Planting Cotton

Volunteer Gloria shows the youngest Museum member how to plant cotton in our new History Garden which features northeastern Florida native and history related plants and flora.

History of the Human Skeleton

Dr. Rachel Wentz will be speaking on Friday, April 9th at 7:00pm at the Museum.

Dr. Wentz is a Forensic Anthropologist and Director of the east-central region of the Florida Public Archeology Network. She will be dicussing the role skeletons play as the body's framework. She will also discuss the iconography of the skeleton and how human remains and bones are symbolic in many cultures. Come out and discover how the skeleton has played an important role through time.

Admission is free for museum members and $5 for non-members.

Contact Alex at 904-261-7378 x. 102 for more information.

Photo Contest

The Amelia Island Museum of History is having a 2010 Fernandina through Photography Contest

For more information and official contest rules check out www.ameliamuseum.org

Exhibit Opening

The Color of Hope

March 26 at 6:00 pm

Join us as we unveil our newest temporary exhibit in partnership with Sutton’s Place Behavioral Health. Created by the clients of Sutton’s Place, this exhibit will open with a presentation by the center’s staff and will feature their clients’ work with artistic therapy.

Join Us For Our Holiday Home Tour & Victorian Tea!

The charming Victorian seaport town of Fernandina Beach, FL will be the scene of the
3rd Annual Amelia Island Museum of History Holiday Home Tour
Friday & Saturday, December 4 & 5, 2009 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

The tour will feature five spectacular homes professionally decorated for the holidays. Docents will be stationed at each home to point out the rich history, architectural features, furnishings, and decorations. Good cheer and tidings of the seasons abound as Victorian carolers will add to the festive experience as they serenade guests with holiday music. Enjoy the spirit of the yuletide at this exceptional holiday event in historic Fernandina Beach, FL.

Victorian Tea

Enjoy a seated Victorian Tea in the fabulous Bailey House at the corner of S.7th and Ash Streets in historic Fernandina Beach. A choice of teas and an abundant assortment of sweet and savory treats will be served on the current owner's finest china. Adding to the festivities, Kate and Effingham Bailey, the original owners of the home, now portrayed by local residents, will greet and visit with guests to share stories of life in Fernandina in the late 1800s.

Reminiscent of Holiday Teas in the 19th century, this memorable event will enhance your holiday experience in old Fernandina. It is not to be missed!

Seatings are: Friday, December 4 at 2:00, 3:00 and 4:00PM and
Saturday, December 5 at 2:00, 3:00 and 4:00PM

This is a private home, seating is limited and advance ticket purchase is required. Tea Tickets are $15.00.

A Recommendation

Looking for a good history read, educational, but entertaining? A book you can carry to the Coffee House, and impress your fellow caffeine fiends with your erudition and intellect, even if you never read a word?

I recommend Kissinger: 1973, the Crucial Year

Alistair Horne who has to date specialized in British and French history has produced a clever book focusing on our Henry during that most difficult of years, 1973. Watch Henry out maneuver his rivals at the State Department and elsewhere, while managing the paranoid and mostly just plain nuts Dick Nixon. And, from time to time, also managing wars, peaces and assorted starlets.

And Henry’s old propensities can still lead him to strange places at age 83.

RUSSIA

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

-Winston Churchill

I was there for all of two weeks, and from that limited exposure to a tiny fraction of the country, I find Winston’s puzzlement still as true today as it was when he said those famous words. Russia is hard to get a handle on. Dynamic and backward, corrupt and direct, capitalist to the core, while pining for the old easy Soviet life.

We visited Kiev, now the capital of the vast new country of Ukraine, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tallinn and Helsinki. The best part of the trip was the thousand mile journey by river and canal from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

As we cruised north, few roads or settlements interrupt what is still a vast northern forest. Unbroken conifers and white birch crowd the banks. Occasionally an old wooden church came into view, usually in ruins. The air was cool, even on the sunniest of days, hinting at the savagery of winter here in one of the coldest places on earth.

I was listening to a podcast earlier today in which a professor at Berkeley made the point that all societies on earth have now made the transition from a traditional society, which may be very different from other traditional societies, to a modern society, which is like all other modern societies. In that sense Russia has made that transition completely. Its cities look like cities anywhere; its people behave like people anywhere, with a couple of exceptions.

One of those has to do with history. The average kid in the US has managed to remain blissfully ignorant of any real knowledge of history. He or she could not tell you anything about what happened in World War II except in the most general terms. Not surprisingly his teacher and parents know little more. Not so in Russia.

Every Russian and every Russian kid has seared into his or her brain two cataclysms in detail – the tyranny of Stalin and the devastation of World War II. Twenty million dead and the country destroyed. Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, half were Russian citizens.

Long before the fall of the Soviet Union, doing whatever is necessary to prevent recurrence is the highest priority. We cannot understand, I think, the intensity of these feelings. That insensitivity came very close to getting us all killed in a nuclear exchange.

It’s still all mulling, and maybe I will have some more thoughts when I get back from rafting the Salmon River in a week.

Six Russian Haiku

Basel’s onion domes ,

Guard the ancient Kremlin walls,

Waiting for the Tsar.

Mirrored Russian lake,

Angry gulls screetch overhead,

Soon the ice will rule.

Mother Russia lives,

Deep within the silent trees,

Waiting for the call.

Birches line the shore,

Volga flows on evermore,

Russian summer comes.

Russia’s soul runs deep,

Only Vodka plumbs the depths,

Truth comes glass by glass.

Bells ring clear and far,

Onion domes of red and blue,

Paint the Russian sky.