Remembering our Freedom

On this Memorial Day I invite you to read from my archives of this blog, “Our Civil War Legacy” and “Honoring Our Civil War Heroes” from the May 2011 blogs.

Today I leave you with some images that remind us of what the day is all about; who we honor; and what freedom means to us. I hope you will honor the day in some manner whether it’s to attend a parade, put flowers and flags on the graves of our fallen military heroes; throw a wreath on the water to honor those lost at sea; or flying your own flag at your home.

The Rockland parade starts at 10:30 am tomorrow. It will travel down Main Street and stop at Chapman Park for a ceremony. Please salute the flag for me as the parade passes by you.

I also offer this YouTube video of how the New World Trade Center will look in 2013.

 

This photo from Rockland History Facebook page is a Memorial Day Parade in Thomaston in the 1800s.



This sheet music photo also comes from the Rockland History Page. We don't know where the actual music that goes with the cover is, however.

This is a picture probably from a Memorial Day parade down our Main Street. This is the Port 'O Rockland Drum and Bugle Corps. I played snare drum in the corps eventually, but I wasn't a drummer at this time. More likely I was in the drill team.

Finally, I hope you will smile when you remember your special veteran on this day. This picture of my brother, Harlan, in Hawaii in front of the USS Arizona memorial site He was a proud veteran of the United States Air Force. I smile today in remembrance of him.

Enjoy your holiday. Don't forget to display "Old Glory," our symbol of freedom, our American flag!

Memorial Day Menu

Baby Back Ribs

Ingredients

1 tsp. kosher salt

1 tbs. ground black pepper

½ tsp. dried crushed red pepper

3 slabs baby back pork ribs (about 51/2 lbs.)

2 limes, halved

Bottled barbecue sauce (your choice)

Preparation

1.    Combine kosher salt and next 2 ingredients. Remove thin membrane from back of ribs by slicing into it with a knife and pulling it off.

2.    Rub ribs with cut sides of limes, squeezing as you rub. Massage salt mixture into meat, covering all sides. Wrap tightly with plastic wrap. Place in a 13- x 9-inch baking dish; cover and chill 8 hours.

3.    Light 1 side of grill, heating to 350° to 400° (medium-high) heat; leave other side unlit. Let slabs stand at room temperature 30 minutes. Remove plastic wrap. Place slabs over unlit side of grill, stacking one on top of the other. Grill, covered with grill lid, 40 minutes. Rotate slabs, moving bottom slab to top; grill 40 minutes. Rotate again; grill 40 minutes.

4.    Lower grill temperature to 300° to 350° (medium) heat; place slabs side by side over unlit side of grill. Baste with barbecue sauce. Grill 30 minutes, covered with grill lid, basting with sauce occasionally. Remove from grill; let stand 10 minutes.

From:

Southern Living
AUGUST 2010

Potato Salad

Ingredients

3 eggs

2 lbs. russet potatoes

1 tbs. plus ½ tsp. salt, divided

3 tbs. white wine vinegar

½ small red onion

1 large celery stalk

½ cup bread-and-butter pickle slices

½ cup flat-leaf parsley leaves

½ cup mayonnaise

½ tsp. Dijon mustard

¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Preparation

1.    Put eggs in a pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, cover, take off heat, and let sit 14 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare a large bowl of ice water. Transfer eggs to ice-water bath. Let sit at least 10 minutes or up to 1 hour, until you are ready to use.

2.    Peel potatoes; cut into bite-size pieces. Put potatoes in a large pot, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil. Add 1 tbsp. salt, reduce heat to maintain a slow boil, and cook potatoes until tender to the bite, about 8 minutes. Drain potatoes, put in a large bowl, and toss with vinegar. Let cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes.

3.    Meanwhile, finely chop onion, rinse with cold water, and pat dry. Set aside. Finely chop celery, pickles, and parsley. In a bowl, mix mayonnaise, onion, celery, pickles, parsley, mustard, pepper, and remaining 1/2 tsp. salt. Peel and chop eggs.

4.    4. Gently toss cooled potatoes with dressing. Gently mix in eggs. Serve immediately.

