Franco-American talk

At the Westbrook Historical Society’s May 3 meeting, about 50 members and guests enjoyed the talk given by Leah Cote Robbins, executive director of the Franco-American Women’s Institute. President Rob Smith opened the meeting with reports given by Secretary Suzan Norton and Treasurer Nancy Curran. Officers to be voted on at the June meeting are President Donna Conley, Vice-President Suzan Norton, Secretary Evelyn Meserve, Treasurer Nancy Curran, and directors: one-year term, Ellie Saunders; two-year term, A. L. Waite; three-year term Mike Sanphy and four-year term, Jim Burill.

Diane Turgeon Dyer and Theresa Carrier heard Leah Robbins speak on Franco-Americans at USM and Diane asked if she could speak to the Westbrook Historical Society. A writer and college teacher, she is an excellent speaker (no notes). She told us of her childhood in Waterville. Her family spoke French, but she said at the age of five, she always answered her family in English. At the age of 16, she was told by some of her classmates that she spoke with an accent. She had an older brother who was in college in Boston, so she decided to try to talk in that Boston accent, too.

People here in Maine with a French heritage have played an important role in our state. I know that there were several in the audience with French backgrounds. We know that the French here in Westbrook have contributed greatly to this community.

At the refreshment hour, after the meeting, I was pleased to have Robert Carrier, former state senator, and his wife Theresa, speak to me. We enjoyed their daughter, Michelle, who was a reporter for our American Journal when we were located at 820 Main St. She and her family live in the Boston area, but she comes back to Westbrook for visits. He mentioned that he reads the Ramblings column.

I also spoke with Shirley Lowell, who said she wants to hike the Capisic Pond Trail, when the lupines are in bloom. I’ll keep her posted.

The society’s election of officers will take place June 6.

Photographic exhibit on campus

“In Black & White & Color”, a photographic exhibit by Denise Froehlich and Murad Sayen, opened May 4 at the University of New England Westbrook College Campus Art Gallery, and will run through July 2.

The announcement card telling about the exhibit said: “Two remarkable Maine photographers, completely different in their styles, offer collections of their photographs that represent bodies of work from different periods in each of their lives. Denise Froehlich’s black and white silver square format prints, split sepia toned, are autobiographical, pictorial in nature and poetic all at once. Murad Sayen’s specially digitally printed color photographs capture the daily environments of rural people and emphasize his love of the myriad ways light defines and enhances our surroundings. Each photographer has a special relationship with light and a deep connection to nature.”

Among the pictures I especially enjoyed was “Sayen’s Abandoned Farm, in Buckfield, Maine.” It was in color, with snow on the ground, around the brick house. His comment was that he drove by it often, and on a November day, the light was just right. The barn roof had fallen in. He wrote, “In American life, farmhouses are evaporating before our eyes.”

He also had a picture with the sun sinking behind the Mahoosuc Mountains, in New Hampshire. That delighted me, as my Blanchard family had owned much of that land and on to Old Speck Mountain.

Also “Shaker Interior” showed an upstairs room in the Sabbath Day Lake Shaker community. Sayen wrote “The richness and yet the utter simplicity seemed to capture the essence of the entire community and the history of the Shakers, dating back to 18th century England.”

Sayen also had many color photographs of boxcars, showing graffiti drawings.

Denise Froehlich’s large photo of silverware laid out on a tablecloth was lovely, as was her picture of three turkeys standing on granite steps, outside a closed door. The birds were in front and also in back of an ornate urn filled with plantings.

I shall visit the gallery again, so enjoyable was the variety of the many photographs.

I was pleased to see Florence Day and her friend Priscilla Barnes, both of whom are from Westbrook. Also Sally McKibben spoke to me, as I was leaving the gallery. She told me that her son, who was our paperboy years ago, is now a teacher in a private school in Lake Tahoe, Calif. I had visited there when Louise Hall and I were visiting her son Dan, when he lived in Reno, Nev. It was a beautiful drive up to Tahoe.

RECIPE

Today’s recipe is from “Giving Good Food” by Deborah Navas, 1984. She writes, under “snacks.” “Here are recipes so tasty that no one will mind that they are nutritious. Friends whose hobby is hiking, cross-country skiing, mountaineering, or other strenuous sport will welcome a snack jar.”

ALMOND CRUNCH GRANOLA

2 cups corn flakes

1 cup slivered almonds

1/2 cup maple syrup

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients together and spread on buttered cookie sheet. Bake at 325 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Cool and fill half-pint jars with screw-on tops. Cover. Makes three jars.

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