All Saints' Day

On All Saints' Day this year, we're driving the back roads of Connecticut near where I grew up: back roads in beautiful foliage, back roads because we prefer them, and back roads because of a horrifying tanker truck accident on Interstate 95 that has left several cars crushed and many people dead. So we've headed a bit north, through Montville and Salem and Haddam, where we mail our absentee ballots and pick up postcard stamps; past the Goodspeed Opera House (shown below), a beautiful 19th century icon on the Connecticut River and a popular regional theater; and finally to my Gram's, Mary Endrich's, grave at St. Joseph's Church in Chester, CT. Seems a fitting visit for All Souls'/Saints' Day.

In 2004, we were in Paris for this Catholic holiday, which takes the place of Halloween in France. I wrote the following Letter from Paris at that time, and reprint portions of it here three years later:

November 1, 2004, Letter From Paris, All Saints and Election Days, 2004. Dear family and friends, This is a holiday week in Paris, dominated as it is by churches built hundreds of years ago, a week leading up to today, Tous Saints (All Saint’s) Day. Our own Halloween pays slender homage to this worldwide rite (Dia de las Muertas in Mexico). This week, the dead have been called forth and remembered, with their favorite foods and meditations. Here in France, it is a week for remembering that the joy of life is made possible by our embrace (not denial) of death. This has been a most welcome and meaningful time for Judith and for me. We light many candles for James, most recently departed, but also for my grandmothers, Signe and Mary Elizabeth, and for our many other friends and family members who have crossed over to the other side. We spend much time in the medieval churches lit by these candles, swaddled in incense and organ music, meditating on our own lives and the ways we make a difference in this world in which we are all, living and dying, connected.

We have cast our absentee ballots and await, with much of Europe, the results of tomorrow’s election. While it is easy to vilify Bush and the current administration, I find it more critical and interesting to consider why so many of our fellow citizens support such decisions, rhetoric, and actions: what are the characteristics of U.S. culture which allow us to reward and to applaud such empty leadership? From a distance, we are more acutely able to feel the repercussions of U.S. choices on the world, and to puzzle over the differences in socio-secular-religious cultures from which national politics, and our understanding of them, arise. Like a cold Maine wind on a blue sky January day—the wind that brings tears to your eyes—we have been buffeted by the seeming faithlessness with which we Americans operate in this world.


By “faith” I simply mean a belief that the world is bigger and more coherent than any one or any group (or nation, or company) of us; and, most importantly, that we each play a part in this bigger whole: a faith in and recognition of the beautiful spirit inherent to the world. . .

“What lies beyond the usual is diminished, it is regarded as wasteful and perverse,” states Rudolf Mittwisser, a 1930s professor of religion and German refugee to the U.S., in Cynthia Ozick’s new novel, Heir to the Glimmering World. “What was once valued there [in Europe] is not valued here. Here they lack the European mind, they are small.”

I move around Paris, watching the way Americans travel, carrying their language and customs and expectations with them like coins to be tossed to embittered others we have either rescued or vanquished. In Deer Isle we are also very aware of the way Americans bring our culture with us when we travel, very aware of the means by which many “from away” bring with us self-righteous, self-important beliefs (the best ways to do business, to communicate)—all with the best intentions. Colonialism lives and thrives in the American psyche, which takes pride in its individual prowess and refuses to prioritize or attend to its interconnections to others . . .


We are all connected, and the whole world is watching. I am not separate from my vote or my country, even when I am in opposition to it. And the U.S. is not separate from this world. It is time that we who want our country to make a positive difference in this world take back the language and ACTION of faith, hope, and charity and embue our daily lives with these beliefs. Other views, and our listening to them, matter; strength arises from generosity, and as Americans we are grateful to have so much to give. . .Faith allows us to embrace death and not to fear it; which in turn allows us to open our arms rather than putting up our dukes. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by acting generously.

Along with much of the rest of the world, I wonder: are enough individual Americans strong enough in our beliefs to make a difference tomorrow, in the ways our powerful nation affects the world we share with so many? May the Red Sox victory be an omen for change. Vive l’underdogs, vive l’esperance, vive la change! [2004]

