Steady second half defense allowed Bangor to hold off Mt. Ararat.

Bangor Girl's Soccer Upends Mt. Ararat, 2-1.

Benet Pols September 26, 2024

Topsham, ME, On Tuesday night the Mt.Ararat Girl’s Soccer team grabbed an early 1-0 and held it through nearly sixty minutes of game time before surrendering two goals to the Bangor Rams. Bangor, last season’s Northern Maine Champion and State runners-up, used its physical game to hold the Eagles off for the remainder of the game. It was Mt.Ararat’s first loss. The Eagles fall to 5-1 on the season. Bangor moves to 6-1 and is at the top of the Heal Point Standings for the moment.

It won't get any easier for the Eagles in the coming days as they travel to 7-0 Camden Hills for a Friday afternoon tilt at 4:00 PM before hosting the Brunswick Dragons on Tuesday October 1. The Green Bridge rivals' clash will be the first of two regular season meetings.

Camden is a skilled team that showed discipline and excellent small space passing while taking down Brunswick last week.

These four teams topped Class A North last season with Bangor finishing at 13-1, Camden next at 12-1-1, followed by Brunswick at 10-4, and Mt. Ararat at 10-3-1. Chances are good the same four will top the twelve team table again this season. The path will be easier for Camden and Bangor however. It appears that only Mt. Ararat stands between Camden and a perfect season. Meanwhile the only remaining formidable opponent for Bangor is a late season match up with Brunswick.

Mt. Ararat, by contrast contends with Camden, Brunswick twice, and perennial Southern Maine Class B power Yarmouth. The Dragons will see Bangor, Mt. Ararat twice, and another Southern Maine juggernaut in Cape Elizabeth.

Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," a Second Edition (convince me otherwise).

Benet Pols August 23, 2024

The first edition of Familiar Quotations, “quoted from 169 authors. The Bible and Shakespeare took up about a third of the text; the balance was chiefly English poetry. . . .A mere handful of Americans was included. . . .There were no quotations from Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, or even Emerson (who made it by the third edition three years later).”

This copy also quotes just 169 authors. This copy also excludes Emerson.

It is distinguishable from the described first edition in length—the first was said to be 258 pages, this, including addenda and index, runs 316 pages—and in its covering. The first is described as “a modest little volume, the size of a postcard, bound in cardboard.” This volume is the size of a postcard, but is bound in soft leather, presumably calfskin.

Bartlett published his first edition of 1000 copies in 1855 including in its 258 pages 169 authors but not Emerson. The third edition, which included Emerson, preceded the fourth edition of 1863 the year that Bartlett joined Little Brown and Company. All subsequent editions, including the 19th published in 2022, have been published by Little Brown.

Until persuaded otherwise, this copy is an apparent second edition. It quotes just 169 authors. It is 316 pages rather than the 258 of the first edition. Like the first, but unlike the third, Emerson is excluded. Unlike the fourth and each subsequent edition which were published by Little Brown, this edition was published by H.M.Caldwell Company of Boston and New York. It, along with similar copies for sale on line, bears no date.

The factual background concerning Bartlett and the first four editions of Familiar Quotations are based on Emily Morison Beck’s 1981 presentation to the Massachusetts Historical Society. Beck was Little & Brown’s editor for the 13th, 14th and 15th editions of Familiar Quotations appearing in 1955, 1968, and 1980. (Beck, Emily Morison. “Getting Familiar with Bartlett’s ‘Familiar Quotations.’” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 93, 1981, pp. 95–108. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25080890. Accessed 22 Aug. 2024).

In addition to the factual data surrounding publication dates Beck describes the University Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts as Bartlett’s college. “At 16, straight from the public schools of his native Plymouth, he went to work there, and by the age of 29 became the store’s proprietor in 1849. His reputation for erudition and extensive reading plus, presumably, a remarkable memory caused him to be eagerly sought after to answer questions about quotations. He kept a commonplace book which became the basis for a collections of the most popular quotations, listed by author, chronologically, with sources. As a service to his friends and clients, he published it himself in an edition of 1,000 copies.”

After joining Little Brown in 1863, Bartlett became a partner in 1878, was awarded an honorary degree by Harvard in 1871, and continued to edit Familiar Quotations through its 9th edition, along with many other works.

This edition has an apparent calfskin cover with double ruled borders on both front and rear, a gilt title to the front, along with an ornate three inch medallion wherein the leather is tooled or cut all the way through to reveal a mauve textured fabric. The remaining leather overlay is tooled and decorated with gilt to make a floral pattern. The ends of the soft leather extend beyond the edges of the boards and are thus loose, flexible, and subject to fraying at its edges. Chips and tears at the head and tail and along the top edge suggest some chewing, but the medallion and titles are bright and attractive.

The frontispiece which should face the title page is missing. Its image facing an identical title page can be found on line within in two district covers. One cover is apparent calfskin nearly identical to this but sports just the title and no decorative medallion. The other shows an urban scene depicting a tower. Both versions listings note they too are undated. Within the decoration on the title page which depicts swirling vines is a monogram, presumably the designer’s, showing a “W” surmounting a “J.” Below, on the left is an image of this copy, on the right is a screen grab from a similar copy (undated, 316 pages, Caldwell) found online.

A single page preface notes that the collection was “originally made without any view of publication” and concludes: “Should this be favorably received, endeavors will be made to make it more worthy of the approbation of the public in a future edition.”

The table of contents listing the 169 authors is in two columns on three pages. Beginning on page 263 is a two page addenda, an index beginning at age 265 fills the balance of the work. There is no other decoration.

Arts! Crafts! Music! and a little bit of learning.

Benet Pols August 18, 2024

I should have grabbed a photo of the woman I saw standing on Maine Street in front of Bull Moose holding what looked like the Wicked Witch of the West’s broom (before Dorothy torched it) beneath her arm. It was a beautiful object with multi-colored bristles and called out for a closer look.. Pleased with her acquisition she directed me to the other end of the mall where I found Robert Sheckler and his excellent looking array of “whisk brooms, dish brushes, besoms, and sweepers made in Maine.”

You can learn a lot at an Arts Festival. For many of the artisans and craftspeople sharing their specialized skill seems like half the fun. Folks willing to do demonstrations of their skill pay no booth fee.

Robert has a knack for telling his story while working; looking over his website and the broad array of classes he offers it became apparent why he was so adept at talking while working.

One of the challenges to buying some his products is the fear you’d degrade it if you used it for its intended purpose. Too pretty to get dirty. The good news is if you take a class you’ll be able to make your own.

Across the way I found this bowl Ken Wise had turned from a standing dead maple. The pattern reminded me of one of the peninsular maps you can find of the Maine Coast..

Like the brooms and brushes Ken’s work is a mix of the functional and the art form. He showed me a broad selection of canoe and kayak paddles. One paddle made from dense, and therefore heavier, cherry sported an intricate and vibrant pattern. Ken allowed it was probably destined for someone’s wall, but a paddle made of a piece of straight grained ash, light, strong, and flexible will dip in Maine’s lakes and rivers. Its patterns looked a lot like hand hewn baseball bats. Many of Ken’s paddle customers have a particular use in mind. Perhaps they’ve acquired an older, attractive, restored canoe and want paddles to match. A traditional Inuit kayak paddle was made from a straight spruce two-by-four.

Ken, a local and member of Mt. Ararat’s first graduating class in 1974, was happy to demonstrate how he carved a spoon but could not turn me a fresh new bowl; his lathe weighs more than a thousand pounds and couldn't make the move down to the mall for the morning. But look for the details about his shop here.

There were plenty of quick card reading devices for prompt payment. Vendors almost all had cards or brochures available so follow-up is easy. Websites were available along with plenty of QR codes, none so imaginative and crafty as Whitten Hill Studio’s fully functional QR code made of wood. What a way to demsotrate woodworking skill and tech savvy commerce acumen.

The only thing I bought were two pairs of Alpaca socks. I am a sucker for quality hosiery. In the process I learned a bit about carding wool and how Inkasisa Farm fell into the Alpaca business when another farmer’s personal travails left nearly a score of Alpaca without a home and keeper..

Nail making so so labor intensive in its early days that it was not uncommon to burn under ultilized structures just to recover the nails.

There was a lot of music, along with many amusements to entertain children, and scores of other artists, craftspeople and makers on the mall. You can find a full gallery of musicians and other makers by following this link but here are some highlights.

Seeing With New Eyes

Benet Pols July 27, 2024

Negatives are like old friends or foes stashed away. Slivers of the past secreted in acid free glassine sleeves, their positive images looking back at them from that mysterious, miniature little window into the past, the contact sheet.

I’ve got binders full of them. Unlike my sentient friends and foes I can revisit this band of brothers and make little changes. Fix mistakes, or maybe just reminisce. It’s remarkable how infrequently we go back.

The negative itself can’t be changed, but you can change how you print it, drawing out different bits and pieces, maybe hiding some others. To paraphrase Ansel Adams, the negative is like the composer’s score, the print is like the performance. Everyone has seen enough bad performances of well known music to appreciate the fact that this analogy can be taken to extremes, but it can also be nuanced.

Digital files are like negatives, except for the shelf space, corporeality, and the nearly tactile aroma.

Summertime. July. With no remunerative photography in front of me, I am trolling old files looking for ailments to cure, amends to make, or an overlooked scrub to bring off the bench.

I found it in a photo that had been something of a star.

It and a handful of its companions traveled well on my social media accounts, were very popular on RadioMidcoastWCME, and all the folks connected with Brunswick High’s Production of Phantom of the Opera spread it far, far, and wide. Over the last six months, the galleries from this show double the next most frequently visited page on this website.

But out of the camera it was not really what I would call a good photograph.

This version of this photo—straight out of the camera with no changes-—was taken the first day of dress rehearsals. As a result the cast, crew, lighting and sound group, the orchestra, and the directors were still adapting. I asked to photograph dress rehearsals for a publicity project for our local radio station, WCME; I wanted the host to have photos for the web, prior to to his interview with the leads and musical director the morning of opening night. I had also learned from shooting *Anything Goes* and *The Great Gatsby* that knowing what comes next is paramount; timing and position are everything.

Above is the unedited RAW file. The Phantom is leading Christine to his subterranean lair for the first time. They had come off the stage and moved up through the aisles and would circle back to a transformed stage. I don’t dispose of my RAW files after editing and exporting them from Lightroom—they stay on my computer like those binders on my shelf. At some point I move them to an external hard drive to make room for what is new.

My goal, after this Monday evening rehearsal, was to get a dozen or so images in decent shape for the web. Time was tight as the show opened on Thursday evening and I had my day job to think about. I was not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I saw a couple of things I really liked in this photograph so I edited it quickly.

On the left is the tech crew. The spot light had flickered and moved about a fair amount as this was a first full dress rehearsal. I felt lucky to have grabbed a few frames with Christine lit while the Phantom was in relative darkness. The tech crew is something that in real time the mind’s eye would take care of—audience member’s minds would eliminate it just as our minds edit phone poles and cars from a scenic byway. But with a photo the cropping tool is necessary. The areas encircled in yellow were what I really wanted to save. The area circled in red—the left side of Christine’s face, hair and the outside of her left arm are blown out, a little too hot and a challenging edit. Getting this area’s exposure toned down without making it look smudgy is the spanner in these works.

The left side of Christine’s face is over-exposed. Matrix metering was on. Though I did use spot metering in some other scenes where a single performer was spotlit, I don’t think it would have benefited this scene. The performers were moving and the light moved to keep up with them so it was inconsistent—some times it led them, some times it trailed them.