5.    Note: This salad is at its best right after it's made, but it may be kept, covered and chilled, for up to 2 days.

From:

Sunset
JULY 2007

Red, White, and Blue Cake

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

11/2 cups sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 (1 oz.) bottle red food coloring

1 tsp. vinegar

21/2 cups cake flour or all-purpose flour

1 tbs. cocoa powder

¼ tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

3 cups heavy whipping cream

1 cup powdered sugar

3 pints fresh strawberries, halved

2 cups fresh blueberries

Preparation

1.    Preheat oven to 350°. Beat butter and sugar together in a large bowl; beat in eggs. Stir in buttermilk and next 3 ingredients.

2.    Combine flour and next 3 ingredients in a medium bowl. Add flour mixture to butter mixture, stirring until well blended. Pour batter into 2 greased and floured 8-inch round cake pans.

3.    Bake 30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from pans, and cool completely on a wire rack. Cut each cake layer in half horizontally to make 4 layers.

4.    Beat whipping cream and powdered sugar until soft peaks form. Spread one-fourth whipped cream mixture over 1 cake layer; top evenly with one-fourth berries. Repeat with remaining cake layers, whipping cream mixture, and berries.

From:

Julia Rutland, Coastal Living
JULY 2011

Happy Eating!



Elizabeth's class aboard the Havey Gamage.
Elizabeth is second from left in front row.

Student Sailor Gives

Graduation Speech

We have enjoyed following the adventure of Elizabeth Sherfey, our “Student Sailor,” as she participated in a “semester at sea” in the Ocean Classroom program aboard the Harvey Gamage. She is the granddaughter of my classmate, Jean Monroe. Here’s what Jean had to say about Elizabeth’s journey:

“She certainly had "the experience of a lifetime" - and we are so thankful for all who helped make this dream come true.” Jean

Our last entry of the adventures of Elizabeth Sherfey is the following graduation speech she gave on May 22:

One ship, four months, 17 weeks, 2,856 hours, 31 people, three heads, ten countries, 120 sunsets, 12 hikes, infinite snorkles and swim calls.

Together, we have done it. We survived. Congrats! Throughout these four months we have learned so much. Not only have we learned how to live, we’ve learned how to fully appreciate the little things. At first we learned how to sleep with everything we brought, work the head, pull on a halyard until our muscles burned, and to throw buckets in a seamanlike manner. As time went on and we got deeper into the Caribbean, we learned how to deal with the heat, enjoy the seemingly endless fruit, look for the green flash, climb coconut trees, and harvest cassava. Right around then, we started our metamorphosis into salty sailors. In the Dominican Republic we learned how to give all we could and appreciate our lives, how to speak broken Spanish. In Trinidad we sat through many long bus rides and learned to never close our eyes. In Tortola, when a ray jumped out of the water and over Softie, we learned to never look down. When we came back to the States, we saw our own culture through different eyes, learning about ourselves. The cold taught us how to wear all our clothes and still fit into our harnesses, while time itself made us appreciate the cold, misty, mornings as we headed up through New England. Maine taught us to be adventurous. Mystic taught us how to effectively shop for warmer clothes, and lookout underway taught us the beauty of singing the song stuck in our heads. From everywhere we’ve been, we have taken a little piece of knowledge, a little bit of a culture, a ticket to life.

The Caribbean taught us how to laugh and embrace the world. The US taught us how to be strong and carry on. The Harvey Gamage how to give it all you’ve got, and still have fun.
I have enjoyed becoming a schooner bum with you guys. Thank you for making our trip great.

- Elizabeth Sherfey, Camden, Maine

Note: If you would like to follow the complete journey of Elizabeth as it was reported on this blog space, check the archives for 2012 for January through May. Look for key word: Student Sailor. The February blog is “Harvey Gamage Log.”

          

These two views of our favorite meal in Maine don’t look all that appetizing here do they.

The History

of Lobstering

As I was researching for another project, I came across a subject I thought you might enjoy, the history of lobstering. I doubt that the lobster fishermen in the old neighborhood of the South End were too concerned about the history of their avocation. They were more interested in repairing the wooden lobster pots stacked up in their yards or repainting their buoy markers so they could get back out to haul. (By the way, for you non-Mainers, “out to haul” means they have to haul the traps onboard. Today that is done mostly by motor-driven winch devices onboard.) They also had to worry about Maine state laws governing their lobster harvest; lobster wars; the weather; and a decent price for their catch. 

