Heritage In Maine

From Maine to the Arctic 2011

2012-02-13T09:36:00.000-08:00

Arctic Conditions on Mt. Washington (Johan Erikson photo)

What better day to talk about the connection between New England and the Arctic than today when a hovering Arctic air mass has Mainers stoking their fires and visitors at the Mount Washington Observatory cowering from 100 mph plus winds with -60 degree wind chill?

Professor Susan Kaplan just shared a blog with me - "From Maine to the Arctic 2011." It documents how faculty from Bowdoin College's Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum traveled to Cape Sheridan, Ellesmere Island last summer. Kaplan and Genevieve LeMoine studied the archaeological remains of over-wintering sites established by Greenlandic Inuit families. These Inuit people lived on Cape Sheridan during the winters of 1905-06 and 1908-09 so that they could work for Robert E. Peary as he tried to reach the North Pole."

Eagle Island shoreline from Peary's office (Patricia Erikson photo)

The blog explains, "Peary was determined to be the first person to reach the North Pole. He spent many years in the Arctic, always learning from his mistakes and refining his plans and techniques to achieve this goal. He used the best of both Western and local Inughuit technology, from a custom-built steam ship, the SS Roosevelt, to traditional fur clothing sewn by local (Inughuit) seamstresses...While he and his men overwintered aboard the ship, these (Inughuit) families constructed houses and lived on shore. The women sewed clothing for the expedition (in addition to their own families), while the men hunted and drove dog sleds for the expedition."
The Bowdoin expedition found fascinating evidence of this Inuit support camp and the blog details some of the incredibly well-preserved artifacts.

Peary's connections to Maine ran deep. A graduate of Portland High School and Bowdoin College, he spent as much time in Maine as possible throughout his life, especially at the cottage he had built for his family on Eagle Island. Thanks to the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, the ties between the Arctic and Maine remain strong. Check out the "From Maine to the Arctic 2011" blog to see the similarities and differences in Arctic expeditions a century apart.

If you would like to read any of my writing about the Peary family, you can check out the following:

Meet the Other Pearys (Portland Magazine, Winter 2011)
Josephine Diebitsch Peary (journal Arctic, March 2009)
An Arctic Betsy Ross (Heritage in Maine 2010)
Snow Queen: A Woman in Full (Portland Magazine 2009)

Discover the Newest Chapter in Presumpscot River's History

2012-01-17T19:18:00.000-08:00

Footbridges beckon hikers into Presumpscot Preserve

Daunting Rapids on Presumpscot River

Blueback herring & American shad return to Presumpscot Falls (D. Watts)

One of the joys of living in Maine is the opportunity to experience stunning natural beauty without the need for hours of travel. Last weekend, I explored an area rich in both natural scenery and ecological history a mere five miles outside of downtown Portland. Using the Portland Trails system, we entered the forest at Oat Nuts Park and descended down onto wooded river terraces.

Along with other hikers and bikers, we were lured by the roar of the Presumpscot Falls. The original Wabanaki residents and later European settlers found the river offered abundant resources.

If we were to travel back in time to the Presumpscot of the 1730s, we wouldn't hear the impressive roar of the falls. Instead, we would find an early colonial dam interrupting the flow of the Presumpscot River and the free passage of anadramous fish populations. In 1739, the Wabanaki leader Polin described the devastating impact of colonial use of the Presumpscot River:

"We are most aggrieved that the River Presumpscot is dammed up so that the passage of fish, which is our food, is obstructed, and what Col. Westbrook did promise about two years ago that he would leave a place open in the dam and that the fish should have free passages up said river into the pond in proper season, but he has not done so, and we are therefore deprived of our proper food."

Historic maps available on Maine Memory Network detail the degree of modification that Polin described; the lower Presumpscot riverbanks once hosted various structures, millworks, weirs, and dams. Fast forward nearly three centuries and virtually none of those historic uses remain visible today.

Remarkably, the Presumpscot River Ecosystem Restoration Project removed the Smelt Hill Dam in 2002, uncovering the tumultuous Presumpscot Falls and restoring several miles of the lower Presumpscot River to its natural flow. My advice? Take the time to explore the newest chapter in the Presumpscot River's environmental history. It's a beauty.

Watch Night: A New Year's Eve Reflection on Slavery, Freedom, and Praise for Blessings

2011-12-31T08:22:00.000-08:00

Abyssinian Church by D. Minter

Each New Year's Eve is a pause, a moment balanced on tiptoe, waiting for the world either to slide backward to the times that we have known, or lurch forwards into the times that we can only imagine or for which we can hope. It's a liminal, in-between moment where past, present, and future meet.

As you might imagine, for a cultural historian such as myself, this is a magical moment where we celebrate as a society something that I hold dear every day: the power of the past to shape our present. Sometimes, or perhaps always, the past holds not just memories drenched with nostalgia, but experiences from which we want to purge ourselves. Whether its individual or collective, this purging requires that we acknowledge, name, and remember that from which we want to distinguish or define ourselves. Since this Heritage in Maine blog is about "the living connection with Maine's past," I won't rattle on about my individual desire to both define and purge myself relative to my own past, but instead provide an example of how some of us, collectively, pause and recognize the in-between moment, and name the past against which we want to distinguish and define ourselves.

Today I learned that the Green Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church on Munjoy Hill in Portland - also known as AME Zion - holds a "Watch Night Service" on New Year's Eve. What's Watch Night? I quote here from the African American Lectionary (the first online, ecumenical preaching and worship lectionary for African American Christians):

"What’s considered Watch Night Service in the black church tradition might be otherwise understood as a church service on New Year’s Eve. But this African American tradition is perhaps one of the greatest cultural touchstones for what it means to be black and Christian in America. Passed down by our ancestors, Watch Night Service is one of the last vestiges retained from chattel slavery by African American Christians. Several accounts are given attesting to the fact that enslaved blacks could not sleep on December 31, 1862, because they were waiting in anticipation all night long, awaiting to receive word of the Emancipation Proclamation — words that would change their status, their lives, and the destiny of their children’s future from the shackles of chattel slavery."

Brad R. Braxton, Baptist Minister and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at McCormick Theological Seminary, explains in more detail the connection between the history of slavery and the contemporary tradition:

Burial site of some of Maine's Afr. Am. and white abolitionists

"On Sept. 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation, declaring that one hundred days later, Jan. 1, 1863, slaves would be free in those states rebelling against the Union in the Civil War. On December 31, 1862, also known as "Freedom's Eve," large groups of African Americans, along with white abolitionists, gathered in meeting halls and churches across the country to watch for news that the President had formally enacted the Emancipation Proclamation...More than 140 years later, African American Christians continue to gather in churches on New Year's Eve to thank God for the blessings of the Old Year and to seek God's favor for the New Year."

Maine has a long history of abolitionism - one that extends to Portland and my home of Peaks Island. Did African American and white abolitionists in Maine gather together on December 31, 1862 for a Watch Night? Whether they did or not - and a bit of research might reveal the answer - the AME Zion church community remembers that expectant night long ago when our country was a war-torn one. Thanks to this tradition and to local historic landmarks, such as the Portland Freedom Trail and the Abyssinian Church, we can ring in the New Year remembering the past and facing a new year with wishes for remaking our world into a better place.

*Thank you Rev. Desi Larson, Ph.D. for bringing Watch Night to my attention.

"Tribal Cannon Returns to Indian Township": Guest Post from Passamaquoddy Cultural Heritage Museum

2011-12-07T15:15:00.001-08:00

Donald Soctomah from the Passamaquoddy Cultural Heritage Museum shares the following news:

Revolutionary War-era Tribal Cannon courtesy D. Soctomah

"After the 1776 American Revolutionary War, the U.S. Government gave the Passamaquoddy Tribe cannons from the war. Pleasant Point donated their cannon to the metal drive in World War II. Indian Township kept their cannon until 1960 when it disappeared.

The cannon was located in 2011 in Maryland, and now its back home. Where has it been?

Apparently, in 1960 a fisherman from Maryland was boating along Long Lake next to Peter Dana Point and noticed a pipe sticking out of the water. He looked at it, and with the help of a couple of other people, loaded it in his boat. The "pipe" was actually the tribal cannon. So he took it home with him to Maryland.

I've been interviewing people about the history of Peter Dana Point and many remember the cannon but didn't know where it disappeared to. This summer the Maine State Museum got the call from Maryland about returning the cannon to Maine and they called me. Laura Nicholas King was on her way to Maryland to visit her sons and I asked her to pick it up, so she brought it home.

So now it's here on the Township and I'm having a cradle built for it." -Donald Soctomah-

Map of Indian Reservations in Maine

For those who are not familiar with the Passamaquoddy peoples, here's a map of Indian reservations in Maine, courtesy of Maine Public Broadcasting Network's teacher resources. The Passamaquoddy Tribe explains that they are represented by the Joint Tribal Council which consists of the individual Tribal Councils of Indian Township, in Princeton, and at the the Pleasant Point Reservation (Sipayik) in Perry, Maine.

Many people also don't realize that the British attacked (what are now) Maine communities during the late 18th c. and that many Wabanaki peoples joined with American revolutionaries. Captain Sopiel Soctoma, Passamaquoddy, and 50 men of his tribe captured an armed schooner off Passamaquoddy Bay and delivered it to Colonel John Allan in Machias. You can read more about these tensions and battles at the Abbe Museum or at the Maine Historical Society. Apparently, many historic cannons found their end in the World War II metal drive as this Nebraska story relates.

Information about the Passamaquoddy Cultural Heritage Museum
Route 1 - Indian Township, Princeton, ME 04668
Hours: Mon. 1:00-3:00 pm; Fri. 1:00-3:00 pm
Email: soctomah "at" ainop.com

Polar Bears, Dog Sleds, and Aviation History in the Arctic: An Ode to Dad

2011-10-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

Clyde Walker Pierce, Jr. at Baffin Island

Two months ago, my father, Clyde Walker Pierce, Jr. passed away. I am indebted to him for a fair amount of my love for history. Had my mother known about the grisly tales he told me at bedtime about his adventures as a WWII pilot, she surely would have stopped him. In other posts, I have written about Maine's military history - Revolutionary War, Civil War, and WWII. Here, I share just a slice of my father's memoir - a peek into the life of a Maine pilot flying into the Arctic, a world of polar bears, dog sleds, and endless ice.

Written by Clyde Walker Pierce, Jr. in 2005

"This is a typical trip to Greenland from Presque Isle, Maine via Goose Bay Labrador. We usually used C47 Douglass Aircraft, or C46 Curtiss aircraft. This particular trip we elected to use the C46 because of its superior speed, cargo capacity, and range without refueling. The crew consisted of pilot, copilot, radio operator, and crew chief.

We took off with a ground temperature around 20 degrees below zero and climbed to 6000 feet above sea level. The upper air was crisp and outside temperature gauge reading 32 below zero. We crossed the Saint Lawrence River, near Anticosta Island, where the distance to cross it was 92 miles, and since the weather was mostly free of clouds we could see our checkpoint the Mirigan, PQ airstrip.

Clyde Walker Pierce, Jr.

From now on all the way to Goose Bay, Labrador everything looks the same - snow and pretty pointed green evergreen trees and so after multiple small lakes hidden by the snow we arrived at Goose Bay airport after three hours of flight time for the 400 miles. The airport was jointly operated by the U.S. on south side and Canadian on the north side.

I should have pointed out we were actually civilians flying Army Air Corp planes but employees of the Northeast Airlines. We were greeted by Colonel Fisk Haskoll the Base Commander. We went to the dining hall and had a meal while plane had fuel tanks topped off.

C46 courtesy of ww2.wwarii.com

A new flight plan was filed and we were off to Greenland some 800+ miles across the cold and stormy Atlantic. We were flying between cloud layers most of the way but about 200 miles from destination we broke out clear above and also below. Soon we were able to hear the beacon at entrance to the Ungliavik Fjord and the needle on the ADF radio homed on the beach almost right on the nose. These signals, beam, or whatever project further and stronger over water than land areas. However before we reached the beacon we encountered lower clouds so we let down over the water and go below the clouds around 500 feet. Anyway we started up the Fjord with high mountain ridges on both sides. The passage is narrow and once you get to this point there is no way you have room to do a 180 degree turn. Yes you are then committed to keep going and if visibility disappears you land in the water. I might add at this point that all the land is not covered by snow as the howling winds see to that. Now multiple ship masts ride out of the water, any sailing vessels that found their graves here. I sort of wondered what the history of these ships would reveal. On the high spots on either side of the Fjord were pointed rock cairns in abundance and I later was informed that Eskimo fishermen were buried in them in a standing position so they could look at their favorite fishing area through a slit that was in the cairn.

This day we were lucky as the cloud ceiling did not lower and we broke out into a valley bowl made a hard turn of 40 degrees and there was the rock and dirt strip. We went into a good sized wooden shack, closed the flight plan, and ate some chow. Since we had a large amount of cargo to be unloaded we decided to do a little sight-seeing. At the end of the valley bowl a huge glacier rose and at its base was some clear water - we could look down in the water and see huge salmon. I thought the salmon were 3-4 feet down but the Eskimo who was showing us around explained in very good English that the fish were down over 30 feet - the water was so clear and free of any and all contamination it would fool one.

Walker at 96 with his Greenlandic model kayak

The Eskimo wore muckalucks [sic] on his feet and legs, a beauty of a parka made from seal skin and animal furs with attached headpiece that would protect him from wind and cold. He told us that when we left and reached the ocean that some of his people would be far out at sea fishing and it turned out to be true - they were out in their kayaks 20 or more miles out to sea.

The trip back was uneventful but there would be more trips to Greenland and beyond but that is another story."

Indeed, and many more stories there were. Thanks, Dad.

(Not) Hearing History at Governor Baxter School for the Deaf

2011-10-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

Governor Percival Baxter

Quakers enjoy a very long history in Maine, reaching back to the days when our state was still part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Thanks to my family's new relationship with Friends Camp in China, Maine, my life's path has crossed with that of Quaker history. For that reason, I found myself on Mackworth Island in Falmouth yesterday, attending a Friends Camp Committee meeting. The Quaker school presence on Mackworth is recent, made possible, I was told, by the shrinking enrollment at the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf. In the 1950s, Baxter deeded his summer island home to the state of Maine and eventually hosted the school that now bears his name.

1922 Portland Press Herald Glass Negative, Maine Memory

By coincidence, yesterday was the day of the Deaf Culture Festival, the 135th anniversary of deaf education in Maine, and the grand reopening of the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf Museum. I confess I didn't know this museum existed; it opened in 1995 to exhibit an array of school memorabilia, as well as teletype technology.

Baxter School for Deaf Museum Exhibit

During a break from my Committee meeting I dashed into the museum. Having no personal experience with the deaf community, I was fascinated by Bill Nye's collection of deaf communication devices. Their diverse forms paralleled the innovations in television, radio, phone, and telegram technologies.

Teletype Machine - exhibit at deaf culture museum

Sadly, the museum tentatively represented a more sober aspect of deaf student experience, one that I had not heard of previously. Apparently, like many other residential educational institutions (including those for Wabanaki peoples), the school for the deaf has a history of staff sexually abusing the children. While some apologies and public healing have taken place, many lives have been scarred, even lost.

I returned to the Quaker meeting, finding members in the process of discussing the quest for peace and acceptance in a broken world. Broken world. That was well said. If there's anything that history teaches us, it's that this struggle across centuries has been constant. It remains a quest worth pursuing.

Reflections on 9/11 from Maine

2011-09-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

Child's Drawing of Twin Towers, Library of Congress

Ten years ago today, I followed my daily routine of boarding a ferry, crossing Casco Bay, and walking up Exchange Street to my job as Dean of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. It was one of those crisp, fall days when you're welcoming a new batch of students for the fall semester and celebrating your new pencil with an impossibly sharp point. Like everyone everywhere, we weren't prepared for the tragedy that occurred that day.

