an 8th birthday and the Shipyard Cup

Three days ago, the Shipyard Cup was reinstated as a big boat race. The boats had to be 70' or longer, though an exception was made for Available, Tim Hodgdon's spec boat, because he was a major sponsor of the race. The weather was divine, and after a day spent taking Tom and Alida Fitzpatrick, friends from CSUMB days, out on Priscilla, I filled Priscilla up with more friends to watch the races on Saturday and Sunday.

It was magnificent weather, with a 7-15 knot breeze, and 6 big boats racing with the Weyant, a topsail schooner standing by. Us little boats just sailed in circles watching. This one here is Tenacious, owned by Southport people, the Bosarge's. She lost the first one and won the second race, though you can check the final standings on http://www.theshipyardcup.com/.
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Then,
Sarah Katherine Smith turned 8 yesterday at the American Girl Doll store in Natick, Mass., with her other grandmother, grandpa Joel, her mother and her sisters, and me. It was a grand moment; the dolls got their hair done and their ears pierced; we all shopped, and the girls got to spend some of their own money. I am a very happy grandma!

c'est fini almost

The outside of the barn, it is finished, except for some doors. As the final touch, Bill Dighton, the contractor, put up the ship weathervane from my father's garage/barn. My cousin, Joanne Bass O'Connor, had climbed out on the garage roof in June of 2001 to get it when I moved my family stuff out of my father's house. I will never forget that, and always be grateful. Now it has a new home and it looks very grand!

I was going to let Joanne put the ship on the top of the 'vane, but the scaffolding is very high, and Bill was not sure he wanted to let her get up there. I know she would done it happily, but it is very hot here now and she is busy on Tuesdays, so he did it for her. I know Dick, her husband, will be happy that she doesn't have to do it.

It is very hot - we are waiting to see what Hurricane Earl will do later this week. But at the moment, he is keeping the cooler weather up in Canada, and we are sweltering as we rarely do. The carpenters are slowing down now that the exterior is done, and are quite happy that they don't have to work in the direct sun. I am not eager to see them go, to finish this job, but I know they are eager to get on to the next thing. And I am eager to move in, really. The barn represents for me, a place where I can make a mess and not clean up every night...where I can make big things, big drawings, paintings, constructs, and do some design, too...I hope. The design just came to me, and though George calls it Versailles west, it will not have chickens and pigs in it...and I like it. I haven't designed anything for a long time, but now I hope I can do more because I love it. There is simply nothing like imagining a 3-D space, a form, and then watching it develop and FEELing it when it is complete. It is quite wonderful.

So thanks to Bill Dighton and his crew, for making it all come out right!

a time warp

I should be sailing, but am not, so I started to work on catching up on art stuff, and found myself reading Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, a "blog before there were blogs" that is attached to my name and my website when you Google me. It is rather personal, but interesting, so I've decided to give it some context here on this blog.

These "chapters" of Mr Toad's Wild Ride were written in Paris while I was there and still married to Peter Smith, then Deputy Director General for Education at UNESCO. If they have a somewhat strangled flavor to them, that's because I was in huge denial about his affair with Letitia Chambers, his "consultant." But they reflect some of the events and adventures of my life in Paris, living in the 15th arrondissement at 76, rue du Commerce for a year and a half.

Essential to this story is understanding how important Mme. Emily Keast Donohue of 18 bis, rue Amelie in the 7th arrondissement was. Without Emily, I do not think I would have dared to move to Paris; and without Emily, I would never have found the apartment on rue du Commerce that was such a treasure. UNESCO wanted us to live in the 16th arr. or over nearer UNESCO, but I continue to love the International-style, 60's penthouse apartment that Emily and I found on rue du Commerce. I would move back there if I had any excuse at all, though now there is a gate and a real concierge; our concierge was never sober that I can remember, and never really did have a clue about who we were, or what we were doing there.

But I loved it, except for the personal part. I loved having to walk everywhere or ride the Metro; I loved meeting Emily and Joy, the dog, every morning for a walk in the Champs de Mars; I loved carrying my fold up, Orchard Supply chair into the Louvre every day for a Paris Sketch class; I loved hopping on the train to go north, south, east or west, or to the UK to visit the Rev Dr. Jennifer Smith, or to St. Jean de Luz and San Sebastien, Spain; or hopping in a plane and going up to Oslo, or east to Doha, Qatar, and then even Vietnam.

I travelled alone or with someone, especially Emily, here and there for a year and a half, and I'll never forget it.

And I miss it occasionally - the bay tree and herbs I planted on my street-side balcony beneath my kitchen sink view of Montparnasse; I miss my terrace with a view of la Tour Eiffel and the bonsai pine tree; I miss the free concerts at the American Church in Paris on Sunday afternoons at 5. I miss the wonderfully deep bath tub with shower and glass wall that overlooked nothing but rooftops. And, of course, I miss the food - at Cafe du Commerce, an authentic, old-style French restaurant where you took a jug, and they filled it up with cask wine. And I miss Cafe Constant, over near Emily, on the rue St. Dominique, where Christian Constant fed people reasonably in an upstairs cafe, next to his 3 star and down the street from his 4 star restaurants, one of which Obama dined at when he was lately in Paris.

And I miss the people - Mme. Emily Donohue, Jan Olsson who ran the most wonderful "stages" or drawing and painting workshops in her artists' studio apartment at rue Balard, and all my artist friends from there - Susan Grieg, Jeannette, et al.; I miss the cheese ladies in the fromagere just down the street, and the Vietnamese market ladies; I miss my friend Kara and her two little girls, Kara who works for UNESCO still, and Mme. Odile Blondy, who took me to the Police Station to file "Un Declaration du Main Courant," which you must do when a spouse abandons the household in Paris.

