Anchoring one end of Eastport’s main street downtown is the Post Office and former Customs House.
Though the Customs role has moved closer to the Breakwater but not so the mail, especially this time of year..
Post Office and old Customs House
Yeah, cabin fever has kicked in
It had to happen, especially after the euphoria of last summer. The return of Covid only intensified it, especially when family and friends came down with it. A letdown was inevitable. The summer people are gone, and Eastport nearly resembles a ghost town.
So here we are.
Cabin fever. The winter blues. The blahs. Even if I weren’t up here living alone, building new friends I can’t quite drop in on yet. Zoom meetings go only so far. Ditto the radio. At least choir practice is resuming, even if we’ll still be doing it online.
Further dampening my spirit was finding myself stuck on breaking through on the next steps for the book. I don’t want to take up new projects till I see this one over the next few hurdles. So I keep nipping away at the edges.
Some nasty weather had me not wanting to leave the house at all, sometimes several days in a row. If only the place weren’t so cold, indoors and out. (And the fuel oil bill comes as a shocker, as does the electrical. Just for me, mostly.)
By now, I’m getting tired of my own cooking. There aren’t a lot of options up here that are better, either. One night I headed down to the brewpub for a cup of zesty soup or an imaginative panini by our resident culinary angels, aka Bocephus, only to find they’ve departed to his relations in Spain for a month. Well, they’ve earned that part and just might return with a supply of smoked paprikia for my wife. Fingers crossed. Otherwise? A boxed Newman’s Own pizza from the IGA managed to suffice.
Obviously, I’m not the only one under this cloud.
The high school actually had a Cabin Fever Week before their winter break, and since I’d be up there anyway for that hour of indoor walking ‘round the gym, I thought I’d follow along.
- Monday, for instance, had everyone wearing red, pink, hearts, something lovely. Xoxo. Well, it was Valentine’s Day. I could do that.
- Tuesday was “anything but a backpack” day for carrying books and gear. More of a challenge, considering the gray messenger bag that goes everywhere with me. My eyeglasses, emergency meds, and cell phone got stuffed in parka pockets. As for the kids? It was backpacks.
- Wednesday? “Wear your best flannel and/or camo. Let’s get real Downeast here, folks.” Now for me, that’s a challenge. My only flannel, apart from the sheets on the bed, was a shirt that’s rather black-and-white rather than the traditional plaid color choices. Forget the splotchy hide-from-the-enemy alternative.
- Dress for Success came on Thursday, “Come to school Interview Ready.” Gee, I haven’t worn a tie in how many years now? I do, however, still have some loud ones.
- The week ended with a school spirit activity. My version was having beloved company on the way up for the three-day Presidents’ Day weekend.
The arts center’s Sunday afternoon free series has been a lifeline – if only we could all take off nearby for more.
By the way, I was wrong about the last of those near-zero overnight lows. We’ve had a few of them return, but on the heels of some highs in the 40s and 50s. The trick is to not believe spring is just around the corner, even if you see a robin hopping around on repeated days.
What’s getting you through the depth of winter?
Jessica’s eagle
National parks I’ve truly enjoyed
I have to confess to how many of America’s national parks remain on my to-visit list. But I still have some favorites among the ones I’ve explored. They don’t have to be massive to still be impressive.
- Rainier, Washington: Most of all. It’s top of the list for reasons I’ve described elsewhere on this blog. Living a few hours away, I had four years of exposure to this glacier-clad beauty and its forests below.
- North Cascades, Washington: Geologically some of the most incredible mountains in the continental U.S., along with rewarding hiking and camping. Some of our best beat-era poets were forest fire lookouts on its remote summits in the ’50s and ’60s.
- Smokey Mountains, Tennessee-North Carolina: I was nine or ten or so when we ventured down from Ohio. We weren’t yet doing family-camping, but there were some wild experiences with cheap motels. But then, when we got to the park, how could I not be blown away? So this is what mountains were!
- Lowell, Massachusetts: I’ve blogged about our daytrip to this pioneering industrial community and its water-powered textile mills. Try to time it so you can also take a ride down the canals through the mills and out to the Merrimack River.
- Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio: This meandering swath of greenery along the Cuyahoga River in the former Connecticut Western Reserve corner of the Buckeye State is a touch of sanity within a populous region. It even includes some decent waterfalls. The Cleveland Orchestra’s summer home is nearby.
- Acadia, Maine: The rugged Downeast coastline starts here, more or less, and there’s nowhere else so much of it is available to the public.
