Helen-Chantal Pike - The Pike Log: Random Entries About Making His Story Mine

The Pike Log: Random Entries About Making His Story Mine

How My Beloved Aunt Became a Cover Girl

February 28, 2012

Tags: Waterford Town Report, Boxcar & Caboose, Waterford School, Elizabeth Roberta Pike, Robert Taggart Pike, Monmouth College, Asbury Park, Beth Kanell

Elizabeth Roberta Pike and her grandfather, R.T. Pike, circa 1918, in Upper Waterford, VT.

Picture it: January 10. It's Phase 1 of the North Woods move and 70+ boxes of dishes, files, books, and clothing form a labyrinth through the house. The Time Warner Cable guy is threading lines that will offset my Verizon cell phone's mountain-challenged message "searching for service".

Lots of interesting things can happen when you're incommunicado. Read More

8 Comments

Why We Pray for Snow in Pike Country

February 16, 2012

Tags: Pike Country, Farm-Way, Northeast Kingdom Weather, WREN, Local Works Gallery, Jersey Shore, Rutgers, Asbury Park Casino, Upper Connecticut River Valley, snow, ice, kitty litter

Beer but no gear sold here. In January 2012, regular unleaded gas with 10% ethanol went up to $3.60/gal at the all-purpose convenience store. Photo taken December 2011. BTW: Home heating oil: $800 for 200 gallons. How long do you think I can make that last?

Against all wisdom to the contrary, I picked a January closing date for the sale of my childhood home on the Jersey Shore so I could then move north 400+ miles in what has traditionally been the dead of winter.

You know the dead I mean. Read More

5 Comments

Where the GPS Are We?

February 3, 2012

Tags: New York Times, Julia Frankenstein, cognitive brain development, Bruce Springsteen, Waterford History Blog, Beth Kanell, Upper Connecticut River Valley, Jamie Cross, Peter Lucia, Grey Matter Bookstore

Thanks to Peter Lucia for this illuminated version of the Upper Connecticut River Valley at night

“Why don’t you have a Tom-Tom attached to your windshield?”

Odd question from Carolyn Kinne Grass as she climbed into my SUV Thursday, armed with an oversized atlas left-over from the era of open touring cars, goggles and silk scarves.

“Why would I need one?” I retorted. Read More

3 Comments

Selected Works

American Studies

Spiked Boots:
Sketches of the North Country

“The new edition contains rare photographs and an insightful foreword by the author’s daughter.”

-Dr. Barbara Tomlinson, Princeton, N.J.

Tall Trees, Tough Men

This is basic history, geography, psychology, economics, and folklore all
rolled into one top-quality volume.

-The New York Times

Asbury Park’s Glory Days:
The Story of an American Resort

"The collapse of American towns and cities is now so complete that our collective memory of why they existed and how they came to be is nearly lost. Helen-Chantal Pike's history of Asbury Park is a worthy, lively, and well-researched effort to correct this cultural amnesia."
- James Howard Kunstler, author of "Geography of Nowhere".

Greetings From New Jersey:
A Postcard Tour of the Garden State

“a Jerseyana journalist”

-The New York Times

Local History

Images of America

Five volumes of illustrated history about New Jersey's North Shore communities.

Anthology

Asbury Park: Where Music Lives

"Although its rock-and-roll legacy is well known around the world, other music forms - gospel and blues, jazz and even classical - have an Asbury Park address that contribute to the American music treasury." - Bob Santelli, author of Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Business

Crossroads of Commerce

Tracks the evolution of leading industries across a 300-year span.

Historical Fiction

Spirited Ladies of Liberty Street

"In the swish of a flapper dress, the smell of the potato mash or the shape of looks-just-like-it liquor bottle, the period details are superb."
- Pamela Waterman, Mesa, AZ