7/20/08 Still More Pemaquid

7/20/08 More Pemaquid

Rodney took one picture of me sitting here and then the bird flew into view and he was able to capture it on the second shot. No, that bird was not Photoshopped into this photo. I took one of Rodney in the same place on his iPhone but there's no bird in his shot.

7/20/08 Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

Where to after Wiscasset? Pemaquid! Or Pemaquid Point Lighthouse to be more exact. How did we decide? Rodney had my Gazeteer and just looked at what was nearby. This was a place he had been to in high school and it's a classic Maine landmark. It's even on the cover of one of Charles Kuralt's book about traveling America. And it turns out, it is THE lighthouse that is on the Maine state quarter. I actually blogged about it a year ago and mentioned that it was a place I should be sure to go to. I had forgotten that it was only just restored a year ago. If we had come last July it would've been surrounded by scaffolding and not nearly as gorgeous to look at. Sure it was rainy/drizzly, but we were so nearby and sometimes photos turn out great on days without direct sunshine and so we weren't going to let the rain dampen our spirits. We drove east out of Wiscasset to Newcastle and Damariscotta and then went south to Pemaquid.

When we arrived, the gates were open but the gatehouse where you pay to enter was closed and so was the little museum. We didn't even have to pay to enter. Oh the double advantages of a rainy day. It turned out the Pemaquid even on a drizzly day is so gorgeous and fascinating that we ended up staying over an hour. We climbed all over the rocks that surround it (it was low tide) and took photos like crazy.

7/20/08 Photographer at Work in Wiscasset

I love traveling with a photographer. I learned to appreciate the art form traveling with my sister. (She used to be a photography enthusiast, then she became an amateur photographer and now she's really good and may even make a go of the professional side as a hobby/career.) It's fun to watch them at work and it's fun to learn from them as well. What's been a blast for me traveling with Rodney is that he has an iPhone camera, too.

[For me, the iPhone is my only camera now. I lost my great digital camera that my family gave me for Christmas 2005. I was hiking in autumn 2007 and it fell out of my pocket. I bought a cheap replacement but didn't like it (I've since passed that camera on to my dad). I found myself using the iPhone camera more and more, part out of desperation 'cuz I had nothing else and part out of frustration when the batteries on the other one were dead or I didn't have it with me and part out of convenience 'cuz I always had my iPhone with me. I really grew fond of the little camera inside my iPhone. It has manual zoom and no flash but it's very portable and takes great advantage of ambient light. If you can see it with your eyes, it will show up in the photo.]

Here he is taking pictures of a display next to Red's Eats.

Here's my photo of the same stuff:

He showed me his cool photo that he created and then let me stand in the exact same place and showed me how to tilt my camera the same way and since we had matching cameras, when I pressed the button, I had a photo very similar to his artwork. It's better than paint by numbers! Here's the photo-a-la-Rodney (I now have it set as the wallpaper on my iPhone.)

7/20/08 Wiscasset

From Belgrade we went to Augusta and stopped at Wendy's (I know . . . not very Maine-ish when there's one in every town, but there's not one in Farmington and it was convenient and cheap and we were starving). Over lunch, Rodney laid out some possibilities of where to go next and we decided to head to Hallowell, a quaint section of Augusta with more fun shops like Belgrade, and then to play it by ear. We got to Hallowell and between the drizzle and the late hour on Sunday afternoon, the shops just didn't look very appealing OR they were already closed. So instead of driving TO Hallowell, we drove THROUGH Hallowell, and that's where our adventure really began.

We continued south on ME 27 and soon were in Wiscasset. Grace had told me about Wiscasset and about Red's Eats. She knows my fondness for lobster rolls and theirs are among the best. Do a Google search and you'll see rave reviews from CNN, Travel and Leisure, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Paupered Chef, NPR, Chowhound, and on and on. There are stories of people waiting 2 or more hours in line for Red's. It's just a simple lobster shack on the corner of Main Street and Water Street. I knew this was a place I wanted to go. But Rodney doesn't like seafood and we had just eaten a late lunch, so I was willing to forgo it. It turns out, there's much more to Wiscasset than just Red's. We had a great time plundering around and, imagine this, taking photos. I even bought more Christmas gifts!

