Sunday Morning Breakfast:

Variations on a theme

cinnamon roll is a nice touch.















Note: Gorilla Munch with banana and frozen cranberry juice ice cube in grapefruit juice.
















Honey peanut butter toast goes a long way, too.
















Simple, perfectly cooked bacon.

Thursday's Scrimshaw Identification Challenge:

Is this an authentic piece of scrimshaw?















(as always, click to enlarge)
















Provenance: the guy who brought this purchased it off of ebay from a dealer out of Honolulu. He did a bit of research on it, thought it was pretty neat, and, comforted by a money-back guarantee, decided to take a risk

Description: the handle is made from bone (you can tell bone from ivory because bone generally has capillary specks). The metal of the blade is ferric (just put a magnet up to it), which means it is partly or completely composed of of iron. The bone handle seems to be filled with a non-ferric metal, perhaps lead.

The knife was probably meant to be a skinning knife, hence the wide blade that allows space for a person’s fingers to keep clear when making cuts, and notches on the back of the blade for tearing hide.

There are a number of images carved into the knife. On the blade itself is a rather buxom mermaid, who—unfortunately—doesn’t show up too well on my picture.

















On the handle is a wide spiral pattern, in between which is written the author's name, the date, the ship, along with a carving of a little American flag and a hopeful little sperm whale.
































What's your diagnosis? It’s nearly impossible to tell whether or not a work is authentic based on a picture; you’ve really got to handle the object. So if you guessed the knife is authentic, you can comfortably blame the photo.

Here's how you can tell it's fake:

1. The metal is still burred, as if it were recently carved.
2. The pits in the metal occurred before the carving did (you can tell this by looking at how the lines travel across the metal under a magnifying glass), meaning the metal first corroded, and then carved. Why would a whaler carve on an unpolished knife?
   
3. The dye is brown—99.9% of authentic scrimshaw uses pitch black dye.
4. The name is inconsistent with the ship and date (you have to check actual records to find this out, or just have it miraculously memorized, like all the guys in the Whaling Library do).
5. The handle is unworn. It is odd for a workman’s tool to be completely unused—whalers rarely bring stuff on board that they aren’t going to be using!
6. The scrimshaw looks as if it were carved by a two-year-old. It’s really just not good scrimshaw.

So the poor guy is going to have to go see how good that money-back guarantee is. Hopefully it is good, but he made the mistake of having the knife shipped to him by FedEx. Never do this. Always use USPS. Why? Because if you ship a forgery via the United States Postal Service, you've officially perpetrated a federal crime, which a nice trump card to be able to pull out if you find yourself dealing with an obstinate refunder. However, if you use a private company such as FedEx, you are S.O.L.

Scrimshaw that is fake is cleverly called fakeshaw (as opposed to fungshaw, which is refers to scrimshaw carved out of fungus, which is not to be confused with funshaw, which is what I call the larger category of carved art).

In closing, here is a picture of the hopeful little sperm whale that lives on my door.

Case Closed on Coffee

How come no one ever told me that Starbucks Coffee was named after the stalwart first mate to Captain Ahab himself?!

Gordon Bowker, one of the founders of Starbucks, originally wanted to call his coffee shop the Pequod, but changed his mind. [Who wants a big, hot, steaming cup of “PEE-quod?”] My views on drinking Starbucks coffee have changed completely. No wonder Starbucks is so successful; they are the ultimate, American coffee.

















I used to avoid coffee—despite its deliciousness—in order to hold back yet another vice. No more! Recent studies from Harvard (so it must be true!) find that not only is coffee not bad for you, it’s actually good for you! Everything in moderation, friends—aurea mediocritas.

Granted, when I drink my coffee, I usually down it like a cheap beer: big gulps, little time. I’m not drinking it for deliciousness; I’m drinking it for results!

