Making assumptions

I'd make a lousy eyewitness.

Last night, sometime after 6:00, but earlier than 7:00, there were two ambulances over at the store. They were there for what seemed a long time. How long? Beats me. Long enough for both Dick and I to think that whoever was in there must be dead. And when they took off, they went in what I thought was the wrong direction (and I can't give you specifics because I realize I don't know if this is an east/west road or a north/south road, which is crazy, 'cause I've lived in this county for nearly twenty years).

Well, the wrong direction is towards a hospital that is further away than the right direction, if you are wondering. This meant to me that someone was either dead or needed more care than the hospital in this county could provide.

I just got back from walking over to the store. It seems particularly quiet today. It's gray, drizzling and the air has a cold bite to it, not like the unusual warmth we've had for a week. As I walked along the road, I remembered the ambulances from last night and wondered why we didn't give a second's thought to the possibility that a baby was being born. No, we imagined death. Maybe a hold-up. Someone having a heart attack. Something bad.

The store was as quiet as a library. Maybe it's always like that and I just don't notice, but I doubt it. I didn't see anyone familiar working there and got worried. Maybe someone who worked there died. I said to the stranger behind the counter, "I know I'm being nosy, but did something terrible happen here last night?" The minute I said it I felt foolish. "Something terrible?"

That's when I realized I truly have been living in a fictional world all week. This is real life and something happened to a real person.

For the sake of privacy, I won't tell you what happened. I don't know the details, but I will. It is a small town, after all. A non-fictional small town.

Photo note: Some Maine road. Looks a bit big. Is it going East, West, North or South?

I guess I just like signs

Okay, I know lawn signs don't win elections. I just like seeing them, is all.

I think it's also because, in spite of my poll watching addiction (and the even worse addiction to reading every word Andrew Sullivan has to say, who's responsible for posting this photo), I still don't quite believe the polls and the pundits. So, seeing a good amount of McCain/Palin signs makes me worry at bit.

But, I just like signs. You should see my kitchen. It's full of them. I want to put up more, but Dick said "there's enough!"

Somewhere in Downeast Maine (that's the northernmost coast, for those from away*, is a guy who's had a 12 foot long "IMPEACH HIM" sign for the last eight years. The lettering was all awry and he was constantly patching it up, 'cause a good many folks ran into it (both intentionally and not).

*"From away" is what people who are not from Maine are called. That includes me, who's lived here for almost 20 years. Even if you were born here, you are considered by hard liners as from away if your parents were born elsewhere. This is an old Maine explanation for that:"If a cat had her kittens in the oven, you still couldn't call them biscuits."

Addendum: For one the arguably greatest signs in the state of Maine, click here.

The geographical cure may be real

A quick perusal of "A Theory of the Emergence, Persistence, and Expression of Geographic Variation in Psychological Characteristics", found here (along with the demographic maps I mentioned in the last post), gives credence to my feeling that living here in rural Maine is not good for my mental health. But, it may be perfectly fine for someone else's.

The concept of "selective migration" is of particular interest:

"Selective migration may not only cause geographic differences
in personality to emerge . . . , it may also cause
such differences to persist over time. For instance, individuals
. . . may try to escape the ennui experienced in small-town
environments by relocating to metropolitan areas where their
needs for social contact and stimulation are more easily met.
Members of particular groups (e.g., gay people, Mormons) may
also choose to live in regions where residents are believed to be
tolerant of their lifestyles or where other members of their group
live (e.g., Massachusetts, Utah). Specifically, members of certain
groups may choose to live near similar group members because
they are more likely to understand and share the same languages,
cultures, and ways of life. Furthermore, individuals may
selectively relocate in search of financial gain and job security.
For example, highly open individuals may flock to places where
artistic abilities have the potential for generating sustainable
incomes (e.g., California, New York). Thus, as individuals selectively
migrate to regions where certain psychological and
behavioral tendencies are common, the prevalence of the relevant
personality traits in those regions should persist over time.
Furthermore, selective-migration processes could also inspire
people with particular traits to flee certain regions, which would
eventually result in a shortfall of those traits in the regions."

Rather a sober entry after last night's rambling (and I have a few more rambling posts sitting in my drafts folder). I will return to reading this research paper, for there is much in it that is relevant, not only to my life, but to the divisions we are increasingly seeing in our culture (and after reading this, I have to revise that to say "our culture?")

So, check it out if you like reading some dense material and/or find this country a cipher, as I do, that you want to understand better. Someone like Malcolm Gladwell should write a book about this (and hey, Malcolm, if you do, please send me a few cents of your bestseller royalties, okay?).

Image note: The Appalachian Trail. See how it extends from Georgia to Maine? Visitors to "Vacationland" see a quiant series of coastal villages. But most of Maine is more like "Deliverance" than "Murder She Wrote".

The ice storm, revisited

Last winter was the tenth year anniversary of the "ice storm" here in Maine (and Quebec). You may not have heard of it. It was hardly on the national news, which I've never quite understood, though the amazing fact that less than a dozen people died during this event may have rendered it un-newsworthy.

It's a lovely summer day here in Maine, yet I am thinking about the winter. I, like many, have been thinking about the winter ever since the price of gas skyrocketed. People may feel some relief now that prices have dropped somewhat. I know I do. I also know that it's absurd to feel relief that prices have dropped below four dollars a gallon. When I think of the dual financial realities of paying my hyper-escalated property tax and whatever it will take to heat my home this winter, I feel vaguely ill. I have decided to take the path of ignoring this pending emergency and presuming everything will be fine, somehow.