It turns out there are 2 advantages to going sightseeing on a rainy/drizzly day: 1. the streets are wet which always makes for a great photo shoot (per Rodney, the photographer, who says look at any car commercial and you'll notice that the road is always wet), and 2. the line at Red's was VERY short. I knew from all the hype that their lobster roll was basically a whole lobster taken out of the shell and put on a piece of bread served with drawn butter or mayonnaise on the side, so I could save it for later and it would still be delicious. So we decided (I asked and Rodney agreed) to be part of the hype without the hassle and I got a lobster roll-to-go from Red's Eats.

7/20/08 Celebration Tour #3 Begins in Belgrade, Maine

It's a rainy, drizzly Sunday afternoon and Rod calls to say, "What are you doing today?" :-) And so began Celebration Tour #3. We were actually in the car driving out of Wilton and still didn't know where we were going. We just knew we were going. We decide to head to Belgrade on the way to Augusta and see where destiny leads us after that.

Belgrade is a cute, quaint little town in the Belgrade Lakes region. It's definitely an area of some fancier "camps" . . . it's more of a destination for "persons from away" and "flatlanders" (mostly rich people from Massachusetts), though some locals do live there year-round. We went to a gallery of arts and crafts that had really great stuff and then to a great tourist trap that had a mix of locally-created stuff and stuff made in China but painted with lobsters or blueberries or lighthouses, thus making it appear to be local. I had a field day but was very good to only pick up two things for the new apartment and the rest were Christmas gifts.

I took a picture of this item to send to Dr. Mari because she collects cows. I've stopped buying her cow items (for the most part) because her house is overflowing with cow things and she really doesn't need any more so I just email her the photo to let her know I was thinking of her:

I took this photo because I actually did buy something made by this artist, who also works part time in the store (but I can't tell you what it was 'cuz it's someone's Christmas present and I don't want to give it away). When I give a gift from somewhere special made by a local artisan, I like to put the business card or a paper explaining who made the art and where it came from. But this artist didn't have any such information on paper that I could include, so I took the picture of her display and will create my own paper.

I know these photos aren't too exciting, but I got so caught up in having a blast in Belgrade that I forgot to take any pictures of the cute, quaint town! I'll pretend that I didn't take any because it was rainy/drizzly and the pics wouldn't do the town justice. Or even better, I'll have to go back to Belgrade (and I think I will) in order to take photos on a bright sunny day or on a beautiful snowy wintery day.

Define "Camp"

The word "camp" is used here in Maine in ways I've never heard before. Like the way the British say "hospital" without an article in front of it ("I took her to hospital" instead of "I took her to the hospital" or "a hospital"), so Mainers and Mainiacs use the word camp without an article. It's not uncommon to hear, "Are you going to camp this weekend?" But they don't mean the verb "to camp," and they aren't referring to the noun for an established summer camp like Girl Scout camp. They're referring to summer homes, generally on lakes or near water, often very rustic, where families have gone for generations to wile away lazy summer days. I actually first heard the term in Louisiana, but then there are so many similarities between Cajun things in Louisiana and Franco-American things in Maine that I'm not surprised.

These are sentences I've heard so far using the word "camp":
We went to open camp Saturday. (Everyone in the family--different generations and in-laws--like a family reunion but more like a work party--all went to the family homestead camp and cleaned it up and aired it out and opened it up to get ready for camp season, i.e., summer)
My mother's family has camp on Big Pond. (All the family and extended family on her mother's side of the family goes to the same cottage/cabin/house every summer on Big Pond. In this sentence, it can often mean that there are several different buildings on the same land or on nearby pieces of land where different families that are all related go every summer so that all the cousins can play together.)
What time are you going to camp this afternoon? (A family (mom, dad, 2 sons) that we sat with at the 4th of July parade, was there with extended family (both sets of grandparents AND two sets of great grandparents, a brother and sister-in-law, I think a sister and brother-in-law but I lost track, and lots and lots of little kids). All those generations and barely-related folks were going to a plot of land on a nearby lake that had several structures (cabin/cottage/house) that somehow all belonged to all of these people and they had a big 4th of July picnic planned at that location.)

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.

