All Who Wander

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

Last Sunday, my walk through the woods was interrupted by an unfortunate circumstance.  A motorist misread a map; it created a problem and I tried to help.  It was a cold and sunny day and quite pleasant in spite of it all.

This Sunday was grey and snowy and I made sure there would be no unfortunate circumstances during my time walking through the woods.

I walked along the “road” for a while, visiting the scene of last Sunday’s incident.  As my father had predicted, the woods were unharmed from the commotion.

My usual woods walk starts at my grandfather’s old potato field.  I’ll walk around the circumference of the field until I get to the shady place in the upper corner.  Then I walk down a hill, into the woods.  Even though it feels like I’m heading into uncertainty, this entire piece of land borders the power line on one side.  No matter how much my contemplation and imagination distract me, I will end up under a telephone pole and know exactly where I am again.

This Sunday, I took a different path and headed into the woods on the other side of the field.  They were, indeed, lovely, dark and deep.  Sometimes what appeared to be a healthy young tree would snap out of the ground as I grabbed it for balance.  Denied light by the larger trees, it was a hollow shell.  The forest is a battleground in many ways; all the trees and shrubs reaching upward and vying for the light.  Some survive.

I followed a stream and the blaze orange tape on the trees.  Many marked trees look alike and I mistakenly assumed that these were the boundaries of our property.  I figured that if Uncle Bob had walked through these woods marking the trees, eventually I would end up somewhere near my father’s hackmatack tree.

It was almost lunch and I had promises to keep later in the day.  I started looking for signs of a clearing.  After a few more minutes of walking, I came to the edge of a field.  I looked to my right and could see a barn and a farm house.  These buildings didn’t look familiar.  I walked through the field, past some farm equipment and towards the telephone poles along the road.  When I got to the road, I looked to my right and to my left and still didn’t know where I was.  I walked to the farm house and asked a man where I might be, explaining that I had been walking through the woods.  He said “it’s a good day for it.”  Then he told me the name of the road I was on and redirected me.  I’d have to get back to my starting point by following the town roads since there was no way I could find my way back through the woods.

I was glad to know where I was but discouraged by the amount of ground I would need to travel.  I thought about how little I actually knew about navigation and even though I had my i-phone with me, I hadn’t bothered to check the compass or the GPS.  Surely, I had earned a Girl Scout badge once to prove that I could find my way in the woods?

That was a long time ago

There is a bumper sticker that says, “not all those who wander are lost.”  It’s actually from a poem by J.R.R. Tolkein.   It’s true.  All who wander may not be lost.  They might just be like me, turned around a bit and trespassing.

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The Advent Season

Posted on December 1, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

I put my Advent wreath together last week.

Yesterday, I got a warm e-mail from my friend Tom, the new pastor of the Congregational Church of Cranberry Island and the Isleford Congregational Church.

He and his wife used to live in Portsmouth, in the middle of the city’s bustle and trendiness.  Moving to an island 30 minutes out to sea must be an adjustment.  It’s not possible to escape yourself by jumping in the car and going somewhere.  Deep contemplation, that’s what it sounds like to me.

Pertinent to the beginning of Advent, Tom closed his e-mail with “Let us school our souls in the arc of the seasons and find that the darkness cannot overcome this Great Illuminator.”

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A Reggie Black Friday

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

(Today’s post, Thanksgiving dinner from the land of perpetual sunshine, is courtesy of Reggie Black.  I’m thankful for Reggie’s contribution today and even though I’m not out shopping, this makes it officially “Black Friday” here on the blog…”Reggie Black Friday.”) 

She didn’t get home as early as planned from her mother’s, which made her late getting a start on Thanksgiving dinner.  Fortunately, I discovered that a rolling Igloo cooler filled with hot water from the shower does wonders to defrost a frozen turkey.  I put the bird in late yesterday afternoon, and this morning the bird was soft and the water still warm.  At least she would have a ready turkey to work with.

Instead, her first job was dessert; the girl has her priorities.  She made strawberry pie from local strawberries, dicing them up, putting them in a baked crust and then pouring a boiled sugar sauce with a little corn starch over them.  Into the freezer to set up, and on to bigger things.

A few years ago we started cooking the turkey using very high heat, breast down and sealed in foil so the juices don’t escape.  We learned to leave the cavity of the bird open so the high heat cooks from the inside out.  This year, she tried leaving the bird uncovered and turning it from side to side every twenty minutes for the first hour and a half before finally leaving it breast up for the final baking.

