The Women Whose Windows I Once Looked Through

My dear Mermaid Darlings,

I have had something upon my mind of late, and I thought perhaps we might sit with it together for a little while.

There were women I admired many years ago; women whose books, homes, gardens and artistic lives seemed to possess the very feeling I was longing to create in my own. I would look at the rooms they had fashioned, and the work they had made, and something within me would whisper, There, you see; it is possible to live that way.

I did not know these women personally, although I sometimes felt that I did. That is the curious intimacy of reading another woman’s books and being invited, through photographs and stories, into the small domestic corners of her world. You come to recognise the chair beside the fire, the flowers upon the table and the view from the kitchen window; and, after a while, it all begins to feel rather like visiting someone you have known for years.

I was a different woman then. The life I wanted was already alive inside me, but so much of it had not yet appeared in the physical world. I knew that I wished to write and paint. I knew that I belonged amongst old houses, weathered garden gates, embroidered linens and all the dear little remnants of another age. I knew there was a mermaid within me and an author too; although neither had yet claimed quite so much of the shore.

These women seemed to have arrived there before me. One lived in a beautiful old house that appeared to hold an entire world within its walls. Another had arranged her life according to an earlier time and seemed entirely untroubled by whether the modern world understood her. I watched from afar and admired what they had made; perhaps more deeply than I realised at the time.

Many years have passed, and their lives have changed. The old surroundings I once loved are gone or altered. The rooms no longer hold the same enchantment for me; the gardens do not stir anything within my heart. What they find lovely now is not always what I find lovely, and there is nothing wrong in that. They are quite entitled to live in whichever manner brings them comfort.

Still, if I am being perfectly honest with you, I have felt disappointed. It sounds almost foolishly personal when I write it down. These women did not promise to preserve their lives for me. They never agreed to remain forever inside the pretty picture in which I first discovered them. Yet when I see what became of those lives, I feel the oddest little sinking in my heart; rather like returning to a house one adored in childhood and finding that the old trees have been cut down and the windows replaced.

The house belongs to someone else; nevertheless, one grieves a little. I have wondered why it should matter to me at all.

I believe it is because I was never looking only at their houses or their gardens. I was looking at a possibility for myself.

Without quite knowing it, I had asked these women to keep a little piece of my dream safe for me. Their lives held the outward evidence of things that were still waiting to unfold in mine. When I saw the books, the artwork, the old rooms and the unconventional choices, I felt less peculiar and less alone. Somewhere in the world was another woman who understood that beauty was not frivolous; that a home might be part shelter, part storybook and part declaration of who one had chosen to become.

There was another little sorrow tucked amongst all of this. One of the women I admired was once terribly discouraging to me about my own art and my hopes of becoming an author and artist. I was younger then, and her words found a tender place to settle. She may not have remembered them for more than an afternoon; I remembered them for years.

It is a painful little thing when someone whose work helped you believe in your dream appears unable to recognise that same spark when it begins glowing inside you.

I do not dwell upon it now, nor do I wish to make her unkindness the centre of the story. It simply belongs there as part of the truth. Perhaps I had given her opinion such weight because I had already given her life more authority than it ought to have possessed.

That is the part I understand differently now.

I thought I was admiring these women; in some ways, I was recognising myself before I had fully become her.

The longing I felt when I looked through their windows did not belong to them. It belonged to the woman within me who already knew what she wanted. She was gathering clues wherever she could find them; an old house here, a painted page there, a woman brave enough to live differently. She was quietly collecting the pieces of herself.

Perhaps we all do this for a time. We find someone who appears to possess the freedom, beauty or confidence we desire, and we place her a little above ourselves. We begin to imagine that she knows something we do not. Yet she may only be showing us what our own soul has been trying to say.

When her life changes, or when she disappoints us, we feel as though something beautiful has been taken away. But perhaps nothing has been taken at all. Perhaps the beauty had already done its work.

I can be grateful for what those women once awakened in me without pretending that I still wish to follow them. I need not criticise the lives they have chosen; neither must I convince myself that I find those lives beautiful. Their tastes are their own, just as mine are mine.

There is a freedom in admitting that.

