Paris Postcards

I recently learned from an acquaintance that she and her husband were leaving for France where they plan to enjoy the onset of autumn with a month-long walk through the countryside. How much I envy them. This past summer Sally Ann and I were in rural Québec a couple of times and a good friend reminded me how nice it is to be in New England one moment, and with a quick step across an arbitrarily drawn line on a map, one is suddenly transported to France. Well, not exactly, but it is the next best thing. Still, I am reminded of my own trips to la belle France, especially to Paris.

My first visit to the French capital came in June 1968, at a time when the city, perhaps the entire world, was in turmoil. Martin Luther King had been murdered in Memphis that spring followed by widespread rioting in several American cities, including here in Washington, DC, in nearby Baltimore and Salisbury, Maryland, and in Wilmington, Delaware. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination came only two weeks before I left for Europe. This country’s military actions in Southeast Asia had reach a crescendo in the spring with the battle at Khe Sanh. Eastern Europe was in turmoil with Alexander Dubcek’s attempt to moderate his predecessor’s hardline Stalinist policies in Czechoslovakia which would lead to the Soviet invasion of that country in August. Nigerian genocide in secessionist Biafra went largely ignored by the rest of the world. Civilization as we knew it appeared to be teetering on the brink.

The month before I arrived in Paris the city and the rest of France had suffered through a crippling general strike which brought about the near collapse of Charles de Gaulle’s 10-year Fifth Republic (he eventually dissolved parliament and briefly went into exile In Germany). Workers closed factories and students occupied their universities, threw up barricades and fought the police who used heavy-handed tactics to restore order. Much of the Left Bank - the Latin Quarter and the areas around the Sorbonne - were sealed off by the police.

Upon my arrival the country was gearing up for new national elections which would, ironically, give de Gaulle an even stronger mandate than before. Much of the Left Bank, including the areas around the Sorbonne, had returned to some semblance of order as students abandoned their barricades. But the tension was still palpable. I had no real agenda upon my arrival. I simply wanted to be a flâneur, what Charles Baudelaire described as an individual who walks through a city in order to truly experience what it has to offer. And that is what I did. I wandered the streets of Paris just to see what there was to see. And what I saw was the aftermath of the recent unrest. Many of the ancient cobblestone streets had been torn up, the cobbles thrown at the police by the student protesters. There were still a few burned out automobiles about, and the remnants of barricades near the Sorbonne. This was all new to a young fellow from America’s heartland. But changes were coming there, too.

I would return to the United States later that summer to similar protests in the streets of my hometown when Mayor Daley ordered the Chicago police to put down protests surrounding the Democratic National Convention. There I had my first and only exposure to tear gas on my way to visit the Shedd Aquarium, on the lakefront.

During the summer of 1971, I spent a quiet few months at home in Wisconsin preparing for the upcoming academic year in Germany where university students, much like their American counterparts, were questioning their own government.. I would also return to Paris, my first trip back in three years, where I planned to spend several days of “decompression” in preparation for the cultural and linguistic “bends” I expected upon my arrival in Germany. I was excited to be going back and I remembered those heady days of June 1968 during my first visit to the city. Yet I was looking forward to a more tranquil visit.

Upon my arrival in Paris in late August 1971, I had occasion to visit the old
American Center for Artists and Students, a rather shabby and dilapidated building at 261, Boulevard Raispal, in the Montparnasse. Founded in 1931, it had become a destination and hang-out for many notable Americans living in or visiting Paris. By the 1960s, it was one of the few places where one could see American experimental theater, attend readings by American writers and poets, and enjoy the best of American culture. It was also a gathering place for American students, those who were attending university, as well as those like myself, who were just passing through and were happy to find a place to read an American newspaper while enjoying a real American hamburger. I had been there in 1968, when it was still dealing with the after shocks of the unrest that summer.