Outside I tended to the autumn cucumbers, stringing them up to a mesh they will climb.  Her autumn squash are covered with blossoms, the spinach is growing, the arugula is ready for our salads and the mustard greens and lettuce are right behind.  It’s probably about time to start pulling the sweet potatoes out back, too.

Despite occasional calls for help turning the bird, my son and I worked on getting the rust off of our tools.  I trained him how to brush the rust off and use naval jelly on a shovel gone badly rusty.  He worked hard at it, but the poor quality metal in the shovel might not be salvageable.  He turned the compost heap which has shrunk to half its starting size, even though we keep adding kitchen scraps to it.  I showed him the rich black compost forming down below, and he was pleased to see his work rewarded.

While our white cat followed us around outside and my daughter worked steadily in the kitchen inside, I was struck by how quiet this Thanksgiving was.  There was no noise.  Every other day of the week some lawnmower, some leaf blower, some zero-turn grass cutter with a budding Dale Earnhardt at the wheel can be heard grating and blasting nearby, but not today.  It was very peaceful.

I feared the turkey would be dry, but it was done perfectly.  She succeeded again.  Mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, dressing.  Where’s the vegetable?  Her eyes turned skyward and she whistled.  She even made a cinnamon buttered sweet potato for me.  He, meanwhile, becoming more aware of where our food comes from, commented that our turkey probably didn’t get to express its turkey-ness much in life.

Through dinner they quizzed me about Sparta, Athens and the Persians.  I told them about Xenophon’s Anabasis, the ambushed Greek army deep in Persian territory (now Turkey) and their long fight to reach Greece again.  I reminded them that Leonidas and his men sacrificed themselves to hold back the Persian army long enough for the rest of Greece to mobilize and ultimately defeat the Persian invaders.  We also discussed the imperial overreach of democratic Athens, and how it ultimately led to Athens’ fall.

“Do you remember going to Sicily?” I asked, and they did.  “Do you remember going to that quarry in Syracuse, the one with the cave in the rear that carried sound perfectly up to the king so he could spy on his prisoners?”  They did.  “That was where the Athenian army that invaded Syracuse ended up after surrendering, left to starve to death in that quarry.”  Their eyes opened wide.

How did we get on ancient Greece?  Because I was reminding them that ancient peoples, and even the bushmen of Africa and the aborigines of Australia, had far more rigorous tests, far more knowledge to learn, than children of today have to pass to become adults in their societies.  “Remember the beginning of 300, and Leonidas out in the wild facing the wolf?”  And we were off from there, all over ancient Greece.

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving.  This was not the first Thanksgiving dinner she has cooked entirely by herself, and she normally cooks our household dinner more than once every week.


She is 13, her brother is 12, and they are homeschooled.

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The Mysteries

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

November was “gratitude month” on Facebook, with many people writing a daily item for which they were grateful.  I enjoyed reading them.

The practice of making lists is good, especially in preparing a Thanksgiving meal.  And sometimes, in matters of faith and reflection, one must resist the mechanical nature of the list.

I don’t know who left their tired, old Chrysanthemums in a pile of leaves on The Farm road, but I’ve admired them on many late autumn afternoons.

I am glad there is still mystery in this world.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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The Dibble Dabble

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

The day before Thanksgiving is alleged to be the worst travel day of the year.  Thanks to winter storm “Boreas,” it will be slow going for people up and down the East coast, trying to get home for the holidays.  Gale force winds may ground the balloons in the Macy’s Day Parade.

It didn’t slow down a motorist in an old Dodge Caravan, who went flying by me on the Meadow Road in Bowdoin last night.  I guess I was driving like an old lady.  I have a lot of thoughts about cars and speed and needing to get to nowhere in a hurry; today I’ll refrain.  The Caravan and I met up again a few minutes later when traffic was stopped due to an accident and the trusty mini-van reminded me of one of my old bosses.  She drove a Dodge Caravan too.  We called her LAW, because those were her initials and because she was “the LAW.”  She’s probably driving a late-model European sedan these days, but back in the early 90’s she was ferrying children around and the mini-van met her transportation needs.

One fall, we had a “team building” session at the LAW’s family camp.  I think it was a pot-luck and one of the desserts she made was an apple cake called “Eldena Jones’ Apple Dibble Dabble.”

I don’t know who Eldena Jones is or why the cake is called a “Dibble Dabble,” but it’s a darn good cake.  I’ve been making it since 1988 and it has graced housewarmings, church suppers, and Junior League events.  I’m going to dress it up on Thanksgiving with some homemade whipped cream.

