I love the way we talk. Mainers, I mean. When I hear people speaking with the types of voices I remember from when I was growing up, I sometimes get a little teary. I am so thankful, like the Maine way with words is a language all its own, and one I am afraid is dying out.

If ever there has been a winter week to enjoy life on Biscay Pond, this past week may have been it. Yes, our brutal cold snap has continued. I have had to hit the reset button on my furnace four times.

Despite the overcast sky and the chilly breeze atop Grand Army Hill in N. Whitefield, the “OPEN” flag flapped its invitation once again to all who passed through town; beckoning them to please stop in and to take a peek at the new library that is now open for business!

Hello all, greetings from me, Henry. I am adjusting to life here in Maine quite well. Louisiana is not as cold; I mean, yikes, 8 degrees below 0! Who would have thought! I don’t know exactly what that means, but I hear my mom and dad talking and it sounds awful!

I didn’t feel well during the night. The sweet med tech gave me my two morning meds around 5:30 a.m. Starting at 7:30 a.m. I watched “Turning Point” with Pastor David Jeremiah and “In Touch” with Pastor Charles Stanley. Both so uplifting and helpful. I have been writing and reading and my sweet roommate and I watched old movies on TV. The sweet med tech gave me my bedtime meds last evening. I was soon to sleep.

Picture yourself lying on your back, your head and shoulders propped up just enough to see over your toes, one hand on a line and the other on a tiller. It’s well below freezing, might be snowing.

The slant of sunlight and the shadows created during the early and late hours of the day this time of year are often mesmerizing and calming. The lack of leaves on the trees allows many of us to see and enjoy the annual gift presented to us during the long nights of the cold winter season.

The Municipal Review Committee, a non-profit consortium that manages waste disposal for 115 Maine municipalities, held its annual meeting in mid-December, and still did not have the good news its members were hoping to hear. No projection was forthcoming for when, indeed if, the shuttered waste processing facility, Coastal Resources of Maine in Hampden, that the MRC helped create would reopen.

Surely an interesting name for a lady was that of “Silence” – Silence Oliver. We do not know her maiden name, but her husband, Jonathan Oliver Sr. was an early settler on East Neck, and served in the Revolutionary War. He enlisted on Dec. 31, 1765, and served until January 1777, when he was discharged at Peak’s Hill, N.Y. He served in Reed’s Co., Bailey’s Massachusetts Continental Line. He lived until 1837, to age 87, and is buried in the Oliver cemetery near the junction of East Neck Road and Vannah (formerly Butter and Egg) Road, on the old Oliver homestead.