Three of my kids and I were driving down I-95 on our way to Shrewsbury, Mass., to visit my mother, their grandmother, whom they called Mummu, a reflection of her Finnish heritage. As we crossed the Piscataqua River bridge and saw the sign welcoming us to New Hampshire, the level of excitement rose. We were […]

I turned onto the River Road, near the Boothbay Play House. My good friend Dick spent summers there back in the ’50s looking for a career in acting. River Road parallels the Damariscotta River, narrow, hilly, winding but without a view of the river. Access roads lead down to expensive homes, Dodge Point Preserve offers […]

Between my junior and senior year of college, I spent a summer in Vienna. Before leaving, I promised my grandfather that I’d visit his birthplace in the Netherlands. My grandpa had immigrated from there as an contract worker. Little did I know when I made that promise that it was to be a hot Sunday […]

“We have the same policy as Grandma,” my 26-year old son says to me from his home in Denver, Colorado, where he lives with his wife. “You’re welcome any time.” He grew up hearing that from his Grandma, my mom, who lives in the San Fernando Valley in southern California, my home from age 6 […]

As I was making my way north from a conference, across from the Delaware River I happened upon something “hidden in plain sight.” How I missed this before, I can only speculate. Anyway, at the Conference, in 2016 in Dover, Delaware, we United Methodists had celebrated the bicentennial of the African Methodist Episcopal [AME] church. […]

One cool and sunny spring morning, Captain Elliot asked me for help to sail his old 30 foot wooden power cruiser out of Blue Hill Bay to its summer home, at a mooring in Bucks Harbor. The trip of about 20 sea miles up Eggemoggin Reach should have taken only a couple of hours so […]

My daughter was one of those kids who said she was never going to leave home. Though she’d gone to college in Colorado and worked summers on dude ranches, Maine was home. She was born here, raised in a sturdy ship captain’s house at Porters Landing. That graceful home, with its wavy glass windows and […]