Facing Your Fears

If you know me, you know my squeamishness around bugs. I will curl into a fetal position if anything with a stinger* is near me, freak out if a moth flies too close, and a dead house fly on a windowsill makes me gag.

While I was working on my public history degree and learning about museums through various internship programs, no one talked to me about integrated pest management (IPM). To be fair, collections was not a focus of my early work. I was much more interested in community engagement and interpretation. On the Freedom Trail, the only pests I had to dodge were rats the size of small dogs; at the Massachusetts Historical Society, distracted Berklee students or Sox fans.

As a site manager at the Phillips and Gedney Houses in Salem, my collections mentor and friend Megan MacNeil gave me the crash course of my life. I started my work there in May 2008 – two weeks before a major open house weekend and the start of the busy summer season in Salem. I had to learn my administrative and interpretive roles and get to know two extraordinary historic properties. Megan led our team through all of these trainings and a “spring clean” of the Phillips House.

Anyone who has worked in a historic house museum knows that it is a smorgasbord for museum pests and wonderland for an entomologist. My first IPM lesson involved Megan calling me into a room where a rug was being cleaned and asking me if I knew about clothes moths.

The smell of my grandmother’s closet, chocked with moth balls came to mind and I likely told her, “sure,” and thought that I was going to just move to my next project. Instead, Megan invited me down to the rug and with her bare hand started scraping away at moth larvae in the rug. Megan can probably recall my reaction better than me, but I’m sure that I was disgusted and ran out of the room screaming.

Megan’s role was much wider at Historic New England and I did not have my IPM guru in the house with me – so the monitoring and care fell to me and my staff. In my time at the Phillips House, I worked with an incredibly talented collections staff and by the time I left in 2015, was also scraping away at larvae with my bare hands, picking up traps with inches long scuttegera, and freaking out a lot less…unless there was a wasp in my office.

Recalling this story is a reminder of how I faced some big fears in my personal life for the betterment of the places I stewarded. I’d love to know what fears you’ve faced. Did you ask for a big gift? Did you stand up to an unruly patron? Did you restore something? Did you sub in for a field trip or education program?

Shoot me a quick message and let’s celebrate our fear factors together!

*I fully respect all of our pollinating creatures and wish them long, productive, happy, healthy lives – just not flying near me!