Lobstering is a hard labor-intensive job. You have to be a hardy person to handle it. Most of the licenses along our part of Maine are handed down from father to son; otherwise you may have a hard time obtaining one. I might also add that some women have gone out to haul as well. I know of at least one Sea Goddess who falls into that category. Can’t remember her name at the moment, but she probably wasn’t the only participant of the Maine Sea Goddess Pageant who pursued that work.

Young lobstermen and women often start out in the business working out of a dory and hauling in their lobster traps by hand. Not an easy task.

So how did we go from using lobsters for bait and to feed children, prisoners and indentured servants to shipping our product all over the world as a favored delicacy? At one point, indentured servants in Massachusetts, who exchanged their passage to the new world for seven years of service to their sponsors, rebelled, and had their contracts state that they wouldn’t have to eat lobster more than three times a week. Imagine that!

The first reported “harvesting” of lobster was reported by James Rosier, of Captain George Weymouth’s crew. In 1605 on a voyage to Maine, Rosier wrote: “And towards night we drew a small net of twenty fathoms very nigh the shore; we got about thirty very good and great lobsters…which I omit not to report, because it sheweth how great a profit fishing would be…”

It’s possible that this early account established lobster fishing as the oldest, continuously operated industry on the North American continent. Today Maine is the largest lobster-producing state in the nation.

Lobsters were so plentiful that they were harvested by hand along the shore in the early 1800s. As an increase in demand came from the Boston and New York markets, “smackmen” appeared on the coast. These first boat-related lobster fishermen were so called because their small sailing vessels were called “smacks.”

The next big development came with the development of the cannery industry. Preserving live lobsters to be shipped elsewhere was a big problem. In 1836, Maine began to can lobster. Beginning in Eastport, canneries eventually extended down as far as Portland. The problem was that the endeavor was so successful that they had to begin using smaller and smaller lobsters in their canning operations to meet the demand.

The collapse of the canning industry, therefore, was then taken over by the fresh lobster industry. They began preserving lobsters in lobster pounds, the first one appearing on Vinalhaven in 1875.

The pounds made it possible to wait for better prices and to allow the molting lobster to grow a new shell and have it harden. Pounds became the backbone of the industry.

Smackmen were replaced in the 1930s by local, land based buyers who were the link between the harvesters and the public. Buyers purchased lobsters from a harvester who in turn bought fuel, bait, and other necessary items from the buyer. The local buyer either sold the lobsters to people who came to the pound to buy them or to regional dealers who sent the lobsters out-of-state. This system still exists today.

Lobstering was and still is a hard way to make a living.  If lobstermen can manage to make a living and put food on their family’s table, they are lucky. Today they have metal pots so they don’t have to repair the wooden ones all the time; and they have plastic foam buoy markers which are easier to handle and are easier to keep up. The lobster fishermen who go out to haul these days are sure appreciated by this writer at least.

In recent years laws have been developed to allow non-commercial harvesting of lobsters. I’m not so sure that is such a good idea and probably goes against the craw of a licensed lobsterman when he comes upon such a “lobsterman.” Leave it to the professionals I say. They have to make a living after all. Do they intrude on your place of business?

So there you have it. This information came mostly from the Maine Department of Marine Resources site. More interesting information can be found there as well as the biology of the lobster itself; laws; and other information important to lobster fishermen today. Go to:

http://www.maine.gov/dmr/comfish/htm.

Thanks for listening.

Submitted by Joanna Hynd of the

Thomaston Public Library

"Thomaston School Memories"

Display at the Thomaston Public Library

The Thomaston Historical Society has a new display in the large case upstairs at the Thomaston Public Library: “Thomaston School Memories,” a collection of items from the Thomaston Academy Building and other historic schools in Thomaston. Some items date as far back as 1883. The collection includes a framed diploma from 1902, a paddle from the class of 1953, as well as graduation programs from the class of 1893. Stop by the library in the Thomaston Academy on 60 Main St. or like

us on facebook.com/ThomastonPublicLibrary  to learn more!

