A Room with a View

I was in Portland last week for a manufacturing conference, which was held at the Holiday Inn by the Bay.

My room was on the fourth floor and it did, indeed, have lovely (if somewhat distant and fog-shrouded) views of Portland Harbor.

One was somewhat distracted, however, by the view in the foreground of the second-floor roof.

Which was a regular hangout for, and covered with the waste of, those pestilential herring gulls.

A small drama has been playing out in Rockland recently between an old dingbat who insists on feeding gulls, her neighbors, and the city fathers.

Said dingbat doesn't just toss out the odd crumb every now and again.  No.  We're talking cases and cases of bread, daily, and a scrum of hundreds of aggressive, defecating, squawking, extremely large birds, which trash not just the dingbat's yard but the neighbors' yards, while the neighbors are trapped in their houses to avoid the noise and mess.

Cars and window screens end up covered in caustic bird droppings.  Feathers blanket patios.  Small children are carried away bodily.

The city fathers got involved after a series of complaints.  A new ordinance was written.  The intrepid code enforcement officer has been going deep undercover to ensure compliance.  The old lady still believes she is within her rights, so continues to feed the gulls.

Of course after years of daily feedings, the gulls are going to show up in her yard no matter what.  Like they stalk fishing boats knowing that old bait is going to be tossed out.  They've got used to humans making their wretched lives easier.

(Take this guy, for example.  One of many at my Portland aviary which dropped by to nab a drink from the condensation draining off the rooftop HVAC units.)

Now the city is threatening fines of $2,500 per day and the dingbat continues to insist that she has to feed the damn things because - this kills me - she says they don't have anywhere else to go.

To all Rockland herring gulls, if the Camden Street Terrace smorgasbord dries up on you, may I suggest the thriving urban environment (and progressive food scene) 80 miles to the south?

In Memoriam 2.0

A couple of weeks ago we held a memorial service for my great-Uncle Lew.

A man like that needs more than one memorial service, see; this was his third, after one in Florida where he retired and a second in Tennessee where he had his career.  This one was for the benefit of my grandmother, who can no longer travel, and the Maine family who couldn’t make one of the others.

A bit of background, if I may.  Back in the 1940s, as I’ve mentioned here before, my grandmother went one way and my Uncle Lew went another, theologically speaking.  My grandmother and Uncle Lew loved each other deeply, but the two branches of the family have always regarded each other with some suspicion. 

Uncle Lew’s side exists in good-humored trepidation of the morally superior and judgmental Baptists, while my grandmother’s line compresses its collective lips in grim disapproval of the worldliness and wickedness of the faithless.  This mutual wariness was visited upon the second generation and most of the third, and it accompanied my grandmother, Aunt Gerry, and a couple of dozen uncles, aunts and cousins from around the country into the Thomaston Baptist Church for the memorial service. 

The eulogy was interesting because the minister didn’t actually know my Uncle Lew; but knowing my grandmother, naturally he made assumptions about Lew, and thus expelled bushels of warm air about St. Lew living his life for the glory of God and similar twaddle.  I’m sure it gave my grandmother great comfort but the rest of us had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud and/or bean the ordained one with a well-flung hymnal.

The afterparty, however, was at MY house, which is a twaddle-free zone.   We drank, we swore, we laughed, we played Frisbee (aging uncles and younger cousins together), we grumbled about politicians, we ate too much and drank some more.  The Baptists declined the Frisbee game and the wine, endured the rest because they were outnumbered, and tried not to show they were having a pretty darn good time.

(And since my grandmother went home to rest after the service, there was no need to conceal the wine.)

Uncle Lew would have loved it.

Aria

The middle school chorus teacher just had a baby daughter which she named Aria.

I am a mean and horrible person, I know, but the thought of using musical terminology for kids’ names strikes me as gut-bustingly funny.  I mean, if Aria gets a little sibling might it be named Recitative?  Wouldn’t G-Clef be a great name for a hip-hop artist? 