Not so in 1971. There were many young Americans in Paris on their own individual pilgrimages of discovery. It was here that I fell in with a group who were off on a Métro ride to the Père Lachaise cemetery in search of the grave of Jim Morrison, the charismatic frontman of The Doors who had died in Paris in early July, just a month prior to my arrival. The grave was still unmarked and we had several conflicting reports as to where it might be located. We never found it, but it gave me another chance to be a flâneur as I wandered through the cemetery looking for the final resting places of others - Balzac, Chopin, Moliere, and two of my favorite painters - Eugene Delecroix and Armedeo Modigliani. I also visited the Pantheon, not far from my hotel in the rue Monge (Gaspard Monge, a French mathematician and draftsman designed the building), which is the final resting place of Voltaire, Zola, Hugo and others.

During another visit to the Center, I met a group of American students attending the Sorbonne and we spent a good part of one afternoon and early evening in various bistros and brasseries along the Boulevard-Saint-Germain. As the evening wore on, one of our group told us about a party later that evening at the home of James Jones, the American expatriate writer best known for his novel From Here to Eternity (1952) which I first read the year before, around the same time I read his The Merry Month of May (1970), in which he describes the unrest in Paris in 1968. We eventually made our way across Pont de l’Archevêché and the Pont Saint-Louis, to the Île-St.-Louis, ending up outside a rather elegant 17th Century building facing the river on the Quai d’Orleans. I was introduced to Mr. Jones, who graciously welcomed us to his home, and the rest of that evening remains a pleasant blur of images fueled by some wonderful French wine. There was a constant coming and going of people with knots of conversation and debate in every room and niche of that grand residence. Several of us eventually ended up walking quai-side below the Pont de la Tournelle before taking it back to the Left Bank as I made my way to my hotel.

I would not return to Paris until the late summer of 1981 . . . a brief stopover on my way to Vienna on business. I was stuck at a hotel near the airport and only had an opportunity to go into the city for one afternoon and evening, I returned to the Pere Lachaise cemetery where I finally found Jim Morrison’s grave. And I ended up at a Vietnamese restaurant in the rue Monge that I first discovered a decade earlier. The place looked much as I remembered it. Eating Vietnamese cuisine in Paris in 1971 seemed just a tad revolutionary what with the posters of Bác Hô (“Uncle Hô” Chi Minh) and Viet Cong banners on the walls. The banners were now gone although a small framed picture of Hô remained. But the food was just as good as I remembered. Unfortunately, the old American Center was gone and I wondered where American students and expatriates congregate now?

It has been almost 30 years since I have been to Paris. Maybe it is time to go back again. I enjoy my occasional trips to Montréal and to rural Québec, but perhaps it is time to be a true flâneur again (in Montréal this term is rather pejorative, referring to one who is loitering). I would love to return to the back streets of the Left Bank where I wandered here and there with no set agenda or schedule. There is still much to see and experience.

Back Home in Maryland and All Caught Up

We have returned home to Maryland after a wonderful and relaxing three month sojourn in Maine. I did quite a bit of writing, including several items to be posted here, but I had only limited access to the Internet while I was away and therefore I was unable to post the items in a timely fashion. The following items are now posted and I am all caught up:




May 31: "Five More Minutes"

June 29: "Ayuh . . . Goin' to Maine"

July 9: "Still Looking Toward Portugal"

July 13: "J'aime le Quebec"

July 27: "Island Poetry"

August 3: "Frying the Cheese"

August 13: "Living in the Past: Rediscovering 'Retro Beers' "

August 17: "When Baseball Was Fun: Remembering Smokey Maxwell"

And stay tuned for a new posting in the next few days. It's good to be back!
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Photograph courtesy of Michael Stewart

When Baseball Was Fun: Remembering Smokey Maxwell

My mother recently spent a week with us here at the lake cottage in Maine, and while she was here she and I spent a good deal of time talking about our family history in and around Paw Paw, Michigan and rural Van Buren County. After she returned home to Florida I went to the local library in New Gloucester to do some additional research and came across an interesting newspaper article in the Kalamazoo Gazette. It took me back to my younger days when I was spending quite a bit of time on my grandparent’s farm outside of Paw Paw.

