Wait, divers use this stuff?!?!

Well, its been quite a week. My brother came up and is now gone, art packaging, moving massive engine pieces, and gettin’ educated on the trade history of Maine all while cramming BIW records into the mix. I haven’t mentioned much about the BIW project this week so I will attempt to play catch up. First off, we got more shelving units in the storage space I work in. That took up some time to set up but it was really needed. And guess who got to set them up? Well, the intern of course! I’m just playing, it was actually kind of fun. I can’t complain when I mention “the intern doing certain jobs.” I’m certainly not running to starbucks for employees or anything and the folks at MMM have all been more than I’d could ask for as far as coworkers/mentors.

So yeah, we got more shelving to house the ongoing BIW project. This week I’ve made some decent progress considering how many other things I was tasked with. BIW Hull #1-25 are done and I’ve made a dent on the high 20’s/low 30’s Hull numbers. I did come across a box stashed away that had a bunch of records from BIW Hull #2 and #3 (‘Machias’ and ‘Castian’ I believe off the top of my head). I had to go through those, enter them into the finding aid and file them with the plans I had already gone through.

I asked around why these were in their own box, and it is just what I wanted to hear! Apparently a few years back when these records were acquired, the word got out that MMM had possession of them. A guy that was planning on diving on the ‘Machias’ contacted the museum and wanted plans for the ship to help out with the dive. Personally, I think this is really cool and something that didn’t cross my mind when utilizing these records and plans. Obviously exhibits and shipbuilders needing the records but not diving on the actually sunken ship! Very cool.

In other personal news, my fiancé (Charlene) and I have set our wedding date for October 8^th of this year right on Lake Ontario in NY. We are both extremely excited and ready to start our lives together. Just an update; :)

Enjoy your weekend all, I will keep you updated next week. Cheers.

Wheelin' out art.

Today Kelly, the registrar, needed a bit of help packaging up a ship “wheel cover” from the mid 19^th century. It was headed off to another museum on loan and as you can imagine, something this old (are apparently rare) needs quite a bit of care for transport. I suppose I can now add “preparing historic material and artifacts for transport” to my resume now. Its one thing to wrap a cup up in newspaper and put it in a box but this thing was HUGE. I would guesstimate it to be 6 ft by 6 ft, only completely round. Maintenance helped make a crude shipping box but it worked like a dream. Nice and snug in there.

It was headed off to an art gallery I believe and some “art handlers” came to get it in a big box. I love art museums but I hope I can say this without offending anyone… A large majority of the people I have encountered in the past (and in this instance) are relatively smug and arrogant. They act as if they have a certain entitlement to them and it just kind of rubs me the wrong way. Did we have a run in with these individuals? No. They were just people of few words and the words they did mutter got under my skin. That is all, I will no longer rant. Note to self: If museum work is my calling, stick to the historical ones and not those who house large amounts of “art.”

Another realization I had today… If you didn’t already know, I’m in the Air National Guard and am a C-130 Loadmaster, which essentially means I am an enlisted aircrewman on a large cargo airplane. I have been in the military for 10 years and am quite familiar with airplane/airframe terminology, etc. Obviously, nautical terms came well before aviation ones and going through these plans, listening to lectures, or just speaking with individuals that are well educated on things of the sea, I am blown away by how many terms aviators have borrowed from seaman. I suppose it makes sense though. Those who put airplanes in the air and continued to develop them probably worked with mariners and naval engineers to some degree and utilized some of these terms. Simply an observation.

"Maine Trades"

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Today was Nathan Lipfert’s (my immediate supervisor and Senior Curator) weekly volunteer workshop/lecture. This week, the subject was on “Maine Trade.” In reality, there are two types of Maine trade: Ocean going (“blue water”) and coastal commerce (“green water”). The workshop was very informative and covered a large time span from the mid 17^th century to about the present time. The state/region sure has seen a huge change over the period but still sticks strong to its roots. The state was built primarily on the export of lumber (used in various vocations/jobs), lime (used in kilns and cement/plaster), ice (believe it or not!), and granite (used all over the world in construction and as a building material). The ice one certainly surprised me but it makes sense in a world before refrigeration.

This workshop got me thinking about a museum’s role. These sorts of things (the workshop) are not only designed to educate the public, but in a large part, the volunteers here at the museum. To be a good museum docent, you really need to have a diverse background on more than just the regurgitated speech you recite while paid guests follow you around. You will, inevitably, receive questions from people not familiar with the city, state, region, or possibly the country (yes, we do have international visitors). It does appear that these workshops are almost entirely on the shoulders of Nathan. I’m surprised that I don’t see individuals from the Library or Education departments here. I can imagine they are fielded with some pretty off the wall questions on occasion as well.

Finally, some Maine Lobster!

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Not a ton went on today. Just finished up a few bags of BIW records, etc. So, I will talk a bit about what went on this weekend. My brother is still here in town. Because I work during the week,

we had primarily the weekend to do some legitimate exploring and stuff we couldn’t fit into an evening after I was off work.

