In celebration of the 160th anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick (or, as it was originally called, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale) the Providence Athenaeum has scheduled a series of six talks and events, plus a great exhibit with more to come in the fall. Director of member services, programs and development, Christina Bevilacqua, has made them all open to the public and free “. . . because I really want to have as many people as possible come to them and get hooked on this brilliant book.” On tap for this coming Friday,

“Hark! The White Whale!” — Historian Jamie L. Jones on culturally contextualizing Moby-Dick. Whaling did not belong to a pre-industrial archaic time; American whaling, in fact, was a driver of 18th and 19th century industrialization, and whaling was America’s first genuinely global, extractive industry. Whale oil and sperm oil were used to lubricate the Northern textile machinery processing Southern cotton, and to light homes, factories, and lighthouses.  And long before Moby-Dick came out, the American public devoured whaling stories much more famous in their time even than Melville’s masterpiece. This Salon will offer a broad overview of the 19th century cultural landscape and the role of whaling in the American imagination.

Then check out the exhibit curated by Kate Woodhouse on Moby-Dick and Melville, made up of artwork, maps, rare books, and whaling ephemera, including log books, rubber stamps, and a harpoon. A harpoon!

Free and open to the public, 5pm to 7pm, Friday, February 18, the Providence Athenaeum, 251 Benefit Street

The Carrie Tower at the corner of Prospect and Waterman Streets has been guiding tourists and new students to the campus for over a century. According to the Encyclopedia Brunoniana the tower

was erected in 1904, a gift of Paul Bajnotti of Turin, Italy, and a memorial to his wife, born Caroline Mathilde Brown, granddaughter of Nicholas Brown 1786, for whom the University is named, and daughter of Nicholas Brown 1811. She died in Palermo in 1892 after sixteen years of marriage to Bajnotti, who also erected a fountain in her memory in Burnside Park in Providence. The tower of red brick is 95 feet high, and is elaborately adorned with stonework. . . There are festoons of fruit near the base, and at the top, above four clock faces on the sides of the tower flanked by eight panels of fruit, are in rising succession, 32 carved urns, eight capitals, four shields, and at the very top, four urns with flame.

The somewhat startling inscription is taken from the Old Testament, the Song of Solomon, 8:6.

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A recent sketch on Portlandia (and if you aren’t watching this yet, why not?) features a couple who have selected “cacao” as its safe word. Unfortunately for the guy, the girl really enjoys enunciating this particular word and successfully cuts short anything even vaguely hinting at intimacy. This irrelevant piece of information has absolutely nothing to do with tomorrow’s lecture at Brown University.

“Before Columbus Discovered Chocolate — Cacao Cultivation and Courtly Appetite in the Classic Maya Lowlands” will be given by one of the country’s leading Maya scholars, Patricia McAnany of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The talk is free and open to public. It will be followed by a chocolate tasting courtesy of Massachusetts company Taza Chocolate.

Monday, 5:30pm, Room 101, Salomon Center, Main Green (through Faunce Arch), Brown University

(Apparently the military turned on him.) This is huge, but what now? Let’s hope that somewhere in that crowd is an Egyptian Vaclav Havel, Gandhi, Mandela, or George Washington to give focus to the movement. In the mean time, turn on your television and enjoy the exciting celebration in Tahrir Square. Remember that at least 200 people have lost their lives to get to this moment. MSNBC has some knowledgeable talking heads and good people on the ground.

Good news for fans of the gorgeous, historically significant, but seriously delapidated, Victorian pile known as the ‘wedding cake house’ up on Broadway — it has been purchased for $210,000 by Community Works Rhode Island, who plan to work with the Providence Revolving fund to transform it into affordable condominiums. From 1915 to 1947 the building had been the site of the Tirocchi Dressmakers’ Shop, the contents of which were donated to RISD for their collections and a 2001 museum exhibition. Brown University also stepped in to create From Paris to Providence, an online exhibition and catalog of the whole shebang.

