Talking UNION with Texas Public Radio, Northeast Public Radio

Happy Fourth of July everyone, a day when we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence because, yes, it's our founding document. (The 1789 Constitution was the second take at the operational details of the new federation.)

In sync with the themes of the holiday, I spoke this week with Texas Public Radio's hour-long interview program, "The Source" about how we should tell the story of America and my new book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. You can catch that interview with the San Antonio-based public radio network online here.

For a shorter take, I also spoke recently with WAMC / Northeast Public Radio's Joe Donoghue on "The Roundtable." I was happy to rejoin the network -- which serves eastern New York State (north of New Netherland) and the entire western third of New England -- which has had me on for American Nations and American Character as well.

This week I'll be coming to public radio listeners in southeastern Virginia, and central Tennessee.

Hope you enjoy.

Maine lags rest of New England in pandemic data reporting

In yesterday's Portland Press Herald, I explore why Maine lags the other five New England states in the daily reporting of all sorts of pandemic-related data, including the fact that it is alone in being unable to report the number of negative tests on a daily basis.

The Maine CDC, which was weakened by eight years of disfavor under Gov. Paul LePage, has also been behind in being able to tally the number of Covid-19 patients hospitalized each day, in reporting non-resident cases confirmed here, and in knowing how many ICU beds and ventilators are available.

A reader asked on Twitter why we would poke at an agency that, with the abdication of the federal government, is our lifeline in the pandemic. The answer: you want your lifeline to be as strong as possible before the cases start peaking, and that requires testing it constantly. That's what we'll keep doing.

Other recent Coronavirus coverage includes this look at the precarious state of the medical equipment supply chain; the strange story of a Portland based pop-up medical supplier; and the Chebeague ferry service refusing to carry suspected Covod-19 patients, even in the context of being the island's official ambulance link to the mainland (updating soon.)

[Update, 3/16/20: The Maine CDC revamped their website a bit today, providing more of the information they lacked and other New England states were providing. Negative test reporting still a challenge, but weekly numbers now posted there too.]

Colony, the Press Herald Maine Bicentennial series, concludes

With the world facing the biggest social, economic, and epidemiological crisis in at least two generations, I neglected to post the final two installments of "Colony," my six part Maine Sunday Telegram series on the backstory of Maine statehood and the lasting legacy of those (colonial) experiences.

The last two installments ran one and two weeks ago respectively and you can find the whole series on the Colony landing page over at the Press Herald.

Thanks to the incredible number of readers who wrote -- and continue to write -- with kind words about the series and what it meant to them. The most common question: will it be released as a mini-book? The answer is "I don't think so" -- the pandemic is drawing all the paper's resources -- but you can find most of these themes (and much, much more) in my 2004 book on the cultural and environmental history of Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier. 

Also, if you missed our 29-part series on Maine-Passamaquoddy relations, "Unsettled," it is indeed available as an e-book as well as free online to subscribers. I hope it brings some distraction to all of you bunkered down in the middle of this crisis.

Colony, Chapter 3: Massachusetts' conquest of Maine

Maine is celebrating the bicentennial of its statehood this year, but the story of our beginnings lies in the millennia and centuries that preceded March 15th, 1820, the day we regained our independence from Massachusetts. 

Colony, an ongoing six-part series in the Maine Sunday Telegram, tells that story, and the third installment appeared last Sunday, telling the story of how Massachusetts Bay annexed the formerly-independent colony of Maine in the 1650s. At one point they even send soldiers in.

The conquest made Maine a colony of a colony, and Boston ruled what eventually became known as the District of Maine -- which didn't even border on the rest of the Commonwealth -- in the interests of mainland Massachusetts, not the people living on the eastern frontier. As we'll see in the next three chapters of Colony, this experience, which lasted until 1820, fundamentally shaped Maine's culture, economy and self-conception.

If you enjoy this series and want more, consider reading my cultural history of Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (Viking, 2004) and, on Maine-Wabanaki relations in more recent times, the Portland Press Herald series "Unsettled," also available as an ebook at the usual outlets.

