Madawaska to Copper Harbor Michigan (UP)
(by way of Columbus Ohio and Chicago)
One of the attractions of small towns is their cohesiveness in both space and time. In them you can find the earliest institutions of modern life, such as elementary schools, extending to places and contexts of an adult lifetime of productive labor and living, and ending with a nearby remembrance of those lives lived and now ended.
In New England, because of its age, the cemeteries have a particular poignancy in that the stone markers have weathered and eroded so that the remembrance once fresh is barely visible or in some cases lost forever. And with such aged stones there is an extended death in that all those who had a first or even second memory of the deceased have now themselves died so that no real remembrance exists. It is the debt we owe: as it has been said, Adam and Eve were the first who neglected to read the Apple terms and conditions.
Many of the small towns have a particularly interesting, one-of-a-kind feature. In St Johnsbury VT, there is the Fairbanks Museum, named after Franklyn Fairbanks, a descendent of the inventor and commercializer of the famous “Fairbanks Scale.” Franklyn was born into privilege and used it to be a lifelong collector and preserver of all manner of natural and human history. He left the funds and the artifacts to create the museum, and planetarium, named in his honor. It is quite amazing for a private individual to have been amassed so many interesting things.
Corner 3:
The state of Michigan comes in two parts: lower and upper, otherwise known as “UP” for Upper Peninsula.
At the upper part of the UP, famed US Route 41 which extends northward from Miami through the mid-west, including Chicago, dead ends into Copper Harbor of Lake Superior.
Onto Fairbanks Alaska here:
Return to 8 Corners Start Page here: