Detailed reconstruction
Author: Jnana Hodson
In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.
Favorite canines from a non-dog lover
Eastport is filled with dog walkers, even more than Dover was, and their perspicacity in making the rounds umpteen times a day amazes me. What else do they do with their lives?
Don’t count me as a dog lover. I grew up having cats. You never step in their poo or take them for walks. And now, rabbits. Ditto.
That said, here are some dogs I’ve had to deal with, one way or another.
- Grimm. The one in Mike Peters’ comic strip. I had a small role in getting it rolling. Still love the caustic humor.
- Rin-Tin-Tin. A frontier mascot in a TV series we watched back in the black-and-white days of TV. Gee, how could I forget Rusty, orphaned in an Indian raid, much less the fact his dog was a then-exotic German shepherd or their home was a U.S. cavalry outpost? I always wanted a pair of gloves like the lieutenant’s.
- Lassie. Another TV star. Gee, when’s the last time you saw a collie? They used to be everywhere, in no small part because of this show.
- Silas. Our neighbor’s German shepherd back in Indiana. He appears in my novel, Nearly Canaan.
- Sal. The big pit bull my younger daughter and her roommate rescued from a shelter. An amazing animal who had one unacceptable quirk. This story ends sadly.
- Our neighbor’s Irish wolfhounds. They would hang over the six-foot fence separating our yards and howl mournfully. Maybe they knew their lives were doomed to be short, a problem with huge dog species.
- Blue. Maybe you know the song? “I had a dog and his name was Blue, bet you five dollars he’s a good dog, too.” Get me the Kleenex.
- Pluto. The mopey Disney cartoon character, not Roman mythological ruler of the underworld. Back to childhood, naturally.
- Simon and Schuster. A pair of basset hounds walked around here by an aspiring writer and her dutiful partner.
- Snoopy. Back to the funny pages, we have Sparky Schultz’ classic and patient observer of human folly. I didn’t appreciate him until he was nearing the end of his run. I think Mike Peters’ wife had a role in opening my eyes here.
Honorable mentions to Fang in Harry Potter or Toto in Wizard of Oz. If only I were a fan of those works.
Tell me about your dogs. Please!
Straight party-line ticket?
You vote for one of them, you’re voting for the worst of them.
They’re sticking that much together.
Wanna talk about rotten apples?
Or of unity in essentials, either side of the aisle.
We have some heavy-duty shipping, too
While washing dishes one night shortly after moving to Eastport, I noticed strange lights between a neighbor’s house. So I went upstairs with my binoculars and still couldn’t make out much, other than it appeared to be a ship. Or maybe two. It definitely wasn’t one of our fishing boats. Here’s how one of the big freighters looks in daylight.
The Breakwater downtown isn’t the only important pier in town. The Eastport Port Authority also operates the Estes Head Cargo Terminal around the curve to the south. The 55-acre, high-security site includes warehouses, an aerial conveyor, and two berths. It’s where the big barges and oceanic freighters pull in.
It’s also the deepest natural harbor in the continental U.S., with the Breakwater close behind.
Most of the shipping these days is exports of wood pulp for paper production, though recent cargo has included delivery of giant blades for the wind farm electrical generators in Hancock County. .
Seems a shame they can’t drum up more business, try as they might.
Kinisi 126
Why Egyptian?
One day, October
1, the hokku
Ripe orange descending
And then the sharp scythe new moon
With her consort, Venus
2, the long version
Orange-fruit globe ascending
Silvery lakes between fog-wisped forests
Many miles intervening
Same orange glop descending
And then the sharp scythe new moon
With her consort, Venus
In uniform some of these histories never quite go away
you have no idea how long since I even allowed myself the luxury of dreaming like this, it’s very healthy, I’m told, hmm, as plane tickets to Dallas! (naw!) (just kidding!) security deposit on a new apartment, so I can move from this one; then use the returned deposit here for some of the foregoing, cunningly
And now in paper!
Taa-tah! My Quaking Dover is officially out as a print-on-demand paper book around the globe.
It does mean going to your favorite book retailer for a copy, but there we are.
Independent bookstores and libraries have their own insiders’ routes to obtain it. Go to them to keep these channels alive.
As for me, I’m stocking up for copies to keep in my car, wherever I go.
How about you?
Where were the Baptists?
I’ve mentioned my bewilderment at the failure by the Church of England to serve its communicants in New England during most of the 1600s.
As well as the fact that Dover’s First Parish could have been the first Baptist church in America, beating Roger Williams in Providence, Rhode Island, by a year.
What perplexes me is that I find nothing in New Hampshire before almost 1800, although there was a church in Boston, a place where Friends struggled.
The fact is that the Baptist tradition originated as a liberal movement. We’ve seen threads of that continuing in Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers.
In my research, I kept coming across fleeting references to Baptists during the years before the American Revolution, but curiously not much outside of Rhode Island to indicate ongoing activity in New England. They were not singled out like the Quakers as great dangers to social or godly order, even though they were still outlawed and ridiculed. Did they meet secretly, perhaps even at times other than Sunday morning? None were hanged in Boston, for one thing. In New Hampshire, they had only three congregations by 1770 – Newton, founded 1755; Madbury, adjacent to Dover; and Weare, which had a strong Quaker presence. Still, as I sense, theirs is a crucial history yet to be written.
Considering all the furor around minister Hanserd Knollys’ brief tenure in Dover, just before he began preaching definitively Baptist doctrines, as well as the support he had, I keep wondering about his legacy in the Piscataqua settlement. Somehow, he set off an unorthodox flame in the community, at least by Puritan standards.
Curiously, as I considered the matriarchal role in the continuing nurture of a faith tradition, the path led back to Thomas Roberts and his wife, Rebecca Hilton. This time I chanced across not their Quaker impact but rather a Baptist one.
Their daughter Esther – also recorded as Hester and Easter – born around 1625 and one of the first English children in New Hampshire, married John Martin (also Martyn) around 1645 in Dover. He descends from Mayflower arrivals in Plymouth Bay. After a round of public service, they relocate to Oyster Bay on Long Island, perhaps among those who flee to avoid persecution, but in 1666 move on to New Jersey shortly after the British seized it from the Netherlands. Joined by Drake, Dunn, Gilman, Hull, and Langstaff families from New Hampshire, as well as other Baptist New Englanders, the name Piscataway soon sticks to their New Jersey community, reflecting their Piscataqua roots. Theirs was perhaps the seventh oldest Baptist congregation in America. The colony itself came under Quaker proprietorship in 1675, assuring religious liberty. Think about all that the next time you’re driving along the New Jersey Turnpike and see the signs for that exit.
That’s the last I find of Baptists in New Hampshire until a Scammon from Stratham on Great Bay – a surname that appears early among Friends – weds a Rachel Thurber of Rehoboth in southern Massachusetts in 1720. Resettling in Stratham, she struggles for 40 years, making one conversion, before moving on to Boston and being baptized into its second Baptist church.
Glory, hallelujah, and all that.
~*~
Welcome to Dover’s upcoming 400th anniversary.
What was that about an obsession?
Jnana's Red Barn 