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Rural Washington County, Maine.
Cobscook Bay. Beautiful geological lenses of roiling water
gaze off to the east. "People of the Dawn."
The lenses of Cobscook peer out upon bold Fundy.
Digby lies sixty miles out across and the Gulf of Maine hangs,
a slack-jawed gaping maw with Cape Cod jutting out as the chin.
We are here. An international cluster of communities.
The Wabanaki whose home is Sipayik - This land their home
for as far back as the stories go and further.
Canadian and Yankee. The boundary markers zig and zag
reflecting the drunken bargain
which cast the squiggle amongst the archipelago of emerald islands
set like jewels in the swirling tumult of North Atlantic waters.

The Cobscook region's communities have in common:
their geographic home
the coastal fringe of boreal woodlands and a labyrinth
coastline of bays rich
in life and resource;
the night sky
dark and draped with the spangles of celestial light
a diminishing commodity
the night sky;
fog horn
sounding - rolling itself - the sound
up across the low skirts of land
across our homes - deep and resonant,
"Do I hear it or feel it?"
The sound rolls like the fog across the land - into the quiet
and settles into each chest;
safe harbors
people return
to the safety of this
place.
But also, the remote land is sparsely moneyed as well
There are the questions which travel with a resource-based economy:
"Will I make it?" "Is this all there is?"
And then the deeper hidden secrets
the hidden patterns which must be
screamed out to even be heard
as a whisper - victim, drunk, abuse
Who sets the bar? What can be
expected? Here?
Here the options are not many to count.
More youth dying unnecessarily per capita
car crash
frozen out on the beach
wet - drunkenly lost
one more wave washes up
and pulls away - what?
And so, this Cobscook Community
Learning Center, because people - we - can
identify what would
help.

Alan Furth 6/99

 

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