Maine Books

I thought I knew all the trails!
Buy this book if you have any intention of ever riding a bike in Maine.
This is coming from a guy who thought he would be able to write such a book.
Seriously worth it, they offer great detail about specific times of year and how it can effect trail conditions, clear directions, great maps, and local policies.
See you at Katahdin!

Usually these types of books are about as fun to read as the phonebook; a maze of cookbook directions and boring narrative. Mountain Bike! Maine is an effective guide to riding which will please anyone who loves to ride and wants to explore the diverse trails of Maine. The authors have thoroughly researched each ride and done a great job of cutting away the fat and leaving in the spice. Each trail description includes helpful information and history on the area in addition to accurate directions. I've lived in Maine for 20 years and practically every ride was new to me. From gearhead to mudbuster and nature lover to history buff, I recommend this guide as a great way to put some fun into your riding!

Excellent book for the railroad buff.Easy communication and fast shipping.

If you want to see older pictures of the Maine Central as it used to be this is your book. Not only does it have great color photos of MEC, but it has interesting info about the trains and the areas in which they traveled.

If you remember the Maine Central in it's old Green and Gold, Marron and Gold, or Harvest Yellow and Green this is something you need to look at. It brought me back to those days when my father took me to the train yards to watch the trains leave for there many diffrent destination.

Get this book and you won't be disapointed.

We received this calendar as a gift from my in-laws. The photos are mostly gorgeous, with good color and detail on nice, heavy stock. If you love these cats, you'll enjoy this calendar. It's a little late for the current year, of course, but let's hope the 2009 edition is as good.

This was a gift for my son and his wife who have two maine coon cats. They loved the calendar and all the really beautiful pictures. They had fun looking for pictures that looked like their cats. This calendar is an excellent choice for maine coon cat lovers.

I loved it so much I gave it to my sister. The photographs are wonderful and remind me of my own Maine Coon kitty. My sister loved it. There are cat calendars and cat calendars--some only so so. This one is magnifico.

I have a black Maine Coon, named Bear, which is very appropriate if you saw him. He weighs a good 20 pounds. The first picture on the calendar looks just like him. If you love Maine Coon's or any cat you will love this calendar

We have purchased a Maine Coon kitten for my niece. To learn how to take care of this wonderful breed, we bought several books. The "Maine Coons" magazine was the most informative of them all. It covers everything you need to know about the breed and more. It also has beautiful photos.

We recently lost a dear Maine Coon cat that had been a friend for 13 years. There is no way to "replace" him, but we missed having no more than 1 cat(his sister) in the house. We found a breeder and now have 2 beautiful Maine Coons kittens that we delight in watching and caring for. This magazine was very helpful in getting us "up to speed" on the ways to handle kittens and their healthy development.

Very satisfied with the magazine/book about Maine Coons. Arrived in a timely manner and in excellent condition.

A Maine Hamlet, by Lura Beam. illustrates the fact that my reviews are not restricted to new publications. Copyrighted in 1957, but again in publication, the author describes the Washington County village of Marshfield, near Machias, Maine, in the decade 1894-1904.

First copyrighted in 1957, the copyright was renewed in 1985, and an introduction was added in 1999, written by Jere Daniell, whose parents live in Millinocket, before the book was reprinted in 2000, thanks to the Maine Humanities Council, the Maine Historical Society, and Tilbury House Publishers.

The author, who was born in 1887, lived in Marshfield for twelve years with her grandparents, spent five subsequent summers there, and visited the community off and on thereafter, writing her book fifty years later, in the late 1950s.

In the first chapter, Beam describes the life that her grandparents had made in Marshfield. The chapter begins as follows:

"The land was a passion, magical in its influence upon human life. It produced people; nothing else at all, except trees and flowers and vegetable harvests. Life ran back and forth, land into people and people back into land, until both were the same."
"The two with whom the hamlet's story begins were truly of the land's forming: their origins, upbringing, education, occupations, and course of life were its gifts."

For me, living in Maine during the 21st century, in an era when everyone's children are finding it necessary to leave the state upon reaching adulthood, for reasons of jobs and opportunities that can no longer be found here, and at a time when one of the most significant issues is the decline of the forest industry, I find it interesting to learn that these were the issues at the turn of the last century.

Of her grandparents, Beam writes the following:

"They spanned the period 1826-1914, the last couple in the family to touch this rural American life in its undiluted form. All their children migrated and became urban. All their daughters would shiver when riding along little wooded roads, and sigh reflectively, 'I hate the country.'"
"The remarkable quality about Grandfather was his ability to adapt his occupation to local changes, an ability which he continued to have to extreme old age. His family was land-rich in lumber, and they had taught him their ways of abundance. When the lumber period ended, and they became poor, he was the only one of nine children who continued in the same environment."

