Rolling On One

Saturday night (so this really could be a post for May 12) we went to a folk concert in Lewiston ME.

On Friday Arlene forwarded me an email with the comment “this sounds like us.” It was originally from The Humble Farmer, a Maine Public Broadcasting radio personality. We’re on his email newsletter list. His show is on the air on Fridays, just about the time we’re far enough north that we can start getting the Portland MPBN station in the car. He had been asked to appear in (turned out, to be the MC of) a concert the next day which was in memory of Tom Rowe, a former member of the group Schooner Fare. The acts sounded good and we wanted to see Humble in person.

Lewiston is something like 20 miles from our house in Casco. It’s the second largest city in Maine (surprise! Everyone’s heard of Bangor, but it’s not as big as Lewiston). It’s right across the river from Auburn, so people often talk about Lewiston-Auburn. We had been there four or five times, maybe more, by now. The first two or three of them I got substantially lost. By the time of the balloon festival we were getting our bearings.

This time I got to the concert with only one wrong turn, corrected after one block going the wrong way. That was an auspicious start.

The concert was in the Franco-American Heritage Center. Check that site for a picture of the concert hall, a wonderful venue in a renovated church with beautiful stained glass windows.

I did get to shake hands with The Humble Farmer himself before the show and tell him that it was his e-mail that got us there.

The concert was a benefit for the Maine Cancer Foundation. Tom Rowe had died of cancer some three or four years ago, and his son Dave has been getting together musicians who played with him or were influenced by him to put on memorial concerts annually, This was the third.

One of the sets was by Denny Breau, possibly the best guitarist I’ve heard since Pat Donohue who plays on Garrison Keillor’s show. We didn’t recognize his name before the concert or we would have got one of his CDs as well as the Schooner Fare disk we picked up.

Schooner Fare was a folk trio mostly active in the ’80s, with a sound a lot like the Kingston Trio — good rich harmonies and tunes you could sing along to. Without Tom Rowe, there’s just a duo left. For this audience they were particularly heavy on songs about Maine. One was “you say you’re from the county, well I’m from the county too.” We were pleased that we’ve been hanging around Maine enough that we knew “the county” means Aroostook county, the largest county in Maine or in fact east of the Mississippi.

During the intermission there were crepes for sale downstairs. The people running the food were well organized and had plenty of food on hand, keeping the line moving so you didn’t have to wait. For just $1 per plate you got two (ok, small) crepes with whipped cream, really good and something you don’t find in a folk coffeehouse in the Boston area. The person behind me in line was speaking French to the guy serving them.

You can see Humble’s report of the concert (graphics-heavy! don’t do it on a dial-up line) here.

Maybe the best part of the whole thing was finding out that there are things worth going to in Lewiston, and that we can go there and get back in the evening. But the music was all good too!

To anyone who found this post searching for information on large expensive gas-guzzling vehicles, I just say nyaaaaah. I’m talking about ruby-throated hummingbirds.

We put up our hummingbird feeder last weekend, expecting that the birds would be showing up in Maine pretty soon. Yesterday, May 12, when I started to grind coffee first thing in the morning, there was a hummingbird there at the feeder.

In fact, there were two there many times during the day. Man, they are territorial little guys. Much of the day we would glance over and notice a bird on the feeder, quickly but nervously chowing down. Several times, though, we saw a blur zoom past the window a couple of inches above the feeder as another hummingbird would chase the feeding one away, or two hummingbirds dash past in pursuit of each other. Unfortunately we couldn’t see any distinguishing marks on either of them to know if there was one dominant bird.

Last weekend (so, May 5, unless it was Sunday the 6th) I was looking out the kitchen window in Casco when I saw some movement in a tree across the driveway, just over the canoe. I thought it looked more like a bird flying in than a squirrel on a tree, so I checked with binoculars. I was amazed to be looking at an owl in the middle of the morning! I got the rest of the crew to look, and we went outside to get a closer view. The consensus was that it was a barred owl. We’ve heard them calling recently and thought that was what we saw on the telephone wire at the corner of Mayberry Hill and Heath roads two weeks before.

In the time since my last post, let’s see,

* our friend Sue came up to Maine last weekend. Richard was out in California, visiting their daughter on his way to a conference in Las Vegas, and she sort of invited herself. It was great having the extra company on the drive, and she did lots of gardening work, including pruning apple trees. She has learned lots about pruning as a volunteer pruner for Newton and volunteer docent at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. So our apple trees are in much better shape than they would be if it had just been up to me.

