Speaking on Maine's past and Lobster Coast via the Schoodic Institute, Sept.8

On September 8 at 7pm Eastern, I'll be talking about the backstory of Maine on the occasion of its Bicentennial: a harrowing and little understood saga of war and betrayal, of clashing empires and ethnic cleansing, of civil war and colonial occupation by Massachusetts of what had been a separate province. These events shaped Mainers as a people and explain some of the culture’s most impressive virtues and most frustrating faults, as well as the still fraught relationship between this land’s real natives and the rest of us whose families came “from away” at some point in the past four hundred years.

These are issues discussed in my history of coastal Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier, as well as my Maine Sunday Telegram series this spring, "Colony."

The talk, via Zoom, is hosted by the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park in Winter Harbor, Maine. It's free and open to the public, but you do need to register.

Speaking on Maine's formative history (virtually), August 20 via Biddeford Pool Summer Speaker Series

This Thursday, August 20, I'll be speaking on, well, why Maine and Mainers are they way they are and how events centuries ago shaped our fundamental, postcolonial character.It's the subject of my second book, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier, as well as this spring's special series "Colony" in the Maine Sunday Telegram. 

The event is the final installment of the 2020 Summer Speaker Series hosted each year by the Biddeford Pool Union Church here in Maine. Unfortunately the pandemic has made this and so many other events impossible to hold in person, but it's going digital, which means anyone, anywhere can join. Kicks off at 7pm, but you do need to register. 

Details can be found on this poster at the Union Church's website. Here's the key bit: 

"To register for the Series, contact Elaine Robinson, 283-1398, or erobinson4@maine.rr.com. You will receive an email with Zoom call information. Donations gratefully accepted. 100% of proceeds benefit charities such as Seeds of Hope, Stone Soup Food Pantry, Ever After Mustang Rescue, and Saco Meals. Send check made out to “Union Church” with “Speaker Series” in subject line to UC Treasurer, PO Box 344, Biddeford Pool ME 04006." 

Other upcoming virtual events include: 

 

September 1, German Marshall Fund of the United States (on my new book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood) 

September 7, Jesup Library of Bar Harbor, Maine (ditto.) 

September 8, Schoodic Institute, Winter Harbor, Maine (on Maine's past, present, and future) 

September 23, Boston Athenaeum (on Union)

Traveling via book? Lonely Planet recommends Lobster Coast for Maine

The pandemic has us all grounded, with transportation cut back, unnecessary travel dangerous, and most international borders sealed off. But the folks at Lonely Planet, the travel guide company whose guides got me around the Communist bloc in 1989, have compiled a list of books to let you travel the United States without leaving your home.

I'm honored that for Maine they chose my 2004 cultural and environmental history, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier. Readers of the recent Press Herald series "Colony" will recognize many of the themes within, but there's much more about what makes our people tick. It's a story Lonely Planet says is "essentially the colonial, East Coast version of The Deadliest Catch."

Especially honored to be included alongside their choices for other states like Maryland -- A Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (for Massachusetts); and John McPhee's Pine Barrens (for New Jersey.)

So stay safe out there.... and happy armchair travels.

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 4: the squatters rise up against Boston's Land Barons

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 fourth installment appeared last Sunday, describing the nearly century-long armed insurrection in the Maine backcountry that foiled the plans of Boston's great land barons and set the captured colony on the path to statehood.

The series continues this coming Sunday in the Telegram, which is in fact the very day of Maine's Bicentennial.

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.

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.

Colony, Chapter 2: Maine and Massachusetts were different from the start

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 second installment appeared in this past edition. It explores the stark differences between early Maine (Royalist, Anglican, West Country-dominated) and Massachusetts Bay (anti-aristocratic, Puritan, East Anglia-dominated) and how they quickly came to be rivals in the early 1600s.

Also thanks to the New York Times's Sam Sifton for plugging the series in his NYT Cooking newsletter this week. "It’s behind a paywall but worth the investment: The Portland Press Herald’s history of Maine on the occasion of the state’s bicentennial year," he writes.

[Update, 3/5/2020: You can read Chapter 3 here.]

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.

Colony, a six-part series on Maine's long path to statehood

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, a six-part series that launched in the Maine Sunday Telegram today tells that story. It's a harrowing and little understood saga of war and betrayal, of clashing empires and ethnic cleansing, of an intra-English civil war and a 170 year colonial occupation by Massachusetts of what had been a separate province. These events shaped us as a people and explain some of our culture’s most impressive virtues and most frustrating faults, as well as the still fraught relationship between this land’s real natives and the rest of us whose families came “from away” at some point in the past four hundred years.

This first chapter is on the prehistoric and immediate contact period hereabouts. The series continues each Sunday for the next month and a half.

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.

[Update, 3/5/2020: You can read Chapter 2 here and Chapter 3 here.]