News reports of protesting students seizing administration buildings on college campuses do bring back memories, and I know I’m not alone.
While there had been earlier seizures of campus facilities in the late ‘60s at schools like Berkeley, Columbia, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, the killing of four protesters at Kent State on May 4, 1970, and two more at Jackson State on May 14 triggered student strikes across the country.
The causes ran deeper than just the ongoing warfare in Vietnam and surrounding countries, do note. My novel, Daffodil Uprising, reflects my experiences in Indiana.
The making of a hippie
While I’m not about to engage in comparisons of today and back then, I am fascinated in the focus on university funding in the current protests. My novel saw that as a crucial factor back then, too – it wasn’t just Dow Chemical, either.
Of special concern, now and back then, is the depth of frustration that finally erupts as rage and revolt. We can assume there are elements in the current actions that go back well before the current Gaza crisis, and not just in the Middle East. They need to be addressed.
I believe that many of the problems in contemporary America can be traced back to unresolved issues from the late ‘60s For now, I’ll leave it at that.
For any of you interested, my book is available at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers, and at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback.
Geographically, Maine is the biggest state in New England – almost as large as the other five combined. That still ranks it 39th in size in the USA.
We’re also famed for some very dry humorists and fresh-from-the-sea lobsters the way Vermont’s stuck with maple syrup and a red leaves identity.
Beyond that, here are some other things that are unique to the place.
It’s the only state that borders just one other state. But it’s also the only one that borders three Canadian provinces.
Half of the state is essentially unpopulated – mostly forests, wetlands, black flies, and mosquitoes.
Its craggy coastline is longer than California’s, but shorter than Florida’s and Louisiana’s and, of course, Alaska. While the state and its tidal waters are famed for lighthouses, Michigan – with four of the freshwater Great Lakes ringing its shores – has the most.
The bulk of the population lives within twenty miles of the Atlantic and its tides. Less well known are the interior towns between the ocean and the mountains. Much of that belt’s suffering, economically.
Some of the state’s biggest urban centers are divided into two cities by rivers: Portland/South Portland, Lewiston/Auburn, Bangor/Brewer, Biddeford/Saco, Brunswick/Topsham. Calias/Saint Stephen is complicated by the U.S.-Canada border. Augusta and Waterville are the prime exceptions.
Demographically, Mainers are the oldest folks in the country. The median age is 45.1 years. About 21.2 percent of the residents are 65 and above while only 18.5 percent is under 18.
Despite all the white steeples you see in the photos, Maine is among the four least churched states. Typically, it’s hovering at the bottom, with New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont as rivals. Some of the variation occurs when looking at religious affiliation versus measures of religiosity.
Famed outdoor outfitter L.L. Bean in Freeport can be seen as the epitome of the Pine Tree State. But quirky discount chains Mardens and Remy have their own loyal following, as adventurous visitors discover.
Maine is the leading lobster-producing state in the nation, employing more than 5,600 hundred lobstermen (male and female). The tightly regulated catch contributes more than a billion dollars to the state’s economy.
The state is also famed for its wild, lowbush blueberries. More than 70 percent of them are harvested in Washington County, where I live. Ranked by dollar value in the state’s agricultural output, the berries traditionally come in second, a bit above $100 million a year, but way below the $247 billion potato crop, mostly in Aroostook County to our north or the $137 million milk output statewide. But medical cannabis sales, at $266 million in 2020, surpassed them, and that’s without recreational marijuana figures, $72 million in 2021. They’re expected to go even higher this year.
Whittier is a poet I’ve come to know largely through Dover, where his maternal grandparents and an uncle and cousins on his father’s side lived. His parents in fact, married in our Quaker meetinghouse.
His poems aren’t about himself but rather a greater faithfulness. While he’s self-effacing, many of his works are deeply felt political and social protests that remain biting and land on-target.
Despite the seeming simplicity of his rhyming form, his lines are sharp. When you read his poems, don’t stop at the end of the line but keep moving onward as a full-sentence thought. There you can breathe. Robert Frost follows in Whittier’s footsteps.
