Richardson has a busy schedule planned in support of her latest book, “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America,” including appearances at WBUR CitySpace, the Music Hall in Portsmouth, and the Boston Book Festival.
“Then we’ll see about [next] fall, because of course this election is going to be huge,” she said just after Labor Day, during a reporter’s visit with her in the coastal Maine town where she lives. “I just don’t know what my future looks like.”
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On the eve of a previous presidential election, in 2016, Richardson truly had no idea what her future would become. A historian whose specialty was the Reconstruction era of the late 19th century – “I wasn’t that plugged in then,” she recalled; “I followed the news like anybody else” – she soon found herself compelled to create some context for the mounting chaos of the Trump years.
Her nightly newsletter, “Letters from an American,” quickly became the most successful account on the subscription platform Substack, a distinction that only continues to grow. “Democracy Awakening” is a culmination of Richardson’s work of the past several years, presented in three sections: a prehistory of the recent efforts to undermine our democracy, a recap of the events of the Trump administration, and a blueprint for “Reclaiming America.”
‘Say More’ podcast in conversation with Heather Cox Richardson
WATCH: Host of the ‘Say More’ podcast Shirley Leung shares her podcast conversation with popular historian Heather Cox Richardson.
“The whole point is to tell us how we got here, and where ‘here’ is, but then to tell us how to get out,” explained Richardson, sitting at a picnic table on the pier where her husband operates a lobster shack.
Just days ago, the small town where she lives and works bustled with summer visitors. Now, the season is over. The lobster shack was closed.
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“Labor Day is history,” Richardson said, “and they roll up the roads.” Gazing out at the harbor, she noted that the water seemed “crazy calm. It looks like you could skate on it, which is very rare.”
Richardson has spent much of her life in this peninsular village of 600 or so residents. (She also keeps an apartment outside Boston, which she uses during the week when she’s teaching.) She has three adult children from a previous marriage; she and her husband, Buddy Poland, were married a year ago. Their great-grandparents knew each other from the local fishing community.
“We don’t all think alike,” she said of her neighbors. “But lots of us have roots that go way back. One of the things that really jumps out to me [about the place she calls home] is that it’s a curiously old-fashioned way to grow up.”
She was born in Chicago, where her parents met after World War II. They moved to Maine in the late 1960s, while Richardson, the youngest of four children, was still in elementary school. She attended Phillips Exeter Academy and eventually earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University.
Despite the tumultuous times that she’s been documenting, the optimism implied by the title of her book is no accident. It’s a better sales hook, she joked, than “We’re All Going to Hell in a Handbasket.”
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“The truth is that I am more optimistic than I have been in a very long time, because people are paying attention,” she said.
By contrast, she recalled one “uh oh” moment from the mid-2000s, when then-President George W. Bush began making unprecedented use of the obscure tactic of “signing statements” – in effect, eroding congressional power by challenging certain aspects of a bill even as it is signed into law.
When she brought up the subject with colleagues and fellow historians, many of them shrugged. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh boy, this is not going in a good direction.’”
Now, however, even ordinary citizens are keenly aware of the daily threats to democracy, from voting restrictions and legislative stonewalling to certain leaders’ blatant disregard for the truth. Richardson has earned her huge following largely because of her even keel. But there are some things even she can’t abide.
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Heather Cox Richardson’s new book, “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America,” publishes on Tuesday, Sept. 26. Erin Clark/Globe Staff
“I really try always to be positive in public and on social media,” she said. “But I lose it on Marsha Blackburn,” the Republican senator from Tennessee.
“One of the things I find fascinating in this moment is that the Republican Party has simply given up on a reality-based world,” she says. “Marsha Blackburn just lies. And I find it, like, mind-boggling. I find it so deeply offensive.”
It’s been all but forgotten, Richardson pointed out, that during the 2016 primary season, Donald Trump “was the most moderate Republican. He was going to get better, cheaper healthcare, close the loopholes, bring back manufacturing and infrastructure. In fact, everything he promised, Biden did.
“You know, I should write about that,” she added.
The middle section of her book reads like a Greatest Hits of the Trump presidency – the attacks on civil servants and career diplomats, the “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, the photo op with the Bible. She knew that material frontwards and backwards from writing the newsletter, she said, and yet she still found herself “shocked” as she read through her own manuscript.
