Let us remember “Men of the Trees” founder Richard St. Barbe Baker, OBE, Hon. LL. D. F.I.A.L., who visited Seattle in 1915 and 1916, and again in 1982, three months before his death. He met with visitors from bed while severely ill to remind everyone of actions needed to protect the world’s climate. Seattle had been on his mind for decades; now, a hundred years later, we are reminded that we too need to be on the leading edge of reducing climate change. We are excited to share that The Unity Museum is planning a special centenary luncheon in June with Paul Hanley as keynote speaker, St. Barbe Baker’s biographer. The foreword and introduction to his new biography were written by no less than Prince Charles and Jane Goodall.  

The Unity Museum’s new exhibit on the History of Continental Drift

Dr. Edwin H. Colbert (father of our curator Dr. Amy Colbert) was a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan who, during an expedition to Antarctica in 1969, confirmed the theory of continental drift as it applied to prehistoric animals. Geophysicists had recently discovered that continents drifted due to seafloor spreading, and Dr. Colbert’s identification of an Antarctic fossil of the mammal-like reptile Lystrosaurus, common to the other southern continents and peninsular India, proved that these all formed a single landmass called Gondwana that has broken up and drifted far apart over the last 200 million years.

 

Dr. Amy Colbert, Curator of The Unity Museum, with a visitor in front of the new exhibit
 

The Unity Museum participated in the recent Light Rail Opening in the University District. The Museum set up for the celebratory event an exhibit about the history of the University District since 1895. Bertha Knight Landes, who was the first female mayor of Seattle from 1926 to 1928, was part of our exhibit, as she lived right up the street from us on The Ave. Little did Bertha know that one day the Light Rail would arrive!

Later on we met with Seattle’s outgoing Mayor Jenny Durkan at a thank-you gathering for us collaborators who worked with her planning team for the festivities around the Light Rail’s arrival in the U District. We invited Mayor Durkan to visit The Unity Museum, and we were pleased that she agreed.