What does this have to do with the ice storm of '98? Quite a bit. One fantasy that I play with when I'm feeling hard pressed to envision just how I will pay my taxes, put gas in my car, or heat my house, is that the financial and governmental infrastructure will fall apart. That's right: I fantasize that I will no longer pay my taxes or my mortgage, and lucky me, I'll have a bit of land to grow food, perhaps keep chickens or small livestock and cut firewood on. I have a well, and if electricity stops working, I will have no problem building and using an outhouse.

Still, you may be wondering what this has to do with the ice storm, or why I'm wishing for this post-apocalyptic dystopia.

When the ice storm hit in '98, it was the dead of winter, but unlike the typical Maine winter weather, it had been raining. It rained for an entire week without let-up. This wasn't the first winter Maine had seen rain instead of snow. Even the most diehard Rush Limbaugh fans up here believed global warming was indeed happening, as they reported on the snowy winters of their childhood that were no longer a given. The Maine winters are long and dark and without snow they are harder to endure. Six months of dim light and cold are bad enough, but the snow helps. One can get outside to snowshoe, sleighride or ski. The whiteness of the snow makes it feel brighter. The snow also help insulate ones' house, and it covers gardens and crop fields, protecting them from the constant heaving of temperature changes. An "open winter" (one without a constant snow cover) is not a good winter. And we've had more open winters than not in the last 15 years or so.

It was nothing new when, back in '98, we had days and days of hard rain. But this time, things were different. Each day it got colder, but it kept on raining. The last two days before the rain stopped, the temperatures were in the 20's but still it rained. Everything was covered with ice. Sure, we'd seen this before, but this time is was thick. By the time it stopped raining, the ice was about six inches thick. I didn't know this, but I was living in one of the hardest hit areas.

The day it stopped raining, the electricity went off. This, too, was not unexpected, for the power stops around these parts fairly regularly. An ordinary heavy rain storm can cause an outage (and usually does). This time the power did not come on. The phone was dead, too, and it wasn't because we had a cordless phone which needed electricity. There was no phone service, period. In '98 there was no cell phone service in the area I lived in (and I'm not entirely sure if there is now, either).

The first night was terrifying. The temperatures plummeted to near zero and the trees started to fall. Huddling inside the little cabin, it sounded like there was gunfire outside. The trees seemed like they were exploding. They cracked with a huge bang and then came straight down. We were all lucky that it was a wind-less night, for if it hadn't been, a lot more houses and people would have been hurt. We started to understand just how the trees were falling and saw we were relatively safe. I didn't understand the mechanics of it, but the trees were not falling hard. One did land on the roof on the house, but it did no damage (and later, we would see that this was indeed the case most everywhere).

That morning, we awoke to a world that looked devastated, as it indeed was. It appeared that a good percentage of trees had fallen through the night. It was truly beautiful, I must admit, but even though we had no contact with the outer world, we knew that something momentous had happened.

By day three, we still had neither power nor phone service. The postal service, which I'd never truly appreciated for its actually living up to the promise of delivering no matter the weather, well, it wasn't delivering (or picking up). We realized that everything had stopped. The road I lived on was barricaded with fallen trees, power lines and telephone poles. I couldn't get to work. I couldn't call anyone. We had no battery powered radio, so we didn't know what was going on exactly. What we did know is that we had to survive.

The lifestyle that I lived at that point turned out to serve well in this emergency. We heated the cabin with wood and so we had no worries about keeping warm. The electricity was out, but that hardly mattered. The stove was electric, but since we had no water pump, we were melting ice on the woodstove to wash with. We also cooked on it. We had no canned goods stockpile, for the house was small (and not being a survivalist, I wouldn't have stockpiled anyway). We did have root vegetables in the small cellar and an entire deer, cut up and ready to cook, in the freezer. Of course, the freezer wasn't working, but it was so full that its contents were staying frozen. And lastly, the outhouse that I cursed on a daily basis, well, I was quite thankful that it was there. In this emergency, a normal bathroom was rendered useless.

We were all set. The days were simple and devoted to one thing: just living. There was a schedule, unspoken and unset, but remarkably easy to understand. Wake up with the sun. Stoke the woodfire. Get ice and melt it on the woodstove. Make oatmeal on the stove. Start preparing food for the one major meal of the day by cutting up vegetables and dethawing the venison. Continue chipping ice off the cars. Bring wood in.

I realized that I liked this life. No bills came in and no bills went out. No bills were paid, obviously. No one could call to hassle us for not paying bills. In essence, with one crazy storm, we were knocked back into early 19th century living. However, we had no horse and so, the big order of business was getting the roads cleared (and the cars de-iced).

It appeared that noone was coming to help clear the roads. Somewhere around day three all the men with chainsaws on the road started clearing the mess. It was interesting how well these men worked together, for these were people who had major grudges against each other. The squabbles over teenage kids driving too fast at night or just why so-and-so had been in jail were put aside.

The only thing I needed when the road was cleared were candles and information. How were my friends who lived in other towns? Had many people died? The first day that I drove to the main road, I was shocked. It looked like an atomic bomb had been detonated. In every direction, all I could see were downed phone and power lines. Even by day five, in that part of Waldo county, power lines were laying in the middle of the main roads, unattended to. There were no moving vehicles in sight.

