Community Corner

Custom House Celebrates 15th Anniversary of Library

The museum is holding two events this Saturday to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Frank L. McGuire Maritime Library.

From a press release issued by the Custom House Maritime Museum 

The Board of Trustees of New London Maritime Society, Inc. cordially invites friends and members to a  Special 15th Anniversary Celebration of the Frank L. McGuire II Maritime Research Library this Saturday, June 15, 2013, from 4:30 - 6:30 PM.   

It's a two-part celebration.  First, Verlyn Klinkenborg will give a reading from his new book, More Scenes from the Rural Life, at the Monte Cristo Bookshop,  13 Washington Street, New London, at 4:30 PM.  The reading is free and open to the public.  

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Next, at 6 p.m., the Custom House Maritime Museum, 150 Bank Street, hosts a reception for  Verlyn Klinkenborg in the courtyard beneath the museum's new tent. The reception is for NLMS members, only. Meet Verlyn, have a drink, and see the new library exhibition by Brian Rogers.  

Verlyn Klinkenborg is a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, to which he also contributes meditations about his farm in upstate New York, collected in The Rural Life. His other books include Making Hay, The Last Fine Time, and Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile. 
His book Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile concerns the tortoise which the English eighteenth century parson-naturalist Gilbert White inherited from his aunt, as described in his 1789 book The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. 

In the first half of 2006, Klinkenborg posted a farm and garden blog about The Rural Life, consisting of entries from the daily journal kept by Gilbert White in Selborne in 1784, and his own complementary daily entries. Since 1997, he has been a member of the editorial board of The New York Times. 

Mr. Klinkenborg has published articles in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, National Geographic and  Mother Jones magazines. He was the 2006-2007 visiting writer-in-residence at Pomona College, where he taught nonfiction writing. In 2007, he received a Guggenheim fellowship, which funded his book The Mermaids of Lapland, about William Cobbett.  


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Also, Saturday is the opening of: Celebrating fifteen years of the Frank L. McGuire Maritime Library -- An Exhibition at the Custom House Maritime Museum, curated by NLMS Librarian Brian Rogers.   

The library named, in 1988, for the late attorney Frank Lewis McGuire II has evolved over fifteen years into a rich collection of books, papers and images on a variety of maritime topics.  As part of the New London Maritime Society and its Custom House Maritime Museum, the library focuses on the maritime history of the seaport founded in 1646 by John Winthrop Jr.  Books on view relate to such colorful figures in New London history as Winthrop himself, 19th century diver/engineer Thomas A. Scott, Eugene O'Neill, and Admiral Hyman Rickover. 

Newspapers announce the opening of the first Thames River Bridge in 1889, the 1954 launch of the USS Nautilus, and other events.  A ten-foot 1855 triptych of Long Island Sound charts renders a birds-eye view of the shoreline in exquisite detail, while an atmospheric giclee print by marine artist Russ Kramer depicts the 1911 rendezvous of the New York Yacht Club at New London on a summer evening.

After the federal government decided to dispose of the Custom House in 1983, local attorney Frank L. McGuire II provided essential support enabling the New London Maritime Society and its director, Lucille Showalter, to acquire and renovate the 1835 granite building as a museum.  The commemorative library exhibit is on view through July, daily from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. except Monday. 

Please contact Librarian and Exhibit Curator, Brian Rogers  - Tel. (860) 572-0291, email: bdrog@conncoll.edu to learn more. 


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