Author Archives: caseykins

Hugos, Home, and Rejections

Posted on August 24, 2015 by caseykins

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There is nothing going on at home this week.  I know.  My life should be more exciting than this.  It’s been over 100 degrees in Redlands, though, and so I’ve been hibernating in the air-conditioning as much as  possible.  A warmed-up dinner, a good book, a cozy husband, and a feisty kitten are the things happiness is made of lately.  And maybe some Doctor Who – Netflix just put up the latest season.  I like Peter Capaldi quite a lot as the Doctor – I liked him quickly too.

I have not felt able to speak much about the Hugo fiasco that has been going on all year.  I’m not in that world and I don’t follow the Fantasy industry as well as I should.  Those authors are mostly unfamiliar to me.  But it did give me a bit of glee to find that competence and diversity won out, and that petty hatred and ballot-fixing did not.  The Guardian has a lovely article on it, if you’re at all interested in the outcome: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/aug/24/diversity-wins-as-the-sad-puppies-lose-at-the-hugo-awards?CMP=share_btn_tw.  Most notably, it seems that the Hugos have maintained their reputation and legitimacy.

It has been a few weeks of rejection (several stories returned), so I’ve been taking it easy on editing the novel.  I keep thinking I’ve become inured to the rejection, and then I get several all at once and I find it’s not actually any easier to take.  Not in large doses.  It’s harder to accept constructive criticism when you’re feeling crappy about it all, hence the snails-pace.  It will all happen eventually.  I’m not terribly worried about it.

And that’s it from the land of Here.  Sometimes no news is good news.

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Book Review: Pioneer Girl

Posted on August 20, 2015 by caseykins

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Pioneer Girl, by Laura Ingalls Wilder & Pamela Smith Hill:

I am a Laura Ingalls Wilder nut, of course.  I mean, anything pioneer and it’s probably my favorite thing.  Oregon Trail game?  Check.  Sewing a quilt?  Check.  Conestoga wagons and horses or oxen? Count me in.  Heck, I’ll even churn butter.  For a limited amount of time (let’s not get nuts).

So when I found out that the South Dakota Historical Society was putting out the original, adult version of Wilder’s novel?  I went a little crazy.  I’ve been following their blog for years while they researched the annotations, and it’s been fascinating.  I tried to pre-order a couple of times but it was a complicated system.  Then, the book came out and sold out of its small print run almost immediately.  Because it was being distributed by the South Dakota Historical Society Press, it wasn’t something I could run down to Barnes and Noble and grab, even if it wasn’t a scarce commodity.  While The Frugal Frigate (my local indie bookstore) has a GREAT selection, they don’t stock many adult books.  There is no e-book version.

And then I walked into the bookshop in Damariscotta, ME, and there it was in all its painted glory.  After picking my jaw up off the floor and then drooling on it, I had to buy it.

It’s been an interesting read.  It’s not what I expected it to be, but in many ways it’s so much more than what I expected.  First of all, it’s the VERY first draft of her manuscript, before her daughter started to help her edit it.  There are at least three other versions, but they elected to print the first version with the idea that it was the most pure.  Wilder’s natural prose is vibrant, but the manuscript is definitely a first draft.  I tells, it doesn’t go into enough detail, and it finds vagueness more than it finds concrete facts.  This last thing is somewhat remedied by the annotations, but there’s only so much the annotations can do for the rest.  Still, it’s a fascinating narrative.  If you’ve read “The First Four Years,” it sort of reminds me of that in style. Only it’s so much more racy.  They didn’t lie when they talked about how much more this one holds in atmosphere and tone, something you don’t get from the Little House books themselves.

The footnotes are so vast and varied that it seems daunting to get through them all.  It was also a bit of a trick to figure out how to read them along with the text.  In places there are two to three pages of notes for every page of the manuscript.  I finally found that reading a page of the manuscript and then going back and reading only the footnotes for that page was best.  It takes a while.  Much longer than I’m used to, and non-fiction typically takes me longer anyway.

So, did I like it?  At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about the book.   I know this is blasphemy, but I didn’t start liking Wilder’s Little House books until about “By The Shores of Silver Lake,” when the girls grow up a bit and are able to express wants and needs, not just play and work.  I felt the same about this book.  I didn’t start enjoying it until they moved from Walnut Grove the first time.  Then it got CRAZY.  I mean, the wives being led around the house by their hair, shootings in the saloon, robbers tying people up kind of crazy.   I’m all on board now, and dying to find out what happens next.

I’m about 2/3 of the way through.  If you can find it, it’s 100% worth the search.  It’s such a luxurious thing too – big and hefty on pretty paper with a velvety cover.  You won’t be disappointed. Especially if you are a Wilder and/or a pioneer lover.

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Easterbay

Posted on August 13, 2015 by caseykins

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted any fiction.  I’ve been over on Wattpad, though, discovering what a great community that is.  Writer extraordinaire Jessica Butler (https://www.wattpad.com/user/JessicaBFry) is doing a strictly-for-fun Fantasy writing competition that anyone can join.  Her prompt spoke to me, so I’ve joined the second round.  Can’t spend time in Maine without writing about Maine, right?  I borrowed names and superstitions like CRAZY, but the rest is all fictional.  It was nice to just write something easy for a minute, I’ve been plugging away on hard novel edits for so long.  I thought you might enjoy it, too, so here it is:

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Dear Jimmy,

It is full, old February here in Easterbay. The kind that is icy and brown and horrible. Wherever you are over there in France, it cannot possibly be as miserably damp and cold as it has been here. A nor’easter blew us five feet of snow, and I shoveled for days. You are not here any longer to do it for us, of course, so I am the one with the strong back to take your place. Not that it matters much if the roads are clear. We don’t have nearly enough ration stamps to take the car out anywhere. Mr. Spofford kindly cobbled together a set of wooden tires for your bicycle, and that’s how I get around these days. Everyone else either stays in or goes by boat. The Gut has frozen over, but the bay is still clear.

