7/19/08 First Harvest . . . and Margaritas

Oh, you're going to be so jealous of the amazing and wonderful landlords that I have! I hate to call them "landlord" and "landlady"--they're really great friends, Darlene and John, who happen to live upstairs. But technically, they're also my landlords. Here's a great story about them and about how lucky I am to be their tenant.

So I'm sitting outside on the verandah, reading a mindless book (what better way to pass the time of a guilt-free summer, eh?) with the radio on in the background, waiting for the Red Sox game to come on. I hear "knock knock." Not the sound of someone knocking, but the actual words, "knock knock." I look up and Darlene and John are standing on the grass a few feet from the edge of the verandah. "Come in!" I reply laughingly. John needs to paint a few spots on their sundeck (my verandah ceiling) that Darlene was not able to get to last week when she painted while he was out of town. She points and describes the places, then he gets the ladder and drop cloths and sets out to painting those spots. He and I start chatting about the ball game while he's painting, then we talk about his time in Dallas doing his pilot training, and then we talk about Abuelo's restaurant. During the time he was down there, Darlene flew down for one of his 48 hour breaks to celebrate their anniversary and they went to Abuelo's. MMMMMmmmm yum. Good Mexican food! He then mentions how much Darlene enjoyed the mango margaritas. Mango margaritas? I love a great margarita but had never had a mango one! Then the game comes on, we listen to the game for a while, he finishes painting and leaves and I stay on the verandah reading and listening to the game.

Soon Darlene comes through with her bucket and gardening tools and she's on her way down to the garden. Next thing I know she's back on the verandah with handful of green beans. "Do you like green beans?" she asks. As I'm nodding yes, she's putting a handful in my hands. "There's not enough there for the two of us, but we'll have plenty in another day or two." Oh, were they yummy. I ate a bunch of them raw and then saved the rest to cook for dinner.

Later I finish the book and go inside. Next I hear the rattling sound that means someone is knocking on the screen door. I look up and it's Darlene and John and they have glasses in their hands which are obviously filled with mango margaritas. But they have three glasses. :-) So we sit on the verandah and enjoy mango margaritas together. We talk about lots of things including that Abuelo's wouldn't give the recipe for mango margaritas but gave them a general idea of the ingredients and so they were trying to recreate them. For a first attempt, these were incredible. I couldn't think of anything to make them better 'cuz I couldn't imagine them getting any yummier. As we all finish up our drinks, they decide to go make a second batch and see if they can refine it. They invite me, too, and next thing I know, I'm in their kitchen as they perfect the mango margarita and then I'm sitting down to watch the rest of the game on television. The Red Sox may have lost the game but I certainly had a winning afternoon and evening with my neighbors!

First harvest of green beans from Darlene's garden.

7/19/08 Maine Community History Project

Back in May, MRM contacted me about being involved in a grant proposal. The Maine Historical Society had a new program called the Maine Community History Project (MCHP) and she wanted to get together a team from Farmington to apply. She pulled together interested folks from the required participants (library, historical society, and a local school), plus she got a cool group called Center for Community GIS (CCGIS) and me--a faculty member who works with future teachers in the area of technology integration. The five representatives from each group met a few times and did some work via email and pulled together an application in a very short period of time. In June, we found out that 50 communities had applied and 8 had been awarded . . . and we were one of the 8. Yeehah!!

On June 27, three of us (MRM, Wendy--an English teacher at the local middle school, and me) went to the all-day training session in Portland at the Maine Historical Society (MHS). On July 7, we had our first official meeting as a participating community where the two staff members from the MHS led the meeting. Our team can have as many meetings as we want, but once a month we have a meeting with the MHS folks and they give us direction and guidance and we keep them updated on our progress. It's a very interesting way to accomplish a project like this.

Today was our first meeting on our own since the proposal-writing meetings. We met at the Historical Society building and just got a glimpse of the amazing stuff that they have and tried to get a handle on what we want to do and how we're going to do it. It's really overwhelming as well as exciting. Our goal is that with this grant (and the help from MHS and the funding that we're getting) we will be able to accomplish what MHS wants but also lay an organizational foundation for the Historical Society and future projects like this, even when we don't have funding.

Oh, so what is this project, you're asking? MHS has an amazing online artifacts collection called The Maine Memory Network. To quote their website, "The Maine Memory Network is a statewide digital museum that provides unprecedented access to over 13,000 historical items from over 180 museums, historical societies, libraries, and other organizations from every corner of Maine. Step inside to see rare photographs, documents and artifacts; to explore online exhibits; to access resources for teaching Maine history; and to learn about how you can participate and help preserve Maine history." Our goal is to digitize at least 150 artifacts from our community (and trust me, we have plenty . . . the Farmington Historical Society has well over 5,000 artifacts that they've catalogued and a bazillion more that they haven't been able to catalog yet) and create an online presence to share Farmington's rich heritage with the outside world. AND we're getting students in the area involved in the process. Since every 7th and 8th grader has a laptop in Maine through their amazing Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), they actually bring a rich resource to the project. And of course, on top of that, you're looking at hopefully getting the next generation involved in capturing and getting interested in their own heritage and history.

For me, it's going to be a heck of a lot of fun personally, but it's also going to enrich what I teach and how I teach it at the university. I'm very excited.

7/19/08 Dog Days of Summer

I never really have understood the meaning or the heritage of that expression "Dog Days of Summer" . . . I've heard it has something to do with the constellation Canis Major whose brightest star is Sirius (I think that means "scorching hot" in Greek or something). But I've only seen the constellation Orion with his dog Canis Major in the winter, so what's the association with summer?

Whatever the expression meant in the past, today it meant that everyone and their dog (literally) were out and about in town. Every car that drove past me or that I walked past had a dog in the back seat. There were a few passenger seat dogs, but the majority were back seat dogs. It was wild! Farmington is a pretty dog-friendly town but I've never seen this many dogs. And none of them were out walking, they were all riding in cars. Usually when I see dogs in Farmington they're out walking their masters. Not today! Go figure.

7/19/08 I think I'm officially a local!

Today as I walked through downtown Farmington, a van with Massachusetts license plate pulled over next to the sidewalk where I was walking and the woman in the passenger's seat asked me if I knew where the Farmington Conference Center was located. I looked enough like a local that she asked me for directions!! Even better than that, I said, "Conference Center? Do you mean Community Center?" To which she replied, "Yes, that's it." And I knew where it was and told her how to get there!! Whoop!* I'm a local now!!

*Whoop is a Texas term as I know it. It's not dissimilar from the 2007 Word of the Year: w00t (note that those are zeros in that word and not the letter "O"). Whoop may be a regional term but it's definitely older than w00t.