Small Towns: East Haddam, Connecticut (Pop. 8,890)

 

 

 

East Haddam, Connecticut is a place that blurs the line between a lived-in settlement and a theme park. Even its entrance is dramatic, especially if you approach from the west side of the Connecticut River. The river is picturesque from the Route 9 approach, and the crossing is a 900-foot-long swing bridge. On a busy boating day, plan on a 20 minute wait for sailboats to clear out.

 

 

 

Once in East Haddam you are immediately dazzled by the 19^th century wedding cake-like Goodspeed Opera House. It is now home to a musical theatre that has attracted Tony Award winners. If you don't want to shell out for a play, a $5 ticket will get you a tour of the Goodspeed. A paddle wheeler used to sit on the riverside, but I'm told it has been sold.

 

East Haddam is not on Connecticut's Gold Coast, but it feels like it could be a distant suburb. For a lot of retail diversity you need to head toward Hartford; East Haddam is strictly upscale gift shops and antiques–unless you have a pretty expansive view of a “country” store like the one situated at Goodspeed Station. Two libraries, a golf club, a wallet-stretching restaurant (Geiston House), a nearby winery, and graceful homes make up the town proper. Former U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd hails from there, as does–believe it or not–Zippy cartoonist Bill Griffith. Several other notables have called it home, but one stands above the rest.

 

 

East Haddam was once the dwelling place of actor/playwright William Gillette ( 1853-1937 ). Before moving down the river, Gillette was raised in the Nook Farm section of Hartford also occupied by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain. Gillette appeared in several Twain dramatizations, but was best known for portraying Sherlock Holmes on stage more than 1,300 times and once in a 1916 silent film. Most of what you associate with Holmes–deerstalker hats, pipes, dressing gown, violin–was popularized by Gillette. Even Arthur Conan Doyle thought Gillette brought more color to Sherlock Holmes than his own novels.

 

 

Still, Gillette might easily have become a famous-long-ago figure were it not for an impressive and imposing pile of rocks he left in the Hadlyme section of East Haddam: his home, Gillette Castle. He never called it that, but it's easy to see how it acquired its nickname. It sits atop an outcropping that towers high above the Connecticut River near where a ferry once ran between Hadlyme and Haddam. The river is majestic at this site as it broadens before emptying into the into Long Island Sound at Old Saybrook, just 20 miles distant.

 

 

 

Gillette made enough money that he could afford to live on several fantasy houseboats before his home was finished in 1919. Alas, he never got to share it with his beloved wife Helen (née Nichols), who died in 1888. Gillette was crushed and never remarried, but his home became a place to entertain his many friends, including President Calvin Coolidge and his wife Grace. 

 

 

 

 Gillette also loved to tinker and had impressive engineering skills. He designed and helped build a 3.6 mile miniature train to the ferry dock. He also handcrafted all of the wooden locks in the house, each one with a different puzzle-like unlocking mechanism. Because Gillette lived there during Prohibition, he also built a disappearing bar in case the place was ever raided. For his amusement he located a strategically placed mirror so he could watch and laugh from a balcony as his guests tried to figure out how to unlock it. Add a solarium, a strategically placed new invention­–a gramophone–and medieval trappings throughout. There's also a lot of cat bric-a-brac on available surfaces. Gillette adored felines and kept a small army of live specimens on hand as well.

 

 

 

 

Today Gillette Castle is part of a state park. Ticketed guided tours take you inside and should not be missed. East Haddam is well worth a visit even if you do need to have to cross the river in search of cheap nourishment!  

 

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

Cabinet of Curiosities: History, Trivia, and ?

 

 

 

 

Cabinet of Curiosities: A Collection of History’s Most Incredible Stories (2024)

By Aaron Mahnke (with Harry Marks)

St. Martin’s Press, 336 pages,

(Available November 12, 2024)

★★★

 

Perhaps you think museums specialize in dominant collections: art, archaeology, aerospace, costumes, furniture, historical homes, science, transportation…. Actually, a singular focus is relatively recent in Western culture. Those with long memories might recall that the Peabody Essex Museum’s India Hall (Salem, MA) used to be filled with tall cases filled with items choked in willy nilly. These once-ubiquitous displays were cabinets of curiosities, unusual objects (for their day) collected by travelers that inspired the abbreviation curio. If objects, why not ideas, “virtual” objects to stuff into mental cabinets.

 

Aaron Mahnke is a successful podcaster and writer whose about-to-be-released book, Cabinet of Curiosities, is an agglomeration of historical events, coincidences, gutsy feats, inventions, tales, and unorthodox people loosely stitched together as “historical.” If you’re scholarly-language averse, don’t worry; Mahnke’s book is about as far from hardcore academia as you can get. Many of his stories rest upon (sometimes obvious) teasers or end in puns. How one reacts to these is strictly a matter of taste.

 

Mahnke blurs the line between events of historical significance and trivia. A few of his short entries–most are just a few pages–are either disputed or apocryphal. Examples of these include the cause of Rudolph Valentino’s death, a 124-year-old Civil War veteran, the Crawfordville (IN) monster, ghost stories, and the assumed fate of a member of the Franklin Expedition. (That one got a new twist this month!) Others certainly fall into the trivia category often labelled “fun facts.” These include the fate of L. Frank Baum’s jacket, why composers fear writing a 13^th symphony, a woman who braved Niagara Falls in a barrel, people with prodigious memories, and jokes that became realities. Some are not-so-much-fun facts. Do we really care that the overweight Goran Krupp failed to climb Mt. Everest in 1966, or that Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek, had a troubled history with flying?