We lived like this for fifteen days. We had started driving a half an hour to Belfast, where power had been restored, to eat different food and shower at a friend's house. But part of me didn't want to return to the "real world". I loved that the TV and stereo were never on. I loved reading until dark and then going to sleep. I loved reading out loud as an activity. I loved the fact that just living was my job. Now, if I had thought this would go on for years, I may have thought differently, but I did ruminate about that possibility. I did possess skills that would be useful if things never returned to normal. I know how to grow flax and the old ways of processing it into something that can be spun into thread. I know how to spin and I know how to weave on old looms. I know how to raise sheep and process their wool for yarn. I can sew and knit. I know how to make butter.

I can't chop wood (to say my life, literally) but others can, and if it came to it, I could barter hand made clothes for wood.

I have been thinking about this stuff again because of the price of gas and because I am just finishing Kunstler's "The Long Emergency", in which he posits what will happen in the post-oil age. He imagines that places where people still know how to do things the old way will be able to manage to some degree. I don't know what to make of his apocalyptic vision. It rings true (though I'm not describing it well enough for you to judge). It's frightening, for sure. Our world will change, and change drastically.

When I think of a world pushed back into 19th century ways, the only thing I am scared of is that I will stay have to pay my mortgage and taxes. If I take that out of the equation, I think I will be perfectly fine, for some of my skills will suddenly have value where now they have none.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not sitting here wishing for the end of the world as we know it. For one thing, I want my internet connection!

But I must admit, I've had a fascination with post-apocalyptic ideas since I was a kid and a yearning for a lifestyle more akin to the Amish's than anything else for just as long. If it comes to that, well, I only pray that the mail service ends and no one will be demanding any money from me, for there will be none to be had.

In which I realize what my gripe is about Belfast

Soon I'll be finished reading "The Geography of Nowhere" and, hopefully, the posts in which I gripe about the changing landscape of Maine (and elsewhere) will stop. But for now, that's what is on my mind.

One of the main issues of the book is the loss of public space in America. The car culture does away with it, most certainly. Kunstler points out that most Americans have never really experienced public space. I would disagree with this somewhat, for I think the public schools (and their playgrounds) constitute a type of public space, in which children are forced to socialize with others who are not related to them. He doesn't mention this, at least not yet, but I suspect it didn't occur to him.

However, I do tend to agree. It was not something I gave any thought to until 9/11. I'm not going to write anything about my political feelings about this day. I am stating this intent so that I am not misconstrued as having no feelings about the fate of the 3000 people who died.

In 2001, I still lived in Belfast. That morning, when I saw the news, I was about to get in my car to go to a doctor's appointment in Augusta, which is the state capital. I was a few miles outside of Belfast when I heard that all the state buildings in the country were being closed, and I realized I was scared enough to retreat to my home, far from any probable places for further attacks. It sounds absurd in retrospect, but the truth is, noone really knew what was going on in those early hours, and I would venture to guess that not feeling fearful was an atypical response.

I came home to an empty house and put on the TV set. I watched it all day and for many days to come. This was where I got my information about what was going on. My neighbors stayed in their houses, probably watching their own television sets or using the internet. I had only one neighbor who came out onto the street in distress. She was from New York City. She had been a problem neighbor and I'd never had a friendly conversation with her, but she was crying and obviously in need of a person to talk to, so we talked. It was good for me to talk to her, for I had been in town (I lived about two miles away) and the streets were near empty. I had a desire to speak to people I didn't know, but it appeared that noone but her felt the same way.

My desire to do something involving others was immense. It seemed crazy to me that there were no groups of people congregating on the streets. I thought back to my very early memories of the assassination of JFK and remembered how it seemed every one came out of their houses to speak to their neighbors or to cry together. But not for this, not for 3000 people. I couldn't understand it.

I walked around Belfast every day for days, looking for something I could not find. I went to the local churches, assuming that folks may be inside praying and even though that doesn't hold much meaning for me, it would have felt good to find others displaying their fear or grief (or whatever) in public. There was nothing. In fact, the streets seemed more empty than usual.

On the television, I saw pictures of New York, where folks were congregating in all the parks or on certain street corners where they had put up photos of missing people. Movie theaters opened their doors just to let people sit inside with others. People sang songs together in Central Park. All of America saw the New York I knew, the one where people come together in times of crisis, and that was a surprise to most, for New York is viewed as an impersonal and unfriendly place. As an ex-New Yorker, I knew that wasn't the truth.

Some of my fondest memories of New York involve crises, though not of the extent of 9/11. But still, they were telling. I was in New York for two major blackouts, many snowstorms that had shut the city down and the tense days after the Rodney King riots. What did people do when these things occurred? Many came out of their apartments and hit the streets. The friendliness of New Yorkers, when push comes to shove, is extraordinary. If you're a tourist and you ask someone where a certain restaurant is, if you get a real New Yorker, he'll not only tell you how to get there, he'll walk with you and inform you of a better place to eat that's not geared to tourists.

This is public life. People give candles and flashlights to those who don't have them. They sit on the stoops of the apartments and chat and share some beers. They erect temporary monuments or places of refuge. Even in a city as huge as New York, it is essentially a city of many small communities.

