Seacoast History Blog # 123 
July 28, 2011

I thought it was just another routine call from a reporter on the Memorial Bridge that has connected Portsmouth, NH to Kittery, ME since 1923. I didn’t know it was the death knell. So I’m blabbing away about the importance of the old lift bridge for 20 minutes, sounding all upbeat and hopeful, when the reporter says something like, “Didn’t you hear? It’s all over. They closed it forever.”  It was one of those, “Oh-by-the-way-your-Uncle-Harry-died” moments. Certainly he didn’t mean forever, like in “eternity,” but more like when Hans Solo was trapped forever in that piece of alien metal. I mean, we know he’s going to get out of there eventually. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog # 122 
July 22, 2011

The last time I did video the equipment weighed a ton and cost an arm and a leg. Back in the 80s I took out a loan for a used video production studio that set me back more than $100,000. It was the size of a Volkswagen. I paid the loan back in five years at something over $2,000/month. When I tried to sell the machinery a few years later, digital had arrived, and I had to let the whole system go to the scrap man for $900. The experience soured me on making movies for a while. But time marches on. The other day I bought a FLIP camera. It shoots better quality images than my old analog system, requires no expensive magnetic tape, holds two hours of HD footage, weighs only a few ounces, and fits in the palm of my hand. It cost $129. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog # 121 
July 11, 2011

Writers are like movie actors except that most of us writers aren’t handsome and we can’t act. But we both live in and out of time machines. Like a movie, it can take years to get a history book from concept and research to design and publication. That requires a ton of advance planning. By the time the final product arrives, the writer and the movie actor have moved on to other jobs. Then suddenly, we’re snapped back into the past. I’m working today, for example, on the page proofs of AMERICA’S PRIVATEER, my book on the tall ship Lynx and the War of 1812. I proposed it in 2008, then wrote and research it for 18 months in 2009 and 2010. A year in design, it’s now inching its way toward publication for the bicentennial of the “Forgotten War” in 2012. When it comes out, ideally this holiday season, it will be brand new to you and four years old to me. (Continue below)

Seacoast History Blog #120 
July 3, 2011

It took almost three days to write tomorrow’s feature on the Fitz-John Porter statue. It was a good use of my brief time here on earth. I started out knowing a little about Porter the Civil War general who was court-martialed in 1862 and spent the next 16 years trying to regain his reputation. I wasn’t sure why the guy’s statue was in Haven Park, but now I know. He was born in 1822 in one of the stately homes on Livermore Street that faces the park. What I didn’t know what that his father died and his mother moved on when he was only three. Porter spent summers there while a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, but basically he had nothing to do with his hometown until he returned in 1894 as an old man. So except for distant family connections, the man on the horse in the park never really had much to do with Portsmouth. And Portsmouth, in turn, has never really had much to do with him. (Continued below) 

Seacoast History Blog #119 
June 28, 2011

I’m not going to give away the details just yet. I signed a contract and I didn’t read it carefully. All I can say is – be sure to watch TV this fall because we’ll be on it. A national television channel will feature yours truly and wife Maryellen in a sequence shot yesterday at a major historic site in Portsmouth. The segment will run for just 8 minutes, but it took all day to shoot.  We’re beat. Making TV movies is super hard work. “In any other country they’d call this torture,” I said to the director after an hour baking in the glare of the lights. “It’s just like two friends having a conversation,” the director said from behind the burning solar flares. “Just look into the camera.” (Continued below with photos)

Seacoast History Blog #118 
June 22, 2011

We’re back from our annual week on Smuttynose Island, our 12^th year in a row, if memory serves. It’s forever the same and always different. This year we had absolutely no visitors. (We usually get 50-100 tourists early in the season). The Oceanic Hotel had not yet opened and the marine forecast announced scary weather, so people stayed away in droves. Only Prof. Nate Hamilton’s archaeology team braved the journey and, despite a stormy opening, the week was gorgeous at the Isles of Shoals. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #117 
June 17, 2011

Four new history exhibits are going on simultaneously this summer in historic Portsmouth, so I thought I’d write a “behind the scenes” column about each. The first on the enormous “Sawtelle Collection” of maritime paintings at the Discover Portsmouth Center was easy. I just excerpted a chunk of the new book I wrote with Richard Candee and other local history experts. The next two exhibits are on the Civil War, this being the 150th anniversary of that horrific event. We have only two monuments in town, both focused on that war. Now we have two exhibits – one at the Portsmouth Athenaeum on the USS Kearsage and one at Strawbery Banke on Gen. Fitz-John Porter. Each exhibit conveniently revolves around one of those memorials. I started the Kearsage story when it occurred to me that in 1999 I actually went inside the Sailors and Soldiers Monument. I know those photos are around here somewhere. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #116  
June 8, 2011

Until today I thought “Portsmouth Betty” was a woman who went up in a UFO with her husband Barney. Who knew the name applied to a 19^th century tin lantern? There was one for sale on eBay recently and a quick search of the Web shed more light on the topic. What we don’t know about how our ancestors lived would fill a book, lots of books, and the topic of artificial lighting is a biggie. I think about this every year during out week without electricity on Smuttynose island because I work until 2 or 3 am every night. On Smuttynose, where the sun refuses to stay up, and there are no wall sockets, this quickly becomes a problem. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #115 
May 27, 2011

It took me 60 years, but I finally know what I want for dinner – and for lunch. I want pho. I’ve fallen for the perfect food, a Vietnamese blend of noodles, chicken, and herb broth sprinkled with fresh raw bean sprouts, lime, basil, cilantro, and maybe mint. I had a bowl in Lowell a decade ago and did not rediscover it until recently. Since then I’ve had four big bowls at four restaurants. I can tell you where the best pho is, and I am sad to report, it isn’t in the New Hampshire seacoast. Despite a cornucopia of top restaurants in Portsmouth, one must go South for the best of pho.  (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #114 
May 21, 2011

I’m happy about the graffiti murals enlivening downtown Portsmouth this summer. And I’m happy about the controversy sparked by the murals. The “battleground” as the newspaper so indelicately put it, gives us a chance to see clearly where the lines are being drawn between what has been called “Old Portsmouth” and “New Portsmouth.”  What we are seeing is the last gasps of the Colonial Revival view of history. That nostalgic belief tells us that the past was great and the future is scary. It was beautiful and comfortable and glorious back then. Historic Portsmouth should therefore be about clipper ships and lighthouses and gas lamps along brick-lined streets. Momma was home cooking supper. Daddy was working at the Yard. God was in his Heaven and all’s right with the world. And anyone who says otherwise, just wasn’t there.  (Continued below)