You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Or is it Our Lady of the Puck?
New England is hockey country, and Boston Bruins fans are legion. Rest assured, Bobby Orr would no doubt lead their pantheon of saints.
While statues of Mary are common across the country, I know of no others like this. Behind the mask, the face looks feminine. This repurposed icon icon overlooks Chauncey Creek Road in Kittery, Maine.
Noticed a few months ago I wasn’t checking the weather forecast as much as I did when gainfully employed.
Back then, I faced an hour-long commute each way and knowing the outlook might prompt me to leave earlier or take a less vulnerable route. Trying to navigate a downhill curve in a freezing rain was one experience I never wish to repeat, and I’ve seen enough vehicles slide off the road while trying to go faster than the nasty conditions allowed, well, to keep me from trying to press my luck. Arriving early might also help, since we’d often be handed an early lockup on the first edition of the newspaper to give the delivery crew an extra edge, and anything to lessen the deadline pressure on all of us would be a blessing. A storm might even mean packing for an overnight at the office, as some of my colleagues did during one really big blizzard. The forecast could even prepare me for changing my plans at home beforehand when shoveling out the driveway would take priority.
This time of year, flash flooding, sleet, fallen limbs, or power outages can also be a problem.
This is northern New England, after all.
Now that I’m retired, the commute’s no longer an issue, except for my weekly trip to choir practice in Boston – and if the weather’s treacherous, I have the option of staying home, which was never the case with my job. Since we rarely need both cars on conflicting schedules, it’s much easier to leave them at the end of the driveway to cut down on the snow shoveling. Our biggest weather concern is frost at crucial times in the garden. Or, during the summer, the Atlantic water temperatures when I’m considering a swim at the beach.
This winter, though, has rekindled some of the obsession. We’ve had far more single-digit and zero-degree nights than usual, plus a constant snow covering with more than six feet total by the beginning of March, even as most of the storms have veered south of us. My fascination has come in tracking four different online forecasts and seeing how far off target they’ve been. As for agreement, forget it. You could just as easily toss a coin. (And that percentage thing they throw at us? A 60 percent chance of snow in practical terms means nothing: either it snows or it doesn’t. In other words, it’s all or nothing.)
Considering everything, though, it’s rather nice to not be complaining about the weather itself. I can more or less take it as it comes, thank you, with all of my sympathy to those who must venture forth, regardless. At the moment, I think I’ll put another log on the fire.
When they lived way up in Maine, with a large lake just down their road, I remember hearing Eric tell about the morning he looked out the window and saw a traffic jam. Miles and miles from the nearest traffic light, here were bumper to bumper pickup trucks heading to and from the lake. Soon, he realized they were removing their bobhouses before the ice melted.
Bobhouses, of course, are part of the male culture of northern New England and many other frozen parts of the world. Since I don’t fish, no matter how much I admire fly fishermen and their skills, I really don’t appreciate the special savvy of landing one’s meal from under the ice. You can do it, of course, by drilling a hole in the thickness underfoot and then sitting or standing out in the cold. But the really serious guys build or buy their own little houses for the tradition – some are quite basic, while others, I’m told, come with TVs and Web connections. Still, I’m curious about what draws men from their warm homes to spend long days or evenings in a very cold environment. One of the answers is that it’s an excuse to drink with your buddies. Another is that it’s just to get away from the women. Except that it turns out some very adventurous women join in on the expedition. Are the fresh fish really worth this much effort?
Even so, that afternoon, Eric looked out again and saw another traffic jam, this time with trailers hauling their boats to the water. Presumably for more fishing.
How did they know this was the day the ice would go? What clues am I missing?
Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:
Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:
Curious bits with local twists for me: Father Samuel Moody, Emerson’s great-great-grandfather, famous preacher of Mount Agamenticus, Maine.
The Wesleyan Academy at Newmarket NH.
Indian name for Mount Washington was Agiocochook, as used by Thoreau.
“The God who made New Hampshire / Taunted the lofty land with little men” – Thoreau, “Ode Inscribed to W.H. Channing.”
The Old Man, the Great Stone Face, “that grave old Sphinx” (Thoreau).
Emerson: “I acknowledge (with surprise that I could never forget) the debt of myself and my brothers to that old religion which in those years, still dwelt like a Sabbath peace in the country population of New England, which taught privation, self-denial, and sorrow.” (on the death of Dr. Ezra Ripley)
Passenger rail service to Concord, Mass., began June 17, 1844.
Emerson was irritated by Shaker “dunce-dance,” “with buildings ostentatiously neat,” as if entering a “hospital ward of invalids afflicted with priapism.”
“… our Concord River which is narrow and slow and shallow.”
Emerson had always shown a fondness for Maine, even including the snowbank near Berwick into which his sleigh-stage had inadvertently dumped its passengers back in 1842.
Department of Interior Secretary James Harlan, “a grim Iowa Methodist” according to Walt Whitman. (Harlans originally a Quaker family connected to my own ancestors.)
