 Good evening. I'm Harold Pacius. We're on the air again with another edition of Pacius on the News. You know, we most frequently have politicians on this show. They come from both major parties, from all points in the political spectrum. I take great pride in the fact that I have a long history as an activist in the old Democratic Party. And yet I have established very good relationships with many of the conservatives who have been on the show, and I think they think we treat them fairly. I should note incidentally that there are a few people who are active conservatives and Republicans who will not come on the show. And I think it's because sometimes I ask tough questions, not all the time, and it goes on for an hour. So if you're a politician, you say to yourself, do I want to go on a show for an hour and have somebody decide what questions they want to ask of me and I'll be forced to answer them. That sometimes is tough. But 98% of the people I've invited on this show have no problem with it because it is a discussion. And today I have a non-politician. He is a guy that I think many of you know or have heard of, Steve Bromwich, who is the Executive Director of the Main Historical Society. I got him on the show for a couple reasons. One, I know him and I like him. But secondly, many of you have heard me say that I think history is the most important discipline of all. If we have no knowledge of history, we will fail in the future. History is our best instructor. Human nature has been the same forever. And human beings run governments, they're dictators, they're democratically elected leaders, but they're human beings. So if you want to know or what to expect from the human beings that run the country, that run our world, that run our cities, read history, understand history, it tells you really everything you need to know about human nature and what human beings are capable of, both good and evil. Very important. In any event, I didn't intend to make that long speech, Steve, and end on the word evil and then switch over to the Executive Director of the Main Historical Society, who's doing a lot of good in this state and generally. But welcome. Welcome, Harold. It's great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to sit and talk. Well, I do. I love to talk with interesting people like you. So, Steve, tell us about the Main Historical Society. Most people are generally familiar with it, but give them a little background on what it does and how it relates to the people who are watching this show. Sure. Well, it's actually an interesting moment to be having this conversation because next year, Main Historical Society has its 200th birthday. So we were founded as an organization two years after Maine became a state. And I think our history is kind of reflective of Maine's evolution. So, right after Maine became a state, it was an era of kind of preserving the memory of the founding fathers and the founding fathers, I think, recognized that history was going to be really important to the state going forward. So we've been collecting materials related to Maine history ever since, and that's everything from business papers, correspondence, maps, photographs, artwork, anything that tells the story of Maine. And that's what our work is, preserving and sharing Maine's story. So we've been doing that for close to 200 years, and I could go on and on, but our program has really evolved since that time period. For much of the 1900s, our work was collecting and scholarship publications. In our early years, we were based up at Bowdoin College. Down the 1880s, we moved down to Portland. We were housed in Portland Public Library, and then when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's sister died, she left us the Longfellow House with the agreement we make our headquarters there. So then we built our research library, which opened in 1907. For most of the 1900s, our campus was, as you know, the Longfellow House, the research library in the Lovely Garden. And our work during that period was really, again, continuing to collect, preserve, do publications. We served a lot of genealogists, but the fact was, unless you were inclined to walk into a research library, you were in southern Maine, you might not have had a real opportunity to interact with us. So ever since that period, we've been opening up in much more about community focus for the last 30 years or so. But I'll pause there so we can catch up. Well, tell me what's community focus. What's that mean? Yeah. So, and again, I'll come at it from a couple of different directions. You know, so for a long time of that period, we were an old Yankee organization in a lot of ways. So I think, and we'll come back to that in your story and how that relates to it. But in the 1990s, we bought our museum building, which many would recognize as maybe not the most attractive building in Portland. It used to be, when I was a kid, Day's Jewelry Store. That's right. That's right. And actually, the building itself was beautiful. It was built in the 1820s. So pretty soon after Maine became a state, and the Longfellow House was there, a beautiful man-starred roof that existed that way until the 1950s. And then it had that the facade was taken off. And Day's bought it and it became a brick facade. And I look back at the pictures in the 50s and say, man, would I love to have that building as opposed to what you look at today. So one of our big goals is replacing that building with something that's much more invited, inviting suited to our purposes and supports the needs of the organization. While we're on that subject, a lot of people can relate to the building. They drive or walk along Congress Street. They see your building there next to the Longfellow Home. And so what is your plan for that area? Well, we're working on that now. And again, with our 200th birthday, a big part of our focus is where we're headed and how we support Maine's needs in our third century. And that's got a couple of major components. First, collecting, caring and providing access to our collections is a critical part of what we do. We've got a wonderful facility out on Riverside Street that we developed with Portland Public Library a number of years ago. So we have a lot of collections stored and managed and processed out there. So we need to really grow it. It's growing like gangbusters and we need more space. So we're focused on that and how we support the collections needs and researchers. We also look at our digital presence. We've had a very innovative digital presence through