Early Gravestones! Upcoming talk & READ THIS BOOK!

What: Early Gravestones of Southern Maine Talk!
When: Thursday, August 18, 2016 @ 7:00pm
Where: Maine Charitable Mechanic Association, 519 Congress Street, Portland, Maine
Cost: Free and open to the public
FMI: email MCMA1857@gmail.com or call (207)773-8396

Meet Portland author, Ron Romano, and hear him discuss and read from his new book! Ron is a MCMA member and Spirits Alive Board member. He will discuss, sign, and read from his new book as well as present slides highlighting the incredible skill of Portland’s first gravestone cutter, Bartlett Adams. Light refreshments will be served.

This event is sponsored by Maine Charitable Mechanic Association (MCMA), The History Press & Spirits Alive.
http://www.mainecharitablemechanicassociation.com/
https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/
http://www.spiritsalive.org/

For those of you who don't yet have this book in your gravestone-loving hands, let me tell you -- you do NOT want to miss it. Ron Romano has outdone himself. After following Bartlett's career, and giving tour after tour in Portland's Eastern Cemetery highlighting his stonework, Romano was encouraged to write his account of Bartlett's life and craft. Luckily for us, he really did it!

It is a fascinating story from start to finish, and interwoven as it is with Romano's account of his search for the tale, it had me wanting to go out and search out Bartlett's signature in Maine's graveyards myself ASAP.

This is the gauge of quality of Romano's work -- he explains the finer points of gravestone studies in a way that makes you want to join in the gathering, and at the same time paints a picture of Bartlett's own life and times that brings them to life in your mind's eye.

This is a rare thing in a history book. I recommend you buy it and experience this for yourself.

Maine letter-writing firsts

Maine.info's website has started hosting The Daily Maine Fact on their front page (formerly posted daily by AroundMaine.com). They don't have an archive, which is sad for folks like me, but every now and then I remember to look at it. Earlier this month, the fact-of-the-day was about letter writing in the early history of Maine.

The first letter ever sent from Maine went to King James I of England in 1607. It was dispatched on this date by George Popham, founder of a short-lived colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River. Popham ran to excess in praising both his monarch and the natural resources of the new land, which he claimed included nutmeg and cinnamon. (Source: Maine: A Literary Chronicle, W. Storrs Lee, editor. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968)

The Maine Historical Society has extensive collections of Maine-related letters for those interested in digging further. Many of the documents are beginning to appear on the Maine Memory Network website, www.mainememory.net, as they are scanned and transcribed to make them more accessible to researchers. The Maine Memory collection is remarkable in that it collects documents from a wide variety of sources and makes them fully available in a number of formats for history sleuths.

Image shown is of King James I, in a letter (ha ha ha). Image source: http://www.kentarchives.org.uk/

EVENT/Call for Entries: Norlands 2008

CALL FOR PAPERS
"Mainers and Their Neighbors Who Went Out into the World"

--where we look at the stories of Northern New England and Maritime people who ventured beyond the region's boundaries. Some, like the Washburn family of Livermore, Maine, found fame and fortune. Most went voluntarily. Many did interesting things.

TO BE HELD AT THE WASHBURN-NORLANDS LIVING HISTORY CENTER
290 Norlands Road, Livermore, ME 04253
June 5 - 7, 2008

The conference is sponsored by the WASHBURN HUMANITIES CENTER in association with the University of Maine at Farmington and St. Michael's College, Vermont.

With this year's broad theme we are seeking the participation of both professional and lay scholars and students from across the spectrum of academic disciplines.

We encourage proposals from new presenters; presenters from previous conferences are encouraged to return, present a paper, and meet old friends.

Previously published material should not be submitted.

Presenters are given two nights lodging and breakfasts free of charge at local homes.

The conference will be held at the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center, a 445 acre site containing a restored one room school house, farmer's cottage, 1885 granite library (housing the extensive Washburn family collections), a 200 seat 1828 Universalist Church, and the 1867 Washburn mansion.

-------------------------------------------------
Submit 150-word abstract and one-page vita by MARCH 7, 2008 TO:
Billie Gammon
42 Hathaway Hill Road
Livermore, ME 04253

Phone: (207) 897-2236
E-mail: billiegammon[at]roadrunner.com

$3 Dewey's Founder, Indiana Jones of Beer, Dies at 59

$3 Dewey's has been a Portland barscene mainstay since its founding in the early 1980s. The founder of the ale house, Alan Eames, was no less a character himself. Though he spent his life in Massachusetts and Vermont, he has left an indelible stamp in Maine, both in Portland's Old Port and on beer enthusiasts in general.

Thanks to the New England Anomaly mailing list for catching this!

The 'Indiana Jones of beer'
DOUGLAS MARTIN, New York Times
Monday, March 05, 2007

Dummerston, VT - Alan Eames, who cultivated his reputation as "the Indiana Jones of beer" by crawling into Egyptian tombs to read hieroglyphics about beer and voyaging along the Amazon in search of a mysterious lost black brew, died Feb. 10 at his home in Dummerston, Vt. He was 59.

His wife, Sheila, said he died after suffering respiratory failure while he slept.

Eames called himself a beer anthropologist, a role that allowed him to expound on subjects like what he put forward as the world's oldest beer advertisement, dating to roughly 4000 BC.

In it a Mesopotamian stone tablet depicted a headless woman with enormous breasts holding goblets of beer in each hand. The tagline, at least in his interpretation, was: "Drink Elba, the beer with the heart of a lion."

He explored similar topics in seven books, the best known of which was The Secret Life of Beer (1995), in myriad radio and television appearances and in speeches at colleges and other institutions. A typical title: Beer: A Gift from God, or the Devil's Training Wheels.

Eames, who followed the golden liquid to 44 countries, often told about his perilous trek high in the Andes in pursuit of an ancient brew made from strawberries the size of baseballs. Or about Aztecs forbidding drunkenness except among those 52
years of age or older. Or about accounts that said Norse ale was served with garlic to ward off evil.
...
His beer-related business ventures began in the mid-1970s with his acquisition of Gleason's Package Store in Templeton, Mass., near Gardner, which became known for its large beer selection. He conceived, designed and operated Three Dollar Dewey's Ale House in Portland, Me., and another with the same name in Brattleboro.
...
Alan Eames, who never learned to drive or use a computer, wrote his last article about witchcraft and beer. He himself stopped drinking the stuff eight years ago.
[Source

To read Eames' last article, about witches and their bubbling brew, please visit this site:
http://www.alestreetnews.com/articles/14_5_10.htm
Eames makes a final note at the end of the article: "This article is dedicated to the memory of my ancestor, Rebecca Eames of Boxford, MA. She was condemned to death for witchcraft on September 17, 1692. Rebecca Eames was unique - not only confessing to having had sex with the Devil - but worse - having enjoyed it."

Also of interest is a mention of another presence that he founded: "Mr. Eames had a life-long passion for ghost stories. In the awful, Eames found strange beauty and of these things, he was a scholar without peer. He had great admiration for the author, HP Lovecraft. Together, he and his wife successfully created the Lovecraft in Vermont Festival in 2006 as a celebration of Lovecraft’s life and ties to Vermont." To hear a New Hampshire Public Radio piece about the festival, please click here.

A lover of animals, especially cats and turtles, Eames did his best by small creatures to the end. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Windham County Humane Society, 916 West River Road, Brattleboro, Vermont, 05301.