In 1852, John Albee, a 19-year-old senior at Phillips Andover Academy, came to Concord to interview Emerson and met a man whose name sounded like Thorough or Thurro. (Note the accented syllable, being the first.)
My wife is a great cook. And so are the kids. This means that when we dine out, the meal often fails to live up to what we can have at home. The chain restaurants strike us as formulaic or bland. In many, there’s much that’s mostly show with little substance, or pretentious and pricy, or simply uninspired. It’s easy to feel we wasted our money.
On the other hand, we’ve also found some marvelous meals at bargain prices in humble places. including some that folks might describe as sketchy. At least until you take the first bite. I could mention my favorite Vietnamese restaurants in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, for starters. Or my regular Greek restaurant in Watertown, Massachusetts. Or our favorite summer hangout for seafood and live oldies in York, Maine. Or dim sum in Boston’s Chinatown. Or Latin American highlighting different countries on different days in Dayton, Ohio.
Of course, when we find a truly authoritative operation – one that sets standards for presentation, skill, creativity, and downright pleasure – we treasure the experience. Our favorite is run by two women in South Berwick, Maine. Whenever we’re ready to spring for a great celebration, that’s our first choice and we’re always delighted.
Once my wife and I got away for a weekend stay in Portland, Maine, and the centerpiece of the trip was a dinner at the famed Fore Street Restaurant, which is set in a kind of William Morris former foundry a couple of blocks from the harbor. She can tell you every glowing detail of our meal, including the local sourcing of ingredients. The wait staff was attentive without being overwhelming or stuffy. And most impressive, a sauvignon blanc was suggested to pair with that evening’s selections – and management priced it close to retail, rather than charging the industry standard of three or four times that figure. It was incredible – the word “stony” fits perfectly – and we’ve never found another that approaches this bottle, not even from the same South African winery.
Well, Fore Street was named No. 16 in Gourmet magazine’s list of top 50 restaurants in the U.S. in 2002.
More recently, I’m so glad one of our regular mechanics and his wife were impressed with their big celebration dinner there a few months ago. And we’re so happy to hear the tradition continues.
Admittedly, we live in an area that gives meteorologists headaches. It’s one of those where several major weather systems collide. Not quite as bad as where I once lived in Upstate New York and we sometimes wound up with four completely different forecasts for the day’s four editions of the paper as the day wore on. But here, one winter, when one of the local websites had its own retired Air Force meteorologist providing early morning reports, he did note an ongoing line running from Concord, New Hampshire, to Portland, Maine, and remarked that if it shifted slightly north or south, so would the weather, depending which side you were on. That line held on most of the winter.
In the past week, we’ve just come through two “weather events” that provide some amusement in the iffiness of science department, even if it has meant more than 20 inches of snowfall to dig out. In the last one, the projected amounts of snowfall kept changing, sometimes with hourly revisions, or so it seemed, going from one to two inches and settling on two to four, at one service, to three to six at NOAA. We wound up with over eight. So they missed, one of them (the one that’s usually somewhat hysterical in its warnings) off 75 to 88 percent.
In the storm before that, I’m glad I decided to back out of plans to head to Boston for a working session with Friends. The heavier-than-expected snowfall was a mess, and I never would have made it there in time.
Now we’re looking at another weekend, one with a gathering halfway across the state tomorrow night, and the other Sunday morning, the one we rescheduled in Boston. And I have no way of knowing what to expect, other than it might be messy.
Without getting into the percent chances of precipitation but sticking only to the forecast, here are the options:
So Sunday’s the only day they agree on, and even that could be simple rain or really messy?
I guess if I had to choose one, it would be the third option, especially since Sunday has only the warmer rain. Or maybe, if I look around more, I might even find a fourth choice I like better.
Or should I just check my horoscope for a clearer idea, instead?
Having a big freezer allows my wife to keep garden produce available through the year and to stock up on “happy meat” (meaning humanely raised, and free of unnatural chemicals) when she finds it marked down on sale.
One year we even ordered half a pig from some Friends in Bowdoinham, Maine.
Went up to the farm, met him before his demise, scratched his nose, watched him trot. Didn’t get to see him leap from the diving board into the pond, though, due to a dry spell. We were assured he was happy right up to the end.
Rachel even ordered the cuts from the butcher the way she wanted them, with no waste. Wanted it all, especially the parts we couldn’t buy at market. No need to make any into sausage or smoke the ham, either. We preferred those as pork belly or fresh ham, which we discovered are very, very tasty additions to just about any dish you’re preparing.
In fact, the experience proved as much of a revelation in taste as what we’ve discovered by growing our own vegetables and berries or going out to a nearby farm or picking our own at an orchard. It’s miles apart from the supermarket. Fresh is the essence of wondrous dining.
These days, though, we’ve been cutting down on meat altogether. It’s more a garnish or ingredient than the traditional slab Americans expect. But that’s another story. Maybe even one to make a hog happy.
The 1664 Richard Jackson house in Portsmouth is the oldest surviving wood frame dwelling in New Hampshire or Maine. The additions turned it into a multi-family residence.