 

Full Disclosure: I am a professional historian, so the next critique should be filtered through that lens but tempered by the fact that I’m not a snob. (I celebrate anything that sparks an interest in history.) Numerous Mahnke “revelations” are pretty well known. These include the astronomical coincidence of Mark Twain’s birth and death, how Theodore Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt, the story of the Learned Pig, the last Japanese World War II soldier, Henry Brown’s unique escape from enslavement, the link between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and galvanism, how seances are faked, the background of da Vinci’s flying machine, and Louis B. Mayer’s sly-but-failed plan to rid Hollywood of labor unions.

 

To give credit where it’s due, Cabinet of Curiosities is exactly as it purports to be. It is as if random occurences from human history got stuffed into an attic full of unmarked boxes. Anyone who has ever gone to a flea market knows the frisson of picking through a container of the humdrum and happening upon something marvelous. Mahnke  divides his book into a dozen easily digestible sections. I would recommend that you do not try to read it in big gulps. The problem with physical cabinets of curiosities was that so many objects in one place tended to overwhelm viewers; wonderment began to meld into mental mush. The same can be true of this book, so read a few tales, think about them, and put the book aside. If something seems a bit “fishy,” it’s never been easier to check for other interpretations. Rinse and repeat.  

 

I’m not sure if Mahnke had this audience in mind, but teachers can mine gold from this book. I often used folklore in my own classes to enliven weary students. Were all of those stories true? If they weren't, they should have been!

 

Rob Weir  

 

Thanks to Macmillan and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book.

Did Feminism Happen?

 

An advertising insert is to blame for the following rant.

 

 

 Fifty-two years ago Ms. Magazine debuted and second-wave feminism was on a roll. Many believed that gender equality was right around the corner. From one perspective that really matters in America--sports--one could draw the conclusion that it was. Think of how WNBA pioneers such as Becky Lobo, Candace Parker, and Sherly Swoopes paved the way for Sue Bird, Brittney Griner, and Diana Taurasi, who passed the baton to Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and A’ja Wilson. Women’s soccer players such as Mia Ham, Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Hope Solo have out-performed male teams for decades. And how about Olympians like Simone Biles, Florence Joyner, Katie Ledecky, and Gabby Thomas?

 

I’d be the last to deny that women have made great strides across American society. I’d also be the last to affirm that the Ms. dream is anywhere close to reality. In many ways it seems further away now than in 1972. Backlash eroded a whole lot of progress. A short list includes the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, the assault on Roe v. Wade, pay inequity, and cultural changes that negatively impacted women.

 

The last should never been undersold. Reagan tried to tell us that women were already equal, though he coddled anti-feminists like Phyllis Schlafly and rightwing evangelicals.  Fox News specializes in bimbo culture, with its leggy blondes (natural or bottled) and its willingness to peddle backdoor GOP idiocy such as attacks on Hillary Clinton's pant suits. It played a large role in helping Trump defeat her and is pulling out the stops again against Kamala Harris. In a feminist world Clinton would have swamped the smarmy Trump and the upcoming election would be a Harris runaway.

 

Trump embodies the ways in which feminism as a movement has lost its mojo. Here’s a guy who brags about grabbing women’s genitals, was found guilty of sexual assaulting E. Jean Carroll, and at last count has been accused of abusing 25 others. Yet somehow he promises to be a “protector” of women and many deluded souls believe him.

 

What to do? Answer: Change the culture. Baby Boomers led the fight for gender equality until too many fell prey to economic greed. Gen X did a bit better simply by kicking down a few doors, but though it will anger some to hear it, things have stalled under Millennials and Gen Z. Pick your reasons why. Solipsism? Short attention spans?  Materialism? I’m tempted to add that they place too much faith in politics and not enough in how they live.

 

 Socialization is generally considered the most important factor in how a child will come to view the world. Some parents are great–one of my favorite moms (and people) ever made sure her daughter had sports equipment, books, and toys that sparked her imagination, not those that simply anesthetize. This sort of put-your-ideals-into-action mechanism is no guarantee that everyone will shout out “the kids are alright” (apologies to Pete Townshend) but it can’t hurt. It’s what every parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent, teacher, and employer should do. 

 

 

This brings me to the insert. One of this household’s favorite pastimes is perusing junk mail catalogs for the tackiest or coolest thing on each page. Who could resist one titled “Top Toys”? I wish we had! It depressed me to consider how little has changed. We still live in a pink and blue world. It’s still girls as passive domestics and boys doing the things they've always been expected to do. It’s action figures for boys and Barbie for girls. (Apparently not many viewers got it that the movie Barbie was a take-down of traditional roles.) Trucks, guns, Hot Wheels, Star Wars, and dinosaurs for the XY kids and princesses for the distaff side, though realistically they should prepare to be homemakers and cleaners.

 

Sure, you could take away a girl’s Barbie and hand her a Transformer, but the way socialization works is that: (a) She will still want the Barbie, or (b) Suffer ostracism from peers for being a weird kid. Reverse and give a boy a Barbie and it doesn’t get better. A better option might be for consumers to boycott stores that promote blatant gender discrimination.

 

I’ll entertain the idea that I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill but take a look for yourself before you conclude that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir