The Likeminded Sea Captain and Me!
July 20th, 2025
By Sally Dugman

Every day when I wake up, I look out a particular window in my home at the cooling canopy of one of my five to seven story high trees in the yard and marvel at the thought that the retired sea captain who built my sturdy home in the 1860’s, without knowing who I’d be, cared enough for my welfare to leave the saplings, my now large and healthy trees, in place for my generation of home owners.
Furthermore, he well built my sturdy home to certainly last for centuries. And apparently, he hated small ship circular windows and cramped places in a hull in which one he to stoop to walk. That is easy to conclude since the ceilings in this home are twelve feet high and the twenty-two windows here are all around four feet long and three feet wide except for a partially stained glass beauty half way up the second stairs well and two small basement ones while the basement, itself, was hand hewn when made of mushy mud and boulders jammed together as walls still holding together firmly today much more than a hundred years later.
Then in the 1920’s, the ladies’s sewing room where the gals had gotten together to mend garments, make quilts out of random scraps, do embroidery and chitchat was remade into a bathroom with a claw footed huge tub and a toilet to replace the outhouse at the edge of the property where the soil is mighty rich and black to this day.
Further, I bought at a store a sink and cabinet under it and had a plumber put in the lines to put them in the bathroom, as well as a mirrored cabinet above the sink into the wall, itself.
Then following the captain’s lead, I, myself, planted some more assorted plants around my yard for future generations… following the Native 7th generation principle about which I’m very keen.
My aboriginal (primitive) forsythia that one of the earlier owners planted in place with a view of some of the giant windows that the sea captain built:
So I, in my personal efforts, have one type of English Ivy going up the entire three story high house, lots of lilac bushes, lilies, true bamboo able to survive in my coldness zone that I got shipped from a specialty bamboo globally supplying farm in Oregon, a Japanese maple, a weeping cherry blossom tree, 2 butterfly bush plants that smell in bloom like the finest lady’s perfume, a Western redbud, a variegated dwarf cedar, assorted flowering specialty plants, hydrangeas and yet even more deliberately put in place, as well as an outdoor water faucet and water line built into the house for me by a certified plumber.
Just as I don’t know much about my inspirational captain who lived in this home before me, the future home owners won’t know me, but will clearly see from my efforts that I wanted a good life for them. It will be obvious, I assume.
Definitely, the seventh generation principle inspires me and my sea captain, clearly, had something like it in his mind when he built a few dwellings in my neighborhood and lived his end day of life in my current house. Here — you can see for yourself about how lovable and sound this enthusiastically embraced plan is: What is the Seventh Generation Principle?
In a world where there is much deliberately destroyed and ruined as is happening in Gaza, the Ukraine and elsewhere, it feels good to look out for unknown, future living others who will be coming along.
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Sally Dugman lives in and writes from central MA, USA, a location that has lots of beauty and long term care going way back in time and into the future by her caring neighbors and herself.
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