapers to see what's going on in the towns and in Norwich because I do like knowing what's going on. I like to be informed. They are still very important. In fact, newspapers and traditional media companies, I don't think have ever had a more important role in history because we will always have to rely on information. Right. There you go. To either make decisions or to know who to vote for or to know where you stand on particular issues. And now we're starting to see problems where media companies are more interested in taking stance than reporting information. I got you. And that's a whole other discussion that can get a little, that can probably get a little controversial in some ways. But regardless, it's imperative on newspapers and media to work on behalf of the people to report the information and not, don't get interested in taking sides. Let people take sides. Yeah, let them make their own choice. Let them make their own choice. Walter Cronkite was on the air. I mean, people looked at him and trusted him. Exactly. If he said it, you believed it was true. That's right. That's what we call a direct effect, you know, towards that. You know, it's interesting you just mentioned that, how media companies each other. You go back into the days where Pulitzer was against Hearst. Remember those days where Pulitzer and Hearst were at each other trying to get the big headlines? They're trying to get more people to buy their papers is what they had to say. That's right. So that was interesting you said it because that's happening again today with the media companies. Oh, it is. And because that information is communicated so much more quickly nowadays, it becomes even that much more important that media companies want to be the first to either get that story out or get that headline out. Because nowadays, you know, anybody on Twitter can share information about what's happening in the world. It doesn't have to be a reporter on the ground somewhere. You can get something out really quick. I do exactly. Yeah. Have you ever been at a place of rule like in overseas where they don't have that type of electronics or media? Like when I was in Africa in the 1970s, they didn't even have paid roles in many of them except for maybe Côte d'Ivoire. Have you been someplace where you have said, wow, this is more like it? I love this aspect of it. Well, I was in London last April. Yeah. And I'd never been before. And it's a really fabulous city, I think. A big city. It's a big city. And I would say that when you compare it to a city like New York or Boston, it's incredibly different. I had an opportunity to kind of see how their magazines and newspapers tend to report information. And I see a lot of the same things, the same overlaps and whatnot. But I think at the end of the day, it's a cultural thing. Yeah. There you go. You know, here in America, our biggest export is entertainment and media in general. I mean, we're talking about movies, television, you know, all forms of media is this country's biggest export. And so culturally, that separates us a lot from, I think, the rest of the world. And the only way I got to go to places like Europe was because the Navy in Scotland was on subs. And the biggest thing was these guys, I think it was called Page Six or Page Three, where they show the women that can't really clap. They can't do that in the United States. They said, that's why in England, we can get away with that. Are you kidding me? They can publish that? Oh, my goodness. So as of today, what are the various, you already answered this actually, what are the various forms of media that you utilize in this museum? For instance, if there's a particular exciting event, exhibits, or news about what is happening here, the local newspaper, word of mouth, TV ads, radio, your website, et cetera. Yeah. I'm going to be talking about that. We do hit on all aspects of media. So for people that are members of the museum, they're plugged into our newsletter and our emails that we send out. They can follow us online where we share exciting pictures and updates on Facebook and Instagram. And they can also learn a lot about the museum too, because we like to share different factoids and information about us. So we've got that. The website we add to as well. And we do a number of forms of advertising in the newspaper as well as on radio. So we try to reach a lot of different people, at least in the region, to get everybody to come here. Right. And your population here, as far as people coming in to see exhibits, is it up to your liking? Or would you rather have hordes of people coming in versus some of the museums in New York? Or would you rather have it the way it is now? Is it nice? And this museum is not one of the museums that necessarily you have to pay to come in. It's one of those museums, because that's how museums used to always be. Yeah. A lot of them used to be. In fact, yeah, the Met was free for a long time. Now they start charging people from outside of New York. That's certainly changing a lot. We have an admission fee for anybody that is either not an alum of NFA or visiting from out of the area. We try to give as much access as possible to the folks here in Norwich. And so if you went to NFA, if you have family or kids that go here, you can come here and you don't have to worry about admission. We want you to come here and experience the museum and be proud of it. I would love to be able to welcome more and more people each day. And in order to do that, I need a big parking lot right next door that only can be used for the museum. And if I can get that parking lot, then we'll be in good shape. It's funny you said, because I used to walk my mother from where we live. I live on Orchard Street. And we would walk. I said, well, do you want to take a walk? Oh, yeah, sure. She