Los Adaes State Historic Site, Robeline, LA

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Notes from the Field

The "Mosquito Museum"

What kind of interpretive exhibit really gives you a buzz? How about a museum on mosquitoes?! Since I spent much of 2024 and part of 2025 developing text for the new Disease Vector Education Center (aka The Mosquito Museum) in St. Augustine, FL, I can guarantee that you’ll have a great time!

The center introduces visitors to the world’s tiniest, deadliest, peskiest insects and other arthropods that help and/or hinder human life on earth. You can play detective to identify mosquito-borne diseases, use digital microscopes, feed mosquito larvae to hungry mosquitofish, and climb into a real helicopter for a simulated coastline spraying mission. Our team worked hard to make this unusual science museum a must-see stop. Click here to see a great review in The Washington Post.

Mary Lou Williams: Jazz Legend

Last fall a local musician called me for a small but very cool project in my own backyard: A wayside sign about jazz great Mary Lou Williams, who was born in the intown Atlanta community of Edgewood. I’m happy to report that on May 3, 2025, we celebrated the installation of this interpretive wayside in Edgewood Garden, about a block from Mary Lou’s home. To learn more about this great keyboardist who arranged music and played with Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Dizzie Gillespie, and more, click here. A celebration of the life and music of Atlanta’s Mary Lou Williams - ARTS ATL

Washington Monument Repairs

When's the last time you looked out over Washington, D.C., from the top of the Washington Monument? Try it again soon! Luckily for me, the elevators were operating again when I worked on new exhibits for this iconic landmark after an earthquake damaged the structure in 2014. (No, I did NOT dangle from one of those ropes! Definitely not in my skill set...)

Nature's Navigators

Every time I work on interpretive panels for another National Wildlife Refuge, I am astonished – again! – by the incredible journeys made by millions of birds every year. From Bosque del Apache in New Mexico to Hollings ACE Basin in coastal South Carolina, these refuges along the North American flyways are annual R&R stops for all sorts of migratory waterfowl. Amazing!

Traveling El Camino Real

Thanks to funding from the FHWA National Scenic Byways program, we have a great assignment this fall: creating interpretive signs for a section of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail in Santa Fe, NM.

Atlanta: City in a Forest

How does a fast-growing city keep its trees? Just ask Trees Atlanta – a non-profit dedicated to protecting existing trees and planting new ones throughout metro ATL. I wrote the text, and my daughter, Allie, did the graphic design. Since Trees Atlanta wanted to use recyclable materials, we chose locally produced aluminum signs. Long live the urban forest!

GIG designed and developed Trees Atlanta's new signage.

Swimming, Anyone?

A lone lifeguard chair remains at Horseshoe Bend Beach in Montana's Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area.

I'm spending most of a Georgia January daydreaming of faraway places-- Read More

Tuesday

May032011

Word Portraits from the Past

Could you pick these men from a jailhouse line-up? Many early Los Adaes soldiers were recruited from debtor’s prisons.

In Colonial New Spain, photography did not exist and portrait painters were expensive, so recruiters wrote vivid, easily recognizable “word pictures” of the ethnically diverse men assigned here.

Try your hand at creating pictures of these two Los Adaes soldiers:

“Francisco Xavier Cortinas… native of the Villa of Santiago province of Coahuila, tall, robust, white round face, red beard, blond hair, large blue eyes, 22 years old, a scar over the left eye….”

“Agustin Sanchez… native of the city of Zacatecas, medium build, stocky, light brown complexion, round face, small black eyes, small forehead, dark reddish brown hair, 29 years old….”