Tag: Smiles

Have you ever been to Acadia National Park?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Maine likes to tout itself as Vacationland, and Acadia National Park is definitely a star attraction. I know people who gush that it’s their favorite place ever. Not that I’d go that far.

Still, let’s consider:

  1. With four million visitors a year, it’s among the 10 most popular national parks. Most of them crowd in during the prime summer months.
  2. The official version has the park being named after Arcadia, a region of Greece that it supposedly resembles. New France, however, referred to eastern Maine as Acadia before being expelled by the English in 1763. In their migration, some of those Acadians became known as Cajuns down in Louisiana. I’m siding with the French here, despite my fondness for Greek culture.
  3. It was the first national park established east of the Mississippi and encompasses 47,000 acres, mostly on Mount Desert Island. Not that there’s any desert, it’s just wild. Additional, less well-known tracts are on Schoodic Peninsula (my favorite) and Isle au Haut as well as smaller islands. And a fourth of the land total is privately owned but under easements and similar arrangements.
  4. With 108 square miles, Mount Desert Island is the biggest island in Maine and the sixth largest in the contiguous United States.
  5. The park has 158 miles of maintained hiking trails spanning mountainous terrain, panoramic views, rocky Atlantic shoreline, mixed forests, and lakes. Former carriage roads are also popular with bicyclists.
  6. There’s a private trolley service for those who’d prefer to view the scenery more than the traffic jam.
  7. Backcountry camping and overnight parking are not permitted, but there are campgrounds and lean-tos for those who plan well ahead.
  8. French explorer Samuel de Champlain gets the creds as the first European. He encountered the place in September 1604 when his boat ran aground on a rock. He applied the name Isles des Monts Deserts, or island of barren mountains, to the bigger scene. Well, some are pure rockface.
  9. In the 1880s, the island became a summer retreat for Rockefellers, Morgans, Fords, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and Astors who built elaborate vacation dwellings they called “cottages.” Many of those were destroyed by a vast wildfire in October 1947.
  10. Its principal gateway is Bar Harbor, a city of 5,000 full-time residents that swells with summer people and their second homes, tourists, and often a big cruise ship or two that add several thousand more people to the crowd. Be warned that parking is at a premium in high summer.

For more adventurous souls, let me suggest exploring two hours to the east, to the Bold Coast, for a less spoiled alternative.

There’s more to the legacy of New Hampshire’s Hiltons

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

While Edward Hilton is hailed as the father of New Hampshire and was early on joined by his older brother William, both drifted away from my history Quaking Dover. Still, some points of interest remain.

Among them:

  1. His son, Edward Hilton Junior, married Anne Dudley, daughter of Puritan minister Samuel Dudley, allying his line with a prominent early New England family in Exeter. I sense there’s much more to this union that is presented.
  2. Edward’s grandson, Colonel Winthrop Hilton, was slain by Natives in 1710 while harvesting mast trees in Epping. He had succeeded Richard Waldron as head of the New Hampshire militia. His other grandfather was Massachusetts governor John Winthrop. So much for high connections.
  3. Winthrop Hilton’s brother Dudley was carried off in the attack and never heard from again.
  4. Edward’s nephew Captain William Hilton mapped an island in South Carolina in 1663, naming the location Hilton Head Island. He also mapped Cape Fear that year. He sailed out of Charlestown on Boston Harbor but acknowledged finishing the maps in the home of Nicholas Shapley in Maine – that is Shapleigh, a major figure in my book. Just look at Billy’s uncle’s second wife.
  5. That is, the elder Edward’s second wife, the widow Katherine Shapleigh Treworgy, who had a daughter marry into the equally prominent Gilman family.
  6. Into the late 1900s, one line continued to live on the farm settled in Newmarket around 1630. In fact, they claimed it was the oldest homestead in the state.
  7. Descendant Daniel Hilton, born in 1794, removed from Newmarket to Meredith, where he had 18 children and left an estate of 80,000 acres by the time of his death in 1867. His ancestry also included Thomas Wiggin, who had brought many of the first wave to settle in Dover after the Hiltons.
  8. Daniel’s son Charles became chief engineer of the New York Central railway, in charge of the building of bridges over the Hudson River and a viaduct in Albany in addition to Grand Central Station and grain elevators in New York City. So much for humble Granite State beginnings. He was also a high-ranking Free Mason.
  9. The Hilton family burial ground along State Route 108 in Newfields, just across the town line from Newmarket, rather thickens the plot.
  10. There’s no connection to Conrad Hilton and his hotel chain.

 

There has to be great music

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

What would you look for in moving to a new community? It’s an interesting mental exercise, even if you’re staying in place.

What we’re seeing when we look at Eastport is the reality of how ephemeral much of what its attraction for us remains. Quite simply, people are a big part of what makes this place so special, and most of the population here skewers toward the gray end of the scale. Who’s in the wings to step up when they move on?

Our young director of Stage East, Mark Macey, for instance, is heading off to London on the theater fellowship. It puts a dent in the scene.

For me, having a Quaker Meeting is a central factor. Ours is small, older, and spread over a wide geographic area. It’s precious while it lasts.

And, as you’ve seen on this blog, natural wonder in the outdoors is important.

Let me add to that music, usually especially in a classical vein. Eastport is especially blessed on that front.

For example, before I had even met John Newell, his influence became a swing factor in my moving to Eastport. Other family members were already on board for relocating, but I was less ready to uproot, no matter the natural wonder of the place. But then, during a visit, I saw a poster for an upcoming Quoddy Voices concert and sensed this was no ordinary community chorus. Its repertoire was much like the one where I was singing in Boston – except that we didn’t yet have a piece in Chinese. Mandarin? (Which our conductor there did speak.) I also appreciate the fact the Down East ensemble is not auditioned and was told, at a small store downtown, that they’d likely really welcome another male voice. (Whew! I can’t imagine auditioning, only the fright.)

Flash ahead to actually living up here.

During the Covid lockdown, I joined the ensemble as it continued to rehearse via Zoom. At least it kept us in shape, and I did see how much fun everyone had together. But how would we sound when the time came?

Here’s a surreptitious shot of John Newell rehearsing Quoddy Voices. We were so grateful the masks came off most of us for the actual concerts.

Quite simply, at our first in-person rehearsal post-Covid, I knew from the first two chords out of our mouths in warmup that this was home. After my first concert with the group, I especially appreciated an aside from another bass-section member, “We’re so happy to have you,” or something to that effect. It’s a much smaller chorus than my previous one, and thus more demanding.

Quoddy Voices is, of course, John’s dream and labor of love. Like my previous directors, he’s meticulous yet patient, a published composer, an excellent keyboardist, a clean conductor, and someone with fine senses of humor and delight who also genuinely cares about his singers and colleagues. (George Emlen and Megan Henderson deserve posts of their own. Note to self.)

How perfect!

But, after ten years at the helm of the chorus, he and his wife are relocating to be closer to family for much of the year.

One thing about singing together is the personal warmth people often develop. The right director can be especially admired, for many good reasons.

John will be missed, of course, and warmly remembered. Many thanks to him for all he’s given to us and the wider community.

If you want to see more of our feelings, visit the Eastport Arts Center’s Facebook site.

We do hope he’ll be back often, perhaps even singing under our next director, someone we know is also a Character in his own right.

Meanwhile, from here to September we have a gap in our Monday night schedules.