. . . this last lip of American land
– Jack Kerouac
When I first launched this blogspot back in December 2008, and it was barely a week old, I began receiving a number of inquiries regarding the significance of its title. Why was I looking toward Portugal? And from what vantage point? Both good questions and the answer was no big mystery.
In reply to these early queries I pointed out that I had been gravitating to the coast of Maine since the late 1980s, and during these trips I often found myself standing on that rocky shoreline, looking out to sea and pondering what lies beyond the far horizon. Gazing in a general easterly direction from the Maine coast, you will see nothing but the rolling expanse of the Gulf of Maine toward the southernmost extension of Nova Scotia. Yet, if you continue across the Atlantic you will eventually arrive on the northern shores of Portugal somewhere near Oporto. Doing this I was constantly reminded of Jack Kerouac’s observations when he stared out across the Atlantic from the shores of Long Island (he naturally gravitated to America’s two coasts) – “this last lip of American land.” Writing in On The Road (1957): “Here I was at the end of America . . . no more land . . ., and now there was nowhere to go but back.” Doing this I guess we are reminded of our limitations, but we are also offered a hint of what might be if we only choose to look beyond those far horizons. I could have been satisfied with “Looking Toward Nova Scotia,” but I liked to think there was far more to consider beyond.
As it turns out, an artist by the name of Bo Bartlett gave a name to what I had been doing all these years. At the time I made this discovery Bartlett divided his time between the coast of Maine and Puget Sound near Seattle. Bartlett, like Kerouac, is drawn to America’s two coasts. (He has since moved from the Seattle area to his hometown of Columbus, Georgia,) “Still Point,” his summer home and studio are situated on Wheaton Island which forms the small village harbor on Matinicus Island. He refers to the seaward side of his island as “the Portugal side,” and so I attribute “Looking Toward Portugal” to him. It seems only fair.
Bartlett and I, however, are not the only ones who have over the years been looking eastward from America toward Portugal. I was recently doing some photo research online and I came across a collection of hand-colored postcards dating from the 1920s depicting various scenes on Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. One of them immediately caught my eye . . . a view of beach dunes covered in vegetation with the sea beyond. “Looking Toward Portugal from the Eastern Shore of Nantucket Island, Mass.” is printed across the bottom of the card. The Eastern Shore of Nantucket includes several of the island’s more remote beaches.
The scene depicted on this postcard is more than likely Siaconset - known locally as Sconset - Beach which is located at the eastern most tip of Nantucket Island some six miles from the island village. It is noted for its broad beaches bordering dunes and sandy bluffs. Surf can be heavy with strong currents.
Further research turned up a postcard dealer on the island who sold me a pristine copy of this very card. When it arrived a few days later I felt compelled to learn more about the card and the person who created it. It turns out to be a fascinating story. This postcard is a facsimile of a hand-painted original black and photograph taken by H. [Henry] Marshall Gardiner who was born in Canada in 1884 and who circa 1890 moved with his family to Detroit, Michigan. His father, William Henry Gardiner, established a photographic studio there, and a short time later opened a second studio on Michigan’s Mackinaw Island to cater to the summer tourist trade. The family bought a winter home in Daytona, Florida, in 1904, where the elder Gardiner marketed photographs of Florida to the ever growing tourist market there.
The younger Gardiner followed in his father’s footsteps at a relatively early age and learned many of his photographic techniques from him. One major difference, however, was his use of more advanced gelatin dry plate technology whereas his father generally used wet collodian negatives. Later in his career he turned to rolled film negatives which were cheaper and easier to use. He also saw the efficacy of operating his own successful photographic business centered on the tourist on Mackinaw Island and in Florida. He assumed control of his father’s business in Daytona in October 1935 upon his father’s death.
Gardiner also traveled to Bermuda early in his career where he produced a series of beautiful hand-tinted photographs which he sold to island tourists. This distinctive technique was popularized in the United States by Wallace Nutting, the father of early 20th century hand colored photographs. Gardiner soon began to produce hand-tinted colored photographs of Mackinac Island and Florida, and the technique became his true photographic legacy to this day.
