When my Dad got sick we moved him off the island so we could get him better health care. It’s (probably) okay to get stitched up here at the Island Medical Center, but for Alzheimer’s?….

It was a very traumatic decision, but we sold the house that Mom and Dad had been living in for the last 14 years, year-round in Stonington. It was their dream house, set on a cliff, over-looking the water at the end of Oceanville Road. My wife and I talked about keeping it, but decided that the money we could get for the house would set Mom and Dad up for their remaining years. It turned out only to be two more years for Dad, mercifully, but Mom lasted for another 17 years after him.

My wife Dale and I started coming up to the island again as summer people, renting places, like my parents did before they built their own house. One day, Dale had one of her better ideas…”why don’t we look for some land? They are not making more land on the water; if we can find some, we can always decide later if we want to build on it. If not, at least it will be a good investment.”

Ron Gross has been a family friend for many many years. He was born on Deer Isle and runs Ron’s Service Station at the end of Oceanville Road, and sold Dad his truck. He always shook his head when Dad came steaming around the corner on his bike, just barely holding on to his balance. Ron – like many people on the island – had many skills. One day he got his real estate license, so we told him that if he ever found some land for us we’d like to see it. Of course he eventually called us.

We drove down a long dirt road with Mom in the back seat with Dale. I was in the front with Ron. As we meandered down this road, referred to affectionately and officially as Fire Lane 16, Mom thought she recognized it. “Is this where the Myers’ live?” she asked. “As a matter of fact, it is, ” returned Ron. He had forgotten that Mom and Dad were friends with the Myers. Dad and Stan Myers had worked at the Island Heritage Trust as volunteer board members for some years. Dad was now gone, but when we drove to the end of the road, almost a mile long, Stan and Peg Myers were surprised and quite pleased to see Harriet Steinharter again. They had a nice chat, and to make a long story a little less long, Stan decided to see the 1/2 of his 30 acres that were for sale, to us. He reasoned that it would be nice to have neighbors he could trust, and he figured that since I was Mom’s oldest son, he could probably trust us. We bought 15 acres of woodlands, with a beautiful open spot on top of a hill overlooking the cove, that was just crying out for a house.

It was a couple of years later that we of course decided we should build our house on this incredible piece of land. You see, the 30 acres that Stan Myers had owned was a long, thin peninsula, with water on both sides (as peninsulas are known to have). It stuck out in the middle of Webb’s Cove, a beautiful little cove less than a mile from Stonington Harbor. We fussed over who and how to hire an architect and a builder and decided to hire local. We have and still prefer to hire locals to do work for us and so we hired a very nice young man by the name of Peter Freidell. Peter lived on the island with his wife and kids and so did his dad. He professed to be able to be an architect and builder in one. Working together with my wife they designed the house we wanted. It needed to be big enough so our kids would be comfortable, but able to fit in the envelope according to Island Heritage Trust rules that governed the property. And so it began….

Building a house is an extraordinary project. I was working full time and also traveling a bit so most of the management of the project fell to Dale. She is detail-oriented and indefatigable when it comes to getting what she wants. This served us well, as I was happy to defer to her on most of the details, weighing in on the most important ones…like the configuration of the deck :-). I was planning to spend more time on that deck than in the house and wanted it big and comfortable and with views of the water. The railing needed to hold a beer, of course…but never mind all that.

Peter Friedell started off well and was building the house of our dreams. He communicated well and seemed to be delivering on his promise. One day he called and asked for a payment in advance for some materials. It was $10,000 so not inconsequential, but it didn’t seem outrageous to advance him some money in the midst of this project. That was the last time we ever heard from Peter Freidell.

He stopped answering calls, texts, emails. We were in Connecticut, so managing this from 8 hours (by car) away was a real challenge but this was crazy. He just fucking disappeared, “ghosted” us as people now say. We eventually learned that he used our $10,000 to buy supplies for another project he was trying to do at the same time as ours, building or repairing a church a few miles away, in Deer Isle. Well, he never finished the church either. He absconded (cool word) with my $10K and left us with the house half finished. I had never felt so betrayed and violated.