Stunned by the news from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we held each other close, took stock of friends and family, and wondered how we would ever do anything routine again. The next day I received an email from an archivist at the Library of Congress. It was an invitation sent out nationwide to folklorists, documentarians, and ethnographers to record the moment in which we all stood, bewildered. "Record the reactions of people on the street," it instructed. This was like a call to arms for the Salt faculty and staff. The Institute's very mission is to teach students how to document the complex world around them under even the most difficult circumstances. The archivist explained that this request mimicked one sixty years early at the bombing of Pearl Harbor when a Folklife Archivist called for folklorists to record "man on the street" responses.

The Salt Institute responded to the call. Our students fanned out across the city, clutching their microphones and photo lenses to capture and share the grief that consumed us all. One of my many memories of those days was burning a CD of their collective work - their recordings of tearful and brilliant reflections by Maine residents - and tucking it into an envelope addressed to the Library of Congress. I sealed it with a wish that, in some small way, we were contributing to an understanding of a moment that confounded us all. Ten years later, the Library of Congress has created a Witness and Response Exhibit from the submissions that poured in from around the country.

Archaeological Discovery at Abyssinian Church

2011-09-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

King Middle School students studying Abyssinian Chur

In my last post, I wrote about the history of railroads in Maine, real railroads. Today, I turn to a related topic - the underground railroad.

In the 1830s, railroads became a new and popular means for passengers to travel. In this pre-Civil War context, the name “underground railroad” was coined to describe a group of people, spread out over long distances, who helped runaway slaves to escape to freedom. This network included Maine.

Maine's shared border with Canada, its many seaports, and its strong anti-slavery or abolitionist community fostered an underground railroad community of both African American and white citizens.

Wood cut of the Abyssinian by Daniel Minter

One of the African American leaders in Maine’s anti-slavery movement was Reuben Ruby (born 1798 and died 1878). Ruby
helped establish the Abyssinian Society and Meetinghouse and the Maine Anti-Slavery Society (1834). Ruby, who worked as a hackman, hosted abolitionist social reformer William Lloyd Garrison (famous for his anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator) in his Portland home.

The discovery of a wooden water pipe in Portland hit the news today and turned the limelight once again on one of the state's most precious historic sites that is also on Portland's Freedom Trail - the Abyssinian Church. The paper reported "The pipe was discovered during an archeological dig...The water comes from a stream that runs beneath the property and is likely fed by an underground spring in Eastern Cemetery, which is behind the meeting house and farther up Munjoy Hill."

Thanks to Reuben Ruby and others, in its heyday, the Abyssinian Meetinghouse became a place where ministers and other activists spoke about the “sins of slavery,” sometimes to large audiences.

Map of Portland Freedom Trail

At that time, Portland’s bustling African American community was centered around India Street. Free African American people worked in many different types of jobs. The census showed that there were 400 African Americans living in Portland in 1840. They worked as mariners, hackmen, barbers, launderers, porters. In the 1850 census, 67 African American residents of Portland were listed as mariners.

If you're hungry for more history of the African American community in Maine, I encourage you to walk the Portland Freedom Trail or read Maine's Visible Black History.

Reflections on 50th Anniversary of Union Station's Destruction

2011-09-05T17:26:00.000-07:00

Just Maine Central Railroad's lines, 1923

Contrary to the stereotype of Maine as a wilderness outpost, in the 19th century the state was riddled with steam and electric rail lines. Maine railways connected passengers and freight to cities on the eastern seaboard as far south as Washington, D.C. and well into Canada.

Steam and sailing ships unloading at Portland waterfront

Portland was one of Maine's significant "transportation breaks" or places where multiple forms of transportation intersected and transferred people and things from one place to another. Shipping met steam railroads, electric railways, and horse-drawn vehicles.

I remember my mother telling me how, after WWII, she would board a Grand Trunk train on India Street bound for Montreal with her skis thrown over her shoulder. Public transportation to Canada for skiing? It's a marvel to us today.

Union Station, represented on a postcard

Destruction of Union Station, Portland

Fifty years ago yesterday, Portland even boasted a railroad terminal replete with pink granite walls, rounded turrets, and marble floors. Fifty years ago today, it did not. As this article in the Portland Press Herald pointed out, the destruction of this magnificent structure was a turning point in the history of Maine's heritage preservation movement and one that led to the creation of Portland Landmarks.

View down 19th c. Commercial Street - note railways and ship masts

Although both Union Station and most of the Grand Trunk buildings are gone now, you can still see traces of Portland's rail history, if you know where to look. Take Commercial Street, for example. Portland's waterfront used to be positioned at Fore Street until the Atlantic & St. Lawrence Railroad filled in the shoreline and built a wide, straight street that would accommodate a rail line running down its middle.

Until recently, those rail lines still ran down the spine of Commercial Street. When I was learning to drive, I remember my father shouting at me to avoid driving parallel to the tracks; he said the rails would cut the tires. Whether they really would or not, I don't know, but I learned how to weave back and forth across the rails, without seeming as though I was an intoxicated driver. The rails were removed or paved over years ago, but next time you're walking or driving down Commercial Street, take a moment. Appreciate the wide straight street parallel to the waterfront. Imagine ships nosed up to the wharves, trains plying their way down the middle of the street, and horse-drawn vehicles dodging to and fro. And don't forget to watch where you step.

Sharing the Dirty History: Casco Bay Estuary Partnership on Portland's Waterfront

2011-08-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

Waterfront Educational Sign, Bell Buoy Park, Commercial Street

"Dozens of factories and foundries poured heavy metals, cyanide, arsenic, and powerful acids into Casco Bay. Shipyards used copper and toxic paints which also ended up in the Bay."

Not all history is pretty. When it comes to an environmental history, in Maine and elsewhere, whitewashed narratives about Yankee ingenuity of the industrial era doesn't serve the public well. Fortunately, interpretion of history has moved out of classrooms and museum galleries and onto the streets, a several decade old movement known as "public history." However, it's fair to say that one of the most noticeable examples in Portland has only now hit the streets.

Wabanaki History Casco Bay

The Casco Bay Estuary Partnership has created educational signs that interpret the history and ecology of Casco Bay. According to their website, the Partnership devotes itself to "protecting and restoring the water quality, and fish and wildlife habitat of the Casco Bay ecosystem, while ensuring compatible human uses." The collection of interpretive signs - newly installed at the Bell Buoy Park between Flatbread Pizza and Casco Bay Lines Ferry Terminal on Commercial Street - encourages waterfront pedestrians to think about Wabanaki use of Casco Bay resources prior to European Contact, as well as Portland's history as the largest commercial shipping port in the nation. One sign reads:

“The coal dust from the harbor
was so thick we had to sweep up the
mess every single morning.”
Randolph Dominic, Sulkowitch Hardware & Paint Co., Fore Street
(Historian William David Barry)

The project takes a step further, encouraging the public to consider how daily choices - corporate and individual - impact the quality of our marine environment and, in turn, our lives.

As a fourth generation Mainer descended from farmers, lumbermen, and wholesale fish distributors, I advocate for the healthy relationship between the Maine economy and natural resource extraction. On the other hand, as a scholar with a degree in Geology and research and work experience in groundwater science, I know that we've erred dramatically in the history of interacting with our environment. Without a doubt, there is much still to learn from these mistakes.

Kudos to the Partnership for taking these insights to the street.

Yo, Ho, Ho, History of Pirates!

2011-08-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

I'm the first to confess that I like (really, really like) Johnny Depp and that my iPod contains the Pirates of the Caribbean track. Do I redeem myself if I enjoy reading about real pirates and the history of rum production and trans-Atlantic trade during the colonial era?

Mind you, this is not history for the faint of heart. Colonial maritime trade and the history of piracy are full of corruption, violence, treachery, and exploitation. Of course I abhor the history of human bondage and environmental destruction entrenched in the stories of how sea captains plied their trade from Europe to Africa to South and Central American and then northward along the Atlantic coast of the "New World."

As current headlines tell us, there's little reason to romanticize piracy. It's dirty business at best. Deadly business at worst. So what's the fascination? Beyond Johnny Depp, I mean.

Maybe I'm drawn to the tension - as in the tension between the awful truth of the history and the spectacular peg-legged stereotypes that represent that history.

Where better to explore the gap between historic truth and fanciful fiction of piracy than the Maine coast? What? Didn't you know pirates terrorized our crenulated coastline?

Some might think that British Captain Henry Mowatt initiated piracy in these parts when he bombarded and destroyed Portland (then called Falmouth) in October of 1775. But, alas, it started much earlier. A long, rainy afternoon with Maine's own Colin Woodard will set you straight. Woodard penned the fascinating The Republic of Pirates. A careful read reveals that the Caribbean didn't claim all the action. Late 17th century and early 18th century pirates careened their sailing ships at places like Monhegan Island where they could restore the ship's hull in relative peace.

Aarrr, so if you're one of the blokes that likes history and pirates - real and imagined - then surrender to Woodard. He takes no prisoners.

Hollywood and Museums: Perspectives on the Real and the Fake from Maine

2011-07-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

Pretty Little Liars - books gone Hollywood

Last week I did the unthinkable. I left Maine in the summer, traveled to California, and among other things, took a tour of the Warner Brothers Studio in Hollywood. Along with 15 other tourists, I visited street sets and sound studios and kept a sharp eye out for George Clooney. As we pulled up to the faux front of "Rosewood High School," the teens on the tour squealed, abandoned the tour guide, and snapped photos of themselves in what was apparently a set for Pretty Little Liars. Ugh. Skeptical of the redeeming value of this and other TV shows, I rolled my eyes and hung out with our knowledgeable guide, Max, while we practiced patience. He pointed out that the "Rosewood High" building consisted of three facades in one, that is, each of the three sides of the building presented a unique backdrop for the camera - a high school, a city hall, and a church.

Trompe l'oeil ceilings of Victoria Mansion (J. Clark)

This is where it occurred to me that Hollywood was adapting a long thespian tradition: Trompe l'oeil or trick of the eye. Often the term refers to a style of painting that creates an optical illusion, changing a flat, two-dimensional surface into what appears to be a three-dimensional structure or object. Warner Brothers deployed trompe l'oeil to transform towering, featureless plywood into a faux bank, for example, boasting a classical facade replete with portico and columns.

By the way, if you're curious, Maine boasts some precious examples of tromp l'oeil, such as the ceilings of the stunning Victoria Mansion in Portland (see left).

Warner Bros. Property Department Storage

Our next stop was Warner Brothers' Property Department (right). I entered the building thinking it would be nothing more than a prop warehouse. I left it provoked to think further about the boundaries between "real" and "reproduction," "authentic" and "fake."

As soon as I crossed the threshold, the cultural-historian-geek took over.

Enormous rooms stretched before us, filled with shelving that any museum would envy for its collections storage. Telephones and lamps neatly occupied their assigned spaces. I undoubtedly embarrassed my teenage daughter more than I already had that day when I snapped photo after photo of the collections whose items spanned more than a century. As Max pointed out, once you repaint a room on a set, all you need to do is swap out its "accessories" a 19th century room becomes a mid 20th century one. That's what props do, right? But, wait, were they "just props"?

As Max led us further into the Property Department, massive furniture, paintings, and statues crowded the hallways - looking like antique furniture worthy of any museum collection (with the exception of the vampire paintings).

"Max? Is this stuff real?"

Max points out bar code object registration

"Correct. Warner Brothers traveled to Europe after World War II and, taking advantage of cash-poor dynasties, purchased thrones, torchieres, everything." Hmm, a number of horror stories about Holocaust-era cultural treasures came to mind.

"So how can you tell what's authentic and what's fake?" I asked him.

Max pointed at what looked like an Egyptian stone carving, lifted it more easily than one could if it were stone, and showed me the bar code registration underneath (above). This bar code linked the item back to its object record which, in this case, would say that this was a fake, I mean, a reproduction.

Some warn that exhibit designers and financial-solvency concerns are "Disneyfying" museums, dragging admittedly staid institutions to incorporate interactive exhibit designs, hands-on reproductions, and touchscreens to compete with other media for the public's attention.

Entertain. Learn. Discover. Museums and Hollywood each have their own domain - no question about it - but the intellectual traffic between them is fast and furious.

Civil War Era Fashion Show

2011-07-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

Embroidery accomplished by a young camper

Although battle reenactments and vintage firearms may be the first things to come to mind when you think of commemorations of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, depicting the history of the Civil War era entails much more. Last night the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum offered one of the many events scheduled statewide in Maine: a Civil War fashion show that coincided with the culmination of the Victorian Secrets History Camp.

Carolyn Lawson, Sally Hall, and Delle Pierce of the Third Maine Volunteer Infantry rode the ferry to Peaks Island, dressed in their 1860s finery. Carolyn's personal history with Civil War reenacting began 15 years ago with the sewing of her first reproduction dress. All that experience shows; her educational living history programs for the public, school children, and reenactors have become popular, particularly now that we've entered the Sesquicentennial.

Civil War Era Fashion Show runway

With the help of school-age campers who served as her models, Carolyn talked the audience through the numerous layers of undergarments that ladies would wear and the logic that inspired their design. Call it a social history of beauty.

"What gives the 1860s fashions 'the look'?" Carolyn asked. "A beautiful woman in the 1860s has a round face, a long swan-like neck, narrow sloping shoulders, a tiny waist, little feet, and we don't even talk about everything else in between." Hairstyles accentuated the roundness of the face. The layers of petticoats and the hoop skirt, combined with a corset and fitted dress bodice, created the effect of a small waist.

Carolyn Lawson dresses a model in layers of undergarments, including the hoop skirts

Carolyn discussed how dress designs reflected a number of practical issues, such as protecting the precious dress fabrics from body oils, perspiration, and potential rust from corset stays or hoop rings. Hence, dressmakers incorporated removable collars, corset cover, and dress petticoat, all to protect the dress fabric.

Carolyn's Suggested Resources for living history devotees and reenactors:

Juanita Leisch's "Who Wore What?"
Elizabeth Stewart Clark's practical approach to dress reproductions using and correcting Simplicity patterns

Remember Maine's Connection to Bull Run: Eastern Cemetery Ceremony

2011-07-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

The first battle of the Civil War occurred at Bull Run, Virginia on July 21, 1861. Sargeant Alonzo P. Stinson was the first soldier from Portland and the first 5th Maine Regiment soldier to be killed in the war.

Stinson's comrades from Company H, 5th Maine Regiment erected a monument to honor Stinson in 1908 at Eastern Cemetery in Portland.

To remember those who gave their lives at Bull Run an event is scheduled this Saturday July 16 at 11:30 a.m. at the Alonzo P. Stinson Monument, Eastern Cemetery, Portland.

Speakers:

Herb Adams, Local Historian
Earle Shettleworth, State of Maine Historian
Kim MacIsaac, Executive Director, Fifth Maine Regiment Museum

Irish Maritime History of Portland, Maine

2011-06-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

Professor Michael Connolly

My grandmother was a first-generation Irish American - a Gaelic speaker whose parents were Connemaran through and through. This past Christmas I took my family to spend the holiday with my cousins who still live on Ireland's wild and western shore. Normally, when I travel abroad, I have to explain how many hours north of New York City or Boston I live for people to have any clue where I'm from. Not so in county Galway. "Oh, it's Portland you're from! Of course, I have a cousin that lives there. 'tis lovely, lovely." They even know about Munjoy Hill and Ri Ra's. It's enough to make you feel quite at home. Well, for good reason - Portland's Irish connection runs deep and you can count on Professor Michael Connolly to tell just how deep this connection runs.

Portland waterfront, Maine Memory Network

For some families, it means their ancestors worked on the waterfront. For others, it meant building railroad lines. For mine, being an Irish laborer meant polishing chandeliers on Portland's West End and waiting on tables (badly) at the Mount Washington Hotel.

Whatever your interest in Irish history and Maine, though, Connolly - a Galway descendant himself and professor of history at St. Joseph's College - can fill you in. Come to the Maine Irish Heritage Center on Friday, June 24th at 7 p.m. where Connolly will talk about his research for his book "Seated by the Sea: The Maritime History of Portland, Maine and its Irish Longshoremen."

