Domestic ghosts

I've been doing another clean-out this week. This time I am in an old estate mansion kind of thing in Bar Harbor. The property is fairly small, with only a small lawn and a couple small gardens, but the view is breath-taking.

I spent a couple days cleaning out the cellar, disposing of scrap lumber and long-dead mice and even some very old, muddy lump coal. But Thursday I worked on the attic. The property owners are getting ready to sell the place and need to get some junk out. I borrowed Josh for the day and we headed up to the third floor of this place.

The third floor is where the staff - maids, actually, used to live. There are three rooms tucked in under the eaves, and each probably held anywhere from two to four girls. The ceilings are slanted at crazy angles because of the roof lines and each room only had a limited area where a person can stand upright. The views from the windows in these rooms were still pretty spectacular, although certainly not what the wealthier residents on the other two floors enjoyed.

As I swept out the rooms, I was struck by the feeling of what it must have been like to be a domestic servant in these rooms back in the day. It was common for girls to leave home at 13 or 14, or even 12 to work for the summer as domestic help. Many came from local farms, and some came from Canada. Some were immigrants, some were migrant workers who came for a season. We found what looked to be some kind of prayer card in one of the rooms. It said something in French about the heart of Jesus.

How difficult it must have been to be a young woman, a girl, still, in those days. A bell was mounted to the wall in the hallway. several wires ran from it, indicating that there were lots of places that a girl could be summoned from. What it must have been like to live in those tiny, cramped rooms, far from home, perhaps not speaking English very well, and at the mercy of the upper class who largely regarded the help as sub-human.

What those girls must have endured - 14 to 20 hour days of washing and scrubbing and waiting and fussing and ironing and serving, in starched, spotless uniforms, for very little pay and one afternoon off each week. They were often at the mercy of the whims of the male members of the household as well, expected to service their sexual needs by unspoken rule, only to be banished in shame from both employ and home family if they came up pregnant. The men, of course, suffered no recourse.

As I swept these rooms, I could almost hear whispers of their voices, laughing and giggling together, quietly muffling sobs alone.

So many Irish girls came over to work as domestic servants. So many women of my stock but of a different world came to work in those grand homes but to live in the stifling garrets.

How lucky I am that I can come into a house like that and charge my own rate, set my own terms, and leave when I choose. How blessed I am to have been born when I was and not 100 years earlier. It has been a thoughtful kind of week. I am glad to be who I am, where I am, now. I am most fortunate.

Sundays at home

I wish I could spend this Sunday at home puttering around. I've got stuff to do here, but I've got stuff to do out there, too. And they pay better than I do. Phoo. Up at a reasonable hour without benefit of alarm clock, it was raining steadily. I had hope. Hope for quality snuggle time with my sweetie. Hope for a day puttering in my basement workshop. Hope for a low-key kind of day.

But then the clouds started to break up and then they all blew away, leaving bright blue sky and copious sunshine in their wake. Damn. This means that I will have to mow the lawn, spread fertilizer stuff, and go jack and level three more cottages. Oh dear. And no Josh. Damn. Laura's a great help, but less willing and less able to get underneath the cottages and grub around with jacks and blocks and such. That means I'll be the only one under the cottages and she'll be hand me blocks and cement things. Damn. So much for a lazy Sunday.

We did have popovers for breakfast, which was nice, and we got to watch the local chickadee, goldfinch and hummingbird populations have their breakfasts outside out window, but now the birds all seem to have retreated to their nests to produce or sit on eggs until suppertime.

Delaying and stalling has pretty much run its course and now I must get to it. Perhaps we will fish this evening as a reward for a day's honest efforts.

Rick Charette hasn't a clue

Maine children's singer/songwriter and professional human muppet Rick Charette is said to have a song called "Mud" and I have heard from various sources that pre-schoolers in particular adore it.

After today, I can bet that Mr. Charette has never leveled a summer cottage or he would never have penned a joyous ode to wet dirt.

There is this summer cottage that is quite nice. It has two bedrooms and a one-room kitchen, dinette, living space. It also has a bathroom and a front porch. And a view of the bay. It is quite delightful.

But it was sagging. The roof line looked like a sway-backed old mule, and the floors inside pitched at odd angles. In fact, the floor squeaked and it looked like the floor was dropping away from the walls. Actually, that is exactly what it was doing. You can see how the trim ends nearly three-quarters of an inch above where the carpet begins.