I once needed to see another woman make books, create art and build a life around the private language of her imagination. I needed to know that such a woman could exist. I no longer need her to remain unchanged in order for me to continue.

I have my own painted pages now. I have written my own little books. I have my Scarlette Rose Cottage, my old-fashioned dresses, my animals, my peculiar treasures and a life that could not have been designed by anyone but me. It is not yet every single thing I see in my mind; but it is mine, and it is becoming.

I have been thinking that perhaps disappointment is sometimes how we quietly return to ourselves.

The women I once admired were little lanterns along my road. I am thankful for the light they gave when I needed it, even if one of them was not especially kind when our paths briefly crossed. Their part in my becoming need not be perfect for it to have mattered.

But I no longer stand outside another woman’s window wondering whether my own life is possible.

I have come home and lit my own lamps.

Most affably yours til my next enchanting swim, Lady Raquel

Chinsegut Hill; Follow the Money

Put the kettle on and pour yourself a proper cuppa before we begin; this is rather a long one, and once we start following the money through Chinsegut Hill, I suspect you shall be glad you brought the whole pot.

An accounting of what we know and the questions Hernando County should be willing to answer.

There are moments when a place becomes so dear to you that silence begins to feel less like grace and rather more like consent, and I have reached that place with Chinsegut Hill.

For years I have watched the same little wheel turn; another organisation, another plan, another promise, another expenditure, another proposed arrangement, whilst the public is expected to nod pleasantly and suppose that someone, somewhere, must surely know what they are doing.

I no longer think that is good enough.

Chinsegut is not a private drawing room in which a handful of familiar people may decide what becomes of her while everyone else waits politely in the hall; she is part of our shared history, public money supports her, and those entrusted with spending that money ought to expect the public to look over the figures.

So I have.

And I shall admit, with very little ceremony, that this whole business has rather got my knickers in a twist; not because I object to money being spent where it is genuinely needed, nor because every large invoice must conceal something improper, but because considerable sums have moved through Chinsegut whilst the people who love her are left to assemble the purpose, the expenditure and the result for themselves.

The figures deserve scrutiny.

More Than $2 Million Budgeted Across Three Years

Hernando County budget documents show approximately $676,165 for Chinsegut Hill Facilities in fiscal year 2023, $770,981 in fiscal year 2024, and $621,211 in fiscal year 2025.

Together, those figures exceed $2 million budgeted across three fiscal years.

I want to be exceedingly precise here because numbers lose their usefulness the moment we ask them to say more than they actually say; budgeted is not the same as spent, and I shall not inflate an argument merely because the larger figure makes a more dramatic headline.

We do, however, have actual expenditure records.

The County’s own Chinsegut Hill Facilities expenditure audit trail records $347,615.98 in expenditures during fiscal year 2024 alone.

One year; nearly three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which leaves me asking the most ordinary question in the world: what did Chinsegut receive for it, not what was proposed or tucked neatly into an agenda packet, presentation or report, but what can we walk upon, touch, see, preserve and point towards today and say, there, that is where the money went?

That is not an accusation.

It is accounting.

And there is a difference.

Money Spent at Chinsegut Is Not Necessarily Money Spent Preserving Chinsegut

Once one looks beneath the totals, something rather important emerges.

A considerable portion of the money associated with Chinsegut is allocated to infrastructure, professional services, modern improvements, engineering, parking, bathrooms, accessibility, grounds maintenance, fire protection, and other supporting works.

Some of those things are plainly necessary: a roof must not leak, a fire-suppression system must work, and public facilities must meet applicable accessibility and safety requirements, but maintenance is not preservation, modernisation is not preservation, and infrastructure is not preservation, even though each may sometimes be necessary to support them; this distinction matters.

When the public hears that hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent upon an historic property, it is perfectly natural to imagine that hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of historic preservation is taking place.

Is it?

I would like to see two columns; in the first, every dollar spent upon modern infrastructure, professional services, consultants, accessibility, utilities, parking, bathrooms, fire systems, maintenance and administration, and in the second, every dollar devoted specifically to conserving Chinsegut’s historic fabric, including original windows, woodwork, plaster, masonry, porches, historic interiors, historic landscape features and other surviving elements which make Chinsegut what she is.

