Dover and Hampton were largely overlooked in Quaker histories

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the conventional telling of the early Quaker movement in New England, the focus soon centers on Rhode Island and Cape Cod. One was an independent colony; the other, in Plymouth, slightly less harsh than Massachusetts Bay to their north.

In contrast, the three northern Meetings – Salem, Hampton, and Dover – are largely overlooked or dismissed as agricultural and poor.

Well, a historian goes where the records are, and those three northern Meetings were largely underground before 1680, when religious toleration came to Massachusetts-governed districts.

Arthur J. Worrell’s Quakers in the Colonial Northeast is slim pickings when it comes to those three Meetings, and Carla Gardina Pestana’s Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts helps rectify that with her concentration on Salem, but her references to Hampton and Dover are few and often cryptically sketched as “New Hampshire and Maine.”

Well, Dover served both sides of the New Hampshire-Maine line, and for decades, it was the only Quaker presence in Maine.

As I keep calling out: Hello!

Hey, Travis!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The annual torchlight parade is largely children, some accompanied by adults. It’s brief, but lots of smiles.

This year included a young woman carrying a big sign, and it still has me curious.

The words elicited an immediate laugh, and an assumption that they’re good news. She certainly seems happy, and we want to be happy for her.

At that point, though, I feel a writing prompt kick in.

Who is Travis? What’s the status of their relationship? Is he even somewhere in the crowd? Is she one of the Navy wives who came to town for the Fourth of July celebration and then joined their spouses for the cruise back to home port? Could this even be an attempt at shaming or is it instead her way of sharing the good news with family and friends, too?

What am I overlooking?

What’s your take? And which storyline would you develop?

 

As a professional historian friend said after one of my presentations

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

New England history is all through Harvard. And then Yale and Williams College.

Except, of course, a few mavericks like me. (Even though, humbly confessed, I’m not a historian.)

Well, you do have another opportunity to see why he said that if you register promptly for my free Zoom presentation from Cape Cod at 12:30 Sunday afternoon ( https://bit.ly/QuakingDover ).

Here’s hoping to hear from you there!

Three flights of imagination

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

FLYING UNDER BLANKETS (sheets? or Navajo blankets?) with Photographer over mountains (starting out from Selah or Naches?) we wind up, after rocky and snowy stretches, Goat Rocks, say, over Vermont, other end of the country – a children’s camp, actually, high up a dirt road from a dream a few nights earlier …

Freeform with or wearing a harness, hands free, touch of Yakima, touch of New England.

 

I’M GOING TO BE BURIED TOMORROW so go out with my friends or family on a sunny spring day, actually, that’s where it starts, on the country highway, looking up the intense green grass toward a plateau or leveling, with tombstones white in the sun … we climb and there see three new holes dug in the earth. One would be mine the next day.

Am I being buried alive?

 

DRIVING ALONG FLAT FARMLAND, like that of northwest Ohio. Great blue sky. Humming along, with a ditch full of water to my right; may be a small river. A small town looms on the horizon, with an elevated green bridge in front of it. First, it’s an interstate highway, and then a railroad. My companion and I discuss the possibilities ahead.

Pass under it and there’s a forced right turn. Everything turns dark and interior. (Hmm. Shades of the water-cage highway weeks earlier.) I overhear a young woman telling of a dream in which she, too, had a prominent bridge. I approach her, ask if her bridge was perpendicular to the highway, as mine was. No, it was beside it. Still, we’ve bridged a conversation. She’s wearing a black cocktail dress. Smiles slyly, seductively. We begin kissing. It’s only a momentary thing, one of us says.

So here’s a dream with conversations about dreams! Again, a sense of places I’ve lived, back when.

All advocates of peace are invited

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t make these points this baldly in my book Quaking Dover, but as I’ve prepared for my upcoming presentation from West Falmouth Friends’ Peace and Social Order committee’s Zoom presentation, I’m seeing these elements at play.

I do hope you can join us online for this free presentation on Sunday, July 9, at 12:30 pm. Please not that preregistration is required at https://bit.ly/QuakingDover. 

You don’t have to be a Quaker to participate, either. (Insert smiley face emoji if you must.)

Just how do peaceable communities emerge and survive?

Making the best of a break in the fog and rain

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

We’re feeling sorry for vacationers to our end of Maine the past two weeks. Especially those with children in tow.

It’s been cold – our furnace is still on – and very foggy and damp, accompanied by showers and thunderstorms.

It’s not what you’d want to run into on your well-earned summer getaway.

At least we’re getting a break, however brief.

Today’s forecast is for mostly cloudy, followed by two partly cloudy days. And then another solid streak of rainy days resumes.

Glimpses of real sunlight and blue sky will lift spirits, no doubt. I might even stop reminding folks of six straight months or so of this for people living in Seattle. (You know, it could be worse. We might even have to start watching movies in German.)

One thing you can also anticipate is the sound of lawnmowers the moment the grass dries sufficiently. Otherwise, a failure to mow in time can lead to an impossible task, as I remember when I had to learn to scythe back in Dover … and my vow to myself never to do that again.

For us, it also means doing laundry. We have a washer here but not a dryer. So we’re anticipating hanging wet clothes and linens out on the line to dry. There is a backlog to address.

Another must-do is a big round of grilling. Maybe even dining al fresco, if the temperature cooperates.

Well, as we’ve been saying all along, this too will pass.

Hold on to that fish!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

An annual cod relay race – using raw salmon instead – is one of the more hilarious traditions at Eastport’s extended Fourth of July festivities.

Running down the street with a fish is only part of the excitement.

Relaying the gear – boots and the slicker, along with the fish – to the next runner is the heart of the contest. Here, two of the younger runners have it almost down to a science.

All-ages teams are paired off during the day until there’s a first-place winner.

This is the big day for pyrotechnic displays

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Unabashedly, I am a snob when it comes to putting big fireworks together in an aesthetic whole, rather than something that resembles an action movie big car smashup.

A smart design team can use the entire sky as a canvas of evolving colors, combined with the timing of a sharp comedian.

That said, here’s some perspective.

  1. A show like Boston’s on the Charles River Esplanade fires off 5,000 pounds of explosives in its half-hour glory. That performance requires a computerized launch system for five barges floating on the water.
  2. Macy’s, the nation’s biggest, goes for an average 1,600 shells a minute – more than three times as many as a typical town display uses for the entire night. That show has more than 40,000 shells fired from six barges in the Hudson River.
  3. China produces 85 percent of the world’s fireworks.
  4. Many of the styles are named for flowers such as peony, chrysanthemum, or dahlia. Others, after trees, as in willow and palm tree.
  5. Prices vary wildly, especially when you’re looking for some serious color intensity and blending rather than honky-tonk garish.
  6. Shells are sold by tube diameter, commonly six-, eight-, and ten-inches, with each additional inch typically adding another 100 feet of elevation to the shot. Are some of those bursts really a thousand feet overhead?
  7. An aerial shell contains six parts. Or more, depending on what bells and whistles are added on.
  8. Larger shells cost average around $336 apiece and may require an 840-foot display radius.
  9. Even a small-town show will run between $7,500 to $15,000 to produce, just for the fireworks. Add to that set-up and clean-up labor, sanitation, musicians, and public safety expenses. The average municipal show costs $25,000. In contrast, a wedding show is tabbed for $1,500 to $3,000. But don’t hold me to those figures. Other estimates I’ve seen simply soar.
  10. Injuries send about 10,000 Americans to the emergency room every year, two-thirds of them males, and many of the injuries are to children. That’s in addition to 7.9 fatalities. As another safety consideration, more fires are reported on July 4 than any other day of the year – some 19,000.