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SPRING 2025: The Power of Words. BONUS: The value of oral history, book/movie recommendations, a birthday party, and a Grating the Nutmeg podcast episode from our archives.
From the Archives: Grating the Nutmeg
Connecticut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair
It’s almost summertime and kids everywhere are already dreaming about their summer vacation. The 1964-65 New York World’s Fair attracted approximately 50 million visitors including many from Connecticut during its two April-to-October seasons. Many Connecticut companies had exhibits at the fair, including the Travelers Insurance Company’s building on the “Pool of Industry”. General Electric’s pavilion included a Disney designed attraction called “Progressland”.
Listen: Connecticut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair
Thanks to the Connecticut Museum of Culture & History and Preservation Connecticut for their financial sponsorship of Grating the Nutmeg, helping us bring you a new episode every two weeks.
Site Lines: On the Windsor Afro American Civic Association and the Value of Oral History
DePeyster writes, “The previously untold history of the Windsor Afro American Civic Association (WAACA) is best understood through the words of its original members.” Founded in 1982 as a response to growing diversification of Windsor, Connecticut, the WAACA’s members convened from all over including New York City, Georgia, Ohio, and even Jamaica, with the collective mission to serve underrepresented members of the Black community. From organizing career days to scholarship fundraisers, and sponsoring contestants in the Shad Derby pageant, the WAACA continually strove to provide resources and equal opportunities.
Subscribe to learn more about the WAACA’s members, mission, and about its lasting significance in the Windsor community.
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Snapshots
On Our Bookshelves
Two recent Nobel Prize in Literature winners have been associated with Yale University in New Haven: Louise Glück (2020) and Annie Ernaux (2022). Glück joined the Yale faculty, in 2004, as the Rosenkranz Writer-in-Residence. She was the 2003-2004 U.S. Poet Laureate. Ernaux published Look at the Lights, My Love, translated from the French, about the phenomenon of the big-box superstore, with Yale University Press in 2023.
Streaming on Our Devices
The summer F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived in Connecticut inspired one of the world's most beloved novels: The Great Gatsby. Novelist Barbara Probst Solomon, raised in the Compo Beach area of Westport where the Fitzgeralds rented a cottage, posits that protagonist Jay Gatsby was based on an eccentric millionaire who lived in Westport during the same time as Scott and Zelda. The New Yorker selected the documentary, Gatsby in Connecticut: The Untold Story, featuring Sam Waterston, as one of the Best Movies of 2020. You can watch it now on Apple TV+.
Out and About: Happy 229th Birthday!
Despite the looming rain on Saturday, May 17, visitors gathered in the Old State House to celebrate the building’s 229-year survival and important connections to history. As the sun started to part the clouds, guests enjoyed live music, birthday crafts, lemonade from The Wini Bar and the winning raspberry buttercream birthday cake from Brown Butter Bakery while touring the building. Watch on WTNH.
Check our next newsletter for more happenings around our state!
Don’t Miss Out! Programs and Exhibitions to Enjoy This Month
Mattatuck Museum
The Mattatuck Museum creates a space where the power of words—both spoken and unspoken—offers powerful narratives this season. The exhibition O’Keeffe In Conversation invites viewers to experience the power of dialogue between Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic works and select pieces from the museum’s collection. Over the course of a year, four microexhibitions curated by individual members of the curatorial team foster dynamic “conversations” between O’Keeffe’s and works that share thematic or stylistic similarities, creating new layers of meaning. Each microexhibition offers fresh perspectives and invites viewers to consider how visual language transcends time and medium.
The exhibition Gordon Parks: Homeward to the Prairie I Come showcases the work of Gordon Parks, an iconic photographer who explored race, poverty, and social justice through both his lens and words. Paired with his lesser-known works of poetry, this exhibition positions Parks within the history of art and provides a catalog of his wide-ranging interests beyond photography.
144 West Main Street, Waterbury. mattmuseum.org; 203-753-0381
Connecticut State Library
The power of words is on full display in the state’s founding documents—the Fundamental Orders of 1639, the Charter of 1662, and the 1818 and 1965 Constitutions—all of which are housed within the Connecticut State Library. Visit the Museum of Connecticut History to view some of these incredible original documents, including what is considered to be the nation’s first written constitution: the Fundamental Orders. In 1639, inhabitants of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield agreed “that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established.” The resulting document provided the framework for the government of the Connecticut Colony and also served as a model for future written constitutions—which is why Connecticut is called the “Constitution State!” The Museum of Connecticut History is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is always free!
231 Capitol Avenue, Hartford. portal.ct.gov/csl; 860-757-6500
Wilton Historical Society
What makes a community? Is it an official town charter? A town government with leaders, laws, and regulations? Lines that lay out its borders on a map? All the members of the community may have a different answer, but it is simpler to just use one word: everyone! In the Wilton Historical Society’s new permanent interactive exhibit, Puzzle Pieces: Putting Wilton Together, visitors can find their place in the community, whether decades-long residents or new arrivals.
Using common universal touchstones, visitors can see their experience in town reflected throughout history and create a space where we all belong. Ever-changing objects from the museum’s collection and interactive stations create a new exhibit to see with each visit. This exhibition was made possible by a generous gift from Wilton Kiwanis. Open during museum hours, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
224 Danbury Road, Wilton. wiltonhistorical.org; 203-762-7257
Lebanon Historical Society
The first history of Lebanon, Connecticut, was written as part of the community’s celebration of the United States centennial in 1876. On July 4, Reverend Orlo Hine of the First Congregational Church read the text, listed as a “Historical Address” on the program.
In the printed, bound book published in 1880, the historical address fills the first 42 pages. The “Appendix,” which follows, includes several three- to five-page essays about the early years of English settlement, Reverend Eleazar Wheelock and the Indian School, and Governor Jonathan Trumbull, with details about the American Revolution. The last 65 pages are lists of town officeholders from 1705 to 1860 and genealogical information for many local families. Although Reverend Hine begins by apologizing for the hasty way a committee collected the information for this commemorative book, it is now recognized in Lebanon as the earliest step in a 150-year commitment to historical preservation.
856 Trumbull Highway, Lebanon. historyoflebanon.org; 860-642-6579
Editor’s Picks:
Jason Scappaticci, “Connecticut at the New York World’s Fair” Connecticut Explored, Summer 2015.
Jacob Orcutt, “Connecticut’s Old State House: Where the Constitution of 1818 Was Born” Connecticut Explored, Fall 2018.
Walter W. Woodward, “Are We the Constitution State?” Connecticut Explored, Spring 2005 Volume 3 Number 2.