Happy Earth Day! Good will to all species, from Furbush Lousewort to Homo Sapiens.
Gadzooks! It is the middle of National Library Week! What have y'all been reading lately? I'm a regular borrower at the Town Hall Book Exchange. I can recommend "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky (2002), which rouses in me a curiosity: Are there any records of a salt industry along our rivers? Or even if families evaporated salt for their own uses?
This very day! Yes, Thursday, April 22, at 2:00 p.m., the Edgecomb Historical Society will meet to plot archiving strategies, now that we can comfortably get at our collections. Note the new meeting place: the Library of the Edgecomb Eddy School on Route 27. Sue Carlson and Ros Strong will share what they learned at the recent Lincoln County History Coalition's workshop on archiving. And yes, I will be sure to ask about salt-making!
Welcome, little William Anton Godfried Van Spanje, born April 5, and now living with his parents Gabrielle and Tyler and big brother Jacob on the Englebrekt Road! Loud kudos to Caroline Friedland, daughter of Dennis and Liz Friedland on Turkey Run off the River Road, for her skating performances in "Love is a Crime" from "Chicago" and solo "Do Re Mi" from "The Sound of Music"in the Midcoast Recreation Center's second annual ice-skating exhibition in Rockport April 3 and 4! Meanwhile, across the river, our niece Chelsea Cameron, is a stalwart on Lincoln Academy's girls lacrosse team! You go, girl!
Edgecomb Eddy Spring Fling Yard Sale tables are still available. Call Ann Poole at 633-2228 for details. This festive bash, sponsored by the Edgecomb Eddy School Parent Teacher Club (PTC) will be Saturday, May 8, from10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., including a barbecue, games and activities for kids, a plant sale for Mother's Day (Hint, hint) as well as the Stupendous Yard Sale!
Jean Cucci on the Springhill Farm Road has news from her daughter Lauren, an Eddy School alum now readying for graduation from Stonehill College in Easton, MA. Lauren spent spring break in Honduras as one of a student group who helped to give eye exams and distribute donated eyeglasses to people in the area around Tegucigalpa. Her group was able to explore the rain forest, and visit a coffee plantation. She hopes to go on a similar trip to Peru after graduation.
Reminded by the recent visiting Thai student teacher at Edgecomb Eddy, Joyce Sirois has sent me pictures and a news story of back when my mother hosted Takako Daido, a Japanese visiting teacher, doing much the same thing. I still correspond with Takako!
Former members of the Edgecomb Congregational Church' Ladies Aid should plan to get together after church on April 25 to discuss the disposition of this auxiliary, which has not met since October 2001.
The Sheepscot River Inn's offer of its tennis court to Edgecomb residents is back in force for the season! Remember, of course, that Inn guests have priority. Call Manager Tamara Lilly-Crawford at 882-6343 for details.
And yo! Laurel Dunn! For getting the trivia answer about Fort Edgecomb's founding date. Laurel, who lives in Winthrop, is Treasurer of The Friends of Fort Edgecomb, so she ought to know!
Congratulations to the Center for Teaching and Learning for its splendid showing at the state's Odyssey of the Mind competition at Bates College! Parochially, let us commend Michael Conley Carter and Robert Langton, both of Edgecomb, both in CTL's Division II team (4th through 8th graders), who designed a working catapult. Also Beth Langton, a parent coach of this group. Anyone interested in helping the qualifying teams get to Odyssey of the Mind's World Competition in Maryland in late May, contact the school coordinator, Lucinda Bliss, at 443-3153, or call the school itself, 882-9706.
Our tenants have had a lively night of it! Something has been removing their bird suet bags and dismantling them all over the ground. So they went on stake-out. By gar, about 10:00 p.m., just as they were thinking they'd call it quits, they spotted two raccoons! The clever beasts had discovered that if they put their weight on a branch of a nearby lilac bush, they could bend it down to reach the feeder pole!
Meanwhile, Bruce and I spent a whole morning turkey-watching. Two toms built up to confronting each other. The way they puffed themselves out, spread their tails, and dropped their wings, they appeared to sail across the field like a pair of Japanese war junks, engaging in battle. Remarkably, their faces have turned a dead pasty white for the mating duration, quite vivid against the greyness of that morning. They came together, jumping straight up, but when the Beta tom came down, Alpha must have struck him in the shoulder a good whop with his beak, because he directly slouched off. Although they kept flaring feathers at each other, they never got much closer after that, but Alpha and his flotilla of hens kept crowding Beta all the way from the orchard across the field to the wood's edge.
Doin' that ol' Buck ‘n' Wing at 234 River Road, 633-2978, bonesukl@midcoast.com. This column appears in several local papers, and at www.Edgecomb.org.