Empress of Ireland

Empress of Ireland 1905-1914

I’ve been thinking about this day for a long time. Now it’s here.

The 100th anniversary of a disaster and a personal family tragedy. Somehow, large number anniversaries are supposed to feel different, more poignant. But for me, I remember most this day in 1964 when I first became aware of the sinking of this ocean liner and the 1012 souls who were lost – including my great-great grandparents. I was the same age as my grandmother was when James & Ellen Faulkner (her maternal grandparents) were drowned as the ship sank in only 14 minutes after impact with a Norwegian coal vessel.

For years, I had imaged myself visiting the memorial outside Rimouski, Quebec. That will come, in time. Today I will head to Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto were there is a memorial to some of those lost – members of a Salvation Army Band.

Banners

Does your museum have banners?

photo source : Lorie Pierce

Besides being festive and colourful, banners are a good way to provide a visual statement of what your museum is all about.

The new Strategic Plan of our museum changed to embrace an organization of 8 different Centres of Discovery, plus a new adaptable logo. These banners portray the Centre for Earth and Space, and the Centre for Ancient Culture. Each banner has tweaked the lens of the logo to match its theme….a ceramic plate for Ancient Cultures and a geode for Earth and Space.

 

 

 

 

 

sightings – Art Deco bookends

 

photo source : Lorie Pierce

These bookends sit on a table in our European Decorative Arts Gallery. They always make me smile as they remind me of Heckle and Jeckle – two animated crows from my youth.

 

 

Mary Anning

Google doodle May 21 2014 source : Google.com

Born in 1799, Mary Anning was the discoverer of the famous ichthyosaur and plesiosaur fossils on the Jurassic coast of Dorset. Following her death in 1847, Charles Dickens wrote of her contribution to geology: “It was not a science when she began to discover, and so [she] helped to make it one.” The Natural History Museum in London has called her the “greatest fossil hunter ever known“.

Could this be a photo of her?

early photo print by William Henry Fox Talbot source : National Media Museum, Bradford

This article discusses the possibility.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2013/aug/21/photograph-mary-anning-women-history-geology

 

 

Evening event

How do you engage a crowd of partying young people, drinks in hand, with the story presented by fossils?

We decided to stage a challenge. A chance to go back in a Time Machine and match fossils with their corresponding time periods.

challenge in action – I am in the red shirt source : @ROMToronto Twitter feed

Evidence of fossil species included:

– a stromatolite from Northern Ontario  = 1.4 billion years old

– Orthocone cephalopod = 445 million years old

– a metasequoia (tree) = 76 million years old

– a woolly mammoth = 12,000 years ago

The mammoth was represented by Meltilda, our stuffed mammoth toy frozen into a block of ice (for the second time – see former post).

It’s surprising how many people automatically felt that the woolly mammoth should be the oldest of the life forms. A good time was had by all 75 people playing our matching game. Many participated in teams of 3 or 4 by including friends they had come with. Being in a team worked well, as the combined knowledge and thinking power of many (especially after a few drinks) was preferable to tackling the questions on one’s own.

Successful participants received a Palaeo Prowess ‘Expert’ sticker.

The activity had just enough challenge to keep it interesting without being too difficult and frustrating.

Obsession with trilobites

So, I’m not the only one.

Someone else is obsessed with trilobites. Plus she has the artistic expertise to express her delight at these incredible extinct creatures with their myriad forms.

Obsession : Trilobite Collection source : Christine Koch designs

Christine Koch is a painter and printmaker who draws her inspiration and imagery from Canada’s mountain and northern environments.

For the past twenty years she has made her home in Newfoundland, an island in the North Atlantic off Canada’s rugged east coast. There, she divides her time between St. John’s, the province’s capital city, and Woody Point, an enclave community in Gros Morne National Park. http://www.christinekoch.com

Her work shows the marvelous natural designs to be found in nature – even if that life form has now been extinct for 251 million years.

I am now the proud owner of a red t-shirt emblazoned with yellow trilobites courtesy of Christine’s talent and obsession.

Incidentally, Christine has a studio at Woody Point, NL, where our museum salvaged the skeleton of a recently deceased blue whale.

Storytelling – what we do

Whether you are a curator, preparator, exhibit planner, teacher, docent or volunteer gallery interpreter…the museum professional is involved with the creation and dissemination of stories. These narratives come alive through printed signs, booklets, classes, gallery visits, websites, lectures, special exhibits, videos and, increasingly, social media such as Google Hangouts.

It got me thinking about the art of storytelling and I checked a Great Course about the topic out of the local library.

source : TPL

The Great Courses are a series of half hour lectures on various topics by academics in those fields. This set is composed of 24 lectures and has this introduction:

The gift of storytelling may be one of life’s most powerful—and envied—skills. A story well told can make us laugh, weep, swell with pride, or rise with indignation. A story poorly told can be not just boring or uncomfortable, but positively painful to experience. Humans seem to be fundamentally hard-wired for stories—they’re how we record both the monumental events of life and the small, everyday moments. http://www.thegreatcourses.com

It promises to be an interesting course in how to build skills in balancing the story-teller-audience triangle.

Heritage Image

1947 museum leaflet source : ROM archives

Our museum just turned 100 years old and people are being encouraged to share their ROM memories and memorabilia with others.

This is the cover of a promotional leaflet from just after WW2. Imagine all the extra info that would be added to it now ……postal code, province, country, Twitter & Facebook handles, website & blog, Instagram site, 10 digit phone number, (fax number maybe?).

ichnology……

…. is not the study of ‘icky’ things, I found out. Rather,

Ichnologic studies are based on the discovery and analysis of biogenic structures: features caused by living organisms. Thus, burrows, trackways, trails and borings are all examples of biogenic structures, but not casts or molds of dead shells or other bodily remains. wikipedia

There are some artifacts in the museum collection that qualify under this definition, such as this burrow of a small ancient beaver.

burrow, ROM Age of Mammals Gallery photo source : Lorie Pierce

An interesting book I am part way through is written by someone I connect with through Twitter.  Anthony J. Martin is a  palaeontologist, geologist, and professor at Emory University, Atlanta, GA

Here’s the cover of his newly published book.

Book cover photo source : amazon.ca

Did you know there is a quarry in Queensland, Australia where 3,000 Late Cretaceous dinosaur footprints are permanently preserved? And that evidence of a burrowing dinosaur has been found?

Remarkable discoveries that give us even more insight into the behaviour of these extinct animals.

 

Just what is a Meme?

A meme is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. wikipedia

It’s fortuitous that our museum’s initials rhyme with the word ‘calm’ – albeit with a bit of poetic license. Now we are on the meme bandwagon.