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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!