So, here I was in Maine, post 9/11, wandering around trying to find people to hang out with and finding none. I ached for the company of strangers. It was then that I realized that living in New York in a tenement building, I had led more of a small town life than I had been living in a real small town. For me, small town life means our lives are intertwined, but this is no longer the case. Sure, we have our friends, but these places are totally insular. Most everything is family centered. And I'd say that tourism and summer people have made that insularity even worse than it may have been otherwise, for Mainers keep some distance between themselves and the people who only "use" this place for recreation. It's understandable. I feel it. I hated living on a street where most of my neighbors lived there for a few weeks out of the year.

When the going gets rough in most of America, people go inside. They band together as kinfolk on their property where noone else can venture without an invitation. They may likely break out their firearms to protect themselves from anyone outside their clan. And so, as someone who has no family here, I wasn't invited (which makes sense, given that I agreed with Obama when he said that rural folk cling to their guns and religion in times of trouble).

Before the war became a justification for what was to come, in those early days, I had a woman say to me, when I told her I couldn't tattoo her 'cause I was a bit too shaky, "But that happened to New Yorkers!"

I wanted to go home, to New York. I wanted to roam the streets or to sit with the signs, symbols and people with whom this thing was happening. To me, it was happening, whatever it was (fear?), to us all, no matter where we lived. It happened to this country.

For two years, I thought about moving back to New York because of this, but I have grown too accustomed to a semi-rural life. I know that there's something that I am used to, the life of the public square, that I miss, and I miss it deeply. I suspect others miss it, too, but they don't know what they are missing.

Photo note: 7th Ave. & 11th St., outside St. Vincent's hospital, police barrier covered in missing persons posters.

Roadside attractions

I grew up taking public transportation or walking. When I was a teenager, I walked about a mile to the Long Island Railroad, which would get me to midtown Manhattan in about twenty minutes. My parents did not worry about anything happening to me, and I traveled freely to New York City starting at around the age of 12.

I loved New York City, as you've probably gathered from reading this blog. But I was also fascinated by the rest of America, which was truly foreign to me. I knew New York was different from an early age. I knew that my family's infrequent use of our car was abnormal. And so, for me, when my father asked if I'd like to get in the car and go somewhere, I'd be thrilled. It didn't matter where we'd go because it always seemed like a grand adventure. So many places were inaccessible by public transportation and simply because of that, I found them fascinating. I loved the ugly fast food places, the old diners and bowling alleys. In other words, I loved the outward trappings of suburbia. It was a foreign country that I wanted to see more of.

When I was in my early twenties, I moved to rural Pennsylvania. Twenty minutes away from where we lived was the sprawl that emanated out from Philadelphia. Every weekend, my ex-husband and I would spend all our free time there. He grew up in Greenwich Village and had the same fascination with suburban life that I did. We went to malls, drive-in movie theaters (oh, I miss them!) and played lots of miniature golf. The ugliness of it all was not lost on us, but still we were entranced. We ate at fast food restaurants and whatever new chain restaurants that appeared on the landscape.

At the age of 16, I had not yet eaten at a fast food joint, ever. Then I worked at McDonalds, and I was forced to. I developed a craving for Big Macs afterwards and seriously wondered what the hell they put in that thing that made me want one so much. I still don't know.

Driving across the country when I was on tour, or on vacation, I loved all things kitsch. I loved the ugliness, but now I think, "well, I never had to live in it", for it's true. When I lived in Pennsylvania, I lived in New Hope, a pretty tourist town with strict zoning that kept out sprawl. The place I grew up in had similar zoning, as did the town I lived in before I moved to Maine. Unconsciously, I lived in places where there were conscious efforts to keep the ugliness at bay. So, now I live in the middle of nowhere, where I hear trucks whizzing by all day long, carrying goods to and from all the stores at either end of their journey. And I yearn to get away from even that. I have come to nearly hate everything I once found amusing.

It is the same with things like the "country fairs" that proliferate around here starting in early August. The first time I went to one, the Bangor fair, when I was 15, I thought it was about as much fun as one could have, even if I did throw up after going on a ride. I had never seen a fair on such a large scale. The only game booths I'd ever encountered were on the small streets of Little Italy in New York, during the San Gennaro festival.

In the first years I lived here, I went to as many fairs as I could stand. Now I can't stand them. They hold nothing of interest to me. I no longer want to eat an eight dollar serving of fried dough with sugar on top, nor try my hand at a game that rigged against me (or if I won, pick out some garish stuffed animal). If there is any livestock to see, it's a sorry sight, a couple of kids from 4H standing around with their pet goat or a pig scramble, where children practically kill each other to grab a terrified baby pig.

I once thought it was quaint. What happened? I suppose it's only that the novelty wore off. Nothing more. Nothing less.

But even as I write the above words, I suspect it is more, for that book is haunting me. I stopped being able to see the carnival workers as anything but poor people with no fixed home. I started seeing all the drunken kids who went wild during the fairs and the obese folks who ate all that fried dough. Once the charm wears off, one starts to see what's underneath, the stuff one isn't supposed to see or even think about.

Ah, seeing what's underneath is something of a curse. I suppose someone's got to do it, like the documentary film maker Frederick Wiseman, whose documentary "Belfast", though critically acclaimed, was hated around these parts, for it depicted everything about Belfast (back in 1999, no less) that people wanted to keep hidden. Even I objected, for I felt he was hypocritical in some ways, filming folks talking about multi-generational sexual abuse while leaning up against their beater cars, while the camera crew tooks breaks at the Gothic Cafe, a beautiful place that never once appeared in the movie. But he had a point to make, and a very good one. As I wrote, someone got to see what's underneath, and "Belfast" (the movie) was about that, not a come-on for tourists. Who said it had to be objective anyway

So, I've come full circle here, from Belfast to Belfast. Maybe I'll write a nice post about the town at some point, but not anytime soon, I'm afraid.

