Got too busy last week. Forgot I was supposed to get the column in early. Hope you all had a wonderful Columbus Day holiday!
And because I forgot, I failed to alert "any Edgecomb child K-8" to show up at the first rehearsal for the first annual Edgecomb Children's Christmas Concert, scheduled for December 11. I am truly sorry. However, rehearsals are being held at the Edgecomb Congregational Church on Monday evenings from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.. I am sure they will welcome your children if they wander in late. Call Deb Boucher at 882-8402, she's a really nice lady! Or leave word of your interest at the Church, 882-4060, and come along this coming Monday, in full ringing tones!
Rug hooking is definitely In! Cathy Williams on Fort Road holds informal classes for neighbors and friends. She takes her own rugs, and those of her students to the ATHA (Association of Traditional Hooking Artists) booth at the Cumberland Fair. Of this year's assortment, nine won first places and four won seconds! Joan Day's blue ribbon is a gorgeous rose; her red ribbon went for an originally designed "Maine Postcard" featuring moose in the background. Gretchen Burleigh-Johnson, who is a first timer at rugwork, took a blue ribbon for her two-by-three-foot ship under full sail, done in the style of a stained glass window. It took her a good year to complete. Cathy's own first place winner is a view of Wiscasset's waterfront from the Davey Bridge. Other class members are from Wiscasset, Southport and Woolwich, and every one of them received at least one blue ribbon!
Lea Wait's newest 19th-century Wiscasset juvenile title is out, "Finest Kind." I've just received the publishers' card: an 1838 12-year-old boy with a deep family secret! Who, over the age of pre-school, can resist? Van Reid says he has drawn the door of the cave closed so he can get to work on his next book. We'll all look forward to the production enabled by this hibernation.
Having been involved in the transfer of the former Eddy School to ElderCare Network when I started as a Selectman, I paid a long overdue visit to the Eddy School Apartments on Thursday. Originally intended as elderly living apartments, it has since been divided. Two apartments are for independent living, six studio apartments are for assisted living.
When I arrived, four ladies were having lunch, so I joined them for some super apple pie and a cup of tea. I met Sher Hooper, the day-time care-giver, who lives in Jefferson. Later, Donor Dorr, the overnight care-giver, arrived. There are several part-time employees, as well.
The present assisted living residents are Anne Beattie and Ethel Hennefeld, both of Wiscasset, Phyllis Roberts and Priscilla Jones, both of Newcastle, and Janet Everett, originally from New Brunswick, Canada. Ethel Hennefeld was away on an errand. This end of the facility is limited to six persons. Janet Everett summed up the group's opinion, that she was as contented here as in any place she might have chosen, and everyone concurred that the care was dependable, professional, and above all, friendly. "They're awfully good to us!" they chorused.
Donor Dorr and Sher Hooper confirmed, they know their mission is successful when tenants returning from outings will say, "Now, it's time to come home."
Sher explained that the division into two units was done about three years ago. For the assisted living unit, all meals are central. Their apartments do have kitchenettes, without stoves, but with refrigerators for keeping beverages and snacks. They follow a regular meal schedule, breakfast at 8:00 a.m., lunch at 12:30 p.m., and supper at 5:30 p.m., with time afterwards for conversation or some t.v. watching, before retiring. Often they receive entertainment from Edgecomb Eddy School children and other community groups, particularly around Christmas.
Donor explained her and Sher's role, which in addition to managing the routine of the facility, also involves administering the tenants' medications as needed. To qualify for doing this, the entire staff has trained to qualify as Certified Residential Medications Administrators, an eight-week course provided by Maine Home Health in Augusta.
They made a request of me, for pictures of the Eddy School as it used to be when in its original use, so if there are any alumni who would be willing to loan photographs, the Edgecomb Historical Society will be glad to copy them, probably enlarge them, for framing. As many know, several of the slate blackboards were kept after the re-modeling, and the tenants just want to keep in touch with the apartments' earlier history.
This request opened up a discussion of schools we have known and loved. Anne Beattie recalled a big stove with a tin barrier around it so the kids would not get so close they might be burned. Donor Dorr recalled a potbellied stove at her school, and I recalled a rather large stove at Salt Marsh School that the older boys would be called on to stoke, and we all hung our wet mittens on top to dry out, and our galoshes below.
Then I went down the outside corridor to the regular apartments. These two units have full kitchens, so the tenants' meals are on their own schedule. There is a very efficient clothes washer and dryer setup in the corridor.
Ralph and Meg Lombardi, our well-known Edgecomb friends, were not at home, but I met Bill and Polly Luger, not long here from the Marrtown section of Georgetown. We had a good conversation about where we'd been before fetching up in Edgecomb. Reverend Luger is a Lutheran pastor, with most of his posts in Brooklyn, where both were born, and in New Jersey. Polly, the daughter of a Methodist pastor, used to be a regular summer person with a home on Mier Point in Brunswick that her family built the year she was born. She joked that whenever she and her sisters would invite boyfriends to visit, if the guys didn't like Maine, that was the end of that romance!
Bill maintains his pastoral career by going twice a month with friend George Walter of Brunswick to the Maine State Prison, a program called Yoke Fellows, inspired by Matthew 11: 29, ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls." and verse 30, "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." It is not so much a mission as a kind of encouragement group, the general theme, "What the Lord has been doing in my life this week."
From this visit, I want everyone to know that here are some interesting new neighbors, who would welcome visits and getting to know some more Edgecomb people. Call the assisted living caregivers at 882.6723 to arrange visits with the current tenants in that facility. The independent tenants have phones of their own.
Out to Owl's Head with friends the other day, to the Transportation Museum! What an unexpected fascination! Did you know the Studebakers started out making Conestoga wagons? One odd aircraft was an Ornithopter, built around 1900 by James Clark of Bridgewater PA. It must have been inspired by Leonardo da Vinci; the wings' frames were made of chicken wire and were supposed to have been all threaded through with white turkey feathers. Only a small portion of the example on exhibit had the feathers in place. It might have looked like a great angel, but I doubt it would have been on high for very long! At the opposite end of car oddities was the BMW 1958 Isetta, "Das rollende Ei," (translated, "The Rolling Egg"). But the car both friend Nora and I coveted was a 1948 Playboy, built by Louis Horwitz' Playboy Motor Car Corporation of Buffalo NY, real zippy, sleek lines, but compact, bright red!
However, I have brought home a linguistic puzzle: Why was a light open four-wheeled horse-drawn wagon with two banks of seats called "a democrat"? I've looked in the Webster-Merriam Unabridged and my two-volume Oxford English (with a magnifying glass) and find only the above description as a definition. But the Big Q, my erudite and knowledgeable readers, is Why "democrat"? Do you suppose there was a "republican" wagon? If so, we'd better see that Owl's Head gets one!
Studying our bunged up Mazda 2000 van with an eye toward posterity at 234 River Road, 633-2978, bonesukl@midcoast.com. This column appears in several local papers, and at www.Edgecomb.org.