Seacoast History Blog #60
August 11, 2009

Here we go again. Writing history is looking more and more like that ringing gag in the film "Caddyshack" where Bill Murray tries every trick possible to catch an underground gopher. I went down another gopher hole today while researching Chapter 4 of my next book on privateering. Before that I was covering a lot of ground, digging up details on Captain Thomas Boyd, one of the most successful and gutsy privateersman during the War of 1812. Sailing the Baltimore schooner Chasseur, he took more prizes in a single day than anyone before or since. Then he faced a British warship head on, despite falling into a surprise attack, won the day, and retired rich and happy. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #59
August 6, 2009

Sometimes I feel like Levi Thaxter, who was driven to distraction by Celia Thaxter’s fame. Admittedly she’s not my wife, but she makes me crazy all the same. Everybody wants to connect with her. And they keep calling me. A decade ago I wrote about Celia on the web. That was before Sharon Stephan’s incredible exhibit and book "One Woman’s Work" that launched Celia’s comeback career as, not just a writer and gardner at the Isles of Shoals, but as an artist too. (Continued below)

"Your eyes are bigger than your belly," my mother used to say when we kids couldn’t finish the food on our plates. I guess that’s still true, although no longer with food, but with facts. When I started this blog I also started a folder into which I tossed ideas for future comments on Seacoast history. I figured I’d blog night and day. Now that folder is exploding out of my TO-DO pile. We kids were also told to "waste-not, want-not". So here are a few thoughts that never got off the ground. Topics include a couple of honors we've won, the Muddy River menu, sound relief coming to atlatnic Heights residents, and an article of ours inspires Christian fundamentalist essay on John Smith. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #55
July 18, 2009

I’ve joked about printing a T-shirt for my next book tour listing all the locations like a rock band does. In my case, however, the tour never gets more than a few dozen miles from home – Brentwood, South Berwick, Kittery, Exeter, Durham, New Castle, -- sometimes as far out as Manchester and Concord. So far I’ve done maybe 30 gigs with the latest book, and last week I was in York, Maine. The fun part is that I get to see the inside of places I might never see otherwise, like the historic York Reading Room that looms over York Harbor like a fort. The sign on the front clearly says PRIVATE CLUB. Until now I’d seen it like any tourist from the Cliff Path, but when you give the keynote address, they actually let you go inside. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #54
July 8, 2009

Another one of those paranormal loonies called me again today. This guy wanted to know if he could get permission to take his electronic equipment into the Old Statehouse in Portsmouth, NH and get some haunted readings. He was a nice guy. Very nice, but a nutjob. I explained to him that the Old Statehouse in Market Square was torn down in the 1830s. Not so, he insisted. He had read about it on the web (probably on my web site, since he was calling my phone number) and he was certain the building is still standing. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #53
July 2, 2009

Sometimes you have to stand back, way-way back, from a great big piece of architecture to see it clearly. Still, we were surprised to read one of the best articles on our endangered Memorial Bridge in a recent issue of the Hartford Courant. If Connecticut can see our bridge from down there, there’s hope that Maine’s Governor John Baldacci can see its value from his office way up in Augusta. Reporter William Morgan had a lot of nice things to say about our beloved bridge, so I asked him why. (Continued below)

Seacoast History Blog #51
June 22, 2009

NEW PHOTOS ADDED: This was our tenth (or maybe 11^th) season as stewards on Smuttynose Island and by far the most revealing. The details will all be fleshed out in an essay, but until then, the upshot is, that there was definitely prehistoric activity on the Shoals. A small group of arrowheads found deep in the bottom of an archeological test pit makes it official. I was standing nearby when the digger made the discovery last week. (Continued below)