Ep. 001 – Why Does Elizabeth Robins Get Her Own Podcast?
Let us start this journey with the question everyone is dying to know the answer to– Why does Elizabeth Robins get her own podcast? Today we start the series off with special guest expert Joanne Gates as she joins Natalie to help introduce you to Elizabeth. In this episode, we explore a diary entry from March 18, 1895. Saddle up for this exciting ride!
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I will never forget the first moment I saw Chinsegut Hill in 2015. My friend Lisa had just accepted a job as Event Planner at that rural estate in Brooksville, Florida and she called and asked me to meet her at the property. “There’s a bunch of old documents and photos and stuff up here and when I saw them I knew you’d care about it.” I’d just started on Brooksville City Council and was trying to understand as much as I could about the city’s past so I took advantage of the opportunity.
As I drove onto the property, the road wound through pastures and pine and bamboo forests and then eventually began ascending upwards with forests on both sides. It was the strangest experience for a Florida that is usually so flat. Then suddenly a lovely white Colonial Revival mansion appeared at the crest of the hill with huge live oaks and a plush green lawn surrounding it while hummingbirds joyfully fluttered from the tree by the manor to the nectar feeder on the wrap-around porch.
I have to imagine that the picture burned into my memory is the same as that burned into the memory of Elizabeth Robins when she saw the very same property in 1905. And of the memory of tens of thousands of others who have come up that driveway since the house was built in 1856. People feel curiously attached to - and protective of - this property and the stories attached to it. And that is one of the reasons I felt compelled to produce this podcast.
Following my initial visit in 2015, I began volunteering. By the end of that year, I was the Manager and Curator of the property and though I am no longer employed there, I still volunteer as a docent, telling the stories of the four private owners of Chinsegut Hill, including Elizabeth Robins. There are way too many stories to tell in the one-hour house tour and this podcast offers an opportunity to go more in-depth with those other stories. Season One of the podcast features ten of those stories and we have seven more seasons mapped out if there is an audience with an appetite for them. The word Chinsegut is an Innuit word that means “Spirit of Lost Things.” Elizabeth and her brother, Raymond, expanded that meaning to “the place where things of value that are lost are found again.”
Chinsegut is how I initially met Elizabeth. The author, actress, and suffragist lived from 1862-1952 and was a pretty big deal in her day but has been marginalized compared to some of her other friends like Virginia Woolf, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, Florence Bell, and Emmeline Pankhurst. We hope to correct that a bit in this podcast. She was brilliant, talented, and accomplished. She was deeply emotional but also reserved her deepest self to herself. Her father was a Darwinist and her mother was an Abolitionist. As we explore Elizabeth we will routinely find Chinsegut - where things of value that were lost are found again.
So here we go. Chinsegut with me.
- Natalie
Read Dr. Gates’ compelling biography: Elizabeth Robins, 1862–1952: Actress, Novelist, Feminist
Elizabeth depicted in a graphic novel
Want more? Connect with us at:
Elizabeth Robins Diary Podcast Episode 1
Brooksville Main Street Website
Brooksville Main Street Facebook
Credits:
References to Elizabeth Robins work printed/quoted with kind permission of Independent Age (Registered Charity No. 210729). Visit www.independentage.org to learn more.
Photos: Independent Age & Roots Creative Co.
Producer & Editor Lief Thomason, Odd Life Studios
Recorded at Profound Revelation Studios
Graphic Designer Barry Meindl, DaBarr Design
Web Designer and Social Media Manager Allisa Babor, Roots Creative Co
“Time is Whispering” Writer and Recording Artist Randi Olsen, Live Oak Theatre
Grant funding assistance by Florida Humanities
Rights to Elizabeth Robins materials owned by Independent Age
Host Natalie Kahler Natalie Kahler | Facebook
