Paul Szmal: Joining me now, Kate Grindstaff from the Seward House Museum. Kate, good morning. How are you this morning?
Kate Grindstaff: Hello. I am great, Paul. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Ah, doing well, doing well. And I know you've got some exciting events coming up, so let's get right into some of the details on what is happening. First off, the Shakespeare in the Gardens event is coming up here pretty soon.
Kate Grindstaff: Yes, it's actually tonight. So we are very excited to invite everyone down to our gardens. We are going to be showing or playing Twelfth Night, and that's going to be at six o'clock. It's free. Just bring a lawn chair and some food if you would like and come on down and watch a really, really great performance. It is Syracuse Shakespeare in the Park. So we usually do this annually, and it's one of my favorite events.
Paul Szmal: Now, is this a live performance with the actors, or is this a movie?
Kate Grindstaff: It's a live performance.
Paul Szmal: Oh, even better. Yeah. Even better. I love live Shakespeare, actually. It's always entertaining to watch.
Kate Grindstaff: Yeah, so there's some really good actors in the performance.
Paul Szmal: All right. And that is coming up tonight, and again, admission is free, correct?
Kate Grindstaff: Yep.
Paul Szmal: All right. Beautiful. You can bring lawn chairs, things of that nature?
Kate Grindstaff: Yep. Yes. That's encouraged.
Paul Szmal: All right. So, yeah, bring a lawn chair, sit back and enjoy a little Shakespeare in the Park. A nice setting for it, actually. And Twelfth Night is, I want to say, one of the more accessible Shakespeare works. So you'll enjoy it, absolutely.
Also coming up are the next couple of lunchtime lectures on your schedule.
Kate Grindstaff: Yeah, so we've got two lunchtime lectures coming up in the next month. So very soon, we're going to have one called The Emancipation Generation, Struggle for Black Literacy, Who Were the Freed People's Teachers? And that's just going to be in two days, so the 14th. Again, lunchtime lectures are always at noon. They're about an hour long and free. We are going to be hosting in the SHM Events Center, formerly known as The Barn from The Barn and Carriage House, so newly renovated. And we're going to be talking with Dr. Ronald Bouchard, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Georgia. And he's basically going to be talking about how after the Civil War and during the Civil War as well, there were a lot of educators from Central New York who went down to the South to help teach literacy. And it's a very, very interesting story. And the Seward family has a lot of connections as well. Of course, we know Emily Howland did this, and we also know Frances Seward supported her financially as well.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I can remember learning in history class that literacy amongst the slaves was frowned upon. So as the Emancipation Proclamation took hold and took effect, there were a lot of people who made the sacrifice of time and effort to travel to locations where freed slaves were and engage them in education for literacy so that they could function as a part of society.
Kate Grindstaff: Exactly, yeah. And our second lunchtime lecture is going to be about a month away. It's called The Other Miller Girl, Lisette Warden, Quiet Conductor and Lady of Pisgah. And this might be really exciting for a lot of people who enjoy coming to the Seward house. For anybody who does not know, Lisette Warden is Frances's older sister. And she also was she was very forward thinking. She also leaves a remarkable legacy, but she's often not not talked about as much because she doesn't play too much into the central narrative that we tell. However, she has an incredible story. So she endures a difficult marriage, then returns to Auburn. She has a house that she names Pisgah, and it's linked to the Underground Railroad. She's got she's got a lot of interesting stories. And our board member and former intern, Shelley Clark, is going to be giving this talk. She actually had done her doctoral dissertation about the life of Frances. So she is very, very knowledgeable and will be illuminating a lot of stuff about Lisette, which people often ask about. So again, it's at noon, free and open to the public in the event center.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I consider stuff like that to be, you know, like slightly hidden history, something that is there on the peripheral. But you may not always ask questions or if you do have questions there's, you know, you don't really know where to go to get the answers. Well, here's where you go to get the answers.
Kate Grindstaff: Yes, exactly.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Kate Grindstaff from the Seward House Museum about some of their upcoming events that they have coming up here on FLX Morning. Another neat idea that is coming up here is the Cadet and Senior Girl Scout Day.
Kate Grindstaff: Yes, so on September 20th, we are launching a new Girl Scout program, and this is going to be for older Girl Scouts than our previous one. So our one in August that has just passed was for brownies and juniors. This is going to be for cadets and seniors. So late middle school, early high school, there's been a big demand for some older programming. So we've got new activities to match up to badge requirements. So for cadets, the Girl Scouts will be working on book artists and for seniors, they'll be working on novelists. And of course, it is also tied into Fannie Seward once again and how she loved to read and write. So everything's kind of centered around that theme. It's going to be at the Seward House about a four and a half hour event, 830 to 2. It's going to be free. You just have to pre-register in advance and registration is currently open on our Eventbrite website page for cadets and seniors.
And then we have another First Friday celebration coming up in September. What's on the docket for First Friday in September at the Seward House?
Paul Szmal: Yeah, so one of my favorite bands is going to be local bands is going to be coming in September. This will be September 5th, 5 to 8 as usual. And we are going to be having Infrared Radiation Orchestra joining us. And of course, we will also have some refreshments, rooms open. We'll have a new art exhibit and we will be listening to some very cool psychedelic music.
Kate Grindstaff: Ah, there you go. Not exactly of the era of the Seward House, but definitely entertaining.
Paul Szmal: Yes. Yeah. Actually, one of our volunteers is the drummer in the band and he he gives multiple tours a week. And this is this is his other passion besides the Seward House.
Kate Grindstaff: Right.
And speaking of those tours, those tours are ongoing.
Paul Szmal: Yes, yep, we have tours every day, 10 to 4, 4 o'clock is our last one, Tuesday through Sunday, and we will be open Sunday afternoons until the end of September. And on those tours now, what do people get to see? What do people get to hear about? We haven't really delved into what a regular tour is all about in a while.
Kate Grindstaff: Yeah, so on one of our regular tours, it's about an hour long. It gives you a very well-rounded overview of the Seward legacy and some of William Henry Seward's politics, Francis's legacy. We kind of dip into children, their children's lives. We also talk about, of course, Seward's folly, the purchase of Alaska, Seward's global, global mark that he made. And we take take people through the entire house. So they see multiple iterations of the house throughout showing it, showing the marks, the architectural marks of the different generations that lived there. And if people want to delve deeper into a specific tour subject, we also have our specialty tours that people can book that are a little bit more in depth, a little bit longer, and focus on much more niche subjects.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. And if you want to book one of these tours, my suggestion would be to go to the website for more information, which is?
Kate Grindstaff: stewardhouse.org.
Paul Szmal: Yes. Check it out. There's plenty of good information there.
As always, Kate, we appreciate it. Thank you very much and have a great day.
Kate Grindstaff: Thank you. You too, Paul.
