Accessibility, Activism, and A Nuclear City

The AmeriCorps Cultural Technology program is a highly beneficial program that one can participate in. Through this, you engage in multiple facets of the professional world such as art installations/exhibition design, various video and documentation work (among many other projects), and have some really enlightening discussions, etc. During the course of this AmeriCorps term, my internship involved doing more oral historian work and creating an archive of high quality video interviews that showcase the rich history of Los Alamos, New Mexico.

(Rising Star art installation, photo by Tara Trudell)

Throughout the course of this internship, I’ve been involved in a number of things. I was at the Cesar Chavez Day celebration, documenting the various activities going on, which included: a march throughout downtown Albuquerque, NM (protesting, fighting for rights, Bernie supporters, dances, etc…it was quite a remarkable sight), various speeches by important figures, a powerful poem about a fist and the power it holds, bands, and performances that were put on by some adorable children. That activity left a lasting impression on me, and I’m glad I was able to be there to witness such a spectacular event. I’ve also been working with the AmeriCorps class on setting up an accessible, multisensory art installation, where we took a poem by our classmate Tara Trudell and brought it to life through video, audio, touch, smell, interactivity… and also keeping with the spirit of the class, we included elements such as sign language, Braille, and other mediums to be able to include those with a disability. I found this semester’s AmeriCorps class to be full of new information, information that I wouldn’t have thought about otherwise if I hadn’t taken the class.

(Rising Star art installation, photo by Tara Trudell)

As for obstacles and successes, well… I’ve had a little of each, more successes then failures. At the start of the internship, one of the bigger pains was scheduling people for an interview. If I’m being honest, I would rather not talk on a phone, and because of that, when I had to make phone calls I would hurry through them as fast as possible, and it would end up sounding more or less like a telemarketing phone call. That was corrected by having our mentor make the initial phone call, and then having Chris and I make a follow up phone call to schedule the interviewee. Another disappointing aspect of the internship was that there were certain times that I didn’t feel like I was getting appropriate feedback in regards to the edited interviews. Compliments and comments are nice, but those don’t help you improve. Granted, I didn’t bring this up at all during the course of the internship because I didn’t think it was a big deal…but now that I think about it, I wish I had done so.

(Rising Star art installation, photo by Tara Trudell)

My expectations of this internship were exceeded. In part due to the fact that I tried a lot of new things this semester, and it’s good to break out of your comfort zone. I worked on my first all accessible multisensory design exhibit, documented an important event about human rights, worked on a successful video collection about a topic I hardly knew anything about, and gained some new technical skills (such as conducting an interview). I feel like I’ve built upon the oral historian knowledge that I first gained last summer through the WW2 project, and I have more of an appreciation for this kind of work. Overall, I think this AmeriCorps internship has been the best one yet, and I can’t to begin work on not only another interview collection this summer, but also phase 2 of the Rising Star art installation.

(Rising Star art installation, photo by Tara Trudell)

Here is a video of the setup for “Rising Star”.

 

And here is a video of the actual installation, up and running.

Some closing remarks

This week Chris and I prepared a video to go along with a presentation that we planned to give when this project came to a close. We had the talk and showed the video this last Thursday  April, 29th. It went over really well… we got lots of good feed back, compliments, and suggestions. For example one of the comments we received was, “This is the first extensive, good quality, video collection we’ve had. So I just wanted to thank you again.” It feels pretty good play a part in the new exhibits that will be installed on Bath Tub Row here in the not too distant future.

Overall, I would have to say that this project went pretty well. There were some hiccups and some kinks that needed to be worked out, but it was nothing that we couldn’t handle. We heard lots of great stories about a pretty spectacular place, my favorite of which being the story of Marv VanDilla (his blog post is up, if you haven’t seen, go check it out).

I’m looking forward to future projects, but for now, it’s nice to put this one to bed… so to speak. So, I’ll leave you with relatively short summary video of some of the work that we’ve done:

Interview #19: Mrs. Ellen Bradbury Reid

Ellen Reid moved to Los Alamos as a child when her father got a job at the lab.  The first summer there her family was unable to get in a house because of a shortage so they lived in a large tent.  In the Oral-History she talks about her childhood such as when she finally got a badge to the town.  She talks about the town and why they would develop the hydrogen bomb after the atomic bomb.  She talks about Norris Bradbury who would become her father- in-law.

