As summer approaches, Lincoln County is entering the high-risk drinking season. In addition to graduation parties and holidays like July 4, we will be inundated with summer tourists.

You will soon see petitions and petitioners everywhere asking for your signature to help bring Maine’s new gay marriage law to public referendum. You need to be aware that the people behind this drive are there for religious reasons.

At first blush, word the Damariscotta Police Dept. plans to open a satellite police station in the former home of the late Ed Whitney’s barbershop in the Elm St. Plaza plays like another episode of the “You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me” show.

There is a famous photograph that makes the rounds about this time every year. It depicts a Memorial Day parade making its way down Main Street, USA. As the national flag is approaching, one elderly man is standing at attention while the crowd around him, children and young adults, remain at ease; laughing, fooling around, blissfully ignorant of the significance of the moment.

Many of you will know me from my 28-year marriage to my late husband, Lee Dunning Jr. Many others will know me from my 17-year employment at Wiscasset Public Library. Many will know me from my four years with the Wiscasset Budget Committee. The point is many of you know me.

Thanks to the kindness of Jim and Glenda Drum, the Damariscotta Mills railroad station sign is coming home. It will be mounted at the old station site on Depot St. to greet people who arrive by train to attend the Fish Ladder Restoration Festival this weekend.

The Alna Volunteer Fire Dept would like to thank all of the businesses and individuals who donated to our annual Mother’s Day pancake breakfast that was held Sun., May 10. We couldn’t have done it without you.

The Bremen Conservation Commission (BCC) would like to thank everyone who participated in their recent sale of Compost Bins. The sale was coordinated by the BCC to raise awareness of Earth Day and the response was above and beyond expectations. In all, 140 compost bins were sold to individuals from nearly every town in Lincoln County!

I would like to bring to your attention what you will be voting on March 31.

Because there were not many people at the March 19 Public Hearing, I want to make sure that residents know what they are voting on, as the language on the town warrant is so misleading.

The Queen is gone; our Muriel, Queen of Jazz and the coffee shops, friend to all of us in the Kingdom. Though with a heavy heart, we want to shout, “Long Live the Queen!” from the rooftops, looking around we ask, “Who is there to replace her?” Indeed, it will take a big soul to fill those tiny slippers.

We need to appreciate what people do for the community, and how hard they work. Dr. Christine Welch, she’s the best.

When you think about the history of the Jazz Idiom, few musicians have exemplified this way of expressing a quintessential “natural swing” the way that Muriel Havenstein did.

Next week, famed mountaineer Ed Webster comes to Skidompha Library in Damariscotta for a talk and book signing. The amiable Webster will discuss his five years in Tibet and highlight his pioneering of a never-before-climbed route up Mt. Everest.

To read the national headlines, it seems 2009 could be the year that the newspaper industry goes the way of the Dodo.

However, now would be the time for us to raise a shaky finger and say something like, in our best Monty Pythonesque voice, “But we’re not dead yet.”