Spot metering Christie’s face probably would have eliminated the diaphanous glow of her right arm and waist. The highlight on her trailing arm expressed any lingering doubts she may have had. Spot metering Christine’s face would also have completely obscured the phantom. He must be present, if dark.

One way to get a quick check on what is lurking in the depths of your RAW file is to click the “auto” edit button. It will quickly reveal some deficits in the file and—if you’re the type of person who whipsaws to panic easily—might make you ditch the file altogether. That could have easily happened in this case. Here is the original file with no edits at all save clicking “auto.” It’s not good.

The graininess is called noise, it’s short for signal noise, an artifact of the conversion of electrical “signals” into varying degrees of light. For those who care, I was shooting manually. For each frame I would choose the aperture, the time of the exposure, and the focal length. But rather than choosing a specific “film” speed, or ISO, I set the camera to auto ISO sensitivity control; it would choose the ISO depending upon the available light. I capped it at 6400 which is what the camera chose for this frame.. Aperture was f 2.8, speed 1/125. I had gone to full 200mm in focal length that this lens would allow. In this full frame image using the automatic edit feature, Christine’s costume is much less interesting.

Going back to the original unedited RAW file, I cropped out the tech crew (the tech crew and stage crew have a role in these productions that you can never appreciate unless you see them working at rehearsal), and cropped further to remove that bright reflection of the rail in the lower right corner. By masking the background and darkening it and some other shadowy areas the focus is really on Christine.

Darkening up the background and the shadows took some fine tuning. Going to straight black would have diminished the phantom to only his mask and shirt, but I wanted him to retain some substance. Remaining to plague me was the hot spot on Christine’s left side. I worked to darken the area by masking her shoulder and the left side of her face using a radial gradient, basically an oval, and making changes only within that oval. This is the result I got in March. I posted it and some others early the next morning and sent the same batch to the radio station.

BHS Players did full, lighted, dress rehearsals on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before opening on Thursday. They did a total of six performances over two weekends. I photographed two dress rehearsals (Monday and Tuesday) and the second Friday show. I also went to the opening night performance but did not bring my camera. Dress rehearsal is fascinating. The level of control exercised by the student techs running the board was impressive; I had always assumed this was likely the domain of moonlighting adult pros. Watching one of the directors, or member of the crew walk right across stage during the action to check on something interested me; the performers simply ignored the intrusion. I had expected an empty theatre but was surprised to see two bus loads of students from other schools filling the seats. On the first night of rehearsal one of the leads was absent, an actor with a role opposite the absent actor, chose to sing both parts to preserve his own rhythm and timing..

One advantage to subscribing to the Adobe Creative Suite is that it continually upgrades—good features get better. New features are beta tested with subscribers and tweaked. The masking feature in Lightroom is far more precise now than even just a few months ago. Noise reduction, which had involved a series of sliders and some guess work, has evolved. Recalling the noise in this image when I edited it back in March I came back to it to give it another run after some upgrades to the noise reduction features of Lightroom.

Noise is often more evident in the darkest areas of files shot at high ISO. For me, two types of work I do generate a significant low light, high ISO images. Stage performances of any type and sporting events shot under the lights. A trick to getting around this is simply to sacrifice the dark areas and move the shadow, contrast, and black level up so those areas are dark enough that the grain disappears. This method has a particular advantage if you are shooting a stage production from the side. Shots across the stage are great when you want to get the facial expressions, or get behind what is happening in the foreground. The downside is that the background of a side view often includes distractions that are not part of the play: emergency lighting, signage, things behind the props, or people standing around back stage. Again, this are things that the mind’s eye stifles while viewing but they can diminish a photograph.

But now, I could remove the noise without removing all of the background detail. This is the same file edited in July with the benefit of some slightly better tools and more time to spend on it.

By no means perfect, but this July edit won the approval of a highly scientific unanimous jury of instagram followers.

Pros:

Retained the glow in Christine’s gown;
Good detail on the shaded side of Christine’s face and depth in shadowed portion of her hair (Okay, wig);
Good reduction in the overexposure of the left side of of Christine’s face and hair;
Less need to combat noise by darkening the phantom allows more depth to the contours of his body and costume, notably the red scarf and the lantern.

Cons:

The warmth added to the left side of Chrsitine’s face to coax out some depth changes the mood a bit; this version of /Christine seems less dubious about the phantom than the starker contrasty version from March;
Bringing up the detail in the phantom accentuates the shallow depth of field. Shooting at 200mm at f/2.8 makes for a very shallow window of crisp focus. Only the plane of Christine’s torso and head is sharp, even her left forearm loses crispness. The phantom is blurry.

But….I can always come back to this file another quiet day:

”The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.”

-Marcel Proust

Quesadillas for cash, golfing for good

Benet Pols June 14, 2024

Word is Brunswick’s best Classic Rock cover band will be celebrating the last day of school this Saturday June 16th at Bolos. Mama Tried, sometimes known as the house band for Brunswick Student Aid Fund, will be playing tunes from the 90’s and the 00’s at Bolos tomorrow night. The more people that go the more BASAF will benefit.

Think of it as Fajitas for Financial Aid.

Mama Tried has been raising cash and awareness for BASAF for years through efforts like this and its annual Brunswick City Limits Benefits at Brunswick High. Comprised mainly of multi-talented teachers and staff members from the Brunswick School Department, the band relies on auditioned student talent for a lot of the vocals during Brunswick City Limits but the band will be on its own at Bolos. No word if they’ll trot out that old Alice Cooper chestnut, School’s Out For Summer.

For those that don’t know, last year BASAF granted more than $543,000 in scholarships to 136 area students split about equally between graduates of Mt. Ararat and Brunswick High schools. To be eligible a student need not attend Brunswick or Mt. Ararat, they only need live in Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Brunswick, Harpswell, or Topsham, the five towns that sent students to Brunswick High School back in 1950’s when Mario Tonin, a principal at Brunswick High and later Superintendent, launched BASAF.

BASAF measures an eligible student’s need based on the federal student aid forms (FAFSA) against costs of the program the student will attend and assesses the gap the family needs to fill. BASAF awards are presented at the annual senior night awards ceremonies at the schools. Last year awards of as much as $4800 were made to individual students. BASAF mails checks directly to the schools, one in July and a second in time for the second semester. Students are eligible to reapply for the scholarship a second year too.

If you’ve already got dinner plans tomorrow you can catch up with the BHS Class of 1980 on July 1st at the Brunswick Golf Course to support BASAF.

Rita O’Connor Maines (also a Brunswick School Department employee) and her team will be leading the Class of 80’s push to endow their third BASAF Scholarship. This one named for Peter Gardner, Brunswick High’s first, and longest serving, varsity soccer coach, a math teacher, and a school administrator. Coach Gardner put 43 years in the Brunswick School system.

The photo of Coach Gardner, his sons and grandsons, was taken last year at the Dragon Scramble. The photo goes around social media all the time thanks to promotional efforts for the Dragon Scramble. Every time it pops up it makes me so glad I was there to capture it.

There’s more about the Dragon Scramble here including a link to all last year’s photos. You can see photos of Mama Tried with Brunswick City limits from 2023 here, and from 2024 here.

More important, if you want to support BASAF or learn more about it here is a link to their web page.

Bolos, at 7 Dunlap Street in Brunswick has all sorts of food and drink to accompany Mama Tried’s music.

Four Thousand New Old Books: tales from the Flea Market, Part II

Benet Pols May 6, 2024

“You know, if you really want to move these books, you need to bring along someone who can’t read, “ the gentleman who had sold me three or four thousand books genially told me. He watched me pausing, contemplating, planning, reading a bit here and there while I should have just been packing.

The books have been moved now (for the most part), but the phrase loiters in my mind each time I pick up one of those four thousand volumes to assign it a value and get it sold. For instance, as I wrote the listing for Rothstein—the story of Arnold Rothstein who fixed the 1919 World Series and was the model for The Great Gatsby’s Meyer Wolfsheim and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls—my mind wandered to a photograph I had made in the fall at the high school production of The Great Gatsby.

The actor had nailed the accent, or at least what we expect the accent of such a guy to be.

If Fitzgerald had really modeled Meyer Wolfsheim on Rothstein he took some trouble to tidy him up a bit as Wolfsheim, no doubt a crook, had some redeeming qualities. Of course Rothstein had yet to be murdered in 1925 when Gatsby was published so perhaps Fitzgerald’s characterization was an act of self-preservation.

Setting the price on this one was easy—$19.19—it sold four days after listing and gave me a great little mental tour. May each of the 4000 be so.

Killdeer, A Jack Antonoff Project

Benet Pols April 30, 2024

Walking backwards through a little pine copse near the high school tennis courts I heard an agitated, strident, clear teeee di di repeated. It was quickly followed by a high, rapid trill ttttttt. This bird was nervous.

Oddly if it had just internalized its agitation, as I do, I never would have known it was there. I heard it long before I saw it and never would have been looking for it, or anything, where it sat guarding its little nest and four eggs. It was well camouflaged so on this pass I did not locate the bird at all. I resumed looking through my camera and moving around this copse doing some test shots in preparation for team photos. Ten minutes later some other movement sparked another outrage from what, once I saw it, I knew was a Killdeer.

Sibley tells us, “Semi palmated plovers commonly use a low accelerating churtle call that is usually accompanied by partially drooped wings, raised back feathers, lowered head, and a fanned tail. This combination of vocalization and posture is aggressive in nature; the birds use it in defending breeding territories and nonbreeding feeding territories.” I did not need this particular lesson. Once you’ve heard the churtle you know where you stand, but I was glad to learn that a Killdeer is a Plover.

Anyone who has been to Sewall Beach knows the plovers are worth the walk.

On the first day I encountered this Killdeer it did not perform its signature dance of the false broken wing but something about its nest location told me I was seeing a Killdeer. With my camera already around my neck it was pretty easy to grab a couple of shots of the agitated parent before moving away.

The nest itself was in the heavy gravel of a drainage basin beneath the only small set of bleachers near the tennis courts. With a match set to take place in an hour spectators would be tromping through the area with some regularity, no doubt wanting to use the bleachers. Not good if you are an agitated, nervous, incubating Killdeer.

The Coach said he would ask people not to use the bleachers.

It is a peculiar thing in the Killdeer. On one hand it has developed a sophisticated behavioral ruse to draw predators away from its nest. It is a talented actor. Sibley refers to it as a distraction display but it seems more of a distraction bit. The adult Killdeer moves away from the nest while dragging its wing as if injured; it moves in fits and starts giving the predator the sense that one more try might net a tasty, if agitated, morsel. When the predator has been led far enough away from the nest, the adult will fly off.

On the other hand, the bird seems to build its nest in the most vulnerable of spots. In general, “Plover nests can be located almost anywhere in the ground—-from the tops of tussocks on open tundra, to gravel bars in braided streams, to furrows in plowed fields and dune hollows on sandy beaches. The nests are typically shallow scrapes….lined with a few pebbles, shell fragments, grass strips, bits of lichen or moss.” The Killdeer (C. Vociferus) particularly will “nest in habitats ranging from. . . .plowed fields to golf courses, and gravel rooftops.”

Perhaps if the Killdeer would devote some of the time it spends rehearsing its bit to thinking about better nesting locations we would all be more familiar with the species.

After getting my photos I left area to shoot a couple other teams elsewhere on the school grounds. Returning after the tennis match I found that the activity surrounding it had indeed driven the adult off, a least temporarily.