I might have a slice toasted for breakfast with some local butter.

I’ve found many variations of this receipt on the internet, but none exactly the way Eldena Jones makes it.  Here it is:

1 1/2 c. vegetable oil
2 c. sugar
3 eggs
3 c. sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
3 c. apple, pared and cut up finely
1/2 c. walnuts
1 c. seedless raisins

Add sugar gradually to oil, add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition.

Measure sifted flour and sift together with salt, soda and cinnamon. Add to creamed mixture.

Add apples, vanilla, nuts and raisins.

Bake in a well-greased large angel or Bundt cake pan for 1 ½ hours at 325 degrees.  Keeps moist and well, “but not around here,” adds Eldena.

If a Dodge Caravan goes flying by you in your Thanksgiving travels this week, keep both hands on the wheel and your foot steady on the pedal.

The Apple Dibble Dabble awaits your safe arrival.

Posted in Cooking and Food | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

One of the blogs I read, written by James Howard Kunstler, is updated every Monday.  Mr. Kunstler is an author and social critic and some of his ideas seemed offensive to me when I first started reading them, mostly because I had never considered that there might be a finite amount of everything in the world and there were such things as limits.

I have since reconsidered this idea.

Sometimes, when Mr. Kunstler writes and speaks, he’ll say “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”  When I first started reading his weekly blog posts, this expression helped me to understand that inventions such as nuclear reactors, GMO-laden processed foods, and ugly suburban architecture were not necessarily created by an evil cabal of men and women who wanted to control me and world.

Just because something seems like a good idea doesn’t necessarily mean it is a good idea.  Sometimes, there are even evident facts which should lead a person to conclude that something isn’t a good idea no matter what.  Imagine a person had a DeLorme map and this map said:

“When determining road conditions for the three lowest classes of roads, we used the following rule of thumb: the unbroken double-line roads are usually passable by passenger car.  The unbroken double-line roads may require travel by two-wheel-drive truck.  The single dashed line trails may require four-wheel-drive vehicles, if passable at all.” (Taken from the Maine Atlas & Gazetteer, 25th edition, copyright 2002, emphasis mine.)

The discontinued road that goes by The Farm is represented on a map with a single dotted line.  DeLorme categorizes this as a “trail” in their legend of map symbols.  The road is not passable by passenger car any time of year, but it probably seemed like a good idea at the time to a woman who drove her Toyota station wagon through the big puddle by Baumer’s Field yesterday.    After all, it was a glorious day for a country drive and there weren’t any ATV’s on the deeply rutted trail.

I was walking in the woods, thinking deep thoughts about trees and land.  It was cold and windy, but the deeper forest shielded me from the blast.  The sound of the wind blowing through the tree tops was all I heard.  I eventually made my way over the power line and back to the single dashed line and started walking.  The woman in her station wagon stopped and rolled down her window.  I explained that she was on a private road and it wasn’t passable.  I suggested she turn around.  She pointed to her DeLorme map and said “it’s a dotted line.”

Right.

I walked off and she proceeded to get stuck.  I won’t bore you with the consequences of what she thought must have been a good idea at the time.  I don’t know how it will turn out today.  I did my best to help; her friends picked her up after dark.  Even though I brazenly drove over the trail to the “other side” in my four-wheel drive Jeep once on a dry summer afternoon, there was that moment when I knew that if I got stuck I was BLEEPED.  I vowed I would never do it again because the consequences of the risk exceeded the reward.

Heavy sigh here…a good idea quickly turns into a bad idea when people ignore the obvious warning signs.

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The Holiday Snow

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

On Friday, we had snow flurries but they didn’t accumulate.  It was a “faux” first snow.  Last night,  it snowed enough to create a thin blanket.

photo(1)It’s a lovely and peaceful way to start the holidays; let’s keep them that way and ditch everything the news puppets want us to think about “the most wonderful time of the year.”

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The Bag in the Pond

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

It’s been gloomy here on the blog and sad events have kept me from talking about my new home.  That’s a shame because it’s a wonderful place, only three miles from my parents, Uncle Bob, and The Farm.  I’m right in the middle of what I’d describe as a “family compound.”  I’m surrounded by my landlord’s family and sometimes, the best part of the day is when I see his father drive by in a golf cart to go and visit his grandson a little further out on the compound.

My apartment is spacious, sunny, and bright, all in a country setting.  There is even a pond just outside my kitchen window.  It’s sort of like the See Mint Pond that I used to look out on when I lived at The Coop, only no one lounges around it in lawn chairs.

