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!

Heading Home

Once upon a time, I lived here in California, near Monterey. It still feels like home in many ways; I have great and loving friends, work to do, and I love the landscape, weather and flowers. But my 'people' are in New England for the most part, and it is time to go home - though it is still freezing at night, in East Boothbay.

When the father of my children decided many years ago to pursue careers which located him, and then us, outside of New England, I understood what a grand adventure life might be. I thought it would be good for my 3 boys to see and participate in a larger world, and that it would be exciting for me. It was all of that and more. We travelled the world; the boys were educated as well as is possible these days. I started and then stopped more projects than most people ever get to even begin, and for the most part, I loved it.

But when the marriage fell apart, I was caught in Paris, France, and had few resources with which to deal. I have never felt more isolated, and trapped. I knew I had to get home, and for me, that has always been Maine. It took me 3 years - 6 months in Paris, two and a half years

in Pacific Grove, California, and now I'm finally living back home in Maine. It feels good even though spring never comes soon enough, and it feels even better when I can get to California again each winter.

Home has been a lot of places for me: Orono, Maine, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Montpelier and then Middlesex, Vermont, Arlington, Virginia, Marina, California, Paris, France, Pacific Grove,

California, and now East Boothbay, Maine. I am a little bit urban, and a lot country. I loved all those places for very different reasons. I may get too old and decrepit to stay in my current house in Maine, and have to move near some family - a very nice concept I think. But Maine will forever be my geographic anchor, and I'm quite happy to be heading home again - even if I have to leave California.

Tsunami!

It was 4:20 in the morning when friends called from Cambridge to let me know, here in California, that I was about to experience a tsunami. It wasn't, however, until 5:50am that I got the first of two reverse 911 calls, saying that there was a tsunami coming and if I was in the zone, I should go immediately to higher ground. I'm not in the zone, but the second call was more relevant: at 7:15, a second reverse 911 call came that said that the State had decided to close all the beaches in Monterey County, and that we should not try to access the shoreline at all.

Perspectives on tsunamis here on the West Coast are considerably different than on the East Coast. I do not ever remember, in all my months and years on the East Coast ever being told I was in a tsunami zone, or ever seeing a sign such as I used to see in Pacific Grove, that I was then in a tsunami zone. But the threat is real here, and is ever present. The same kind of subduction zone that caused the earthquake in Japan, exists off the northern coast of California, Oregon and Washington. It is a not-so-theoretical possibility that something like what happened in Japan, could happen here. Especially as we consider the "Ring of Fire". With one devastating earthquake in New Zealand in February, another in Japan in March, where might the next one be?

News organizations out here are quite specific now, that they are letting us know what's happening so that we may be prepared. But they also say, quite specifically, that they are not trying to "scare" us. What? What is this news if not scary, that the Japanese still do not have control of the 3 reactors in Fukushima? Authorities are saying that after a meltdown, it will take 10-14 days for radiation to reach the West Coast, and by then it will have dissipated in the wind

to a level that will be tolerable. Really. It brings all those things to mind, like well, I've lived a good life. If God wants me now, he will have me. There's not a great deal I can do about things. and Que sera, sera.

The situation has caused some conversation about the difference in people's behaviour on the East and West Coasts. It has been generally conceded out here, that people in the East are better at knowing their neighbors on an ongoing basis, than people on the west coast. But that when a big one happens, people on the west coast are better prepared. This shows up in interesting ways in the budgets of non-profits and governmental agencies. Back East, we really worked hard on the school boards, United way agencies, and other boards that I have experienced, to balance the budgets fairly precisely each year. Here on the West coast, those same sort of agencies always have a "reserve" of 3-6 months, left in their accounts, or generally set aside for just such things as tsunamis.

I think it is in the way of the weather in both places. The seasons back East demand that people be always at a relatively low level of preparedness, whether it be for hurricanes or blizzards or torrential rains. Out here, the weather is usually not the problem. Devastating earthquakes, tsunamis and radiation from far away places are the problem - less frequent, but more disruptive. So we people adapt to our situations, and organize ourselves accordingly. Let's hope those reserves are not necessary at least while I'm still in California!

Being Away

The advantage of being away for March, from Maine to California, is that you get to witness spring twice. Here at the entrance to my tiny cottage, the Japanese maple is leafing out right by the door. Not that I wouldn't like to see the 2 1/2 feet of snow that my granddaughters just got in Vermont, but I'd really rather see the leaves coming out and the orchids blooming - at least for now.

The other advantage is that time slows down. There are fewer things to do out here - no spring cleaning to be done, no snow to shovel, no Boards and committees to attend. I find my own agenda each day, and somehow I get more done. Life is simpler, and for me, that helps sort out what's important versus what is simply time-filling activity.

For instance, I've been reading poetry this week. When I first arrived, I bought Barbara Kingsolver's book, 'Lacuna,' and read it and really enjoyed it. Then I found a first edition of Jack London's 'Valley of the Moon' for $5.00 in a little shop in Bodega Bay, and read that. Sonoma is the Modoc (Native) name for Valley of the Moon, and I am always pleased to know the meaning of the names of places I love. Then I rediscovered Willa Cather's 'Death Comes for the Archbishop.' and read that. Now, I'm reconnoitering a collection of Robinson Jeffers' poetry.

