 John, tell us a little bit about City by the Sea 2. It's sort of a now and then format. Is that right? That's right, Brian. City by the Sea 2 is a companion volume to my first book, which is called City by the Sea. That came out about four years ago. And this sort of completes the story that I began in the first book that I couldn't really finish. And is this a different time period in the new book, or is it different places? How did you choose the difference between the two books? Well, let me put it to you this way. When I did the first book, I had over 400 pages of material, which was much, much too much to look at. And the final book that we ended up with was 200 pages long. So I had this extra 200 pages of wonderful pictures of Portland that had not been published. Meanwhile, I'm getting a phone call, I left a phone call from the bookstore saying, do you have any more City by the Sea? And that first edition sold out completely. I published 3,000 copies and sold out. So I said, no, I don't have any more. So they encouraged me to do a second edition. And I thought rather than do a second edition, why don't I just come up with a whole new book with all new photographs. And that's what City by the Sea 2 is. And where do you get these original images from? Well, they come from all over the state, actually. Some were from Maine Historical Society. A lot I got in Augusta from my friends at the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. And some come from private collections. And I have quite a few of my own. And how do you choose an image? What do you look for in an older image? Well, you look for a lot of things, a couple of things anyway. I want an image that's interesting. I like ones that have people in them when I can get them, although they're hard to find. But one of the other criteria is it has to be something that I can go to today and photograph from the same exact vantage point. Because that's what the book is all about. It's an abandoned now book. So I want something that's visually interesting, something that might have some historic significance to it, or architectural wonder, and something that I can reproduce today so that you can compare the changes. And do you ever have trouble figuring out what the location is, or when you see an old image, you say, I know where that is right away, or do you have to do a little research? You do have to do a little research. As a matter of fact, many of the photographs that I came across in my research were in files. And they were labeled unidentified. And I'll give you an example of some tonight where it was a beautiful photograph, but nobody knew where it was from other than it was from Portland. And me, having grown up in the city, I spent verse with my whole life here. I think I know about every inch of the city that there is. When I came across a photograph like that, I really thought a lot about where it could be. And I nailed down most of them. And some of the images that you have have not been seen in printed form in some time. Is that right? That's right. Some that you'll see this evening and in the book have not been published before. And they struck me as particularly interesting. The new images are as they are. And there are images that I took and I photographed them all myself. And I would like to say that I'm of the old school. I actually still use film. I don't use a digital camera at all. And my feeling there is there's a lot more to quality than simply the amount of megapixels in a picture. And you get something with the film format that's missing in digital and brings out the character of the photograph a lot more. And I think that's what came across in the book and why these pictures are so interesting. Have you been a photographer all your life? Sort of amateur. Amateurly, I'm not a professional photographer by any means. My professional background is in finance and accounting. But it's always been a hobby of mine and I've always enjoyed history. So this gave me a chance to do both. What stories do your pairs of photographs tell? What do they relate to the viewer? To me, they tell a story of a wonderful city. Portland is a very nice place to live with an absolutely fascinating history. When you dig into the history of the place, there have been a lot of interesting and colorful characters that have lived here and built the city to what we know today. Luckily, it's a very architecturally diversity also. We've had the benefit of having some great architects. John Calvin Stevens comes to mind. He built just on the Portland Peninsula alone over 300 buildings, if you can believe that. And they're magnificent and all you have to do is walk through our town and look around you and there's gonna be something to interest just about anybody out there, I think. Do you have a favorite pair in the new book? Oh, I don't know, I think I've got a couple of favorites. One of the ones I like a lot is the ones that shows looking out from the City Hall Tower towards Back Bay and the Bayside neighborhood because the old photo that I started with was 1895. Somebody walked up to the top of that tower, snapped the black and white picture of what you saw then. And when you compare that to today, I did the same thing, I went up to the top of the tower, snapped the picture and it's just amazing. You can see how much fill we've added, how much more land we have now in that area than we used to have. And it's really dramatic. Another, and Munchaway Hill, of course, is another area that's seen a lot of changes. You're a lifelong Portlander and you've written at least three books about Portland. What makes the city such a rich source of material for you? Probably the fact that I grew up here. I know the place really well and I have lived in other areas. I've been all over the country actually with my career but now that I'm sort of retired and back here in Maine, I've just fallen in love with the place all over again. And there were parts of the history that I didn't know much about even though I grew up here that I've researched. And the more I got into it, the more interesting it became for me. So I think that'll come out in the book for people to buy the book and read the book. I'll see my love affair with the city in it.