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.
Author: Jnana Hodson
In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.
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?
Come to the book release party!
If you’re anywhere near Dover, New Hampshire, on Nov. 5, feel free to stop by the Quaker meetinghouse for the official Quaking Dover book release party.
The meet-and-greet event takes place at 7 pm at 141 Central Avenue and is free and open to the public. As a Covid precaution, we will be masking.
Copies of the book will also be available for purchase and author signing.
In the meantime, it’s release date is coming up on Saturday. Check with your local bookseller to order a copy.
End of the line
I do wonder about this scuttled auto ferry seen from a trail at Roque Beach State Park. It’s far from any center of population, and there’s no remaining top structure.
Was it scavenged before being abandoned? Or even after? Did it fall victim to fire? Or a storm? Somehow it was run aground along what’s now thick forest.
