Lower Lake Schoolhouse Museum

Merry Christmas at the Schoolhouse Museum tree lighting with Russ Cremer, Joan Cremer and Santa Photo credit Joan Cremer

Santa visited the tree lighting at the Lower Lake Schoolhouse Museum last night

Don’t forget! Annual Tree Lightning at the Schoolhouse Museum this Friday

The KUSD Learning Hub at the Historic Schoolhouse Museum has been closed indefinitely. Please contact the Konocti Unified School District for an alternative hub.... Thank you to all the students, parents, mentors, educators, volunteers and museum staff that made this a successful endeavor in these challenging times. We can't wait to host school tours after the pandemic is over. The museums remain closed with the County in the Purple Tier.

Louisa May Alcott, the author of the beloved novel "Little Women," was born on this day in 1832. Originally from Germantown, Pennsylvania, Alcott was born into ...a poor family that was rich in ideas and connections. A talent for writing led to her fame, most notably for the book Little Women, published in 1868. Set during the Civil War era, the book is a semi-autobiographical tale of the life she shared with her three sisters. The main character, Jo March, who was based on Louisa herself, challenged the norms of her day with her defiant, opinionated nature. Alcott was actively involved in both abolitionist and suffrage causes. During the Civil War, she worked as a nurse at the Union Hospital in Washington, D.C. under the legendary social reformer Dorothea Dix. After only six weeks, she became seriously ill with typhoid fever. She gave her family permission to publish her letters home about her experience in a Civil War hospital and they became favorites of readers in the Boston Commonwealth magazine. When she later revised them into a book called Hospital Sketches and added a fictional narrator named Tribulation Periwinkle, it became Alcott’s first widely popular work. A strong supporter of women's rights, Alcott became the first woman in Concord to register to vote when the state of Massachusetts passed a law in 1879 allowing women to vote locally for school committee members. The following year, after she and 19 other women voted in their first election, she satirically noted that "No bolt fell on our audacious heads, no earthquake shook the town. Alcott died in 1888 at the age of 55; she is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on a hillside now known as "Authors' Ridge." To introduce a new generation to Alcott's timeless classic, it's available in a beautiful new "Little Women" Box Set along all four of Alcott's novels at https://www.amightygirl.com/the-little-women-collection For a new retelling of this classic story perfect for teens, ages 13 and up, check out "Jo & Laurie" for ages 13 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/jo-laurie For a new biography for teen readers about Alcott, check out "A Hopeful Heart: Louisa May Alcott Before Little Women" for ages 12 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/a-hopeful-heart For adult readers interested in learning more about Louisa May Alcott, we highly recommend the excellent book about her and her mother, "Marmee & Louisa," at https://www.amightygirl.com/marmee-louisa There is also a fascinating book exploring the enduring popularity of this classic "The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters" at https://www.amightygirl.com/meg-jo-beth-amy

Raised in Potter Valley near Ukiah, California, Grace Carpenter Hudson was an acclaimed painter of Native American subjects, especially the Pomo of coastal and ...inland Northern California. After attending public schools in Ukiah and San Francisco, she enrolled in San Francisco’s California School of Design as a teenager, studying there for five terms with Virgil Williams, Raymond Yelland, and others. In 1890, the artist married John Hudson, a physician for the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad Company, who quit practicing medicine in order to research the Pomo people and follow his interests in archeology and ethnography. With her husband, she returned to Ukiah and became known to locals as the "Painter Lady". Hudson achieved a national reputation during her lifetime. She produced her first important work, National Thorn, which depicted a sleeping Pomo baby in a cradle basket, in 1891. Two years later, she painted a crying Pomo infant, a work she called Little Mendocino. The popularity of the second painting in particular, which was exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and at the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, confirmed her reputation and direction. This painting is a bit unusual for Hudson in that it depicts a young woman, rather than a child. The title of the painting is derived from the name of a game Pomo women played with gambling staves, which this woman holds in her hands. By the time of Hudson’s death in 1937, she had completed over 684 numbered oil paintings, most depicting the Pomo people. Grace Carpenter Hudson (American, 18651937), Kai-Dai, 1913. Oil on canvas, 23 in. x 17 in. Crocker Art Museum Purchase, Rose Huckins Memorial Fund, Richard F. and Joan Gann Fund, and F. M. Rowles Purchase Fund, 2006.14.