You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
I’m not writing poems lately
but I’m not praying much, either
Let me elaborate:
Consider the act of writing as prayer. Neither is done for outward compensation, much less any guarantee of results, but rather to open one’s heart and mind to what is eternal and true – and attune oneself to that, regardless.
the snake
within the gull
A gap between two islands presents a quick glimpse at the town of Castine beyond. A landscape explored from the water connects places in a much different sense than you get from land.
That’s one of the lessons I savored aboard the historic schooner Louis R. French last summer.
Remember, so much of Maine is water.
The Shackford children had their joint holdings surveyed in January 1833, with Hannah Shackford’s husband, Darius Pearce/Pierce, performing the task. A flurry of real estate transfers followed, formalizing their agreements.
By 1820, according to the Census, the sons were heads of household.
Trying to follow the transactions gets rather confusing.
William and Jacob had even gone into business together in 1833, turning their attention away from seafaring. Their dealings included waterfront between the high-tide and low-water stretches as well as bands of shorefront below our house that would be developed into wharves.
From what I see, the boys weren’t getting a family discount. In 1830, John junior paid his father $1,000 for one parcel next to his brother William’s. In a transaction dated December 30, 1831, John senior specifies a band of waterfront “partially in front of my own dwelling house,” with the sellers being himself and “my wife Elsie.”
Among the deals were one on the easterly side of Water Street “to the fence of my homestead” and then westerly to Water Street, confirming that his homestead included both sides of the road.
Of special interest to me in confirming that our house was the one John senior occupied are the two deeds conveying adjoining land along Water Street. First was a sale to Myrick Bibber, a furniture merchant, on June 13, 1839, for a lot on the southwest corner of Water and Shackford streets, and then on July 10, to Daniel Aymar for the lot between the two.
Each of them is measured to the line of “the yellow house lot owned by me.”
Here’s how the description appeared on the two deeds recorded at the Washington County courthouse.
I was surprised to see that he signed the deeds with his mark, X, as did his wife in several instances. New England was noted for its nearly universal literacy, both men and women.
Here’s his X on his will.
Grandson Samuel Shackford said Esther, John’s first wife, “had been well reared and was a woman of superior intelligence” and that her children “were indebted to their mother for nearly all the educational advantages they ever enjoyed.” Unlike her husband, she signed some of the documents, as noted in the record, “her seal.” “School-teachers were rarely obtainable, in those days, in this then out-of-the-world. For a brief period, the services of William Lloyd Garrison’s [future] mother were secured to teach in the family” when she lived on neighboring Deer Island, Canada..
The real estate transactions indicate the children were all literate.
Esther died June 21, 1830. His second wife enters the picture rather obliquely soon thereafter.
His will of June 14, 1832, bequeathed “to my beloved wife Elsie the use during her life of my homestead or the house in which I now live, together with the lot and privileges thereto.”
Further down, it directs his six children and grandson Samuel to pay “to my wife Elsie the aforementioned annuity of one hundred & fifty dollars. And on my demise the homestead on house in which I now live with the lot come privileges pertaining thereto, and the one of which I have willed I am bequeathing to her during her life, I am bequeathing to them, my six children … in the same proportion of my other property.”
A harder to read codicil of October 5, 1839, raises the amount of the annuity to “my wife Eliza Shackford” to $200 during her natural life and “all my furniture and my pew in Baptist meetinghouse forever.”
After Captain John’s death, as Samuel Shackford confirmed, Elsie (or Elise, in his account) obtained the Revolutionary War veteran’s pension based on his service.
Elsie was later recorded in the 1850 Eastport Census as Eliza Shackford, 70, living in a household headed by Abigail Winslow, 37, along with four children — Anna E, 12; Lucy M., 6; James F., 4; and Mary A., 2; as well as Ethel Olmstead, 37, with his occupation as “gold digger” in the metal mining industry. An index to that Census listing placed Ethel as the head of household, even though he was at the bottom in the family. I am perplexed by the Winslow identity.
All of it, of course, has relevance on the house we bought.
That image seems especially appropriate as we celebrate the appearance today of my newest collection of poems, Ocean Motion, now available in the ebook platform of your choice. Yes, let’s envision a book floating on the water like a boat.
For much of the first half of my life, the concept of an ocean was incomprehensible, even more so than mountains.
