This content is protected against AI scraping.
Two chaps, Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettigrove, tossed a coin to decide on the name for Portland, Oregon. Being decidedly uninspired but obviously wanting to leave a funny story to history, they each wanted to name the place the same as their home towns (Portland, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts) and settled it by tossing a coin. Pettigrove won.
While this is a delightful story, given their perfect surnames, they could easily have named it either Pettigrove or Lovejoy, Oregon. That would have been much more fun.
How Portland, Maine was named is a little more prosaic. It was named after the Isle of Portland in England. Which was a bit presumptuous given it had already been named Machigonne by the original inhabitants. Boston, of course, was named after Boston in Lincolnshire.
It may be wondered why I’m talking about the naming of American cities and, to be fair, I am a bit surprised myself. After all, I was originally going to write about the grader that stripped the natural growth either side of the forest path on the way to the ICA followed by getting a wave from Oskar and a delightful photograph of a slug eating a mushroom.
Actually, I heard the grader and saw it’s flashing light, on Tuesday as I returned from the shops. I wondered what it was doing given I couldn’t see the machine for the trees. Not liking how people seem to depend on big, noisy, rough as guts machines, I would have preferred it to have been accomplished by a person with a scythe. Like Jonas.
Still, what can you do? People, it seems, prefer the rough to the smooth and making as much noise as possible while accomplishing a job with more regard for speed than pride in their work.
But, getting away from the natural environment, I was delighted to get a wave from Oskar this morning. Oskar is Louise’s…I’m not sure what to call him. Maybe, her beau? He doesn’t want the relationship to be announced to all and sundry so, anyone who lives in Trosa should ignore what I just wrote.
I have only met him once, out on our road when we were trying to find Emma one night, so I was not surprised when he didn’t wave the last time I saw his van pass me. Today, however, he did wave. To which I obviously responded with a wave of my stick.
As it turned out, my shopping could have been a lot smaller given we had a delightful, mid afternoon invitation from Nicoline for dinner. I was quite glad to, among other things, present her with a jar of my apple and tomato chutney, made with her apples.
Last year, I made it with her apples and Victor and Ebba’s tomatoes but this year the tomatoes had to come from the ICA given they left Trosa following last year’s harvest. Victor and Ebba, that is. The tomatoes were in the chutney.
But, that’s a bit irrelevant because, rather than the baked endives with ham I was going to make, we had a delicious, fish packed, fish soup prepared by Nicoline. And, just as delightful, we met Maggie and Chuck.
Maggie is an amazing colour expert and Chuck, who has trains in his basement, is her husband. They have just completed a European trip, visiting various friends and cities while Maggie spoke at a colour conference in Florence.
The reason Nicoline really wanted Mirinda to meet Maggie was because of her (Maggie’s) volunteer work with AmeriCorps, back in the day. We’d never heard of it, and it sounds amazing. Dessert Wednesdays was high on the agenda of pleasure as it aimed to bring together their neighbourhood and is still going strong, two decades later.
However, there was a lot more ‘discussion’ about the American right to bear arms (personally I prefer the term ‘right to bare arms’). The discussion, for want of a better word, became quite the conversation about civil liberty versus civil safety. It turned out that Maggie (and Chuck) believe strongly in the Constitution and, therefore, this right, being enshrined in it, also passed muster.
Though, and this is very important, they do not own weapons and would never own them.
Anyway, we all parted friends and, hopefully, will see them again, the next time they visit Sweden.
And I will make the baked endives with ham on Saturday,
Also ‘and’, here’s the slug eating the mushroom.
Oh, and one more ‘and’. Nicoline gave us all an assignment (or homework if you prefer) but this post has gone on long enough. Perhaps I will include my thoughts on that tomorrow.
