Jimmy Silin, born April 14, 1943, in Erie, Pa., was 82 years young when he passed away peacefully on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. Jimmy, of Whitefield, is survived by his wife, Ann Brown Silin; and his son, Ethan Silin, son of Janice Elwell Silin (deceased June 21, 1993); and his brother, Daniel Silin.
James was a modern-day polymath versed in music, writing, art, mathematics, science, history, farming, and gardening. Jimmy enjoyed the simple things in life, especially working outdoors and contemplating the world.
At an early age, Jimmy developed cataracts in his eyes, enduring numerous operations and requiring glasses from then on. He graduated from Choate School in Wallingford, Conn. in 1961 and subsequently attended Brandeis University. During the cultural shift of the Vietnam era, Jimmy pursued communal farming and gardening establishing his home in Whitefield.
James mastered the domestication of bovines for dairy and beef, even churning his own butter, living up to his namesake, Turnbull. He also became an expert haying technician; fine-tuning the arts of weather prediction, mowing, drying, bailing, truck-stacking, and barn-storage of square bales, on a level that would become legendary in Lincoln County haying lore.
Jimmy pursued a moralist lifestyle in contrast to the predominant ways of the world practicing organic subsistence agriculture. He raised and cared for an assortment of farm animals over the years transforming the land into Under The Sun Farms.
Jimmy consistently walked the path of peace, attending peace protests weekly for decades and composing inspiring anthems. He held an encyclopedic knowledge of the blues and music of the oppressed. He composed exceptional lyrics and political observations. Confiding about writing, he once said, “With songs you are not limited by time and space. One line can be about your love and the next can be about the past or future or any place at all. Every other type of writing has to be written in a linear timeline one way or another.” His lyrics and blues riffs remain timeless among many in Hallowell, Lincoln County, and beyond.
Jimmy’s lyrics and ideas will live on to make hearts happy and minds tingle. “People die, but dreams don’t,” he remarked in a song. We can only aspire to be as happy and as focused on the poetic dreams we love as Jimmy was on his activism, his music, his farming, and his pursuit of harmlessness amidst the chaotic world.
So, although “time only goes one way, it keeps on moving,” as the chorus goes, Jimmy lived his life in a manner like a song without limitations of linear time in normal storytelling. Jimmy lived the timeless lifestyle of harmlessness and happiness as a musician and farmer embodying poetry and song in his life.
Jimmy Midnight may best be known for his limberness on stage, able to play guitar and sing while contorting himself into rock and roll squats unattainable for most, no matter their age. But he will also live on inspiring limberness, harmlessness, and happiness through his example of poetic living, unrestricted by time and space.
