She's also coming back in July, July 8th, um, to talk about hikes, historic hikes in, you know, the Massachusetts area. So, we're very happy to have her here today and I'm very happy that you all
come out and join us. We learned some interesting things about the small museum. Thank you so much. And I do want to say thank you to the friends of the air library for sponsoring this program. We have a calendar of events at the desk
and I have some on the table over here. Please take a look when you go cuz we have a lot of really cool stuff coming this this couple months and we appreciate the friends for putting that together for us. If you want to go out there with even
>> Yeah. Before I forget, very first thing I should say is if there's a museum you're interested in going to, check with your library for a pass >> because they are a wonderful resource when it comes to getting you out to as many museums and other locations, uh,
interesting places as you're interested in going this summer. Um, I recently published this little book, 50 Memorable Museums in Massachusetts. As part of this whole project, um, as I was just
saying, I have put together a spreadsheet of over 250 museums in Massachusetts. Now, that is pretty broad because it includes a lot of historic homes
and um you know, sometimes libraries have museums, not necessarily anything that small, but something worth going to. 250 locations, so 50 in my little book is just scratching the surface. Um
I tried to break out at least 20. If I talk quick, you can get all 20 of them tonight. Uh, but I tried to break out 20 just to show you some of the variety and maybe start you on your own adventure of discovery of all of the wonderful places
we have in Massachusetts. And the question begins, what is a museum? You know, is a historic home in and of itself a museum? Well, kind of depends on how it's presented. Um, is a historic site a
museum? If it doesn't have a building, if there's no real collection to it, again, there are so many ways to define it. Why do we go to museums? Well, to educate yourself, to entertain yourself when you have some free time. They often
have air conditioning in summer. We were just talking about a museum that last weekend was like 30° inside. I was freezing. I'll tell you which one that is if you really wanted when you have rainy days to vacation. Go
to a museum. Entertain yourself. Be inspired. It doesn't mean you have to paint like this master who who's uh developed these gorgeous paintings here in the room, but just some sort of creative artistic inspiration.
And of course, culture. In Massachusetts, we've got to get our culture in. So it means learning, always learning and experiencing new things and exposing yourself to new and different ways of looking at the world.
>> And the project included my mom. You'll see her in a lot of the pictures. We started about 3 years ago because I was working on a book about her family when she was a kid and I needed as much information as I could. Now, mom
recently turned 90, so getting her to talk about things that happened 80 85 years ago is difficult. But I I felt like when we went to museums, >> she was really um you know, all of her
senses were were lit up and she was very engaged. And afterwards, we would have these wonderful conversations about what we saw. and it was much easier to get the information I needed from her because she was so engaged. So, you'll see her in a lot of the pictures. Now,
as I said, so many um filled up my list over 250. It still blows my mind to think about it. Fine art museums, history museums, nature museums, textile museums, galleries, military history,
social history. And then I found out there was a beer can museum that I hadn't even been to and it's down in the Middleboro area. So let's start on the Southshore in the town of Plymouth where I lived for many years. Right on Court
Street is a museum that's familiar to a lot of people who grew up in Massachusetts. The Pilgrim Museum, also called Pilgrim Hall Museum, because it's a place that all of us went on school field trips to learn about the pilgrims.
Now, they tend to tell people and try and impress on people that they're one of the oldest museums in the country. And they are one of the oldest museums in the country, but they are not the oldest museum. In 1832,
they were preceded by more than 50 years by the Charleston Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, which has a large collection and is still open. >> So, I think Charleston Museum opened in like 1774 before the American
Revolution. Pretty amazing. And museums go back even further than that. There were some in Europe in the 15600s that were open to the public. One in Rome that I read about. And well before that in about 400 AD there was a museum
in Mesopotamia. >> You think what would they even have there? You know, papyrus scrolls or something. But so the Pilgrim Hall Museum is one of our oldest in the country. Certainly one worth investigating.
It includes it started with the collection of objects that were gathered by people who came over on the Mayflower. So they are actual objects from the Mayflower voyage, which makes it very interesting.
>> I am especially impressed with the Elliot Bible that's on display there, which was a typical King James version of the Bible. translated word for word into the wampa and no eggag language. So
this was to convert the native Americans way back in the 1600s and turn them into what they used to call preying Indians. And so that is an artifact that you can only see a couple places in the country
including the Smithsonian. But we have one right here in Plymouth which is awfully cool. Now, I quibble a bit with this museum because of their rather dogmatic stance that the pilgrims were
the founding fathers of the country, that these brave white men who crossed the ocean came here to, you know, straighten out the natives and show them how to live right and all that sort of thing. And in the Hall of Portraits, which was recently renovated, so this is
a picture from the previous iteration. Some of the pictures kind of do that quietly. There are these giant imposing portraits of people looking down at you. And you know, back in the day when
people didn't go to very many museums, I'm sure that really impressed them that, wow, these guys were the real deal. They really were the founding fathers. you know, really uh reinforced that mythology of these people leading the country.
