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Pilgrim’s Inn: Our home away from home

Published by DJB

You can tell a great deal about a lodging establishment by the quality of their Q-tips. More on why that matters in a moment

I started this post as a love letter to the Pilgrim’s Inn in Deer Isle, Maine, then I switched to describe it as a fan letter. Either works. In busy years (and 2016 has qualified), I spend close to 3 months out of each year in someplace other than home. It comes with the job. That experience was helpful as Candice and I looked for a place to stay in Maine for the last quarter of my sabbatical.

While at the American Academy in Rome over six weeks in March and April, Candice and I had a wonderful studio apartment in a historic building where we got accustomed to being in one room together for long stretches of time. We found that the studio apartment layout – with areas to sit and work, a table to gather around for conversation, and with windows to throw open and take in the fresh air – helped stimulate our personal interactions and my work. It was also nice to have two delicious meals a day provided, so that we could focus on other aspects of life.

The Maine part of the sabbatical was not as intense from a work standpoint, but I did want someplace that was relatively quiet, where I could read for hours on end in comfortable chairs, and where we had options for food and stimulating places to visit. Candice went online while in Rome and found just the place we were looking for: the Pilgrim’s Inn in Deer Isle, Maine. We booked the room that had the features we were looking for in a retreat and have enjoyed every day here over the past two weeks.

Greene Ziner Gallery — Artwork of Melissa Greene and Eric Ziner at Yellow Birch Farm

Deer Isle is not a tourist destination along the lines of Bar Harbor or Rockland. That was fine with us. We found hidden treasures, such as the Greene Ziner Gallery at Yellow Birch Farm, where potter Melissa Greene and blacksmith artist Eric Ziner hosted us for a farm dinner last Saturday evening.

Haystack Craft Center — Haystack Mountain School of Craft

Artists at Haystack — Artists at work at the Haystack Mountain School of Craft

We also took time to tour the beautiful campus of the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, a treasure listed on the National Register of Historic Places just a few minutes drive from the inn.

The combination of a stunning natural setting, a unique campus designed by award-winning architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, and the focused energy of the school community, provides an environment that supports a serious exploration of craft, ideas and imagination.

The Greene Ziner Gallery, Yellow Birch Farm, Haystack, Owl Furniture – these were all places that the welcoming innkeepers at Pilgrim’s Inn directed us to as we sought out unique places in our home away from home. Tina Oddleifson and Tony Lawless have owned Pilgrim’s Inn for 11 years, and they are the “perfect” innkeepers – willing to talk when you want to talk, quick to size up a guest’s interests and make just the right suggestion, and always willing to stop and give you their undivided attention even when they must have had a dozen things on their to-do list before noon. The staff was all just as eager to make our stay comfortable and unique. We got to know some of them and their stories while we were here. Amy – who was a visitor at Pilgrim’s Inn for 20 straight years and cried each year when they had to leave – now owns the oldest house on the Island with her architect husband and works at the Inn. Paige began busing tables at the restaurant when she was 14, and is wrapping up her 7th year before heading back for her senior year in college as a journalism major. Mena (short for Philomena) heads off to California for school in a few short days, Madison, Jody, and the others whose name we didn’t catch. Like Gabby, Alesandra, Gianpaolo, Pina, and the other folks at the American Academy – all worked together and in the most friendly way to support our time in their special piece of the world.

Room #9 at Pilgrim's Inn — View of our home away from home…Room # 9 on the third floor…at the Pilgrim’s Inn

Sitting area — View back toward the sitting area – amidst the treetops – in Room #9

Pilgrim’s Inn is a beautiful 1793 home listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We lingered over a sumptuous breakfast there every morning, and had dinner at the Whale’s Rib Tavern restaurant in the inn six nights during our stay. Up in room #9, as we sat in our rocking chairs and read while listening to music or the birds, we felt we were in a treehouse, given that the inn has two large front yard trees just outside our windows. On most nights we were able to open the windows and let the cool Maine air blow through the room as we slept.

And about those Q-tips. Many travelers know that you can tell a great deal about the quality of a lodging establishment with items such as the towels and sheets. But Q-tips are a particular point of reference for me. Many hotels and inns provide them, but they buy the skimpy type that have very little cotton on the ends. The quality places? They have plush Q-tips. I knew we were in for a good stay at the Pilgrim’s Inn the first time I opened the container on the shelf by the sink and saw those plush Q-tips poking up between the cotton balls. Ahh…a true home away from home.

