This has been a very hard week here. Our deep well at the church can be pumped dry in a few minutes. I have had to disconnect the hose and have been carrying lots of jugs up to church, where I fill a few while I watch the gauges. I can only fill a few at a time.

What a busy summer we had at the Transfer Station. Seems like each summer is busier than the one before. We have been having a little fun watching license plates and have noticed plates from 28 states, the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces. I am sure we may have missed some, but Maine’s Vacationland designation seems correct.

By the time our youngest child, Abbey, appeared on the scene, my wife and I had been parents for 17 years. Abbey was number six. So I had already had nearly two decades of addressing the ubiquitous children’s question: “Why?”

We both find that as the years pass by we find ourselves remembering past events that took place in our childhood days here in the Damariscotta and Newcastle area. So many of the local farms had their own vegetable and fruit stands by the roadside in front of their farms.

Any nation that justly prides itself on having free speech is quick to learn that guaranteeing free speech also entails guaranteeing a considerable amount of uninformed, ignorant speech. Any election in any country will ensure that such speech is never in short supply.

We normally can observe five terns in Maine, ranging in size from the larger Forster’s tern to smaller least tern. The Forster’s tern can be identified by its distinctive comma-shaped black ear patch and is restricted to breeding and wintering along coastal marshes.

“Sibling relationships need much more support and celebration than they receive in our culture. Often, as adults, we find that our siblings are the people who have known us the longest, know the most about us, and share the most life events with us. Particularly in our mobile society, sibling relationships offer us a shelter that few other relationships can provide. If we are lucky, our siblings are our built-in lifelong friends.” — Mary Pipher

As August ends, we are still very dry with not much hope, they say, of any relief in the near future. The tropics are fired up with three systems twirling around right now. Hurricane Gaston is a Category 2 out in the shipping lanes and all we’ll see out of it is a few waves. Then there is TD 8 near North Carolina, and TD 9, which is near Florida and could dump six to 10 inches there. Maybe we should do a little rain dance here in the southern/Midcoast areas of Maine?

We were in Rockland Tuesday to get a few errands taken care of. It was late when we started for home, so we had our evening meal at the Lucky Fortune restaurant in Damariscotta. It was a very busy place. We finally were served our meals and they were very good.

We have had many a 4th of July parade here in the village over the years, but I do not ever remember seeing a wedding parade until this past Saturday, when Zack Leck was married to Caitlin Herlihy at the Brown Church. He and his beautiful bride, who wore her mother’s gown from the 1970s, along with their guests, formed a parade from the church to Zack’s brother Jonathan’s home across from the tennis court, where the reception was held. B.J. and I were fortunate to catch the parade and snap a picture or two. Congratulations to the happy couple. They will be residing in Washington state.