Tag: Life

When sardines were big

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Eastport’s economic glory days were when the city was the Sardine Capital of the World.

They’re small herring and abounded in the waters around Eastport, where they were easily caught and delivered straight to the cannery atop the wharf.

Here are some related facts.

  1. Napoleon Bonaparte helped initiate the canning of sardines, the first fish to be so preserved.
  2. Packing in Maine took off from Eastport in the 1870s and peaked around 1900, with 75 plants, mostly along the Downeast coast. The first sardine cannery in Eastport started in 1865 but failed to reduce the moisture in the cans, leading to a sharp, unpleasant odor. Its owner returned to Portland and found success with baked beans. Others in Eastport improved the process.
  3. The workforce was largely women, with blurring hands and sharp knives or scissors expertly packing the small fish into cans – as crowded as sardines, as the popular expression went. Their hands were in cold seawater, year-‘round.
  4. Eastport also cranked out the cans and lithographed labels.
  5. The fish were packed in cottonseed oil, soy oil, or upper-end mustard sauce.
  6. The world’s biggest sardine cannery jutted 250 feet out from the shore at the entrance to Shackford Cove.
  7. Home refrigeration doomed the industry, making fresh cod, haddock, and other fish readily accessible.
  8. Sardine tins were part of soldiers’ rations during the world wars.
  9. The discarded fish parts were used to make fertilizer, while the scales were transformed into pearl essence, a shiny coloring used in many consumer products.
  10. Vintage sardine cans and labels are collectors’ items.
Eastport’s sardine canneries were also centers of child labor, as photographer Lewis Wickes Hine documented in August of 1911. Above, Fulsom McCutcheon, 11, was a worker at the covering machines. The world’s biggest sardine cannery extends behind him. It was about two blocks from my house. 
Hiram Pulk, 9, cuts sardines at the Seacoast Canning Company’s Factory No. 1 in Eastport. “I ain’t very fast – only about five boxes a day. They pay five cents a box,” he was quoted. Both photos from the Library of Congress collection.

 

 

The Bingham connection

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

After discussing Maine’s unincorporated townships, I need to add that there are a lot of variants – 17, if I’m counting right. Among them are the BKP, BPP, NBKP, NBPP, and WBKP designations – translated as Bingham’s Kennebec Purchase, Bingham’s Penobscot Purchase, North of Bingham’s Kennebec Purchase, North of Bingham’s Penobscot Purchase, and West of Bingham’s Kennebec Purchase.

So just who was this Bingham guy?

In short, he was William Bingham, already a wealthy Philadelphian when he became filthy rich via privateering during the Revolutionary War. He was also a statesman and U.S. senator who parlayed his riches into vast land purchases, as noted above but also including upstate New York, where Binghamton, where I’ve also lived, was named in his honor.

Got it?

Quite simply, Bingham owned two million acres in Maine, making him land rich but cash poor.

His agent in Maine, Revolutionary War Gen. David Cobb, was responsible for laying out most of the roads associated with the Airline Highway (now eastern State Route 9). And when Cobb retired in 1820, John Black, agent for Baring Brothers Bank in London, felt that lumber was the wealth that would provide his boss the needed profit. There were further complications as well as marriages, but you get an idea how Baring township in the Moosehorn wildlife preservation got its name.

Cobb did, however, build a great house at Gouldsborough and soon faced some harsh realities that he notated between 1795 and 1800.

First, the land and climate of eastern Maine were not and are not suitable for farming. He noted that “those who come to view the country … have as frequently returned almost blind by the bites of flies and mosquitoes. You have no conception of the hosts of these devils that infest the thick forest at this season.”

More critically, he found “the great body of the people of this country possess no regard to the rights of private property,” calling them ” vicious inhabitants who disfigured its landscape. Every inhabitant here is now a trespasser, a plunderer. They live by it, and therefore they will not cultivate the finest soil in the world. They’re not doing this is the chief cause why the reputation on the country has been damn’d. If the people who live by lumbering are indulged in cutting the forests wherever they please, they will have but little … appreciation of the soil.”

For the record, the soil itself wasn’t nearly that rich.

But continuing, in his estimation, “The greater part … follow lumbering and fishing … and they are very intemperate, very lazy and very poor. It may be said in truth … the majority of the inhabitants are drunkards.”

There are those, of course, who would question whether much has changed since.

Or, as is sometimes said of Eastport, it’s a drinking village with a fishing problem.

Do you understand  a Carlos Williams kind of morning?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Or even one along Puget Sound?

Slow rain outside, misty, foggy, nothing pressing to do, you just want to stay abed a while longer – or return after a leisurely hot shower. Maybe there’s some activity in the next room or down the hall, but it doesn’t matter.

Reminds me of a visit to a neighboring college back in Indiana, when I cracked open my poetry course assignment to an appropriate new vision – one of several breakthroughs that October weekend, actually. Savor another cup of coffee, reflect, recharge. You need those, at least in some proportion to the rest of your goals and life mission. Even if an ingrained Protestant work ethic guilt tries to kick in.

The fog around the island also reminds me of Washington state and visits to friends on the other side of the Cascades mountains. The same smoky indolence.

Do you have any memories of a special time or place of moody experiences like these?