>> But, you know, that aside, a lot of very interesting artifacts from the Mayflower. Um, a lot of great information about how difficult it was for people to survive when they first arrived here. You know, we think we have
tough winters, but try living in an un insulated shack, you know, down on the the seashore. >> So, >> the Pilgrim Museum is definitely worth a visit. And one thing that they're doing that is absolutely fascinating is that
they're starting to sort of blend the new understanding of Native American civilization here in America with the coming of the uh pilgrims in a tapestry, a handstitched
tapestry that will blend both stories together. When it is completed, there will be uh 120 ft of handstitched tapestry sort of retelling the story of
the pilgrim's arrival in a more modern light so that >> you know a little more acceptable to to folks who understand it holistically. >> So the next visit is out in Webster uh almost directly south of here. Webster
was not even a town when Samuel Slater built a mill there back in the 1820s. Samuel Slater was the father of the industrial revolution in America. He was actually an Englishman who came across
the ocean as a teenager with the knowledge of the English and Scottish uh mill works in his head. He memorized all of how it worked. the gearing and everything. He basically stole corporate
secrets and snuck back to the United States where he could then put them to their highest and best use and actually make money off of them. >> So he made mills with a series of partners all the way up the Blackstone
River starting in Rhode Island. So he's somewhat more associated with Wood Sakeet and Pucket where some of his mills are still historical sites in the Blackstone River. But he eventually landed in what is now Webster, built his
last greatest mill and he had so many employees that he actually had the state of Massachusetts create the town of Webster for his mill, which is kind of neat in and of itself. So the story
of the Samuel Slater experience that one of the dosens told us was that there was a family from Webster and the daughter who was in her 30s maybe was starting a restaurant >> and her father said what are you going to call the restaurant and she said
Slater and he said h why would you call a restaurant Slater and she said Dad don't you know about Samuel Slater? He's the whole reason that Webster exists. And the father said, "Well, I've never heard of him, but somebody should build
a museum to him." And then dad did exactly that. The father of this young woman who was opening the restaurant built a museum to Samuel Slater. And the coolest part is that he brought in the
most high tech way of telling a very old story. He brought in uh the most advanced museum technology. And when you go in room by room learning about Samuel Slater, you're not looking
at dusty artifacts under glass. You're actually getting like holographic actors on screens and they're talking about, you know, they're in costume. They're speaking like they were in the 1820s and 30s and they're talking about
the mill business. You know, what's what's working, what's not working, do they have the right supplies, how are the employees doing. >> You go to the next room and you're in one of the employees um living spaces and it's the mother talking to the child
on the screen again in costume. It's really immersive and it is so well done. I just can't say enough. Was truly out of all of the museums that my mother and I visited, one of our absolute favorites. We would go back to it in a
heartbeat. It's only open currently Thursday to Sunday. >> Another thing that they've done in that museum space is recreated old downtown Webster. You know, they talk a lot about how Webster was such a boom town when
the Slater Mill was, you know, up and working. And so they decided to recreate it. You can actually walk into some of these businesses. On the other side of the room, there's this old Worcester and Webster Street car that you can get on.
You can see mom sitting here on it there. And the whole wall is a movie screen. So you're sitting on the street car watching the scenery go by as if the street car is moving down the street. I can't tell you how, you know, we were
just so tickled by the experience. It was just a wonderful, wonderful visit. So, now we're moving way down the Southshore to the New Bedford Whale Museum. This is an old favorite. Lots of people have been there at some point,
right? But this is one of those museums that you've really got to put your time in to sort of grasp the enormity of it because it's so much more than just whaling. Thank you. >> This museum tackles New England history,
uh manufacturing many different aspects of New Bedford's history and New England's history at large. It was started back in 1903 by a group of local businessmen who wanted
>> to memorialize the whaling industry. They didn't want it to be forgotten and it was really the economic driver for Massachusetts for decades. Uh so started with this scale model of the Lakota which was a whmanship owned
by Jonathan who was a local businessman, a local whaler. Obviously, he made in in today's dollars like millions and he only took about four or five voyages,
you know, to catch whales. Um, so it's really amazing how much money could be made in that industry at the time. And as a reminder, of course, they have the whale skeleton hanging over the lobby of the building and it has been there for
many, many years. It still drips oil onto the floor. There's always a bucket under it. More scrimshaw than you can shake a stick at. Um I was amazed at the size of the whale boats. You know, my mother is a very small person, but can
you imagine going out after say an 80 foot sperm whale and something that's about 18 to 20 feet long? That's insane. That's completely off the charts. But as I said, you know, other industries are highlighted as well. There was a
wonderful glass works in New Bedford that pretty much matches up with uh Sandwich glass um glass museum down in Sandwich as far as the quality and uh the techniques. It's just gorgeous. Of
course, plenty of whaling artifacts, but here's one that I challenge you to find is the Resolute Desk. Now, the Resolute was a British ship that went into the Northwest Passage or where they believe
the Northwest Passage was in Canada. So, they thought that they could sail from England straight across through Canada, you know, the Hudson Bay area and come out over by China and Russia. And they were always looking for the Northwest
Passage. There's some great books about it. One that I read is called um the man cooking his warts because one of the the expeditions that went to find the Northwest Passage got stuck in the ice
and the ice was terrifying. 120 men disappeared. Nobody knew what happened to them. And of course, the title of the book, The Man Who Ate His Roots, is self-explanatory if you understand the circumstances.
So, the the boat, the uh Resolute was sent to go find that lost expedition to find any traces of those 12 men. >> They went out there, they searched for probably more than a year. They came
back empty-handed, couldn't find any of them. But the English people treated them as heroes. And the Queen of England was smart. She knew that she could play on this good feeling. And so she had the
ship, which was useless at that point, broken up and made three highquality desks out of parts of it. >> One is in one of the castles in England. I believe it's used by Prince William.