Making Whoopie: A Comment on the 'Whoopie Pie War"

2011-06-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

Cranberry Island Kitchen's Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

A melt-in-your-mouth gourmet whoopie pie has led me to do something I never thought I would do - take a stand on the recent whoopie pie wars. Of course, as a Maine native, I grew up eating whoopie pies and I should declare myself a biased consumer of the "Maine" treat.

Before I put my foot down in the thick cream, however, let me tell you about the mouth-watering whoopie pies from Cranberry Island Kitchen that I just discovered. The owners of this Maine business - Karen Haase and Carol Ford - were featured guests on the Martha Stewart Show in 2007 where they showed Martha the clam-shaped Island Buttermilk cakes, lobster-shaped shortbread cookies with a tangy lemon glaze, and sand dollar-shaped shortbread cookies spiced with rosemary and ginger; Martha loved it and a national audience agreed.

Since I don't follow Martha, I hadn't heard of these delicacies until I met Carol Ford of Cranberry Island Kitchen recently at the swanky Falmouth Kitchen & Tasting Tour where she was helping to raise funds for Preble Street. I forgot altogether to tour the hosting kitchen when she started talking about peppermint whoopie pies, Mexican pies, and whoopie pies seasoned with dark rum, cointreau or espresso. One bite of her miniature pumpkin-shaped whoopie pie (above) and I was a fan.

Politely talking to me while my mouth was full, Carol told me that Cranberry Island Kitchen had won a "throwdown" against Bobby Flay on the Food Network. A throwdown? Apparently these whoopie pie wars take many forms. You've heard about the Maine vs. Pennsylvania challenge and how the world's largest whoopie pie was created here in Maine in South Portland this year? Obscenely, it topped a thousand pounds. The prior world's record was held by the contending state in this origin-of-the-whoopie-pie debate.

So, how does one determine the validity of these whoopie-pie-originator claims? It's likely there are both academic and public relations answers to this. A folklorist has suggested that Pennsylvania originated the whoopie pie, pointing to the evidence that immigrants brought creme-filled pastry tradition with them that dated back to medieval Germany. Really? I trust that a number of ethnic groups brought pastry traditions with them that could qualify as precursors to the whoopie pie. A more pertinent question might be when was the pastry-in-question first called a whoopie pie? And what's a "whoopie" anyway?

With the help of the handy, online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, we know that "whoopee" has been a joyous exclamation (in print) since at least an 1862 of Harper's Magazine and in the language of one of Rudyard Kipling's imperialist ditties since 1890. Before G. Kahn's lyrics to "Makin' Whoopee" popularized the euphemism for "amorous behavior" in 1928, Maine's Labadie's Bakery had been baking them for a few years.

But was this treat called a "whoopie pie" somewhere else earlier? The jury is still out. Those of you who want to research the history of whoopie pies more than eat them, have at it. As for me, I'm going for a run to try and work off the one I just ate and plan how to get to the Maine Whoopie Pie Festival on June 25th.

Fort Sumter April 12, 1861: The Day the World Changed

2011-04-12T04:19:00.000-07:00

Bombardment of Fort Sumter; courtesy Library of Congress

If you do nothing else today - April 12, 2011 - pause and think about the fact that on this day one hundred and fifty years ago, the world shifted on its axis after the Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina. A long and bloody battle over slavery and over states' rights began in the United States, sending shock waves throughout both economy and collective conscience on a global level. The Civil War - or the War of Aggression, depending upon your perspective - started us on a journey toward the Civil Rights Movement.

To jump start your reading on Maine and the Civil War, you can check out my prior Civil War postings or my posts on civil rights. Then check out the "Fate of the Union" article in this weekend's Portland Press Herald that highlights happenings at the Maine State Archives and the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum, as well as the development of the Civil War Trail.

Fire of Patriotism by Colin Woodard in Down East Magazine offers an overview of how the Civil War brought a sea change to the state of Maine.

Also, a fleet of articles on the Civil War published in Smithsonian Magazine offers insights into a number of interesting themes.

Fifth Maine Lecture by Herb Adams Herald Start of Maine Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration

2011-04-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

Kim MacIsaac (5th Maine Director) and Herb Adams

For those living in the latter half of the 19th century, April 12th on the calendar conjured up as many images and emotions as December 7th and September 11th have for those of us living in the 20th and 21st century, respectively.

Historian, former State Representative, and lecturer Herb Adams reminded an overflowing crowd at the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum that one hundred and fifty years ago today, Portland circled around "Market Square" (see below) rather than "Monument Square." On April 10th, 1861, the Civil War had not yet started. More than 70,000 men had not yet left from Maine to serve in the war.

Herb Adams lectures on his "Day by Day" project at 5th Maine

When Monument Square was Market Square

Four years later, close to 10,000 of these soldiers had lost their lives in battle or to disease, giving Maine the highest per capita loss of any other state in New England and creating the need to memorialize the dead with monuments such as the one that renamed Market Square as Monument Square.

Herb Adams' lectured on his "Civil War Day by Day" project - a research and e-access project on two, politically-opposing Portland newspapers, the Eastern Argus and the Portland Advertiser. One of Adams' startling discoveries was that Lincoln's future assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was performing in a Shakespeare play here in Portland in April of 1861.

Since December 3rd of 1860 the "Victorian internet" had arrived in Maine. Washington and Portland were in telegraphic connection for the very first time. Four months later, Maine would learn of the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, South Carolina with surprising speed. John Wilkes Booth would have read about the start of the war here in Portland. Adams commented that "The facts were always there, buried in Portland’s newspapers. The newspapers are keepers of the memories of their times." Now that Adams has restored this chapter in history, it has been quoted in a new biography of the Booth family, “My Thoughts be Bloody.”

Secession Talk on Peaks Island is Nothing New

2011-02-26T10:10:00.000-08:00

Kim MacIsaac authored "The Casco Bay Islands"

Guest Blog by Kimberly Erico MacIsaac, Peaks Island (hotlinks added by P. Erikson)

As a fourth generation Peaks Islander, life-long resident, and sometime Peaks Island historian, my research into the history of secession movements on the Island has uncovered six secession movements prior to the current effort. Each attempt was precipitated by real or perceived injustices reaped on the island by the City of Portland. To briefly summarize:

· 1883 – Islanders were scrambling to meet the demands of a burgeoning summer tourist trade, but inadequate municipal services hindered their efforts. Some residents felt that they were being taxed for services they were due but not receiving. The issue of secession was raised, but was dropped when the group realized they could not afford the costs of self-government.

· 1922 - Peaks had developed into a full-fledged summer resort with hundreds of cottages, hotels, boarding houses, summer theatres, and an amusement park. The fresh water aquifer had all but dried up; electric power was supplied to just a small part of the Island in the summer; the dirt roads hadn't been maintained. The possibility of secession was raised (again, inadequate services for taxes paid), but faded away when Sebago Lake water was piped to the island and year-round electric service began.

1948 - Due to a manpower shortage during WWII, the City closed the Island fire station and protection was provided by the Peaks Island Military Reservation. The base was closed in 1947 but the city was slow to reopen Engine 12. After a couple of woods fires had to be extinguished by islanders, the specter of secession arose but was dropped as soon as the City reopened Engine 12.

· 1955 - Post-war prosperity brought many young families to the Island. The small island school was severely overcrowded. Some Islanders felt that the City wasn't responding to the educational needs of our children; secession talk once again surfaced. Mainland schools were also overcrowded with baby boomers at this point. By 1956, several new classrooms and a gymnasium were added. Talk of secession stopped.

· 1992 - Portland's 1990 property revaluation resulted in taxes being doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in some cases. Talk of secession again reared its head, the perception being that the Island was not receiving its fair share of municipal services, given the high taxes assessed. The Legislature killed the secession bill that had been submitted on behalf of the secession group.

· 2006-7 - This secession movement was triggered by another huge tax increase. The Island Independence Committee believed they could do a better job of providing services while decreasing taxes. They did not produce a real plan or budget that took into account the true costs of services or the cost of compensating the City for the large amount of City-owned property on Peaks. The Legislature did kill the bill as submitted, but then created a PROCESS by which a secession bill should be submitted.

2011 - It is not clear to most Peaks Islanders, including our many seasonal property owners, what is motivating the current secession group. High taxes? Expecting more City services? Something else? Their efforts to bypass the legislative process by putting forth the same bill submitted in 2007 with no updated information and the "straw poll," which they claim showed a majority support of secession, was organized in such a hasty and secretive fashion that many islanders did not know it was happening.

Like all communities, Peaks Island has changed and evolved. Most changes have been due to changes in American society and/or global events. The most notable is the high turnover in population. People come and go, many staying a few years at best. Most, regardless of how long they stay, are drawn to Peaks Island because it offers the amenities of the City and the tranquility of a rural-like community.

Previous calls for separating from Portland were precipitated by changes in American society – changes beyond the control of Islanders or Portlanders. Such outside influences sometimes resulted in problems on the Island. Problems were most often resolved by working with City officials.

In the last two secession attempts, Peaks Islanders NEVER had the opportunity to vote Yea or Nay on secession. Perhaps the time has come for an “official” election to put this issue to rest once and for all. Failure to do so will surely result in future calls for secession whenever changes beyond Portland’s control affect the island. Yet I hope that such a vote will be part of the statutory PROCESS created by the Legislature the last time around.

Celebrate Martin Luther King Day in Maine: Despite Governor LePage

2011-01-17T09:14:00.000-08:00

Panel from Seashore Trolley Museum's "A Seat for Everyone" Bus Exhibit

It saddens me to hear the Governor of my home state use language such as "kiss my butt" and "go to hell" on record, let alone direct such language at our nation's President and at Maine's NAACP. Fortunately, many civic (and civil) leaders have articulated clearly that the history of the NAACP is intertwined with Maine's history of securing social justice for all citizens. I have family members who remember the Klu Klux Klan march against Catholics and Jews in Portland. The history of African American experience with violence and prejudice is not solely African American history. Hatred and prejudice never stop at one target. Tolerance for hatred toward one group is to invite it toward one's self at another place and time.

Perhaps more than any other day, I feel good about promoting civil rights education, cross-cultural tolerance, and an awareness of difficult histories. Did you know that one of Maine's museums, Seashore Trolley Museum, curates a vintage 1964 bus that operated in Washington, D.C. when Martin Luther King, Jr. was giving his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington and when the Civil Rights Act was signed? King Middle School students' work on Civil Rights has helped the museum convert the bus into a mobile bus exhibit. If you would like to know more, check out educational offerings at Seashore Trolley Museum and watch this short, narrated slideshow "A Seat for Everyone."

Fifth Maine Regiment Museum Joins Portland History Docents Program

2011-01-12T11:19:00.000-08:00

Portland History Docents on site visit at Tate House

Cultural tourism is here to stay in Maine. Few programs support it as well as the Portland History Docents program.

For years, the Fifth Maine has hosted the program's graduation ceremony at its historic Queen Anne building looking out over Whitehead Passage. The exciting news is that this year the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum has joined the contingent of organizations that offer this twelve-week program. Also, this inclusion of the Fifth Maine occurs on the eve of the 150th anniversary (the Sesquicentennial) of the Civil War!

If you are interested in this excellent training program, see Maine Historical Society's website for registration information.

Maine Civil War Sources Online

2010-12-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

Stevens and French, both of Fifth Maine Regiment

In the same way that it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a legion of volunteers, museum staff, and archivists to mount an online project showcasing 160 documents relating to Maine in the Civil War. The news recently called attention to the unveiling of just such an online project at the Maine State Archives.

As the Associated Press reported, and Portland Press Herald/Bangor Daily News reprinted, "The website showcases some of what state archivist David Cheever calls the most comprehensive collection of Civil War material in any state." Without a doubt, the Maine State Archives curates an impressive collection of letters, muster rolls, and photographs of soldiers. Since the "Civil War Material Goes Online" article didn't mention it, I thought it would be helpful to provide the Civil War at Maine State Archives web page where the public can locate the finding aids for the Maine State Archives' online treasure trove: (http://www.maine.gov/sos/arc/research/civilwar2/)

More troubling is the failure to mention that the Civil War Stories project, whose debut prompted the article, was a collaborative effort, not solely a showcasing of Maine State Archives material.

J. French letter mentions seeing Lincoln in D.C.

Successful collaboration hinges upon credit being given where credit is due. The Maine Historical Society's Maine Memory Network carefully highlights its hundreds of "partners" who place documents and photographs online at mainememory.net, going so far as to embed a gray-scale credit line (identifying the name of the originating archive) in the online image itself.

As a consultant for the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum, the only dedicated Civil War history museum in the state of Maine, I managed interns with Director Kim MacIsaac over a two-year period. These interns were graduate students who researched in the collection, scanned and transcribed documents, and drafted ways that teachers and students might interact with the materials. The Fifth Maine contributed some of these documents to the online Civil War Stories project, so, too, did the Lewiston-Auburn Museum and the Androscoggin Historical Society.

As we approach the eve of the Civil War Sesquicentennial in Maine, such online collaborations are an occasion for celebration.

Angus King and Surviving a "Flat" World

2010-11-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

Former Maine Governor Angus King delivered a keynote speech at the Maine Science Teachers Association annual conference in Gardiner on Friday that both troubled and rallied the audience.

Former Maine Governor King

Troubling were the statistics that King shared on the wage differential between so-called "First World" and "Third World" labor markets, a differential which entices corporations to outsource labor. You're probably thinking that you already know this, but King pointed out that we're not only talking about sneaker manufacturing here. He recounted how a late-night visit to an emergency room in a Maine hospital led to a real-time reading of his x-ray by a radiologist in Australia. Australia? Art, law, science, customer services, and teaching - in addition to manufacture - it's all being outsourced.

In short, following Friedman's "The World is Flat," King emphasized that our short- and long-term futures will be shaped by our ability to adapt quickly to rapid changes of our global economy and technological innovations. As Jared Diamond would no doubt agree, there is no guarantee that the United States will remain a global leader, just because this has been true over the past several decades. So how do we respond to this reality?

Workshop at Seashore Trolley Museum

Rallying was King's assertion that one key to a prosperous future is the ability to "learn learning" or learn how to learn. Learning-how-to-learn is in marked contrast to the memorization of assigned content or even than achieving a perfect score on a standardized test. Learning how to learn means understanding that "knowledge" is created and that each of us is an active participant in that process. As King argued, comfort with active creation of knowledge is all the more crucial in a digital age where more information is available to us than at any other time in human history.

Seashore Trolley Museum exhibit at MSTA

Along with Johan Erikson of St. Joseph's College, I ran a professional development workshop at the MSTA conference on behalf of Seashore Trolley Museum's STEM (Science-Technology-Education-Math) education program. Meanwhile, Phil Morse staffed an exhibitor's table that showcased the quality of the Museum's gallery exhibit, the transportation history lesson plans available on the Museum's website, and children's literature, such as Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, associated with our civil rights mobile bus exhibit.

The Museum's STEM program advocates for raising citizens who are comfortable with technological design skills, particularly those related to the transportation industry. Teaching design skills means advocating for the inquiry-based learning model that must preface the type of educational approach for which King advocated.

Burnurwurbskek Singers: Drumming from the Toes

2010-09-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

They may have been on stage, but what the Burnurwurbskek Singers offered was far more than a performance.

Barry Dana prepares to drum

As a group of six at the University of Southern Maine campus last night, they sang as one voice, sitting at one shared drum. The Corthell Hall audience couldn't have guessed that the group had just finished drumming as one of many Indian basketmakers and artisans that participated at the Common Ground Fair. After blessing their drum, the singers poured themselves into each song as though it were their first of the day.

One song welcomed to Wabanaki country the visiting performance artist James Luna, who gave his "Phantasmagoria" performative lecture after the Burnurwurbskek Singers finished.

Over half an hour, the group shared honor songs - old and new - that remembered veterans, blessed the children who will create our future, and recognized the long history of American Indian self determination struggles.

