Maine Memory Network

S Road School Bookplate, South Bristol, ca. 1931

Contributed by: South Bristol Historical Society Date: circa 1931 Location: South Bristol Media: Ink on paper

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Motto book page, Farmington State Normal School, 1886

Contributed by: Mantor Library at UMF Date: 1887-12-19 Location: Farmington Media: Ink on paper

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Assessor's Record, 181-183 State Street, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: John J. Cunningham Use: Store - Book Mart

5 Warwick Street, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Emil E. Mayer Use: Dwelling - Single family

Mayor residence elevations, Hanover, NH, 1999-2000

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1999–2000 Location: Hanover Clients: Michael Mayor; Elizabeth Mayor Architect: Carol A. Wilson; Carol A. Wilson, Architect

Weir residence elevations, West Bath, 2006-2007

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 2006–2007 Location: West Bath Clients: Jane C. Weir; Robert J. Weir Architect: Carol A. Wilson; Carol A. Wilson, Architect

John Y. Merrill: Leeds Farmer, Entrepreneur, & More

John Y. Merrill of Leeds (1823-1898) made terse entries in diaries he kept for 11 years. His few words still provide a glimpse into the life of a mid 18th century farmer, who also made shoes, quarried stone, moved barns, made healing salves -- and was active in civic affairs.

Bookplates Honor Annie Louise Cary

A summer resident of Wayne collected more than 3,000 bookplates to honor Maine native and noted opera singer Annie Louise Cary and to support the Cary Memorial Library.

Surry by the Bay - Surry Village School

"Until 1939 the only reference book in the school was a Lincoln Library book, which was shared by the students."

Surry by the Bay - Phebe Fowler: A Woman of Property

"Phebe Fowler: A Woman of Property Text by Steve Collier and Sandy Collier Images contributed by Susan Paquette through the Surry Historical Society…"

Longfellow Studies: Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith" and "Whitman's Song of Myself" - Alternative Constructions of the American Worker

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
Most if not all of us have or will need to work in the American marketplace for at least six decades of our lives. There's a saying that I remember a superintendent telling a group of graduating high-school seniors: remember, when you are on your deathbed, you will not be saying that you wish you had spent more time "at the office." But Americans do spend a lot more time working each year than nearly any other people on the planet. By the end of our careers, many of us will have spent more time with our co-workers than with our families. Already in the 21st century, much has been written about the "Wal-Martization" of the American workplace, about how, despite rocketing profits, corporations such as Wal-Mart overwork and underpay their employees, how workers' wages have remained stagnant since the 1970s, while the costs of college education and health insurance have risen out of reach for many citizens. It's become a cliché to say that the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" is widening to an alarming degree. In his book Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips says we are dangerously close to becoming a plutocracy in which one dollar equals one vote. Such clashes between employers and employees, and between our rhetoric of equality of opportunity and the reality of our working lives, are not new in America. With the onset of the industrial revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century, many workers were displaced from their traditional means of employment, as the country shifted from a farm-based, agrarian economy toward an urban, manufacturing-centered one. In cities such as New York, groups of "workingmen" (early manifestations of unions) protested, sometimes violently, unsatisfactory labor conditions. Labor unions remain a controversial political presence in America today. Longfellow and Whitman both wrote with sympathy about the American worker, although their respective portraits are strikingly different, and worth juxtaposing. Longfellow's poem "The Village Blacksmith" is one of his most famous and beloved visions: in this poem, one blacksmith epitomizes characteristics and values which many of Longfellow's readers, then and now, revere as "American" traits. Whitman's canto (a section of a long poem) 15 from "Song of Myself," however, presents many different "identities" of the American worker, representing the entire social spectrum, from the crew of a fish smack to the president (I must add that Whitman's entire "Song of Myself" is actually 52 cantos in length). I do not pretend to offer these single texts as all-encompassing of the respective poets' ideas about workers, but these poems offer a starting place for comparison and contrast. We know that Longfellow was the most popular American poet of the nineteenth century, just as we know that Whitman came to be one of the most controversial. Read more widely in the work of both poets and decide for yourselves which poet speaks to you more meaningfully and why.