Serving Maine and Lincoln County for over 140 years
A few brief thoughts on various topics in our pages this week:
We congratulate James Bailey on his promotion to become the new administrator of Two Bridges Regional Jail. Col. Bailey has the right priorities as he begins his new post: to rehabilitate rather than simply warehouse, and to watch the budget closely as our corrections system continues to face financial challenges.
The side porch at Hodgdon Green, the assisted-living home in Damariscotta, has become a comfortable, relaxing, pleasant retreat for the men at the home, especially on those late, warm fall days. We now have six men in residence plus a day visitor, and the porch provides an ideal gathering spot.
All current members of the Bristol Area Library are invited to the library’s annual meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 11 at 6 p.m. Annual reports will be presented and refreshments will be served.
Food festivals abound at this time of the year, from those celebrating pumpkins to oysters to apples, but the tastiest and most versatile of all these fall delights for the home cook must be apples. Orchards and farmers markets sport baskets of uncommon as well as the more familiar varieties of those shiny globes. It is no wonder they have inspired the old cliches, such as being someone’s “apple of his or her eye,” or the quintessential saying about “motherhood and apple pie.”
Green Mountain Power operates the first U.S. solar microgrid installed on a capped landfill. Stafford Hill Solar Farm, in Rutland, Vt., a city of 16,000 inhabitants, is also among the first U.S. microgrids to be powered solely by solar energy and battery backup. Its 7,700 solar panels generate 2 megawatts of power, backed up by a 4-megawatt battery storage system.
We congratulate the town of Damariscotta on the completion of its effort to fund the construction of public restrooms downtown.
Farrell riding high: In June of last year, Newcastle photographer Chesley “Chet” Farrell had a show of his work in the cafe at Rising Tide Community Market in Damariscotta. His pieces were impressive – lovely depictions of the local landscape, for the most part. Notable, though, was the fact that Farrell’s work was largely unframed. That is because the photographs that he had gathered up to exhibit at the time were basically all he had left after a fire at his home and he had to put together a show in a bit of a hurry. He did a fine job.
Fort Anne was probably constructed by the first residents of Sheepscot in the early 1600s. In some places it is spelled Ann, in others, Anne. I have chosen to use Anne as I suspect it was named for the then Queen of England.
Last week there was some discussion in The Lincoln County News office about the second major hurricane-relief effort to start up in the Twin Villages in as many weeks.
Have lots of fun for a really good cause: The Maine Marimba Ensemble‘s upcoming concert on Saturday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. at Darrows Barn at DRA Round Top Farm in Damariscotta looks like a really fun time. And the ticket price – $10 at the door – will go to benefit the Meals on Wheels program at Spectrum Generations Coastal Community Center in Damariscotta.
I hope you’ll indulge me for a few minutes as I write about my favorite Chihuahua, because he’s not getting any younger and I wanted to write this in the present tense, not as a memoriam. It’s OK, though — as I write this, he’s sitting in my lap watching me type.
The chances are high that if you are reading this article, I am preaching to the choir about minimizing your use of plastic. We do know that the choir needs to step up its work, since both our state and federal governments are reducing funding in most aspects of environmental protection. A state like Maine that depends largely on the ocean for its survival should be at the forefront of commitment. We need to renew and expand our personal commitment, at the least, and encourage our family, friends, and others with our knowledge and practices.
A few years ago, my employer sponsored a two-day management seminar and one of my takeaways from it was the rapidly spoken: “What we are now is the result of where we were when.” When refers to what the presenter called a SEE, a significant emotional event. Most of my SEEs in the last few decades have come from homilies at Catholic Mass. Most recently, our priest explained that answering Jesus’ instruction that we forgive others is not about what we feel toward the other person, but rather about what we will ourselves to do. I fear I missed much of what else he said as I tried to ingest the concept of forgiving without feeling forgiveness.
In 1774, German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang Goethe penned the notion that “misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.” In modern times, this sentiment has become known as “Hanlon’s razor,” which directs us to “never attribute malice when incompetence will suffice.”
