It actually started several weeks ago when we tuned in to watch This Old House and found them remodeling a brick rowhouse in Washington, DC. Between replacement of just about everything—the house literally was gutted; even the mantelpieces and the doorframes had been stolen—Kevin O'Connell visited with historians and learned about the home, the occupants, and the neighborhood. It seemed to finally go back to the roots of This Old House; lately they seem to be spending time making old homes into overpriced McMansions.

History Channel also showed another hurricane special recently, the story of the 1935 Florida storm that killed so many members of the former "Bonus Army" who had been sent down to the Keys to build a road from the mainland to Key West to bring the "auto tourists" out to these areas. Narrated by Edward Herrmann (glad to see he's got a thriving career narrating history programs!), it followed in the wake of Isaac's Storm and Violent Earth: Killer Hurricane (1938). I'd read Willie Drye's book, also called Storm of the Century, but it was fascinating and chilling to see the film and stills of the actual footage along with the re-enacted pieces.

Since the cables have all been restored I can now watch America again after work, which I've been doing as well.

Along with the audio-visual support I've been enjoying several historical-based library books. One of them was the second book in Anne Perry's World War I series, Shoulder the Sky. Frankly, I didn't enjoy the first one all that much; too much narration of people thinking or wrestling with consciences and what people were wearing, without much action. The mystery is slight in the second book, but Perry does do a good job of portraying life in the trenches. At times her prose is so vivid you don't want to be reading it at mealtimes.

I was looking for a good book about the Pilgrims (the real ones, not the cardboard cutouts we have learned about in legend) and settled on Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower, which has had excellent reviews. I reserved along with it Heart of the Sea, Philbrick's book about the saga of the whaleship Essex and her shipwrecked crew which inspired much of Melville's Moby-Dick. I picked up Heart first and was immediately immersed (pun not intended) in the story of the dangers and privations of Nantucket whalers and the survival story of the remainder of the Essex crew. I've read whaling narratives before but Philbrick's is particularly vivid, especially the description of the sights and smells of whale butchering.

Mayflower is more a tale of political intrigues leading up to the wars between the English colonists and the different Native tribes. It's reminded me that much of the story takes place not just at Plymouth, but in the areas I grew up near: Bristol, Portsmouth, Taunton, Swansea...noted on one of the maps in the latter part of the book (which I haven't read yet) is "Colonel Almy's house" in Portsmouth, which I assume is either the same home or on the same site as "The Old Almy House" where we used to stop on the way home from Newport.

Reading this book made me realize that I had very little Rhode Island history in school—my mom was always surprised that we didn't learn RI history; she had it when she was in school in the 1920s—aside from the basic things like Roger Williams founding Providence and the burning of the Gaspee, so I'm wondering if there's a good RI history book out there. In searching just now I found one volume on Amazon.com that had an excerpt with a fact that I had never heard before: Roger Williams lived in Salem, MA, for some years and built what was later known as "the Witch House" (which my friend Liz worked at for several years, playing either Rebecca Nurse, an elderly woman accused of witchcraft, or the woman accusing her).

Labels: books, DVDs, history, New England, Rhode Island

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