June 25
PIRATES OF THE SHOALS
Hello,  I have enjoyed reading your web page on BlackBeard. We are from Southland, New Zealand and the kids have been studying BlackBeard at school. Is there an update on the hunt for his buried treasure?
Trudi Baird

EDITOR’S REPLY: The update is the same as the original conclusion -- nothing. It is extremely unlikely that the so-called Blackbeard ever had any treasure in this area, much less buried it in an island made of solid rock. 99.9% of the "pirate" tales are legendary and .01% are based on fact. Pirates were more likely to get a cargo of fruit or lumber or raisins than to ever find someone transporting valuable coins or jewelry on a ship. They were the modern equivalent of the kind of criminal who robs a liquor store because he is too dumb, poor, lazy or desperate to do a real job. Pirates were not romantic figures, but violent men, for the most part, until fiction writers like Robert Louis Stevenson and movie companies like Walt Disney created the imaginary stories that surround them today. Considering how much money Disney has made off their most recent film, we can see who the modern pirates are today.  Just about every island in this region claims to be the site of Blackbeard’s imagined treasure, largely because the island often were trying to attract tourists during the dawn of the tourism area here. We’d love to find an ounce of fact in any of the legends of treasure, but so far, nothing but movies, poems and novels.  Have fun with your project.
 

June 22
MEMORIES OF ATLANTIC HEIGHTS
SeacoastNH scores again! (“Atlantic Heights was Architecture for the Poor”) For a short while at the age of 10, I lived in Atlantic Heights on Concord Way.  We had moved from Columbia Street in Portsmouth. A classmate of my older sister lived on Kearsarge Way. I remember attending Atlantic Heights School in fifth grade, and ice skating on the school grounds.  There was a dip in the ground that was filled with water in the winter to form a skating rink.  I slipped on the ice while skating and caught quite a gash on my knee when I was clipped by another skater as I went down.  I also remember walking in the woods, looking at all the white birch trees, and checking out the high-tension power lines, the gypsum plant, and the tank farm. Thanks for more history of Atlantic Heights.
Robert Garland

EDITOR’S REPLY:  You might be interested to know that the skating area is still there and flooded each winter. The school is now housing for the elderly and the woods, I’m afraid, are all but gone – filled to the brim with more and more new housing units that match neither the charm or price of the original brick village. Be sure to search used books stores for the complete history of Atlantic Heights, a now out-of-print history of the heights by architectural historian Richard Candee.

July 18
RESPONSE TO MEN WRITING AS WOMEN
A reply for Mr. Paul McDermott (see letter below).
Dear, dear, dear Mr. McDermott,
I do hope you realize this is 2006! I say this because you stated that you understand women -- for example, if a woman is in a job as a cop, soldier, firefighter...etc. she will think like a man. How wrong you are. I myself was a cop for 18 years and I'm pleased to say that I didn't think like a man. It's probably want eventually got me fired, but that's another discussion. Now granted, I'm only one woman speaking up, but I do think my experience as both a woman and a former long-time cop give me better qualifications than your observations.

What you've actually done is just keep stereotyping alive and well. How about if in the future good writing is based on imagination, expression and an openness to female or male points of view? Besides, it's not as if we all don't posess aspects of both genders anyway. Gently and firmly,
Karen Johnson, Portsmouth, N.H.

July 17
MEN WRITING AS WOMEN
Writing female fiction from a man's prospective is not hard to do. (re: TAKEN by Rod Philbrick aka Chris Jordan) I know I do it .It helps if you're married a long time, or at least living with a woman. You have to have some understanding of the Female persona. That does not come easy. It helps if you know the writing styles of some of today's leading female authors Like Ms Cornwell. One of the things that I try to remember is that a woman will do the same thing a man will do in certain situations, and in other situations she will not. I have to know which is which. I'll give you an example: If your heroine is a cop, soldier, firefighter she will think like a man She has to She is in a man's environment. If on the other hand she is a Nurse, doctor, homemaker or even a corporate head, she will and this is not written in stone think more like a woman. Every situation is different. Women adapt easier than we men. The one thing we male writers cannot do is to adopt an attitude that we understand how you ladies think in the bedroom. That is where we have tendency to fall on our face. That is where we have to tread lightly, but I'm leaving that right here. This latest thing that I'm writing concerns a woman in the high powered world of men like Donald Trump My character is similar, while somewhat less charismatic than he. My lead Female falls for him, and ultimately saves him. Any how I'll get this man's book, and read it
Paul McDermott  US Army retired  

July 11
INDIAN ARTIFACT – NOT – JUST SCHIST
This stone artifact was found in Maine. Can you tell me anything about it or can you refer me to someone who could help? I am not looking to sell the piece but I would like to know more about the period that is came from. Thank you very much, 
Alan Lucia

EDITOR’S REPLY: Thanks for sending this photo along. Sorry, but our Native American expert tells us that this stone is of natural origin. Fine schists with cross-cutting layers of resistant quartz produce grooved pieces that look a lot like artifacts. Messalonski Lake produces a lot of them in Maine. Archeologist’s note that it is certainly possible that Native Americans may have picked up this funny looking stone and used it, but it appears to have occurred naturally and was not engineered. Of course, once it has been removed from the ground where it was discovered, about 90% of the scientific data is lost, so it becomes nearly impossible to know what happened.

July 10
DANGEROUS FIREWORKS FUN
Enjoyed your article about fireworks on the Fourth of July. This brought back a lot of memories of those days. My father would buy a peck bag of fireworks for $10 and for one or two days we would have a black (no pun intended). We were living on the corner of Prospect Street and Maplewood Ave in a large apartment house at the time (1936-38). House is still there. My father got the bright idea to fire a skyrocket from Prospect St, over Dennett St into the North Mill Pond. He thought he had the angle right and lit the fuse. Unfortunately the angle wasn’t right and it went through the front room window of a home on Dennet St. A guy was reading a newspaper in the front room and he came charting up the hill to find out who did the deed. None of us knew anything about it. My claim to fame was across Maplewood Ave. was an empty lot (there is a house there now). IN the lot were three beehives. I got the bright idea to put a cheery bomb in one of the beehinves. I sure got a lot of bees very angry. Those were the days when fireworks were legal. A lot of people got hurt or disfigured because of them and it was a good thing that they made them illegal.
Brad Harrington 

July 8
WINNING THE WAR ON TERROR
Dear Mr. Robinson, I truly enjoyed your recent article regarding those ornery gulls on Smuttynose (NH Gazette, 6/30/06). Yet, I can't help wondering: Perhaps the raccoons ought to have stayed..?
Dimitri Yiannacopoulos
Portsmouth (my rock...)

EDITOR’S REPLY: We were out on Smuttynose just the other day when another Caswell descendent asked similar questions. We’re not genealogy experts, but our piece on the Caswell family references Joy Thurlow, a woman who knows them well. She is the best source for the genealogy of Caswells on the Shoals.