Why, you ask, am I out on the roads in the depths of winter? You may be pleased to learn that I joined the Coast Guard. I am officially a Spar. Semper Paratus! It is just Rudy Gamage and I in the office, and I am supposed to limit my activities to manning the telegraph machine. Or perhaps we should say womanning the telegraph machine. He gets to go out on the boat, while I am supposed to stay safely at home, say the official regulations.

When I remember how many times you and I ignored mackerel skies and even rumbles of thunder to take the boat out and pull lobster pots, I find it ludicrous that old Rudy Gamage is considered the safer bet. Especially because his love of beer has not waned with the ages. I am often left to my own devices in that office, and have taken the boat out alone a few times. Shh, don’t tell anyone. You will be pleased to know that I have never seen a German U-boat. So far, I have only rescued two sets of summer tourists trapped by the tide, and nothing since August.

I will save all the stories for you, of course. But I feel almost as if you are there with me in spirit when I am out on the ocean. And I am finally doing more for this war effort than saving cans and knitting socks. That feels good too. Stay safe, Jimmy. You have to come back soon, you know. You’re the only brother I have.

With much love,

Addy

Dear Addy,

Since you have access to your own boat now, I will give you the warning that grandpa gave me when the Lookfar became mine. Whatever the weather, whatever the circumstances, you must never take the boat out on the night of a blue moon. The bay does funny things, and it isn’t safe. Promise me you won’t, no matter what the coastguard says.

Jimmy

***

In the silence of the coastguard office, the telephone rang shrill and sharp. Addy startled awake.

It rang again.

Addy rubbed her eyes and picked up the receiver.

“Easterbay Coastguard,” she said, hoping that her voice did not sound too terribly thick.

“Addy, it’s Madge,” said the voice on the other end; Madge from the lighthouse up the road.

“What’s wrong?” said Addy. “I thought it was quiet tonight, has it…?”

“No, no,” said Madge. Her voice was tinny through the receiver. “Ocean still as glass up here, actually. But there was a boat, and a funny green flash right about sunset. I saw it over there by Witch Island.  It was dark, but not too dark yet.  Might just be the Poland boys out doing something they shouldn’t, but you know how superstitious they are. None of the local boys would take the boat out on the blue moon. It might be nothing, but it might also be… I don’t want to be remiss. There’s a war on.”

“Yeah,” said Addy. “Yeah, I’ll let Rudy know. He’ll want to check it out. Thanks, Madge.”

“Oh, anytime,” she said. “I don’t relish going out there in this cold, but like I said… someone should see to it.”

“We’ll head out right away.”

Addy hung the receiver back on the wall and grabbed her coat. She switched on the yellow porch light outside the one-room storefront that served as the coastguard office, locked the door, and put the key in her pocket. Then, she swung her leg over her bicycle and took off down the road to the Lusty Mermaid.

The lights of the bar bloomed yellow through the wide windows. The painted mermaid holding the mirror and comb on the wide sign looked dull in the darkness. Shouts and laughter spilled onto the street. Addy leaned her bicycle against the painted clapboard siding and went inside.

“Hey, hey now!” said one of the men at the bar. “If it isn’t Addy Hanna.” His words slurred together.

“Shut up, Billy,” said Pete from behind the bar. “Rudy ain’t here, Addy. Went home, oh, a couple hours ago. Said he was goin’ back to the office, but obviously… I mean,” he waved at her standing there in the doorway. “Sorry, kid.”

“No sweat, Pete,” said Addy. “It wasn’t anything big anyway. I mean, nothing I can’t handle.”

“Well, see you next time,” he said.

“See you next time,” said Addy.

She hopped back on her bike and drove back to the office, weaving to avoid the snow drifts on the side of the road. It was cold, and the moon shone bright in the sky, casting a pallid silver shadows on everything. When she got to the office again, she pulled a leaf of paper from her desk.

“Out scouting Witch Island,” she scrawled on it, and then notated the time. She closed the piece of paper in the front door so it would flutter to the floor if someone came in looking for her, and then she walked down to the dock.  The weathered gray boards rocked beneath her feet, and the only noise was the quiet slapping of water against the floating expanse of wood before her.

She scanned the bay for the Lookfar as she walked, even though she knew she would not see it  in its mooring in the middle of the bay. The Lookfar’s bright red hull was tucked on blocks of wood in the barn at home, waiting for Jimmy to come back from France. But the large coastguard ship stood floating in the white moon path that danced over the waters in the bay.

She wouldn’t take it, Addy reasoned. It wasn’t an emergency. All she needed to do was find out who was on Witch Island in the middle of the night. And if it was Germans, she would be able to zip away faster in the small, blue rowboat, her muscular arms pulling her fast through the waters she was so familiar with. She would be able to get faster help in the smaller vessel.

