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June 14, 2009
WOLF CREEK HERITAGE MUSEUM NOTES by Virginia Scott MUSEUM HAPPENINGS Well, summer is in full swing at the museum. Our numbers vary each Wednesday with all of us busy with appointments, family committments, vacations, etc. Fern McGee will not rejoin our ranks until school starts again. We will miss you. Good news is that Lovella returns this week from her surgery. She looks great so everyone call or drop by and welcome her back. A big THANK YOU to LaVaun Kraft, Dorothy Schoenhals , and Georgia Couch for filling in for her. Our June/July exhibit is up and you will love it. Jean Weis and her friends and family have brought us a bright, beautiful, and multiple mediums: The pastel paintings are by Jean and Rebecca Ashley; Mosiacs are created by Cary Nell Huff; and finally the quilts created and quilted by Jean and Joanne Watson. The combination of these different art forms is a fun and colorful exhibit. The reception for Jean and her group will be held Saturday, July 18 from 4 pm to 7 pm . Elaine Littau will also be here that Saturday to introduce her new book Elk's Resolve, book II of her Nan's Heritage Series. Please mark your calendar for promising evening. HISTORICAL MUSINGS On June 2, 1911, Carry Nation died in Kansas. Born in Kentucky in 1846, she lived in Texas for several years as a child and again as an adult from 1879 to 1889. While in Texas, she had numerous mystic experiences. Ms. Nation came to believe that she had been elected by God and that she spoke through divine inspiration. Nation, who described herself as "a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like," fet divinely ordained to forcefully promote temperance. Moving to Kansas, she helped organize a local chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1892. In the name of home protection she began a crusade against alcohol and tobacco that lasted the rest of her life. Claiming the justification that saloons were illegal in prohibitionis Kansas, she wrecked "joints" and berated persons who sold liquor. Standing at nearly 6 feet tall and weighing 180 pounds, she cut an imposing figure. In 1900 she adopted the hatchet as her tool of destruction . Between 1900 and 1910 she was arrested some 30 times after leading her followers in this destructiion. The sale of souvenir hatchets and earnings from nationwide lecture tours allowed her to pay the fines that resulted from the arrests. Although she was a national leader of the extremist element of the prohibitionist movement, she never had the unqualified support of the WCTU or of any other national organization. In the final years of her life she was increasingly afflicted with mental illness, and died in a Leavenworth hospital. Known as perhaps the most famous prohibitionist in American history, she was a woman of her time. |
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