Tag: Community

Here’s wishing you all could be there

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Stephen Sanfilippo is both a wonderful folk musician and a professional historian, two strands that weave together delightfully in his performances and recordings of maritime songs.

He’s a master of the sea chantey repertoire as well as many other seafaring tunes and lyrics – many of which, as he’ll explain, traveled far and wide into the American hinterlands but not back. He does prefer the spelling “chantey” and “chantey man,” for reasons I’ll leave to him to explain. And there are plenty of opportunities to sing along.

Here’s an invitation to his free appearance on Wednesday, January 25, at 6 pm at the Pembroke, Maine, public library, itself an appropriate venue. (I do love the stuffed birds displayed behind him.) The event will be followed by a series of more monthly concerts. Yay!

From his previous appearances here, I can acclaim this is one more facet of what makes living Way Downeast Maine so special to me.

Ring in the big celebration

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My first New Year’s Eve in Dover was filled with wonder when all of the church bells burst out ringing. The next year, however, they were silent.

The occasion, I learned later, was the new millennium, even if technically 2000 was the last year of the old millennium while the actual arrival went unnoticed as such.

This year, Dover’s churches have been asked to ring their bells at 9 pm as a prelude to a fireworks presentation to welcome in the city’s 400th anniversary year observations.

Here’s hoping the weather obliges.

From many miles away, we’ll be thinking of folks there and hoping for a most exciting new yar.

Maine Public service reaches far

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Usually, you need a tall tower for FM and TV transmission. The taller, the better. Not so in the mountainous terrain of Washington County. One stick sends Maine Public Television’s signal across the easternmost reaches of the state. Another, Maine Public Radio’s. I’m not sure about the third. Maine Public Classical comes to us locally from Millbridge, rather than this transmission complex on the Charlotte-Meddybumps town line..
It really is pretty modest.

 Some things I miss about Dover

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It may be a small city, but even so, it was home. And much larger than where I’m now living.

So some of what I miss?

  1. The over-the-fence or across-the-street conversations. Especially the guy stuff. Tim, Mark, Jack, Mayor Bob, that circle, especially.
  2. Recycling. I feel guilty putting it all in one bag. Unless the volunteers regroup after this Covid thing.
  3. The indoor pool. Not just the physical exercise of swimming, but the banter with other swimmers and the lifeguards.
  4. The Quaker Meeting and Greek circle, too. Not just older folks, but meeting the babies who have come along in the interim.
  5. Our garden, even though it was a lot of work. It was even visually pleasing.
  6. That leads to glutting out on fresh asparagus for nearly a month in late spring.
  7. And heirloom tomatoes, with tomato and mayo sandwiches for the better part of two months come high summer. (Downeast Maine is too cold at night for them to mature.)
  8. A range of dining options, not all of them in Dover. We weren’t far from neighboring communities. Not just ethnic, either. LaFesta Pizza would be a prime example of taking a specialty a step extra.
  9. The Amtrak as an escape to Boston or Portland. Not that I had used it that often, back before Covid, but I had plans.
  10. Dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer. Without the renovations on our new old house, it was a return to a primitive era for me. The two nearest laundromats were an hour away, in opposite directions.

Gobble, gobble, darn it, gobble

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

There’s a widespread assumption across America that no household should be without a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. And that’s led many charitably inclined groups and individuals to deliver free turkeys to poorer families ahead of the holiday.

What gets overlooked is the realities of the recipients themselves. Some may not welcome the challenge in front of them. Some don’t cook, period. Some don’t have a full-sized oven. Some live by themselves and have no way of dealing with all that meat. Carving the heavy roast gets tricky, even if you have a large platter and the right knife and serving fork. Not everyone even likes the taste, white meat or dark.

I’ve heard of one group home that had a dozen of the brick-solid big birds stashed away in the bottom of its chest-style freezer, no date attached. A diligent volunteer finally took charge and into the trash they went, one a week.

Speaking of volunteers. Many people step up to volunteer for the holidays, only to be told the spots are already filled and then turn testy. What do you mean?

Doing good can get tricky and lead to hurt feelings.

The real needs continue all year, especially through the depth of winter, when the food and volunteers would be most welcome.

That holiday spirit doesn’t have to be expended all at once, does it?

Getting fit with Eastport’s hot ladies

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

There I was complaining about not being able to continue swimming laps since Covid curtailed everything, especially followed by my relocation from Dover and its wonderful indoor pool. I certainly wasn’t getting in any regular exercise routine once I moved up here, and one month of yoga down by the waterfront did impress me with just how much this body’s deteriorated from 50 years of neglect. Geeze, how humbling!

