LOCAL LANDS, LOCAL HISTORIES
I am the third in a matriarchal line of caretakers of a colonial house and surrounding conservation land at the northeast tip of Massachusetts, on Cape Ann. Over the past decade, I have been involved in reanimating histories buried in the archives, as well as a number of projects related to the land. These experiences have found their way into many of my writing projects as I have reflected on Gloucester histories, on the intellectual category of local history, and on working with the land.
PUBLICATIONS
“Why I Give” in Sawyer Library Foundation newsletter.
“Creating Commons” in the Gloucester Daily Times. Co-authored with members of the Creating Commons Collective. May 23, 2023.
“Leaf Blowers Have Got To Go” in the Gloucester Daily Times. November 2, 2022.
“Location, Location, Location: Archives and Place in Moments of Memorialization” in “Reimagining 1620” issue of Early American Literature, 56.1 (2021): 173-182.
Unfolding Histories: Cape Ann before 1900. Catalog accompanying the special exhibition of the same name held at the Cape Ann Museum. Installed and created an online publication of Unfolding Histories using Omeka S. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Museum, 2018. Unfolding Histories was reviewed in the the Boston Globe, April 17, 2018 and the Gloucester Daily Times, March 29, 2018.
“If this land be not rich, then is the whole world poor.”
“Ghosts, too, are weeds that whisper tales of the many pasts and yet-to-comes that surround us. Considered through ghosts and weeds, worlds have ended many times before.”
“What I desire is not control, but the agency to engage in acts of repair.”
“Life is the story of bodies that learned to contain the sea.”
Please visit the meadows around my house, which take advantage of the area’s natural bounty. Nicholas Anderson (Eco Reparation) helped me to make these meadows, and working with this land is my passion.
