this is then us make man and welcome to positively remark and today we are going to be exploring a very interesting facility here in vermont the lake champlain maritime museum and  susan evans mccord the executive director of the lake champlain maritime museum welcome to positively vermont thank you so much for having me donna tell us a little bit about yourself for us and how you became involved with this well i'm new to the museum although the museum is not new but i've been there for just about two months and i spent some time in vermont after college and then was just most recently living in washington d c working at the smithsonian's national museum of american history so i have a real background and education and passion for the work that museums can do in our communities and when i moved back to vermont year ago i was working as the executive director of e s a vermont a great statewide organization that does arts education and development for people with disabilities and when i saw the opportunity at the lake champlain maritime museum i was happy to sad to leave e s a vermont but really happy to return to museums especially in a great place like vermont that's great  then we have wives collection of objects related to the maritime history of lake champlain so we are a archaeology and history museum so what we're really focused on and look at is the relationship between the people and the water and the place over time so how were the choices people made the actions they took our they impacted by the lake and how did the lake impact them from the beginning of people living in this region up to today and hopefully into the future we hope that all of our programs h building which is an old school house that was moved onto the site in the mid eighty's and we've since ballooned up to eighteen different buildings on site and some waterfront on lake champlain so each building has some exhibitions or education space we have a blacksmith forwards we have exhibitions on the science and archaeological history of the lake and then we have a large exhibition on the battle of al gore islands which connects directly to our replica boat the philadelphia so the philadelphia was one of the boats that suggs during the battle of al gore island seven hundred seventy six that boat was taken out of the lake in the one nine hundred thirty s it was fully intact on the bottom of the lake and it was put in the smithsonian's national museum of american history where it still is today  we have a replica boat replica of being exactly the same built from the same model that is on the water so visitors can go to the philadelphia step on board the ship and really step back into what it was like to be on a gunboat in seven hundred seventy six which is a pretty amazing opportunity we're open to the public from may through october so we're open for museum visits you can come on site check out our exhibitions at our experiences but then we also do education programs year round so in addition to our exhibitions we have school programs or reporter with schools around the region to do programming related to history archaeology and the ecology of the lake  we also do boat building programs one of our longest running programs is called champlain longboats it's a really wonderful project where we actually work with students who come onsite into our boat shop and they build a boat and yeah and i'm particularly excited about that project as it's such a wonderful example of hands on learning in a museum setting but doing something that's really meaningful for kids so we bring students into the program every year to build the boat from scratch and then the bo themselves are used in our rowing program which we actually work with five regional high schools and we have about two hundred high school students who do a competitive rowing program in the spring and fall and they pratt they train on and then they also train in burlington and lake champlain and then they will race against each other they do regional regattas and it's a really great opportunity for kids to get involved in sport and activity but with a deep then from there at albany the goods we go down the airy canal and to the west or down to the hudson river to new york city so the lake champlain was kind of right in the center of all of this commerce and traffic and shipping canal boats were a special style of boat that was meant to be a full of goods that were moved on the canal so they were actually designed to be pulled by oxen so the boats if you can imagine a fairly narrow canal you wouldn't have the sails up on a canal you'd have oxen on either side of the canal travels with the churchill which is a tug boat so that boat is what pulls it along as well you can pull up the sails on it if you're into that kind of adventure and so that boat really allows us to champlain and its importance to the entire region so every summer we do a different tour with the boat last year we partnered with the corning z m a glass and did an amazing tore through all the way down to new york city and then all the way out the canal to corning new york and we created a glass barge where they were actually blowing glass on the boat which was a really neat thing to see and we actually saw about thirty thousand visitors to the boat last year so this year we are happy to be working with the lake champlain basin program and the champlain valley national heritage partnership to have the theme for the year be related to the international year of the salmon i don't know if you've heard of the international year of the  the rivers and streams that connect to the lake and then they go back into the lake there are not very many of them left but they've had a huge impact on lake champlain region over time and they have been hugely impacted by environmental change over time as well so the international year of the salmon our many efforts around the world actually dedicated it highlighting highlighting these stories so the lowest the core will be highlighting some of the stories about the impact of north atlantic salmon this year  archaeology center really one of the most impactful and well known around the country we partner with universities researchers historians who really are looking at underwater archaeology so marine archaeology and underwater archaeology is as many and suggests the field of going into water diving finding shipwrecks and other materials and then doing research on those deciding the best way to preserve them making about making them available to the public sometimes