MSI Press Blog

Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir,  In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver Blueberry Hill Farm Blueberry Hill Farm sat just up the hill from our family farm in Acton—walking distance, if you were local, maybe half a mile or so. The entrance was a long dirt road that wound its way along the hilltop, eventually opening onto wide, sun-drenched fields of domestic blueberry bushes, their rows neat and generous. It was a commercial farm back then, owned by the Robinson family, a kind and upright clan whose patriarch had done more good in his lifetime than most people ever hear about. I liked working for him. He encouraged me. And he especially liked my sister—she was a natural, one of the best blueberry pickers around. As kids, we started with pea picking, the domain of the younger crowd, ages five to fourteen. But once we hit our teens, we graduated to blueberries, which required more finesse. You had to know how ...

Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir,  In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver Talking Mainiac Beyond just the Acadian influence, as in the use of fir balsam to refer to balsam fir trees, the Maine dialect can be difficult to understand for people “from away” (outsiders). Once I left Maine and started living and working in other parts of the USA, it took years and even some speech therapy, before I could blend in ways that did not mark me like the time I was helping out with collecting demographic information in Florida and had difficulty communicating with one of the residents. “Where do you come from?” he asked. “I am American,” I responded. “So am I,” he said, “but I did not just get off the boat.” My clarification that I grew up in Maine did nothing to dissuade him from his conviction that I really was a foreigner and had no business asking him any questions. The Maine dialect can sound like a different...

  Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication from the forthcoming memoir,  In with the East: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver Fir Balsam If I had to name the scent of my childhood, other than lilac, it would be fir balsam. Not pine, not spruce—fir. The real thing. The one with flat, needled branches that broke off in a soft snap, leaving your fingers sticky with sap and your nose full of something that smelled like winter and warmth at the same time. Most people say balsam fir , but where I grew up, it was always fir balsam —likely a reflection of the Acadian French influence that shaped much of our local speech. At Christmas, all us kids would follow my father through the snow to the woods behind our house to cut down a fir balsam for our tree. He would pace through the trees with quiet authority, selecting just the right one—not too tall, not too spindly. We’d help drag it back to the house, and on the way, gather extra boughs for decorating. Some woul...