It seems that the winter's heavy snow melted into the spring's heavy sog, which washed away or otherwise made unstable all of the underpinnings of this little cottage. There is a support beam that runs the length of the cabin, underneath. It is designed to keep the floor joists from sagging, and it is generally a very good idea. Only, it was not attached to anything. It was sitting haphazardly on some blocks under there, but was not touching the rafters above it. And the blocks that had been under it were scattered around, as though they had all shifted and fallen out at once. You can see from the picture that there is daylight visible above the big support beam. This is very bad.

So this local kid Josh I borrowed for a day climbed under there and spent four hours jacking and blocking and jacking and blocking and easing everything back where it is supposed to be. We raised that floor by a full five inches. It was more than a little creepy how far that thing went. By the time we crawled out of there, we looked like we'd been dragged behind a pulp truck through the wilds of Upper Somerset County. For a long while. What a mess we were. Here's a picture of Josh and me once everything was jacked and leveled and we made sure the doors all opened and shut.

And here is a picture of my clothes in a heap on the kitchen floor. I dared not bring them into the carpeted bedroom or the bathroom where I tend to step barefoot. They are being bagged for a segregated washer at the laundry place. Ewie.

I have to say I was impressed with young Josh. At 19, he still lives at home and helps care for an ailing parent. He does not drive, so I picked him up, and he was ready to go when I pulled into the drive. He worked his ass off all day, and never once complained. I had him toting cement blocks back and forth, schlepping lumber and blocking here and there, bottle jacks and tarps and tools every which way. I had him crawl around under the cottage with me, jacking here, leveling there, digging a hole (!) under the cottage so there would be room for the jack, essentially, if there was a nasty job, he got it. And he never, ever complained. Well, he whined a bit after spending three hours on his belly (and man bits) in the damp, cold, very rocky dirt beneath the cottage. Since some of my favorite parts are also located on my front, I sympathized.

When I am tempted to say bad things about "kids these days" I think I will try to remember Josh today. He worked hard, got dirty, and remained cheerful through it all. Jack it up, block it, let it down and do it again. Okay. And that's what we did. I told him at the end of the day that I'd be glad to work with him again, and he even expressed a similar opinion of me. What a good kid. Young man, actually. Whichever. A good person. And I am glad to know him. Not all "kids these days" are slackers and techno-dweebs. Some, at least one here on the island, are real people, unafraid of hard work, and able to remain cheerful even while filling his shorts with rocky mud.

A little less stress

My sweetie got a job yesterday - I am so proud of her! She has been much more diligent about a job search than I was when I was first out of work. Certainly having regular unemployment checks helped ease the stress for me, but then having both of us out of regular, steady work was really stressful. I've been working mostly steady for a couple of weeks now, to the point where I am beginning to feel like I might be able to make it in this venture. But then yesterday Laura landed a job and that helped a lot. I know there will be at least some money coming in on a fairly regular basis, even if it rains and I can't do what I had planned.

I don't think I really knew how much stress I had until it lifted yesterday. It's not all gone, certainly, but it's better than it was. And we might get to visit Nova Scotia for free. That would be so incredibly cool.

Yesterday I weeded and pruned and chopped and trimmed for a lady who doesn't know my regular rate, so she pays me what she can afford, which is substantially less. That's ok. Every now and then it is good to do a little discount work to help someone out.

As I was pruning the ornamental cranberry tree (??) in the front yard, removing all the dead branches and cutting back the ones that were causing trouble, a chickadee landed on a branch not four feet from my head and proceeded to dress me down in no uncertain terms. Chirp. Chirpety-chirpety chirp. CHIRP! I apparently was doing something of which he did not approve, and he was telling me just that. I could have reached out and touched him, I swear. It was remarkable. I could see his mouth open and this throat move around as he chirped his different notes at me. His tiny little feet were like little wires wrapped around the branch, and his beak was so small, about the size of a sunflower seed in the hull. But he made such big sounds, and such beautiful ones, so close to me. The notes were nearly overwhelming. It was awe-inspiring. Such power and music coming from such a little source. And such fearlessness to approach a human interloper and voice such a beautiful protest.

I eased up a bit on my trimming efforts.

faith

Having faith is touchy stuff.

Sometimes I can believe that the world is running according to some grand plan and that it all makes sense of a sort, and other times it seems like all is madness.

What is faith? Some would say that it is superstition, a belief in something that cannot be seen or touched or verified, whether the adherent has faith in a deity or a grand plan of sorts.

