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I live in a small Massachusetts town near the New Hampshire state line. I have been a resident of
the Bay State for most of my life. Though I have lived elsewhere, I always came back. The climate is agreeable
and autumns are glorious; and the ocean and mountains are close at hand.
My home town is named for Sir William Pepperell, who never saw the place. He was a lifelong resident of
Kittery, Maine, which was then part of Massachusetts. Sir William led a military expedition that captured a French
fort in Nova Scotia during the French and Indian Wars, a feat that got him a knighthood. There are only two Pepperells
in the country (the other one is in Alabama). My Pepperell was a town before America was a country.
There is a marker out near the Groton town line showing where Patriot Prudence Wright and a group of
armed women busted a Tory spy in the American Revolution. Pepperell's menfolk were away laying siege to Boston so the
women took it upon themselves to form a militia.
There is also a local legend about a witch who was burned in the 1600s. With her dying breath, she
placed a curse on the town. As a result, the town fathers moved the village between two rivers because, being canny
Yankees, they knew full well that a witch's curse could not cross water.
The site of her alleged burning is today the junction of a country lane and a dirt road to a junk yard.
At this very spot stands the house of Colonel William Prescott, the hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill in the American Revolution.
He had nothing to do with the town's legendary witch who came long before his time or (depending on the version) long
after it. (One version says she was branded, not burned, and banished from the town shortly after the War of 1812.)
The witches are long gone but Bigfoot has been sighted right next door in neighboring Hollis, New Hampshire.
That happened on May 10, 1977, on the grounds of the Hollis Flea Market where a dealer was sleeping in a truck
with his family, waiting for the market to open. They were awakened by a violent shaking. Outside was a
"10-foot-tall hairy animal with human-like features." They lived to tell the tale. Click the
link below.
The Hollis Bigfoot
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| photo by George Parker Jr. |
Above: October on the nearby Nashua River. (It flows past my front window.)
Below is Pepperell's covered bridge, a local landmark. Until April 2008 it was the only covered
bridge in Massachusetts still open to traffic. The bridge is now scheduled for demolition with a new covered bridge
to be erected in its place. This will be the third covered bridge built on this site.
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| photo courtesy of Wikipedia.org |
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| The "Old Covered Bridge" in Pepperell |
About "Parker's Planets"
As an astrologer, it stands to reason that my blog is about astrology. This is not about Sun signs, however.
Rather it is a general overview of the constantly changing planetary formations in the heavens above -- and what they mean
for us down here on Mother Earth.
I began doing astrological forecasts many moons ago, first as a columnist, then as a broadcaster. But as
Saturn lumbered across my Ascendant several moons thereafter, I dwindled into obscurity (which is what you do when Saturn
squats on your Ascendant). The title of the blog -- Parker's Planets -- was dreamed up at the urgings of a
former editor who insisted I put my name in the column headline. It followed me onto radio and now here it is again,
reincarnated on the internet.
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