Burnurwurbskek Singers at Univ. So. Maine

I've listened to drums at pow-wows all across the country and have experienced my share of chills at the sound of some of the high Plains voices. But the sound of the Penobscot men who encircled this drum was distinctive, deep. When I mentioned it to Dean Francis (sitting at far right in photo below), he said that they were "drumming from their toes." Francis spoke eloquently to the audience about the power of the drum to bring people together and to remember who they were, who they are, and who they want to be.

Rather than clap, what the Burnurwurbskek Singers prompted me to do was to reflect upon the strength and bravery of those who labor to help their children remain proud of their heritage and their community to stay together.

Penobscot Drummer

So here's my cyber thank-you card to you, Burnurwurbskek Singers. Beautifully done. Thank you for sharing.

Stay in touch with me here at Heritage in Maine to read more Wabanaki happenings on my blog.

Puncturing Perceptions at the University of Southern Maine Art Gallery

2010-09-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

"Wet Dream Catcher" (foreground), one of Luna's pieces on display

“Everyone is an artist. You’ve been given a gift of seeing (and hearing since it’s not just visual) in a certain way. The trick is letting it out” internationally-acclaimed performance artist James Luna assured his crowd of listener’s at Friday’s gallery talk on the University of Southern Maine campus. Standing amid the Turtle/Television Island Project installed at the USM Art Gallery and curated by Carolyn Eyler, Luna shared the behind-the-scenes stories, the life histories if you will, of each of the pieces on display, many of which are used as elements in his performance installations.

Luna, a member of the Puyoukitchum (Luiseño) tribe based in La Jolla, California, shared that “People come in thinking ‘I’m going to see Indian art. Horses. Feathers. Bark. I hear he’s gonna dance.’ I’m not any of that. I’m breaking perceptions. But I’m not just talking about me and other Indians, but humanistic things, how we relate to one another. We need to understand our similarities more than our differences and then maybe there will be peace in our lifetime. Art can do that.”

Well, at least Luna’s art can.

Luna is known for challenging his audiences by puncturing their expectations about what an “Indian” is or how one should look or act or even how “Indian art” should appear. As I wrote here, the first time Luna came to my attention was in the early 90s when I heard about his jaw-dropping performance installation called "Artifact Piece.” In a brilliant critique of longstanding museum practices of exhibiting Native American bodies or burials in gallery displays, Luna clad in only a breechcloth, installed himself in a glass case at the San Diego Museum of Man.

A peek at the ssipsis portion of USM Art Gallery Installation

The theme of commercialization and exploitation of Native American spirituality is evident in one of the notable pieces on display. “Wet Dream Catcher” (photo above) is a condom- and good-luck-charm-adorned tennis racket that parodies the ubiquitous dreamcatchers for sale in stores which, in turn, mimic the spiritual item known as a “dream catcher.” Luna explained that “Wet Dream Catcher” expresses his frustration with the selling of Native American spiritual items. “It’s not stuff to sell. If you take, you have to give back.”

All of Luna’s pieces ricochet between popular culture expectations of Indianness and elements of both historical and contemporary Indian experience.

The Turtle/Television Island Project installation is shared with the only Penobscot woman birchbark artist, ssipsis, who is also a poet and activist. The installation includes stunning birchbark artwork on loan from the Hudson Museum, Abbe Museum, and from ssipsis, as well as a section of a birchbark longhouse, constructed by Barry Dana. Subsequent events in November will feature and discuss ssipsis’ work which is available to visitors to the USM Art Gallery.

Not a "Nice Indian Storyteller": James Luna Coming to Maine

2010-09-08T09:38:00.000-07:00

Luna's performance installation "Artifact Piece"

Stand back. James Luna, an internationally renowned Native American artist is on his way to Maine to perform alongside a number of talented Wabanaki musicians, dancers, filmmakers, and activists. As Luna's website warns,

"Don't be fooled that he is a nice Indian "Storyteller" as his anecdotes are humorous and painful at the same time. The stories are more about the strife, misconceptions and commodification of ethnicity in America than about Indian people alone."

Indeed. The first time Luna came to my attention was in the early 90s when I heard about his jaw-dropping performance installation "Artifact Piece" (above). In a brilliant critique of longstanding museum practices of exhibiting Native American bodies or burials in gallery displays, Luna clad in only a loincloth, installed himself in a glass case at the San Diego Museum of Man. Luna later reflected on this installation:

"The exhibit was not announced which was good because of the element of surprise...Then these people came, just 'Joe Family' on a Saturday to the museum, were, like, totally blown away. That told me something about the power of the piece, and also about what people come to museums for. They don't come to see living things, they come to see dead things. I've been requested to do it numerous times and I've refused because it's a really emotional piece for me"*

The University of Southern Maine Art Gallery in Gorham, Maine is hosting a series of events entitled the “Turtle Television Island Project,” incorporating the work of James Luna, a member of the Puyoukitchum (Luiseño) tribe based in La Jolla, California, and Penobscot birch bark artist and Maine author, ssipsis.

The exhibit, “Turtle/Television Island,” will feature Luna’s photographs, video utilizing innovative storytelling formats, and objects that create humorous commentary. The exhibit will also present historic Wabanaki birch bark artifacts and contemporary birch bark art by ssipsis. A new video and other material highlighting forty years of ssipsis’s activism will also be on display.

Burnurwurbskek Singers of Penobscot Nation

The series of events will include a 1 p.m. gallery talk by James Luna on September 24th at the Burnham Lounge, USM Robie Andrews Hall in Gorham; Luna's performative lecture "Phantasmagoria" with the Burnurwurbskek Singers of the Penobscot Nation on September 25th at 5 p.m. in USM Gorham's Corthell Hall; and a Talking Circle "Thirty Days to Move: The Art and Activism of ssispis" featuring a short video of ssispis produced by Susan Evans on November 4th.

All events are free and open to the public.

For more information, call Carolyn Eyler at 207-780-5008, Judie O’Malley at 207-780-4200, or see
http://usm.maine.edu/gallery/cal.html

* Farmer, Gary 1994 Aboriginal Voices 1(4):20

Passamaquoddy Language Survival: Film Screening

2010-09-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

Allen Sockabasin, speaking Passamaquoddy to his son

The indigenous tribes whose homelands we now call Maine include the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac, and Maliseet. The living cultural heritage of these groups is as precious as any resource that exists in our state, yet it remains invisible to many who live or travel here. Filmmaker Ben Levine's documentary film "Language of America: An Indian Story" has intervened and attempted to reveal the hidden story of Passamaquoddy language preservation efforts in Maine.

"Language of America" features Allen Sockabasin, a Passamaquoddy elder who speaks his Native language, and is a successful storyteller and author of books such as "An Upriver Passamaquoddy" and "Thanks to the Animals." Sockabasin's extraordinary career of cultural preservation efforts for his tribe has just earned him the 2010 "Catalyst for Change Award" from the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity at the University of Southern Maine. The awards banquet for this honor occurs next month. October also offers Maine residents an opportunity to attend a screening of "Language of America" at the Space Gallery on Congress St. in Portland on the 14th at 7 p.m.

Levine with Maliseet Elders I. Perley and R. Nicholas

"Language of America" tells the compelling story of colonial genocide, language loss and survival, and what it means to devote oneself to cultural revitalization efforts in a digital age. Sockabasin, as well as Jessie Littledoe (Wampanoag), Ella Sekatau (Narragansett) and others, offer moving perspective on how their indigenous language ties them to the knowledge and identity of past generations.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the movie Avatar is the latest Hollywood blockbuster to popularize (faux) indigenous culture and language. Against this backdrop, it's refreshing that Levine's film takes us into the real communities of indigenous peoples in Maine and New England. Watch it and you will feel as though you had traveled with him.

From Velvet Ropes to Freeware: Museums and Web 2.0

2010-08-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

When you think of museums, it’s likely that you think of artifacts, art, or guided tours rather than Web 2.0 and “freeware.” Of course, most museums would prefer to have their visitors focus on the content of their collections and programming rather than the means by which they present them – whether it’s glass cases and velvet ropes or twitter and blogging.

Faculty Scholar, Matthew Edney (left) with students

Students who wish to work in public history and museums, however, need to focus on and master the various tools of the field as they evolve. Fortunately for students at the University of Southern Maine (USM), the University’s participation in the Sloan Consortium is encouraging faculty such as myself to nudge students into the Web 2.0 realm. Here’s just one example why. A recent survey by the New England Museum Association (NEMA) shows that out of 90 museums “87% feel that new technologies have changed the way their museum communicates with the public and/or press.” (4) Depending upon the software, one third to 82% of the museums reported using software such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or blogging software (primarily Blogger or Wordpress) (4, 10). What are the benefits of employing a strategy of interlocking social media? Most museums see it as a way to build a broader and more diverse audience and visitor base and to communicate more readily with that audience.

Seminar at Osher Map Library, USM

I was given the opportunity to teach graduate students in the American and New England Studies program at the University of Southern Maine recently, a program which includes a “Public Culture and History” track. I challenged my master’s students to convert their original research into online museum exhibits using Web 2.0 tools. It was an unorthodox request for these students. Didn’t I just want a final research paper?

With the movement afoot at USM to encourage online education and digital literacy, I designed my “blended” seminar to require students to take their original research into museum and archival collections and convert it into an illustrated, digital narrative that would be available to the general public. Our topic area? "Top of the World: America in the Arctic," in other words, the history of American interests in the Arctic, a rich area to explore, particularly on the heels of the International Polar Year and the centennial commemoration of the discovery of the North Pole.

"Northward Over the Great Ice" exhibit showcases Peary flag

We visited the Arctic collection at USM’s Osher Map Library with Faculty Scholar Matthew Edney (above) and took advantage of a special exhibit "Northward Over the Great Ice" at Bowdoin College's Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum (right). But then they set off to explore, virtually speaking, the Library of Congress, National Archives, Alaska State Library, University of Washington Special Collections, New Bedford Museum, and many more. I’m biased, of course, but I think the students produced engaging interpretations that drew from primary source collections without the costs of their travel or publication costs. These same advantages are precisely those that attract heritage or public history industry to Web 2.0 technologies.

Photo by John Hess, from Briskey's online project

Please join me in congratulating these students by visiting our Top of the World site that centralizes all of their excellent work.

For more information about the growing relationship between museums and various digital technologies see Museums and the Web.

(Source: New England Museum Association News (33:4) Summer 2010)

The "Art and History of Treasure Island" Exhibit

2010-07-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

The Fifth Maine Regiment Museum welcomed the first children's exhibit in over a century of operations! The Fifth Maine's education program partnered with the Island Rovers’ Camp at the Peaks Island Children’s Workshop (PICW). This is the third year that PICW has partnered with the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum to produce an island history themed camp.

We are so proud of what the children accomplished in just a few short days that we post their final works here.

How can children today best appreciate museums, history, and the heritage-rich world around them? One approach is to make it relevant to them and to the stories that matter to them.

My approach this year to island history was not only to expose the campers to many artifacts at the museum, historic sites on the island, and the life histories of our elders, but to allow them to express their place in it artistically.
On Monday, they learned that museums were once called “treasure houses” and that artifacts are a form of treasure that takes many forms – sea glass, sea pottery (old crockery), scraps of newspapers and maps, postcards, and so on. Throughout the week they identified what they consider to be treasures on the island. They incorporated some of these treasures in their collages.

The campers first produced a “practice collage” where they learned vocabulary such as “collage,” “focal point,” “composition,” and “background.” After mastering a practice collage, they produced a final one using sand paper that they created from island sand. They also chose background papers, some of which they created using crayons and pastels, to represent the Fifth Maine’s garden.

Family members who attended the opening asked campers to show them their favorite “treasures” in the museum and were led off by the hand. May this help their childhood memories of museums differ from mine...

Portland Freedom Trail: Sign Posts to the Past

2010-07-11T15:45:00.000-07:00

If you've never taken a stroll on the Portland Freedom Trail, then add this outing to your summer to-do list. While the Freedom Trail in Boston features Revolutionary War-era history, Portland's Freedom Trail maps onto the landscape the history of another kind of freedom - freedom from slavery.

Each of the sixteen mapped stops on the trail in downtown Portland pinpoints an important site or person in Maine's chapter of the history of abolitionism and the underground railroad. If the names Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sojourner Truth sound familiar, you may be surprised to learn that they all visited and lectured publicly in Portland, as well as corresponded with the African American and white abolitionists who lived here. The trail helps Mainers and visitors discover these hidden histories (below).

The artwork of Portland artist, Daniel Minter, crowns each granite marker along the Portland Freedom Trail. The markers provide visitors with signposts to people and places of the past. Minter's designs, transformed into bronze plaques (see right), help us don "time traveler glasses" of sorts. Each plaque depicts scenes and the accompanying text relates the history. As these King Middle School students demonstrate, Minter's plaque designs generate the ideal opportunity for educational rubbings.

I worked with King Middle School this spring as part of the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum's Civil War and Underground Railroad curricular program that kicks off the Sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War. The Abyssinian Church, built in 1829 as Maine's first African American congregation, was one of the sites that we visited on one of our field trips.

As part of their expedition "Small Act of Courage,"students raised money to help support the renovation of this nationally-significant landmark. During their stop at the church, the seventh graders presented their donation to Abyssinian committee members (below).

By taking a stroll on the Freedom Trail, you too can discover some of the hidden chapters in Portland's history and help preserve some of our priceless treasures, such as the Abyssinian Church.

Zoom By "Zoom In" at Maine Historical Society

2010-06-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

Who isn't zooming around these days, trying to keep up with work, the kids in summer mode, and the promises offered by hot sunshine and ripe strawberries? Here's my advice to Mainers: don't forget to be a tourist in your own backyard and check out the rich history that saturates the places around us. Whether you'd like to do this from your laptop or in a museum gallery, the Maine Historical Society on Congress Street (right) can take you on tour.

Tonight I stopped by the opening of the museum's new exhibit "Zoom In: New Approaches to Maine History." This exhibit takes the dramatic changes under way in museums globally and moves them to the center. What changes? The adaptation of museums to the digital age.

With increasingly univeral access to the web, museums have been working hard to use digital technology to provide better insight into the collections which they curate. The Library of Congress, for example, established the stunning American Memory project. From 17th century broadsides to 1950s Coca Cola advertisements (right) to anything else you can imagine, they not only have it in their collection, but they can show it to you, digitally, while you're still in your pajamas with coffee in hand. None of this is easy or straightforward.

Inspired by American Memory, the Maine Historical Society raised funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and crafted its own, Maine Memory project in partnership with more than 200 Maine museums and historical societies statewide. Maine Historical Society Director, Richard D'Abate recently visited the Library of Congress and acknowledged this relationship: "We’ve always kept an eye on the LOC [Library of Congress], as both a model and an inspiration. Their pioneering work with online collections, for instance, directly influenced the creation of the Maine Memory Network. But being there made me think again of what it is we aspire to: collecting fine and significant things, showing the complexity and variety of history, increasing the store of human knowledge and sharing it broadly."(summer 2010 MHS newsletter)

Now, Candace Kanes (left), Maine Memory Network Curator and Historian, has curated a gallery exhibit that draws upon images and text from the Society's Maine History Online component of the Maine Memory project. Candace has been compiling a large number of Maine historical narratives and providing them online. Her "Zoom In" exhibit shares some of these compelling stories by drawing from Maine History Online images and text

Did you know that WWII prisoners of war picked potatoes in Maine (right)? Or, to stick with the potato theme, if you've never seen the Maine Potato Blossom Queen serenade her subjects, then you must explore this chapter of 1960s history. Maine History Online exhibits combine historic television footage, such as this, with digital scans of historic photographs and photos of artifacts. In "Zoom In" these are supplemented with artifacts from the Maine Historical Society collections and contributing partners. Computer stations and video screens in the gallery allow visitors to explore the ways that online resources can enhance their perception of Maine history.