loved walking. So we'd go down the hill. And I said, she said, what's that? I said, that's a museum. She said, can we go see? I said, yes, come on, let's go. And the reason that's important was she had Alzheimer's at the time. And I love the fact that she was energized with these things that she remembers. And she loved museums. And we've been here three times in the 90s because of her love for the statues and going around just looking at exhibits. She's one of those people that can stay in the museum all day. She can just look and say, isn't that fascinating? There was no phones there, no nothing. Just your memory of what's going on. Yeah, yeah. That was wonderful. All right. Do you believe that the medium is the message? That the media themselves are instrumental in shaping human and cultural experiences? That is the form, the event. That is from the event of the Revolutionary War of today. So the medium is the message. That was by a guy named McLennan. Back in the day, he was writing something about how he figured that the medium, no matter what people may believe, when they listen to the medium, that changes their desires. The medium is important. I think it's incredibly important. But I guess I'll probably answer that by circling back to something I touched on before in the sense that media companies, whether they be newspapers or anything in between, they have a social responsibility to the community. And that's the same type of responsibility museums have. Museums operate in the trust of the public. We are expected to abide by very clear ethics and rules and guidelines. And when it comes to managing our collections and managing our own messaging to our visitors, when people come to museums, they expect to be enriched. They expect to learn something. They expect even to be entertained in some way. And they'll expect something surprising that they might not have been expecting at all when they first walked through the door. And that's a big mandate for us. So I have to be always vigilant of making sure that what we're communicating in our exhibits and in our programming is honest and that it's accurate and that it's relevant to what's going on today. The exact same thing is with media. They have a responsibility in making sure that what they're saying is accurate and honest and relevant and that it can connect. Oh, that's excellent. You know what? I never thought of it that way. I thought of a museum as always an entertaining place, like the Hayden Planetarium. I said, when I go in there and see this, it's just magnificent. And that's why I said that you made it to a point where it's a responsibility for their communication. And that's an important factor that people always get. They think that people will just throw anything out there. And they've got blogs now, podcasts, all these things. These things have a different way of trying to convey a message. But at the same time, the responsibility to the consumer or to people is not necessarily true in their trying to get their point out. You know, for instance, we have Yale, Columbia, all those, they're protesting now based on the war in Israel and Gaza. And I said to myself, you know, it's interesting how the war started with Hamas, who was with individuals that were from the Palestinians. But now because it's gone so big, so bad, 30,000, 40,000 people have died, this message has changed against the Israelites. Before there might have been some empathy for them. Now it's against them. And that's why I said, wow. And of course, the media is deeply involved with that. So it's interesting your message on that. And I agree with that because all the museums I've been to have been fascinating, but it does portray something that lets you know that. And you know what? It's also for the community. The community is at large. It's so important to be able to help the museum and to want people to come there and bring other people in there behind them. That's right. This is actually excellent. Is there anything else you want to add to that? Well, I think that I'll probably wrap up by saying that this museum is unique in the sense that we're connected to a high school. We're connected to NFA. We have a built-in population of 2,000 high schoolers. And most of them are all going to come here at least once, if not more. And that is also a big, big part of our responsibility as a museum is to ensure that we can connect with these students on a deep level. Because they're forming opinions, world views, and they're beginning to understand how the world is working. We're playing a role in that. We're helping them in their journey in life. And that's why I like this setting a lot because not every museum just has a built-in audience like that. It's a very special thing to have. And over the years that I've been here, I've worked with some wonderful students that are going to go on to become something special in their own right. And years and years from now, they're going to remember coming here. And they're going to remember the experience they had at NFA. And at the end of the day, if I can at least help influence the life of one student, then I know we're doing something right. We must be doing something right. Absolutely. You know that? You're one of these students that really are thinking about joining or being part of the museum? Oh, yeah. We have students who have volunteered with us. We have students who have helped us conduct programming. They are helped with events before. There's always a select number of students that really enjoy this setting. And so they end up getting to do some neat things here, for sure. That is magnificent. Thank you so much. My pleasure. This has been an excellent time. I've enjoyed my time here. Good. And even though this is a class, it's a little different, you know?