The Preacher and the Plague: a profile of the Maine pastor at the center of a notorious super spreader event

On August 7th, an obscure independent fundamentalist Baptists pastor presided over a wedding at a church he founded in the northern Maine town of East Millinocket, which was followed by a reception that did not comport to public health guidelines to contain the spread of COVID-19. Two months later, he's known far and wide -- by deed if not by name -- featured in news coverage around the world after the wedding has been linked to nearly 200 cases and at least eight deaths in Maine and the pastor has remained defiant.

Who is Rev. Todd Bell, where did he come from, what are the characteristics of the movement he belongs to and which supports him and why do they lead him to continue hosting maskless singers in his Sanford church and attend events featuring maskless youth choirs in other states, as he did this past week? Is he accountable to anyone, secular or otherwise?

I explored Bell's life, movement, and mission for this in-depth profile in today's Maine Sunday Telegram. And thanks to the Press Herald's subscribers for making this kind of time consuming work possible for a state-level news organization.

Talking pirates with Hilary Duff on TLC's Who Do You Think You Are?

In an unlikely development, I recently returned to Blackbeard's Bath, North Carolina haunt to chat with actress Hilary Duff about one of her ancestors, the man responsible for the pirate's death 300 years ago this fall.

Duff was being whisked around the world for what became this week's episode of the cable television program "Who Do You Think You Are?" on TLC.; I was there as author of The Republic of Pirates, which tells the story of how Blackbeard came to be in Bath and how Duff's ancestor organized the expedition to kill him. The segment was shot on an unusually cold January morning -- so cold in fact that Bath Creek had frozen over, making boating impossible, so we spoke on a dock surrounded by

mirror-like ice.

Here's an extended clip of our conversation. The full episode -- S9:E4 -- is available here to US cable subscribers with TLC in their package.

Thanks to the excellent team at Shed Media for an enjoyable mid-winter dive into piracy.

I'll next be talking piracy in Nassau, site of the Bahamian pirate republic, in mid-July, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the pirates' downfall. Stay tuned for details. My next public talk is at the Chautauqua Institution in far western New York state July 3, on American Character.

Talking pirates on the Under the Crossbones podcast

Recently Phil Johnson, host of the Under the Crossbones podcast, contacted me and noted that we've next year will mark the 300th anniversary of Blackbeard's death in the Battle of Ocracoke Island. How time flies!

I talked to Johnson about Blackbeard, the Golden Age pirates, and how I researched my history of them, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. Our conversation has just posed online for your pirate listening pleasure.

Thanks to Phil for his interest and hope you all enjoy.

From U.S. cities, some lessons in protecting liberal democracy

This year's presidential election has exposed a long festering crisis: that tens of millions of Americans are ready to endorse a candidate who has pledged to use extra-constitutional means to solve the country’s problems, including the jailing of his opponent, an erosion of first amendment protections for the press, and ethnographic tests for federal judges.

Authoritarianism now has a sizable constituency in American politics, one that won’t be going away on Nov. 9, regardless of who is president-elect. The next president and congressional leaders will still preside over a country that is politically polarized, with differences that are geographic even as they are ideological, but the risks of inaction have grown.

In the new weekly print edition of my old journalistic home, The Christian Science Monitor, I have

the cover story on how we move forward and shore up our liberal democracy. This is the topic of my most recent book, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good, but it's been reinforced by what I've seen on the ground as I've travelled the country this year for POLITICO, observing successful innovations of various sorts in cities from Utah to New Hampshire.

The story -- which appears in the print edition dated Nov. 7, but went up online yesterday -- explores how people can balance the individual freedom and the need to build and maintain the social and physical infrastructure that allows it to exist.

It's been a few years since I last wrote for the Monitor, but I'm a past Eastern Europe, Balkan, and Global Affairs correspondent for that paper, having written hundreds of stories from dozens of countries between the early 1990s and 2010 from bases in Budapest, Zagreb, Washington, South Texas and Maine. It's nice to be back in its pages again after a long hiatus.

[Update, 12/31/16: This story prompted editorials in both the Des Moines Register and the Roanoke Times.]

How Tech Helped Winston-Salem Shake Tobacco

My latest installment for POLITICO Magazine's "What Works" series is on how the manufacturing city of Winson-Salem, North Carolina reinvented itself as an arts-and-science hub as cigarette manufacturing diminished and local companies were gobbled up by conglomerates. It's a remarkable story of collaboration between a traditional patriarchy, research scientists, city officials and punk rockers.

This is my eighth full-length "What Works" piece this year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood"; how Philadelphia repurposed a 1200 acre former naval base;  how Milwaukee breathed life back into a legacy industrial district, creating the manufacturing park of the future, and how Roanoke, Virginia went from a train city to a brain city. In addition -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

What city is next? Here's a hint: Bernie Sanders.

In Smithsonian, a newly-discovered account of Blackbeard's final days

The newsstand edition cover.

Subscribers of Smithsonian Magazine should be receiving their February 2014 issue right about now and -- unlike the newsstand edition -- it has Blackbeard on the cover.

Inside of either edition, you'll find my story on Blackbeard's final days, including an exclusive, newly-revealed eyewitness account of his final ship captures. These documents were discovered by underwater explorer Mike Daniel, the man who found the wreck of Blackbeard's flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, back in 1996. There's also a suite of other recent discoveries, some of which post-date the 2007 publication of my book, The Republic of Pirates, which by coincidence was released in the United Kingdom a few days ago.

So enjoy, and give Republic of Pirates a read if you find you're wanting to know more.

