amusements and pastimes

There’s an interesting getaway a leisurely five hour drive from Tampa: Jeckll Island, Georgia (www.jekyllisland.com).

The History of Jeckll Island page of the above website gives an encapsulated account of its history:

“In 1886, Jekyll Island was purchased to become an exclusive winter retreat for America’s most elite families, known as the Jekyll Island Club. For more than half a century, the nation’s leading families, including the Rockefellers, Morgans, Pulitzers, and Goulds, came to Jekyll Island ‘to secure an escape.’”

Jeckll Island Hotel Club exteriors

As with many of the pleasures one discovers in life, a trip to Jeckll Island would never have been something I would have sought out on my own initiative; rather, I went there because of an external event–the wedding of my son!

My son and his fiancé–now his wife–decided to have a small, “destination wedding.”

I’d never heard that term before. But, now that I’ve learned about it, I must say I’m taken with the idea. The couple and those invited to the wedding go to the destination and rent rooms through the night of the wedding. The wedding takes place on the grounds of the destination and included in the price of the event are things like the officiant, the musician, the photographer, the wedding dinner, etc. Then, the day following the wedding, the guests return home and the couple stays at the destination for their honeymoon.

Such a lovely idea. And in this case, this particular destination was such a lovely place, a place I would never have come to otherwise.

The guests and bride and groom stayed at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel (www.jekyllclub.com)–either the main building or one of the “cottages,” which are the former residences of people who used to winter there and who originally bought the island, people such as the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Pulitzers. Humble folk. Just about as humble as their three storey “cottages.”

Jeckll Island Hotel interiors

All the pictures in this post are of the Jekyll Island Club Hotel buildings and grounds.

There are other, quite good, less expensive places to stay on the island, but the Jekyll Island Club Hotel was less expensive than I thought it would be. Actually, it was less than some hotels on St. Pete Beach. So, if you’re only going for a couple nights, as I was, it doesn’t break the bank. For a very nice two days within a short day’s drive from Tampa, I really do recommend Jeckll Island, Georgia, and the other neighboring Golden Isles of Georgia (St. Simons Island, Brunswick, and Sea Island–see Brunswick and the Golden Isles of Georgia).

Jeckll Island Hotel dock

One last suggestion: when you visit the Jeckll Island Club Hotel, take time to visit its bookstore. Allow at least an hour to browse its many rooms, each dedicated to a specific theme related to the Georgia islands. My favorite (you can tell by checking my credit card statement for that visit) was the cookbook room, with many cookbooks relating to the Atlantic barrier islands cooking history.

Jeckll Island bookstore

There are two cookbooks in particular I’d like to mention. One is Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way: Smokin’ Joe Butter Beans, Ol’ ‘Fuskie Fried Crab Rice, Sticky-Bush Blackberry Dumpling, and Other Sea Island Favorites. The other is Cornbread Nation 5: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

Cornbread Nation is the most recent in a series of Best of Southern Food Writing volumes. That title is obviously carefully chosen. It’s the quality of the writing, not just the recipes, that is the appeal of the series.

trees and moss

Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way is, of course, about the cooking of the Gullah region (the coast of South Carolina and Georgia), home to the Gullah who…

” are known for preserving more of their African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African-American community in the United States. They speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure. The Gullah language is related to Jamaican Creole, Barbadian Dialect, and the Krio language of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Gullah storytelling, cuisine, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming and fishing traditions, all exhibit strong influences from West and Central African cultures.” [ref]

To say more about the Gullah would require another whole post. There is also an incredibly rich and beautiful Gullah musical tradition that would require yet another whole post! So, I’ll leave you with these five links that interested me in a Google search of Gullah.

• Gullah Language & Culture
• The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection
• Hilton Head Island Gullah Celebration
• Gullah Festival
• Gullah Gourmet

Also…all best wishes to my son and daughter-in-law. May you have many, many happy years together!

