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CSK Books: The Skin I'm In, Breaking Ground/Breaking Silence...
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From: Marc Aronson <75664.3110>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 17:24:06 -0500
The challenge in Breaking Ground Breaking Silence was to honor the limitations of what we know from the study of the burial ground, and in that way teach about the process of recovering knowledge, while also creating a clear narrative. What helped was that Gary knew every detail of the dig, so he could show us at his lab all of the tools the scientists used, the objects they recovered, and how they studied and preserved them. The lab was in the basement of the World Trade Center, and after the bombing there was a great deal of security around it. Still we were able to wander the aisles amidst vats holding beads in preserving solutions, fragments of pottery, maps showing the location of all of the coffins, etc.
One particularly interesting moment came when we met a researcher who had a tiny fragment of fabric from another dig that she was studying under a microscope and trying to match with books with historic fabric patterns from around the world. She had to find an exact match to the weave to determine where it was from. It was that puzzle-solving excitement we wanted to put into the book.
Joyce then used established print histories to tell the story of slaves and free blacks in New York. She kept seeing a parallel between the trials of the slaves accused of setting New York aflame and the Salem witch trials.
Gary tells me he is now working on a tunnel in a church in Syracuse that was the last stop on the Underground Railroad. In it are faces carved into clay which may well have been made by escaping slaves. I get to see photos tomorrow.
Marc Aronson
Received on Fri 12 Mar 1999 04:24:06 PM CST
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 17:24:06 -0500
The challenge in Breaking Ground Breaking Silence was to honor the limitations of what we know from the study of the burial ground, and in that way teach about the process of recovering knowledge, while also creating a clear narrative. What helped was that Gary knew every detail of the dig, so he could show us at his lab all of the tools the scientists used, the objects they recovered, and how they studied and preserved them. The lab was in the basement of the World Trade Center, and after the bombing there was a great deal of security around it. Still we were able to wander the aisles amidst vats holding beads in preserving solutions, fragments of pottery, maps showing the location of all of the coffins, etc.
One particularly interesting moment came when we met a researcher who had a tiny fragment of fabric from another dig that she was studying under a microscope and trying to match with books with historic fabric patterns from around the world. She had to find an exact match to the weave to determine where it was from. It was that puzzle-solving excitement we wanted to put into the book.
Joyce then used established print histories to tell the story of slaves and free blacks in New York. She kept seeing a parallel between the trials of the slaves accused of setting New York aflame and the Salem witch trials.
Gary tells me he is now working on a tunnel in a church in Syracuse that was the last stop on the Underground Railroad. In it are faces carved into clay which may well have been made by escaping slaves. I get to see photos tomorrow.
Marc Aronson
Received on Fri 12 Mar 1999 04:24:06 PM CST
