Whoever said the Blue Angels spectacular air show is not about war has never attended one. "Welcome the men that strike fear in the hearts and minds of our enemies," the announcer shouts as the pilots take the field. "Our enemies tremble at the very sound of our mighty warriors who have brought us victory in Kosovo, Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan." I’m paraphrasing here, but that is the true gist of the message as the heavy-metal music blasts through the loudspeakers and the daredevil pilots thunder past tens of thousands of screaming onlookers gathered on the sweltering airport tarmac. Oops, sorry. These are not stunt tricks, but "professional maneuvers" learned by every pilot, the announcer reminds us. Because we all know that flying jets upside down in formation 18-inches apart at over 400-miles per hour is a highly effective method of dropping bombs on enemy targets. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog # 93
August 26, 2010

I had forgotten about the dead baby seal that I found at the Isles of Shoals earlier this summer until I saw the headline in yesterday’s Portsmouth Herald. Apparently I am not alone and the recently weaned seals are showing up on local beaches. Even when the experts tell you that there is nothing amiss, it’s hard not to blame someone, even Mother Nature, when the body of a little pup washes up on shore. The strange thing about a week on Smuttynose Island is that almost every day is strange. This summer was no exception. So I dug back into my photo files to remember what happened in June, and those photos are posted below. (Continued below) 

When I was a kid growing up in Massachusetts our family frequently went to an incredible rock formation called Purgatory Chasm. I remember the towering granite walls with trees growing out of them high in the air. You didn’t really hike the trail, but clambered over huge jagged rocks while following strips of paint suggesting the path of least resistance. I remember thinking that Purgatory was great because it was clearly dangerous – very dangerous. There were deep caves and treacherous precipices and, as far as I could see, no safety railings, no park rangers and no emergency doctors or nurses on site. I went back to Purgatory last weekend just to see if I had made the whole thing up. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog # 91
August 1, 2010

I did not see this train coming. It was in all innocence that I clicked the "face recognition" button in Picassa, the free picture management software from Google. The next thing I knew my computer was grinding away looking for photos of human beings on my hard-drive. It took 9.5 hours, but eventually Picassa located just over 35,000 faces. That was the easy part. Then it was my job to identify everyone in the pictures. I have been doing just that for three days now and I have about 8,000 faces left to go. My own face is drawn and weary. My eyes are itchy liquid pools. But I am close. I am very close to cataloging the people I know. (Continued below)

We are on island. This blog was written a week ago and, through the miracle of robots and the Internet, was cued up to post today. This is our twelfth year as stewards on Smuttynose at the Isles of Shoals and, if this year is like the last nine, we are just now running out of milk, cereal, meat, vegetables and fresh fruit. By tomorrow we will be moving to the canned beans, pasta, tuna, dried fruit, peanut butter and protein bars. We pack pretty close to a week’s worth of food and – with six miles of ocean between us and the nearest storre, we eat pretty much whatever is left. (Continued below with photos)

Seacoast History Blog #86

Tell me this is not odd. I finished my book on Privateer Lynx at 5 am yesterday morning after an all-nighter. It has been an 18-month marathon. A few hours earlier I got an email from the Lynx headquarters in Newport Beach, California announcing that Lynx was resting peacefully in Gosport Harbor at the Isles of Shoals. The last time I saw her was in San Diego. Lynx has been headed this way from California since November 2009 – seven months and thousands of miles. So what are the chances I would write the final words at the very moment she arrived here? (continued below with PHOTOS)

I love the digital age. I’m closing in on the last chapter of the book I’ve been writing for 18 months. When I finish, I will ship it to the editor and a few readers who will email back their notes. And that magic works the other way too. A couple of hours ago I had no clue that another hardworking author had completed an expansive new biography of John Barry. He’s the guy who, some say, deserves the title "Father of the American Navy" that is most often doled out to John Paul Jones. Jones is still well known while Barry has been sinking into obscurity. This is his first major biography in a generation. I have one old book about Barry written by a Catholic priest, but have never cracked the cover. Now I have a new, much more appealing-looking study by Tim McGrath – and it hasn’t even been published yet. (Continued below)