My love of our local native landscapes and historic architecture is strong, and has, over the years, given me an enthusiastic and appreciative identification with the region’s past. Many of the roadways, landscapes, and buildings known to the early settlers are still here for our use today, well over a century later. How fortunate we in the Shoreline Region are!
In Tomales alone, there are two churches (1860 and 1868), a number of early commercial buildings (including the 1867 Tomales General Store), the 1874 Tomales Town Hall, and many intact, early houses on Maine Street and beyond. These well-used pieces of the past can, if we let them, link us to long-ago days and original residents—and tell us much. Both by fact and implication, they offer us all a very visible sense of connection.
Beyond a simple awareness of dates and facts (obviously useful in their own right), tangible things around us can lend us context and perspective, contributing to a sense of history. Very different from a facile, “those were the good old days” kind of view, but a sense—however indistinct—of the universality of our everyday human activities, occupations, and interactions.
With the obvious exception of the monumental changes technology has given us over the decades, fundamentally many of our basic goals, expectations, and feelings are not as dissimilar to those of our predecessors as we might imagine. This perspective can lend a welcome insight into the scope and scale of Life.
My hope is that, through the History Center, we can all gain a sense of the subtle evolutions and revolutions that have made us who we are, and made this place what it is. I hope that we can learn to make things better if they need to be, and to develop the insight that—in spite of the changes in the world, and in this place—we are all humans, living our lives and aiming to do good in whatever way inspires us.
Happy 2023 to us all!
Although nothing is certain, it may be that things are becoming “manageable.” In other words we can—if we are careful—probably begin to resume life almost as we knew it. And the History Center will return to its popular series of presentations. We are very fortunate to have an enthusiastic new Program Committee, headed by Elizabeth Phillips, and there are good things to come.
Read MoreThough our museum is currently still closed to the public in compliance with Marin County guidelines, we are working behind the scenes to keep things going, and are continuing to publish our quarterly history Bulletin. And happily this “down time” will produce something very important for our growing Collection.
Read MoreAs you may know, work has been progressing slowly on this long-planned retrospective of the work of local amateur photographer, Ella Jorgensen (1864‒ 1945). This blog includes an introduction to the photographer, and a bit about the exhibit’s planned intentions.
Read MoreThe Shoreline Region’s consciousness of its past reaches, in many ways, back to three men — all of whom wrote on the subject with feeling, enthusiasm, and knowledge. Each focused, with a bit of overlap, on his “home” section. Here is a young Bray Dickinson, reading on the porch of his family home in Tomales, probably well before he began to research the town’s history. (photo by Ella Jorgensen)
Read MoreBecause the natural and man-made environments of local history are familiar to us, its story is approachable, inspiring a sense of kinship and connection.
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