Comments on: Two Men in a Barn

By: Lisa

Lisa — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 06:58:03 +0000

I love that farm it is such a great token of the New England history. It would be a tragedy to loose it!

By: AgathaO

AgathaO — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 00:02:13 +0000

Thank you Jeannie — I like the idea of Frances. I’ll be meeting with FLT soon and I will mention your ideas and offer. Thanks!

By: Jeanne Sargent

Jeanne Sargent — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 13:48:21 +0000

Pleun, Your photos and words put passion into a problem…. telling a story that breathes life with all kinds of possibilities. Let’s talk Frances Henry into a repeat performance reading from her essays of Evelyn and Harry and ask Steve Wick to capture it on video for countless others to experience at their convenience. There’s the New England Grassroots Environment Fund and several on-line fund raising programs that we can consider, some with incentives that might spark fresh interest in this project. I’d be happy to help you with that part of the venture to raise the funds to pay for Rich’s immediate work. You’ve got the ball rolling. Now you and the FLT need help keeping it in motion. Time is of the essence as the barn slips downhill.

By: AgathaO

AgathaO — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:37:09 +0000

Thank you Annie, how true. I never met Harry, although I saw him at work many times. I met Evelyn once, when she was 98 or 99! But you are right, they built/maintained that barn with the work of their hands. As Rich Potter said: “if Harry was still here, that barn would not be failing as fast as it is, he’d have been shoring it up this way and that for the past decade. That’s how the farmers did it.” And that is, of course, why these barns still stand at all. You know you can contribute at the Land Trust, right Just mark it for the barn in some way. Right now they are looking for money to pay for Rich to start the process of taking it down in earnest. I am incredibly sorry to see it go but it beats the alternatives. Other ways of supporting are to share this on fb and other ways. Thank you!

By: Annie Barbour

Annie Barbour — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 10:25:57 +0000

Beautifully presented, Pleun. I think about the ghosts of Evelyn and Harry, Evelyn using the air horn that her neighbor Joyce Freeland bought her to call Harry in from the fields when they were both in their 90s…I don’t care to lose those memories because they’re the lovely ghosts who built the beautiful place in which I live. And the work of their hands, that old barn for instance, anchors those memories.

By: AgathaO

AgathaO — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 00:45:48 +0000

Thank you, both of you. Yes it has to come down, they say. This year.

By: Phil Allessio

Phil Allessio — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:43:05 +0000

Pleun: You did an absolutely wonderful job writing the piece about the barn not to mention the the nice pics. I think it will take many angels to save the barn, but one never knows. I do think ultimately it will have to be taken down in its entirety like the round barn at the Shaker Community in Hancock and re assembled.
Wish I had an extra million or so.

By: Hayley Wood

Hayley Wood — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 14:27:21 +0000

I want the barn to live on! Thanks for this beautiful essay that helps all of us who are more tone deaf to the past than you understand the deep value of THE BARN.