The rowboat rocked when she stepped into it, sloshing water toward the dock. She unrolled her scarf with her mittened hands and re-rolled it so it covered everything but her eyes. She buttoned the ends of it inside her wool coat, and then she thrust one of the oars against the dock to push away. When she hit the open water, a breeze picked up, an icy wind that whipped through the knit gloves and scarf, but didn’t quite catch the core of her through the wool coat. She shivered, and rowed on.

The coast receded behind her into a mound of trees on the horizon. She steered around the small islands in the center of the bay; too small for anything but a copse of trees and some sea lions. In the daytime their grumbles and barks filled the bay, but in the darkness it was silent. She rowed around the islands, and then she was in the open, choppy sea.

The wind blew harder, and somewhere to the north the sky turned to green swirls as the Aurora Borealis erupted above her.

Addy stopped rowing to look at it, oscillating green in the night, mimicking the waves beneath the boat as it rippled in the sky. Her smallness assaulted her, a tiny thing on the vast waters beneath the magnificent, magical heavens. She used a mittened hand to push the scarf back from her eyes, and the sky swirled magenta before the colors went blue, then green again.

Gingerly, still half-watching the sky, she picked up the oars and resumed rowing. The lump of dark foliage in the ocean that was Witch Island grew closer, into a heap of boulders dipping their fingers into the sea, a fringe of bare trees on top. Not far in the distance, the bright beam of the lighthouse swung past.

There was not a boat near the only beach on Witch Island. The bay was bare.

Addy kept rowing, pulling her small boat closer to the sandy inlet.

Still no sign of anyone; or anything.

She rowed until the bottom of the small boat grated on the sand, and then tucked the oars into the hull. When she hopped out into the water, she felt the cold of it even through her rubber boots. She leaned back and pulled until the boat slid farther onto the beach, the tiny low-tide waves lapping at the stern.

The beach was bright in the moonlight. It was easy to see that Addy’s boat was the first thing that had disturbed the sand, that her footsteps were the only thing marking the soft white swells of the beach.

She sighed, and shrugged to herself, and then floated the boat back into the water so she could hop aboard. It wasn’t a big island. The thrust of her arms pulling against the water made her biceps ache in the cold, but she could go all around the other side and still make it home again in less than an hour.

When the beam of the lighthouse swung across her again, Addy gave a wave to Madge and Bob. Madge would be able to see nothing but the dark crescent that signified a boat in the ocean from her position, but it made Addy feel less alone to pretend she had someone looking for her.  With the green swirls in the sky above her making everything into an eerie shadow, it was hard not to feel like someone in a horror movie.

On the far side of the island, without the brightness of the lighthouse, the aurora borealis leapt into fullness again. Addy scanned the granite boulders, but it was hard to see anything in the shifting light.

A huge clump of seaweed, ice gathering between the fronds, rolled next to the boat. Addy thrust it aside with her oar. It rolled, and when it tipped Addy could see that it wasn’t just seaweed.

 It was also a woman.

She sucked the breath into her throat and it lodged there. Her eyes went wide.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, and then louder; “Are you alright? Hello?”

The woman didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed, and her red hair was tangled with the brown seaweed. She was lying in the water with her torso bent, her legs disappearing into the murky waters, her arms splayed. In the green light of the sky, her skin looked blue and translucent.

Addy steered the boat closer. Whatever else was happening on that island now, she had to get the woman into the boat, and she had to get back to the coastguard office. Even if the woman was dead…

“if someone found my corpse in the water, I’d want to be pulled out,” Addy whispered again. She pulled off her gloves, steeled herself, and touched the woman’s shoulder.

It was slippery. She made to grab again, determined to gain greater purchase, but instead the woman, the thing in the water, moved. It grabbed Addy, and it’s face was no longer the dead face of a human, but a thing filled with teeth.

It smiled at her, and its red hair rose, writhing like the tentacles of an octopus.

Addy screamed. She picked up an oar and swung it at the thing like a bat. The wood connected with a sickening thwack, and then a splintering. The thing blinked and shook it’s head, and then it’s hairy tentacles grabbed Addy across the shoulders and pulled.

Addy dropped the broken oar and grabbed the side of the boat. She kept screaming, hoping that the water would magnify her sound enough that someone would help. The tentacles gripped into her skin, sucking at them, and her fingers slipped from the wooden sides of the boat, scrabbling.

 The water was cold as it submerged over her head, seeping into her coat and making her feel so heavy.  She could no longer think. All she could do was see: the bubbles rising from her mouth, the murky waters around her, the red that grasped her chest, the green lights fading in the sky.

Everything wavering.

Everything turning black.

***

Easterbay Dispatch, March 4, 1943:

Addy Hanna’s tragic disappearance the night of the blue moon has resulted in an inquiry regarding the operations of the Easterbay coast guard. Rudy Gammage was found to have been a negligent officer, and is stripped of his duties dishonorably. What that means for the current state of coast guard affairs, Easterbay is still waiting to hear. Officials in Portland are considering eliminating the Easterbay coastguard due to the small population of residents in the area, and folding patrols and operations into the larger Rock Pond division.

A coastguard rowboat washed up near the lighthouse rocks Saturday morning. Ms. Hanna’s family is offering a small reward for information resulting in her recovery in the hopes that locals will take up the search for her body in earnest.  The fact that she disappeared on a Friday night during the blue moon should not rule out other concrete factors.  Anyone with any additional information is urged to contact Jude Plummer at the police station – 0534.

