At Home On Piety Hill

When we moved to Maine in ‘93, our first home was down on Naskeag Point, site of the famous Revolutionary War battle. Denise and Emma’s passion for beach glass was born there. We ran straight down to Naskeag, as soon as we arrived on the Blue Hill Peninsula. Emma wanted to bring home a lobster buoy for a souvenir and immediately found a pink girl’s buoy on the shore. Unfortunately, the buoy she found is still an active, licensed color. It’s never a good idea to mess with someone’s lobster gear, so she left it at the shore. She didn’t find much beach glass this time, but plenty of clam shells.

I’m sitting in a very comfortable motel room in Wolfeboro New Hampshire, which I’m sure you know was the first resort town in the United States. We found a wonderful little place on the lake, where Emma and Denise are relaxing in a gazebo, on the lawn, watching some kids being delightedly dragged and tossed about the lake on some big rubber boat by their irresponsible parents.

We finished some takeout for lunch and two pints of hand-packed Morrissey Ice Cream, followed by a nap. Now, I’m ready to get down to some serious Bible study, following this post.

Ever since our first trip to New England, Denise and I have trained our eyes to detect each and every dairy bar along the road, in search of the best soft serve and homemade or local dairy’s hard ice cream. Maine abounds with the stuff, as does New Hampshire. The Morrissey mocha almond fudge was just right, but I think the peppermint stick was just a bit too sweet. I like the peppermint “hot.”

Last Sunday, I preached at a small church in Bangor. Following the service, pastor Joe, Tricia and their grandson Austin took us all out to Nick’s for lunch and we followed that up with a trip to the Gifford’s stand on Broadway, over by the Bangor Mall. They serve up some of the best hard ice cream I’ve had, in a variety of flavors. I’m a bit of a purist and go for something simple for evaluation and review. Their chocolate chip is a superb blend of rich, creamy vanilla and semi-sweet chocolate chips that are just the right size. They tend to be on the large size, which other chocolate chip fans will agree is the proper way to make it. As you can see from the photo on the left, Austin’s decision for chocolate lover’s chocolate was an excellent choice.

Denise usually gets something with maple in it while we’re in the area and Emma generally goes for the peppermint stick ice cream. Gifford’s excels at both.  Dutch Treat, on the road to Bar Harbor, makes their own ice cream right there and it’s a Salisbury favorite. We all like soft-serve and found Lodie’s on Deer Isle for the first time. It’s creamy, firm and comes in a variety of flavors and swirls. Of course, we still love our Blizzards at Dairy Queen and even McDonald’s will do in a pinch.

This is the cape we made an offer on, sight unseen. It’s a quaint little home, built in the 50s, out in the Sunshine area of Deer Isle Maine. The owners thought our offer of $90k was way too low (starting at $139k and lowered to $125k when we got interested). They countered high, so we waited to see it. 

The property is beautiful, near some nice ledge and it is a short distance from the Eggemoggin Reach and swimming, as well as the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. We had hoped to make it a vacation home and rental for students / faculty / boaters. 

When we finally saw it, we realized that it would need about $50k of work to repair the failed septic, update it some (not much for our mid-century tastes) and deal with the moisture problems. I have allergies, so that’s an issue. We decided against going any higher than $80k. A comparable newer cape, the same size, would only fetch $120-135k in the current market, so it wouldn’t be a great investment and would require a lot of labor and headaches. We’re opting toward new construction or very recent, perhaps even a manufactured home.

So, we met some new friends in Sedgwick Me — Joanne and Doug. They told us that Pushcart Press, the world’s smallest bookstore, is in the building at the back of what was once Donny and Eleanor’s garage and auto dealership. We stopped by to check it out. The Pushcart Prize is a prestigious literary project, pioneered by Bill Henderson over 30 years ago. As it turns out, Mr. Henderson is now a resident of Sedgwick, where I once served as Postmaster and our family wintered for a year before moving up to Blue Hill. From the PP website:

The Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in the pages of our annual collections. 

Writers who were first noticed here include:
Raymond Carver, Tim O’Brien, Jayne Anne Phillips, Charles Baxter, Andre Dubus, Susan Minot, Mona Simpson, John Irving, Rick Moody, and many more. Each year most of the writers and many of the presses are new to the series.

