Modern Town in the Old Town

Yesterday was my first day interpreting at Mystic Seaport. I was in the chandlery, and although going in I was extremely nervous, I shouldn't have been. It went very, very well. One of the things that surprised me was the number of international visitors. I talked with at least have a dozen Britons, a woman from Japan, a pair of Quebecois, and three other groups from France. I got the chance to interpret my interpretation to one lone Frenchman from small-town Brittany, and with a couple from the southern part of the country. That was fun, but made my brain hurt. The best visitor of the whole day was an employee of Dengameleby, a Danish open air/living history museum. The gentleman was in town "spying" on all of the New England open air museums, as well as attending the recent ALFHAM conference. Apparently his museum is opening a new section of their town, including a 1920's and a 1970's section. How cool is that? It is my understanding that LHF, if it ever has a fabulous donor who makes it possible, wants to start a 1950's farm. So often we act extremely retroactively, and are trying to gather artifacts from hundreds of years ago. We'd be able to put together a much better approximation of what happened only 60 years ago compared to two hundred or more. This Danish museum is now going on my list of places to visit!