 

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An Early Summer Reading List

Posted on August 10, 2015 by caseykins

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I have not been thinking very bookishly lately, I’ll admit. I have also not been reading so much as I’ve been writing.  Brian and I are STILL plugging through re-writes of the novel, although we are getting about 4 chapters done per week.  My original self-imposed deadline was August 1, but I have amended that to September 1st.

I am giving up on my summer reading challenge, and so I’ll post what I’ve read so far down below.  I didn’t get nearly as much read as I wanted to, and for that I am a bit upset with myself.  I am keeping all those books on the To Be Read pile, though, and hope that I will get to them soon.  Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is top on the list.  I’m giving up because I’ve just lost the will-power.

It was SO HARD to keep to this challenge.  I can’t even express.  I am used to being able to grab books on a whim and read them, whatever the subject. I expected that Person Of Color books would be harder to find, that I would have to look longer and deeper to find them.  What I didn’t expect was that I would NEVER find a book about certain topics by POC.  This was especially true in the non-fiction realm, and even more so in History.  I mean, I decided I wanted to read about the California Mission system and could not find a book that wasn’t written by a white author.  THE CALIFORNIA MISSION SYSTEM, guys. If that isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is.

I am a white historian, and it still made me horrified a bit to realize that our history, perhaps especially the history of POC, is largely being written by white people.  It makes me distrust everything just a smidge.  Like, I’m sure all the facts are correct but there has to be an angle on this stuff that isn’t being explored; that didn’t even occur to us.  What are we missing that we don’t even know about?  I’m certain we are missing something.  It makes me uneasy.

I fell in love with several new authors, though.  The last time I did a summer reading challenge, I actually enjoyed only about 4 of the books and read thirty six (The Graveyard Book, Of Plimoth Plantation, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Watership Down, if you’re wondering).  This time I enjoyed SO MANY, and only read twelve.  In that respect, it was a success.

I can only wrangle myself so much, and so I’m letting myself go back to comfort books while I try to keep myself on track to finishing this novel.  I am leaving this challenge with a greater determination to fold books by POC into my regular reading habits.  I am counting the days until Renee Ahdieh releases that sequel to The Wrath and The Dawn.  I’m following Varian Johnson and Jenny Han on Social Media.

Here are the books:

  1. To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han – I was unsatisfied by the ending, because I didn’t feel like either boy was really good enough. But there were so many parts of this book that felt imminently familiar, especially the dregs of how we all try to cope when the capable one is gone (even if they are just a phone call away).  A GREAT read.
  2. The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han – I did not know that a book could replicate so much of my own life. There are differences, of course, but living in someone else’s house by the beach every summer is something I’m very familiar with.  The book broke my heart, in the best way.
  3. Bud, not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis – Weird to be in the head of an unreliable, and not that bright narrator. Bud falls for some stuff he shouldn’t (heads I win, tails you lose?).  But I can ultimately see why it won the awards it did, and it’s a great slice of depression-era life.  Plus music, how can you not appreciate a kid with a saxophone?
  4. The Wrath and The Dawn by Renée Ahdieh – Holy CRAP is this book good. I could not put it down. I have been longing for a more feminist Scherezade tale, and wondering if I should write it (and how I would), but this is it tenfold.  Better than I could imagine, everything I’ve wanted.  Could not put it down.
  5. Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson – In a setting completely foreign to me, but great just the same. It’s about the juxtaposition of good Christians and bad Christians, self-fulfilling prophecies, and  the nature of goodness.  I loved Maddie and her spunk so much.
  6. Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan – A beautifully written book that deals with a lot of the problems facing migrants and others during depression-era America. Esperanza’s growth was less than I would like, though.  Ryan leaves a lot unresolved with strike issues etc. in the end.
  7. We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han – Not as good as the first “Summer” book, but still good. I do like the way Belly is just as flawed and makes as many mistakes as the boys, even though it makes me exasperated with her sometimes. Is the parental story happening in the wings more exciting than the kids’ in this book?
  8. Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston – Not my favorite, because THE ENTIRE THING was written in phonetic spelling; i.e.: hard to read. After I got about ½ way through part one, I skipped it and went to the Voodoo stuff at the end.  More an anthropological curiosity than something I enjoyed.  I loved Tell My Horse, so go read that one instead.
  9. S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han – Why do I always want Han’s leads to get together with the one they don’t? It’s frustrating.  But it’s also so good, and I can’t stop reading them.  Rooting for the wrong guy at least keeps me guessing.
  10. Kindred by Octavia Butler – Holy crap. I was expecting it to be hard to take, but not THAT bad… trigger warning for  rape and huge amounts of violence.  It’s well written and compelling, though.  Hard to put down, it’s just that I wasn’t sure I wanted to pick it back up once I had put it down. Didn’t finish it because I was having nightmares, but maybe I’ll go back.
  11. Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier – A strange mashup of literary fiction and high school coming of age. I liked it, but I didn’t feel pulled by it.  It was beautiful, but didn’t possess me.  Perhaps it was just that I hated Gwen a bit and didn’t understand why everyone else loved her so, especially Dimple.
  12. Same Sun Here by Neela Vaswani and Silas House – CRAZY good, although I do wish that each of the protags got a little bit more of an ending.  Especially Meena, who I felt didn’t have as much of an arc as River.  But it was a beautiful book, nice to see contemporary issues represented, and a well-done exploration of Redneck/Immigrant stereotypes and the problems both groups face – similar yet different.
  13. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz – Oh SO good. I loved rooting for the boys and their complicated lives, but I loved the writing so much, too.  Deserving of all the awards it won.

