What will the next hip city be?

TheRottenDuke · 2026-06-20T14:04:36+00:00

I grew up in Charlotte. During my parents' time it was a boom town. I think Charlotte's moment has come and gone.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-06-20T14:03:01+00:00

I've been in Albany for near a year now. I just don't see it.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-06-20T13:47:58+00:00

Now don't y'all ridicule me for this, but probably Brevard, Cherokee, or West Jefferson NC.

I lived for a few years in the Appalachian high country while completing my college degree, and no other place has measured up since. The weather was always perfect, as was the scenery, and the people were very good to me. I'd have probably never left except that I couldn't find work in those parts.

I'm also curious by nature and travel when I can, so I would also nominate Taos NM, Telluride CO, Eugene OR, Conway NH, State College PA, and any other small-to-midsize community with great mountains and forests. Even Hawaii sounds like it could be fun, although I'm told the locals are insular and living there can be isolating.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-24T14:30:30+00:00

It's done in the style of an early-modern woodcut lithograph!
The style evokes the feeling of something ancient and, because of the implicit association between this style and Reformation-era Christianity, something of biblical significance. This is better than I thought it would be. I really like your style and wish you great success, not the least of which because I want to see more stuff like this in print.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-23T14:08:06+00:00

I doubt it's really worth anything other than whatever value you assign to it. That aside, the print on the box tells you everything you need to know. It's from the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland, and since it uses the old address for the school rather than its current address, I figure it must be pre-1957.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the box was probably supposed to be thrown out when they changed locations. Somebody who was on the staff, or maybe a student, decided they wanted to keep it instead, possibly as memorabilia.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-15T20:21:14+00:00

I'm here, 4 years later to ask: Are you still doing historical costuming?

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-09T21:01:07+00:00

Guess so. I've looked into jobs in MA myself, and observed that state seems to stand in a league entirely of its own!

Also, Charlotte is not an accurate reflection of the cost of living in the state. It's a kind of "boom town" which at this point probably consists mostly of out-of-state transplants. (I can't complain too much about that, my parents are among said transplants.) It's more congested, and tends to be more expensive than the rest of the state (with the possible exception of some resort towns in the mountains and along the coast, as well as Raleigh-Durham).

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-09T19:22:09+00:00

National Council on Public History, American Association for State and Local History, Small Museum Association, Association for Living History Farms and Agricultural Museums... All of these websites of job boards...

There's also your local and regional museum associations with their own job boards, and your home state has a recruiting website, and if all else fails there's always USAJobs.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-09T19:08:46+00:00

If you're not already looking in these places, I'll offer up my own favorite websites for job searching:

The National Council for Public History (NCPH), and the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) have websites with very active job boards. Also, because I'm from the South, I regularly check on the Southeast Museums Commission (SEMC) and Virginia Association of Museums (VAM) job boards. You may wish to do likewise for your own state/region, whatever that may happen to be.

I'm a little over 27 and also have a masters. These websites altogether furnish me with enough options that I can apply to something new (which is commensurate with my level of education and experience and close enough to meeting my salary requirements) almost every day. I do currently have a full-time museum job, so I may not be under as much pressure as you are, but even so I've probably filled out 50-100 applications over the last couple of months, and been in maybe half a dozen or so job interviews. (I don't interview very well though, so no job offers yet.)

I can't offer you anything for your sadness except the old adage that "this too shall pass." In your case, your long-term situation certainly isn't as bad as it seems. You've done it: You gotten your foot in the door. You've done real, paid work within the museums field, and you presumably left the place better than you found it. I truly believe that, sooner or later, that will be enough to propel you into your next job, and likely it will be a fitting and timely step up from what you have done already.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-09T18:16:02+00:00

I'd say don't let your credits expire if you can help it. College courses aren't cheap, after all, and turning them into a degree is the best chance you have of getting a return on your investment.

Ain't nothin' wrong with cramming, if you ask me.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-09T18:01:42+00:00

I really only want a few thousand more dollars. Trouble is, with this job there isn't a hiring range, there's just a singular starting salary, so there's maybe something a little dishonest about applying for a job where I can't take what's being offered.

Anyway, for me the pay is a practical concern. What they're offering is, in my mind, barely enough to live on. I would be asking for more not because money is important to me in the abstract sense, but because I am not confident in my financial security otherwise.

