CW: This post mentions maternal and fetal mortality.

A visit to Hannah Treat, an offering from a recently transitioned porcupine. Hannah and her infant son, Albert Franklin died in 1865, possibly in childbirth, possibly in the house in the lavish house her husband, Franklin Treat, had just built. A year after Hannah and Albert’s deaths, Treat launched a schooner from Marsh Bay, named after himself. It showed up in ports across the world carrying lumber, fruit, and rubber.

Franklin eventually moved to Rhode Island, became a state legislator, and was buried in 1887 alongside his new family at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence. Hannah and Albert are buried in the hillside cemetery that overlooks Marsh Bay. Her grave features a lute with a broken string—signifying the end of her mortal life. I don’t know what happened to the schooner Franklin Treat but the house still sits at the corner of 1A and the Loggin Road in Frankfort, Maine, and is for sale for $79,900

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People ask me why Franklin Treat’s house, which I spent a year researching, remains unfinished. Why people keep purchasing it and failing to restore or rehabilitate it. I think of Hannah and the broken string. How one of the back rooms was once strewn with one-directional love letters. The Christmas parties in the parlor. Eels jumping in Arlene’s frying pan. The gambling. The arsonist. The leather belt. The woman who fell through the stairs. The mother who died on the day she was finally moving to a house that didn’t require a thousand cords of wood to keep it warm in the winter. The humans who extracted granite from the nearby mountains, the profit that returned to one of the families who lived in the house while the workers’ lungs filled with dust, eventually killing them. The troubles of that family, the troubles of all the families, who lived lavishly—or impoverished—within. Their love, their laughter, their grief, the questionable origins of the wealth that enabled such a home to be built in the first place.

When Dana Geel, the last owner (and my friend), was alive, he never permitted me on any floor but the first. His grand plans included hiring a local teenager to clean things up on the higher floors but due to his health and the way his brain worked, this never materialized. A few weeks ago, I ascended to the floors I’d written about but never seen along with the realtor, a TV reporter, and a camera person. They carried folders with them containing the story I wrote about Dana and the house.

“Do you know what the names of his cats were?” the realtor asked the TV reporter. “Win Some and Lose Some!”

”I know, I read that in the story!” the TV reporter said.

I exchanged a look with myself.1 It is strange to watch details that otherwise might have faded take on new life and meaning.

The home—so grand at one time that as one former owner and historian (Dan Harrison)2 noted, there was not a knot in the clapboards and not a streak in the white marble fireplaces—now features moss on the floor, mushrooms on the ceiling, the thick scent of wet plaster, and a literal elephant in every room.3

I stood at the landing on the third floor, facing the room where one former inhabitant swears she saw a ghost. I gripped the banister she and her friends used to slide down and imagined I was gripping the hands of all the humans I learned about through my research on this house. I wondered what Hannah’s favorite songs were, what we could sing for her.

New Work in the World

“Swimming Upstream”—my story about Passamaquoddy elver stewardship is in the October issue of Down East Magazine, which you can purchase here, at Hannaford, bookstores in Maine, etc., or, look for it online soon. Next month’s Substack will contain the back story, and maybe offer some additional perspectives from the folks who appear within.

Housekeeping

People must earn money in order to live, including myself.4 Here are four options:

1. We all move to a post-money system (by December would be great).
2. I take on some jobs (here are some of the things I can do but I am not opposed to physical labor/odd jobs). I’m more flexible in November/December and beyond.
3. Someone hands me a bag full of money which I promise to use responsibly and redistribute lavishly (while continuing to work on efforts that may not create financial gains but are still worthwhile).
4. I stop being self-employed, get a steady job, etc.

This is not a get-rich-quick situation (I don’t want to be rich at all) but if you hear of any opportunities/gigs/etc., please send them my way Thank you!

Currents

Ieva Jusionyte reading at Left Bank Books in Belfast on September 27, 6 p.m.

Left Bank Books invites the public to a free talk and book signing on Friday, September 27 at 6:00 pm by Brown University professor and author Ieva Jusionyte who has most recently written Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border. Her book examines how America’s guns have entangled the lives of people on both sides of the US-Mexico border in a vicious circle of violence.

I met Ieva through a workshop a few years ago with Kerri Arsenault (through MWPA) and am very excited that she is coming to read to us in Belfast.

The Love It Took to Leave You

Hearing this single from Colin Stetson’s new album a few months ago transported me to another place. Now, the whole album is here.

Movies

Thanks to being connected to Torchlight Media, I attended the Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) last weekend. I saw many great films and attended scintillating forums with filmmakers (and film participants). Here are a couple that stood out:

Yintah

Mistress Dispeller

Seeking Mavis Beacon

Books

Slippery Beast

When Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History, With Eels by Ellen Ruppel Shell came out last month I was precociously paranoid that its existence would replace this nascent idea for a book on eels that I am “working on”5 but now I have Shell’s book in my hands and can confirm that everything will be okay. Eels may need conservation but more books about eels may mean more eels, eventually. This would be a good thing.

All Fours

To everyone who has asked me over the past few months if I have read All Fours by Miranda July, the answer is now yes. Let’s discuss.

Question Everything by Brian Reed

Brian Reed had a problem. In the middle of making his second hit podcast, he got sued. Accused. Told the biggest story of his career wasn’t journalism at all.

Join a reporter on a quest to rethink everything he thought he knew about his profession, in hopes of making journalism better for all of us.

This podcast is swarming with the questions I think about a lot (ethics across genres/different forms of media, representation, criticism, feedback, storytelling, responsibility, narrative sovereignty, etc.).

Bangor Community Day

🎉 JOIN US SUNDAY 🎉 The Maine Coalition for Palestine is hosting a second community day!

Where: Bangor Waterfront
When: Sunday, September 29th from 1-4p.m.

The Maine Coalition for Palestine, along with our signed members, and Wabanaki and Sudanese community members, are hosting a second Community Day to dance, eat, listen, mobilize, and organize.

This event provides space to hold grief, to listen to our Palestinian, Sudanese, and Wabanaki community members, and to express joyful resistance.

Come stand in solidarity with collective liberation and bring the whole family!

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