Thanks Tina and Tony for the wonderful hospitality. You helped ensure that – despite the high bar set by Rome – the final two weeks of my sabbatical were just as restorative and unique as the first six.

More to come…

DJB

Dawdling

Published by DJB

E.B. White once wrote, “The curse of flight is speed. Or, rather, the curse of flight is that no opportunity exists for dawdling.”

I’ve been reading White as we’ve dawdled the past few days near his long-time Brooklin home in Maine, our feet very much on the ground (and water). The first dictionary definition of dawdle is “to waste time,” but then options such as “moving slowly and idly” are put forth, as is “languid” and “saunter.” I prefer the latter choices, as we’ve been dawdling, but definitely not wasting time.

Monday we sat outside the Pilgrim’s Inn, at water’s edge, and read for a couple of hours in the morning, enjoying a picture perfect Maine summer day. Then we sauntered (if you can do so by car) over for a late lunch at the Brooklin Inn. Our friends Tim Boggs and James Schwartz had invited us to their area home for an afternoon sail and dinner.

As we were walking out of the Inn, James and Tim drove by, stopped, and encouraged us to hop in for a short tour of area sites. First stop – the graves of Katherine and E.B. White.

White Graves — Graves of Katherine and E.B. White

We then drove by the White’s old house and farm, made famous in many a book and New Yorker essay, and had a quick wave from the current owners who are friends of our hosts. Afterwards we stopped back to pick up our car and browse through a wonderful book and gift store (where I picked up In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America’s Most Companionable of Writers) before heading to the summer home of our friends.

Candice in Wilbur — Candice with our hosts in “Wilbur”

Candice and I are not sailors, but after a quick house tour we headed out at low tide in “Wilbur” – the dinghy – and boarded the beautiful wooden boat “Red Head” that Tim and James have moored in the bay near their home. Over the next 90 minutes we dawdled while Tim and James worked. It was a delightful way to take in their environs on a day made for sailing. Along the way we enjoyed views of the lighthouse at the end of Herrick Bay, along with views of Blue Hill and Acadia National Park.

Red Head (photo courtesy of James Schwartz)

We returned as the tide was coming in for drinks, conversation, and a wonderful meal with our hosts. It was great to catch up with both of these friends. They have been colleagues, family friends, and much more to all four of the Browns, and the evening passed much too quickly. As the summer light was fading, however, Tim took us down to the water’s edge to see the remarkable sky at sunset.

Today we dawdled some more, with reading book-ended around a lunch-time trip to near-by Stonington. That gave me the chance to finish the In the Words of E.B. White book. A delightful read, and I’ll leave you with just a few thoughts from one of the 20th century masters of our language.

Never hurry and never worry! (Charlotte’s Web)
Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. (The Elements of Style)
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. (E.B. White: A Biography)
I discovered by test that fully ninety per cent of whatever was on my desk at any given moment were IN things. Only ten percent were OUT things – almost too few to warrant a special container. This, in general, must be true of other people’s lives too. It is the reason lives get so cluttered up – so many things (except money) filtering in, so few things (except strength) draining out. (One Man’s Meat)
I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else. (Letters of E.B. White)

I suspect you’ll see more of these in the future…but now I need to go and dawdle a bit.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Sunset in Maine by DJB

Observations from the Road (Or “The Deer Isle’s Locally Sourced Food and Music” Edition)

Published by DJB

With our fellow diners at the Yellow Birch Farm dinner on Deer Isle

During our first week on Deer Isle in Maine, we have jumped enthusiastically into the local food and music scene. Sometimes the outing was planned. At other times the opportunities were serendipitous. But isn’t that how we are to live?

This is one long “Observations from the road…” post, which could be titled “My, Maine has so much to offer in locally sourced food and music.”

Our first two encounters with food and live music were unplanned yet set the stage for our visit. Upon our arrival at Pilgrim’s Inn last Sunday evening, we saw someone carrying a guitar into his cabin. After meeting Richard Perlmutter and his wife Judy the next day and determining that he did – in fact – have a guitar with him, we agreed to meet up after dinner on Monday for an impromptu jam session.

