There’s much more than one big story to touch on
There’s more to the origin of Dover Friends Meeting than the three women who were whipped out of town in December 1662 in what would have been a death sentence, had it been carried out to the letter.
Still, it’s a big story, one that occupies a central place in my new book, Quaking Dover. The horrific incident is also the most frequently visited page at the public library’s online history site, and it’s the subject of one of Greenleaf Whittier’s most famous poems.
I’ll be using that to introduce other examples of courage and faith from the town’s Quaker experience when the Dover Public Library features me in a book reading in front of a live audience this coming Wednesday. I hope you can join me, perhaps even posing a question or insight.
The appearance will also be streamed live, but preregistration is required.
That’s 6:30 pm this Wednesday (March 22).
If it’s anything like the Dover400 new authors presentation earlier in the month, I can assure you it will be a blast.
What revelations will turn up in Dover’s early public records?
In preparation for Dover’s 400th anniversary, dedicated volunteers have been poring over early records. In many cases, these served both the town and its tax-supported church, back to the 1600s. Many of these have been digitized and posted on the City of Dover website, but they can be very hard to read.
Even so, they’re being transcribed for release as part of this year’s big celebrations.
Moreover, in the light of scholarly advances, these hold the potential of drastically revising an understanding of our legacy.
I think it will be exciting.
Farewell to a Greek treat
Best wishes to the owners of Café Nostimo in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who have just announced that they’re closing their Greek restaurant at the end of today after 16 years in business. Time to retire. We can understand that, especially the part about working nights and weekends.
Theirs had become a must-stop on my return trips to the Seacoast region, and I was looking forward to indulging myself next Wednesday, before my Quaking Dover presentation at the Dover Public Library.
Wish I’d known about the place pre-Covid, when I lived in nearby Dover. I had heard that some nights even had Greek dancing. The restaurant did have a large tent pavilion beside it for summer dining and more.
Lamb shank was top-of-the-line, but their gyro wrap was heavenly. I could argue about some details elsewhere, especially in comparison to a favorite version in Watertown, Massachusetts, but their desserts lineup was unbeatable.
I’m viewing this like a great dinner and the time you look at the empty plate while you’re full of happy memories.
As the translations on their wall proclaim, Yamos! And: Epharisto!
Attention span of sorts or shorts
Here we were, designing the newspaper of tomorrow. Meaning the next day’s editions.
As for the newspaper of the future?
Never thought it would be built around the dimensions of a computer screen or even a smart phone or have all of those links to follow.
The changing economics and business model are another subject altogether.
How are you getting your news?
So you think it’s only money?
I’M DRAGGED TO AN INVESTMENT seminar in a rambling, modern one-story home. Maybe we’d received an invitation addressed to someone else. At any rate, went. Midway through the presentation, I realized the numbers didn’t add up and left but tripped on my way out. [Now in a different room, with sun: trying to gather up my goods spilled from my purple bag.] The pastor’s wife shows up, indicates she’s not happy with his participation in this scheme. The pastor, strangely resembling the black-belt master, appears and tries to argue me out of my reluctance to invest – turns on me, “How did you find out about this?” My last remaining items are under the head of a sleeping baby – a sick baby. I go to get a pillow so I can retrieve my remaining items. When I return, my bag has been stolen.
Don’t trust a pastor with investment schemes.
WE’RE OFF SOMEWHERE THAT vaguely resembles the historic manor overlooking the river one town over – there’s some development but the landscape’s mostly open with green fields. While strolling alone, I notice a dark Victorian house with Japanese touches and tell myself to bring my daughter back to see it herself. Then, as I approach a crossroads, I see an even more elaborate version, this one with a Queen Ann with a Buddha face occupying half of the second story, its mouth opening out on to a side porch. It’s a truly stunning residence. And then my daughter drives the blue Prius down the crossroad. I wave to her to look the other way, at the house, but she waves in return only at me and heads off to another destination. We’ll rendezvous later.
Another dream intervenes (now forgotten) but the next thing I remember is entering the cellar, which contains an upright stone monument of some note. John and Sarah Dawson are already there. She tells me his family knew the owners of the house and he once wrote a poem in honor of the stone, which he now recites. Not bad for a physicist, I think.
Somehow, we become locked in the cellar, along with another couple. There’s a door to the outside, but when we follow, it leads to hurricane fencing and concertina wire. We’re trapped?
Not quite. John knows some secret to get through, and it leads us to an outdoor dining room, one with white walls and black iron gates – the iron topped by a wiggle of white paint to indicate they were Catholic.
John explains the owners were Germans who lived most of their lives in Japan before retiring to this site, presumably with their children and grandchildren.