Put those columns beside one another.

Let the numbers speak.

The Curious Case of the Fire Pump

In October 2023, the fire-suppression pump serving the Chinsegut facilities failed.

A functioning fire system is a life-safety matter, and I am not suggesting otherwise; what interests me is what followed.

The initial emergency expenditure for the temporary replacement was approximately $31,239, including installation and the first month’s rental; thereafter, the temporary pump carried a monthly rental charge of approximately $8,500.

The County’s fiscal year 2024 expenditure trail contains at least ten $8,500 entries associated with that temporary pump; $85,000 in visible rental payments during that record period alone.

Then came the permanent replacement.

In November 2025, Hernando County approved a $268,660 contract with Summit Fire & Security.

The County solicited competitive bids; Summit submitted the lowest of five bids, and that fact belongs in any fair account of the matter.

Another figure belongs there too.

The successful bid includes a $135,000 line item for mobilisation.

Removal of the existing pump and related equipment accounts for another $15,000.

Thus, $150,000 of the $268,660 contract appears within those two categories alone.

Perhaps the $135,000 mobilisation figure was entirely reasonable; if so, I would genuinely like to understand precisely what it covered, including which personnel, equipment, transportation, machinery, temporary facilities, supervision, bonding, insurance, or specialised requirements were included.

A large figure is not evidence of wrongdoing.

Neither is an official invoice a reason to stop asking questions.

The County also received approximately $124,014 in insurance proceeds related to the failed pump, and that amount should be properly considered when discussing the net cost of the permanent replacement.

But the question I cannot answer from one simple public accounting remains: what did the fire-pump failure cost Chinsegut from beginning to end, once emergency installation, rentals, professional work, inspections, permanent replacement, and all associated costs are totalled?

The public should not need a magnifying glass and several evenings at the kitchen table to discover the answer.

In January 2025, the Hernando County Board of County Commissioners approved approximately $298,917 for work associated with the Chinsegut dining hall, including ADA parking, drive, and restroom improvements.

County records elsewhere identify still more Chinsegut work involving roofing, hydrants, valves, railings, decking, bathrooms, accessibility, engineering and infrastructure.

Again, some of it may be perfectly necessary.

My question concerns proportion.

Of the money being spent in Chinsegut’s name, what percentage actually preserves historic Chinsegut?

That is a number I very much want to know.

Even the Grass Has a Paper Trail

The County’s fiscal year 2024 records show approximately $15,950 paid to Clear Cut Lawn & Landscaping for Chinsegut grounds maintenance, with other tree and landscaping expenses appearing elsewhere in the records.

Perhaps every invoice is perfectly proper; that isn’t what troubles me.

What troubles me is that understanding the financial life of this publicly supported historic estate requires an ordinary citizen to rummage through government expenditure records like an old aunt searching for the family silver.

Transparency should not require its own archaeology.

Then There Is the Nearly $500,000

In 2025, County Administrator Jeff Rogers publicly stated that Tampa Bay History Centre had invested nearly $500,000 after becoming involved with the museum portion of Chinsegut.

That caught my attention.

Half a million dollars is not pocket change, even in the curious world of public institutions, and yet I have not found a simple public itemisation explaining precisely what constitutes that nearly half-million-dollar investment.

So I ask quite sincerely: what does “close to $500,000 invested” mean?

Does it represent cash physically spent at Chinsegut, staff salaries, administrative allocations, exhibit development, interpretation, research, signs, curatorial services, collections work, travel, professional time assigned a monetary value, private donations, grants or some combination thereof?

Those distinctions matter enormously.

The Tampa Bay History Centre licence arrangement with Hernando County has reportedly carried a fee of only $150 per year, making a clear explanation of the other side of that arrangement even more worthwhile.

If close to half a million dollars has been invested in Chinsegut, itemising it should settle the matter beautifully; identify what was purchased, what remains because of it, which resources were private, which came from grants, which represented professional or staff time, and which produced physical improvements at the property.

A half-million-dollar claim ought to leave more than an impression; it ought to leave a ledger.

