Massachusetts Hall

The oldest building on the campus of Bowdoin College is Massachusetts Hall, indeed the only one when the college was founded in 1794 with just a few young religious boys as students. It was naturally so-named; Maine was a district of Massachussetts until 1820, and Governor Sam Adams of Massachusetts chartered the college, naming it after another Massachusetts governor whose son was a prime benefactor (some things haven't changed). The ties are still strong; almost 25% of the school's students come from Massachusetts.

I think of Nathaniel Hawthorne when I see Massachusetts Hall. He arrived on campus in 1821, and I like to think that the emancipation of Maine meant the emancipation of that Puritanical Salem boy. Did Maine stimulate his imagination? Did Maine's freedom and beauty make him a writer? Of course, it's one thing to live in Maine when you're a young man, quite another to do so when you're much older. But you can be re-born at any age.

My daughter Kate is now a senior at Bowdoin. When she was a freshman, she took a seminar in the Hall, in the very classroom Hawthorne did. As she prepares to leave Maine next spring, I know she will tackle life with Hawthorne's passion and energy, and perhaps without his suffering, and will think of her father trying to do the same.

More red berries

They're not exactly the luscious raspberries of July, but these winterberries (I think that's what the plant is) of November taste as good in the eye as raspberries do in the mouth. We need the relief from the browns and greys of the winter woods; the red sweaters and yellow caps and the little orange collar for the dog that we put on for our walks are against hunters, not depression. We thirst for every bit of natural color.

It's a hard season coming up. At the solstice only a third of the day is lit. People who make their living from the land and the sea and the tourists can't. Many will fall short of food, medical care, clothing because of the cost of oil and propane. Many will lose their jobs in the aftermath of the greed-fest of the last years. Cold is only enjoyable when you know you can escape it. Ice is beautiful on lakes, in cocktails, under hockey teams, and doesn't particularly please as a carpet for the driveway. Have I mentioned sleet and downed power lines?

But for these fortunate enough, late fall and winter are also invigorating. Those splashes of red and orange in the wetlands are a triumph against pettiness. A snowfall makes you feel ten years old again, and snowshoes prolong the illusion. The fir trees sparkle in the sun. On a really cold morning, steam rises off the ocean as if the water were breathing in cozy hibernation. And nothing defines cozy like a drink and a snack and a spouse around the wood stove.

I wonder what the winterberries taste like. Bittersweet?

Black and White

How wonderful what happened yesterday! I listened to Obama's speech from Grant Park, half-drunk on the words and the hope and a single-malt too far. Like Michelle Obama, I'm proud to be an American for the first time in a very long while, decades, and I don't have to back-track as she did. Children of the 60s have a hard enough time with disillusionment, and in my case, it was exacerbated by my experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer and as an employee of European companies for 20 years. No more apologies and embarassment and shame now - we just might be returning to a government of compassion and peace, and leaving one of greed and war. He's just one man, but how resolute, how steady, how principled - God protect him.

And completely wonderful that Maine, the whitest state in the Union, voted so strongly (58-40) for a black man. And voted a Republican woman, Susan Collins, back to the Senate 61-39, and a Democratic woman, Chellie Pingree, to the US House 55-45. Race and sex will always matter in politics, but the chance that they will reduce in importance to, say, religion or education or eloquence or integrity, just another factor in a personality, is greatly enhanced by the stunning events of November 4, 2008.

Route 1

For whatever reason (OK, the main reason was that we didn't have the dog with us to make extra car time so loathsome), we decided, after Sunday-brunching with the eldest in Brunswick, to forsake the highways and take a gentle route back home. The idea was to stop in Ogunquit and walk Marginal Way and the beach; we could have taken I-295 and the Turnpike all the way to Ogunquit, but the day was beautifully blue and before we knew it,"gentle" morphed into Route 1.

We left Brunswick at noon, got home at 5:30. Since the trip normally takes 2.25 hours, and the little side trip to see Walkers Point in Kennebunkport got us slightly lost and took 1 hour, and the Ogunquit walk cost 1.5 hours and $5 in parking at Perkins Cove (on Nov 2! we paid!), the extra time spent on Route 1 apparently comes to only 0.75 hours. (If I include the hour due to resuming EST, we're into negative territory, appropriate for Route 1.) Of course, it seemed much longer. There are a few copses and open fields between Brunswick and Portland (save the national excess that is Freeport), but all green disappears in favor of stores and stoplights from then on, as Portland spreads south, as the "vacationlands" of Scarborough and Old Orchard Beach and Saco and Biddeford and Wells just plain spread. But it's not like most "Route 1's", where national chains predominate. In Maine we have mom 'n pop restaurants and motels, water parks and souvenir shops, a lot of them cheek by jowl for miles, to be sure, and everything really quite ugly, but the only sign of the national disease are the gas stations, occasional Holiday Inn, and a few new malls set back against acres of parking. 98% of Maine businesses are small businesses. We proved it yesterday.

Development slowed as we neared Kennebunk, stayed mostly tasteful in the Yorks and Ogunquit (it must have something to do rich people, or zoning, or all the McCain/Palin signs along the road), roared up again in Kittery. But all in all, it wasn't quite as dreadful as parts south, say in Saugus, MA.

And the great thing about Maine's section of Route 1 is that you can drive a minute or ten off the road and immediately be in the woods, or on a farm, or by the surf. Except maybe in Old Orchard.