I’m almost sorry I’m done having babies because I would happily endure another infant if it gave me the opportunity to say “This is my daughter Fermata.  Would you like to hold her?”

Honeybees

Today is one of the first really warm, sunny weekend days.  Our usual two pairs of rose-breasted grosbeaks are back.  The chickadees, nuthatches, mourning doves and finches are crowding the feeders.  The ticks and black flies are out in force, but I decided to risk it because my front walk and flower beds have been taken over by crabgrass and dandelions and were long overdue for some attention.

It's been a very long time since I've seen so many honeybees as are out and about.  The dandelions were positively boiling with them.  This is a good sign.

I wonder if they're wild, or if someone nearby has gotten a hive?

They were placid and perfectly content to share their space, even let a nosy human get right up to them with a camera.

I confess, many times I paused and waited for one to finish burrowing in his blossom and shuffle off in search of another.

Then would I heartlessly dig the dandelion out by the root.

There are still plenty to go around.

Bob the Bus Driver

The kids’ school bus driver is named Bob. 

Bob is a retired cop from New York City.  He has some great stories, which he only tells to kids who would appreciate them.

No one f*cks with Bob.  Seriously.   No one acts up on Bob’s bus.  He doesn’t yell.  He is just Bob.

If Bob arrives at your stop in the morning, and you’re not quite there, if you hustle he’ll wait for you.  If not, he’ll leave.  Even if he sees you coming.  If you don’t break at least a trot, he will drive away.

The bus stop at the end of our road is on a busy east-west thoroughfare along a stretch with blind curves coming and going.  Over the years there have been some pretty close calls as people have come barreling along a little too fast, in their 6.30 a.m. fug, and encountered a stopped school bus. 

My personal favorite involved black ice and a loaded dump truck laying about sixty feet of rubber while the car behind the dump truck did a 180.  I wasn’t sure exactly what message Bob conveyed to the truck driver – it was tough to lip-read from across the street, through the bus window and all the smoke – but I was very glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of it. 

Yesterday morning when Bob stopped for the kids, the car following the bus pulled way over onto the shoulder and up alongside the bus, like it was going to pass on the right, before it finally stopped.

Bob actually got off the bus to face down the driver.  I think if I’d been the driver I would have wet my pants.

Bob is awesome.

The kids are in good hands.

The Seventh Subaru

Over the years there have been two Legacy wagons, one ancient Legacy sedan, two Outbacks and most recently a Forester.

Now there's a new Legacy sedan. 

Have these ever come a long way since 1991.

(Is it bad when you walk into the car dealership for only the second time - the first being more than three years ago - and the manager says he remembers "doing battle" with you the last time?)

Anyhoo.

When you and your babies have been in a car that's crunched good and you've suffered no ill effects, and a vehicle has pulled out of more than one icy road scare, you develop some serious brand loyalty. 

And now, for the first time in fifteen years, I own a vehicle that doesn't scream "MOM."

I think I love it.

Eight Things I Love about Living in Maine

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network held its spring fundraiser yesterday.

MPBN's ability to raise $374,000 in one day reminded me how much better Maine does public broadcasting than that little corner of Pennsylvania whence Himself hails and where we lived for a number of years.

And that got me thinking about other things that I prefer about Maine.

I don't mean to diss on that corner of Pennsylvania.  It has lots of stuff going for it:  Hunter's wings, Yuengling lager, rolling hills, and the type of Italian food you only get where a third of the population has a last name ending in a vowel.  (And hey, it's been quite a few years since the Youngstown organized crime spat spilled over the border and a box truck exploded in that restaurant parking lot, so it's all about the food now, right guys?)  People who live there love it.  My brother-in-law would no sooner leave than he would light his hair on fire.  Hell, we can't even get him to visit.

But I'm a Maine girl.  Not to say that Maine doesn't have issues, but I say, perhaps not objectively, that certain things here are superior to Pennsylvania.