On Saturday, we headed down to Freeport so my brother could see the L.L. Bean complex and do a little shopping. We did the Bean store, the North Face outlet store (my favorite) where Nick made a few purchases (this stuff is cheap compared to ticket price!) and walked around a bit. Then we headed south to Portland to grab some lunch and a pint. We wandered through the Old Port area, which is full of shops, restaurants, and bars. The USA/England soccer game was about to kick off so it being an Irish pub, it was PACKED. No worries, we got a table fairly quick, got a tasty burger and a Guinness and were on our way before it got to rowdy. The picture from yesterday was from the area with a lobster suited man attempting to coax people into a certain lobster joint.

We then headed back to Bath for a pitstop, then to Georgetown, which is the next strip of land that heads south towards the Atlantic and is on the other side of the Kennebec River. Our mission? To find a lighthouse and get some lobsters to eat. We followed our map, which lead us to a (surprising) dead end. We knew the lighthouse was close by so we hiked a bit and found it. It wasn’t as big as we had hoped but still cool! The name of it was Bald Head Lighthouse, I believe.

We then drove south towards the sea passing numerous lobster shacks on the side of the road. Lobster isn’t “cheap” here but its much more affordable than it was in Missouri, for obvious reasons. These little shacks are much like “roach coaches” or “street meat” as they sell variants of lobster sandwiches, soups, etc. We had heard about Five Island Lobsters so we passed by the street meat, found it, ordered some whole lobsters and chowed down. We probably looked like complete idiots tearing into them as we didn’t really know what we were doing but hey, we got out the good stuff and oh was it good!

Sunday was another rainy day (lots of rain lately!) so we hung out primarily indoors and laid low. That was the weekend in a nutshell.

Heavy Lifting!

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Monday proved to be an interesting and dirty day. Chris, the Curator of Exhibits needed a hand moving some things. And by some things, I mean very dated 3-400 pound pieces of rusty cast iron steam engine pieces out of a gravel floor barn. On the MMM campus, there is a large garage that houses ships that are not on exhibit or were donated and need various levels of restoration before they would ever be used for even sitting in during a rainstorm on land. These engine pieces will be used for the upcoming “Heavy Metal” exhibit and needed to come out. I’ll be honest, I felt a bit like those who built the Egyptian pyramids. We used the very dated technique of prying these pieces up, sliding boards under them, then making a path out of the barn, laying a wooden road out of the barn, and placing a series of rollers under them, slowly guiding them out. Whether this method or aliens built the pyramids, it worked for us but took a considerable amount of the day. At one point, a maintenance worker tried to assist us by pulling it out with a winch on a 4-wheeler. This thing was a beast and outweighed the 4 wheeler easily.

For those of you that visit museums regularly and see the “done-up” exhibits, just know that more than likely a curator and some lowly intern probably had to dig those things out from museum storage! This is the side of museum work I did not see at Plimoth Plantation and rarely encountered at the National Archives. Seeing the visitor’s enjoyment through the current exhibits make this sort of work worthwhile, however. This is just a small piece of the pie for the upcoming exhibit but will surely pay off as well.

My brother and I did some exploring, so I will post a weekend re-cap tomorrow.

TGIF!

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Thank God It’s Friday! Just kidding, its been a great week. This morning, Kelly, one of the few paid staff employees showed me a bit more around the library and the collections, which took most of the morning. The museum has a fantastic collection of books, primary and secondary sources, manuscripts, photos and ship plans. One of the reasons I am here is that I hope to really nail down a topic for my Masters thesis as well. I dug through some of their 18^th century primary sources and have a few leads. Most of their collections begin in the 19^th century as much of the colonial records were burned during various wars. I did come across several ship log books, captain’s correspondence, etc that I will have to dig up later when I have some more time.

In other news, my brother, Nick Wagner, is on his long drive from Kansas City, MO to Bath for a weeklong visit before he heads to Boston. He recently graduated from Rockhurst University in Kansas City with a Bachelors degree in Theology and will be attending graduate school at Boston College. It will be great to see a familiar face and a co-pilot for this coming week’s shenagins.

The Debate of Jamestown vs. Popham Colony

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Thursday, back into the basement to continue work on the BIW plans project. I did complete Hulls #17 and #18 (“Dahlgren” and “Craven”), found even more records for Hull #21 (“Mayflower”) and updated it, and completed Hull #22 (Light Vessel #71). Two of my favorite volunteers, Stu and John were helping today as well, which is nice. These gentlemen are not historians by trade or education, but their experience as volunteers have made them just that.

We had some interesting conversation about early American history… Roughly at the same time as the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia was attempted, a settlement at Fort Saint George, called the Popham Colony, was in place, which I knew virtually nothing about. This settlement was unsuccessful and I believe lasted less than two years. Regardless, I find it interesting that Jamestown is held so highly but Popham Colony is virtually removed from history except for locals in the region. It may be due to the popularity of the Jamestown story and Captain John Smith. I will have to do some personal research on the subject and John let me borrow a book on the colony.