Now I can sip my coffee casually, guilt free with a corporation that really understands me!
*sip*

Auctions & Artifacts

It looks like my photo from the Over the Top museum auction/fund raiser made it into the paper (click to enlarge):














I'm excited to say that this will be the second time I’ve made it into the Standard Times, or as locals so affectionately call it, the Substandard Times. Neat!

Speaking of auctions, I made it up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire last Sunday for the Northeast Maritime Auction. It was great to see such a beautiful little town, and to spend the afternoon writing down the selling prices of numerous fantastic artifacts. My Director was kind enough to introduce me to a number of the big name maritime collectors who were at the auction. And then I got to see them in action:

“I see 85, 85, 85 can I get 90? 90 thousand. 90 thousand. Going to 95—gentleman in the blue, 95 grand anyone for 100k?—105, who’s got 105? No one? No one? This is a great deal here guys, a genuine X, really no more?—SOLD to 7732 for 105,000 thousand dollars!”

That’s basically the auction in a nutshell, with items selling for as little as 100$ to as much as 150k (or, if I had come the previous day, up to 300k). The highest selling items (75-125k scrimshaw sperm whale teeth) went to the collectors Stuart (my director) introduced me to, which was exciting in and of itself. What really took the cake was going to work the next day, only to find all those collectors had shown up with their newly purchased scrimshaw artifacts so Stuart could analyze them.

I guess this shouldn’t have surprised me: Stuart wrote the dictionary on scrimshaw, literally.

…and the sequel.

So I spent my Monday looking at hundred thousand dollar whale teeth under a microscope with maritime collector juggernauts, each armed with his own magnifying glass.

Tooth identification is pretty interesting. With a microscope, you can see exactly how the cuts were made into the tooth, exactly how the knife or tool responded to the surface of the tooth, and generally get an idea of the artist’s style. Close inspection of letter formation, or how the artist depicts eyes, or other characteristic features also helps to identify who the author might have been. Newly carved teeth are soft, and harden with age, allowing one to make long smooth cuts in its surface—so if you see scraping or fracturing, you can be pretty certain that the scrimshaw is a forgery. We took the teeth into the museum collections to compare them to a number of other teeth to see if we could find a common artist, but the comparison led us to believe that we’d come across a completely new artist altogether. I guess that means another entry for Stuart’s dictionary. He promises me I’ll be well versed in tooth identification by the time I leave here—a party trick that, no doubt, will leave the ladies swooning!

I got a chance to talk with a few of the collectors, and got an earful on auction dynamics. Basically, if you go into an auction without full knowledge of the artifacts that you want to purchase, how much they are worth, how much you are willing to spend, and especially who else is bidding, then you’re asking to be screwed.

I love this job because stuff is always just falling onto my desk, and it’s always cool. I walked into Stuart’s office the other day and he had a full on harpoon head just laying across his desk—“sure, touch it, poke it, see how it’s aligned, just put it back on my desk when you’re done.”

Thursday a lady came in who was a descendent of George Lyman Howland, (Howland is a big-name whaling family here in New Bedford). She had brought in her great-grandfather's liquor box, a wooden box divided into six compartments with nice glass bottles with frosted glass stoppers. A couple of them even had residual alcohol in them, one of them was still half full of gin! Basically, I was looking at the original, 19th century, Quaker six-pack.

Sundance Film Festival: Green Porno

I got this link from the Vassar Ultimate Frisbee Team mailing list, reminding me once again why I will never drop off the list, despite not being on the team.

Sundance Film Festival: Green Porno

It's not actually pornography. I haven't laughed this hard in a while. It might be better than my favorite YouTube video:

TISA - Obama

(Turn up your speakers, trust me.)

Mouse Hunt

I’ve been on a mouse hunt the past few days.

I remember when my dad used to set traps around the house, and I felt bad for the mice and rats he was killing.

No more.

These little buggers dart around in my peripheral vision. They think they’re so quick, but I know their game. Part of the problem is, when you live inside a library with a lot of important stuff on the floor below you, there is no room for messing around with any liability.

