Kids and families, mostly. It’s a traditional part of our big multiday Fourth celebration.
Tag: Fun
I’m really looking forward to tonight’s reading
If you’re a musician or writer or some other kind of performance-potential artist, you probably find being part of an open mic event invigorating. Not just because you get to air your own work and see how it fares on exposure, but also because you’re amid so many kindred spirits.
Tonight has a kind of hybrid version — six featured published writers at the wine bar downtown — and it is creating a buzz in our small community. Each of us gets about 15 minutes in the spotlight, as well as a book-signing and chat time afterward.
I’ll be reading a chapter from my new book, Quaking Dover, one that details a remarkable but often overlooked outburst in early New England, the bohemian colony called Merrymount. I had settled on that excerpt, a side I hadn’t yet presented in my presentations, before realizing how appropriate it is for this weekend’s ArtWalk festivities, many of them reflecting Pride awareness.
So, here we go … just as the summer season is beginning in our oceanside setting.
Blue on the beach
Well, it has been called ‘a rich feast of a book’
Join me via Zoom at 6 pm Tuesday when I look at Dover Friends’ influence in Maine – along with other surprises. We’ll start with sections of my book Quaking Dover and move on from there. (May I admit that preparing these PowerPoint presentations turns into a lot of fun?)
Preregistration for the Pembroke (Maine) Historical Society’s free event in its wonderful ongoing series is required. Hope you’ll be there.
Comfort food I crave
Open-face hot turkey sandwich at a great diner-style eatery in Mexico, Maine.
What’s high on your comfort food list?
I’m having fun preparing PowerPoint presentations
In general, when it comes to new tech, I’m pretty much of a neo-Luddite. I prefer to stick to the tried-and-true rather than chasing after every new twist and trying to master it before it’s obsolete by the next wave.
I still haven’t stepped up to host a Zoom session, for heaven’s sake. And we’re definitely not E-Zpass users when it comes to highway tolls, either.
Preparing visuals to accompany my public presentations related to my new book, Quaking Dover, however, has me beaming.
The first leap was in learning to connect a laptop to a slide projector – you know, so folks could watch a slide show on a big white screen or a wall.
From that experience, I realized the shots really needed to be all of one size. Some pictures I was discussing ran off the screen, while others were too small. That led to the PowerPoint format.
My initial outing with PowerPoint was with the Whittier Birthplace Museum’s virtual lecture series back in January. There, I was amazed to discover how much I could enlarge a detail from a photo without having it pixilate. Individual signatures from a Quaker marriage document, for instance, could be displayed prominently. The size of the photo in hand wasn’t an issue, either. Up we go!
I’ve been at it again, this time for presentations at the Dover Public Library on March 22 and the Pembroke (Maine) Historical Society on April 18, as well as a third in July via the Falmouth Friends Meeting on Cape Cod. All will be streamed, by the way, if you’re interested in participating. (Do mark your calendars.)
It’s getting easier with each round, and I’m learning how to easily copy a PP slide from one production to another. Yay!
Fun? I’m finding it downright exciting. Hope you do, too.
Looking forward to another open stage night
Here’s a shoutout to our monthly open stage at the Eastport Arts Center at 6 tonight or, if the weather’s bad, the same time tomorrow.
It’s always a lot of fun, alternating live music and spoken word. I even tried a section from Quaking Dover last month, instead of poetry or fiction, and some found my reading emotionally moving. I did bill the genre as creative non-fiction rather than history. Well, there are no footnotes and I’ve focused on the overall story and people more than mere names and dates. The reaction has me looking at additional opportunities for presenting the work.
Here’s one band that showed up, and I’m hoping they’re back. They do look quintessentially Maine, and you can imagine their joyful sound.
The free event’s billed as “open mic” but I’ve long hated that spelling of “mike,” even if it’s become too widespread to counter.
Still, we had a fine turnout and went an hour longer than planned. I’d be really surprised if you wouldn’t be wowed by at least something. There’s so much talent around here.
It’s always a fun time
For those of you living in New Hampshire or southern Maine, here’s an invitation to Dover Friends’ annual Arts & Letters event now rescheduled for 2 pm Saturday, March 18.
It’s one way to sample the local Quaker community as members of all ages display their artistic talents, from painting, drawing, weaving, and photography to original music, poetry, and fiction, perhaps even dance or furniture-making.
The mix each year is different. I remember our amazement when we first saw the museum-quality quilts a newly retired English teacher had begun creating as well as the array of Sculpey figures one of the kids produced. The afternoon even includes a potluck, billed as culinary arts.
The historic meetinghouse is at 141 Central Avenue, just south of the downtown.
Cheers!
I’m not the only one around here hungry for more
Last month we had our first indoor contradance this far east in Maine since the outbreak of Covid, and it was a blast.
I’ve posted before about the New England tradition from colonial times, which hippies then spread around the globe. Not that you have to identify as one to attend. Let’s just say free spirited?
A typical contradance is something for all ages and abilities, singles and couples alike – you do mix during the evening – and the live music is reason enough to come out for a substance-free environment. As we say, if you can walk, you can dance. Besides, a caller has us practice the figures, as they’re termed, before the music begins. It’s a great community-builder, for sure. A great way to meet neighbors of all kinds, or even a potential mate, if you’re unattached. It’s low-pressure, OK?
The whole point is to have fun, mistakes included. Just keep smiling. As I tell the newbies, we experienced dancers make just as many mistakes, mostly because we’re too busy talking.
Our dance last month had mostly beginner dancers, and they were delightful. I’m hoping and expecting to see them back Saturday night at the Eastport Arts Center, bringing a few friends in tow. Frankly, that’s how we all got addicted to this activity, word of mouth with an invite, or even being dragged, as I was, to show up.
Not that you need that much to enter the door.
Remember, just keep smiling.
Sometimes a single-function tool is exactly what you need
This very sharp two-blade knife, designed for use on grapefruit, has become a favorite of mine. As a Christmas present however many years ago it was intended as something of a joke. We didn’t have tons of extra room in the old place, and since the move, we’ve been seriously downsizing from that.
But it does the job so well it has made the cut, as they say.
