HEALING PLACES, PACES, AND READS

“It don’t get no better than this,” one ten-year-old said to another in Minneapolis some years ago.   Surely they meant to include summer in Tenants Harbor, had they but known. Even with rain and more rain, the flowers, herbs, and sun-glo tomatoes are planted, the kitchen is back together  with a Cheerios-yellow wall plus two metal roses, and early morning Sea Street walkers are up and at ’em. The books are shelved, if in the company of unusual neighbors, and when I can find the BOOKS and OPEN signs to hang on the porch, Roseledge Books will be open for business.  But I’m here now, if you should happen by.

I love your comments and suggestions.  To those of you who  think the chipmunk did us a favor or who want to be sure the 2012  Cheerios are finished before they come for wine-plus   (you know who you are, S. and S.),  may I say that snotty ill becomes you.

Add wee adirondacks, tear off the 2, follow the arrow. You're here!

I’m here and healing. The newly- sanded floors allow the  easiest-possible paces and I need to walk a lot.  I’m reading while healing, but  Roseledge Books Regular ME suggests a reading about healing  in Victoria Sweet’s God’s Hotel, which I have ordered immediately, and to which I would add as a neighbor about-healing read, T. R. Reid’s The Healing of America.    Jerome Groopma’s How Doctor’s Think might be good here, too, because healing is a two-way  responsibility.  The more you understand how a doctor thinks and your body works, the more you know how to describe your body’s cues and thus help avoid a dreadful misdiagnosis.

Then there are books to read while healing.  The titles may vary by reader, but page-turners (e.g. David Baldacci’s The Forgotten) probably use the least amount of mind which is what you have to give when you are sickest and need everything you’ve got to heal.  Memoirs or journals(e.g. Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies, Anthony Shadid’s House of Stone) are focused with some fact and some fiction which makes them a good intermediate read when you’re better, but not quite on top of things.  Then when energy, impatience, taste for coffee and gummi bears return, you head for the careful, involved read.  Right now, for me, that is re-reading Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs to find any clues in the text that support her being for a time in or near Tenants Harbor.  A friend wants to do a booklet about her time here and he has actual evidence.  I am to offer “speculative insights.”   Oh the fun of entering the local fray among those who favor TH, Martinsville, or Port Clyde!  When the booklet exists, Roseledge Books will have it.

Who would sail into any other harbor? Surely not SOJ.

The native strawberries are in, the (newly invasive) rosa rugosa are blooming, and an orange crane was stepping masts at the public landing.  Nights are still cool, but the heat in my spa-recliner takes up any slack.  I am being one with nature and planting an already-big tree to shade the porch from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.  Umbrellas are heavy or electric and always iffy in the wind.  Does this mean I am green or sustainable?  Come and see.