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“When you strip out the noise in that section, it is the [story of the] rise of an authoritarian,” she said. “I was also shocked at how upset it made me.”
The Maine coastline near Cox Richardson’s home.
Erin Clark/Globe Staff
Richardson traces our democracy’s current peril back to previous episodes in the country’s history. During Reconstruction, for example, white Southerners began to complain about government “overreach”: With tax dollars supporting public works such as roads and schools, Black folks were benefiting disproportionately, they argued.
“So you’ve essentially got a redistribution of wealth,” Richardson explained, “and that’s ‘socialism.’”
The so-called “liberal consensus” – that civil rights should be codified by law, that government should protect consumers from corporations, and that the common good should be commensurate with individual freedoms – became a target for conservatives led by William F. Buckley beginning in the 1950s. Richardson also cites the rise of talk radio in the 1980s, “and then Newt Gingrich’s deliberate use of words in the 1990s, which said anybody who is our enemy is a ‘liberal.’
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“Trump took that to a fine new height,” she said.
Just recently, she came across a quote from Abraham Lincoln. It addressed the need for Americans of goodwill to defend the democratic principles upon which the nation was founded.
Cox Richardson moved to Maine as a child in the late 1960s with her family.Erin Clark/Globe Staff
“He said, ‘Right now people can get famous by’ – I’m paraphrasing – ‘by defending those principles. If we stop defending them, people can start getting famous by destroying them. And that’s something we need to be guarding against.
“‘You can be famous for creating or destroying,’” she reiterated. “I thought, ‘Wow,’ you know?”
She also thought that the water looked too inviting not to take her kayak out for a quick paddle around the harbor. Which she did, inviting her visitor to come along.
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On the water, Richardson insisted that we venture around the bend to get a good look at the classic keystone bridge that straddles an inlet there. She never tires of marveling at it.
A keystone bridge, of course, is a time-tested symbol of strength.
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.
The keystone bridge where Cox Richardson likes to kayak — a symbol of strength that reflects the historian’s optimism. Erin Clark/Globe Staff
Gratitude was in the heart of Colleen Walsh-Irwin as she and her extended family gathered in Bath, Maine, to witness the christening Saturday of the USS Patrick Gallagher, a Navy warship named after her uncle, a decorated U.S. Marine who lived on Long Island.
“It’s such a great honor and tribute to my uncle, who sacrificed so much for the United States, and he wasn’t a U.S. citizen,” Walsh-Irwin, 58, of East Northport, said of her uncle, Lance Cpl. Patrick “Bob” Gallagher. She spoke by phone from Maine a day before the christening of the ship, a DDG 127 guided-missile destroyer.
“It just makes us feel so grateful,” Walsh-Irwin said, referring to the family who traveled from Ireland and Long Island to Maine for the ceremony. “We’re grateful to the Navy and Bath Iron Works for building the ship, and all the people involved in making this dream come true. There were so many behind the scenes for years to make this happen.”
Lance Cpl. Patrick Gallagher was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions during a 1966 enemy grenade attack that nearly killed three of his comrades in a foxhole in Vietnam. He was killed in combat in his last few days of military service in Vietnam. Credit: Marine Corps
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Gallagher was an Irish immigrant — from Ballyhaunis, County Mayo — who had settled in Lynbrook in 1962, joining an older sister, Walsh-Irwin’s mother, Margaret Gallagher Walsh, now deceased. She was the eldest of nine siblings and Gallagher was the second eldest.
Walsh-Irwin said when her mother was a young child, she couldn’t pronounce his name and called him Bob. She said the family called him “Uncle Bob.”
After he enlisted in the Marine Corps and was called to go to Vietnam, he had the choice to go back to his home country. Instead, said his family and others, he chose to serve.
Gallagher, who served in a gunnery unit, was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions during a 1966 enemy grenade attack that nearly killed three of his comrades in a foxhole near Cam Lo, in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. He kicked away one grenade, then cradled another to his belly before throwing it into a nearby river.