Serendipitously, we found that the Whale’s Rib Tavern was open for dinner at the Inn on Monday (we had mistakenly thought it was closed both Sunday and Monday evenings), so we quickly booked a reservation and had the first of what has become a string of terrific offerings over this past week. I had the halibut, which was so wonderfully tasty, before we joined Richard and Judy in one of the cozy gathering places at the inn.

Fresh local seafood from the Whale’s Rib Tavern (photo credit: Pilgrim’s Inn)

Now, had I known that Richard has won multiple Grammy and national music awards, was the founder of the remarkably successful Beethoven’s Wig choral group, and has played professionally his entire career, I might have been less inclined to offer to sit down and play a few folk and popular tunes. But as far as I knew when we started, Richard was this very easygoing and friendly person who had a nice little parlor guitar and a Martin mandolin that he was carrying with him on a “tour that’s more vacation than tour.” To bring you up-to-date, here’s how Richard’s website describes his work:

Beethoven once said, “If my music had words it’d be a lot more popular.” His wish has come true! Modern day “co-writer” Richard Perlmutter has added lyrics to Beethoven (and Bach, Mozart, et. al) that have propelled the works of the old longhairs to the tops of the charts, and introduced them to new audiences everywhere.

Despite the fact that he’s forgotten more music than I’ve ever known, the four of us – joined about halfway through by a family visiting from Ireland – had a delightful time playing tunes and trying to remember lyrics. (Lesson #1: Always bring a fake book.) Over the course of our first 36 hours on the island, we had met the man who produced the first Nickel Creek album (when they were ten years old), played Irish tunes on the mandolin for a gentleman who loves to attend sessions back in Dublin, and had the first of several wonderful meals. What could be better?!

Deer Isle has limited restaurant offerings, but there are several that are very, very good. Whale’s Rib Tavern has never disappointed – for either breakfast or dinner – and we heartily recommend it for those visiting the Downeast section of Maine. Everything is locally sourced, and the menu offers just enough for everyone to find something appealing. We have discovered a number of favorites, but the Blue Hill rope raised mussels, roasted garlic cream, and fried leeks (especially those friend leeks) are extra tasty.

Mussels with fried leaks at the Whale’s Rib Tavern (photo credit: Pilgrim’s Inn)

Our second evening of combining exceptional food and music came about because Candice had spent time online to scope out things to do around the island. Stonington has both an excellent farm-to-table restaurant that overlooks the working waterfront and an active music venue across the street in the historic Opera House. But before we made it to either one on Friday – when we had reservations – we discovered a wine tasting at Water’s Edge Wines that helped jump-start the evening.

Living in the moment, we took the time to chat with the owners – Ken and Bette Kral – while sampling some excellent wines and cheeses. Along the way two ladies joined us at the shop and in the course of our conversation we found they – like us – were heading to Aragosta for an early dinner. Hillary and Yvonne had been classmates in a New England boarding school some 25-30 years earlier and were spending the weekend together to catch up and enjoy Deer Isle. Over the course of the next 24 hours we ran into them three times (it is a small island) and by the time they left to head home on Sunday we were sharing life stories and hugs in the parlor of the Pilgrim’s Inn.

Lobster ravioli, a signature dish at Aragosta, after I’ve taken a bite or two!

The daughter of a gardener and a chef, Aragosta’s Chef Devin Finigan grew up in the kitchen and the garden in nearby Vermont. The offerings at Aragosta are wonderful. Candice and I split a serving of Blue Hill Bay oysters, the signature lobster ravioli and the Old Ackley Farm duck (with house gnocchi, confit, blueberries, Morgan Bay Farm bok choy and green coriander). What a terrific meal, made all the more remarkable by the view out our window.

View of the Stonington harbot from Aragosta

But our Friday was not yet complete, as we had tickets to the Deer Isle Jazz Festival at the Stonington Opera House. The opening act was a terrific group of high school musicians from the George Stevens Academy. Then they were followed by Dafnis Prieto’s Si o Si Quartet. Oh. My. God. What a talented musician. What an incredible group.

Dafnis Prieto Si o Si Quartet (photo credit: Stonington Opera House)

Cuban-born drummer Dafnis Prieto has received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and numerous prestigious commissions and awards, all honoring the originality and craft of his work as a composer, bandleader, drummer and educator. Prieto has entered the top echelon of a new generation of artists blending Cuban and American traditions to achieve fresh aesthetic goals.