One is in the White House. It's the one that little JFK Jr. is peeking out from underneath. And the third one is in the New Bedford Willy and Easy. >> So, that's a super cool little um hunt to go on and find that artifact. So,
here we are closer to Central Mass. I'm sure lots of you have been to the Icon Museum in Clinton. It used to be called the Russian Icon Museum because the founder Gordon Langden was one of the uh businessmen in the plastics industry in
Clinton. And when the um Soviet Union changed its stance against, you know, American business and against the rest of the world in general and reopened to business and trading across borders, Mr.
Lankton would go to Russia frequently to do business in the plastics industry. And he started to find these amazing carvings and paintings that were for sale everywhere. And he recognized that they were pretty unusual, pretty
interesting, started to collect them and bring them home. And over time he amassed quite a collection that became the Icon Museum. Now, they were they are all religious icons. So, you're not going to
see a lot of variety in in genre anyway. And the style of painting, they use the tempura egg tempura paint, which almost makes the paintings glow from within. It gives them this aura that is so neat to stand close to. It's It's a little
spooky, I have to say. Um, but if you get one of the audio guides and go around, you understand more about the collection and where these items came from and what their importance was to
Russian families whose religion was banned during communism. So, they weren't allowed to actually practice religion. They had these items in their homes that they would remember their uh spiritual traditions. But over time, you know, they fell out of favor and now
people are getting rid of them or they wore them back in the 90s that Mr. Langon collected them and made this museum. The museum has a lot of um symposiums, a lot of opportunities to learn more and you know visit and and
learn from experts who will explain things to you about them. Uh they also do art classes. They do uh tempora painting classes. I just saw it was an 8week session. Quite a commitment. They have done Ukrainian Easter egg
decorating which is really neat. Um they're free the first Sunday of every month. Good to know. Also check with the library for a pass. And before I forget, there's an organization called the
Highland Street Foundation, which every summer does a whole series of free museum days. I mean, I think it's every Friday for the entire month of August and maybe even a little bit more than that because I saw April Vacation Week,
they had some museum days that they, you know, have the museums open for free to the public just, you know, out of the goodness of their hearts. So, next, a favorite of mine up in um Adams, Mass.
Who has been to Mass Mocha? Isn't it the most incredible place you've ever met? I just love it. And I tell everybody, if you get a chance, you've got to go. You've got to go. It is a long day. It's a long, long drive. But this former
manufacturing site is just a model for so many communities. what you can do with old buildings. Um, in the 1850s and60s, this mill made fabric for the Civil War
m uh Civil War soldiers to to wear. Um, after that it was sprayed with electric and they made little electrical components that were used by the military in like guided missiles and bombs and things like that. Spray went
out of business probably close to 30 years ago and everyone was like horrified. What is going to happen to the town without this center of business and jobs? It was scary. And a few folks
stepped forward with a brilliant but you have to understand kind of out there idea. We think this should be a modern art museum. And people were like here, you know, in like I don't know 24
buildings. Modern art museum is going to fill all of this. Well, they did and it is so cool. I I have people in my audiences when I talk about this raise their hand and say, "We took our kids there 20
years ago and the family still talks about it because the stuff you see is so unique and magical." That's what it is. It's magical. They pair the spaces with these enormous tall ceilings in giant
giant um manufacturing floor, you know, size areas with artists and say, "Hey, what are you going to do with all this room?" And I could just imagine some of them, whoa, I can't I could come up with something really cool. you know,
enormous installations that are again very immersive because you're literally walking through them. This particular artist, this is no longer there, but when I visited EJ Hill was given this giant manufacturing space and decided,
h where better to build a roller coaster. You know, it's not just a pink roller coaster handmade. It's a pink roller coaster that museum visitors could get on and ride around the room. How cool is that? In this picture over
here, my my sweetheart John is standing there in an exhibit where a heart of hearing artist was given a tremendous amount of space to again do as they saw fit and decided to use all of those
little notes that they passed back and forth with friends, with waiters, with doctors to communicate in ways that we take for granted because we have the you know ability to hear. So it was again a
very immersive experience to go into these rooms covered with all of these notes and realize on a day-to-day basis that's their reality. And it's really mind expanding I have to say. Again 24
buildings long long hallways you got to wear comfortable shoes. get a map. There is there is a cafe. There's a beer garden on site so that you can get some refreshments and take your time and see
the whole thing. Where else are you going to climb some industrial stairs to get into an Airstream trailer that is positioned two stories above the ground and is filled with artifacts from the Cold War. You know, where else is that
going to happen? So that's Mass Mocha out in in Adamson. Just a gem. Absolutely worth the trip. Oh, and you know, they have lots of musical events and special events. If you get on their website, start getting the emails and
find out, you know, when you want to go visit. So now we're going to the opposite end of the state to the Cape area to Newbury Port Customs House Museum. Now this is a fairly small museum. I always recommend take the
dosent tour because I could have gone in there and just read the little cards on the shelves and sort of come away with some information. But I was lucky to go in at a time where there was a dosent available, someone who knows the
collection very well, knows the history very well and took me room by room and made the connections between different items so that I really understood the history involved. And the Customs House
Museum was a creation of um Alexander Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton was looking for ways to fund the federal government, you know, way back in the late 1700s, early
1800s, and he came upon the idea of taxing goods that were coming into the country, goods that were coming off of ships. Uh, Newbury port is on the Marramac River. It was a major port back
in that era. And so the goods that came by ship and were offloaded into Newberport were weighed and measured with a lot of the items including this giant barrel, you know, and taxed accordingly according to, you know, the
quantity, the volume. And so they have a lot of artifacts of that time, but also it made me understand how um the the um trajectory of Newberry Port's history
was affected by it because when the administration changed in Washington and this customs h house fell out of favor and was closed, all of a sudden Newbury Port's economy was going down the tubes because they no longer had these people
coming in doing all of the off ship off offloading and weighing and measuring and collecting the taxes and all that stuff. But it also claims to be the birthplace of the US Coast Guard. And that's because the Coast Guard began as
an arm of the Treasury Department. And it was really their job to check ships in and to check their cargos. And um over time, you know, it morphed into what they do now, protecting the coast.
