Let 'er rip - Sledding in Holyoke, Mass., 19th Century

Image Museum website

 



I don't when we're going to get the first big snowfall, but these kids are ready for it.  This is a late 19th century photo of some back alley fun in Holyoke, Massachusetts.  The contraption they're riding seems to be some sort of a "rip".   Do you remember rips?  Or did they call these sleds something else where you're from?

JFK - A 50th Anniversary

Fifty years is a long time, but still only the blink of an eye in the measure of eras, only one small thread in the enormous tapestry of history.  We see this event, this assassination, as the beginning of our modern, cynical, chaotic era, and most who remember the day--indeed, that entire waking nightmare weekend--remember not just the news but where they were, what they were doing, who they were at that time, fitting themselves into the larger context of national history.

 

 

It happened on Friday.  By the time Monday morning arrived to a bleak new world, we had suffered the shock of assassination, the agony of a young widow, been stunned at another murder on live television, and had in the course of it all become newly educated on the protocol of personal, communal, and national mourning.  Our world shut down for one day at the end of it in tribute, honor, and respect--and something more; a desire simply to pause and reflect before the world--as we suspected it might--got even crazier.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 







 

 

The newspapers (shown here from three different Springfield, Massachusetts, papers) are yellowed and fragile with age, but their images and words are still overwhelming.

 



Save the Leavitt Theatre - Ogunquit, Maine

Over at my Another Old Movie Blog we visited the Leavitt Theatre in Ogunquit, Maine, here in this post. Recently, a drive has been started to help the Leavitt adapt to the new digital projectors that are so costly, and without which many small independent movie theaters, like the Leavitt, will go out of business.  Here's the press release that was sent to me.  I thought you might like to have a look, and help out if you can.

____________
As many as 10,000 movie screens in North America could go dark by Dec 31st, 2013! http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/how-digital-conversion-is-killing-independent-movie-theaters-20130904
LEAVITT THEATRE KICKSTARTER: http://kck.st/HhQ8MO

Hello.

By Dec. 31st Hollywood will cease distributing films to all movie theaters on celluloid reels in favor of digital prints. America's movie screens have been forced to buy digital projectors that can cost as much as $100,000. An estimated 10,000 screens – one in every five screens in North America – will go dark because they can't afford to convert.

Over 1000 independent old-school, mom-and-pop-owned movie palaces in small towns are struggling to come up with the price of conversion. They lack the cash and resources of big chain cinemas. And to make matters worse, the film companies are helping subsidize the large multiplexes' conversions but not the single screen movie houses.

The Leavitt Theatre in Ogunquit, Maine (est. 1923) is one of these theaters. A beautiful, classic, independent, family owned movie theater that has been showing first-run films for 90 years, they must go digital by Dec 31st or go dark!

Please click on the link below to find out more about a new KICKSTARTER drive. The Leavitt Theatre has just 25 DAYS (until Nov 30) to raise $60,000. They need help!
KICKSTARTER:http://kck.st/HhQ8MO

 Please spread the word, even if you are unable to donate.

Thanks everyone!

Article:
http://retroroadmap.com/2010/07/29/the-leavitt-theatre-ogunquit-me-youll-love-it/

Also on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Leavitt-Theatre/99336197126?ref=hl

Dismount and Murder - new mystery book

Dismount and Murder third in the Double V Mysteries series is now available in eBook, and paperback.  Elmer and Juliet continue their tentative relationship while investigating murder at a wealthy estate in Litchfield, Connecticut, in the summer of 1950, while a horse show on the grounds covers the tracks of a number of suspects.  Elmer, an ex-convict, is now off parole, the Korean War has just started, and television antennas are starting to spring up on rooftops all over the place. 

Then there's that missing corpse. 

It's the dawn of a new, unsettling day.

Available in eBook and paperback online here:

Amazon

CreateSpace

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

Apple

Kobo

And other online merchants.

 

You can find the two first books in the series, Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red and Speak Out Before You Die also at the above online shops -- and in all of them, except currently for Amazon, the first book -- Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red -- is FREE as an eBook for a limited time.

Visit my Another Old Movie Blog this Thursday for a chance to win a free paperback copy of Dismount and Murder.

 

 

New England Vampires

With Halloween approaching this week, we give thought to an episode in New England history when vampires were thought to dwell among us.

Not vampires like Dracula, but it was very common in the folklore of New England, even unto the early 1800s, that death by consumption—or tuberculosis as we now call it—was due to the souls of the dead feeding on the living.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection, easily spread among people in close quarters.  Entire families were wiped out by the disease, but with absolutely no knowledge of germs, the infected victims and their frightened relatives sought other answers.

In rural New England, folklore persisted that in order to stop the disease, the body of a family member who died of it would be exhumed, and ritually desecrated in various manners—the organs would be removed and burned, or the head decapitated, or the body simply turned over to face downward.

It might have given a panicked family a night’s sleep to think they’d solved the problem, but the ritual obviously did nothing to curb the consumption of remaining family members.

A fascinating article on the subject by Abigail Tucker, which begins with an eerie investigation into an unmarked graveyard and leads to incidents in Griswold, Connecticut; Woodstock, Vermont; Plymouth, Massachusetts; and Exeter, Rhode Island; was published in Smithsonian magazine in October 2012, and reads like a mystery novel, an historical documentary, and a tantalizing ghost story.  You can read it here.

 

Gilbertville Covered Bridge - Hardwick & Ware, Massachusetts

The Gilbertville Covered Bridge, also known as the Ware-Hardwick Covered Bridge, built in 1887, crosses the Ware River between the central Massachusetts towns of Ware and Hardwick.  Gilbertville is the village in Hardwick where the bridge is located.

 

These photos are from 1992, a period between two important restorations.  The bridge is a little over 136 feet long, and about 24 feet wide, with a roadway of a little over 19 feet. 

 

 

It had been restored in 1987, but due to a number of issues, including a pernicious beetle infestation, was closed to traffic in 2002, finally rebuilt and opened again to traffic in 2010.

 

 

 

Have a look here for more on the Gilbertville Covered Bridge.

 

 

 

 

New Book - The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts

Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 16th, I'll be speaking before the Chicopee Historical Society in the Community Room of Ames Privilege, lower Springfield Street, Chicopee, Mass. on three men who all worked at the Ames Manufacturing Company during the Civil War, and how the links and coincidences between them illustrate the Northern Civil War experience in a small factory town.  The event is free and open to the public.

Also, my latest book on the subject, The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War will be for sale at the event.  It is also available in paperback from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, and CreateSpace.  It is available as an eBook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Apple, Kobo, Diesel, Sony and other online shops.