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    • The Yin and Yang of New Hampshire and Vermont

      “She’s one of the two best states in the Union.
      Vermont’s the other. And the two have been
      Yokefellows in the sap yoke from of old
      In many Marches. And they lie like wedges,
      Thick end to thin end and thin end to thick end,
      And are a figure of the way the strong
      Of mind and strong of arm should fit together,
      One thick where one is thin and vice versa.”

      – Robert Frost, New Hampshire

      New Hampshire and Vermont are Yin and Yang.  Almost flipped mirror images of one another, as Frost describes.  The people are similar in so many ways, and different in so many other ways.  Generally, Vermont is a “blue state” while New Hampshire is a “red state”, traditionally voting Republican (much to the chagrin of Vermont and Massachusetts).  New Hampshire has a certain active principle, Live Free or Die vibe going, while Vermont embraces a more receptive, Freedom and Unity vibe.

      The Connecticut River defines the border between the two, as determined by King George III in 1763. Vermont didn’t exist back then, the land was deemed New York’s. But that didn’t last very long; about the time it took for New York to try to collect taxes from the people there. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys chased the tax collectors right out and Vermont seceded as the American Revolution was ramping up. That’s a very New Hampshire thing to do! And ever since, these two states have been locked in an eternal embrace; interconnected yet independent. White Mountains and Green Mountains, conservative and liberal, two of the smallest states in size and population; wonder twins holding up the northern border and hugging each other for eternity.

    • From Falkirk To Portsmouth

      206 years ago next week, on September 10, 1813, the British brig General Hunter was captured after the Battle of Lake Erie. That battle deserves more attention, which I’ll try to offer on another day. This story is about the journey a pair of cannon took from the banks of the River Carron in Falkirk, Scotland to their current home near the banks of the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The guns are of course inanimate objects, but darn it they’re surely survivors.

      Once a part of the arsenal on the brig Hunter for the British, captured and turned to service for the Americans on the brig USS Firefly, the cannon saw service in the War of 1812, the Second Barbary War of 1815 before being retired from active duty and sold with the Firefly to a wealthy merchant from Portsmouth named John Peirce. The guns were on two of the Peirce merchant ships before finally becoming a family heirloom, donated and placed in their current location more than a century ago. As Portsmouth changed they were moved closer to the building to where they are now.

      I’ve come across the guns a couple of times while walking through Portsmouth. And I’ve done a double-take each time. The ships they were in are long gone, and so are a succession of crew and wealthy owners who once valued the utilitarian efficiency of these weapons. Today they’re no longer lethal, instead standing permanently at attention, muzzles buried in the earth, as tourists, drunkards and businesspeople alike drift past, oblivious to their violent history.

      They flank the entrance to the Portsmouth Athenaeum, itself a curiosity in this modern world. The building is almost as old as the guns, and they guard it like older twin brothers might protect a younger sister. Saved from anonymity by the plaques proclaiming their role in the Battle of Lake Erie. But they’d only part of their story. Imagine all these cannon have witnessed, and the stories they could tell.

    • Now… or Never

      Reading has a way of pulling material out for us.  I fully intended to write about the Battle of Lake Erie today, but it will have to wait just a bit longer.  Instead I came across this poem last night while thinning out the bookshelves.  I have books stacked on books, and it’s time to clean out a bunch of them.  Fall yard sale or donate to a library or sell to a used bookstore?  Their fate is to be determined.  But back to that poem.  It speaks of young lust to be sure, but also calls out across the centuries, warning us to get on with it already (so to speak), for time is short:

      “Had we but world enough, and time,
      This coyness, lady, were no crime.
      We would sit down and think which way
      To walk, and pass our long love’s day…

      But at my back I always hear
      Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
      And yonder all before us lie
      Deserts of vast eternity.
      Thy beauty shall no more be found,
      Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
      My echoing song; then worms shall try
      That long preserv’d virginity,
      And your quaint honour turn to dust,
      And into ashes all my lust.
      The grave’s a fine and private place,
      But none I think do there embrace.”

      – Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

      Who doesn’t smile at the game old Andrew was playing here?  That the game was played in the 1650’s, but published posthumously, as if our hero were reaching out from the grave to remind us that time is short, and to do what we must do….  now.  Carpe Diem.  Marvell was apparently a real player, and I spent some time getting acquainted with a few of his poems this morning before writing.  I may revisit his work sometime, but I can’t ignore the call.  I dance with a lot of ghosts after all, and so should everyone.  They know things we don’t yet know.  History speaks, and so does literature.

      Interestingly, the first time I read the first and last two lines of the poem wasn’t in some English class, but in a business book written by Felix Dennis called How to Get Rich.  I’d picked up his book back in 2006 at the height of my lust for business success.  Back when I read it the first time I ignored the urgency of his call.  I’m less inclined to do so now.  Dennis died in 2014, joining Marvell in calling out from the grave.  Seize the day!

      The grave’s a fine and private place,
      But none I think do there embrace.”

       

    • Snatching Necklaces From the Sea

      “The wind freshened, and the Spray rounded Deer Island light at the rate of seven knots.
      Passing it, she squared away direct for Gloucester to procure there some fisherman’s stores. Waves dancing joyously across Massachusetts Bay met her coming out of the harbor to dash them into myriads of sparkling gems that hung about her at every surge. The day was perfect, the sunlight clear and strong. Every particle of water thrown into the air became a gem, and the Spray, bounding ahead, snatched necklace after necklace from the sea, and as often threw them away. We have all seen miniature rainbows about a ship’s prow, but the Spray flung out a bow of her own that day, such as I had never seen before. Her good angel had embarked on the voyage; I so read it in the sea.” – Josh Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World

      I’ve read that passage a few times over the years since first reading this book, and did so again last night.  There’s magic in setting out on a new adventure, and I feel this paragraph captures that exhilaration.  These are the highlighter moments in the novel of life; the first ride without the training wheels when you have balance and velocity with you and you feel like you’re flying, boarding a plane for a flight overseas to a place you’ve always dreamed of going, or simply the first feeling out steps on a long hike when you realize everything is good to go.  Preparedness meets possibility, and the world is in front of you welcoming you to explore your potential.  Ready?  Go!

      Of course, not every moment is a highlight moment, but there should be something in every day that makes you feel alive.  Every dawn is full of possibility, if we’ll only get out and greet the day.  Over the weekend I re-acquainted myself with my sister’s dog Parker. She’s a yellow lab with a highly expressive face and eyes that tell you everything you need to know.  Reading about Slocum’s boat Spray, I thought of Parker’s expression as she realized she was going for a swim in the bay.  Sheer delight, and a sprint to the water.  May we all have more of that in our time here.

      What shall we make of this day?

    • Great is Today

      If you want to fully feel the urgency of “now” watch a veteran roofing crew begin work on a house. There’s no time to get in touch with their feelings, they pull up, assess and get on with it. Get it done ASAP, and move on to the next house tomorrow.

      It’s the first Tuesday in September, and the first day of school pictures will be snapped all over Massachusetts. New Hampshire went back last week, but really that’s just to get a head start on snow days to come. School begins in earnest this week from kindergarten to college. And so [unofficially] summer ends, Autumn begins, and there’s a heightened sense of the moment.

      I read Leaves of Grass last week. More precisely I finished Leaves of Grass last week. Walt Whitman has some brilliant prose, and some sprinkled liberally throughout this work, but there’s a lot of chewing to get this one down. Lot of Walt getting in touch with his sensuality stuff in there that proved controversial for the time, but this isn’t going to be a post about the work as a whole. Instead, this line jumped out at me:

      “Great is today, and beautiful, It is good to live in this age… there never was any better.” – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

      Whitman wrote that sometime between 1850 and 1855, when Leaves of Grass was published. It was before the Civil War and other dark days in Whitman’s life. But there are always dark days, and always vibrant days throughout history. Life is the ebb and flow. Don’t bury your head in the sand when darkness reigns, but don’t ignore the extraordinary gift of now we’ve been given either.