Possibly this particular family could not find a rooftop to its liking so chose a patch of good gravel, shaded by the bleachers, but sandwiched between high school athletics fields and the bus loop. No doubt there was no tennis or other high school activity on the day this family started nesting.

I learned that all plovers species show strong site fidelity. Many species will replace sets of eggs that are lost, and the Charadrius plovers, such as the Killdeer, which nest at temperate latitudes often produce a second brood. As ground nesting shorebirds experience high rates of nest predation, a possible explanation of their small clutch size—usually no more than four, which is the number I could see in my photos—is that small clutches are less vulnerable to predators, take less time to produce, and are therefore easier to replace if lost.

Another important pice of information is that the incubation period is long. Twenty-one to thirty days in North American species. And that Killdeer are in decline, mainly as a result of changes to human agricultural habits.

A Thursday night email to a high school biology teacher alerted the school to the birds’ presence. Given the question of site fidelity it seemed possible that their eviction was temporary. On Saturday morning when I returned to shoot a match against another top rated team there were plenty of spectators and lots of commotion but no one was sitting on the bleachers which had been encircled in caution tape.

The Killdeer was there too, sitting on its nest, difficult to spot unless you knew where it was. The bird had decided that this large number of noisy humans were focused on something aside from its nest. Returning later in the afternoon with more stakes to build out and solidify the tape barrier, I was treated to brief performance of the Killdeer’s distraction bit.

(For the less youthful readers Jack Antonoff has a band called Bleachers)

A sunrise drive to work so entrancing that sometimes on days I don’t have to work I make the drive anyway and stop along the way. Center is Crystal Spring Farm. On the far left is the barn at Dionne Farm, host of the old Brunswick Town Hall clock

Meditations on a Mobile Home and a Clock Tower

Benet Pols April 18, 2024

There’s a mobile home in town that —at dawn—is an object of beauty. For one thing it’s the yellow of an old Maine manse, a nearby stick built garage is painted the same yellow. For another it sits behind a healthy line of trees, near squarely perpendicular to the rays of the rising sun. The trees mark the edge of a big farm that—so far as I know—is the only outfit in town still raising livestock in substantial numbers. There is a lot to see: the cattle in their morning perambulations radiating steam, the farmhouse itself is something of an artifact. A good part of the year I pass just after dawn. If I am lucky the gleam of the sun raises dew from the ground and casts lengthy shadows after the cows before stopping hard against the yellow wall. The shadows of its boundary trees run along the ground, up its walls and then rise over the slight pitch of its roof giving it a tiger like pattern. The yellows punctuate the woods and call back to the sun while the shadows hold on for another half hour of rest.

My ride to and from work is a meditative act. I’ve been traveling the backroads from my town to the next town for nearly a decade now and have yet to regret the extra four minutes of contentment each trip bestows upon me. For a good chunk of the year I travel west with the rising sun following me, for another portion, when days are shorter and my workplace buzzes, I work into the night and so am treated to the retreating sun thickening the world in purples.

Among the small beauties like this mobile home are larger iconic beauties marked with a sense of history and by public minded kindness.

Two things happened in Brunswick in 1961. They tore down the old town hall and its majestic clocktower, and I was born. The townspeople have been full of regret ever since.

Town Hall is gone but the clock chimes on, hosted for some sixty years on the roof of what is still called Dionne Farm. The clock has been there all my living memory first brought to my attention by a bewoolened teacher at the head of a Longfellow School class field trip. There to see cows and learn about silos we learned about Dr. Dionne and the rescued clock. At six or seven, town hall was ancient history, for the teacher the memory was likely fresh.

Sunset likes up the old Town Hall clock. Town Hall on Maine Street was torn down in 1961. The clock then made its way to its current location at Dionne Farm on 262 Pleasant Hill Road. I do not know the exact date of its resurrection but it has been there as long as I can remember. If fundraising goes well, the Brunswick Topsham Land Trust will own it in two years.

From three quarters of a mile, the barn is a white speck on a prominence just visible between two long stretches of woods siding the road. First thing the sun shows is the northerly stretch of woods at the end of an active farm field, the trunks are pink with morning light that oozes down from their tips like syrup before reaching the field. Passing through the woods a little dip gives way to a hill with the barn and clock hard on the right side of the road. The white of the barn and the white of the clock face are two different things; the stone of the clock face, perhaps marble, is rougher and its reflections subtler, calming, with a broader array of color. Topping the rise the sun hits the rear view mirror straight on requiring the brights dimmer even though, at this hour, no cars follow. Through the next intersection the rear view mirror catches a line of trees on the drive at Crystal Spring Farm. The barn and the trees are silhouettes, now black, back-lit by the fully risen sun.

I have stared at this view scores of times and made early morning pilgrimages on days when I did not need to be on the road just to take it in fully without the bother of traveling someplace.

It is a peculiar phenomenon: the sense of a perpetual public or personal entitlement in something as intangible as a view, vested in me by the mere passage of time. With no more personal effort these many years other than having enjoyed the fruits of Dr. Dionne’s family’s time and care of the old clock, its host, and the surrounding gardens and landscape I, for some reason, am attached to it as if it were mine.

The house itself is not interesting except that its roofline follows the rules of old New England houses, which is to say there are no rules. The roofline went where the roofline went each time an ell was added, or an outbuilding incorporated with the growth of the household. Even with no distinctive architectural elements or style, the house grabs your attention with the bookends of the huge barn and clock at one end and the green house and lovely garden at the other end.

Of course it is not just a clock. The property, and neighborhood as a whole, are a testament to the past, in many ways an emblematic gateway way to town and a salute to the agrarian past much the way the two mill buildings astride the Androscoggin, now sporting restaurants, antique stores, and offices, stand for the industrial past.

My meditative moments turned to angst late last summer after reading of the passing of Dr. Dionne’s son-in-law and learning of his family’s plan to sell the property. Angst blossomed to full scale anxiety when the realtors’ signs signifying multiple lots were for sale went up.

A realtor friend kept me up on what he knew, what he thought of the prices: reasonable for the stand alone lots, too much for the house and connected property which would require further subdivision to justify the investment. Offers on the two lots came quickly and the signs came down. Word was there was a price drop on the bigger property but the sign stayed up. No Christmas lights dazzled from the big hardwoods fronting the road as they had in year’s past.

My route home from work is more varied as I have the luxury of more than just four spare minutes along with the need for some additional reflection. I may wander down Flying Point with Maquoit Bay on the right to Bunganuc Road. Bunganuc offers three choices: to cross back at Highland, or Casco, or Woodside,

There are plenty of barns along the way. There is a beautiful double doored barn in Freeport that, when both ends are open, offers views straight through the barn and down to the mouth of Maquoit Bay. It’s hard to look through it without seeing Fern and Avery on a rope swing. Granite Farm’s barn with its giant domed roof and silvery wind vents atop it is legendary, and there is a quietness around John McKee’s barn.

All three roads put me back on Pleasant Hill Road with Dionne Farm and Crystal Spring Farm to frame the last little stretch before I am back in amongst the neighborhoods of town.

All of this may explain the palpable sense of relief and joy I felt when I learned last Friday that a sense of history and public minded kindness is still at work and that the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust has the opportunity to retain this jewel.

Four-thousand new old books: Tales from the flea market, Part I

Benet Pols March 9, 2024

Stephen Spender.

I had never heard of him. He was, I learned, a poet. English. Very active from the 1920s through the 1950s and somewhat active beyond that. Knew Auden, Hemingway, T.S.Eliot and all sorts of others.

Among my four thousand or so recently acquired new old books are a lot of poetry books. This is regrettable in many ways, not the least of which is, for the most part, they are not worth much.

There are a few things that dictate an old book’s value: one of them is its condition. This Stephen Spender book was “near fine,” in spite of its sixty-nine years on shelves. Not so old to be “rare,” or antiquarian, but “vintage” is fair. Because it is in great shape, I wanted it to be uncommon, if it could not be rare.

Nope. Half a dozen or so listed in single digits on AbeBooks, my primary selling platform.

In any event, I had never heard of the guy. Even so, I listed it at $10.

Two days later I read this:

”About twice a week I would venture to London, usually to the Churchill Club, where a very good dinner was furnished for half a crown. I mean a really good dinner, not a canteen or Red Cross Club dinner. It was at the Churchill Club that I encountered T.S.Eliot, heard Myra Hess, heard that fine Octet and other things—Peggy Ashcroft and Stephen Spender reading poetry, a talk by the recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury etc. etc.”

There he was. Stephen Spender, in the same paragraph with Peggy Ashcroft and T.S. Eliot, in a letter from my father to my mother written in 1944 or 1945 describing his wartime experiences in England (Not to worry, my father also described Buzz-bombs, V-2 rockets, and plenty of death and destruction).

Not coincidentally, I stumbled on Spender while reorganizing some papers to make a more efficient workspace for my four thousand new old books .Perhaps I should bump that price to $11.

This is one of several beaver dams upstream from Booker Pond. It is at the confluence of two arms of the major ravine in the 200 Acre Wood. You can see the lodge just left of center across the impoundment. To the left, or Northeast runs a 1600 foot stretch of ravine and a couple more dams. Ahead, or northeast runs an 800 foot branch.

The Two-Hundred Acre Wood

Benet Pols March 1, 2024

Or 278.6 acres to be more precise.

In the early 70s my friend John’s parents built a new house on Rossmore Road just off Maquoit. After listening to Cheech and Chong’s Sister Mary Elephant a half dozen times we got on our bikes and went through the back yard into what I now recognize as a Pine Barren.

In the southwest corner of the 200 Acre Wood there is a little patch of abruptly undulating sandy soil. The wavelength of these crests and dips is short. It was perfect for getting a little quick downhill momentum before snapping back up the peak of the next wave to hit that euphoric bit of airtime middle schoolers relish. The trees were well spaced and the significant pine litter seemed to do something that prevented a lot of brush from growing up between them, soft soils assured an easy landing from wipeouts. It looks much the same now.

Booker’s pond was accessible through the woods but easier to get to by wheeling down Rossmore Road. Fewer houses lined the road and Matthew Thornton’s tenuous connection to Brunswick had not yet been memorialized. The pond seemed both larger and a bit further back off the road. There was some sort of dam where there is now causeway which probably changed the contours of the pond a bit. I never fished or hunted but John did so he could regale me tales of what might be in the pond or in the woods.

The pond eventually drains through some culverts under Rossmore Road to a saltmarsh adjacent to Maquoit Bay. Word is if you’re brave and a decent swimmer you can swim the stream through the saltmarsh down to the public landing at Wharton Point.

A friend sent me this map. It shows three spots off Maquoit Road and one from Sequin where you can enter the Wood without trespassing; the southerly entrance on Rossmore, which had been a traditional neighborhood access point, has signage noting the land is private property. It is fairly easy to walk these woods without impacting private owners. At this time, aside from road side, there is no public parking. Choose your entry point carefully. It is clear that even the iciest conditions, people enjoy bike riding on the paths.

As a professional wanderer and Baedeker of Brunswick people will make suggestions for places I might ramble next. The swimmer reminded me of the “Morrell” property, so called after the family that had owned it for a good long stretch. But the land has been owned by the town for something more than a year now. A hand drawn map accompanied the suggestion. It showed a trail system which included some of those I had drifted around as a child but also included a pretty extensive network that loops around and crosses over the property to an egress on to Sequin just off Mere Point Road. The promise? A spectacular walk along the rim of a ravine, some recent beaver dams, magnificent pines, and the possibility of wildlife including fishers and bobcats.

