Veteran Meetings Trade Editor Maria Lenhart's Quirky New Cape Cod Guidebook

Cape Cod is a destination that has been home to or frequented by some of the most influential people in U.S. culture, from literary lions like Kurt Vonnegut to American icons such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and playwright Tennessee Williams. 

Former Meetings Today editor Maria Lenhart, who has also written and edited for some of the other top meetings industry trade publications in a career measured in decades, has co-authored Secret Cape Cod and the Islands: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure.

[Related: Former Meetings Today Editor Co-Authors Quirky Cape Cod Guidebook]

Former colleague Tyler Davidson tapped into the making of this delightful new travel tome born during the pandemic, as well as Maria's observations from her many years covering travel and meetings, and how a group of senior ladies meeting in the Cape to play cards was treated to a private performance by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, among many other decidedly quirky tales and travel tips.

Listen now:

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Transcript:

Editors note: The following transcription was facilitated by AI program Otter.ai and proofed by our editors. Although it is very accurate, there inevitably will be some mistakes, so please consider that when reading. Thank you.

Tyler Davidson 
Hello, and welcome to this Meetings Today Podcast. I'm Tyler Davidson, vice president and chief content director for meetings today and really happy to have with us an old colleague of mine, former Co worker, someone I've known ever since I began in this this unique career of travel, trade, writing and editing.
Maria Lenhart, who is one of the authors of the new Secret Cape Cod in the islands, a guide to the Weird, Wonderful and obscure guidebook.
Thanks for joining us, Maria.

Maria Lenhart 
My pleasure.

Tyler Davidson
And a really, you know, interesting story.
Besides how interesting the guidebook is just an interesting story.
How it all came together and and I think from what you sent me, the Genesis was sort of during the pandemic, right?
And why do you kind of describe how that came about with your co-author? Who is Linda Humphrey?

Maria Lenhart  
Yes. And Linda is also a veteran of the travel trades.
I met her when she was at business travel News and I was working for a sister publication, Meeting News and we traveled together to Asia in interesting places, so known her for a long time.
This was back in the 90s, but anyway. During during the pandemic, as you know, a lot of work.
Kind of dried up a lot of everything.
Changed dramatically and.
So you know it was.
I was kind of looking for some way to occupy myself and I had a a friend who had written a guidebook for Reedy press called 100 things to do in Sonoma County before you die, and it turns out this publisher.

Tyler Davidson   
Mm hmm.

Maria Lenhart  
Specializes in series of guidebooks that focus on different towns and regions.
So in the meantime.
Linda invited me to this was in 2020, even before the vaccine.
And I was, you know, in my apartment in San Francisco, kind of going crazy.
The the wildfires were raging guy turned orange.

Tyler Davidson  
Yeah.

Maria Lenhart   
It was a pretty yeah. Yeah, it really did. And she said, why don't you come back and stay with, you know, my husband and I are are at our house on Cape Cod.

Tyler Davidson 
It was like the end of the world.
I was here too when I was going on. Yeah.

Maria Lenhart  
Which they normally rent out, but they were they were living there to get out of New York City and she said come back and shelter with us.
And so I thought, why not?
So I I did.
I went back there and then the idea was kind of hatched. Like maybe we should contact this reedy press and see if they want a book on 100 things to do in Cape Cod before you die.

Tyler Davidson  
Mm hmm.

Maria Lenhart  
Well, we did that and they said, well, we've already got somebody doing that book, but would you like to do secret Cape Cod?
And sure, you know, we didn't realize that that particular book is a lot more work than the one thing, but you know.

Tyler Davidson  
Yeah, but you had time right at the during the.

Maria Lenhart  
We had.
We had time and.
So so we got started on it and yeah, it was just really fun learning kind of trying to uncover interesting little known stories, like the fact that Kurt Vonnegut once had a *** dealership.
Before he became a famous novelist in in Barnstable and you know, it just sort of interesting back stories behind places or, you know, that kind of thing and you know, and then we found out, like, Martha's Vineyard is like Hollywood E as all these, all these int.
Celebrities live there and there's tons of gossipy stories. So.

Tyler Davidson   
I bet.

Maria Lenhart  
So we're kind of able to make it a little juicy, you know, here and there.

Tyler Davidson   
Yeah.
And how about what's a what's a juicy story you can share with people?