[Disclaimer: if you buy something, like the books above, through my Amazon.com links, I receive a teeny-weenie commission from Amazon. It really is miniscule. It doesn't increase the price of the item in any way. So, if you'd be willing to buy something through my Amazon links, I might be able to afford a second cup of coffee some morning! I make this disclaimer because we are now required to by law, so please consider things thoroughly disclaimed.]

On a recent trip to Fort Worth, Texas, a friend, born and raised in Texas, took me to the old Fort Worth Stockyards. If you’re ever in Fort Worth, a free (except for parking) bit of entertainment that’s very enjoyable, especially for kids or easily amused old folks, is a trip to the stockyards.

The big event–I think it only happens twice a day–is the “cattle drive.” (I didn’t know they could drive; did you?) Actually, it’s more like a “cattle mosey,” since they just amble along the street, the whips in the hands of the cowboys and cowgirls only for decoration. Such gentle, beautiful creatures.

Cattle Drive

 

Museum

There is also a free museum. It’s chock full of stuff from the era that made Fort Worth the legend it is. The museum is in a still functioning office building of the era.

 
 
 
 
 

I grew up with these

However, some of the items in the museum I remember from my own childhood home. I must be even older than I thought!

 
 
 

Around the restored old-town

Many of the buildings in old town around the stockyards have been restored and are now filled with shops and restaurants. I particularly enjoyed this one shop that specialized in hats, boots, spurs, and other articles of cowboy/cowgirl attire. Even the hotel was decorated with period furniture.

 
 
 

The rodeo arena is also here at the stockyards. I’ve only been to a couple rodeos in my life, but I’ve always enjoyed them. If I ever get a chance to return to Fort Worth, I hope to take in another one. I truly do enjoy the American West culture, history, and mystique.

That’s not all there is to Texas, of course! All the people I met on this trip were active professionals, highly cultured, and politically progressive. That should be no surprise since the music scene in Texas is among the finest in the country. Just the number and quality of pipe organs (why I was there) exceeds the number and quality of pipe organs in all of the Southeast US. Texas is a remarkable place that I hope to revisit.

1929

OVERLOOKING LAKE DORA FROM LAKESIDE INN

• Mount Dora Center for the Arts
• Mount Dora Chamber of Commerce
• What to do in Mount Dora
• Mount Dora Village Merchant’s & Business Association
• Wikipedia: Mount Dora, Florida
• City of Mount Dora

Mount Dora is a small historical Florida village on the shore of Lake Dora that has successfully made itself into an arts and convention center with plenty of opportunities for outdoor recreation.

LAKESIDE INN PIER

JUST A FEW OF MANY MOUNT DORA SHOPS

HISTORIC MOUNT DORA TRAIN STATION

ONE OF MANY LOUNGE/RESTAURANTS

NESTING BIRDS DOWNTOWN MOUNT DORA

STREETSIDE HARPIST

TAKING IT EASY

WORLD’S SECOND LARGEST LAWN BOWLING COURT

VINTAGE FLORIDIANA

Tomorrow, the Sunshine City Antiques and Collectibles Show opens at the St. Pete Coliseum. Here’s the details from the City of St. Petersburg Events page.

January 8-10
Sunshine City Antiques and Collectibles Show, Friday 5pm to 8pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am to 5pm, $6 adults, 12 and under are free. This nationally recognized show features nearly 100 exhibitors of antique furniture, art, pottery, jewelry, silver, toys, and glass. The event also features a two-day Antiques Appraisal Fair. Held Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 2pm, $5 per item.

The photo at the top of this article is a panorama of the 2009 Antiques Show at the Coliseum. It, and of all the still photographs in this post, expand to full size if you click on them. I encourage you to at least take a peek at the panorama at full size.

Immediately above is a short embedded video from that same vantage point. I just wanted you to see the scope of the show and to hear the sounds to get a sense of the show’s ambiance.

The rest of the snapshots from the 2009 show I present without further comment except to say that two of my favorites are the model boat (immediately above), the folk-art jugs (immediately below), and the old lace exhibit (at the very end).

