Salem is a walking town, with Essex Street acting as the main pedestrian artery. If you’re spending the night in Salem, haunted hotels are the way to go. This walking tour assumes you’re staying at either the Hawthorne Hotel, or the Salem Inn, which lie at opposites ends of this walk. Both are historic, with […]
A Field Guide to visiting Salem, Massachusetts: From Witches to the Maritimes, to literary fame, a history lover’s dream
I’ll admit it, the first time I saw the sign announcing that I had arrived in Salem, I got chills up my spine. The Salem witch hunt was a real-life horror story, and usually the first one we learn as school children. If you grew up in the sixties, there’s a good chance that mood […]
Deconstructing myths of the American Revolution: Paul Revere’s ride in the words of Paul Revere himself and a travelogue
What most people know about the midnight ride of Paul Revere comes not from the history books, but a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which stretched the truth
The Day We Realized Our Culture Was Broken
We take great pride in our ancestor’s innocence, the concept becoming a tenant in our mythical past. If we let the shootings go on, our innocence is gone forever. Thoughts inspired by the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings.
The truth about Thanksgiving and the creation of an American myth
Thanksgiving is the most Norman Rockwell of all our holidays. Rockwell’s painting shows us a mythologized past of America in the middle of the twentieth century. For some of us it’s not far off the mark, but for most, it’s an America which never existed. Yet like America, the holiday is a melting pot of […]
Haunted Inns of New England, Longfellow’s Wayside Inn and the ghost of Jerusha Howe
One Autumn night, in Sudbury town,Across the meadows bare and brown,The windows of the wayside innGleamed red with fire-light through the leavesOf woodbine, hanging from the eavesTheir crimson curtains rent and thin.As ancient is this hostelryAs any in the land may be,Built in the old Colonial day,When men lived in a grander way,With ampler hospitality;A […]