Here are my top eight:

1.  Public radio.  Which inspired this post.  It's tough for a regional station in farm and gun country to scrape together enough of the target demographic to make a go; the Erie station would routinely claw its way toward a $75,000 goal over the course of ten days of increasingly strident and panicked pleading.  By comparison, MPBN is a well-oiled statewide machine with a huge audience base.  They rake in a few thousand pledges in one day and call it done for half a year.  Plus the programming is better.

2.  The New York Times.  Here, one can walk into any grocery or convenience store any day of the week and get one.  In Meadville there were only a handful of places that got in half a dozen copies on Sundays and if you weren't there by ten a.m. you were SOL.

3.  Alcohol sales.  There, one has to go to a drive-through distributor for beer and wine coolers, or to a state store for wine and hard liquor.  Here, one can walk into any grocery or convenience store any day of the week and get whatever spirits one's heart desires.  Exception:  Sundays before 9 a.m., our nod to the good old blue laws.  Whatevs.  If you're doing your grocery shopping early on Sunday, just grab a New York Times and relax until the cashier can ring your vodka through.

4.  Paper birches and balsam trees.

5.  Less snow.

6.  Maine's long and dignified political tradition.  Paul LePage (the monomaniacal blowhard who currently occupies the governor's mansion after a fluke of an election resulted in a 38% plurality) aside.  Us:  Margaret Chase Smith, Ed Muskie, Olympia Snowe, Nelson A. Rockefeller.  Them:  Tom Ridge.  And Rick Santorum.  And HE'S positively mainstream compared to Teresa Forcier and her pistol-packing-momma endorsement of Mark from Michigan.  Then there was R. Bud Dwyer - good Lord.  And don't forget the 1995 Washington Post cover story which quoted some of our local business leaders (anonymously, but everyone knew who they were) who thought the rationale behind the Oklahoma City bombing was sound.  We just don't have that shit here.  Thank God.

7.  Halloween.  Seriously.  For starters, in Maine we hold it on October 31 instead of the second Friday after the second full moon after the autumnal equinox or however it's calculated down there so you have to look in the paper every year to find out when to go trick-or-treating.  Plus, up here we're pretty light on Mennonites.  A plague of locusts has nothing on a busload of Anabaptist youths delivered to a neighborhood where people are giving out free candy.

8.  Lobster.  Did you know this is the only state in the union which doesn't have a Red Lobster franchise?

April 3: Kitchen Gadget Appreciation Day

Remember Kitchen Gadget Appreciation Day?  No, probably not...  it hasn't gained a whole lot of traction over the last year...  but today, to celebrate the second annual occurence of this illustrious event, I think it's fitting to select one item from my kitchen to receive the Gadget of the Year Award.

This year I choose the gadget I reach for the most, just about every week.  Here it is:

This is a spoon sold by King Arthur Flour which measures exactly one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of yeast.  When one buys yeast in bulk, it's soooooo much easier to grab this thing and scoop once or twice than to measure out two and a quarter teaspoons.  And at $3.95, it's an affordable indulgence.

Happy Kitchen Gadget Appreciation Day to all! 

Not quite sure where the last fifteen years went

Here are a few of the events from the last week:

1. Thing One took a girl on a date to the Banff Film Festival.  When they got in the car, he opened her door for her.  Where does that come from?  I mean, he sure as hell didn’t learn that from his father.

2. Thing Two discovered that my shoes are too small for her.  This means she’s no longer asking to borrow my favorite black Mary Janes with the 2” French heel.  Like I ever let her wear them anyway.

3. Thing One decided, finally, to part with what he has been affectionately referring to as the “ferret” on his upper lip.  His father got him a Gillette Mach 3 and some shaving cream and provided suitable instruction.  (Shaving, Himself’s got covered.  Chivalry not so much.)

4. Thing Two is learning a Chopin Mazurka.  I’m jealous.  Chopin and I never quite came to terms.

5. Thing One’s schooner captain offered him a summer job.  An actual job.  With wages.  For the whole summer. 

6. Thing Two made banana chocolate chip nut bread.  Just because.  She was home alone and bored.  It was really really good.

                                                                             

For the record, I’m far too young for any of this to be happening. 

