aln a Maine Manner of Speaking

aIn a Maine Manner of Speaking

Guest Writer: Ken Fellows

Maine Porch Railing Ken Fellows

                                                              Tourist: “How far is it to Portland?”

                                          Maine Farmer: “The way you’re headed, about 30,000 miles …

                                                             with some stretches of pretty bad wheelin’.

     Years ago, when we moved to our home in Kittery, Maine, I was charmed by local speech … words like “Sat’day” for Saturday and “barse-ackwards” for reversed, and colloquialisms (“go’in over town,” “right as rain”). I was also smitten by our new neighbors’ comments, often cryptic, wry, and ironic. But it was the short, off-kilter conversations I found most beguiling. 

    My first encounter with local brevity came while building an addition to our Kittery house. A muscular, middle-aged Mainer, perspiring and frustrated, was trying to back a huge cement truck along the narrow edge of a new foundation. A stunted, bushy tree next to his truck was another vexing obstacle.

Assuming I could help, I shouted up to him: “I don’t care much about that tree.” The driver whipped around and glared down at me from the truck’s cab. Clearly annoyed, he deadpanned: “Neetha’ do I.” Reflecting on that brief exchange, I marveled at how that Maine truck driver, in just three little words, had expressed his extreme contempt for my help, established me as an irritating interloper, and effectively curtailed any further distractions from the gallery. Our future relationship had been established.

     A graying lobsterman, Henry M., lived in a house backing onto ours. He was an extreme example of Maine reticence. He was a thin, spry man, polite but taciturn. He often left products of his fishing on our doorstep but never knocked on our door or ventured to stop in when we were obviously at home.

He waved from his yard but rarely spoke. I suspect he wanted to be neighborly but was inhibited by our being “from away” and perhaps embarrassed by our age and background differences. He was probably a treasure trove of Maine lingo and local stories, but his shyness kept me from gathering any samples.

     A 60-year-old lobsterman, Bud S., lived next door. Over many years, our relationship was quiet and distant, yet never unfriendly. We met occasionally on our adjoining creekfront lots, he repairing his lobster boat while I fussed over a dock with a landing float I was building. I was always impressed by his reticent speech and calm demeanor bordering on indifference. He never initiated a conversation, and his responses to questions were mumbled and abbreviated. Yet I found his persona intriguing and amusing … a quintessential Maine character. His bearing always put me in an uncharacteristic calm. 

      Having returned to Kittery after a long winter, I was devastated on a sunny April day to discover the floating-raft section of my new dock was gone. I assumed it had washed down tidal Chauncey Creek and out to sea during the winter's high tides. Bud happened to be there, painting his boat for the next fishing season at the waterside. His back to me, he remained thoroughly engaged in his work and characteristically mute as I loudly voiced my anger and frustration. For at least 10 minutes of my uninterrupted, distraught whining about my loss and the expense of building another raft, Bud concentrated on his painting, nodded once or twice, but never turned around. Exhausted and deflated, I finally turned to leave. 

Without expression, in his usual laconic tone, Bud muttered: “Well, you could build anotha’ one, I suppose (pause …), but my cousin down the cri’ck saw your raft floating by some weeks ago and hauled it up on his beach (pause) … I could help haul it back whenever you like.” And so another Mainer had let a ‘new-be’ stew awhile before generously offering needed information and help.

     Maine lingo – it’s often reluctant, on target, exasperating, and amusing, all in the same mumbled breath. It slows city folk down, lowers their voices, and encourages their consideration and reflection. It makes them more accepting and much easier to deal with.

Ken Fellows

Joanna. . https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Parker Palmer: How Trees Save Our Lives

Parker Palmer: Trees

“I used to take trees for granted. But these days, I know that spending time in their presence leaves me refreshed and renewed. I wonder if trees photosynthesize the soul as well as sunlight?”

But most of all, I’m drawn to trees because of something W. S. Merwin says in this lovely poem—the way they slowly and quietly cycle through the seasons, as though nothing had happened while our individual and collective lives whirl madly around them. This is Parker Palmer’s response to W. S. Merwin’s poem “Elegy for a Walnut Tree,” published in the weekly column “On Being with Krista Tippett” (5/3/2017).

I want to remember what Parker Palmer tells us about the outdoors, especially trees. Could “trees photosynthesize the soul”? Being outside with trees does something to my soul. Photosynthesis is a process plants use to convert light energy into chemical energy (sugar from carbon dioxide and water), which is later used to fuel the plants’ activities, and it releases oxygen as a waste product. Plants are like transformers, changing one form of energy into another, turning light energy into chemical energy. 

