CRITTER CHATTER: Happy Endings x 2

Injured raccoon today. Looking good.

by Jayne Winters

I don’t remember that I’ve ever written back-to-back articles about the same species, but sometimes things just naturally fall into place. Both of these recent rescues have a happy ending, so how could I resist?

Injured raccoon on front seat of car.

As a follow-up to August’s column about the racoon that underwent surgeries for a broken leg, fractured jaw, and dislocated eye (I’ve learned the medical term for this condition is “globe laxation”), recovery went exceptionally well. Although not all eye injuries result in loss of vision, it’s likely this coon’s optic nerve was significantly damaged. The surgical site healed well, but it’s unknown whether he will regain sight in that eye. Thanks again to Dr. Cody Minor, of Windsor Veterinary Clinic, and his assistant, who made their final house call to Duck Pond last week to remove the leg cast prior to transfer to another rehabber pending release.

The second happy ending is that of “Winnie.” Her story has made the news on several Facebook pages, as well as in a recent PenBay Pilot/Boothbay Register article. While driving home from Vassalboro on the evening of August 27, a young woman witnessed a truck in front of her drive through a family of raccoons that were crossing the road. There was no oncoming traffic, but the driver didn’t attempt to brake nor stop to offer assistance. Four kits managed to run out of the way of the vehicle, but a little female was hit. Although motionless, she was still breathing; Kristen was able to wrap her in a sweatshirt and placed her on the front seat of her car.

Familiar with Don’s rehab facility, she called him and after confirming it wasn’t the mother racoon that had been hit – which would have been a serious concern for the remaining babies – brought the youngster over to him for admission and assessment. Thankfully, there were no broken bones, and once stabilized, she was transferred to Kathi McCue, at Wilderness Miracles Wildlife Rehab, in Bowdoin, where she has made great progress. “Winnie” was initially placed in quarantine (typical protocol), given physical therapy for a soft tissue rear leg injury, upgraded to a larger pen, and continues to thrive. The ‘icing on the cake’ is that Kristen will be present when Winnie is released.

Kristen was not only a Good Samaritan, but has also been a fundraiser, generously creating GoFundMe pages for both Don and Wilderness Miracles. If you wish to donate, go to https://www.gofundme.com and search for “Support Don Cote’s Wildlife Care Center” and/or “Support Wilderness Miracles Wildlife Rehab.” Wilderness Miracles also has a donation link on its Facebook and web site pages, as well as specific wish lists.

For anyone who knows Don, even semi-retirement he is busy! He receives many calls daily, provides advice and makes referrals. Duck Pond is now primarily a site for folks to bring in small injured or abandoned wildlife, with other rehabbers (or Don himself) transporting the animals to their own facilities for further treatment and care.

He has been working primarily with Misfits Rehab, in Auburn (207-212-1039; FYI, Jen accepts bats and mice), Wilderness Miracles, in Bowdoin (207-720-0074), Bridget Green, in Wiscasset (207-631-0874), Critterville Wildlife, in Brooklin (845-549-2407), and Saco River Wildlife (207-702-1405). As mentioned earlier this summer, mid-coast Maine has a newly-licensed turtle rehabber! Pam Meier can be reached at The Turtle’s Back (203-903-2708). Wildlife rehabbers are handling their own rescue calls and are especially busy with young animals that require extra feedings and care; Don greatly appreciates their ongoing assistance. Please remember to check these websites for someone close to you: https://www.mainevetmed.org/wildlife-rehabilitation or https://www.maine.gov/ifw/fish-wildlife/wildlife/living-with-wildlife/orphaned-injured-wildlife/index.html

In addition, you can contact your local Animal Control Officer through your town office.

– Donald Cote operates Duck Pond Wildlife Care Center on Rte. 3 in Vassalboro. It is a non-profit state permitted rehab facility supported by his own resources & outside donations. Mailing address: 1787 North Belfast Ave., Vassalboro ME 04989 TEL: (207) 445-4326. EMAIL ADDRESS IS NOT BEING MONITORED AT THIS TIME.

SCORES & OUTDOORS: Woolly Bear update and other folklore winter predictions

Photo by Roland Hallee, taken on Sunday, September 22.

Roland D. Halleeby Roland D. Hallee

Well, my article on Woolly Bear caterpillars in the September 12, 2024, issue of The Town Line, generated some emails.

One reader wrote: “According to your article in this week’s issue of The Town Line you haven’t been seeing any Woolly Bear caterpillars. Maybe it’s because they all migrated to my boyfriend’s house on the Ward Road, in Augusta. We have been spotting many of them since last week and the orange band on all of them is quite long. I guess that means we’ll have a mild winter. Personally, I would prefer snow over rain that freezes over. Snow is much easier to deal with.”

