Archive | Coast of Maine

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Year Five: Words Have Power

Today is day eight of Year Five of this gap year experiment. If there’s a theme, it’s one of gradual acceptance of aging along with an increasing appreciation of the power of words. If there are surprises, perhaps it’s that Sam and I are still happily married after so much time in each other’s company – […]

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Finally, At Home in Stonington

Something clicked into place a few weeks ago. It was a long time coming, considering I left Washington D.C. two years ago. After a long winter of discontent*, we drove back to the coast of Maine in early May. About a month later, click. I realized, “I’m home.” Maybe it was the first hint of […]

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Lobstering at 3:00 AM: Hard Work, Beauty, and Profit

A successful local fisherman took me lobstering recently on the Gulf of Maine. If this inspires visions of Robert McCloskey’s Burt Dow ambling nautically through the Penobscot Bay archipelago, fasten your seat belts. A successful lobsterman is a leader and a figure of respect in Stonington, a tiny community that lands 20 million pounds of lobster […]

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Surprising Lessons From Snow Shoveling

Six feet walls of snow are piled up in every driveway. Blankets of snow, dimpled by who knows what, roll down to the Deer Island Thorofare. Snow fills the woods. With temperatures steadily below freezing, Stonington’s harbor has partially iced over. But the sun comes out with surprising regularity, and then everything dazzles. As long as […]

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Sam’s Take on the Ups and Downs of San Francisco

I have not left my heart in San Francisco but I might have a weakness for the Fillmore/California Street neighborhood where we stayed in an Airbnb over the holidays. After ten days in this city some thoughts have coalesced but remain poorly defined. I want to like it here but I can’t. Or, I don’t want […]

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2015: Making Space and Doing Less

A neighbor was poking around her vegetable garden recently. Not a noteworthy event except that her garden was covered with a good six inches of snow. It was a brilliantly sunny day and the snow glistened fiercely. I called out to ask what she was doing. “Oh,” she exclaimed. “I’m looking for animal tracks. There are […]

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