Not too long after the map arrived my wife and I went in. We’d walked past the point of no return before the fishers and bobcats were mentioned. I remembered them just about the time my wife got a text from our oldest saying, “What are you doing in the woods?” In an odd bit of parentifcation our oldest tracks my wife’s movements on her phone . We were standing on the edge of the ravine by this point so it seemed the best thing was to just send back a picture back of us on its rim.

In the summer of 2022 following pernicious algal blooms and shellfish die-offs in Maquoit Bay Brunswick imposed a temporary development moratorium in the Maquoit Bay watershed. Not long after the town purchased this piece of land to forestall a large scale housing development then in its early planning stages. The town’s immediate impetus was the environmental degradation of the bay and the devastation to the shellfish industry. There was also talk about future development of the land that may ameliorate the local affordable housing pinch. The reality is this land and the neighboring infrastructure make it more susceptible to high priced subdivision rather than a 900 hundred unit apartment project. But a ravine is a ravine, and a bluff is a bluff.

Word is the Brunswick Town Council will begin considering the next steps on this project sometime in April 2024. If the past is any guide the council will likely assemble a group of stakeholders to review the property and make recommendations. Here are some links to news items regarding the acquisition of the property:

Four acres of clams die in Maquoit Bay as the result of nutrient run off

Brunswick Council imposes short term development moritorium in maquoit watershed to address degradation of bay

brunswick buys 278.6 acres

More a gorge rather than a ravine it was well worth the price of admission. Among Brunswick’s coastal ravines with ready public access it may be the deepest and steepest. It is hard to do it justice with photos. The woods are dense and mask just how steep the walls are.

Several ravines and gullies dot the 278 acres but this one stands out. It has two major arms. Their confluence is just a shade north of Booker Pond proper. From their meeting point, which is currently the domain of some industrious beavers, the northwest branch extends nearly 1600 feet. The northeastern branch is shorter by about half and ends as a two tined fork of its own. The sides of the ravine run anywhere from 70 to 80 feet above sea level while its low point varies between 12 feet near Beaver Dam on up to about 26 feet further up and further in. There are plenty of places where the drop from the gorge’s edge down to the base is nearly 55 feet.

It’s fine to stand there and wonder how deep the ravine is by guessing the height of trees you’re looking over, but it is also pretty satisfying to use a little tool on the GIS site attached to the town assessor’s database. You can spend hours dragging and dropping around town.

But why not take an hour or two to wander through the 200 Acre Wood? Imagine yourself standing at the edge of this ravine during one of those three super soaker events we had in December and January. Where would all that water go if it didn’t have ravines and ponds and bogs and marshes?

Images below will open large

Gunkholing By Foot

Benet Pols February 13, 2024

With the lack of snow limiting the opportunities for cross country skiing and snow shoeing, plodding along the shore line and exploring stream beds is a diversion.

It has been cold enough so trails have retained the veneer ice and packed glistening snow that results from the freeze and melt cycle. The hardtack produced by passing hikers makes the trails treacherous for some.

A great example of this is the path at the Maquoit Conservation Land . With just a straight out and back and little fresh snow to rejuvenate the path the footing leads to a mincing pantomime of a penguin. One solution, if you’re up for it, is to do a little bushwhacking, and get down to the adjacent stream beds.

Just to the west of the trail (on your right as you head toward the bay), which runs pretty close to the western boundary of the property is a stream that marks the boundary between the the western side of the property and an adjacent private landowner. However, to the east (on your left as you head toward the bay) are two streams that are contained within the boundaries of the property. With frozen embankments and reeds laid flat by the scant snow cover, it is a fairly easy walk back up the stream to points where it narrows enough to be stepped over and allow you back down the other side. You’ll get to see an area that is difficult or even unpleasant to get to other times of the year when leafy underbrush obscures lines of sight, the sucking mud has thawed, footing is brutal, and sensitivity to the plant life might make walking over it seem like walking through your neighbor’s flower bed. Also insects.

But in winter, an overcast day is as fine as a sunny day.

You’ll find that the major streams are joined here and again by smaller streams—so far as I can tell none of them have names that have made it onto any maps—these smaller streams offer some choice and diversions along with the brief sense that you are alone in the woods.

Moving horizontally up the banks and over the ridges that separate the streams you will see the woods doing their regenerative thing recovering from blow down of years past.

Commonly called rare clubmoss, ground pine, or princess pine, which is what I have heard it called. It is a North American species of clubmoss in the family Lycopodiaceae. Native to the eastern US and southeastern Canada from Georgia to Minnesota to Nova Scotia, it grows in the understory of temperate coniferous and deciduous forests where it is involved in seral secondary succession some years after disturbance has occurred.
It is known for the superficial resemblance to various conifers, hence the names ground pine or princess pine. However, its above-ground parts are rarely more than six inches tall. Its main stem is actually an underground creeping rhizome which grows about two and half inches below ground
Historically, princess pine has been harvested from the wild for use as Christmas greens for wreaths, as well as the use of its spores for flash powder, a product that is now practically obsolete, The harvesting had caused it to become threatened in several areas, leading Indiana[ and New York to declare it protected by state law.

Photographing Phototropism: embracing the optimism of a single yellow birch.

Benet Pols February 3, 2024

Tithing for conservation, a tangible response to climate change.

They lie down next to each other in a companionable sort of way, like two lichened old gravestones in an ancient peninsular cemetery, “Tamarack, April 20, 2018, her relict, Hemlock, December 18, 2023.”

One has lain there for five years or more, her branches more or less gone, her trunk moss-covered and softened in places. She shapes herself to the undulations of the earth beneath her. The remnants of her root ball long indistinguishable bits of duff. Her friend, more recently fallen, bears the scar where her tap root was cleaved, her root ball still smells of freshly splintered wood and raw earth. The fungi have not yet begun their work in earnest.

Nearby, their manmade companions, an old boathouse and a small tilted fish house have survived another tide. The wrack line pushed up into the shrubbery is littered with artifacts of older times scrapped by the storm from the very bottom of Middle Bay. Lots of old glass and rusted cans of a great age accompanied a Clynk bag’s load of more recently abandoned containers: twisted tea, white claw, and the ubiquitous woke Bud Lights.

The eradication of iconic structures like the Five Islands Cook House or the Fish Houses at Willard Beach stir contradictions. Destruction porn caught on phones accompanied with impromptu narration is compelling. The ruinous power of water captivates. On the other hand we brood on the acceleration of a once slow moving cataclysm. Even hide-bound ideologues wonder what is next? Their subdivision? Their livelihood? Their insurance policies?

The postcard tidy man made structures at the shore line contrast with the messiness of the woods. Blow down stays down. Dead trees stripped of bark stand as long as they can endure against woodpeckers and other boring critters. There is no cleaning and raking of the forest floors. The only cutting is minor to clear trails and eliminate widow makers.

This is how I first joined the Harpswell Heritage Land Trust. In 2020, I spent inordinate time in land trusts traveling to Blue Hill or Castine solely to check out some new trail in the woods. I picked up the habit of sending along ten dollars as a sort of gate fee. After a storm several years ago brought down some trees, I walked Skolfield Shores Preserve and wondered at the costs of trail maintenance. I sent my $10 with a note suggesting they use it on a can of gas for their crew’s chainsaws. They called my bluff and made me a member.

Why do conservationists, and other land managers, leave the standing deadwood and the blowdown?

It provides habitat for all manner of living creatures. As the insects, moss, lichen and fungi move in it provides food for others. The standing wood serves as look out spots for crows and birds of prey to scout from; others hide out, store food, and find shelter. Along with the moss, lichen, and fungi, microorganisms return vital nutrients to the soil. Blow down becomes nurse logs for their progeny and other plant species looking to exploit the new gap in the canopy.

Succession doesn’t just take place on HBO

Phototropism is thought to provide plants with an effective means for increasing foraging potential, maximizing photosynthetic opportunities. Positive phototropism is the bending of stems and leaves toward the light, particularly toward specific wavelengths. Negative phototropism is the movement of other plant organs, like roots, away from light and presumably toward water and soil nutrients. In short, phototropism s a survival mechanism.

Foraging in this case is an excellent word and not my own. I like it because it gives sentience to the yellow birch, like a dryad.

Three winter storms in six weeks trashed the coastline and left river front communities and businesses reeling. Just this past summer we watched the same dreadful weather borne watery power leave communities in Vermont, and to a lesser extent, Western Maine, bereft and devastated, dependent on bottled water as they pled for federal money to put roads back in place, buildings back on foundations, and to restore public water.

At the moment it seemed that there was a common explanation as to why what happened in Vermont wouldn’t happened here in our part of Maine. You see it was the hilly and mountainous communities drained by narrow gorges and narrow valleys. Picturesque and quaint, these gorges caused all the damage by magnifying the force of the heavy rains. Vermont which used to be immune to major flooding, tornadoes and other perils that afflict the middle parts of the country was different than most of Maine. Vermont had been a lot like Maine—able to endure cold weather and snow because even at their worst winter storms they generally leave structures intact, roofs on and basements dry.

If Vermont was special Maine was even more special.

Until, that is, our winter wonderlands changed. Atmospheric rivers dumped biblical rains. And we recalled that while Maine has fewer gorges and canyons than Vermont, we have tides, and tidal surges.

Where we should have had a blizzard, a snow day, and fresh powder on the piste and in the woods, we had a deluge. What should have been snowpack to replenish aquifers in spring instead scoured the shores of vegetation and livelihoods. We watched the water rising, sand bags being deployed, and our post card scenes disappearing before our eyes.

Like wandering around outdoors, making photographs is a reflective pastime. I find a consonance with natural objects and creatures when I see them through the lens, even rocks in the mud or fallen tree trunks. It brings me closer—it may be just a construct, my imagination—but I feel it. I can be a part of it. The same is true when I look through the lens at a goal being scored, a competitor being chased down the back-stretch, a victory celebration, or the intensity of eyes in completion.

For an instant I understand it.

Perhaps the land trust needed a few cans of gas because the trails were impassable for some folks. There were dangerous branches or whole trunks hanging like a guillotine over trails. Some maintenance would be done so more could enjoy the restorative power of the outdoors. Concrete thinking like this leads me to spells of abstract thinking.

Reflecting on climate change, my role in it and my reaction to it, the only tangible way for me to engage in climate advocacy—without suffering the frustrations of engaging with government—is through contributing directly to land conservation. I feel it is the only real thing I can do. The rest is just noise.

There is plenty of science on carbon sequestration in forests, the importance of salt marshes as ocean levels rise, and the role connectivity between parcels plays in the preservation of species diversity.

But more important for me is the resilience of that yellow birch.

Ripped from the ground when its much larger coniferous neighbor fell some years ago, left clinging to the apex of a disk of earth circumscribing the fallen trunk and torn roots, the nymph found its trunk, just a sapling at the time, perpendicular to the sun. Its own root system, extirpated from all it had known, flailing in the air. But its roots pivoted ninety degrees toward the earth, while its stem lengthened cells on the side away from the sun and bent its spindly stem ninety degrees to reach the light.

Now its trunk is five inches in diameter and the tree rises twenty feet above the edge of the old root ball. It may not reach old age; its weight may surpass the capacity of what earth remains in the root ball of its host.

But for the time being it is a tree, foraging.

Last fall during senior portrait season one of the land trusts put out a call on their social media channels. They had noticed the abundance of photos shot on their properties and asked for a #hashtag, just a little hat-tip to the organization that keeps all these beautiful spots. Spots so memorable that a 17 year old can imagine themselves 40 years hence saying that’s who I was and that’s where I wanted to be.

