RIP Nut Lady

Elizabeth Tashjian, founder of the Nut Museum of Old Lyme, Connecticut, has died at 94.

Opened in 1972, the Nut Museum was a showcase for her nut paintings, a nut crèche in a coconut shell, and the prize of her collection, a kind of double coconut weighing 35 pounds from the Maldives, known as a "coco de mer." Tashjian liked to point out that it resembled a female pelvis, and used it to illustrate her theory that humans were descended from nuts. Darwin, she told Mr. [David] Letterman, was "bunk." [Link]

Admission to the museum was originally one nut, but was later increased to $2 and one nut. Learn more at The Nut Lady's Homepage.

Prepare to Salivate

From The (Fort Wayne, Ind.) Journal Gazette of Sept. 1, 2005:

Museum gets domesticated

Butler exhibit depicts centuries of Indiana home life

By Stefanie Scarlett

The Journal Gazette

A black typewriter with mother-of-pearl inlay and gold scrolls, a colorful “crazy quilt,” a flint stone scraper.

They’re pieces of local history (and prehistory), a glimpse into domestic life across the centuries.

And they’re all part of a new exhibit at the DeKalb County Historical Society Museum in Butler that opened to the public with regular hours for the first time in July.

[snip]

[Records include] a book of carefully collected town news, including marriage and death notices.

It’s the type of scrapbook “that genealogists drool over,” [curator Sally] Garrett says.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Though the National Genealogical Society's Guidelines For Using Records Repositories and Libraries makes no mention of drooling over records, this perhaps falls under their recommendation that one "treat original records at all times with great respect."

Do I Smell Pork?

From the Scott County Virginia Star of Aug. 10, 2005:

$2.56 Million Going to D-B Project

Lisa Watson McCarty
Publisher

The long-anticipated Daniel Boone Visitors' and Exposition Center earned a big boost Tuesday as Ninth District Congressman Rick Boucher announced receipt of some federal dollars to jumpstart the project.

[snip]

The federal appropriation comes on the heels of today's signing of the Highway Bill by President George Bush. Boucher assured his audience yesterday that Bush's ceremonial signing of the bill in Chicago heralded good news for Scott County.

[snip]

When complete, the visitors' center will house an exhibit area that meets Smithsonian Institute standards for museum collections. It will also feature Daniel Boone and Revolutionary War era archives, a library for genealogical research and a theater.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Be sure to avoid the potholes as you're driving to the Expo Center.

Rest in Pieces

From The Dallas (Tex.) Morning News:

Morbid museum fleshes out history

Ike's gallstones among the oddities preserved

10:27 PM CDT on Saturday, August 6, 2005

By ROBERT DODGE / The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON – Alan Hawk, a museum collections manager, turns the key on a big light blue locker, opens a drawer and reveals some of history's treasures: sections of bullet-pierced vertebrae from both President James Garfield and Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Next to them is a little jar containing President Dwight Eisenhower's gallstones. And in a nearby cabinet is the full skeleton of Able, the first monkey sent into space.

The gems are among 25 million artifacts held by the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington.

[snip]

The museum's Civil War collection draws plenty of inquiries from people wanting to know if they have a bone or other tissue of an ancestor. Sometimes they do.

"Most are proud it is here," Mr. Hawk said. "It is a chance to connect with their family history."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]