So, it's a cool little museum. And Newburnport is a fabulous town to visit. If you haven't been Yankee Homecoming weekend at the let's see, that's probably mid August. Really a big time to visit the town. Lots going on, lots
to see. Um beautiful place to go. Now we're on Cape Cod, another maritime museum in downtown Hyanas, right next to the marina in downtown the docks. And the one of the first things that
impressed me was like, oh, as a sailor, I know that Cape Cod has sholes, has uh shallow water, can be kind of dangerous for ships. But this is an actual drawing of three large ships all beached at once
because they washed up on the shores. And that was the reality of Cape Cod for centuries. You know that they didn't have the navigational equipment to stay far enough offshore when there was bad weather or to have weather forecasts.
So, the maritime museum is centered around many of these um these things. Things like the uh breaches buoy, which when a ship foundered in shallow water and began to list, they would shoot a line into the
rigging and then run this big canvas barrel. It's like a canvas barrel that would run on a pulley out to the ship. people could get into it and be hauled back to safety and then they would send
it out again and back and forth. And so they have pictures of it there. They have an actual Coast Guard surfman's badge. The surfmen back then used to literally be the actual first responders because they would walk up and down the
beaches looking for the ships that were in trouble. They didn't, you know, you couldn't wait for the phone call to come or for someone to call on their VHF radio that, hey, I'm in trouble. Mayday, come get me. It was a matter of finding
them. So, they also um talk a little bit about the uh the wreck of the Portland, which is the subject of an interesting local book called Cape Cod and the Portland Gale of 1898. Again, no weather forecasting. The Portland was a regular
steam ship that went from Cape Cod up north. I think they were they're heading for Portland, Maine. And they wrecked in a terrible storm. No one knew the ship was missing. And over 100 people were killed in that one incident. So, you
know, interesting history of Cape Cod. If you haven't read The Outermost House by Henry Beston, this is a very old book. I think it was written in the 40s or 50s, but such cool history of living in a dunes shack on Cape Cod and sort of
watching the seasons pass and watching many of the Coast Guard uh surfmen pass up and down the beaches on their daily tours of duty. Um, again, lots of lots of scrimshaw. I mean, I look at these
and I say, "Who needs an iPhone with your girlfriend's picture if you can have a carved tooth, right? Or who needs to send a postcard home when you can carve the scene on a sperm whale tooth?" It's amazing what they did with their
spare time. Sometimes I wonder when all of our screens are um done and over with, what what will we have to show for our lives, right? You know, if we're not on our phones, I can't carve script shop. Another thing that they have at
the Cape Cod Maritime Museum in Hyenas are lots of examples of local boats made for the conditions on Cape Cod, which are high tides and shallow water. So, many of them are shallow draft. They
have ores and sails so that you can get in and out for fishing or hunting ducks or what have you in those big tidal areas of the cape. They also build a lot of boats on site. So when I was there,
they had a group of young boys like Cub Scout age learning how and literally hands-on helping to build a boat in that workshop which is pretty cool. You know, makes the museum more part of the community.
Now, back to the Southshore again. Um, Fall River Maritime Museum. I'm afraid I didn't have as many nice things to say about the Fall River Maritime Museum, and I hope they excuse me, but there are some very interesting things there. It's
part of Battleship Cove, so you can get a double ticket to see the Maritime Museum and go on the USS Massachusetts and the other ships there that are under the Braga Bridge uh route 195 bridge. Uh
the museum itself, you know, unless you really really want to learn about these steamships, you might not spend the time in there. But the steamship history was really very interesting to me. I get I'm easily interested. You know, I love to
get go on these little um imaginary journeys uh in museums and learn about new things. And I never knew that from 1897 to 1937 there was an enormous business of steamship travel that originated in Fall
River. And there was a whole fleet of these steam ships that would go down to Newport, Rhode Island, to New York City, up to uh Portland, Maine, and many different destinations. And so in the museum, they have models
of them. They have recreated stateaterooms. They describe what the journey was like. And I'm like kicking myself. My grandparents traveled in luxury and style. I mean, you would get on the ship in Fall River, have a
sumptuous meal on real China in your stateateroom, go to bed, wake up in the morning, and have breakfast maybe out on the veranda as New York City is coming into view. And I'm buying tickets on,
you know, Spirit Airlines and Suffrag, but uh so little things like that. Unfortunately, in 1937, the steamship business absolutely ground to a halt very unexpectedly, left lots of people out of work. And
then the poor people of Ball River had to witness all of these ships literally falling to pieces at the peers. They just rotted away in place and never to be used again. It is a location that has
some Titanic memorabilia because it's very close to Woods Hole where Dr. Ballard went out and actually discovered the Titanic. They have the scale model from the 1958 movie A Night to Remember.
