13 Feb 2017
Three Museums

A two-story yellow frame house with porches Riley home

In Tallahassee, Florida in February the weather is beautiful. We seem to have escaped some of the more dramatic weather our family members and friends are experiencing in Florida and in the Eastern United States, and we're enjoying it greatly. Tallahassee has many tourist attractions, in addition to the built-in advantage of being a State Capital, and many of these are out of doors.

The Florida Historic Capitol Museum was awash in students who had come from out of town for a civics lesson while we were there. We could tell that the guides were giving them careful and complete attention. We found the exhibits interesting, especially the current exhibit on Against a background of pine trees, the tree in the foreground is covered in pink flowers. Flowering tree World War I. We were impressed by learning about several large projects, including the prevention of constructing a barge canal across the state, which had been carried out by women's groups (a persistent sex).

The John G. Riley museum is located just a few blocks away from the government complex, in the former community known as Smoky Hollow. This was a vibrant Afro-American community until the 1960s when much of the area was condemned to allow construction of the Florida Department of Transportation building. Now the Riley house is the only building from that period left standing. Mr. Riley, born into slavery in 1857, was taught to read by his aunt following the Civil War. As Supported by four stout posts, a solid hammock forms a comfortable nest for the slumbering sand-colored cougar Cougar resting an adult he became a preacher and teacher, often tutoring students in the living room of his own home, and was a major businessman and community benefactor, for examply by buying property and constructing small houses which he sold to African-Americans, keeping the mortgage papers himself in many cases; this was at a time when African-Americans in Tallahassee had major problems getting mortgages.

Today, there's a community project underway which looks quite exciting: a park has been Welded out of parts taken from an auto scrapyard, the long-necked dinosaur sculpture is painted a bright turquoise. Dinosaur sculpture developed near the riley house, with a community garden and playground and a demonstration of the architecture of the typical "shot-gun houses" which used to be the common sight.

The Tallahassee Museum is an outdoor museum which attracts young and old. A most unusual element is the trees-to-trees construction of zip lines which are strung throughout much of the built-up part of the museum grounds. But most of the area where we spent time was a beautiful quiet swamp where we could admire cypress trees and cypress knees and look for birds and animals. A large collection of dinosaur sculptures, welded together out of old car parts and brightly painted, is found along the walk. They have established large areas where native Florida animals are housed: foxes, wolves, bears, eagles, panther - we saw them all.