New Waymarking Group

We received an offer to be an officer for a new waymarking category for Plantations. I'd been entertaining the idea of helping manage a category for some time now but felt uncomfortable climbing on board this one.

I'm a yankee and I do love history and Old Florida but, again, I'm a yankee. I see plantations as different things than maybe a native Southerner would. To me, they represent slavery and prosperity on the domination of others. To me, they represent empty pride and braggart natures. While I think we need to preserve that history in a way to remind us that we are always capable of control, cruelty, inhumanity and racism (and, furthermore, what forms of these things are we still acting out today), I don't think that's really the somber and disturbing tone that the Leader is looking for.

The Old Florida that I love is oak hammocks shading white-washed two-room shotgun shacks, banjo picking, gators in the canal, spanish moss drifting from oak branches in a gentle breeze, grassy roads, unincumbered wildlife, etc etc etc. The Old Florida I adore is lower class, if anything, and as carefree and easy-going as can be. Snook Haven is a good example.

I politely declined and I hated to do it because it was a group, but honestly, I think I'd rather help manage Fairy Doors than something that glorifies the so-called magnificence of the upper class Old South.

- Mrs. HH