7/18/08 Pampered Chef...Maine Style

I was invited to a Pampered Chef party! Julie in Dallas will be sad that my first party was not one of hers (and I'm sad about that, too) but I thought it odd timing after the beef strogonoff incident. Actually, I had accepted the invitation before the strogonoff event, but it's still great timing. Rhonda, our hostess, lives about 30 minutes from campus. When she sent directions via email, I noticed that Kirsten was on the list, so I emailed her and asked if she wanted to carpool. She said yes! Shwew! That meant I had a navigator to help me get there OR a friend to be with in the event I got lost. Getting lost can be a fun adventure if you have a friend to share it with.

I loved getting to yack with Kirsten on the way out. We had been on a committee together this spring but the committee work was so intense, no one really got a chance to know each other on a personal level. It turns out that we both have sisters very close to our age, we both worked at summer camps as counselors and then as directors, and a few other fun things we had in common. The drive out was through gorgeous Maine hillsides and forests with plenty of lakes (ponds) nearby. The beginning of the trip was similar to the route I took last December to go to Harry's town supper in Chesterville. And very soon after turning left at the bridge, we drove past the Chesterville Town Office, which was the location for Harry's town supper. The next landmark was "the closed country store" and I was guessing that it was the then open country store where I got directions to the Town Office. Sure enough, it was. Only we were coming from the other direction. There really were angels out that wintry December night that got me to Harry's supper! Seeing it in daylight without snow told me how incredibly fortunate I had been that I even got to that supper that night. And just a little further down the road, we arrived at Rhonda's. Oh my! She lives on a real farm! There was a barn with heavy equipment outside and animals in the field and a dirt road to drive up to get to the farmhouse. It looked so "country"! It was fabulous.

The party was a blast. I don't know for sure since this was my first, but I'm pretty sure that this party was just like any Pampered Chef party where a group of women gather at a friend's home, someone does a fun demonstration of wares, then you sit around eating, yacking, and flipping through the catalog. This was no different until the Pampered Chef representative got to the part of the demonstration where she was talking about the boning knife that they offer. She showed its flexibility and explained its purpose and quality and then gave examples of how and why to use it. "You'll save those precious grocery dollars if you buy the whole chicken at Hannaford's and cut it into pieces yourself instead of buying the package of boneless breasts," she said. Then she got my attention when she said, "And for those of you who raise your own chickens, you can easily butcher them yourselves with this handy knife." Wow. I just don't picture housewives from the suburbs of Dallas being able to relate to that advantage of the boning knife!

Sylvia from the Computer Center was also there and the three of us hung out together most of the night. There were a lot of other nice people there, but I really enjoyed these two women. I had so much fun I forgot to take a photo, but on the way out of Rhonda's lovely farm house, I saw the pigs in the field and wondered if some day they'd meet the edge of a Pampered Chef boning knife.

7/17/08 Where the Sidewalk Ends

This doesn't quite capture it, but my walk home is eight tenths of a mile from my building on campus and the last tenth of a mile is uphill. It's not a steep climb, but it's noticeable. And near the top of the hill, the sidewalk ends. Fortunately, my apartment is not very far from that. In the winter, I don't know if the sidewalk will be plowed that far up like it was in my old house. We'll find out. Meanwhile, it's a most pleasant walk and twice as much exercise which is a good thing.

7/17/08 Sheriff Andy Taylor?

As I was coming out of the post office, I spotted MRM going in to Dunkin Donuts. This would be the second time in a week that I bumped into her in downtown Farmington. I dodged across the street, stopping traffic in both directions (as a pedestrian in Maine, that's my privilege) and followed her into Dunkin Donuts just to say "Hi" so that I can count this as another "running into folks on the street" event.

This week in particular I keep bumping into people I know as I walk down the street . . . Jo on her way to the post office to mail a package, Chris on her way into the Homestead with friends visiting from Michigan, Maggy and Harry on my way out of the post office. Part of it is that I know more people, part of it is that it's summer in Maine and nobody's hanging out inside, part of it is that this is a small town and your chances of running into someone you know are far greater than they are in a big town. But whether it's mathematical or magical, it's a blast.

I was sharing my enthusiasm for this activity with Rodney who said, "Next thing you know, you'll be bumping right into Sheriff Andy Taylor on the streets of Mayberry." He's right. And I look forward to that day.

7/16/08 Red Sox Rule

Tee hee! Gotta love it. This shirt exemplifies the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry. I know I saw these right after the World Series last year, but I had forgotten about them and how clever-yet-tacky they really were.