Um, and I will get back to the Titanic theme in just a second. I want to touch on very briefly the Maronei Maritime Museum out in Chadam way down on the Cape which was uh the first
intercontinental communication station in the United States. They could they could communicate with ships at sea between Europe and the United States in Chhattam and that was the only spot where you
could do that. So they would transmit the daily news to people crossing the ocean on ships. And of course it was one of the first places to hear about shipwrecks. Um, in World War II, and I've written a couple of World War II
books about German submarines, uh, in World War II, they were partially responsible for being able to triangulate German submarines positions out at sea by listening to their radio
transmissions. So, it helped us eventually turn the tide of the war. German submarines were terrible in sinking so many ships on the east coast. They s in 1942 170 American ships on the east coast
just in the first four months of the war. They were absolutely just picking us off right and left. And the Maronei Maritime Museum has the equipment that they used to find those submarines. and
they have volunteers who will actually demonstrate how it was used. They still can run the old uh radio um triangulation equipment and that sort of thing. So now I'm zipping way back out
here to the Springfield neighborhood of uh uh Indian Orchard in Springfield. And I said I would get back to the Titanic thing. This is just a really fun teeny tiny little museum. I had heard about
it. I had it on my list. One day, my mother and I were in the car and we went to a couple museums and I said, "Okay, let's try and get to this one before it closes. It closes at 5." So, I put it in my GPS. We floored it, got out there into Springfield, and of course, my GPS
has said, "You have arrived." And I'm like, "What do you mean I've arrived? I don't see a museum. I see a jewelry store, but in the window of the jewelry store is this little tiny sign that says Titanic Historical Society. And I
thought, "Oh, is someone pulling one over on me?" Really? Was it worth driving all the way out of here? So, we went into the jewelry store and in the midst of the usual cards and
gifts that you find in a place like that is this giant um replica of the Titanic. And so, we looked at it and we walked around it and we're you could see the expression on my mother's face like, "Is this it?"
There was a lady behind the counter and I said, "Is this the museum?" And she said, "Oh, you came for the museum." And I said, "Yes." And she said, "Well, that'll be $7." So, we paid our $7, come back behind the counter with her and
into a back room. And the museum was back there. It's no bigger than this room. It's dusty items under glass, but it was a hoot. The woman was the sister of this guy who started
the museum. His name was Ed Kamuda. When he was a teenager back in the 50s, it might have been the movie A Night to Remember, I'm not sure what movie it was, a big Titanic movie came out. Remember in the 1990s when Leonardo DiCaprio came out in in uh the
Titanic movie? It was a big deal. Well, back in the 50s, A Night to Remember, had the same impact. And Ed Cut, who was just a teenager, he saw the movie and he was just like, "Whoa!" Mind blown. He wanted to know everything there was to
know about the Titanic. And he found out that every movie theater that showed the movie received a brochure that had all of the names and addresses of the surviving Titanic uh survivors in it. He
wrote to every single one of them. And it was 30, 40 years after many of them were still alive, they started to correspond back and forth with Ed. And he showed such interest that when they wanted to get rid of something, you
know, who wants this old thing that I wore the night that the Titanic said, "Well, Ed'll take it." M >> they sent him things like shirts, scarves, um what were the uh cufflings, you know, little objects like that. But
as time went on, he only grew more and more infatuated with the Titanic story. He started a newsletter for people interested in the Titanic, and he updated them on anything that happened. anytime an anniversary of the Titanic
came around or something happened to one of the survivors or he got correspondents from a survivor, you know, anything. And it was a subscription newsletter as we used to do back in the day before email. um he turned that into conventions, Titanic
conventions back in the 80s and he would have the survivors come to the conventions and there were plenty of people in the world who would who were blown away to meet these folks and hear their stories themselves. So over time
he became the de facto Titanic expert in the United States. And when they did make that movie in 1990 with Leonardo DiCaprio, who do you think the director called? This guy, he was actually given a part
in the movie. He and his wife were in the movie. He gathered the cast and apparently allegedly said, "You're all here today because of this guy." What a moment huh? um with all of the tremendous earnings
from his newsletter and his conventions, he erected a few monuments to the Titanic situation. I believe that the captain of the Titanic might have been from Springfield and he had a monument put in the cemetery in Springfield. Of
course, the man's body was never recovered. He went down with the ship, but the monument is there courtesy of Edmuda. his sister is still giving micro tours of the museum. She told us that many of the most treasured artifacts are
actually on loan to the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri and a couple of others. So, there isn't a whole lot to see, but the experience was unforgettable. It was a
booth. We had a great time and came away from the whole experience thinking life that was such a great use of our time. You know, it was so fun. So, here we are back on Cape Cod again. Sorry if you're getting whiplash. We're still on the
maritime theme. The Wida Pirate Museum. Super cool. This is um on Route 28 in Barnstable. And I think way way way back when there was an aquarium in this building. If anyone remembers back that
