The Tigris runs wide there, the color of hammered tin, and the old city rises from its western bank in a dense layering of neighborhoods that have been inhabited continuously for centuries. Moslawis—the city’s people—had a word for those who did not understand this: They were people who had not yet sat long enough by the river.

“By morning, a city that had been continuously inhabited for seven thousand years belonged to a force that intended to abolish everything it had been.” — Omar Mohammed

Spontaneous hootenanny

Dad and his brother rubbing elbows with the governor. Not the first 15 minutes of fame for the Old Man, and not their first trip to the Blaine House, either.

Congratulations to Trees Ltd. on receiving the Austin Wilkins Forest Stewardship Award, one of Maine’s highest honors recognizing exemplary stewardship of the working forest!Presented today by the Governor at the Blaine House, this award recognizes landowners and individuals who demonstrate an outstanding commitment to managing Maine’s forests in a sustainable and responsible way. Named for Dr. Austin Wilkins, the award celebrates those who embody a lifelong dedication to the health and future of our working forests. As a Master Logger Certified Company, PLC member and Board Member, and leaders in Maine’s logging community, Don and Will exemplify the values that this award represents. Their commitment to stewardship, professionalism, and long-term forest management reflects the very spirit of Austin Wilkins. We are thrilled to see them recognized in such a meaningful way. Congratulations, Don and Will, on this well-deserved honor.

Well deserved.

I always appreciate this bookshop.org pop-up after purchase.

This morning’s waning hunter moon over the city of Bath

It has long made perfect sense to me that a picture taken on an iPhone would either use its wizardry to make the thing in front of you look “better“ than it really does, or it would do no justice whatsoever to the thing in front of you at all. Rightly or wrongly you may justify it, but them’s yur options. (It’s true of photography in general, but the iPhone has a special way of taking less problematic functions of technology and simultaneously masking and magnifying them.)

It somehow fits, too, with Maine’s (chosen or fated) way of life. Just this morning I learned — with not an ounce of surprise, mind you — that Maine is leading the charge with the highest percentage of second (“seasonal”) homes in the country. There’s some “polar star” irony there that does sting a little as it, uh, slaps you in the face, but you get used it, I guess. (It’s a fact, too, that I’m soon to accept some defeat over, the instruments of surrender being worked out and drafted over the coming months. More on that another time.)

But I’m not the only one who thinks about this stuff this time of year; it’s a theme deeply rooted in Maine itself. I’ve quoted before but never posted this excerpt from the introduction to the 1998 reprint of Night Train at Wiscassett Station, about the writer Lew Dietz:

He understood the importance of the seasons. To this day Mainers generally don’t have as much pavement separating them from the earth as residents elsewhere. Snowstorms are still largely respected in Maine—neither feared as cataclysmic, nor ignored as nuisances. Summer is perceived as the anomaly that it is, a hectic blip on the radar screen of the year, not to be mistaken as ’the way life should be.’ Who residing anywhere on the coast or up in the woods has not felt the palpable sense of relief that washes over the state once the leaves have fallen? ‘By the time of October’s hunter moon,’ Lew wrote, ‘the trauma of summer has been healed, health and sanity restored.’”

If you want as close to a sense of Maine as you can possibly get from a book — one that I believe does as much justice to the art of photography and writing as anything can — I recommend finding a copy. (And now I recall that I shared about this once before, a couple years ago , along with one of my favorite of Kosti Ruohomaa’s photos and a reference to Richard Wilbur here.

Hardwired

But we still have to locate our work — even, or especially, when that work is play — and go like hell, and use what we have to help, however we can.

Much of the time it feels pointless, self-indulgent, and meaningless. But it’s everything. Every time you think of quitting, consider your life without the ones who lighted your way: the art they made, the stories they told, the songs they wrote, the love and work they put into the world. Then keep going. It makes no sense, and it’s the only thing that makes sense.

Jeffrey Foucault, after bringing the righteous thunder. Read it in full. Along with the quote I also added a message from Foucault’s newsletter and tour link below it. I got to see him along with the Old Hat String Band last October, and even got to chat a little after the show, about living and raising kids in that “digital funhouse.” Worth seeing, worth supporting, if you can.