Gardiner also traveled to Nantucket Island, situated off the coast of Massachuset’s Cape Cod, around 1910 and this discovery served as a key influence on his evolution as a photographer and the development of hand-tinted photography as an art form. The island was still very much a rural backwater with a year round population just over 2500, no where near enough to sustain photographic business despite his efforts to make it work. But he never lost his interest in and love for this island and over the next three decades, until his death in 1942, he continued to document Nantucket’s architecture, as well as the countryside, its beaches and seascapes, and island inhabitants, producing framed and unframed hand-tinted color photographs. Smaller postcard facsimiles were produced by the Detroit Publishing Company using their patented "Phostint" printing process.
It was not long before Gardiner’s photographs were becoming collector items, especially those of Nantucket scenes, and as time has passed they are scarce and command premium prices. Gardiner's postcards are widely collected. Unlike his hand-painted photographs which can command a premium price today, his Nantucket colored postcards (and even a few of his more rare black and white postcards) are much easier to find on the market and they are more affordable. Approximately three dozen of his best Nantucket images have been collected by the Nantucket Historical Association and are the subject of H. Marshall Gardiner’s Nantucket Postcards 1910-1940, edited by his daughter, Geraldine Gardiner Salisbury, in 1995.
Looking at this postcard and thinking about Gardiner’s photographic career I am reminded of “The Rest of the Story,” a weekday ABC Radio Networks program hosted by Paul Harvey beginning in May 1976. They were interesting factual revelations on a wide variety of subjects and people which were not revealed until the end of the program which concluded with Harvey pausing then saying “And now you know the rest of the story.” I wonder if perhaps this image was the inspiration for Bo Bartlett’s reference to the eastward view from the “Portugal side” of Wheaton Island of the coast of Maine. I am quite certain the views are similar regardless. This same Maine coast has become for me a place of solitude, solace, and inspiration.
Looking out to sea from “the Portugal side” of my own life, I ponder what lies beyond that meeting of water and sky. I realize that my grand search will never be over. Certainly not in my lifetime. I will always return to that “last lip of American land.”
And now you know the rest of the story.
Today marks the final Sunday service at Twinbrook Baptist Church, in Rockville, Maryland. For several years it was my home church which my wife and I attended regularly. It was a long drive for us every Sunday morning and our attendance consumed much of our Sundays when all was said and done. But we did not resent the time spent there because we loved . . . we still love . . . our fellow congregants and we believed strongly in the progressive mission of a truly Christian church.
Twinbrook Baptist Church was established in a new residential subdivision of Rockville in 1956 by Reverend John Laney and a number of young couples who shared a vision of racial and gender equality at a time when it was not foremost on peoples’ minds in postwar America. A “Fellowship of the Concerned.” The mission of the new church was very simple - “To bring Christ and the church to those who have been turned off or turned away. We represent hope to the hopeless and provide an environment that is safe, open to questioning and discussion, free from judgment, and full of Christ's love.”
Reverend Laney spoke out passionately in those early years favoring predominantly white churches that were accepting black members. He supported the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and his struggle for racial equality while also speaking out in opposition to America’s military adventures throughout Southeast Asia. Twinbrook Baptist Church steered a course independent and divergent from that of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention. In 1960, when the SBC suggested that “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew,” it was Reverend Laney who objected to such blatant anti-Semitism, publishing a retort in local Baptist publications in Washington, DC, stating categorically that such a God “would be a God who would have listened to the silent Christians in Nazi Germany while turning a deaf ear to the millions of Jews who cried out from the concentration camps and the gas chambers of the Holocaust . . . I cannot conceive of a God who would eagerly listen to Jerry Falwell and Bailey Smith but who would not tolerate a prayer from such great souls of the recent past as Martin Buber and Abraham Heschel.” Bold words from an American Baptist minister in 1960.
As a result, for more than six decades Twinbrook Baptist Church has always stood tall, often taller than the rest, and rose to every challenge to champion unity and acceptance among those less fortunate. It stood with those who found themselves outside of a fair and equal social equality, and in doing so it left its indelible mark on its neighborhood, on its community, and on the basic precepts of true Christianity . . . something it seems to me we are in dire need of these days as evangelical exceptionist “Christianity” seems to hold sway over much of the nation and the powers that be in Washington and in various statehouses.
