Officially, Eastport sits on Moose Island, though I have yet to see one here.
This time of year, though, it’s covered with flowering lupine, gloriously so. You’d never imagine the kind of winter we’d had.
Lupine island
Tag: Smiles
Don’t overlook Baltimore
There are reasons it’s also known as Charm City. Or, as they say of neighboring D.C., it has Northern charm combined with Southern inefficiency. By the way, don’t blame me for that perspective.
- Baseball great Babe Ruth was born here (1895) and poet Edgar Allan Poe died a drunk on its streets (1849).
- Speaking of baseball, the Camden Yard ballpark spurred the return of smaller professional arenas to central cities across the continent. Now, if the Birds could only fly higher than the Yankees or Red Sox in their division. They really are doomed in that association.
- Speaking of birds, the Baltimore Oriole got its name because its colors resembled those of the coat of arms of Maryland founder Lord Calvert. I have no idea about their religion, but he was an advocate of religious liberty.
- The port was second only to Ellis Island in the number of immigrant arrivals in the 19th century. And while the city sits below the Mason-Dixon line and has a Southern outlook, it also has a strong German presence and Northern connection strengthened by the Baltimore & Ohio train tracks.
- With his profits from those rails, Quaker Johns Hopkins founded the nation’s first research university in 1876. Today it and its related hospital and institutions are the state’s largest employer.
- The metro area is also home to McCormick spices. You can smell it in the humid spring air.
- The National Aquarium crowns the redevelopment of the Inner Harbor as a popular destination. The waterfront is also graced by the tall-masted USS Constellation of Civil War glory.
- American Methodism was founded in 1784 at the site of today’s Lovely Lane church. And a 1789 conference at Old Otterbein Church led to the formation of the United Brethren denomination of German-Americans (it merged in 1968 with the Methodists, giving them the “United” in today’s name). Also in 1789, the nation’s first Roman Catholic archdiocese was founded in the city; its cathedral was finished in 1821. It even produced a saint, I believe.
- A flag waving over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 inspired Francis Scott Key to write the lyrics to the National Anthem, the one that was much in the air yesterday, but the music’s from a much older British drinking song. How ironic, especially since it challenges even the most professional singers.
- The city doesn’t show up in my fiction, despite my living in the inner city’s Bolton Hill and suburban Owings Mills for three years. Even if the place is so hot and humid you have to turn on your air conditioner on the same day you turn off your furnace. Or, as they say of neighboring Worshington, it’s built over a swamp you know.
When our small city turns into a four-day party
Though Eastport was settled relatively late – that is, toward the end of the Revolutionary War – it was instilled with a Colonial flavor by prominent early residents who were resolute veterans.
A continuing spirit of Tea Party and Minutemen makes Independence Day in New England feel different than those elsewhere. It’s not just the place of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World. It’s the region where thickheaded Yankees have always doodled.
Quite simply, history is palpably alive everywhere across New England.
Boston, of course, is the epicenter, but across the six most northeasterly states, local observations uphold distinctive traditions. Think of musketeers firing a round ever so often along the town parade route, along with fifes and drums.
As an independently enterprising oceanside village, Eastport soon had a reputation as a hive of privateering – that is, legalized piracy – and not-so-legal smuggling. That independent streak gets its own attention in the city’s annual Pirate Festival a week after Labor Day.
Unlike much of America, the city had frontline experience of the War of 1812. Fort Sullivan atop the bluffs surrendered to the British Navy in 1814, and Eastport then remained under the royal thumb until 1818.
Two years after its reunification with the United States, Maine became liberated from Massachusetts for the first time since 1653 and began to breathe into its own unique character.
For its part, Eastport rocketed as a center of shipping, shipbuilding, fishing, and sardine canning before the big decline of the 1900s set in.
Today, the tiny city’s locals remember a vibrant past and close-knit community, one that spanned the shorelines on both the American and Canadian sides of the watery border.
Is a renaissance on the horizon? There are signs for hope.
All of these strands infuse the holiday here.
The national holiday also marks the opening of New England’s short summer season. After a cold, dark, long winter, Eastport’s small year-’round populace can actually come out into the open air for long times together. The ocean and lakes are finally warming, to the extent that they do, and that attracts vacationers to join in.
After months when only a stray New Hampshire or Massachusetts auto plate is seen around here, I’ve now seen those of every state but Alabama, Hawaii, and North Dakota (not all at the same time), some seeming rather exotic.
And the Fourth includes the city’s Old Home Week, with high school reunions and the return of many summer residents.
A lot happens over a four-day span. There’s a doll carriage and wagon parade. A torchlight parade. Car shows, bike races, water games, pet show, rubber ducky race, festive all-you-can-eat blueberry pancake breakfast, free outdoor movie, contests, live music, and a street dance, all with a small-town flavor.
A traditional visit by a large U.S. Navy vessel failed to materialize, a consequence of being on Ukraine-related alert. Three different ships had expressed interest in landing at the Breakwater before the turn in world events.
