glory days of summer

Though Priscilla looks nothing like this big, there have been several glorious sailing days of late - including today. Summer so far has been a total delight, except for the spider mites on my nasturtiums. But there has to be at least one or two problems or we humans lose our touch at solving problems.

I can't think why DC is having such trouble putting aside election issues when so much is at stake economically. Do they not realize how dangerous is the game they are playing??? You cannot be a leader of this country and be rigid. Presidents and Members of Congress and the Senate all represent All of us people, and there must be give and take on both sides.

Have they forgotten when the budget was last balanced? It is within their memories - all of them. It was at the tail end of Bill Clinton's second term - before 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, before George Bush's tax cuts for the rich. The budget was in balance for the first time since World War 2. How is it too much to ask that those tax cuts be rescinded, that we leave two countries on the opposite side of the world, and where we finally accomplished revenge for 9/11.

I see people making less than $100,000, now struggling to hold on to homes, jobs. I rarely see people making over that limit struggling. It cannot be that rescinding those tax cuts will hurt many people, and it would provide some economic justice! As Nancy Reagan said the opposite way: "Just do it," DC!

Summer guests and the weather

Last weekend I had the second batch of company this summer. As are so many of my friends this year, they came to celebrate a 65th birthday! They were also sailors hoping to get a ride on Priscilla, my 30' sloop. As it does from time to time, the weather did not cooperate. In fact, it was really miserable and cold, in the 50's and raining hard. So instead of sailing about in balmy breezes, we ate oysters at Lobsterman's Wharf, drank Cold River vodka - a new Maine vodka made with Maine potatoes, and lobsters cooked right at home.

On Sunday morning, though, we had to buy newspapers at the General Store - along with their delicious muffins and breakfast pizza! So home came the Boston Globe, the New York Times plus the Portland Sunday Telegram - enough newspapers to keep all 5 of us college-educated people entertained for a morning. I went straight for the NYT magazine, and managed to get it first. I was after the Letters to the Editor, and I found what I was looking for.

Two weeks ago, the NYT magazine had published a story on the Erie Canal in their Voyages issue. The story was written by a woman whose friend had made a small, flatbottomed dinghy which the two of them intended to paddle(????) along the Erie Canal. The photo was unforgettably pathetic. So I wrote a letter complaining, explaining that 20 years ago, my 11 year old son and ex-husband, and another family with two boys spent 10 days on two 20' motor boats going down Lake Champlain,

through the Champlain Canal which links the Lake to the Hudson River,

down the Hudson River to Troy, NY,

up the "Mohawk Stairs", locks which take you from the River up to the Erie Canal,

out the Erie Canal which is over 400 miles long (not some dinghy trip!),

through Lake Oneida,

up the Oswego Canal to Lake Ontario,

across that Lake and down through the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River,

through the St. Lawrence Seaway into Montreal,

on down the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Richelieu River which drains Lake Champlain, and back up the River to home. It was 700 fabulous miles of modest excitement.

The Canals of the early 19th century are still for the most part, viable, especially in Canada, and are great fun to travel on. Who knew that you could circumnavigate the Adirondacks? These remnants of long ago travel deserved more than a pathetic attempt at boating on a 5 mile stretch of the 400 plus miles of the Erie. So I wrote my letter of complaint, and the NYT edited it, and published it, which of course, pleased me immensely. I hope it challenges more travel on the old canals.

Then George and Fred went after the crossword puzzle and finished it on their way home!

Windjammers Day 2

Rain held off until late in the evening of Day 2 of Windjammers in Boothbay, so the parade with the Land Trust float seen here, stayed together and did not fall apart. For the past two weeks, Dick Palmer, Debbie Moorefield and myself worked to build this float, and were we ever proud!

Called "Take a Hike", we entered it in the Green category using all recycled or "green" materials, including foam from the YMCA Pool Building project (the osprey, and the fish), foam from dock building (the rocks), and an old dinghy filled with used lobster traps, a kiosk from one of the Land Trusts' sites, etc. We did buy stuffed baby osprey just for the pleasure of having them and now we each have recycled them into our homes. The nest we built with driftwood and sticks from Debbie's collection, tying it together with old lobster line.

It's always a bit anticlimatic after such an effort, but the parade was one of the biggest I've ever been in, and as such was great fun - lots of music and small Shriner cars zooming around, etc. No politicians were in this one which was just as well. That would have reminded me too powerfully of all the parades I used to do with my boys and their father. But it was fun, even knowing that the end of the parade is always every "man" for themselves, and getting home is a trick to get around the rest of the parade.

Summer has officially begun now, and guests are arriving now. I can't wait!

windjammers day one

They came this year on a brisk NW wind; between 12 and 3pm they passed Damariscove and Fisherman's Islands, and sailed on in to Linekin Bay. They were having just a lot of fun, it was clear. Though I've had to use a photo from last year - this year I was too busy sailing myself -, this photo gives you an idea of what they look like.

In the meantime, Priscilla got all decked out with flags borrowed from the Marina (thanks, Dan), and we sailed a bit and motored a bit over to the Harbor to be in the Antique Boat Parade. Priscilla was launched in 1965, so we were the 5th or 6th boat, depending on whether or not you counted the lobster boat that horned its way in front of us in the parade. It was a nice clean boat so I didn't mind, but he was not Us. And there were about 15 legit boats in the parade - lots of beautiful launches, and two sailboats actually sailing!!!!

