Children’s author to speak at Unitarian Universalist Church of Sangerville and Dover Foxcroft Sunday service

SANGERVILLE — Rhonda Welcome will be speaking at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Sangerville and Dover Foxcroft, on Church Street, 9:30 a.m. service on Sunday, March 23. She will be talking about her children’s book “Putep’s Tale”.

Welcome is a homesteader/mom/grandma, licensed veterinary technician,  licensed wildlife rehabilitator, teller of stories, lover of dancing. She is mesmerized by the sea and water, land and mountains and the amazing planet we call home, and is a graduate of University of Maine, Washington County Community College and University of Maine-Machias. She has a degree in creative writing, courses in journalism, peace studies and wildlife ecology.

“Putep’s Tale” is a story created from a whale bone she found on Mowry Beach in Lubec. A deceased fin-back whale washed ashore and had been buried 20 years earlier. As she sat with the 14-foot, 200-pound jawbone and shared the bone’s story with people who came into our shop ….. it started to create a story of its own. 

She feels the whale wanted the story shared and I have been doing that ever since, by word of mouth, by our book and by the video done by MPBN and shown on PBS passport. Putep is the Passamaquoddy word for whale. The Passamaquoddy people have been in Washington County for thousands of years; the whales have been here too.  By using the original name, she hopes to honor the history of the native inhabitants.