Day: November 16, 2016

Winter is Coming…

fullsizeoutput_5b83

11/16/2016

Even if it seems that nature might have gotten her signals crossed winter is inevitable. The oil fuel truck backed up our driveway this morning and made a delivery. Yesterday the guys we hire to plow the driveway pounded in the wooden posts that will guide them if and when the snow arrives.
“If” is of course a wishful if but the fact is that it’s been warm enough this fall that I’ve heard people use the words “the new normal” a bunch. I have an elevation app that has determined that our house is less than 90 feet above sea level. Being a golfer I like to describe our location as the distance tee to green of a par four from the ocean. For those who don’t golf that’s about 400 yards to the Camden harbor.

I’ve thought of having a plaque made with the current elevation of 10 Kims Way and the date I’d commissioned it so that those who might inhabit our house after us have a marker and a means of comparison, especially if things change. According to a University of Maine study from 2015 the length of what’s called “the warm season” has increased in our state by two weeks in the past 100 years and is predicted to increase by two more weeks in less than 50 years from now. That’s good for golfers I guess but not so good probably for much else.

A few years ago I had dinner with Graham Shimmield who is the head of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences here in Maine. If anyone would have insight into how sea levels might change, I figured he would but I was also a bit puzzled. I had just attended a talk by Shimmield at our local library and he had shown pictures of the stunning new campus Bigelow Laboratory had recently built in East Boothbay.

The buildings were on a cliff and I’d guess maybe not that much lower than the elevation of my house above the ocean. So, I asked Shimmield if he felt confident about the future of the site Bigelow had chosen to do its research.

“I figure we have at least 100 years,” he said.

Between the Rocks and a Very Hard Place…

fullsizeoutput_5bca

11/15/2016

I have walked the Rockland Breakwater at least a couple dozen times since moving to Maine six years ago. The Breakwater is just what its name connotes so sometimes there are whitecaps on its ocean facing side while the waters on the harbor side barely ripple.

The Rockland Breakwater took almost a decade to build and was completed in 1900. It extends over 4,000 feet and is about 40 feet wide. 700,000 tons of granite were used in its construction at a cost at the time of $750,000. Needless to say, adjusted for inflation over a century later, it was a big deal. 

When I walked the Breakwater for the first time I was tipped off by my wife to look for something special and I guess I got an even bigger hint because I found it. With all the thousands of pieces of granite along its entire length there is only one slab in one place that spans all 40 feet of the Breakwater’s width.

Once you’ve found this singular rock, you can always find it but my guess is that a majority of the people who traverse the Breakwater don’t even know it’s there. Sometimes on my walks when I’ve encountered a family I’ve challenged kids to discover it.

There’s a lighthouse at the far tip of the Rockland Breakwater and although the setting is magnificent, for me the building itself does not have the majesty of its neighboring lighthouses like Owls Head, Pemaquid and Marshall.

Walking the Rockland Breakwater isn’t dangerous but it requires lowering your gaze as you step from one rock to another to avoid a misstep. Taking in the view of the distant Camden Hills requires a full stop.

I took this picture on my walk yesterday. Can you find the magic rock?

Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency followed closely by the death of Leonard Cohen has turned a line in one of the poet/songwriter’s pieces into a wistful message: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

One can only hope…

The Day After…

fullsizeoutput_4e1a11/9/2016

A reminder– It certainly doesn’t feel like it right now but those of us who oppose what Donald Trump has espoused and represents are still the actual majority in this country. Yes, it may not be by as much as we thought but it is still the case.

When I lived in California I learned about wildfires and something called a controlled burn which was exactly what it sounds like– a fire started intentionally to either fight a larger fire or to prevent a more catastrophic fire from happening at all by burning an area in advance with fire crews present to make sure things don’t get out of control.

The Republicans have been doing controlled burns for generations now. Think Willie Horton. But what they never expected was that an arsonist like Donald Trump would come along and they’d have a conflagration that would threaten to burn down even their own homes.

Those of us who are watching this fire right now have to make sure it won’t spread any further. We need to work together to put it out.

There are certainly enough of us. We need to support the best of us who run for school boards and local office, state legislatures and Congress.

Most of all we need to speak up for what we believe in. No matter the legitimate grievances of those of us who elected Donald Trump there are more of us who are disgusted and outraged by his character and his beliefs.

And yes, there are still more of us than them.