2006 Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife

Today I take off for the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, a conference in oh-so-historic Deerfield, Massachusetts. This year's theme, New England diaries, has brought out an exceptionally large number of papers, so the presentations run from Friday night to Sunday morning with nary a break. I'm introducing speakers on Saturday morning at an hour when I normally avoid human contact, both for my sake and that of the humans. So we'll see how that goes.

Since a blog named "Boston 1775" shouldn't miss the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, I'm posting an early entry for Saturday.

In the meantime, I invite fans of New England history to peruse the volumes of Dublin Seminar papers on various topics. Each collection has in-depth material on daily life in the region. I'm particularly fond of The Worlds of Children, from the 2002 conference, since it includes my report on drawings of Pope Night in Boston in 1767. (See part of the better-known but less detailed woodcut of that raucous holiday here.)