Chris Kastle - News
From the Observation Deck
It is thrilling to watch the water and feel the wind and follow the shore birds as fly and forage and see the approach of storms from the observation deck of the Lighthouse!
I have been enjoying my tenure as Director of Education at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum immensely. It has been a time of great adventure, learning, and creativity as I have participated in a number of enjoyable, moving, and beautiful events since starting here in the Fall of 2008. We honor veterans with the rest of the nation in November. In December we celebrate the lighthouse with a host of luminaries placed throughout the neighborhood as well as music of the season, and, at the Lighthouse Festival in March, we welcome thousands to enjoy a wonderful family festival complete with pony rides, a wooden boat show, model boat building, and, of course, a chance to climb the lighthouse, visit the keeper's house, and tour the grounds.
One of my favorite projects over the past year or so has been to develop a Traveling Sea Chest that holds a Five-Unit Interdisciplinary set of curricula as realized through medium of maritime history. The Units are: Ships and Sailing, A Sailor's Life, Shipwreck Passage: A Game of Adventure on the High Seas, Shipwreck Discovery and Documentation, and Preservation and the Museum. For complete information, see www.staugustinelighthouse.org.
There are many, many other things that happen on a day to day basis - school tours, home school days, summer camp, outreach programs and, yes, budgets and meetings too. Great to be here!
Performances and Etc.
Yes, I am still actively performing and have been at a number of venues when time permits. I have shared stages with several wonderful Florida storytellers including Shirley Bryce in a 2-woman show, "Some Well Seasoned Stories", at the San Marco Theater here in St. Augustine and with Nancy Avera in a concert presentation of the 2nd Annual Festival of Muses at the St. Cyprina Center for the Expressive Arts, also here in town. It was an a excellent time meeting, sharing, and presenting music with a host of fine performers at the Sarosota Folk Festival despite the unseasonably cold weather. And I have been invited back to the Florida Folk Festival in White Springs as well as the festivals at Barberville. There will also be presentations at one of the venues for the Gamble Rogers festival and at the new River Day Celebration up in Jacksonville.
The only out of town plans this year cover the Chicago Maritime Festival (See below.) and the Mohegan Colony Storytelling and Music Festival in Crompon, NY.
In January, I was elected to the Board of the Tale Tellers of St. Augustine and have also been asked to serve on the Board of the Florida Storytelling Association as of March.
Chicago Maritime Festival
The 2011 festival will be on February 26th at the Chicago History Museum. Outreach performances will take place February 23rd-25th; if you know a school that would be interested please have them contact me.