10% of any fee for portraits—senior photos or any location portraits—will be contributed to the land trust or any public entity that manages the property where the photos are made.

Famed Broadcaster Dale Arnold Visits Six Rivers Youth Sports to Help Raise The Rink!

Benet Pols January 5, 2024

Dale Arnold, with a timbre and face familiar to legions of New England Sports fans as the voice of, among others, the Boston Bruins and the New England Patriots, paid a visit to the Six Rivers Youth Sports Complex in Topsham and met with board president Bill Patterson and his team to review the plans for the new ice arena, hear about fundraising, tour the existing indoor turf facility, and to lend his support.

For many in attendance Dale’s tones and presence go back to his days on WBOR broadcasting Bowdoin College Hockey during the Polar Bears’ legendary Championship runs under iconic Coach Sid Watson or, even further, to the sidelines of the gridiron on McKeen Street in Brunswick where Dale cut his teeth as a teen doing play-by-play for Dragon football at WCME.

Dale’s embrace of Six Rivers Youth Sports’ mission was palpable the moment he mentioned his daughter’s hockey career. Dale noted that while he had lettered in four sports in high school he never played hockey himself but did become that most dutiful and passionate of all sports parents—a Hockey Dad. Dale has shivered by the glass in the early morning hours, been to rinks in the remotest corners of New England and the Maritimes, and spent nights in threadbare motels as knee hockey games raged in the corridors until all hours.

Dale knows the importance of local, public ice. Dale knows the importance of youth sports. And Dale knows the importance of inclusive opportunities.

With board members spanning the generations, reminisces flew. Doug Morrell, Brunswick High ’69 skated on the first artificial ice in the region when Bowdoin’s storied Dayton Area opened in 1956. He and Tim Griffing ’74 played in the era when Maine had just five high school hockey teams. Sid Pols, BHS ’23, the event videographer, told of winning a State Championship with the Dragons in 2022 and recounted Brunswick’s epic five overtime playoff win over the Cheverus/Yarmouth co-op that season.

Chelsea Bickford, Six RIvers’ project manager, is a second generation ice warrior with dual interests. In the late 70s when Maine High School Boys hockey expanded from five to eight teams her father hit the ice with the first Mt. Ararat varsity squad. Chelsea laced them up herself in high school using the skills she learned at the Skating Club of Brunswick to patrol the blue line for the Yarmouth Clippers Womens’ hockey team. But as a veteran figure skater and teacher whose mother led the Brunswick Skating Club for years, what she really misses is the Gala Shows every March.

Like a local Ice Capades these shows had it all and signaled the final event on Bowdoin’s ice every spring; there were sequins, costumes, skits, line routines but also real opportunities for local figure skaters to perform at a high level in spot lit glory for an adoring audience..

Everyone had a coldest rink story.

Everyone had a story about getting on the ice before school at 4:30 AM.

Everyone agreed that the region needs another indoor ice skating facility and that efforts like the Zamboni Pull fundraiser are vital to raise the rink..

The Zamboni Pull

Brunswick’s Hockey Moms, tired of driving all winter for practices, came equipped with work gloves to give the Zamboni a pull for their teams. The course had gotten smooth and fast by the end of the afternoon but the hockey Moms pulled first. Even with a Zamboni full of water and the course frozen and bumpy, the Moms got it done.

Sixteen teams braved classic stick season raw weather to lend helping hands to haul a seven ton Zamboni the length of a forty foot course adjacent to Six Rivers Youth Sports indoor turf field just off Route 201 in Topsham.

Their cause? Raise $400,000 before the end of the year to unlock a $400,000 matching grant so Six Rivers Youth Sports can move forward with plans to add an indoor, fully refrigerated, NHL sized ice arena to the lot. Familiar to many as the former sites of Roller World and “The Dome,” Six Rivers recently doubled the acreage available for the project. As the location has been a destination for generations of young people, the spot is a cinch as the best place to add a new ice sheet to the local inventory.

The Bowdoin Men’s Ice Hockey team, whose home ice, the Sidney J. Watson Arena, is the only other local sheet, stepped up to put several teams into the Zamboni Pulling contest but plenty of other luminaries put teams in as well. Like most good fundraisers, this was as much about Fun as Funds. Costumes and team apparel was de rigueur. “It was gratifying to all the volunteers at Six Rivers Youth Sports to see so many people turn out and pull together with excitement for the new rink,” said Bill Patterson, the longtime President of the non-profit’s board.

Being first on the course hampered the Brunswick Hockey Moms. The Moms were hamstrung by the fact that the Zamboni’s snow tank was still filled to the brim with water. Sloshing over many heats lightened its load so the boys from Bowdoin had it easy by their turn on the course. But hard work didn’t challenge these women; they’ve been putting in the miles for their skaters for years.

**Nothing shows *esprit de corps* like Jorts. Izzy’s Fan Club got it done in the costume department.**

Why does the region need a new ice arena? After-all Bowdoin’s state of the art Watson Arena is home to Brunswick 2022 State Champion Boys Hockey team, the State’s only public school with a stand alone girls team in the Brunswick Dragons, two teams from Mt. Ararat, and legions of youth hockey players and figure skaters throughout the community.

That is just the point. Things have changed since Bowdoin built its first indoor rink in 1956. The demands on ice time at the college have changed with the growth of women’s hockey at all levels and increased regionalization of high school sports.. The four high school teams from Mt. Ararat and Brunswick now represent six or eight different schools from Lisbon to Wiscasset, across to Freeport, and every town in between.

The twin sheets of Auburn’s Norway Savings Bank Arena have long been a second home for the area’s youth skaters but consider the 11 year-old skater sitting in a car with her parents, driving from somewhere on Orr’s Island to Auburn for hockey practice on a weekday night. She’s eating dinner on the fly in the car, and hitting the ice at 7 PM. After an hour of drills she will be lucky to be home for bed at 9 p.m. Meanwhile her mom is watching the snow falling, wondering what Rte. 196 will look like on the way home.

Led by Coach Ben Guite atop the Zamboni, the Bowdoin Men’s Ice Hockey team put several teams in the Zambini pull contest braving sleet and occasional snow to help raise some funds and awareness. The college has always been generous with the ice time but their first priority is their own students so there is simply not enough local ice available to fill the local demand..

It’s not just about youth youth hockey or high school hockey. The new rink will provide recreation for the area’s adult leagues, figure skaters, curling leagues, and recreational skaters. Even now, the turf field is an asset to the community providing off season indoor practice facilities for the local field hockey, lacrosse, and soccer players.

The Skating Club of Brunswick, for the time being constrained to giving lessons at one end of the ice while their recreational skating occupies the remainder of the sheet, will once again have the time and space to pull off its annual show and provide more competitive outlets for its talented skaters.

A 2016 estimate by Midcoast Youth Hockey found that a child spends a minimum of 66 hours in the car over the course of a season, to get 44 hours of practice time. Even carpooling with three players a car, the Midcoast Youth Hockey Association was driving roughly 62,000 miles a year to make sure its skaters got their ice time. No doubt the same is true for the region’s figure skaters.

So the Moms know driving and they know Zambonis. They also know a good time. While they came out clad in hockey jerseys representing the local squads, plenty of the other teams put on their best threads to celebrate the occasion. The unofficial best costume contest was a toss-up. On the one hand was Izzy’s Fab Club with their ugly seasonal sweaters and classic denim jorts. On the other was the Morning Wake-Up Hockey Club complete with Stove Pipe hats and a human sized rabbit mascot.

Pizzas, beer, and treats were provided by The Osprey, Moderation Brewing, and The Pejepscot.

All together this event raised $10,950 which together with the December match totals out to just shy of $22,000.

The existing indoor turf facility and fitness facility is at left in what was once the Roller World facility on Atwood Lane just off Route 201 in Topsham. Pictured at right is the proposed new indoor, fully refrigerated, NHL sized arena. ***Visit Six Rivers Youth Sports***

My house pictured in 1952, the year my parents bought it. My mother and brother are in the middle distance just in front of a white lilac. The foot print of the house remains the same except that some outbuildings, barely visible at the right, are long removed. The interior has changed a good bit and is due for a change again. The thin apple tree to my mother’s right is long gone. When I was a child an opening in its trunk caused by lightning—if the lore is accurate—had been filled with concrete. There were perhaps a dozen apple tress in the yard then, three remain and two of them face imminent collapse. A recent rain and wind storm canted one noticeably to the north and the ground on its south side has bulged where its tenacious root ball shows signs of migration, but has yet to fully give up its ground. The vegetable garden in the foreground was tended to by tenants who came with the house when my parents and their first two children moved in.

Saying Good-bye

Benet Pols December 30, 2023

I knew that I would miss him.

But I thought it would be an emotional thing, a tugging or a regret that perhaps I hadn’t held up my end. After all he had been there all along. I could not remember before him. What I did remember was that he was big and strong and solid even when I was just a child. I had known him well for nearly sixty years.

But I missed him immediately. It wasn’t subtle.

The following day the west side of the house a was blinding debilitating glare, its windows now a hideous basin of reflectivity. The formerly breezy second floor bathroom, once a retreat, was a stifling cauldron. Where evening western light had once filtered its way through the broad lower branches of his canopy before reaching our kitchen it now had time to coalesce in the side yard after emerging from behind the neighbors’s trees and blast through the window to waste my retina with thrombotic fury.

Linoleum, long held in place by the syrupy dampness of its decaying underlay immediately began to peel back at the seams. Plaster, freed from the gravitational pull of its moist surface, began to flake like the forehead of a pensioner.

What had I done?

The decision had been delayed for years. Each spring new translucent greenery appeared on fewer and fewer of his upper branches. Wincing I would turn away, as one does from recurrent doddering patter: I tried to find something else to think about until the awkwardness passed. A hammock purchased during the lockdown phase of the Covid pandemic only made things worse. Lying on my back I would be confronted by his crown looking like a patchy scalp.

But stick season would return—like spring in reverse—and bring plenty of companionship to the deadwood around his ears and buy me another five or six months of complacency.

Here he is in the winter of 1967, probably seventy years old, or so, at the time. I am adorned by the snowball, my sister Mary, not yet three years old, sits in the snow. At this age, with the help of a ladder, or an old black Raleigh three-speed leaned against his trunk, getting to that vee and then working my way gradually up the right-hand stem was a possibility. Within a few years, with the help of a couple of burls and stronger hands, getting to the vee unaided was possible but challenging.

Ironically, another Oak on the east side had been bothering me for years. I could see the squirrels coming and going from an ample gap at its base. In 2014 the east oak was missing bark on a patch a foot or so wide and stretching up to my waist like a brutish stretch of varicose veins running up a calf from a swollen ankle. Squirrels exiting at its scarred base left trails, like Pigpen, of what looked like a cloud of sawdust.

Then there was the hen of the woods. Some sort of mushroom the hippies like was drawing crowds. My reading in the front room would be disturbed by abrupt braking by the bend in the road. The slam of a car door, motor still running, signaled a new visitor. Another wooly headed character would be fussing around at the base of my oak, looking furtively this way and that. Not wanting to discuss religion, or worse spirituality, I would keep a low profile until the Prius moved on.

This began to happen with some regularity. Eventually—this was back in 2014—I checked in with a friend, the owner of a local cycle shop. His Facebook stream was often a source of mycological tips and advice. “Yeah….your hen,” he has a way of drawing out the first part of a word as if whatever followed may be confidential. “People have been talking about your place, wondering if you’re going to harvest it. They’re worried about insect damage.” Within a matter of hours, through the good offices of the cycle shop, my hen of the woods was removed.

