Light Hearted ep 290 – Suellen Wedmore, poems about women lighthouse keepers; Melanie Correia, New Bedford Whaling Museum

Suellen Wedmore and a first-order Fresnel lens on display at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Massachuetts. Melanie Correia Suellan Wedmore‘s poetry has appeared in many publications and she has won numerous awards, including first place in both the Writer’s Digest Rhyming and the Non-Rhyming Poem contests. The poems in Suellen’s book A Fixed White Light enter the lives of six of courageous and mostly forgotten female lighthouse keepers, giving readers the opportunity to experience their heroism as well as their trials in a time when they were often met with skepticism and discrimination. Inside the New Bedford Whaling Museum The second guest in this podcast episode is Melanie Correia, associate curator of exhibitions and collections at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in southeastern Massachusetts. The city of New Bedford was a whaling capital and the richest city in the world in the mid-1800s. Today the museum plays a critical role as champions for whale preservation and guardians of the area’s heritage and culture.