far, thank you. I I don't feel that old then. Um the Winter Pirate Museum is based on an actual pirate treasure recovered off of Cape Cod. Actual pirate treasure. The widow was the slave ship
carrying the golden deloons. So, a really legit pirate treasure being the blues. And the first thing you see when you go in is the ship's bell because the identity of the ship was unknown to the
people who discovered it and started to recover some of the artifacts until they found the bell. They had suspicions that it was the widow, but it wasn't really well documented. Actually, nobody else knew it was there. was a fishing captain
who using his fish finder, you know, if you're familiar with that, it sort of does sonar on the bottom of the ocean. He was off of Ptown somewhere on the outer Cape and was using his fish finder and came across, you know, this unusual
sort of topography and went back to it and did a little investigation and thought, I think that's a shipwreck. I think that's an old shipwreck. and then went through the documents, couldn't find any documentation of it, thinking,
well, maybe it's a really old shipwreck. And that was the basis of this entire museum. It's all based on that one ship, but found locally, which I I think makes it so neat. They do a lot of things in
this museum, all centered on piracy and pirates. They explain piracy down to every cross tea and dotted eye. The period of piracy was actually much shorter than we would believe having
seen all of the pirate movies, right? Um it didn't last very long. There weren't very many really, you know, high-powered pirates who were making a lot of money. It was really a pretty miserable life to live. But um when they did, they had a
good time apparently. So there's a lot of explanation about the pirates in the museum. There is a science aspect to it. It shows what they actually find on the ocean floor. And then when they x-ray it and find out what's inside all of those
barnacles and all of that growth and then the decision, do we try to extricate this old gun from this piece of, you know, marine life here or do we leave it? So they have an entire room that's just dedicated to the science
behind the shipwrecks. There is also a small, you know, model ship. If you have kids, they can go climb on it and pretend like they're pirates. And finally, when you're walking out of the building, you get to see
the Golden Blues, which is so neat because they hammer it into your head. This is the only pirate booty anywhere that you can see in a public place. You know, it's just there's a lot of legends, there's a lot of myths, but
they have the real deal right there on Cape Cod. well worth a vacation day visit. Um it is a little pricey to get in, but and they also don't take any sort of um reciprocal museum passes or anything
like that. So I think it was probably $20 a piece um back in central Mass. So we are I believe in Worcester, Worcester Art Museum. Probably familiar to many of you. I'm happy to say that much of the
museum recently had a facelift. So these are old pictures. I'm, you know, they didn't do anything to the John Singer Sergeants or, you know, their fabulous artwork, but they have refreshed much of the interior of the building, which goes
hand in hand with receiving and putting the Higgins Armory collection on display. So, they have been working on the Higgins Armory Collection for several years, restoring all of that hardware with an expert. Um, and now it
has its own gallery, which is super cool because if you remember, the the Higgins Armory itself was such a neat place to visit. Was like going into a castle with all of those um those knights uh in in
their hardware. Uh they also have a flora flora and winter exhibit every March. They have floral designers replicate artwork in flowers. Really a fun visit because you know at
that point in the winter your eyes are so thirsty to see color. >> You're like dying to see things in color. Everything seems to fade to sort of black and white and gray in the winter time. If you go into the museum for that exhibit, it's like, "Oh, I
remember what that looks like. That's gorgeous." So, they have lots of old masters. They have more modern paintings. It's really a a super museum and it has parking. You don't have to go all the way to Boston. I will say that
the last time I borrowed a museum pass from a library and went, it took the price down a little bit, but it was still a little, you know, a little painful. So, it's it's a little expensive, but I have to say for a
really high quality museum experience that you don't have to travel all the way into Boston for, it's worth it. Uh, again, more of a flora in winter exhibit. I thought this was a cool juxiposition of mom and the carving.
And then they have some uh American favorites. This is uh Hicks Peaceable Kingdom. Something that's familiar to many of us. >> This gentleman's name was Edward Survage. He was from uh from Worcester.
He painted his family, his family members. And I always like to go remind myself, >> you know, we giggle about this picture because everyone is way out of proportion. >> He starts with probably a normal size
and proportion person, but then they get tinier and tinier until he couldn't even paint their hands because >> they had shrunken so much. So he just put a big table in front of the whole thing to sort of cover it up. Yet the
painter Edward Sage went on to paint George Washington's family. So if you stick to your art and you practice, you can succeed. And I love this little painting. Um I
learned a lot going to so many museums. So, one thing that I learned is that back in the early 1800s, painters, itinerate painters would travel around the countryside with a partially finished portrait
minus the head and they would come to what looked like wealthy homesteads and say, "Sir, may I paint your daughter?" And therefore, you go into museums and you see these paintings, they always
look off just a little bit, like the head just doesn't quite fit the body. And that's what it was. You know, that's a piece of New England history right there. Crazy as it may be. Okay, let's see. How are we doing?