That, perhaps, is the heart of everything I am asking.

Archaeology Has Value; So Does Proportion

Archaeological research at Chinsegut predates the present management arrangements; the Gulf Archaeology Research Institute conducted substantial work there years ago; tens of thousands of artefacts have reportedly been catalogued; historic-preservation grant work supported additional archaeological investigation in 2017; and further archaeological and historical research appears in 2023 records.

There is value in knowing who lived upon this land; the stories of enslaved people, labourers, families and others whose lives touched Chinsegut deserve rigorous historical treatment.

My question is not whether history ought to be studied; my question is how the priorities balance.

How much has been spent upon archaeology, studies, reports, consultants, interpretation, programmes and administration compared with the amount spent conserving the surviving historic estate itself?

Place those figures side by side, too.

Seven Months Later: Where Is the FAMU Agreement?

In January 2026, Hernando County Commissioners voted to pursue an operating arrangement with Florida A&M University concerning the retreat portion of Chinsegut.

That vote was not itself the final operating agreement; the contemplated final arrangement was expected to return for approval.

As of August 25, 2026, after reviewing the public BOCC material available to me, I have been unable to locate a subsequently approved final comprehensive FAMU operating agreement.

I choose those words deliberately.

I am not declaring that a document cannot possibly exist; I am saying that I have not found the final approved agreement in the public Commission records I have examined.

If it exists, publish it prominently, and I shall gladly read every page.

If it does not, seven months is quite long enough for the public to ask what remains under negotiation, who will control the retreat, who will bear maintenance expenses and operating losses, who receives revenue, who determines programming and alterations, who controls fundraising and grant applications, what becomes of improvements funded during the agreement, and what obligations ultimately remain with Hernando County taxpayers.

Those are not little housekeeping matters; collectively, they are the agreement.

The Same Little Circle

This is where my concern becomes larger than any single invoice.

Different names appear, different institutions step forward, different proposals receive their moment and another plan eventually takes its place; yet Chinsegut seems to remain within a remarkably familiar orbit whilst the wider community struggles to understand what is being spent, what is being accomplished and what the long-term plan actually is.

An historic property should not spend decade after decade becoming somebody’s next project; it requires stewardship, and there is a difference.

And Since I Am Asking for Transparency, I Owe You Mine

I make no pretence of being a disinterested observer.

I have sought the stewardship of Chinsegut Hill myself, and precisely because I have, I believe I owe the reader the courtesy of saying so plainly.

I want no one to reach the end of this piece and discover my interest as though I had tucked it beneath the table.

I have preservation experience; I understand historic environments, design, public programming, storytelling, fundraising and the rather delicate business of making people care enough about a place to support it.

I also have contacts with considerable means who have expressed a willingness to support charitable work through my nonprofit endeavours.

My vision for Chinsegut has therefore never begun with the question of how much money I could extract from Hernando County; it begins with how much money, private philanthropy, programming, partnership and charitable support I could bring through Chinsegut’s gate.

I have never wanted Chinsegut as a salary; I have wanted her as a responsibility.

My interest certainly gives readers reason to scrutinise what I say.

Please do.

But apply precisely the same standard to everybody else around the table.

Scrutinise my proposal, my experience, my financial model and my intentions; then scrutinise every existing and proposed operator’s contracts, expenditures, grants, results and financial dependence with equal vigour.

That seems perfectly fair to me.

And once we establish that standard, I am entitled to ask something that has become increasingly difficult to avoid: why has a stewardship model offering preservation experience, public reach, nonprofit infrastructure, fundraising relationships, and an intention to seek substantial private support, rather than another continuing stream of County subsidy, not received serious consideration?

Perhaps there is a perfectly ordinary answer.

Then give it.

Because if an alternative model could reduce dependence upon taxpayers, attract philanthropy, simplify the institutional machinery and return historic preservation to the centre of Chinsegut’s life, surely the public interest requires that it at least be examined.

Unless perpetual expenditure has itself become the model.

Follow the Money; But Follow It Fairly

I want to be exceedingly clear about something else.

