Engaged!

Ok so I didn't do much today because I was celebrating my engagement to Wiki. He asked me last night and of course I said yes! This weekend is reserved for romance and fun. I canceled my Valentines Day Fundraiser due to low registration. Instead we are meeting everyone at Barragans for dinner and margaritas. Good news is my Special Libraries Association Dinner Party at the House has 19 registered guests. I'm dying to meet all the different kinds of librarians that are members. Part of why I'm hosting this event is because they gave me the Karen Sternheim Memorial Scholarship last year and I would like to show my gratitude since I won't be living here to participate on any boards or chairs. Anyhow the picture is of me and Wiki at the Bonaventure Hotel where Durk was kind enough to put us in for our first two nights together in Los Angles.

Homework Post 1

Hours Total
6/140

So, I'm going to mark my homework posts as such so that my teacher can find them and so that people who don't care about archiving/library stuff can be warned. I'm going to start some of my archiving work here so that I'm not in a crunch when I get to Helsinki. Today and yesterday I spent a total of about 6 hours doing archival related work. This was all centered around a travel scrap book that Tom kept. It's quite old and raises a lot of preservation concerns. Here is what I did...

-Wiki and I went through the book and worked on translating all of the text (some is German but most is Finnish). These were placecd in a word document for the time being.

-Found a nice archival box that fit the book just perfectly (it's spent most of it's life on an open bookshelf in Tom's room- nooooo climate control). I had to alter the box some because there was a 3 ring binder thingy in it. After removing that, I there were two small holes so I'm thinking I'll seal them with some thick archival paper and archival tape.

-Discussed with Sharp (our Vice President) how we can reformat the book and possibly make a new version on Lulu.com or a similar site so that our guests can flip through it without giving me a heart attack. We could place the translations in some sort of index in the back.

-I took the book outside... told the boys to smoke their cigars and cigs AWAY from their usual area because that's where I was shooting. Anyhow, I shot each page in natural light at 300 DPI on my Cannon Rebel. I wanted to scan it but the spine is too fragile. The pictures look a little dark, but I noticed the screen on this computer is rather dark as well.

I had a dinner party with several of my new volunteers and pornographer friends last night and it turns out one of them has mad skills when it comes to scanning and photoshopping. I may have him come give me a lesson and also suprvise him on getting some of Toms research binders digitized. Just for fun, above is a pic of my porn/volunteer party in our beautiful living room.

Why a Blog

So, people keep telling me I should keep a blog because there's never a dull moment when you live at the Tom of Finland Foundation! I'm the Library Director & International Liaison as well as a resident in Tom of Finland's Home in Los Angeles, which is also a Foundation and erotic art archive (more about that later). I'll be here up until Feb 26 at which point I'll be flying with my boyfriend Wiki Wickman to go live with him in Helsinki. Wiki (pronounced Vicky) took care of Tom during the last 2 years of his life. Tom wanted to pass in Finland and our Foundation President-Durk Dehner needed to be here in Los Angeles to manage the Foundation. So when he met my dear kind Wiki who was working in a gay bar in Helsinki (though he identifies as straight obviously queer friendly) he asked him to care for Tom. As a result Wiki has a lot of Tom's ephemera mixed in with his personal collection (he's a big collector). This ephemera has not been recorded or cataloged. So my first project will be to weed Wiki's collection and create aquisition forms so that they are on record with the Foundation and can be lent to future exhibitions. In addition Wiki has both Tom of Finland originals and reproductions. We plan to bring everthing together in order to launch a Tom of Finland Visitor's Center and Museum in Finland. This will probably be seasonal due to the harsh Finland winters-which we plan to spend back here at the Foundation in Los Angeles. I'm working with a professor at San Jose State University (where I am an online student) so my posts will sometimes be brief reports on what I'm doing and how many hours it took. However advise and feedback from all is welcome!