[Above photo: The lovely 141 foot gaff-rigged schooner, Columbia on the Portland waterfront. She was built by the owner of Eastern Boatyard in Panama City, FL. as a replica of a 1923 Gloucester-built fishing schooner. The original was the only American vessel to give serious competition to the Bluenose, a famed Nova Scotia schooner of similar purpose. They would race back to Halifax from the Grand Banks full of fish each season.]
30 October 2023
The lovely young couple across the street have led a block party for the past 3 years. It is geared, and rightly so, toward children, with face-painting and t-shirt printing. This year one highlight was the pie contest—wonderful entries, including a delicious cranberry-apple by my friend and neighbor, Gail. The winner was a lemon curd pie with a fabulously flaky crust, large slices of cooked lemon, and not too much sugar. The husband of the couple, Jerome, volunteered to sit on a bench underneath an apparatus which dumped a bucket of water on him when a rubber ball was thrown and struck a target. No adults were allowed to try, but several of the 8-10yo children soaked him. Finally, his tender and understanding wife kissed him and announced that he’d retire this employment after one more soaking.
I met a couple of neighbors and with one of them talked (rather, I listened) for a good while. He runs an organic soil company but his love is sailing. He owned a Lyle Hess-designed 28’ Bristol Channel Cutter, the most glorious and capable of traditional sailboats and now has a cold-molded one-off gaff-rigged cutter. He showed me pictures of it under sail—what a dream! Among other voyages, he did an 8000 mile loop around the Atlantic, gunk-holing in Portugal. Much of it was solo sailing. It fulfilled a dream of mine. However, the reality is that halfway across the ocean I’d wonder “And why am I doing this?” and how I’d managed to shed companionship so completely. Still, a romantic fantasy. I mentioned that if he needed crew I was available. I suspect he has his regular crew.
Look online for the yacht, Columbia, pictured above. She has a terrific back-story and videos of her under sail are breathtaking. She’s for sale, a steal at under $12 million. The builder-owner is reportedly at work on a replica! As a high school student he’d determined to build her.
The shifts in our weather continue to amaze me. The recent high was 72 on the day of our block party; the next day the high was 46. Today is cool and rainy. I must get bulbs in the ground for next spring soon, before the earth freezes.
My nephews and their mother, my sister-in-law, will move permanently to Portugal in 3 weeks. They have bought a place in the countryside, a 20 minute train ride east of Porto, on 2.68 acres with grapes, olives, fruit trees, an 1827 stone cottage, another stone cottage, and a newer, more modern home, all beautifully maintained. For a remarkably reasonable price. I admire their persistence, looking at many places throughout the country for over a year before buying. And waiting for the many layers of bureaucracy to approve their move and residency; it must have felt like pouring cold molasses or watching your lawn grow. I cannot wait to visit.
There are matsutake mushrooms in Maine. They are the treasured Japanese Pine Mushrooms. Poki’s parents would forage them in the Fall on the slopes of Mt. Ranier. We’d get a call in the evening from the United Airlines freight office at the San Francisco International Airport and know what awaited us. They are heavenly sauteed in butter with a little salt, although Ari likes to do them with butter, soya sauce, and a touch of mirin. Apparently, they are so valuable that Asian gangs, armed, have staked out productive territories in the Pacific Northwest. 20 years ago they sold for $34 a pound. Attempts at cultivating them have, so far, been unsuccessful.
Ari and I met at a lake, which-shall-remain-unnamed, launched our kayaks on a cloudy day, and paddled to a distant shore. Disembarking, we scoured the woods and harvested a good number of matsutake. Next September I plan to travel to various lakes, paddle to inaccessible second-growth hemlock forests, and identify more spots. They are easily distinguished from other mushrooms, looking for all the world like the penis of one’s dreams, if one dreamed of such things.
I am writing, both tales for my fiction course and memoir sketches for my writing group (The latter sounds grand but includes only two ladies beside myself. They are fun and interesting, write well, and I enjoy their company.). I’ve had some fun with the fiction course but it really isn’t my deal. I write to sort myself out and do that better with “fact”, at least what I perceive and recall to be fact. Memory is surprisingly fungible, I discover, let alone faulty as I gradually lose the names, or struggle for them, of people I have known. My sister, being 11 years older than me, is further along that path and it gripes her mightily.
