LOVELL – The second part of Peter Lenz’s two-part lecture series was concluded at the Charlotte Hobbs Memorial Library in Lovell on Tuesday.

“There are millions of volumes in the Library of Congress that are available on the Internet now,” Lenz said, “and probably just as much history that hasn’t been written.”

His passion for history took him through schooling at Antioch, Harvard and the University of Massachusetts where he often felt history wasn’t being accurately reported.

A major aspect of his interest, over the years, has been studying people whose vulnerability has been abused and exploited. Principal subjects have been slavery, witchcraft persecution and the treatment of American Indians.

After extensive research over years, Lenz said he continually found a wide gap between the often friendly, supportive relationships native populations offered white settlers and the more accepted view of natives as frightening to whites.

Some inaccurate descriptions are humorous such as natives being described to Europeans as covered in gold and living in crystal palaces.

To laughter, Lenz said that definitely helped recruit new colonists.

Often, however, the original history was painful. Lenz said some of the same explorers who were so impressed with the “peaceful, friendly, civilized” inhabitants were also aware their “generous, nonviolent natures would make them easy to deceive and subdue.”

Lenz publishes all his books, actually copying every page on his own copier. He said his imprint, Nickel and Dime Press, describes his financial circumstances. However, he also said, emphatically, that his passion for recording history was so great it kept him up at night with excitement. His company’s motto is: “Books made with care.”

Currently, Nickel and Dime is republishing a series called “Voyages to Norumbega-Mawooshen.” Long since sold out, it details the 1500s and 1600s when New England was first explored and settled by Europeans. Lenz also described a series which runs to eight books and started as an idea for a pamphlet. Ultimately, the pamphlet grew into a book and the book’s appendix turned out to be three times larger. “Healing our Heritage; Columbus, Indians and Slavery” is part of the first title.

Due to his book, “The Fire that Time,” which featured research into witchcraft persecutions and its parallels with anti-Semitic and other persecutions, Lenz was invited to be part of the commemoration of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. “I just let history do the talking,” he said.

Currently, Lenz is collecting and expanding on historical articles he wrote for the print directory prepared by the Western Oxford Foothills cultural council. He calls this collection, “Pete’s Prurignacious Peregrinations.”

“I intend the title to mean these are my own heartfelt ramblings about my life’s travels,” he said.

Another project in preparation is “Literary Pearls,” a compilation of historic, humorous and modern literary expression in western Maine over the last 300 years. To illustrate some of the “hidden jewels” he has uncovered, Lenz asked, Native American Judith “Warm Tears” Hays to read a selection from the journals she has kept most of her life. Warm Tears, whose grandfather was Irish, is preparing a book called “Secrets of an Indian Grandmother.”

Lenz concluded the program by asking Lovell poet Timothy Richardson to read the two poems he contributed to the collection. The second poem, a “terza rima” sonnet called, “From the Top,” is a tribute to the inspiring beauty of western Maine and its effect on the creative process.

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