Library hours: Tues & Wed & Thur 11-5, Mon & Fri: 11-7, Sat 11-3; 60 Main Street; phone 207-354-2453

My mother, Evangeline, in red and
 Aunt Virginia on the whale rock in Spruce Head
enjoying their retirement.

Front and Center, Mama

This tribute to my mother was written to be read at a party for her 80^th birthday. I was not able to be there. Her birthday was in May, so I offer this to honor her special day as well as for all the mothers out there on Mother’s Day.

She’s a woman of few words who believes her role is best played behind the scenes. Well today is the exception because today your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, husband and other family and friends here today would like you to step front and center so that we may say..”God Bless You’’ and “Happy 80^th Birthday.”

Mama, you’re the glue that holds this family together.

You taught us our manners.

You taught us respect.

You taught us what is right and proper.

You’re the string around our fingers and the one who pulls most at our heartstrings.

Anyone who ever said that Yankees are cold and inhospitable never spent any time at your house. You had four children but adopted four times who knows how many more. If a guest came to visit more than once, you assumed they really enjoyed themselves the first time and, therefore, you adopted them and they were no longer a guest but adopted as one of the family.

And who can forget all the good food you’ve cooked for us over the years. (Remember when the pressure cooker blew up down on Mcloud Street?) We all have our favorites such as:

New England boiled dinner

Fish chowder

Potato salad

Dandelion greens

Pies: apple, blueberry, chocolate, rhubarb, lemon meringue, mincemeat (all made with home-made pie crust by the way).

Roast pork and baked beans

The Christmas sweets: peanut butter chocolate balls, full stops.

And all the Care Packages with squares and whoopee pies in them.

The remarkable thing is that you can remember what is the favorite specialty of each of us.

Mama, you’re a woman of simple pleasures who appreciates the little things—like a bouquet of wild flowers, humming birds and phoebe birds, or just going to garage sales. Remember the estate auction on Water Street where you bought all that stuff in a laundry bag without knowing what was in it for 50 cents! It contained the pantaloons Nat wore as “something old” for her wedding day; old-fashioned lace and an old-fashioned black collapsible umbrella?

You have always wanted your children to enjoy life to the fullest; to experience new things; to do the best we could with what we had; to take the good with the bad in life; to let bygones be bygones and go on.

We won’t forget what we’ve learned from you.

You commented on the poor shape of an old house we passed once on a back road,

“Look at that house,” you said. “There’s probably an old couple in there all by themselves. The place is going to pot and there’s no one to help them keep it up anymore. There were probably a lot of kids there once and a lot of happy memories, but they’ve all gone now and the old couple is all alone and forgotten. So sad.”

Well let me tell you. That will never happen to you and Daddy. We remember too many good times. You’ll always be front and center in our hearts.

Have a happy day with everyone. And have a taste of lobster for me.

              Love,

                     Your daughter, Sandra

A Note: When my mother was still cooking she made me some fish chowder when I came home to visit. It was the last meal she ever made for me. It was delicious. Happy Birthday, Mama!

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there!

Thomaston Public Library Movie for May 16

THE ECONOMICS OF HAPPINESS will be shown at the Thomaston Library on Wednesday, May 16, at 6:30 pm.

This film shows the disruption to communities around the world by "globalization," covering problems such as financial instability and unemployment, ethnic conflict, and climate change. And it also shows that there are communities that are resisting big money and power. Commentators, including Bill McKibbon and David Korten, as well as spiritual and communty leaders from many countries provide inspiration and ideas for moving to local sustainable communities. The film is a little over one hour long, allowing time for discussion.

You can read about it at this website http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org

This event is free and open to the public.

FMI, contact Carmen Lavertu at 354-9556 or clavertu@gmail.com

The Traverse Board

This interesting tidbit of historical navigation devices was included in the latest newsletter from the Sail, Power and Steam Museum, “Reading Both Pages.”

The traverse board is a memory aid formerly used in dead reckoning navigation to easily record the speeds and directions sailed during a watch. Even an illiterate crew member could reckon with this simple device.

