10/18/2009 People and their Pumpkins

We know about dogs and their owners looking alike and they say that over time, couples start to look like each other. So I wonder what the type of pumpkin you carve says about you. Here are Karen's photos of each of her guests with their pumpkins.

10/18/08 Pumpkin Carving Party

How handy that I have friends who blog about events that I attend so that I don't have to. Well, okay, I'll create my own blog entry on this, I promise. But until then, read about the great pumpkin carving party. An advantage (or is it a disadvantage? well, it's a difference) of reading someone else's blog is that photos of me appear in it. :-)

http://keatsfan.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/pumpkin-carving-party/

Here are my photos from the event. Can you guess which one I carved?

10/18/08 GPS for MCHP

An important part of our Maine Community Heritage Project is gathering GPS coordinates of all of our locations so that we can pinpoint locations of the places we're talking about on a map. Then using GIS sofware (Geographic Information Systems), we can create these cool, layered maps. We can also create "layers" for Google Earth and we hope to create walking tours where folks can see the places in the photos we're scanning but also see where the places are. I'm not describing it very well, but trust me . . . it's gonna be cool!

Today, MRM and Nancy and I got in MRM's car and started driving all around Farmington and Farmington Falls. Nancy knew where we were going and navigated. For our first stop, she said, "Turn right. Now slow down. Turn in here." And we parked next to a logging truck on an empty lot:

Turns out, that was the site of Farmington Falls School. Wow. You gotta really know your local history to know that. There were zero signs, no indicators, she just knew. Good thing we're capturing this information now! Here are the other places we went to today:

On north side of river (I forgot to ask the name of the river . . . good thing we're on a team), site of Farmington Falls Mill (can't tell you which one . . . one of the things we're learning is that the same site would change hands many times and even what was milled in the building would change):

Sorry these aren't very flattering photos or even very interesting ones. I had my iPhone in one hand taking pictures while trying to upload them to Loopt online service where you can share with friends your current location (yes GPS wise or in my case by using triangulation from cell phone towers) and what you're doing. In the other hand I had a second GPS and was confirming the numbers that MRM was getting and Nancy was writing it all down.

On south side of river . . . another mill in Farmington Falls:

Oops, I didn't get the name of this cemetery:

Two photos of Measuring Rock . . . one of the surveyor's spike (hey! I saw one of those earlier this year on the Appalachian Trail hike!) and the other of MRM getting the EXACT GPS coordinates by climbing on top of the rock. :-) When the first settlers came, they didn't have surveyor's tools so they improvised. They picked this really big rock as their starting point. It stands out, is easily located, and is somewhatly central. Then, because they didn't have traditional surveyor's chains that are one rod long, they took pieces of bark and made rods. And then they set out to mark off the land into plots. Today's surveyors are impressed at how accurate their measurements were and nobody's every changed their property lines.

And a very friendly dog at the private home on whose property Measuring Rock is located. Fortunately, Nancy knew the family so when they came out to see who was climbing on their rock, they were delighted to see Nancy and they welcomed us. Shwew!

Heading back to the car after measuring the Measuring Rock:

Next was Gower Cemetery. It was a short but steep climb from the road to the cemetery. The other cemeteries are right next to the road. This one is NOT visible from the road and you really have to know where you're going to find it. This is such an adventure!!

This is a little cemetery and only has 2 headstones in it.

This person fought in the American Revolution as denoted by the Sons of the American Revolution marker next to the grave.

This is the site of Stephen Titcomb's House. It burned down in the 1950's and the site was razed and the basement filled in so there is NO sign of it ever being here. Nancy wasn't sure exactly where in this field it was located so we got to pick. ;-) She did know it was below the knoll and above the pine trees and visible from the road, so were pretty close.

Case cemetery:

We're now back in Farmington, north of Farmington Falls (we actually might have been back in Farmington 2 stops ago, I don't really know, but I know for sure in this photo we're back in town). It's the site of a school. Nancy knows which one. I was focused on my technology and didn't get it written down. I remembered it had the same last name as the man whose house is up the road a little bit but I don't remember the name. There are many advantages to having a great forgetter but when you're dealing with history, it's not an advantage. Fortunately, my role is about the technology and getting future teachers involved which I can do and do well even with a good forgetter. Melanie found an apple, which we thought was pretty ironic since we were at the site of a school. But then again, it was kind of creepy because there were no apple trees in sight, so where did that apple come from??

Now that is a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon. :-)

10/18/08 frost on the field

It was 30 degrees this morning when I woke up and you could see frost on the field. It doesn't show up too well in this photo, but all those white/gray patches are frost. At 9am, I left the apartment to go to the Historical Society for the MCHP project and there was frost on the windows of my car. Lots of frost! I actually had to get in my trunk and find the ice scraper!

10/17/08 Maurer Meal

Maurer Meals are such a cool thing! Local restaurants serve them to "raise money for the Justin A. Maurer Memorial Scholarship at UMF while raising awareness of activities necessary to improve local community health nutritionally, economically, environmentally and spiritually." The meals are made all from local foods. Grace and her husband Tom and I went to The Homestead for Faculty Seminar and then ate dinner there. Tom had prime rib, Grace had a stuffed acorn squash (see photo) and I had blueberry pork marsala. Who would think of putting blueberries in a sauce with cream and mushrooms to cook pork in? Oh my goodness!! It was delicious!!

blueberry pork marsala

10/17/08 making sure it all works for the grant

Today MRM, who's also the head of the Farmington Cultural Heritage Project grant team that I'm a part of, and I met to get all of our equipment up and running. I purchased the laptop two weekends ago in Portland at The Apple Store and we ordered our high-end photo scanner from a reliable online source and it arrived Wednesday. It's a good thing we decided to do this trial run. It took a little longer than I expected. But we got it all running and the two pieces of equipment talking to each other so we're good to go! Exciting times ahead!

10/17/08 still autumn

There's more leaf droppage as autumn starts to wind down, but lots of leaves on the ground is a fun part of autumn, too. Meanwhile, there's still plenty of beauty on the trees. More crisp, clear, beautiful days. I'm trying to savor each one before they're gone for another year.

10/16/08 The Price of Gas

I bought gas tonight not because I needed it (I still had over 1/2 a tank) but because it was so unbelievably cheap and I figure after the election the Republicans will make sure it sky rockets so they can blame the Democrats. Anyway, it was only $2.89 a gallon! I went to write it down in my mileage book and saw the amazing change in prices in less than a month:

9/21: $3.71
10/5: $3.36
10/12: $3.04
10/16: $2.89

And though I didn't fill up, don't forget October 2 when the price was $3.49 a gallon at 8:30am, $3.48 a gallon at 2pm, and $3.47 a gallon at 8:00pm.

It's still outrageously expensive, but those are some amazingly fluctuating prices!

10/13/08 Maine Monday part 1

Today was a fabulous wonderful amazing day of Maine traditions. I started the day making Needhams. You've read about them, I've heard about them, but who knew I'd have a chance to make them?! I haven't had time to formulate my own blog entry about it yet (I have tons of photos and so much to say) but my friend Karen who was my hostess for my Needham-making morning wrote a blog entry, so for now, you can go read her blog. :-)

http://thirdfury.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/2008-10-15-2/

That's how I celebrated our Columbus Day Holiday from 10am to 2pm. Wait 'til you see how I finished out the holiday. :-)

10/12/08 Gifford's last week

JUST as I was taking this photo, they turned the lights out on the sign. So I'll tell you what this is a picture of. ;-) It's the Gifford's ice cream store and the sign says, "7 days until closing". This is one of the last seasonal ice cream stores to close for the season. They get a LOT of busloads of peepers through the autumn leaf-peeping season. Farmington is just a little past peak now, so the buses will stop coming through soon.

Last week the sign said "apple sundae" which means vanilla ice cream with homemade apple pie filling on top. I knew I wanted to stop and have some of that. But I didn't get by last week and tonight when I stopped in, they were out of that. But they did have apple pie ice cream so I got that. Oh yummmm! They ground up apple pie filling and a sweet crust-like crumble and put it in their award-winning ice cream. AND it was the special flavor of the week so I saved 50 cents. I hope I can stop by one more time before the 7 days are up. I'll even pay full price! Supposedly on the weekend (their last 2 days) they offer "buy 1 get 1 free" so I need to find someone to go with me. Of course, there is the alternative. ;-)

And then Gifford's will close and winter won't be far behind. Sometime in March the Gifford's sign will change from "closed for the season" to "opening day [insert date here]". That first Friday night they have free ice cream. I've never been but I hope to make it this time. 2009!

10/10/08 embarrassing before photos of the office

I swear I'm going to clean this place up. This is about what it looked like when I skipped out of town before Memorial Day. I was planning to clean it up and get it all organized this summer but elected to do Celebration Tours instead. (Smart smart move on my part! Hindsight tells me that I made the wisest choice.) So it still has that disheveled look.

See that flat box on the floor in front of the basket of magazines? Probably not, but there is one there and inside is an Ikea file cabinet begging me to put it together. I better get to it pretty quickly because pre-registration starts next week and I need a chair for my advisees to sit in while we talk about the upcoming semester!

10/10/08 falling leaves

This is kind of a funky photo. It's of the side of the tree. I was trying to capture how blue the sky was. But look closely, you'll see I captured the blue of the sky, but I also captured a falling leaf! I definitely was not attempting to capture that, it's just a coincidence. When I got to school and emptied my book bag, I found a leaf in the book bag. Murphy's law must be running rampant right now. What are the odds of either of this leaf-catching events, much less two in the same day!

10/10/08 Moonshadow

I remember the Cat Stevens song, Moonshadow. The lyrics included "I'm being followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow." I liked the song, even though I had no idea what any of it meant.

Tonight I figured out what must be a moonshadow. I was walking home and there was a shadow next to me most of the way. There was an additional shadow that kept coming in and out. I finally figured out that the one constant shadow was a shadow caused by the moon! I don't think I've ever seen my shadow created by moonlight! The second shadow was caused by the street lights which was why it kept moving. As I moved into the streetlight, the shadow was behind me. As I started to walk towards the light, the shadow moved to the side and got very small; as I walked away from the light, the shadow was in front of me. I only got startled a few times. ;-)

10/9/08 Autumn Album Entry 2

Well, this brilliant plan of documenting Autumn every week from the same place is out the window. We had our initial meeting back in September, but the group decided to skip two weeks before we started, so that killed my kickoff. The first class ended at 5:45 (early) but I stayed for the ribbon cutting ceremony and it was dark when I got out. I was able to get this photo today after class but it's getting dark pretty quickly now. By next week when I get out of class at 6:15 (the usual ending time, we just got out early last week due to the ribbon cutting ceremony), it'll be too dark to take this photo.

Oh well! Hope you enjoyed this album of two pages. ;-) If you can't tell from the photo, autumn is gorgeous in Maine this fall!