Here she talks about an encounter with Oppenheimer after he lost his clearance.

Interview #18: Mr. Tom Nolen

Tom Nolan moved to Los Alamos in 1957 when he was twelve years old.  In the Oral-History he talks a lot about his childhood.  He played baseball for a local little league team and worked at a department store in town when he was in high school.  He reads a part of his memoir for the interview.  He also discusses a few people he had met in town that meant a lot to him.

Here he reads a story he wrote about his baseball experiences as a kid.

Interview #17: Mr. Richard Swenson

Richard Swenson was a very critical person in the cold war.  He worked primarily with the Navy developing and launching arrays in the ocean to detect Russian submarines.  In the Oral-History he talks about growing up on a farm in North Dakota and how a swimming pool in a basement of a school sparked his love of swimming and the water.  He joined the navy to pay for college and became a Navy Seal.  He spends the entire interview talking about the different arrays and the challenges he faced creating and deploying them.

In this clip he talks about one of the arrays.

Interview #16: Mr. John Ruminer

John Ruminer moved to Los Alamos at an early age in 1941.  He grew up in Los Alamos and enjoyed the schools.  He went off and got his PHD in engineering were his thesis was on shockwaves and composite structures.  He moved back to Los Alamos in 1975 working as a engineer in the Los Alamos Laboratory.  He was involved in the lab-to-lab talks in the 1980s.

Here he talks about one of his accomplishments working at the lab.

Interview #15: Mr. Sig Hecker

Sig was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in the 1980s.  He was born in Poland and lived in Austria in his youth until he was thirteen and immigrated over to America.  He got his degree in metallurgy and material science and first came to Los Alamos in 1965 for a summer job.  He permanently came to the lab in 1973 and worked on a wide variety of projects such as plutonium batteries that would allow space craft to reach Pluto.  He became director of the lab in the 1980s and talks about the different aspects of being director such as what projects he spearheaded, dealing with the public and having to go to Washington and work with the politicians to get projects funded.

In this clip he talks about the lab to lab meetings between the Los Alamos laboratory and the Russian labs.

Interview #14: Mr. Fred Ribe

We were recommended to speak to Mr. Fred Ribe by Mr. Art Freed, the head librarian we spoke to last year. I can see why he recommended him, he played big roles at some really important events in history. One in particular, that he really elaborated on was his involvement in drawing up a petition to re-instate Oppenheimer’s security clearance. He also had a lot to say about Oppenheimer in general, his character, how he operated the lab, his stance on the dropping of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He lead a pretty crazy life, from his involvement in the develop of the H-bomb and Bikini Atoll, to teaching graduate classes, to being involved in Lab to Lab meetings between the U.S. and Russia.

In the video below he discusses what happened at Bikini Atoll, his love for music, the ethics behind the work being done in the lab at the time, and he also discusses a bit about what happened with Oppenheimer’s clearance being revoked by the AEC.

Interview #13: Mr. John Hopkins

John Hopkins worked at the laboratory in Los Alamos.  In the Oral-History he talks about why he came to Los Alamos in 1955 and his first impressions of the town.  He talks about the cyclotron which was his first project when he came for the summer in 1955.  He talks about how the housing situation worked during those days and what you had to do to get a house.  The bulk of the interview is about Nuclear Weapons and he goes over every aspect of them from their history and why Los Alamos was chosen to develop them there to the culture of nuclear weapons at Los Alamos.  He goes over how they are developed and the morale and political controversies that accompany them.

Here he is talking about his first impressions of the town when he arrived in 1955 and what the town had to offer as well as the housing situation.

Interview #12: Mr. Marv Van Dilla

Marv Van Dilla is a extremely intelligent scientist who worked in the Bio-Medical division at the Lab.  In the Oral-History he talks about growing up in New York City in the 1930s.  He got his PHD in Physics at MIT after WW2.  He arrived in Los Alamos in 1957 to work at the laboratory.  He worked on the Human Genome project at the lab.  In the oral-history he goes over nuclear weapons in detail, the effects, morals and how they work.  He talks highly of Los Alamos and the outdoor activities he did with his family when he lived there.

Here he is talking about the effects of nuclear fallout on the japanese people after WW2.