The Swannanoa Valley History Museum

It's a sunny August day, but the vacation camps in Ridgecrest or Montreat give people Wed. afternoon free, so there are a lot of tourists in Black Mountain.

I arrive at 1:20 in time for my docent volunteer shift from 1:30-5:00 pm.

But can't just sit down.  Talk with docent from this morning, talk with the director and meet the treasurer.  Then visitors come in, and I welcome them...more than I expected, 2 groups of 3 at once.  Then someone comes in to renew her family membership, and we get to talking.

A new book by our director, Anne Chesky Smith...I'm going to enjoy looking at the Then and Now photos of Black Mountain.

I love looking for various sites I've been to on the topographic map...that's the town of Black Mountain as the amorphous white area with a pin in it...and I live somewhere around Highway 70 looking toward High Windy Mountain in the foreground. (A visitor asked a good question, "Is there a real Black Mountain somewhere?"
"No not in these woods." I looked it up and one is in Maine, one in Vermont, and one in Kentucky.

Finally I walk about taking some outdoor photos.  This is the first sunny day that I've volunteered here.  However, within 2 hours, a summer afternoon thunderstorm hit!  It was more trouble for the 12 people who were dropping in (most of them under 12 years old) and had to wait till someone went for their cars, then dashed out in the rain to get into cars that stopped in the main roadway.

 The renovation 2 years ago meant putting replica doors in the style of the old fire house, which now houses the museum.

This is the entrance through which all visitors pass.

This is where I sit, behind the guest book.

 Me being a docent in front of an old quilt depicting a historic Swannanoa Valley. (It's the only quilt here, sigh, made by Stephanie Wilds.)

Old jail cells that used to be in the basement of the then court house, which now is the Black Mountain Center for the Arts next door.

Upstairs are the old artifacts, a.k.a. antiques.

Downstairs is a temporary exhibit about Black Mountain College.

 It includes a video...

 And a faux geodesic dome...

But a picture of a real one (not at Black Mountain College, but someplace similar)

The first geodesic form was attempted to be constructed at Black Mountain College with Buckminster Fuller, but the material of venetian blind slats proved to be unsuitable.  However the design was good, and the right materials have sure been built a lot since then.

My own post script from today's volunteering was that I now have permission from the director to use photographs the museum has in stock for sharing here on my blog!  She even offered me digital ones scanned from originals.  Whoo-hoo! What pleasure that will be to share with y'all.