Good. Uh, Danforth Museum in downtown Framingham, right off Route 9, is a longtime Framingham institution. moved closer to Framingham State. Uh now they call it Frammingham State University off
of Route 9 and they do a lot of teaching, a lot of art classes, but they also have a jured exhibit every year that just knocked my socks off. I always I unfortunately have had this sort of uh prejudice having grown up in that area,
you know, thinking what's this museum going to show me anything? You know, here I am on an art snob, you know, completely uneducated. I went in there and my jaw dropped. Their jured exhibit was stunning and a lot of the artists
were fairly local. They're Massachusetts people. And I'm like, "Wow, that means there are lots of people that I walk by or drive by every day who have superpowers to create this incredible art." This was an entire tea set made
out of wool. that, you know, somebody put together was really neat. You know, this um picture of the woman there is a statue. It it's a very good allegory or comparison of what being a woman is
like, you know, there's so many pieces to you. And I want to mention uh Meta Voic Fuller was a local artist actually a sculptor trained in Paris and she was an
African-American sculptor who lived in Framingham for most of her life and practice her art in the attic of her home sculpting Africanamean
people. And at that time that was so unusual and Danforth has her entire collection on site. They often put pieces portions of it out on exhibit, but just someone worth learning about. You know, she was
um well ahead of her time. So again, mom looks so confused looking at this um model woman here. She's like a puppet. Um, some of the just the quality of the artwork stunned me and I can't wait to
go to their next jury uh exhibit. So, where's the star? Cape Cod again. Here we go. More art. And and I promise you, if you take a look at the book, it's not all art museums, many history museums. I guess I just kind of got on a roll. I
did many maritime museums, now many art museums. Down on Puit uh on Route 28 in around the Mid Cape is the Cahoun Museum of American Art and brought to us by Martha and Ralph Cahoun who lived in
this tiny little house on the side of Route 28 back in like the 20s and 30s. and they were just getting by painting uh early Americanstyle almost like stencil work on furniture.
So they weren't highbrow artists of any sort. They were just trying to sell art to pay their bills basically. And they even have a few receipts hanging in the art museum that show how close to the
bone they've lived. But then at some point Ralph here got a wild hair and decided he was going to go off on his own and he started to paint very whimsical scenes with mermaids flirting
with sailors and you know I think in this picture one of the mermaids her tail is hooked by a fisherman and she's s sort of spitting water at him. They became wildly popular and all of a sudden the cohorts were, you know,
making quite a lot more money. They started to collect art on their own. So when they passed away, they left their home as an art museum, their own collection there on site and the association that runs it built on
another wing. So they have uh revolving exhibits. This artist um Sarah Peters was originally from Cape Cod has recently moved to New York City but she several of her outdoor sculptures are on
display across the Cape and mostly people take a look at this and just crack up. I mean Wonder Woman as a teapot with such an expression on her face you know boredom. Um, there was also when we were there, uh, Rhode Island School of Design students had an
entire exhibit in this new wing that was just incredible. So, worth a stop. Oh, and they have a fabulous, really noteworthy uh, museum shop. Very unusual, different little gifts.
Worth going. Totally worth going when you're on the Cape. Where are we now? Here's one. The most famous sculptor you've probably never heard of, Cyrus Dalan. Anyone heard of him? >> Does anyone recognize Paul Rivere on horseback?
>> The North End across from the Old North Church. Right. Well, Cyrus Dullan was an upand cominging young artist back in um the early 1900s when there was a an art
competition announced to memorialize River and he was only like 23 years old when he won that competition with this model, >> you know, with River on horseback looking so alive and so full of energy.
energy and rebellion. Looking like he is ready to lead the country into war and winning this art competition turned the Boston art world on its head. People were like, "Who is this young upstart?
Who said he could win this competition? He's a nobody." You know, there were a lot of very famous artists in Boston. And this guy comes out of nowhere at a very young age and wins. And so people started taking notice even back then.
Unfortunately, it was 40 years before they actually put the statue in the north end. So he had to wait a little while, but he stayed busy. He made uh statues of Governor Bradford. Is anyone familiar with the angel Moroni on the
top of every Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple in the world? I was in Argentina last fall and we're driving down the highway. I'm like, there it is. You know, it's like I've seen it in Arlington. I've seen it in,
you know, and here is the model in this tiny museum. And when I say tiny, this museum takes maybe 45 minutes if you read everything and go through it twice. but lots of his models for his
sculptures. Um, a lot of history. He did the appeal to heaven, the Native American on horseback outside the Museum of Fine Arts where he's leaning back like this. this. When you see his sculptures, you understand why he was a
great great sculptor because even the small models look so alive like they could get up and walk away, you know. So that's in Arlington. Um right where the um bikeway entrance is, if you're
familiar with downtown Arlington, there is parking. There is some parking in a dedicated lot right behind the building, but it's like this tiny little Cape Cod house in a little park-like setting right in the middle of downtown. Um, fun fun place to visit. And they're open on
Sunday afternoons. That's how we ended up going. We were kind of like, hm, we didn't get to a museum this week. Darn it. Wait a minute. There's one that's open on Sundays. Let's go. Never regretted that. So down in the Brockton Taton area is the Fuller Craft Museum.