our Maine Memory Network for the last 20 years or so. Through that, it empowers any small local historical society, public library with the collections to scan their material and put it on one website. So we have about 270 partners around the state and beyond who are putting materials in their local stories online. So our digital presence has been very important to us and it's going to continue to be a foundation going forward. And then finally on our campus here in Portland, we see such an opportunity to really create a facility and an experience that welcomes and orients people to Maine and helps them connect with Maine and its incredible story and sense of place. So with that, expand on the museum that you now operate. You have a small museum. That's right. Would be your intention to build out and enlarge the museum? Yeah, we're pretty creative and on Trump and Oriole, how we're thinking about approaching that. So for us, one of the real needs is to have a core permanent exhibition that really explores what makes Maine Maine. And we think through our partnerships around the states with other organizations, there's a great opportunity to provide a real visitor experience about Maine that doesn't exist in Portland currently. In terms of how we get there, we have our current building, which has lots of issues and limitations. We currently only have a changing exhibit gallery, so we don't have a permanent exhibit. So we're looking at whether, at how we redevelop the building, the lot where the building is. We've got lovely space in our library building that could be put into public play. And then we look at the neighborhood, you know, there's lots, there's lots happening with the time and temperature building. So we think our block, our presence, what we're doing could help be a catalyst for Congress Street's redevelopment and vitality. So you use the phrase, what makes Maine Maine? And the role of the Maine Historical Society in answering that question and connecting with people who ask the question, what makes Maine Maine? So probably several people watching this program now are saying, what does it mean, what makes Maine Maine? What do you mean by that? And what's the role of Maine Historical? Sure. That's a great question and a fun thing to talk about. So I think, you know, I think we need to start or we should acknowledge, you know, I think one of Maine's great assets is its sense of place. And it doesn't matter where you travel to, you say you're from Maine, you live in Maine, and you often get a far away look in somebody's eyes and they're remembering summer vacation or camp or having grown up here, whatever it may be. And I think, you know, you see it in our tourism industry and how people flock to Maine. And I think people really appreciate the values, the landscape, so much of what of what Maine is about. I think if you asked a lot of people that question, what makes Maine Maine, they might say, it's the environment or the landscape or the ocean or the mountains or the forests. I would make the case for it's really the people. All of our natural resources are a fundamental part of us and the Maine experience. But I think what really makes it special is people's connections to this place. And I think that you see that in communities around the state, whether people have grown up here, whether they've been summer people where they're, you know, we're all new Mainers over the last 400 years, you know, the Wabanaki have been here for 13,000 years. I think we all connect to different locations and communities, but it's about our personal experiences and experiences we've had with our families and our friends and our jobs that make it special. And I think that's a key part of it. So our work again, preserving and sharing Maine stories is trying to explore and document and capture and bring together all of these diverse experiences, you know, what it's been like to live and grow up and work in Millinocket for the last 100 years or the last 125 years, what it means to be from Bar Harbor or from Indian Island, you know, I think all of these experience is add up to what makes Maine Maine. So you touched on this earlier. When I was a kid, Maine Historical was where it is now. The library was behind the Longfellow home. And I used to see people going in there, you know, all dressed up probably, you know, lanky, yanky lawyers going in there to do some work studying about their ancestors in Maine, you know, who were head of paper companies or kings of the logging industry or whatever. And didn't relate to me because my father came when he was nine years old. My mother was born a year after her parents came from a mountain village. So I didn't connect with it. Those weren't my ancestors. Those weren't my people. So what makes Maine Maine is different now than it was 70 years ago. Would you agree with that? Yeah, 100% tell me, you know, demographically and culturally, it's much different than people dreamed it might become 70 years ago. So tell us about Maine Historical Society's connection with what makes Maine what it is today. Yeah, well, you know, it's funny because because this is about stories and personal stories and how they connect, I could turn a lot of this back to your experience and your story. And it's something I've always been fascinated in. So I think, you know, you and I probably first really connected six or seven years ago when we had a major exhibition up that was about immigration in Maine that really looked at how vital immigration, how constant it's been since the Europeans first arrived and how much that has shaped and added to the state. And I think, you know, I often to look to your experience and your career and your partner, severance, and I look at where you guys came from as kids who 20s, 30s, 40s, immigrant kids or Franco kids were not didn't necessarily have all the opportunities. And there was discrimination. And you guys, I'm guessing, but I've read both of your books, you know, started on the outside. And over the course of your careers, you became major civic leaders. And really, you know, part of the key leaders of the mainstream of Maine's business and civic society in a certain sense, despite our funny names, despite your funny names. So I mean, I think that that narrative and the fact and that brings it back to Maine Historical Society, when we first sat down, that notion of seeing how all of these stories connect and demonstrate this experience and evolution. So I think, again, currently, a big focus in our work is is asking the question, what's going on