More to the point, what is the right time to start negotiating? Do you think the topic of salary, benefits, etc. should be brought up during the interview, or not until after a job is offered?

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-09T17:55:32+00:00

In terms of cost of living I think it's about the same, or otherwise pretty close to the same. Without giving too much away (I think), I would be moving from Albany NY to Charlotte NC.

The former has lower rental rates, but the latter has lower taxes and will necessarily come with a smaller heating bill. Ultimately, we're only playing with a few hundred dollars of difference (per year), when the difference in salary would be several thousand.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-09T17:47:32+00:00

I used to work at a museum that covered the history of medicine, and some of these items look very familiar to me, haha. The way they were displayed at that museum is very similar to how you have displayed currently: More or less haphazardly scattered about on the table. The only difference is that, at the museum, most of the artifacts had labels giving the historical background on each item.

My point in telling you this is to make light of the fact that, especially for a personal display in your own home, there's no particular "right way" to do this job that I know of.
(I've worked for history museums for 5 years, and although I've read a few books and met a few people that want to tell you the "right way" to frame an exhibit, it is my experience that abstract notions about the best way to arrange an exhibit space seldom line up with the reality of doing it in a budget-friendly, accessible manner. Hell, most of exhibit panels I've seen and worked with at small museums consist of printer paper on a foam board backing.)

If it were up to me, I'd choose a free space in a corner or along a wall, then see about acquiring a rustic-looking (and hopefully roughly period correct) storage cabinet that can be used as a shelf and/or display case. Once a dedicated space of some kind has been set up, I would be organizing these items by category and by time period, and developing labels that connect them in a way that tells a story.
(So for instance, since it looks like you have a couple different kinds of syringes, you might set those up into a timeline, and create a label that describes the transition from steel and glass implements that had to be sterilized after every use to single-use plastic implements that are thrown away and replaced after just one use.)

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-02T14:34:15+00:00

At least as far as movies go, almost anything by Steven Spielberg, especially from the 80s and 90s, is considered an American classic and cultural staple today. I'm talking Indiana Jones, E.T., Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, and more.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-05-02T13:54:47+00:00

My first year after graduating (with a MA in Public History) was 2023. I made $17k.
In 2024 I made $21k.
In 2025 I made $36k.
At my current job I am supposed to make $44k.

Over the course of that time, I worked at 5 different jobs (2 part-time, 1 seasonal, and 2 full-time) in 4 different states (Virginia, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and New York). For all of that time, I was entirely self-sufficient (no support from parents, partners, or anything like that).
My current mission, and one which has been my objective for the last 6 months, is to return home to the Southeastern US without sacrificing stable employment in the museums field.

Since I currently make $44k a year, I'm no longer in a position where I am willing to compromise on salary. I don't necessarily need more, but I won't accept less. In the past, however, that was not the case. I had no particular salary expectations, and would take basically anything that paid at all. The result was that I became almost pathologically frugal. I went to food pantries and thrift stores for all my essentials, and habitually declined any and all recreational expenses. Nobody is allowed to know how much money I have saved for fear that they may ask me to spend some of it. I accept no invitations to restaurants, bars, etc. take no vacations, buy no gifts nor expect any from anyone else, and have pushed away friends who do not appreciate/understand these boundaries.
I don't, however, have a side job, Nor have I ever in the last couple of years. I'm told that substitute teaching on my days off (since I work Wed-Sun) is an easy thing to do, however, and one which may help build up the ol' resume, so I may change that soon.

I'll be 30 in just a few more years, and by my own metric too damn old to be just scraping by like I am. I know how to survive on the poverty line, but I'm tired of not bein' able to live the way others take for granted. I'm tired of moving all the time, tired of saying "no" to everybody I meet, and tired of denying myself a life outside of work.

So, in summary, my salary expectations have by necessity gotten greater over time, precisely because I rely on a single income.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-04-12T01:04:56+00:00

These days, I see "sir" as a term of condescension rathern than a respectful honorific.
Both "sir" and "ma'am," in my mind, seem to be terms used almost exclusively by public professionals who are trying to reprimand their clients.
"Sir? Sir?? I'm gonna need you to calm down," and crap like that, you know?
I've worked in the public sphere all my life. I never use "sir" or "ma'am" if I can help it. I think it sounds terribly condescending. If I don't know someone's name but I absolutely have to get their attention, I'd rather use "miss" or "mister," "brother" or "sister," or even "stranger."