The second chapter describes the place of Marshfield, perhaps from a child's eyes, given the time that she lived there.

"The place spoke first of Nature, afterward of living creatures. Beside the strong tree grew the strong man. Along with the human faces came the faces of the arethusa and the violet. The place had grown into the native looks, institutions, and beliefs."

Although history is described in every chapter of the book, the third chapter is devoted to it, from the discovery of the area by French explorers in 1604, to the founding of the town of Machias in 1763, the capture of the British schooner Margaretta in June of 1775, and the period between the end of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

"Lumbering was always moving farther away. First it had been in people's backyards, then on the Ridge directly to the north. By the 1890's it was thirty-five to sixty miles away on the unnamed Plantations to the north, by distant rivers and lakes."

She continues:

"A few adventurers had left home in each generation from the time of the forty-niners. During the 1880's, all young people, girls as well as boys, began to migrate at twenty-one."

While the people of the hamlet show up in each chapter, the fourth chapter discusses them as a whole.

"There were 227 people in the hamlet, according to the United States Census of 1900, of whom the writer remembers 216 by name, home, family setting, and reputation; they lived in fifty-one households all of which I had visited. Three families were unknown to me because they lived at the end of the hamlet, and were tied to the town, rather than the hamlet, in school, church, and social life."

The author goes on to describe, with amazing detail and remarkable prose, the way that people lived, at home, in school, church, or elsewhere in the hamlet.

"Children were allowed to leave home before its restrictions grew too confining and no one ever lived with in-laws unless in the last illness. Living conditions had room enough for space to heal some wounds. Public opinion enforced stability and good behavior."

In the following chapter, Beam describes the work ethic that dominated the hamlet:

"Work was not for money or for possessions, it was for love, work for work's sake. Any old man too crippled by rheumatism to help on the farm would say, "Got to keep a-going," and shuffle off to saw wood for a widow or to tend the village cemetery."

Everyone in the hamlet owned and operated a farm, but the young men also worked in the woods during the winter, while others did other jobs on the side, as far as the demands of farming permitted.

In the sixth chapter, the author describes family and personality patterns in Marshfield, revealing her own capabilities as a sociologist, as she supplements her own remarkable memory with research done later, tracing the ancestry of her neighbors to the original settlers, and describing the societal changes that took place over the years, including the development of a social class system.

Next, she described the church - Congregational, which was only in session during the summer months, and the unique place that it held in the lives of hamlet residents.

"Church was the only occasion when the hamlet saw itself all together, both sexes, all ages, the handicapped as well as the strong. Out of this time came the feeling of belonging, the willingness to cooperate, and the solidarity which wanted to protect and cherish the group."

The hamlet hosted two schools, upper and lower, so that no child would have to walk more than four miles a day. Each was a one-room school house. Of the school, she said:

"It gave no tests, no examinations, no homework, no reports, required no excuse for absence, used no marching or other devices of drill. Children might sit where they liked. They were not promoted from grade to grade annually since there were no grades, only individuals. There was no graduation; pupils merely went to school as long as they wanted to. The only school reward was being known as a good scholar."

The ninth chapter describes the pleasures that were available to the residents of the hamlet, both inside and outside of the home.

Camp Meeting, the biggest summer event, was high on the list; as was the County Fair, which was for country people rather than townspeople. Those in the hamlet were apart from those who lived in the nearby town, so much so that there was very little interaction.

"I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty ... I woke and found that life was Duty." These words embroidered on the pillow shams were widely approved by the people in the hamlet."

Thus began the tenth chapter - Belief and Code. In this chapter, Beam talks about the codes that people lived by. The work ethic ranked high, of course; as did thrift. But there were other assumptions that were made, and accepted by nearly everyone.

Some of these include:

* Maine was still a Prohibition state and many people had never tasted spirits. People had convictions against the use of liquor except in illness and no one ever made wine or cider.
* Smoking was not considered in relation to health but as the indulgence of a useless habit.
Once a day was enough for coffee. While adults took tea for the other two meals, children were told, "Wait until you're twenty-one." They drank only water or, in winter, cocoa. All stimulants were deplored as taking away from an individual's ability to manage himself.
* Eating between meals, except for children and men at hard physical work, was against the theory of abstemiousness.
* Order was a virtue, always set as a goal in periods of let-up. Organization was an essential of work. People were rated even within their own families on whether or not they were good organizers.

