Author: Jnana Hodson

In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.

A guardian angel appears for Maine’s daily newspapers

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All but one of the state’s daily newspapers recently came under new ownership, but the surprise is that it’s not a mass-media corporation run by profit-squeezing accountants or, worse yet, investment brokers.

Instead, they now come under a non-profit committed to maintaining community journalism.

I’m hoping this is a wave of the future.

Curiously, it’s also something my last employer, the conservative New Hampshire Union Leader, turned to for continuation.

It will be vital to see how this plays out.

 

Red squirrel jitters

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Squirrels were a pestilence back in Dover, raiding our garden and devouring the crown molding in our barn, in addition to some damage to the house itself.

While deer are a problem here, we haven’t had squirrels.

But the other day, I looked up from my keyboard and saw a small red squirrel scampering across our brush pile.

A few minutes later, my wife, working in another room, called out to say she’d seen a squirrel.

“A red one?”

Yep.

They’re worse than the grays we had, in the opinion of many.

So far, at least, it hasn’t been back.

Cross our fingers. We really no longer see them as cute.

My range didn’t expand to the whole state

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Statehood for New Hampshire was accompanied by growth in the Merrimac Valley and western side of the state, including Quaker Meetings.

Weare, especially, became a Friends center, with two large meetinghouses in town and another in neighboring Henniker. There was also the Clinton Grove academy.

Much of that growth, however, came from Massachusetts, not Dover, and so it fell outside the focus of my Quaking Dover story. They were even in a different Quarterly Meeting than the one encompassing the communities emanating from Dover.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

Lookin’ lush

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Here’s a progress report on our raised, fenced-in garden experiment this year. So far, we’ve had no further problem with the deer, although they’ve been daily visitors to the back yard and neighbors lately, especially as small apples have been falling from the gone-wild trees.

The picture shows tomato plants thriving as they’re finally blossoming in our mostly cool climate, along with basil, calendula, cucumbers, and peppers.

The adjoining bed has been producing romaine lettuce, Swiss chard, parsley, and sugar-snap peas, while the leeks are coming long royally.

Not just us

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WE’RE TOGETHER ON AN OLD FARM, one with a huge barn. We’re buying it. I say, “In New England, we build a woodshed connecting the house and barn.”

We enter and it’s a banquet hall, where she stands apart with a group of girlfriends. Sees a fire door and opens it. The alarm doesn’t go off. Instead, she’s in an anteroom, facing another door.

Told of the dream, she replies, “That’s good! I wasn’t afraid to open it.”

 

SHE’S WITH A NUMBER OF FORMER boyfriends and lovers, but knows it isn’t really them but someone else; each time, one would strip off his face like a mask. In time she identified the Lover as me, not by my face but by my HANDS.

 

AT THE MOTEL, I’M FLIRTING with two or three women. Maybe more?

As they pass each other, there’s friendship, not jealousy.

I’m supposed to run one – a newer one – to the airport, but each time I go out to the car, something else is missing from the dashboard. Speedometer, clock, etc. Stolen, stripped out overnight, while we slept. Not the hubcaps or battery, but the interior – controls – until I cannot drive anywhere.

 

You’d think those birds would be far more ravenous in the depths of winter

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We continue to keep our bird feeders out through the summer (something we wouldn’t do if we had bears in town), but I am surprised by how much more they eat in summertime, when there’s plenty of other food available, than they do in deep cold and snowy conditions when they need more to keep their metabolism up.

Yeah, we know there are more of them now and that they’re also feeding their babies. But on some days they eat as much as they would otherwise consume in two weeks – or more.

On the other hand, we do enjoy watching the variety and drama as they dine right outside the window at our kitchen table throughout the year.