in Maine today? What are what are people interested in? What are what are their needs? What's going on? And how do can we provide context and information to support that? So for example, our exhibitions over the last six or seven years have all looked at taking on topics like immigration, like Maine's food industry and economy. When we were preparing for Maine's Bicentennial, we said celebrating nominally celebrate celebrating commemorating 200 years of statehood is important. But wait, let's step back and really look at provide the context for that. And that's 13,000 years of Wabanaki stewardship of Maine. So we had a major exhibition that worked closely with the community to try to highlight and tell those stories and make sure people were aware. This year, we had, you know, as the nation confronts, you know, the repercussions of George Floyd's death and murder, where does Maine fit into that dialogue? So our current exhibit really tries to look at how Maine fits into some of these national themes. In connection with that last phrase you gave us, how Maine connects to these things. Did you ever, this is kind of out of the blue, did you ever have an exhibit or any information about the tire and feathering of Father John Bapst of Ellsworth, after whom the high school, Catholic High School in Bangor is named. He was tired and feathered. Do you have something on that? We have, I believe we have resources on our Maine memory network to tell that story. You know, the current exhibit again, Big N Again talks about two African American students at the University of Maine who were tired and feathered, I think, in the 19-teens. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, our goal is to bring these stories to the forefront so people understand them and we can acknowledge them and we can kind of bring everybody into the dialogue and the conversation about where does Maine go from here? So this is where we live and it's a much more diverse place and the stories are very diverse, aren't they? Yeah, they sure are. It's interesting, I walked up here today with a new friend of mine, Petter J. Mouha-Marisa, who is, who was granted asylum in this country from the Democratic Republic of Congo and he's a new manor and he is adjusting himself and figuring out how he's going to fit into Maine. What makes Maine Maine? Well, Petter J is, one day, going to be what makes Maine, part of what makes Maine Maine. And so, you're right, it's all of these stories. And you point out that the stories go way back 13,000 years, Wabanaki Indians, people who live in this area, where this program is seen around Casco Bay, they're interested in, wait a minute, who lived on my land, who might have lived on my land 10,000 years ago? Were there somebody here in Greater Portland? People, human beings? And the answer is yes, and this is who they were. And curiosity. Yeah. And of course, that's what I want to get back to history for a moment, because as you know, and others who watch this program now, I think history is the most important discipline. And curiosity drives it. I have a grandson who's 14 years old and who's now just started high school. And so I, you know, think about how he's going to do in high school and whether he will learn a lot in high school. And I keep thinking, I got to remind him, he's a curious guy. No, he's curious, very curious. And if you're curious, you will learn history. It's like gossip almost. It really is. So how long have you been director? About almost 10 years. And you were here for several years before that. Yeah, I've been there about 20 years. OK, you like this business, this museum and historical association business? Well, I love it. And actually what I really love about it is the mainness of it. And I think history and the museum and engaging people around the state is a really great way to be part of and contribute to main vitality going forward. So, you know, as somebody who loves Maine dearly, it's a great way to, again, just contribute to the dialogue. So a lot of these people that you meet around in your travels about the state are not people that I described, tall, lanky, Yankee lawyers going into your facility to learn about their ancestors. They're people with a totally different story. And you find they're they're interested. You engage with them and you find out that people who don't qualify as old line Yankees are very interested in the history of Maine. Yeah, I think I think the way you have to keep bringing it back to the personal, you know, and I think when you're talking about your grandson and how you teach history, you know, a lot of people think they might not be interested in history and they might have had a not a great teacher or it might have been presented in a boring way. But the way it really I think it comes out of the personal experience and where does my story fit in? And so I think what you find in the great thing about the Maine Memory Network and the work with communities, once you go out and you start talking to people about their stories and what was it like growing up in Millinocket or Holton? And they start telling, well, I grew up with it, you know, working in this mill and my family had a camp and we always drove down to Lincoln on the weekend, you know, and you start to see these connections and people initially think, well, I haven't contributed to history, but they start telling these stories and there's pride and there's a sense of connection. I think when we saw each other recently, I was I was talking about, again, Maine Memory Network. So that model where we provide this infrastructure, what we go out and do training and support with the organizations around the state. We've had some great programs where students get really involved working with the local historical society to digitize material and tell stories online. A lot of these kids might not think they're interested in history, but they start researching topics and an old landmark that's got a family name or they see these old hunting or fishing pictures and somebody's holding up a string, a ten trout or has got a needle, a rifle and all of a sudden they get really engaged because it's out of their interests. So I think so much of it starts with what people are interested in and where they've come from and the stories of their place and all of a sudden the history kind of creeps up on you and you begin to see it in the bigger picture. Tell the audience about Maine Memory Network. Tell them what it is and then I'm gonna ask you to tell them how easy it is for them to connect and again