The Si o Si Quartet features longtime Prieto collaborators Manuel Valera on piano, keyboards, and melodica; Johannes Weidenmueller on Bass, and Peter Apfelbaum on tenor and soprano saxophones, bass melodica, and percussion. Si o Si is a thrillingly multifaceted ensemble, with an orchestral richness to match its rhythmic complexity and breathtaking energy.

I am not generally a “drum solo” fan…but I could have listened to and watched Prieto all night long. He was so musical, so full of energy, and yet so seemingly effortless in his playing. Valera stayed with him on the piano and filled out the quartet sound along with Weidenmuller. Apfelbaum’s sax work was terrific. I was – to put it simply – blown away to be hearing this level of music in a town of a few hundred people at best. We met a couple at the Pilgrim’s Inn the next morning – easily identified as a jazz fan by his Downbeat t-shirt – and it turns out they have been coming to the jazz festival for years. I just love these small summer festivals that draw such incredible musicians to such beautiful – and inspiring – places.

So Saturday rolls around and once again the serendipitous meets up with the planned. As we were pulling into the inn after lunch, I noticed a couple of guys under a tent with guitars in hand, and remembered that the community bulletin board had a notice about “bring your instrument and play” time on Saturday afternoon next to the post office. I joined Jim, Mike, and a third player who came later, and we worked through bluegrass and country music standards for about an hour. Jim was “practicing” for his regular gig at 7 a.m. in Stonington at the “Church of the Morning After” – a jam session with fishermen along the waterfront. He encouraged me to join them, but I noted that 7 a.m. services were for folks who didn’t really have a “Night Before” – and we had plans.

At virtually every restaurant on Deer Isle, we’ve seen local providers, such as 44 North Coffee (a wonderful coffee roaster right around the corner from the inn), and Yellow Birch Farm. These local providers are keeping the best chefs supplied with locally sourced food. And Saturday night we had plans to see those two things joined at a farm dinner at the Yellow Birch Farm.

We joined 13 other new friends (an amazing seven of us from the Washington area – including three who live in the Watergate, where my offices are located, a long-time National Trust supporter, and a couple who found rooms in local houses for the Si o Si Quartet and all the other performers at the Opera House). We began with cocktails, followed by a farm tour and a wonderful two hours of food and conversation. Held in the 19th-century barn that is the Greene Ziner Gallery, we were surrounded by beautiful artwork by farm owners and artists Missy Green and Eric Ziner and fortified with a fresh and well-prepared dinner. Halibut was the main course, but I was especially taken with the tomato tart and the blueberry (of course) dessert.

Dessert at the Yellow Birch Farm dinner

As we rolled out a bed this morning to attend church at St. Brendan the Navigator Episcopal Church (what a great choice of a saint for the Deer Isle community), we wondered what this week will bring. But we’ve already made new friends, heard new music, and tasted some of the best of the bounty of Maine.

More to come…

DJB

Acadia

Published by DJB

Thunder Hole at Acadia National Park

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service in 2016, Candice and I spent last Thursday at Acadia National Park in Maine – with thousands of our newest friends – to enjoy this magnificent landscape (and the first national park east of the Mississippi River).

On a beautiful summer day, the park was brimming with people taking every form of transportation imaginable to access a part of Mt. Desert Island. We enjoyed the loop ride, and stopped along the way to see treats such as the magnificent views at Thunder Hole. It was fun to see young couple skipping from rock to rock while grandparents pulled out their lawn chairs and sat in the shade just to watch the endlessly fascinating waves break against the shore.

Panoramic View of Thunder Hole

After a lunch in Seal Harbor, we headed up to Cadillac Mountain in the center of the park.

Cadillac Mountain, at 1,530 feet (466 meters), is the highest point along the North Atlantic seaboard and the first place to view sunrise in the United States from October 7 through March 6. It is one of over 20 mountains on Mount Desert Island (MDI), Maine that were pushed up by earth’s tectonic and volcanic forces millions of years ago. Were it not for the once enormous glaciers that sheared off their tops, they would be even higher than what we see today.

View of Frenchman Bay from Cadillac Mountain

View looking west from Cadillac Mountain

We also took the time to hike part of the 45 miles of carriage roads in the park. Acadia’s carriage roads…

…are the best example of broken-stone roads – a type of road commonly used at the turn of the 20th century – in America today. They are true roads, approximately 16 feet wide, constructed with methods that required much hand labor….

