Winter
July 16, 2015 § Leave a comment
Winter at Old Mill Pond Road
(Photograph by Martha Andrews Donovan)
Aphorism #9
Do not confuse silence as an absence of sentience.
(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”
Aphorism #7
January 7, 2015 § Leave a comment
Pott’s Point, Casco Bay, Maine
(Photograph by Martha Andrews Donovan)
Aphorism #7
Carry yourself across the beach of blue mussel shells, further than the ledges overlooking the sea, beyond, even, the survey marker — that bedrock-embedded, sea-worn sign that beckons you to cross boundaries.
Aphorism #6
December 31, 2014 § Leave a comment
(Photograph by Martha Andrews Donovan)
Aphorism #6
Don’t overlook the benefit of regeneration.
Aside: Research indicates that the Asian shore crab, which first mysteriously appeared on the Atlantic coast in 1988, is co-existing quite nicely with native species in its rocky intertidal home.
“Are Invasives Bad? Not Always, Say Brown Researchers”
Aphorism #5
December 18, 2014 § Leave a comment
![Headline announcing the Biological Survey [of the Panama Canal Zone], The Washington Post, April 9, 1911 located at: http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/expeditions/Panama.html](https://madonovan.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/wapo-panama-headline.jpg)
Article
Holiday postcardSent from Gatun Canal Zone, Dec. 13, 1911
Purchased at Concord Antique Gallery, Concord,
New Hampshire, c. Dec. 13, 2014
Dec. 13, 1911
Dear Ones – How we would love to be home at this Xmas time, but the best we can do is wish you all a “Merry Xmas” & Happy New Year across miles.
Florence & Herbert
Aphorism #5
What we discover is often what we least expect to find.
Aphorism #4
November 24, 2014 § Leave a comment
Aphorism #4
Shoal or Shola: The only way through is through.
Credits:
Potts Harbor, Casco Bay: “Chart image courtesy of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), used in accordance with their terms of permitted use. Altered and redistributed charts such as this should not be relied on for navigational purposes.”
NOAA Charts
Terms of Service
[I have swum many times across the shoals to Pinkham’s Island.]
Eighty-Mile Round: Kodaikanal and areas of the “Eighty-Mile Round” – Dindigul, India Topographic Map (compiled in 1954, printed in 1959). U.S. Army Map Service, Corps of Engineers. Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin.
[My mother Beatrice Florence Witter and grandfather Ted Volney Witter hiked the “Eighty-Mile Round” in 1939, before my mother left India for the last time in 1940. My mother noted in her Yale Review reminiscence that they “established a speed record through a leech shola.”]
Aphorism #3
October 9, 2014 § Leave a comment
(Photograph by Martha Andrews Donovan)
Aphorism #3
In the striking of hammer and chisel against stone lies all possibilities.
Then
August 22, 2014 § 2 Comments
(Martha Andrews Donovan)
THEN
I believed in the firmness of the sky, the comfort of eleven-year-old skin, the hedges I refused to carry. And when the first horse I ever rode balked at the dead sheep that bled in my path, I held fast and did not let go. I saw a girl tremble with sunstroke as she was lifted in her chair and placed in a tub of ice, but I did not wish to be carried off to some stiller place and because I was young I believed I could choose it to be so. I asked a boy from France to dance with me, a boy who was shorter than I and who I could barely understand, except when he put his arms around my waist and I could feel his pulse beating beneath his skin. I rolled over in my kayak just to see what it felt like, over and over, and felt the longing in my lungs – a longing so simple I had to find my way to the surface.
Aphorism #2
August 4, 2014 § 1 Comment
(Photograph by Martha Andrews Donovan)
Aphorism #2
Remember (re-member) the skin, the bones, the once-pulsing life: breathe, breathe.
Martha Andrews Donovan: One Writer's Excavation 