As I’ve noted earlier, I grew up far from the seashore or even craggy ranges like the Rockies or Alps. The Great Smokey and other Southern Appalachian glories were a bit closer. I didn’t encounter the ocean until I’d reached adolescence and we visited Florida on a camping trip with some of Dad’s old Army Air Force buddies. I next saw surf my senior year of college, with my then-girlfriend and her parents. From there, my encounters went to a few times on the Staten Island ferry or other points in New York City or Long Island, and then the ferry rides in Washington state, a few days camping along the Pacific (recorded in my American Olympus book), a jaunt along the Oregon coast, and then Maryland, New Jersey, and ultimately New England, plus a few returns to the Gulf Coast of Florida.
In all of those, I faced an enigma, a recognition that I didn’t quite grasp its appeal. Something was missing. It was like a gray Lake Erie looming with whitecaps I had seen around age seven, except that there was something else called tides. It was water with nothing else but sky on the horizon.
The pace of my encounters picked up, especially once I moved to New England, nearly half of my life ago now. Having a boss who owned a 32-foot sailboat fostered some of that, especially when we ventured forth once or twice each summer from Newburyport, Massachusetts, or once from Portsmouth, New Hampshire – both notoriously treacherous harbors.
As I describe in one poem, my first time of being in a sailboat was also my first time out on the Atlantic and my first time of seeing whales (including a minke that surfaced only feet away from me) and my first time of setting foot on an island, one that was now a Unitarian and Congregationalist churches summer retreat.
Those experiences all infuse these poems.
Moving to Dover, as I remarried, picked up the pace. The tides reached downtown, after all, and Great Bay along one side. Plus, with the kids, we got to visit Maine beaches and Cape Cod at their grandfather’s. And later, picking up one after her work at a coastal motel, I had repeated exposures to the ocean at midnight, another world altogether. I wouldn’t say it was romantic, even with a full moon.
The resulting poems eventually appeared in small-press literary venues around the globe as well as a series of PDF chapbooks at Thistle Finch editions.
As these poems demonstrate, the more I’ve gotten to know ocean as the North Atlantic along New England, the more in awe I am. Other writers can express the ocean from their own locale and nuances.
Still, I have come to love lighthouses and do treasure opportunities to climb up within them to savor the view from the top. But don’t get too romantic, it was a harsh, often dangerous, life for the keeper and his family. I hope these poems reflect that reality and more.
Do note that New England thrived on seafaring, designing and building distinguished vessels along its forested shores and sailing them around the globe to Asia and elsewhere and then back or out to hunt whales. The memories are imprinted in the muscle and soul of its people.
Remember, tides rise and fall dramatically in New England. You learn to be alert, even wary. And, do note, I’ve learned so much more since I first expressed that.
One of the ocean chapbooks included in the final collection was titled “Land Overlaps Sea,” an outlook that still impresses me, considering that it’s actually the other way around. The poems in the collection reflect places close to where I lived at the time and ways they interact with the Atlantic. It has been quite instructive over the years, even for an old landlubber like me.
Meanwhile, bits of sea shanties – the chanted or sung work ditties of sailors over the years – muffled and muted by the wind, flit through background, even if you don’t quite catch their words.
While the poems reflect a period of my life before moving to a remote fishing village at the far end of Maine, what I’ve encountered since confirms my impressions.
Maritime historian and sea chanter Stephen Sanfilippo and his wife, Susan, have definitely added much to my comprehension, as have my new friend, Captain Robert J. Peacock, and my times out on the waters, especially week-long cruises aboard the historic schooner Lewis R. French, as you’ve been seeing here.
~*~
So here we are, with my thought that each new volume is akin to the space within a vessel:
a book launch
rather than release
BOOK
BOAT
the connection floats for me
my experience on the water flows everywhere
For my poems of the sea, check out Ocean Motion at Smashwords.com. You can find also find it at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. Or ask your public library to obtain it.
I was looking at one of our typically outrageous dawns or maybe it was a sunset and realized it was as amazing as an aroura borealis.
Now I’m wondering about the gulls.
When we think of many of the technological advances that impact our daily lives, we usually don’t know the names of their inventors, even when we know the businessmen who got wealthy as a result. Elon Musk did not invent the Tesla, for instance, nor did Bill Gates invent the internet or Henry Ford, the auto. The list is actually a long one.
Consider John William Lambert, mentioned in a previous Tendrils.
I remember visiting an early coworker and, upon seeing an old car with an impressive Lambert name in brass across the radiator sitting at an open garage door, I asked, “Ann? Is that car any relation to you?” She replied that her grandfather used to make them but otherwise conveyed no knowledge that he had been so prominent a figure.
Here are ten facts from his life.
(Prompted by artist Jane Kaufmann.)
CHAINSAW
LAWYERS
ARTISTS
GALLERY
(sounding like a franchise)
Jnana's Red Barn 