You should also know that I cheated (full-disclusure) and read:

  1. When Beauty Tamed The Beast by Eloisa James – I just CAN’T get over these names… can’t we call them something less embarrassing? But this one, I think, was her best yet.  The men in romance novels often don’t feel real, but Piers was such an ass that he was perfect.  Or maybe I’m just married to a rather endearing ass myself.
  2. Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman – The resolution seemed a bit easy to me, but otherwise this book was perfect. I love that his children’s books have hard things in them, and that this one was about Norse Gods.  His writing is so beautiful.
  3. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell – Oh, this book is my favorite thing ever. I fell in love with it the first time because of the Cath/Levi relationship.  I fell in love with it this time for the Cath/Regan relationship, and the quips.  Which I kept reading out loud to my husband, who laughed in all the right places.
  4. Sunshine by Robin McKinley – I forgot how violent this book is. But Con, man… You have to love him even while he frightens you.  The world is so robust that I wish there were more books.  McKinley has said there won’t be, though.  As vampire books go, it’s one of the best.
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Maine vs California, and Some Pictures

Posted on August 6, 2015 by caseykins

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I am back from Maine.  It has been almost five years since Brian and I have been together, and it was lovely to have a partner in crime.  It’s always so funny coming home again, though.  I fly into Boston and am deposited into a whole different world, and then I fly out again and am deposited in my own life in California.  There is no transition, and no in-between.  Just one dichotomy and then the other

Maine was gorgeously green this time.  The humidity clung to us, but there was a light breeze most times that if you could catch it would blow the mugginess away.  The mosquitos bit, but I did not get munched by a green-headed fly even once.  That is a victory.  We hiked on forest trails that suddenly rounded a bend and became a secluded bay; trees and calm waters stretching as far as you could see.  Maine is a place to eat your weight in halibut and lobster, watch the fisherman chug through the Gut on their boats, and watch the brilliant stars in the sky.  Life trickles by like a stream.

Back in California, I went to work on Monday morning in a dry heat.  The drought has made things so brown out here.  I raced freight trains to work in a sea of concrete and other cars, and then I went into my air conditioned building and froze. I came home to a cuddly black cat in the window, dinner made from my home-grown tomatoes, and a very handsome husband burning sweet incense in the back room (for his weekly meditation).  The streetlights are so bright they drown out all but the most persistent constellations.  My four-poster bed is the perfect combination of soft and firm.

I will be back to some semblance of a regular blogging schedule ASAP, but I have had to play massive amounts of catch-up at work (to the point where all I want to do at the end of the day is collapse).  In lieu of a full post, please accept this collection of photos from the trip.  Bookishness will recommence next week.  And incidentally, if you are ever in Damariscotta, their bookshop is full of wonderful.  They don’t have the biggest inventory, but they have everything I’ve been drooling over online for months (Laura Ingalls Wilder autobiography, anyone?), and local stuff that is hard to find (Maine historical atlases).  I wanted to stay for months and spend a fortune.  You should go.

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The Hidden (well, not super-evident at first glance) History of Damariscotta

Posted on July 23, 2015 by caseykins

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Every once in a while I discover a topic that gets me going on the ol’ History Research bus again.  This has gotten a bazillion times worse now that I actually have a history degree (read: access to a library, some sleuthing skills, and knowledge that most archives have at least a bit of a digitized collection these days).  This time it’s about the Pemaquid area – so interesting I didn’t even know what I was missing.  I’m about to go all history nerd on you, so you should be forewarned.

I’m going to Maine for vacation in a bit here.  My Mum has a house on Rutherford Island in South Bristol.  I’ve only been there during the off-season, so I’m used to there being nothing closer to us than the grocery store in Damariscotta 45 minutes away.  Unless you count the Pemaquid lighthouse, and nearby fort.  They’re a quick 20 minute drive down the road.  This is my husband’s first trip to the area, and we will definitely go to the lighthouse.  But I wondered about the fort… I thought maybe if I did a quick Google search I may find out something cool about a battle that was fought there, or something.

What I found was a CRAZY wealth of information that sent me on a research spiral involving most of that area.

Pemaquid was colonized before Plimoth was colonized.  It wasn’t supposed to be, but they think that a few people may have stayed on when Francis Popham’s failed colony went back to England in 1607.  The colony failed due to infighting, not so much due to starvation and disease, so a few families moved farther inland to the rich waters near Pemaquid and stayed.  How do we know this?  Well, mostly because Helen Camp found skeletons in the 1960s.

Yup, three of them.  They were wrapped in animal skins, laid with their knees up and their palms on their shoulders like most natives at the time, and each had a brass plate on their chests.  Brass wasn’t available in the New World, only in the old, so probably a melted-down kettle? Warriors, you would think.  Right?  One might have been – a male under 40.  But the others?  A woman of European descent with a baby on her shoulder.