I’m sure you’ve all been wondering why the blog posts have dried up. In fact, I’m just sitting down to answer the backlog of thousands of email messages. We are winding up our trip to Maine and are finally relaxing on the shore of Allamoosook Lake. Emma is in a canoe, Denise is sitting in her Adirondack chair with a needlepoint and I’m doing what I like to do to unwind… writing. So, here are a few shots of the view from the lodge and a preview of posts to come.
There is a very picturesque island out in front of the lodge and it appears to have a camp with a dock out into the lake. It’s very quiet here, the loons and ducks are paddling by and there are only two boats out on the lake. I just heard some folks at their camp about a quarter mile across the lake discussing supper plans for the evening — Chinese food in Bucksport.
Emma is really enjoying her vacation and is now out in a canoe, trying to find an anchorage, so she can stop to read her book. I’ll plug away on a few posts about the house we let go out in Sunshine, the one that interests us in Lamoine, lobster supper, whoopie pies and, best of all, good friends.

Hey, kids! Let’s have a sock hop at the Salisbury’s pad! I bought each one of these albums at the same yard sale for 25¢ apiece — much less than the original owners paid. They threw in the album stand for free! The entire display goes well with our entertainment center, don’t you think?

Bo had the Box Tops album, when he was in the sixth grade. The Fontaine Sisters and Herman’s Hermits were before our time.

Help My Unbelief

I know the Lord is nigh
and would but cannot pray
For Satan meets me when I try
And frights my soul away
And frights my soul away

I would but cannot sing,
guilt has untuned my voice
My sin, just like the serpent’s sting
Has poisoned all my joys
Has poisoned all my joys

Chorus

Help my unbelief
My help must come from Thee
I would but cannot love,
though wooed by love divine
No arguments have power to move
A soul as base as mine
A soul as base as mine

I would but cannot rest
in God’s most holy will
I know what He appoints is best
And murmur at it still
I murmur at it still

Chorus

I would but can’t repent,
though I endeavor oft
This stony heart can ne’er relent
Til Jesus makes it soft
Til Jesus makes it soft

Wilt Thou not crown at length
the work Thou hast begun?
And with a will, afford me strength
In all Thy ways to run
In all Thy ways to run.

My friend, Aaron, at I Am Chief brought this to my attention. It’s one of many hymns, besides Amazing Grace, written by the old African blasphemer and it suits me fine. I see myself in this mirror. This is what it sounds like 200 years later. 

I’d like to introduce a new feature to our tens of thousands of readers. Krazy Kitsch serves to provide you with a virtual tour of our Home on Piety Hill, which Denise is transforming into a varitable museum of off beat, kitcshy kollectibles and questionable art, furniture, kitchen utensils and, well, just about everything else. Now, mind you, some items will not actually be kitschy at all, but we’ll use that as a sort of catch-all label for just about anything we think is cool. Here’s a good definition of kitsch from Wikipedia:

A term of German or Yiddish origin that has been used to categorize art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an existing style. The term is also used more loosely in referring to any art that is pretentious to the point of being in bad taste, and also commercially produced items that are considered trite or crass.

Because the word was brought into use as a response to a large amount of art in the 19th century where the aesthetic of art work was associated with a sense of exaggerated sentimentality or melodrama, kitsch is most closely associated with art that is sentimental; however, it can be used to refer to any type of art that is deficient for similar reasons—whether it tries to appear sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative, kitsch is said to be a gesture imitative of the superficial appearances of art. It is often said that kitsch relies on merely repeating convention and formula, lacking the sense of creativity and originality displayed in genuine art.

Take it away, Denise…

This collection now on our bedroom wall was started with finding one of the ballerina prints at a garage sale. I found the two wall pocket ones on Ebay which were being sold by a lady who lived real close to my daughter so I was able to drive over and pick them up instead of paying shipping! The largest one is a paint-by-number that is so sweet.

March 4, 2008, at The University of California, Berkeley

Tiimothy Keller begins by stating the concern that belief  in religion and Christianity, in particular, is  ”too divisive in a free democratic society…” That people with strong religious convictions, “feel impelled… to impose those beliefs and… to really oppress and marginalize people.” He concedes, “I do think that religion is part of the problem with the world,” but goes on to state that robust, crunchy religion is on the ascendancy, so we must find a way to deal with exclusive truth claims. Get a drink and snack, settle in and give him a listen.

Okay, so I’ve been a little nostalgic lately and I scanned some old photographs of our family. When Denise and I began dating, she had long blonde hair… naturally blonde. I had long hair, too. 

Denise also bought a brand new Landcruiser FJ40, which I loved to drive and she snapped this photo, as we drove by the 76 station at the corner of Painter Avenue and Lambert Road in Whittier.

In the Spring of 1974, after Denise graduated from Sierra High School, we drove north to pick up Denise’s brother at UC Davis and brought him home. We stopped in one of our favorite destinations from our desert days, Virginia City NV, and I took this photo of Denise. Wow!!!