curiosity, they can look up a lot of things, right? You can spend a pandemic getting lost in there. Yeah, so again, we launched Maine Memory about 20 years ago and the model's pretty simple. We provide the infrastructure, the technology and we provide training and support and it's really. So this is internet access. It's an internet, it's www.mainmemory.net and so it started as an online archive where all of a sudden you could start scanning materials from hundreds of little organizations, scanning them locally and put them into one database where then you could search. So you search Civil War and you might find things from 37 different Maine communities and you could start to see the different stories and connections. So after a period of time, we said, oh, that's great. You know, you can search across geography and across institutional boundaries without going to 50 little historical societies and then we said, this is great but there's more potential. People said, but tell me stories. So we started creating a museum component. So there's a couple hundred online exhibits there that explore everything from little businesses to potato picking. Well, how do you get those stories? By working with the community. So Maine Memory in its first 10 or 12 years, one of the key sources of support were some major federal grants. You know, it's been very innovative. So we'd have a big federal grant that would take us for a couple of years that let us go out and work with the community, gather these stories, talk to communities about their stories and get them on. When did you talk to individuals in the communities and how did you find these individuals? So the point person from the beginning was always the local historical society and what you could see is that the local historical societies around Maine are an incredible resources. You know, they've been collecting in their community for decades, if not centuries. They know the stories, they know the material, but oftentimes they're run by elderly people. They're in a small building that's only open a couple hours a week. So one of the things, but they've got incredible knowledge and pride. So one of the things that the Maine Memory Network let us do was to start partnering with them. And then you could look and say, you know, they were eager to share their collections both within their community and beyond. So all of a sudden you could see, wait a second, we launched the same year as the laptop program. So all of a sudden middle schoolers in every community in Maine had the technology. They had teachers in school districts that wanted to demonstrate the value. So we started putting schools and historical societies together and the kids would get involved in the scanning. And then you bring the public library into the mix. And all of a sudden you have these, all these little nucleus of partnerships getting together to talk about their stories, their history, what's important to know about them and then sharing those stories online. So how would somebody watching the program that they wanted when we finished, not before we finished, but after we finished the program could go online to access something. What did they type in? MaineMemory.net, and if they Google that, Maine History, MaineMemory.net. So type in MaineMemory.network.net. And now I get to ask a question or you type in some subject. Yeah, so again, so here's where you follow your personal interest in stories. So you might be interested in sailing or mills or Franco or immigrant. Whatever your interest is, you start following it. And that's where you get lost in it. Just type in the keywords. Just type in the keywords, yeah. So we're talking about Abinaki. So if we wanted to know about life in an Abinaki settlement 500 years ago in Round Casco Bay, would you just type in Abinakis or Abinaki plus Casco Bay? Or Wabanaki, we've had a couple. Not Abinaki, Wabanaki. Wabanaki. So we've had a couple of major exhibitions. So there are a lot of resources on there that again we worked with the communities to develop the main tribes and community advisors and partners. It's been very important that we're just trying to provide a platform and a forum for telling these stories but having the community share their stories. So there's a good amount there. And if you go searching and you don't find something, that means there's a need and an opportunity to get involved in getting that story online. Very interesting. There's another dynamic too. So for much of its history, all the contributions did come through local historical societies, but there's now a feature on the site called My Main Stories that lets any individual go to main memory network and they can upload photographs, a text story, a video, and tell their personal experiences about any aspect of life in Maine. It's pretty wonderful. There's a... People use it? People do use it. Yes, they do. So I don't know anything about Facebook. I don't use Facebook. I've learned in the last couple of days that Facebook is gonna destroy the world. But I've always intrigued. People tell their stories on Facebook. They say things to each other. Some of it's lies, apparently. Apparently, I don't know, but apparently they're lies. But somebody can go on. I mean, we got a lot of this in our society. I noticed the obituaries used to be written by reporters. I know I was a reporter one time and got assigned the obituaries for the day. And you'd learn about the person and you'd type them up, you'd talk to the family and get information. Now the family puts in whatever they want. I mean, they could make a person practically a Nobel Prize winner if they never left Madawasca. And so everybody gets to tell their own story. And I guess they like that. So they must be doing that. People wanna do that. Tell the story. Well, I think they do it. I think it's about sharing connection. And I think what's nice, and I mean, that's one of the things you see in social media is just that desire and the ability to connect people. What I think is nice about the main memory environment is again, all of this is the context of how does it fit into the main story? But it's all curated, it's archived, it's cataloged. So once somebody goes in to tell their story, if it's wildly inappropriate, it's not gonna make the best. So I say, okay, I'm one of the people watching. Oh, that's great. Steve tells me I can put my story on main memory network. So I go on, tells me how to get my story in, put my story in. Now, other than my relatives, who would look for my story? Well, I think one of the ways I look