You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
You can catch up with my insights on “Quaker Meeting as a nest for social justness” via YouTube, thanks to West Falmouth Friends on Cape Cod.
The event, the latest of the special presentations based on my book, Quaking Dover and the New Hampshire city’s 400th anniversary, was recorded and is now available.
Many thanks to all involved.
To see what transpired during the hour, click here.
This is how the rising moon looked from across our street last night. The reflection is in the bay between us and Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada. Some of those lights on the island are moving traffic.
Ten random notes in no particular order:
Something I’m deeply appreciating in my new community is how much depends on people who step up in public service. One person can truly make a difference. What’s amazing us is that some individuals seem to be everywhere we turn.
Some are born and bred here. Others are high-spirited “people from away” who transform the town in unique ways while respecting is core character.
One of the newer arrivals is Joan Lowden, better known as the Bass Lady jazz host on our community radio station. She loves to give shout-outs to others, so here’s one for her.
The former Silicon Valley ventures whiz is much more than a voice. She’s an organizer, fundraiser, website consultant, active volunteer, and cheerful doer who makes things happen, often behind the scenes.
This weekend’s ArtWalk offers some fine examples.
Here Joan is at our monthly open mic event, both singing and playing bass. She’s also a key player in MICE, the Moose Island contradance band, and a welcome member of varied combos. She even starred at our Mardi Gras night at the senior center while definitely lowering the median age.
In New Hampshire’s White Mountains Presidential Range as seen from the Vermont state line.
“God!” he cries
seemingly to no one
I haven’t written a real poem
in at last a decade
prose, especially fiction, has taken the fore
plus relocating to a remote Maine island
do I even consider the photography
How else do you think
other than by talking to yourself even silently
or through the fingers or feet
I’ve long preferred instrumental music, abstract
or airs in languages I don’t understand
and usually forget the lyrics and lines in scores
I’ve sung in concert
So I was swimming a half-mile a day
before the pandemic but haven’t been back
in deep water, fresh or surf, indoor or out till today,
my first venture in a little-known river pooling
too rocky for laps but perfect for extending myself
in the familiar chill under a cloud-strewn afternoon sky
yes, it’s glorious and refreshing
in a way I discovered my first year after college
in hippie abandon or the New England coast
and Dover’s Olympic pool later
it’s the sunlight and breeze
stretching above, around
a call to attend to my rooting as well
in meditation, prayer, Scripture, favored poets
all as seemingly impractical
Our waterfront contains two sets of steel pilings each capped by a concrete structure that sits apart from the pier and above the water line.
In Eastport’s case, these are mooring dolphins, where lines from a ship exceeding the Breakwater’s 400-foot dock length can be attached to help secure the vessel in port.
Here’s one in action.
The line’s slack now but won’t be when the tide rises more.
It would be an ambitious project, and I’m not sure quite how one would structure it, spanning six states and many subjects as it would from early colonial times to today.
Dover Friend Silas Weeks’ book of meetinghouses and burial grounds remains my go-to volume, but it’s mostly about buildings rather than people.
I’m still surprised to hear Rhode Island Yearly Meeting as the body’s early name, rather than New England Yearly Meeting. When did it change officially?
Well, I have seen some genealogies that get impossible to follow after, say, the third generation.
I even feel something like that in Dover, once the textile mills take over.
Still, the conventional histories of Quakers in America focus on Philadelphia, overlooking or slighting the unique challenges and characters of New England, North Carolina, Ohio, and more.
For now, my Quaking Dover is a microcosm of the bigger picture. I’m hoping it will prompt more.