SOMEBODY’S EXPRESSING APPROVAL of my shoes, maybe even adding them to a Ten Best list. “But they’re cheap,” I counter, “I bought them at the Kittery outlets years ago.”
“Doesn’t matter,” comes the reply. “Look at that hand stitching and the fact they’re comfy.”
Making a public presentation is a two-way affair
Feedback for an author is a vital part of the equation. Reader responses and honest reviews are more than essential feedback, they’re affirmations that others care about the subject and labor. You’re no longer alone. And often, you learn things you might not come upon by mere research.
As I found one more time, to our mutual amusement, when presenting some Maine aspects of my Quaking Dover book as a local writer in town, one early Maine family that’s spelled Treworgy is pronounced TRU-wurjee.
More or less.
Well, it was originally Cornish, by way of Devonshire, and came up to this end of the state from being among the first settlers down at the other end, right across from Dover Point.
Beyond that, writing and reading are ultimately one-on-one, despite the anonymity of the reader, who may be deeply touched personally, all the same.
That’s why it’s so meaningful when you speak up.
Call it Victorian, if you must
By the time of the Civil War, Bangor as in Maine was the world’s leading lumber port. Some of that wealth is reflected in the proud Second Empire, Greek Revival, and Federal style homes that punctuate the Broadway Historic District and elsewhere through the city.
My elder daughter would find these to be models for her annual gingerbread houses.
Meanwhile, do any of them capture your imagination?
And you wonder where Stephen King got his inspiration?
Anyone else fond of the flavor of malt?
Perhaps in ale, lager, or a frappe?
As we New Englanders call the latter for a malted milk, not a shake.
Now I’m finding malt’s even an elusive ingredient in Worcestershire sauce. Along with the anchovy, which can spur a second “fond of the flavor” response.
Much more than a spring tonic
It was fairly common in the wild when I was growing up in the Midwest, and its red roots and polymorphic leaves of one, two, and three lobes all on one tree made it distinctive. But the tree is rather rare where I’m now living.
It does, however, play into my Quaking Dover story, as I’ll explain.
Here are ten things of note about sassafras.
- Found in the eastern North America and East Asia, the tree can grow to somewhere between 60 to 100 feet in height (the maximum keeps growing in the versions I’m encountering), though I associate it mostly with shrubs in the forest undergrowth. For others, it was seen as an aggressive plant quickly cluttering old fields.
- Traditionally, it was famed as spring tonic in the form of tea boiled from its dark red, aromatic roots, although the leaves and bark can also be used. More recent research cautions not taking it for more than a week, and it was pulled from commercial markets after experiments in 1960 found that safrole, a compound prominent in its volatile oils, caused liver cancer in rats and mice.
- Commercial oils used today in foods, cosmetics, and soaps are safrole-free and safe for consumption.
- Root beer, a popular soft drink, was traditionally made from sassafras roots, often cooked with molasses. Charles Elmer Hires, the first to successfully market the brew, was a teetotaler who wanted to call his extract “root tea” but found it sold better among Pennsylvania miners as “root beer.” And, for the record, it was long used to brew a backwoods beer.
- French Acadians relocating to Louisiana discovered its spice qualities from the Native Choctaws. Its dried lemony-scent leaves are ground to create filé powder, a green aromatic dust that thickens Cajun gumbos or is later sprinkled atop the dish.
- Its blue berries on red stems, forming early in the fall foliage season, provide a high-energy food for migratory birds on their long southward flight. The birds are attracted to the color.
- The tree’s leaves turn a spectacular variety of purple, orange, yellow, and red. That alone earns it consideration in landscape design.
- The straight-grained, durable wood was commonly used to make horse-drawn sleighs, though the runners were usually hickory, a harder substance. Sassafras has also been popular in making buckets, cabinets, cradles and other furnature, woodwork, and even utensils such as spoons.
- Native Americans valued sassafras in a range of medicinal uses, including a poultice for open wounds. Fascinated by the applications, Europeans soon attributed the exotic plant with supernatural qualities, including the retardation of age, making sassafras a rival to tobacco in importance as an export from America.
- How medicinal? It was the reason 23-year-old Captain Martin Pring, in 1603, became the first European to lead an exploration of the Piscataqua River. Sassafras was valued as a cure for the French pox, which you may recognize as the name the English and others called what we refer to as syphilis. (If only it had actually worked.) Failing to find many of the trees in today’s Dover and vicinity, he sailed on to encamp at Truro on Cape Cod, where he indeed harvested sassafras but was interrupted when his rude behavior greatly upset the Natives, making for one of the first sour episodes in English relations with the New World locals.
Jnana's Red Barn 