Saturday, September 24, 2011

Welcome to Our Blog

Welcome to our blog, "The Jumping Sheet."
Houston Firefighters rescuing someone using a jumping sheet.
(c) 2011. Houston Fire Museum, Inc.

The Houston Fire Museum shares the history, experiences and stories of Houston's storied fire service. We believe these stories are as vital to America's history as the stories of presidents, industrialists, railroad men, wildcatters and oil industrialists, shipping magnates, politicians, or the scores of others whose histories are taught every day in schools across the nation. We salute our city and nation's firefighters as historic and modern day heroes, who helped to transform the Houston we known today.

We believe that history is a valuable resource for understanding contemporary issues and the road towards the future. Historical perspectives can shed new light on what's going on in our world today. In our programming, we aim to talk about the present and future as well as the past.

In this blog you'll find lots of historical information about Houston, Houston's fire stations and fire fighting history. However a focus will be on our collection's mysteries, of which there are many. We'll post about new research we've done, photographs of objects we've collected, and how you've helped us identify and uncover the history of our artifacts. We'll also keep you updated on new partnerships and how they relate to the history and heritage of Houston's firefighting service and the education of fire and life safety.

The title of this blog is borrowed from firefighting history. The "Jumping Sheet" is the sheet held by a group of firefighters on which people caught in a burning building can jump on to. I envision the blog and our interaction with you in regards to our collection's mysteries as the jumping sheet and the staff at the Houston Fire Museum as the group of firefighters holding on to it. 
I hope you'll hang in there as we get a feel for this blogging thing, and I hope you'll email us with suggestions or questions for what you'd like to see or read about.

Cheers!

~Tristan Smith, HFM Executive Director

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