Author: Jnana Hodson

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

Oh, those clean starched white dress uniforms

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The 350 U.S. Navy sailors who descended on Eastport for our extended Independence Day festivities were the first to uphold the longstanding tradition since before the Covid pandemic.

They were a welcome contingent in our small community, often appearing in their pristinely ironed white uniforms, which do look impressive even though, as I was told, they can be a challenge to keep clean. You have to lean way over while eating, for instance, to keep from spilling anything on yours. Not that we noticed any dirt when they marched as a big bloc in the grand parade Tuesday afternoon. At least the sailors and officers who fielded teams in the very messy cod relay contest the previous day were more practical in their dress.

What they got was a six-day taste of small-town America having summer fun.

As the police chief reported, “the Fourth of July was relatively quiet, aside from a couple of fights involving sailors … which were handled by the crew from the Navy ship.”

Where to from here, as a writer or a person?

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Creatively, I’m feeling a lull or perhaps more accurately adrift.

After my Cape Cod presentation via Zoom earlier this month, I have no other Quaking Dover events on the horizon. Nor do I feel compelled to undertake another big writing venture.

Authors these days are often saddled with the promotional end of any publication, and I’m coming up on a year of launching the marketing push on my latest book. Admittedly, I am proud of my public appearances on its behalf – each one unique, reflecting what another writer declared a “rich feast of a book” – but it’s also exhausting, especially, as I hate to confess, at my age.

Do I cut the ties and say it’s time for the book to sink or swim on its own, or do I find new ways to try to generate a buzz? It is the one book that seems to speak to a wider audience, especially, say, than poetry or my hippie novels.

The blogging hits have slowed down, perhaps as many viewers have shifted to other platforms. Social media and mass media both appear to be hemorrhaging there, so I can’t say I’m alone.

I’m certainly out of touch with youth and often can’t understand their conversations. That really hurts. I believe there’s so much knowledge that needs to be handed down but don’t know where to begin. Besides, I’ve often found them a source of great energy in my own outlook.

In short, I don’t have a big project calling for my attention and devotion. That part feels really weird.

I do have a big backlog of periodicals and books to finally tackle as well as a shelf of personal journals that deserve visiting, so that points to an overdue reading orgy.

There’s plenty of outdoors around here to indulge in, too.

I may even have to look at my remaining possessions and reorganize and cull them.

As I’m saying, I’m feeling a bit strange.

I’m sold on Maine’s crab

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Ours are smaller than the glorious Dungeness of the Pacific Northwest or Chesapeake Bay’s popular Blue delicacy, named for the color of their tips.

But that’s not to say Maine doesn’t have crabmeat that’s as sweet. Ours comes from two species.

Here’s some perspective.

  1. Jonah crabs are the slightly larger and more celebrated of the two. They’re reddish with large, black-tipped claws, and found primarily in deep waters offshore.
  2. The meat comes from the claws. When Jonahs show up in a lobster trap, a fisherman typically removes one claw and throws the rest of the crab back. The crab, we’re told, can survive on one claw while the other grows back.
  3. Jonahs are regulated by an interstate commission that places a 4.75-inch minimum size on keepers and prohibits the retention of egg-bearing females.
  4. Atlantic rock crab, or “peekytoes,” live in bays and tidal rivers closer to shore. These measure just five inches across and are the most commercially caught crab in the state.
  5. Peekytoes cannot be shipped live, presumably because they’re too delicate. Instead, they’re cooked and hand-picked before shipment.
  6. Both commercial and recreational crabbers require a license from the state and must observe strict limits on their take. At least, those specifically going after them. See the lobstermen, above, for a clue to exemptions.
  7. Locals in the know say that picking the meat from a crab is a nearly lost art. They admit they can’t avoid getting hard bits of shell in the tender flesh, no matter how carefully they try. Instead, as they advise, go to Betty’s in Pembroke or Earle’s down in Machias for your supply.
  8. Favorite dishes around here are crab rolls, crab salad, and crabcakes. Our house also celebrates a heavenly crab imperial. Others make them into a dip or spread. And, in some circles, Jonah crab claws make an appetizer served like a shrimp cocktail.
  9. They can be harvested year-‘round, though fall, when crabs are most packed with meat, is the peak season.
  10. Smaller, invasive, nasty green crabs have been proliferating as Maine waters warm, decimating other marine species and their breeding grounds. Some enterprising chefs, though, see tasty opportunity in some dishes to counter that.

