Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • Matthew Thornton

      Yesterday afternoon I was in Merrimack, New Hampshire between meetings and stopped at a coffee shop for a few minutes.  I passed the Common Man Restaurant, which having dined there I’d remembered as one of the oldest houses in the area.  I thought I’d like to go back to the Common Man to re-acquaint myself with the house.  Glancing across the street, I saw an old graveyard dated from 1742 with a tall monument with a red, white and blue wreath on it.  I almost crossed the busy street to look at it but the timing wasn’t good.  These are places I generally gravitate to and I made a mental note to come back to this spot sometime to get to know those who came before us a bit better.

      This morning I was reading my Kindle app on my iPad and decided to clean out some old screenshots I’d accumulated when reading online articles.  I came across an article on the Ulster-Scots that I’d found interesting and re-read it.  One of the people in the article jumped out to me immediately; Matthew Thornton.  Thornton was an Irish-born signer of the Declaration of Independence, representing New Hampshire.  More interesting.

      Thornton’s family arrived in Boston in 1719 with many other Ulster Scots.  They moved to Wiscasset, Maine (another place I’ve come to know) but fled the area when the Abenaki attacked their settlement and burned their home.  The family moved to Worcester, Massachusetts for some time before Matthew ultimately ended up in Nutfield, New Hampshire in what is now Merrimack.  He served as surgeon during the French and Indian War and participated in the attack on Fort Louisbourg in Cape Breton that changed the course of that war.  Thornton became the first President of the New Hampshire House of Representatives and the Associate Justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire.  In 1776 he was elected to the Continental Congress and made his way to Philadelphia, where he became one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

      Thornton lived in the house that is now the Common Man.  It’s called the Signer’s House to honor him.  He died in 1803 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, but was buried across the street from his home in Merrimack, New Hampshire.  That’s the graveyard that was calling out to me yesterday.  So within 15 hours two random events pointed to the same man; Matthew Thornton.

      Yesterday afternoon I met with a friend of mine who is living along the Souhegan River in Merrimack.  I was struck by the rapids right in the backyard and commented on the Abenaki who probably had the same view, and the early settlers who came across this spot.  I didn’t know at the time that Matthew Thornton probably stood roughly in the same spot several times.  Once again, I’ve been dancing with ghosts…

      Postscript:
      Coincidently, I was driving through Merrimack again hours after I wrote this blog and decided to pull over to visit Matthew.  The monument was built to honor him by the State of New Hampshire, on a lot and foundation given by the town of Merrimack, to honor Thornton.  His gravestone is located roughly 50 yards away from the monument.  It was carved from white marble and flanked by American flags planted in the soil on either side.  His wife is buried to his left, and his sons to his right.  They all face the house that they once lived in.  I wonder which of them was calling to me when I drove by?

       

    • Merrill’s Marauders Bridge

      Route 3 crosses the Souhegan River in Merrimack, New Hampshire.  The bridge that spans the river in this place is called the Merrill’s Marauders Bridge, named after the Army Rangers who volunteered for “a dangerous and hazardous mission” behind enemy lines in Burma in World War Two.  The Rangers were led by Brigadier General Frank Merrill and accomplished some extraordinary things during the war.

      Marching a thousand miles through the jungle, Merrill’s Marauders attacked the flanks of elite, battle-hardened Japanese troops time and again.  This is not unlike the warfare that Roger’s Rangers conducted during the French and Indian War.  The Marauders captured a strategically important airfield called Myitkyina Airfield, disrupted supply lines and generally overcame vastly superior numbers to win critical battles against the Japanese.

      After the war, General Merrill became the Commissioner of Highways for the State of New Hampshire.  Apparently this bridge over the Souhegan River was his favorite in the state, and he and his Marauders are immortalized with the bridge now named for them.  I think Robert Rogers would appreciate it as much as Merrill’s Marauders did.

    • Bearded Bicycle Guy

      I was driving to an appointment when I saw something interesting.  A guy I’ve seen for years riding his bicycle around the town next to mine was standing in a Shaws parking lot with a big green trash bag and a hundred seagulls flying around him excitedly.  The source of their excitement was the bread crumbs flying out of the green bag as he lifted it, shook and twisted it.