The best non-fiction book I have read this year is The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know, by David Richo. I don’t say that lightly, because I read a lot of books. It’s so good, in fact, that I’ve already begun rereading it.

THE CASSADAGA HOTEL
(note the spirit orb that mysteriously appeared in the photo of the bedroom)

The Power of Coincidence is a book about synchronicity. Synchronicity was first recognized as part of the human experience by Carl Jung, a student of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Jung broke with his teacher to form his own approach to psychology which became the foundation of modern depth psychology. Richo, the author of the book I mentioned above, refers to synchronicity as “meaningful coincidences…that may guide us, warn us, or confirm us on our path…always unexpected and somehow uncanny in [their] accuracy of connection or revelation.”

Why am I starting a piece on the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp with information about Carl Jung and synchronicity? I want to provide you with one possible avenue to gain intellectual entry into an exploration of Cassadaga that, assuming you’re not a spiritualist, will allow you to appreciate what goes on there. Please note, I say “one possible avenue.” There could be many others including taking the beliefs of spiritualism at face value. But, looking at mediums from the perspective of depth psychology works for me and it might for you. In fact, Jung’s writings, especially his Memories, Dreams, Reflections, explore alchemy, divination, astrology, and UFOs, from just such a perspective: mirrors that reveal glimpses of motives and feelings and desires of which we may not be consciously aware.

Of course, you could explore Cassadaga, Florida, purely for its historical charm as a town founded in 1894 that is now an historical district. But, I think it’s much more meaningful to actually take a taste of its very reason for existing: spiritualism.

Cassadaga is an entire town comprised only of mediums, psychics, clairvoyants, and diviners of different traditions, all of which are covered under the term spiritualism, which the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp Association describes as a “Science, philosophy, and religion based upon the principle of continuous life.” For a fuller statement of what their church believes, be sure to read this page from their website: Spiritualism Defined.

Recently, a friend and I traveled to Cassadaga. We stayed at the Cassadaga Hotel & Psychic Center, an early 20th century hotel that is reputed to be haunted. We each had separate, private readings done by a medium associated with the hotel. We were both extremely impressed by the things our intuitive said to us during the course of our respective 45 minute sessions.

One of the contemporary terms used instead of “medium” is “intuitive.” I like that term because it fits with my own way of approaching this whole thing. As humans, we have intuitive powers that make us far more perceptive than we realize. Too often, to our detriment, we dismiss our intuition. It is totally conceivable to me that a medium can accurately intuit issues and attitudes with which a client is grappling. That insight, sincerely and empathically discussed, can then, as I said earlier, act as a mirror that reveals a glimpse into our subconscious. That glimpse, as Richo says, “…that may guide us, warn us, or confirm us on our path…always unexpected and somehow uncanny in its accuracy of connection or revelation” has the power of a synchronicity, a meaningful correspondence between the inner and the outer (a paraphrase of one of Jung’s own definitions).

I hope you travel to this historical town near us and I hope you permit yourself to suspend your hardcore rationality long enough to enjoy a session with one of the psychics. There are a list of them associated with the hotel available through the hotel website (www.cassadagahotel.net) and another list of psychics in town available through the town’s website (www.cassadaga.org). We picked ours more or less at random and were very pleased.

We also went to the Spiritualist healing and reading service that night at the Colby Memorial Temple there in town. The healing portion was particularly interesting to me. My friend has not had trouble with her knee since then. That’s the kind of tale that, of course, gives skeptics conniptions, but…a fact is a fact. It may be only the placebo effect, but placebos have a very long and very useful history.

Of course, Halloween is coming up. Halloween night, there is a Witches Ball in Cassadaga! That might be just the excuse to rent a room at the hotel, try out a medium, and get some snapshots of some ghosts. If there’s anywhere in Florida that’s guaranteed to have ghosts, it’s got to be Cassadaga.

Here is a link to a full-sized SLIDESHOW of all the pictures in this post.