This past Sunday, Paw Paw honored one of its local legends, a two-day celebration commemorating the life of and career of Charlie “Smokey” Maxwell, one of baseball’s greats from a much-missed bygone era when players truly played “for the love of the game;” a time when young kids looked up to these guys as role models. Maxwell is a native son in the truest sense, and it is only fitting that he be honored by his hometown. He was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, in 1997, but hometown honors trump that in my book.

Charles Richard Maxwell was born in Lawton, just a few miles south of Paw Paw, on April 8, 1927. He grew up in the area and played college baseball at Western Michigan University, in nearby Kalamazoo until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1945. Following his stint in the military, he played a few years of minor league ball in Roanoke, Birmingham and Louisville before he went to the show in 1950 as a southpaw utility left-fielder for the Boston Red Sox through the 1954 season. He played very briefly (four at bats) with the Baltimore Orioles, during the 1955 season, before going to left field for the Detroit Tigers in May where he was in the starting line-up for the first time. He would play the next eight seasons, through 1962, with the Tigers and it was during this tenure that he picked up his additional nicknames of “Ole Paw Paw,” “Sunday Punch,” “Sunday Charlie,” and “The Sunday Smasher.”

Living with my grandparents and attending the one-room Acorn School in 1955-1956, I became a Detroit fan almost by osmosis. Just about everyone in Michigan supported the Tigers back in those days. And besides, I had lived briefly off of Six Mile Road in Detroit when I was a wee tyke. It was a venerable charter American League franchise, one of eight major league teams, in 1901. Tiger Stadium, its home turf, was opened in 1912 and would host the team until its final season there, in 1999 (at that time tied with Fenway Park, which opened the same day, as the oldest major league ballpark). The Tigers would be the first team I ever rooted for and regardless of the intervening years and occasional shifting alliances as I moved around the country, the Tigers would always reside in a soft spot in my heart.

Smokey Maxwell and Al Kaline, known affectionately as “Mr. Tiger” after 21 seasons with the team when he retired in 1974, were my favorite players back then. They played left and right field respectively and were two of the most popular players on the team. Kaline was the star, leading the American League in batting average in 1955 while coming in second after Mickey Mantle in all the other batting statistics. But I was a little kid and statistics did not mean anything to me. Maxwell was my favorite because he came from Paw Paw and most of my relatives knew and grew up with him. That said, Maxwell had his best year in the majors in 1956. A power hitter, he came in third with a batting average of .326 (just behind Mantle and Ted Williams) and 28 home runs. He also made it to the All Star Team for the first time (a feat he would repeat in 1957). Unfortunately, the Tigers would end the season in fifth place both years.

We were living in Wisconsin in 1957 when the Milwaukee Braves won the National League pennant and went on to beat the Yankees in seven games in the World Series. I guess I am a fickle fan; I started to cheer for the Braves. But I never truly gave up on my first love - the Tigers. And Smokey Maxwell remained one of my favorite players. He went on to lead the American League in fielding percentages in 1957 and again in 1960 when he made only one error in each of those seasons.

I saw my first major league game in 1958 when my dad and I drove from Toledo, Ohio, where we were living at the time, up to Detroit Stadium (another iconic stadium lost to the wrecking ball just a year ago) to watch the Tigers play the New York Yankees. You know, I can’t remember who won that game, but I do remember Mantle and Whitey Ford hitting homers over Maxwell’s head and the distant left field fence. I only wish I could have been at the May 3, 1959 double-header between the Tigers and the Yankees (yes, it was a Sunday) when “Sunday Charlie” hit four consecutive home runs (one in the opener and three in the second game). That would have been sweet! He would go on to hit 31 dingers that year.