Speaking (a lot) about most everything at Star Island's Natural History Week, June 20-27

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be the annual speaker on Star Island, Isles of Shoals, for this year's Natural History Week, held June 20 to 27. [Update, 5/4/2020: Star Island's entire summer season has been cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic.]

Natural History Week - "Living in a Changing World" -- is held each year on the bucolic island, located off the coast of southern New Hampshire, but in a small archipelago that straddles the border with Maine. Attendees spend the whole week on the island, enjoying its beauty and nature by day, and attending daily talks by your truly and others. 

During the week I'll be speaking on:

* the crisis in the world's oceans (topic of my first book, Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas) and the warming of the Gulf of Maine (subject of a Portland Press Herald series I wrote that was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize.)

* the cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine (subject of my second book, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier) and a forthcoming Press Herald series tied to Maine's Bicentennial this year.

* the true story, reassembled from archival sources, of the great Caribbean pirate gang led by Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy, and others -- pirates who plied the waters of the Gulf of Maine as well as the Spanish Main. (A story told in The Republic of Pirates.)

* the reasons why the United Staes is polarized and paralyzed, which have their origins in the differences between the distinct colonial projects on the eastern and southwestern rims of what is now the United States, subject of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.

* and perhaps American Character: The Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good and the new book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, to be released June 16th, as well.

Registration information at their website, and further information at Star Island Corp's mother ship. I look forward to meeting those of you who decide to attend.

Kelp, "forests of the sea," vanishing from parts of warming Gulf of Maine

Kelp, a foundation species with a role not unlike that of corals in tropical seas, is vanishing from the coasts of New Hampshire and southern Maine due to the rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine, I reported in Saturday's Portland Press Herald.

Their disappearance -- and replacement by shrubby invasive red seaweeds -- means less refuge habitat for commercial fish species like cunner, juvenile pollock and cod, and possibly crabs and lobster as well, although they are as yet poorly studied.

The good news is the excessive temperatures that are wiping out kelp in places like the Isles of Shoals have not yet reached areas beyond Casco Bay, in southern Maine, and will likely take decades to reach eastern Maine, where nearshore waters are considerably cooler. Details in the story.

I've been covering climate change and the Gulf of Maine -- the second fastest warming part of the world ocean -- in some detail. For background, consider starting with this series and perhaps continue with this update from earlier this year.

Warming of Gulf of Maine choking right whale food supply

In recent years, the endangered North Atlantic right whale has effectively abandoned summer feeding grounds in the eastern Gulf of Maine, showing up instead in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, where many were mowed down by ships before officials realized what was happening and impemented a speed ban.

Now scientists appear to have nailed down why they moved. As I reported in yesteday's Portland Press Herald, the warming of the Gulf of Maine has decimated the copepod the right whales feed on, forcing them to look elsewhere for sustenance. Details in the story.

Scientists have said the right whale could go extinct by 2040, after a spate of deaths. Last year was one of the warmest on record in the Gulf of Maine.

For more on the warming of the Gulf, copepods, and a lot of other context, consider this 2015 series.

Gulf of Maine sees 3rd warmest year on record as monitoring programs wither

The Gulf of Maine -- already the second fastest warming part of the world's oceans -- just saw the third warmest year on the 37-year long satellite record, with average sea surface temperatures reaching levels only seen in 2012 and 2016. As I reported in yesterday's Portland Press Herald, researchers saw unpleasant effects on puffin chicks, sea turtles, and the North Atlantic's biggest kelp forest.

Meanwhile, various federal and state initiatives to boost monitoring and research into the phenomenon have gone nowhere, while funding for several existing monitoring systems has withered, resulting in scientists having fewer means to track what is going on.

Details in the story, but for more background start with this six-part series on the warming crisis in the Gulf, and this piece from a year ago on the state of Maine's response.

Speaking on the Scots-Irish legacy in Maine and the nation, Aug. 14, Brunswick, Maine

This is the 300th anniversary of the coming of the Scots-Irish to New England and to mark the occasion, there's a multi-day conference taking place this week at Bowdoin College sponsored by the Maine Ulster Scots Project.