Photo note: The Wigwam Hotel,Holbrook, Arizona
I used to find places like this absolutely fantastic. I do like these kitschy roadside attractions far better than yet another row of McDonalds, Wendy's, Dunkin Donuts and all the rest of that lot, but it's sort of like the childhood question, "Would you rather me eaten by a lion or a tiger?" This stuff was only advertising, after all, though it seems creative. Somehow, if it's really, really big it's okay. After all, the same people who think it's fun kitsch or ironic, generally don't like the crap people put on their front lawns, like the back views of people leaning over to pick dandelions, so we can see their butt cracks. But if one blew up those wretched pieces of plywood to 50 feet, they'd be attractions (or even make it into a Whitney bienniel).

Anywhere, USA

I'm in the middle of reading "The Geography of Nowhere" by James Howard Kunstler. It was written in 1993, which makes it even sadder than it is already, for the forces that are ruining our small towns and sense of community have never abated.

Perhaps now, as the economy slumps, the endless expansion of places to buy things will stop. It's already happening. Unfortunately, what we are left with is many vacant buildings on the outskirts of our towns. Ugly vacant buildings.

I had once tried to rent space in one of the near empty shopping centers. The rent was insanely high and so I did not. Now, of course, there is a small national franchise occupying this space. The rents downtown are barely any better. Who can afford them? The only locally owned businesses that thrive are ones where the buildings are owned by the shopkeepers.

As mentioned briefly in the last post, there are some new shops (if one can call them that). I once thought it nice that zoning in Belfast did not dictate too many things, but now I wonder how they could allow the new atrociously ugly signs. The city council members have scratched their heads for years, wondering why Belfast hasn't grown much as a tourist community. Why would anyone really want to visit it? It's got the same sprawl as any town in America.

Where once there were fields of hay or pastured animals, there are now fast food joints and industrial "parks". The huge businesses (Bank of America, Athena) may be set back from the road and hidden by trees, but their presence is large. At night, where there once was darkness, there is now the glow of lights emanating from the buidings, where workers toil away 24 hours a day in different shifts.

I find it all terribly sad. I moved here nearly 18 years ago and in this time it has gone from a rural area to something not definable. It isn't a suburb, for there's no city it serves. It's just a mess.

I can feel the change in the community (or lack thereof) when I do take a walk there. Once, simple errrands would take all day for one would continuously bump into folks with whom one would chat. If I was in a hurry, I would sometimes nearly curse that fact. Now, I long for those "good old days", not simply out of nostalgia, but because it is indeed a real loss. Many people I know have moved away. Most people know folks who have. They may have sold their land to developers or not, but either way, they moved to places (the majority of them) that hadn't felt the touch of sprawl yet or to real cities, where there were opportunities.

Some towns in Maine have been smart about development. This entire state is a place for tourists. We may not like that, but even our license plates reflect it: they read "Vacationland". As we ruin the beautiful places, this so-called vacationland becomes a no-man's land of the same ugliness that plagues the rest of the country.

I used to argue with young people about the changes that were taking place. "Why can't we have a Taco Bell?", I remember one fellow asking of me. I suggested to him that if he indeed wanted all the conveniences of living near malls, he should move. But his attitude has prevailed amongst the city planners (or non-planners). Let them come! It almost feels like they've given up in despair. Let them come, for we've already failed. Contrast Belfast with Rockland, an hour away, and one can quickly see why there's a sense of failure. Rockland, just ten years ago, was nearly a ghost town. There were sections that felt akin to slums. The sprawl outside the town was unstoppable. Add to that the fact that if one were driving down the coast, another route enabled one to bypass Rockland altogether. What could they do?

Now Rockland is more than thriving. I haven't seen an empty storefront in years. They've got a festival for everything - jazz, lobsters, classical music, blues, and the town itself. There's even a good art museum. People stroll the streets and they aren't just tourists. Folks live above the stores. They sit in outdoor cafes. The train line was refurbished and now one can get there from Boston (or New York). There is so much to walk to that one doesn't even need to rent a car.

Every time I think of Rockland, I want to kick myself. I saw the change occurring and thought "move there", but didn't. I was wedded to where I was. Belfast still seemed like a place of creative promise. Perhaps the final straw, the last nail in the coffin, was an event that went unnoticed by most: there was a building called the "Slack Factory", owned by a cooperative. People rented rooms there, to play music, to paint, or to live (thought that was not really allowed). There was an open mike night once a week, all year round. Next to this building was the bingo hall. They needed more parking, and I suspect they didn't like the strange people who hung out at the building next door. So, they offered to buy it, and a good sum was offered. This cooperative, once a bunch of local creative people, had scattered. The ones that left wanted the money and didn't care about the consequences to the community. There was a fight and the buy-out was put off. Urgent pleas for money went out: if the folks who had a stake in the sale could raise only 5000 dollars, the building would not be razed for a parking lot. The deadline loomed, and they were short some small sum. Within a week, the building was gone, new tar had been laid, and an era came to an end.

The open mike night moved to the UU church, and with that came some censorship. Once, the little "city" of Belfast was named one of the "hippest unknown places in America" by some magazine. Young people flocked here during the summers. Music was played on street corners. It's all gone now.

