A trip to Favorite Places in Maine

We're in Bath, Maine at one of my favorite stores, Reny's Department Store. They have just about anything and good prices. I wish there was one in Brattleboro, but they are all in Maine. However, Dollar General has come to Brattleboro. It's no Reny's, but it is my second favorite chain department store. It is several cuts above the typical dollar store because it has a dependable inventory anywhere you go -- and Dollar General is expanding all over the country. It is a fairly good quality bargain department store, about as close to the old Woolworth's 5&10 of my youth as you will find in today's world. If it had a lunch counter, it would practically be a Woolworth's. We have seen them in small towns all over the midwest and west, and I think they have a totally different philosophy from Wal-Mart. They are not predatory, they build relatively small, modest stores in very small communities, yet they provide a cross section of clothing, housewares, office supply, sundries -- sort of everyday stuff at reasonable prices. For a long time I bought my bandaids there whenever I found one - a box of 60 good quality bandaids for $1.

Earlier today we had a wonderful hike at Morse Mountain, a Bates College Reserve near Phippsburg, that takes you down to a wonderfully secluded beach. A beautiful day and a wonderful hike. Yesterday we had lunch with dear friends, Phil and Deborah McKean at the Tomaston Cafe, one of our favorite cafes in the world. Phil had just finished teaching a 14-week class on The Cultures of Asia  in the Seniors College program in Tomaston. He put me on to Amir Acsel's The Jesuit and the Skull about Teihard de Chardin and Peking Man, I just ordered it. It will be worked into my blog on Creationism and Evolution (which is still in the works. Be patient!).

Tonight we're going to a concert here in Bath -- the Oratorio Chorale is performing the Durufle Requiem, and two Bach Cantatas, $80 and #23, all of which I have done with the Blanche Moyse Chorale, so that will be fun. It will be interesting to see how another chorale sounds. Speaking of the Chorale, I just wrote program notes for our upcoming concert on December 10 and 12 - notes on Britten's Ceremony of Carols, Palestrina's Missa Hodie Christus Natus Est and Vaughan Williams' Nine Carols for Male Voices. After our director, Mary Westbrook-Geha vets them, I'll post them here. 

Tomorrow we'll meet Ellen's brother Jim, his friend, Mary Cooke, and her son DJ, at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockport, ME - one of my favorite museums in the world, famous for its Wyeth collection but a lot else besides. It is Jim's birthday. We'll spend a couple of hours there and then, late in the afternoon, we'll walk out on to the jetty at Rockport and watch the full moon rise. Monday we'll visit Ellen's old friend, Nancy Carney in Brooklin, ME. We're staying at Jim's place in Woolwich, which is very cozy. Tuesday we'll stop in Kittery, ME on the way home to buy several loaves of bread at the When Pigs Fly outlet - our favorite bread in the world (and the world is full of good bread!). And we'll probably stop at Bob's Clam Hut in Kittery, our favorite fish place in the world. We'll be home in time for River Singers rehearsal.

We did it!

By golly, we've repaired the deck. I dug out the rot from two joists. The rot extended about two inches deep into a 2" x 10" joist, and for a length of about 4 feet on each joist. I don't know why there was rot just there, and only there; there was no obvious explanation. But there it was. Then I removed the nails -- most of them I could pry up and pull out from above (they were threaded nails, so not real easy to pull out) -- a few I had to work up from below before I could grab them with the claw hammer. Then I put up a sister joist on one side of the rotted joist -- a pressure-treated 2" x 8" x 8'. I shimmed that joist up tight under the decking and screwed it into the rotted joist at points where it was still solid. Then I used Bondo to fill in the gap left by digging out the rot. This was a messy job, but it creates a very hard patch. Then I put up another sister joist on the other side and repeated the process of shimming and screwing in. Just for good measure I put a carriage bolt through all three joists and tightened it up really tight so those babies are really solid. Then I put wood preservative underneath and on top of the decking. Now Ellen and I are putting back up the sheets of metal roofing that hang under the joists which makes it dry under the deck and like a car port. The metal roofing is angled so water that drips through the deck runs off to the front. It's been a big job but we've done it!! Yay!

I'm also well into my project of sending to my granddaughter Katie annotated copies of Shirley's letters to home from college which she sent in Fall of 1950 from Wellesley to her parents. I've just done Letter # 11 -- eleven letters home in about six weeks. Shirley was amazing! She wrote to friends in addition to her parents so she wrote a lot of letters. With the annotations and pictures I've got over 50 pages of text so far. At this rate the whole 4-year project will be a 500 page book! I had a fun day going to the Wellesley College Archive and gathering background information and photos from sources there. This is like eating peanuts for me.