- Olympic, Washington: It’s the heart of a unique realm worthy of a Tendril of its own, as well as a longpoem you can get at my Thistle Finch blog.
- Mammoth Cave, Kentucky: The world’s longest known cave system, only part of it is open to public tours, but what is shown includes spectacular geologic formations and chambers.
- Crater Lake, Oregon: It’s impressive but usually seen as an auto circuit around the volcanic crater of what was once mighty Mount Mazama. The lake sits at 6,178 feet above sea level.
- Everglades, Florida: To appreciate this ecological system, you need to take a guided boat tour into its vegetation and zoological wonders. This is the real Florida, almost surreal. Well, compared to much of the commercial development throughout the state, maybe a better adjective is needed.
~*~
There are many more, awaiting personal discovery. So what are your favorites?
As an example of the kind of excellent journalism we’re missing these days, let me offer this modest example
My wife forwarded me a link to a Washington Post article about the ways international supply-chain problems impacted a small, family-owned, dairy north of our place in easternmost Maine and its signature product, a chocolate milk with a passionate following.
For me, it’s a great piece of journalism, or as I told her, my ideal of reporting.
In fact, it fit into the aspirations I present in my novel Hometown News.
Personally, I favor longer pieces that take a long-range view, as this one does, especially when they encapsulate a much bigger, more difficult, issue in ways that hit home.
In contrast, the trend has long been for shorter, faster, less complex dispatches that move on to the next sensational blast. You know, the 24-hour news cycle. Or less. Most of it is forgettable, puff in the air, hit-me-with-what’s-next superficiality.
Instead, what we have here is a consequence of assigning a reporter full-time to the Northeast, as the Washington Post does, in one of those expenses that might seem superfluous to the bean counters who fill too many executive positions in too many industries. In fact, we can blame them for much of the supply-side issues that plague us. Prestige, after all, is rarely seen as a quantifiable asset.
Moreover, I doubt the Post would have found this story without that marginal investment. (The nearest daily newspaper, fine as it is, finds itself way too overwhelmed by everyday issues to dig into something requiring an investment of time like this. In fact, one of the things I that drew me to working at the New Hampshire Sunday News was the opportunity to assist similar projects, where we might have a week to dig into the dimensions and then display the findings properly.)
I also love the fact that the Post hired an excellent photographer to pursue the story, too, and paid for his time to look beneath the obvious surfaces. Again, it takes time to get a feel for what’s beneath the surface and come up with something fresh and expressive. His shots tell a full, parallel, story of people dedicated to their seemingly commonplace employment. What emerges is almost like a film score underpinning a movie.
Better yet, in this case, the difficulty encountered was about chocolate – who couldn’t love that! As well as the schoolchildren who loved the dairy’s chocolate milk as part of their lunches. You can’t build a better connection than you do with kids, except maybe through the words of their parents, as this report does.
My kudus to reporter Joanna Slater and photographer Tristan Spinski – and their unnamed editors for publishing this.
If only we could see much more along this line of journalism!
Parts of Maine often resemble the Far West
Maine is larger than the rest of New England combined, and except for much of Vermont, it was settled much later than the rest of the six-state region. That is, the parts of the state that were ever settled at all. Half of the Pine Tree State has no year-round population at all, for good reason.
The result is that there are paved roads where you can drive for miles and see nary a utility line or a mailbox, much less a house. Often, the only human activity you detect is timbering or mining. Hunting and fishing are a way of life. It wasn’t that far out of Bangor I used to see the bear-hunt guide sign.
Those roads remind me of driving from town and out toward a mountain pass on my way to trails in the high country out West.
Downeast Maine’s open blueberry barrens on the ridges, meanwhile, give me a sensation of the Big Sky Country of Montana or the Horse Heaven Hills of Washington state, except that the blue overhead isn’t the same deep intensity.
I believe that the presence of Indigenous peoples is another part of the mix. Eastport is adjacent to the Passamaquoddy’s Pleasant Point Reservation, as we’re reminded every time we drive to or from our island. They’re one of the four tribes comprising the Wabanaki Alliance in the state.
Yes, there is a kind of frontier feel around here. I’d suggest calling the area the Far East, but that name’s already been taken.
Fact is, many of the old ships that sailed to the Far East were built along these shores rather than those of the Far West.