The visitors stopped but I learned that tradition holds that the hen’s appearance foretold sphacelation in the base of my tree.

So I called the tree guy.

Same tree guy my father had always called. And then I called again, and again. I did get a call back one day—he said he’d be around soon. As soon move along the years I called again. Eventually Tree Guy Number One did stop by. Driving by, he made the mistake of meeting my eyes while I did some side yard chore. Having no clear evasive path, he stopped and with a sheepish expression said he knew he owed me a call. But still, no action was to be taken on my tree. He did peal back a long swatch of bark and throw it in the grass. I also heard lengthy remarks on how bad one of my sisters’s neighbor’s oaks was. It required the full court press. My tree, housing a menagerie and sprouting fungal wonders, could just stand there.

After all, it had stood on this side of my house a long time.

I finally moved on to another tree guy. Tree Guy Number Two had a daughter in my boy’s class but was reputed to be a touch on the pricey side. But he returned the call promptly and came over at the appointed hour. He held clip board and some sort of gadget, which gave me confidence. He thumped on the trunk for a bit and pealed off a long swatch of bark which he dropped in the grass. They all do this.

I was not to worry about the squirrels. I may have learned that if the oak was to fall, its expected path would not be through my roof, or through the neighbors driveway to smash his vintage Buick Electra. Its expected path was out into the street. So, so long as no one was there, all would be well. I may have inferred the last bit. I also learned that some of the mycological traditionalists can conflate correlation with causation.

Either way, for now that tree would stay. Tree Guy Number Two’s assessment seemed fact based and had involved some sort of analysis. And it always gives you confidence when someone declines an offer to be paid for services because in their opinion the service isn’t necessary. Tree Guy Two affirmed Tree Guy Number One’s recalcitrance with a rationale that I could comprehend.

Even now, another decade on, Tree Guy Number two’s assessment of my easterly oak still stands.

But the easterly oak never had the same emotional pull as the westerly tree. It’s right on the boundary; in fact over the years it has cleaved the boundary line laid out a hundred and twenty years ago with marble scavenged from some demolition project at the college where the first owner of my house had worked. Always with one foot in the neighbor’s yard, this oak wasn’t really a part of the family. Its trunk, straight and branchless until above the roofline, offered nothing to a young scrambler. Even its leaves end up in the neighbors’ yard. You saw it as you looked at the house from a distance, but from within the house you looked past it.

The shadow on the western wall of the house shows how tall he was even in 1923. The horse, who once lived in my barn, is Phil. In the wagon are Catherine Johnson, who sold the house to my parents in 1952, and Arthur and Maisie Wheeler. All are relations of my fifth grade teacher, the source of this photo. Catherine’s husband, John Franklin Johnson, moved the core of the house from the lot on the corner of Boody and Maine Streets where 260 Maine Street now stands. Frank Johnson got the house from the estate of Rebecca Packard and moved it around 1905. The house is believed to have been built—at Maine and Boody—around 1857 and occupied by the Packard family. It was damaged by fire sometime before the move. Interestingly the first “Town House” was also located near the corner of Maine and Boody, it was destroyed by fire in 1857. In my childhood an oval sign stood on that lot commemorating the first Town House.

The age of the trees is always a question. A good bet is that they went in around 1905. I got the 1923 photo in an indirect route from my fifth grade teacher who, as it happens, was the grandchild of the man who had moved a good portion of my house a few blocks from over by the college. Mr. Johnson was a factotum of some sort at the college and got the house from the estate of a Mrs. Rebecca Packard.

My fifth grade teacher, Mary, who still lives in my neighborhood, had spent a good deal of her youth on Longfellow Avenue in the home of her grandmother, Catherine, who sold this house to my parents in 1952. Mary had heard stories of the house, and the horses—Phil and Major—who had lived in the barn. These tales illuminated her childhood the way scrambling up the western oak illuminated mine. Not long after I bought the house from my father my old teacher rang me up. She badly wanted to see inside the house, to look around the rooms she’d heard about, to see inside the barn where the horse stories grew. She had been reluctant to pester my parents knowing they were older and not having the direct connection she had to me. She had photos she wanted to give me and stories to share. She could tell me the horses names and what each was known for.

I have had the 1923 photo for close to twenty years now, but the shadow of the oak, the one on the west side, the guardian, was something I fell to just recently.

This past spring, some three years after I put that hammock out back, I came home from work to find orange cones in the street ensconcing a giant chipper parked in front of another neighbor’s house. A procession of oaks that had lined the curbside of his double lot and a handful of trees out back were down. Huge piles of logs filled the gap between the two houses on his property and logs smaller than six inches in diameter were being hustled into the maw of the chipper with Fargo-esque zeal.

Seven trees in all. None of the trees had had the majestic girth of my oak but they were all just as tall. I knew the yard well. I had spent my youth in it; these oaks had provided years worth of ammunition for acorn fights. Instructed to pick the sharp little remains of the style off the ends “so no one gets hurt,” we fired away at each other like Sandy Koufax.

Three thousand dollars my neighbor, David, told me. I asked why. It didn’t seem possible that any of the trees in the side yard would have been a danger to any structures.

“Benny,” he said—no one but David calls me Benny but he has been doing it for nearly sixty years so I let go—“I’m 86, I’m tired of raking leaves and acorns. Can’t do it.” He bemoaned the fee while I thought about my two oaks and imagined I might throw in a string of scraggly white pines on the backline. In a strong wind those pines whip back and forth like seaweed in waves. I’d have gladly gone twice his three thousand to take down the oaks and neaten up the pines.

***From above the hammock, August 2023.***

I chatted with the foreman for a bit and he explained that if I called the number on the side of the truck one of the girls would set up an appointment. Someone would come out and give me a number. I took a photos of the side of the truck—I didn’t really need to do it because this outfit has more yard signs around town than your average gubernatorial candidate. You can’t run down a street in town without reading the fellow’s name and number on plasticized corrugate.

But I did call the number. A person answered. I told them where I was—right next a big job they had going on now, a $3000 job I emphasized.

Tree Guy Number Three had a very nice looking truck, no signs of any scratches, or dirt, one of those rigs that has four passenger doors and flies on by on 95 hauling shiny snow mobiles or Bayliners. He also wore Carhartts. Crisp Carhartts.

But he also had a clipboard and a gadget so we talked for a bit. Turned out he had once worked for Tree Guy Number One, and also for Tree Guy Number Two.

I explained how the westerly Oak had become my first priority but wondered if there were economies of scale involved—for instance the use of a crane or some other heavy equipment—would it might make sense for me to have them do both trees at once as I had just seen with the neighbor’s seven oaks? He peeled off a swatch of bark from the eastern oak and threw it on the grass. The bare spot on the tree has progressed these last ten years. It’s now above me head and a couple feet wide. The squirrels still come and go.

We looked it all over and he had a look at my line of scraggly white pines too.

Those pines.

You’d have thought they were named Omaha, Utah, Gold, and Juno because it was going to take Eisenhower and the entire allied command to wrestle them down. First a big chunk of the fence at the front of the yard had to come down (we may be able to put it back up). And then probably a few of the hemlocks that make up the front hedge (good riddance, but can you spare the lilacs?).

Perplexing because the driveway seemed like the logical entry point to me, a non-tree guy. Carhartt gently advised me that the problem with my approach was that huge dying oak tree right next to the driveway. The one just to the west side of my house.

The estimate came. My first impulse was to run over to my David’s house to cheer him up about the three thousand he’d spent on his seven oaks. It seemed that each one of my oaks was going to cost more than all seven of his. And oh those pines.

It is possible that Carhartt mistook my willingness to talk about a lot of trees as an indication of something else altogether. As the scope of the job went up somehow the price of each of its constituent parts went up too.

Diseconomies of scale.

All those yard signs must be pricey.

I thought that maybe stick season, just five months away might make me feel better and put the proposal aside. I vowed not to use the hammock.

In July a bluebird caught my attention atop one of the dead limbs high above what remained of his leafy crown. He was spinning a virtuoso bluebird yarn so I stepped inside to grab my binoculars. Sibley says, “During the breeding season males sing, usually from an exposed perch or the tree canopy, to signal territorial possession to prospective mates as well as rival males.” I followed the blue bird around the tree from place top place with my field glasses when I spotted it.

A widow maker.

Eight feet long or so, maybe five inches in diameter, covered with lichen, detached at both ends from the tree itself and just lying there. Perfectly horizontal, dead as could be and above the second floor windows, suspended in the branches it had landed amongst when it separated from the rest of the tree who knows when.

I emailed Tree Guy Number Two. Tree Guy Number Two’s daughter plays lacrosse and I had seen him at a game a few weeks earlier and we chatted, he remembered my easterly oak, but I told him my current concern was a different tree, “Oh that big oak by your driveway?” he recalled.

The eastern oak could be deferred, the western oak could be saved with some heavy trimming and some cabling which would probably cost nearly as much as the removal costs now. And ultimately he would succumb so the judgement was pay now, or pay now and pay again later.

The line of white pines could also wait. Tree Guy Number Two glanced at the pines but focused on his notes about the driveway oak.

“Do you burn wood?” he asked. I would save $375 by keeping all the wood too large to go through the chipper. I do own a wood stove and a chimney intended for it but—but the chimney is probably occupied by bats or chimney swifts now—and, at the moment, the stove and the chimney aren’t mated. I hesitated, and mentioned that a brother in-law burns wood and had expressed interest; I’d make inquiries. A wry look crossed his brow but he said nothing for a couple of beats. No worries, people often hope to make use of the wood but call later to get the larger wood removed. It would cost the same $375 either way.

The plan was for tree guy two to clear some of the weight from the crown in late summer and come back for the trunk and major stems in November. A cancellation saw the whole crew in my driveway in late August. Looking over the paperwork the arborist asked me if I intended to keep the larger wood or if they’d come back to haul it away. When I explained that my brother-in-law would rent a splitter and haul the wood the same wry look crossed the arborist’s face, but his ground crew, hauling implements off the truck just laughed. “If you do need us to come back and get it, it will be easier if he leaves it in long pieces.”

Izzy’s Fan Club, unofficial Co-Champions of the Best Costume Contest with Morning Wood, showed their commitment to the cause of building a new ice arena in Topsham, Maine by cutting down perfectly good jeans for the Jorts element of the costume

Raise the Rink! Hockey Moms and the Rest of the Skating Community Come Together to Have Some Fun and Build a New Rink in Topsham.

Benet Pols December 16, 2023

Their cause? Raise $400,000 before the end of the year to unlock a $400,000 matching grant so Six Rivers Youth Sports can move forward with plans to add an indoor, fully refrigerated, NHL sized ice arena to the lot. Familiar to many as the former sites of Roller World and “The Dome,” Six Rivers recently doubled the acreage available for the project. As the location has been a destination for generations of young people, the spot is a cinch as the best place to add a new ice sheet to the local inventory.

The Bowdoin Men’s Ice Hockey team, whose home ice, the Sidney J. Watson Arena, is the only other local sheet, stepped up to put three teams into the Zamboni Pulling contest but plenty of other luminaries put teams in as well. Like most good fundraisers, this was as much about Fun as Funds. Costumes and team apparel were de rigueur. “It was gratifying to all the volunteers at Six Rivers Youth Sports to see so many people turn out and pull together with excitement for the new rink,” said Bill Patterson, the longtime President of the non-profit’s board.