The exhibit runs from June 25, 2010 – May 29, 2011 so there's plenty of time to pick those strawberries and drop the kids off at camp before you visit the gallery or click on Maine History Online.

Of Hoop Skirts and Porta Potties

2010-06-14T19:34:00.000-07:00

You might guess that wearing a Civil War era hoop skirt could be a challenge unto itself. "Personal space" takes on a whole new meaning when you effectively bump into people even though your body is still a few feet away from them. If you northerners thought snow parkas were bulky, think again.

A number of ladies appeared to float gracefully about the grounds of Washburn-Norlands Living History Center this weekend for a Civil War rally. Carolyn Lawson, a reenactor from the Third Maine Volunteer Infantry, shared (discreetly, that is) how a Victorian lady would don a hoop, as well as countless other undergarments, including a chemise, drawers, corset, and so on with the help of the manikin (right). She explained the many layers and their function.

I was not among those who "floated gracefully." Rather, I caught myself stepping on my dress once or twice and looking around to see if anyone had noticed. When one is new at something, it's often desirable to keep a low profile. I found that was difficult at the reenactors' encampment. When I entered the row of tents on my route to "the necessity", someone shouted "lady in the camp!" and all the men jumped to their feet, faced me, and whipped off their caps. Uncomfortable doesn't begin to describe the cultural experience. I was later reminded that I should have been escorted, rather than wandering alone, when I entered the camp.

It didn't seem fair that on my first day on a hoop-skirt-wearing adventure, I should also have to navigate a porta potty. My skirt and I exited the confined space rather like a seed would be spat at a target. Later, I learned that there was a more "spacious" privy available, thank heavens.

When the public gates opened and visitors sauntered in for the day, it was much easier to walk about freely and enjoy all that the rally had to offer. During the Civil War, soldiers and their families exchanged letters at an unprecedented rate and this was no exception at the rally. The men shared their war experiences during a slow moment at camp (left) and the women wrote back to them from the civilian camp (right).

As the wife of the Third Maine's Captain, Carolyn could have stayed with her husband, but she chose to set up her tent near the other ladies who, as single women or wives of enlisted men, were required to stay in the civilian camp. Her quilt, books, and painted cloth floor transformed her small canvas tent into a welcoming retreat (left).

The camp held other surprises, too, such as this puppeteer (right) from the 20th Maine Regiment who prompted an extraordinary Abe Lincoln to dance as he sang "Lincoln and Liberty."

The rally's over now. The reenactors have returned to their regular jobs and packed away their blue and gray...and also their hoops. Who knew that a trip to the porta potty could be such an adventure?

"Desegregating" History for the Sesquicentennial

2010-05-24T07:30:00.000-07:00

May 22nd was a gorgeous day for gathering together educators and heritage professionals from museums, historical societies, and schools to kick off preparations for the commemoration of the Civil War Sesquicentennial in Maine.

Presenters and participants hit Peaks Island's shore on an early boat and walked to the waterfront location of the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum, a 19th century building on the National Register of Historic Places.

After fortifying ourselves with coffee, we rolled up our sleeves and spent the rest of the day immersing ourselves in how we might best "revisit" the Civil War one hundred and fifty years later.

After Fifth Maine Museum Director Kim MacIsaac welcomed everyone and provided an overview of the upcoming Sesquicentennial events, I spoke about how the Civil War provides us with an entry point to teach or interpret about an endless array of topics (left).

To illustrate how we can make our Sesquicentennial work engaging, my "Hands-On Minds-On the Sesquicentennial" talk demonstrated the "Classroom Gallery" approach to inquiry-based learning with primary sources.

The photo at right shows King Middle School students examining materials in a recent Civil War program that I piloted with them. A fascinating artifact in the foreground (identified as a walking cane carved by a slave) and a simple container of molasses were among many items engaging seventh graders in an inquiry-based exercise.

This weekend's workshop participants also tried out the Classroom Gallery exercise. Peeling them away from all of the artifacts was not an easy task!

Next, Daniel Minter and Rachel Talbot Ross (below) spoke about Portland's Freedom Trail. They highlighted a number of African American and white abolitionists that supported the Underground Railroad in Portland and other parts of Maine. Daniel is the artist who designed each of the plaques on the Trail's monuments. Daniel offered his perspective that the Freedom Trail is "not African American history. It's all of our history. History shouldn't be segregated either." He later shared his striking, hand-carved stamps with us, explaining how he designs an image to tell a story with continuing resonance to the present.

We next listened to Brian Collins (topmost right) of Pejepscot Historical Society, whose Joshua Chamberlain House restoration talk could have been billed as a historical detective story. Beautiful photographs of the Chamberlain House interior, taken by a local reporter a century ago, have revealed important clues for how to restore the house to its turn-of-the-century state.

Jamie Kingman-Rice helped eliminate mystery by highlighting the wealth of Civil War resources curated in the Maine Historical Society's library, as well as those made available through Maine Memory Network, Maine History Online, and the Society's collections database. The Fifth Maine's website also centralizes these, as well as other, useful links. During the course of the day, we all generated a number of questions, each of which would serve as a springboard for further research. I'm hoping we all keep Maine Historical Society busy in the four years to come!

We breezed into the 20th century with King Middle School teacher Caitlin LeClair as our guide. She shared her recent experience with a Civil Rights era Expeditionary Learning curriculum that her seventh graders recently completed. The students' own accounts of their learning process were favorites, of course. They're available for others to view on King's website. Caitlin demonstrated how she found the history of slavery and Reconstruction-era discrimination (and the resistance to both) as essential grounding for student understanding of the 20th century Civil Rights Movement. Caitlin echoed Rachel Talbot Ross' earlier call to avoid casting African American history as a history of victimization. It is a proud history indeed.

Kim MacIsaac brought the wonderful day to a close and, among other things, encouraged us to take advantage of the Civil War Reenactment Weekend June 12-13, 2010 at Washburn-Norlands Living History Center. It's likely to be the largest gathering of hoop skirts in Maine for quite some time. You wouldn't want to miss it!

Sincere thanks to Maine Humanities Council for their grant support and to the Maine Archives and Mueums Association and Maine Historical Society for their sponsorship.

From Square Feet to Megabytes: Gallery Exhibit to Online Exhibit

2010-05-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, last September I finished curating a gallery exhibit at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine, entitled History in Motion: Public Transportation Connecting Maine's Communities. Collaboration with several other museums, such as the Brick Store Museum, Sanford Historical Committee, and Kennebunkport Historical Society was built into the project.

One of the many exciting outcomes was that the Kennebunkport Historical Society digitized some of its historic images and joined Maine Memory Network for the first time.

That inspired the exhibit team to create an online version of the gallery exhibit. Sounds easy, right? There's no exhibit furniture to worry about. No paint. No strategizing how to secure a conductor's hat so that visitors won't try it on.

As I quickly learned, moving a three-dimensional exhibit online has its own challenges. One becomes fluent with dpi, MB, url, and jpg acronyms, if you weren't already.

Then there's an appreciation for how people read on the computer and how that differs from reading a book or reading an exhibit. The "real estate" for the eye is even smaller than other formats. Then there's the non-linearity of the reading process. Readers can click here, click there, and move through the content with an unpredictable pattern.

I'm reminded of a lesson that I learned when directing the Educational Digitization Initiative at the Washington State History Museum - presenting online content is not only like working in three dimensions, it's like working in four dimensions. The internet provides us with a curious ability to move through content as though we were a time traveler, casting aside the conventions that normally constrain our movement.

For me, that makes working online all the more exciting, unpredictable, and ultimately, rewarding. Check out how History in Motion has become an online exhibit and let me know what you think.

Portland History Docents

2010-04-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

It's fondly known as "the PHD program" of Portland, but Portland History Docents might best be described as ambassador of the City of Portland's wealth of historic resources. Organized annually for the last decade by five of Portland's historic institutions, this docent program provides some 50 or more participants with months of preparation for guiding visitors through the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House, Victoria Mansion, Tate House, Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum, or Portland Landmarks' sites (including Portland Observatory).

The program culminates each May by graduating a new class of docents at a final ceremony at the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum on Peaks Island.

Midway through the program, after a range of site visits, participants "pledge" to serve as docent at one of the hosting institutions. Today, I pledged to docent at the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House.

With this decision, I bring myself full circle back to my childhood crush on the bewhiskered Henry and his poetry. When bedridden for a week with influenza as a young child, I occupied the hours by memorizing The Wreck of the Hesperus.
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
   A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
   Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
   The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
   On the billows fall and rise.
Perhaps the image of a young woman washed ashore, frozen and lashed to a mast, has brought me to this historic house. Perhaps the fact that this nationally-famous poet wrote - not about somewhere else - but about familiar places, about a sense of home. My home. Perhaps it's because my mother toiled the soil of the Longfellow House garden throughout years of my life and her spirit lingers there still. Likely it's all of these.

More than anything, when I received my first behind-the-scenes tour of the house today, it felt like coming home. I hope to see you there.

An Arctic Betsy Ross

2010-03-31T12:46:00.000-07:00

Next week, I speak about Josephine Peary at Bowdoin College. Here's a peek at "First Lady of the Arctic: Josephine Peary as Arctic Explorer/Author."

In 1891, Josephine Diebitsch Peary accompanied her husband, Robert, on her first expedition to Greenland. Subsequently, she traveled to the Arctic many times, both with Peary or in search of him.

In 1898, Josephine presented her husband with an American flag she had made for him to carry on his polar expeditions. In April 1909, he planted that flag at, or near, the North Pole and left a diagonal slice of it behind (see right; courtesy Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum).

Until recently, the lives of women, like Josephine, who accompanied their husbands to inhospitable lands, have not captured the interest of researchers.

My public lecture at 4:00 p.m. will focus on the flag and Peary’s quest for the North Pole. I have found that viewing the North Pole story through Josephine's eyes changes the story in surprising ways.

The National Geographic Society has loaned the flag to Bowdoin College as part of a centennial commemoration of Peary's 1909 expedition. If you haven't yet stopped by to see this historic flag, then use this lecture as an excuse to make the trip to Brunswick.

Marching Toward the Sesquicentennial II

2010-03-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

One of the projects keeping me busy lately has been developing and piloting Civil War curricular materials at the Peaks Island Elementary School. I have been doing this as a consultant for the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum as it prepares to assume a leading role in Maine’s Sesquicentennial Commemoration of the Civil War, beginning in 2011.

Over the past two years, the Fifth Maine has been gearing up for the sesquicentennial, beginning with the digitization of numerous items from our collection and the piloting of our "Writing with Light" lesson plans connecting the history of photography with the Civil War.

Then, last year we piloted a Civil War History summer camp, a successful program that we will run again this year.

We continued throughout the school year, working with third, fourth, and fifth graders on piloting additional curricular materials. Just last week, students culminated their studies with an impressive, student-composed theatrical and poetic performance depicting the Civil War era.

Now my efforts turn to revising the curricular materials that we piloted and posting them on the Fifth Maine’s website, in time for our professional development workshop on May 22nd, entitled “Teaching and Interpreting the Civil War: Are You Ready for the Sesquicentennial?” This workshop will pull together an exciting collection of presenters from the Pejepscot Historical Society, Maine Historical Society, King Middle School, Portland branch of the NAACP, and the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum. Collectively, we will explore our perspectives on how the Civil War is a Maine story.

Like our Bridging Museums and Schools workshop last year, we hope to gather a diverse group of participants from elementary and middle schools to museum and historical society volunteers and staff members. We will cover a range of topics, including: Maine's Underground Railroad, Civil War collections in Maine, teaching strategies using primary sources, and perspectives on relevance of Civil War history for Maine residents today. We plan to take a version of this workshop "on the road" over the coming year to reach historical societies or schools who are unable to attend at this time.

I hope you’ll consider joining us or help us pass the word. Further details and registration materials are available from the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum.

Dear Mr. Cameron: An Open Letter from Dawnland

2010-01-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

Dear James Cameron,
If this were a movie review, I could marvel that your Avatar has managed to unsettle the Vatican by suggesting that Nature replace divinity. I could concede that veterans decry Avatar as anti-American and anti-military. And I might even chime in with writers who groan at the well-worn trope of colonial hero going Native (even genetically) and saving the endangered “noble savages” a la Dances with Wolves, Emerald Forest, or Dune. But, that’s all been said.

I’m writing to ask you for money.

In an interview, you agree that Avatar critiques colonialism and the colonial impact on the global community, particularly indigenous peoples and their languages. You say that your film is a call for responsibility in stewardship of this planet.

You should have been with me last night in Portland as I attended the screening of Language Keepers, a film from the Documenting Endangered Languages Program. The documentation took place at the Passamaquoddy communities of Pleasant Point and Indian Township (Maine), and Tobique First Nation Reserve (New Brunswick, Canada). You wouldn’t have missed the irony.

You've had enough money to hire linguist Paul Frommer to create the Na’vi language and pay coaches to teach the actors. Na’vi looks as though it might take off as the next Klingon, a dialect for hardcore fans. Meanwhile, Passamaquoddy people struggle to keep food on the table, raise money and publish a dictionary while still dreaming of a language immersion school. You don't need to go to Pandora to find cultures struggling to stay alive.

About Avatar’s Na’vi language, Frommer said "I was surprised they [the actors] all did very well, and it gave me hope, too, that other people will try to learn it and speak it. I'm excited because there is going be a Pandora-pedia online and a lot of material for people to learn more about the planet. There's this incredible devotion to detail. It's been fascinating to me. It's almost academic in its approach."

Mr. Cameron, you said, “We know the ecology and composition of the atmosphere, the geography and species of plants, the culture and the history of the Na’vi people.”

What about the Native peoples of your own planet that you purport to steward?

You also said, “Look, right now is a special time because we can basically do anything we imagine. I mean you have to work hard at it, and you’ve got to have the technique and you have to be willing to throw money at the problem.“ Yes, you meant filmmaking. But, Mr. Cameron, singlehandedly, you could fund a Passamaquoddy language immersion school in Dawnland, in perpetuity.

Do that, and then you’ll be speaking the right language.

Skating On History

2010-01-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

You're officially a history geek when you see it everywhere you go and hidden in everything you do. Yes, even when skating.

Just before the holidays, my family and I were skating on Peaks Island's "Ice Pond." This photo, taken from the middle of the Ice Pond, shows how you can skate and see Hussey Sound on the horizon at the same time. At first glance, you might think it's called the Ice Pond for obvious reasons. It freezes in the winter and people skate on it, right? But, there's a hidden story here. The line of trees at right marks the location of a small, man-made dam. Generations ago, the dam was built to deepen the pond and to allow entrepreneurial islanders to harvest the ice. This was big business on Peaks Island.

As this ad from the collection of the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum shows (above), if islanders needed ice for their ice boxes (this is pre refrigerator days, remember), then they put ice cards in their window. The one at right is an example, again, from the Fifth Maine. The "Ice Pond" was just one of several ponds on the island where ice was harvested, and it wasn't just islanders who were customers. Schooners bellied up to wharves and the ice was loaded into the hold of the ship and packed in sawdust for long-distance shipping, most likely to the southern Atlantic states and the Caribbean.

That line of island business is long gone now. As we seek to reduce our carbon footprints, progress one of these days may mean ditching the refrigerator and going back to the ice boxes. I hope it means I won't have to hang up my skates.

Bringing Dawn to Dawnland: Maine's Swedish Heritage

2009-12-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

It begins before dawn on the morning of December 13th. In each household throughout Sweden, the eldest daughter wears a white gown, red sash, and a crown of blazing candles. She emerges from the darkness carrying steaming coffee and pastry to wake her family. In each university, school, and community, too, candlelit parades offer a festival of light, led by the one who brights light to darkness - Sankta Lucia. This tradition, along with many others, crossed the Atlantic with Swedish emigrants and rooted itself here in Maine.