I’m still 24.

Just so we’re clear on that.

"There's a WOMAN running this place?"

Rant alert.

Here's the thing about where I work:  almost all of the senior managers are women.  Not just women, but women who are now or have been, for most of their careers, working mothers.

Our plant is something of an anomaly in the giant Swiss company which owns us.  Not simply because of the noticeable dearth of females in leadership positions at other sites and at the top levels of the organization, but because our plant runs really, really, well.

Go figure.

Say what you like about gender equality, and a lot of us are married to men who would self-identify as progressive, even feminist, but the reality is that most working moms also manage the vast majority of the household responsibilities.  This means that even though we have achieved income parity with, and perhaps superiority to, our professionally high-functioning spouses, we are still the ones that leave work early to take the kids to the dentist and come home to help with homework, cook dinner, and scrub the toilets.

We're the ones who know what size jeans and shoes the kids wear and which socks came through the laundry last week without a mate.  We're the ones who know how much money is in the checking account and when the bills are due.  We have the family calendar in our head and we're the ones that schedule our workday around the piano lesson or ski team practice.  We're the ones who go to soccer games.  

We're the ones that plan the meals, grocery shop, and cook dinner every night.  We're the ones that do the Christmas shopping.  We're the ones who wash the clothes and dispense relationship advice and make sure the pets and children are all up to date on their shots.  We're the ones who divvy up the chores and make sure everyone does their bit.

We have our heads in the details.  We can juggle six things at once.  We not only know what needs to be done, we know how to do it... and we know how to delegate.  And we know how to address someone who isn't pulling his or her weight.  There's no ego involved.  We're just doing what we need to do.

This is what makes us able to run a successful business.

We're damned proud of it.

We interviewed a man a few weeks ago - I won't name names, because I don't in this blog, but he is a member of a prominent local family which owns a landscaping company and whose last name starts with F and rhymes with gnarly.

The guy was a knuckle-dragging misogynist.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

He could not get his brain around the fact that women were running the joint.  The rest of us could not get our brains around the concept that in the year of Our Lord two thousand almost twelve, a man would come into a job interview and in all seriousness say, "Let me get this straight - there's a woman running this place?  And a woman in charge of production?"

Women can vote, get advanced degrees, be personally and professionally successful, marry or not, have children or not, even own property in our own name.  But we still aren't president; we still don't earn the same dollar for the same work; and our success is marred by institutionalized paternalism and cultural chauvinism.

For all our gains, true equality has been far too slow in coming, and has even regressed in the past twenty years as we have, as a nation and as a gender, allowed the anti-feminist rhetoric of the Right to infect our values.  We've been lulled into thinking we have it good enough.  We've been brainwashed into believing that the veneer of political correctness - even as we sneer at it - has corrected discrimination when, in fact, it has merely concealed it.

We need to do better.  We need symbolic, meaningful and binding acknowledgement of a social and economic commitment to equality.  We need the ERA.

Mr. Rhymes-With-Gnarly did not get the job.

A somber bit of news

Poking around the web this morning I was startled to see a headline on CNN that Joe Bodolai is dead.

Joe Bodolai and I share an alma mater, and I interviewed him for a profile in the alumni magazine some years ago.  I enjoyed the conversation immensely - it was one that stood out among dozens of similar interviews.  Though the subjects included politicians and artists and professionals of no little renown, at this distance they have lumped together in my mind as one big, successful, famous Allegheny College alumnus who changed the world.

But my conversation with Joe was memorable.  He was charming and hilarious, of course.  He seemed like a good man, one with convictions; at that time he had just returned to the States from Canada, where he had moved as a conscientious objector back in the day.  He spoke at length of his wife and sons, whom he clearly adored.  He was modest about his own achievements.  He had an infectious joie de vivre.  Though he surely forgot the conversation as soon as it was over, by the time we hung up the phone I felt as if I'd made a friend.

And my wonderful editor allowed a direct quote which included the phrase "boob jobs" to remain in the finished article.  Certainly a first for that august publication and something of which I am justifiably proud.

