For Me
January 16, 2016 § 2 Comments
Jesup Path, Great Meadow Loop, Acadia National Park,
Mt. Desert Island, Maine
Uncertainty is my new home. I am beginning to love this new home. I am beginning to see the light and the shadows that fall on this earth in the most surprising of ways — the grasses that dance for me.
(Found) Aphorism #8
January 28, 2015 § Leave a comment
Sitting on the front porch of “Pott’s Pub”
Hurricane Ridge
South Harpswell, Maine
Summer 1966
Aside: The strong winds last night took me in my dreams back to Hurricane Ridge….
(Found) Aphorism #8
artifice does not improve upon nature
— John C. Donovan, Harpswell Notes, Summer 1980
The complete entry from JCD:
“Still another gorgeous Sunday morning and once again with that almost August-autumn touch in the air and again last night, one of those totally clear but moonless ones, the winds from the west rocked this ancient cottage. The winds took their toll. Last weekend the strong gust not only shook the shanty to its foundation, but also, sad to say, blew away the nest our little friend had built on the front porch. I rescued it twice, the second time with the help of Frank and Ruth, and at Bea’s suggestion even Scotch-taped the poor residue to the rafters. Unfortunately, artifice does not improve upon nature, and so our little friends no longer visit with us. I wonder if they engage in contingency planning so as to have a back-up nest elsewhere?”
Click on the link below to read my reminiscence of growing up on the coast of Maine (which found a home some years ago in Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, April/May 2006):
Birches
January 10, 2015 § Leave a comment
Mt. Desert Island, Maine
(Photograph by Martha Andrews Donovan)
…. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
— Robert Frost, “Birches”
Contributor Spotlight – Hayden’s Ferry Review, June 12, 2102
August 28, 2013 § Leave a comment
Contributor Spotlight – Hayden’s Ferry Review, June 13, 2102
Three generations of Witter women, no longer living, press themselves upon me; like children of the forest, these women appear to me in my waking and in my dreaming, these strangers whose lives were shaped and defined a long time ago in a distant land. I have lived with them for so long now that I feel I know them well – their desires, their despairs, their rich and complicated lives….
Click on the link above to read my reflections on “Dangerous Archaeology: A Daughter’s Search for her Mother (and Others) – a memoir in fragments” – a hybrid image/text essay done in collaboration with photographer Autumn E. Monsees and published in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Spring/Summer 2012 (Issue 50). This essay was named to the “Notable Essays” section of The Best American Essays 2013.
Martha Andrews Donovan: One Writer's Excavation 