The 2018 Diaspora Conference and Reunion opens tomorrow morning, August 14 at Bowdoin's Kresge Hall and continues through Thursday, with presentations from scholars on both sides of the Atlantic.

I'm pleased to be giving the opening keynote Tuesday night on the impact of the Scots-Irish migration on both Maine and North America, issues I wrote about in some detail in The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier and American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America respectively. I'm preceded by Norman Houston, director of the Northern Ireland Bureau, the diplomatic mission of that part of the UK to the US and Canada.

Conference information can be found here.

At 1 pm tomorrow I'm also speaking about the political ramifications of American Nations in Maine Public radio's live interview and call-in program, "Maine Calling." Tune in if you can.

Talking Maine's 1820 split from Mass. with KQED's California Report

This November, Californians will be asked if they want to split their state into three, a measure spearheaded by venture capitalist Tim Draper. I wrote about some of the problems Draper's borders present, in historical-cultural terms, over at Medium last month.

But this week, I got to talk about an entirely different aspect of historical background on KQED's statewide "California Report": the lessons and precedents set by Maine's split from Massachusetts in 1820.

Readers of The Lobster Coast are aware of the two entities were separate colonies back in the 1640s, when the English Civil War pit Royalist, Anglican, semi-feudal, West Country-dominated Maine against Puritan, Parliament-backing, East Anglia-settled Massachusetts. The execution of the King cleared the way for Boston to annex the Maine settlements, which they ruled as a colony -- the District of Maine -- for nearly 70 years. The War of 1812 -- when Massachusetts refused to defend eastern Maine or help the federal government rollback the British occupation of it -- was just the final blow to Commonwealth unity.

But I digress. Here's a link to the audio of our interview, and here's the web story. (KQED is the San Francisco NPR affiliate, and one of the nation's public radio "superstations."

Cruise tourism impacts in Maine, a series

Over the past four months I've been at work on a series on the impact of cruise ship tourism in Maine, where most ports of call have a smaller year-around population than the compliment of the larger ships themselves. The results have been appearing in the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram this week, with the final part in today's paper.

The bottom line for Maine communities: taking an ad hoc, reactive approach to cruise tourism has considerable dangers, but if you plan, prepare, and negotiate properly, you can get the outcomes your citizens want, rather than the ones that will just happen to them.

The full series -- Pier Pressure -- consists of five articles over three days, and they're all here for your convenience:

Day 1: "Some in Maine fear cruise ship tourism has gone overboard" (featuring Bar Harbor and the global, business, and historical contexts Mainers should know about.)

Day 1 sidebar: "No discharge fight comes to Acadia region" (Maine has the weakest marine discharge protections in New England, but there's a good explanation for why.)

Day 2: "Long touted economic benefits of cruise tourism far overstated" (How assumptions have been way off for passenger spending and net economic benefits in Portland, Maine.)

Day 2 sidebar: "Lone Portland passenger study made assumptions, overestimated economic impact" (A flawed 2009 study led city officials and residents to unrealistic expectations.)

Day 3: "Cruise ships trigger identity crises for a small city in Maine" (on Rockland and solutions generally for Maine ports.)

Photos by the ever-awesome Greg Rec.

Bar Harbor voters decide today if they want to buy an abandoned ferry terminal so as to ensure it becomes a multi-use facility, not a cruise ship mega-pier. [Update, 6/13/18: They approved the purchase by a more than five-to-one margin.]

In an unrelated note, my thanks to peers and colleagues in the Maine media for kindly recommending me to Pine Tree Watch's list of Maine's Most Trusted Journalists. The others so honored are my Press Herald colleagues (and, remarkably, immediate newsroom desk-neighbors) Mike Lowe, Eric Russell, and Bill Nemitz; Lewiston Sun-Journal managing editor Judy Meyer; Maine Public's Steve Mistler, Don Carrigan of WCSH-6/WLBZ-2, and the Bangor Daily News's Erin Rhoda, Chris Cousins, and Jake Bleiberg. All of us well know this is not an exhaustive list, as Maine is blessed with a great and varied press corps.