There are many accounts of how Santa Lucia Day developed. This is my summary: the Santa Lucia tradition dates back to ancient times when what is now Sweden was gripped by terrible famine. At the height of winter, when darkness and hunger were at their worst, legend says that a ship sailed across Lake Vanern. At its helm stood a beautiful woman dressed in white with a radiant glow about her head. Her barge brought not only light, but a shipload of food for the people. The pre-Christian festival that developed to honor her, occurred on the day of longest darkness, winter solstice (December 13th in the Julian calendar). After 1000 A.D., this Scandinavian story merged with a Sicilian, Christian story about a woman who was burned at the stake for not renouncing her faith. Santa Lucia Day, like many other traditions, bears pagan and Christian elements.

My own ancestors, on my father's side, were among those Swedish immigrants who settled in Maine during the 1800s. They were Nilssons and Olsons with, it seemed, a new spelling for every document that bore their last names. My ancestors were farmers who drove their loads of potatoes into Skowhegan by horse and wagon, capable of swearing up a storm in Swedish, if the appropriate occasion arose.

Thanks to them, those famous foreign place names in Maine (see left) include New Sweden and Stockholm. Even the most avid geographer has a right to be confused.

Now that I'm married to a Swedish American, we celebrate some Swedish traditions here on Peaks Island, including Santa Lucia Day (my daughter looks out over Whitehead Passage, upper right photo). Resources nearby offer Mainers some of the essential ingredients.

In addition to a crown of candles and a properly clad young lady, this holiday is defined by food. Lussekatte (Lucia Buns) and pepparkakor (spice cookies) are the beloved goodies to which I awoke this morning. Here's a Lussekatte recipe easily managed in a bread machine;

1 cup milk
1 egg
1/4 cup butter
3 T brown sugar
1 1/2 t shredded citrus peel
3/4 t salt
1/8-1/4 t crushed saffron threads
2 1/4 c bread flour
1 t active bread yeast

After the dough has been prepared by the bread machine, roll small pieces of dough (with heavily floured hands and board) into 6-10" long ropes of dough. Twist each rope into an "S" shape. Brush raw buns with mixture of beaten egg and water. Add a raisin to each spiral twist. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.

Enjoy and God Jul fellow residents of Dawnland.

What I Am (NOT) Thankful For

2009-11-24T17:53:00.000-08:00

For those who are Native American or who work in Native American Studies and anti-racist education (I’m the latter), November is a mixed blessing. It’s Native American Heritage month, an opportunity to call attention to the rich heritage of a chronically marginalized people of North America. That’s a good thing, right? Well, not exactly. Here’s why.

First, there’s the challenge of, let’s call it, the fireworks effect of designating any “heritage month.” Lots of sparks all at once, but without necessarily integrating substantive content or new awareness into daily, weekly, monthly life. Despite the best of intentions, an hour or two of heritage month celebration can end up comprising the bulk of annual attention on the subject. In Maine, this can be discouraging for the work groups that have labored for years to forge a Wabanaki Studies curriculum that would integrate, rather than tack on, inquiry into Wabanaki peoples into overarching curriculum structures.

Here’s the second reason November gets a thumbs down: it’s time for those “traditional” pageants of construction-paper-feathered headdresses and stereotype-ridden picture books about Thanksgiving (like these images from "Best Thanksgiving Book" by Troll Associates, 1985). You’re thinking, come on, we’re forty years past the Red Power Movement, haven’t we gotten beyond that knee-jerking Thanksgiving Myth? Nope. Until three years ago, the kindergarten class that my daughter attended (in Washington state) glued together paper headdresses, fringed vests, and buckled hats to "reenact" the “First Thanksgiving” feast. The teacher who sustained this annually finally retired. Does it still happen elsewhere? Absolutely.

I’ve been in and out of Portland Public Schools a lot this month, from first grade classes to fifth grade classes. The selection of Thanksgiving themed books being read to children, or provided to them for independent reading, have scarcely improved. Anne Rockwell's "Thanksgiving Day" was one of these. Among other things, these books continue depicting children “dressing up” as a generic Indian as though the identity could be donned like a Halloween costume. They also contain inaccuracies that foster the Thanksgiving Myth that the Plimoth Plantation and the Wampanoag Nation have worked so hard to disassemble. Check out Debbie Reese's fantastic collection of reviews on American Indians in Children's Literature. If you scroll down far enough, you'll see an entire section devoted to the challenge and opportunity Thanksgiving presents.

In the spirit of being thankful, not just this month, but always, one could heartily feast on more worthwhile heritage fare. For example, try: "1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving" by Abenaki author Marge Bruchac or the fabulous web interactive at Plimoth Plantation's online education center.

Maliseet Chief Brenda Commander Speaks to President Obama

2009-11-17T05:06:00.000-08:00

Bangor Daily News Photo by John Clarke Russ, 2006

A Maliseet chief’s plea to President Obama
By Chief Brenda Commander, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians

The Bangor Daily News photo at right shows Brenda Commander in 2006 signing documents with Governor Baldacci. This month, she traveled to D.C. to deliver a speech at the first Tribal Nations Conference with President Obama. Her speech, reprinted in the Times Record and copied below, urges the President to remember the living relevance of history:

Times Record Published: Monday, November 16, 2009

I commend President Obama for holding this important meeting. As chief executives of our respective governments, we both took oaths of office. While I swore to uphold the laws of my people, my obligations to the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians run much deeper than law. I must do everything in my power to protect the Maliseet culture, ancient traditions, customary practices, and spirituality given to us by our revered ancestors. No group is more important to me and my fellow Maliseets in the continual struggle to retain our distinct character as a Wabanaki People than our children.

Our children truly are our present and our future. The Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians has struggled against great forces, especially the state of Maine, to protect and nurture our children. In the 1980s and 1990s, Maliseet children involved with the child welfare system were being placed at alarmingly high rates with non-Indian families threatening the existence of our tribe. Without aggressive intervention by our tribal government, we were in danger of losing an entire generation of children.

What future do any people have without its children?

As we have battled the State of Maine to respect the Indian Child Welfare Act, the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act and our inherent sovereignty given to us by GheChe’Nawais, we have received no legal or political support from the United States which has a trust responsibility to defend the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians from harm. What we have accomplished to defend our right to exist as a sovereign people has come from our tribe and support from our Wabanaki neighbors.

Yes, we have received money. But, Mr. President, what the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians most need from you as the chief executive of the U.S. is for your government to cast off the political neglect we have experienced for the last 29 years since the signing of the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act and instead become a concerned, dependable, and engaged ally as we face assaults on our sovereignty. The Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act was not solely about settling our land claim against the United States. The Act was about establishing a new relationship between sovereigns grounded in respect and trust. It was to be a national model, but it failed. The United States has been conspicuously missing as we native people alone have struggled to have the state of Maine respect the intent of the Settlement Act.

I remind you that the first treaty the fledgling United States executed was the Treaty of Watertown with my people and the Micmacs on July 19, 1776. When the nascent U.S. was facing a global superpower in the form of the British Empire, the Maliseet people answered the call, joining you in arms to secure your country’s freedom. When we were not citizens and could not vote we came as allies to your defense in subsequent wars. Now, we need this country to come to our defense in justly addressing the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act.

I ask that you and this country act with honor through an engaged presence and participation in what the United States has committed itself to do.

Brenda Commander is chief of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians. Her commentary, which is the text of a speech she delivered in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 5, is reprinted with her permission.

Saving Grace: A Restaurant on the National Register of Historic Places

2009-10-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

What am I doing writing on food in a blog about heritage? What could be more central to heritage than the foodways of a people, region, or country? So much of our material culture, our music, and our transportation pertains to how we harvest, prepare, and consume that culinary life force. So with that, I can't resist commenting on a fine dining experience I enjoyed at Grace Restaurant, a splendid example of how a historic building can achieve, well, divine new uses.

The days are behind us when historic structures can be demolished in the name of urban renewal the way Union Station was in 1961. That demolition acted like a pebble in the pond whose ripple created the historic preservation movement in Portland. Thank heaven that this early Gothic Revival style church on Chestnut Street, dated to circa 1856, met with a different end. Owners Anne and Peter Verrill completed the renovation this summer and opened what a Press Herald article called "a new house of worship for foodies."

Grace Restaurant enjoys an architecture that elicits awe when you step through their door, like no other that I have seen. The vaulted ceilings still point heavenward and suggest the sacred. The stained glass windows still paint an otherworldly light in the room. But the only high priests here are the chefs who command the former altar space and the second floor bartender who bustles beneath a towering work of stained glass artistry.

Sitting with my dinner party up in the lofty reaches of the second floor balcony, I ordered a melt-in-your-mouth hanger steak draped with mustard-beer sauce and served with fried green beans that seemed to redefine the vegetable. The service was friendly and knowledgeable about the historic building; when questioned about its history, our waiter called attention to the lovely buttresses whose apparent wood grain is really a hand-painted texture that was popular in the 1800s.

The next time I visit Grace, and there will be a next time, I'll head for the bar menu where I can act like a five-star foodie on a cultural historian's budget.

A Wordle View of My Blog

2009-10-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

A Tipi in Wabanaki Country - Charles Shay

2009-10-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

When I learned that there was a thirty foot tipi-shaped museum on the Penobscot Reservation’s Indian Island, I wondered, why? Tipis are associated with Plains Indian culture and, like other things of the Plains, have become part of the stereotypic “Indian” material culture assemblage. What was one doing on a reservation in Maine? Then I met Penobscot Elder Charles Shay at an event celebrating the reprinting of his grandfather’s (Joseph Nicolar) wonderful book The Life and Traditions of the Red Man. Watching his presentation – now available on DVD – I came to understand that learning the story of “the tipi,” which has housed his family's museum for decades, revealed several chapters of Penobscot history: how some Penobscot families have successfully worked in the entertainment industry, how many Penobscot families established businesses of their own, and how some Wabanaki peoples intermarried with members of other tribes, including tribes from the Plains.

Mr. Shay inspired me to design a curricular unit where elementary students could answer the question of "why is there a tipi on Penobscot land?" given the rampant stereotypes of Indian peoples with which they are familiar. I provided students with reading materials and primary sources that would allow them an inquiry-based exploration of traditional Wabanaki home styles, popular stereotypes of Native peoples, and 20^th century Wabanaki adaptation to the American economy from the Depression era onward.

After Mr. Shay’s interest in my project, I convinced Michael Sexton, a friend and professional photographer of Michael Sexton Photography, to travel with me to Indian Island and create some photo portraits of Mr. Shay. They are both taken on Indian Island, in Mr. Shay's yard and in his museum. I hope you enjoy them.

Debut of Century Old Restored Electric Locomotive

2009-09-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

It takes 600 volts of electricity to power the locomotive known as “ASL No. 100” down Seashore Trolley Museum’s tracks. Starting today, the public can view this fully-restored, century-old locomotive in operation for the first time in more than five decades.

Yesterday, descendants of the men who operated this locomotive after it was built in 1906 attended a private dedication ceremony, along with state senators and representatives, museum members, and educators, to celebrate the completion of a $180,000 project funded by the Federal Highway Administration and the Maine Department of Transportation, as well as several railway societies, local businesses, and individuals. The ceremony also commemorated the opening of a new gallery exhibit that I curated: History in Motion: Public Transportation Connecting Maine Communities and the launch of an elementary school science and technology educational initiative, which I will continue to develop this year.

The ASL-100 project has fully restored the last surviving, original piece of rolling stock from the historic Atlantic Shore Line Railway system, one of only two locomotives of its style to survive in North America. The Atlantic Shore Line (ASL) moved freight back and forth between the mills and the Boston & Maine Railroad, transported coal from Cape Porpoise, Maine’s harbor to power the looms of the Sanford mills, and carried passengers to a number of southern Maine resort destinations. As an artifact, the locomotive helps us interpret the history of both the textile industry in the Sanford-Springvale area and the resort industry in the Kennebunks.

ASL #100 is one of the Museum’s ten Maine vehicles listed in the National Historic Register. It's a significant landmark in the history of public transportation and its restoration is one of a dozen projects underway in the Museum’s Town House Restoration Shop, according to Jim Schantz, Board of Trustees Chairman.

Wabanaki Studies

2009-09-04T13:54:00.001-07:00

Yesterday's post may have been a disheartening one for those with an interest in Native American Studies or in Wabanaki communities of Maine. I refer to the probe into the craigslist sale of scalps, purportedly of 'Maine Indian' origin. I ended the blog entry talking about how our educational system needs to 'humanize' Wabanaki peoples in order to get beyond the popular stereotypes and beyond the legacies of the violent colonial history. Today I wanted to offer a couple of starting points for those who wish to identify resources that may assist them in doing this.

The Maine Department of Education's website on Wabanaki Studies in Maine Schools includes a chart of K-12 learning targets that have been integrated with Wabanaki Studies content that supports LD 291: An Act to Require Teaching of Maine Native American History and Culture in Maine's Schools. It also includes links to a lot of other key Wabanaki resources (make sure you don't miss the especially the rich websites of Betsy Sky-McIlvain and Joseph Charnley, among others):

Also, Debbie Reese's fabulous blog on American Indians in Children's Literature is one you shouldn't miss. It helps educators tackle a number of the national myths and stereotypes pertaining to Native Americans that are embedded in some of our most beloved texts, such as Little House on the Prairie or Sign of the Beaver.

Using just these two starting points, a whole world of resources will open up to you.

Bones and Scalps Coming out of the Closet

2009-09-03T05:27:00.000-07:00

"What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it" -Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 - 1831

Many readers of the Portland Press Herald may have been surprised this morning to see the story headlined

"Offer to Sell 'Maine Indian' Scalps Probed."

Anyone who has consumed popular Westerns, in film or literature form, might not be surprised by the association of the term "Indian" and "scalping" since the skulking and scalping savage hidden in our woods stands as one of most prevalent and pernicious Indian stereotypes in our nation's history (take Seth Eastman's 1847 Death Whoop, for example, at right). Countless cowboy and Indian movies, sports mascots (think tomahawk chop), dime novels, and juvenile literature have replicated this savage imagery.

Many Mainers might not know, however, that early colonists, including those in what is now Maine, scalped Wabanaki peoples and received a bounty for their efforts. The current investigation into the craigslist posting of "Maine Indian scalps" for sale brings this ugly history to light. Since LD291 became state law, in 2001 (an "Act to Require Teaching of Maine Native American History and Culture in Maine's Schools") it's worth reviewing this history.

The Native American practice of taking scalps as a trophy of war is thought to predate European colonization, although it was not nearly as widespread nor as predominant as stereotypes would purport. To put things in perspective, Europeans themselves came with a well-developed heritage of taking and displaying the heads (and other body parts) of enemies as trophies. When Wampanoag sachem, Metacom (also known as King Philip), was killed in 1676 during a war that bears his name, Plymouth settlers posted his head on a pike for over two decades. In the context of trying to wrest homelands away from Native peoples, European settlers started with their own brutality in war, adopted, and effectively institutionalized the scalping practice, making it their own.

One of the significant landmarks in this violent history was February 20, 1725 when a posse of New Hampshire volunteers attacked a Native American encampment and took 10 scalps, receiving a bounty of 100 pounds per scalp from colonial authorities in Boston. Bringing it closer to home, in 1755, Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phips of Massachusetts Bay colony issued a proclamation calling upon his Majesty's subjects to "embrace all opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians." Phips promised a payout from the "Publick Treasury" of 40 pounds for the scalp of every male Penobscot Indian; the scalps of women and children earned 20 pounds. The Phips Proclamation endorsed this colonial violence and widened the cultural divide between settlers and Native residents.

But you might be thinking, that was a long time ago, right? What does it have to do with us today? Let's return to how the scalps of Native American individuals from Maine might have ended up on craiglist. It goes far beyond taking trophies amid warfare. Colonization of the Americas rendered Native peoples as other-than-human, categorizing their bodies and possessions as "artifacts" attractive for collection, exhibition, and interpretation. This legacy lives on with museum and private collections whose holdings have historically included human remains, particularly Native American ones. If this isn't a prank, what the craigslist incident may show is that these scalps were passed down in a family from generation to generation, held in a kind of private cabinet of curiosities.

