Friends of John Muir's Birthplace

Harold Wood, renowned webmaster for the Sierra Club’s John Muir Exhibit, is a long standing life member of Friends.  Among his many roles Harold is also chair of the Sierra Club’s Education Committee and an expert on all things regarding John Muir.  Accompanied by his wife Janet, a professor of geology and earth science at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California, and a NASA Solar Systems Ambassador, Harold took time out from a recent tour of the UK to visit Muir’s birthplace.

A two night stopover in Edinburgh proved too tempting and on Thursday 6 September Harold and Janet took a morning train to Dunbar station where they were met by Will Collin.  From there they sauntered on to the High Street, stopping off at Kirk Close, the site of the Erskine Memorial attended by Daniel Muir and his family, and the St George Hotel which Muir booked into at the start of his 1893 return visit to Dunbar.  Then it was on to the Birthplace where they were met by Jim Thompson and Jo Moulin.

Harold had seen the building before it was acquired by the Birthplace Trust. On that visit there was a top floor reconstruction of what the Muir home might have looked like back in the 1840s.  But Harold wasn’t ready for the new interior.  Fair to say both Janet and he were hugely impressed by what they found.  They spent over two hours exploring every nook and cranny, finding Muir quotations in places they didn’t expect and being impressed by the amount of information to discover in so small a space.

Eventually Will had to pull them away to a lunch arranged at The Rocks where they were joined by a few Friends including honorary member Winifred Sillito and community council chairman Stephen Bunyan.

The afternoon programme was a walk round part of ‘John Muir’s Dunbar’ and a visit to the revamped Town House, led by Jim and Will.  Fortunately the weather was fairly kind, no rain but blustery, typically Dunbar. Then a walk back to the station for the 5 pm train back to Edinburgh brought the visit to a close.  Harold and Janet have promised to write up an account of their visit and we await it with interest

The 50 State Quarters were released by the United States Mint every ten weeks, or five each year. They were released in the same order that the states ratified the Constitution, starting with Delaware 1787 and ending with Hawaii 1950. Each quarter’s reverse commemorated the State with a design emblematic of its unique history, traditions and symbols. Some of you may remember the California one which featured John Muir released in 2003. Dunbar Rotary purchased one for each child in the Dunbar catchment area and Friends obtained some which were attractively packaged and sold for the bebefit of the Birthplace. Friends have now received a presentation box of all 50 coins given to us by Mr and Mrs Morton from Haddington

On 6th June,Geoff McQuilken, Executive Director of Mono Lake Committee, in California visited the Birthplace with his wife Sarah, children Caelen and Ellery, and father Gordon. Our tour of Dunbar was curtailed as the heavens opened and we got drookit.. However the ground floor of the house next door where the Muirs moved to in 1842 has recently opened as a tea room and we dried off there, so Geoff can say he visited both of John’s Dunbar homes