      This man is well known in town, and I’ve known him as the bearded bicycle guy who rides up and down the major retail stretch between two towns in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  I’ve assumed he was homeless, but maybe he’s just and avid bicyclist with plenty of time on his hands and a penchant for recycling bottles and cans.  Either way, he’s pretty harmless.  I suppose I could stop and ask him about himself someday, but I’m more likely going to just keep driving.  That probably says more about me than him.  We all have busy lives to live, and stopping my car for a moment to ask an apparent homeless man what his story is seems like more commitment than it’s worth.

      Bearded bicycle guy is different from me, but he wasn’t looking at all concerned about it.  So why should I be?  He’s just another guy marching through time, just like me.  The difference between us this morning is that he was the center of a storm of his own making, as a hundred gulls swirled around him for their feeding.  They obviously knew the drill well, and were as attentive as the gulls that follow a fishing boat as it heads back to shore with the fishermen cleaning the fish throwing scraps over the stern.  And he was clearly enjoying the moment as much as the gulls were.

      I’m not sure who is having a more successful day.  I’ve booked some key meetings, moved some projects forward, caught up with two guys I went to college with, worked out this morning and read a few pages in my book before I went to work.  It’s been a good day.  And yet bearded bicycle guy was having every bit as much fun, perhaps a lot more, than I was.  He may just do the same thing tomorrow too.

    • True North

      Feeling the need to go north.  Far north.  Labrador north.  Iceland north.  Pennan north.  Denmark and Sweden and Finland north.  Viking territory.  Inuit territory.  The kind of places that require commitment to get to.  As spring takes hold in New Hampshire and I’m dreaming of warmer days, I’m also thinking of these places.  Aurora Borealis north.  Tundra north.  Icebergs floating by north.  I blame Jacques for the icebergs, I hadn’t thought of them until he showed me how many were floating around out there.

      I just finished a renovation project in Pocasset.  I’ve checked one box and I’m looking at the bucket list of wanderlust places, and north announces I let another season go by without a visit.  Baseball and crocuses and opening the pool are here, and I’m thinking about going north.  Such is the life of a restless explorer.
      Shelving grand adventures for the moment, spring does bring with it opportunity for exploration locally.  Plenty of old forts and lighthouses and state parks to visit.  Plenty of opportunities for adventure right here in New England and New York.  North will have to wait a bit longer.  But not much longer.

    • The Old Worthen

      The oldest bar in Lowell, Massachusetts is today called The Worthen House.  Back when I was in college it was called The Old Worthen, and that’s still how I like to remember it.  If you walk into the place today you’ll find tables and a long bar that runs front to back.  The bar is essentially the same, but the tables were an addition after a fire gutted the old place.

      They say that Edgar Allen Poe frequented the place and wrote at least some of The Raven here.  More recently, Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg drank at the Old Worthen.  That’s all fine and good, and as a history buff I appreciate those who came before me, but for me the Worthen was our college bar.  I spent my formative drinking years at The Old Worthen, and those memories are locked in my brain more than any class I took in college.

      Taking nothing away from the current place, back in the mid-1980’s The Old Worthen was a bit of a dump.  Wooden booths were jammed with hearty drinkers.  If you asked the bartender they’d give you a knife to carve your name into the walls.  We put away plenty of pitchers of cheap beer back in our day.

      The Old Worthen had a juke box.  For the life of me I can’t remember how many songs that juke box had, but there were five that always seemed to be playing.  My Way by Frank Sinatra, Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin, Crazy by Patsy Cline, Tainted Love by Soft Cell and the hairspray rock anthem for somebody, Here I Go Again by Whitesnake.  That’s an eclectic mix of songs if I ever saw one.   The songs that were playing were usually determined by which table had the most quarters.  When we ran out of quarters somebody would jump in with hairspray rock.

      They say there’s a ghost on the second floor of the place.  I never saw a ghost in all the time I spent in that building, but then I never did get up to the second floor.  I like to dance with ghosts, as I’ve written about before.  But for me that doesn’t mean some spirit moving the plates around, it’s looking up at the leather belt driven ceiling fans and knowing I was looking at exactly the same thing that Jack and Allan were looking at 30 years before me.  A part of me lives on in the Worthen, as it does for thousands of others who walked through that front door.

      I’ve been back to the Worthen a couple of times over the years since college, but my time there is done.  The Worthen House belongs to the next generation of drinkers.  And just as the experience I had in the 80’s was different from the experience Kerouac had in the 50’s and Poe had in the mid-1840’s when he was living on the second floor, so too the experience is likely different for the generations that have come after me.  But I’m happy that it keeps on going year after year.

