Ernest Wessen’s letters are a must for aspiring Americana dealers In his memoir, The Adventures of a Treasure Hunter my idol, Charlie Everitt, refers to his wife as “Mrs. Everitt.” I like the old fashioned formality of that address. Same with Ernest Wessen, the great Midwestern Americanist and author of the legendary series of catalogs […] More >>
Archives for August 2014
A Classy Move
In what I hope is not a trend going forward from the canceled Philadelphia Book Show, exhibitors received word last week through the grapevine that the summer Papermania show in Hartford CT had been called off. In a phone conversation with Gary Gipstein, son of the show’s originator Paul Gipstein, Gary said that the managers […] More >>
Middle River, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, August 9, 2014
Ledyard bleeding out upon the sands of Egypt. Maybe a quick flashback montage of Dartmouth, Captain Cook, John Paul Jones, Jefferson in Paris, those seductive ladies of the night, Joseph Banks, the Nile (“Do you know the river Connecticut? Of all the rivers I have seen it most resembles it in size.”) The sand. But […] More >>
Guest Blog
Dawn in my field, sometime last summer I’m on the way up to my field in Cape Breton to work on the last essay about my walk down the Connecticut River, tracing the journey John Ledyard made in 1773, and thinking about America then and America now. The walking can be hard, but writing about […] More >>