Tag Archives: BOOK

Annual Gathering, Annual meeting, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Birmingham Historical Society, BOOK, Book Sale, Book Signing, Cake & Pie Contest, Favorite Pie & Cake Contest, Meetings, Membership, Publications, Trustees

500 Million Years of Alabama History at our 82nd Annual Meeting

Please join us on Monday, February 26 at 7 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens for the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Birmingham Historical Society. President Wayne Hester will preside. 

Recorded history is said to have begun with the drafting of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets, approximately 5,000 years ago. Beginning in the 19th century, the study of fossils has evolved to tell a significantly longer span of earth’s history:  500 million years, i.e. “Deep Time.” Per our speaker Bill Deutsch: “Alabama has been part of this unfolding story  since the modern science of Paleontology began, and fossil richness will keep it center stage.”

 Deutsch will take us on a mesmerizing “Walk Through Deep Time”, unfurling Alabama’s rich fossil legacy and its connections to our history, geology, and world-class biodiversity.  (Add to your FB calendar HERE)

Following Dr. Deutsch’s talk, Carolanne Roberts will announce the winners of the Fruity Wonders Cake Competition, praising our members’ creations and sharing comments from our esteemed judges.

Then, we invite you to get a copy of Ancient Life in Alabama, to chat with Bill Deutsch,  sample  cake, and pay 2024 Society dues. Copies of Deutsch’s book will be available for sale for $30 cash, check, or charge.

About the Author

Dr. William (“Bill”) Deutsch is a Research Fellow Emeritus in the Auburn University School of Fisheries, Agriculture, and Aquatic Sciences. The New York native holds degrees in Biology, Anthropology and Zoology, and Aquatic Ecology, the later a PhD from Auburn. During his 26 years as an aquatic ecologist in Alabama, With a longstanding interest in fossils, Deutsch participated in fossils hunting expeditions across the nation He has taught, lectured, and written widely about the natural wonders of our state, especially its rivers and its fossilsand what they can tell us about the present and times long past.

“Since moving to Alabama nearly 40 years ago, I’ve learned about its rich variety of fossils. Rock outcrops are fanned out in a relatively discernible pattern, with bands of fossils representing each geological era. The story of more than 500 million years of life is here, just under our feet. Tropical seas teemed with sharks, mosasaurs, and reef life. Coal-forming swamps ringed coastlines with huge dragonflies and millipedes, slithering amphibians, and towering horsetail plants. Dinosaurs of several types were here along with toothed birds, legged whales, rhinoceroses, mastodons, and giant sloths—the highest fossil diversity of any state east of the Mississippi River! In Alabama? Who knew? How and when did this happen?”

–-Bill Deutsch, “Preface,” Ancient Life in Alabama : The Fossils, The Finders & Why It Matters, July 2022.

“Fruit came with the flowering plants in the Mesozoic age [145 to  66 million years ago]. Late dinosaurs probably imbibed.” Bill Deutsch. 

CALLING ALL CAKES

For the Fruity Wonders Cake Contest

THE RULES: Bake your cake and bring the form and your cake for judging to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens Auditorium between 3:30 and 4:00 p.m. on February 26. 

JUDGING CATEGORIES: Most Colorful + Best Creative Use of Fruit + Best Visual Presentation +Best Flavor Profiles + Best Memory Statement + Best Overall

Arthur Shores, Birmingham Civil Rights, Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham Landmarks, BOOK, Book Sale, Book Signing, Churches, civil rights, Dynamite Hill, family history, Fred Shuttlesworth, Research, Smithfield

“Dynamite Hill” unveiled Sunday, December 11th at Tabernacle Baptist Church

The Birmingham Historical Society’s newest book has 13 first-hand accounts of what it was like to grow up on Dynamite Hill, the neighborhood that was repeatedly bombed in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Barbara Shores, the daughter of civil rights activist and attorney Arthur Shores, along with Marjorie White, director of BHS, bring those stories to life with childhood memories, photos, and historical background.

