View of cove at Molly’s Point

Departing Maine & Arriving Florida

WINDING DOWN MAINE

Our airline threw us a curve when it changed our departing flight from a very civilized 12:45 pm to before sunrise at 6:00 am.  Thus, we left our rental house a day early, drove down to Portland and spent the night at the airport Hilton Garden Inn,.  We’d been told that the hotel was offering no services (no food, no shuttle) and that it was mostly empty.  Imagine our surprise, when we arrived and learned that they were sold out that night!  Granted, it was the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, but early in the week, the hotel gentleman had said everyone’s gone home, back to school and so on.  

We took an Uber to downtown Portland, the Old Port area, our first time there this summer, and wandered around a bit.  Many streets in that neighborhood are closed off and restaurants abound, offering food and drink outside in properly spaced tables and booths.  There were more people on the street than I’d seen anywhere.

Creative way to offer drinks and food

We had booked an early table on the patio (really in the street) for dinner at Petite Jacqueline, a bistro we’d frequented in the past.  The tables were appropriately distanced, and all the staff were wearing masks.  It was a treat to be waited upon and served.  We enjoyed a panzanella salad and roasted Brussels sprouts followed by lobster rolls with tarragon mayonnaise and a stack of sinful skinny fries.

FLYING IN THE AGE OF COVID

Maine is serious about social distancing and wearing masks and there were signs and announcements galore at the Portland airport.  It’s paid off because they have one of the lowest numbers of cases and deaths of any state in the U.S.  

American Airlines was also serious.  Although they don’t block off any seats on the planes, they required everyone to be wearing a mask. The flight attendants on both flights went up and down the aisle several times checking.  They also warned that noncompliant passengers could be denied the right to fly with them in the future.  No food or drink was offered.

In the Charlotte airport, there were also announcements about masks, but they didn’t sound as forceful as those in Portland.  I did see a couple of individuals without masks.  And I was struck by how busy this airport was—-many more people traveling than when we’d flown on a Tuesday in mid-July!  

Both our flights boarded efficiently, left on time, and arrived on time or few minutes early.  Deplaning was done by rows from the front.  Passengers were requested to wait seated until the row in front of them had been vacated, and folks seem to cooperate with this instruction.  All in all, I felt as safe as was possible given everything.

FLORIDA RE-ENTRY

mangroves along the bay
Mangroves overlooking Sarasota Bay

When we left home in July, the state of Florida was a Covid-19 hotspot.  Our area wasn’t as bad as Miami-Dade, but still far too many new cases each week and very spotty mask requirements or enforcement.  Now, there are more signs about masks and, it seems more people are being observant.  Before we left town, Fresh Market required masks to enter, but Publix supermarkets did not.  We are pleased that now masks are required for entering a Publix.

The Hannaford stores in Maine made their grocery aisles one way with green arrows on the floor on one end and red exit signs at the other.  I’d gotten so used to this that I kept expecting to see a green arrow in Publix allowing me to proceed down the aisle, but not so.  

It was 57 degrees when we woke up in Maine on Saturday, 82 the afternoon before in Portland, and 80 this morning here in Florida with a predicted high of 94!  Boy, did I love the cool pleasant air of the Maine coast!

VIEWING

Radioactive (Amazon Prime)
Rosamund Pike (the guardian.com)

I didn’t realize until this film was almost over that it is based on Lauren Redniss’ 2010 graphic novel of the same name.  That’s a colorful arty book chock full of information.   I had read it with science book club I facilitated at the Academy of Sciences in San Franciso. 

Marie Curie, its subject, was a passionate, arrogant, brilliant, driven woman.  She loved science and was determined to do science no matter who or what might get in her way.  The film recounts her struggle to get lab space, her attraction to and then marriage to Pierre Curie, and their joint work on radium.  That same radium sickened them both and he died an early death.  Madame Curie was passionate in her personal life also. Her later affair with a married man sullied her somewhat suspect reputation as a “dirty Pole.”  

The film is gripping and full of emotion.  It is less successful with the interjection of more contemporary events, such as the use of radiation to treat cancer or the tragedies of Hiroshima and Chernobyl.  While these events highlight the positive and negative sides of the Curies’ discoveries, they are jarring interruptions in the arc of Marie’s life.  Nonetheless, definitely worth watching! (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo and other unattributed photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).
  

Hendrick Head Trail

Maine Moments: Outside & Inside

HIKING TRAILS

This is a different Maine for us.  No restaurant meals.  Limited social activities and more time at home.  But if we want a change of scene, then there are local trails to explore.  The Boothbay Region Land Trust maintains preserves in Boothbay, Southport, Edgecomb, and the surrounding area.  A variety of trails are open to the public, some good for hiking, others suitable for easy walking. 

Several years ago, we hiked the wooded one-mile trail at Porter Preserve on Barter’s Island.  It has some gradual elevation and several great vistas of the Sheepscot River and one overlook with a welcoming bench.

Large toadstool

This week we went to the nearby Hendrick Head Trail.  This is a short trail, just a half mile one way that then loops back to the main road.  It’s wooded and quiet and the path was dotted with tiny pinecones and one giant toadstool.

The trail entrance is located just down from a little beach and from the beach, there’s a view of the Hendricks Head Light. This lighthouse was established in 1829, with the present structures dating from 1875.  It’s a squarish lighthouse with a keeper’s house that has a bright red roof.

Hendricks Head Light (lighthousefriends.com)

HODGE PODGE OF READING

I mailed a box of books to Maine and between them and e-books from the library, I have a motley assortment.  Here are just two of them.