Maxwell was eventually traded to the rival Chicago White Sox in 1962 and played there for two seasons until his retirement in April 1964 at the age of 38. He played 14 seasons (1,133 games) in the majors with a career batting average of .264 with 148 home runs. Of these, 40 were hit on a Sunday hence his several nicknames. More importantly, 23 of his homers were against the Yankees!! He also chalked up a career 532 RBIs, 856 hits, and only 25 errors. Unfortunately, Maxwell never made it to the World Series although the Tigers came close a couple of times when he was playing for the team.

How are the Tigers faring this season? They are playing .500 ball and they are in the middle of the pack in the American League Central Division, behind the Minnesota Twins and the Chicago White Sox. Save a miracle they are out of contention again this year.

Even though Charlie “Smokey” Maxwell played with different teams during
his career, he settled in Paw Paw in 1952 and continued to call it home throughout his career. It was there that he returned after he retired, becoming a local businessman selling automotive parts. He still lives there today, at age 83, although he does spend his winters in Florida. Smokey Maxwell and his fellow players were not just the “boys of summer” playing ball on multi-million dollar contracts. He worked in a manufacturing job in Jackson, Michigan during the off season just to make ends meet. During the recent celebration in his hometown, Maxwell was asked why he played baseball. His answer was quite simple - “Because it was fun.” What more is there to say?

Living in the Past: Rediscovering "Retro Beers"

“Happy and I’m smiling, / walk a mile to drink your water. / You know I’d love no other, / and above you there’s no other.” These are the opening lyrics to “Living in the Past,” by Ian Anderson, which first appeared on Jethro Tull’s 1969 album “Stand Up" (it was also the title track for the 1972 double compilation album with the same title). This has been one of my favorite Tull tunes since I first became a fan of this seminal British blues/rock band back in 1969. Ian Anderson, lead singer, flautist and band factotum, turned 63 three days ago, and I have been humming this tune quite a bit lately as I sit by the lake.

Each summer I drive hundreds of miles between Maryland and Maine, a trip that brings with it the opportunity to drink the pure local water. This includes the proffering of Poland Spring, which is located just a few miles north of our cottage. There is also the growing variety of micro-brew beers produced throughout the state using this very same water as one of it their key ingredients. A few of these beers have found markets throughout New England, but they are few and far between once you get south of Boston. So, if I am spending my summers in Maine, and since scientists are now telling us that beer hydrates better than water (I am not making this up), I have taken these opportunities to drink the local stuff.

I figured this would be the case when we returned to Maine again this summer. I stopped by the local roadhouse on my first beer run and ended up passing over the micro-brews for a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon 16 ounce tall boys. It has now become my official “Beer of the Summer.” I like PBR, the “American Style Premium Lager” that I cut my beer drinking teeth on. I was living just outside of Milwaukee the year I reached legal drinking age, and the rest is history. A couple of years later I was back in Milwaukee for the summer and I worked a night shift. The group I worked with would often get off work at the end of the week and have breakfast at a local IHOP and then go downtown to the Pabst brewery for a tour and “brunch” in the tasting room. PBR was also our beer of choice when we went to see the Brewers play in the Old County Stadium. PBR and I go way back!

I am not setting any precedent here by choosing one of the old brand name beers. The first summer we spent in Maine back in 1988 I was drinking Narragansett out of the can. I had heard of this legendary New England beer yet I had never had the opportunity to drink it before. It was not bad and it got me through that first summer before I began to discover and sample the offerings of the local Maine breweries.

What goes around comes around. After years of drinking the micro-brews, perhaps it is time to return to the gold standard . . . even if the old names are a little tarnished these days. They are coming back slowly but surely. Over the past year I have begun to see PBR available in most stores, and more recently I am seeing it on tap in bars and even available in cans in some top shelf eating established around the country. And why not. PBR has a long and distinguished history. Founded in Milwaukee in 1844 (before Wisconsin gained statehood), it took the name of Pabst in 1889 at a time when other breweries were established in the city. During the Depression the company turned to other pursuits, including cheese production. It eventually fell on hard times, as did many other local breweries, and operations were moved to San Antonio. The venerable Milwaukee brewery we came to love was abandoned and fell into disrepair, and it was finally demolished in 2007. The company that brews PBR today owns the rights to the name and trademark, and regardless of what anybody says, I think it still tastes pretty damn good regardless of where it is brewed. Apparently I am not the only one who thinks so; PBR is très chic these days!

