Google has updated it’s page rank status again and this blog has risen in rank to a PR4. Whoo-hoo!

Buddy

This is a short experiment to see if I can rank for the phrase “Thomas Blossom Obama”. It is not merely experimental, however, President Obama actually IS a descendant of Thomas Blossom who came to Plymouth Colony on a ship called Mayflower (yes, another one with that name) in 1629.

Blossom lived in Leiden, Holland and tried to come over on the Speedwell but was rebuffed as Speedwell proved unseaworthy. He was a deacon of the Plimoth church and died in the contagion of 1633. Thus is the Thomas Blossom Obama connection.

—-Update—-

So here we are on the anniversary of our nation’s birth and this post is number 4 on Google’s first page. Happy Birthday America!

BTW that’s Paul Atchison as Peregrine White in the photo.

Our friend Rick Knight iis a heck of a photogtapher. Here’s a little montage he put together. If you haven’t been here, when you coming to see us? If you have, y’all come back. Check out Rick’s work

Oops, I goofed. The Hicks/Bangs wedding is this Saturday, June 27th. See you all there (and spice cake, did I mention spice cake?)

If any of you have photos that you have saved from your visits to Plimoth Plantation and would like to share them with others, please feel free to join us at our Flickr group and upload them to Plimoth Plantation Flickr Group.

In the near future we will expanding our online presence by using FaceBook, Youtube, and Twitter more.

Before every wedding, in Pilgrim times, the Banns were read. This amounts to a notice that announced the wedding and called for examinations of the bride and groom’s character.

“I, William Braford, publish the Banns of marriage between Edward Bangs of New Plimoth and Lydia Hicks of New Plimoth. If any know cause or just impedement, why these two persons should not be joined in Matrimony, ye are to declare it.”

…when a 180 tun bark called by her shipwright, Stuart Upham, the Mayflower II, sailed out of Brixham, England on her historic voyage to Plymouth, Massachusetts. Please join us when we welcome and honor Joe Meany, an American who served as ship’s cabin boy on that proud vessel.

Hear ye, Hear ye

Visitors are invited to join museum staff for this full day celebration and
personal reminiscences of the remarkable 1957 voyage from England to
America. Come meet a 1957 Crew Member, Joe Meany, the American Cabin Boy of
Mayflower II, and hear his humorous stories, including how the crew
surprised him by secretly planning a shipboard graduation for him to replace
the official high school ceremony we was missing while at sea. Joe’s wife
Ann will also join us to share stories about how she ended up with Felix,
the Mayflower II kitten and mascot. At 10 am and 3 pm, meet Peter Arenstam,
current Mayflower II Captain and a children’s book author, who will read
from his book Felix and His Mayflower II Adventures. Additional celebration,
and enjoyable activities for children will go on throughout the day. It is
family fun for everyone!

A Community Service in honor of Felix The Mayflower II Kitten
On this day dedicated to Mayflower II, we ask our guests to help the Friends
of Plymouth Pound (a no-kill shelter), by donating a can of cat or dog food.
All guest donate the pet food will receive a free picture of the 1957
Mayflower II crew, as well as a discount of $4 off adult and $2 off child
combination tickets to Plimoth Plantation and Mayflower II.

Buddy

(photo by Garrettc on Flickr)

One of the oddest things that visitors say to us, but appropriate here in that I want to mention a couple of things we have been discussing for future possibilities.

Our Director of Education (etc.) and I went to a conference sponsored by the New England Museum Association on using Web 2.0 properties (like this blog) to enhance and expand our web presence. To that end we are looking into expanding our use of our extant FaceBook page for greater interactivity. More on this to come.

Thanks to Kathleen Wall for ongoing contributions to this blog, they are always appreciated. She and I have had several discussions about how we could bring the “foodie” (and gardening as she has done below) niche to a greater awareness of what we do here at Plimoth Plantation. Foodies are a great (and, I suspect, luctrative) demographic that we need to explore.

So, for you foodies out there, here is a neat resource (read:enjoyable time waster, if you are anything like me): The EGullet Society’s online forum

Buddy

Back in March, the museum sponsored a Spring Clean Day. Denise from the Volunteer Program rounded up nearly 300 people. Teams were formed and everyone had work. Team Q was the English Village Gardens Team, and boy, am I a day late and a dollar short in extending my thanks.  Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. Or should i say “QQQQQQQQQQ” - Ten Q.

None of this was glamour work, by the by, it was moving compost piles, top dressing garden beds, taking out old, worn structures, moving the famous New England stones, creating new pathways and walk ways. Terry and Justin were great team leaders; I ran from garden to garden to try to keep track of what had been done and what still needed doing, moving the too few tools for the great number of people who showed up. Fuller and Hickes gardens were completely rebuilt and Allerton garden got a major face-lift as well.

The benefits of that work is very apparent in the gardens today. We’ve been planting spinach, turnips, radishes, cabbages and coleworts (coleworts are an older way of saying collards), lettuce, garlic, leeks… in short the things we’ll be using over the summer and into the winter. Things that are coming up, some as rabbit food (bad bunny) and some as ground hog salads (very bad woodchuck) and the cabbage family cousins as safe haven for flea beetle.  There’s so much life and death in a garden, it seems ironic that some people do it for relaxation. Although it is very satisfying, eating a plate of something that had once been a little seed in your hand. I’ve been advocating a 10 minute a day plan to keep up in the garden. Ten minute to pull a few weeds, plant a row of one thing, and just tromp around and see how things are going.  If I could just find ten minutes to follow my own advice at home!

We’re just now seeing the last of the asparagus, so it’s time to put in the cucumbers and pompions.

John Forti, Horticulturist  at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth NH - and formerly here - has an article out in Early American Life magazine on seventeenth century kitchen gardens, including directions on how to build your own.

Or you could stop in and ask a pilgrim.

KMWall

Colonial Foodways Culinarian