In one of our luckiest developments, young Lucas Avis was Friedell’s foreman constructing the house and doing most of the real work. Luke offered to finish the house for us. Thank goodness for him. It took a while but he got the job done, done well, and even built us a beer pong table with help from my sons, which they were tickled about. That beer pong table is still up and able outside by the fire pit and can be seen from google earth.

We got our house and we love it. We needed to repair some things and we can complain about a few things that didn’t get done 100% right the first time, but it got done and we’ve been in it for over 10 years now. Peter Friedell’s reputation on this island is that he’s the guy who “fucked over a lot of people” according to a carpenter who came to see us today and will be fixing some of those imperfections. Every once in a while someone comes over who has history on the island and when they hear that ours was the Peter Friedell project that didn’t get finished they say – “oh, so you are THAT house.”

Every once in a while I have an interaction that makes me shake my head or smile, or both, and remind myself that I am indeed Down East (and will always be from away).

*For those new to the idea, “down east” isn’t just Maine, it’s “real Maine.” Sorry to all my good friends in Ogunquit, Kennebunk, and the rest of southern Maine. It’s wonderful there and I might even end up living there some day, but when you come all the way up to what’s called Down East, you realize you are in “real Maine.” It is remote, unspoiled, beautiful, and charming, in its own way.

So as for charming…

They paved the main road this year. I don’t know the last time they paved it – route 15, or Stonington Road, take your pick. I honestly don’t remember when they last did so, but it’s beautiful now – you can drive without fear of ruining an axle or ride your bike without fear of flipping over…at least until this winter, when the potholes will surely return.

The only problem is that when the pavers went past our little dirt road it really messed us up. Because Margaret Lane is just a half mile long dirt road, entry and exit to Rte 15 is now messy and difficult. Dirt has washed away from rain, and we kick up stones every time we try to enter the main road. It didn’t seem like the end of world, though, so we called Eaton Paving and asked their advice. Good old Terry came down within a few days and recommended a solution – he would dig out around the road and create us a new entryway, or apron from Margaret Lane to Rte 15. I thought that sounded okay and he promised an estimate shortly. The estimate arrived within the week and we simply agreed to it – this is Deer Isle, Maine, so trying to negotiate the price would be akin to saying ‘just forget it.’

And so it began.

They added us to their list of jobs to be done. I called in a couple of weeks and a friendly voice answered. “This is Karen.” I asked Karen when she thought Eaton Paving would be able to come do our small job here in Stonington. Karen said she had no idea, as the guys made that decision and they arrive and leave well before she does. She said it might be a “couple of weeks.” “Just to clarify, Karen, do you mean a couple of weeks till they can do the work, or a couple of weeks before you can tell me when they can do the work?”

I think we all know the answer I got.

I called back in a couple of weeks. Karen – ever friendly – had no more information then and said it might be “a couple of weeks.” I called a couple of weeks after that and Karen started making me feel bad for bothering her, she was so nice. Unfortunately though, she had no idea when Skip would choose to do our job. She claimed it was tacked up on the wall and she had put a little circle around it. The fourth time I called she reiterated about the circle (surely that would signal to Skip that we should be a priority?) and then admitted “well, I’m his wife, but we don’t talk about the business at home, and he comes in to the office real early and chooses which jobs they will do.”

I wasn’t annoyed – i am too experienced around here to get annoyed; it’s just the way things are.

A few days after that last call – it’s a couple of months now since I got the estimate – I was driving past Dean’s (photo above). Dean runs the local business that repairs engines, a pretty important business in this fishing town. He services my chainsaw (you can’t really live here without a chainsaw, ya know) and so he has gotten to know me at least a little bit. I couldn’t help but notice all the Eaton Paving trucks and equipment at Dean’s house (next door to his business). They were redoing his driveway, and it looked like a very nice job. Dean must be pleased, I thought. I also thought that maybe because he’s a well-known local he somehow got priority from Eaton Paving.