removing them from the water and conserving them but that that field of research is something that the maritime museum has become a real leader in around the world and the marine research institute actually does projects both on link champlain on the hudson river and some of the  finger lakes in new york and beyond that it really is looking at how to best preserve the underwater resources underwater resources that are still out there one of the big projects that we do every year at the museum is that we actually manage vermont's underwater preserve sites as in partnership with the vermont office of historic preservation so you may have heard of historic sites that you would go visit in vermont you can drive to them or get there and see a great great location that's well preserved and interpreted for the public be underwater historic preserves are the same idea but they're underwater so there's nine of them in vermont they're shipwrecks and we manage the site so we go to them every year make sure they're in good condition  put out markers so that diverse can access them and all of that information can be accessed on our website where we make it available to people and track you know work with them to tell them when the preserves are open when they're closed how they can access the site safely and living and having lived in vermont for a long time right in burlington i looked at the lake almost every day and never really thought about that but it's pretty amazing the history that is at the bottom of the lake and kind of the sides of the lake to you there's boats there from all the way back to the french and indian war revolutionary war boats in the lake canal boats up through the one thousand nine hundred eighteen hundred and into the one nine hundred s some of them are easier to access than others and actually if you come to the museum you can take a boat tour that uses their remote operated vehicles sonar ovi so that we as a little camera on a robot pretty much that we drop into the water and you can take a boat out to where the rock is will drop the camera and right from the boat you can take a kind of a video tour of the rock underneath the boat that's  island is one of my favorite topics actually i'm glad you asked the battle where island was in seven hundred seventy six that was a real turning point in the revolutionary war interestingly it was a battle that the united states lost but in some ways by losing they were able to turn the tide of the war so benedict arnolds the benedict arnold that you're probably familiar with he started by being a hero of the revolutionary war so he was leading a fleet of boats on lake  champlain in battle with the royal navy of the british navy so the british were coming south from canada benedict arnold his job was to prevent them from going through lake champlain once the british got through lake champlain they would be able to access the hudson river and have be able to effectively split the colonies in seven hundred seventy six so the battle happened in the fall and benedict arnold realized that they were going to lose basically they had it was clear that they were outgunned out outmaneuvered by the british navy who had much more experience in naval warfare so benedict arnolds boats are captured and it was as it tends to be it can be very foggy on lake champlain so benedict arnolds boats were captured a fog descended and they the british were on their boats the americans were on their boats and they basically ok in the morning we'll take your boats will go on our way south you're all our prisoners so better start thinking you know i really don't have anything to lose decided to escape with the fleet so it was a foggy night it was really dark he lined up the boats and one single line and didn't use lights he only had one light at the front the very front boat and one light in the back and he sailed them under cover of darkness to get away and pretty much when the british woke up in the morning and the sun came out they saw where the boats what happened some of the boats he he intentionally ran the boats aground some of them he lit on fire some of the boats had sunk during the battle itself in the previous day so because this this affair kind of took so long and because winter was quickly descending the british decided and the british were pretty embarrassed that they had let a fleet of boats get away during the night so they decided to that they couldn't continue further south because of the weather because they had been so delayed by this battle so they had to wait until the spring of seven hundred seventy seven effectively giving the colonies more time  american history but before he became a traitor he was a hero and really helped the americans win the revolutionary war before he worked against them so those stories about complexity and history are ones that got me really excited about why we learn history today understanding that others arnold made individual decisions and he was a really complex character is is something that you can learn from today both about how individual people make decisions today and how everyone is part of history this network with the local schools we have a great partnership with many of the school districts in addison county and beyond the school programs in addition to our boat building program that i mentioned we also do a lot of partnership programming where we go out into the schools connect them with some of that history ecology work i was talking about and then we also welcome students on site so many schools come to believe champlain maritime museum for their spring and fall field trips where they get to the summer camp registration is now open so if people are looking for things to do with their kids in the summer we do summer camps for kids of all ages some day camps some overnights and the camps really run the gamut again we have a history focus camp we have camps that are about experiencing the lake so about how to boating we have a fishing camp we have camps about scuba diving so really are all of our camps are about how do we get people connected to the lake in ways that will inspire them to stay connected and make a difference in the future so our day camps run through june july and i think some of august maybe just a lot all the information's on the website but in addition to those day camps we have expedition camps and overnight camps so those camps there's two one we camps that are full overnight experiences on the lake where you're on the lake the whole time camping with your group