The gift of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and family, (the carriage roads) weave around the mountains and valleys of Acadia National Park. Rockefeller, a skilled horseman, wanted to travel on motor-free byways via horse and carriage into the heart of Mount Desert Island. (The construction) efforts from 1913 to 1940 resulted in roads with sweeping vistas and close-up views of the landscape.

Signage along the carriage roads in Acadia National Park

View from a carriage road

We had a wonderful day and were reminded – once again – of why our national parks are “America’s best idea!”

Candice and DJB at Acadia National Park

More to come…

DJB

Open your eyes and see what you can see with them…

Published by DJB

Now I understand.

For the past two years — and especially since my time last March and April at the American Academy in Rome — friends have enthused over Anthony Doerr‘s writing. My only experience was through his short memoir Four Seasons in Rome, which while an interesting read struck me as something he did because he had journals from his time at AAR and decided to make something of them. Not a terrible thing to do, but also not up to the level of the reviews of Doerr’s work I was hearing from friends.

Then over the first two weeks of August, I read All the Light We Cannot See. I’ll repeat myself. Now I understand.

What a lovely, rich, engrossing, and uplifting book. First of all, Doerr is a poet with words, but he has a scientist’s mind. This is as finely crafted a story as I’ve ever read, with the shifts in time and character all put together in an amazing sequence that pulls the reader forward with anticipation. I can easily see why it took him ten years to write All the Light We Cannot See. At the end I was sad there wasn’t more.

I won’t bore you here with the details…the book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2015, for goodness sake. Chances are you’ve read it. But if you haven’t, then take this advice from someone who doesn’t dive into fiction all that often: Read. This. Book.

Here’s the synopsis from Doerr’s website:

“Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks. When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris in June of 1940, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure’s.

Doerr’s gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of multiple characters, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.“

The synopsis of the story does not do this book justice. The language, the depth of characterization, the understanding of so many aspects that require detailed explanation, the keen tension that runs throughout…all are pivotal to this work.

A colleague of mine – Priya Chhaya – went to hear Doerr speak at the Arlington public library recently, and came away impressed by the power of words. She wrote about that topic on her personal blog, and I want to quote from her observations:

“Because of…current events I found Doerr’s presentation especially moving. He was charismatic and funny, serious and inspiring. He walked us through WWII Germany where cheap radios were used to prevent communication beyond its borders and citizens only heard propaganda giving them “enemies” to blame. There is no more real life evidence on the power of language and words than in the propaganda of the Third Reich.

However, the magic of Doerr’s book… is in finding hope through words despite their absence. In his story he uses radio waves (invisible, yet all around us) and brings together a blind girl in German occupied France and a member of Hitler’s army through storytelling. While fictional in form, Doerr is able to show the power of language when it is allowed to flow freely in all its forms – in Braille and through a hidden radio in an attic. In the talk he states that “literature is a gym for your empathy muscle,” and emphasized that the more you read the more you are taken beyond your own life and situation. Consequently embracing other visions, experiences and points of view living side by side with your own.“

I love the line “literature is a gym for your empathy muscle.” All the Light You Cannot See is a powerful book. As Marie Laure’s grandfather says in a lesson heard by Werner in his youth, that he remembers at the time of his most important decisions, “Open your eyes and see what you can see with them before they close forever.”

Highly recommended.

More to come…

DJB

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on…

Published by DJB

A dear friend from our days in Staunton passed away yesterday. Ted Jordan was much too young and vibrant, but an accident claimed his life and devastated both family and friends. A scholar, gifted writer, carpenter and general contractor, Ted would do anything for anyone. The 17 trips he took to Honduras to build schools and churches are but one example of the person he was. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Dana and his boys – Ben, Grayson, and Tim – and their families.

I was fortunate to see and talk with Ted for a good while when I was in the Shenandoah Valley last month for the Red Wing Roots Music Festival. He was at the festival with his granddaughter, Violet and his son, Ben. I told Candice that evening that it was such a treat to see how much joy Ted’s family brought him at this new stage in life.

There was a time where Ted and I played music together at least once a week for a decade or more. One of our favorite tunes was the old Shaker hymn Simple Gifts, which we played as an instrumental. I would finger-pick the melody and Ted flat-picked a lovely harmony line. To this day, when I play that tune I hear Ted’s guitar doing its thing.