My heart goes out to Joe's family.  Though he wrestled demons, he gave the gift of laughter to so many.  The world is dimmer for the loss of this man.

Things I Have Inherited from my Mother: A Holiday Study in Three Parts

Part 1:  This photograph  of C. Clifton Lufkin (1879 - 1970). 

Uncle Clif built the house my mother lived in and was, at age 17 or so, the subject of this charcoal sketch by his brother, my grandmother's grandfather Will Crie Lufkin.

Part II:  This oak Morris chair which, to put it gently, needs some work.  The manufacturer's label on the back lists patent dates of 1899 and 1900, but mission-style models like this one were made more toward 1910 or so.

I have been hanging on to it because I can't bear to part with family stuff, and this was Uncle Clif's Morris chair which he loved and which my mother kept because she loved it too and always meant to fix it up some day.

Part III:  A small collection of Uncle Clif's clippings which run the gamut from snippets of genealogical information to fragments of correspondence to hand-copied hymn text.  In amongst random bits was this poem:

We have decided to omit the Christmas tree this year;
But we can just as much enjoy the presents and good cheer,
If in our hearts there is content, and on our lips a smile,
As on my Mother's table the Christmas gifts we pile.

There's presents there for Father, and Maude and Eva Jane,
And there's a token of esteem for Frank of Glencove, Maine.
And Clifton comes to get his share, and there's some things for me,
Oh! We should be so happy, as happy as can be.

Poor Mother broke her left arm, eleven weeks ago;
We gave her then a morris chair, and so our cash is low;
But for all that I chance to see upon the table there
Some packages marked with her name, besides the morris chair.

Maude has a smile upon her face as she comes from her work.
She has a present from her boss.  She is a faithful clerk.
Now let us all be thankful for the gifts both large and small,
And wish a Merry Christmas, and happy day to all.

 - W. C. Lufkin

Wow.  The provenance of the Morris chair and so much more.

If my 1910 estimate is correct, Maude, my 37-year-old great-great-grandmother, was apparently putting her commercial college degree to use and working outside the home.  Eva, her daughter, was exactly my son's age.

Clif and Will's mother Sarah, wife of the last of the Zebulons, would have been 51.  Zebulon himself was ten years older and his brother Frank (the one who at the turn of the century was in competition with Will for Maude's affections) about 55.

This chair - this offering to a flinty Matinicus native who probably never before in her life had sat still outside of Sunday services, this gift with its deep cushions and footrest and high arms for elevating tired, wounded extremities, this luxury - it probably cost $10.  That's about $250 or $300 in today's dollars, no small sum for hardscrabble farmers who sold gladiola blooms and kittens to scrape by.

But being cash-strapped didn't stop this family from exchanging at least a few gifts, and it doesn't explain why this family with eighty-some acres of land didn't simply head out to the back 40 and chop down a balsam fir for Christmas that year.

And more questions:  How did Mrs. Z. break her arm that September?  Did she miss her footing on the farmhouse's narrow, steep staircase? Did she trip coming in from the henhouse or stumble under the weight of a load of wet laundry bound for the clothesline?

With Maude out clerking, Sarah's arm broken, and no other women in the house save the teenaged Eva (who must have been in school; she went on to Colby College and a teaching career), who managed the cooking and cleaning and household chores?

Ah, well, some things I'll never know, but what fun to piece together the fragments that I do have.  And what a nice Christmas story goes along now with that old chair.

High School Musical

Our school district really does the arts in a big way. 

Am I starting to sound like a broken record on that topic?

Not that we don't have a great sports program, but our 660-student high school is sort of the anti-Glee.  Success in music or art or theater is a point of pride, both individually and collectively, and community support is overwhelming. 

(As an aside - forgive me, but since we're low on grandparents this is my forum for bragging about my children - my freshman son has just been invited to join the uber-selective jazz band.  Woot!)

