Lectures in San Jose, California

If you're going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area (California) for the The North American Society for Oceanic History, Steamship Historical Society of America and National Maritime Historical Society 2009 annual conference, you may want to consider heading south to San Jose on Sunday, May 17 to catch two lectures on environmental awareness around water issues: "The Rising Tide – Climate Change and San Francisco Bay Wetlands," a lecture by Adam Parris, and, "Raising Environmental Awareness for Water through Textile Art," a lecture by Linda Gass.

The lectures will be held at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and details are available on their calendar site. It's a wonderful, small museum, right downtown, and well worth a visit.

(TIA: I'm not just a fan of the museum, I'm a memeber.)

Gold Rush Port

The Friends of the San Francisco Maritime Museum Library send along this lecture announcement:

Gold Rush Port—the Maritime Archeology of San Francisco
Saturday, March 28, 2009, 6:00 p.m.

Drawing on excavations in buried ships and collapsed buildings from the Gold Rush period, maritime archeologist James P. Delgado re-creates San Francisco's unique maritime landscape, shedding new light on the city's remarkable rise from a small village to a boomtown of thousands in the three short years from 1848 to 1851. Copies of his new book, Gold Rush Port—the Maritime Archeology of San Francisco, will be available for sale.
The Sixth Karl Kortum Award for Maritime History will also be presented at this time by John Kortum, Esq. The Award of $1000 is presented every other year for the best research in selected fields of maritime history. For more information and guidance, please see the Friends’ website at www.maritimelibraryfriends.org. Submissions are accepted at any time, and will be considered in the succeeding September 12 deadline period for each award cycle.

TIA: This is the library where I work.

Lady travelers

Thanks to the Librarian's Internet Index, I've discovered the online exhibit, Wilder Shores : Lady Travelers of the 18th and 19th Centuries. From their site:

Wilder Shores is organized geographically, loosely following the structure of Barbara Hodgson’s book No Place for a Lady: Tales of Adventurous Women Travelers. (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2002). The exhibit features books and manuscripts, both by and about, women who traveled to these regions: Europe, Russia, Turkey, The Middle East, India and the Far East, Africa, The Americas.

The web exhibit doesn't include the texts, but does include portraits of these intrepid women and selected illustrations from their accounts, all excellently attributed with easily followed citations for further reading.

The Ocean Wireless Boys

Now you can easily join Jack Ready and Noddy Nipper in their high seas adventures, for The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code by Captain Wilbur Lawton has been published at Project Gutenberg.

The author, also known as John Henry Goldfrap, may have been better known for his Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol series, but the availability of this book may change that--daring rescues are the norm for the Ocean Wireless Boys!

Wooden Ships and other poems

From Wooden Ships:

They are remembering forests where they grew,—
The midnight quiet, and the giant dance;
And all the murmuring summers that they knew
Are haunting still their altered circumstance.

Read more in Project Gutenberg's eBook version of Ships in Harbour by David Morton, originally published in 1921.

Women in science

Institutions continue to celebrate Women's History Month by releasing wonderful resources. This photo of "Mary Jane Rathbun (1860-1943), working with crab specimens" is part of the Smithsonian's Flickr photostream and their "Women in Science" set.

Perhaps coincidental with these great images, the Library of Congress' Science Reference Services has published Women and Minorities in Science and Technology: a guide to Selected Resources. Like their other guides, this one contains screen after screen of references to books (general and specialized), journals, and recommended websites.

Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears

Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears is a free online magazine aimed at K-5 teachers, with beautiful photographs and interesting articles. The link to the archives is at the top of the page, and many articles are linked to a "Virtual Bookshelf" bibliography.

If you'd like to go strait to a listing of many, many children's books, follow their "Book Club" link to their Shelfari site. Also worth reading is their blog, highlighting resources of interest in their magazine and elsewhere.

WAVES

This lovely image is from George Eastman House's Flickr photostream, and their new "Women!" set. WAVEs, or "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service," were women returning to general Navy service in 1942. Yes. Returning. Women first entered U.S. Naval service in 1917.

For more on the women in the U.S. Navy, the Naval Historical Center's World War II era WAVES overview and images, and World War I era Yeomen (F) overview and images are a great place to start.

When the English warship became a gun platform

The BBC has published a fantastic article on its website, 'Superguns' of Elizabeth I's navy, outlining what's been learned from a reproduction cannon. The cannon, modeled on one recovered from an Elizabethan-era shipwreck, is providing the evidence to back up the historical accounts of the Elizabethan navy as outstanding gunners, much feared.

The article is well worth reading if you've ever been curious about naval gunnery. Wonderfully written, it's explains the technical issues and why these discoveries are so exciting beyond historical interest in the English battle with the Spanish Armada--why the development of uniform cannon changed the role of the warship to one of an effective gun platform, and led to the naval warfare that is practiced even today.

And it also has a cool video of the replica gun's first firing.

A Three-Hour Tour

In Seattle, Wash., the Center for Wooden Boat's 33rd Annual Dinner and Auction on March 7 sounds like wonderful fun--there will be a Gilligan's Island costume contest! From the flyer:

How it works: 1) Come to the auction dressed as your favorite Gilligan's Island character, 2) Register as a contestant at the door, 3) Pose for a quick photo to be placed at the voting table, 4) Mix, mingle and have fun! Attendees will vote for you, their favorite character by placing dollar bills in your ballot box on the voting table. Winners will be announced during the live auction. One winner will be selected for each Gilligan's Island cast member to receive a great prize, so come to the auction and show off your creative side!

Don't feel like dressing up? That's okay! Be sure to bring lots of dollar bills to 'vote' for your favorite character!

I hope they share photos on their website!