I stopped in at Dean’s soon after that, just to pick up my newly sharpened chains. Dean was there and said hi. I asked him in a friendly way, “Gee Dean, how did you get them to pave your driveway so quickly? I’ve been waiting a couple of months now.”

Dean looked at me and without smiling or smirking just said “well now it took about two years. I wouldn’t call that ‘quickly.’ They didn’t even call me, they just showed up one day with all their trucks and did the driveway.”

Here’s where I smile and shake my head yet again. “Okay, thanks Dean, that kinda resets my expectations a bit.”

Ayyup. Gotta love it up here.

I’ve decided to do a few entries about Maine. No idea what took me so long to think of this, or even whether they will be interesting to anyone but me, but heads up.

Translation – anyone who wasn’t born and raised here is “from away.”

The Queen of England died yesterday, 8 September 2022. She was 96 years old and had been Queen for 72 years. I read and watch the various reactions to her, her role and her passing with interest. Many find the role of the royal family of great value, but many do not, believing it to be anachronistic and irrelevant. The royals do not govern, and have little constitutional power. They also command great wealth, which always gets hackles up from some.

I am a bit philosophical about this. I have learned to value tradition. I think back to my time in college. I went to Dartmouth College, a school with many traditions. I grew to love this. I am now in my 60s and have four children. We have our own traditions. My wife makes a big deal out of Christmas and the holiday is filled with family traditions, even throwing “reindeer dust” around the yard so that Santa is sure to find us. We put the windows down in the car whenever we cross the causeway to Deer Isle, so we can smell the wonderful sea air.

I don’t know that I can explain why traditions are of value or why I value them…but I do. Maybe it is just a simple way to bind us together. Our family are bound in small ways by these traditions. I imagine the British people (and many others) are bound together by the traditions carried on through the royal family. That’s pretty cool, actually.

I live in Maine. Not full time (at least not yet), but a little more each year. I’ve been coming up to this little island – Deer Isle – for over 50 years, since my mom and dad stumbled on it and found it more attractive than the usual tourist haunts. They had grown tired of crowds on Cape Cod, as much as we enjoyed the beaches there. So one year, we stayed at a place called the Eggemoggin Inn, on Little Deer Isle. It was gorgeous – a great big wrap around porch, set on the water, near the charming little Pumpkin Lighthouse. We were hooked – or to be more accurate, they were hooked. It was beautiful, it was remote, there were plenty of things to do, just not touristy things. Dad was happy riding his bike every day and Mom would go for long walks. We ate lobster, dug our own clams, and learned about the culture of this little island.

Thus it began. Each summer, they would go online and find a charming house to rent. Over the years we stayed in rental houses on all parts of the island – Little Deer, Sunshine (east side), Sunset (west side) and then discovered Stonington, all the way down at the southern tip of Deer Isle.

The island was something we never tired of. My brother and I were young when we first started coming, but I remember clearly each house we rented and how much we looked forward to coming. Kids have lots of priorities when they are young, often these priorities don’t require hanging out with parents….but I don’t remember it that way. I went on bike rides with my dad – when I was old enough – and went for runs on beautiful routes all ove the island. I learned how to properly cook and eat a lobster (or two, or more) and how to dig for clams. It seemed that there was no end to the things we could do on this island. If we tried to describe it to others, however, it always came out sounding boring.

“what do you do up there?” people would ask. There was no night life and not many shops of any notoriety (read ‘none’) on the island. There is a grocery store for the staples, but if you want to do any substantial shopping you have to leave the island and it’s about a 45 minute drive to get anywhere. We hike, we walk, we bike. We visit the same haunts each year.

Eventually, Dad retired and of course (“Florida is for old people,” he used to say) they went to Deer Isle. Dad had fallen in love with Stonington, so there was no doubt where they would settle. They bought some land – about 12 acres – at the end of a 4-mile long road and right on the water. They built a house and planted their flag. Mom and Dad lived there full-time, year-round for about 14 years. The winters were long, but they settled in. Sadly, Dad developed Alzheimers and we were forced to move them off the island in order to get some quality health care. We took the very difficult decision to sell their house, raising enough money to take care of Mom and Dad for the rest of their days. Dad only lasted a couple of years, dying in 2005, but Mom lasted until this year (2022) and always remembered Stonington with her heart.

