Author: Jnana Hodson

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

I’m sold on Maine’s crab

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

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.

Finally, a decent seafood selection Way Downeast

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Even though we live a block from the ocean, we’ve been perplexed by the selection of local seafood available in the region’s markets. Or more accurately, it’s lack.

The bigger supermarkets have been a disappointment, and the smaller ones, quite limited.

The best overall selection we’ve found, especially for local catch, is Earle’s SUV that shows up on U.S. 1 down in Machias on selected days. That’s an hour away.

For crab, clams, and scallops, it’s Betty’s seasonal shack in Pembroke, about 20 minutes from home.

Other than that, it’s meant going directly to the fishermen, if you know where they are.

Finally, we’re feeling upbeat. The reopening of Quoddy Lobster’s dining operation, just a block from us, includes a fresh seafood counter.

New owner Look Lobster, a fifth-generation family company in Jonesport, has already invested heavily in the Eastport site by rebuilding the pier for straight-from-the-boat deliveries. Last summer it became my go-to place for fresh retail lobster, especially for anything over a pound and a half.

Now that the end-of-the-street site is serving traditional lobster plates for the first time since Covid, it won’t be long before the outdoor picnic tables by the sea are soon packed with devoted fans. The place, a very popular destination both among tourists and locals, was much missed.

Wilting as they lose local awareness

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As a newspaper editor, I was often startled in looking at coverage from the other side when something I was affiliated with was subject to a story. Or even more startling, when I was quoted and seeing how it looked it print.

It was like working in a restaurant kitchen and shipping dishes to the dining room and then, on a night off, going in for a celebratory dinner.

Seeing a report through the readers’ viewpoint really could be eye-opening. It’s not the “names-is-news” philosophy that many small-minded editors and publishers pursued, either. That approach could be even more boring than reading the phone book. Remember those?

The backbone of most of American newspapers has been the way they connect with their local communities. As one wise editor once told me, it should be news of local interest, rather than just happenings in the place itself. I spent much of my career trying to open parochial outlooks to an awareness of the wider world, both directions, and I do believe that can happen and even be exciting.

When I was calling on daily newspaper editors across the Northeast as a syndicate features field representative, I was surprised by how few of the papers gave a taste of a unique nature of each of the communities. Many of the editors thought of local news as city council and school board meetings plus high school sports scores. As I argue in my novel Hometown News, the real stories – the kind that come home – are found elsewhere and require more reportorial digging. That’s one reason I’ve long advocated local columnists (real writers, not dilettantes, though skilled amateurs are welcome). Few papers had even that much.

When former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously proclaimed “All politics is local,” he understood those roots.

~*~

A decade after I’ve left the newsroom, I’m directly experiencing that again, or more accurately, its lack.

In the past 20 years, the number of people employed in newsrooms at American papers has dropped about 60 percent. That leaves far fewer people to write about what’s happening or even be aware of what’s going on at the grassroots level where they live. Much of the nuts-and-bolts editing is being done in clusters far from the paper itself, removing another layer of local nuance and understanding.

In my case, in my participation in events celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of Dover, I’m seeing the local paper is doing far less coverage than I would have expected. Not after the family that owned it for generations finally sold out to a media conglomerate.

That disconnect isn’t just print media, either. New Hampshire Public Radio no longer originates any content in the Granite State, as far as I can see. Two decades ago, appearing on one of its shows would have been a natural for a local author like me.

Quite simply, it’s disappointing and a bit scary.