Chapter eleven tells us about the arts, much of which would not be recognizable as such.

"Its citizens were striving for conduct, not art. They were creating themselves, by rules, by conflict, by appreciation, by recognition. Many of these unknown lived well, died well - silent, consistent, and organized to the end. Some of them talked well. In gossip, in humor verging on satire, and in certain attitudes toward personality, they were creative. This stage of artistic development was not peculiar to the hamlet. It appeared again and again in the building of new towns in the West."
"Yet it can be seen that there was some readiness for art. Everyone could do something in the practical arts, men in farm crafts, women in household arts. Everyone was supposed to excel in one or two of the tasks of his routine."

In the twelfth chapter, she speaks of migration:

"Migration began as a stern necessity, but time had eased conditions. By the 1890's, migration was sometimes two-way, the young going away to make new homes in the city but returning in summer, the parents going up to the city in winter. Whether the parents moved or not, both age groups lived in two places psychologically. It was not quite like the psychological division of the twentieth century caused by living in the suburbs and working in the city, but it had points of similarity."

She describes that what most people thought of as "the city" was Boston. The social class system that divided the nearby town from the hamlet were far greater than that separating them from Boston.

"From about the middle of the nineteenth century, our forebears' imagination began to be drawn to the West beyond the Mississippi River. Later, from the close of the Civil War to the 1890's, realism determined that the practical goal was Boston."
"Farming people were interwoven with the life of the town; many went there every week, rolled town affairs upon the tongue; and yet beyond a point all felt chilly barriers. The fir trees might have come down off the hills and frozen to their full height between town and country. The countryman obstinately felt that the townsman did not regard him as an equal."
"No such cleavage applied to Boston. The Boston metropolitan area was faith and promise. When the children were twenty-one they would set out for the Hub. After they were settled they would found their own homes and families there and come home to the hamlet every August, with children, bicycles, and trunks, to a carnival of drives, picnics, and parties."

In the thirteenth - and last chapter, she describes the differences, as well as those which remained pretty much the same, between the time that she lived in the hamlet and the community she discovered upon returning fifty years later.

"The great change is that the lovely land of isolation now seems connected with the world. The connection begins with the town and the hamlet. They are tied together as they were not at the end of the nineteenth century. The hamlet is a ribbon development, with no strong focus such as a green; this suggests that the town and the hamlet may in time become a single unit, as they were in the beginning."

This is quite likely, given Maine's current drive toward regionalization. We are willing to destroy an entire population's ability to earn a living in order to save an endangered species, even an insect, yet we put that same amount of energy toward destroying, rather than saving our history.

At this time, the hamlet of Marshfield still exists as a cluster of houses and a church, but the community has been absorbed into that of nearby Machias. Soon, the name itself may be gone.

A Maine Hamlet by Laura Beam is one of those rare books where the author (who lived her entire life in the hamlet about which she wrote) combines a detailed, fact-oriented account of turn-of-the-century life in a hamlet in downeast Maine with poetic language that resounds in the heart. The book covers a variety of topics, including the passing of the seasons to courtship and marriage, childhood, as well as a discussion of the effects of modernity on this hamlet. And when you read each chapter, the people, situations and settings become alive, speaking to a part of each of us that is connected to or desirous of a simpler, more natural way of life close to the earth and to the joy of human relationships. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone, not only people who are interested in Maine. The language is simple, intelligent and beautiful, while the contents touch on subjects which are universal, although presented with a regional outlook that makes this area of Maine so special to so many people.

This book is completely gorgeous and artfully conveys the beauty of the land, wit of the people, and talent of the photographer. I highly recommend it.

"Maine, a geographical outpost thrust into the wild North Atlantic, has offered romance, mystery, retreat, and renewal to hundreds of thousands of people over the years." ~ Carol Bass

Thinking about Maine makes me wonder about two of my best friends in the world and what their lives were like growing up in this beautiful area. Now and then they tell me about the winters or school life, but now I have pictures to go with the stories. The pictures are gorgeous and are authentic representations of the Maine lifestyle and culture.

Throughout the book, advice is given on how to bring the feeling of Maine into your home. You may want to paint a picnic table or cook up a fish chowder. I found a quilt that has a very cozy Maine feeling to it and they suggested I put more red cushions in the living room.

General stores are also a feature and Carol Bass shows you which flowers to plant to give your garden added beauty.

I just know that one day I won't have to keep dreaming about a trip to Maine, I'll be there at a bed and breakfast where the breeze blows curtains through an open window, wandering down country roads and maybe even writing a poem while overlooking the water. The Blueberry Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast looks fascinating to visit in the late summer or early autumn.