Beloved saintly Tess hear my confession

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

because I haven’t really known how to shop for myself expertly I’ve hated selecting birthday or Christmas that is, excepting books and records and a few groceries I’d like for myself you’d think spending would be a simple if you had enough cash and my dependable depression reflected insufficient variety or sassy style on the racks here but price tags on anything I desired conveyed, As I learned, kid, look, you aren’t worth anything as far as your job and life are concerned and maybe if you stole from dying widows or threw single-parent kids into the street, you’d be rich and then honestly, most men still dread shopping so what do you really want in gift wrapping?

A few things that peeve me royally

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Look, don’t make me elaborate. Here are a few, in no particular order.

  1. Getting stuck in traffic
  2. Having my plans derailed
  3. Overly loud music or TV or movies or mufflers
  4. Not being able to make out the dialogue or lyrics. Along with people singing way out of tune
  5. People cutting in line or who who can’t count the limit in the express checkout
  6. Stupidity of all sorts, but willful stupidity most of all
  7. Arrogance
  8. Lateness or just not showing up, as promised
  9. Lying and cheating
  10. Abuse of authority slash power or gross injustice in general

Your turn!  Lay it on!

Living in sweats

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The thought had once appalled me. Like was this the epitome of laziness, that you really didn’t bother to get dressed for the day? Or that perhaps you’d gained so much weight you wanted something that would hang loose rather than accentuate anything?

Skip ahead to retirement and then the Covid shutdown, and I’m having to admit there have been days when I’m living happily in sweats, especially in the depth of a northern New England winter.

Sometimes I even think of it as luxury, not having to venture outdoors.

Oh, what a bum I’ve become kind of feeling!

How do you dress for everyday comfort?

Moose on the loose

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

This was going to be about squirrels, my nemesis in Dover, but now I’m thinking of Bullwinkle and his kin.

After all, I am living on Moose Island, not that I’ve seen any in town yet. But then I’m not seeing many squirrels here, either. Instead, it’s mostly deer.

Now, for the star of today’s show.

  1. Moose are the biggest member of the deer family and, unlike the others, prefer to be solitary rather than in herds.
  2. A bull can weigh in at up to 1,500 pounds, while a cow can be up to 1,000 pounds.
  3. Their broad, “open-hand” shaped antlers (not horns) can stretch up to six feet end to end.
  4. Calves stay with their mothers for a year or more but are weaned at five months.
  5. Their mothers are quite protective and have been known to kill bears with their kicks.
  6. They’re adept swimmers and can trot at up to 35 miles an hour, despite their slow-moving, sedentary, and dumb image.
  7. They’re a road hazard. They’re drawn to the pavement for the salt that’s been spread to melt snow and ice. And then they think they can outdo a car or truck, not that they don’t do some serious damage.
  8. A bull can eat up to 71 pounds of food a day – half of it aquatic plants needed to balance the bark in their diet.
  9. The fall mating season includes energetic fights between bulls over a desired cow.
  10. Their hide is often covered with a blanket of thousands of parasitic winter ticks, which stay attached for up to six months, sapping a moose of energy, blood, and hair. They’re the leading cause of death in moose less than a year old and diminish adult cow reproduction.

Not just moose but a murder mystery, too

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The joke is that moose don’t have horns, they have antlers. The Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge excuses itself by noting that it’s named after a brook that meanders through the preserve. Not that it’s the only fine body of water.

Canoeing, kayaking, and fishing are welcome.
The marked lanes make for some lovely strolls.

And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service adds that the preserve is home to much more than moose, bear, beaver, and deer. For example, some 223 bird species have been identified in its two divisions – the 31-square-mile Baring Division to our northwest and the 13-square-mile Edmunds Division to our west, both within a half-hour drive from Eastport.

The terrain is varied, much of it wetlands, and a third is protected as wilderness.

I especially appreciate the miles of hiking trails, some along former roads.

What I wasn’t expecting on one outing was the moose I encountered on a grassy roadside near a flowage.

When I first spotted the tawny hump amid the green, I thought it might have been one bent over grazing, in which case I’d need to approach cautiously, or else just a big rock.

Instead, it became a mystery.

The hooves and legs.
Apart from the head injury, the body was in fine shape – no mat of ticks, for one thing.
It really is a big, powerful jaw.

Tire tracks in the grass had me wondering if a ranger driving down the gated-access lane had tried to veer away from the animal on the roadway, only to have it bolt into the oncoming vehicle.

The carcass was fresh enough that a solitary vulture overhead wasn’t even taking notice.

Later, back in town, I began picking up details. Everybody seemed to have more to add, most of it from Facebook.

Seems the baby male was hit on Charlotte Road earlier in the morning. (Baby? It was bigger than me.) Folks were wondering what took the wildlife officers so long to clear the road. They then took the remains into the preserve, to return to the food chain. Mama Moose, meanwhile, spent the rest of the day wandering forlornly.

It is a relief to know that moose collisions aren’t so common around here that they’re taken for granted. Deer, on the other hand, as everyone will remind me – keep your eyes open.

For my entire hike, I was the sole human experiencing sights like this.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever encountered out on a walk? Or even a drive?

Querido Pedro

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

what should imbibe a tone of its own at least the dialogue you know back to the earth or center city I’d say boho was largely suburban youths trying to head simultaneously in opposite directions ill equipped for either but rife with contradictions of youthful rebellion, colorful partying, prankster mentality as well as individuals in search of authentic and lasting values as the whole outbreak proves you know how much I still miss it