New Clear Vision

Let’s Get on With Our Lives…

by Robert C. Koehler

Nothing fills an emotional void quite like the piercing drone of bagpipes. No matter the kids were rolling their eyeballs as they shuffled two-by-two into the stifling field house — this was profound, and I was on the verge of tears.

Oh, there she is. My daughter. Gulp. Eighteen years old. A college student. I stifled the impulse to wave and embarrass her still further. We had fleeting eye contact, then she turned to the business of finding her seat, one of almost 500 reluctant stars of this event.

I sympathized with their reluctance. Ceremony is about the past, not the future; and the past, represented by a thousand graying moms and dads looking on from the bleachers, wasn’t quite ready to let them go. It had them in its loving tangle. They were making the best of it.

I knew how self-conscious I would have been. All weekend I’d been reliving my own undergraduate career. The previous night, after arriving in St. Paul — a seven-hour trek from Chicago — we’d gone to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant and I couldn’t shut up about the old days, and the wonder that I had survived them. (more…)

Getting Back to Basics to Raise Money for the Needy

by Pat LaMarche

According to information furnished by the American Pulpwood Association and reprinted on the Maine Nature News website we should “respect mother nature.”  And that admonition is used in conjunction with the proscribed ice thicknesses on Maine lakes when it comes to traveling across them.

Here are a few of the safety hints they cite: ice two inches thick will support the weight of “one person on foot” — ice seven and a half inches thick holds “a passenger car” — and two feet of ice can hold about “45 tons.”

Now if you’re not from Maine I need to explain a few things about these ice facts.  Winter sporting enthusiasts need to know them because they play — aka fish, snow mobile, cross country ski, etc. — on the waterways as though they were land.  They even build ice shacks onto the thick ice of lakes, rivers and ponds from which they enjoy their winter activities. (more…)