Another of our favorite tunes was Wondrous Love, where Ted played guitar along with my mandolin. When we got to the final verse, we would sing it a capella. Ted commented on more than one occasion that I would close my eyes for that verse and let the sound wash over me. He was right. There was something about singing on after being freed from death that spoke to both of us at a very deep level.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be,
And through eternity, I’ll sing on.

Sing on dear friend. Rest in peace.

More to come…

DJB

New Collection of Essays Looks to Preservation’s Future

Published by DJB

Bending the Future: 50 Ideas for the Next 50 Years of Historic Preservation

(In a recent post on the National Trust’s Preservation Forum blog, I highlighted the recent publication of 50 essays with ideas for the next 50 years of preservation. I’ve excerpted portions of that post for More to Come…. You can read the entire post here. Full disclosure: I was one of the contributors.)

The 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA)—the cornerstone of preservation practice in the United States—has spurred conferences, articles, and celebrations throughout 2016. One of the most lasting and influential looks to the future to emerge from this year could well be a new work from the University of Massachusetts Press, Bending the Future: 50 Ideas for the Next 50 Years of Historic Preservation in the United States. Edited by Max Page and Marla R. Miller, professors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Bending the Future features visions of the next five decades from some of the nation’s leading preservation professionals, historians, scholars, activists, and journalists. The editors invited “provocations,” and they certainly received a few. But what is almost universal across these short essays are thoughtful and insightful examinations of the roots of preservation and of where those foundations can take us in the future.

There is more agreement among the authors than I would have expected. As the editors note in the well-conceived introduction, there is strong agreement that we need “once more to nourish preservation as a grassroots movement.”…California State Historic Preservation Officer Julianne Polanco sees intangible heritage as a key to this new focus. Na Li—who is at the forefront of efforts to establish public history in China—proposes a “culturally sensitive narrative approach” that “prioritizes oral history as a tool to understand neighborhood preservation values.” There is also a strong call for preservation to focus on helping make communities more economically vibrant and socially just. Gentrification and displacement are key issues for a number of contributors, including Suleiman Osman, an associate professor of American Studies at George Washington University, and Japonica Brown-Saracino, an associate professor of sociology at Boston University. Brown-Saracino’s call for preservationists to advocate for affordable housing and for longtime residents’ businesses and institutions is echoed by other writers in Bending the Future.

Because the contributions are arranged in alphabetical order by author name, it is pure luck that the book begins and ends with powerful essays that force us to think deeply about the underlying assumptions that are part of the legacy of the NHPA. Michael R. Allen’s opening essay, “What Historic Preservation Can Learn from Ferguson,” tackles the way we should remember and preserve sites of the very recent past—such as the place where Michael Brown was shot by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. When Allen notes that, “Preservationists may be the last people to acknowledge the historic associations embodied by unlikely landmarks, and that is to our shame,” he calls on all of us to recognize that sites such as these are where “real, unresolved, and difficult history unfolded.” Among the lessons Allen feels we should take from Ferguson is to “listen to and support communities that ask open questions about the future of sites, not walk away when communities choose preservation plans that do not fit our models.”

The final essay, “Put on Your Hipster Hat,” from University of New Mexico Professor of Cultural Landscape Studies Chris Wilson, calls on preservationists to become “conversant with the principles of urbanism” and look for ways to “reconcile them with preservation practices.” This is more difficult than it may seem, Wilson notes, because preservation orthodoxy calls on us to preserve the most significant buildings and districts of every era, including suburbia and mid-century modernism. Wilson asserts that, “Facing the contemporary challenges of sustainability, resilience, and global climate change, we can no longer simply preserve the most significant remainders of every era that has passed the fifty-year cutoff.”

Wilson’s assertions—and those of other contributors—are sometimes contradicted by other authors in the book. That’s fine, as the editors were not seeking a manifesto, but instead were challenging all of us to dig deep and challenge our assumptions as we look to the future. I would have liked to see more Native American voices and a few more practitioners sprinkled among the academicians….But by and large, there is a wideness and optimism to the thought in Bending the Future that bodes well for the next 50 years. Recommended.

More to come…

DJB

Guns, wedding gowns, cold beer

Published by DJB

While driving through Central Maine to reach our destination on the coast, we passed a convenience store on a small rural road that had a sign which read:

Guns
Wedding Gowns
Cold Beer

We were laughing too hard to stop and take a picture, so you’ll have to trust me on this one. Depending on the willingness of both sides to get married, these three things comprise almost all the essential ingredients needed for a (shotgun) wedding. Add a Justice of the Peace (or these days, an internet-approved minister) and you’re all set.