       

    • Short Run to a Long Run

      “The short game is putting off anything that seems hard for doing something that seems easy or fun.  The short game offers visible and immediate benefits.  The short game is seductive.” – Shane Parrish

      “I hope we can all agree that the long run is made up of a bunch of short runs.  That seems obvious.  The surprising thing is that we live our short runs as if that isn’t true.” – Seth Godin

      “Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.” – James Clear

      I was contemplating each of these quotes on their own merit the last few days as each appeared in my inbox or Twitter feed.  It’s no accident that they resonate for me; after all I’ve chosen to follow the authors of each of them.  But they say when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  I believe that to be true.  And there’s a lesson in each of these quotes that’s hard to ignore.  Daily, consistent action towards an objective.

      James Clear would argue that the goal isn’t the point, the system is more important.  And identifying yourself as someone who would take this daily action is ultimately the most critical part of the entire sequence.  For example, I’m an athlete so of course I get up at 5 AM to work out.  Or, I’m a successful salesperson so of course I make efficient use of my time, have a bias towards action and am highly knowledgeable about my products and each of the opportunities I’m working to close.

      “Only mediocrity is sure of itself.” – Paulo Coelho

      Mediocrity stems from not examining your life, your job, your process, your goals, your system and challenging yourself to improve in each.  Demanding more of yourself is hard to do if you think everything is fine.  We’re all guilty of getting comfortable in our own skin.  After all, it worked yesterday, why not today too?

      Ultimately every day is a small but meaningful part of the whole.  At my age that lesson has become very clear.  Recognizing the value in each day is earned through living.  I remember hearing that throughout my life, but you don’t really know it without the cold intimacy of accumulated time.

      “Life without a design is erratic.” – Seneca

      This is an indictment on winging it.  I’ve seen my own success in anything directly tied to how much I’ve structured action around a specific objective.  We can’t all hit the lottery, but we can all determine our identity, establish long term objectives and break that down into daily tasks that get us there.  As James Clear so eloquently puts it, we cast a vote for our own identity.

      If I live to be 100, and that’s certainly the goal, then I’ve clearly rounded the mark and it’s shrinking into the distance behind me.  Best to have clarity about where you’re going, set the sail and get to it.  There’s a lot to do.

       

    • York Gaol

      Sitting on a small hill in York, Maine is a gambrel-roofed wood and stone building of consequence.  With the original construction beginning 300 years ago this year, it’s been a unique witness to history.  This is a building with stories to tell.

      Gaol means jail, and that’s what this building was for the Province of Maine, a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts which of course eventually became the State of Maine.  Situated as it is in York, 27 years after the Candelmas Massacre hit this town hard, the jail was used to hold prisoners from Pisataqua River to the south to the St. John River to the North.  It is thought to be the earliest surviving British colonial structure in North America.  By comparison, Fort Western in Augusta, Maine wasn’t built until 1754.

      This old Gaol has witnessed the French & Indian War, the Revolutionary War, recruitment for the Civil War and countless changes to the landscape around it.  It’s a fascinating little bit of history perched on a hill in York.  I’ve driven by it many times over the years, so it’s witnessed me grow from a know-it-all teenager to a harried soccer parent to an empty-nester history buff.  It was about time I started paying attention as well.

    • There Once Was a Sink From Nantucket

      The last few days have been a whirlwind.  Running all over creation in search of a viable solution to a vexing problem: an undersized vanity and a hard deadline from the countertop people.

      It started off innocently enough.  We had the sink we needed, we had the countertop ordered and the vanity was installed by yours truly over the weekend.  Everything was in screaming successful installation….  which made me nervous.  Nothing is easy and this couldn’t be THAT easy, right?  Right.  Dry fitting the sink I discovered that it was too deep, and I had a guy coming to measure the template and pick up the sink for installation in two days(!!).

      I returned the sink for a smaller one and drove it down on Tuesday to meet the counter guy.  Dry fit revealed it too was too big.  Cursing myself for not bringing the measurements with me, I quickly drove to Wareham to see what the plumbing supply place had.  No go.  Home Depot? No go.  Lowe’s?  No… go.  So I hustled back with the smallest sink they stocked and realized it too was too big.  Meeting the counter guy, I told him I’d be by their shop tomorrow (today) with a smaller one.

