This week we read Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History’s Front Lines by Amy M. Tyson. Tyson’s book centers around Minnesota’s Historic Fort Snelling, a living history museum, and in particular how the interpreters viewed their roles within the museum. Like our reading from last week, Tyson creates an ethnography of the Fort Snelling environment, and its interpreters. Throughout her time at Fort Snelling, and the many interviews she had with its interpreters, Tyson discovers that the large majority of workers are torn between their true love of their work with the public and pressures from inside and outside of the job that can make it daunting. One major issue that many of the interpreters who were interviewed felt, was a sense of unimportance from their upper management. For instance, during the creation of the MHS Interpreter’s Caucus, which was an organization of the seasonal interpreters that fought for certain causes like medical leave, were unable to disassociate their employer's belief that these were only temporary workers, not professionals (Tyson 84). As Tyson points out throughout a large portion of this book, that many of the interpreters employed at Fort Snelling saw them selves and were indeed professionals within the field of interpretation, but were disheartened by lack of recognition from their employers and others outside of the interpreter’s sphere. Another major point of stress that many interpreter’s felt was emotional depletion from both their interactions with patrons to the museum, as well as from interactions with their fellow interpreters. For instance, many interpreters  found stress from the social stigma of being an interpreter, as well as the stress of having to in a sense split their personalities between one or more historical characters. Although these pressures not only cause emotional and physical toll on these workers, they all for the most part found their time with the public rewarding and strove towards bettering their public service (114-115).
    One large issue that I noticed throughout Tyson’s The Wages of History, was a large disconnect between the employer and the importance of their seasonally employed interpreters. Unfortunately, it seemed that despite certain efforts interpreters did not feel appreciated by their employers professionally or intellectually, which ultimately effected the ways that interpreters viewed their own work and their own value within the museum. What The Wages of History  lends us as public historians is insight into how we can better interact and communicate with those within our own sphere. In relation to our semester project, we can also better understand our own actions with not only the narraters with have worked with, but those who are hoping to continue this project.