Or perhaps it ended the day an old friend left her family and farm to work for MBNA. She once churned her own magnificent butter. When she stopped, she revelled in the fact that she could now buy clothes in places other than second hand shops.

Ah, materialism - the streamroller that flattens everything and everyone in its wake.

Photo note: Where in the world is this particular Taco Bell? It doesn't matter.

Islands

We left the house at 6:00am yesterday for our journey to Bear Island, Maine. If we were crows, I suppose it would have been an hour's journey, (though this is just a wild guess and Dick could probably tell me the exact amount of time, but he's asleep).At around 11:00am we arrived at the island, which I feel I ought to capitalize. The Island.

There are almost 3000 (!) islands off the coast of Maine. I had no idea that the number was so high until a moment ago, when I googled it. I knew there were alot, but not this many. 95% of these islands are privately owned.

The idea of owning an island is beyond me. Yet, I remember having fantasies about just such a proposition years before I moved here. I had come to Maine to camp for a few weeks via plane, and while waiting to leave, I noticed that there was a glass display of real estate ads, all for islands, not houses, nor acreage but whole islands for sale, and most of them cost less than the price of a modest house in the suburbs of New York.

At the time, I lived in a tiny house on Long Island (not the one in Maine). For the price of that house, I could have owned my own private realm. I would have no money left over to build a house or buy a boat, but a person can dream, can't they?

I didn't buy an island but I did move to Maine. Unfortunately, I moved up here totally broke and didn't buy property until the prices were driven almost as high as they ever have been (such has been my luck in all matters financial).

But this is not what I meant to write.

I wanted to write about the kind of light (and darkness) that exists on an island. I am pausing here, trying to find the right words, and they are not coming to me. I am terribly tired, but I would venture to guess that this is not why I am at a loss for words. I am not enough of wordsmith, by any means, to convey the quality of the light off the coast of Maine.

Every time I have left the mainland, within five minutes I become awe struck. The water reflects the sky and even when the skies are dark with rain clouds, the sense of spaciousness grows as one gets further from the shore. The boat may be noisy, but the sound of gulls and terns overpowers the sound of the motor (or maybe only to my ears).

Yesterday morning was gray and foreboding, but the gray was tinged with purple, so similar in color to the shakes on the sides of most of the islands' buildings. One realizes, too, just how many shades of gray there are. The rocks, the sky, the dead trees (oh, they are beautiful, those mangled behemoths), the new and old houses, the storm petrels. . .all gray, magnificent gray.

We got lucky, and heavy humidity and fog did not turn to storms. The sun came out brilliantly, quite surprisingly, and the sky was filled with the kind of cumulous clouds that I've always thought of as islands in the sky. Totally perfect. Islands below and above.

And then Bear Island, the Island, small enough to see water on all sides, but large enough to hold a small forest and quite a bit of mystery.

What can I say? I coveted. I still do. There was the "big house", where the family has lived for over one hundred summers. And there was the "kitchen house", which not only held a kitchen but an indoor dining room big enough for thirty people (or more) and still feel intimate. The screened dining room faced the sun setting over the water and held a view of not only the other islands, but the coast of Maine, far enough away as to obscure what I knew was there - the "city" of Belfast, where I used to live (and now have very mixed feelings about). I could not see the new nail salons and the big orange sign of the new Family Dollar Store. Ah, poor Belfast. If one strays from its still beautiful side streets and two lower shopping streets on the water, one could be in Anywhere, USA.

As this evening has turned to night, I realize that the darkness on the island was so much deeper. Here, in my tiny rural village, we have street lights. No, it isn't New York. I can see the stars at night and at some point, around 9:00pm, the sound of cars pretty much ceases. But it is never truly pitch black. It never becomes truly quiet either, for there's always some hum of a motor to be heard, whether it's the cooler in the General Store or one of the trucks my neighbor has in his front yard. In my own house, something is usually making some sort of sound. It may be the sump pump or the well water pump. We've stopped using our furnace (for good, I think), but there's a propane heater and a refrigerator and if one is really sensitive to these things, the sound of the electricity. Yes, it makes a sound. Another thing Dick could explain, but I won't wake him up to say "Hey Dick, why do we unplug the washing machine?"

Bear Island runs what little electricity they use from solar panels (or something - I didn't ask for details). At night, the darkness seems deepened by the quiet. And oh how I long for that kind of quiet. It is like the quiet after a huge snow storm. It envelops me and makes me feel comforted and snug as a bug. I am surprised when I find that many people are afraid of this kind of darkness and quiet.

So many homes, most of them, I'd say, have neither quiet nor darkness. The TV is always on, or the radio, or someone is listening (sort of) to music. The phone is always ringing. When I was in Princeton, I noticed that about a third of the folks on the street were talking into the air, for they had bluetooth devices in their ears. There is no place you can not be reached by others or assaulted with sound.

On the Maine Islands, you're lucky to get any kind of phone service. The mail arrives by boat, every day during the summer (at least on the few islands that were serviced by the boat we came in on) and twice a week during the winter. For those who do have cell phones, they have great excuses for not being able to talk; "I'm on an island." It sounds so dramatic, as if they were cast away and stranded, and not living leisurely and by choice in this wondrous setting.

I have been bewitched by other Maine Islands: notably Swan's and Little Cranberry Islands. As a teenager, I spent a day sitting in the woods of Deer Island, Canada, reading H.P.Lovecraft under the enormous pines. I never wanted to leave.