So it stands to reason that the annual fall musical has become something of a creative juggernaut, an all-consuming synthesis of music, art, dance, drama and engineering.  The productions since the new high school, with its state-of-the-art, 826-seat auditorium opened, have included Cats, Honk, Once Upon a Mattress, Beauty and the Beast, and Les Mis. 

This year they tackled Phantom of the Opera.

Full disclosure:  I am not an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan.  I believe his success is due more to savvy marketing and brand management (see:  Brightman, Sarah) than artistic merit.  His compositions, though maddeningly catchy, are simplistic; his characters are one-dimensional.

What's more, the quality of his music is inversely proportional to the demands it places on its singers.  Even a marginally competent singer can make good music, even if it's technically demanding, sound effortless, because a good composer knows what sits well with the voice.  But poorly written music, even in the hands of a gifted performer, sounds challenging because it is gratuitously demanding.  Lloyd Webber is a master of sweeping, dramatic melodies which are truly a bitch to sing.

All of that by way to say that Phantom might not be the best vehicle to showcase teenage singers, even those who are genuinely talented.  The vocal requirements are too muscular (particularly over a pit band) and the ranges too great (an octave and a half per number is fairly standard) for voices which won't be mature for at least another ten years.

However, these guys pulled it off, even enjoyed themselves, so it seemed, and there was clearly talent to spare - the director double-cast six of the the leads so as not to completely exhaust anyone over the run of eight shows, several of which sold out.  So what if Friday night's Phantom was a little pitchy and had to substitute falsetto for pianissimo in the upper register. 

I can't even begin to guess how many people were involved, between the students in the cast and crew, the parents and teachers who volunteered their time to assist with everything from sewing costumes to folding programs, the directors and musicians... the whole town was caught up in it, and the audience's response to Friday's performance was truly gratifying. 

Our school district really does the arts in a big way.

Am I starting to sound like a broken record on that topic?

Remember, remember the fifth of November

Why are other countries' holidays so much cooler than ours? 

I mean, seriously.  We have dead presidents' birthdays and Thanksgiving and Independence Day, which actually is kind of cool in theory, but it celebrates signing a piece of paper, doesn't it.  Woohoo.

The French, on the other hand, mark their own revolution on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille - how cool is that? 

And the British have Guy Fawkes day, which celebrates the foiling of a plot to blow up Parliament in 1605 and involves burning effigies, for heaven's sake.

Clearly, our national holidays are singularly lacking in coolness.

My friend E happens to a) be British and 2) have a lovely new camp on an itty bitty pond up near Liberty.

Last Saturday being November 5 and not a school night, she and her family threw a very cool bonfire night party.

(I mean the party was cool, not November 5 was cool.)

(I mean, November 5 WAS cool, but not too cool to have a cool bonfire night party.)

(Oh, never mind.)

The kids put together a couple of Guys.

And a bonfire.

And the grownups put together a potluck, complete with sausage rolls, beans and Yorkshire parkin.

And then there were the fireworks.

(Okay, so they were actually marine flares.  Marine flares are way cooler than fireworks.)

Very cool.

Superstitious bunk

I'm sitting in my hotel room on the 14th floor of the Sheraton in downtown Dallas. 

Except that I'm really on the 13th floor. 

What's up with that?  Why, in this enlightened age, do major high-end hotel chains insist on pretending the 13th floor doesn't exist?  Are we who are lodged here less likely to encounter bad luck simply because we're calling it the 14th floor?  Do they think we are idiots?

I want to write something very profound about this, but I have to go network in a minute, which requires lip gloss, a perma-grin and the ability to get middle-aged men to talk about themselves.  (Not difficult.)

Colleague #2 update:  This many manufacturing professionals in one place has almost certainly attracted the attention of al Qaeda.  Be vigilant.

Dallas, Day 1

So I'm here in Don't Tread On Me territory, with two colleagues, for a manufacturing conference. 

