Programs with PMM

Sailors' Valentine Make & Sip on Zoom
Thursday, August 6th, 6pm-8pm
Ages 21+, $30/person
When you sign up for our Sailors' Valentine Make & Sip, you get a kit with everything you need to make your own Sailors' Valentine! Materials include a large variety of shells with some seeds and sand to add variation plus an octagonal mold to build your valentine in. Also included are glue, tweezers, and everything else you see in the picture! Kits can be picked up at the Penobscot Marine Museum between now and the Zoom event on August 6th. Participants can get started right away on their own, or can join with PMM staff and other participants on Zoom at 6pm on August 6th to get a little history about the Sailors' Valentines, tips and tricks for how to make them, and to share progress on the Valentines. More information and registration can be found here

Member Mondays on Zoom
Mondays in August
FREE, Members only, programs begin at noon
Rotating among Curator Cipperly Good, Photo Archivist Kevin Johnson, and Digital Collections Curator Matt Wheeler, each week a different staff member will focus on one of their favorite artifacts or collections. Enjoy close up views and interesting stories, plus an opportunity to ask your own questions and chat with PMM staff! If you're not a member already, join here . If you are already a member, look for another email from us with the Zoom information. If you did not  receive this email, please email skettell@pmm-maine.org at least 1 hour prior to the program.

Puppet Shows on Facebook Live
Tuesdays in August beginning August 11
FREE, programs begin at 11am
Check our website and Facebook page for more information coming soon.

Peek into Paintings on Facebook Live
Fridays in August
FREE, programs begin at noon
Join us at Facebook.com/Penobscot as PMM Museum Educator Sarah Cole uses high resolution images of our paintings to zoom in on all the details. See our paintings as never before! Learn about the artist and the history and geography behind the subject of the painting.  Coming in August to Peek into Paintings....Dolly Smith, Steamers, Dangerous Cargos, and Rescue Boats!

Salted Tales: Zoom Edition
Thursday, September 10th, 6pm
FREE, registration required
Coastal Maine's rich maritime heritage has produced a lot of sailors and you don't work on the water without accumulating good stories. Penobscot Marine Museum invites you to join us for Salted Tales: Stories From the Sea Told Live on Zoom --- Hear five working seamen and women tell hair-raising real-life sea stories of amazing experiences. Each fast-paced story will be eight minutes long. Register here.



Tell us what you think
What kinds of programs would you like to see from PMM in the next few months? What did you enjoy or dislike in July? We'd love to hear from you! Please take 2 minutes to fill out this short survey Thank you!
Have a research question?

While the museum's archives may not be open for in-person research at this time, we are ready to answer your questions. Our physically distanced, crack team of researchers is willing and able to comb the archives and library for answers to your burning questions about genealogy, ship histories, and other maritime topics of interest. Send in your request by  mail: PO Box 498, Searsport, ME 04974; email:  cgood@pmm-maine.org ; phone: 207-548-2529 ext. 212.

Please be detailed in your request and let us know what information you have already found. Once we have done our initial research, we will contact you by phone or virtual face-to-face meeting where we can show you what we found. All copying and scanning fees are waived until we can physically reopen to the public, although donations are always appreciated.

Hope to hear from you soon!
Find us on YouTube
If you missed our Facebook live programs (or if Facebook isn't your thing), don't worry! You can now watch the recorded video from Jr. Adventurers and Peek into Paintings on Youtube! Find them and much more here .
Maritime Mystery Tour in the
Boothbay Region in August!

Visit the Boothbay region anytime during the month of August to participate in the Maritime Mystery Tour organized by the Boothbay Region Maritime Foundation. These tiny wooden pot buoys represent the Boothbay Region fishing fleet. One hundred of them will be given away during the month of August to the first 100 people that solve seven mysteries on the Maritime Mystery Tour. The tour is a celebration of the Boothbay Region Fisheries Collection, a community sourced collection of fishing related photos. The project is the result of a collaboration among the Boothbay Region Maritime Foundation, the Penobscot Marine Museum, and the Boothbay Region Historical Society. 

