All posts by Susan Aprill
In other spelling news
Gray’s Beach Park is named for Edward Gray, who arrived in Plymoth Colony in the 1642 and eventually became one of the the richest men around. He owned land along what later became Kingston’s shoreline, including as this notable land record, the site of Kingston’s little beach.
And we know it’s Gray’s with an A, because, yes, it’s carved in stone.
This is Old Burial Hill in Plymouth, and Gray’s is one of the oldest marked stones there. The more legible of the two markers is actually a sign pointing to the original stone, which appears to be in some kind of protective frame. The related page on Find-a-Grave has some good modern close ups of the actual stone.
Source: The Jones River Village Historical Society Lantern Slide Collection IC4, series “The Pilgrim Story, Plymouth” 90 slides copyright A. S. Burbank, circa 1920.
The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives by Jesse Eisinger
It’s a little frustrating. A decade after the financial crisis that nearly demolished the world economy, there has been little if any accountability. Citizens, many victims of essentially criminal acts by huge multinationals, wonder “Why isn’t anyone going to jail? Isn’t that kind of thing illegal?”
Well, yes, fraud is still illegal, but the Department of Justice doesn’t seem to handle it that way anymore. The Chickenshit Club explores how the DOJ, and the regulators who rely on it for criminal enforcement, changed after successful prosecutions of Enron, WorldCom and other last century harbingers of impending financial doom.
It’s a sad tale of dedicated prosecutors and investigators hemmed in by front office politicians far closer to the center of corporate power than to the people they should serve, losing their edge, their institutional memory, and ultimately, their mission. If you want to know how deferred prosecution agreements and “chump change” fines replace criminal convictions and jail time, this book has the answers.
Filled with horrifying examples of the revolving door between high powered corporate law firms and high ranking government positions, The Chickenshit Club is an informative read, but not a very happy one. As Eisinger notes in conclusion, “Any hope for tougher corporate enforcement appears laughably misplaced.” Sigh.
Happy Birthday to
Our distinguished and beloved Town Historian!
Source: MC11 Joseph Finney Collection
Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkardness by Melissa Dahl
You probably know the feeling well. You’re lying in bed, just trying to fall asleep, but images of your worst moments in junior high — the bad haircut, the wrong clothes, the time you called the teacher “Mommy” — just will not stop tapdancing through your painfully conscious mind.
That’s the feeling Melissa Dahl investigates in Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness. To get deep inside the cringe, Dahl talks to anthropologists, sociologists, neuroscientists and advice columnists. She puts her own social discomforts, teenage angst and work dilemmas in the spotlight to illustrate and individualize scientific studies and broad research. She pores over her own online writing; attends workshops to learn to talk about race; even reads from her teenage diaries on stage.
Her eager search for compassion for her awkward self — indeed, for all the cringing selves everywhere — is deep and kind and just plain funny. You’ll cringe in sympathy, and maybe stretch your understanding of this very, very human experience.
The awkward in me sees and bows to the awkward in all of you.
Recommended by Susan.
And the correct spelling is…
Here’s a detail of an early brochure for the summer cottage development called Ah-De-Nah, circa 1930. The name was pitched as a Native American term, but descendants of the developers, Edgar and Waldo Loring, might tell you it was just made up.
Welcome Home!
Why, thank you!
It’s good to be back.
Local History: Presidents at the Library
About a display of presidential signatures from the LHR
Tura’s Pharmacy
Sometime in the 1870s an apothecary opened on Summer Street in Kingston. It would serve the Kingston community for almost a century and a half, until October 2015, when the doors closed for good. Stop by this month and see photos and artifacts that tell the story of Tura’s Pharmacy.
Tura’s Pharmacy, November 1979
Vacation
The Local History Room will be closed from July 21 through August 4.
If you click on the photo to display a larger size, you may be able to make out what looks like the Bug Light on the horizon on the right side of the the photo (under the black dashed line).
Sources: Cyanotype from the Delano Photograph Collection IC11 (scan federally funded with LSTA funds through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and digitized at the Boston Public Library in conjunction with the Digital Commonwealth)
For more, visit the Kingston Public Library, and the Local History Room, and the full blog at piqueoftheweek.wordpress.com.
What’s in a name?
There’s a spot in Kingston just west of Exit 9 on Route 3, elevation about 68 feet, which has been long known as Thomas’ Hill.
[This screen shot is from the Town’s GIS, which is just amazing. Give it a try!]
In her 1933 description of Kingston place names, Emily Fuller Drew tells us that
Colonel Thomas’ Hill is located from the Great Bridge up the slope, going south of the River. This hill was named for the Thomas family whose home was located on the hill.
That’s this house.
Here’s a view south, up the hill towards the Thomas House, taken from a spot just before the Great Bridge over the Jones River.
And here are a couple of views looking the opposite way down the hill.
[This wood cut is from this book, originally published in 1839.]
And here’s one of indeterminate direction, but with a nice shady feel to it.
These images all bear the description “Thomas’ Hill,” because that’s what’s it’s been called for quite some time. Now, though, there’s a need to update our shared geographical vocabulary. There’s a whole group of Kingstonians with a completely different point of reference, for whom this area doesn’t relate at all to an 18th century Kingston family or their stately home atop the hill.
Let the historical record now reflect the vernacular alternative: “HoJo Hill.”
Source: Jones River Village Historical Society Lantern Slides IC4; LHR Image Collection IC7; Mitchell Toabe Papers MC18; and highwayhost.org.
For more, visit the Kingston Public Library, and the Local History Room, and the full blog at piqueoftheweek.wordpress.com.