I’ve never been one to pursue a solo fitness regime.

But then, when some enlightened souls opened the high school gym for walkers in the early morning, I stepped up, apologies for the pun, but it was something and definitely not at the mall, not that we have anything like that anywhere around. Well, I have posted some photos of Shead High’s gym. Maybe I was getting into shape for some summer hiking?

In the process, I met some interesting folks, all women – guys my age rarely seem to recognize how out of shape they’ve become, apart from maybe weight lifting – and the suggestion kept arising that I should try the twice-a-week fitness sessions at the, uh, senior center. (I really hate that term and definitely prefer to call it the Old Firehouse.)

Most of the time, though, once I started attending, I was the only male in the circle. What a revelation! Yes, I remember ages ago when I would have killed for such odds in my favor, yet these days I’m definitely married. (Got mine!) But still, you wouldn’t believe what I hear. It could be a highly rated TV series, if we could find a focus. Oh, well. As they say, laughter is the best medicine.

The hour-long class is definitely well planned, a blend of stretches, isometrics, cardios, and the like. It can challenge the beginner and adept equally well.

Nonetheless, when the temperature approaches 60 or so, indoors or out, they insist on opening the windows. Claim it’s too hot.

I am, on the other hand, still freezing.

 

How the Cocheco Mills reshaped Dover

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My history of Dover, focused on its Quaker Meeting, begins trailing off about the time the textiles mills prosper at the Lower Falls in the Cochecho River. There’s no escaping the fact that the mills completely reshaped the direction of the emerging city, then and now.

  1. The complex began with the Dover Cotton Factory in 1812, but the surviving buildings were constructed between the 1880s and early 20th century. The downtown is built around them. The mills even span the river below the falls.
  2. A clerical error in the company’s 1827 reorganization, as the Cocheco Manufacturing Company, dropped the second h from Cochecho, leading to ongoing confusing about the proper spelling of the river’s name.
  3. In 1828, the mill was the site of one of the earliest labor strikes in the nation, the first to be conducted entirely by women. They were protesting a pay cut.
  4. The mills brought waves of immigrants to the city, especially from Ireland, Quebec, and Greece. The complex eventually employed 1,200 workers, most of them women.
  5. At its height in the 1880s, the mills shipped 65 million yards of printed calico worldwide annually, with esteemed designs from the associated printing operation on the site of today’s Henry Law Park.
  6. The buildings were subject to disastrous fires and floods. They were also noisy and cold in winter, hot in summer.
  7. The company owned lakes upstream to ensure water power through the year.
  8. The mills operated as the Cocheco Manufacturing Company and then the Cocheco Mill Company until 1908, when the operation was bought by the Pacific Mill Works of Lawrence, Massachusetts, which shuttered everything in 1937. The buildings were then bought at auction by the city.
  9. In the early 1980s, entrepreneur Joseph Sawtelle purchased the largest vacant building in the county and began a visionary restoration that uncovered the boarded windows and led to offices, entrepreneurial incubators, and retail stores in the heart of the city. After his death in 2000, Eric Chinburg acquired the properties and added trendy apartments to the mix.
  10. The mills were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.

Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in an iBook edition at the Apple Store.

Even in a housing shortage

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 11 Comments

Yup, home prices went through the roof in most of the country – but not here.

A common sight throughout Downeast Maine is abandoned housing in varying stages of decay. Seeing an old dwelling like that, your initial impulse is that somebody, somewhere, ought to save it. You know, live out in the woods, free from hassles, and all that. It’s gotta have a charming history, right?  (Rusting trailers and mobile homes somehow get less sympathy, if any.)

Abandoned housing comes in varying stages of collapse.

Then reality kicks in. Most of these would cost a ton to renovate – and many are tiny. Insulation, plumbing, and wiring are only the beginning. It’s cheaper to start fresh, if you can. Jobs are scarce, often towns away, if you can find work, so unless you’re retired, that’s another strike. And if you are retired, you might check out far to the nearest doc or clinic. I have to wonder, too, why anyone would want to live that close to the highway and its noisy traffic, other than maybe getting priority plowing after a snowfall. As for the mosquitos and black flies?

Others might tell you it gets boring. No malls or big-box stores, much less neighbors or a real supermarket.

Even as a summer home, then, there are drawbacks. Wouldn’t you rather be on a lake or the ocean?

It’s not all out in the wilds, either. Eastport has three in a row here.
Each with this notice attached, declaring a building dangerous, unsafe, and not habitable.