      “Look around. Look around. How lucky we are to be alive right now.” – The Schuyler Sisters, Hamilton

      Be alive, right now. That’s all there is. We can’t time travel backwards, and we can’t hit fast-forward.  We all know Aesop’s fable about the ants and the grasshopper, but he wasn’t saying there’s no time for play, he was saying that we need to harvest first, then dance and sing.  So by all means work, and build that nest egg, but don’t lose sight of this magic moment along the way. 

      “Do not be concerned with the fruit of your action – just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.” – Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

      I’m weighing that fable as roofers strip the roof over my head and I contemplate Whitman. The irony isn’t lost on me, I’ve been on construction crews and know their world. They don’t stop to smell the roses for very long, but sometimes a moment appears. As I spoke with them before they started I pointed to the ripe grapes they would soon cover over to protect them from debris and told them to help themselves. They savored the sweetness of the grapes with audible pleasure, even as they got on with the work at hand. The fruit came of it’s own accord, then it was time to get back to work.

    • Shattering the Peppadew Jar

      (Reposted after quirky WordPress delete)

      This morning I was pondering the power of routine in our lives when my routine abruptly changed.  I was filling a glass of water in the refrigerator when I noticed the basket of limes was protruding out because they were crowded by the package of strawberries.  In pushing the strawberries to side I started a chain reaction that led to a jar of peppadews to topple over onto the glass I was holding in my hand, shattering both immediately.  They eventually ended up on the floor, where the juice and glass and peppadews and water began to flow outward in all directions.  Suddenly I wasn’t focused on the next step in my morning routine and quickly began the cleanup process, which included extracting two small slivers of glass from my hand.

      Prior to that moment, I had been contemplating in succession the workout posters on the wall in the basement where we exercise, and then the cookbooks on the shelf in the kitchen, and thinking about how we rarely look at either.  When I work out I generally do the exercises I’m familiar with, I don’t scan the wall for a new one.  When I cook uiuiI usually cook the same things over and over, rarely going to the cookbooks for something new.  In the time I could scan the index of a cookbook I could Google a couple of available ingredients and find a dozen four and five star-reviewed recipes.  And yet the cookbooks remain ready should I need them.

      Routines are powerful things indeed.  I’m better for having changed the start to my early morning from grabbing a coffee and scrolling through social media to exercising first, reading second and writing third before I jump into whatever the rest of the world is up thinking about.  I credit reading Atomic Habits for shaking me loose from the normal routine.  Other books have inspired me along the way, but that book was like a jar of peppadews shattering in my hand, triggering me to change things immediately.

      This is my 200th blog post this year, and this is the 189th day of the year.  I’m well ahead of last year’s pace when I started this thing.  Last year I posted 143 times total.  That’s the power of establishing habits for you.  I’ve read more, and better books.  I’ve worked out more consistently as well. But the writing has been the one I’m most pleased about.  I was contemplating what to write about in this 200th post of 2019 – travel, gardening, history or some such thing, but nothing has done more for my writing than changing my daily habits.    Some of it is pretty good, some of it isn’t so good, but I’m not aiming for perfection.  Instead I’m establishing the habit and the commitment to shipping every day, as Seth Godin would say.

      Follow some friends of mine at fayaway.com to see how they’re doing their own version of shattering the peppadews to sail around the world.  Other friends have completely transformed their lives by focusing on hiking the mountains of New Hampshire.  We rarely see them anymore but they’ve never been healthier or happier than they are now. I watched a niece similarly transform herself through hiking and other lifestyle changes. Another good friend from Maine left an abusive marriage and moved to the mid-Atlantic region, where she just announced her engagement to a much better person. All shattering their own peppadew jars. Anything is possible if you just shake yourself free of the shackles of routine.