The traverse board is a wooden board with peg-holes and attached pegs. It is divided into two parts. The top part is for recording direction sailed. It has a compass rose with its 32 compass points, just as it would on the face of the ship’s compass. Eight concentric rings are inscribed on the compass rose, each with one peg hole at each point of the compass. Eight pegs are attached to the center of the compass rose with strings.

The bottom part is for recording speed. It has 4 rows of holes. Each column represents a certain speed, measured in knots. Eight pegs are attached to this part of the board.

Each half-hour during the watch, a crew member would insert a peg in the top portion of the board to represent the heading sailed during that half-hour, as is shown on the ship’s compass. The innermost ring of peg-holes is used for the first half hour, the second for the second half-hour, and so on until all 8 rings were use.

Each hour during the watch, a crew member would insert a peg in the bottom portion of the board to represent the speed sailed during the hour. The speed would have been measured using a chip log. If the speed for the first hour of the watch were 101⁄2 knots, the crew member would count over 10 holes in the first row and place one peg, then place another peg in the column marked “1/2”. In the second hour of the watch, the crew member would use the second row of pegs, and so on until all 4 rows were used.

At the end of the watch, the navigator would collect the information about the speeds and directions sailed during the watch, clear the pegs from the board, and use the information to figure the vessel’s dead reckoning track.

Meanwhile, the helm of the new watch would begin recording the new sailing headings and speeds on the traverse board. Remember, dead reckoning was the only method the navigator had to determine longitude and the calculations were fraught with errors until the invention of the Harrison chronometer (1737).

Student Sailor Comes Home

Aboard the Harvey Gamage

Harvey Gamage as it sails into New York City.

Our student sailor, Elizabeth Sherfey, granddaughter of my friend, Jean Monroe, has come home from her classroom on the ocean. This is the latest blog from the trip. See some great video of the homecoming to Gamage Shipyard, where the Harvey Gamage was built, at http://www.oceanclassroom.blogspot.com.

"If I make it there I'll make it anywhere. It's up to you New York, New York"
Frank Sinatra's voice sang out over the intercom and carried us all on deck. As I left the companionway my breath was taken: above us, Lady Liberty emerged from the fog, tall and noble, and students stood in wonder, all except Patricia and Elizabeth who danced the Foxtrot with big goofy grins painted on their faces. We remained on deck long after the city lights came out. They were a departure from the starry night sky, but they were beautiful.

From the moment we entered Sandy Hook Channel I was inspired by the students. They successfully tacked up and down the Lower Hudson with Brendan at the helm, an impressive feat considering the traffic, variable winds and pressure of getting each tack just right. This would have seemed impossible two months ago, but they handled it with ease. Peter W had planned our course through tight channels and he and Claire used the chart and buoys to successfully complete the task. Once anchored, Lady Liberty watched over us throughout the stormy night. The next morning we woke to beckoning seas and marveled at the city as we passed through the East River. With students perched aloft photographing the skyscrapers, I couldn't help but revel in the fact that the first skyscrapers were not in cities, but on the sea. Old square-rigged ships carried sails so high they were referred to as sky-scrapers, and above that were the moon-rakers and then star-gazers. Inspiration all around.

Our passage up the Long Island Sounds was a high point of the trip; the conditions were perfect and we traveled 5 knots using only the staysail. Students were in high spirits despite the cold. In Mystic we made connections to our maritime past, visiting the Charles W. Morgan, various exhibits of all things maritime including figureheads and music, and even had the chance to row whaling boats. Students worked on their ditty bags in a sail loft and experienced Mystic Seaport in the intimate way of a mariner.

Our visit in Mystic coincided well with academics. In Maritime Literature students discussed The Sea-Wolf while sitting in the fish hold of the L.A. Dutton, an old and fast whaling schooner. In Maritime History students are finishing their independent research projects, and those who are researching whaling and fishing sailboats found themselves immersed in their topics of study. In Marine Science students are finishing independent lab reports. With the end of the semester quickly approaching, students find themselves busy, both with schoolwork and with the pressing need to make the most of every second.

A special thank you to Katie's parents and grandparents for their hospitality. We all enjoyed the barbeque immensely.

