|
What's Up at the Custom House
May 5, 2024
Photo: Steve Hambey spent days transforming our crushed clam shell midden into a new surface for the museum yard. It's terrific.
Photo, top: NBC's ace consumer investigator Caitlin Burchill visited Harbor Light last week. Our online ticketing service (since 2014) ran into some difficulties due to COVID. For more than a year we were owed a considerable amount of money. Everything is straightened out now, but it took some doing as well as the assistance of the CT Attorney General and the NBC consumer investigative team. The story will be on the NBC news some time this week.
The Custom House is open Thurs.-- Fri. 1 to 5 PM,
Sat. 1 0 AM to 5 PM, & Sun. 1 to 5 PM.
| |
In the US, Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexican culture -- an American holiday with Mexican roots (not a holiday celebrated in Mexico). We have just the thing for your celebration in the Shop : Mexican paper picado banners, both in white and in bright colors.
| |
| | |
Donations like yours make moments like this. | |
|
Your generous gifts sustain the Custom House museum, keeping it a friendly, open community center.
Please DONATE today!
Photo: Rockenson Charles and his friend Angie visited on Thursday. You'll remember Rock was our intern last summer and ran all the lighthouse tours. This year he's on our board. Rock earns his graduate degree from Albertus Magnus College in another two weeks.
Cheers to our sponsors - Charter Oak Credit Union - Community Foundation of Eastern CT - Eleven+ - Frank Loomis Palmer Fund - Kozmic Riffs Music Service - Maco Family Fund - Robinson+Cole - Veolia/NL Water Authority - Yankee Remodeler. Thank you!
| |
|
By appointment year-round
a popular destination for more than a century.
Visit Inside NL Harbor Pequot Light
It's Long Island Sound's oldest and tallest lighthouse. Photos: Christina Corcoran.
Climb 116 steps up into the lighthouse lantern. The views are spectacular! Tours for up-to five people take approximately 40 minutes. We offer tours every Saturday at noon. Sign up online: https://harborlighthousetour.bpt.me
To book a tour at other times, send us an email. Photo: the USCG Aid to Navigation team was in our area checking the lighthouses on Thursday.
Tours are available every Saturday and Sunday at 11:45, or you may schedule a custom time during the week. Please provide a minimum of two day's notice for a custom tour. Tickets are $35, $30 for NLMS members, $25 youth 8 through age 18.
| |
May 12 through July 19
Beacons through Time exhibition
Christian Fiedler captured six months of the sun’s path across the sky in a single image. Using a small camouflaged pinhole camera stashed at Harbor Light, his long-exposure print in the lantern room records the scene from 25 October 2022 – 8 May 2023: 195 days. Our visits giving tours inside the lantern room during those months did not signify; the camera registered only the long view.
Christian Fiedler’s Beacons through Time, will be on view at the Custom House from May 12 through July 19, 20204. The luminous pinhole camera prints also will include Point Judith (RI), Avery Point (CT), and Montauk (NY) Lights, among others.
Also opening soon: a small exhibition from local shipwreck diver Mark Munro. It’s on the Volund, a 239-foot Norwegian tramp steamer which sank ‘somewhere in the Race’ in 1908.
| |
Tuesday, May 21, 1:30 PM
JIBBOOM Club #1
Our May Jibboom speaker is author/artist Patrick Lynch, who will present A Tale of Two Estuaries. It's three estuaries, actually: the Thames, the Connecticut, and don't forget Long Island Sound.
Connecticut’s two largest riverine estuaries have long been recognized as world-class natural treasures, also rich with the human history of our region. The very different characters of the Connecticut River and the Thames River estuaries are due to accidents of geology that determined their fates. This talk will compare and contrast the Thames and Connecticut River estuaries, emphasizing the natural history of our regional estuaries and coastal habitats. Mr. Lynch's books now are available in the museum gift shop.
Jibboom is not a club, but a friendly gathering with a speaker, treats, and good fellowship. The event is FREE and open to all - please come on May 21, 1:30 PM, and bring a friend.
Biography: Patrick J. Lynch is an artist, photographer, and author who has written ten books published by Yale University Press, including “A Field Guide to Long Island Sound.”. His next book, “A Field Guide to the Connecticut River,” will be published by Yale Press in the spring of 2024. After 45 years as a director of various media departments at Yale University he retired in 2016.
