Sorry for the longer time between posts; I generally try (and succeed!) to post once a week but I was on vacation up in Maine and forgot my power cord, which might have been a good thing. I had my Fall Reading List all ready to post, but now I think I’ll save that for next week and just post my Maine pictures this week. We were based in East Boothbay on the Mid Coast, where we have been very casually house-hunting for a summer house. That was supposed to be the mission of this week as well but really it was just a family vacation as both my parents and my brother and brother-in-law joined us, along with a friend from Salem. We had a big beautiful farmhouse right on the water with spectacular sunsets each night. Great New England Summer weather; none of the swampy heat we’ve had in Massachusetts for most of the summer. I had my very first visit to Monhegan Island, which as inspired artists for generations. The other highlight, at least for me, was a visit to one of the National Park Service’s newest monuments, the Frances Perkins homestead in Newcastle. And the capstone was a oyster farming tour of the Damariascotta River given by my stepson Allen, who works at Muscongus Bay in nearby Edgecombe. Just a great week! Posting vacation pictures is definitely low-effort blogging, but I hope you’ll forgive me as I am now in the dreaded syllabus week before the beginning of the semester.

“Our” House with view and sunsets; around East Boothbay.

I could not resist putting my husband John’s lobster pasta in here as he seems to be on a lifelong quest to create the perfect lobster pasta and this was very good!

The Frances Perkins National Monument in Newcastle, with the sign that greeted us in the parking lot!

Maine is very intertwined with Canada, and I heard concerns about few Canadian visitors everwhere I went: given the hostile rhetoric from our President, it was nice to see this welcoming sign. Frances Perkins was a fierce social justice warrior and the first female cabinet member in U.S. history who served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor throughout his terms. She was integral to the passage of Social Security. This house along the Damariascotta River was in her family for over 250 years: though she was not raised here (her father moved south to Massachusetts for more opportunities, leaving her uncle to carry on the farm) she visited it often. It became a National Historic Landmark in 2014, and President Biden signed its official designation as an NPS Monument in December of 2024. It was quite poignant to visit this place given events recent and past, and there were quite a few people there—-hopefully Americans and Canadians! After we left the Perkins homestead, we drove out to Pemaquid Point, and this is the best picture I have ever taken of that locale so I had to include it.

Monhegan Island. I can’t believe I have never been there but now I have.

Monhegan is just one of thousands of Maine islands, but it is very storied. About ten miles and an hour and a half off the mainland, it’s about a mile in acreage, divided into a small village and lots of forest. Except for an unfortunate experience with sheep, the islanders seem to have been very intent with their land and pursuits, and the result is a very pictorial islandscape which has been captured by a succession of artists for more than a century. I absolutely loved the Monhegan Museum of Art & History, which blended art and history in nearly every exhibit: seemingly there was always an artist around to create posters for lighthouses (Alexander Parris), tea gardens, and baseball games (Frederic Dorr Steele), along with door panels (Karl Schmidt) and tea cups (Rockwell Kent). I could not leave out the lobster claw composition.

Oyster Farming on the Damariascotta River:

My stepson Allen got permission from his boss at Muscongus Bay Aquaculture to take us on a river tour at their Newcastle farm–just down the road from the Frances Perkins Homestead. It was fascinating, and this is seems like such an important industry for Maine (and all of coastal New England I think) right now: the neighboring Glidden Point farm was just featured in an article in the New York Times, and an oyster farmer is running against Senator Susan Collins in the upcoming election. I captured several “oystermobiles” as I drove around, but the one on Georgetown Island in the last photo above is the best.

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. The one cloudy day we had was perfect for pictures.

Lots of late summer color and the famous trolls–very popular but I did manage to get a few alone.