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.