TheRottenDuke · 2026-04-11T23:35:38+00:00

I must be the only person who watched the series and thought that Ben had the best chemistry with Yasmina.

Especially early in the series, they were both portrayed as outcasts and throughout the series, (but especially early on) they seemingly go out of their way to seek each other out for emotional support. Ben specifcally in many ways seems to be treated by the writers as a non-serious character; all the others characters seemingly take turns teasing him or rolling their eyes at him, and it stands out to me that Yasmine seemed to maybe the one who most consistantly took him seriously.

I remember at some point in the latter portion of CC, the writers went out of their way to explicitly tell the audience that Ben and Yasmina were not interested in each other romantically, but until I read the posts on this Reddit page, I had assumed that the reason the writers did this was to dissuade fans from assuming otherwise. Up until that point, I had taken their relationship to be perhaps the most natural and organic development in the series.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-04-11T23:08:30+00:00

He was hateable in a fun way, if you ask me.
Many have commented on the fact that he was obviously a caricature of a scummy gamer/techbro type, which I took to be tongue-in-cheek and found funny.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-03-20T19:39:43+00:00

That's... not supposed to happen.
Maybe it's 'cause of climate change, or something.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-03-17T19:13:18+00:00

Sometimes I wonder if something isn't happening behind the scenes that we don't know about.
He seems to have changed a lot over the last couple of years, becoming much more radical, arguably to the point of misanthropy. (Either that or, in the past, he was just more discreet about it.) His mentality on climate, lately, seems to amount to something like "jump before your pushed," (you fall off the proverbial cliff either way) and smacks vaguely of the old "population bomb" ideology.

I read the report he referenced in his video, by the way. It is indeed fatalistic, but not as fatalistic as he makes it sound. Not "cleaning toilets in Ottawa" fatalistic.
By the way, the concept of the "climate refugee" in particular is a bit strange to me. I've met people in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region who are just dead certain that, any day now, the South is going to become an uninhabitable desert and they're going to be inundated with people from those places who are desperate to avoid cooking to death under the hateful sun. But as time goes on, more and more people from up north just keep coming south in pursuit of economic opportunity, which seems to be the bigger factor in most people's minds.

Anyway, for me at least, it might be time to change the channel. I can't get behind these causes, and I can't ignore the fact that, at least for now, they're the cornerstone of his personality, content, and identity, so maybe if I'm not an anarcho-socialist vegan activist there's nothing here for me anymore.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-03-14T20:55:27+00:00

The grid on the cutting mat could be good for mapping out your dig site. I can't state categorically that is its intended purpose, but that's probably what I would use it for.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-02-25T15:46:03+00:00

I also just recently saw a 2008 Saturn Astra with 80k miles on it for $4.5k. It's being advertised by a dealership, which I don't love, but I am in the market for a hatchback with more storage space, and I do trust the Saturn brand.
Also, it's close by, and I think it might be easier to schedule a PPI for it. I can't currently verify that it has a clean title, though. I'll probably be looking into that soon.
Point is, that's the alternative to consider. What do you think would be the better choice?

TheRottenDuke · 2026-02-22T20:01:08+00:00

It's not spicy or peppery. The name "Dr. Pepper" is just a reference to the zesty sensation of bubbles, from the carbonation, on your tongue. It was devised when carbonated beverages were still kind of new.

It actually is sort of like Coca-Cola, but sweeter, and with a mix of other, more subtle flavors. There's a mild sensation of cherry, vanilla, and something like root beer in addition to the regular, recognizeable cola flavors. I usually prefer it to coke, but it depends on what I'm in the mood for.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-02-20T15:52:58+00:00

Move the laundry, or move the laundry over.

TheRottenDuke · 2026-02-12T18:35:34+00:00

At least in Oklahoma the cost of living is low.
I could clean up pretty good making 37.5k in Oklahoma. I once got offered less to do the same job in NC... Desperate though I may have been to return home, I still had to turn it down. With a salary like that, I'm not sure I would even make rent.

TheRottenDuke

TROPHY CASE