You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Thanksgiving raises thoughts of New England Puritans, even though they differed in many ways from their fellow Calvinists, the Pilgrims – the ones who celebrated that first round of feasting.
Here is Sir Richard Saltonstall (1586-1661), a Puritan who founded Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1630 before his return to England.
The birds and squirrels have already harvested the sunflower seeds. I like to leave the stalk up anyway, just as a perch for the critters.
Why let power go to waste? A small hydroelectric station captures a share of the Cocheco River. The Watson Dam itself is a V-shaped design stretched across the stream. I imagine it runs in front of a waterfall.
The presidency of Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), with its tilt toward powerful slave owners, left the nation headed for Civil War.
While he was born in a humble dwelling nearby, this Hillsborough, New Hampshire, estate is where the family moved in his infancy.
Maybe the taggers think they’re creating motion pictures? Not all of the railroad graffiti lands on the train cars. There’s a lot along the route, too.
The Isles of Shoals are a cluster of small islands off the mainland of New Hampshire and Maine. White Island is occupied by its lighthouse and supporting structures.
Next time you see one of those “No U Turns” signs on someone’s driveway, think about their side of the story and the audacity of some of the public.
We know an old farm in Maine that has a driveway connecting to both the busy highway in front of the house and a country road to the side. It gets plenty of “summer people” congestion at the traffic light, along with drivers who try to beat it by driving taking the driveway – or worse, just driving through the yard.
Recently, during a sudden storm, one SUV dodged in under the tree in the front yard to deflect hail, in the process mowing down hostas and other flowers before then backing hard into the parked pickup truck on the way out, and gunning it down the road.
Later, when one of the residents of the house was turning up the driveway from the side road, another car, crowded with tourists, came the other direction – and gave her the finger when she refused to back out so they could pull on through. Look, it’s her home, not theirs!
Their New York plates did nothing to soften the reputation.
Winged skulls are part of the New England colonial legacy. The region’s harsh environment invoked a stoic outlook on life. The images also inspire a collection of my poems, available by clicking here.
Well, we also had the telephone – and memos, sometimes delivered by a mailman and sometimes by an office courier and sometimes, gasp, in person by the boss himself. Or maybe just his secretary.
But when I began drafting Big Inca Versus a New Pony Express Rider, the Internet was somewhere over the horizon. Yes, online communications did exist in what we now consider some crude form. That’s progress for you, I suppose.
Still, in developing the story, I wanted some kind of encrypted exchange between the distant handler and young Bill in the field, and that led to the technical arrangement described in the novel.
Thus the events could be disclosed in a series of memos covering a three-year period. It’s almost like playing cards, one at a time.
To tap into their exchange, just click here.
As the sign proclaims, built without mortar … nearly two centuries ago.
Jnana's Red Barn 