Our tides vary between 15 and 25 feet, depending on the moon cycle, and half of that change occurs in just two hours, halfway between high and low. It still amazes me.
In just six hours, day in and day out
Oh, Jody
after three months I recognized the true nature of dining hall menus in their two-week cycle of institutional perdition now I’ve revolted by way of vegetarian practice and straight from the garden gratitude for herbs and spices, sauces, flavored vinegar, pressed oils, the religious dimensions of feasting and fasting as well as prohibitions, there are reasons apart from snobbery no wines accompanied those dinners, after all, what do kids know and who would teach of goodness : as in what God saw as good, as in good to eat? and so it was, grace before vittles / sweet tasty dreams
So much for one game plan
As I’ve been revisiting my earlier planning for retirement, I started to scold myself for not looking more carefully at finances. Then I remembered something I had anticipated but never noted: adding an overtime shift or two each month during my final five years of employment.
For years, management always seemed to have those openings, and the pay was good – time-and-a-half, often with a nighttime or weekend differential.
In the last five years, the kids would be on their own, for one thing. We would really build up our savings – by 25 to 50 percent, as I’m now calculating.
What happened instead was that the newspaper found itself increasingly financially strapped, to the point our pay was actually being cut. Officially, I was the copy desk chief, except that in the end there were no longer copy editors. They were all wearing other hats as positions consolidated. As for those overtime hours? We agreed to allow the hiring of part-timers.
So much for the big plan.
At least the stock market hadn’t crashed when my wife and I closed out our IRA to purchase the house in Maine.
Even with a deadline
Why is writing so slow?
You know, take so long to do, good or bad?
Reading, on the other hand, runs much faster than talk.
That’s why you don’t get much news in a newscast.
Just sayin’ …
Don’t think of them as poor or marginalized
A fair number of the Piscataqua’s early settlers were from prosperous, even well-connected, families.
The question is just what prompted them to relocate to the primitive, even harsh, conditions along the Piscataqua River.
David Thomson, the son of a Scottish minister, has the King’s ear and a debt of gratitude.
The Hiltons are part of an extensive and prosperous fishmonger clan.
Thomas Roberts’ father, by some accounts, becomes a baron. Even if he didn’t, Thomas still becomes a member of the powerful fishmonger guild.
The Hilton brothers weren’t exactly out of the loop, either.
~*~
Powerful? Take Francis Champernowne, a 1640 signer of the Dover Combination, a remarkable document stating the residents’ desire to be freed from being subjected to company-town decisions being made in England. While I see scant evidence that Francis actually resided in today’s Dover, he did have extensive landholdings in New Hampshire, including the current towns of Greenland – named for his Green Land farm – and Madbury, then part of Dover and named after his ancestral home, Modbury, in Devon, England.
His father, Sir Arthur Champernowne, owned at least eight merchant ships or privateers and had fished New England since 1622. In 1635, Sir Arthur financed a settlement under his son, Francis – likely the southern part of Kittery, Maine, which became known as Champernowne’s Island, today’s Cutt’s or Gerrish islands – as well as another on Braveboat Harbor in York. Francis may have also lived at Strawbery Banke (today’s Portsmouth) until 1640.
Captain Francis was well-placed. His great-aunt Catherine was the mother of both Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Ralegh/Raleigh Gilbert, an important explorer and adventurer of the New England and Canadian coastline. Captain Francis was also a “beloved” nephew of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, proprietor of Maine and unofficial godfather of New England itself.
Francis was often at sea, to England and Barbados, especially. During the early part of the English civil war, his Royalist leanings led him to join King Charles I’s fleet under the Earl of Marlborough. Returning to Dover by 1646, he left for the Caribbean in 1649 but returned to Maine in the early 1650s, where he later became a commissioner and justice under Charles II. In April of 1678, he signed the articles of peace with the Abenaki at Casco. He was an ardent Anglican and died in Kittery.
It’s enough to make me think living conditions back in merry old England weren’t that great, either.
~*~
The Waldron family that soon comes to dominate the growth around the Lower Falls, or today’s downtown Dover, came from wealth in Warwickshire, England. William drowns, but brother Richard turns Dover into something of a personal fiefdom while rising to become Speaker of the Assembly once New Hampshire is under Massachusetts rule. He builds the first saw mill and grist mill at the falls, has extensive shipping connections, dominates the fur trade with the native Pennacooks. He didn’t exactly start from scratch.
You’ll be hearing a lot more about him. Man, will you.
Remembering those lost in the waters
Fishing is dangerous, hard work, done in all seasons and kinds of weather. It’s also an inescapable source of livelihood for many families along the Maine coast.
I might as well get out of bed
Once again, another disturbing dream pushed me out of a restful sleep. It kept returning, with new twists.