I am not accusing any individual of theft, embezzlement or corruption, nor am I claiming to possess evidence that Chinsegut money has illegally lined anybody’s pockets; I have found no evidence establishing such a thing, and I will not manufacture an allegation because I am angry about the stewardship of a place I love.

What I am asking is more disciplined and, I think, ultimately more difficult to dismiss.

When substantial sums continue moving through contracts, consultants, institutions, maintenance arrangements, grants, professional services and capital projects whilst the community struggles to identify an equivalent measure of historic preservation on the ground, follow the money and ask who received it, for what purpose, under which authority, what was promised, what was delivered, whether the project changed, whether further costs followed and what tangible benefit remains at Chinsegut because the expenditure occurred.

If every answer is excellent, scrutiny will prove it.

Open the Books

I would like to see a comprehensive public accounting of Chinsegut from 2020 forward; County appropriations alongside actual expenditures, contracts and change orders, grants and their recipients, consultants and professional-service agreements, archaeological awards, management arrangements, disclosed private contributions associated with public partnerships, reported revenue, operating losses, and a proper itemisation of the nearly $500,000 investment attributed to Tampa Bay History Centre.

Then place the expenditure beside the result.

That last part matters terribly.

It has become fashionable to speak of stewardship in lovely language; stewardship becomes considerably less romantic when rain finds a roof, historic fabric disappears, the landscape changes, modern interventions creep into an old place, and everybody involved possesses a splendid explanation whilst the estate quietly bears the consequence.

Chinsegut cannot defend herself; ledgers do not speak until someone opens them; buildings cannot object to a poor decision; and land simply remembers; perhaps that is why those of us who love old places must occasionally become inconvenient.

If Hernando County can demonstrate that its present model has served Chinsegut beautifully, if Tampa Bay History Center can itemise precisely what its nearly half-million-dollar investment produced, if the $135,000 fire-pump mobilisation was entirely reasonable, if the repeated temporary rentals were unavoidable, if the substantial expenditures connected with Chinsegut have produced substantial preservation, and if FAMU remains the intended future operator, then place all of it before the public plainly; show the accounting, explain the expenditure, identify the work and present the agreement.

I would welcome those answers.

Because the purpose of asking is not to catch somebody; it is to save Chinsegut.

Perhaps Florida Should Look Again

If those questions cannot be answered plainly, however, then perhaps we have arrived at the larger question nobody particularly wishes to entertain.

Perhaps the State of Florida should reconsider the present stewardship arrangement for Chinsegut Hill.

There is no shame in admitting that a structure has failed; the greater failure would be continuing indefinitely because everybody has grown too accustomed to the machinery to ask whether it still serves the house.

Chinsegut deserves better than perpetual transition; she deserves preservation before programming, stewardship before institutional ambition, clarity before another contract, and a financial model capable of bringing resources to her rather than perpetually explaining why still more must be spent.

I have spent enough years vexing whether asking these questions might offend the people sitting around this particular table; I am rather more concerned now with the old house sitting beyond it.

And so I ask, without theatrics and without apology, that those entrusted with Chinsegut show the public where the money has gone, what remains because of it, which contracts and grants authorised it, what those expenditures actually produced and how much genuine historic preservation resulted.

A half-million-dollar claim ought to leave more than an impression; it ought to leave a ledger.

And when millions have been budgeted and hundreds of thousands demonstrably spent, I think the same principle ought to apply to Chinsegut Hill herself.

Open the books.

Let us see the ledger.

Then let the people decide whether this beautiful old place has received stewardship worthy of her.

I rather think she has waited long enough.

____

A Note on My Sources

The monetary figures discussed above are drawn principally from Hernando County budget documents, Chinsegut Hill Facilities expenditure audit records, Board of County Commissioners agenda materials, procurement and contract documents, and publicly reported statements concerning Tampa Bay History Centre’s investment.

Where I describe money as budgeted, I mean budgeted; where the County records identify an actual expenditure, I identify it as such. Where an amount has been publicly described as an investment, I do not represent it as a direct County payment without evidence establishing that fact.

The distinction is intentional.

The questions are mine; the figures belong to the public record.

Lady Raquel

ChinsegutHill.com