For a time I thought the two Boothbay Harbor One Designs were just harassing the parade, but then discovered that one of them had two friends on her and she was an official part of the parade. I was a bit chagrinned as I had been swearing (silently) at them throughout, but I am extremely proud of them now, to know that they actually sailed all the way through the parade!

Hooray for you, Patty Berger and Nancy Adams!

Afterwards, we had a gorgeous sail to Fisherman's Passage when the wind died and we motored the rest of the way home. It was idyllic. Summer has begun!

May vanished

May vanished into grayness, even as the traps and buoys waited on the shore in Lobster Cove. My birthday is in May, and I can remember planning and hoping as a young girl, that I could have an outdoor birthday party at someplace like Sand Beach in Acadia Nat'l Park. But it never happened when I was a child and it certainly didn't happen again this year. Not until the last day of May did we see spring time temperatures, even as approaching thunderstorms threatened to cool us off again.

But today is another month, and hopefully another start to spring and summer. Windjammer Days are coming, and that means all sorts of things to do. Priscilla will go in the Antique Boat Parade again this year, with Jack and Holly and others as crew. Then on Wednesday, the Land Trust will sponsor a boatbuilding tent for kids, and a float in the parade which will be pretty special. We're building an osprey nest on a boat trailer, and will fill it with stuffed baby ospreys. A child will wear an osprey costume and fly around the float - catching fish???? or distributing them, I'm not sure yet.

Traps and buoys are finally beginning to accumulate in the River, though Priscilla is hardly ready for a cruise yet. Other boats are, and I went for my first row yesterday- just out around the shipyards, but it was a lovely feeling to be floating and moving around on the water again. If only the temperature will remain above 60, I will be happy to get going on the water.

The garden remains in a bit of limbo, growing like mad, but because it's been so chill, it has been discouraging to try and weed. So I've mulched the tomatoes and lettuces, peas and cucumbers, but not the corn, and I don't have straw yet for the asparagus. Still, the first asparagus was really tasty, and the rhubarb terrific. Perhaps this weekend it'll warm up again so that people will want to weed!

The General Store opened in the middle of May, and all the town is glad to have them back. Lobsterman's Wharf is open now, too, usurping the Post Office as the place to be.

Most of us are dying to know how the new Bigelow Lab is coming along, but a big gate keeps us locals away for the moment - except if you know where the back trail is, or if you can get out on the water. But for the moment, we leave them alone. Windjammer Days are coming, and there's a lot to do.

spring is sprung

Easter brought spring to East Boothbay. Suddenly the thermometer has broken the 60 degree mark, much to everyone's relief. People are beginning to flood the roads into town; Sugarloaf-stickered cars are beginning to reappear; lobster boats are filling up with traps; yards are emptying of traps and buoys; daffodils are popping up.

My church was filled to the brim today. My neighbor down the road, with mesothelioma, read the lesson - a real victory for her, but I didn't make it to the fog-rise service at 5:30am. The sun did not come out until about 9, and I decided to wait for the sun.

I dug up the last of the wintered-over parsnips and carrots, fed the rhododendrons, and began to make garden to-do lists. I've been varnishing the oars to the dinghy lately, but that project's about done. Things are gearing up for "the season," like the lobster boats. I guess I'd better, too.

A Terrible Fuss

I wish I could post a photo here, of the mural that has been creating a terrible fuss here in Maine over the past two weeks. But I can't seem to get one off the newspapers or online media and onto my blog, so we'll have to do without. The gist of the matter is this though: A few years ago, Judy Taylor of Tremont created a mural in 11 panels depicting a history of the labor movement in Maine. It hung in the State Labor Department these past few years with nary a protest or really much comment.

However, a few weeks ago, our Governor allegedly got an anonymous letter complaining that the mural was anti-business and should be taken down. So our Governor took it down surreptitiously over a weekend without any warning or hearing. It has been in hiding ever since.

It has been my experience with murals that once one has been removed from sight, they fall largely into the domain of maintenance or security personnel. Some of them know how to care for a work of art; many do not. Once, when a large and valuable mural was in the process of being stolen from Stilwell Hall on the old Fort Ord in Marina, CA, the MP's who chased off the thieves, took the mural and stuffed it into a janitor's closet in the Police Station, where it remained for the better part of three months. The public assumed that it was being taken care of because the thieves had been chased off.

After about three months, I began to wonder where the mural was. A search was launched with the Commandante of the Fort helping, and lo and behold, the mural was found rolled up and standing in the janitors' closet in an old wooden barracks. Paint had been chipped off and it was in danger of being mildewed. It took nearly $50,000 and six months to restore that mural, which had been painted by Vinegar Joe Stilwell's daughter in a Chinese manner, and was 8' high and 11' long. It hangs now in a lobby at Cal State University Monterey Bay, very near where it hung originally.

Public Art is rarely "high" art. Public mural art usually tells a story; it is a visual narrative that communicates stories with images instead of words. Often, we do not understand what the story is, or how important it has become to us, until it is taken away. Often also, we never get the story back. The WPA murals in Stilwell Hall at Fort Ord were saved with the unlikely cooperation between the US Army and Cal State University. The State of Maine could use some unlikely cooperation now - between Governor Lepage and the rest of us who would like to read the story in Judy Taylor's murals once again. And then, let's move on!