Being first on the course hampered the Brunswick Hockey Moms. The Moms were hamstrung by the fact that the Zamboni’s snow tank was still filled to the brim with water. Sloshing over many heats lightened its load so the boys from Bowdoin had it easy by their turn on the course. But hard work didn’t challenge these women; they’ve been putting in the miles for their hockey players for years.

That is just the point. Things have changed since Bowdoin built its first indoor rink in 1959. The demands on ice time at the college have changed with the growth of women’s hockey at all levels and increased regionalization of high school sports.. The four high school teams from Mt. Ararat and Brunswick now represent six or eight different schools from Lisbon to Wiscasset, across to Freeport, and every town in between.

The twin sheets of Auburn’s Norway Savings Bank Arena have long been a second home for the area’s youth skaters but consider the 11 year-old skater sitting in a car with her parents, driving from somewhere on Orr’s Island to Auburn for hockey practice on a weekday night. She’s eating dinner on the fly in the car, and hitting the ice at 7 PM. After an hour of drills she will be lucky to be home for bed at 9 p.m. Meanwhile her mom is watching the snow falling, wondering what Rte. 196 will look like on the way home.

It’s not just about youth youth hockey or high school hockey. The new rink will provide recreation for the area’s adult leagues, figure skaters, curling leagues, and recreational skaters. Even now, the turf field is an asset to the community providing off season indoor practice facilities for the local field hockey, lacrosse, and soccer players.

A 2016 estimate by Midcoast Youth Hockey found that a child spends a minimum of 66 hours in the car over the course of a season, to get 44 hours of practice time. Even carpooling with three players a car, the Midcoast Youth Hockey Association was driving roughly 62,000 miles a year to make sure its skaters got their ice time.

So the Moms know driving and they know Zambonis. They also know a good time. While they came out clad in hockey jerseys representing the local squads, plenty of the other teams put on their best threads to celebrate the occasion. The unofficial best costume contest was a toss-up. On the one hand was Izzy’s Fab Club with their ugly seasonal sweaters and classic denim jorts. On the other was the Morning Wake-Up Hockey Club complete with Stove Pipe hats and a human sized rabbit mascot.

Pizzas, beer, and treats were provided by The Osprey, Moderation Brewing, and The Pejepscot.

All together this event raised $10,950 which together with the December match totals out to just shy of $22,000.

With 15 days to go in December there is plenty of time to have your gift matched. Hop on over the the Six Rivers Website and make a pledge.

Brunswick Boys Hockey team gives it a pull.

The Bowdoin College Men’s Ice Hockey Team, led by second year Coach Ben Guide put three teams in the contest.

We Belong to the Rock.

Benet Pols December 1, 2023

My thoughts flittering between The Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge and the photos I was trying to make, I rapped on the door on Summer Street.

The copy I had owned had been deposited at the post office on my way down to the river. Rated by me as in “poor” condition, I was happy to send it on its way back to England even if I was only to gain $44. Originally printed in 1548 “in prose and ryme doggerel,” my copy had been reprinted in 1814 from an original in a printing of 120 copies.

Bedecked with a pair of imposing Nikons I stood on the porch hoping my knock would be answered. I had no back up plan. Behind me in the driveway was a middle-aged, lightly blistered, Subaru Forester bearing a “Save the FJWB” bumper sticker. The Frank J.Wood Bridge, a 1932 WPA project linking Brunswick and Topsham and bookended by Brunswick’s Cabot Mill on the South and The Great Bowdoin Mill of the Pejepscot Paper Company on the North dominated the view shed from this Summer Street home. The bridge has also been the source of long ranging community conversation as its inexorable end appraoches.

**Looking down river toward the Frank J Wood Bridge, and its replacement, now under construction, from a residence in Topsham.**

As it turns out The Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, despite its majestic title, is fairly prosaic: it ranks as the earliest known continental guidebook in English, but I didn’t know that at the moment. I had not considered it in any way since researching and adding it to my inventory back in October 2019. Patience is a big component of the used book business. When I awoke Tuesday morning to find the order, I completed the customs forms and packaged the book up and posted it. It may have been wanted for Christmas.

I started pondering its high-minded title during the mile and a half walk to the Topsham side of the river. I had stopped several times along the way to get photos from beneath the Frank J. Wood Bridge at Brunswick’s 250th Anniversary Park and from various other spots that might show the crews at work, their implements, and their progress.. A lot of clambering around on the river bank and various rock piles to get the best views gave me time for idle thoughts between exposure changes, consideration of the sun, and waiting for bridge builders, traffic, and pedestrians to do something more interesting.

There’s nothing like transparency. I rated it “poor” and am pleased someone will get some pleasure from it at $44. An 1814 reprint of a book initially published in 1548. The 1814 edition was in 120 copies and bears this notation, “This volume was faithfully reprinted from an almost unique copy of my own (illegible) and is presented to by friend Mr. David Showell, of Park Lodge, Kent Road. London Institution” It also bears inscriptions showing subsequent ownerships up through the middle of the 19th century. Its author, Andrew Borde, was an erstwhile monk, an occasional Suffragan Bishop, a writer of early fad diet books, a physician, a traveler, and an acolyte of Cromwell who wrote about all these topics. He died in prison after being convicted of keeping house with three loose women.

What sort of knowledge were we talking about? Spiritual, astronomical, philosophical, or scientific? How had in been introduced? Empirical, methodical study, force, or was it revealed?

I was about to back off the porch when the owner of the Subaru opened the door. I asked her permission to walk through her back yard to make some photos of the work underway over by the bridge. Work which will decidedly not be saving the FJWB.

I had been on the property before because in the side yard, hard on Summer Street, is a gravel labyrinth with an old millstone at its center. Assorted other relicts of ancient millworks and a flutter of Buddhist prayer flags welcome passersby from the street for a moment of reflection. But I didn’t think I should go around the back side the house armed like Ron Galella without asking permission.

The homeowner asked where the photos would find a home and I pointed across toward Fort Andross, as if to explain it all. I told her some will end up on the radio station’s website and a larger number would end up on my own website. The radios station’s listeners and followers seemed to enjoy seeing the bridge work the last time I had shared them through WCME. It gives people a chance to inspect what they might only catch a glimpse of while crossing the bridge.

“Of course,” she said and thanked me for asking, “not many do” she added. “Do you know what I’d suggest? go through the labyrinth and across the back where you’ll see a big rock.”

I had seen the rock. Standing on the FJWB looking upstream toward the falls a high granite promontory protrudes into the river side. All rock save a lone rugged evergreen doing its best to slowly cleave the rock. The rock was the reason I was at her door. I wanted to be on it with my cameras.

“Of course, we don’t own the rock,” my host added, “We belong to the Rock.”

And there was my introduction to knowledge.

Photos of construction of the new bridge to replace the Frank J. Wood Bridge, also known as the Green Bridge, between Brunswick and Topsham, Maine. These photos were made November 28, 2023. The replacement bridge and all related construction will be completed in 2026.

Photos of The Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, by Andrew Borde 1548, reprinted here in 1814. Photos made in October 2019.

Arriving just before the sun went down netted a couple of frames with the sunset. F/20 helps with the sunburst. The expanse of detail-less sky revealed a dusty sensor. A cleaning and a test will follow but it may be time to send it into Nikon. Getting rid of the spots with the healing tool made me feel like a dermatologist.

Scouting Locations, Looking to Photograph the Northern Lights Without a Plan

Benet Pols November 24, 2023

A couple of weeks ago there was buzz about good opportunities to see the Northern Lights in my neck of the woods. Back in the summer I had been spurred to add photographing the night sky to my repertoire while hearing Alyn Wallace, author of Photographing the Night Sky, chat on a podcast I occasionally listen to at work, The Irish Photography Podcast.

The great thing about Alyn Wallce and his book is that he both goes into meticulous detail about the intricacies of the mechanics involved in getting the shots along with the science behind the celestial phenomena that make a good night sky photo, but he also keeps it simple. The chapter on Aurora is 31 pages long, within it is a how-to side-bar of perhaps 400 words.

One thing he doesn’t tell you is that you need a good north facing location with a clear line of view to the horizon and little light pollution. But I was able to figure this out on my own. It also helps to have a nice location with something recognizable in the frame.

This would have been the shot. North is just to left of the boathouse. The expanse of Middle Bay Cove with a low tree line on the horizon would have provided ample sky, the cove itself, if the tide cooperated, a nice mirror, and the iconic boathouse a landmark that many recognize.

I bailed because I realized once in there that getting back in and out after dark was going to be a challenge. This boathouse is on the shore of Middle Bay Cove in Harpswell. It is part of conservation land managed by the Harpswell Heritage Land Trust, Skolfield Shores Preserve. It is directly behind the old Merriconeag Farm property on 123 not far from the town line with Brunswick.

The absence of light pollution would friendly to the exposures but probably kill me, or ruin my gear, on the way in and out. Like most land trust trails, the path is cleared well enough for daylight attentive walking but roots, mud, thicket, rocks, deadfall and other changing natural obstructions inhabit the rolling quarter mile stroll through a forested preserve. In additinon, the fine old farm house has a decent parking lot indicating that a fair number of people reside in it now. Down back of the parking lot a maintained gravel road winds through the woods to a couple of abutting households. Lurching past neighboring households with an armload of gear and a green head lamp after midnight did not seem brilliant.

Stashing the tripod, or even setting it up where I expected to shoot, was a possibility but with the tide coming I thought better of it because I know:

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,

But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;

The little waves, with their soft, white hands,

Efface the footprints in the sands,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The location is great because you can see over the water to the north, west, and south. Many of the publicly accessible bits of coastline around here face more or less south as they are at the end peninsular ridges left by the retreating glaciers so tend to run north to south into Casco Bay. But my impulse to get out and get the shot was triggered by something I had seen on the socials an hour or two earlier. I could visualize the final photo, what I didn’t visualize was the planning needed.

One of the great things about photography is you can get an “A” for conceptual thinking a “D” for execution and still come out with an opportunity to shoot something else pleasing and preserve the gentleman’s “B.” I never regret a trip to Skolfield Shores.

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Sidebars:

The Irish Photography Podcast. It’s a great podcast, unfortunately it seems to be in hiatus now, but you can still listen to the archived episodes. One of the things that first attracted me to the Irish Photogprahy Podcast was the hosts’ accents. Superficial I know, but like most folks I uncovered the annoying habit of podcasters, particularly when paired, or worse when working as a threesome, to go all Dudebro in their efforts to be hilarious. They all seem to be auditioning for a role on sports radio. The Irish accents masked this for me for the first twenty or thirty episodes before I clued in the fact that these were just Irish Dudebros. I feel like twenty episodes is pretty much the half-life of most podcasts in any event.

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You listen to podcasts at work? Yes, for about four months of the year, but this is another story.

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The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The tide rises, the tide falls,

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;

Along the sea-sands damp and brown

The traveller hastens toward the town,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,

But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;

The little waves, with their soft, white hands,

Efface the footprints in the sands,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls

Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;

The day returns, but nevermore

Returns the traveller to the shore,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

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Harpswell Heritage Land Trust, Skolfield Shores Preserve

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Alyn Wallace, Photographing the Night Sky.

This is the road to Fort Popham pictured in John McKee’s *As Maine Goes*, Photographs by John McKee Introduction by William O. Douglas, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Copyright 1966 by the President and Trustees of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine 04011. The Photo would have been made sometime in 1966 or a little earlier. To the left is the cove, a part of Atkins Bay, that you will see as you exit Spinney’s. Across the way, where the Federal style house sits, is Gilbert Head in Georgetown. The Fort itself is out of the frame to the right.

