130th country today

Elizabeth, pictured here with a family member, is celebrating her 130th country visit today. We talked with her about her past traveling adventures.

Her favorite country is Tibet. She's been there twice, thus far.

Elizabeth told us that she's been traveling from a very early age. She was a passanger on a research vessel when she was 8 - headed to the Arctic! That ship later sank in the North Atlantic storm that inspired the movie The Perfect Storm. Elizabeth was also caught in that storm - she held onto a bunk for 2 days while the boat was beaten by the waves.

Walking through the museum exhibits, Elizabeth could relate to the ordeal of the men of the Molasses Reef Wreck - just like them, she's seen first hand the power of the open seas!

Good Deeds Never Go Undone

We had very special guests at the museum today.

A family flew in from Pine Cay to see Grand Turk and the museum. We gave them a behind the scenes tour and suggested they go up to the Bohio for Lunch.

All this, after a quick renewal of their membership.

We enjoy having our friends stop by. Especially when it requires a trip on a private plane.

We hope they enjoyed the visit as much as we did.

Old Navy Friends

Today we had a visit from Ray and Anita Spencer. They had been touring around off the Carnival Glory, visiting the northern tip of the island.

In 1961-62, Ray was stationed at the US Navy Base, so he went looking for familar landmarks. He found a few. The gatehouse and basketball court are right where he left them, and of course the Lighthouse.

Later in the day, Ray and Anita stopped by the museum to share memories "of a very special time" in Ray's life. He showed off some pictures he carried in and told stories of getting his picture taken with John Glenn.

It's like having old friends return when we get visitors like the Spencers. We love welcoming you back - no matter how long between visits!

Micro Excursioning

Yesterday, Mario and Angela came to the museum and were thrilled with the exhibits and the behind the scenes tour. They were off the Holland America Westerdam, but they enjoy "micro excursioning" where they plan their own activities and contact local companies before they cruise. Mario was scuba diving with Blue Water Diving in the afternoon, so they came early to the museum.

Growing up in the Canary Islands and now living on Vancouver Island, Mario understood many of the conditions of island life and we had a great conversation about the what Grand Turk is really like as a place to live.

During the behind the scenes tour, the couple was very interested in how our archives are conserved in such a humid environment. This is actually a great question and they looked at length at our climate controlled storage room and our current project of reorganizing our archival collections.

Geo Caching a Little More Popular than We Thought.

This morning we had two geo cachers stop by the museum off the Holland America Eurodam. Known on Geocaching.com as Teampolarbear and Papoosky, these two guys have registered over 1500 caches by downloading the information from the geocaching website into their Ipods and then using Garmen GPS units to locate the various caches that are in the places they travel.

They were looking for three today: the museum, the lighthouse, and a new one at, I think, the Salina House. They rented a golf cart and were off the ship early. They were the first two people at the museum. I noticed them looking around the front of the museum when I came into work, and knew immediately what they were looking for.

I thought they were just the third geocachers to come to the museum since the "cruising cachers" (see blog entry on Dec 9) left the cache. They told me, however, that many people have signed the log. I looked on the Geocaching.com website and to my surprise, 18 people have logged the visit and some have put up pictures standing at the museum with staff. An added bonus, they said very nice things about the museum.

Though the guys today were having a great time on Grand Turk, they did say that their wives had stayed behind at the cruise center to "shop." I wonder if they were shopping, or just NOT "geo caching."

Salinas Kiosk

The Salinas kiosk has gone up. The kiosk provides cultural information on the history of the Salinas as salt ponds and their importance today as a migratory bird habitat.

Already there have been several visitors and islanders alike standing reading the panels. They are effective and should be an asset to understanding this large part of Grand Turk.

The Archives

by Jessica Brody

Today's task between hosting cruise ship visitors: assembling the archives. Tiffany and I spent August through December arranging and creating order in the museum's paper collections. We sifted through governmental reports, church records, salt industry ledgers, and personal accounts of the islands. After separating them into categories, we started entering them into the database. To complete that task, however, we needed to give them permanent homes in the storage room. We couldn't do that without ordering the proper archival supplies so we know how they fit on the shelves. We were able to do this through a grant from a US Foundation.

Last week the order finally arrived after much delay (oh the joys of shipping to these islands!). I've never been so excited to see an archives box. It was like Christmas! These acid-free containers will keep the collections safe for hundreds of years. It's nice to know the work we are doing here will keep our stories alive for the TCI's next generations.

The Library

by Jessica Brody

The library is in heavy use today. We've had a number of visitors, some just perusing, and others working from it's shelves as we speak.

To our visitors I showed off the work Tiffany and I did over the fall and winter - cataloging and adding books to the database - and adding the latest update:Just yesterday I completed a small victory for man over machine when I figured out how to use the database to print book labels just the way I needed them. Soon the library will be recognizable as well as functional! I'm looking forward to completing the project in the coming weeks and officially calling the library up and running.

And it's none too soon! We have four students here this morning working on projects based on our library's collection.

Images of the Turks and Caicos

Last night was the second Spring 2 Collections event at the museum. We watched 10 minute of silent footage, recently donated to the museum, of the Navy base being built on Grand Turk and then talked about photographs in the museum collections. We talked a lot about the airstrip that used to run where Cee's Grocery store currently resides on Grand Turk which prompted stories about the planes running on the islands. Children in the schools used to hide under their desks when they heard planes taking off because you never knew when one of the US airplanes was going to break the sound barrier. "You didn't know if you were going to hear that shatter noise or not," shared one participant.

Overall, we identified 19 people in 25 photographs. Reminiscing was so much fun we've decided to make this a regular event!

Thanks to all who participated and we look forward to doing it again soon!

Old Friends and New

by Jessica Brody

A member of the museum stopped by to drop off the annual dues and left us with an unexpected gift! She had a couple things her husband was willing to part with: a commemorative ship's bell and an old spy glass. The ship's bell is probably a significant addition to the museum collections since it has the name of a ship on it, but I couldn't keep my eyes off the spy glass. It was so cool! I'd never seen one before and it looked right out of the Mary Poppin's movie.

I just happened to have one of the kids for the afterschool program nearby. I showed her the spy glass - she'd never seen one before either. I asked her to guess how old it was. "It doesn't look so old," she said. When I told her it was probably about 110 years old she refused to believe me.

We've been working hard the last couple weeks under extreme pressure to complete two grant proposals. These had to be completed on top of assembling a new display for Provo, preparing for Children's Program and Spring 2 Collection events, and hosting 7 cruise ships through the museum.

The grants are very exciting. The first was actually a submission of the second and final round of the British Library's Endangered Archives Project. This project would allow the museum to hire an archivist to seek out and preserve pre-1900 government records. The possibility of saving these documents is a very exciting prospect and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we are accepted!

The second proposal, submitted today, was a nomination to the American Association of State and Local History's Leader in History Award for Where is Simon, Sandy? The publication of Simon, Sandy and its proceeds have led to the promotion of Turks and Caicos culture and history to international audiences, the acquisition of donkey-related items, and it provides funding for the Children's Program. Certainly a project like this is worthy of recognition!

Looking at the spy-glass today reminded me of how rewarding all this work can be, not only did I get to see something new, but I got the opportunity to interpret that history for a Turk's Islander. The look on her face reminded me why we work so hard on these projects: to interpret and celebrate Turks and Caicos history!