OFF RADAR: ‘Didn’t Do Much but a Little of Everything’
Diary of Dalton Raynes offers an unusual look at 1897 coastal Maine
By Dana Wilde
Share
“Didn’t Do Much but a Little of Everything: The 1897 Eagle Island Diary of Dalton Raynes,” Ian Ludders, ed.; Lulu.com, Morrisville, N.C., 2020; 248 pages, softcover, $10.30.
Despite its title, “Didn’t Do Much but a Little of Everything: The 1897 Eagle Island Diary of Dalton Raynes” devotes far fewer pages to the text of fisherman Dalton Raynes’s diary than it does to detailing “the vast familial spiderweb of nineteenth century Penobscot Bay.”
This might sound dry. The book comprises the diary; ruminative, often lengthy footnotes; photos; a fisherman’s expense ledgers; reproductions of century-old news articles; and other miscellaneous materials such as the editor’s digressive comments on how Native American culture invisibly infuses our lives even now. It all grows like weeds from the terse, fragmentary, bu