May Newsletter

From the Director

I have just completed my first full week as the new Executive Director of the Penobscot Marine Museum, and I am so pleased to be on board. It's been a full week as I have started to meet board members, staff, volunteers, organizational partners, and local community members. I remain so impressed by the commitment and passion of our many stakeholders and the breadth and depth of all we do.

It will be an unusual transition as I travel back and forth between Searsport and my current home in Cedar Falls, Iowa, but I am excited about the months to come and look forward to calling this community home. I will be permanently on site beginning in early June, and I welcome you to stop by, give me a call, write me an e-mail, or drop me a note. I would love to meet you and hear about your connection to the Penobscot Marine Museum and this region's rich maritime traditions.

- Karen Smith

Events

A Salty Upbringing:

Tales of Maritime Mothers

Saturday, May 12 from 4:00 to 6:00

PMM's Sea Captain's Home

Cost: free, donations welcome

Save the date for a special Mother's Day weekend event at the Museum on May 12 from 4pm-6pm. The Searsport District Middle School's National Junior Honor Society will tell tales of mothers depicted in our collections, through portraits and mementoes. A Midcoast Maine mother reared her children at sea or at least close to the water's edge. In later years, she sent her sons off to be captains and crew and her daughters to be captain's wives. Hear our troop of young actors tell the tales of the mothers as you tour our Sea Captain's home.

Opening Reception:

Sailing Small: Small Boats, Big Ideas

Friday, May 25

5:00-7:00 p.m.

Main Street Gallery

40 E. Main Street

Cost: Free, Donations Welcome

Help Us Open!

The Exhibits Team is looking for a couple volunteers to help us get ready for opening on Memorial Day weekend. Tasks include painting exhibit walls and exhibit furniture, a second pair of hands in installing objects and exhibit furniture, help building our model ponds, and doing a spring clean on our exhibit building interiors. If you are available for a couple of hours for a one day only task or a couple of days, please contact Cipperly Good at 207-548-2529x212 or [email protected] .

Collections News

Searsport Students

Launch Mobile Tour

On Friday, April 27, the Searsport District School's chapter of the National Junior Honor Society launched a mobile phone tour of their favorite objects from the Museum's collection.

Photo Archives News

We just added a fascinating new collection to our online database. A few years back we created an exhibit celebrating our area's summer residents, aptly titled Summerfolk . In the process we borrowed two scrapbook photo albums from Bob and Helene Quinn documenting their family's history on Eagle Island, which lies between North Haven and Deer Isle. The Quinn family history on Eagle Island goes back 200 years. Check them out here .

We also added some "new" Eastern Illustrating negatives of towns recently adopted. Jim Dow and Ciona Ulbrich adopted some negatives of Mt. Katahdin . Valarie Tipton adopted negatives Kittery and Kittery Point , Goose Rocks and Ossipee Lake . The late Anne Bray had adopted a couple of the Starboard negatives a couple years ago. As a little tribute to her we put the rest of Starboard's negatives in her name. She would have enjoyed them. Do you know where Starboard is??

Volunteer Spotlight

Betty Schopmeyer's history with PMM goes back to 2001, shortly after she relocated to Maine from Maryland. Her first career had been as a speech and language pathologist and she continued that work briefly in Maine. She began her 2nd career volunteering for then PMM curator Kate Campbell. Her project was to sort and label the museum's textile collection. She soon began transitioning from volunteer to employee. She was hired for a day a week to assist in library cataloging, which led to another part time job as a grant writer, a skill she came to master. In 2005, she applied for and received a major grant from IMLS, which funded the Pen Bay History website . Mac Deford, the Executive director at that time, appointed her the education director. She continued in this role until her "retirement" in 2013. Her accomplishments in that position are too many to list here! Not being able to stay away from the museum, she almost immediately began volunteering again, this time in the photo archives. Her first major project was digitizing and cataloging a scrapbook history of Eagle Island, which has just been added to our online catalog. She is currently working on the Peggy

McKenna Collection, which will no doubt keep her busy for awhile.... Her 3rd career as an artist began shortly after her retirement. She began studying painting with Kris Engman and found she had a real passion for it. She and a group of other artists have just founded the Local Color Gallery on High Street in Belfast. Their grand opening is May 5th, so check it out!

Inspired by Models? Get Paid to Play!


Carroll Thayer Berry Collection

Penobscot Marine Museum is looking for a paid summer intern to spend 8 weeks interacting with visitors and facilitating the building and sailing of pond models. Sailing Small: Small Boats, Big Ideas, the 2018 exhibit and programming will explore the question: What inspires model makers to create miniature versions of watercraft? Models, and the inspiration to build them, range from the practical to the whimsical.

Through intern-led daily programming in the exhibit and on the interactive model pond, we hope to tap into the imagination of visitors and allow them to move from being passive observers to becoming actively involved in model making. The intern will:

-Inspire creativity with origami boats and wooden block boat building activities.

-Supervise the visitors testing their boats in the model pond, as well as the museum's fleet of remote-controlled and sailing pond models.

-Referee a daily boat race between the visitor-built boats.

-Facilitate experiments with boat design and construction in the buoyancy lab.

-Instruct visitors in the use of computer aided design software to create boats, their interiors, and special components.

-Demonstrate the use of half models as boat plans and oversee the visitors' use of the design, drawing and measuring equipment.

Applicants pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in education, history, physics, technology, engineering, math and other related subjects are encouraged to apply. A secondary museum or archives internship project can be arranged between staff and interns. Position begins no later than June 15 and ends no earlier than August 15, with extension of internship subject to availability of applicant. Position requires intern to work 16-21 hours per week (three days a week plus every other Sunday afternoon).

Please contact Cipperly Good at [email protected] or 207-548-2529×212 with any questions. Submit Resume, Cover Letter and 3 References to Penobscot Marine Museum, P.O. Box 498, Searsport, ME 04974.

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