Me? I haven’t yet had to complain of having too much. Now, please pass the Old Bay.

An island garden isn’t entirely quaint

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I’ve loved the phrase, “island garden,” even before we relocated to Moose Island, Maine.

The resonance comes in a classic book of that title by poet Celia Thaxter from her efforts on Appledore Island at the other end of the state. Her volume is illustrated by the great American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam, an addicted summer visitor. He made some stunning paintings on the island.

My wife and I did make a pilgrimage to the site, which once included a hotel considered by many to be America’s first artists’ colony. Nowadays, you do need permission to land there – we arrived on a research vessel as guests of the University of New Hampshire, which shares a major ornithological center with Cornell in what had been a World War II watchtower and bunkers.

Moose Island, in contrast, connects to the mainland by a causeway – no need for a ferry – but it’s still an island, an element that grows in awareness the longer I’m here.

Celia’s text often laments the arrival of garden slugs on the previously uninfected island, a pestilence we certainly understand, even before relocating from New Hampshire.

Alas, we do have those slimy destructors here. Apparently, Celia was unaware of the advantages of using seaweed as a mulch, one that repels the offenders in both its fresh and dried states. It’s something I’ve previously posted on. And something I need to reapply here.

While her garden was mostly flowers, ours skewers more toward edible items. And that adds a further layer of offenders, as you’ve been seeing here: deer. The ones with voracious appetites.

Welcome to Cobscook Friends

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As a small, rural Quaker fellowship, we’re especially happy to be worshipping together in one space every Sunday again, at least through the summer and early autumn.

Covid, of course, had us connected only by Zoom through much of the Covid onslaught and after that, coming together in a physical space on alternative weeks only. We do live at distances from the meetinghouse, so winter weather can often be a challenge.

Not so summer. We’d love to have others join us in our hour of mostly silent centering, beginning at 9:30 on Sunday mornings. The meetinghouse is in the woods along Maine Route 189 in Whiting – on the way to Lubec and many great outdoors trails.

If you meditate in some practice, you’ll fit right in – and if that seems foreign, it’s still a great time for personal reflection. I always find it renewing.

As for Happy Hampton?

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In New Hampshire, Hampton is often touted as Happy Hampton, at least in summer, reflecting its long, broad, honky-tonk ocean beach and the rock concerts at the casino. Let me warn you it can be pretty crowded this time of year. Inland a bit, it’s also known for the Hampton Tolls on Interstate 95, which can be a major travel delay.

In the colonial era, Hampton was renowned for its saltmarsh hay and related agriculture.

It was also the center of the colony’s other Quaker Meeting, one at least as old as Dover’s, as far as I can tell.

As I was researching my book, Quaking Dover, I kept wondering what happened to the Hampton Friends over time. And then I discovered that, like Dover, Hampton had small, neighborhood worship groups, or “preparative meetings,” that came together once a month to address their joint affairs and personal conduct. The monthly sessions rotated among the meetinghouses under the Monthly Meeting’s care, in Hampton’s case including Amesbury, Massachusetts, which became home to the celebrated poet John Greenleaf Whittier.

Amesbury continues, while Hampton fell away long ago.

Since the boundary line between New Hampshire and Massachusetts kept shifting in the colonial era, sometimes reaching down to the Merrimack River – or Merrimac, as Massachusetts insisted – I feel safe in saying New Hampshire had two Monthly Meetings, while the Bay colony had only one, at Salem.

Either way, it could be a rich story in the telling.