In 1989, curators from The RISD Museum were invited into this mansion at 514 Broadway by its owner, Dr. Louis J. Cella, Jr. The site of A. & L. Tirocchi, Gowns — the dressmakers’ shop run by his mother, Laura Tirocchi Cella, and his aunt, Anna Tirocchi, between 1915 and 1947 — was a perfect time capsule. Dr. Cella offered the Museum its choice of the contents for its collection. The RISD Museum accepted more than 300 beautiful textiles and costumes from the 1920s and 1930s and all of the business records. Other fabrics and fashions were given to the Historic Costume and Textile Collection at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston.

And not a minute too soon for the rapidly deteriorating structure. It had made the Providence Preservation Society’s Most Endangered list in 2010, and according to the article in today’s ProJo the roof needs some immediate attention.

Your favorite mentalist Rory Raven has a new book out about the Dorr Rebellion — the shockingly under-taught and under-appreciated (almost) revolution in Rhode Island in the early 1840s.  Here’s the Valley Breeze:

An idealist and an optimist, Dorr had spent more than a year “fueled by the unshakable belief in the righteousness of his cause” and by the faith that the people of Rhode Island would rally around him. “Now, standing on a windswept hill with a few poorly armed farmers and mechanics, little food and none of his legislators present, the crisis had come,” Raven writes.

Raven called Dorr a remarkable man in Rhode Island history, who has been largely overshadowed by Roger Williams and the state’s other historical luminaries. He spent six months researching “The Dorr War,” which has been published by the South Carolina-based History Press, and came away more intrigued than ever by the portly Dorr.

“I don’t think I realized how bull-headed and idealistic he was, and I think, in a way, that doomed him to failure,” he said.

He’ll be at Books on the Square on Thursday night.  I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet (will write more once I have) but viscerally recommend those who don’t know about Dorr reading whatever they can find on it.  Somebody should’ve made a feature film by now, or at least a decent History Channel doc.  (I’d be thrilled to consult.)

Long before technology could show us the world through the eyes of meerkats and marching penguins, people had a passionate interest in the natural world. Victorians with disposable income were mad about collecting flora and fauna, filling their homes with specimens from foreign lands. To see what that might have looked like, check out the ‘Victorian Parlor’ exhibit on the second floor of our own Natural History Museum and Planetarium in Roger Williams Park. Not everything in the parlor is dead and stuffed — that’s a functioning beehive next to the window. The museum itself is now an artifact of times gone by and should be preserved as such. (A bizarre Age of Aquarius mural project — above your head as you walk in, and up the staircase — took place in the 60’s, with decidedly mixed results. They should probably go.)

Remember to check out ‘Curioser: New Encounters with the Victorian Natural History Collection’ an art installation curated by Erik Carlson and Erica Carpenter, up through September. Six lucky artists were let loose in the vaults to cull pieces from all the cabinets, boxes, drawers and crates of stuff. (Pictures from show after the jump.)

Curiouser was created with the goal of giving the public a glimpse into the Museum’s vast vaulted collections. The idea is not to show these seldom-seen items as arcane specimens, but rather as vivid evidence of a time when people were perhaps curiouser than we are today. Curiouser will free the Museum’s antique collections from the strict imperatives of science and analysis, releasing them “down the rabbit‐hole” of artistic production. Artists’ works incorporate actual pieces from the Museum’s vast Victorian collections of insects, shells, fossils, bird skins, plants and taxidermied mammals.

Museum is open 7 days a week, 10am to 5pm (last admission 4:30pm), directions

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Rhode Island artist Sydney Burleigh designed the Fleur-de-lys Studios in Providence in collaboration with the architect Edmund Russell Willson of Stone, Carpenter, and Willson. Built in 1885 in conjunction with the Art Workers Guild, the building was to be used for art studios, including Burleigh’s own. It is an important monument to the American Arts and Crafts Movement and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992. It is now owned by the Providence Art Club. 

From Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

The Secretary of State’s office is giving you a chance to learn more about Rhode Island’s political past by visiting a free exhibit in downtown Providence.

“Rhode Island Votes: A Lively Look at Election History” features early voting machines, campaign buttons, voter guides, newspaper stories, historic ballots, photos and histories of the Dorr Rebellion and the Women’s Suffrage movement.