Public outrage in the 1980s over the coveting of human remains as "artifacts" fortunately led to the passage of a federal law called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, also known as NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act). Now, it's not only illegal to traffic in human remains (Illegal trafficking), it's also illegal to curate human remains in museum collections if a tribe is eligible to reclaim them, usually for reburial.

The repatriations completed in compliance with the federal law have enabled at least some progress and healing. According to statistics compiled by the National NAGPRA program in November 2006, in the sixteen years since the passage of NAGPRA, 31,995 Native American human remains had been repatriated to tribes, as well as 3,584 sacred objects. Some Wabanaki human remains reported as eligible for repatriation were recovered by archaeological or construction activity. or were recovered from shell heaps and later donated to a museum.

As John Bear Mitchell (Penobscot) said to the press about the possible sale of scalps, "This doesn't just affect people in the past. It affects us today, people who are living." One of the first steps in securing the human rights and civil rights of the indigenous inhabitants of what is now Maine is to recognize the humanity of the Wabanaki peoples and cease identifying them as extinct or exotic artifacts of the past. Let's hope Hegel was wrong and that we can learn from history.

2009-08-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

Picture this: I was installing an exhibit at the Seashore Trolley Museum today when a young boy, about ten years old, walked into the gallery. He strode over to a corner of the room, stopped dead in his tracks, splayed his feet wide, let his jaw drop, and started hollering at his sibling:
"Wow! Sissy! Sissy, come HERE! You've gotta look at this. There's a really, really OLD computer here."

What was he looking at? A vintage Remington typewriter from the museum's collection, pushing a century old. You know the kind. The lovely, round, metal typewriter keys. The carriage return that snaps at the end of each line. A body heavy enough to throw your back out.

Using his prior knowledge, this boy's identification of the artifact made good sense. It had a keyboard. It sat on the table. What else could it be?

This reminded me that the 12th annual Beloit College Mindset List hit the press this week, offering a glimpse of our world through the eyes of this year's incoming college class - er - that would be the Class of 2013, right? Anyway, this year's list revealed that incoming college students have never used a card catalog to find a book, have never had to wait until the evening news to find out the news, nor have they known a world without the internet, let alone a world without desktop computers. Apparently, the idea of this list is to prevent college professors from cracking jokes like "Here's Johnny!" when their students have no idea who Johnny Carson was. Or something like that. Now, to be honest here, what rap star could I possibly bump into, literally, and know that he was one? Silence. Cultural references change quickly. Not only do typewriters become "really old computers" but vinyl records become "the largest CD I've ever seen." It seems to me that the "teaching with technology" trend in our schools could support "teaching about technology."

How can our society raise problem-solving citizens (as well as a sufficient number of home-grown engineers) unless children not only learn about the history of technology but about how scientific processes and critical thinking are fundamental parts of human society? The technology that kids worship (you know what I mean here) doesn't just drop into their hands out of nowhere as they might think. It emanates from our daily human needs, wants, and challenges. We identify a problem and then use our creativity to imagine a solution. We design it and test it. Then, maybe we design and test it ten more times before it really works. These design and development processes drive technological change. It's how we went from this "old fashioned" canvas roll sign in bus windows (below) to the flickering digital ones we see now.

Now more than ever, our children are often better at using digital stuff than we are; yet, in truth, these coveted objects (think iPods, iPhones) are "black boxes" to them. They don't know what the technology is that drives them, how it works, or how it evolved.

I'm not speaking anecdotally here. There's a movement afoot nationally to bolster our public education standards with an emphasis on what are called the Skills and Traits of Scientific Inquiry and Technological Design. Thankfully, the new learning standards of Maine's Department of Education encourage the development of these skills.

Science and Technology Specialist Anita Bernhardt advised Seashore Trolley Museum to look at Boston's Museum of Science for best practices in science education, particularly their Engineering is Elementary program in the National Center for Technological Literacy. The museum hosted our first professional development workshop for elementary school teachers this spring, a workshop that focused on how to teach about electrical circuits and engineering design. Now that we're finishing up the installation of History in Motion: Public Transportation Connecting Maine's Communities, we're preparing to head out into school districts to share workshops and lesson plans, with electrical wires and duct tape hanging out of our pockets. Maine's history of public transportation (the horse-drawn streetcars, the trolleys, the buses) offers a valuable opportunity to integrate history and science learning standards.

And we'll be keeping our eyes open for those really old computers and huge CDs lurking in the closets.

Writing Themselves Onto the Pages of History

2009-07-23T13:29:00.001-07:00

For the second year in a row, the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum collaborated with the Peaks Island Children's Workshop for a Rovers summer camp week with the theme Island History. Last year the focus was the history of Wabanaki people on Peaks Island; this year's focus was photography. Since artist Jude Valentine was in residence at the Workshop the same week and had planned to make paper with the students, she and I collaborated on exploring history through scrapbooks and photo albums. I showed the students examples of albums from the Fifth Maine's collection, some more than one hundred years old, such as the Civil War veteran album that I'm holding here.

Viewing items from the collection offered an ideal opportunity to build vocabulary (related words such as binding, clasp, ephemera and so on) associated with albums and scrapbooks. The children collected these terms throughout the course of their visit to the museum; they then took them back to the Workshop and posted them in their work space where they composed their own albums (left).

Armed with digital cameras, the children walked the island and documented various aspects of island history. Using their own photographs, in addition to newspaper clippings and postcards, they fashioned their own fabulous representations of island history.

Notice how the children are "present" in their own albums, how they write themselves onto the pages of their island history album. One student cut out pictures of herself and her fellow campers and then painstakingly pasted them onto a postcard image of a ferry such that their faces populated the ferry's decks. The fibrous paper they crafted was then used as a foundation for their images and embellishments. One student asked if we could make scrapbooks for an entire week next year. "I'd sign up," she said. Perhaps what appealed to them so much was not only the integration of art and history, but the ability to narrate and make meaning of a past that, more often than not, is taught as though it is "about someone else and somewhere else."

Marching Toward the Sesquicentennial

2009-07-17T21:21:00.001-07:00

Taking inspiration from the Civil War reenactments that the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum has hosted for many years, the Museum piloted its first Civil War History Camp this week. Following a month of rain, camp organizers - Sue Hanley and I - welcomed the partly sunny skies. The Museum's historic garden spilled down the rocks that slope to the shore and provided a scenic backdrop, not only for Sue's lovely hoop dress (below), but for the seaside campfire where six- to twelve-year olds baked ramrod bread and boiled crushed acorns to produce homemade ink (further below).

Although this camp primarily targeted children who were visiting friends and relatives on the island, the Museum's Civil War curricular activities this coming year will focus on third, fourth, and fifth graders at the Peaks Island Elementary School. This is an ideal year for us to pilot our expanded curricular offerings since the following year - 2011 - is the sesquicentennial commemoration (that's 150th year for those of you who can't get a mouth around that one) of the start of the Civil War.

Given the many possible approaches to teaching the Civil War, the Fifth Maine draws its inspiration, in part, from the composition of its collections. Blessed with original letters written in the hand of Amy Morris Bradley (below left), the Museum is positioned well to address the history of medicine in the Civil War, particularly the role of women in administering to the wounded, organizing medical care, and raising the funds on the Home Front.

The Fifth Maine's Civil War collection also curates a poignant collection of letters from Fifth Maine soldier John Stevens. Our approach with the History Camp, however, was not to focus upon the battlefield experience as much as the vital role women and children played at the Home Front in supporting the war effort. To stress this, we engaged the campers in rolling bandages (above right), "picking lint" (an unfortunate good intention that contributed to wound infection), and in writing letters "back" to those written by either Amy Bradley or John Stevens.

Holding the precious letters in my hands as I worked with the children (above), I thought of the veterans who, in 1881, built the Queen Ann cottage in which the Museum resides. How would they view our work? It's likely that they'd understand how gathering around the fire and toiling at tasks in common kindled friendships, an aspect of the human experience that transcends time.

Photographs and video by Annika Erikson

WWII Historic Site Vandalism

2009-07-17T21:17:00.000-07:00

It might have been a scene from the Blair Witch Project rather than a historic walking tour on Peaks Island. It is the tenth anniversary of this horror film, after all. Picture it. Ten teenage boys, a handful of adult chaperones, two tour guides, and a World War II fort whose darkness was barely penetrated by the beams of their flashlights. They thought they were going to learn history; instead, something sinister awaited them in the darkness. What was it?

Last night, at Battery Steele on Peaks Island, this is how a group of Maryland Boy Scouts felt about the tomb-like fortress that once protected the North Atlantic coast from its position on the Peaks Island Military Reservation. On a good day, it's hard to steady the nerves when exploring this site on the National Register of Historic Places. With three-foot walls of concrete and a protective cover of more than ten feet of soil, the interior, well, just doesn't see the light of day.

The sinister presence last night was not a chainsaw-wielding antagonist, but rather the copious evidence of vandalism at a historic site. This is sad treatment for a site that the Peaks Island Land Preserve (a.k.a. PILP) acquired for preservation in 1995. Despite PILP's frequent and regular trash removals that clean up the Battery, this group of scouts encountered enough garbage and recyclables to fill four plastic bags in just a few minutes.
The destructive antics at Battery Steele have been sufficiently egregious to make news lately. Most onerous, and environmentally hazardous, are the vehicles and appliances that are unwillingly dragged there to meet their demise.

Let's hope that this National Historic Landmark isn't dragged to its demise by the vandals. Perhaps youth walking tours can provide an alternative way to appreciate the fort.

"Find a Way or Make One" Camp

2009-07-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

This July the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College is collaborating with the Maine Humanities
Council to sponsor a week-long History Camp for interested area high school
students. Taking inspiration from one of Robert Peary's favorite mottos, the camp is called "Find A Way Or Make One: The Quest for the North Pole." The camp aims to let students interested in history get a closer look and deeper understanding of a topic through hands-on activities with primary source documents and presentations of experts.

I was fortunate to receive an invitation to lead one of the camp's activities. On July 14th, I'll work with campers in the afternoon; we'll focus on Josephine Peary's contributions to American Arctic expeditions by paying particular attention to one of the artifacts on display at the museum, the American flag that she made. This photograph shows Josephine (left) holding up the flag with the help of her daughter, Marie (right). Normally curated at the National Geographic Society, currently the Peary-MacMillan is exhibiting the flag as part of the North Pole centennial commemoration.

Civil War Camp at Fifth Maine

2009-07-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

Life in the 1860s wasn't for the faint of heart. With so many men away from home, children had to work hard around the house by cooking, tending animals, and keeping the home fires burning, literally.

The Fifth Maine Regiment Museum's debut Civil War camp for kids will offer a rare glimpse into this period. From 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on July 16th, Sue Hanley and I will help participants dip candles, churn butter, cook campfire biscuits, and write letters with our homemade ink, singing our way through the Top 40 of the 1860s as we work.

Letters from the Fifth Maine's own collection will enable campers to hear the voices of a Civil War soldier and nurse, while we roll bandages and "pick lint" to send to the front.

Join us on Seashore Avenue, Peaks Island as we travel back in time. For more information, call 207-766-3330 or email fifthmaine@juno.com.

Women in the Archives

2009-06-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

"Seeing layers of the past writ large in the present." E. Bischof

While layers of the past surround us every day, that does not mean that we see them easily, nor even see them at all. All of us walk across landscapes that bear traces of the past without even noticing them. At some point in our lives, however, like cartoon humans we have one of those "lightbulb moments" where we suddenly see a building, a wharf, a tree, or a grave with new eyes. I think Rose Morasco captures the sense of discovering these traces in her photograph at right, composed in honor of the Maine Women Writers Collection's 50th Anniversary Symposium "Women in the Archives: Using Archival Collections in Research and Teaching on U.S. Women."

For three days, the Maine Women Writers Collection at the University of New England's Portland campus hosted and celebrated the anniversary of its founding. The Collections' staff showcased presentations by a series of curators and scholars working in women's history. Two of the most powerful presentations came from Maine-based scholars - Elizabeth Bischof and Eve Allegra Raimon of the University of Southern Maine, both of whom spoke on the panel "Pedagogy and the Archive."

I found kinship with Bischof's commitment to curricula that empower students to engage with local history and primary sources. Bischof sees her role as helping students learn how to look at the "tangible history" around them. This tangible history occupies the same spaces in which we live but is not always visible to us, at least initially. Monuments, historical sites, cemeteries, and so on are places that we take for granted and yet they shape our lives in ways that we do not realize. I concur with Bischof, that one of today's challenges is getting students to "unplug" from all of their electronic devices and really look at the world around them in new ways. The reward can be "plugging back in" and sharing this, with blogs, for example. She shared one of the products of her student's work: From Away: A Newcomer Experiences Maine's History, a nice model for how students can creatively narrate their process of discovering "the layers of the past write large in the present."

Writing With Light

2009-06-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

"Photography n. from the Greek phos and graphos; literally, "to write with light"

Phantasms, stereopticons, and darkrooms - oh my! The Peaks Island Elementary School third grade embarked upon a Writing With Light unit this semester designed by the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum. This unit of three lessons integrated history (history of photography and local history) with Science and Technology (the nature of light and photochemical processes), and Language Arts (reading informational texts and writing observations and narrative).

In our Magic Lantern lesson, students explored the invention of photography and the evolution of camera technology, through the Fifth Maine's Classroom Gallery format (below). I'm not sure which was the favorite - looking through the stereopticon or seeing the artist's conception of phantasmagoria, an 18th c., Magic Lantern version of our horror movie.

On a bitter, winter day, the students gamely hit the streets for our second lesson, In Plain Sight: Then and Now. Armed with primary sources - historic photographs of key points in their neighborhood - they assumed the role of photojournalists and examined and documented changes that have taken place over the past century. In her journal, next to the historic photo below, one student wrote: "The last place we went was across the street from the Inn, by the parking lot. Tolford's store was where the parking lot is today. It was there about one hundred years ago. I feel it would be nice if that store was still here because I've never heard of a post card having your picture on it for one thing. I think if that store was still there, we'd all enjoy it."

I think she's right. The island could use a modern version of the "Post Cards Art Studio."

Finally, today, in much fairer temperatures, they put their scientist caps on once again, taking their understanding of the properties of light to a new level with The Pinhole Camera lesson. An intrepid group of parent volunteers had fashioned a slew of pinhole camera from - you guessed it - Quaker oatmeal boxes. The single most challenging aspect of this assignment was holding still for several seconds while their photographic film was exposed to light. The second most challenging? Keeping their hands off of the light switch in the darkroom! As one student wrote, below: "People in the old days had to work hard just for one picture. Now a days it takes 1 click, and bam, you got yourself a nice color photo. I can't believe how much we take for granted. It was a little bit harder than a push of a button back then."

Seashore Trolley Museum Teacher Training

2009-05-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

Today, the Seashore Trolley Museum hosted what I believe was its first teacher professional development program. Partnering with the Museum of Science in Boston, the trolley museum of Kennebunkport offered "An Alarming Idea" workshop. This day-long workshop empowered elementary school teachers to explore what engineering is, how engineers conduct their work, and how this pertains to electrical circuits. Session leader, Carolyn DeCristofano, showed us the centrality of the design and testing phases of engineering. A rowdy, hands-on activity with index cards (right) warmed us up to the culminating activity of designing and building electrical circuits that would be designed to set off an alarm. Surprised that a circuit-building curriculum would target elementary students? This is the approach of the Engineering Is Elementary program, part of the National Center for Technological Literacy at the Museum of Science. This is a nationwide movement to improve teaching technological literacy in our public schools. Beginning with this initiative, the Seashore Trolley Museum will help disseminate this inquiry-based learning approach in science and integrate it with social studies for teachers in Maine. I have enjoyed thoroughly the opportunity to work as a consultant for STM and facilitate the building of this partnership. Much credit goes to Anita Bernhardt at the Maine Department of Education for suggesting that we should connect with this nationally-renowned program.