Leaving the Rock

The Rock is not a very easy place to leave.
For all of my childhood, with a mother who never lived more than 25 miles from the house in which she was born, my family had trouble getting out of the house. My father and I used to sit in the car, buzzing and hissing and swearing with impatience, while my mother went around the house multiple times, checking the stove and generally patting the house.
Now I get it.
I am wrenching myself away from The Rock -- just to take a break.
I've always found it amusing to hear "our beautiful Island," as the welcome sign reads, called The Rock. Sounds like a prison, no? And in truth, maybe feels like that to many who, like my mother 40+ years ago, have a hard time getting away.
But I'm one of the privileged Americans who enjoy mobility; even as gas prices soar. Because in truth, mobility has little to do with the economy and everything to do with a state of mind: the same state of mind--about choice, about possibiliy--that brought me to this beloved island after 16 glorious years in New York City.
So here I am, standing in the driveway at the Opera House, looking up at its towering bulk--and patting it.
Patting the doors. Patting the stage. Patting the studio. Patting concessions. Patting the box office, the stairway, the deck, my desk.
Here I am, walking the dogs down our meadow and along Long Cove, patting it with my eyes: the shimmerescent black-green water, the pointed firs, the clammy mud, the rotting apples, the denuded maples, the kingfishers, the pink granite boulders dropped ashore out of a comic book.
And here I am, finally, the lucky bearer of both an awareness of the power of mobility and a sense of place, approaching the causeway, patting it with my eyes, loving it, willing myself to remember: the fragile green bridge in the near distance, the white teeth lining the slender causeway, the 18-wheelers loaded with multi-ton blocks of granite.
The Rock has always been here and will be here when I return, but it is still difficult not to whisper to it, as the traffic inches up and up, in single file, toward the crest of the bridge: don't go away.

We'll Educate You, Part 1

Last week I was invited to speak with students at Eastern Maine Community College (EMCC). It is always an honor to be asked to visit with college students, and I accept such invitations if I can. I learn a lot, and I love to share the many blessings of my life with young people. Beginning last year, the State of Maine is placing a lot of emphasis on community colleges; in large part because the full 4-year experience has become so ridiculously expensive (as a Bowdoin College alum, I can vouch for this). EMCC is a small huddle of 1960s era brick buildings, complete with the wear and tear one might expect after 40 some odd years. It is tightly situated between Interstate 95 (which one hopes makes it accessible, if not exactly breathable), Rollaway America, a strip of car dealerships, and Acadia Psychiatric Hospital. And it is filled with hard working, blue collar students from all walks of life: lobster fishermen, housewives rejoining the workforce, as well as first year college students. There were 20 of them in this English class, learning to interview and report on what they learn; they were all great. Hungry for life, eager to learn; a different breed from the University of Maine at Orono new media students I visited with several years ago, who were tongue-tied into their own iPod worlds. How can we, as artists and business people, better share our life experiences with the next generation of learners?

Education is a hot topic in Maine communities these days, as Governor Baldacci and the state legislature have legislated a consolidation of our local school districts. We're a rural state, very spread out; and over the years, good old Yankee desire for "local control" has wrought enough separate administrative districts to run the nation's schools. Administrative consolidation is the right idea, although the specifics of the consolidation law itself are causing serious road blocks. The biggest road block, however, is a serious misunderstanding of local control; lead, in fact, by a good-hearted but wrong-headed guy from this island. Local control ain't administrative control, particularly in regard to schools. Local control, in the best Yankee sense, is participation; and participation is something that is dying out in our small local communities. Local control of schools is about the people in the building, the principals and the teachers and the parents; not about where the superintendent is, how many meetings he attends, etc. It's about Parent Teachers Associations, and parents who spend a lot of time in the education of their own children. I will note here that we cannot even maintain a PTA in our community, because there is not enough parental participation in local education (other than basketball, that is). And "local control" is especially not about local school boards, which, in an attempt at representation, consist of well-meaning folks who know and seemingly care little-to-nothing about educational research, policy, or programs; each with their own specific memory axe ("this is how it was when I was in school . . . ") to grind.

How is "local control" best maintained and expressed, so our unique, individuistic Maine communities maintain their original essence? I'll leave that to the next, or to another, post . . .

The First Dark Night

The moon was full this week, so the post-equinox dark unexpectedly hit us this morning--when it was still too dark at 5:45 a.m. to let the cat out into the coyote-filled wild--and again, like the knockout punch in a series, this evening when it was fully dark by 7 p.m. A perfect evening to launch the blog I've long considered; considered, in fact, since the completion of my tenure as News Editor at the local newsweekly. Surely there is a better way to share more accurate, richer information than what we've come to accept from the usual media sources. Signs point toward the new form of blogging as a solution. From my perspective, the jury remains out. For one thing, I will never have the time as a blogger I had as a news editor and reporter to fully research and experience the issues on which I want to write. Thus by its very nature, a blog is more "op ed" than ed. Still, I remain intrigued. Here goes . . . I hope you enjoy.