Greening with renewed life
The cruise ships are coming!
As our City in the Bay has been redefining itself, in part thanks to its lively arts scene and surrounding natural wonder, tourism has been ticking up, even in the face of Covid-19.
Part of Eastport’s appeal is the deepest natural harbor in the continental U.S., a port that at one time, back when there was a lot of smuggling, was the second-busiest in the nation – something a shift in federal tax laws and heightened enforcement soon curbed.
Still, we have a long history of steamship travel, right up to the auto age.
And now, this year, hooray, we’re even anticipating the return of passenger vessels, albeit of the increasingly popular “small” ship variety rather than the floating cities that can overrun a seaport.
First, the 210-passenger, 325-foot Pearl Mist is scheduled for five visits, most of them 3½ hours ashore, as part of a seven-night round-trip out of Portland. Other stops on its Fundy Bay circuit include Rockland and Bar Harbor in Maine, and St. Andrews, St. John, and Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick. Fares run from about $4,000 and up.
Second, in September we host the innovative 530-passenger, 459-foot Roald Amundsen expedition ship on a 10-hour stopover. Originally, this was to be part of an adventurous 44-day navigation across the Arctic Ocean in a Northwest Passage venture from Vancouver, British Columbia, an ultimate bucket-list voyage. But the fares, starting around $57,000, may have been too pricy for the Covid-antsy market, causing it to be broken up into segments – the first ending at Nome, Alaska, and the second continuing from there on to Greenland and ending at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Eastport is now tucked in as the cherry in a shorter, more affordable, New England dessert.
More exciting is the news that the Amundsen is now scheduled to return next year as part of an even more audacious 94-day cruise – a Pole-to-Pole adventure that will originate in Vancouver, British Columbia, and traverse the Northwest passage before coming to Eastport and then continue on to equatorial warmth, the Panama Canal, the Pacific coast of South America, and finally shore visits on Antarctica. Think of going from icy summer to the edge of autumn in New England to the tropics and on to spring while exploring three continents. The lowest fares figure out around $600 a day.
And little Eastport will be part of that.
In Maine, the bulk of the cruise action hits Bar Harbor, at the edge of popular Acadia National Park, where frequently two ships a day debark during the summer season, and in Portland, which gets especially busy during the fall foliage season.
We’re really not set up for the mega-cruise vessels that have dominated the industry. Let’s see how our emerging niche shapes up.
Nesting osprey
Pantry items I consider staples
No, not the usual listing of milk, bread, eggs, butter, potatoes – those are givens. Rather, the things special to me you’re not likely to pick up if you’re doing my grocery run.
- Olives. Big green stuffed ones, though I love ripe ones as well, elsewhere.
- Gin. Where did you think those green olives were going?
- Bagels. Or breakfast pastry.
- Craisins. They go well in yogurt or on a salad.
- Sunflower seeds. On that salad, too.
- Cookies and pretzels. Something to snack on.
- Garlic. Rather than onion.
- Lemons. And limes, for someone special.
- Orange juice, or grapefruit. Perk me up in the morning.
- Not as frequently but all the same: miso, sesame oil, rice vinegar, almonds.
What’s on your hidden list of essentials?
Bundles of anchors
There they were, down by the lobster pier. I’m assuming they’re used in the new system of stringing traps in a row along the bottom, rather than lines going straight down from a buoy, to reduce the possibility of entangling whales.
The Tides Institute as a vehicle of preservation and change
The catalyst of re-envisioning Eastport is the Tides Institute and Museum of Art, founded in 2002 by director Hugh French. Its mission has been in acquiring and presenting wide-ranging collections of artworks and historical documents reflecting the coastal region, as well as educational and preservation efforts that include eight significant buildings in the town – four of them in the downtown district – and guest artists residencies each summer.
The leadership is rounded out by French’s wife, Kristin McKinlay, who is director of exhibitions and the StudioWorks residency program, and by Jennifer Dolanski, Artsipelago/program specialist, plus eight trustees, only one of them living in Eastport. The others reside in places like Boston and New York City.
There are also concerts in its 1818 church that housed the Free Will Baptists, plus other events at its 1828/1829 Seaman’s Church, which housed the Congregationalists.
Oh, yes, every New Year’s Eve there’s the maple-leaf drop at 11 pm Eastern – midnight for our Canadian neighbors – followed by the giant sardine an hour later. Both the maple leaf and sardine were commissioned creations.
I suppose TIMA was inspired in part by the Island Institute, founded in 1983 to help Maine islands from Portland to Acadia tackle pressing environmental and socio-economic issues. The Rockland-based organization’s impressive publications include the annual magazine, Island Journal, as well as data analyses to guide public policy. Its focus is on sustainable livelihoods and communities in changing times that include rising sea levels, bringing together marginalized communities, and economic survival.
In contrast, for now, TIMA’s focus seems to be more on art and architecture, principally – especially the small downtown on the National Register of Historic Places.
In essence, it’s building a future rooted in the past but not stuck there. It’s really the way every art moves, too, no matter how revolutionary some of the leaps may seem.
I do have to wonder whether TIMA has taken on too much. The restorations appear to have stalled, perhaps before Covid set in, and both of the churches need significant repair, inside and out. The institute has, all the same, helped distinguish Eastport as a fine arts center in a visually stimulating setting in Maine, an identity that may attract new residents in a time of national population change.
Frankly, it was one of the things that lured me here, as well as my wife and elder daughter.
Kinisi 102
crack in the dawn
doorways in seeds
perchance a season of great harvest
‘Why look among the dead for someone who is alive?’
Rather than portraying the women disciples at the empty tomb, Rembrandt focuses on one of the angels and the world-changing impact of their message.
Luke 24, by the way, describes them not as angels, with wings, but rather as two men in shining garments or brilliant clothes or even gleaming like lightning, depending on the translation.
The words must have struck like a thunderbolt.
Reviewing a whole year of posts in one evening
It didn’t start out to be an overview, but I do forget a lot, including what I’ve written or photographed or even done over time. These posts, though, are records of bits of that life, coming together in the manner of a quilt when you step back enough to see the emerging pattern.
Somehow, in the process of scheduling a few new entries a few nights ago, I wound up going backward in time through the Red Barn. Let’s just say I stayed up much later than I had planned before sleep started to catch up with me. And that was just going through the previous year, not the entire decade I’ve been at this.
But what a year! Not to brag, but I was surprised by the high quality of the dispatches and their range, and I did enjoy some deep satisfaction. (That’s not always a given for a writer, by the way – sometimes it’s more “Ugh!”)
Has me wanting to go back deeper in the archives, maybe a month at a time, to see what other treasures might be buried there.
And from there? Bet many of the rest of you have rich lodes awaiting rediscovery, too.
Blog on!
Sweet Bev
should I have let all the correspondence lest it expire right there they’d mostly fall away in any case, too quickly ignoring the besotted side of Santa Claus beneath the chipper vocalizations, no dispatch of cards or presents the holidays came upon me to quickly, perhaps in part just constantly on the road; then, too, this felt so contrived and coerced compared to Christ’s power and expansive love I could see Christmas as an especially wicked flu to carry in such travels, wake up, voiceless, coughing and sore when we need rest more than carols and ditties, do tell
Jnana's Red Barn 