      “Don’t think, try.” – John Hunter

      “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle

      What Aristotle left unsaid is that mediocrity is also a habit. Change – getting out of your comfort zone, can be good indeed. James Clear talks about casting votes for your identity. If you identify yourself as an athlete you’re more likely to get up and work out. If you’re identify yourself as a disciplined eater you’re not even going to see that bowl of M & M’s your wife leaves right next to the door. Carrying the metaphor further, shattering the peppadew jar is deciding what your identity is going to be and casting that first vote. Who you’ll be, and who you won’t be on a larger scale.

      Back in my early twenties I used to call rowing an attractive rut, because it’s easy I could see the benefits of doing it in my overall health and fitness level, but I could also see the opportunities I was missing out on to do it. Travel, taking specific college courses because they conflicted with rowing, going out with non-rowing friends to an event because it would impact my performance. When you believe the overall benefits outweighs the costs it’s inconsequential that you’re missing out on things. About when I started identifying rowing as an attractive rut I was changing the equation in my own mind. I still row, but I don’t have illusions of winning the Head-of-the-Charles anymore.

      Achieving anything requires a healthy measure of sacrifice. Establishing one routine at the expense of another. You can remain average at a bunch of things and get along perfectly well in this world, or you can do the work that makes you exceptional at a specific thing and below average at other things. Attractive ruts are found in routine. But life is all too short, and before you know it another decade has flown by.

      “A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.” – Laurence J. Peter

      So perhaps it’s best to shatter a few more peppadew jars. Sometimes an abrupt reminder to shake up the routine is the best thing that can happen.

       

       

    • The Rules of the Game

      Pre-dawn magic time once again on Buzzards Bay. Up early today, but not earliest this time. My brother-in-law, who owns a hardware store, was busy on his laptop in the kitchen as I headed out for the light show. A barge drifted past delivering oil to Boston. Yes, even on this Labor Day many people are hard at work keeping the world moving forward. And as I watch the rest of the world wake up, I’m pondering a few quotes on this Labor Day in the United States. This may be thought a day of rest for the common man, and I surely am that, but instead I contemplate the game of work, and the challenges that lie ahead.

      “If you don’t build your dream someone will hire you to help build theirs.” – Tony Gaskins

      “You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” – David Foster Wallace, Infinit Jest

      “If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.” – Chinese Proverb

      “Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process.  The pain is a kind of challenge your mind presents – will you learn how to focus and move past the boredom, or like a child will you succumb to to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?” – Robert Greene, Mastery

      As I write, a crow lands atop a nearby tree, mocking me with its caw. The world owes us nothing, it lectured me, and it’s up to us to make something of ourselves. Pause, reflect, shift if you must, and move ahead. There’s only today after all.

    • His Majesty’s Pleasure: The Expulsion of the Acadians

      During the French and Indian War the British looked at Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island and saw a threat.  The Acadians, original settlers to this area from France, had been allowed to remain for 40 years after France had conceded this territory after the capture of Port Royal in 1713.  But the Acadians had never pledged an oath to Britain, and the resumption of hostilities in the French and Indian War became the tipping point.  How many in North America suffered because the French and English couldn’t get along?  Too many.

      Beginning on August 10, 1755 the British began rounding up Acadians and expelling them.  Often families were separated, with husbands and wives, mothers and children being sent to different places.  It reminds me of what happened to Japanese Americans in World War II, and what’s happening now on the Mexican border.  The weakness of moral character in people in power causing immense suffering for those who are powerless.  You can have homeland security without being an asshole.

      Henry Wadsworth Longfellow heard about the expulsion of the Acadians from Nathaniel Hawthorne.  There’s a moment when I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall listening in.  Longfellow then wrote a poem called Evangeline that told the plight of a fictional character of the same name trying to reunite with her husband.  The poem brought attention to the expulsion then, and still offers insight into their suffering now.  The Acadians were lured into church to hear at announcement, only to find out that they were prisoners, and their world was being turned upside down.

