Tag: museum

Margerumalia – Writers on Display

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – September 12, 2025

I was honored to receive an email recently telling me that my book would be featured in a display at The Caretaker’s Cottage curated by the West Lafayette Public Library. My wife and I went over to see it and she took this photo of me. You can see MAMLA on the top shelf of the display case farthest to the right.

It’s quite the incentive to put my nose to the grindstone and finish my sequel, The Most Amazing Museum of Chicago. I have 10,335 words written on my first draft, so that’s not nothing! 

The Caretaker’s Cottage was remodeled into a beautiful little museum that the public library set up and it sits on the edge of Grandview Cemetery, where my parents and grandmother are buried. The cottage was built around the turn of the twentieth century and housed the cemetery caretaker and his family.

The grand view, now hidden by majestic maples and towering oak trees, looked down the hillside and across the Wabash River, providing a spectacular vista of Lafayette.

I used to walk or ride my bike past that cemetery on my way to junior high school and always found it calming, not frightening like cemeteries in the movies.

The rotating displays of the museum honors West Lafayette residents from soldiers to sports figures to writers, telling the story of our city. There used to be a display of my mother’s campaign memorabilia and some highlights of her twenty-four years as mayor. That exhibit and more are now housed on the top floor of the public library.

A less comfortable story, but vital to tell, is that West Lafayette was once a sun-down town. That means that everyone who was not white had to leave the town by the time the sun went down. Non-whites were allowed to clean houses and do manual labor, but they could not live here. 

This practice ended before I was born, but it sends a cold spike into my guts when I think about it. The docent admitted that she benefitted from generational wealth, living in the house that her grandparents built about a century ago. She even showed us a copy of the deed they signed with large letters excluding non-whites. It was poignant. 

What is it they say in Alcoholics Anonymous? Before you can begin mending, you have to admit you have a problem? I’m glad to see the racial mix across the city and when I work part time at the Junior/Senior High School. I hope we, as a nation, can continue to mend and learn from our history how ever uncomfortable it may be. 

We are, after all, the human race. We are one people. 

TTFN

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – International Museum Day

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – May 23, 2025

PHOTO CREDIT: icom.museum

This past Sunday, I heard on the radio that it was International Museum Day. Well, why did you wait and tell me on the day of? C’mon people, give me some room to run with this little gem!

Having set my novel in The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, and building on that theme in the much-anticipated sequel The Most Amazing Museum of Chicago (I, for one, am dying to know how it turns out), I should be informed about this International Day for Museums. Heck, I even blogged a recommendation for Mike Gayle’s book The Museum of Ordinary People (Margerumalia, January 17, 2025). All museums honored here!

Clearly it’s up to me to seek out the information and share what I learned. You’re welcome.

Oh, dear. I went to the icom.museum website and I’m afraid it’s rather stodgy and very academic sounding. Their photographers, on the other hand, really know what they’re doing. There are lots of really interesting photos that make you say, “That’s interesting. I wonder what’s going on here?” Especially in the Sharing Is Caring section.

That’s what we want to know, isn’t it? What are these people doing here and why? …And then what happened? …And then what? Stories are our common bond. 

Somewhere in the Black Forest of Germany, my mother sensed that my brothers and I were bored by the tapestries, the thrones, and suits of armor gathering dust in the umpteenth castle of the day. So she took us outside. 

A small square pond about the size of a Little League infield sat low in a clearing surrounded by  tall shaggy oaks. Mossy bricks edged the still water and no breeze blew through this fine and private place. 

“Hello?” my mother shouted, only to be answered by her own voice. 

“Hello?” it said back. 

We looked at her blankly. 

“That was the Echo,” she told us. “Let’s see if we can find her.” 

And even though we knew it was a game, we dashed up and down the little hillsides, looking behind tree trunks and vine-covered stones to see if we could find the mysterious Echo. I think we even shouted a few times to hear her shout back in our own voices. 

After about twenty minutes of this game, my brothers and I were nearly spent and remarkably capable of touring another bedroom in the nearby castle.

Echo went with us. I know because I heard her mocking the tour guide with his own voice even though he didn’t shout.  

Fifty-plus years later, I still remember that exciting moment when Mom made the echo into a sprite called Echo. 

And this morning, two little boys walking with their mother and calling me “a grandpa” rushed ahead when I told them that the yellow post at the top of the hill was good luck if they touched it. We all earned our good luck this morning.

That’s the kind of museum I want to remember. And a lot of the curators have figured that out. Especially the children’s museums who say, “Go ahead. You can touch it,” because they know we learn through all of our senses, not just our eyes.

TTFN

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – The Museum of Ordinary People

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – January 17, 2025

The Museum of Ordinary People – by Mike Gayle

I begin most mornings with a walk through the woods and last fall I decided to listen to Gayle’s book that I discovered on Chirp when it was on sale.

Since my book bears the title of The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles this title jumped out at me like a complete opposite from mine. An antithesis, if you will. For a few bucks I could download it and get a good look at the opposite end of the museum spectrum. I’m glad I did. 

The narrator, Jess, has mixed feelings about disposing of an old set of encyclopedias her mother had bought her as a child. The process of clearing out her mother’s home after her death left her with new appreciation for possessions and their meanings to people who owned them.

Jess learns of The Museum of Ordinary People and decides to cart the box of books to the museum rather than send them off to the tip (what Brits call the dump). There she learns of an uncurated collection of items that had been donated over the years and suddenly a fire is lit within her. She had always aspired to work as a museum curator and asked the owner for permission to inventory these items, working after hours and on weekends to set up and open the museum to the public.

The novel includes a love story but I wouldn’t say the book should be called a romance. I’ve read thrillers, sf, and historical fiction with love stories and wouldn’t call them romances either. Women’s Fiction is fairly accurate but I’d rather refer to it as general fiction…with a love story. And the first person narration on the audiobook is charmingly performed by Whitney White who lends a sincere authenticity to Jess’ story. 

There’s a kind of cozy mystery quality to the story with ordinary people experiencing a moment in time that alters their life perspectives. No murder needs to be solved, but there is an engagement to be broken (not a big spoiler), a mother’s illness and death to be processed, and a life to be rediscovered and lived. All in all, a rather good formula for a successful story. 

The supporting cast of characters are well fleshed out and equally engaging, as are the side stories of items in the museum that have their own histories, including that set of encyclopedias that began the whole tale. Hitchcock would have called those books a MacGuffin—“an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). 

Unlike my story of the Shafer family and their adventures in MAMLA, these characters don’t take an elevator up to the clouds, nor adventure in the antediluvian era of Southern California, nor even step into a work of art, but I was wholly engaged with what would happen next and whether the Museum of Ordinary People would finally get the opening it deserved. 

The novel also made me consider the many possessions that my parents left behind, especially the ordinary ones. Does the badly mangled book that my mother received from a beloved teacher, signed and dated inside the cover, have any value to me or my family? What about my Dad’s high school yearbook with one picture of him, and a love note from a girl who would be “thinking about him every day” next year? My older brother counseled me to be ruthless, but that was someone’s life. The Museum of Ordinary People brings those questions into meaningful focus. 

You can learn more about Mike Gayle and his many books at mikegayle.co.uk. Oddly this novel is not included in his list of books but it’s easy to find on Amazon. I recommend it and plan to read more.

TTFN

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles