I have always been obsessed with things that feel inseparable from Maine.

Old wool blankets, hand-carved decoy ducks, wooden blueberry rakes, anything made for a specific job by someone who clearly understood the place they were living in.

Then I saw Jeremy Frey’s Wabanaki baskets at the Portland Museum of Art and got completely hooked.

Frey is a Passamaquoddy artist and seventh-generation basketmaker. His work was unlike any basket I had ever seen. They were precise, complicated, and almost architectural. I remember standing there, trying to figure out how someone could make something that exact from strips of brown ash.

I have been looking for one ever since.

I found plenty along the way, but none of them really called to me. Then I saw this one in an antique store.

It is about the size of a medium watermelon, woven in tan, cream, and faded orange. The outside is covered in hundreds of small pointed curls that make it look like it grew quills.

What really got me was the metallic strand woven through the design. I had never seen that before. It catches the light against the ash, making the whole thing feel unbelievably unique.

It is not perfect either. Some of the points are bent or missing, and the rim is a little loose. It looks like it has been around for a while and actually lived with, which I like.

I knew pretty quickly this was the one, mostly because I picked it up like a newborn and refused to put it back down.

The basket appears to be a brown ash fancy basket covered in several types of splint-curl work. The sharper, folded points along the sides are usually called porcupine curls, while the smaller, rolled shapes on the lid look more like periwinkle curls. Despite the names, none of them are porcupine quills. They are made by folding and twisting thin strips of wood outward from the basket. The Hudson Museum identifies three common versions: diamond curls, sharp porcupine curls, and the wonderfully named periwinkle curls.

Wabanaki basketmakers have used brown ash for generations. After the right tree is selected and harvested, the log is pounded until its growth rings separate into long, flexible layers. Those layers are cleaned, divided into increasingly narrow splints, and finally woven. It is an enormous amount of work before the thing even begins to look like a basket.

Some baskets were built for work, to carry crops, fish, tools, and whatever else needed moving. Fancy baskets used finer splints, sweetgrass, dyed ash and increasingly elaborate shapes. They held sewing supplies, gloves, buttons, calling cards and all kinds of small household things, although some seem to have existed mostly because they were beautiful.

Many were sold to visitors at coastal, lakeside and mountain resorts. Wabanaki families set up basket tents where they sold baskets, birchbark work, carvings and other goods during the summer season. At a time when Wabanaki people were being increasingly dispossessed of their ancestral lands, these businesses provided income while maintaining a visible presence in places their families had traveled to for generations.

But Wabanaki basketry is not just an old Maine craft. It comes from traditions that existed long before Maine was a state, and it is still changing. Jeremy Frey was my first real introduction to that world. I saw his work at the PMA and have been completely mesmerized by basketmaking ever since. His baskets are rooted in generations of knowledge, but there is nothing stuck in the past about them.

I still do not know who made my basket, exactly how old it is, or what the silvery material woven through it actually is. It looks metallic in person, almost like a narrow ribbon or fine strip of metal, but I have not found another basket with enough documentation to identify it confidently. Somewhere along the way, the maker’s name and the story behind those materials became separated from the object.

There are certain buildings where you probably should not ask too many questions about what used to be in the basement, and the old Mercy Hospital at 144 State Street is one of them. You have probably driven past it dozens of times on your way toward the Casco Bay Bridge without realizing what is still beneath it.

Today, the building is Nightingale, a restored apartment building with a rooftop deck, fitness studio and views over the West End. Beneath all of that is roughly 45,000 square feet of windowless space that once held the hospital kitchen, laboratory and morgue. It was later planned for storage, which means someone could theoretically keep their Christmas decorations where Mercy Hospital once kept its dead.

So yes, people have wondered whether the building is haunted. I have heard that workers started talking about ghosts after only their second day inside during the renovation. There was never some huge story attached to it. Apparently, something about the building just made them uneasy.

Maybe that story is true, or maybe it has been repeated enough times that nobody remembers exactly where it began. Mercy’s real history is strange enough without adding much to it.

The hospital began during Portland’s 1918 influenza outbreak, when the city’s hospitals were overwhelmed. The Sisters of Mercy were asked to enter the homes of sick Portlanders and care for them, and all 60 reportedly volunteered. Mercy later moved into the State Street building in 1943, during World War II, and staff even practiced air-raid drills there.

For almost 80 years, Portlanders were born there, treated there, recovered there and sometimes died there. Sister Mary Annunciata Quigley, who ran Mercy for decades, kept diaries about daily life inside the hospital. Her final entry was written by someone else: “Sister Annunciata died at 9:15 a.m. today. All meetings canceled.”

Mercy began during one pandemic and spent part of its final years treating patients during another, with a dedicated COVID ward operating inside before the State Street campus closed in 2022. During the conversion, workers uncovered and restored decorative plaster from the chapel and recreated an inlaid floor found in the old surgical suite. The hospital became apartments, but pieces of it are still there.

I have not found proof that Mercy is haunted. Still, knowing what used to be beneath the building is probably enough to make me take the stairs back up a little faster.

🐶 Murphy – 6 yrs
A gentle soul just waiting to bloom. Murphy loves quiet time, soft affection, and being close to her favorite people. Give her a little patience, and she'll reward you with a whole lot of love.

🐶 Phil & Lil – 4 yrs
This bonded brother and sister came all the way from the Virgin Islands and are looking for a fresh start together. They're a little shy at first, but with a calm home and a little patience, these two will make the sweetest pair of companions.

🐱 Flip – 4 yrs
A beautiful long-haired cat who just needs a little time to settle in. Once she feels safe, Flip is the kind of cat that quietly becomes one of the best parts of your day.

If the link doesn’t open anymore, it means they’ve already been adopted!

Western Prom Sunset Concerts @ Western Prom | 6:30 pm | Free

Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers @ State Theatre | 8 pm | 🎟️ $45

Come From Away Preview @ Maine State Music Theatre | 7:30 pm | 🎟️

Cassatt Quartet & Steven Beck @ Portland Conservatory of Music | 7 pm | 🎟️ $28

Summer Sunsets Live! @ Thompson’s Point | 5 pm | Free

Thursdays On the Prom - Renovators @ The Eastern Prom | 6 pm | Free

Summer Music Series @ Monument Square | 4:30 pm | Free

Michael Kosta @ Aura | 8 pm | 🎟️ $39.50

Movies on the Monument @ Monument Sq. | 7 pm | Free

Fifty years of Common ground release party @ Bold | 5 pm | Free

Donavon Frankenreiter @ Aura | 8 pm | 🎟️ $39.50

Aaron Mahnke (Lore podcast): Exhumed @ SPACE | 8 pm | 🎟️ $

Terrance Simien & The Zydeco Experience @ One Longfellow Square | 8 pm | 🎟️ $30

Yellowman w/ tuff like iron @ Bayside Bowl | 8 pm | 🎟️ $

Deering Oaks Farmers Market @ Deering Oaks Park | 7:30 am | Free

Art in the Park @ South Portland | 9 am | Free

Guster On The Ocean @ Thompson's Point | 4:30 pm | 🎟️

Kathleen Madigan @ State Theatre | 7 pm | 🎟️

Portland Hearts of Pine vs. Corpus Christi FC @ Fitzpatrick Stadium | 7 pm | 🎟️

Say Zuzu w/ Whitney Walker @ Bayside Bowl | 8 pm | 🎟️ $20 adv

Fruit Forward Mari Market @ 93 Washington ave | 9 am | Free

Adam in the Amazon: Antimiki Documentary @ One Longfellow Square | 2:30 pm | 🎟️ $30

Midori Morrow Artist Talk @ SPACE | 4 pm | 🎟️

Guster On The Ocean @ Thompson's Point | 4:30 pm | 🎟️ $70

PSO Chamber Strings @ Brunswick Town Mall Gazebo | 5:30 pm | Free

Portland Celebrates Jerry Garcia @ Portland House of Music | 7 pm | 🎟️ $15

Poetry in the Park @ Congress Sq Park | 10 am | Free

Until next week,
— Jake Newman