Where to from here, as a writer or a person?

Creatively, I’m feeling a lull or perhaps more accurately adrift.

After my Cape Cod presentation via Zoom earlier this month, I have no other Quaking Dover events on the horizon. Nor do I feel compelled to undertake another big writing venture.

Authors these days are often saddled with the promotional end of any publication, and I’m coming up on a year of launching the marketing push on my latest book. Admittedly, I am proud of my public appearances on its behalf – each one unique, reflecting what another writer declared a “rich feast of a book” – but it’s also exhausting, especially, as I hate to confess, at my age.

Do I cut the ties and say it’s time for the book to sink or swim on its own, or do I find new ways to try to generate a buzz? It is the one book that seems to speak to a wider audience, especially, say, than poetry or my hippie novels.

The blogging hits have slowed down, perhaps as many viewers have shifted to other platforms. Social media and mass media both appear to be hemorrhaging there, so I can’t say I’m alone.

I’m certainly out of touch with youth and often can’t understand their conversations. That really hurts. I believe there’s so much knowledge that needs to be handed down but don’t know where to begin. Besides, I’ve often found them a source of great energy in my own outlook.

In short, I don’t have a big project calling for my attention and devotion. That part feels really weird.

I do have a big backlog of periodicals and books to finally tackle as well as a shelf of personal journals that deserve visiting, so that points to an overdue reading orgy.

There’s plenty of outdoors around here to indulge in, too.

I may even have to look at my remaining possessions and reorganize and cull them.

As I’m saying, I’m feeling a bit strange.

Welcome to Cobscook Friends

As a small, rural Quaker fellowship, we’re especially happy to be worshipping together in one space every Sunday again, at least through the summer and early autumn.

Covid, of course, had us connected only by Zoom through much of the Covid onslaught and after that, coming together in a physical space on alternative weeks only. We do live at distances from the meetinghouse, so winter weather can often be a challenge.

Not so summer. We’d love to have others join us in our hour of mostly silent centering, beginning at 9:30 on Sunday mornings. The meetinghouse is in the woods along Maine Route 189 in Whiting – on the way to Lubec and many great outdoors trails.

If you meditate in some practice, you’ll fit right in – and if that seems foreign, it’s still a great time for personal reflection. I always find it renewing.

A 17th century herb garden

Well, this is how it looked last September.

The English colonists knew their herbs and spices, as shown in the Pemaquid state historical site’s garden. The selection includes bee balm, betony (lamb’s ear), celandine, chamomile, chives, clove pink, crane’s bill, dill, evening primrose, feverfew, Johnny jump up, lady’s mantle, lavender, lemon balm, mint, parsley, sage, savory, tansy, tarragon, thyme, and yarrow. Many of these were grown for their medicinal applications.

We never had much more than salt and pepper back in the ‘50s, at least as I recall as a kid.

As a professional historian friend said after one of my presentations

New England history is all through Harvard. And then Yale and Williams College.

Except, of course, a few mavericks like me. (Even though, humbly confessed, I’m not a historian.)

Well, you do have another opportunity to see why he said that if you register promptly for my free Zoom presentation from Cape Cod at 12:30 Sunday afternoon ( https://bit.ly/QuakingDover ).

Here’s hoping to hear from you there!