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Rocks and rills,… woods and templed hills
400 copies published for the members of the National Amateur Press Association
No. 4 May, 1959. Grantham, New Hampshire
Compensations of NAPA Publishing
(for DRAWBACKS, see back cover)
We practice the best of hobbies, in the best of company. No other AJ organization can offer the variety and high average quality of NAPA publications. None other has the prestige of NAPA among writers, printers and publishers.
In no other AJ group do so many members maintain life-memberships or consistently renew affiliation from year to year. None other has so glorious a history or such noble traditions, the association of so many names famous as well in professional journalism and allied fields of creative activity. None other is so truly a NATIONAL association of amateur journalists.
None other is so well organized and administered; none other maintains such a degree of financial responsibility and stability.
WHO ELSE HOLDS SUCH GREAT CONVENTIONS?
B O S T O N – July 3-4-5
Birthday in Apple-Blossom Time
IT IS in the nature of things that in those vital decisions which fix the place and the day of his birth, a man is utterly without voice. If on arrival he first gives voice in what may sound like a strong protest, we should grant him the right, as becomes a free-born American. It is possible that his protest is justified. If the date is December 25th, we can understand. We may also sympathize with the infant who checks in on February 29th.
But see here, if he is born under the sign of Taurus, in the middle of May, in apple-blossom time, in New England, what is he bellowing for? Little Ferdinand shall have flowers to sniff on his birthday, live on intimate terms with the birds ‘n the bees, and collect his loot in due season.
It’s in his stars, in Maytime.
Life is beautiful. It stays that way. It is May. Who could choose any more happy birthday!
Indian Relics: Where to Search
The Indian neglected to leave maps and records of the places of his habitation. Consequently, if we hope to dig up his property, we are compelled to think like an Indian, and go where he would go.
Indian trails, camp-sites and village locations were determined by his necessities. He had to find food, water, shelter, clothing, utensils, tools and weapons. He was in no position to trade with a chain-store or a mail-order house.
Very often he settled on a level plateau at a junction of two streams, a ‘n ashaway, in the Indian tongue, the origin of Nashua, N.H., and Ashaway, R.I. There his squaw could grow a field of corn. From the trees he harvested materials to build a canoe and a Quonset-hut type of dwelling. (Eastern Woodland Indians did not live in conical skin tepees as did the Plains Indians.) Trees also furnished bow-staves, arrow shafts, handles for implements, and nuts for food.
Fish were plentiful at the stream-junction. Raccoons and bears came to fish and fell under the hunter’s arrow to fill his frozen-food locker and provide furs for warm clothing and coverings for bed and floor.
The inlets and outlets of ponds and lakes offered advantages similar to those of the ‘n ashaway. Along the seacoast large shell-heaps usually mark Indian resorts.
Another type of Indian habitation is found in caves and rock shelters, generally chosen for convenient access to supplies of flint, quartzite or soapstone, materials for weapons, tools, implements, amulets and tobacco-pipes.
Sites of forts and battle-grounds at points along tribal boundaries yield a profusion of arrow and spear points, stone knives and war-clubs or tomahawks. Burials with weapons, pipes, amulets, etc. were not uncommon.
Along the Mishamayagat, the Great Trails, were many camp-sites, wherever the traveler could find good water and fish for the evening meal.
Try to put yourself in the Indian’s place, in his time, and go where he would go, if you want to find his relics. If the trail leads you to a site that is now a cultivated field, you may detect Indian sign on the surface of the disturbed soil, a scattering of stone chips resulting from primitive manufacturing, blackened stones from camp-fire or council pit, perhaps an arrow-point or a potsherd.
Rather, may you find an undisturbed site!
Spring Song in New Hampshire
NEW HAMPSHIRE in the Spring may not be Heaven, but it is close to it. Some of our hilltops reach to the very blue above, and down in our valleys are Elysian fields; among our trees and along the fence-rows you can hear the angels sing.
Flames of swamp maple remind us of past glories of the ‘foliage season’, though now “all the woods stand in a mist of green,” swirling about the dark spires of Northern spruce, pine and balsam fir.
Beneath the trees and down among the meadow grasses the ever-warming sun swells bud to blossom, until at length the apple orchards, having waited out a late frost, pour loveliness of form, color and perfume across the greening fields.
Brooks and rivers run full; trout leap for May-flies and the counterfeits of a lucky angler. The ice is out in lakes where rainbow and golden trout lure –
LOVE THIS LAND!
Drawbacks of NAPA Publishing
(for Compensations see front cover)
Ours is the only AJ group that assesses the PUBLISHER to foot the costs of the Mailing Bureau and MORE, so that PUBLISHERS ALONE are forced to make involuntary contributions to the Treasury in addition to payment of regular members’ dues.
Since the PUBLISHER has already paid for the major cost of amateur journalism by the time he has met his bills for paper, ink and costly equipment and has shipped 400 copies to the bundle-stuffer five parcel-post zones distant, it seems to us that his fellow-members should be willing to pay the postage on their monthly bundles. Only fair.
Now I am sorry to find myself in opposition to such Olt-Timors as SEGAL and BABCOCK. Known them for a long time, respect them, enjoy their fine publications, but I just don’t have their DOUGH (or CRUST?)
PLEASE SUPPORT AMENDMENT No. 2.
Love This Land is one man’s venture into Amateur Journalism. It is set in type by the editor and printed on a 5×8 Kelsey hand press. Except as otherwise indicated authorship rests with the editor:
Hollis French, Grantham, N. H.