The mice did hit me back. I recently found a “bonus” prize: the half-decomposed, half-mummified body of a mouse who had been stuck to one of those glue traps and dragged himself under the fridge to die—it really must have been an awful way to go, but his revenge lasted weeks; I’d been wondering why my fridge smelled sour despite all my cleaning efforts.

I’m very convinced of the humanity of the classic spring snap mousetrap. There is really no quicker way to go. You take a bite, and it’s over before you even taste the cheese. I hope I go that quickly, I just hope that when I ultimately bite the cheese, mine comes with a small side of dignity.

I figured my journal would be a-okay without a picture gallery of my murder spree, so instead, here is a collection of shattered childhood fantasies:

Haircut

I got a haircut...
here:

Week 2: Bagpipes, Floods, Facebook, Auctions, Bread and Breakfast

New Bedford puts on all these fantastic citywide events on a regular basis. I love this little town. Walking downtown yesterday afternoon, I encountered a whole marching band of bagpipes, and an entire temporary skatepark set up in a nearby parking lot. All of this was fun to watch, but I was just out to hit the farmer’s market for fresh bread.

Yum. This lady makes such good bread. I make it into toast everyday for breakfast.

Cereal with banana, bacon, grapefruit juice, bread and strawberry jam—now that’s a breakfast you can be excited to wake up for! I’m going to ask her to make me honey bread for next week. I’m thinking French toast.

On Monday, a huge storm dumped five inches of rain in about an hour. It completely flooded the Museum’s library basement, which is a huge problem from the standpoint of humidity and mold issues for priceless stores of original whaling journals and literature one floor above. This meant lots of helping move stuff out of the basement—damage control. Not to mention the internet and phone systems were down all last weekend and through the middle of this week, adding more trouble to the organization of flood-control efforts. I did get to adopt a bunch of neat books that got soaked. Thankfully, nothing historical was damaged, just a small portion of the bookstores overflow storage.

I also was invited to sit-in on the planning committee for redesigning the Museum, which was absolutely fascinating with regards to their goals and philosophy when it comes to setting up exhibitions. I made some suggestions about marketing the museum on facebook, redesigning the website (something which has been in the works for a while), and advertising the NBWM to all nearby major universities in order to see if any American History and Literature professors might want to incorporate a fieldtrip to the NBWM into their curriculum. I’ll write more about all this later.

We’ve also been in a discussion at the museum about forgery in artwork, which has lead to some conversations that nerds like me really enjoy. I’ll post on that later, too.

Last Saturday was the Over the Top fund raiser and auction at the Whaling Museum, where I went around and got the names of all the people the photographer was taking pictures of, and I even got a few pictures of myself!

It was really pretty fun: I had a good excuse to meet a bunch of NBWM patrons; there was delicious food and catering; and I really enjoyed being at a party under an enormous blue whale skeleton.

This Sunday, I’m bussing up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for the North Eastern Maritime auction where I’ll be shadowing the Senior Curator while he does whatever he does at auctions. This is definitely going to be really exciting.

I'll close with the following, a more whaling museum-appropriate watercolor of a Madonna and Child:

Disaster Preparedness

At the museum, we’ve been in a discussion on and off for the past several days about whether or not one would die for a piece of artwork. We came to this question after the Conservator brought up the topic of his position as co-chair of the Disaster Preparedness Committee, and the museum’s need to prepare a list of the top ten most important objects to retrieve in the event of a fire, flood, bomb threat, etc.

Though everyone agrees that such a list should exist, it is difficult to compile on account of different curators having different ideas of what is most valuable. Is our basis of value entirely pecuniary, or does it emphasize historical and/or cultural significance as well? The value of a given object, after all, fluctuates. As decades progress, different generations relate more or less to certain works of art—so just listing the top ten most expensive items in the collection is often not adequate; the question requires the expert consensus of curators with a powerful sense of foresight.

But say the decision were up to you. Say a fire broke out and you could save a monument, or you could save yourself, what would you do? Or say some mobster came knocking on your door, asking for the access codes to a safe containing the View of Toledo or the Pietà , and he would kill you if you didn’t give it to him, what would you do? Any number of hypothetical situations will suffice for this question, as long as the core remains the same: at what point is a human life worth more or less than a work of art?

For several of the other interns and for the registrar the answer is a resounding “never!” Their argument is that no object is worth more than human life, that things are things, but people are on a wholly different value scale, entirely incomparable. The Registrar related to me the story of how she lost her entire family photo collection when her basement flooded, a tragedy that made her understand that things are just things, and never so important as people. Her response is the result of experience-based pragmatism, and seems on the surface to be a sound argument. But she doesn’t see any difference between her family photos and the The Birth of Venus (just look at her!)

Before I explain why I disagree with the Registrar, I have to, for the sake of our hypothetical situation, clarify the issue of instinctual responses in life-or-death situations—that is, no one can know what his or her actual response would be in a life-or-death situation until it actually occurs, when the adrenaline is rushing, when the fight-or-flight animal impulse and Lady Irrationality take the reins and high-tail your scared butt out of the hypothetical burning building faster than a Nantucket sleigh ride. (Does anyone else hear the Mighty Mighty Bosstones playing right now?)

Furthermore, one who jumps into a life or death situation usually understands the situation to be just that: life or death. Rarely is the situation so clear cut, as in the case of Harry Potter, that death is guaranteed. Most heroes genuinely expect to survive—it is their willingness to take the risk at all that makes them heroes. For the sake of our hypothetical situation, there is no chance of survival. Only one survives: you or the art.

My judgment that my life is worth less than the Pietà comes from my assessment that whatever effect my little life will have in this world, whatever I may do, wherever I may go, it will never amount to the positive effect that the Pietà will have on humankind as a whole for generations to come.

Take Edward Jenner’s discovery of the small pox vaccine. I’m sure there is a precise number, but generally we can say that Jenner's discovery has directly saved the lives of many thousands. This object therefore is directly worth human lives. In this case, there is no longer even a question of whether or not this vaccine is worth dying for because there is a direct relation to human life.

But artwork doesn’t save lives, right?

Let’s take a monumental piece of literature, the Aeneid, or the Platonic Dialogues, or whatever. These are works that have been read by countless people, changed the way people live and continue to do so, sometimes indirectly, sometimes directly. I (and many others) can physically point to passages from the Aeneid that have changed my world view and life for the better. Just about everyone can say this for some great work of art—though the specific works may vary on an individual basis. Great art has this effect. My point here is that these monuments are very much like the small pox vaccine. All one has to do is receive the inoculation, and suddenly they have a better chance at a happy, healthy life. Similarly, all I had to do was read that book or experience that art, and suddenly I live a happier, richer life.

Now that it is clear that objects can be valued in comparison to human life, the question of whether or not one should die for a monumental work of art is no longer interesting. Of course one should! Particularly if it is a work that is of special significance to the person; but even if it is not, one should recognize his or her own limitations in the appreciation of great art and respect that, even if one doesn’t particularly like the Mona Lisa, the failure of appreciation is the failure of the viewer—the greatness of such monuments is no longer in question.

Am I suggesting that some people’s lives are worth more than others? Am I suggesting that there is a hierarchy of value to human life?—that Edward Jenner ought to really consider running into the burning museum to save artwork before he finishes his vaccine, because perhaps his life might actually be worth more than a work of art? Yes—absotively! This logic stems from the very same logic that puts women and children onto the lifeboats first and asks a security guard to take a bullet for JFK: the value of a human life varies based on the potential for goodness.

So if it came down to destruction of some hypothetical original manuscript of the Aeneid, or some like form of it, yes—take me instead.