On the Trail of John McKee, Part II: A Missed Opportunity Revisited.

Benet Pols November 21, 2023

I am gratified by the response to my post last week about John McKee and Bunganuc and am compelled to share what I have learned in its aftermath. A Bungonucker’s listicle.

As I am not an influencer I may have a genuine understanding of when my posts on this blog or on the socials actually please people. Clicks on the website and analytics that track them to their source are great….sometimes. The biggest bang for my buck usually comes from a school connected activity: sports photography, whether posted to my own accounts or via the Facebook Page of RadioMidcoastWCME usually travel well. Cultural events, such as last week’s presentation of The Great Gatsby by the BHSPlayers generate huge spikes and wander far and wide as grandparents and other relations at great distances check in. The man behind the curtain at WCME told me that my photos of the bridge construction adjacent to the Frank Wood Bridge were viewed more than 11,000 times in two days.

But on top of clicks, John McKee has generated a visceral interest.

So in the spirit of click-baiters, SEO mavens, and influencers everywhere, here are the five things I learned (so far) since posting about John McKee last week:

1) John McKee’s property is in a conservation easement owned by the Brunswick Topsham Land Trust so his property and what it means to me and others will continue to hold this meaning. Perhaps one day I will walk this stream.

2) A quick look at look at the Cumberland County registry of deeds leads to the inference that John McKee has been instrumental in conserving other properties in his neighborhood on the Highland Road.

3) Fellow faculty brats and current faculty members (not just those related to me) have fond memories and strong feelings. One told me of John’s early work with the Board of Maine Coast Heritage Trust, one told me of his dog Pi, and another told me of her regular visits with John McKee.

4) His neighbors have the same strong feelings about the area: one, whose family was instrumental in conserving the Town of Brunswick’s Maquoit Bay Conservation Land, is a proud Bungonucker, one told me of walking the stream in snow shoes from Pleasant Hill Road to the stream’s opening as a creek at Maquoit Bay, a third told me story about John’s decision to purchase his land being driven by the quality of its well water for the photographic process.

5) I now own four copies of As Maine Goes. I bought the three listed on ABEbooks to be sure I got a decent copy this time.

I made this photo the same day I made the photo of the can of PBR that reminded me of John McKee. It shows construction on the new bridge crossing the Androscoggin River between Topsham and Brunswick. It will replace the Frank J. Wood Bridge, a 1930s PWA project known as The Green Bridge.

Above the Swinging Bridge, Androscoggin River

Getting In Touch With My Inner John McKee

Benet Pols November 17, 2023

Whenever, I make a photograph like my Pabst Blue Ribbon can here, I always refer to it, silently to myself, as getting my John McKee On.

John McKee is a name from my past, a Professor at Bowdoin, a colleague of my father’s, and for a period of time, a noted photographer whose work made a difference. In the early part of this century as I began exploring photography myself, I reconnected with my childhood memories of John McKee’s photography, particularly a photo of a rusted hulk on Popham Beach.

On childhood trips to Popham our family would pass this wreck, or some other just like it. There were more than a handful down by the shore. Our family would generally approach the beach through the dunes off the Popham Road rather than through the State Park lot. I can’t say whether this was the result of parsimony, a general habit of tardiness, or if it was just the way things were done back in the day. I can say that the memory of the sand swept wreck, glorious in its rust, comes back to me every time I head down the Popham Road.

A personal Madeleine, no doubt triggered more frequently these last twenty years by the constancy of a camera in my hand. I went searching for the photo I remembered of the wrecked car and eventually found it in As Maine Goes, a catalogue of John McKee’s photographs in what proved to be an influential collection. I found the catalogue on line and bought it. Regrettably, it arrived pretty well banged up by its transit but I am glad to have it.

A scan of John McKee’s photo, “Dawn, Popham Beach” from As Maine Goes, Photographs by John McKee, Introduction by William O. Douglas, Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Copyright 1966 by the President & Trustees of Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine 04011. Interestingly my copy, purchased on ABEbooks bears the stamp, “Withdrawn from MOMA Library.”

For several years now I have been intending to write him. I pass his home frequently on the Highland Road on my commute to and from work. I often walk the road from Pleasant Hill Road to Bunganuc Road. I eyeball the Bunganuc Stream’s outlet into Maquoit Bay winding by a legendary house on posts hard on the stream side. On the walk back, if the sun is in the right place its light is refracted through the slats on the cupola of Professor McKee’s barn. Along the road are signs noting that his property, which extends down across the road and down to Bunganuc Stream, is private but may be crossed with permission of the owner. The signs provide the name, John McKee. For several years now, since discovering that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in one of his earliest published works, written under the pseudnym George F. Brown, referred to us natives of Brunswick as Bungonuckers, I have wanted to walk along Bunganuc Stream to see what triggered Longfellow to decide that this little stream encapsulated the essence of our community.

“Having very little business of their own, they have ample leisure to devote to the affairs of their neighbors; and it is said, that even to this day, if a Bungonucker wishes to find out what is going on in his own family, the surest and most expeditious way, is to ask the person who lives next door.” The Wonderous Tale of the Little man in Gosling Green. The New Yorker, 1834.

Today as I wondered what to do with my can of PBR, I wondered again about John McKee and what approach I might take to ask his permission to cross his land to wander down by Bunganuc Stream.

It seems now I never will:

John McKee, Associate Professor of Art Emeritus, died on March 8, 2023, in Brunswick, Maine.

(The following notice was shared by President Rose on March 13, 2023)

I’m sorry to inform the Bowdoin community that Associate Professor of Art Emeritus John McKee died on Wednesday, March 8, 2023, in Brunswick, after a period of declining health.

John was born on October 20, 1936, in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in Palatine, Illinois. He graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth as a music major in 1958 and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a master’s degree at Princeton in 1962, where he did additional graduate work and was an assistant instructor in French. His black-and-white documentary film about undergraduate life at Princeton, “Princeton Contexts,” won the Silver Award (highest in the category) at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1962—an early indication of his talents as both a photographer and filmmaker.

John came to Bowdoin in the fall of 1962 as an instructor in Romance languages, a position he held until 1966. His photographs and accompanying catalogue for a 1966 exhibit at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art—“As Maine Goes…”—revealed some ugly truths about the environmental consequences of pollution, seaside dumps, and unchecked development along the coast. It was widely recognized as a catalyst for the environmental movement and for legislation banning billboards on public roadways in Maine. Following the exhibit, John was named the director of the Bowdoin Center for Resource Studies in 1966 to explore land-use issues along the Maine coast. The extraordinary photographs from “As Maine Goes…” also won him the National Conservation Communicator of the Year Award from the National Wildlife Federation.

His second exhibit of photographs at our museum—”Hands to Work and Hearts to God,” about Maine’s Sabbathday Lake Shaker community—was recognized by the Maine Commission on the Arts and Humanities with the 1973 Maine State Award for images that “…summon poetry out of simple things and do not yield to the obvious or the picturesque.” A major retrospective in 1984, “Photographs 73–83 John McKee,” also received critical acclaim for John’s artistry. His influence as a teacher was on display in a 1994 exhibit and catalogue of the work of his former students, “Bowdoin Photographers: A Liberal Arts Lens.”

John was a lecturer in the art department from 1969 to 1987 and an associate professor of art from 1987 until 2001, when he retired and was voted emeritus status. His former students established the John McKee Fund for Photography in 2002 to honor his legacy.

John’s faculty file contained a sealed envelope to be opened upon his death. Inside is a note, written in December 1990, informing the dean of the faculty that he did not want a memorial service: “Anybody who wants to, might some good day go for a quiet walk and enjoy looking about.” This was followed by “If a memorial minute must be read at some faculty meeting, it better not last more than sixty seconds.”

John’s life and career have had a lasting impact on the College, on Maine, and in his field. We join with his former students, friends, and colleagues in expressing our gratitude for the many ways he encouraged us to see the world around us with new eyes.

Sincerely,

Clayton

This is a drawing of John McKee in 1971 by another name from my childhood, Thomas Cornell. Cornell was a faculty member and artist at Bowdoin College. This drawing is seen in a catalogue of an exhibition of Cornell’s Drawings and Paintings at Bowdoin in 1971. *Bowdoin College museum of Art, 1971 By the President and Trustees of Bowdoin College.*

I told Carter he might be the last kid with a yearbook photo taken under the Green Bridge

Benet Pols October 2, 2023

He’s actually not the first high school senior I have told that, but with construction started on the Topsham side and large temporary platform in place adjacent to the decking of the Frank J. Wood Bridge the view when under the Green Bridge will definitely be different.

No fear though, there are plenty of other sites down by the river—-on both sides—for good photos. Things are moving quickly over there though. The photos of Carter were taken around September 8, the pair showing the platform stage upstream were taken just two weeks later.

Today—October 1st—I’d say I have room to schedule two, maybe three, more high school seniors before that November first deadline (in Brunswick anyway) for yearbook submissions.

The sun set this evening at 6:21. Daylight will dwindle rapidly through the month, but the good news is we don’t set the clocks back until November 5th, four days after the yearbook photo deadline in Brunswick. So the sun will still be above the horizon until 5:30 on Halloween.

The golden hour, morning or evening, is a favored time for outdoor portraits. But the truth is it is really a golden thirty-five minutes. The good news is that in the morning and evening it is preceded and followed by the blue hour.

The bad news is unless your high school senior is working the tides they are probably sleeping in and only available for the evening hours (I can get up early if your senior is ready to go).

With a month to go, I have two shoots in the pipeline right now—-and I like to leave time for rescheduling due to weather and also still leave families with plenty of time to debate your favorites. So probably two, maybe three more can sign on before I call it a season.

RATES:

$225. Basic package. Up to two hours shooting on location, in the Midcoast area, the towns served by Brunswick, Freeport, Morse and Mt. Ararat High Schools.

What you'll get: 15 plus digital images, edited and delivered electronically. Images formatted according to yearbook specifications—the final image may need to be resized for submission.

Printing available for additional fees.

Paypal, Venmo, checks and cash.

EMAIL me here and we can exchange numbers

Some frequently asked questions:

Scheduling with the senior directly is much, much easier for all of us. They know their own schedule. They are also going to be way more reponsive to me—-I’ve only got one thing to pester them about. Parents have a list of twenty things.

Trying to pick a specific date more than four days ahead is almost useless—-everyone wants these taken outside and outside the weather forecast is only really good a few days out.

Bring a friend, or sibling. It’ll bring a little humor and ease any tension. Parents? Not so much.

Props? Your guitar, your dirt bike, the full moon shining off your Camaro’s hood? I’ll do it but we want the conventional shots too. Year book photos print quite small, forty years from now (trust me) you will be looking for a good head shot. I have taken shots with significant others, pets, gear, running through the woods, running through the woods with gear. Almost always the classic tight shot on head and torso gets chosen. A nice recognizable background is pleasant, but it is secondary.

Editing is a process that takes some time. It’ll will be several days, maybe a week, before you see the first edit of 15 photos. All of them will be lightly edited but some will be more completly edited (think skin). This gives the senior a chance to determine their favorites in terms of posture, pose, smile etc. My taste, or the parent’s taste, may not mirror the senior’s. Maybe there’s a blemish on the sitter’s favorite shot that is mysteriously absent on one that I did more editing with—which was probably one of my favorites. I can go back and retouch those that want additional work.