Abbey, Literature Teacher

Unforgettable

There is a show on TV right now starring Poppy Montgomery called “Unforgettable.” She plays a cop who has total recall. I also remember this song, “Unforgettable,” by Nat King Cole that was later done as a duet with his daughter after his death through the miracle of modern recording devices.

Mary Lou Henner, of “Taxi” fame, the old TV show, has total recall in real life. That means that given any day in the history of her life, she can recall every detail of what she was doing that day; with whom she interacted etc. Supposedly, only 125 people in the whole world have what is called “total recall.”

I’m not sure I would be happy with this “gift.” Having such a memory would mean you would remember every detail of all the bad things that have happened in your life, as well as the good things. I still have my memories of the flood of almost three years ago, especially the sewer smell in the house and the never-ending rain. I still occasionally have nightmares about it. The sooner those memories fade into the past, the better I’ll like it.

Think about the memories you have of your childhood. Many of them are connected to the senses; like the smells of your mother’s cooking; the smell of seaweed and salt air; the vision of sea smoke or fog as it comes in from the sea and distorts the view around you.

Any kid who grew up along the coast of Maine has these memories of living by the Atlantic Ocean. Kids from Alaska know many different names for snow. Kids in California have many names for the wind. Kids along the coast of Maine have many names for the water and for waves. We "coastal" people have a collective memory of the sights, sounds, and tastes associated with the Atlantic Ocean.

We knew when an incoming wave would be a gentle one which we could jump over as it came to shore. We knew that another wave coming in might splash all over us as we sat on a rock by the water. “Choppy water” wasn’t a good condition in which to take the rowboat out. “Rough water” was mostly experienced in “open water” or water where no land is visible. You might get rough water on a ferry ride over to the islands. You could see some seals sunning themselves on a small island or see osprey nests, but otherwise, it was just “open water.”

“Mild as a millpond” referred to water that appeared like glass, usually in the evening. That kind of water was good for a moonlight cruise perhaps.

Those of us who moved away in our young adult years hold these memories of the water close to our hearts, especially if we live away from any kind of water source. It’s the reason we return home as often as we can. The water draws us home again in our retirement years. It’s also why some of us can’t bear to leave it at all, which perpetuates so many family names in our area.

As we grow older, those memories of family members who have passed on grow dimmer. We desperately try to remember what their laugh sounded like; how they talked and moved about the earth.

One day we look in the mirror and the memories flood back as we see our mother or father staring back at us. The older I get, the more I look like the old pictures I have of my mother. For a time in my life, I looked like my father’s family. In the end, I guess I carried on traits from both sides.

Once in a while, though, I laugh at something and I can hear the echo of my mother’s laugh. I also have discovered I cough the same way.  My sister and I also sound like her on the telephone. I often got confused by my mother’s friends when I came home to visit. If I hadn’t stopped them I may have found out some real juicy gossip I suppose. Funny how those memories stick with you.

When the family got together for one last picnic down at the cottage in Spruce Head before my folks gave possession of the place over to the new owners, my brother-in-law took some film of the event. I have a copy of it. As I watched it the last time I see my mother walking across the porch. A few minutes later, I walked across the porch, with the same gait that she had! Later on, when I talked to my sister about that quirk I thought was unique to my mother and me, she said, “We all walk that way.”

I suppose if our mothers teach us to walk by watching how they do it, that we naturally would walk the same way. I don’t know if this phenomena is unique to just my family or not, but our memories are made from close association with our mothers for the first few years of our life. It may be possible that their traits will also become part of our makeup.


Many times when I meet people for the first time they will stare at me for the longest time and try to place me in their personal history. They ask me if I was ever in a particular place or took part in some activity with them. I used to try to help them out but soon discovered that it was useless. I simply tell them now that I have "a familiar face."

“Memories are made of this” as the song goes. Recollections are not always remembered the same way by two people who experienced the same event. Rather than having the trait or “gift” of total recall, perhaps how we remember something means that’s how we should remember it. Warm memories will last our lifetime. Bad memories we hope will fade with time. I think I prefer it that way. I wish you only happy memories.

Thanks for listening.