Monday, November 09, 2020

What a year! Bigfoot in Maine update etc

 Hi everyone--

This update note is long overdue, as are so many other things in this completely bonkers year.  The good news is, although I'm still fighting to keep my shop (The Green Hand Bookshop) afloat in the midst of all this, my upcoming book, Bigfoot in Maine, has meanwhile been quietly moving ahead.  It is making its way through the maze of editors and formatting designers at the publisher, and if all goes well we'll be looking at a release date in the first half of 2021.

All the illustrations are done, photos are tweaked, chapters written, and everything indexed.  Phew!!!  There was a lot of back and forth about how long it could be, and in the end I had to cut almost half of what I had written, but I fought to keep in the bulk of the most important part, in my view -- the oral history of eyewitness accounts. 

Some of the parts I had to pull out will show up here or in print as articles, so that they still see the light of day.

I am still talking with folks about their encounters, and with those out in the field investigating current activity, even though Covid has restricted my own travels for the foreseeable future (again, trying to keep the shop going has been intense, and we're not out of the woods yet).

Just for fun, I also recorded a short adaptation of the Maine story "Hobgoblins of the Wild North Woods" by Winthrop Packard, published in the Boston Evening Transcript, back on Dec 31, 1902. While it is ostensibly fictitious, it contains many elements of Bigfoot sightings reported even today.

You can listen to it here for free -- enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/mys-648503636/a-hair-raising-bigfoot-yarn

I hope you have all stayed safe and well in these trying times, and I wish everyone better days ahead.

Sunday, January 05, 2020

Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook!

Hi folks, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Many of you like myself can appreciate the part that food plays in the cultural history of Maine.

There are 5 days left to participate in the Kickstarter to help Rabelais Books put together their inspiring project --
The
Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook! 

[Apologies for the lateness of this alert, 2019 was not kind and I missed a lot of fun things that were brewing.]
If you aren't able to contribute, but have a Maine family food memory, recipe, or image you'd like to send to them as part of the project, do not hesitate! Deadline for submissions is JAN 10!

Submit here: https://www.maine200cookbook.com/home/#submit

Kickstarter here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maine200cookbook/maine-bicentennial-community-cookbook

Don Lindgren of Rabelais Books has long been a tireless archivist of historical cookery, and I can only imagine as he turns his enthusiasm and focus to the topic of Maine's own recipes that some marvelous and fun treasures are going to be turned up in the hunt. 

Let's do what we can to help him out!  If you have a delicious or notorious family classic that has long been a part of your family gatherings and history, why not send it in and add it to the mix?  It's one small (but tasty) way you can participate in Maine's bicentennial!

If you're curious about Rabelais Books, I encourage you to visit their website, as it (and their catalogs) are a trove of information and imagery on the topic of food books of all sorts:  https://www.rabelaisbooks.com/