At first people wanted to scream Vikings, but radiocarbon dating says early 1600s (not 1000s).  There are a bunch of these skeletons that have been found on the coast, too.  There’s even a Longfellow poem about one found in Fall River Massachusetts. He definitely thinks it was Vikings: (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173914)

The best thing I found was the newspaper articles.  You gotta love online archives.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1928&dat=19650821&id=20IpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wWYFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3615,1050454&hl=en

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1928&dat=19660609&id=YGogAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3GYFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6082,4761052&hl=en

As if that wasn’t cool enough, there was a successful settlement there of almost 200 people between 1620 and 1680; situated perfectly to take advantage of the awesome fur trade in the area.  It was going so well that they decided to build a wooden fort in the 1670s to help protect them from pirates.

Yup, they needed protection from pirates.

Dixie Bull famously sacked the town in 1623, sailing into the harbor with three ships and burning the town.  Dixie disappears from all records in 1633, and there’s a local legend that one of the Damariscotta fishermen killed him in a duel in retaliation.  There’s also an AWESOME rumor that there’s buried treasure on Damariscove island.

The town was sacked and burned further during King Phillips War.  They tried to re-settle again, but it just never really worked out.  The French thought their Canadian holdings stretched all the way down to the Kennebec river.  Massachusetts was certain their border stopped at the St. Croix river.  The French put a whole bunch of catholic missions into the region to try and hold it, but it didn’t work out for them so well.  Damariscotta built a crazy-expensive stone fort to see if that would help. It didn’t.  In conjunction with the local Wabanaki tribe, the French sent the military in and contrived to make the area unlivable.

It was resettled again in the early 1700s.  They built another wooden fort and fortified it with a bunch of earthworks.  This one they were able to defend, but the town voted to pull it down themselves in 1775 so the British couldn’t occupy it during the war.  In the 1910s, the locals decided to rebuild the old stone fort as a curiosity.  That’s the one you can go visit now.

The lighthouse itself is another trip.  One of the first lighthouse keepers was Nathaniel Gamage.  Yup, forefather of the famous Gamage brothers with the internationally known boat building business (which you can see out the window from my mum’s).  Nathaniel Gamage was ousted so that President Harrison could install his own guy.  But Gamage had paid the former keeper quite a lot for the farm around the lighthouse, and the interloper wasn’t interested in doing the same.  Huge legal battle over funds ensued.

The most interesting thing is the skeletons, of course.  And some of Helen Camp’s discoveries throughout the 1980s.  Evidently, everyone had forgotten about the first settlement here in the early 1600s.  Camp (amateur archeologist) noticed that a local farmer’s fields had weird, square-shaped depressions in them.  He thought it would be cool to let her investigate, and she unearthed a village.

That’s where I’ll be in a few days, watching the lobster boats chug up the Gut, and thinking about all those amazing things that happened in the beautiful sleepy backwater.  Obviously all of this needs MUCH more research.  I am gleefully searching Worldcat and pulling up the interlibrary loan forms, starting with everything Helen Camp ever published.  The history bus is chugging along.

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A Weekly Round Up

Posted on July 20, 2015 by caseykins

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This week there is a tropical storm somewhere, so we have been getting spurts of torrential downpour and some epic thunder all weekend.  The wind blew down the grape vine trellis, and the cats went a little crazy.  Brian and I sat in front of the window and watched the water stream from the pergola in the back yard, puddling in the dirt and weeds.

The cherry tomatoes have gone a bit wild.  I was able to actually use some of them to cook with. (!!!)  I had heard that the Juliet variety of grape tomatoes was not considered one of the better tasting types, so I was a bit apprehensive.  But these are excellent, tangy bites of sunshine.  I would plant them again in a heartbeat.  I’m going to claim it’s the compost. The Marriage Perfect Flames are turning orange-ish too now.

I am ¾ packed for Maine.  Terribly early, I know, but I won’t have another weekend to do all the laundry.  I will only have Friday night.  It seems strange to go back again so soon after my last trip.  Strange but wonderful.  I haven’t had the chance to long for gray beaches and blue skies; for lighthouses and that sweet, wild smell of reedy grass that meets me as I walk the dirt roads, the salty wind that whips my cheeks red.  I’m not feeling empty without it all, I’m just feeling VERY glad to see everyone.  And excited for lobster and Queen Anne’s Lace, of course.

We took the cone off the kitten yesterday.  Her first act was to try and eat it in retaliation.  Then she spent the next four hours cleaning herself.

The last thing that happened was Brian and I celebrating our 12 year anniversary.  We got rained out of the plans I made (outdoor amphitheater?  Not so much), but Plan B was to go see Guys and Dolls at the Fox theater in Riverside.  They played slap-stick Buster Keaton movies before the show instead of ads, had a fancy picture booth with Sinatra, and made the experience altogether perfect.  Bonus points for the contingent of the audience dressed in ‘50s garb.  I think Plan B might have turned out better than Plan A would have, even if it hadn’t rained.

I am also attempting to pick vacation reads and maybe a new crochet project.  Any recommendations?

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The Spaying of Jennyanydots

Posted on July 13, 2015 by caseykins

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We got the kitten spayed this weekend.  The Humane Society could not pronounce “Jennyanydots,” so all her paperwork just said “Jenny” on it and it made me a bit sad.  She’s Miss Dots to us when I’m not calling her “floof!”  Although I don’t care a whole lot.  It just made me feel like it was less homey than I would have liked.  We dropped her off in the morning and then picked her up in the evening. Her recovery has been simultaneously hilarious and tragic all at the same time.