Jeffers' house and tower are about 8 blocks from my cottage. They are right on the edge of Carmel Point and overlook the Bay. He lived and wrote here in the first half of the 20th century, and his works reflect the dark history of that era. I'm finding they resound at the beginning of this century, too. He likens the cities crowding along the coast of California to a purse seine gathering in sardines, flashing in the light as they leap for freedom and are restrained: "...we have built the great cities; now there is no escape."

But rarely is all lost in his work. There are glimmers of how to behave justly, act kindly. I found one line this morning, in a poem called "The Great Sunset." The last line of the poem, in which he turns from the "glowing west" to the "cold twilight," he says, "To be truth-bound, the neutral detested by all the dreaming factions, is my errand here." I can think of no better description of how a life should be lived, than to seek truth, to balance judgement, and act compassionately. A great thing to be reminded of, when we have time to slow down, and read poetry.

getting away

After all the snow we had in East Boothbay, perfect for X-C skiing and snowshoeing even on West Harbor Lake, - it was time for me to "get away." So I've come back to California, to my part of California anyway, for a month. I get to rent a place from friends in Carmel, a cozy cottage with a gas fireplace for when it rains, which it is doing right now. It is even supposed to snow here tonight. Oh, well. It won't last long, and it does turn the hills electric green. In Vermont, we called this kind of snow, "Poor Man's Manure."

The news from East Boothbay, though, is not so good. A good friend and neighbor has inoperable cancer, and will be returning home from Boston before I get back. She was hoping to read the lessons on Easter Sunday this year. I hope she makes it.

"Getting away" is what we do in Maine in winter. Some go south as "snowbirds;" I like to go West although we have no name for this yet. Even those who stay, and they are a rugged and tough bunch who make a good deal of fun of us who get away, get away to friends' and neighbors' houses more in the winter than in the summer. There is work to be done in the summer, less in winter, and people see more of each other in January than in June.

I do not mean to run away from all my new friends by "getting away," I am instead running back to my old friends, just for a month, to an old life which was fulfilling and happy, too. I work at Point Lobos State Park, doing history walks, and paint with great old friends and artists. I go to an annual scholarship auction at Cal State Monterey Bay. I visit and walk along the beaches here.

It reminds me of old times, happy times, and gives me a larger perspective on my new home in Maine. Hopefully when I get back, the snow will be gone and the forsythia will start blooming. Although I am not counting on it. I was counting on no snow in Carmel and here it is.

Getting Fleeced

There will be no photo here even though it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon on January 9th. I had been promised, by mailed invitation and 2 follow-up phone calls, two tickets to Orlando, Florida, or maybe an SUV, all for just showing up at a timeshare presentation. So off I went to the Tradewinds Motel in Rockland at precisely 1:45 pm. I was there on time and in place, and I wish I hadn't been.

I was ushered into a large room where a woman came and began speaking with me about travel plans, showed me the timeshare space in the Motel, and talked about divorce, a subject about which I am still not entirely rational. After agreeing to take what I thought was information about their offer, and signing many pieces of paper, I left. I had no tickets to Orlando, nor a car.

ON getting home, I put the packet of papers on the pile with the tax stuff and the refinancing material from my other mortgage. It was a large pile, not entirely well-organized. I then went off to a ski weekend in New Hampshire with some women friends, came home, shovelled snow, and then went off to Boston to see friends. On Sunday, January 23, I was going through the pile of papers, and found the Tradewinds stuff. Oops.

I started going through the papers to see what it was all about, found a paper that said, ' sign here if you don't want us to resell your personal information.' I decided that I really did need to look at the stuff if they had a 'do not sell form', and started looking through it for something that looked like a description that I could understand. I found one form with a Notice To The Purchaser at the bottom. It said,
" Buyer's right to cancel: You may cancel this contract within ten calendar days following the date of execution of this contract or the receipt of the public offering statement of Tradewinds on the Bay Vacation Club, whichever is later."

I rustled through all the papers and found no "Public Offering Statement," and thought I was home free. I wrote out a letter asking to cancel the contract on the basis of not having found a Public Offering Statement, and packed up all the paperwork I could find, and shipped it back to Tradwinds. They received it on January 26th.

On January 27th, I got a call from Stephen Cobb at Tradewinds. He tried to talk me out of rescinding the contract, but I wouldn't budge. He made a phone appointment with me for 10am the following morning, with Joseph Hart(?), who was not so amenable. He accused me of lying, of being foolish, and of looking really stupid in a court of law. He was yelling by the time I gave up and asked him what to do to get rid of the property. He sent me to a man called Edward Magee at Resort Solutions in Williamsburg, Virginia. Edward offered to sell my property for a $199 fee and no closing costs. I said I had to think about it. By then, I was completely confused about what I had done, or not done, and very confused about what to do next.

I went to the Consumer Protection site on the web and found Maine's consumer mediation site. I filled out forms; they returned with an email asking for more information, and I responded with what I had. I still am confused, but now am quite angry. When I looked at my credit card statement today, I discovered that not only had they taken their money from my credit card on January 20th, but this Sunday, on January 30, they had again tried to get my deposit from my credit card, and then tried to rescind that transaction.

I remain confused as I still don't have any record of what I signed, having sent all the paperwork back to them. Nor do I know what may or may not happen next. I filed the complaint with the consumer mediation service. We shall see what happens next.