Walking Tour and Colonial Comics in Cambridge, 20 Dec.

On Saturday, 20 December, I’ll sign copies of Colonial Comics: New England, 1620-1750 at the Million Year Picnic comics shop in Harvard Square, along with the book’s main editor, Jason Rodriguez, and some of the other writers and artists contributing to this anthology of historical comics. The signing is from 3:00 to 5:00 P.M.

At 4:00, in conjunction with that event, I’ll lead a free walking tour of central Cambridge focusing on colonial sites for anyone who wants to come along. We’ll gather in the lower alcove of the Million Year Picnic’s building at 99 Mount Auburn Street.

The tour will include the location of the first printing press in America (subject of a story in Colonial Comics), the burying-ground that Cambridge established in 1635, and the house where Gen. George Washington first slept in town. Weather permitting, we’ll go as far afield as the Georgian mansion that Harvard keeps tucked inside one of its dorms and the mythical Washington Elm before ending up back at the Million Year Picnic.

Although Colonial Comics focuses on the first century of British settlement in America, most of the sites we’ll visit will date from the eighteenth century, and most of my stories will be about the Revolutionary period. That’s because of what survives, and what I know best. My goal is to point out some of the oldest things we see around Harvard Square every day.

And, of course, to sell books.