Tough Love by Susan Rice

Susan Rice (nytimes.com)

Susan Rice is one of the contenders to be Joe Biden’s vice-presidential candidate which makes her memoir timely.  A Black woman who grew up in a contentious household (her parents ultimately divorced), she served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama and then as his national security advisor.  She was slated to become his secretary of state but was pilloried in the press and on social media for comments she made after the Benghazi incident.  Smart, extremely knowledgeable about a range of international issues, Rice is straightforward and occasionally blunt.

The book is long and covers some of the same crises that Samantha Power dealt with in her book, The Education of an Idealist.  I confess to doing a fair bit of skimming and, at points, being more interested in the personal details of how she juggled having young children with her very demanding schedule.  Nonetheless, I recommend it. I think you will come away impressed with her accomplishments and her talents. (~JWFarrington)

Kiss and Kin by Angela Lambert (1997)

I bought this novel in paperback some years ago (the paper is yellowed) and never had read it, so added it to my Maine stash.  It’s a story of love and loyalty in two upper class British families.  Harriet is a recent widow in London to celebrate her grandson Hugo’s birthday. He’s the child of her son, Roderick, and daughter-in-law, Jennifer. They are going through a rough patch with talk of divorce.  

The other grandparents, Oliver and Clarissa, are slated to attend, but Oliver arrives alone and is immediately transfixed by Harriet.  As Oliver and Harriet embark on a passionate affair, they agonize over what they perceive as their duty to their adult children.  Harriet particularly is concerned about the impact of their relationship, once proclaimed, on their mutual grandchildren.  I enjoyed this novel, but found it dated, an opinion shared in other online reviews.  (~JWFarrington)

Note: Toadstool and header photo on Hendrick Head Trail ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Customers--Boothbay Farmers' Market

Maine Time: A Different World

A DIFFERENT MAINE

Maine is very different than Florida.  It has one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 cases and one of the lowest numbers of deaths.  Masks are required almost everywhere, and the level of compliance is very high.  Going to the supermarket here is a real adventure.  One entrance only with sanitizer and a mask enforcer, big arrows and signs indicating one way down the aisles, and a reminder at the checkout station to stay back on the indicated spot.  It’s strict but reassuring.

Even the outdoor Boothbay Farmers’ Market is compliant.   Everyone was masked!  Stands are fewer and spaced farther apart on the town green than in past years. A sign in the middle of the lawn states face coverings are required.  

People queue up widely spaced to be served, and the produce stand has a rope in front of its offerings. When it’s your turn there, you tell the man what you would like. He gathers up your zucchini, cherry tomatoes, basil, and lettuce, and then at the end figures out your total.  You insert your credit card and bag your veggies while the transaction takes place.  The process takes longer than usual, but certainly reduces contact with anyone else and with the veggies!

WEATHER

The weather too has been a welcome change from home.  Not the heavy rain showers of our arrival day, but the cool to cold nights thus far and two days with highs in the middle 60’s.  Last evening and this morning, we were blanketed by coastal fog.  Eerie, moody, calming, you name it, it’s a different scene.  I am happy to be wearing long pants, long sleeves, socks (yes!) and even a light fleece indoors.  

NOVEL READING

Maine is quiet, quieter than usual this year, and social engagements will be fewer, so more time for reading and reflection.

ON TRIAL

The Body in Question by Jill Ciment

(penguinrandomhouse.com)

This spare novel was on several notable and best-of-the-year booklists, but I don’t believe it received much attention when it was published in 2019. Googling Ciment, I learned that at 17, she married a professor thirty years her senior and remained with him until his death in 2016.

For this murder trial, the jurors are sequestered.   Juror C-2 is 52, married, and attracted to 41-year old juror, F-17 and, against judicial rules, engages him in a secret affair. In part, she is testing whether or not she is still attractive enough, even though she has a husband she loves.  Her spouse is decades older (86) and in rapidly failing health.  

There are several bodies referenced in this novel:  the body of the child Caleb at the heart of the court case, C-2’s husband’s body described alternately with tenderness and medical detachment, F-17’s body, and lastly, the bodies F-17, anatomy professor, dissects. The trial goes on and ends as does the affair, but it is followed by a media frenzy and a crisis.

C-2 returns to her husband’s decline and to another meeting with the other jurors.  It is only then in the aftermath that the characters have names, not numbers, and life twists and unwinds.  

As I was reading, I wasn’t sure whether I liked this book or what to think of it.  I appreciated the clean-cut writing and the distance the author maintained from the characters.  Upon finishing, it has stayed with me. And I have pondered the various facets of love and desire, trust, innocence and guilt it presents. (~JWFarrington)

MYSTERY AND LOVE

The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

(bainbridgereview.com)

Susan Wiggs is a reliable author of contemporary women’s fiction and, early in her career, historical novels. One such was set at the time of the Chicago fire.  I looked forward to reading this latest novel but was somewhat disappointed.  The setting in a San Francisco bookshop hooked me from the start, but I found Natalie’s all-consuming grief over her mother’s unexpected death overdone and tiresome.

Natalie returns home and takes over managing her mother’s bookshop.  The store is teetering on the brink of failure in a dilapidated historic building, and she has the added burden of caring for her grandfather Andrew, who has early dementia.  There are two likely “knights in shining armor”:  one, contractor Peach, who takes on the building repairs, and the other, the famous, handsome and wealthy author Trevor Dashwood (what a name with echoes of Jane Austen!) who agrees to do a reading and signing in the store.  

A bit of mystery surrounding the legacy of the building and hints of hidden treasure add to the mix.  Wiggs did her bibliographic homework on the ultimate treasure as it is very believable.  The outcome is predictable, and the two men engaging characters. Especially delightful is Dorothy, a regular store patron with initiative and pizazz, who is also Peach’s young daughter.  Overall, this is pleasurable reading to while away an afternoon.  (JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo and farmers’ market photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).