ABOUT ROSEMARY

I was born under the sign of the bull, forever connected to the earth. As far back as I can remember, I have spent as much time as possible outside.

When I was younger I played outdoors, later in life I worked outdoors. Up until the last few winters I have worked outside year round doing land survey. Hiking in the White Mountains, canoeing in the Alagash. It is this constant contact with the earth which drew me to North Village.

Can land be cursed or is it just the tortured souls who roam it who are cursed? If man disappeared would the land still be cursed? North Village caught my attention because of the curse of the witch. In doing my research, I found that North Village was doomed long before the witches ever came.

Author

My book, Nissitissit Witch, suggests that the original curse on the valley was from the Indians who were slaughtered when the invading white settlers took the Nissitissit. We, as victors, wrote the history, but what about the history of those who came before us, what about the troubled Indian spirits?

While telling tales of Indian Spirits and witches, I use this platform for my true message, which is pollution. We took America from the natives and the first thing we did was to decimate the woods, pollute the rivers and torture the land for anything we could take for profit. We dammed the rivers and killed the salmon.

During the 1800s, the Nissitissit was no different than any other river. During that time our rivers were the recipient of every waste product and poison produced. North village is located in a narrow valley that concentrates the flow from about forty thousand aces of land upstream. There were many little villages along the Nissitissit and any toxins they wanted to dispose of were dumped into the river.

Right in North Village, I found that they made felt and had a velvet shop.

The process of making felt uses mercurous oxide. Velvet clothes use felt in the collars, and the dyes in the velvets were also very toxic. Long-term exposure to mercury causes death by fits of insanity and people died in 'an unusual way'.

Nissitissit Witch takes all of these factors and spins a fictional,  entertaining yarn that has lots of history of the area spun into a tall tale.

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