      “Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them
      Entered the sacred portal. With load and dissonant clangor
      Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and casement, –
      Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal
      Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers.
      Then uprose their commander, and spake from the steps of the altar,
      Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the royal commission.
      “You are convened this day,” he said, “by his majesty’s orders.
      Clement and kind he has been; but how you have answered his kindness,
      Let your own hearts reply! To my natural make and my temper
      Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous.
      Yet must I bow and obey, and deliver the will of our monarch:
      Namely that all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all kinds
      Forfeited be to the crown; and that you yourselves from this province
      Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there
      Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people!
      Prisoners now I declare you, for such is his majesty’s pleasure!”
      – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

      Many of the Acadians would end up in Louisiana, and their descendants are Cajuns.  Others would go to the thirteen colonies.  Some would eventually go back to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.  Many others died before they reached a destination.  It a dark stain in the history of a beautiful place.  And it offers a lesson we often forget.  The decisions of a few can disrupt the lives of many.

       

    • Love the One You’re With

      I woke up extra early today, hearing the call. Looking out the window I see a faint orange tint to an otherwise black sky. Not time yet, but close. I lay back down, but it’s no use. The call prevails. I scroll social media to distract the restless spirit. A quick scan confirms my worst fears of missing out. Aurora Borealis seen in Maine and New Hampshire last night. I switch to the Aurora app and look at the blob of green and orange stretching across the entire northern hemisphere, dipping down enough towards New England that a perch on Mount Washington or Katadin would surely offer a glimpse. Despair. I’ve missed it once again. I close the app and open Facebook to distract me. An old college friend posted pictures in Iceland… bet she saw it, I think to myself. Enough! I get up, get dressed and walk out to the crickets. No Aurora here but something equally spectacular I’m blessed to witness. The last day of August calls, and there’s plenty to see right here.

    • Three Legs of the Triangle

      Beginning Tuesday morning through last night I drove from Southern New Hampshire to Rocky Hill, Connecticut, up to Danbury, over to Dover Plains, New York, up to Albany, up to Burlington, Vermont and back down to Southern New Hampshire.  That’s a roughly 700 mile perimeter triangle on a map that is bigger in area that some of the states I drove through.  I’ve found that the people are mostly the same no matter where I go, but there are some differences in the three legs of that triangle.  The drive from Southern NH through Massachusetts and Connecticut is one world. The other two legs from Dover Plains to Burlington and back offer a very different world.

      I was at a bar in Danbury talking to a guy who was waiting out the traffic with dinner and a couple of drinks before he got back in his car to crawl home.  I know a guy in Massachusetts who does the same thing.  The traffic in both places will murder you 1/10th of a mile at a time.  There’s a helplessness that comes with relentless traffic that can eat you alive. That guy in Danbury was shell-shocked by a combination of forces working against him.

      Sprawling development has changed Danbury from the place I knew 25 years ago.  Perhaps nothing disgusted me more than seeing condos perched on the top of a hill, offering lovely views for the people who lived there but ruining the view for everyone that had to look at what they did to that hill.  Wedging more homes into open space means more and more people jamming onto those roads.  But the people are great, if worn down by the grind of traffic, urban sprawl, and Connecticut’s bureaucracy. There’s seemingly a sign everywhere telling you what you can and can’t do (Take my sunglasses off when I drive into a tunnel? Who knew?).

      New York is two states, metro New York and everywhere else. Dover Plains is not Metro NY, and neither is anyplace else along the stretch from there to the Canadian border, save for some Capital District commuter misery. North of Saratoga you can breath again. And other than the ferry drama mentioned in yesterday’s post those two longer legs were uneventful bliss. No condos carved into hilltops, no commuters on the verge of boiling over. Bliss.

      If you’ve ever stood by the side of a road you know how unnatural it is. It’s a horrific blur of noise, fumes and speed, all meant to rapidly transport goods and people from one place to another as quickly as possible. It’s inherently inefficient, destroys vast swaths of land, disrupts communities and ultimately destroys itself and chunks of the planet. The flip side of that story is that the world becomes smaller. I love the highway system when I’m zipping around 2/3 of that triangle, and hate it when I’m crawling along on the other 1/3. It’s a complicated debate, but I hope we get it right in the end. Let’s not let the 1/3 leg become the norm