I guess I have faith in nature and its science. Stuff runs. The sun comes up and goes down, the stars dance their way across the heavens, and seeds somehow always know which way to send the roots and which way to send the leaves. And delightfully, this is all done without the consent or approval of humans. There is so much that happens in this world that we try to control. We dam rivers to control flooding, we try to straighten streams and we build sea walls to prevent erosion. Nature doesn't give a darn. The ocean will take what is hers, no matter how much work we put into keeping a particular patch of real estate dry. Rivers will wash away intrusions built too closely along their banks, although downtown Augusta seems to stand resolutely despite nature's efforts to cleanse herself. Up north this spring, the waters of the St. John Valley illustrated precisely what is meant by the term "flood plain." Will it teach people not to build there? Not likely.

I guess I have faith in stupidity as well as nature. The stupidity of humans. We build our shelters in utterly ridiculous places. Mountaintops, flood plains, fault lines, tornado zones. And then we get alarmed when mother nature comes in and puts the smack-down on our efforts. And the kicker here: We rebuild. Of course. Talk about nuts. Oh well. Stupidity, like gravity, seems to be universal.

I saw a marvelous thing last night. I was at a meeting where a guy celebrated 27 years without drinking. He's a great guy, and his wife and daughter were there to help him celebrate with lots of friends. Many of the people in the room had been in the recovery program for nearly as long as this guy, and I was struck by the simple faith of these folks. They do not necessarily believe that there is a white guy with a beard and a lightning bolt who will strike down bad people, but they all had faith of a sort.

They all trust in something they cannot see, they cannot touch, the cannot scientifically verify, to help them through their days. Some were Christian, but not all of them were. In fact, there were many in the room who would probably identify themselves as "unchurched." But they all had faith.

Sometimes, I wonder if my existence is so much fluff and noise. What great difference will my time on this earth make? What lasting impression will be made by my rental of this particular group of hydrocarbons? Is it all for naught? Is it all just an exercise in chemistry, a slow rearranging of atoms on the earth's surface?

I suppose I make an impact of sorts on the people and things around me. I have been told as much. But to what end? What purpose does this life, or any life, have in the grand scheme of things? A hundred years from now, will anyone remember me? Will they remember what I said or wrote or thought? Probably not. A thousand years from now? Certainly not.

So what makes us go on? Faith, maybe? Maybe. Against all reason, I have a feeling that what I do might be important to someone. Even if the only someone is me. I have to believe that there is a reason for all of this stuff we call life, for to stop believing in that would mean an end to any kind of purpose for living. I don't know what the reasons for me being here and now might be, but I can have faith that there is a reason and keep going.

Perhaps my reason for today is to weed a garden that belongs to an elderly woman who used to ride my bus. Maybe my work for her today is what is important. Ok. Maybe my purpose for today is to have lunch with a friend. That might be true as well. It is in my book, so it is in my plan for today. Tomorrow I will jack and level some cabins. It is the humble, necessary work that makes life work for others. That's what I seem to do. And I like it. I like knowing that I have eased people's path through the world, that I have made life more comfortable for them, even if they are unaware of my efforts.

Perhaps it is kindness that I have faith in. Maybe that is the whole reason for everything. I don't know.

Nature and science are a marvel to me. Grass is green, water flows downhill but is drunk up through roots and tendrils, and the most complex chemical processes take place in a leaf smaller than my littles fingernail. Whole ecosystems establish themselves and burn out of existence beneath the shelter of a mushroom cap. And I have nothing to say about it. Nature is amazing stuff. As humans, so are we a part of that nature. We're probably the only part of it that spends so much time thinking about our role in it, but never mind. We are a part of the grand complex thing that is the planet earth. There is much within our command, but far more beyond it. And that is good. It reminds us to be humble. A flood can change our world. Or an earthquake. Or a storm. And yet still we go on. Perhaps it is faith in ourselves, our own importance, that makes us do that. I wonder.

For today, I will weed a garden. I will luncheon with a friend. I will try to clean out the basement. And I will have faith that there is a purpose, that there is a divine order of some kind, and that I am neither in charge of it nor do I need to be.

The tide has turned

It seems more and more inevitable now that Barack Obama will get the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States. I never thought I would see in my lifetime a black candidate with a real chance at becoming president. I am at once thrilled and terrified.

I am thrilled that America has come so far. I remember growing up with a father who adored Archie Bunker. He missed the genius of the satire completely. Rob Reiner's brilliance was utterly beyond his grasp. He really believed that Archie Bunker was right. For all I know he still may.