Being outside in a forest transforms and quiets my soul. Soon, the busyness of my mind, the committee in my head, and my to-do list no longer rule me. I am grounded in the earth. I move out of my mind and into my body. I see a world greater than myself, a power at work beyond my limits. 

As I return to the forest, I observe how the trees quietly “cycle through the seasons.” The trees are a permanent icon, reminding us to be the “steady bow,” as the parent Khalil Gibran writes in The Prophet. We are indeed all parents caring for this earth, which in turn also parents us and cares for us.

My father was a forester who, for so many Saturdays, took people out to plant more trees. Often, we would drive by the pine forest to see how the trees were growing. This produced changes in my synapses, so I always had difficulty seeing a tree cut down.

This poem is significant to me today because two large trees in my neighbor’s yard, just outside my window, were uprooted last year. Soon, men with chainsaws took the trees away. I still grieve their absence. 

It helps to remember that our son and his wife had to cut down a dying tree near where they were building a house. They honored the tree by using its wood to make a mantel for their fireplace. Our daughter holds an advanced degree in forestry and returned to Arkansas after teaching at the Wilderness Institute at the University of Montana. I have hope for the future.

Donna Kay sent me this picture of trees that were meaningful to her.

Trees were nature’s healers for all those who spent more time outdoors during the past pandemic.

Elegy for a Walnut Tree

by W. S. Merwin

Old friend now there is no one alive
who remembers when you were young
it was high summer when I first saw you
in the blaze of day most of my life ago
with the dry grass whispering in your shade
and already you had lived through wars
and echoes of wars around your silence
through days of parting and seasons of absence
with the house emptying as the years went their way
until it was home to bats and swallows
and still when spring climbed toward summer
you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers
of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened
you and the seasons spoke the same language
and all these years I have looked through your limbs
to the river below and the roofs and the night
and you were the way I saw the world

"Elegy for a Walnut Tree" by W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning. © Copper Canyon Press, 2014. Reprinted with permission.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com

Living the Paradoxes of Life

Living Paradox

University of Arkansas graduates 2025

“The great paradox of life is that those who lose their lives will gain them. If we cling to our friends, we may lose them, but when we are non-possessive in our relationships, we will make many friends. When fame is what we seek and desire, it often vanishes as soon as we acquire it.”—Henri Nouwen, “April 30” in Bread for the Journey (HarperOne, 1997).

Nouwen again opens us to an authentic truth: that we live and work with paradox, holding tensions. One of the best books I read during my work as a physician was John R. O’Neil’s The Paradox of Success: When Winning at Work Means Losing at Life. It is subtitled A Book of Renewal for Leaders. O’Neil explains how our excessive pride as leaders, combined with the seductive perks of power, can become addictive. At some point, wielding power itself becomes more important than its goal. 

Power and the need to control our fate can take over and, at times, become the end rather than the means. The paradox of success is the promise of renewal, as we can step back, especially in a retreat, and see where we have gotten into trouble. There are obstacles to stepping back, such as our drive for perfection, which can turn our path into a prison. Often, we let our clocks tell us what we should be doing, especially as we drive toward the dead end of a substantial paycheck. 

O’Neil believes that any time spent away from our usual productive round of activities is renewing, as long as it is time spent pursuing wisdom. Renewing activities can include exercising, watching birds at my window, being in nature, listening to music, playing the harp, being quiet, writing, talking and connecting with friends, visiting the sick, and some form of daily retreat, usually involving writing. 

O’Neil encourages us to heal by pursuing a different situation, one where we do not run the show and focus on relationships rather than goals or end results. Our difficulties stem from the very traits that make us winners. We will find unmined gold in dark places, initially hidden from us.

The book includes a graph about success. We work hard to reach the top as we master our profession. However, we only stay at the top briefly, since there is always someone else, or many, who will soon surpass us. O’Neil suggests that we pause to assess our situation as we approach the peak of a pursuit and consider starting over in a new career. 

That can keep us humble, as we are back on a learning curve where we do not have all the answers. Then, as we approach the top of that career or undertaking, he suggests that we observe and again consider starting all over. As Benedictines might say, “Always we begin again.”

My summer reading again includes David Brooks’ The Second Mountain. I think Brooks is uncovering some of the same principles about life. For so many of us, our time during the pandemic was a period of discernment—learning to live with the paradoxes in our lives. 

Richard Rohr recently reminded us in his blog that our call is to hold the tension, not necessarily to find a resolution or closure to the paradox. We must agree to live without resolution, at least for a while. He believes that being open to this holding pattern is the very essence of faith.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com  https://www.joannaseibert.com/