The Year in Review:

It's Selfie Time

This is when I get to think about my last year. Mostly I find these posts contrived and necessary only by virtue of the social media tides, but I’ve been trying to reflect more and thought I’d take the opportunity to give it some honest consideration. Books. I’ll talk about books.

There are a few books that packed a punch for me this year. I already told you about Trust by Hernan Diaz. That’s the one that taught me about telling one story four different ways, and how the truth doesn’t lie in any one telling but in the miasma of the whole. God, I thought about that book for months considering how each story in the collection bounced off the the other.

The next two came in the 4th quarter, late in the game. How different my year would have been if not for these two.

For those who know me, they know I’m prone to being late to most trends (I just started wearing skinny jeans) and getting lost in the sauce of process oriented systems. When I told my friend Kerri about my latest exploits, she gave me a David Spade side-eye saying, “I take it 2019 Covid just called?” Yeah. In other words, I’m finally on the sourdough train. Oh, but what a train. Here, let me show you.

I started getting fancy with them. They are such a delight to slice into, and I get all of those warm fuzzies thinking how for the amount of bread we eat in this house, at least these empty calories have some redeeming qualities — actual whole grains and no preservatives. My new obsession was already at full tilt when I got this book from the Jesup Library. I’m probably not going to return it on time, so you might want to wait til February to check it out. It’s so beautiful in both structure and picture, but it has a delightful narrative as well.

Instead of scanning the cookbook, I found myself actually reading it. I think what hooked me was Lahey’s cultural observation about the Italians bread making process which he describes as, “…a particularly Italian quest: how to achieve sublime beauty with the least amount of effort.” I actually LOL’d when I read this because it transported me back to cooking with my Nono, Columbo Barufaldi (behold all those beautiful vowels), who always accused me of making things too complicated or using “so many dishes, too many dishes.” Why would I want to spend all my time cleaning up and being too stressed out to even enjoy my meal? It’s no way to live.

The next book recommendation came from my writer friend and fellow Stonecoaster, Beth Anderson. She knows my life exists in two worlds, the writing and artistic life which I am cultivating and the other of tourism and business which sustains me. The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry into the Tourist Age by Marco D’Eramo (yes, I have an Italian theme going here) speaks to many of the big ideas that Bar Harbor wrestles with as a community.

As a community, Bar Harbor has flash points from hosting the number of visitors we have each year; specifically with parking, traffic, and cruise ships. Some believe that we should be grateful to have our thriving economy while others believe that the numbers of people we accommodate each year diminish the value with overuse.

What I wish everyone could recognize is that both sides of this divide want Bar Harbor to remain precious.

D’Eramo’s book helps me look past the tip of my nose and allows me to see the very big picture of global tourism and how people travel compared to how they traveled in the past. I was particularly enchanted by his distinction between the words “tourist” and “traveler.” The former consumes food and events and locales, while the latter assimilates and works to understand the culture and systems.

During my time at the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce we had many conversations about how to educate our visitors to be stewards of Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island — how to help them turn from tourist to traveler. I think this could be a worthwhile effort that all facets of the community could embrace because the energy goes toward building the community that we collectively want instead of fracturing the community by amputating sectors that some don’t want. In my business life, forward thinking decisions have trumped fear based decisions, every time.

That’s it. Those are my top three books, one for each of my personas.

Here’s a Cormac McCarthy version of my next month. A thesis, a socially awkward fourth MFA residency, tedium of hiring H2B visa employees and tax prep, children who will all be taller than me this year, bread— always bread.

I wish us all a peaceful new year.

-n