But to return to the concerns of the Conservator, one seldom expects life or death situations to occur, and when they do, there is rarely time to consider the right course of action—one must act! So take some time now. Sit with yourself. Consider your own disaster preparedness.

Conservators’ Lament

Deep in the night, a small family of rats enters through the ventilation shafts of a museum, enticed by spilled breadcrumbs accumulated by the young new intern. The swift copy pasting of information in the artifact database will lead to the propagation of a typo which will not be resolved for upwards of a decade. Several boxes of newly donated artifacts arrive at a particularly busy time; they will remain in the corner for that week and be forgotten for that month—when they are finally cataloged, no one will remember who brought them to the museum in the first place. Upstairs in the gallery, direct sunlight will hit the same painting every day for the next six months of exhibition, causing irreversible color fading. Downstairs, in the library, thousands of books continue to yellow, slowly oxidizing, ever so slowly burning. A failed water pump will lead to flooding in the basement during the next serious downpour. Mold is inevitable. In the vault, a tired old journal opened too wide will suffer cracks along ancient fault lines in its spine. Later, pulled from its shelf, the spine will crumble entirely. In the exhibition room, a lady will accidentally bump a painting with her shoulder while backing up for a family picture. Somewhere nearby, the grease from her child’s handprint won’t be doing any good to whatever unfortunate object his fingers find appetizing. In transporting a painting on loan to another museum, the hydraulic shock system fails. Despite careful packaging, vibrations will cause a failure between the gesso and paint layer—too soon bubbling will be visible. Poor framing will flatten the fine indentation on an ancient print, dulling the impressed ink; poor matting choice will press it against acidic paper. Nothing is static. All things are dynamic. Everything is falling apart.

Yet soldier on, Conservators, you tireless warriors in the noble battle against entropy!

My Internship is Kriller.

I stepped outside my room today after work to find this:

Apparently, today is the New Bedford 1950’s Car Rally Day…or something. It was pretty eventful. I’m sorry I couldn’t get an audioclip of the 1950’s cover band that was blasting all evening, but here are some cool cars instead:

I love this Mustang.

The Man-Mobile.

James Bond?

Angriest car I've ever seen.

My Corvair! In a show!

I have a really cool job. They put me in a big storage room, and I go through a list of accession numbers and pull incredibly valuable maritime prints and stack them carefully on a table for the Classic Prints exhibit the museum is putting up in a few months. Then the Conservator comes by, and we look at each print and he teaches me about what needs to be done with regards to framing, touch-ups, and general conservation for the prints. This process involves everything from matting and cutting, mounting, frame choice, mold and spot removal, UV protection, tear and corner repair, handling and manipulation of works, and identification of media. We go through each print and do this, and then he has me practice locating these features of the prints myself. It’s a really neat, detail-oriented job. Then, for “homework”, I go read a big book on how printmaking works, another on identifying prints, and another on how one goes about forging prints.

Once my Director/Curator gets back (he is out for the next week, though I’ll be meeting up with him next weekend for the Northeast Action), he and I will go over the same paintings, discuss their historical and artistic relevance, and decide for certain which should go in the exhibit. (I have a whole different set of books to read for this, one of which I just finished, Herman Melville’s Picture Gallery was written by the man himself, and was fantastic). In a nutshell, today I read a book about the art Melville is referring to in chapters 55-57 of Moby Dick (“Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales”, “Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales”, “Of Whales in Print; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars”, respectively), then I went and physically found and handled the drawings Melville was referring to, and discussed their condition with the Conservator. Scha-wing!

I did manage to come up with the proper Latin version of the phrase my Conservator wanted on his wall (“Preserve today for tomorrow”): Conservate hodienum diem crastino!

We also got into a heated discussion in the registrar’s office with the other day-interns about what does one save when a fire hits a museum (god forbid!). This quickly degenerated into an argument about whether or not one would give his or her life to save a work of art. I was surprised to find that the registrar, the gatekeeper of the museum’s artifacts would, unquestionably—be it the Pietà or even the Mona Lisa—save her own life over the art. The Conservator and I felt that we’d definitely prefer the existence of a great work of art to our own; where would civilization be without the Aeneid, or Shakespeare, or—horrible to even think—Moby Dick?

