This is acrylic on a 24″x 30″ canvas. I took a photo of Olive in a blueberry field on Christy Hill in Sedgwick ME on an overcast day and thought it would make a good composition, if I made up a horizon and cloudy sky.… Read the rest
Category: <span>Maine: The Vista From Away</span>
Our family lived in Maine from 1993 – 1997 and the area we lived in was ripe with chance meetings of fate, because so many celebs and power people vacation or retire there. Here’s just one example. More will follow and fans of the old TV comedy, Green Acres, will want to check out this post.
Most people who flew out of our area to the rest of the United States and the world would leave on the 6AM flight out of Bangor International Airport. It was a large plane, flying to Logan International in Boston, where connections were made with the rest of civilization.… Read the rest
Blueberries are native only to North America. Wild Maine blueberries, like Maine lobster, are the best — finest kind. They are small and full of flavor, unlike the larger ones that grow higher off the ground in places like New Jersey, Oregon and Washington. Our friends in Maine will sometimes eat the larger, inferior blueberries from away but that’s an anomaly.
Blueberries are raked and it is difficult and back-breaking work. If you are good at it, you can make a big wad of cash during the season, typically the month of August. In the 90’s, that’s how teenagers in our town earned money to buy a car.… Read the rest
Before I begin on this post, I have to make an acerbic comment. I just looked at my blog in Explorer and it doesn’t render properly. This is WordPress, for crying out loud. Why doesn’t Explorer play by the rules? I’m actually glad Google has come out with Chrome to compete with Microsoft in the browser battles. I prefer Safari now or Camino, the Mac version of Firefox. There, I said it and I feel much better now.
As we moved south toward Portland, we found this wonderful place in Glen Cove Maine, the Oakland Seashore Motel. The cottages were cute, but we stayed in the motel.… Read the rest
What trip to Maine would be complete without a lobster bake? And, why do they call it a bake, when you boil or steam everything? Well, that and other weighty questions of eternal consequence will have to wait until later. Right now, we’re talking about downeast cuisine.
We headed down to Brooklin to buy some lobsters from John Candage and found them for just over $5 a pound.
We got together with Bruce and Terri, Paul and Mary, Leah and Emma for some lobster, steamers, fresh corn on the cob and, of course, pie. Mary made the best coconut cream pie, with a great whipped topping.… Read the rest
We decided to visit the Penobscot Narrows Bridge near Bucksport and take a trip up to the observatory at the top – 420 feet high, to be exact. Denise and I were vacationing and hunting for investments just about a year ago and happened to visit when the bridge was opened for the first public walk-across and Bridgefest. It was impressive.
While we were waiting, Emma was wishing she had brought her sweater. She did, however, bring a book along. It was one of about 8 she read in our 12 day vacation. Sidebar: Emma has always been a voracious reader.… Read the rest
One of our favorite places to visit is Camden Maine, which most people know as Peyton Place. We know it as the home of Cappy’s Chowder House and the site of a wonderful webcam.
I love the library there. The town outgrew the old library, so they built a new one under the park out back, down by the harbor, and 
connected it to the original. Most of the holdings are in the new addition, while the original library provides a wonderful place to relax and read, as well as some wonderful views of town.
The first photo is of Denise and I in the underground addition, under the skylight that sits in the center of the lawn in the park.… Read the rest
Moving to downeast Maine in 1993 was, in many ways, similar to the 60’s TV comedy, Green Acres. Like Lisa and Oliver Douglas, the Salisbury family struck out on an adventure to discover a little piece of rural America in Sedgwick ME. We made a splash, rolling into town with our 5 ton Ryder truck and ’67 Chevy Bel Air. Fortunately, we were from California and were looked upon as more of a curiosity, than a complete nuisance like other people from away (New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, etc.)
So, imagine our surprise to find that we had moved into the same town as Ralph Monroe, the eccentric carpenter from Green Acres.… Read the rest