The exhibit is on display through January 28 at the State Archives, 337 Westminster Street, Providence. The facility is open to the public weekdays from 8:30am to 4:30pm. Free parking is available at the In-Town Parking lot across Snow Street from the State Archives.

Photo at right of President Truman speaking in Providence

Roger Williams National Memorial Park will host the New England Native American Culture Week Powwow. This will be a traditional gathering of native peoples including the Narragansett Indian Tribe, with a grand entry at noon.

10am to 5pm, Saturday, Roger Williams National Memorial, 282 North Main Street

As noted yesterday by a friend of a friend, from Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History:

All that we can be absolutely certain of about Jefferson’s activities on the Fourth of July 1776 is that he recorded the temperature at 6A.M. as 68 degrees Farenheit, that he purchased a thermometer, and recorded the highest temperature of the day as 76 degrees, and that he paid for seven pairs of women’s gloves…

Old postcard Roger Williams Park.

*“You’re A Grand Old Flag” . . . George M. Cohan

Governor Stephen Hopkins led our delegation to the 1774 Continental Congress, later signing the Declaration of Independence for the colony of Rhode Island, an act of great bravery. John Adams wrote in his autobiography regarding Hopkins’ contributions to the congress,

But Governor Hopkins of Rhode Island, above seventy Years of Age kept us all alive. Upon Business his Experience and judgment were very Usefull. But when the Business of the Evening was over, he kept Us in Conversation till Eleven and sometimes twelve O Clock. His Custom was to drink nothing all day nor till Eight O Clock, in the Evening, and then his Beveredge was Jamaica Spirit and Water. It gave him Wit, Humour, Anecdotes, Science and Learning. He had read Greek, Roman and British History: and was familiar with English Poetry particularly Pope, Tompson [Thomson] and Milton. . . I could neither eat nor drink in those days. The other Gentlemen were very temperate. Hopkins never drank to excess, but all he drank was immediately not only converted into Wit, Sense, Knowledge and good humour, but inspired Us all with similar qualities.

Can you still get this stuff? Sounds excellent. This is the Stephen Hopkins House on Benefit Street next to the courthouse. George Washington visited once. It is unknown if he actually slept there, or whether the two of them stayed up all night giggling.

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This marker stands at the corner of Planet and South Main Streets. This weekend is Gaspee Days, about a 15 minute drive out of the city. Friday night is fireworks, Saturday is the parade, and Sunday the Gaspee burns again (info and schedule). I like that the committee has fashioned Gaspee Days as ‘Rhode Island’s First Water Fire’. Bryan Rourke has a nice piece about Pawtuxet Village and the festivities in the ProJo. Click here for a short history of those momentous events in June of 1772. The building housing the old Sabin Tavern was demolished in 1889, but the room in which the plotting occurred may still exist at 209 Williams Street. I hope that’s true. It’s complicated.

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A second installment from the Providence Preservation Society’s 2010 Most Endangered Properties series — the old Temple Beth El at 688 Broad Street (1910-1911). Like the previously discussed Atlantic Mills Towers it suffers from being a hulking pile in a difficult location (in a more than difficult economy). What can be done with this thing? It is still an inspiring edifice, but judging from the protective ‘netting’ around the capitals it’s going to need help soon. PPSRI provides some history;

In 1908, the Congregation Sons of Israel and David, a reform group, decided to move from their temple on Friendship Street. After renting a hall Downtown for a year, they decided to purchase land on Broad Street and construct a new temple. The interior of the Temple was built to reflect the Reform style of worship of the congregation. The congregation decided to build a new temple on the East Side during the 1940s as the population around Temple Beth El was no longer the German Jewish community it had once been. The neighborhood now consisted of a number of small Orthodox congregations from Eastern Europe. In 1954, Temple Beth El was sold to the new Congregation Shaare Zedek, which formed out of five smaller Orthodox groups in the neighborhood. Interior changes were made to reflect the congregation’s Orthodox style of worship.

The current owner plans to put it up for sale. Any takers? Any suggestions? More info and complete list at PPSRI. More pix after jump.

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