The heritage of trolley transportation in Maine is a rich one and offers ample opportunity to connect the intricacies of electrical engineering with social history. Consider this controller whose innards you see at left. It comes from a century-old Atlantic Shore Line Railway Locomotive #100 whose renovation is nearing its end. Stay tuned for more information about an exhibit that will open this summer, offering the public a representation of public transportation in Maine for more than a century.

Digging Up Dirt: Secrets of Malaga Island

2009-05-18T18:03:00.000-07:00

The Civil Rights Conference in Augusta today drew more than 1000 students on civil rights teams from more than 70 schools all around the state of Maine. University of Southern Maine archaeologist Nathan Hamilton and I facilitated two sessions called "Digging Up Dirt: Secrets of Malaga Island." We first reviewed with students the difference between evidence and interpretation. Then we invited them into a hands-on exploration of artifacts excavated from Malaga Island off the coast of Phippsburg, Maine. In the early 20th century, the mixed-heritage residents of Malaga Island - African American, Native American, and European - were targeted, successfully, for a forced eviction from the island. The more unfortunate were institutionalized at the Maine School for the Feeble Minded in Pownal. In at least one case, a family was forced to live on a houseboat finding little welcome wherever it went.

By investigating pottery shards, buttons, smoking pipe stems, medicinal bottle shards (see above), and fish, pig, and bird bone fragments, some one hundred and fifty students collectively offered up their interpretations of what life was like on Malaga Island a century ago. Their keen observation skills noted that artifact and historic photograph evidence told a very different story from the historic newspaper articles that accused the Malagaites of being "cave dwellers." Students walked away from the sessions having touched the same objects that were touched by Malaga residents some one hundred years earlier. Our hope is that they take their newly-found, personal connection to this story back to their schools and encourage others to explore the history of Malaga Island.

Teachers who wish to learn more about Malaga Island may choose to enroll in a course offered this summer through the USM College of Education's Professional Development Center or explore the resources at www.malagaislandmaine.com.

2009-05-15T17:07:00.000-07:00

Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit. ~Eli Khamarov

Yesterday, King Middle School students showcased their culminating research projects to educators who had traveled from all over the country to learn about expeditionary learning. Students filled the Portland Expo with exhibit panels as well as original music, art, and video. Far from being busy work, their projects demonstrated that they had tackled some weighty subjects. As this collage featuring the Khamarov quote shows, the students impressively wrestled with challenging social issues, such as poverty. Their research and reflections explored poverty and social justice, as well as the nature of innovation, responsibility, and leadership. In some aspects of my work, I find myself having to work hard to convince educators and administrators that, if our goal is to raise savvy, engaged citizens who are prepared to resolve conflicting perspectives, then these subjects are appropriate for students younger than high school. It was refreshing to see civil rights, human rights, and social inequality issue education fully integrated with art, science, and history content!

Language of Flowers

2009-05-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

The Victoria Mansion of Portland today hosted one of the several Big Read events planned around Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. This Language of Flowers event promised to discuss how Wharton's book revealed the elaborate Victorian practice of using flowers to communicate a wide range of emotions. I confess that, as the daughter of a former president of the Longfellow Garden Club and the daughter-in-law of a Master Gardener, wild horses couldn't have kept me away. Since I'm currently writing from the perspective of Josephine Peary, a female protagonist set in the Victorian time period, I was looking forward to learning about the seemingly "secret" code of Victorian floral communication. I learned that sending someone lilies of the valley would communicate the idea of purity and innocence; who knew? Victoria Mansion Director Julia Kirby's lecture delivered the predictable conclusion that Victorian writer Edith Wharton had mastered this language of flowers and had revealed it to her readers through the actions of her Age of Innocence characters.

Fortunately for this event, floral designers from Harmon & Barton's Florist were present. While arranging flowers, they were the ones to accomplish what I think the Big Read intends. The Big Read, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, aims to reverse the declining trend in reading books. As communities, we are meant to "connect" around a single book and build community by discovering and exploring meaning together. If this is the case, then this Big Read needs to accomplish more than discuss the behaviors of elite society in New York City during the Gilded Age. It was the Harmon & Barton floral designers who helped connect the Maine audience to the history and culture of Wharton's book. They spoke of the 19th century Greater Portland greenhouses that once enabled the upper class of even the northern Maine climate to enjoy the luxury of fresh and exotic flowers. Breaking out of discussing the New York elite, the florists from Harmon & Barton's also spoke perceptively of how Victorian people of more modest means would have grabbed whatever container they had handy to hold flowers, say, a tin can rather than a colored and cut vase. Most likely, people of modest means were using only those flowers that were native and in bloom from their kitchen garden. This history of kitchen gardens would have been an opportunity to connect to a powerful, contemporary social movement that started in Maine. Kitchen Gardeners International has been one of Maine's shining moments in the national news lately, one not related to hate crimes, that is. Think Obama and the White House lawn garden. This probably seems like a digression but contemporary Maine gardeners (even florist shop customers) do have a lot to do with Edith Wharton's characters and how they used flowers. If we are encouraged to think about it, people of every era perceive chaos about them and seek refuge from it in their daily lives. Cutting and arranging impossibly colorful flowers - creating a pause in the day - can create beauty, order, and celebration even in a world gone chaotic.

History Is Not For Wimps

2009-05-11T18:01:00.001-07:00

Have you ever considered how history gets a bad rap? You know, the "dusty," "old," "boring" stereotypes. Not unlike some of the criticism leveled at many museums. The Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, where I used to work as a curator, decided that the public perception of history needed, well, dusting off. To present the public with a more muscular, tough-stuff image of history, the museum ran an ad campaign called "History is Not for Wimps." Banners, posters, and newspaper advertisements featured faces from Washington history - some well known but most anonymous - and then annotated them. A photo of a miner trailing a pack horse behind said "A Trip to the Grocery Store: Six Days Round Trip." Rosa Parks' arrest mug shot said "Didn't Give Up Her Seat Or Her Pride." No, they most certainly did not use this shot of me clinging to a climbing wall when they chose their final poster designs. My colleague, Gwen Smith, fashioned this one - it's a toss up whether it was more for her benefit or mine.

As I was unpacking the deeper layer of boxes and folders from my cross-country move, I uncovered Gwen's mock poster. Since I'm preparing for a session at the Civil Rights Conference in Augusta on Monday, this find prompted me to reflect on the crossover between inquiry-based learning theory, Outward Bound, and the more dangerous episodes in history. Inquiry-based learning approaches in schools stem from Outward Bound's legendary wilderness programs. The core of Outward Bound isn't simply field trips into the wilderness or the outdoors; the heart of the theory entails pushing ourselves OUT of our "comfort zones" where new levels of awareness and learning can take place. Often, history - especially the "comfortable" versions of history - offers us stories of progress, heroism, or accidental tragedies. Yet cultural historians also must navigate the far more dangerous stories, those where humankind can be its own worst enemy. Like roping up to climb a rock face, researching and teaching some of the uglier chapters of history can be risky, yet isn't the peak - the search for social justice - worth that risk? History remains not for wimps.

Local Gems in Statewide Treasure Chest

2009-05-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

At the Bridging Museums and Schools workshop today, participants had the opportunity to reflect on how they were using the Fifth Maine Regiment building in the same way as Civil War veterans decades before, as a place to cozy up to a hot cup of coffee and take shelter from the coastal chill while they shared experiences. Karen MacDonald of King Middle School offered an inspiring glimpse into how the expeditionary learning approach can involve museums. I heard several participants comment that they took to heart her distinction between “the field trip” and the “field work” approach to student visitation at museums. This year, MacDonald used Robert Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” exhibit for King’s Windor 6 Lead On Expedition. “Museums,” MacDonald said, “are models for our culminating projects…they also are a source for our research, an inspiration, and a site for teachers to experience their own professional development.” If you missed her presentation, you can still catch their Site Seminar, Leadership Summit, or Celebration of Learning next week.

Carolin Collins of the Maine Historical Society’s educational program presented next, sharing her experience with the well-received Local History/Local Schools partnership program; she also demonstrated how the Maine Memory Network could serve as an invaluable resource, and creative outlet, for teachers and their students. Collins reported that more than two hundred museums and historical societies statewide have contributed, collectively, over 15,000 primary sources to this online database! Among its many resources, Maine Memory Network offers Finding Katahdin: An Online Exploration of Maine History, including more than 50 Maine Studies lesson plans and hundreds of primary source documents tied to the acclaimed Maine Studies text book Finding Katahdin (University of Maine Press, 2002). Collins completed the herculean task of re-aligning Finding Katahdin with the "new" 2007 Maine Learning Results.

Lastly, I facilitated some role-playing, encouraging the elementary and middle school teachers, as well as museum staff and volunteers to step into the shoes of students and try some inquiry-based exercises involving primary historical sources. One exercise took an analytical approach to historic photographs and ephemera to learn the distinction between “evidence” and “interpretation”; the other exercise adapted the National Writing Project’s “writers marathon” into a museum-based or classroom-based writing exercise that puts heritage resources "to work" as sources of inspiration. This was also my opportunity to advocate for the National History Day program in Maine and for fostering inquiry-based learning environments.

There is such creativity among us on how to bridge the space between museums and schools that we need to continue the dialogue and share these local gems in our statewide treasure chest.

Bridging Museums and Schools

2009-05-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

Inspired by this image of Peaks Island's own "Giggle Show" from the turn of the century, we might ask: "Why can't teaching with primary sources be fun?" This coming Saturday, May 9th the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum and the Maine Historical Society are running a Bridging Museums and Schools Workshop. Hosted by the Fifth Maine, this workshop will offer models for how museums and schools may build better pedagogical bridges between them. Karen MacDonald of King Middle School in Portland will share her experiences with extending expeditionary learning into museums. Carolin Collins of the Maine Historical Society will discuss two initiatives, one of them funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. I will facilitate a session that places the teachers in the role of students and gives them the opportunity to experience inquiry-based learning in a "classroom gallery," a strategy that we have been piloting at the Fifth Maine. One classroom gallery model targets language arts by adopting the Writer's Marathon approach from the National Writing Project. The other classroom gallery model provides a classroom alternative to the well-worn scavenger hunt activity and uses a game mode to help deliver historical content and satisfy Maine Learning Requirements.

Museums as Artifacts

2009-04-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

As the thermometer pushes eighty degrees, students in my American and New England Studies class, Museums and Public Culture, are trying to ignore the sunshine so that they can draft their twenty-page museum ethnography papers. All semester they have been perusing their assigned readings and pondering the place of museums in our society. Michael Ames once called museums "artifacts of society" and, indeed, these hallowed institutions harbor traces of former ways of looking at and interacting with the world around us. Rarely do we consider that the curiosity is not under glass, the true curiosity is the behavior of enclosing things under glass and then peering at them! So, with this blog entry, I invite them to comment upon their chosen museums of study and lead us towards some of their insights about heritage in Maine and beyond.

Revolutionary War: View from Peaks Island

2009-04-17T12:12:00.001-07:00

Cannon fire, columns of black smoke, and a red penant snapping ominously atop the mainmast of a British warship. Peaks Island Elementary School students are learning that the Trott family faced these things on the morning of October 16, 1775. As part of their unit on the Revolutionary War, twenty one third, fourth, and fifth graders explored a local chapter of national history.

Students examined historic images and documents related to British Captain Henry Mowatt’s burning of the colonial town named Falmouth (what we now call Portland). Working for the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum, I led students on a field trip to several historic sites including the site of Benjamin and Thankful Trott’s log cabin where they were living with their four children in the fall of 1775. From their homesite just above Ferry Beach, the Trotts would have had an unobstructed view of the unexpected destruction of the town and the ships in the harbor.

The field trip also stopped at Ye Olde Trott Burying Ground that was in use beginning in the mid 1700s. At Brackett Cemetery students completed a scavenger hunt where they identified Peaks Islanders who had been born prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Josephine Peary in the Centennial Commemoration Year

2009-04-09T17:30:00.000-07:00

All over the country this week, various lectures, ceremonies, and events have been commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the date that Robert Peary claimed to have discovered the North Pole, on April 6, 1909. The controversy over whether it was Robert Peary or Frederick Cook who first discovered the Pole (or whether either of them reached the precise top of the world at all) has dominated much of the media coverage. One exception has been the attention given to Matthew Henson, Peary’s African American fellow explorer. Although Peary relied heavily upon Henson for decades and chose him as one member of the team that made the final dash towards the Pole, Henson did not receive appropriate recognition during his lifetime. In the post Civil Rights era, Henson’s skills as an explorer (as well as linguist, dogsled driver, and carpenter) finally are receiving the recognition that they were due all along. However, the 1909/2009 commemorations largely left silent the contributions of Peary’s wife, Josephine Diebitsch Peary. Cally Gurley, Curator of the Maine Women Writer’s Collection, generously invited me to speak during this historic week as part of their lecture series. I was pleased that University of New England students from Elizabeth DeWolfe’s Women and the Environment course were able to attend and hear “White Woman, White Snow, Blank Page: Josephine Peary as Arctic Author/Explorer.” Although Josephine accompanied her husband on multiple Arctic expeditions – notably giving birth on one of them and spending the winter trapped in an icebound ship in another – she maintained a strong connection to Maine. After the Pearys built their stunning cottage on Eagle Island, Josephine spent winters in Washington, D.C. and her summers at their cottage off the coast of South Harpswell. The last two decades of her life, Josephine lived in an apartment at 290 Baxter Boulevard in Portland, Maine. Bowdoin College's Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum is exhibiting several artifacts associated with her life, including an American flag that she sewed (borrowed from the National Geographic Society) and porcelain teacups borrowed from the University of New England’s Maine Women Writer’s Collection.

North Pole Flag

2009-04-06T04:21:00.000-07:00

For those of us who look forward to winter and the rush of Arctic air, this year has been an exciting one in Maine, not because of the snowfall but because of the Peary Centennial and International Polar Year Commemorations. The Portland Museum of Art has been hosting its Coldest Crucible exhibit, curated by Michael Robinson (whose blog is stunning, by the way). Also, the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College hosted several days of events to commemorate one hundred years since April 6, 1909 when Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole. An attentive audience listened as a few Bowdoin students delivered their first conference papers.

There are two artifacts on loan to the Arctic Museum that are worth the drive to Brunswick. One is the enormously controversial page – an inserted page – from the diary Peary kept on his 1909 dogsled trek to the Pole. Loaned by the National Archives, this page sports the entry “The Pole At Last!” I confess that the other artifact counts as my favorite – an American flag loaned by the National Geographic Society. I delivered a talk at the Bowdoin symposium entitled “Mother of the Snowbaby, Author of the Flag: Josephine Peary in the Arctic.” Robert Peary’s wife, Josephine, sewed this flag as a memento for her husband who was departing on one of his many expeditions. We know from many media accounts, correspondence, published articles, and family oral history that Peary carried this flag for the next decade on his quest for the Pole, cutting swatches out of the flag and caching the pieces each time he accomplished a “farthest north” geographic point. Peary cut a diagonal stripe from it when he reached the Pole. This tattered, stained, and patched flag awaits those who would like to see, in person, one of the most famous artifacts in Arctic exploration history.

Behind-the-Scenes Tour

2009-03-09T18:43:00.000-07:00

From the collection of the Maine Historical Society comes this skeleton key that fits into the lock on the sitting room door in the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. Curator John Mayer has generously shared "the key" to the collections with our American and New England Studies class - "Museums and Public Culture" - by giving us a behind-the-scenes tour and filling us in on current projects. Listen in on some of the highlights of our visit.

Welcome!

2009-03-06T10:01:00.000-08:00

Welcome to this new blog, a forum to encourage students of all ages to explore and connect with Maine heritage.

This semester I'm working with graduate students from the American and New England Studies department at the University of Southern Maine in our "Museums and Public Culture" course. Next week we'll meet at the Maine Historical Society for a behind-the-scenes look at their collections with curator John Mayer. Stay tuned for our impressions and dialogue!