“A hurricane will never surprise us again.”
The Robinson Sawmill’s Annual Meeting will take place on Saturday, September 9, at the Maple Corner Community Center. The meeting gets underway at noon with food, followed by a report on activity at the mill and the election of a new member of the Board of Trustees. We will then have a presentation by Stephen Long of Corinth, Vermont about his book Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane that Transformed New England.
A hurricane will never surprise us again. But that’s what happened to the people of New England on September 21, 1938. Without any warning, the most destructive weather event ever to hit the Northeast pummeled the coast and blasted its way to Vermont and New Hampshire with torrential rain, flooding, and sustained winds of 100 miles per hour.
In his book Mr. Long tells the story of New England’s Katrina. A journalist and co-founder of Northern Woodlands magazine, Long focuses on the devastation to the region’s forests and the daunting challenge facing New Englanders still in the throes of the Great Depression. His presentation is richly illustrated with archival photos of storm damage and the unprecedented recovery operation.
Long is the former editor and publisher of Northern Woodlands magazine and has been a Charles Bullard Fellow at Harvard Forest. Originally trained as a journalist and writer, he developed expertise in forestry, silviculture, conservation policy, and the natural history of New England after moving to Vermont in 1989. He founded the magazine Vermont Woodlands in 1994, which quickly grew and became Northern Woodlands, covering New York and New England. Long served as both an editor and contributor for seventeen years, before leaving to pursue his own research and writing. He is the author of More Than a Woodlot: Getting the Most from Your Family Forest. He lives in Corinth, VT.
The meeting is at the Maple Corner Community Center rather than at the mill as Mr. Long will be displaying PowerPoint slides as part of his presentation and to do so he will need electric power, which is absent at the mill!
The public is welcome to attend and we hope to see you there!