The same summer I read Lovecraft, I joined a bunch of other kids to rough it on an interior island on Moosehead Lake. We didn't figure out properly how much food we needed and were out by the end of day two, so three of us got in a canoe and started paddling in what we thought was the right direction of the store. Moosehead Lake is big. None of knew how to read the map of the waters or use a compass (skills we should have had, of course). To make matters worse, a storm blew up out of nowhere, lightning and all, and we wound up nearly killing ourselves trying to make it up onto the shore of another typically stoney Maine Island. I am not lying when I tell you there was an old sign that read "Welcome to Devil's Island". Sopping wet and freezing, we crawled our way over the rocks and found a row of burnt out summer cottages fronting a deep woods. We figured we'd sleep in one of them until the morning came, assess the canoe's damage in the morning, and pray someone would come along. Or something. We hadn't a clue.

Before we made it to the cottages, a woman ran out of the woods. She was quite old. She said she had been watching us, and feared that we would not make it to shore. She led us through a dark path to a large house deep in the woods. There were two other old women who lived with her. And then there was this - the ground floor of the house was filled with glass canisters of cookies and sweets. On every surface we saw, there they were. It was insane. We were kids of 15 suddenly thrown into a real life Hansel and Gretal house. The women were thrilled to see us. They went off island once a month for groceries and spoke very little. We were like little children to them. The boy who was with us was of particular interest to them. He had dark skin and dark hair and had the audacity to announce he was Jewish. I have no idea why he did, but one of those woman, I kid you not, parted his dark hair to look for horns. Oh, we were babes in the wilderness!

I remember falling asleep, scared that I had been poisoned, and scared that I would be bitten by bedbugs, for I was sleeping on a bed filled with straw, something I'd only read about in books or seen in museums. In the middle of the night, I had to pee, and went to the outhouse. There was a chainsaw on the floor, with something oozy looking dripping off of it. My imagination ran away with me. I truly thought one of compatriots had been killed very quietly while I was sleeping and certain I was going to be unwittingly fed him or her for a meal the next day.

The next day turned out to be bright and beautiful. Our canoe was ruined. The women told us that we could stay and that Moosehead Lake had a coast guard of sorts, since it was so big, and that after a large storm they generally would come by to check on things. Eventually.

Even though none of us had been cut up and stewed and the women were less terrifying in the light of day, none of us wanted to stay too long. We were grateful when the boat turned up in the late afternoon. They were looking for us. They had checked on the friends we left behind first, who were terrified we had been killed in the storm. They took us all back to the shore. We were admonished for our ignorance and warned against ever trying such a thing again without knowing the basics of compass reading and preparation. It didn't matter. We were all from the city and now that we were out of danger, we all agreed that this would make the best story of the summer once we got home.

And that was certainly true, for here I am, thirty years later, telling this story.

Back then, I was somewhat scared of the darkness and quiet of islands, though I also felt deeply attracted to them. Tonight, it is raining heavily, thunder is cracking and lightning is lighting up the dark night sky. But it isn't so wild or so daunting here on the mainland. We will not be stranded. Tomorrow, my driveway may have some new ruts, but that is all.

I meant to speak of the nature of the light on the islands, but I fell back in time, and remembered some of what brought me to this place called Maine. It is not the place I knew as a child, but it is still is, out there on most of those 3000 islands. Yes, now people have satellite dishes, internet service and cell phones, but they can always say "Service is bad out here" and go about their business, picking blueberries and gazing out at the water, living in a world of enormous light and darkness.

If I lived out there, I'd have a gray cell phone. A osprey might come swooping down and mistakenly carry it away in its talons, thinking it was one very cold mouse.

Ah.

Photo note: This is not the water off the coast of Maine. I have no idea where it is. It was on the Web, and the description was in a language I did not recognize, which is intriguing in of itself. I looked for a good picture of any of the 3000 Maine islands, and gave up. They all looked too much like picture postcards, or were ads for multi-million dollar homes. I toyed with the idea of putting up a square of purplish gray, but this photo will do. For what, I am not sure.

At precisely 11:37am

I made a note on a piece of paper that I finally put a new scent on. After 5:30's (approximately) revelation about the Maine winter and my nearly week long obsession with the scent-that-shall-not-be-named, I felt that I had had enough, at least for now. It was time to move on. My love had lost it's mystery. Sigh.

I didn't want to try anything that might challenge me. Nor did I want to smell anything that I was too familiar with. Interesting dilemma there. But the answer lay in Chanel's Eau de Cologne, which was the "boring" scent from the Exclusifs collection. It's a nice refreshing and unsurprising cologne which lasts about 10 minutes at most on my skin. A cool breeze of bergamot - and poof - it's gone.

I decided to layer some Frapin 1270 over what was left of the cologne. This was an odd choice, since I've never even opened the sample vial to sniff it. I knew nothing about this scent and still don't, for I intentionally disregarded it when I applied it.

I feel like I've insulted Beatrice Cointreau by ignoring her creation and combining it with another on it's first try (though I highly doubt she'd be too upset by this Maine yokel's faux pas or opinion, but I could be wrong). I was rude to it and owe it an apology. Yet, a few hours later, I smell very little of note, or to note. It just smells nice, but I've got all sorts of scents on me at the moment and I am guessing that the soap I used to wash my hands and forearms at 11:30 is the predominant smell. It was Caldrea's Italian Cypress Pear, which was their unpopular Christmas release.

