The sunlight in the old photo looks as it does today on a spring or early autumn afternoon. The facade of the white clapboard school shines, and the shadows cling to the posed figures, the shade line close to where we would see it now, more than 130 years later. There is even a familiar … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: October 2012
Setting Sail for Long-Ago Shores
Last week, I spent a morning in the 19th century. I shipped out on a wooden schooner named The Bowdoin, as if entering a time machine, sailing across Penobscot Bay from Searsport to Castine, Maine, with 15 high-school juniors from Belfast. They were students in an American Studies course who were learning about the Age … Continue reading
BTUs, Student Age, and Academic Subjects: Notes towards a new theory of elementary school heating.
The school building is cold—again. That is, the rest of the building is cold. My office and Mrs. Thomas’s office are saunas. But Bill McWeeny’s room is glacial (yesterday it was a sauna); so is the art room. We’ve come to expect the lobby to be cold, given the constant traipsing in and out during … Continue reading
Plowing by Woods on a Snowy Evening
A Nor’easter has us in its talons—finally. The entire East Coast has been hammered, there is a record twenty-two inches of snow in New York’s Central Park, and this storm might just bury us too. It has taken until Sunday, February 12th for a proper winter storm to arrive here in Castine, Maine. The kids … Continue reading
The Steeplewright Stuff
Most of Bob Hanscom’s work is in the 18th or 19th century. He commutes to his job up a set of narrow winding stairs, or sometimes up a ladder. And occasionally he is hoisted by crane, as high as 130 feet in the air, while standing in a yellow metal cylinder that he designed for … Continue reading
Fishin’ Blues
For my family, last summer was the summer of mackerel. On the second evening of our vacation in Castine, Maine my son Spencer caught his first fish, a shimmering black, green and silver mackerel of between 12 and 20 inches in length, depending on the time at which Spencer regaled us with the story. The … Continue reading
Awaiting Bear Number Three
Bears come in threes, I think, but perhaps this is just the conditioning of folklore. Nonetheless, I know that my third bear is in the area and will visit soon. I was not expecting my first bear. In fact, it seems to be a rule of bears that they will appear when you least … Continue reading
Owls of Literature and Utility Poles
On four out of five days during the past two weeks I have had the good fortune to see the same large barred owl, in the same place, at the same time. It has become an evening rendezvous. We are both punctual, or at least on the same schedule, and meet up on the Castine … Continue reading
Having a Cabin in Mind
I have a cabin in mind. It’s something I’ve been yearning to build for a while now, say forty years, but haven’t gotten around to. It derives from the aspiration for a dedicated space, four walls and a roof devoted to one man and rumination; a space on which nothing intrudes. It is also the … Continue reading
Emptying the Harbor
On Friday, right on schedule, the floating town docks were hoisted out of the water with a crane and stacked in the municipal parking lot for the winter. Our platform for mackerel fishing is gone; the red and white ’20 minute tie up’ sign is sentinel to nothing. The harbor seals venture closer as the … Continue reading
