Penobscot Marine Museum
2015 History Conference
Wish You Were Here: Communicating Maine’s Unique Sense of Place
Saturday October 24, 2015
8:00 am to 2:30pm
University of Maine Hutchinson Center
80 Belmont Avenue
Belfast, Maine
For tickets click here.
or call 207-548-0334 or 548-2529.
SCHEDULE
8:00 to 8:45 am Registration
9:00 to 9:30 am
Northeast Historic Film: Preserving Maine’s Sense of Place in Moving Images
Brook Minner is Executive Director of Northeast Historic Film.
Showing short clips, including the oldest known film shot in Maine (1901) and the 1919 launching of a four-masted schooner built in Harrington, Maine, Ms. Minner will illustrate the ways in which preserving Maine’s moving image history preserves and strengthens Maine’s sense of place.
9:45 to 10:15 am
Memories Create a Sense of Place: The Maine Folklife Center’s Role
Katrina Wynn is Archives Manager at Maine Folklife Center at University of Maine.
Using examples from its collection, Katrina Wynn will talk about the Maine Folklife Center and how it helps preserve and define Maine’s cultural history and sense of place. With a vast collection of oral histories and documents, the Maine Folklife Center preserves a treasure trove of local and regional cultural history on topics ranging from logging to Wabanaki culture.
10:30 to 11:00 am
Post Cards and Town History: Telling the Story of South Bristol with Post Cards
Dave Andrews has been the historian of the South Bristol Historical Society since its creation in 1996.
Postcards can be a great tool for discovering otherwise forgotten history. Dave Andrews will share his extensive experience in creating, managing and using his own post card collection to research South Bristol history. His postcard collection has figured prominently in many of the activities of mid-coast Maine history groups.
11:15 to 11:45 am
Glass Plate Maine: Early 20th Century Images from the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company
William H. Bunting is the author of A Day’s Work: A Sampler of Historic Maine Photographs 1860-1920 Part I & II. Kevin Johnson is the Penobscot Marine Museum Photo Archivist.
Kevin Johnson and Bill Bunting will show photos from Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company, the largest manufacturer of real-photo postcards in the United States, and discuss what these photos reveal about Mainers’ own sense of place and identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Earle Shettleworth Jr., William H. Bunting and Kevin Johnson are working on a book celebrating the extraordinary legacy and photographs of the company.
12:00 am to 12:45 pm – LUNCH
1:00 to 1:30 pm
Making a Storymap to Define “Place”
Margaret Chernosky, of Maine Geographic Alliance, brought a variety of GIS software to the teaching of geography at Bangor High School.
Chernosky demonstrates the construction of a storymap which defines Maine’s sense of place by using the iconic images, ranging from the County to the coast, from vintage postcards.
1:45 to 2:15 pm
Maine in Her Heart: the Photography of Margaret “Peggy ” McKenna from 1971 to 2013
Jay Davis is the author of History of Belfast in the 20th Century, and has been the editor of the Republican Journal, Waldo Independent, and Maine Times.
Peggy McKenna (1947 – 2014) was a professional photographer whose remarkable photos captured the essence of and endeared her to the hearts of her subjects. Over the years she photographed thousands of people for Down East, Waldo Independent, and Republican Journal, creating an astounding and vibrant photographic portrait of the place that is Midcoast Maine.
Lunch is included.