The past month or two has been an odd season for me, yet I can find reasons to count my blessings. Maybe you can, too, if you look around, instead of despairing over the global panic, which bears no fruit. I broke my arm in early February, both bones in…
I know life can get busy, but one should always make time for the fun things. Below are some of my upcoming events which you will enjoy, especially if you are interested in Living History or Music. February 1, 2020 – Shades of Grey Camp Band at Highlands Retirement Community…
[I hope you will indulge me as my family celebrates my mother’s 90th birthday. She’s an incredible individual, and not just because she’s my mother. – SMC] Lorraine “Ma FAST” Morong CELEBRATION OF THE YEAR At the Town Hall on Saturday, October 18, 2014, long-time Madbury citizen Lorraine Morong celebrated…
Birth of Martin Johnson, Pioneer Wildlife Photographer Oct. 9, 1884 Remember Marlin Perkins in Mutual of Omaha’s 1960s TV show “Wild Kingdom,” and how he left all the rhino-wrestling to his buddy Jim? To say nothing of Steve Irwin’s popular “Crocodile Hunter” forty years later. This post celebrates intrepid forerunner…
The name “Rebecca Smith Pollard” rings no bells in my beady little brain, and neither does her pseudonym, “Kate Harrington.” But the blog post in “The Writer’s Almanac” for September 20, 2011, puts me strongly in mind of my own elementary school education and of my subsequent avocation, living history…
It was on this day in 1787 that the Constitutional Convention adopted The Constitution of the United States, which (after ratification by the states) became the nation’s supreme governing document on March 4, 1789. September 17th is also called Citizenship Day, the day on which most immigrants are officially sworn…
Hannibal Hamlin (1809-1891) Vice presidents rarely cut any swath, and few people know much about them unless they succeed to the Presidency. Because Lincoln had a different vice president for his second term (Andrew Johnson who became president on Lincoln’s death), his first VP, Hannibal Hamlin, has been all but…
Today, August 4, is the birthday of the U. S. Coast Guard, which came into existence 222 years ago, in 1790. I have a couple of reasons for an interest in the USCG: 1. My current employment is temporary contract work on real property assessment of US Coast Guard assets….
William Strunk, Jr. One of the most dog-eared books in our household when I was a child was Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. As my siblings and I progressed through our school-years, my mother consistently pushed this book in front of us as we sat down to our…
John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Annie Fields I recently acquired a biography of James T. Fields, the Boston publisher who printed the works of most of America’s great writers of the 19th Century. The fly-leaf of the book states that his second wife, Annie Adams Fields, was Boston’s greatest hostess…