      Quick online searches and some phone calls brought relief – one left in stock in Boston!  Buy it now to hold it and pick it up in the morning!  Whew!

      This morning I got up at 4 AM, drove to Boston to pick up the sink, drove it to Bourne and proudly handed it to the salesperson.  Her response?  We have this same sink in the next room.  See?   Life is either a grand adventure or nothing at all.  But it’s best to check local stock before you drive all over creation trying to find something that was right under your nose the whole time.

    • Candlemas Massacre: The Raid on York

      Wandering around New England today, it’s difficult to imagine this place as the frontier and a war zone.  But you don’t have to look far to see evidence of ancient atrocities.  In 1692 one of those atrocities took place in York, Maine.  200-300 Penobscot Indians led by sachem Madockawando and Father Louis-Pierre Thury, a French missionary but no man of God.

      There were clearly a lot of horrific things done to the Native Americans over the years, but its simplistic to say that they were always the victims.  Madockawando’s Penobscot warriors, like the Abenaki, were vicious warriors who would kill innocent women and children as quickly as they’d kill an armed soldier.  There are stories of torturing and murdering prisoners that are as bad as any other atrocity I’ve heard about in history.

      Candlemas is the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, which takes place 40 days after the birth of Jesus.  It’s a holy day for Christians, and the faithful of York no doubt looked at it as a day of spiritual celebration.  Unfortunately, York was the edge of the wilderness in 1692, and right in the middle of King William’s War between the English and the French.  Raiding English settlers was considered fair game by the French and their Native American allies.  Scalps were considered proof that they had killed someone, and they were rewarded for every scalp, whether it was a man, woman or child’s.

      On January 24th, 1692, the morning after Candlemas Day celebrations, the Penobscot warriors left their snowshoes on a large, flat rock and raided the settlement of York.  They burned 17-18 houses, killed 75 people and marched between 100-200 more to New France as prisoners.  Several of these prisoners died during the march north, others were eventually set free when the English paid a ransom.

      The rock that the raiding warriors used to lay their snowshoes on was preserved and used as a memorial for the victims of the raid.  You could easily drive past it on Chases Pond Road without realizing what it is, a simple memorial set into the rock, on a small plot of land lined with stones and woodland behind it.  It wouldn’t be hard to envision the Penobscot warriors walking through the woods and setting those snowshoes down.  Walking around and placing a hand on the rock is a handshake with history, and a reminder of the harsh environment our ancestors lived in 327 years ago.  In another nod to history, someone named one of the nearby side roads Snowshoe Spring.  Otherwise this could be any other stretch of country road in New England.

       

    • Boulder Hopping

      When I was a kid I’d spend hours climbing on boulders, hopping from one to the next like a goat.  As I got older this tendency didn’t fade.  Instead, the boulders got bigger.  Hiking a boulder cove on a White Mountain trail is still a delight and I hope it always will be.  Perhaps the ultimate boulder hopping adventure is Muhoosuc Notch in Maine.  Once you’ve done this “toughest mile of the Appalachian Trail”, you’ll know what boulder hopping is all about.

      A similar, less strenuous experience is walking along a long jetty that hasn’t been civilized for the general population.  A jetty that’s basically a pile of rocks extended out into the water is much more interesting than, say, the Rockland Breakwater.  Both serve the same utilitarian purpose, but the secondary benefit of each is very different.  The relatively flat Rockland Breakwater allows you to look around a bit instead of constantly checking where you’re going to land your foot next.  Hopping from rock to rock can be compared to working on a jigsaw puzzle in that it requires a high level of concentration, which becomes meditative.  Another analogy might be playing chess, where you’re thinking a few moves ahead to ensure success.

      Stepping stones in a stream are another form of boulder hopping, and offers it’s own reward as well as risk.  Gauging distance between stones, the level of traction you’ll experience when you land on it and the relative stability of the stone are critical components to your overall success in staying dry and getting where you need to go.

      Ultimately the analogy of stepping stones and one’s career is overused, so I’m not going to dwell on that here.  To me the exhilaration of jumping from one boulder to the next is enough.  I’ve never come across a pile of rocks that I haven’t wanted to crawl over or hop from one to the next.  Or a scattering of boulders on a body of water that I haven’t mentally played connect the dots with to determine the best way to land on each without stepping on the same stone twice.  That’s not unlike points on a map, is it?