• Colleague #1:  Wow, is that a protest?
• Me:  Cool, it’s the Occupy movement! 
• Colleague #2:  Can’t be.  Those people in front are carrying American flags.
• Colleague #1:  I think I heard about this somewhere…  What’s it about, again?
• Me:  Kind of general fed-upness with corporate greed, joblessness, income inequality and the disappearing middle class…
• Colleague #2:  Yeah, they don’t really know themselves what it’s about.  All kinds of people just showing up.
• Me:  Yeah, even people who carry American flags and love their country.
• Colleague #2:  Well, I just think they should put some time in before they’re entitled to do that.
• Me:  But even the military’s not hiring now.
• Colleague #2:  I know, but those idiots don't have any idea what they're talking about.  Do you really think taxing the rich is a good idea? 

Isn't this brilliant?  First, you equate patriotism with capitalism so you can say that anyone who is anti-business is anti-American.  Once you have claimed this moral and economic high ground, you maintain that anyone else trying to stake it out is a misguided, directionless idiot.   And when the idiots reach critical mass and actually present a factual, coherent, reasoned argument against your oversimplified sound-bite opinions, you change the subject and throw in a little ad hominem attack. 

I'm in Texas.

At a manufacturing conference.

Going deep undercover for the next week.

Over and out.

Haiku: The 2011 Soccer Collection

They move like the wind
On the far side of the field
And my camera sucks

Come closer, my son
And slow down a little; no.
This camera just sucks.

Long ago, he thought
Mom's vuvuzela was cool.
But now, not so much.

She goes at full speed
Neither stopping nor slowing.
Yet another foul.

The trunk of my car
Holds umbrellas, two blankets,
Chairs and a raincoat;

Many games are soggy,
In rain, drizzle, fog-darkness...
This builds character.

The guy with the beard
Our assistant principal
(and substitute coach)...

...is British, of course.
This is Camden.  We must play
To stereotype.

Notes from 32,000 feet

I dislike flying.

I used to dislike flying simply because it was a minor pain in the crotch.  Driving to airports, layovers, delays; these were the slight inconveniences of air travel.

Now, however, one is required to take off shoes and belt and display anti-wrinkle cream in a one-quart baggie; fees are assessed for seat-selection and baggage-checking priveleges; one gets yelled at by a TSA agent for minor infractions (like sending one's minor child through the line with her passport) and then one's underwire bra is subject to scanned or patted-down scrutiny.  Pain-in-the-crotchness is de riguer and no longer minor, but monstrous. 

But that's not why I dislike flying. 

I dislike it because the older I get, the more inclined I am to overthink things, and the whole idea of a pressurized metal tube hurtling through the air at 500 miles per hour, under the absolute control of a single individual who may or may not be well-rested and sober, gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. 

Am I right?

Creative property management

The manufacturing facility where I toil in middle management sits on 27 acres of what used to be farmland.

We keep the grass around the building mowed, but that leaves about 25 acres untended except for the occasional brush-hogging to keep down the mouse, snake and coyote habitat.  (Not that I have anything against wildlife habitat, but two of the three aforementioned species have a habit of coming inside the building, which causes some people to scream and jump on top of furniture and that's just not a safe working environment.)

This year, however, I got a phone call from Farmer K who was looking for a place to graze his small flock of Katahdin sheep.  After getting the blessings of the city code enforcement officer and our corporate attorney (he just never knows what I'll be calling about next), and after my boss recovered from her fit of the vapors, we said sure.

So now we have these guys out back.

The pen is portable, so Farmer K comes every couple of days to move them to fresh grass.

After a couple of years of this the pasture will be restored, and then Farmer K can hay it if he chooses.

The land is being put to good use, my business is not paying to have it mowed, sheep spew less carbon than internal combustion engines, a local grower is getting his flock fattened for free, and it's doing wonders for employee morale.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Hurricane Island

We visited Hurricane on or shakedown cruise a few weeks ago, and each time I go there I am drawn further in to the mystique of the place.

Now I find out Hurricane Island doesn't have a Wikipedia page.  I thought everything had a Wikipedia page.

So here's the story.

