Now that my weekly Locke’s Mills column (along with those of several other former Bethel Citizen town correspondents), is part of Western Maine Neighborhood News, found on Substack and at the website wmnn.org, I’ll be posting only every other week’s “free to all” Locke’s Mills columns here on my own site.
On some of the weeks when my current column doesn’t appear here, I’ll be posting a look back at Locke’s Mills columns from 5 and 10 years ago.
FIVE YEARS AGO
In the March 4, 2021 issue of the Citizen, I mused about having just turned 62: “While 62 isn’t always considered a ‘big birthday,’ like the ones that end in zero or five, it has always felt somewhat significant to me…It’s the age at which my mother, and a lot of my friends’ parents, retired. Most people I know who are my age are still working, and I don’t have any plans to retire myself, but my lifelong best friend, Donna, is retiring this spring, just in time to spend even more time than usual at camp this summer.”
I noted that 62 is the age at which many businesses, especially restaurants and hotels, start offering a senior citizen discount, and added, “Of more interest to me, I’m now eligible for a Lifetime Senior Pass from the National Park Service. For $80, I can get lifetime free access to over 2,000 recreation sites managed by six federal agencies.” [I actually didn’t get around to purchasing my LSP until October of 2022, when I visited Rocky Mountain National Park with my Colorado kids, but I do have one now!]
In March of 2021, we were just beginning to emerge from a year of social distancing, thanks to the recent development and availability of COVID-19 vaccines, and I wrote, “Now that Maine has begun vaccinating those 60 and over, I hope to join Tony in getting vaccinated against COVID-19 soon. Most of my siblings have already had their shots, and I have high hopes for what I missed the most in 2020: family gatherings at camp this summer.”
Trying to get an appointment to be vaccinated can seem a bit like playing the lottery. If you’ve been having trouble navigating the process, or you don’t have computer access, my best advice is to find someone to help you sign up online.
A week later, on March 11, 2021, I reported that the most recent guidelines under the “Moving Maine Forward” plan would increase the limit for indoor gatherings to 50 percent of capacity as of March 26, adding, “That means that Greenwood should be able to hold our annual Town Meeting at the Legion Hall, which has a maximum capacity of 300, since we aren’t likely to have even close to 150 people in attendance. The selectmen had previously been considering how to hold a “drive-in” Town Meeting like the one held in Woodstock last year, but being able to gather indoors should make things simpler,” with masks and social distancing still to be required.
We had had a 30-hour power outage on my birthday, due to high winds, and had used our small generator to run one circulator from our wood furnace, keeping the house at about 55 degrees. I had also plugged my new Instant Pot into the generator “and enjoyed a pot roast like my mom’s for the first time in many years.”
TEN YEARS AGO
In my March 3, 2016, column, I had been out looking for signs of spring:
“I took a walk down the Greenwood Road past Round Pond on Sunday. Although I saw a few fishermen out on the ice, from the extent of the bare ground in the woods along the road, the lack of snowbanks, and, especially, the bright orange posters warning of ‘Heavy Loads Limited,’ it really looked more like late March than late February. My former mother-in-law, Mabel Kennett, who was a teacher, always said it was an early spring in Maine if she was able to rake her lawn during her April vacation. Unless we get some big storms in March, it doesn’t look like that will be a problem this year.”
The Greenwood Historical Society was offering packs of postcards for sale to commemorate the town’s bicentennial, with each pack of five postcards including scenes of Greenwood as it would have appeared in 1816-1855. “This is the first of several postcard packs that the historical society plans to release throughout the bicentennial year, so don’t miss your chance to start building your complete collection.” [I believe the commemorative postcards are still available at the town office.]
When the March 10, 2016, issue of the paper came out, the town was seeing interested residents to serve on the Planning Board and the Board of Appeals, as well as “two regular members of the soon-to-be-formed MSAD 44 Cost Sharing Committee. These are all important positions, and we need thoughtful folks to fill them. It’s a great way to get involved on the local level, something that I can say from personal experience is very rewarding.”
Tony, Will, and I had attended the Democratic caucus at Telstar, where several area towns held their caucuses. “Sixteen Greenwood residents came to caucus and seven had voted earlier by absentee ballot. Our local results of 15 for Bernie Sanders and eight for Hillary Clinton mean our town’s two delegates to the state convention in May will be split between them. Interestingly, if just one person had switched sides from Hillary to Bernie, both of our delegates would have gone for Bernie, which shows how every vote really can make a difference.”
In other local news that week, Peter Seames had broken his hip in a recent fall, and neighbors and friends were sending him their thoughts, prayers, and get-well wishes.
I was experimenting with baking sourdough bread from a starter I had been nurturing for a couple of weeks:
“Real sourdough bread depends on wild yeast and lactobacilli that are naturally present in flour, as well as in the air, and it takes somewhere between a week and two weeks of daily ‘feeding’ with flour and water to get the starter to the point where it’s ready to bake with. Then it can take several hours for the dough to rise, so it’s a real ‘slow food’ experience. I’ll let you know how it works out.”
And I was continuing my walks on the Greenwood Road, “now that the snow has melted back enough to leave the edges of the road dry and ice-free. I enjoy seeing the incremental changes on the ponds each day at this time of the year and keeping an eye on the expanding pool of open water by the culvert that goes under the road in the area Diddy Johnson called Mayes’ Bridge. Spring is on the way, and, even though this winter hasn’t been especially harsh, I’m always ready to welcome it.”