And not just PBR. Narragansett is also rising from the ashes (in southern New England, at least). Originally brewed in Cranston, Rhode Island beginning in 1890, a century later it moved its operations to Fort Wayne, Indiana until the company closed in 1981. The Cranston brewery was demolished in 1991. With new investors in Rhode Island, production resumed in 2005 and just last month it was named the official “Beer of the Clam.” I have found it in a few stores here in Maine and perhaps next summer it will be more widespread. One can only hope.

Beer drinkers know a good thing when they see (and taste) it. I have no complaints with micro-brews; there are a lot of good ones out there. But there is something special about popping a can of PBR on a warm summer day sitting here by the lake. I agree with Ian Anderson. “Oh we won’t give in, / let’s go living in the past.”

Frying the Cheese

If you have been reading these random notes for any time at all, you will know that I am a confirmed cheesehead. I have been one all of my life. Growing up in the upper Midwest, I guess I have come by this honestly. I will eat any cheese placed in front of me regardless of its appearance, fragrance/odor, or words of praise or caution. Suffice it to say, I have eaten a lot of cheese in my time, but until a few days ago I had never tasted Halloumi. In fact, I never even heard of it before SallyAnn and I came across it at the weekly farmers market here in New Gloucester, Maine.

One of the regular vendors, Townhouse Farm in Whitefield, Maine, offers a selection of locally-produced yogurts - “ewegurt” - made from sheep’s milk. But it was the smallish half rounds of Halloumi that caught my attention. How can it be that there is a cheese out there that I have never heard of or read about before, much less tasted? Of course, I had to buy some. A cheesehead worth his weight can not pass up the opportunity to sample a “new” cheese (actually it has been around for centuries). In response to our inquiry about it, we were told that we could fry or grill it. “Won’t it melt?” I asked picturing a mess of gooey cheese dripping through the grate of our grill. I was assured this would not happen. What a concept!

Being a historian I immediately looked into this new discovery. It turns out that Halloumi really has been around for centuries. A national delicacy of Cyprus (Greek = Χαλούμί Turkish = Hellim), it is traditionally made from unpasteurized sheep’s or goat’s milk (and sometime cow’s milk although it changes its consistency and grilling qualities). Traditional Halloumi is produced without the introduction of bacteria and it is a good source of protein and contains almost twice the amount of calcium of other cheeses while only 25% fat weight. It is normally stored in its brine or the whey extracted during processing (although the locally made Halloumi we purchased was not). It has very little water content and does not require aging, although it will produce a stronger and saltier taste. This all contributes to a much higher melting temperature than other cheeses making it ideal for grilling and frying. It turns to a nice golden brown on the outside with grill markings while the inside has the consistency of fresh curds and squeaks when you chew it. It can be chopped into croutons for salads or served with pita bread. It is also quite good with roasted peppers and olives (especially Greek olives). We fried it and served it over freshly sliced Heirloom tomatoes with a sprig of basil and drizzled with a light dressing.

Halloumi is not particularly cheap - it goes for around $15/pound - but it is a treat, keeps well in the refrigerator, and it is worth the extra you pay for a cheese made from sheep’s or goat’s milk. If it is good (and it looked oh so good), it is worth the gamble. A similar type of cheese is manufactured commercially in this country using cow’s milk and sold as “frying cheese,” yet it has a tendency to melt rather than soften. I would recommend the real thing!

Island Poetry

I recently spent a week on Monhegan Island. Measuring almost two miles in length and only 3/4 mile across at its widest (not quite six square miles), it is situated 12 miles off Midcoast Maine. It has a permanent population of approximately 75 hale and hearty souls while the summer population grows to around a thousand with the arrival of the rusticators, many of them artists of varying stripe, and day trippers. SallyAnn and I have been going out to the island for the past six or seven years, and it is something we look forward to each summer.