And that is what terrifies me. We are pretty well insulated in our liberal little corner of the Northeast. A guy I know refers to Bar Harbor as being "behind the tofu curtain" for its dearth of hippes-turned-entrepreneurs. Free range organic flax seeds are available at the grocery store here. Yeah, it's kinda liberal compared to the rest of Hancock County, and quite liberal when compared to any number of rural counties in the midwest and the deep south. Now before all you southerners and midwesterners get your panties in a knot, please understand that I know that not all southerners are rednecks and not all midwesterners are nazi-sypathizing offspring of German immigrants. Let's just say that I know that not everybody in America is as cool and hip and progressive as we are here in the liberal northeast.

I worry what will happen to Obama. On the campaign trail, who will guard him? The same secret service guys who put a noose in the work area of a black colleague? What happens if he wins? Will he have to travel around in a bullet-proof bubble like the pope? How tragic for us if he does.

On the other hand, what happens if he does get elected? What kind of progress can be made with a new approach, a new mandate, a new way of doing things? There is so much to hope for, it is sometimes difficult for this lifelong Red Sox fan to deal with. I have become reluctant to hope. There is a part of me that looks at the last few years of Red Sox and New England Patriots' championships as a fluke. It's too good - it can't be real. It will be taken from us. We know what that is about.

Honestly, I am more comfortable sometimes working from an underdog position. It is familiar. The work is hard, but it is comfortable. I know it and I am good at it. Operating from a position of power or authority is foreign to me, I don't trust it.

So I worry about getting a big majority in both houses of Congress and capturing the White House at the same time. Good God. It might be too much. We'll screw it up. Just like the Rs did after '96. They came on strong, like the bullies they were, and kicked ass and took names. I fear that we might do the same after being back-benched for so long. That or we might just fart around and get all tangled up in our own importance and get nothing done. Like the Red Sox do (or did) and the Patriots (ditto there).

Tom Allen threw his support to Obama today. That was nice. I am getting more and more impressed with Tom Allen every day. For a straight white male lawyer from Portland, he is remarkably good on a variety of issues. Unspeakably dull to listen to, but dead-on when it comes to the issues. I must remember to donate to his campaign this week.

I must learn to feed my hopes and sooth my fears. In politics as in life. I must learn to put one foot on front of the other, to do the next right thing and to move forward, trusting that what I need will be there.

Cleaning Daze

We've been cleaning out a cellar this week. Hot, dirty, dusty, sweaty work. Bleah.

When we showed up, the cellar looked, as my grandmother would have so delicately put it, like a shithouse in distress.

There was the oddest assortment of stuff down there - things to do with camping and fishing and photography and ham radios and home brewing and woodworking and all kinds of stuff. And it all needed to come out of the cellar and be sorted for keeping or throwing. What a job.

After the first day, we learned that the foundation had been poured backwards, so that the bulkhead through which we had been schlepping crap all day was, in fact, on the wrong end of the house from the original plan. Hell, we could have told her it was on the wrong end of things. At least it was good to hear that it was not designed badly on purpose.

So then there was this desk. It was one of those old teachers desks that they cranked out in the 1960s, maybe. It was 5 feet long, maybe a little longer, and battleship gray. It has three drawers on the left side and a cabinet door on the right with a little metal slide-out platform. And a lap drawer. It was FILLED with radio parts and odd bits of wire and screws. Holy crap. I filled a 30-gallon trash can with what came out of that thing, lugged the can up and dumped its contents, came back down and discovered that the desk still weighed a ton. Shit.

Laura and I tried to get the thing up the steps on a four-wheeled hand truck, but that didn't work. I tried to lay it flat on some planks up the steps and push, and that didn't work any better. Finally, Laura got the idea to call a guy whom she used to work with to see if he could help. God bless this young man. Big, strong, 19 years old, still more enthusiasm than brains or sense. He was perfect. She went and fetched him from his house down the road and we had that desk humped up over those stairs and around the yard into the garage in about 15 minutes. What a guy. We gave him $20 and Laura brought him home again. He was a lifesaver.

Three days of steady work with two people, plus the kid we hired, made for a nice little job, however nasty it was at the beginning. Here's what it looked like when we were done.

And here's supper when we finished. That's a beautifully grilled rib-eye steak with two big slabs of bleu cheese on top. Oh, man. It was the perfect end to three days of miserably dirty, physical work. I think I am ready for a smart job again.