Sponsored by the Maco Family Fund. Photo: Patrick Lynch's books are in the Shop.
| | |
Sunday, May 26, 6-9 PM
Open Mic at the Museum
Our 36th monthly Open Mic welcomes music, poetry, prose, stand-up -- or you can just say what's on your mind. Come on, give it a try; it's a friendly supportive crowd.
Co-hosted by Kenny "Doc" Frazier and Christina Corcoran, Open Mic meets on the last Sunday of the month at the beautiful Custom House Maritime Museum. Sponsored by Kozmik Riffs Music Service.
Couldn't make it downtown? Open Mic performers can be watched on the Open Mic at the Museum's Facebook page. Photo: April's Open Mic.
| |
What can you do with an NLMS membership?
You know us from museum visits, Jibboom events, and Lighthouse tours, but did you know NLMS members also have access to research materials, extra discounts in the Shop, and advance notice of special events?
Become an NLMS member - sign up today (download pdf) or Sign up online.
| |
|
This week at the Custom House
Docents are critical to the daily running of things at the Custom House.
Photo. above left: Ford Garrett is our newest docent. Welcome, Ford! Photo. above right: Christina Corcoran started as an NLMS docent more than 10 years ago. She has been our board president, she created & runs Open Mic at the Museum, and is the educator for the NLMS Local-History & Landmarks program in the NL Public Schools. Here Christina is last week bring interviewed by NBC reporter Caitlin Burchill at Harbor Light.
The possibilities of what you can do at NL Maritime Society are endless. We welcome new volunteer docents, workers, & lighthouse tour-givers. To learn more about these opportunities please contact nlmaritimedirector@gmail.com
The week coming up is a good example of why we need help. An American Cruise Lines ship arrives the night of Wednesday, May 8 and departs Friday, May 10, at 12:00 AM. It's the first cruise ship to visit NL in a couple of years. The last one brought very few people into the Custom House, but previous ships brought in hoards. What this ship will mean for downtown New London is difficult to tell... We are asking whatever docents are available to put in a couple of hours on Thursday between 10 and 5 -- just come by and hang out -- you never know who -- or how many -- might show up.
| |
|
Photos, above: We left out of Niantic on the Black Hawk, a seal at Little Gull. Andy Champagne. Photo, left: Race Rock at sunset. Drew Walker Gray-Smith.
It's Saturday night and we're just back from the Sunset Seal Watch trip. Our thanks to the Black Hawk II- Party Boat Fishing at its Finest, who so generously donated the evening's cruise to view the seals in Long Island Sound (as well as a couple of lighthouses) -- a fundraiser for NLMS. It was an awesome trip -- & it was great fun! We'll post more photos on facebook and in next week's blast.
| |
|
This Sunday's talk from the Henry L. Ferguson Museum is Woodpeckers of the Region, with Kim Hargrave, director of education for Pequotsepos Nature Center, in Mystic. It's today, May 5 @ 4:00 pm on zoom!
--Susan
| |
We're online & on Facebook! | |
|
photo, above: a submarine glides into NL on Friday.
Photo, above: Visit the gift Shop at the Custom House museum for some lovely Mothers Day gifts. We have silk-screened cards; embroidered pins with bees, flowers, birds and butterflies; lavender sachets; and my personal favorite: shoelaces saying: You are here *for now, which is true for us all
-
View Online Exhibitions of New London Maritime History from the Custom House Maritime Museum's Frank L. McGuire Library.
| |
-
Facebook the Custom House SHOP for gifts with an extra feel good factor -- when you shop with us your purchases support our exhibitions, & educational programs.
Photo: Drew Gray-Smith did some shoveling of the clam shell midden, too!
| |
|
-
We're on Instagram! @nlmaritime.
Photo: Green grass is beginning to show in the planters at Harbor Light. Finally!
| |
|
Easy - effective - earth-friendly. Tru-earth laundry detergent is sold in strips -- no plastic! Support the NL Maritime Society while protecting the earth. Find out more at http://tru-earth.sjv.io/NewLondonMaritimeSociety Thanks!
Photo, below: Saturday night we went on a Seal Watch and, yes, we saw seals! Drew Walker Gray-Smith.
| | | | |
