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dr. alina

@alinascott

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🇧🇿 Belize 📍ATX
@dralinascott | Historian | PhD
Make the thing
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First in the family babyyyyyyy 🙏 we really did that. 🇧🇿🇧🇿🇧🇿🇧🇿🇧🇿🇧🇿🇧🇿🇧🇿 by @alinascott

A day in Aquinnah with @rossizzl by @alinascott

Montezuma’s Oropendola or as a bird watcher in the 80s described it, “Monty pythons version of a church organ.” I wrote about this bird and the place I used to see them nest every year. I also wrote about some of the historical origins of the name. This is by far one of the most fun posts I’ve made. Full article at alinascott.substack.com/

Selected images via wikimedia commons by Charles J. Sharp
Archival documents cited in full on my substack by @alinascott

When I was in college I was really into turning contrast and highlights down on photos to muddy them. It’s basically what the “fade” filter does on Instagram now. Here are some photos of Belize from maybe 2015 when I was shooting on my Canon Rebel t3i 🤪 by @alinascott

Belize everyday everyway 🇧🇿
Happy 45 to the jewel! by @alinascott

Eswatini, 2014 by @alinascott

Squares for the memory box
August 2026 by @alinascott

I don’t want to be demure or respectable
I was that way, asleep, for years. by @alinascott

New post on the newsletter today ♥️

I recently returned from a trip to Wampanoag land. The Aquinnah Cultural Center is one of those remarkable places that will stay alive in my mind until I visit again. The homestead is in the shadow of the Aquinnah Lighthouse (formerly the Gay Head Lighthouse). I wrote about the home’s first owners – Mary and Edwin Vanderhoop – in my dissertation, but nothing could have prepared me for the beauty of the place.

It’s odd to write about a place you’ve never been to, even though I am from a place people often write about before ever visiting. Still, I felt a familiarity and comfort there that I only feel in old places.

History is interesting because real people made it in real places. The philosophy I’ve stumbled into is that whether we like it or not, those histories are our responsibility to keep.

I’ve felt this in my own Belizean context for some time. When I looked out on Mary’s patio, I was thankful to be a witness to their story. I also found it interesting how much Aquinnah reminded me of Seine Bight, Crooked Tree, or my grandmother’s Monkey River.

I left the land amid the waters with more questions than answers. The most important one being: what is expected of those who leave their ancestral homes, and what is expected of those who stay.

Whether you approach a story from above or below, the lives lived and seen from the ground remain. From the left and the right. The uphill slopes. The runes masked as woodland fences.

I am currently reading Joseph Vanderhoop Lee’s “Nothing More of This Land” and hope to write a review of it soon. Several people I met, including a docent at the Cultural Center, spoke highly of the work. It seems, so far, to be a true labor of love and care.

Happy 10th day of September, Belize. I di miss unu bad todeh ♥️ by @alinascott

Texas summa 🌞 by @alinascott

🌺 excerpt of a reflection I’ve been working on of our time in the cape and noepe. It will be on my substack eventually.

“I think I was surprised by how many flowers bloomed in each yard. We stayed in Falmouth at the house with the blue hydrangeas. It was next to the one with fading white ones, just up the block from the yard of sunflowers.

The blues that don the Cape are native to Asia. A webpage suggests how to “tinker with the soil’s pH to produce blue hydrangeas.” Bigleaf hydrangeas (hydrangea macrophylla) are not native to the United States, yet they “signify a mythical American summer, as iconic as Fourth of July fireworks and barbecues.”

According to Erin Fogarty for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, in the 18th century, a Philadelphia-born Quaker named John Bartram travelled through “Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and the Carolinas, documenting indigenous plants and gathering seeds.”

There he collected H. arborescens (Smooth Hydrangea) and H. quercifolia (Oakleaf hydrangea), both native to the American Southeast. These were then planted on his own farm, which supplied the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for Mount Vernon and Monticello (via the Massachusetts Horticultural Society).

He documented his findings in a 1791 book called Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws; Containing An Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians (last slide)

And just like that, this reflection became an analogy for the emergence of American identity and botanical colonization... by @alinascott

Visiting Aquinnah was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do. I feel blessed and thankful all rolled up into one. No book or photo could fully capture the beauty of people and place.

The Aquinnah Cliffs (formerly the Gay Head Cliffs) are a national landmark. Their Wampanoag name, “Catachukutcho”, refers to the tribe and the colorful cliffs at the end of Martha’s Vineyard.

The best passenger seat photographer.

Path from Aquinnah Cultural Center and shops to Gay Head Lighthouse.

Mary’s house

If my dissertation was an image.

Inside the museum

Catachukutcho

The Gay Head Lighthouse

The Gay Head Lighthouse

Path between the cultural center and the lighthouse.

View from Mary’s porch.

Wampum earrings made by Miss Berta! by @alinascott