It’s been nearly a decade since I last designed and paginated a newspaper page or faced its deadline pressure or even dealt with kinks in the paper’s latest computer system, but the game keeps popping up in my slumber – a game I’m also always on the verge of losing.
Why that and not, say, invading armies or insects or storms when it comes to anything verging on nightmares?
What are your repeated dreams?
Two for Cassia
They’re only a block apart on Middle Street but quite different takes on the witch’s hat tower that her family had in my novel What’s Left.
Ways this move was easier than others in my life
I’m not counting the few times I relocated across town. I mean the big moves, from one state to another, even from one part of the country to another.
You already know my fondness for Dover – and I have been intensely loyal to some of the locales I’ve made home but not others – yet this transfer of fidelity has been rather startling in its speed.
Dover? That was the address I had longest anywhere, edging out my native Dayton. Yet the 300-mile leap from Dover to Eastport was a breeze in comparison to the others I’d done. It’s rather perplexed both my wife and me.
Here are a few factors.
- We needed to downsize, and our house and garden and stuffed barn were more than we could keep up with. Quite simply, they were weighing on us, not just emotionally but especially when we looked at our bank balance.
- I had been to Eastport. Apart from Dover, where I had been worshiping as a Quaker, the previous moves had dropped me in as a total stranger. I hadn’t even visited Indiana University until showing up as a student in the middle of my sophomore year. Well, there was my return as a research associate, this time with a wife and a duplex rental on the other side of town. I hadn’t even been to Binghamton, New York, for a job interview.
- Eastport had a few things I was anticipating. Quoddy Head State Park had rekindled a sense of wilderness I’d left behind in the Pacific Northwest 40 years earlier. And the local choir had a repertoire much like our Revelsingers in Boston. Plus, I had been to the small Quaker Meeting and worked in projects with one of its outstanding members.
- I wasn’t alone. Eastport started out as my elder daughter’s wild dream, soon supported by my wife. Where else could we afford to live so close to the ocean? Back to downsizing, but as a whole-family venture. No more Lone Ranger sans Tonto, even if I was coming up as the vanguard. Their visits were festive occasions.
- We weren’t doing it all in one fell swoop but rather in stages. For the first four months, I was commuting back to New Hampshire almost weekly as we prepared our old house to market – meaning largely decluttering and cleaning. On this end, we still need to make renovations before filling this place with goods now in storage. Frankly, I’m enjoying doing more with less.
- Emotionally, Covid had already distanced me from many connections. I wasn’t swimming daily, for one thing, so that part of my routine wasn’t severed. I hadn’t even seen my pool buddies or the lifeguards for the better part of a year. We Quakers were worshiping and conducting business by Zoom, and I could keep that connection going a while longer. I was even getting together monthly online with Dover’s religious leaders and a Seacoast writers’ schmooze.
- Being in the middle of a big writing project gave me a crucial focus and meant the solitude on this end was welcome. Normally, access to libraries would be essential to what I was investigating, but I found rare resources in my computer searches and downloads. Yes, times have changed.
- There was no accompanying sense of failure or betrayal. My job hadn’t been terminated or taken an unacceptable turn – gee, that could lead to another Tendrils! (You know, the modern American workplace – see my novel Hometown News for examples.) I didn’t even have a new job to confront – what a relief! My lover hadn’t just dumped me or failed to reconnect when I arrived, and I wouldn’t be searching for love, either. Nor had I left paradise for an industrial or suburban wasteland.
- I’ve enjoyed exploring with an eye for what I’d introduce to the others on their visits. And meeting some fascinating new folks, likewise. I still feel I’m living in a real-life Northern Exposure.
- Well, there were moments of feeling exiled, like “What have I done wrong,” but they were soon countered by reclaiming some of my independence. I’d gotten spoiled, as far as food goes, and not really cooked anything for two decades, other than lighting the grill or popping something in the microwave. (Well, there was a fried rice that impressed one of our Chinese guests.) But now our morning phone calls have included cooking advice and insights. That sort of thing. I’ve been pleased with my dinners, even the ones I wouldn’t serve anyone else, should I have to. As for exile? Nah, I’ve never felt more comfortable anywhere.
They called it Assault and Battery, or just Sodom
Some people and places just get bad raps for no reason. That used to be the case for the neighborhood just south of Battery Street. Or Assault and Battery, as the ditty went.
Or, in the more salacious version, Sodom and Gomorrah.
Residents of the allegedly more reputable North End of town, meanwhile, got dubbed Dog Islanders, after the tiny island at its tip, one that once had a lighthouse nobody in town could see.
Definitively, the two parts of the village were separated by Shackford Cove (aka Huston’s) , which ran further inland than it does today, as well as a seemingly nameless stream at the bottom of some steep banks. And the cove did have four shipyards at one time as well as the world’s largest sardine cannery a bit later.
Today, though, it has some fine homes mixed in, a few with some of the most spectacular views in town.
Jnana's Red Barn 