The pond is a good barometer of the weather.  If it’s windy, I can see it on the pond’s surface and in the grasses surrounding it.  I can see the rain drops.  Lately, I’ve been able to tell how cold it is by the amount of the pond’s frozen surface.

For the first month I lived here, there was only one thing wrong with the pond.  Drifting around the edges was a yellow “thing” that looked like a large plastic bag.  At first, I didn’t pay much attention to it.  Maybe it was some kind of “pond freshener.”  Sometimes it was on the left side of the pond and sometimes it was on the right.  I thought about going down and investigating, but I didn’t want my landlord and landlady to think I was snooping or getting into things on the compound that were outside the realm of my lease agreement.

What if I fell in?

I could have said something, but it seemed so petty.  I didn’t want anyone on the compound to think I was a pain in the BLEEP (or a PITA), nor did I want them to think I was a Type A fuss budget.

I’m pretty good friends with my landlady and we swap texts and phone calls regularly.  One day, we were talking about something funny and out of the blue, I got up the courage to say “hey, I meant to tell you, it looks like there is something in the pond.”

There was a brief silence.

Then she laughed and said “Oh, I know!  It’s driving me nuts!  I can see it from my kitchen window.  I’m going to get Mr. Landlord to fish it out.”  As promised, a few days later I got a text from her which said “look out your kitchen window.”

The bag was gone.

Easy enough.  Unfortunately, none of the houses on the compound were selected for holiday house tours and I can’t help but wonder if the bag in the pond had anything to do with it.  We’ll just have to go snooping around some other houses this holiday season and see what other people do with their ponds and palaces.

The Portland Holiday Home Tour features five (5) historic West End homes.  Visit  today and tomorrow, November 22, 2013 and November 23, 2013 only.  Friday’s hours are 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Saturday’s hours are Noon to 6:00 p.m.  The tour starts at Mercy’s Fore River Hospital.  A portion of the proceeds benefit Gary’s House, Mercy Hospital’s home for families in medical crisis.  For more information, click here.  Tickets are $30 at the door.

No bags allowed.

Posted in Talk of The Toile | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Flip-Flop

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

I was shocked to find that abandoned flip-flops are everywhere, not just near sea-side condos.

Wee-yud.

Posted in Minimalist | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Blog Dark

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Julie-Ann Baumer

My sleep has been out of whack since we “changed the time.” It’s not the earlier darkness; it’s something in the morning that discourages me from getting up. It’s warm under the covers.

Today is no different, but I’ll start my coffee and then I’ll start up my computers. These are my tiny little technological steps towards beginning the day.

Last week, my mother and I visited one of her oldest friends, Madeleine, at a hospice near our town. My mother and Madeleine grew up together, speaking French and chumming around in the Franco-American world that once was Lewiston, Maine. They both graduated from Saint Dominic’s High School in 1956. When my mother married my father and moved to Lisbon Falls, Madeleine married her husband and also moved to Lisbon Falls. I always loved hearing them randomly break into French talk and laughter. There was a certain conspiratorial and cliquish quality to it; I’m sure the Slavs and the Yankees in town didn’t quite understand. I had spent enough time around my French-Canadian relatives to be comforted by the melodic and happy words.

Although I’m not a doctor or nurse, there were signposts during our recent impromptu “visite” which indicated this would probably be the last time my mother and I would see Madeleine. She was having trouble breathing and the nurse delivered a plastic cup of morphine as the late afternoon shadows crept in at the window.

My mother called me yesterday to let me know that Madeleine had died at 2:30 p.m. Dusk was falling and I was just rounding the corner of Route 196, by the corpse-like hulk of the Worumbo Mill. I was on my way to dinner at my friend Shelley’s and when I got to my destination, it seemed natural to talk about this sadness. It’s good to have friends who are not afraid to talk about uncomfortable and imperfect topics.

I’m not a stranger to death and funerals. When I was very young, one of my cousins died and it was sad and strange. Although we didn’t talk about it a lot, my parents didn’t try to shield us from it and my brother and I went through the funeral motions with the rest of what was then a very large extended family. Pontificating about the meaning of life and death, however, was the realm of priests and poets, not us peasants.

These days, pontificating about life and death are the realm of physicians and pharmaceutical companies. Many people don’t want to talk about it, hoping that there will be some cure found before it is time for the inevitable conversation. It seems like a fool’s errand, this pursuit of the horizon.

It reminds me of a poem by Stephen Crane.

Rest in peace, Madeleine.

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