at it in our work is I think again, so much of us have a passion for Maine and we love Maine and we almost can't get enough of Maine but we have our very specific points of reference, where we grew up or we went to camp or where our favorite place is. And I think to me one of the fun magical things is the ability to give people more Maine. So one of the things we hope to encourage is people to kind of broaden their main horizons and get off the beaten path and keep exploring and go see Skowhegan and go see Rumford and go to these different dimensions and see the rich history there. So I think again, we're a very self-centered world today. It's all about me. So you've got to be entertained. You've got to find what you're looking for. And I think again, it starts with I'm Googling online and I've got a question about Maine or a main place and I start to pull the thread and it takes me in different directions. So I think that's how you get to different people's stories. When we launched that, my main stories, we had a couple of collecting initiatives. One was around veterans and another was around mill workers. So we worked very closely with one of the great, the Maine Papermaking Museum and there's an incredible collection of maybe 15 or 20 stories of people who worked in the paper mills. And it's wonderful and fascinating to talk about what it was like to grow up in their communities and that machine that they were responsible for and how important that machine was to the process of making paper. So I'm jumping around here, but if you look at these challenging political times and all of this disconnect, to me I think empathy and getting to know people and all the struggles and the things we love that we share is part of a foundation of connection, I think. And I think when you start seeing these intimate stories and what Maine means to other people, it's an opportunity to bring us closer together. Steve, I'm a World War II buff. Okay. I regard it as the greatest drama in all of human history. Extraordinary drama. And I was alive as a kid during World War II and certain things I do remember about it and our lives and the home front and those days. So from the World War II, but a lot was happening in Portland. You know, we had the shipyard in South Portland. We had a Navy base in Casco Bay. Sailors all downtown Portland. I remember this as a kid, full of sailors downtown Portland. People from small towns and larger towns all over the state of Maine had children. Off they would go to war. Off they would go to war. Small town guys, the kids who had never been out of Melanarchy, you used Melanarchy, never been out of there. Maybe gone to Bangor once or twice in their lives. And suddenly they're landing on a beach in Normandy, France. Fascinating stuff. So for a World War II buff, what could I find on Maine Memory Network? You could, probably mostly personal experiences and stories and photographs that have come back, uniforms, that sort of thing. We actually have an exhibit in our gallery and online right now about POWs in Arusta County who, German POWs who came and worked and spent a couple of years in Maine and became part of the community. Recently we did one on Black POWs who, excuse me, Black soldiers who were stationed in Maine, guarding railroad infrastructure and such. So there's those kinds of resources. But I'll tell you, if you love the Maine story, one of the best books, it's not, I mean, it's in our collections, but it's not our production, but it's called The Soldier's Son. Maybe published 10 or 15 years ago, but it's about a kid who grew up, he was probably five or seven when World War II started and they're outside of Farmington somewhere and he tells stories about his dad and his buddy sitting around the general store around the fire, drinking and talking, what's this war gonna mean? Are we gonna go off to it? And then he tells a story. So his dad drove a truck in the woods in the paper industry and he fast forward and overseas he ended up being a truck driver, driving those doos and a halfs around supporting the war effort. So it's so interesting to see the personal experience taken there. Then this guy, John Hodgkins, who wrote the book, his father never talked about the experience, of course, and so it was later on when he found his footlocker after he passed away that he was kind of discovering this tale, but it's such an intimate personal tale of how a Maine family was affected by World War II. So off the subject of Maine memory met work in the internet for a moment, suppose I wanted to research Fort Williams and what it was like during the First World War and the Second World War. If I went to your library, would the librarian be able to point me to some stuff that would help me learn more about Fort Williams? Yeah, and I think that's one of our greatest resources as an institution is the expertise of our staff and where they are, they're great in many ways. One of the places where their best is people having questions and they're trying to begin to figure out a question like that and where do I start and where do I go? Some of the answers to that might be in our collections, records that we have, publications we have, but they're also really good at pointing you out, oh, you know, there's a trove here or a mother load there. So when you have a query like that, all of our catalog is available online so you can go to our website and search the catalog of library materials and objects. You can go to Main Memory Network and then if you're finding new questions or you have questions, you just send us an email or call and our staff can help you in the right direction. Sports are a very important part of main history, right? Yes, indeed. And there's access to sports history and sports stories. So I was in the 19, early 1950s, I was on the capers with high school state championship basketball team. I think if I, the newspapers, if I went into newspaper archives, I don't know how to do that, but if I did, I could probably find something. Would there be anything about high school sports teams and their success in your main memory network or the library? Sure, you go and go, I'm guessing I haven't done the search in it, type in basketball and you'll find in one of the things that communities around the state tend to share is those high school photographs of the sports team. In the 1920s and the 1940s, you name it. And I think that's one of the funnest, most proud moments you have. You'll appreciate how inescapable this work is because once you start talking to Maine and getting into