Maria Lenhart   
So so.
Well, just just things like if you if you we took a just a regular old kind of a van tour of of Martha's Vineyard. And yeah, we just learned some interesting things about how a lot of celebrities. Well, you will not recognize them because they tend to.
Drive really old crappy cars when they're on the island, 'cause. They don't want to get a new car out because the roads are very dusty and lot of dirt roads.
But yeah, there was. There's a.
General store in Schulmark where all the celebrities go to buy their incidentals.
And there was a a funny encounter between Larry David and Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer.
Yeah, they got into kind of an altercation.

Tyler Davidson 
I can imagine, right? Yeah.

Maria Lenhart  
Oh, yeah, yeah. And yeah, it.
Yeah. So, so there was some good stuff. And we also learned about the really interesting African American history on The Cave.
I mean, a lot of people tend to think of the region as, you know, pretty Caucasian, you know, English descendants and all that.

Tyler Davidson 
Yeah.
Yeah.

Maria Lenhart
But it's a lot more diverse and really more interesting than than you would think so.
So it was a big discovery for us.

Tyler Davidson
And what makes this guidebook sort of stand out against?
Maybe some of the other ones you might see on a bookshelf in a bookstore.

Maria Lenhart
Well, I think that Cape Cod is sort of uniquely interesting because it's attracted over the years.
So many really interesting people.
So many great writers.
Celebrities. It's where you know there's the Cape Playhouse where people like Henry Fonda and Betty Davis started.

Tyler Davidson
Mm hmm.

Maria Lenhart
Their great writers.
Their and.
You know, a lot of you know, Martha's Vineyard and especially and Nantucket has long been kind of a vacation place for the most influential broadcasters, like people like Mike Wallace and, you know, folks like that. And so. So the people make it interesting.
And it has a long history. There are a lot of ghost stories there. I mean, somebody are haunted and you know, so there's just a whole mix of things.
That that make for kind of an interesting read.
We wanted it to be a book that people would enjoy reading and not so much of just where to find out where to go, but just to enjoy.
Sort of. The armchair experience kind of so.

Tyler Davidson
Yeah. So it's a good read on top of of having valuable information about the destination.

Maria Lenhart 
No, we we like to think so.
And and you know, when we also did share our favorite spots where to watch a great sunset or to get the best clam chowder, it does have some of that in there, too. But it's really more. And we kept finding these weird stories. Like, I think one of.
The weirdest stories is about Bob Dylan.
He stayed at a hotel, a Beach Hotel in Falmouth before setting off on his.
His big tour the the one that was filmed by Martin Scorsese.
And this was like in the mid 70s, early 70s and when they got to the hotel, the only other guest there were these middle-aged women attending a mahjong tournament.
And so it was Dylan.
And they had a whole bunch of people in his entourage, like Joan Baez and Ramblin Jack Elliot different.
People. And so they ended up giving kind of an impromptu concert for the mahjong ladies, and they and they loved it.
So and that actually is partly in the the role.
It's it was called the Rolling Thunder review. That's.

Tyler Davidson 
Right. The Rolling Thunder review.

Maria Lenhart 
Why? Yeah.

Tyler Davidson 
Very interesting movie in its own right too, I gotta say.

Maria Lenhart 
Yeah, yeah. And and Scorsese actually filmed.
There's some footage in the documentary about their time at the at the hotel.
So that was a fun one to include.
You know, we so. And we found out that.
You know, Grover Cleveland had his own the president.
Grover Cleveland had his own train station, Little train station on The Cave.

Tyler Davidson 
Really. Ah.

Maria Lenhart 
Think so?
You know, I didn't ever associate that region with him. But yeah, when he was there and you can visit his train station and his house.
So there's just a lot of fun little odd, odd oddities that we found.

Tyler Davidson 
When you must have done something right because you wanted a the Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers.
If I'm correct.

Maria Lenhart 
Right. I just just found that out, you know.
What was it last week? I guess when you know, when I went to Istanbul for the Convention and I'd entered it back in April and, you know, was hopeful. And that was very exciting that when they announced that that yay.

Tyler Davidson
Right.

Maria Lenhart 
Cause with books you're always looking at new ways to promote them, and anything that can give you a little.
Excuse to send out a press release or whatever is good.
My publisher requires the author's to do a lot of their own marketing.
Promotion and we had to set up our own book signings and talks and that kind of thing.

Tyler Davidson
Wow.
What was that experience like?
Was that fun going out and Hawking the book?