This year was no different. We took the boat from New Harbor, just above Pemaquid Point, and returned to our regular room on the third floor of the Monhegan House with its wonderful views of the lighthouse on the hill and the harbor with Muscongus Bay beyond. It was nice to see friendly and familiar faces from summers past, and the island had not changed noticeably since our last visit; that is one of the things we appreciate and count on.

The island has been a mecca for artists for over a century. An important art colony was established there circa 1890 and prominent artists of the day - Robert Henri, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, and others - began to visit the island regularly during the summer months. The English artist Samuel P.R. Triscott came in 1892, settled there permanently in 1902, and remained until his death in 1925 (he is buried in the small island cemetery below the lighthouse). Rockwell Kent arrived in 1905 and remained several years. The Wyeths also came to the island to paint and James Wyeth still maintains a home there. Subsequent generations of painters have continued to flock to the island - James Fitzgerald came in 1924 and resided there after 1942. The Russian painter A. J Bogdanov, Andrew Winter, Henry and Herbie Kallem, Reuben Tam, and others also came to the island to live and paint.

Today there is a thriving community of artists that maintain homes and studios across the island. The Monhegan Artist’s Residency program sustains others who wish to come to the island to work. The Lupine Gallery, near the island wharf, exhibits and markets the work of island artists and every summer the Monhegan Museum hangs work by noted artists past and present. Several artists also open their studios to the public.

Each time we visit Monhegan we have enjoyed wandering the island trails and the villages paths were we are constantly encountering artists hard at work at their easels and sketch books. Oils, watercolors, pastels, charcoal, pencil . . . just about ever media is represented. And then there are the photographers. This year SallyAnn came armed with her paints, pastels and her sketchbook, and while she was roaming the island in search of something to paint, I was contented to sit in the shade on the porch of the Monhegan House where I read and wrote.

I have never understood why Monhegan has long been a destination for artists yet it has never nurtured an organized community of writers. I would think that novelists, essayists and poets could appreciate and thrive in the same environment that has sustained a relatively large community of artists over the years. This is not to say that there are no writers there. Last year Matthew Keill, who has been a regular summer visitor to the island, published a novel entitled Monhegan Windows and it was for sale at various venues across the island. This year I also found copies in several bookstores throughout Maine. There are a very few poets who frequent the island, some of whom even count themselves among its permanent residents.

Jan Bailey, who is originally from the foothills of South Carolina, first came to Monhegan as a season visitor and now resides there year round and has for many years. She is the author of Paper Clothes (1995), Heart of the Other: Island Poems (1998), and her most recent collection, Midnight in the Guest Room (2004). Besides her writings, she has operated a store on the island and is presently the librarian.

Kate Cheney Chappell, a painter, printmaker and a seasonal island poet, envisioned and curated “Island Visions / Island Voices,” a joint artists-poets show at the Lupine Gallery in 2000-2001, and it then moved to the mainland and the Round Top Center for the Arts, in Damariscotta, Maine. Island Visions / Island Voices, a collection of poems, including those by Ms. Bailey and Ms. Chappell, was subsequently published by Stone Island Press (University of Maine at Machias) in 2001in conjunction with this exhibition. Ms. Chappell was also associated with the 2007 exhibition “On Island: Poetry on Monhegan,” sponsored by the University of New England, in Portland. It demonstrated that the island has had a strong, if not well-known, writing tradition which has included individuals like Rockwell Kent and Reuben Tam who are known for both their visual art as well as their poetry.

Whereas there are studios and galleries serving as an outlet for artists, the island’s literary events are few and far between. The island has it’s own public library housed in a small clapboard cottage located between the wharf and the island school, and it is here that the handful of literary events and workshops take place each summer. Besides that, this small and intimate library has a wonderful collection of books considering its size and constituency. There have also been readings by those published on “Monhegan Commons, an island website, and in 2003 Marjorie Mir edited and published Poet’s Cove: An Anthology, featuring poets who have appeared on the Common’s webpage.

