Watching the United States Presidential debate last night, I was struck by just how far over the edge we’ve fallen from “Presidential”. I’ve known this, as you have, but it was hammered home like an iron spike to the skull last night. And so I woke seeking inspiration from better men (so far) who have…
“Le sommet de la plus part d’icelles est desgarny d’arbres parceque ce ne sont que roches. Je l’ay nommee l’isle des Monts-deserts.” – Samuel de Champlain(Translated into English: “The top of most of them is bare with trees because they are only rocks. I named it the island of Monts-deserts.”) French Explorer Samuel de Champlain…
“As our present political state affords Matter for a variety of Thoughts, of peculiar importance to the good people of New England we purpose to insert every thing of that Nature that may be pertinently and decently wrote. For ourselves, we declare that we are of no Party, neither shall we promote the narrow and…
In 1622 Captain John Mason was granted the land between the Kennebec River and the Merrimack River and the territory was named New Hampshire. The border with Massachusetts wasn’t the middle of the river, but a distance three miles north of the river’s shore. This made for an interesting, zig-zagging border that meanders along as…
“To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.” – Heraclitus Heraclitus seems to be trending on the blog, coming up a couple of times in the last 24 hours of writing. Purely coincidence, but then again maybe…
“How does the country come out of a crisis stronger and not weaker?” – Jon Meacham “It’s just a sign of the grim moment we’re in that a basic statement about the capacity of America to reform itself can even seem partisan” – Jon Meacham I supposed it took an historian to jolt me back…
“Water does not act like a perfect mirror. Light objects will appear a little darker and duller in their reflected images and dark objects will appear a touch lighter… A reflection [also] shows you the view from the point on the water’s surface that you are looking at, not the perspective from where you are…
I confess when I visited Greenwich my mind wasn’t on chronometers, it was on the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time. But after the obligatory pictures at 0° along the famous line that dictates so much of our modern lives I spent the duration of my time exploring the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and listened intently…
The Nauset of Cape Cod are part of the Mashpee Wampanoag and were known as the “Praying Indians” because they became converts to Christianity. They were an important ally for the colonists against tribes that rose up against the encroachment of the English settlements. Most famously they worked with Benjamin Church as guides in his…
It might say a lot about me that on a hot Monday morning on Cape Cod when I found myself with time alone I didn’t opt for the beaches, but instead made a pilgrimage to an old graveyard in the woods of Forestdale. This was a trip back for me, for I would walk in this…