Maine's US Senators seek federal response to warming Gulf of Maine

Last week I reported on Canadian researchers having found record-warm water pouring into the primary deepwater entrance to the Gulf of Maine and Maine scientists confirming that they've seen similar, Gulf Stream-derived water filling some of the Gulf's deepwater basins -- all worrying signs that the region's stunning long-term warming trend is continuing.

Earlier this week, I had this update: US Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Angus King (I-Maine) have written the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asking for a beefed-up federal research and monitoring response to determine causes and effects. The rest of Maine's Congressional delegation -- Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-ME2) and Chellie Pingree (D-ME1) -- said they also strongly support the senator's actions.

Details herein.

For more on the warming of the Gulf, consider this comprehensive Press Herald series on the issue, plus this follow-up on how little the State of Maine has done to address it.

Record-warm deepwater pouring into the Gulf of Maine, researchers find

In today's Portland Press Herald, I wrote about a Canadian research team's discovery that record-warm Gulf Stream water is pouring into the Gulf of Maine, probably because of a weakening of the normally dominant, very frigid Labrador Current flowing down from Greenland via Atlantic Canada. The water - at depths of more than 200 feet - was a balmy 57F earlier this month, 11 degrees above the norm for this time of year, and other scientists say such water has been filling deepwater basins inside the Gulf for months.

Exactly what will happen next is uncertain, but the fear is that when the water upwells to the surface -- usually during winter - it could contribute to another "ocean heat wave" like the one in 2012 the wrecked havoc with just about everything in the Gulf and set off a chain of events that had New Brunswick lobstermen detaining trucks filled with Maine lobster at the gates of Canadian processing plants.

[Update, 5/2/17: Prompted by this story, US Senators Angus King and Susan Collins have asked NOAA to take action.]

For more on the warming of the Gulf of Maine and the possible consequences, consider my 2015 Press Herald series "Mayday." I last wrote on the situation -- and Maine's lack of response -- in November.

Gov. LePage's support for offshore drilling at odds with every New England member of Congress

This month, when the Trump administration unveiled its plan to open virtually all areas of U.S. federal waters to oil and gas exploration, most of New England's elected leaders expressed outrage. Every member of the US Senate and US House from the five coastal New England states signed onto a bipartisan bill to ban drilling in the region, while every governor from Massachusetts to Florida announced their intention to seek an exemption. Florida's governor even got one.

The one exception: Maine's Gov. Paul LePage, who not only didn't join the chorus, he'd written a letter in August asking Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to do just what he did.

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram I report on the controversy and how LePage's stance on drilling may complicate Maine's effort to get a Florida-like exemption.

I previously reported on oil and gas drilling in our region in late 2015, when Canada leased areas on their side of the border, at the entrance to the Gulf of Maine.

Can a fallen New Hampshire mill town become the Silicon Valley of human organ manufacturing?

Over at POLITICO, I have the story of how inventor Dean Kamen is leading a $300 million push to resolve bottlenecks in the mass production of genetically-customized human tissues and organs and, he hopes, turn Manchester, New Hampshire into the "Silicon Valley of regenerative medicine."

It's a remarkable vision, and one backed by an $80 million Pentagon grant that's ramping up research-and-development of the processes, manufacturing technology, 3D-printers, and process controls that would allow humans to print and grow their own replacement organs rather than wait on a transplant list. And Kamen has industry giants like Rockwell Automation on board, not to mention the entire political class of his tiny adopted state.

It's also taking place within the Millyard, a once-all-but-abandoned 19th century brick industrial complex that was, back in its heyday, the largest textile manufacturing facility on the planet, and a physical expression of the post-Puritan dream of what a republican industrial utopia might look like, a topic I delved into in detail for this POLITICO piece a couple of years back.

When I met with him, Kamen highlighted the remarkable similarities between what Manchester is trying to do and what I wrote about Winston-Salem, North Carolina having accomplished. I'd have to agree, the parallels are pretty remarkable, right down to the focus on growing of human organs.