This is one of the reasons my wife and I found a home at Twinbrook Baptist Church. We were both raised in the Methodist church. We were baptized in the Methodist church. Together we attended a small liberal arts college in Florida affiliated with the Methodist church. Like many in our generation, as we moved away from home and began to establish careers and start families, it was easy to put spiritual matters and questions of faith further down on the pecking order, and we strayed away from the church for several years. Then, in 1982, we bought our first house following the birth of our son, and we attempted to reestablish our connections with our Methodism. Unfortunately, the church we selected in our neighborhood was in the throes of its own collapse, and when it finally did, we never looked for an alternative.
It was in 2007 that my wife joined one of her best friends, who grew up at Twinbrook where her parents were founding members, in a Habitat for Humanity build in western Maryland as part of the church’s regular mission program with that important organization. She was quickly attracted to the church’s dynamic pastor and many of the church members, and as a result we began to attend occasional Sunday services and celebrated the congregants as kindred spirits with similar liberal to progressive values and goals enjoyed by a close-knit faith community. Once I retired in 2010, we began to attend more regularly and soon we decided to join the church. Shortly after we did, however, the pastor decided to step down, and eventually left the ministry entirely. It was then, in my humble opinion, when the church’s decline began to accelerate. It had long been in a slow decline as older members passed away and children who grew up in church moved away. But there was a strong and active core that kept things going. And we liked that and found a new spiritual home there regardless of the slowly dwindling numbers.
We had a temporary pastor whom I liked, but going in we knew she was a place holder until the congregation was able to call a new pastor to the pulpit. The process continued for several long and painstaking months but we eventually settled on another dynamic pastor who was committed to the church’s existing liberal and progressive principles – a church found on the principle that it was a safe place for people of color and other marginalized groups. She was also a local and national advocate for the LGBTQ community, and she pledged to raise the standard of welcoming and affirming Christianity and to make Twinbrook Baptist Church a sanctuary where the LGBTQ community would not only feel safe, but also welcomed. The church was officially “out,” incorporating the rainbow colors into its logo. There was a sign on the front lawn declaring “All Are Welcome Here. Really!” Its members marched in annual Pride parades. So why did the LGBTQ community not come? A few showed up, but almost none of them stayed.
Perhaps the most disturbing result of this shift in direction was the number of core members who decided to leave the church and worship with a more traditional pastor and congregation. And the attendance at church services and events continued to dwindle. Some new members - straight and otherwise - would occasionally come, yet very few of them stayed. It was not long before we came to the painful conclusion that the church was dying faster than we wanted to admit. And it was not happening only at Twinbrook. Regardless of denomination, congregations are shrinking across America as former worshiper are distancing themselves from organized religion. So what to do?
Twinbrook could have continued to dwindle until there was nothing left. No more members and no money left in the bank. What a sad legacy to just disappear after six decades without a trace. The numbers and the money were dwindling and it was time to decide whether this would be the ultimate fate and legacy of Twinbrook Baptist Church. The decision was a loud and resounding “no”! There must be some way to make some good come out of this difficult situation.
Two years ago the congregation began to ask itself serious questions about survival and various option to sustain it. Perhaps a part-time pastor? A smaller, less informal place of worship? More effort into outreach ministries? Still, the reality of a fast dwindling membership would not support these options. The decision was to accept its fate and close with dignity and to share its remaining largesse with others.
For the past 14 years Twinbrook had been sharing its sanctuary and common areas with Centro Cristiano Peniel, a large and thriving Spanish-speaking congregation. Over the course of several months an arrangement was put in place to allow this congregation to purchase the entire church building outright at far below the fair market price. The closing of one church ensures the survival of another. What better legacy can there be? CCP will continue to allow the existing daycare center and other Twinbrook-sponsored mission projects to remain in their spaces pursuant to existing arrangements. In addition, Twinbrook is donating more than $1 million of the proceeds from the building’s sale to dozens of local organizations sharing its liberal values – a diabetes clinic and hospice care, emergency housing funds, Habitat for Humanity, local school lunch programs, LGBTQ youth programs and other local community initiatives and non-profit organizations. Add to these Baptist organizations such as the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists.