Hurricane is a high mound of pinkish granite, overlooking Penobscot Bay just west of Vinalhaven, overgrown with rough spruce and tangled black raspberry bushes.  Hurricane Island Foundation - comprising the same cast of characters who were the backbone and ribs of the now-defunct Hurricane Island Outward Bound School - maintains facilities there, and the owner of the island, a dissipated old physician with more money than sense, has a boondoggle of a house carved into the rock on the southwestern end which is accessible only by a rigorous hike.  There are no roads; HIF maintains some trails.

Between 1870 and 1914, Hurricane was a leading producer of granite.  The Civil War General Davis Tillson was one of the owners and the driving force behind the island's success - he was a paternalistic, benevolent visionary who oversaw well-managed operations which provided happy, contented laborers with honest work, housing and a company store in which they could satisfy all their earthly wants.

Well, either that or an autocratic megalomaniac who oppressed and essentially imprisoned his workers, economically and physically, in a company town.

Depends on who you ask.

The Scottish laborers called Tillson "Lord of the Isles," and the Italians "Il Bombasto Furioso."  Might be a clue there as to which version of the Tillson legend is closer to reality.

In any case, the granite business was good to Gen. Tillson.  By 1877 there were 600 souls living on the island, with an active quarry, a cutting operation, polishing mill, and highly skilled carvers turning out granite which found its way to buildings and monuments all over the United States, including the Washington Monument; post offices and courthouses in St. Louis, Boston, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh; the Library of Congress; the New York Custom House; and the Brooklyn Bridge.

The village, ca. 1908

The stonecutting sheds, ca. 1907

The quarry, ca. 1907

By 1905, however, architectural styles were changing.  Concrete was on the scene.  Production and shipping costs were rising.  Granite contracts were becoming fewer and farther between.  The Hurricane Island operations began experiencing periodic shutdowns.

In 1914, good news for the island came in the form of a contract for 1,200 tons of granite for the Rockport, Massachusetts breakwater.  The superintendent of the island, one John Landers (Tillson had died in 1895), was a trusted and talented manager who personally oversaw the cutting of the stone and its loading onto a stone scow in November of that year.

The scow, under tow en route to Massachusetts, made it as far as Rockland Harbor, then foundered and sank.  It was not insured.  Sixteen days later, John Landers died of typhoid fever.

Those two events - the latter perhaps more than the former - sounded Hurricane's death knell.  Operations were immediately and permanently suspended, and the hundreds of people who had lived and worked and married and borne children and buried their dead on Hurricane left in a panicked frenzy to find other work.  Virtually overnight, Hurricane was deserted.

Its inhabitants had not even paused to pack, but for a few personal possessions.  Tools were dropped next to half-finished carvings.  Homes were abandoned, some with tables laid for a meal and pictures still hanging on the walls.

Folks from Vinalhaven wasted no time in salvaging everything they possibly could, from the personal belongings to the buildings (the lumber and other materials were transported the short distance over Hurricane Sound for re-use elsewhere).  

In the century since then, the spruce and brambles have reclaimed almost all of the island, and there are very few traces of the thriving town and graniteworks other than stone foundations, several wells, and two untended graves.

There are many, many other islands around with abandoned quarries and granite wharves; some, like High Island, are uninhabited, while others, like Vinalhaven, have managed to sustain communities.  But only Hurricane is so haunting and compelling, the immediacy of its abandonment unique.

The churchyard

Abandoned stonework

Flywheel and boiler of the steam-driven air compressor

One of two lead-lined safes which still sit in the foundation of the bank.
They were reportedly the only things too heavy for the good men of Vinalhaven to liberate from Hurricane.

The quarry.
Under the placid surface of the water lies rusting rock-moving machinery.

This is the same view from above the quarry as
 in the postcard of the cutting sheds, above

Erik Lawson, aged one year, seven months, and twenty days.
This is one of only two graves remaining of the fifteen or so that were here in 1910 - either the others were vandalized and the stones removed, or possibly the graves themselves were moved after the island closed down.
According to one of the last residents of the island, most people buried their dead in their own (well, Tillson's) yards, which means there are lost graves scattered all over the island.

Sunset over Hurricane Sound