His Navy Cross citation lauded Gallagher for displaying “valor in the face of almost certain death,” Newsday reported in a 2017 article about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s letter to then-Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, urging the Navy to recognize Gallagher posthumously by naming a ship after him.
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But within a month of receiving his citation from Gen. William Westmoreland, in 1967, Gallagher was dead at the age of 23. He was just days from going home when he was killed in another enemy attack.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) said of Gallagher: “He was not a citizen, but Patrick was called to serve,” adding that he could’ve gone back to Ireland to avoid service in Vietnam, but didn’t.
“It’s the story of the Irish,” said Schumer. “It’s the story of immigrants. It’s the story of the greatness of America, and the attachment that immigrants for generations have had for serving here, in this case, Irish immigrants for serving our country with valor and loving America’s freedom and willing to die for it.”
Patrick Nealon, commander of VFW Post 2307 in Lynbrook, is among family and supporters who are in Maine for the ship christening. He said Gallagher “could’ve walked away” from serving in Vietnam.
“He said, ‘No. this is my new country. This, I will defend’ … and he went.”
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Nealon was among those who sought to get Gallagher recognition. There was a petition drive that several years ago had garnered about 10,000 names. There was also support in Gallagher’s home country. The Dublin Airport commemorated Gallagher’s exploits in 2015 in a series of billboards displayed in its departures area for flights to the United States. And his home village commemorated the 50th anniversary of his death.
Nealon, who is Irish, said of the ship named for Gallagher: “It’s a real proud moment, for all of Ireland and every Irish American in the United States.”
Heather Strout Thompson has been hauling lobster since traps were wooden. Here are her top lobster rolls in her home state of Maine, from Chipman’s Wharf to Luke’s Lobster.
Hundreds of years ago, lobsters washed up in droves along what’s now Maine’s rocky coast, so plentiful and cheap it was fed to prisoners. Today, tourists from all over come to the US’s north-easternmost state for the meatiest, sweetest lobster in the world, thanks to its freezing cold waters. And the best lobsters naturally make the best lobster rolls.
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Heather Strout Thompson has been hauling lobsters since traps were wooden, starting as a 10-year-old on her dad’s lobster boat in the 1980s. Now, with her sister and niece assisting her as sternmen, she’s captain of the boat she built. Her 36ft Wayne Beal fishing vessel, “Gold Digger”, even finished first in five of Maine’s celebrated Lobster Boat Races.
The lobster roll is a classic and beloved New England sandwich, featuring fat hunks of delicious lobster meat stuffed into a grilled, split-top hot dog bun. To find Maine’s top specimens, we spoke to Heather Strout Thompson, a fourth-generation lobsterman (a gender-neutral term in Maine) from the town of Harrington, who’s among a growing number (now 15%, up from 8% 10 years ago) of females in this male-dominated industry.
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“Fishing is in our blood,” says Thompson. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever done, so I’m going to do everything I can to protect it – for my grandchildren and theirs.’”
Thompson says the most tender, succulent lobster comes from the freshest daily catch. So whether you take your lobster roll drenched in melted butter (New England style) or tossed cold in a touch of mayonnaise (the Maine way), you can count on one thing: Thompson’s list of family-owned shacks and restaurants along the Maine coast serve their lobster rolls trap to table, no freezer needed.
Here are Thompson’s favourite lobster rolls in her home state.
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For delicious lobster rolls right off the boat, Chipman’s Wharf in Milbridge is a guarantee (Credit: Getty Images)
1. The best off the boat: Chipman’s Wharf, Milbridge
From the rooftop restaurant of Chipman’s Wharf, overlooking a working waterfront, a lobster roll has never tasted sweeter, says Thompson.
An industry in peril
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The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, and with mounting regulations, the delicacy in Southern Maine is now scarcer by the year. In nearby Connecticut, where the first lobster roll was made in 1929, along with southern New England, the lobster population has declined by 70%, forcing Maine’s multigenerational lobstering families to work even harder to survive.
Visitors can support the industry by eating the best lobster rolls anywhere, straight from the boat.
Forty-four miles east of Acadia National Park on the Narraguagus River, lobster rolls are ordered (hot buttered or cold with light mayo) while patrons watch the boats deliver their catch. One of these boats is driven by owner John Chipman, a third-generation lobsterman, who constructed the restaurant in 2002.