Another wrote: “Seeing lots of woolly bears. Everyone has a long brown stripe.”

Still another: “I saw one large healthy-acting woolly bear a couple days ago, and am pleased to report his orange band was at least half his body length.”

Another reader, who lives in Palermo wrote: “I live on Hostile Valley Road, in Palermo, and I just wanted to let you know the ‘bears’ are doing well over here. I walk many days and do a lot of gardening. I’ve seen at least a dozen so far these past two weeks. Most have been the traditionally marked version with a mid-body red/brown combined with the two black ends. Look very proportional with the blacks together equaling the red. I have seen one that was black on one end with the rest of the body red/brown.”

So, with all of that, guess what happened last Sunday? I saw two woolly bears, and managed to photograph one of them. Again, large rust colored band compared to the black tips.

From all reports, all the woolly bear sightings have mentioned a long rust-colored band, one e-mailer saying the band occupied at least half of the body.

Let’s hope the little critter is correct and we will have a relatively mild winter, as in the last couple of years.

Old farmers’ folklore states the severity, or mildness, of an upcoming winter is predicted with the woolly bear’s markings. The wider the rust-colored band, the milder the winter.

Other folklore to consider, the height of bee hives. The higher from the ground, the more snow can be expected. I have seen a few bee hives this year, one was in the ground, the others attached to the corners, in the rafters under the roofs, which is pretty normal.

Also, the amount of difficulty peeling an onion. My wife and I eat a lot of onions, and this summer, they have peeled easily, another sign of a mild winter.

Moose sighting on Killdeer Point

How many people witnessed the moose sighting on Killdeer Point last week? According to those who did, the moose took a swim, emerged on Killdeer Point, then went for a stroll up the road. Where it went from there, nobody seems to have seen that.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

The Boston Red Sox have won nine World Series. Only two other teams have more. Who are they?

Answer
New York Yankees (27), St. Louis Cardinals (10), (Philadelphia/Kansas City/Oakland Athletics, has 9 also).

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Franz Liszt

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Franz Liszt

One of the very first classical records to give pleasure to me during seventh grade was a 12-inch 78 (Columbia Masterworks 12437) of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, by Franz Liszt (1811-1886), as performed by Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985) with the Phildelphia Orchestra and recorded April 18, 1946.

Franz Liszt

Lasting just under 10 minutes, the piece is divided into two parts, the first being a slowly paced and haunting atmospheric scoring for strings while the second accelerates into an explosively jubilant dance for full orchestra. Ormandy, being justly renowned for bringing the rich string sound, that his predecessor Leopold Stokowski (1882-1975) had already achieved there, to an even greater sustained level, conducted a very exciting performance which can be heard on YouTube.

Ormandy would later re-record the Rhapsody but this earlier one still stands out.

Ormandy also recorded the Liszt tone poem Les Preludes at least twice. Again a 78 set is my favorite for its extra adrenaline and was released on Victor , M-453. It is a very colorful show piece in which Philadelphia’s strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion display their virtuosity (In 1943, Ormandy and the Orchestra would record for Columbia for 25 years before returning to RCA Victor in 1968.).

Liszt composed two Piano Concertos and the Totentanz also for piano and orchestra. In 1960, Ormandy collaborated with pianist Philippe Entremont, himself still living at 90. Ormandy has also left a recording of another Liszt tone poem, Mephisto Waltz.

During his youth, Liszt himself was a legendary virtuoso touring Europe with mobs of screaming women fans; in 1837, he was involved in an affair with Countess Marie D’Agoult and she gave birth to a daughter Cosima who would later marry composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

Eugene Ormandy

While still living the flamboyant life of a touring celebrity, Liszt, according to the writer Samuel Chotzinoff, “made the quixotic decision to quit the concert stage and accept the post of musical director in the small town of Weimar [Germany], at a salary of a thousand dollars a year, there to devote his time to composing, conducting and teaching the piano without pay.”

For the remaining 38 years of his life, Franz Liszt was unstintingly generous with his time and money to the mentoring of younger composers and musicians. He would eventually practice a religious asceticism, dressed in a priestly cassock and becoming the Abbe Liszt.

Other very good interpreters of Liszt’s music include pianists Artur Rubinstein, Alfred Brendel, Van Cliburn, Sviatoslav Richter, Lazar Berman, George Bolet, Claudio Arrau, Annie Fischer, Walter Gieseking, and Martha Argerich; and conductors Leonard Bernstein, Fritz Reiner, Herbert von Karajan, Selmar Meyrowitz, Alceo Galliera, Antal Dorati, Jascha Horenstein, Sir Thomas Beecham, Anatole Fistoulari and Sir Georg Solti, etc.