these stories, I was walking the dog a couple of weeks ago and I happened to run into somebody, George Wentworth's son. You know George Wentworth, legendary Maine basketball coach. And I know his son too, yeah. So George Wentworth, just for the folks, George Wentworth was the longtime coach of Stearns High School in Millinocket, small town, won the Maine State Class A big school championship that paid Portland High, Southport, all the big schools at the time and the New England Tournament in Boston Garden. George, you ran into his son. Yeah, go Maine. And so we were talking about earlier about how powerful sports are as a way to connect people and get them interested in history and exploring it. But we just ran into each other and we had a wonderful conversation and I was exploring that notion, are there collections related to his stories? Because, you know, a towering figure. But George Wentworth was so important because of where Millinocket was in that time and place. Maybe three or four years ago, we did an exhibit on the history of the paper industry because I think one of the important things, you know, earlier you were mentioning how consistent human nature is throughout history. I would also say the flip side of that is our society is constantly evolving and changing and the more we can anticipate and understand that, the better position we're in. So as you look at the profound changes that are happening in the paper industry and to those communities, we thought it was really important to recognize and honor the rich community lives that had been there, you know, getting out of graduating from Stearns High School and getting a job for $70, $75,000 in the paper industry, having a good life and a good home, being able to go play in the woods, having a camp, all of that was- A snowmobile, yeah, a boat. A boat, all of that was tied and that was contributing to, again, the main story. Those paper mills that were driving the economy, so many aspects of Maine life. So that Stearns basketball team in George Wentworth, I mean, that was a really special moment and peak that was reflective of so much of Maine. So I think it's a really telling story. It's about basketball, it's about all of that good stuff but there's profound things to say and explore in there too. Well, another sports item, everybody watching this show has had children or grandchildren or nieces, nephews in Little League Baseball in Maine. And so it prevails everywhere in the state. And how did we get Little League Baseball? Well, my father's closest friend, Harris Bud Plasted, who was an insurance guy here in town and a neighbor of ours, started Little League Baseball in Maine. One interesting sidelight, given the fact that you're from the Maine Historical Society, is Harris Plasted the first, his grandfather was a Civil War general and governor of Maine. Frederick Plasted, Bud Plasted's uncle, was also the governor of Maine. But in any event, he was in insurance business but he got interested, he read an article in the Saturday evening post about a guy down in Williamsport, Pennsylvania who started this league for kids under 12 or 12 and under. And he said, what a great idea, he likes sports. He went down to Pennsylvania, met with him, how do I get it started in Maine? Got it started in Maine. Fast forward decades, he's now an old man and I see him and I said, Bud, do you have all your records, the letters you wrote and all of the things you did to start Little League Baseball in Maine? Oh, absolutely. He said, I have all kinds of stuff, including when our first Little League World Series team from Maine, 1951, when we first got it started in Maine, kids from Falmouth, Scarborough, Westbrook, and Cape Elizabeth won the Northeastern Championship and went to the World Series. He said, I have all the records on that. I said, what are you gonna do with it? Give it to Maine Historical Society. So if you wanted to find out about the beginning of Little League Baseball, you can go to the library there. Probably Maine Memory Network too. Yeah, I don't know if it's on Maine Memory yet to this point, but I think that's a great example of that something, that's a story that so many of us can connect to and having dear friends who've been on the Little League board and having my youngest. You were, weren't you? Well, my young, I dodged the board bullet, but my youngest is in eighth grade so I've just completed that coaching cycle, but it's been such an important part of our life and our community and our experience that it really shows what it takes. It also shows, it's a kind of example of, it shows that it's about individual contributions and what we each individually here in Maine today do makes a difference, you know? And if we wanna see something, everybody has an impact and so you look at the placesteds, what he contributed and all the people who are keeping that going to now, that's another really important example of what makes Maine Maine, you know? People leaning in and making things happen. And what about railroads? Do you have stuff on railroads, Maine railroads? No, there's a lot in there on Maine railroads so that's another great search term and that will probably keep many people occupied for weeks. Yeah, there's lots of lots of things. You're living in a timetable of somebody as a kid took the train from Portland to Bangor, you might even find a timetable in your Maine-Main Railroad. Oh, sure, and you know, the railroads and the steamships, they were so responsible for driving the tourism industry, you know? So a lot of the early tourism promotion grew out of the railroads and their expansion around Maine. You know, it's funny, as a kid who's grown up, you know, in the time that FedEx has emerged, you would think overnight is something that just evolved, you know, in the last couple of decades, but it's interesting, friends, friends we've worked with run an old nursery and they talk about, you know, in the late 1800s being able to order, make orders by telegraph to Boston and plant materials could be up here on the train the next day, you know? So it's a very connected world, and again, whether it was steamship or train or our cars or our internet today. Somebody just gave me an old book I'm familiar with and never really read it. I've lived in Cape Elizabeth almost my entire life and it's a history of Cape Elizabeth written by William Jordan, who was, as you know, a local historian of some note. Indeed. And a lot of people watching this show live in Greater Portland and South Portland and Cape Elizabeth. Now, as this history