Paul Szmal: 7.53 now on FLX Morning on Finger Lakes Newsradio. We're joined by Katie Grindstaff from the Seward House Museum. Katie, good Friday. How are you?
Katie Grinstaff: I'm great. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Doing well. Doing well. And I got to jump on this right away because I'm intrigued at the title of it of one of the things that we wanted to talk about. And that is Seward's Potpourri Tour. What is that?
Katie Grinstaff: Yes. So we actually have this specialty tour coming up tomorrow. We're very excited about it. We are bringing in Dr. Robert May. And it is going to be kind of a mishmash of stories about the Seward House. So he has come in for various different programs with us over the years. Very knowledgeable. He has written Manifest Destiny's Underworld. So he's given up many talks before, but now he's coming in for his first time giving a specialty tour, which is about an hour and a half long tour where he's going to be kind of knitting together all of his stories, all of the research that he's done in reference to the objects in our house. So he'll be telling lots of new stories about objects and artifacts that we we've never told before. And we're very excited to have him back for another program. That's going to be at 10 o'clock a.m. tomorrow.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. So you want to jump on that one right away. Any registration required for that or can you just show up and be a part of it?
Katie Grinstaff: So reservation is preferred and you can do that through our website. I can purchase a ticket through the website. You can also come tomorrow and purchase a ticket at the door.
Paul Szmal: All right. Also, there's a Barn and Carriage House ribbon cutting coming up.
Katie Grinstaff: Yes. So we have been working on our Barn and Carriage House project really for over a decade at this point. But construction has been active for a little over a year at this point. And we are so, so, so excited to finally be opening it officially to the public. So that is going to be May 16th at 11 o'clock a.m., of course, at the Seward House and the Seward House Gardens. And we're very excited about this. The Barn is going to be a new place where we can do programming and we can have meetings and we can do educational workshops and talks. So we're very excited about that. Excuse me. The Carriage House is where the carriage is going to be shown off once we have that back for being conserved. And then we also will have brand new office space in that location as well so that later we can open up, hopefully, more room for collection storage and staff quarters interpretation in the main house.
Paul Szmal: Excellent. Excellent. So come on by. That's going to be a free event. All right. And that's coming up later on in the month of May. And as we head into the summer months, too, there's going to be the Hands on History Summer Camp that will be happening.
Katie Grinstaff: Yes. So we have our annual Hands on History Summer Camp that we partner with the Cayuga Museum, Seymour Library, and the National Park Service on. And that is going to be July 21st through 25th. And we are very excited. One of our, well, one of my favorite programs of the year. It's for students or children aged 8 to 10. And it's a day camp. So it's from 8.30 to 12.30 every day that week. The kids go to all these different sites. They do different history related activities, for example, at the Seward House. We have a large Victorian tea party where you can have tea with Mrs. Seward. You'll be doing some stop motion filming, some archeology, some architecture, Lego builds at some of the other sites. So we're very excited to be hosting that once again. And if you'd like to register, just send out an email to me at the Seward House.
Paul Szmal: All right. We'll get that email address out in a moment. We've got about a minute left here, which gives us just enough time to talk about State History Day and Passport to History.
Katie Grinstaff: Yes. So just a quick shout out for State History Day, because I've already talked about that. But the kids are going to New York State History Day this next week. So we're just wishing them luck. These are the same students that had finished up and moved on from Finger Lakes History Day last month. And Passport to History is also just starting up. And this is our program for fourth grade students, where they get to visit every site, most every site, historic and cultural site in Auburn for free with their families. So they will be starting their field trips next month. But then after their field trips are complete, they will have this passport booklet that they can then use as a free ticket to get into all of these sites with their families. Their families can come for free as well, all throughout the summer. So they can come unlimited times to all of these sites for free with their families until the very last day of summer vacation. So we're excited to start that up again.
Paul Szmal: And real quick, what's that email address for you, Katie?
Katie Grinstaff: Yeah. It is outreach at SewardHouse.org.
Paul Szmal: Wonderful. All right. Thanks so much, Katie. We appreciate it greatly.
Katie Grinstaff: Yeah. Thank you.