Kinisi 94
the wet horizon pours out
draped in fish
down to the seed
rather than transcendence
As for my emotional home, I’m lost
without geohistory and mythopoetics
where I wanted to collapse into your dreams
once you came
When you wish upon a star
Back when I lived in the ashram (see my novel, Yoga Bootcamp, for a taste of the experience), I was surrounded by fellow monastics attuned to astrology. They never quite converted me, even while they gave me a respect for looking at individuals and events from any number of archaic and unscientific perspectives. Sometimes their observations were uncanny. Besides, how else do we get down to allowing for gut instincts or intuition, which at times proves truer than rational thought?
Not to rule out fact-checking and logic thought, but surfaces can be misleading and data, incomplete or in error. I can assert that from some very personal experience.
~*~
In the bigger picture, there were times in my life when nothing seemed to be happening and, then, whammy, everything fell together. Searching for a new job, for example, or sending out poetry submissions and getting only rejection slips for weeks or months before any acceptances, which came in a cluster from five journals on the same day. That sort of thing, on the road in sales, too.
As for the love life?
Look to the stars, right?
Among my New Year’s practices I began sketching out the upcoming astrological outlook as part my annual goal setting. Typically, the forecasts offered words of encouragement or even cheerleading. We all need that.
Sometimes they were reminders to look higher or jolts against continuing mindlessly in a rut.
They also countered those seemingly nothing days when I felt I was merely going through the motions, reminders that much was out of my hands, that all I could do was keeping sending out submissions or resumes, for instance, and be in place and visible when the current shifted.
Perhaps most important was the inner dialogue these prompted.
~*~
As examples? Consider one day, releasing “pent-up tension in the weeks to follow. You’re ready to plunge ahead with a project that has been on the back burner for months, or to finally take a big step toward freedom. However, you may encounter resistance from a worried partner. Serious negotiations may be the only way you can settle your differences.”
Or another, that “suggests that a close colleague or friend can assist you with this process.”
Uh-huh. I’ll have to dig into my journals to see what, if anything, happened on those dates.
Sometimes they were encouragements to polish up my appearance and image and self-confidence. At other times, warnings of a “wave of change, with unpredictable Uranus and transformational Pluto upsetting the order that you seek.”
Sometimes, the words seemed appropriate:
“Although you may be progressive in your thinking, Aquarius is a fixed sign, and you don’t always handle change easily. Unfortunately, the more you seek security by grasping at the status quo, the more sudden and shocking the changes will be. Above all, remember that during these hectic times, flexibility is your friend.”
That, or maybe a good therapist.
~*~
I’m not so sure how accurate my journal entries would be, by the way, especially when they track relationships. Did that old flame reenter my life during a retrograde? Did my flirty side offer opportunities for my love light to shine for a whole year?
What did I really learn? Don’t hold your breath.
~*~
More intriguing, though, is the two-year stay of karmic Saturn in a position to bring me “increased professional responsibilities and demands I work harder than ever before. … You get what you deserve – and if you’ve defined your goals and worked hard to achieve them, this can be the big payoff.” Well, it was accompanied by three big trines to balance “your dreams of material success with common sense and persistence to bring your ideas into reality. … This can be the culmination of many years of striving toward professional goals, which are now within reach. If you fall short, however, you’ll need to make critical decisions about whether to continue along the same path.”
This turned out to span the time I took the buyout at the office, began releasing much of my pent-up material on my new blogs, followed by my novels as ebooks. Neither the blogs nor ebooks had really been on my horizon, even though one novel had been released as a PDF edition by a pioneering digital publisher.
~*~
Revisiting these notes does feel unsettling. The practice simply faded away years ago, perhaps along with my big dreams. Or perhaps I had simply had it with so much of the gibberish.
Boynton at Water Street
Before leaving
discard piles of weekly magazine employment classifieds . dirty dishtowels, need replacing . ditto, the car . boxes stuffed with working papers, political reprints from college and later stint as academic editor . one more career detour, Swami . save file folders for reuse . don’t need any extra expenses now . former jobs, like former loves . what can you do at the moment? rat out pigeons from under the eaves, their smell of warm barn rot . dust and mop . Ajax or Comet the bathroom sink, tub, bowl . remake the bed after slippery sheets expose toes to night chill . clean the parakeet cage, heart yearning for its owner . how I’d love to trade that old English bicycle, with its flat tire and second gear that strips out, get a sleek ten-speed . instead, you need new blue jeans and pour a fresh motor oil in the Subaru . indoors, lay a wood fire but don’t ignite kindling, the coy display to signal a homebuyer . not all of the ash of this failure is mine
Jnana's Red Barn 