Maria Lenhart
It well, it turned out to it turned out to be a lot of fun.
Went back to the Cape in June and we set up five or six.
Events.
And the first one, my God, we got 8080 people showed up and we signed books and we gave a talk.
And Linda's daughter is a wonderful graphic artist, and she created a very nice slide presentation.
And so we did several of these talks.
We had a signing at Barnes and Noble where I think two people showed up.
But you know that happens.
That can happen.
So yeah, it was an interesting experience and we were terribly nervous at first.
But then we kind of got into the rhythm of it so.

Tyler Davidson 
Right.
So how do you just gonna sit down and you start talking and sharing stories about the research of it and some of the?

Maria Lenhart 
Yeah, we had we had.
We had a script and we rehearsed it quite a lot, but you can't just read it.

Tyler Davidson 
Hello.

Maria Lenhart   
But but yeah, we we tried to prepare as much as we could and make sure that we were in line with the slot with the video presentation and all that.

Tyler Davidson  
Right.

Maria Lenhart   
And it worked out pretty well. You know, it's it's not as hard as you think and.
And people were very supportive or we had great audiences.
They were.
You know, they were great.
They were good.
A lot of local people came and that's what we really liked about it because we wanted to do something that appealed not just to tourists but to people who live there.
And so they yeah. So they can get, they can explore new aspects of where they live, that they may not have thought about so.

Tyler Davidson 
Mm hmm.
And that's a very fast way to find out if you got something wrong. Probably a bunch of local New Englanders reading your book and right in front of you. Right.

Maria Lenhart  
Yeah, yeah.
And we didn't get, you know, the only I don't where.

Tyler Davidson  
Pass you pass the test on that one. It sounds like, huh?

Maria Lenhart 
Yeah, they only kind of the first interview that I did because we also had left the media guy that helped us get some press.
I had a interview with a A very popular local radio guy in Boston.
And I was totally he.
He wouldn't.
He hardly let me get a word in edgewise about the book.

Tyler Davidson  
Yeah.

Maria Lenhart  
It was all about him and.

Tyler Davidson   
He's.

Maria Lenhart   
I mentioned that you know that Mike Wallace had been at a home on Martha's Vineyard and he started in, oh, I met Mike Wallace back in so and so. And he and me and my son got to spend an afternoon with him on and on and on.
And I'm like trying to get get steering back to the book.
Almost impossible and and then he confronted me, he said. Well, I don't recognize your area code.
Where are you calling from?
And so you know.
He really got on the fact that, you know, you don't.
You're not an Englander.

Tyler Davidson   
Yeah, you're not from around here, right?

Maria Lenhart 
I live in San Francisco. For God sake, you know, like OK.
So that was, but that was I've I've learned that's par for the course. You can you can.
So anyway.

Tyler Davidson 
Well, so and you've covered the meetings and events industry for years and years and years.
Anything of particular relevance in this book that maybe attendees could get at something out of it? And I suppose too would also make a great gift for attendees if you're meeting in the region there.

Maria Lenhart  
Absolutely, yeah.
If you're meeting even in the Boston area.
I I think it would be a real fun gift for people because it it it really gives you ideas of places to explore, but also gives you some good background.
So yeah, I I I do hope that that it would be relevant, especially for people in the New England area or and I've been surprised to find how many people around the country.
Have associations with Cape Cod people in the Bay Area even.

Tyler Davidson   
Mm hmm.

Maria Lenhart 
So so yeah, if anyone has an interest in that area, just wants a good read.
You know, we're very.
Happy about that.

Tyler Davidson  
And I, you know, and I guess people, if they're interested in it, I mean you can go to Amazon and get it or reedy press the publisher.

Maria Lenhart 
Yeah, yeah. And and if you wanna support your local independent bookstore, they can order it too.
So there's many ways that you can you can purchase it very easy to do that and if you shop around, you can usually get a discount on it and that kind of thing so.

Tyler Davidson  
Awesome.
Awesome. I guess the next one then is lost treasures of San Francisco.
You're you're hopping on.

Maria Lenhart 
Right. I'm I'm working on that one now and that's been a real immersion in nostalgia for me because the book is about all the places that no longer exist.

Tyler Davidson   
Mm hmm.

Maria Lenhart 
I don't all the places, but a lot of them.
And you know, just the memories of old.
Some of the old department stores that we used to have, like images of the City of Paris or the emporium or restaurants like there, used to be a wonderful.
Ice cream candies chain called Blum.
But you know, San Franciscans just get misty eyed when they hear about.

Tyler Davidson  
That in in Playland at the beach is the other thing, right? Yeah.