Did I mention the wall of harpoon guns and jarred whale oil I found?

First Days in New Bedford

I’ve made it to New Bedford and I’ve officially done two days of interning. It was a bit of a journey to get here—initially I landed in Providence, Rhode Island, and had to look up a friend to stay with in Boston before busing myself down to the Whaling Museum on Monday.
Currently, I’m living in the “Scholars’ Quarters” (very posh sounding, I know), where I have basically the entire third floor of the Kendall library to myself. There is my room, which contains an office and a bedroom bisected by a small wall, three or four other bedrooms, two bathrooms, a conference room, a kitchen, a living room, several random supply closets, and a huge common room all for little ol’ me. Right now, I live alone, but I’m told other people (“scholars”, I presume) will come through occasionally.

The first order of business was moving all the best furniture into my room, which I’ve just about accomplished.
















The second was buying food.





















I keep finding new parts to the Scholars’ Quarters. I found a couple random doors that go out to different parts of the roof. I also keep finding random TVs and trinkets squirreled around in various cabinets, as well as notes and things from previous interns, which generally contain advice, and happy little pictures in all sorts of unexpected places.

















At first I was worried that I was going to be lonely up here in my scholarly tower, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to be a-okay. I have an absurd amount of reading and research to do as it is. But I’ve also done some patrolling around New Bedford, and there is quite a bit going on. The best part is everything is on my block. There’s a bank, Chinese food, dollar store, Rite Aid, Mexican food, sea food, several churches, music venues, cool coffee shops, cool clothing shops, and other young people, all within two blocks. There was a movie store too, but it is shutting down this month, so I got a whole bunch of DVDs for incredibly cheap.

My interning has been fantastic. I literally walk around all day with a notebook, and write down whatever anyone is saying, because it is always good.

This morning, I helped a dentist from the Harvard School of Dentistry photograph sperm whale teeth with various different pathologies, which he explained as we went along. I saw the world’s largest piece of scrimshaw (an enormous carved whale jaw) and learned that sperm whales are the only mammal with an unopposed set of teeth. That’s right, the world’s largest toothed mammal only has those big honking teeth on its bottom jaw—and biologists don’t even know why. My bet is that, since sperm whales clearly aren’t chewing their food with only one set of teeth, they probably dive deep, grab those squid, and drag them quickly to the surface in order to quickly depressurize/kill them. The dentist also said that the function of the Narwhal horn has been discovered: it is densely packed with very sensitive nerve endings which it uses for detecting the movement of prey in the water. Neat! [For more information: http://narwhal.org/]

I always assumed the horn was just for mating, like peacock feathers. You know what they say, big horn, big… …horn. I am, as they say here, 100% blubber-brained (this is a compliment).

I spent most of this afternoon working with the Whaling Museum’s conservator, a nice old man who spends his time making sure historical artifacts don’t decay. We sat around and he showed me all the different possible ways things can decay, and how he can repair and prevent that. Soon he will be showing me the actual techniques for getting stains, mildew, rips, etc out of prints, and how to properly package paintings, etc. We discussed the ethics of Photoshop, paintings and their frames (is the frame appropriate for the time period of the painting? Is it an original frame? If so, how do you maintain the two?), and the ever pressing question of at what point are you over-treating an object and intruding upon its natural aging process; that is, at what point are you violating the artist’s work/intent? What was the artist’s intent? He recited some of the conservators’ mottoes:

“Preserve today for tomorrow.” (He wants me to translate this phrase into Latin for him.)
“There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.”
“Do as much as necessary and as little as possible.”
“The treatment was successful, but the patient died.”
He also strictly adheres to Murphy’s Law.

I gave him my favorite motto:

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."