But most of all, I miss the spirit of Paris - finally and most dramatically experienced by me, when I came down the Ave. Motte-Picquet on the day after Peter left. The man behind the newspaper kiosk, just there by the Metro stop at Motte-Piquet, came leaping out from behind his counter to give me a huge hug, saying "Je t'aime; je t'adore." Whereever he is, maintenant, I will be eternally grateful to him for reminding me that I was a person, and a lovable one still. So, vive la Paris, et a bientot.

the barn leaps up

I can't keep up with it - the barn keeps leaping up and out, now even the roof is on, and the windows are going in. So I've had to spend the last few days ordering parts for the weathervane that my cousin Joanne rescued from my father's house when my wicked stepmother sold it years ago. The colors of everything have to be tinkered with, also, and I never finshed a lighting plan so that needed doing. And now a finish grading plan needs concocting.

So I haven't been painting, but I have been having a great deal of fun finishing off the barn. I even have ordered a slate sink from Monson, Maine, having coveted one since my grandmother's in the house in Wilton.

The big anticipation of the moment is the arrival on Labor Day weekend of my friends, Raili and Markku, Simo and Raili's twin sister, from Helsinki, Finland. They will be here in Boothbay for the weekend, and we already have reservations for the men to go fishing with Capt. Dan Wolotsky, and we will also go sailing on my Priscilla. Nash and Marion Flores will also do a cocktail party for them on Southport. And then we will all traipse up to Castle Island Camps in Belgrade for two more days of fresh water fishing, and a ride on the Belgrade Lakes Mail Boat.

The two men are big hunters and fishermen. The fishing I can deal with, but the only hunting allowed in Maine at Labor Day is hunting bear with dogs, and I just could not arrange that. Nor actually have I really tried. It's just not my thing. But I do wish there was a bird season around now, and the turkeys and geese - the two-footed kind - seem to be invading.

The leaves of the red maples are beginning to show signs of changing color. Nothing serious now, but I do have 5 ripe pumpkins and I canned the first tomatoes today. So fall is coming; lobster is getting cheaper; the winds are coming out of the north and west now as much as the south and east. Rides on Priscilla will get to be fewer and farther between now, but it's been a great summer all in all. There will be plenty of time to recoup after Labor Day. I actually can't wait.

where went summer?????

The Bowdoin and the Harvey Gamage

Several days ago, or maybe last week, I started to write a story about "Where went summer," based on a comment my oldest grandaughter had made when we moved away from California. She could not understand why, and she asked me, "Where went California?" One could ask that now and mean something very different about California, but here I am now in Maine, and I'm wondering, where went summer."

I started to write again this afternoon, but alas, the power went out. It was taken out by a runaway pickup that had been parked by the side of a house on a very steep hill, across the road from the Mill Pond. And you guessed it, the parking brake was not on. The truck nailed the power pole as if it were a bulls'eye, and carried right on, under the power pole, across Rte. 96, and down the hill, stopping just about two feet from the Mill Pond itself. It was quite a ride only there wasn't anyone in it.

Perhaps I'm not supposed to write about 'where went summer,' but it has been such a grand and glorious summer that I need to keep trying. Tonight I've just come from a Garrison Keillor type presentation of stories and music by Danny Beal and the Holy Mackerels. It was marvelous and somewhat more original than Tim Sample in that Danny has not been discovered, and allows an occasional emotion to show. But I haven't heard Creedence Clearwater music played so well in 40 odd years, and they led with Tombstone Every Mile - my mantra song at college.

Last weekend, I spent time thinking about 45 years ago, as I sat with Holly on Priscilla (see photo) all dressed in flags for the Boatbuilders' Festival here in town. We sat on her on Saturday night, having cooked,organised, and decorated, and ate pizza from our terrific General Store, drank a good Barbera, and watched the schooner Bowdoin come into the harbor, followed by the schooner Harvey Gamage. The Bowdoin is on its way to Halifax, on a summer cruise with Maine Maritime students; the Gamage does semesters at sea for the Ocean Classroom here the Harbor.

But it was the Bowdoin that sent me into the past. Admiral MacMillan who commissioned her in Boothbay 50 years ago, was an arctic explorer of some renown, and a good friend of my grandfather Bass.' He and his wife, Miriam, used to come up to Wilton before and after various expeditions, and I have childrens' books that Miriam wrote about Eskimo adventures. Even before my time, my uncle Streeter went with Admiral Mac to Baffin Island and Greenland on the Gertrude Thebaud in the summer of 1937.

The Bowdoin was also at Mystic when I worked there, but that was not such a happy time. The Seaport had no money to keep her up, nor use her appropriately. So she has found her way back to Maine, at Maine Maritime in Castine, and she looks very happy - workable and fit. Her people seemed pleased to be there also. It made me happy to see that.

At Boat Builders, I display art and work at helping children build boats out of odd pieces of wood. They are wonderfully creative - if their parents let them be, and I love doing it. It does tire you out though, and I admit to falling asleep in my chair in the afternoon when I should have been selling art.

It was a magical day though, 72 degrees and dry, just like the Fishermans' Island event for the Historical Society, and as the days have been when I've been out sailing with all the good friends and family that have come to visit. It has been as close to perfect as I can imagine a Maine summer being, and I suppose that is why every time I've sat down to write about it, something has caused me to stop writing. I was not meant to spend the summer in front of the computer, and I haven't. But it will take me awhile to pick up the pieces - the couch that came that wouldn't fit in the house, the Genoa jib that ripped - again, and the barn sink that needs ordering. Yet the barn keeps going up, and the puppy is turning into a dog, and I need to go to bed - even though the Holy Mackerels are playing at McSeagull's tonight.