There are 19 mystery locations in the mystery tour. The sites included represent historically-important fishing-related businesses or services in the Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor and Southport area. Three of them are only accessible by boat. Visit the Boothbay Region Maritime Foundation website and click on the clues to see a historical photo of each mystery location. Use your skills of deduction to see if you can determine where the present-day site is. The historical description of the business and the physical features in the photo will test your local history knowledge. If you are a visitor to the area, no worries, map clues are provided that will take you directly to the sites. The most important thing is to have fun transporting yourself back through time for a glimpse of what life in an active fishing community used to be like. Verify you have solved the mysteries with an online album of selfies that you take at each location. When your seven photos have been shared with the Boothbay Region Maritime Foundation you will be given the GPS coordinates of a pickup site for your prize.

The Mystery Tour begins on August 1 and ends August 31. Registration is required. Please visit the foundation's website to register and for all game rules, mysteries and clues. You can visit the foundation website for more information, boothbayregionmaritimefoundation.org/.
Photo Archives News
PMM Images included in
Maine Farmland Trust Virtual Exhibit!

Boy with potatoes, Kosti Ruohomaa Collection

We are excited to have several of our our images included in the Maine Farmland Trust virtual exhibit 200 Years of Farming: A Bicentennial Celebration. This exhibit focuses on the history, practices, triumphs, and challenges of farming in Maine over the last 200+ years. The virtual exhibit will run through October 2, 2020 with virtual artist talks on Friday, August 21 at 5pm. 

A Few Words with Marty Bartlett


Since many of our archival photo collections date back to the early part of the twentieth century, it's rare that we have the opportunity to talk with a photographer whose work is in our collections. 

As we move a little closer to publishing another group of Marty Bartlett's images to our online catalog, we wanted to learn more about the man himself and the impulse behind his photographs (for an overview of his work and the collection at PMM, please refer back to our March e-newsletter).

The important thing to know about Mr. Bartlett is that he's deeply inclined to take the long view, at least with regard to the stewardship of fish stocks. It has always made sense to him to balance the prosperity of fish harvesters with the vigor of species. In other words, he's an old-school conservationist.
When Bartlett worked with marine biologist Frank Mather at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on the tuna tagging program he'd developed, the data they gathered ultimately showed them what they might have guessed: foreign and U.S. fleets were landing tuna at a rate which would hobble their ability to rebound.

Their findings weren't well regarded. They got to see that in fisheries as elsewhere, big business in a boom is likely to view an appeal to moderation as a threat. He described this attitude in an article he penned for the Woods Hole Historical Museum journal Spritsail in 2000:

"The messenger with such news is never greeted with anything but resentment, ridicule and scorn from the people who have the most at stake in the industry. He can also expect a generous ration of patronizing condescension from the industries scientific network. But tuna experts with the Food and Agriculture Organization agreed with Mather."

In the end, reason prevailed, and the ICAAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) enacted measures in 1975 to regulate tuna harvesting. Bartlett's later suggestion to federal regulators around the gulf states and Florida to protect swordfish spawning grounds for similar reasons fell on deaf ears, and it took ten years and a deep dive in swordfish numbers before seasonal restrictions were put in place to allow the animals to multiply and mature at a sustainable rate.

In his retirement, Bartlett has built and maintains an alewife ladder near his home on Lake Quantabaycook in Searsmont, Maine to support the breeding cycle of this native, anadromous fish. Not surprisingly, he's a big advocate of supporting local fisheries in the face of large-footprint, centralized fish farming.

The short view only shows us a better course of action only when the high costs of the prevailing one become obvious. In considering how growing billions of people will eat and the human impact on the natural systems we rely on for food, Marty Bartlett, like many others, hopes we take the long view.

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