I’m assuming they’re robocalls, which I believe should be outlawed with horrendous consequences. Or even if live, rather than recorded, going for the throats of the higher-up perpetuators, rather than the poor offshore minions who actually speak into the phone from wherever.
But still, don’t they get the idea that I got the picture that they’ll never, ever, be this responsive if I pay up and ever need a repayment by way of a claim?
It’s an aging vehicle, after all, and will need some costly repairs. How much? The so-called insurance expects to be far ahead of any premiums in the long run, no questions asked.
Got any ideas on how to turn the table on this nuisance? My readers and I are all ears!
Whale watches, the ferry to and from Lubec, plus the Fourth of July, salmon, and pirate festivals were all fun. I even observed a beluga that lingered just offshore my first time out on the water here.
The island’s ten degrees cooler than the mainland in summer – I wore shorts only three times, all of them when I was off to run errands elsewhere. And supposedly the temps run ten degrees warmer in winter, though this house is still cold. We really do need to replace the windows and thoroughly insulate.
We missed gardening, apart from the little fenced-in patch in the front yard, but not the weeding, though the rabbits still happily devoured anything I brought in. Rather than squirrels as a menace, we have deer – especially when the wild apple tree starts bearing. They eat nearly everything in sight, including tomatoes, as I learned before reinforcing the rim of our little garden. Still, I nearly got a doe to eat a cookie from my hand one evening. My wife wasn’t so daring. And tomatoes? They really don’t grow well around here. But the oxeye daisies, basil, and lettuce continued merrily all summer.
None of the big renovations we’d anticipated got done. Contractors are booked out a year in advance, and the one we had lined up backed out before tackling the roof that our insurance company wants replaced pronto. Well, even if we had gotten started, prices on building supplies did more than double. We’re hoping they drop – soon.
Sandwiched in between the arrival of Pilgrims at Plymouth and the Puritans at the Massachusetts Bay colony, we have the libertine plantation at Mare Mount, or Merrymount, on Boston’s South Shore. It’s a provocative whiff of how New England life could have turned, had Thomas Morton successfully warded off the rival raiders.
The very name “merry” at the time was often a synonym for sexual trysting. As for Merry-Mount? It couldn’t have been more graphic.
Unlike Plymouth, this settlement was prospering and welcoming misfits.
Think of hippie. Maybe even commune. Dancing naked with Natives around a giant maypole, one that’s flagrantly phallic. Not just pagan but also reflecting some lingering Devonshire traditions taken to an extreme. (Significantly, for comparison, most of early Dover’s settlers came from Devon, not the East Anglia of Puritan culture.)
Thomas Morton, founder of Merrymount and a thorn in the Puritans’ side
That’s the short version, though there’s much more sketched out in my upcoming book.
And after Merrymount comes crashing down, its founder finds shelter in Sir Ferdinando Gorge’s Maine, not far from Dover.
No, early New England wasn’t all stern Puritans, not by a long shot, no matter how much they tried to keep a lid on.
Nearly two decades later, facing the Quaker outbreak, did Puritan authorities fear the Friends movement might trigger another Merrymount in their midst? As I’ll show, Quakers were anything but quaint and respectable when they show up, though I can assure you they stayed sober rather than make merry. Ahem.
But they were still an alternative to the Puritan rigidity.
I know, it’s something I would have claimed for myself, too, way back when.
And it is a common identity for many today.
But after five decades in a disciplined tradition, here’s how I’ve come to see it:
It’s like the difference between a one-night stand and marriage.
Or between lust and love.
Quakers preferred clear glass windows. These are from another tradition embodied at the Lubec Congregational Church.
On a less flip note, I’ll admit that a problem with a lot of religion arises when it comes second-hand, even as speculation or shallow platitude, rather than from a personal experience of the mysterious divine. And also when it’s approached as law, with its thou-shalt-nots and rewards or punishments, rather than a relationship with the Wondrous Other. (I’ll leave the particular definitions open, for now.) I’ve called the latter approach “thinking in metaphor,” for good reason.
You can see how the theoretical or law-and-order approaches can mess up a romantic relationship. Ditto with the practice of faith.
By the way, I cherish religion that addresses daily life, in the here and now, more than in an abstract hereafter, though I’ll also agree with Freud’s disciple Otto Rank that religion is the one means we humans have with dealing with our ingrained fear of death.
To my eyes, this one is surprisingly secular for a church sanctuary. It’s unabashedly intended to be merely pretty.
As the saying goes, God is in the details, and I can be quite critical of various traditions and teachings, including my own. Missing the mark, in a Jewish translation, is one definition of sin. At those points, turning – the basis of the word “repentance” – is required. But I’ve also come to cherish what one old Quaker called “mutual irradiation,” those places where humble practitioners of different disciplines cross paths and inspire each other.
Admittedly, I do come at this from an essentially mystical community that requires individual awareness, one that’s sometimes referred to as an Alternative Christianity. For a better feel of it, visit my As Light Is Sown blog.
In that stream, William Penn, an unapologetic Christian minister, boldly wrote in the late 1600s:
“The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious and devout souls everywhere are of one religion and when death has taken off the mask, they will know one another, though the diverse liveries they wore here make them strangers.”
As for religion, he noted:
“There is a zeal without knowledge, that is superstition. There is a zeal against knowledge, that is interest or faction; there is a zeal with knowledge, that is religion; and if you will view the countries of cruelty, you will find them superstitious rather than religious. Religion is gentle, it makes men better, more friendly, loving and patient than before.”
What do these windows say about the people who filled the pews?
Put another way, spirituality and religion are two sides of the coin. One without the other would be counterfeit.
Come the first touch of chill here, and three-quarters of the population begins to vanish. Those folks quietly pack up and return to their primary residence, as have the many tourists. It rather reminds me of living in a college town, but in reverse.
Downtown Eastport in the off-season. The Tides Institute and Museum sits in the old bank building in the center of the scene.
The waterfront and downtown are no longer crowded and festive. Many of the stores, galleries, and eateries are closed up, as are the whale watch, water taxi, and passenger ferry to Lubec. By Halloween, roughly two stores, a diner and a restaurant plus a gallery or two remain open downtown, plus the IGA, two banks, and Family Dollar over on Washington Street.
It makes for a challenging business model, trying to pay the rent and all on a four-month retail prime time. Here the highly watched Black Friday, the make-it-or-break-it financial hurdle of American retailing, doesn’t wait till the day after Thanksgiving but probably hits sometime around the beginning of August.
I have to admire the entrepreneurs who manage it anyway, especially those who stay open through the slim volume of the two-thirds of the year when Eastport’s remote fishing village nature is most prominent.
It also means a lot of do-it-yourself involvement. If you want to see movies, you join the film society. Music? Pitch in with the choir or orchestra. Theater? You guessed it. Dining out? One of the neighboring towns must be having a church supper. Seriously.
And you turn out for others.
Yes, it means more work than just sitting on the sidelines, and with a small population, keeping things going can be a struggle.
But one thing I’ve noticed. It doesn’t take long to be appreciated when you take part.
barking crows
whims of courtly love
course you hate being ordered about
marble, limestone, granite, ice
soapstone as a handyman’s tool
sweating came much later
to this cold-blooded frame
Jnana's Red Barn 