With my parents off the island, my wife and I went back to renting during summers for a little while. This island sort of gets under your skin, and it’s hard to let it go. Eventually, my smart little bride suggested “let’s see if we can buy some land; they’re not making more land on the water. Then we can decide if we want to build a house.”

One of Dad’s friends was Ron. Ron was Ron Gross, of Ron’s Service Station. It’s where he bought his truck (and eventually I bought mine) but one year, Ron got his real estate license and offered to show us some land on the water, right on Webb’s Cove, near Stonington. Mom was still okay at that point and joined us for our summers on the island. She drive with us down the 1/2 mile dirt road to see the land for sale. It turned out to be for sale by the Myers family, and Mom recognized it immediately – “Is this where the Myers live?” That was fate. Stan and Peg Myers were selling half of the 30 acres they owned on Webb’s Cove. Stan decided it would be nice to sell it to people they have a connection with and who would be good neighbors. Thus – we ended up with 15 acres of woodland right on the water. There were (and still are) paths through all 30 acres, created by Stan for hiking and communing with nature.

The next part of the story is not difficult to guess – a few years (not many) after we bought the land, we built our house. It is set on a hill, and has views of the cove that are glorious. We built something with enough room for the kids and their kids someday (maybe?). It was like planting a flag for our family.

This place is so beautiful. It is clean, unspoiled and gloriously uncrowded. In the summer we get visitors, but it never gets crowded or touristy, like Bar Harbor or some of the towns in southern Maine. We are just too difficult to get to, so we are not “on your way” anywhere and the people who visit need to compete for rooms on an island that only has a limited supply. Downtown Stonington is still just a fishing town. There are 400 lobster boats (the largest lobster port in Maine) and a few places to get a bit to eat and a shop or two, but no real shopping to speak of. The Harbor Cafe is just what it sounds like, a simple cafe. The local grocery store opens at 4am to serve the lobster men (mostly men) who need something before they hit the water.

I thank my lucky stars that all of my kids love it here. I just hope they end up with life partners who love it as much as we do. Frankly, I don’t think I could have married someone who didn’t fall in love with this island the way I do.

Last year, my youngest son Will started his own business – taking people on guided kayak tours of the islands. As it turns out, Stonington is in the middle of an archipelago of over 60 islands, and those in the know call it the best sea kayaking on the east coast. We of course have had our own kayaks for years and can launch from our property when we want (and when the tides permit), but when Will got his Maine guide license, his instructor certification and his Wilderness First Responder certification, this became serious. We are now part of his dream – helping him with a “family run” kayaking business. This has afforded me the opportunity to go on some of his tours and see so many more of the islands than i ever had when Dad was alive. I so wish he could have seen this.

There’s something magical about this place. It’s clean, it’s unspoiled, and it’s beautiful. It’s chock full of wildlife, and I don’t mean lobsters – ospreys, eagles, herons, guillemots, seals, porpoises. We see these neighbors pretty much every day.

I am outside every day. The air smells wonderful, full of the smell of the sea and pine trees. We walk the dogs in the woods twice a day and they love it.

We started a family tradition, years ago, when the kids were small. When we drive on to the island, especially after a time away, we cross a winding causeway between Little Deer and Deer Isle, we all put the windows down and smell the salt air. It feels like our blood pressure goes down right at that point….ahhhhh, we are back.

I listened to a song by this name on Spotify today. It was by Curtis Salgado and Alan Hager. I am not familiar with these musicians, but….I want my dog to live longer.

I think some of the saddest days in my life so far are when we lost our beloved family dogs. Some have left too early – Adelaide was less than 10 when she died – and some enjoyed long lives, at least according to dog standards. Jasper was 17 when we had to say goodbye to him.