To make up for my snubbing the Frapin 1270, I put up this drawing: the nave of the Amiens Cathedral, the cathedral church of Notre Dame, Amiens, northern France. It is the largest Gothic cathedral in France and among the most famous religious monuments in the world. It replaced an earlier building that burnt down in 1218 and was built for the most part between 1220 and 1270.

The Frapin perfume is named 1270 for the year the Frapin family established itself in the Cognac region of France. Frapin is a Cognac maker; I am bit confused, for I cannot find anything about their perfume on the Web except reviews and where to buy it. Stay tuned, or if you know, please enlighten me. I don't think I"m all that interested in this scent, but it's history is intriguing. What I did learn, I got from Lucky Scent.

The final word (hopefully)

I awoke at 5:30 this morning with my wrist up against my nose. I had a scorching pain in my big toe, sending pulsations of sensation up my leg, which is probably what woke me. Never mind, I thought, as I intentionally deeply inhaled the now somewhat flowery lingering scent of last night's application of Passage D'enfer. In that moment, when the smell took me away from my pain, I realized exactly why this is the perfect scent right now and why I seem to reject every other fragrance as imperfect (and know, in time, that I'll come to reach for another, of course).

It is the smell of Maine in April. You've heard of April in Paris but you probably don't know that much, if anything, about April in Maine. I know we're not quite there yet, but we might as well be.

In April, we are all stir crazy. Cabin fever is the correct term but I never hear anyone use it. I hear that they feel that can't stand it any longer. I hear that person X's husband beat her up yet again. I see the declining stock of liquor at the General Store. I hear the complaints of those whom everyone complains to, and how every person seems to be having some sort of crisis. I hear that this year is oh so much worse than last year and musings about whether one can make it through yet another Maine winter. I heard that last year (and every year before that - sorry, folks).

Did I mention I feel it, too? I am certainly not immune. I despise this season in Maine.

It can be warm (if you call the upper reaches of 40 degrees warm). This year it is not. It hovers around the freezing point during the day, which seems to be a temperature that makes me feel like crap. It's damp. When the sun is out, which is infrequent, the snow starts to melt. It is not pretty. It was only fifteen degrees at 6:00am, which has been fairly typical and I am so done with Winter!

Some years we have more snow in April than during the entire winter. This happened last year and I do believe we're all holding our breath that it doesn't happen again. Last year we hadn't much snow by the time it happened. This year we've had nearly 200 inches of snow. The records have been broken and noone is jumping up and down about it. I suppose the skiers may be, but I don't know any one who's a skier, so I couldn't tell you.

So, Julie, please try to keep on topic (as if that's even remotely possible!)

Passage D'enfer is the perfect scent for this time of year. It's austere with a hint of softness. It's cold but not icey. It's dry but not powdery. I hadn't thought it would be comforting, but I certainly felt it was this morning. It wasn't the comfort of a warm cup of cocoa but the comfort of something old and reliable, perhaps akin to a well loved throw that one thinks should perhaps be retired, but hey, it can always be patched, right?

We who live in Maine bitch and moan and bitch, bitch and bitch some more come this time of year, but we are also somewhat proud of being able to live through it and come out relatively intact. Somehow that relates to my last sentence above, but I can't put this connection into words. Perhaps you, the reader, can see it, or sense or something. I'm tired.

Image: "Passage D'enfer, Paris" by Miho Hirawkawa

Au The Rouge Redux

Monday morning. Slept late. Not an unusual thing.

It was just that I had to get to a doctor's appointment and I had very little time. I was scrambling. So, I threw on the same clothes I wore yesterday, reheated a cup of cold coffee in the microwave, brushed my teeth, threw a pretty scarf on, 'cause, after all, I was wearing leftovers which I'm sure smelled of duck grease. . .and then I reached for the Bulgari Au The Rouge.

And then I realized I've contradicted myself in an earlier post for I had written that this scent would make a better air freshener than perfume.

I am fickle (characterized by erratic changeableness or instability, especially with regard to affections or attachments; capricious). As an aside, I find the word changeableness objectionable, it just sounds wrong in some way, but this is the definition in the American Heritage Dictionary, so who am I to say?

The Rouge was the perfect thing for a groggy Monday morning. It is fresh without greenery, which seemed perfect for a day like this one. The sky was a cloudless bright blue. The sun seemed brighter than usual. The idea of spring seemed not too far fetched, though any evidence of it's arrival was not apparent. We are still surrounded by snow. But this snow is no longer beautiful. There are piles higher than my head, filled with the detritus of a ruined driveway. Large patches where the snow has melted are filled with sawdust, tree bark in chunks of all sizes, and sunflower seed hulls.

It is bleak and ugly and lasts until May 1st. This is the Maine that tourists don't often see.

I've had such a yearning for Spring as does everyone I speak to. We all get cranky around now. I am hoarding my little vial of CB I Hate Perfume's "Memories of Kindness" for it smells exactly like tomato vines on a hot summer day and I need that. But there's something almost pathetic about looking for (and finding) summer in a bottle when it's so bleak outside.

I could have reached for my favorite Chanel, which is the epitome of green, but I am trying new scents these days, so I passed.

The Rouge was perfect. No, it's not very complicated. What memories and feelings it evokes are rather humdrum to me. A cooling cup of tea in a plain white cup. But sometimes you just need something simple.