#648 Kent Curtis papers to UVA

It's a mad dash to the Virginia finish line!

We've only had 7 years here in Virginia and there is so much to do.  During the past 2 weekends, we've made first-time visits to Devil's Backbone Brewing Company, Walton's Mountain Museum, Green Valley Book Fair, and the Frontier Culture Museum.  And we've made return visits to Shenandoah National Park, the Blackfriars Playhouse, and Colleen's Drive-In.  So many fun things.

One Virginia event really stands out.  We've recently donated my family's papers belonging to Kent Curtis to the UVA special collections library.  With the enthusiastic support and guidance provided by Molly Schwartzburg, the delivery has been made and a VIRGO catalog record has already been created.

Boxes filled with Kent's papers

American literature and World War I are real strengths of the library's collections.  And that fits perfectly with Uncle Kent who was an author of boys' adventure stories and a WWI pilot.  The donation includes Kent’s correspondence (about 1000 letters), newspaper clippings, journals, scrapbooks, his publications (journals, books), phonograph records, and photographs. Kent did not achieve personal fame but he knew famous people including F. Scott Fitzgerald.  And their correspondence is included in this donation. 

For me, much research lies ahead.  I'm eager to explore the wide swath Kent left behind and hope to uncover more of his correspondence in archives around the country.  And I look forward to writing more about him on this Uncle Kent Curtis blog. Meanwhile, my family is pleased to have found such a good home here at UVA for this collection that is so important to us.  And I am thrilled that a significant part of our family remains here in Virginia.

Yours in appreciating special collections,
Mary

#269 Playing in our sandbox

Words are always changing.

Do you remember when the cheap sandals we now call flip-flops were called thongs?

Do you remember when a sandbox was where kids went to play and cats went for business?

In our new wiki sandbox, we've been building and testing our first Wikipedia page.

Now we're out of the sandbox. Our work is published.

For the first time, Kent Curtis is part of Wikipedia.

Yours in changing words,
Mary

#265 Cruises in the Sun

Cruises in the Sun was written by Kent Curtis, my uncle, and published in 1950.

What could be better for some shipboard reading? Cruises in the Sun is a collection of three novels - The Blushing Camel, Drumbeaters Island, and The Cameleers - all previously published separately. Since these are sailing adventure stories set in Florida and the Bahamas, I picked up my copy as I was heading out the door for Nassau.

Despite the fact that my reading time was limited to the flights to and from Nassau and despite the fact the weather in Nassau was mostly rainy and windy, I loved the stories about shipboard customs, sailing across the Great Bahama Bank, and life.

One of my favorite passages comes from another cruising adventure, the Cruise of the Nona...

"Indeed the cruising of a boat here and there is very much what happens to the soul of a man in a larger way. We set out for places which we do not reach, or reach too late; and, on the way, there befall us all manner of things which we could never have awaited. We are granted great vision, we suffer intolerable tediums, we come to no end of the business, we are lonely out of sight of England, we make astonishing landfalls - and the whole rigmarole leads us along no whither, and yet is alive with discovery, emotion, adventure, peril, and repose."

And another favorite passage from Cruises in the Sun...

"What wouldn't I do? I'd sail a boat like this to Africa, and climb mountains and then write books about my adventures. I'd like to learn to play the piano, I'd like to be an acrobat, I might even start a war if I was sure it wouldn't get too big for me to handle personally. I'd like to go down the Mississippi in a canoe and over the Andes on a horse. I'd like to do almost anything except go back to school and spend the next seven years of my life learning to be a credit to my family."

Yours in spending a little time on a ship, reading sailing stories, and pretending I'm an adventurer,
Mary