and then our another one of our programs is actually a five week camp where he's from the first three weeks building your own boat and then you spend the last few weeks overnight traveling from whitehall new york to burlington on the lake it's amazing but how many people  have over the course of the year we have about seventy five staff who are full time and season all so it again we're open to the public may through october so that tends to be a lot a lot busier we've a smaller staff in the winter but it's in addition to those seventy five people we have many many volunteers who work on our programs who are so grateful for we couldn't do what we do without our volunteers and then we have great partners in the school districts and communities nearby in these senior also involved in professional development to these pills was that's all about we are we work with teachers throughout the state in the region to do profession accredited professional development courses during the summer and those also have a wide range of topics some are about teaching with objects so how can teachers be using historical objects in their classroom as a way to spark interest in their students and then we also partner with the artists association  baqir culture leaders to teachers to talk about teaching abenaki culture in the classroom that's a really special one week experience that brings teachers and abenaki culture bearers together for a way to increase  increase the knowledge around abenaki culture that's right here in vermont and to highlight the importance of teaching not for vermont students school and what is is the boat building program that i mentioned that bring students to the museum to build a boat and then other students wrote road those boats on the lake in the community rowing with the others but we do it so it's not just kids who can row on the lake we have community rowing at the museum and in burlington so twice a week at the museum in virginia we have rowing where people can just come on down adults can come on down to the museum and get with a few other people in or in a boat and go out and row and then we also do that in burlington once a week as well and that's a way for us to bring adults together in community members and do some fun activity and take in the beautiful beautiful views in the summer it's especially important to where we are around metal arts so blacksmithing blades nothing copper copper work and those are opportunities for adults to learn from experts in the craft of metal arts so those are weekend long classes or one day classes where you can come in and in our for example on our blades that thing class you can come in and learn how to build a knife using the blacks before age it's amazing yeah it's a photo opportunity and a great way to connect with history and be reminded that some of those the same some of the same processes that people were doing even during the revolutionary war are things that you can still be engaging in today usually with an updated twist you have a very excellent website  what about digital projects what is that entail so there's only so many people that can come to rural addison county to visit our museum what we would love it to be more we're always welcome to have more people come but we really see  the access through the internet and social media as a way for us to share the work that we're doing and also to learn about the work of other people the great thing about social media now is it's a real conversation so you can bring together people in dialogue around  topics that are related to the museum's content collections it's amazing now what about community participation what what are you looking for from the community to assist her or work with you on various projects and support your efforts oh thank you so much for asking well we as i said rely on our volunteers for so much of what we do they're an amazing resource they bring their experiences to the museum and we hope they get something from working with us too as they do so we're always open to people who are interested in volunteering and you can find that contact information on our website and we also invite everyone to the museum this summer when we open and to keep an eye out for the lowest score and she's sailing around the lake this summer and our summer camps are real opportunity for people to jump in and actually jump into the lake as many of them involve but also to jump into what we do with both feet well tell us about membership you have a membership program we do have a membership program membership is terrific way to stay connected with the museum if you become a member of the lake champlain maritime museum you get free entry to the museum and discounts on the campsite classes and workshops that i was just going on and on about so it's a great way to support  plans for the summer yeah will be like i said opening in mid to late may and we're actually have a new exhibition opening on that to hazel sherman and his steamboats also about an interesting name and an interesting fella he was one of the premier a steamboat builders in the whole region and he was based in for gems and people have done many of his steamboats wrecks of history boats are actually still in the lake  was really important to the virgin islands region in the early eighty's early mid eighty's hundreds and all of addison county many scholars have studied him people have looked into his work for years and he has a great name to boot but until this year no one had ever seen him before because there were no portraits of him that we knew of and in fact just this past year we were contacted by someone who said i have a portrait of to his real sherman and another one of his wife you know can we talk about it and  i don't think that's possible no one's ever seen one before but through some diligent research it turned out that they he was absolutely right the story totally checked out and they are portraits of j'sbail and his wife that we're happy to bring bring back to virginia and put on  public and then be able to talk about the impact of steamboat technology the lake well it's amazing really sounds like you have a fascinating facility in fascinating series of programs thanks that i'm really lucky to be there it's a great team that works at the museum it's been wonderful to me our supporters and our community members who really see the museum as i do which is why i was interested in working there as just a real resource of the community and a great way to stay connected to lake champlain that's