You Are Now Leaving Piscataquis County
Aug. 25th, 2003 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksActually, I'm in Ohio, but I've spent the last week or so traveling around New England visiting family. My great-aunt Ruth somehow manages to live in the middle of nowhere in Rhode Island, a state with which I am impressed for its ability to summon up a middle of nowhere in that amount of area. She and my great-uncle have a hummingbird feeder outside their kitchen window, which attracts an enjoyable variety of juvenile and adolescent hummingbirds, ruby-throated and otherwise. I can't tell the kinds that aren't ruby-throated apart because they tend to be very similar except for markings on the wings, and who has ever actually gotten to see a hummingbird's wings without the aid of camera or tranquilizer darts?
My other great-aunt Ruth and her descendents and my great-aunt Jeanette and her husband John live in the middle of nowhere in Maine, which is much easier to do. (Yes, I have two great-aunt Ruths. Two great-aunts Ruth? At any rate, I assure you that any resemblance to the name of my beloved fiancee is purely coincidental and can be very frustrating...) I'm most fascinated by Jeanette's house, I think. It's somewhere between its hundred-fiftieth and two-hundredth birthdays, but we're not sure where, as the graveyard on the property indicates that the man who built it was born in 1810, which means that the house was probably built between 1830 and 1860. It wasn't the original structure on the property, of course, since the land grant goes back to pre-Revolutionary days, but it's the surviving one, and still reasonably livable though very uncomfortable. It's only been owned by my relatives for forty years or so, so relatives of the original owners of the land grant still drop by every so often to look in on it. It was my family who modernized the plumbing, mostly, and all that sort of thing. The state has put in a paved road nearby and issued it with an address instead of a postal code, but it's still pretty far out in the woods. So staying there is more of camping out than anything else, and continually swatting mosquitoes and wondering about the plasterwork, but there's no denying it's an interesting place to be, and I'm always fond of seeing my aunt and uncle.
On this trip, I determined that although I can eat one entire lobster with reasonable decorum and good table manners (for lobster), halfway through the second I begin to lag and lose physical coordination and I had only just washed my hair that morning, too. Maybe it was good for shine or something.
My Uncle John is Greek, by the way, so I asked him in what vicinity his relatives are as I know there are still a plenitude of them-- he is a Peloponnesian, from very close to Sparta; not near your neck of the woods, Earis, but he used to know people from Thessaloniki (mostly in Brooklyn when he was growing up). He also asked if I'd heard of a small island, just off the coast of Sparta, where Helen and Paris had stayed the first night while leaving the vicinity-- his mother's people have owned that forever, and I wish I could remember the name of it.
I shall be in Ohio until Saturday morning, and am therefore accessible again and will be reading LJ and such. Homasse, wish I could've gotten in touch with you over the weekend, but I have not been near computers.
Saturday it's off to yet another set of relatives and then back to the Mawr on Sunday, to which I greatly look forward. Happy school start.
My other great-aunt Ruth and her descendents and my great-aunt Jeanette and her husband John live in the middle of nowhere in Maine, which is much easier to do. (Yes, I have two great-aunt Ruths. Two great-aunts Ruth? At any rate, I assure you that any resemblance to the name of my beloved fiancee is purely coincidental and can be very frustrating...) I'm most fascinated by Jeanette's house, I think. It's somewhere between its hundred-fiftieth and two-hundredth birthdays, but we're not sure where, as the graveyard on the property indicates that the man who built it was born in 1810, which means that the house was probably built between 1830 and 1860. It wasn't the original structure on the property, of course, since the land grant goes back to pre-Revolutionary days, but it's the surviving one, and still reasonably livable though very uncomfortable. It's only been owned by my relatives for forty years or so, so relatives of the original owners of the land grant still drop by every so often to look in on it. It was my family who modernized the plumbing, mostly, and all that sort of thing. The state has put in a paved road nearby and issued it with an address instead of a postal code, but it's still pretty far out in the woods. So staying there is more of camping out than anything else, and continually swatting mosquitoes and wondering about the plasterwork, but there's no denying it's an interesting place to be, and I'm always fond of seeing my aunt and uncle.
On this trip, I determined that although I can eat one entire lobster with reasonable decorum and good table manners (for lobster), halfway through the second I begin to lag and lose physical coordination and I had only just washed my hair that morning, too. Maybe it was good for shine or something.
My Uncle John is Greek, by the way, so I asked him in what vicinity his relatives are as I know there are still a plenitude of them-- he is a Peloponnesian, from very close to Sparta; not near your neck of the woods, Earis, but he used to know people from Thessaloniki (mostly in Brooklyn when he was growing up). He also asked if I'd heard of a small island, just off the coast of Sparta, where Helen and Paris had stayed the first night while leaving the vicinity-- his mother's people have owned that forever, and I wish I could remember the name of it.
I shall be in Ohio until Saturday morning, and am therefore accessible again and will be reading LJ and such. Homasse, wish I could've gotten in touch with you over the weekend, but I have not been near computers.
Saturday it's off to yet another set of relatives and then back to the Mawr on Sunday, to which I greatly look forward. Happy school start.
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damn spartans
Date: 2003-08-25 08:18 pm (UTC)Just kidding.
Greeks are very tribal, more so than any other people I've ever experienced. And the funny thing is that they base their tribality on extremely ancient events. Every section of Greece knows that they are the best. The Cretans were the first. The Myceneans led in the Trojan War. The Athenians invented democracy. Sparta was a champion of woman's rights. The Macedonians conquered the world. And the Romans . . ., FUCK THE ROMANS!!!!!
Ahh, Greece. Talk about selective history. I love that country.