Eliza Scidmore
My BBC Cameo in Alaska Now Online
My cameo appearance on BBC2’s “Great American Railroad Journeys” can now be seen on the Internet. The episode appears here on YouTube. I make a short appearance about 16:00 minutes into the clip. The interview took place in the summer of 2018, when I went to Alaska for research and to lecture on my book…
Read MoreEliza Scidmore Sports a New Look
On a research run through the Internet I come across this woodcut illustration of my book subject, Eliza Scidmore. It was made by an L.A. artist named Bijou Karman for an online National Geographic series on “21 Women Travelers Who Changed the World.” You can see the list of women and their portraits here. I…
Read MoreI Trailed Eliza Scidmore to Glacier Bay
(Reposted from August 2018) An email out of the blue from U.S. park ranger Caitlin Campbell sparked my first trip to Alaska this summer, capped by a special experience at Glacier Bay. Caiti first contacted me a year ago after stumbling across the website and blog I started to chronicle my progress on a biography…
Read MoreScidmore in Book on Women Writing in WWI
(Reposted from October 14, 2015) Eliza Scidmore, the subject of my biography in progress, appears in a new book of writings by American women in World War I. Author Elizabeth Foxwell took a very different turn in compiling the anthology. Foxwell has spent much of her career immersed in mystery and crime fiction. A true…
Read MoreFrom Early ‘Lady Writer,’ Washington Cherry Blossoms and a National Geographic Legacy
From NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY NEWSROOM Originally posted January 16, 2018, on National Geographic Voices Blog (Under the transition to Disney partnership in 2020, National Geographic removed previous blog content by contributors. The article below is copied as it appeared on the site.) Eliza Scidmore went to Japan for the first time in 1885. She was…
Read MoreJohn Muir Website Adds Page on Eliza Scidmore
Eliza Scidmore now has her own page on the John Muir website, hosted by the Sierra Club. The website, established in 1994, features a huge amount of information on all things Muir, with new material added regularly. After learning about Scidmore’s connection to Muir, the webmaster of the site, Harold Wood, invited me to post…
Read MoreEliza Scidmore on Stage at National Geographic
Eliza Scidmore got top billing on stage Thursday night, March 29, in Washington. National Geographic Live! featured a staged presentation of her writings during the city’s cherry blossom season. I was there, and National Geographic VP Greg McGruder kindly introduced me to the audience as Scidmore’s biographer. I had served as an informal adviser to…
Read MoreGirl Scout Patch Includes Scidmore’s Legacy
Washington celebrates the birthday of its famous cherry trees later this month. The city got the first of those trees on March 27, 1912. Two weeks earlier, on March 12, a resident of Savannah, Georgia, founded the Girl Scouts. So, Girl Scouting and Washington’s cherry trees have both been going strong for 106 years. (Many…
Read MoreScidmore, National Geographic Female Explorer
Eliza Scidmore is known largely for her role as the earliest visionary of Washington’s cherry trees. She was also an intrepid traveler. And the National Geographic Society considers her its first female explorer. The Geographic recently spotlighted some of its pioneering women on its blog. I kicked off the series with an article on Eliza…
Read MorePilgrims at Japan’s Koyasan, Long After Scidmore
Today, Buddhists and other pilgrims flock to the sacred site of Koyasan, a mountainous area of temples in southeastern Japan. The New York Times ran an article about it in the Oct. 22 travel section. Eliza Scidmore wrote about Koyasan in 1907 for National Geographic. It’s interesting to see the different takes on the same place…
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