For those following along, my last piece for Smithsonian Magazine was on the "Great Pyramids of Bosnia" and the dangers of pseudo-science in the December 2009 issue.

American Nations media frenzy

As regular readers of this space know, American Nations went viral late last week, more than two years after its publication, with interest rapidly spreading into mainstream media.

Over the past week, I'm pleased to say that has developed into a nationwide media frenzy of sorts, capped off by yesterday's interview with Chuck Todd, host of MSNBC's The Daily Rundown. My thanks and appreciation to Todd and his crew for their interest and for so efficiently and accurately setting up the book's paradigm in their introduction.

By Friday afternoon, the book's overall sales rank at Amazon hit #50, an all-time high for one of my titles.

In addition to the interviews and features described or previewed last Sunday, here is a small sample of the attention the book and framework received in this unusual week:

Columnists at a number of big city dailies weighed in on whether I'd gotten their region right, at least based on what they understood from the Washington Post or Tufts Magazine articles. (Few, understandably, got to read the actual book before their weekly deadlines.)  

The Oregonian's David Sarasohn essentially endorsed it, but thinks his state's two cultures get along better than the same ones in, say, California. Up in Washington State, this blogger used the paradigm to analyze Boeing's "regional divide."

Kevin Horrigan at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch just doesn't understand what the map and model are really about, and criticized it for things the book explicitly doesn't say, but it was still nice to have the attention. (Alas.).  By contrast, Ralph De la Cruz at the Dallas Morning News thoughtTexans have been successfully "map pegged."

[Update, 11/17/23: The Omaha World-Herald's Erin Grace had this beautifully-executed piece on The Midlands, Nebraska, and the American Nations in this morning's paper, complete with a new color map.]

South Floridians are up in arms at not being included within the eleven nations I treat in the book. (Would it help if I told you Hawaii and Newfoundland aren't either?) The Miami New Times thought I was arguing that the area "shouldn't be considered part of the United States" (sigh), but at least acknowledged they hadn't read the book. (To my surprise, a lot of their commenters seemed to endorse the idea that Miami "isn't really America", suggesting this is an emotive issue thereabouts.)

I had an enjoyable conversation with Brian O'Neill at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about whether Allegeheny County belongs in the Midlands or not -- he's sticking with Appalachia though. The Santa Fe Reporter offered no judgment, but expressed relief that they weren't part of New France. Jack Craver at The Capital Times in Madison, wondered aloud if Wisconsin would still qualify as part of Yankeedom under the Scott Walker administration.

Much further afield, there was the Irish Times, whose U.S. correspondent, Simon Carswell, unpacked the model for his country's readers, saying it "helps navigate a greater understanding of what drives people in this vast, eclectic country."

The Wall Street Journal's Market Watch blog had their own piece, as did Andrew Sullivan's The Dish, and the Raleigh News &Observer.

Lots of other papers reprinted the Washington Post piece, which went out on the Post's news service late in the week, from the Tampa Bay Times to Tokyo's Japan Times.

I also had fun chatting with my Portland Press Herald colleague Greg Kesich about the book and the secret of going viral in our in-newsroom television studio Thursday. Earlier today I chatted with the host of CJAD's Viewpoints in Montreal, but alas, the segment isn't up online yet. The one I did with Lakeshore Public Radio in (the Yankee bit of) Indiana earlier in the week is though, as are the previously plugged NPR, BBC, KPCC, and KPFA pieces.

And, finally, the Free Lance-Star of Fredereicksburg, Va., Friday published my recent Washington Monthly piece on the regional divide in the recent Virginia governor's race as an OpEd. Thanks for your interest.

Now to get some sleep....

American Nations in North Carolina, Midcoast Maine

Today's Raleigh News & Observer recommends five titles as gifts this holiday season including, I'm pleased to say, American Nations. (The compiler, Rob Christensen, also wrote a recent column referencing the book.)

I was also a guest yesterday on Inside Maine with Phil Harriman on Portland's own WGAN. (Phil kindly plugged the book as well.) Our conversation is now online at their website.

If you happen to live in central Midcoast Maine and want to take Phil or the News & Observer up on their recommendations, I'll be meeting readers and signing all of my titles in Boothbay Harbor this Wednesday, Dec. 21, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. The event is at Studio 53. (At last report, there were also signed copies still in stock at Longfellow Books and the Maine Historical Society in Portland and the Maine Coast Bookshop in Damariscotta.)

Occupy Wall Street's regional strengths and weaknesses

Interviewers have been asking me what the American Nations paradigm -- that the continent is really divided into eleven "countries," most of them centuries-old -- can tell us about the prospects of the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements.

Analyzing the Tea Party was relatively easy, as they've been engaged in electoral politics from the beginning, creating a wealth of data; my feature in the current issue of the Washington Monthly shows why the movement is doomed to failure in large swaths of the country. The results of last week's off-year elections bolstered the argument.

But the Occupy movement offers much less of a data trail: its newer; it has thus far spurned electoral politics; there's no "OWS caucus" in Congress to track. I've hypothesized that the movement would also face stark regional differences in popularity and leverage but, until today, didn't have any evidence to test the idea.

Today's article at the Washington Monthly's Ten Miles Square blog offers preliminary evidence that OWS is strongest in the very same "nations" where the Tea Party is weakest. But there's a surprise too: OWS appears especially strong in in the Far West, suggesting the (Tea Party-steered) G.O.P. coalition may be vulnerable to fracture. Enjoy the piece, and let me know what you think.