Ryan Michaels with The Birmingham Times, interviews Shores and White prior to the event on Sunday in this article. Shores notes that many young people who have grown up in Birmingham are unaware of the significance of Dynamite Hill in breaking the racial barriers that existed in housing and schools. It’s a story that needs to be told and retold! Please mark your calendars for Sunday’s event:

Birmingham’s Dynamite Hill” will be unveiled on Sunday, Dec. 11 at Tabernacle Baptist Church, 600 Center St. North in Birmingham’s Graymont neighborhood, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Please note that this and other BHS publications will also be available locally at SHOPPE in Forest Park, via USPS and online HERE

BOOK, Book Sale, civil rights, Dynamite Hill, Smithfield

New Book Release – Coming Soon!

This is the story of a neighborhood just west of the Birmingham city center. Known since a subdivision in 1887 as Smithfield, North Smithfield, Graymont, and East Thomas, the neighborhood’s current name honors the seminal legal battles for attainment of civil rights that unfolded here from 1946 to 1965. The 88-page book includes photographs, maps and accounts of the legal battles and civil rights fights, reflections of neighborhood leaders and participants in the struggles, as well as the stories of children, who grew up here in the 1950s and 1960s, describing their lives on the hill as they unknowingly witnessed history unfolding before them.

Publication expected mid-November at which time a celebration place and date will be announced. Stay tuned!

88 pages, 126 maps and photographs, $26.95

Birmingham Historical Society, Book Sale, Book Signing, Gardening, George Ward, Shades Crest Road, Vestavia

You’re Invited! Nov 1, 2021

Birmingham Historical Society
invites you to
An Evening in Honor of George B. Ward
Monday, November 1, 2021
7:00 p.m. Strange Auditorium
at
Birmingham Botanical Gardens
PROGRAM
By Marjorie White
SIGNING OF THE NEWLY RELEASED
Birmingham: The City Beautiful, Compliments of G. Ward
Published by the Society
with the financial support of
The Sterne-Agee Foundation
Members paid for 2021 may pick up their copy of the new release.
Books not picked up will be mailed following the meeting. Additional copies will be available for purchase for $30 (cash or check), both at the meeting and from Birmingham Historical Society, One Sloss Quarters, Birmingham, AL 35222.


INVITATION FRONT: Left, top to bottom: George Ward, Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, 1907; Birmingham City Hall (1901-1950); George Ward Park, 1901 Greensprings Avenue, Birmingham.
Center, top to bottom: The Relay House, the city’s first hotel and home to the Ward family, its proprietors (1871-1886); Cover, Birmingham: The City Beautiful booklet prepared and signed by Mayor G. Ward, 1908; View of Birmingham at the Red Mountain Gap, the city’s first protected viewshed, enacted 1929.
Right, top to bottom: George Ward, investment banker, builder of Vestavia, 1926; Ward’s Vestavia temple residence (1926-1971); Ward’s Temple of Sibyl (1929), as relocated to its park site on U.S. 31 at the entrance to today’s City of Vestavia Hills. Historic photographs courtesy Birmingham, Alabama Public Library Department of Archives and Manuscripts; color photographs courtesy Abraham Odrezin, 2020.

“George Ward was a most unusual and an unusually accomplished man with a significant legacy. Ward was alderman, mayor, and city commission president, an investment banker, a civic and community leader, a student and a reader, a writer, a lover of classics, a gentleman farmer, an idealist, sentimentalist, natu- ralist, conservationist, birder, and floriculturist, in short, a many-sided man of extraordinary ability.”
— Marjorie L. White, Author, Birmingham: The City Beautiful, Compliments of G. Ward


“Birmingham: The City Beautiful, Compliments of G. Ward is a fundamentally important contribution to the material available on our community. It places Birmingham in the City Beautiful Movement in the context of urban America. The document can also serve as a guide for citizens interested in becoming en- gaged in their community. It is a manual of civic participation. Three cheers.”
— Edward S. Lamonte, Retired Professor of History, Birmingham-Southern College, Former Chief of Staff to Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington Jr.