“At Chipman’s they’re all lobstermen, and they’re bringing it up to the restaurant themselves, so you know it’s the freshest,” says Thompson.
Chipman recently had to reconstruct the restaurant’s 106ft wharf after the pilings and the 800 traps on them washed away in January 2024 storm floods that ravaged coastal Maine. But with a few dozen steadfast lobstermen delivering daily, this seasonal family restaurant isn’t letting up anytime soon. And if you prefer making your lobster roll at home, they ship too.
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Alamy
Luke’s Lobster is a household name for lobster roll lovers around the world, but there’s only one Luke’s Lobster restaurant and it’s in Portland, Maine (Credit: Alamy)
2. The best for sustainability: Luke’s Lobster, Portland
As a third-generation lobsterman, Luke Holden traded Wall Street investing in his 20s to start a tiny lobster shack with his partner, Ben Connif, in Manhattan’s East Village, sourcing directly from his dad’s Maine lobster processing facility.
Thompson’s tips
• Avoid seasonal crowds; travel in the shoulder season (May, September-October)
• Tracing from trap to table, meet a lobsterman on their lobstering tour.
• Go see a working waterfront (in Portland, Millbridge, Stonington, Monhegan, Friendship, Beals, Southwest Harbor or Vinalhaven).
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Luke’s Lobster now has 17 branches in Japan, Singapore and across the US, but there’s only one fully fledged restaurant and it sits at the end of an old fishing pier with one of the best views of Casco Bay in the growing foodie mecca of Portland. The company’s lobsters, which are always bought directly from lobstermen, are kissed with a touch of butter and mayo and topped with Holden’s special seasoning.
Now back in Maine, Holden has his own Maine processing plant and donates a portion of his proceeds to preserve fishing communities and ocean sustainability, using only renewable energy and helping lobstermen reduce their carbon footprint.
“What Luke has done is vital to the future of Maine’s lobster industry,” she adds. “And, because the meat is so fresh, he makes a darn good lobster roll.”
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Monhegan Island is an hour-long ferry ride away from the mainland, but worth it for its succulent lobster rolls (Credit: Getty Images)
3. The best hidden gem: Fish House, Monhegan Island
After an hour-long ferry ride from Boothbay, New Harbor or Port Clyde, a lobster roll is non-negotiable at Fish House at Mohegan Island, a fish house and seafood market owned by harbour master Sherman “Shermie” Stanley. The only place in Maine with exclusive rights to lobstering in the surrounding waters, Monhegan Island is also the state’s sole spot with a winter lobster season, kicking off on 1 October – on Trap Day, the island’s holiday.
Thompson’s tips: how to eat lobster like a local
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• A softshell lobster available July-September) may contain less meat, but it’s sweeter and so soft you can rip it with your hands. No shell-cracking tool necessary.
• Skip the celery and tarragon. Let the lobster be the star: serve in a split-top hot dog bun, buttered on the griddle. Top with melted butter, light mayo or both.
• If preparing at home, leave no meat behind, starting with the legs.
That means lots of fresh lobster for the 59 year-round residents willing to tough it out in Maine’s freezing winters 12 miles out to sea – and its many visitors. This breathtakingly beautiful island doubles as an artist colony, drawing famous artists like Rockwell Kent and Jamie Wyeth, who still lives there seasonally.
Thompson suggests pairing your lobster roll with a tasty beer from lobsterman Matt Weber and his wife Mary at their nearby Monhegan Brewery before devouring a fresh lobster roll (mayo and a side of melted butter) at Fish Beach overlooking the harbour: “Their lobster roll is filled with giant satisfying chunks of claw meat.”
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Website: www.monheganfishhouse.com
Address: Fish Beach, Monhegan
Phone: 207-594-8368
Instagram: @monheganfishhouse
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Taste of Maine in Woolrich is home to the world’s largest inflatable lobster, and excellent giant lobster rolls to match (Credit: Getty Images)
4. The best big roll: Taste of Maine, Woolrich
While those with big appetites might also consider buying their roll earlier in the season, there’s a reason to buy in the high season. “In July, you’ll start catching more and more ‘shedders’ and less hardshell lobster. After they bury themselves in the mud and moult (males once a year and females every two years) the lobster shell is softer,” says Thompson. “Some softshell shedders may have less meat, but they have a sweeter flavour and [to get to the meat] you can break them with your fingers like paper.” No lobster tools necessary and less messy too. “The colour is a nice bright orange. We call them pumpkins,” she adds. “The Taste of Maine serves softshell most of the summer. It’s fresh, amazing and packed with meat.”