Seriously, we’ve had a wonderful introduction to Maine. On Saturday we stayed at a B&B in Littleton, Massachusetts, to split the drive in two (the Lyttleton Inn), and in the small world department it turns out that the innkeeper is the aunt of a former colleague at the National Trust. We savored the delicious breakfast and interesting conversation with Mary (the innkeeper) before hitting the road north.

The second day’s drive was uneventful (just what you want) and we reached our destination – the Pilgrim’s Inn – by mid-afternoon. The building dates from 1793 and first served as an inn in the early 20th century. The current configuration as The Pilgrim’s Inn dates from 1977, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

As we were leaving our inn on Deer Isle last evening to head to dinner, we met a classical guitar player and his wife who are on a “more vacation than tour” tour. After talking guitars briefly, he said, “I’ll play anything…maybe we can get together.” Finally, at dinner last evening in Stonington, we stuck up a conversation with a couple while waiting for a table. It turns out he’s a retired Episcopal bishop from Texas and we were able to make all sorts of connections. As the evening ended he and his wife invited us to join them later in our visit to see E.B. White’s home. Candice – the former elementary school teacher – was all in. We already had plans to see other friends who have a home nearby while on Deer Isle, so our connections have tripled in the first night in Maine.

Nice folks here in Maine – even with the guns and wedding gowns. We’re looking forward to a rewarding and relaxing two weeks. (With thanks to Andrew and Claire for holding down the fort at the old home place.)

Pilgrim's Inn View — View from the deck at The Pilgrim’s Inn

More to come…

DJB

Image: Pilgrim’s Inn at Deer Isle, Maine, in the late afternoon light

National memory and the forgotten First Emancipator

Published by DJB

The story of Virginian Robert Carter III and the emancipation of 450 enslaved individuals shortly after the founding of the United States is one of the forgotten stories of American history. However, in our current period of political unrest — much of it centered on racism and questions around who owns the American story — this is an appropriate time to look at how this act of emancipation, and similar acts that took place throughout the South before the Civil War, were buried and forgotten.

Thankfully, Andrew Levy’s complex and largely satisfying book The First Emancipator: Slavery, Religion, and the Quiet Revolution of Robert Carter brought this story the attention it deserves. Levy claims — powerfully and in a way that challenges our core national narrative — that Carter “did something that transcends our ability to listen to our own past.”

A recent tour of the National Trust Historic Site Oatlands outside Leesburg, Virginia, with several senior staff led to a discussion of the story of slavery at the plantation. Robert Carter III was the grandson of Robert “King” Carter — one of the wealthiest men in colonial America — as well as the father of George Carter, the founder of Oatlands. As one tours the house, a portrait of Robert Carter III hangs on the wall, with a copy of Levy’s book on a table below. The guide then explains Carter’s amazing story, and it was all I could do not to walk out immediately and run to the gift shop to buy my own copy. I had it in hand, however, before leaving.

As told in Levy’s work, Robert Carter primarily watched the American Revolution from the sidelines from his home on the Northern Neck. However, over the course of some 15 years, Carter went through a religious transformation. Levy does a wonderful job of showing how Carter began this religious epiphany as an Anglican, then as a Baptist, and finally as a member of the Swedenborgian sect. The book showcases the fact that the earliest Baptists in the South were freedom-loving outsiders who pushed against the establishment. (Very different from the dominant Southern Baptist Convention of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries in the South.)

This religious transformation led Robert Carter III to file a “Deed of Gift” in 1791 in Northumberland County, Virginia, for the gradual manumission of his slaves, according to the laws at that time which permitted owners to free their slaves as long as certain conditions were met. Carter’s Deed of Gift is believed to be the largest private emancipation in American history.

Levy tells this story in great detail, and it is worth reading. However, the most powerful pages in the 200-page work come at the very end.

In his review of Levy’s book, historian Adam Goodheart takes Thomas Jefferson to task, as does Levy in his work. Jefferson famously wrote of slavery, “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” However, Carter’s action – and similar emancipations by other well-known figures such as Edward Coles, and Richard Randolph (Jefferson’s cousin) as well as hundreds of property owners forgotten to history – shows that Jefferson was really not looking for an answer to the question of what happens once the slaves are freed.

