Playing tourist

Our very dear friend, the Rev. Dr. D, came to see us for a few days.

This gentleman was the chaplain at my college way back in the day, and hired me as the chapel organist when I was a sophomore.

Then he retired and moved to Oregon.  But he came back to Pennsylvania to perform our wedding.

Then he moved back to Pennsylvania.

We've kept in touch.  He loves Maine and had been wanting to come back for a while, and we were one stop on his whirlwind summer vacation.

In spite of breaking his leg last October and being almost 80, he ran me more or less ragged.


Here's what we did over the course of two days:

Cooked a mess of lobsters, steamers, mussels and corn, and made an unholy and thoroughly satisfying mess of the kitchen.

Got ice cream at Dorman's and seafood at the Rockland Cafe.

(Not in that order.)

Went up the Penobscot Narrows Observatory and all over Fort Knox.

Visited the Penobscot Marine Museum.

Walked around Camden and drove up Mt. Batty.

Had a picnic lunch at Marshall Point.

Poked around the Olson House.

(I can completely understand how someone could get hung up on this place and spend a lifetime painting it.)

















Met up with Thing One on the schooner American Eagle.

Went sailing.


Visited my grandmother.


Took about a bazillion pictures.


Revisited old memories and made new ones.


Had a blast.

Recipe: Winter Harbor Mussels & Pasta

We spent last Saturday night with friends in Winter Harbor, on the east side of Vinalhaven.  It's a narrow channel which the more adventurous sailor can pick his way up, threading around sand bars and outcroppings of ledge.

I am not an adventurous sailor.  Every time we go to Winter Harbor, I pour myself a glass of wine, lie down with a cold cloth over my eyes, and wait until I hear the anchor drop or the keel scrape bottom.  Whichever comes first.

It's worth the aggravation of getting there, though.  The scenery is amazing, and it's as good as landlocked, so a very sheltered anchorage.  There are granite cliffs to climb and old quarries to explore.  Bald eagles and osprey soar overhead.  The water is lovely, warm (by North Atlantic standards) and a translucent green.  And best of all, those sandbars at the tide line are loaded with mussels.

We gathered a mess of them and brought them home with us Sunday, cleaned them well and made pasta for dinner.

Winter Harbor Mussels & Pasta

3 lbs. small mussels (more or less), debearded, scraped, scrubbed, soaked and rinsed (or whatever it takes to clean them up)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1/4 cup minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 28-oz cans whole Italian tomatoes, undrained
1 cup vermouth
1/4 cup each chopped fresh parsley and basil
Salt and pepper
1 lb. linguini or spaghetti, cooked & drained

Heat the olive oil in a large pot.  Saute the onion and garlic until the onion is tender.  Stir in red pepper, tomatoes (with juices) and vermouth; bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until the liquid is reduced by 1/4 to 1/3.  As it cooks, use a spoon or potato masher to crush the tomatoes.

Add the mussels; cover and simmer 5-7 minutes, until the mussels open.  Discard any that remain closed.  Stir in parsley and basil and season with salt and pepper.

Serve in bowls over hot cooked pasta, with plenty of bread for sopping.

Serves 4 generously.

Scenes from a weekend sailing trip

Carver Cove, Vinalhaven.  I want that house.

Little Hen Island?  Big Hen Island?  Some island.  Vinalhaven-ish.

Some island, probably called Hen.

Starboard Rock, Winter Harbor, Vinalhaven

The Monument, Fiddler's Ledge, North Haven

And then there were none

Towards the end of Herman's illness, and particularly after we had him put down, Max went berserk.

He started using the dining room carpet as a litterbox.

He was uncharacteristically and violently affectionate.

He figured out how to open the sliding screen door.

And we haven't seen him since.

Going from two cats to zero cats in a week is very disorienting.

And heartbreaking.

Herman, remembered

I had to have Herman put down last week.

He came to us in 1998, a half-starved stray who had taken up lodging at the feed store, with his brilliant green eyes and stubby tail and bones jutting out where bones shouldn't be.  I brought him home and from the minute he took up residence, he radiated gratitude.

I'm not anthropomorphising this.  He was visibly, palpably content to be with us, and he was always around, always in the middle of everything..

Leaping up the stairs first thing in the morning, when Thing Two's feet hit the deck, for a spot of play and cuddles.  Greeting us at the door when we came home each day.  Underfoot in the kitchen.  Tucked in front of the fire.  Sitting patiently by my chair at dinner every evening, waiting until I finished and pushed back so he could jump in my lap.  Perched on the back of the recliner.  On my bed every night, always keeping to the highest spot - my hip, or butt, or chest, or, if it was a really cold night, up around my neck.

He was endlessly playful.  Kittenish.  A decent mouser when he could be bothered.  Very talkative; a cat you could dialogue with.

He had periodic respiratory infections that would slow him down a bit, but he always bounced back.  Until this time.  Something else was going on, and despite treatment, he declined very quickly.  He stopped eating.  He got scrawny again.  And weak.  It was his time.  I stayed with him while the vet gave him the shot.


Days later, I still feel like I've been punched in the gut.  I play the whole sequence of events out in my head in the middle of the night.

He was our buddy, and his absence leaves a pretty big hole in this household.

2012 Great Schooner Race

Thing One called Thursday night.

The fleet was gathering and anchoring off the breakwater in Rockland Harbor, in preparation for Friday's Great Schooner Race.

It was a beautiful night.  

He asked us to come out.

(When your tall, confident, independent 15-year-old who has only been gone for four days calls and wants to see you, well, your heart lifts a little.)

So we grabbed Chinese takeout and Wilson the Agoraphobic Goldendoodle, tootled across the harbor, dropped the hook and enjoyed dinner and the view.

Thing One rowed over after the small boat races.

While he ate our leftovers, he filled us in on his adventures (which include going aloft, twice, untethered, while underway).

Snatches of sea shanties in three-part harmony drifted over from the Stephen Taber and each schooner fired off its cannon.

(Add cannons to Wilson's list of phobias.)

Friday morning was a beauty, too.  The schooners jostled for position by the starting line, off the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater...

...then spread out across the bay as they caught the wind.

The Schooner American Eagle making Owls Head

One can only imagine what it must have looked like a hundred years ago, when Rockland was a hub of shipbuilding and lime transport and the harbor was crowded with vessels like these, and much larger than these.

We're hanging on to a bit of history here.

Just being kids (2012 edition)

The gang got together here last weekend.

Looking back at the pictures of them from just a year ago, the mind boggles at how much they've grown.

Thing One's friend M, back from his first year at MSSM, has really gelled as a person, it seems; another friend, T, is headed there in the fall to finish out the rest of his high school career.

They're all physically much bigger than I am.

They all have jobs.

But get them all together on a beastly hot day and they play Frisbee and soccer and capture the flag (with the sprinkler running at midfield) and have a campfire with S'mores and swing on the swings and go swimming in the lake with [most of] their clothes on and eat a shocking amount of food.

Monday morning we deposited Thing One on the schooner and we'll see him probably one night a week between now and mid-August.

Dammit.

Weirdo

Who does this?

Three things I love about where I work

1.  I can wear jeans every day

2.  I can swear a lot

3.  The plastic poop war