“She’s still under the influence,” said the gal who handed us her cat carrier. “So don’t let her drive home.  Put the lampshade on right away, and you can remove the black bandage from her leg in an hour.”

“I wish someone had told us that she wasn’t allowed to drive before she got her last DUI,” I said to Brian later in the car. He laughed.

Boy, was the gal at the vet’s office right.  Dots could not walk in a straight line to save her life. She kept flicking her foot backwards to get the bandage off, and she HATED the cone.  It turns out that a high kitten attempting to get out of a cone is the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen.  She decided that if she walked backwards, she could probably walk out of it.  So she was staggering around the room backwards, bumping into all sorts of things, rolling her head around and generally being floppy.  But she was doing the whole thing with this nonchalant look of boredom on her face, her pupils wide.

She finally gave up and slept on the stairs, only waking up intermittently to kick at the cone with her back feet.  The next morning, she kept misjudging distances and space, and ended up falling off the window ledge, the couch, the counter, and the dining room chairs.  She has now mostly adjusted, but she is constantly itching her ear and hitting plastic instead, or trying to clean herself by laying the cone against her leg and licking it.  She keeps this resigned look on her face as if it was a horrible trial she was just going to have to submit to.  It breaks my heart.

I had heard that spaying cats made them much more friendly, but I wasn’t prepared for quite this friendly from Dots.  She wants to constantly be on my lap these days, and she’ll even cuddle up to Brian.  One of my favorite things about my floof is that she was sometimes such a feisty little shit; just like all women should be.  She’s been so docile the last couple of days.  I’m hoping it’s just because the cone has quenched her spirit, and when it’s gone in a week she’ll be back to normal again.

“I hope she’s not,” Brian said when I told him.  “I like this Dots much better.”

We’ll see…  I mean, I could do with a little less mayhem.  But I’m loathe to dispense with the mayhem altogether.  It keeps life interesting.

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Some Thoughts on the 4th:

Posted on July 6, 2015 by caseykins

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I get a little nutty about the 4th of July.  I have a tricorn hat I bought in Concord, MA that I drag out specifically for the 4th every year.  I have a ’76 flag that I run up, and this year we added a host of bunting to the front of the garage.  Every time there is a Sousa song, I cheer.  I ALWAYS sing along to Stars and Stripes Forever.  Put a sparkler in my hands and let me run free, and I’m the happiest lady ever.

I’ve been seeing all these things online this year, though, that make it seem like celebrating the 4th when this country needs so much  improvement is somehow blasphemous.  Or silly.  Or just not right somehow.  Like if you want to do it, especially if you’re going balls-to-the-wall, you’re what’s wrong with escapist America.

I consider myself a realist when it comes to things.  I don’t want to bury my head in the sand and forget that Black people are dying unnecessarily, or that it took a Supreme Court case to insure an entire segment of the population could get married, or miss the argument that there is any merit at all to consider flying the Confederate flag over a government building.  I want to debate drone strikes, gun control, and privacy laws.  I want to look at all the ways America has not measured up to her promise and work to fix those things.

On every other day than the 4th of July.

I realize that this is probably controversial.  But here is why:

Say what you like about how our country operates in practice, but it’s a pretty amazing idea.  Before people like John Locke, it was just CRAZY to think that people had any rights at all.  And here is our country, founded on the principle that people deserve to be able to seek happiness, attempting to guarantee that you can associate with anyone you choose without repercussions, and ensuring you can say whatever you want to and about whomever you want.  There is something beautiful in there.  And when you add in all the crazy stories of the regular folks who made this thing a reality, it gets even better.  Like, to the point where I get a little leaky around the eye (I’m not crying – you’re crying).

To me, the Fourth is a time to think of all these things.  It’s time to revel in the stories of these Founding Fathers, to look at the principles they passed down, and to celebrate that they’ve made it in this world for another year.  The Fourth isn’t about reality.  It’s not about what America is.  It’s about what America could be.  Fly the flag, wear a bald eagle or a tricorn hat, muster on the green, go in search of fireworks.  Bathe in patriotism like a pig in mud.

Then, take all that idealism and use it on July 5th.  There’s plenty of stuff out there to fix, and with a renewed fervor for freedom, it becomes all the easier to see what those things are.  It becomes easier to want to change them.

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Books I’ve Drooled Over

Posted on July 2, 2015 by caseykins

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The last time I did a summer reading challenge, it didn’t really work out that well.  It was the summer before I entered Chapman, the last summer I knew I might have some time before I was bogged down in scholarship 24/7, 365 (summer classes, man.  And winter interterm).  The challenge was to read ALL new books – nothing that I had ever read before.  For a gal who nurses comfort books like they’re going out of style, that was quite a challenge.  I managed it, but I read 37 books that summer and only 4 of them were books I loved enough for them to matter (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Watership Down, The Graveyard Book, and Of Plymouth Plantation, if you’re interested).

I have had much better luck with this challenge.  So far, of the eighteen books I’ve read, only 3 of them are books I didn’t love.  Several have been can’t-put-it-down all night reads.  These are the one’s I’m about to tell you about.  And recommend that you try them too.  Here they are:

The Wrath and The Dawn by Renée Ahdieh: I love fairy tale re-mixes, and I have been wanting an Arabian Nights tale for SO LONG.  I can’t even tell you.  I even thought about writing it myself, if I could get a concept figured out.  That’s how badly I wanted this thing.  And it’s here, in it’s perfect gilt package, and it is glorious.

