Dear Readers,

There is an outdoor art gallery tucked into the hillside on a side road not far from the line separating Boothbay Harbor from Boothbay.

Today, most of the works are covered with snow. But when the warm breezes blow up the coast and the osprey return from down south, you will see them again.

Art critics might call the display “found art,” objects found on the side of the road, or at the dump. They were the leavings of others arranged in a way that made the gallery owner/artist smile when she looked upon them. They made lots of us smile too.

I am fond of the plastic woman's torso with a smiling face, and its companion, a fist with one finger extended in the universal act of defiance. They seemed to personify its creator.

Over the weekend, the gallery owner/artist left us. Her name was Ruth Farrin. For the last several years, she has battled a cancer that forced the doctors to remove her voice box so she could no longer talk. She was forced to communicate through a buzzing device. She smiled and said she talked like a robot.

Ruth grew up in this town and went to school here. She never married. She never had kids. Somehow things didn't work out for her in that way. Her circle of friends consisted of her family, including brother Pat, sisters Becky and Cindy, and her mom, a grey parrot, a cat and some birds twittering at the feeder. She also had a gang of pals who would drop in, drink a few beers and share stories, some of them, she claimed, were true.

Ruth liked that. She loved to laugh. She loved a good story.

Never a wealthy woman, she used what money she was able to scrape up to keep up her place. The grass surrounding her yellow mobile home was always mowed. Her gardens blossomed.

In the last year, as the cancer stripped more than 100 pounds from her comfortable frame, she became a passionate advocate to save St. Andrews Hospital. She lost that fight, but never quit battling.

In the end, her family and longtime friend, Lee Abbott stayed with her as life slipped away, finally leaving her at peace.

Her brother Pat said there will be no funeral service. Ruth, he said, was not much on funerals.

Instead, sometime this spring, Pat said he will host a cookout, maybe a pig roast, and ask Garry Blackman Sr. and some others to play music for a couple of hours. It will be a fitting send off for a woman who loved to cook outside, drink a beer or two, and swap stories. When they decide on a date, Pat said he would put a note in the Boothbay Register to let everyone know the details.

In the end, despite her troubles, much like the plastic torso of the smiling woman on the hillside, Ruth stared at life and defied all the troubles life sent her way.

“Life was tough for her, but she was a good gal,” Pat said.

He was right.