Especially given the age we find ourselves in now, I want to quote extensively from the last two pages of Levy’s book.

“The possibility exists, of course, that we are the most equitable generation of Americans that have ever existed, and that we have grown comfortable with the ambivalent telling of American history because it is the only fair version. But we ought to consider the possibility that we are the shapers of history now, and that we have made for ourselves the only Jefferson and the only Washington that seem at home amid the struggling and contradictory progress toward racial equality of the last generation – an age that, like the Revolutionary epoch, was thick with political voices who knew how to say exactly what is right on matters of race but lacked the will to implement any motion that might be perceived as extreme. It is a sorry tribute we make to Jefferson, Washington, and the other founders that we continue to insist that they were larger than life so that we can blame implicitly our own confusion and ambivalence on the heroic power of their legacy of confusion and ambivalence….

It is infuriating in the early twenty-first century to consider this alternate history, in which Robert Carter is the founding father of the only American Revolution we truly lost. It is even more infuriating, however, to consider that we have been unable to find a single use for Robert Carter.”

Goodheart’s review picks it up here.

“..Levy ponders his subject’s near-total disappearance from the American consciousness. Unlike Jefferson, Carter ‘does not soothe us, excuse us or help us explain ourselves,’ Levy writes. ‘But what is most incriminating is that he does not even interest us, because that forces us to consider whether there now exist similar men and women, whose plain solutions to our national problems we find similarly boring, and whom we gladly ignore in exchange for the livelier fantasy of our heroic ambivalence.'”

A powerful read in troubling times.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Oatlands (photo credit: Virginia Dept. of Historic Resources)

Think before you speak. Read before you think

Published by DJB

Author Fran Lebowitz once wrote, “Think before you speak. Read before you think.”

I’ve been thinking about reading recently, because I will be out of the office as I complete the final two weeks of my sabbatical and link that with some personal days off.

I have the opinion that summer reading lists should be light, but that may simply be an excuse to read another baseball book. Since this time is tied to my sabbatical, I’m going a bit more serious this August and I thought I’d share a few of the books which will be on night stand.

(Regular readers can expect “mini reviews” in the coming weeks.)

Bending the Future: 50 Ideas for the Next 50 Years of Historic Preservation in the United States (Edited by Max Page and Marla R. Miller) – This brand new work from the University of Massachusetts Press contains a wonderful introductory essay and then 50 short contributions from practitioners, academicians, journalists, community activists and more.

I’m looking forward to digging into this work as one more way of scanning the current thinking about preservation’s future. (Full disclosure: NTHP colleagues Stephanie Meeks, Tom Mayes, and Susan West Montgomery joined me as contributors to this book.)

Tabula Plena: Forms of Urban Preservation (Edited by Bryony Roberts) – I met Bryony at the American Academy in Rome during the first part of my sabbatical, as she was the Rome Prize winner for 2016 in Historic Preservation. In this new work from Lars Müller Publishers, Bryony and a group of authors consider – in contrast to tabula rosa urbanism – “the possibilities of tabula plena – urban sites that are full of existing buildings, systems, and activities that have accumulated over time….The transformation of existing buildings conserves resources while opening up possibilities for design through collaborative authorship and interlocking architectural forms.” Her shop talk at the AAR on this work certainly whetted my appetite for this book.

After listening to my brown bag lunch talk at work about my time at the American Academy, a colleague – who is currently on her own sabbatical in her native Croatia – sent me a copy of The Other Venice: Secrets of the City by Predrag Matvejević, a “writer of the world.” I’m very much looking forward to seeing this wonderful city through different eyes. And finally, another colleague loaned me one of her copies of Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (her “hands-down favorite book”) after reading one of my regular Monday email musings to our staff. She thought I would enjoy this work on uniting the knowledge of the sciences with the humanities. I have a few other books to consider as well, such as All the Light We Cannot See (by Rome Prize winner Anthony Doerr – see a pattern here?). It promises to be a stimulating August in many ways. Perhaps you’ll find something that piques your interest. I would like to know what books you’ve found worth reading this summer.

And by the way, Fran Lebowitz also said, “In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.” Whether true or not, I find that a comforting thought.

More to come…

DJB

Image: Beach reading by Claire Brown

MORE TO COME…

Encounters, discoveries, and observations from the slow lane of life.

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Think before you speak. Read before you think