The Year of Living Distantly

We're one year into the global pandemic and I, at least, feel my heart rate increase when I think back to those scary days in late March and early April 2020 when nobody knew for sure what was going to happen next. Thankfully it appears clear we're at the beginning of the end, and we didn't end up living in The Road.

Among Americans, we Mainers have gotten off lightly, but it's still be a wrenching experience that will transform society. So for the anniversary of the pandemic I took stock in how the pandemic effected and changed different sectors of life, from the elderly who paid the most terrible price to schools, restaurants, hospitals, and the performing arts. You can read it all in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, or online here.

Jeff Daniels discovers American Nations

Jeff Daniels has been driving sell out crowds to New York's Shubert Theater to see his performance of Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin's new adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird. Parade Magazine, that insert in what remains of America's Sunday newspapers, interviewed him for this past Sunday's cover profile.

It's a compelling profile on a timely topic -- Atticus Finch is a lawyer defending a falsely accused black man in 1930s Alabama -- and a worthwhile read. But the self-interested reason I'm talking about it here is, at the end, he's asked his "Fave Read." His answer: American Nations. "It's fascinating," he says in what are the last lines of the feature. "It's all about how this country developed and why we are the way we are. We've never been one nation under God. It was always 11 nations."

Daniels first mentioned my book in a tweet  November 4th -- in fact, the title was the only thing the tweet said. The play opened December 13th, so I want to imagine he picked it up while thinking about regionalism and the Deep South of the 1930s. Or maybe he just wanted an escape. Either way, thanks Jeff for the kind plug.

AMERICAN NATIONS by Colin Woodard.

— Jeff Daniels (@Jeff_Daniels) November 5, 2018

Politically minded television viewers will remember Daniels' famous speech in the pilot to Sorkin's television series, The Newsroom, where he plays a Yankee Republican distressed about the direction of the country, his party and all.

For contrast, the last celebrity to go out of their way to mention the book was the idiosyncratic Glenn Beck.

Speaking within Chautauqua!, Stonington, Maine, April 6

I've been invited to deliver a ten-minute mini-lecture-within-a-play next week by the deliciously-named National Theater of the United States of America.

NTUSA is putting on their production of Chautauqua! at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle the evening of April 6. The production -- a decidedly unconventional celebration of the famous 19th century Yankee variety-show-cum-intellectual-program -- is in the midst of a New England tour from its New York City spawning ground. The New Yorker has called it a "timely, beautiful meditation on the relationship between the arts, urbanity, community, and economics."

As you've probably guessed, I'll be giving distilled remarks drawn from my book on the cultural history and identity of coastal Maine, The Lobster Coast. Tickets are $20. Hope to see you there.

My grandfather, the ceramicist

Last year I was asked to write a profile of my grandfather, the semi-renowned Maine ceramicist Weston Andersen, whose Andersen Design line of hand-decorated, slip-cast bowls, vases, and wildlife sculptures are lurking on the shelves and mantles of a great many homes here.

The piece, "The Arts and Crafts of Andersen Design", is in the current issue of Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors. Unfortunately, it's not available online, but readers here in Maine will find it on most newsstands.

My grandfather (who studied under Eva Zeisel and the pioneer industrial designer David Dohner) and late grandmother (who met him during the Blitz in her native London) came to Southport Island in the early 1950s, making their wares in a swallow-infested barn. More than half a century later, my grandfather is still at it over in East Boothbay, collaborating with my aunts. If you enjoy the magazine piece, drop by their showroom there to see designs both old and new.

My grandparents, Weston and Brenda Andersen, at home on Southport in the 1950s.

Phoenix's "best Maine writers" of the decade

It's been a few months since we heard from the Department of Vulgar Self-Promotion, so I'm hoping readers will excuse the following:

The Portland Phoenix (the alternative weekly hereabouts) just published their last issue of the Noughties, which features a piece on the "best Maine writers of the past ten years." It includes "local demigods" (Stephen King, Carolyn Chute, Phillip Hoose, Betsy Sholl), seasonal residents (e.g. Richard Ford) and "Young Lions," including yours truly. Here's their plug (with my own hyperlink enhancements):

"In non-fiction territory, COLIN WOODARD's exhaustively researched The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators & the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (2004) presents a new local history that's edifying and, necessarily, both reverent and indignant. A similarly compelling unearthing, The Republic of Pirates, followed in 2007."

It's wonderful to be included in such a round-up, but even better to make the Young Lions department at age 41. It's a pleasant reminder that when the Noughties started on January 1, 2000, I was still four months away from publishing my first book, Ocean's End, and a full year from getting the initial idea for Lobster Coast. (This came to me in an epiphany while shaving in a Reykjavik pension, strangely enough.) Middle age still seemed far, far away.

Now the troubles of the world are on my shoulders.... not least that I will have to compete with the Demigods to make the list in December 2019!

The Times travels to Prouts Neck, even if you can't

I was surprised to see a piece on Prouts Neck in this Sunday's New York Times travel section. After all, the exclusive summer colony in Scarborough, Maine where Winslow Homer painted his famous seascapes if famously off-limits to the public, a fact I discovered while writing The Lobster Coast. As you can read in this passage, even in the dead of winter there's a gate, an electronic passkey reader, and the Scarborough Police Department blocking your way.

So I picked up Geraldine Fabrikant's piece with interest, knowing the Portland Museum of Art had acquired Homer's studio a few years back. If it's in the travel section, it must be something you can travel to, right?

Nope. Read the piece and you quickly discover the place is still as inaccessible as ever. "While the studio is on a private road, it will be open to small groups by special arrangement after [PMA's restoration] work is finished" in 2012, Fabrikant writes. "Prouts Neck is not easily accessible to visitors, and that is fine with the summer residents — not so much from snobbery, they say, but from a desire to keep it as unspoiled as possible."

The Times then carries on with their "If You Go" section as if you could actually visit the place, suggesting you fly to Portland and have a look at the Neck from Scarborough Beach State Park. (Not worth the trip, I assure you.) The only way you can so much as take in the view of the shoreline Homer painted is by shelling out at least $480 a night to stay in the Black Point Inn, which is owned by the Prouts Neck cottagers. (This gets you the right to walk their private trail.) There's even an interactive map showing you all the locations most of us have little hope of accessing for several years yet.

If the Times wanted to write about Winslow Homer's studio or the history of Prouts Neck, great, but put it in the Arts & Culture section where it belongs.