new Pelican Garden blog!

The Pelican Garden on Star Island is beautiful, has an impressive yield and now has its own blog!  You can check it out here, An Island Garden.

You may recognize the name of Celia Thaxter’s book about her own Isles of Shoals Garden, published the year of her death in 1894.  You can purchase the volume online on Shops on Star, in our bookstore, or read it on island in the Vaughn Library. It describes her garden on Appledore in detail, how she dealt with pests, and is a charming memoir.

Don’t miss the About page for Pelican Garden history!

The Isles of Shoals was almost part of an Oil Refinery!

I had read a little bit about this part of our Isles of Shoals history, but it was greatly illuminated last week at ISHRA – Isles of Shoals History and Research Association‘s annual meeting at the Seacoast Science Center.

Dudley Dudley was the theme speaker, and was truly riveting.  She began and ended with personal parts of her story and the middle was fascinating and nail biting, even though we obviously knew

More Pelican Pranks- an April Fools special

You can catch up with the other stories in our pranks series here.

Mark Adams shares this story:

When I was the fire marshal I got to decide the location of the fire scenario for the fire drill. At that time the sirens weren’t as loud as they are now, you used to be able to sleep through them.  I would always try to arrange the fire drill location for where I knew a girl was trying to take a nap, so when we busted in with all our fire fighting equipment we would wake them up!

Sarah Wicker, former head chef, had her children on Star as children and babies.  She used a doll to pretend it was her child and convinced staff that she had accidentally

Pel lexicon

Pelicans, (what we call Star Island staff), speak what seems to be “in code” sometimes.  We don’t always know we’re doing it, and sometimes we have a hard time talking about Star Island in a way that mainland folks will understand.  This is not new, but it is constantly changing.  I decided to start work on a Pel lexicon to help break down some of the language barriers 

Bobby Wharem, the smoldering dreamboat

This past summer we got a great box of donations that had belonged to Lenny Reed, a past cook on Star Island for many years, about whom there are many stories that maybe we’ll get on the blog at some point- (let me know if you have some of the stories and would like to share them!)

One of the photographs in the collection was this one of the Star Island staff in 1953:

And there he is, back right, my favorite Star Island dreamboat,

Bellhop pranks

Many island staff crews keep logs to keep each other informed of current work-related events and reminders, which also leaves room for gossiping and recounting practical joke adventures.  The following is a description from a night of bellhop pranks (which occurred while off-duty and crew bonding).

Erin 7:30 am: Recap of last night’s shenanigans

• put pink dress, big monster shoes, little girl shoes, maybe some other stuff in Janis and Amy’s room
• short sheeted Susan’s bed and woke up all of night crew
• hung out in Turtle and Dano’s room, blasted music, took a polaroid (they never came, we just confused some people)
• left an anonymous note at the desk for a wake up call at 6:00 am in Martin’s room
• put monkeys and other stuffed creatures in the rowboats.

Vaughn Cottage 2012 Exhibits

Did you miss the Vaughn Cottage library and museum in 2012?  Each year it is set up differently and highlights various storylines in Isles of Shoals history.

Well here’s a quick virtual tour of the cottage for you if you missed it, or if you want to revisit it!

Vaughn Cottage 2012 Exhibits (the link again in case you didn’t click it above!)

More information is available on the Vaughn website- such as more photos and information regarding all of the Celia Thaxter pottery shown last year as well as more information on some of the Dreamboats photos.

As we ramp up for the 2013 season with exhibits that will be determined this spring, do you have any requests or things that you would like to see covered?