Tom & Mac’s 100-Minute History Roadshow Returns for 11th Year!
Mac Deford and Tom DeMarco will present “Go West Young Man: Settling the American West from Louisiana Purchase into the New Century,” their 11th annual 100-minute history show in 3 venues this year. No advance registration is necessary at any of the venues, but a suggested $10 donation is appreciated. Showtimes as follows:
- Portland Public Library: Tuesday, January 17, 2017 at 6:00 PM
- Camden Opera House: Friday, January 20, 2017 at 7:00 PM
- Belfast Hutchinson Center: Sunday, January 22 at 2:00 PM
Each year Deford and DeMarco choose as the topic of the show “something at least vaguely relevant to the subject of that year’s Camden Conference”; the upcoming 2017 Conference is titled “Refugees and Global Migration: Humanity’s Crisis.”
In “Go West,” the migrants are the settlers, attracted by the wide open spaces of just-acquired Louisiana Territory and beyond.
The refugees are the Native Americans, pushed out of their land along a Trail of Tears only to settle in empty land and then be pushed out of that a generation later.
The “cast of characters” in Tom & Mac’s History Road Show includes Sacagawea, the teenage Shoshone woman who led Lewis and Clark to the Pacific and back (carrying her infant son all the way), the Virginian, Charles D. Skirden, Senators Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, a few Whigs and No-Nothings, Jacksonian Democrats like the Little Magician, Martin Van Buren, and orphaned Federalists like Daniel Webster, plus a troop of Mormon pioneers, and one prescient climatologist. You’ll also meet — as in every Mac and Tom Show — scoundrels and rogues and witless intriguers, including John Tyler, the only president in US History who was ever drummed out of his own party while president.
Tom DeMarco is the author of thirteen books (his sci-fi novel Andronescu’s Paradox is the most recent) and a Principal of The Atlantic Systems Guild, a technology think tank with offices in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. Mac Deford is a retired Foreign Service officer with service primarily in the Middle East. He had a subsequent career with Merrill Lynch International, mostly in South America and Asia, and is a regular columnist with The Free Press.
This presentation is offered as a free community event in in anticipation of the 30th Annual Camden Conference –Refugees and Global Migration: Humanity’s Crisis, February 17-19, 2017. The 30th Anniversary Camden Conference Community Events Series is supported in part by the Maine Humanities Council.