Maine Historical Society - Programs Podcast

Seth Goldstein; Recorded February 13, 2025 - Black people and people of African heritage have lived in Maine for more than 400 years, playing a vital role in the shaping of the economy and the history of the state. In the 1800s, many of these individuals worked as farmers, homemakers, drivers, hotel owners, and restaurant keepers, and even more worked in the maritime trades as shipbuilders, fishermen, lobstermen, and sailors. In this talk, Cushing’s Point Museum director Seth Goldstein discussed the fundamental role of African heritage sailors in regional history and examined why the jobs of mariners and shore-related occupations such as longshoremen were important for individuals of African heritage. Seth also addressed how Black mariners participated in the Underground Railroad. Recorded February 13, 2025

Susanna Ashton; Recorded January 23, 2025 - In December of 1850, a faculty wife in Brunswick, Maine, named Harriet Beecher Stowe hid a fugitive enslaved man in her house. While John Andrew Jackson stayed for only one night, he made a lasting impression: drawing from this experience, Stowe began to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of the most influential books in American history and the novel that helped inspire the overthrow of slavery in the United States. Author Susanna talked about her book A Plausible Man, a historical detective story of Jackson’s remarkable flight from slavery to freedom, his quest to liberate his enslaved family, and his emergence as an international advocate for abolition. Recorded January 23, 2025

Adam Shprintzen; Recorded January 13, 2025 - Vegetarianism has been practiced in the United States since the country's founding, yet the early years of the movement have been woefully misunderstood and understudied. Through the Civil War, the vegetarian movement focused on social and political reform, but by the late nineteenth century, the movement became a path for personal strength and success in a newly individualistic, consumption-driven economy. This development led to greater expansion and acceptance of vegetarianism in mainstream society. From Bible Christians to Grahamites, the American Vegetarian Society to the Battle Creek Sanitarium Adam D. Shprintzen explored this lively history of early American vegetarianism and social reform. Recorded January 13, 2025

John Babin and Avery Yale Kamila; Recorded September 30, 2024 - Reaching back 300 years, MHS’s exhibit, Maine’s Untold Vegetarian History features stories of Mainers who changed what vegetarians eat and opened access to plant-based foods. Co-curators John Babin and Avery Yale Kamila discussed this little-known history with plenty of food for thought!

Ann Powers; Recorded October 7, 2024 - Did you know that Joni Mitchell’s eighth studio record, Hejira, was inspired by a cross-country road trip Mitchell made to and from the midcoast village of Damariscotta? For decades, Mitchell’s life and music have enraptured listeners, and yet, while Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer with one arm, with the other arm, she pushes us away. Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting. In Traveling, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell's peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer’s childhood battle with polio, and charts the course of Mitchell’s musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell’s collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life. Kaleidoscopic in scope, and intimate in its detail, Traveling is a fresh and fascinating addition to the Joni Mitchell canon, written by a biographer in full command of her gifts who asks as much of herself as of her subject.

Arlene Palmer Schwind; Recorded July 9, 2024 - It is perhaps unusual that a small state like Maine can claim connections with several opera divas who enjoyed international acclaim between the 1870s and the 1920s. In her illustrated presentation, Arlene Palmer Schwind explored the fascinating lives and careers of Annie Louise Cary, Lillian Nordica, Emma Eames, Olive Fremstad, and Lillian Blauvelt. The experiences of these remarkably talented singers reveal the challenges that faced independent female performing artists in that period as they aimed to reach the peak of what was, and still is, a difficult and demanding profession.

Nathan D. Gibson; Recorded July 16, 2024 - In the late 1950s, Maine was home to one of the most dynamic and exciting recording studios and record labels in the country—Event Records. Co-founded by Al Hawkes and Richard Greeley in 1956, the label recorded bluegrass pioneers (The Lilly Brothers and Don Stover), rockabilly icons (Ricky Coyne and Curtis Johnson), country music legends (Dick Curless, Hal "Lone" Pine, Charlie Bailey), instrumental wizards (Lenny Breau), and many more. Country music researcher and audio archivist Nathan Gibson befriended Hawkes in 2006 and the two spent countless hours playing music together and talking about bluegrass in Maine, record collecting, audio engineering, and Moxie soda. In this presentation, Gibson shared a few of his insights into Event Records and the music of Al Hawkes based on his personal interviews and country music collections.

Nadine Hubbs; Recorded May 29, 2024 - America ushered in twentieth-century modernity with new technologies, aesthetics, and national status as a global power. With the rise in economic and political standing came new cultural pressures: American concert music was deemed far behind its European counterparts and in urgent need of catching up. Years of searching failed to identify a representative compositional voice. Then in 1939 came the sensational New York premiere of Aaron Copland’s “cowboy ballet,” Billy the Kid, soon followed by Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, and other megahits. America found its national sound in the music of Copland, a gay Jewish Brooklynite and one of a close-knit group of gay composers who crucially influenced and collaborated with each other. How did a circle of gay composers become architects of American national identity during the most homophobic period in U.S. history? Nadine Hubbs's answer may surprise you.

York Lo; Recorded February 1, 2024 - York Lo retraced the footsteps of Chinese in the New England area over the past two centuries —from the first known Chinese immigrant to the recent election of Michelle Wu as the first Asian and female mayor of Boston. Highlights of this talk included the story of the first known Chinese immigrant in the area and his connection to a famous painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, a racist incident in Boston Chinatown that later led to the biggest anti-American boycott in China, Chinese soldiers from the area who have served the country from the Civil War to WWII, and the story of the accidental politician who became the first Asian mayor in the Boston area (and it’s not Michelle Wu) and many more stories of triumphs and tribulations.

Seth Goldstein; Recorded February 22, 2024 - Historian Seth Goldstein discussed the economic ties between Maine and the luxury-producing plantations of the West Indies and explored the various commodities, such as lumber, draft animals, and salt cod, that Maine supplied to West Indian plantations. Concurrently, enslaved Africans in the Caribbean labored in horrific conditions to produce sugar, molasses, rum, and other goods that were consumed in Maine. Seth explained how the West Indies Trade was significant to the forced migration of enslaved Africans to Northern New England and how the West Indies Trade left a lasting mark on the city of Portland and the state of Maine.