This week was our first evening meeting of 2023. Our speaker at the important meeting was Dakota Russell, the new executive director at the House of the Seven Gables. 

Dakota started his presentation by recounting some if his previous positions. He moved here from Wyoming where he had presented to the local Rotary club about the internment camps for Japanese living in the United States during World War II, many of them United States citizens. One member in Wyoming did question whether or not the camps actually existed. On the other hand, Bruce Whear was very excited to hear this presentation, perhaps at a later date. 

Dakota has worked in museums and historic sites for 20 years.  He noted that people associate a lot of memories with these places which is why he enjoys his work so much. He did explain the differences between historic sites and museums in his mind. Historic sites are places for the people. Museums are for the elites and historic places are by the elites. 

Dakota's career started in Missouri which had a newer stock of historic sites. These sites told a story of the things important to the people in charge at the time, like Confederate historic sites where he worked. Whatever the case these, sites serve as jumping off point for conversations. He got the opportunity to create a new historic site for Nathan and Olive Moon Historic Site (Nathan was the son of Daniel Boone). The powers that be wanted it to be more along the lines of the image of people have of Daniel Boone. Instead Dakota gave equal voice to slaves and Native Americans, as well as the story of cultures cooperating and clashing. This story resonated with the 21st century audience. 

Dakota then moved to Cody, Wyoming and the site of Heart Mountain Internment Camp. This historic site has an interesting history as it was bought in the 2000s by people held there during World War II as children. They built a museum there. Stories were told in the first person, for example "we were rounded up". They looked at present-day themes such as how different races have been impacted by the spread of infectious diseases. This ruffled a few feathers. 

Explaining his move to the House of the Seven Gables, Dakota no longer wanted to keep fighting to prove social justice was important. Instead he wanted a place that already believed it. He told us the history of the Gables, that it was a house falling into disrepair and purchased by Caroline Emmerton in 1910. She wanted to use her wealth for public good, which led her to the concept of a settlement house. In short, she would buy a big house for groups to gather. Emmerton restored the house, including putting gables back on. The house served as a settlement house where residents, almost all immigrants, gave tours and worked to restore the property. Today they use money to help immigrants, like teaching ESL classes and hosting a naturalization ceremony. That matters to Dakota and they are restoring one room to how it was in the settlement house.

The Service Committee once again passed around a signup sheet for Build a Bed event coming up in February. There is still room to sign up. Contact Francesca Little if you are interested. February 14 is the date that the EarlyAct club will be collecting change for the "Change for Changing Lives" even that will benefit the North Shore Moving Market. The Auction Committee is soliciting any gifts to be packaged together and raffled off, including unwanted or duplicate holiday gifts.  

A reminder, of course, that we will be meeting at 5:15 on the fourth Tuesday of the month. This week we were served a Mediterranean themed assortment of appetizers. 

John Fisher attended via Zoom, apparently after having a tooth pulled.