Our dogs are such good members of our family. I cannot imagine being at home with them. These days we have anywhere from 2 to 5, depending on which of the kids are home. All of the usual points apply – they are always happy to see us, no matter what kind of a day it is, they are loyal and loving.

Mostly I just enjoy being with them, and miss them when I am away. Every once in a while, however, I look at one of them (the two labs are now 10 years old) and I get wistful…lamenting the day in the future when we will have to say goodbye. Frankly, I choke up. I wish my dog could live as long as we do.

I just don’t get it. I realize it’s a flaw in our democracy in the US but to have more guns than we have citizens is fucking ridiculous. We have school shootings on a regular basis (this week it was in Texas) and 50 people (Republican senators) block any attempts at new legislation because they are afraid their constituents will kick them out of office. Some of the articles I read and the diatribes I listen to suggest that the vast majority of Americans want better laws governing gun safety and access to guns. Yet 50 senators refuse. Kudos to Steve Kerr of the NBAs Golden State Warriors.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/33979219/warriors-steve-kerr-delivers-impassioned-plea-gun-control-texas-school-shooting-get-numb-this

We are the only country that seems to value gun laws more than schoolchildren. We have indiscriminate shootings almost every week. Some conservatives say that there’s no way to prevent this, yet we are the only country where it regularly happens. People get sad, they get angry, yet nothing happens.

Honestly it makes me frustrated, because I don’t know what to do about it. I can do my darndest to help elect people to government with the sense to address the issue, but I feel helpless otherwise. More than helpless, I am embarassed. My many friends in other countries (including my own daughter) think there is something terribly wrong with the USA. Honestly, they are probably right….

Guns and gun laws may just be one symptom of the cultural decline and division here now. Donald Trump was and is a symbol of this, but he’s not the cause of it. He gave many people “permission” to act like complete assholes. He put some of those people in positions of power and now we fight over gun laws, abortion rights, immigration, books in schools, racism, voting rights.

I would run for office if I thought it would help. I just don’t have enough faith in our system of democracy any more. Time for a drink and to rebuild my optimism.

Nationalism bothers me. Too many people believe that their nation is more important than others, and the good of their nation supersedes all else. In reading Walter Isaacson’s wonderful biography of Albert Einstein, I discovered that this brilliant scientist developed a taste for current affairs in addition to physics. He was a pacifist, against war of any kind (aren’t most of us?), but Hitler’s rise made him waver on the principles of pacifism. In fact he proposed that an international entity should be established that could transcend national sovereignty by imposing the resolution of disputes. This would require the surrender by every nation of a bit of its sovereignty. He tried his idea on Sigmund Freud, another great mind of that time period. As you might expect Freud was bleak, and confirmed that man has an active instinct for hatred and destruction, along with a separate need to conserve and unify. The idea of a “united nations” with teeth was of course a pipe dream.

Here was are, over 75 years after Hitler’s failure, and we seem to be watching a similar force, in Vladimir Putin. His belief in the power of his nation (and his right to rule it, of course) should take precedence over the rights of the Ukrainians to conduct their own nation. Are we heading toward another world war, based on these commitments to nationalism? I don’t know, i hope not, but i fear it. The nationalism espoused by Donald Trump in USA (“America First”), by Putin, by the populist leaders of several other countries – they make the world a less attractive place.

I find encouragement in small steps, however, the departure of Donald Trump (at least for now) from power, the re-election of Emmanual Macron over right-wing populist Putin fan Marine Le Pen, and a similar win the nation of Slovenia.

Why should America be first, anyway? We became great because we were seem as a beacon of freedom, willing to help others, and to accept others. We are a country made up of immigrants!

Okay, after 36 hours of radio silence, I finally heard that the boys made it out of Ukraine, were in Munich and heading home. Apparently they were followed and were worried that their conversations were being listened to, so there was no dialogue.

They successfully deliver the 7 duffle bags of medical supplies, first a few to a bombed military base in the west of the country and then the rest were left in Lviv.

Every little bit helps. I be the boys will have some stories when they get home…