written and performed by Sassafras Stomp
produced by Jamie Oshima at Tiny Room Studio

Sassafras Stomp is a high-energy folk music duo with one foot in Maine and one foot in western Montana. Weaving together diverse fiddle traditions and evocative songwriting, fiddler Johanna Davis and guitarist Adam Nordell build a rich, dynamic traditional roots sound marked by driving foot percussion and sweet harmony vocals.

photo by Jonathan Ives

The Maine Coast Craft School Philosophy:

A useful, every-day item, such as a spoon, bowl or chair,
made by the hands of the person using it or by someone they love,
will bring enduring joy and meaning to ordinary tasks.

Handmade objects, even very simple ones, are ambassadors of inspiration,
artistic expression and resourcefulness in our consumerist culture.

We think there is something deep within us that longs to be using our hands to make beautiful things, and we believe that engaging this elemental “maker” in ourselves could bring about positive and tangible change in our world.

painting by Jessica Ives

+++

207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on a 4×4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.

Tuesday 207 Paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Jessica is editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

photo and text by Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors editor Polly Saltonstall

These are not ferns or any other low growing ground cover. Rather they are oak seedlings. The result of last year’s massive acorn drop. I read somewhere that oak trees plan this. They go a 4 or 5 years without producing many acorns, thereby starving out predators such as squirrels and chipmunks so that in the 5th or 6th year when the trees produce a bumper crop of acorns (the technical term is mast year), there are fewer animals around to eat them and hence more seeds have a chance to germinate. I’m curious to see how many of these seedlings actually take off. It’s truly an amazing sight.

from Maine Lingo: Boiled Owls, Billdads, & Wazzats by John Gould

RIVER: In Maine, dictionary definitions of river, brook, stream, etc., fall apart under the Fish & Game laws. Stream fishing closes on August 15, but rivers may be fished after that. The only way to tell a Maine river from a stream is to look in the book and see what-the-hell the Commissioner calls it. Some large streams close and some smaller rivers stay open. Otherwise, Maine usage permits considerable leeway with brook, stream, and river. Creek is seldom used. For the use of such terms to represent a region, see branch.

BRANCH: Used in Maine as elsewhere for that portion of a river before a confluence; the East Branch and the West Branch of the Penobscot River. But in Maine there is local meaning for a region drained, in terms of logging off. Loggers speak of the “West Branch” as an area as well as a stream. The term branch-water as a highball ingredient is seldom used by true Mainers; a man in the West Branch would more likely ask for a “small slop of sluice juice.” Try that after a couple of martinis!

SLUICE: The chute built into a lumbering country dam for spillage, but more particularly to float logs through. To sluice logs is to stand with a piracy and guide them so they won’t jam, and the term applies to the entire operation of moving a drive out of a lake into the stream below the dam. Many times the sluice is called a sluice-way. Thus when a woodsman says he gave somebody a sluicing’, he means he gave him a kind of conducted tour, no doubt to his improvement. And, if a Mainer asks you for a splash of “sluice juice” in his highball, give him plain water and leave out the ice.

painting by Jessica Ives

After Jordan Pond in Acadia, Pleasant Pond in Caratunk has the highest underwater visibility of any lake in Maine. Swimming in waters with 40 feet of clarity was our reward after a three hour pond-pilgrimage from Mid-coast Maine.

+++

207 Paintings post everyish Tuesday around 5:30am EST on both The Maine and jessicaleeives.com. Save thirty percent on a 4×4 inch oil on panel painting by making your purchase within the first week of its posting. Instead of $300 pay just $207, a number which just happens to be the Maine state area code.

Tuesday 207 Paintings are exclusive to The Maine. They depict the land, the light and the people that make this state a state of wonder. Jessica is editor of The Maine and writes occasionally as The Outsider.

Justin Timberlake cover by The Oshima Brothers
recorded, filmed, and edited by Jamie Oshima at Tiny Room Studio

Sean and I began singing this song fifteen minutes after JT posted it on Youtube and, much to the dismay of our parents, recorded it in the next room until 5:00 am. Sorry guys…

display by Jo Ellen Designs

It’s almost fall! Don’t be-leaf us? Ask the window display!