indicates, for much of history, South Portland and Cape Elizabeth were the same municipality. That's right. They were not two separate municipalities. There was one municipality encompassing all of what is currently South Portland and Cape Elizabeth. So you read, I started reading it, William Jordan's History of Cape Elizabeth. It's essentially about that side of the bridge. Right. South Portland and so forth. Fascinating. Now, you know, the book wouldn't go well in Boston, but around here, if you live here, there is a natural curiosity about your place. Yeah. This is my place. I wonder how it evolved. I wonder who lived here. I wonder what the people did. And you're in that business. Yeah. And I think, again, that's the cornerstone of it, because it is the local and the local stories and the connections that are where people's passion and their interests are. And, you know, you see it, it's certainly through a name memory network, but it's like those Acadia publishing books, where, you know, I think every town seems like has one. But I think that strikes at that nerve of how interested people are in their local stories. Does the Domingue Historical Society have the books of most of those towns? I can't quantify and say we've got them all, but there's a rack there that's got a lot of them. Okay. And those books do well, because people care about their town. Yeah, and it's a great model, because again, it just, it lets all that material funnel up, you know? So, back to this contrast between the lanky Yankee lawyer I used to see going into study as ancestors in your library and your current exhibits, main memory and everything, that focus on main people, all of them. Not just the ones whose grandfathers were governor, but all of them. The internet made it possible, I suppose. Yeah, certainly in important ways. So, and I think, you know, some ways, if you look at maybe for a long time, our audience was people who were explicitly interested in history, per se. And I would look at our critical audience now as anybody who has a connection to Maine, anybody who cares about Maine, anybody who's interested in Maine. And I think we really believe that we're, we can be the conduit for their connection to Maine, for their stories and recognizing what everybody has contributed to the state, whether they grew up in some Midwestern city and came to Coastal Enclave. And I think, again, we really believe through our programming, through our online resources, what we offer in Portland and the preservation of those stories that there's something really for everybody who cares about Maine. How many people, do you know how many people use your main memory network, actually, log on to it? You have any idea? Yeah, you know, I think it was about half a million people last year. Yeah, and you know, it's interesting with the pandemic, with all the challenges of the pandemic, at a time where people were kind of isolated and home, you know, it provided, you know, the content on there and the main content is vast, you know, so that provided a great resources for people to go exploring. But the other thing has been Zoom. You know, we've had, you know, we always have done great public programings on all kinds of main topics, but unless you could get into Portland, not everybody could participate. So with Zoom, you know, we've tripled participation in our programs last year, and we've got speakers from around the country, we've got audiences from around the country, all who wanna connect on these different main topics. How much does it cost to become a member of the Maine Historical Society? I think the individual membership at this point is about 50 bucks. The best deal in Maine. Well, let's talk about it. So it's a good deal in Maine, so if you're, if somebody watching this show, says, dude, I'd like to, because I wanna get notices, I wanna get, you send that, if I'm a member, you send me notice of we're gonna have this program, here's how you log on or whatever. Yeah, yeah, so if you're a member, first of all, you support this mission of preserving and sharing Maine's story. You get a subscription to our journal, you know, which is published a couple times a year ago, which is a foreign scholar. I get it, and it's really quite a journal, it really, about Maine history. Fascinating, I read it all the time. Yeah, we like to hear that. So we publish that in partnership with the University of Maine. You get admission to all of our museum exhibits and stuff, and you get notifications to all those programs and discounts and that sort of stuff. We also have a very active presence on social media, so you can learn a lot about what's going on through Facebook and those platforms, and there's always interesting tidbits and stories that are being shared. But suppose I was watching this show, and I said to myself, oh, this Steve, he's a fascinating guy. He, I'm so, I'm interested in Maine history. I'm going to become a member for 50 bucks. Can they do it online? They can do it, they can do it. They could probably multitask and do it while we continue our conversation. So Mainehistory.org. Get to work. Yeah, you can do all of that online. You can sign up for membership, you can make a contribution, you can do all kinds of good stuff. You can download all those publications, you can look at all this material, all online, yeah. Okay, but I think it's a great deal. So schools, teachers, social studies teachers, some of them talk about Maine history to kind of connect with the kids. Do you hear from social studies teachers, school teachers? We do. One traditional part of our education program is physically the Longfellow House in our museum gallery around our exhibit. Certainly with the pandemic that's been challenging. But again, Maine Memory Network, the timing of that and the resources it provides. Again, we launched with the, at the same year as the laptop program. So the synergies there have been pretty incredible, both with students and teachers being active and getting material online, but also accessing all of that Maine story. So there's a lot of curricular resources on Maine, Maine Memory. We worked with the state around the Bicentennial to create curriculum related to Maine Statehood and the Bicentennial that's on there. So there is a strong school presence. I think there's always the opportunity to do more. And that's one of the areas we'd like to really expand the collaboration and the resources we provide. The Longfellow House, which is part of your operation, I'm assuming attracts mostly tourists. Maybe school children would come. But the last time I was in the Longfellow House was probably, I'm 85 now, I was probably 12. So maybe 73 years ago I was in the Longfellow House. I confess that. And I'm sure that's not good news for you, but I see a lot of people going in. A lot of tourists, yeah. A lot of tourists and a lot of third and fourth graders from the greater Portland area and from around Maine are definitely a big part of the trip. What they see is a mid-19th century house and the furnishings and is that what they see? Yeah, well I think one of the remarkable things about the Longfellow House is first, Portland is so associated with Longfellow and he's such a part of the city's identity, I think, in a lot of ways. And the neat thing there is that the house was, has been in the family from when it was built when it came to Maine Historical Society. Pre-revolutionary times. 