As many of you know, I don’t respond to emails mostly because your comments deserve sharing, but also because typing with one short-fingered hand and weakened abs is not the good time I want to have. So that is my mea culpa and these are my replies.
Marta, Many thanks for Louise Dickinson Rich’s Happy the Land. I suspect the First Edition with it’s original jacket is worth money –yes, I watch Antiques Roadshow–and if it is, I will donate it to the local library in your name. Seems as if I have been forever reading about people who live differently. LDR’s books about “back to the lannd/earth” life in the woods of interior Maine were among my first and still mirror exploits of friends who are off-the-grid in the woods of northern Minnesota or, more recently in Maine, e.g. Linda Tatelbaum’s Carrying Water as a Way of Life: A Homesteader’s History. Even more recent is Lou Urenek’s Cabin:Two Brothers, A Dream, and Five Acres in Maine, but it is not yet available in paperback which uninsulated RB requires. The use of “cabin” instead of “cottage” suggests interior Maine and a few comforts, the latter of which RB readers seem to prefer.
Walk up Sea Street, inhale salt air, and prepare for RB's comforts.
Summers ago, a biology teacher/summer guide in Acadia National Park could not understand why I was sitting on a rock inhaling the ocean when I could be hiking through Minnesota’s BWCA which was his idea of a good time. In Music of Failure, Bill Holm argues that he has an eye for the “horizontal grandeur” of prairies [and coasts, I’d add] and others an eye for the woods. So different strokes: I’ll take big water and big sky; the Acadia guy can wallow in the woods. Living the rough life of homesteading is another whole issue. RB has always had electricity and running water, now it has plumbing and lots of windows, but no insulation or polish. Call it austere, up the scale from primitive, but not yet “living simply.” Anyhow, many thanks, Marta, for the fun of being remembered, thinking about you, and dreaming-up yet another of life’s spectrums.
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M from NC, RB did have Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake and will soon have it again. There must be something in the Canadian air because I have just had to re-order Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air, Jane Urquhart’s Away, the best book I know on emigrating or leaving home, Thomas King’s Medicine River, the best book I know on friendship, and Howard Norman’s The Bird Artist. I also ordered his What is Left the Daughter.
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S,J,M,K,P and D, I know, I know; the blog went black or blank or whatever it did. Charlie forgot to change the year on the credit card he used to pay for the domain name, but all should be good now. Sorry about that, but — good news — I discovered I have six readers., Yes!
Just like that! Orange pops out from the rock wall and makes a walker smile.
Dana, the 1000 piece puzzle of best seller covers is perfect. I have only one table top with an ever dim bulb, but it is available because we eat outdoors unless rain-chased into comfy chairs with laps and straight chairs as tables. So set it up, I say, and many thanks. (I trust the puzzle pieces match the cover picture.)
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And thinking of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (you know who you are), I should warn you all who are coming that the warm spring has encouraged ticks and, yesterday I heard on Maine public radio, bears. So if you are woods folks or just tree enthusiasts, bring light-colored clothing with long legs and sleeves to spot, then shed, the attracted ticks. No bears near yet, but my best advice is to avoid them.
See some of you soon.