While fireworks were displayed off over the harbor on the Fourth, America’s Independence Day (the beautifully designed and executed big show fired from the town’s Fish Pier was followed by a joyously rowdy encore from a diner’s smaller private pier), the companion July 1 presentation for Canada Day, in honor of our neighbors in New Brunswick, was still a victim of Covid cutbacks. Some residents, though, could view shows happening on Deer Island across the water.
Seems ever so fitting to shoot the works twice, considering Eastport’s dual connections.
it really does feel like a party’s come to town.
How do you celebrate the Fourth?
Kinisi 112
kitchen
laboratory
garden
It may be a stool but it’s not for sitting
Top zoos in North America
Yeah, yeah, I know the concerns about holding animals in captivity. But where else are kids going to learn about exotic fellow creatures? TV? They can’t smell them there. The circus? Few of us even live on farms anymore, and those dogs I see walked up and down the street are hardly exemplary of the animal kingdom. Frankly, they’re more spoiled than most children.
But I digress. Out of view, the best zoos are also places of serious research and attempts to keep gene pools alive.
Here are some of the best in North America:
- San Diego. It pioneered the open-air, cageless exhibits, for one thing, and is in a beautiful park, for another. So I’ve heard.
- St. Louis. More than 600 species on 90 acres, and you can get around via a mini-railroad.
- Omaha. Some of us remember it from a television series.
- Cincinnati. Includes a botanical garden, and for years it was also home to the summer opera, the nation’s second-oldest. Now that was an interesting mix.
- Bronx. It was the first with a zoo animal hospital and full-time veterinarian staff.
- Toronto. Features seven distinct zoogeographic regions – animals and relevant plants and climate displayed together.
- Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. One of the most diverse, and admission is free.
- Los Angeles. Founded in 1966, it’s one of the newer zoos in America and has zoomed in status.
- Columbus. Includes a notable aquarium, a manatee rescue and rehabilitation program, and Polar Frontier.
- Philadelphia. Also noted for its success with hard-to-breed-in-captivity species.
Honorable mentions to Miami, Fort Worth, Seattle, Brookfield and Lincoln Park in Chicago, Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, Houston, and Denver.
Kinisi 111
a place of walking sticks or canes
more than UFOs
Our new universal catchword
Sardines!
Or even:
Sardines?
Memorable hikes in my life
One of the blessings and saving graces of my youth was being a member of a rogue Boy Scout troop that included a big hike one weekend of each month and primitive camping on another. The two together introduced me to many essentials of the natural world and real life.
One consequence is that hiking has been a big delight in my life ever since, despite a 20-year gap at one point and the reality that my days of being able to hike a 25-mile stretch are long gone.
Here are a few memories I treasure.
- My first backpacking experience, from Clifton above Yellow Springs to Belmont in Dayton, Ohio. You couldn’t do that now, not with all the suburban sprawl and the ban on trekking along railroad lines post-9/11.
- The week we spent on the Appalachian Trail, ending at Roan High Knob in North Carolina/Tennessee when the rhododendron were in blossom. I had never seen them before. I was 12, with a 60-pound backpack. Funny, though, I haven’t backpacked since.
- A brace of Scouting trails we hiked in neighboring Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, earning a medal and sometimes a new scarf as a result. These included the Daniel Boone country around Lexington, the Lincoln country, even getting hopelessly lost in Brown County because some crucial trail markers had been shot up beyond recognition. Later, when I lived nearby, I realized the big lake now sat atop a road that had been paved with crushed geodes. Now that I’m thinking of it, in my return to the scene, I had a fine late-winter stroll through the same woods.
- Mount Washington, New Hampshire, ’74, introducing me to the amazing flowers of alpine terrain.
- Mount Rainier, Washington, multiple times from ’76-‘80. Though I never attempted the summit, I did make it up the permanent snowfields to Camp Muir twice. And the alpine terrain continued to dazzle me.
- Mount Stuart in the Enchanted Lakes wilderness area, Washington state. It was an early autumn outing. Again, I didn’t tackle the summit, though I was acquainted with the man who had been the first to make it to the top. The crisp late afternoon air abounded in cosmic rays.
- Mount Lafayette, New Hampshire, late ‘80s. Another mountain that reaches above the tree line.
- Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire, a decade ago. A more difficult climb than its altitude would suggest. But there are reasons the Indigenous people considered it sacred, even before the lovers’ leap story.
- Quoddy Head, Maine, three years ago. The day was foggy and wet, adding to the drama as we moved on the bluffs atop restless Fundy Bay water. The open peat bog and boardwalk added to the wonder. It was the first time since my initial encounter with Rainier that I’d felt so amazed by nature. It’s what convinced me to move to Eastport.
- Bold Coast, Lubec and Cutler, Maine, the past two years. Forget Acadia National Park. This is unspoiled and uncrowded. And for me, it’s now part of home.
Oh, gee, how can I not mention that crazy hike up the desert slope of the Yakima Canyon, Washington state, where I was among those to first to see the return of the bald eagle to the valley after a quarter century or more? I was looking down on an incredible wingspan and didn’t even know its species until later. It was still winter, ’77, and, because of the rattlesnakes, I wouldn’t have ventured into the landscape otherwise. It shows up in my novel Nearly Canaan.