Personally, it is sad to see the doors of Twinbrook Baptist Church. For those of us who worshiped there, whether it was for 63 years or just a year or two, it will always hold a special place in our hearts. As one door close, dozens of others are opened. The legacy of the Fellowship of the Concerned will continue. May its gifts be a lasting benefit to all. And after all, isn’t that what faith is really all about?
At this hour 50 years ago today Jefferson Airplane took the stage at the Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York . . . and the rest is history. There is Jack Casady's bass riff, Jorma Kaukonen's mystical smile, and Grace Slick's blissful expression throughout. Five decades later we are still asking Alice what the dormouse said . . . and feeding our heads when we are feeling small.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_raXzIRgsA
I just finished rereading Joan Didion’s essay "Keeping a Notebook," which appears in her 1968 essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem. "Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether," she writes. "Lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss." Perhaps this is true. My 94 year old mother has kept journals off and on throughout her lifetime, and has been writing daily entries in one for the past 20 years at least. I have learned my journal etiquette and religiosity from her.
"Why do I keep a notebook at all?" Didion continues. "The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in a way that any compulsion tries to justify itself."
Reading Didion I am reminded of why I keep notebooks of my own . . . many of them. They are an archive of thoughts and recollections, containing everyday rumblings evidencing no particular intent. There are ideas for things I want to write eventually; memorable quotes and citations resulting from my reading and researches; lists of things to do and see; letters to write and why. "Keep a notebook," Jack London tells us in "Getting Into Print" (Editor, March 1903). "Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up in your brain." More importantly he tells us why. "Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory." This is especially true as we grow older and more forgetful. Such is my own case. "Why did I write it down" Ms. Didion asks? "In order to remember, of course, but what was it I wanted to remember." That is always a good question and one I ask myself as I page through one or another of my notebooks dating back a few years.
I always have a notebook of one sort or another with me. You will find me writing in it while commuting, or having a meal or a drink by myself. Whenever I have a few spare moments with nothing else to do. Ms. Didion likes to recall a memorable culinary event or an engaging dinner partner; a particular meal or a newly discovered libation. Even a recipe for a meal yet untried. I have done this more often than one can imagine. There have been times when I have been asked if I was a food critic. Perhaps I should have played along and scored some "comped" meals and drinks?
And how many notebooks do I have you ask? At last count they number around 150 volumes dating back to 1969 and at present I am adding 2-5 volumes annually. Each volume can contain anywhere from 75 to 150 pages. And I write very small to boot so you do the math. And this number does not include numerous logs and notebooks full of research notes for one project or another compiled over a 32 year career as a historian employed by the US Department of Justice (the old one with an honorable reputation, and not the current one seeming hell bent on circumventing justice rather than guaranteeing it . . . but I digress . . . that is a subject for another notebook). There are also the notebooks/journals containing research collected for my doctoral dissertation thirty plus years ago, as well as those full of research notes and draft sections of manuscripts for other projects on a wide variety of topics: Thomas Wolfe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Steinbeck, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Lloyd Wright, et al.. There are a few notebooks containing poetry written over four decades. And how can I forget the three massive ringed binders containing the hard copies of the almost 500 essays posted here at Looking Toward Portugal over the past eleven years. Add to all these the countless notes scribbled on scraps of paper, notepads, napkins, telephone call reminders and buck slips, and various other items in various folders that were meant to be transferred to one notebook or another but never were.
From time to time my wife will ask me what I plan to do with all of this detritus of a historian/writer/journalist for whom everything is worth saving for that time when it will become important and necessary. As Philip Graham, the late publisher of The Washington Post reminded us, "Journalism is the first rough draft of history." I believe this to be true. So what will become of all of this largesse once I shed this mortal coil, this veil of tears? Like any historian or writer, I would like to think that these dozens of notebooks might serve as a crucible for new ideas and theories that others might to some small degree find useful, or at the very least entertaining. They do contain observations of historical and cultural events over several decades of the 20th and 21st centuries. So who really knows? I will nevertheless continue to jot and scribble regardless. It’s what I do.