First of all, Shazi is awesome.  She’s there to kill the king before he can kill her.  Who doesn’t love a super-spunky protagonist?  And then there’s also Khalid and his really horrible secret, and his hotness, and his hostile kingdom.  The world feels dangerous as well as beautiful, and it has a magical component that is so epically huge that it’s impossible to understand how much it influences the foundations of everything, because in the beginning it feels like it’s only for background atmosphere.

Shazi basically doesn’t get a good opportunity to kill the king for a while and then finds herself falling in love with him.  He also starts to fall in love with her, and then he has to make this horrible choice between her life or the entire kingdom.  They’re married, too, so there’s a lot of hot sexual tension (and sex, although not in any detail – it’s more that you know it’s happening in the cut-away), which is unusual for a YA novel.  But in the wings there is Khalid’s abusive father, a pregnant lady-in-waiting, Shazi’s failed magician father, her childhood crush who wants to rescue her, and a whole host of natural disaster.

My only real beef with the novel is that it’s a cliff-hanger.  Usually that’s a deal-breaker for me, but with this one it isn’t.  Instead of my usual ‘my God, guys – how much money do you want from me?’ attitude about cliff-hangers, I’m just ready to throw a party that there will be MORE (!!!).  This is the best thing I’ve read this summer.  It’s so good I might even read everything Renée Ahdieh writes for the rest of her/my life.  All I can say is that the next one better come out soon or I may die of waiting.

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han: In this book, Belly goes with her mother every summer to live in Aunt Susannah’s beach house (not her real aunt, but her mother’s college roommate).  It’s just the moms and the kids in the house most of the time – Belly, her brother, and Susannah’s two boys.  The husbands are present only in small days, in glimpses and weekends.  Only this summer everything is different.  The boys that Belly has had a crush on for as long as she can remember seem to have a crush on her back.  There’s a bittersweet feeling that they’re growing up and this summer might be the last one; and then they get positive evidence that yes, this is the last.  This is it.  It all will end.

I do not know how Jenny Han captured my childhood so completely, but she did.  We used to spend huge chunks of the summer on the Southern Maine coast – first at my grandfather’s house in Biddeford Pool and then at my Aunt’s house on Gooserocks Beach.  When my grandfather had a house, Aunt Nancy used to rent hers.  She and Uncle Dennis would move out for the month we were there, leaving Alysson and Leah behind – five girls in a tiny two-bedroom cottage sharing three beds and a pull-out couch.  If two people were in the bathroom, one of them was standing in the shower.  Those are some of my fondest memories, all of us stacked together, running free in the ocean and playing house on the granite rocks.  This book captures that, and all the losses in between when we knew how bad the property taxes were, and we too knew it was all ending, too.

One of my favorite things about Jenny Han’s books is that I always end up rooting for the guy the main character doesn’t get together with at the end.  I think it’s a testament to how real her characters are, and how flawed.  People always look more perfect when you don’t know them as well, don’t they?  I love that I can’t count on anything with her.  Everything is a surprise, even while it feels like something I’ve already lived.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz: This is basically a book about a friendship that blossoms into a deep love over the span of about two years.  Dante and Ari meet at the swimming pool one summer, and they become inseparable after that.  They’re as different as they can be on the outside, but on the inside they’re the same.  Neither of them has come from a wealthy background.  Ari has a brother who was sent to prison, a father who fought in Vietnam, and a propensity to talk about nothing at all.  Dante feels the deep burden of being an only child, wants to talk about everything, and is friendly but friendless.

It’s a good story.  A coming of age thing where both boys are trying desperately to figure out who they are and if they can live with who they are.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it because of the plot.  But what I really fell in love with was the writing.  Sáenz starts off using very simple language, easy thoughts and plenty of juvenile tags to the letters and journals he samples from both boys.  But as their lives deepen, so does the writing style.  And his use of imagery and foreshadowing made me thing of Fante’s masterpiece “Ask The Dust.”  With the added benefit that I didn’t want to murder any of the protagonists for being whiny like I did when I read Fante. It’s a beautiful thing.

Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson: I picked up Johnson’s novel because I liked “The Great Greene Heist” so much.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.  Joshua is the preacher’s son, and is reunited with his childhood crush Maddie (a preacher’s daughter with a bad-girl image) when she comes back to town to stay with her aunt.  I think I was expecting it to be this thing where she’s bad and he succumbs to it while renouncing his faith or something.  I was expecting drama and drugs and high school hijinks.

Instead I got this lovely story about dichotomies and assumptions.  Maddie struggles with who she is vs who she’s told she should be, and what attempting to live up to her label has cost her.  Joshua learns to have opinions, to rely on more than his parents, to find a deeper faith through reason and questioning.  Both of them learn that parents aren’t perfect, even the good ones, and that love doesn’t really trump all.  Not when there are so many other things in play.  The whole book is a fight about good and bad, and if we can really assign those titles to anyone without knowing the full story.  With some bonus making out to keep things steamy, of course.

I think what I like most about this novel, though, is that it gave me a different perspective on the world.  It felt like my own in a lot of ways, but Joshua’s life centered around things that are foreign to me.  My horizons were broadened. And that was the point of this whole exercise in the first place, wasn’t it?

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