Maria Lenhart
It.
Oh, absolutely.
Playland, which I I remember as a child. It was pretty incredible and I even remember the fly shacker swimming pool, which was the largest outdoor pool in in in the country. It was so big they had to patrol it in life in row boats. The lifeguards would be.

Tyler Davidson  
Alright.
Ow.
Wow.

Maria Lenhart
In row boats and of course it was. It was out by where the zoo is, which is near the ocean. And it was very chilly.
But you can imagine.

Tyler Davidson
Yeah, definitely.

Maria Lenhart
But it was actually seawater that was pumped into the pool.

Tyler Davidson  
Like.
Amazing.

Maria Lenhart 
Yeah. So place there were just some amazing places that are that are gone. And then of course we went, you know, part of it is on the the psychedelic era era where people went to the Fillmore and the Avalon and saw the Jefferson Airplane and all those great.

Tyler Davidson  
Right.

Maria Lenhart 
Groups that that kind of got started in San Francisco.

Tyler Davidson
I yeah.

Maria Lenhart  
So you know, there's just so many different in the beat era, you know, in the CHA chares.

Tyler Davidson 
Oh yeah.

Maria Lenhart 
You know just.

Tyler Davidson  
City lights and well, I guess that's still there, but there's a lot.

Maria Lenhart 
That's still there, thank goodness.

Tyler Davidson 
Yeah, I know.

Maria Lenhart
Thank goodness. Yeah.

Tyler Davidson 
And yeah, amazing.
Well, and then and before we we exit today, just tell me like what it your impression sort of on covering the meetings and events industry for so long and I think you mentioned to me that you kind of got into this whole business sort of by accident like.
A lot of meeting and event planners.
And you know, what was it like on day one and how is?
Has changed in your opinion since then.

Maria Lenhart 
Yeah, it this is giving me an opportunity to really reflect back on that 'cause, I I probably started writing for the travel trades somewhere in the the early to mid 80s and it was so very different than I mean, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of people.
Recall meeting planning wasn't even that much of A recognized profession in those days.
It was, you know.

Tyler Davidson
Yeah.

Maria Lenhart 
Often handled by a secretary or maybe the officer of an association.
But you didn't have so much of A designated profession and and certainly and not departments. And you know different.
So it it's been really a remarkable how it's evolved and I always enjoyed writing articles about.
Especially how how people can kind of advance their careers. This is a profession heavily female and this is a road up to the executive ladder for for a lot of women.

Tyler Davidson 
Yeah.

Maria Lenhart 
And and along the way, I mean the people that I met, the really wonderful people that share their knowledge, I mean, I'm thinking of people like Joan Eisenstod.
I mean, what a resource?

Tyler Davidson
Right.

Maria Lenhart  
A person like that is.
I mean, they're really what made the stories good because they they would share their knowledge and you just sort of would take it, take down what they were saying.
But there's a lot of generosity in the industry and people really trying to help each other.

Tyler Davidson 
I agree.
That's that's what makes it interesting and makes me just love to do my job every day.
Is that very aspect of it?

Maria Lenhart 
Yeah, yeah.

Tyler Davidson  
Well, thank you, Maria so much. We've been friends for decades and and colleagues and Co workers and just so happy to see this great book out. And and thanks for joining us today.

Maria Lenhart
And.
Oh, well, thanks Tyler. You know.
Always enjoyed the always enjoyed your company and and your you know.
So I'm glad we're still we're friends and and I'm glad you're back.

Tyler Davidson   
I know after being in the publishing industry for so long, we're still friends.
How does that happen?

Maria Lenhart  
It's amazing.

Tyler Davidson   
I mean that.

Maria Lenhart  
Yeah, that's amazing.
So.

Tyler Davidson  
Excellent. Well, thank you, Maria.
That was Maria Lenhart, the co-author of Cape Cod in the Islands, a guide to the Weird, Wonderful and obscure.

Maria Lenhart   
Alright.

Tyler Davidson   
From Reedy press.
Available in Amazon, your local bookstores wherever fine books are sold.
I'm Tyler Davidson, vice president and chief content director for meetings today.
Thank you for joining us for this meetings today podcast. If you're interested in other podcasts, we do head on over.
To meetingstoday.com and check out our podcast section where you will find a wealth a treasure trove of podcasts with industry thought leaders.
So thanks again to Maria for joining us and thanks for all of you for tuning in.
And no matter what you're up to with the rest of the day, make it great.
See.

Maria Lenhart 
Thanks Tyler.