Upon our arrival on the island this summer, I was hoping that there might be a similar literary event and so we stopped by the library on our walk from the wharf to the Monhegan House. A sign posted on the lawn outside the library announced an evening of poetry and I stopped to inquire about it. We were greeted by Jan Bailey who told us it was the first of two such programs planned as an opportunity to come and read a favorite poem, whether it be one of your own or one by a favorite poet. This year I came armed with some of my own work and so I looked forward to participating in this gathering.

That evening arrived, and after a long day exploring the island followed by a rustic seafood dinner en plein air along the island harbor, I walked over to the library. I could see and hear a storm approaching as I walked through the village. Ten of us showed up and we sat in a circle in the small reading room and took turns reading our own work and that of others. When it was my turn to read, I shared Donald Hall’s “To A Waterfowl” as well as some of my own poems. There was quite a selection of verse and I was able to meet and talk poetry with some very interesting people, both residents and visitors like myself. It was a very pleasant evening and the approaching storm lent some wonderful atmospherics to it all. Afterwards, I walked back through the village with one of the other participants, a young school teacher from Brooklyn who has been summering on the island with her family for as long as she can remember. The wind was blowing and the lightning and thunder were all about us. I like storms, especially out on the island, and this one will be particularly memorable! Luckily, the worst of it held off until I was back to the Monhegan House.

I hope that one day writers and poets will discover Monhegan and that it will be home to a thriving community contributing to the literature of the island. Its rocky shores and coves, its woods, it mighty headlands are the marrow of stories yet to be told, and poems not yet written.

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Thanks to my wife SallyAnn for allowing me to post two of her beautiful watercolors.

J’aime le Québec!

We are quite fortunate to be spending our summer months in the foothills of western Maine. Not only is the rocky coast of Maine just a short scenic drive to the east, but the mountains of western Maine and northern New Hampshire are a short hop up Route 26. And beyond that last height of land in the northern reaches of the Appalachian Range is the international boundary with Canada and la belle Province of Québec.

Crossing the border here, Montréal, Canada’s second largest metropolitan area, is only a two-hour drive through the rolling hills and farmlands of the Eastern Townships. The US-Canadian border is an arbitrary line drawn in 1842 and formalized by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. Here it follows the highlands separating the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Ocean watersheds. For several miles before the international boundary you find yourself driving through near pristine forests where one seldom encounters another vehicle. There are no houses, telephone lines, or a living soul. Then, as one crests that final ridge line two lonely customs stations - one American, one Canadian - come into view. Completing the border formalities, one continues down into the St. Lawrence Valley with its patchwork of dairy farms and green fields and pastures interspersed with a collection of small villages.

There is no doubt one is in a foreign country. Speed limits and distances are measured in kilometers. In fact, everything in Canada is metric, a system the country converted to in the 1970s. At first one might think this was northern New England, but the architecture is different in subtle ways; the houses and barns have their own design distinct from their counterparts in the United States. Above all, everything is in French. The signs are French, the people speak French. Québec is French, pure and simple. Unlike the rest of Canada, which has been officially bilingual since 1969, the only official language in the province since 1974 is French. It was designed to protect its French language and culture within the framework of the Canadian nation. Québec is also very Catholic; crosses and shrines are everywhere and every village, many named after one or another saint, has a church in a prominent location.

I first came to Québec in the summer of 1967. Canada was celebrating its centennial and we spent a few days in Toronto before continuing to Montréal to partake in the festivities at Expo 67. We stayed in a small motel in St-Jean, on the banks of the Richelieu River, south of the city. It was there I had a severe allergic reaction on a Sunday morning and I was forced to seek help at the local hospital. Nobody spoke English and I had to sit on a wooden bench in the emergency room while the hospital staff, all speaking French, ran around treating several local youths who ended up sliced and diced during a bar fight the previous evening. I sat there until a doctor who spoke English drove down from Montréal to examine me and to prescribe medication that took care of my problem in short order. This first visit to Québec was my earliest introduction to a truly foreign culture and foreign language environment. It was intriguing, to say the least.