* I made zaatar bread in Maine. Hannafords had a few things on major markdown when we stopped there, including a package of zaatar for a quarter. Lots of zaatar, maybe a pound, at least a half pound. I couldn’t resist, and then I had to use some of it. Sue was a big help in consuming it.

* I went out to Milford MA, about 40 miles southwest of Newton, for a shiva call. Naomi, who played piano in the klezmer band for several years, lost her 84-year-old father, so the current pianist and I went out there. The place was packed with members of a very large family, but Naomi seemed very glad to see us.

* OK, at least you know I’m still here…

I didn’t do any spinning last weekend, but there was lots of rotational energy going on. I finally have my lathe set up with a grinder for sharpening tools next to it.

A lathe, for those who have never seen one in use, is a device for turning firewood into sawdust. Most woodworking involves removing some wood from the workpiece to make joints, smooth surfaces, and make things the right size. Woodturning really requires you to remove a big fraction of the material you started with. Anyway, here’s what it looked like at some point last weekend:

Last weekend there was lots of snow on the ground at our place in Maine. There had been a snowfall early in the week. Though there had been lots of melting, it looked more like the end of winter than April 14.

Three weekends ago we walked around the block in Casco. Remember, that’s three miles around. About 100 yards from our house, no, make that 200, we saw a bird walking across the road. A ruffed grouse! We’re pretty familiar with them by now. This one was just walking, not particularly concerned about us. We wondered if it was the same one that was hanging around our crabapple tree most of the winter.

On the road at the top of the ridge we heard a bird commotion behind us and saw a couple of crows harrassing a big hawk, either a goshawk or a cooper’s hawk. We thought it was big enough to be a goshawk. A little way further we saw a hawk, either the same one or a different one, on a tree across the field. This second one (or second view of the first one) didn’t impress us as all that big, so we’re calling it a cooper’s. I thought it was eating something — maybe one of the robins that had just come back North.

When we got back to our place there was a grouse walking off our lawn into the woods to the right, on the far side from where we had seen the one crossing the road. Maybe it was the same one and it had just been foraging its way over from the road in the time we had gone all the way around.

Three weekends ago, that would be March 30 – April 1, I guess, we did an old jigsaw puzzle of computer languages, probably computer languages as of the mid-70s. It included punched cards, punched paper tape, and Fortran on coding forms. Like this —

It turned out to be pretty easy because it was easy to figure out which concentric circle held any given piece. The best thing about it, besided it being an fun level of difficulty, was that it was one of the era of Springbok puzzles printed on really thick, solid cardboard with pieces that fit so well that you can hold the finished puzzle up, like this:

No glue, nothing behind it, just the puzzle.

I hope the cars behind me on route 26 in Gray on Friday night saw the deer that crossed the road fifty feet in front of me. Otherwise they must have been pretty annoyed at how slowly I was going.

There was a deer crossing sign a little before that, and I saw a glint of something about eye high on the left of the road up ahead. It could have been a reflection off someone’s eyeglasses, if there were a person walking along the road there. I let up on the gas pedal and kept half an eye on it. Sure enough, it was a deer that was crossing as advertised.

Closer to our house, right at the T intersection where the road to downtown Casco comes in, I saw something on the telephone wire across the road. “I think that was an owl,” I said. “I’m turning around.” We looped back and stopped where our lights were shining enough on it. Yes — there was a barred owl sitting there looking at us.

So I think I’m getting more tuned in to what’s out there.

Oh my goodness, has it been that long since I updated? Yes.

What I wanted to say first, is that yesterday I was struck by how we had been interacting with the distribution sector of the U.S. economy at different levels. We were a little earlier than usual leaving Newton on Friday, so we decided to stop at Costco. On Saturday morning we went out to a garage sale, stopping first at the Casco AG to get a copy of the Bridgton News. On the way back from the garage sale we bought some nuts and bolts at an Aubuchon hardware store, and food for supper at The Umbrella Factory. Our last stop was what made me think about this. We were about out of maple syrup, so we turned off route 11 at a sign “maple syrup for sale”, parked in Sweet William’s driveway, and he got a half gallon of maple syrup for us from the shed in the back of the sugarhouse.

So, check it out —

• big box wholesale club store
• independent supermarket
• one-room general store
• direct from producer