His poem, “How the Women Went from Dover,” commemorates an important event that appears in my Quaking Dover as well.
Here’s how our Pascha repast looked last year, when the Eastern Orthodox Easter observance came two weeks earlier than this year’s.
Grilled leg of lamb, medium-rare, roasted Greek potatoes, and fresh asparagus suit me as a perfect follow-up to the Eastern Holy Week observations. Or the marathon, as some justifiably refer to the sequence of services.
The quartered, peeled potatoes were coated with a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, and fresh rosemary and placed on a small baking tray that had been sprayed with oil to make the cleanup easier. When done, the crusty exterior covered a hot creamy interior that melted in the mouth. As my late German mother-in-law would have said, this is better than God living in France.
Let me say I’m looking forward to another round today, fully aware of the glorious experience awaiting those who have observed the nearly seven weeks of strict dietary restrictions they call fasting. Truly.
A state park right in our small city set upon Moose Island has some marvelous side trails. And to think, the site nearly became a stinky oil refinery. Hats off to citizen action!
The two weeks before Christmas got more than a little frantic around us, even without all of the holiday buildup. The renovation tradesmen were on a collision course. The spray foam crew gave us a date they would be in town for a bigger project down the street – they would dovetail us into the afternoon – but that meant the windows on the back half upstairs would have to be framed and the electrical outlets along the exterior wall would have to be in place before they arrived. We would also have to be out of the house for 24 hours afterward while the toxic vapors subsided.
Our contractor and his accomplished accomplice worked through the weekend to meet deadline.
We also had a plumber on-site – you don’t try to reschedule those guys, do you? It’s hard enough to get them at all. First, he was moving a cold-air duct for the new wood-burning stove and its metal chimney, accompanied by moving the water heater to make way for that metal chimney. As long as we were dealing with the water heater, we advanced our anticipated shift to a heat-exchange unit, which should drastically reduce our monthly electrical bill. While he was at it, he replaced the old sump pump and its precarious hoses. Some of those photos have already appeared in this series. We were delighted that the new stove and chimney were in place and working by Christmas Eve, when the rest of the family was visiting.
What I haven’t mentioned is the hurricane-force storm that hit a week before Christmas, pushing back the foam-installation crew by two days – along with our Airbnb reservation. (The tempest hit right after my choir’s two concerts, as if I needed any more activity.)
And then there we were, welcoming family and putting up the tree on Christmas Eve, this time in front of a warm fire.
Our lawns, walkways, and streets are littered with asphalt roof shingles, thanks to some intense winter storms.
The region sustained two similarly intense storms, back-to-back on January 10 and 13, along with widespread power outages. Having a wood stove meant we wouldn’t be freezing.
Our roofing held, front and back, unlike many of the others around town. Asphalt shingles popped up in our yards and along the streets like dandelions in springtime, but few of them were ours. Even new buildings suffered. Not that we could sit back smugly. Our front roofing was still precarious, awaiting the next big step of transformation come springtime. And here the insurance company had insisted three years earlier we had to replace it pronto?
We were tempted to leave the space open.
With the windows framed and now outlined by the foam, we had a much clearer idea of how the upstairs was shaping up. In looking at the space, we found ourselves wondering if maybe we should just leave it as one big room. We let that dream give way to more practical thoughts, including gaining a second bathroom.
We did, though, decide to have the new ceiling rise with the roofline rather than be flat. It’s not quite as step as a cathedral, but who’s quibbling? It means the new bedrooms will be more like a tent or small pavilion rather than bland boxes.
Today’s the release date for Hamlet: A Village of Gargoyles, and I’d love for you to check it out.
The 200-plus off-beat poems of my collection were composed well before I relocated to a real-life village and, by then, many of the pieces had appeared in literary journals around the globe. What I’ve seen since comes as confirmation.
And now they’re together in one volume, as originally intended.
The pages present candid, surreal, often humorous confessions by various community members who span the generations and occupations of an imaginary locale. They’re the kind you may chance upon in a comic strip, support group, or while walking the dog in your own neighborhood.
Opening the book can be like opening their door, for that matter.
You can find it in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain it.
Jnana's Red Barn 