1785, Longfellow's grandfather. Peelig. Peelig Wadsworth built it, friend of George Washington, fascinating connections there. Then Longfellow grew up there till he went off to the Bowdoin and on, but he maintained his sister who was widowed young, lived there until she died at the end of the 1800s. And so people today forget or can't imagine, I think the level of his fame and celebrity. So throughout the 1800s, people were showing up at the house to see the home of a great Longfellow. So it was preserved intact. But I also think the other fascinating thing about the family, they were humble, they were down to earth, but they were so committed to this community and they wrote everything down and they wrote letters. So they were involved in what was going on in the life of Maine and commenting on it and caring about it. So I think as a, it's a time where it wouldn't necessarily be easy to run a house museum. There's so much wonderful story in that house is pretty wonderful that I think it stays really pretty relevant and interesting as an experience. You said, you don't think people are really aware these days of the enormous fame in his time of Longfellow. He was known throughout the world, right? He was indeed. He was a very famous man. One of the most famous Americans worldwide of his time. Absolutely, and he'd go over and he did a lot of travel internationally and there are the stories about him visiting royalty in England and all the servants and helpers, snickering and seeing him and appreciating his presence. One of the ways I like to look at his fame and I like to claim that Mainers have really dominated American culture for centuries. So I gave Longfellow credit for creating American culture in the 1800s. And then I'll give John Ford a lot of credit because of the Western for the 1900s. And then I think we could give Stephen King some credit for the 19th and 20th century. So you look at these dominant role that Mainers have had in American culture. It's pretty amazing. John Ford, the famous movie director, perhaps the most famous movie director in all of Hollywood history, John Ford. That's right. And there's a statue down here where Ford and Center Street meet. A statue of John Ford. So his is a different story. The Wadsworths and the Longfellows were all line Portland kind of aristocrats, the establishment. Ford, the second name you mentioned, another story about Portland, totally different, not part of the establishment. Bofini, right? That's right. Irish immigrant family. Irish immigrants. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. And then the third, Stephen King, probably among the most prolific and certainly most read authors on the planet, I think. Yeah. Worldwide. And closely associated with Maine. So Maine is such a part of his identity, I think, in his writing and how people know him. Yeah. He's an interesting guy. I've never met Stephen King. But, and I've never read a book. He's written because I don't read fiction. Yeah. I'm only interested in what really happened. Yeah. Well, you know the one you should read. I've read some, but his one on the JFK assassination is fascinating. Kind of the way he kind of, there's some time travel and some attempts to change history there. But for somebody who likes history, it's some fine fiction. No, these guys like him entertain us with that stuff. They change history. And then the people who read it don't read the real history. Their history is what they read. It's like the internet, you know? Oh no, I read this in Stephen King's book. This happened. Yeah. I mean, that I don't. Well, I think you always have to be aware and skeptical and have a discerning, critical eye to whatever you're reading, you know? So. Exactly. And now we know what we've been through over the past decade that a lot of people don't have a discerning eye, but they still read it and believe it and they don't have a discerning eye. It's a problem, you know, Steve? Well, I think you certainly look at the social media and the platforms that have existed for things that aren't true but have gained credibility, shall we say, and gained following and gained believers. You know, that certainly is a problem and an issue. So, you know, we just have to keep putting out there good information, good context and trying to, you know, I think another thing we try to do is really try to provide a calm platform for taking on issues. And there's so much hot emotion and yelling at each other across spectrum. So one of the things we really hope we can do is provide a place for people to explore the stories, get to know them, unpack it a little, talk and come together. I'll tell you one of the stories you should tell these folks who think they're being patriotic claim to be patriots but refuse to get an inoculation. But they claim to be patriots. They're the opposite. You know, they don't care if all of America gets infected. They won't do their part. I talked about World War II. In World War II, the government told you to do a lot of things. That these so-called patriots today would say, I don't like the government telling me what to do. They would not have been part of the team in World War II. Patriots, they would have been traders. Absolutely true. I said it, you can get mad at me, write me letters, but that's it. Traders, not patriots. Steve, with that note. For that note, we're going to end this discussion. This has been fun. I've learned a lot talking to you. I hope the audience has learned a lot. Go on, www.mainmemorynetwork.org. Go on to get a $50 membership in the Maine Historical Society and immerse yourself in Maine history. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Appreciate it very much. Thanks.