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By Rosalie Baker 05-2022





“The way life should be” reads the sign just across the border as you enter the state of Maine.


For years, when I drove by this sign as I came to vacation in Maine, I would smile and feel a sense of freedom. Fast forward to 2018, when I made the decision to call Maine home! Life sure is wonderful here, and the state has become my launching pad, its sites taking me to all corners of the world. “How?”


Well, for me, Maine is a springboard to the wider world. Let’s take the Maine sunset I am using as the logo for this blog. It is so vivid, so breathtaking — daring all to “Touch me to see if I am real!” And, it is that thought, that vision that brings to mind another vibrant scene, one the Roman writer Pliny the Elder described some 2000 years ago:



Around 400 B.C., there lived an artist named Zeuxis. Honored as one of the greatest artists of all time, Zeuxis had come to believe that his art pieces were priceless, that no price would be high enough to reflect his mastery. But, Zeuxis was not without rivals. One was Parrhasius, who challenged him to an artistic competition.


On the appointed day, the two men brought their works to be judged. Zeuxis showed his piece — an exquisitely painted bunch of grapes. Just then, some birds happened to be flying by and dove straight down to partake of the delicious fruit. Everyone cheered! How could anyone surpass deceiving birds?” they asked themselves.



Parrhasius calmly exhibited his piece. All Zeuxis saw was a curtain, hiding, he believed, whatever ‘masterpiece’ his rival had concocted. “Draw aside the curtain,” Zeuxis boldly shouted. Parrhasius did not move. The curtain was so lifelike that it had deceived even ancient Greece’s ‘greatest’ artist! Zeuxis nodded, “Yes, Parrhasius, you have won the bet!”


Join me next on Maine—Window to the World for “rappelling” past and present.



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