“Every man, woman, and child in Birmingham seems to be imbued with the city beautiful idea. I have never observed in any other city universal interest as is being manifested by the people in this city.”
— Warren Manning in “Manning Tells of Progress of Work-Talks to Commission of City Beautiful Plan,” Birmingham Ledger, November 19, 1914

(click HERE to purchase from Amazon)

Book Signing, Exhibition, Watercolors

Pretty posies – Powerful Healing, An Herbal Primer

Pretty Posies – Powerful Healing, An Herbal Primer by Maria Antonia Viteri for sale SUNDAY, October 13th, 2019

Sunday, October 13, 3–5 p.m.—Garden Party, Publication Celebration, and Exhibit of watercolors from Pretty Posies, Healing Powers–An Herbal Primer by featured artists Sumter Coleman, Gail Cosby, Ellen Erdreich, Louise McPhillips, and Jane Reed Ross, all Birmingham residents. Grandmother’s Garden at Sloss Quarters, 10 North 32nd Street


They’re simply gorgeous to witness, the blooms and glories festooning Grandmother’s Garden on the grounds of Duncan House, headquarters of the Birmingham Historical Society at Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark. What more could we ask of them beyond their beauty? As it turns out we can ask a lot, for each of the plantings contains medicinal properties to cure what ails you, to soften a symptom or two.
Pretty Posies, Healing Powers–An Herbal Primer whisks you into the world of medicinal plantings with illustrations by five Birmingham watercolorists inspired by Grandmother’s Garden. Author and noted herbalist Maria Antonia Viteri supplies an engaging guide to the blooms, the buds and shoots—and their soothing uses over time.
“This book is a fascinating combination of lovely artwork and detailed accounts of historic methods of herbal healing that can be successful yet today,” says Marjorie L. White, Director of the Birmingham Historical Society, which will publish the volume in October 2019. “You leave the final page with a heightened understanding of simpler eras when the backyard was the pharmacy for our ancestors.


“Viteri, who has extensively studied herbs and their healing properties, walks us through the subject with ease and eloquence. You gain both inspiration and education.”
The illustrated guide focuses on Southern/Appalachian traditions—from usage and sources to traditions of teas, salves, and tinctures. Chapters feature Backyard Weeds, Southern Soothers, Culinary Herbs, Teas, and Roses; herbs include Dandelion, Elder, Passion Flower, Rosemary, Sage, Solomon Seal, and Roses, used to heal or help ailments from coughs and cholesterol to diuretics and digestion and more.
“Viteri introduces us to powers and potential of flowers and plants we’ve seen all our lives and appreciated solely for their beauty. This book goes beyond the beauty and creates new possibilities for the reader,” says White.

EVENTS:
Sunday, October 13, 3–5 p.m.—Garden Party, Publication Celebration, and Exhibit of watercolors from Pretty Posies, Healing Powers–An Herbal Primer by featured artists Sumter Coleman, Gail Cosby, Ellen Erdreich, Louise McPhillips, and Jane Reed Ross, all Birmingham residents. Grandmother’s Garden at Sloss Quarters, 10 North 32nd Street.
October 15–November 30—Watercolors from Pretty Posies, Healing Powers–An Herbal Primer. Birmingham Botanical Gardens Library Gallery.
TO PURCHASE: From Birmingham Historical Society, One Sloss Quarters, Birmingham, AL 35222 or Amazon by mail or from Leaf & Petal at The Gardens during the exhibition, $19.95.
BOOK DETAILS: 27 illustrations of medicinal herbs, all grown at Grandmother’s Garden; 64 pages, full color; additional illustrations of the garden.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Maria Antonia Viteri, a native of Mobile, has studied Western and Southern Appalachian herbal traditions in Alabama and California. Viteri, a Master Gardener, is also licensed in Architecture and Landscape Design. She currently resides in Sterrett, Alabama.