So I have been coming back to Québec every chance I get. There is something about this place that continues to draw me to it, particularly the Eastern Townships that stretch east of Montréal along the international border with Vermont, New Hampshire, and northwestern Maine. I love to wander here and there and soak it all in. The markets and the grocery stores (even the small chain outlets in rural towns) are a treat to visit and explore. The charcuterie, the cheeses (I have already written about poutine, Québec’s “national” dish), varieties of terrines, the local vegetables are de rigeur here. At home such a variety would only be found in specialty or gourmet shops. I am reminded of the markets I use to frequent when I was a university student in Germany. It is fun to walk down the aisles and look at well-known brand name items in their French-language packaging. I used to read the boxes in Germany in order to increase my vocabulary. I improve my French in a similar manner.

Québec is a place where things are quite different from what I grew up with. Different values, different language, a different culture. And each time I come, I remember back to that first visit over four decades ago. Things have changed, but in many ways they have changed very little. Québec will always be a different kind of place. That is what I love about it. Je me souviens.

Still Looking Toward Portugal

I am sitting here at the cottage on Sabbathday Lake, in Maine. It is very early in the morning and the fog is gradually lifting off the mirror smooth surface. The coffee percolator pulses and clatters as it comes to life, filling the entire cottage with the pungent aroma of dark roasted beans. A daily morning tattoo with its inviting cadences.

We have been at the lake for just over two weeks now and I am starting to fall into the routine. We have been spending quite a bit of time here at the lake and I have been writing while Sally Ann is busy with her sketch work and exploring new possibilities with her watercolors and pastels. Frankly, I can’t think of a better place to write and paint. The solitude and quiet offered to us has taken hold of us. At the moment we can’t think of a place we would rather be.

This is not to say that we have not done a little exploring, and our wanderings have taken us up into the Great North Woods of northern New Hampshire and then into the Eastern Townships of Québec (more on that later). We have also been over to the coast in search of cheap lobsters and clams and to sit in the shade of the lighthouse at Pemaquid Point, to stare out at the ocean, to Monhegan Island shimmering on the horizon, and toward Portugal which lies somewhere beyond the earth’s curvature.

I am reminded of what I posted back on December 8, 2008 when this blog was just a couple of weeks old:

So what lies beyond? When I first discovered Maine and its coast in the late 1980s, I often stood on a rugged finger extending into the surf below the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse (the one depicted on the Maine state quarter). I also favored Ocean Point, a few miles to the southwest of Pemaquid on the southern extremity of the Boothbay Peninsula. Later I ventured farther Down East to Quoddy Head, and the most eastern point of land in the continental United States (and like Kerouac I am also drawn to the America’s Pacific shore, visiting Quoddy Head’s western counterpoint at Cape Flattery on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula). About five or six years ago I discovered the eastern headlands of Monhegan, a small island located 15 miles off the Maine coast which has long been immortalized in the paintings of the Wyeths (James Wyeth still has a home on Lobster Cove on the island’s southern exposure), Rockwell Kent (who originally built the Wyeth cottage), George Bellows, and so many others. Even today one cannot visit Monhegan’s headlands, coves, and shores without encountering artists discovering and interpreting the island’s landscapes and seascapes for themselves.

Soon we will be back on Monhegan Island where we can once again go to those coves and headlands and extend our search a bit farther beyond that horizon. Life does not end at our coastline. There is something more out there and we yearn to know what it is. So we keep going back, we keep looking.

The percolator has ceased its morning rhythms and the coffee is ready. My attention is refocusing on the day that lies ahead. We will enjoy the lake as we write and paint. Yet I can’t help but ponder the possibilities that lie ahead as we once again wander out to sea. Norman Maclean was right. “I am haunted by waters.”