I saw a wonderful film—“The Origin of Evil” (L’Origine du mal)—at the Portland Museum of Art’s film series. I forced myself to go, based on the reviews, even though it was a glorious, warm day when I could have hiked or kayaked or whatever outdoors—BEFORE WINTER SETS IN. I’ll say nothing of the plot but it is entertaining, full of surprises, and well-done.
I’m finishing Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys. Can she write! Olive Kittridge is her most famous but I prefer this, digging as it does into the struggles some in Maine have with wanting it to remain white and unchanged, despite the inevitability, necessity, and benefits of newcomers from other lands. Also, she examines the conflict between staying home vs. exiting for the bright lights of a metropolitan area, New York City in this case. She reminds me of my favorite, Alice Munro in her perceptiveness and character development.
I had a small dinner party with two couples, all of whom are published authors. I experienced untoward anxiety about the menu. I eagerly tried out the dish I selected to cook—-Caldo Verde, the national dish of Portugal—and found it less than appealing. Recalibrate. I settled on a slow-roasted piripiri chicken with tiny Yukon gold potatoes with aioli, an arugula-radicchio salad with a Cesar dressing, and a pear-apple-cherry crumble topped with ginger ice cream for dessert. It took a hell of a lot of work and time, but all emerged as planned. One of the guests said, “That is the best meal I’ve had in a long time.” And I learned to make aioli and Cesar dressing along the way. I think I need a small stable of recipes I can rotate so that each time it doesn’t feel like free-climbing El Capitan, never knowing the outcome! I like cooking; my anxiety diminishes the pleasure, however.
The killing continues in Myanmar and Ukraine and, now, in the Middle East. The most recent eruption—Hamas terrorists slaughtering and kidnapping unarmed Israeli women, children, the aged, etc. and, in turn, Israel’s reprisal, killing 5x (so far) as many Palestinian civilians in a desperate fury to destroy Hamas’ massive underground tunnel system in Gaza—is terrible beyond words. What soils it all even more, if possible, is the exploitation of it for political gain by many, often using disinformation. It was predictable that sometime the radical Palestinian factions would explode in violence, the populace being as suppressed and ill-treated as they have been. It doesn’t do to say “God promised this land to the Jews.” Even if it were so, a displaced people will fight back, because they likely think that their god promised the land to them. In such a complex situation involving two groups of people, both of whom have been persecuted and reviled, it behooves all of us to contain our emotions.
I was in Boston for a few days with a friend and wandered on my own to the Harvard Yard where I enjoyed a cappuccino at a group of small café tables and chairs on the patio in front of Memorial Chapel. Across the yard from me was gathered a large group of people at the base and on the steps of Widener Library. There were placards and intensely impassioned speakers, pleading the Palestinian cause. And well they might, as the Palestinians, most would agree, have been treated shabbily by the Israeli government. However, Israel had just suffered a terrible terrorist attack by Hamas, a Palestinian (and Iranian) organization dedicated to the eradication of Israel. And so it goes, endlessly. I think one terrible tragedy is the missed opportunity of the Oslo Accords, for which we can blame—Yassir Arafat, perhaps? But then Bibi forced a dramatic expansion of settlements in the West Bank. In such a sad and confused situation, it seems to me that, especially those of us not in battle, must hold our passions—Yeats’ “blood-dimmed tide”—, think about the innocent and vulnerable, and attempt to promote a measured response. Simply pummeling Hamas, with the concomitant civilian casualties, will only ensure that the conflict continues to erupt.
Our leaders, dependent on popular support to retain their power, rarely have the will to address the root causes of problems. Ironically, Joe Biden is effectively trying to shift things in a fairer direction in our country, diminishing our massive wealth and income disparities, but he remains remarkably unpopular for reasons unclear to me, even as the GOP continues to try to stymy his efforts.
A Psychiatrist in Myanmar 