"Sixty thousand fun-loving visitors had up to Unity each fall to reconnect with rural living, to join in this feast for the senses, and to participate in a down-home celebration of the season's harvests: organic apples and squash, sunflowers and late-blooming perennials, fresh berry pies, homemade honeys and jams, and the best cottage cheese and goat's cheese this side of heaven."

~The Rebecca Review

The book took me back to that time. It was very descriptive. I felt as though I were there with him every minute.

This is a beautifully written and presented book where the author transport you to a time and place before the complete assimilation of the American population. The Kennebec Valley is not home to the colorful fisherman that Mrs. Paul's fishsticks have made synonymous with Maine but with farming life that has all but vanished. The changes in the author and his family during the course of this work put you into the very frame that shaped so many from New England. A must read for any fan of early 20th century American history and for any fan of Americana in general

Just a wonderful book to have lying around. I loved reading it the first time and now I love to just pick it up and leaf through it - this may sound strange, but the whole book with it's tasteful font and peaceful paintings make you forget everything and relax. It somehow has a very soothing feel as well as being interesting and informative. Without a doubt though, it's the illustrations that make the whole book worthwhile.

Maine Sail: An Artist's Journal Of A Cruise Down East showcases the artistic talent of Margaret McCrea, who with her husband, is also an avid sailor taking Maine coasts cruises in the 32-foot Panacea. Color artworks that soothe the spirit and capture the natural beauty of the water and the shoreline, combined with notes and contemplative musings that set the gentle images in context, make for a relaxing and rewarding artbook to page through. The narrative font is an imitation cursive handwriting font, which helps set the homestyle memoir mood. A superb and memorable tour, especially recommended for nautically inclined armchair sailers.

This is an excellent resource for those who love history and how cemeteries add to our knowledge of everyday life in Maine's past.
The author not only takes us on very interesting tours but has also added the local history, legends and folklore associated with each cemetery. I would highly recommend this book for those who love New England and it's rich colonial history.

As author Karen Wentworth Batignani points out in the introduction to this book, telling someone that you're interested in cemeteries immediately makes them think you're more than a bit morbid. But cemeteries are among are most important and informative historical locations, especially those from the New England area where are earliest settlers first lived. Karen takes on a whirlwind tour of 38 cemeteries along the coast of Maine. She begins with a primer on cemeteries pointing out how in the 1800's cemeteries were major tourist attractions and also provides a bit of history stone-carving styles and epitaphs.

At each cemetery detailed, Karen provides information on how to get to the cemetery, notes on the landscape and a brief history of each region noting when the cemetery was founded and its earliest dated tombstones, as well as noting some of the more interesting residents buried there. The descriptions are helped greatly by hundreds of photographs showing the various styles of stonework. Since many of the older markers are too difficult to read in the photographs, dozens of epitaphs are re-printed in the book. In addition to the cemeteries, the book also notes any other destinations of note in the nearby area such as museums, historical homes, etc and even provides the hours of operation and phone numbers.

Touring these cemeteries is an enlightening trip back in time to meet many remarkable and courageous men and women who braved incredible dangers from both French and Indian attacks to settle these new lands.

In the York Village Burying Ground we find the grave of Jeremiah Moulton, who was just four years old when his parents were massacred by Abenaki Indians. Young Jeremiah was allowed to go free because the Abenaki found him to be amusing. It's a mistake they would regret as Moulton would go on to become a vaunted Indian fighter. He died in 1765 at the age of 77. And then there is the grave of Samuel Moody, a true hellfire and brimstone minister cut from the same cloth as Cotton and Increase Mather.

Off the beaten path is the New Town Cemetery in the tiny town of Arrowsic, population 501. Buried here is Brig. General Samuel McCobb who was a part of General Benedict Arnold's disastrous expedition into Quebec.

In Ancient Cemetery in Beautiful Wicasset, you will find the burial place of Ezekial Averil who was a bodyguard to none other than George Washington and lived until the ripe old age of 95 before passing away in 1850.

The harbor town of Machias features the O'Brien family cemetery, founded by Morris and Mary O'Brien in the mid 1700's. Machias was the location of the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War as Jeremiah O' Brien led a group of men on the successful attack of a British vessel.

Cemeteries hold many great stories about the past if we take the time to listen to them. Whether the cemetery is spread over many acres or perhaps tiny like the Pioneer's Burial Ground with its two dozen markers, this is an informative and fascinating excursion into Maine history.

Reviewed by Tim Janson