Toot! Toot! We're Hopping on the Substack Train!
Introducing “Bulletins from Broad Street,” a new online home for MBHS publications
Hello, friends! You read that right: all of the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society’s e-mail communications have moved to the Substack platform.
Below are the answers to some questions you might have about that change. (The upshot of everything that follows is that if you just want to keep receiving our e-News in your inbox as normal, you don’t have to do anything.)
What does this mean?
All MBHS Publications in One Place
First of all, it means you’ll now be able to find digital editions of all three of MBHS’s publications—e-News (now The Saddlebag), The Courier, and Goose Eye—in one convenient location. It’s at bethelhistorical.substack.com, and collectively we’re calling it all Bulletins from Broad Street.
Goose Eye Available Online
Secondly, it means the last (but not least!) of those, our annual history journal, Goose Eye, will be available digitally for the first time. MBHS members and paid Substack subscribers will have access to the full archives, while free subscribers will be able to see previews and selected articles. (The Saddlebag and the digital edition of The Courier are free to all.)
Manage Your MBHS Membership Through Substack
It also means there’s an easy and convenient new way to manage your membership in the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society. A paid subscription to Bulletins from Broad Street includes membership in MBHS (and vice versa), so as long as you keep your billing info up to date, you’ll receive full benefits (including print publications)!
(We are unable to offer a senior member discount or life membership through Substack; if you want to do either of those, please join or renew your membership through our online store or in the good old-fashioned way by writing or calling.)
What do I need to do?
Not much! Unless you want to change your subscription level. If you’re receiving this post as an e-mail it means we’ve already successfully migrated you over and you’re on the list. If we recognized you as an MBHS member from your e-mail address, we’ve also already “comp”ed you to the paid subscriber level.
How do you know what level you’re at now? See that subscription button below this paragraph? It should display your current status. It might say “Subscribe now,” it might say, “Subscribed,” or it might say, “Upgrade to paid.”
If it says, “Upgrade to paid,” but you’re already an MBHS member or annual fund donor (i.e., if you’ve been getting the print edition of Goose Eye), it means we didn’t recognize your e-mail address. But fear not!—just let us know and after confirming your membership we’ll bump you up to the paid level. (You do not have to pay twice.)
Explain about all these publications again. Why are there three?
The three publications included within Bulletins from Broad Street reflect MBHS’ history, and each offers something a bit different. By default, when you sign up to the Substack you will receive e-mail updates for all three, but if only some of them interest you, you can also manage your subscription to turn off emails for specific publications.
The Courier
The Courier is the oldest MBHS publication—it started under Director Emeritus Stanley Russell Howe back in 1976, and was named for Bethel’s first newspaper the Bethel Courier, which was published from 1858-1861. (The Society’s Courier was also originally known as The Bethel Courier, but the “Bethel” was eventually dropped to reflect an expanded, regional focus.)
For many years this was the Society’s sole periodical and it served all functions: Society news, historical articles, member profiles, transcribed diaries, and more, all in one publication. Back in those days, The Courier was published quarterly, but now that it is supplemented by other publications it comes out twice a year. The spring edition tends to offer a preview of the busy summer season with a full calendar of events. It’s also when we thank all our donors from the previous calendar year. The fall edition features a summer wrap-up and a preview of upcoming holiday season events.
The Saddlebag
The Society got its first email address back in 1997. Since then we’ve tried (with varying degrees of success) to keep up with all the latest trends. We’ve been sending out “e-News” updates for many years, but not under a formal title. The “Saddlebag” name is new with the move to Substack, but it harkens back to a long history. MBHS owns the saddlebags which brought the first mail to Bethel, and they are on display in our Dr. Moses and Agnes Straw Mason House. When equine-based mail (the original e-mail) first got going, one of the main things carried was not letters but newspapers and periodicals. It was one of the few ways people had to learn about what was going on in the rest of the world.
Goose Eye
Goose Eye: A Journal of Western Maine and White Mountain History is our annual history journal. Goose Eye was created in 2021 to provide a space for more detailed, scholarly articles. The print issue of Goose Eye is also quite attractive, and if you leave it lying on your coffee table, people will know what a sophisticated and smart history enthusiast you are, and they will applaud your excellent taste.
To celebrate bringing Goose Eye online, we have made the entire first issue completely free to all, and will be opening up select articles from later issues. Goose Eye No. 1 is available now, while Goose Eye No. 2, 3, and 4 will be added over the next couple weeks.
Do I get anything else with a paid subscription?
Yes! Digital and print subscriptions to Goose Eye are definitely one of the main benefits of membership in the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society, but there are other reasons to join as well.
Members get a 10% discount in our Museum Shop, free use of the MBHS’s research library (plus discounts on photocopying and research request fees), a preferred rate for Mason House exhibit hall rental, voting rights in the Society, and reduced rates on workshops and classes.
We might also take advantage of the Substack paywall to offer some bonus/early access content to members only. For example, you might get a member-only preview of an upcoming exhibit or a special look behind the scenes. Our members are what make MBHS run and we love rewarding them!
Why Substack?
For us as publishers, Substack has a lot of nifty and helpful features, like the ability to create “sections” within your main publication, allowing us to differentiate our various publications; or the ability to set paywalls for specific content, which is what is enabling us now to be able to put Goose Eye articles online.
As a reader, you can actually ignore all the Substack features altogether. All you need is an e-mail to sign up and you’ll still get the publications in your inbox, the way you would any e-mail newsletter.
That said, while joining yet another social network might be a hard sell, creating a Substack account does give you some additional ways to interact. You can comment on posts, manage your subscription, “restack” things you find of interest, and follow our account and others to see short “Notes” (similar to posts on Facebook or Twitter/X).
I (Will) have been using Substack for a little while now, and recently launched my own publication Ammoscongon Chronicles (utterly shameless self-promotion). Because it’s oriented toward longer-form writing, Substack has proven to be a great platform with loads more thoughtful and interesting content than you typically get on social media. Moving MBHS’ publications over seemed like a natural next step.
Thank you again for your interest in the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society! We are glad to have you on board!