Actually Brockton, it's a textile museum. >> You know, it's a type of sculpture, right? Soft sculpture where people make things out of fabric and out of um household items really. We went uh a
second or a third time recently and there was an entire button exhibit where one collector who had amassed an incredible collection of buttons had applied them to bathtubs and aprons and
you name it. Everything was just buttonized. Um so textiles have many different forms. This artist here has redone the entire cast of the Wizard of Oz as soft dolls. Super neat to to see
and and to think, you know, it was just our reaction to this museum is >> it makes it look fun to make art, you know, not like it's work, but like these people are having fun. They're being so
creative. How about a dog satchel made out of leather? You know, this red dress is internationally famous. The artist made the skirt out of many different pieces that they sent around the world
to many different communities and invited the women in those communities to embellish their piece of the skirt in whatever way they saw fit. And then the artists collected all of those pieces again and created the dress so that it
represents the entire world of women. And you know that was just so original, so unique. Speaking of unique, I've never seen anything like this anywhere. This installation
looked like um lyken or a vine crawling up the wall inside the gallery. And we looked at it and we were like, "Wow." You know, the colors alone were really neat. But when you get really close, as mom is here, you realize that it's spun
pieces of paper just twirled around into a tight little like uh leafshaped item and then, you know, put very carefully in color variations so that it
went from dark green to light green to blue to white across the wall. And I mean the walls are 15 feet high and it was just spidering all over the place. So again, you know, it's one of those places where you come out feeling inspired, feeling like, okay, maybe I
couldn't do that, but you know, I can appreciate it. Um, moving up into the Boston area. I'm running I I'm not out of time. I'm actually over time. Do you want me to keep going? I'll do one or two more. Um, this is an oldie but a goodie. This is
the Bunker Hill Museum in Charleston, across the street from the actual Bunker Hill monument. It is exactly the way I remember it from my fifth grade field trip. Exactly. The little diaramas with the soldiers. Um, nobody has a face, you
know, that sort of thing. Um, but it was so worth going again, even though, you know, I know the basics about Punker Hill and everything. And of course, it is the 250th anniversary, so refreshing my memory wasn't a bad thing. But this
time, I went around the room and read all of the information about the building of the monument. And that in itself was an education. That was fascinating to me because other than
these little diaramas, it talked a lot about the wise and the hows of building this monument. This was the original monument that was built in memory of one man >> whose name was Joseph Warren. He was a
young doctor from Boston who actually treated some of the victims of the Boston Massacre. and he spoke out against the British monarchy and against you know the tyranny of um of taxation
without representation. He was killed at Bunker Hill and he had so many followers. He was also a mason so he was part of a fraternal organization. He had so many people interested in his life,
unfortunately, you know, the end of his life that one one museum curator told me that he was the first use of forensic dentistry. They found his body buried in
a grave at Bunker Hill and identified him through uh fillings that Paul reveal Bunker Hill monument in his memory. But then it became rebuilding the monument bigger and better than ever
>> from donations um from local people. And it really crossed the line between actually people wanting to give to building the monument and sort of being held up by the locals who said if you're
a patriot, if you want to be an American, you will give us money for this monument. So they were really squeezing people for donations and making them feel like if you pay us to help build the monument then we will
include you more equally in the community. >> What so very very interesting stuff to learn there and I will wrap it up with this one which is the American Heritage Museum in Hudson. Has anyone been to this one? >> Very interesting. You know, as a World
War II author, I was dying to get in here, dying to get in. Um, I was blown away by the size of the collection. Of course, it is the Collins Foundation plus the collection of a man from the
West Coast named Jacques Littlefield, I think it. Yeah, Jacqu Littlefield. They brought it together. It's a very new museum. It's very well done except I felt that the human element was
really really missing like sorely missing in this museum that you have a lot of hardware and some of the hardware has cool stories too like the tank that broke through the ice in Poland went to the bottom of the river and was not
recovered for 50 years and it was in pristine condition and it's the only one of its type. Oh, that's kind of cool. But to me, it's the human stories that make the history come alive, so to speak. And there's not so much of this,
except there are lots of exceptions in my program. This was incredible. They have recreated an actual portion of the Hanoi Hilton >> from Vietnam
and they project PS on the inside of the building having them talk about their time when they were incarcerated and tortured in that
building. So to actually have part of the Hanoi Hilton in medicine, >> it gave me goosebumps. Now I was a young kid during Vietnam. I don't remember a lot of it, but I've read a lot and I've met some survivors.
This is completely unique and just very very well done. Unfortunately, you can't just get to the Hanoi Hilton and skip the rest of the museum. Um I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend skipping it, but They do have dosent who circulate
throughout the museum and talk about the different pieces and talk about history and that is super valuable but I feel like it's it could be a very uneven experience because if you don't have the good fortune to connect with a dosent
who is talking about something that you want to hear about it might not you know work for you. But for the parts of the museum that you can just go in and see on your own, it is a unique collection.
It's an exhaustive collection. And they have many, many outuildings as well, full of airplanes and other equipment from the war. They have demo days where they're driving the tanks across the field in the back. They take people up
in the B24 bombers for rides. Um, so it's a very busy museum, but >> go back to >> it is what it is. So I'll stop there. Thank you so much for your time tonight. Does anyone have a question, comments,
correction? I'm open to it all. No, >> get to see the gear sculpture installed >> because it took so long, >> right? He was in his 20s when he won the competition. It was 40 years later, so
he was in his 60s. >> Yeah, he did. Question. >> Um, if I can plug the local museum. >> Oh, please. >> Uh, the Fort Devin's Museum. It's up the road here. >> I haven't been there yet. >> Please come visit. We're open on Friday.
>> I'm I'm on the board. Okay. >> We'd love to have you. Um, and you know there I'd like to think we're a much smaller like that and a teapot. >> Oh, really? >> Not not the vehicles. You don't have the vehicles to do this. >> Sure.
>> Yeah. I It's been on my list for the longest time, but you know, it's a matter of matching up timing. >> We're only open Tuesdays and Fridays and third Saturdays. So, yes, that's that's difficult, >> right? That's the tough part of so many volunteer-led museums. Yeah. I you know
I >> Oh, that's wonderful. I can't say enough about the people that I've met at the museums throughout the state. So dedicated, so enthusiastic, so willing to share what they know, you know, their
um excitement and um and their education. It's it's been it's been a fabulous trip for me to to do this program and to do the little book that I did. So, thank you all for coming and thanks for having me.
>> Thank you very much. And I'll be back.