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This family-run restaurant, founded in 1978 and filled with nautical antiques does everything bigger, with live music and comedy, and of course, beautiful water views.
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McLoons Lobster Shack on Spruce Head Island serves two kinds of lobster rolls so you can see which one is your favourite (Credit: Alamy)
5. The best of the islands: McLoons Lobster Shack, South Thomaston
Also on the Mid-Coast, another family-owned lobster shack sits at the tip of one of Maine’s prettiest peninsulas on Spruce Head Island. “I love to see lobster shacks when I’m travelling. Most are family-owned-and-operated, and it’s nice to see people supporting local fishermen,” says Thompson.
McLoons belongs to Bree Birns, whose family owns and operates the bustling wharf where lobstermen deliver their catches to one of Maine’s long-standing fishing co-ops. The shack itself is an old lobster storage shed now serving up two rolls: a traditional quarter pounder and the double-sized Rolls Royce (with butter, mayo or both) and plenty of claws – the most tender, flavourful part, says Thompson. “Double the lobster fresh off the boat from another female lobsterman? What’s not to love about that?”
Her recommendation: Take it all in with a side of coleslaw and chips from the outdoor table and chairs made from lobster traps.
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For a true old-school lobster roll experience, head to South Freeport to Harraseeket Lunch & Lobster Company, one of the oldest in the state (Credit: Getty Images)
6. The best old-school joint: Harraseeket Lunch & Lobster Company, South Freeport
Located right by the boats at the town landing in South Freeport, Harraseeket Lunch & Lobster Company is another landmark mom-and-pop waterfront shack that has been serving locally sourced lobster since 1970. The small dine-in-dine-out shack with a lobster pound is one of the longest-serving lobster shacks in the state.
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“It looks like a hole in the wall but looks can be deceiving. The lobster roll is delicious – and one of the few left that still comes with fries,” says Thompson. With indoor or outdoor dining over harbour views, a lobster pound and the state’s celebrated homemade whoopie pies for dessert, this is classic Maine.
Website: harraseeketlunchandlobster.com
Address: 36 Main Street, South Freeport
Phone: 207-865-3535
BBC Travel‘s The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.
Two popular beaches in southern Maine were under advisories Friday due to elevated bacteria levels.
Swimmers and beach-goers should avoid the water at Ocean Park in Old Orchard Beach and Mackerel Cove in Harpswell, according to advisories listed on the Maine Health Beaches website Friday.
Earlier this week there was an advisory in place in Kennebunkport.
A group of people play Spikeball at twilight on the beach in Aug. 2020, at Ocean Park in Old Orchard Beach. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press, file
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The town warned beachgoers on Tuesday to avoid swimming or contacting the water in the Batson and Little rivers at either end of Goose Rocks Beach, citing elevated bacteria levels.
“In addition to repeated results showing human bacteria (DNA) in the Batson and Little rivers, the most recent testing has shown elevated levels of enterococci bacteria in these rivers,” the town said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
The latest testing results on the town’s website, measured Wednesday, found bacteria levels in the Little River to be more than seven times higher than what the EPA considers unsafe. Levels in the Batson River were more than four times that threshold, according to the town’s test results.
No advisories were posted on the statewide healthy beaches list for the main beach at Goose Rocks on Friday.
The town said Tuesday that the water quality at Goose Rocks Beach is more difficult to maintain than at most beaches in Maine, largely because of the two tidal rivers that bookend the shore. While the two rivers experience higher than average bacteria levels, the main swimming beach does not, the town says. Bacteria levels can also be heightened at low tide.
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Enterococci bacteria come from the intestinal tracts of warm-blooded animals, and they can indicate contamination by fecal matter, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In response to the heightened levels, the town is increasing its testing from once to twice per week.
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