Senior Moments come galloping by! Thanks to quick-witted editors, I was saved from giving the wrong date for the Edgecomb Historical Society's Annual Meeting, which is TODAY! Thursday, Sept. 22, at 2:00 p.m., at the Edgecomb Eddy School. Go to the conference room, but if there is overflow, we will move to the cafeteria.
Come to learn about our Fort Edgecomb Bicentennial preparations, our historic building research survey, our website and much, much more! Is anyone out there an experienced genealogist? Our collection is small but valuable, and needs serious professional organizing so that people can use it. Alas, most of our current active members are more adept at scrambling over fences and slogging through bogs looking for artefacts.
And then, oog, my deepest apologies to Midcoast Co-Housing! I got the address wrong. They are located on Salt Marsh Cove Road. Bruce and I went to the meeting on the 13th to hear a panel of Grace Goldberg, former general manager of The Rising Tide Co-op in Damariscotta, Linda and David Pope, former teacher at Lincoln Academy, and Blanche Davidson, all of whom live on the premises, and moderator Reverend Kitsy Winthrop of the Midcoast Unitarian/Universalist Fellowship. The co-housing concept arises in part from 19th-century American "intentional communities" such as Brook Farm founded by Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller and others of the New England Transcendentalist movement, but also from modern Danish projects led by planner Jan Whitman Heuer in the early 1970s. Co-Housing communities are neighborhoods planned and managed by the residents using consensus decision-making. They feature extensive common facilities: laundries, meeting rooms, kitchens and dining rooms and so on. They aim to achieve a balance between neighborhood and privacy.
The 36-acre property was formerly owned by Dr. George and Kathleen Jones. The group plans on no more than 25 dwelling units, with two or three in the main common building. There is another smaller building to be converted into a residence, and the rest are envisioned as duplexes, some 11 buildings in all. These will be nestled on five to six acres, leaving 30 acres held in common for gardens, children's playgrounds, and "wilderness." This will result in lower costs for infrastructure, as only one drive will be needed, with parking restricted to the in-coming edge. They hope to appeal to a wide cross-generational range of people, from young families with children to retirees and singles. One warning, prospective residents should be tolerant of community meetings. Lots of meetings.
Questions were asked about the financing, acquiring or selling a unit, comparisons with condominiums, rental possibilities, service fees. Interested persons are invited to visit, to see if the concept fits with their preferences. They have held frequent open houses, the most recent Sunday, Sept. 17, too late, alas, for me to carry in this column, but there will be others! Call 633-0417 to arrange a visit or ask questions.
During the meeting, I was pleased to meet architects Scott Slarsky and Katarina Edlund, whose River Road summer cottage was reviewed in a Boston Globe article a few years ago.
Let us mourn the passing of Marguerite Rafter of Wiscasset, philanthropist and activist on so many fronts! And applaud Martha Vaughan, formerly of Boothbay, who has just celebrated her 100th birthday!
Congratulations, Fluid Imaging Technologies, Inc.! They have sold their FlowCAM© II to the federal EPA Region I office in Chelmsford MA. It will be used to monitor and collect data on microscopic organisms from lakes, rivers and streams throughout New England.
Susie Stephenson is complaining of empty nest syndrome! Maggie has been enrolled in the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Portland. Joe is attending Hebron Academy, after a soul-satisfying Grand Tour of Europe this summer! Nate remains, to keep his family in parentally fit condition.
As a part of the Skidompha Library's Centennial Celebration, a concert version of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado" will be produced at the Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta on Sunday, Sept. 25 at 3:00 p.m. Among the performers will be Jim O'Brien who has Edgecomb ties, particularly as an occasional pastor at the Edgecomb Congregational Church. Call the Skidompha Library at 563-5513 to reserve tickets, $5 each. The Maine Coast Book Shop has tickets as well.
Scams of the Month Department: Claudia Coffin has warned me of the devilish VISA and MasterCard Telephone Credit Card Scam: The scamsters already know your credit card numbers. They pass themselves off as the Security and Fraud Department at either VISA or MasterCard. And everything sounds legit until they ask you to verify your card by reading them the seven code numbers on its back. The first four are the last of your card number, but the next three are your security PIN number that verifies that you are the possessor of the card. THAT is what they are after. Instead of a credit for fictional scam purchases, the scamsters will make those purchases on your card. To save yourselves, hang up. Call the 800 number on your credit card, report this experience, and then call the police. They are collecting data on such scams.
And now I read of scamsters taking advantage of our generosity toward the Katrina victims. My policy is to tell such callers, "I never respond to telephone solicitations." Instead, contribute through your church or other organization, people you can trust will get the money to where it is truly needed.
Teetering on the Autumnal Equinox as we move from summer to fall at 234 River Road, 633-2978, bonesukl@midcoast.com. This column appears in several local papers, and at www.Edgecomb.org.