First off, I should explain that few old houses in New England actually have much by way of closets. So I’m actually talking today more about personal wardrobe and style.
One of my long-term planning notes was this, for my shift into retirement:
Focused look: new jeans (black/green/gray); sandals (fewer socks; also, they travel better); blazers for the pockets.
What actually emerged was quite different.
I shifted from denim jeans to tan cargo pants, for their pockets, especially.
Instead of my customary oxford shirts, I wore turtlenecks in winter, and Aloha shirts in summer. (I still largely avoid T-shirts.)
Instead of that blazer, I rely on a messenger bag to hold my reading glasses, cell phone, emergency cardiac prescription, choral music scores, and so on.
My style, such as it is, has emerged from yard sales, mostly. These days my focus is on wearing them till they give out while also downsizing. You’d be surprised how many compliments I get.
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.
This is what you expect to see at the ocean, right? Just stick around another six hours to see what happens to our high tide.At Carrying Place Cove, if often looks like somebody pulled the plug on the tub and let all the water out.
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
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.
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.
Sir Walter Raleigh. His nephew was a big settler along the Piscataqua, Did he dress anything like this?
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.
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.
The two stones in the Lost Fishermen’s Memorial in Lubec rise like waves beside each other, one representing fishermen from the Canadian side of the channel and the other, from the American side. Three flags fly over the site – Old Glory, the Maple Leaf, and the Passamaquoddy Nation’s.The inscribed names of those lost since the year 1900 are mesmerizing – women and men, some of the surnames repeated. As people say respectfully, so-and-so has the sea in his blood, and it seems to run in families.Maine granite sculptor Jesse Salisbury created the monument in 2016, and names have been added since.
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?
Jnana's Red Barn 