Facing threat to shellfish industries, Maine doing pretty much nothing

"Mayday," the Portland Press Herald series on the effects -- now and moving forward -- of the rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine, came out two years ago and concluded that Maine wasn't doing enough to confront the threat, particularly in regards to ocean acidification, which is something experts say can actually be mitigated at the state- and local-level. So what's happened since?

As I reported in yesterday's Maine Sunday Telegram, the state government has essentially done nothing, with legislators choosing not to fund the key recommendations of the bipartisan panel they'd convened to study the problem, or even to enable it to continue working. Leadership and action on the issue has been left to a scrappy group of volunteer scientists and conservationists concerned about the problem.

With Maine's fishing and aquaculture industries at risk, there's some choice words from experts on the issue. Details herein.

For more on the problem, consider reading the "Mayday" series (which was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting) and, especially, the parts on ocean acidification and state inaction.

Trump admins' plans for New England's marine monument making waves

Here in Maine and New England generally, the Trump administration's plans to expand exploitation of natural resources in the Kathadin Woods and Waters National Monument has rightly received the lion's share of public attention and debate. But out to sea, something similar has been proposed for the nation's first permanently protected marine reserve, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument.

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram I describe the facts around the debate, which pits a subset of southern New England's fishermen -- and Trump's Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke -- against scientists and conservationists. Read on for details.

For more on the Gulf of Maine, consider "Mayday," the 2015 Press Herald series on climate change hereabouts, or this recent story on the recent discovery that increased warming of the Gulf is not uniform throughout the year.

Gulf of Maine warming concentrated in summer, which is getting longer

I've been remiss in posting that in this past week's Maine Sunday Telegram I reported on new scientific research that reveals a new level of detail of how the Gulf of Maine is warming.

As discussed in detail in my 2015 series on the warming of the Gulf, the body of water is the second fastest warming part of the world ocean, with plenty of implications for life here, marine and human alike.

The new research -- by a team including many of the same scientists who worked on the previous studies -- shows Gulf summers are getting longer by two days a year, and that almost all the annual warming is concentrated in the summer months meaning, among other things, less of a cold-water "speed bump" is present to protect the Maine coast from hurricanes.

The AP followed up on this story later in the week.

In recent weeks, right whales have been dying in large numbers in the northeast Atlantic -- possibly due in part to secondary climate effects -- and researchers have estimated that many commercial fish species in the Gulf may run out of thermally appropriate habitat in coming decades.

A catastrophic year for North Atlantic right whales

This has been a terrible year for one of the most endangered marine mammals on Earth, the North Atlantic right whale, which has a surviving population of just 500. As I reported in Wednesday's Portland Press Herald, at least a dozen of the rare whales had been found dead off New England and Atlantic Canada, most of them in waters they had not previously been known to frequent.

Another whale carcass has since been reported off Massachusetts.

Why is this happening? Scientists aren't certain, but food -- and therefore climate change -- is believed to be a driving factor. Read on to learn more.

I've reported extensively on the right whales in the past, when it appeared they had finally turned a corner. For more on this, start here.

Exploring the lasting legacy of early Maine and New Hampshire

Readers of The Lobster Coast and American Nations are aware of the lasting effects of Colonial Era events on the future trajectories and characteristics of North America's disparate regional cultures and subcultures. Maine, especially, is shaped by events in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when a distinctive Anglican/Royalist/West Country-influenced society was made a colony of Puritan/Anti-Royalist/East Anglia-domnated Massachusetts. Its a colonial legacy that continues to effect our development, attitudes, values, and economic performance, even though few Mainers today either know the history.

A new exhibit at a museum on the border of Maine and New Hampshire shines a light on this poorly understood period in the two colonies' history, then bound together by shared experience and resistance to Massachusetts overrule. "Forgotten Frontier" is showing at the Old Berwick Historical Society's Counting House Museum in South Berwick, Maine, and I visited and wrote about it in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram. Have a look and consider a visit.