A story is told of Schumann and Brahms visiting Liszt, of Liszt playing his own Piano Sonata for the two guests and of Brahms falling asleep. Liszt was not happy.

FOR YOUR HEALTH: Prepare Your Place for the Next Pandemic

Germs, pollution and allergens can be spread around your house by an ordinary HVAC system.

(NAPSI)—While more than 1.1 million Americans lost their lives due to COVID-19, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, emerging HVAC technology is now available to protect homes from the next pandemic.

The 2020 pandemic blindsided a nation that found itself without a vaccine and preventatives. Scientists warn a similar coronavirus-type event could wreak havoc again.

SARS CoV-2, like all coronaviruses, was easily transmitted via inhaled and exhaled airborne droplets. Home isolation was often ineffective and didn’t offset outside influences, such as returning schoolchildren, parties, or just visitors who can potentially infect unprotected home environments. Air droplets have been proven to move between rooms mainly via the HVAC system’s air distribution.

New HVAC Technology Combats Viruses

The good news is that the HVAC industry’s air filtration sector has introduced new disinfecting technologies to combat airborne biological contaminants, including coronaviruses. Most submicron-sized contaminants, 95% of them smaller than a grain of sand, easily pass through a standard HVAC filter. However, a new third-party-tested technology disinfects airborne pathogens and enhances particulate filtration, which normally would pass through an HVAC system.

One example is Aireshield® by Reviveaire LLC. This patented non-thermal plasma disinfection system resembles the size and thickness of a common HVAC fabric filter used in most home central air conditioning and/or heating systems. It’s easily installed by HVAC technicians or Do-It-Yourselfers.

How It Works

The non-thermal plasma system electrostatically charges the HVAC supply air with an undetectable plasmic cloud of negative and positive-charged ions. The positive and negative ions electrically attach to themselves and submicron airborne contaminants. This agglomeration process enlarges both biological and non-biological submicron particulates, so they easily entrap in standard fabric HVAC filters. The electrostatic field also disinfects pathogens.

The process also prevents bio-slime, a sludge t­hat easily grows in the dark, moist environment of cool HVAC coils. Bio-slime potentially cuts HVAC efficiency (thermal transfer) by up to 30 percent.

Keeping coils clean and efficient can pay back a non-thermal plasma system’s cost in three to five years with energy savings. The system continues providing protection from viruses, as well as everyday concerns such as allergens, flu, common cold and other airborne biological contaminants for 10 years or more.

Protecting a home from everyday airborne contaminants or pandemics requires readiness.

To find contractors who can install Aireshield, call Reviveaire at 908.987.7089 or email info@reviveaire.com.

SMALL SPACE GARDENING: Fall plantings provide continuous spring color

The late spring blooming bulb Purple Sensation allium has four-inch round purple flowers and is critter-resistant. Photo courtesy of Longfield-Gardens.com

by Melinda Myers

Welcome spring and create continuous color for several months with a collection of spring-flowering bulbs. After planting in the fall, you’ll enjoy an array of flower colors that combine nicely with other spring-flowering trees, shrubs, and flowers.

Start the season with early blooming snowdrops. As winter fades watch for the dangling white flowers on six- to ten-inch-tall plants. Include these small flowers in rock gardens, mixed borders, and informal landscapes in sunny and part-shade locations.

Include a tapestry of colors with white, purple, lavender, and yellow crocus. Large Flowering Pickwick crocus offers unique blooms of white flowers with purple pinstripes. Its striped petals surround the red-orange stamens making this a standout in any planting. Crocus are a favorite of critters as well as gardeners so consider protecting them with a repellent as the leaves emerge in spring.

Look to early, mid, and late spring blooming tulips and daffodil varieties to maximize the color in your landscape throughout the spring. Check catalog descriptions and package labels to help you select an array of bloom times. Longfield Gardens’ Bloom Times Guide to Spring and Summer Bulbs (Longfield-Gardens.com) can also help you plan for three months of color in your landscape.

Look to Emperor, Kaufmanniana, and Greigii tulips for a bit of early spring color. Add some fragrance and showy, peony-like flowers with Double Early Foxtrot. This award-winning tulip has sturdy, weatherproof stems that support its loosely cupped flowers. Its petals contain a range of pink shades from white to deep rose.

Plant some Darwin Hybrid and Triumph tulips for mid-spring color in the garden. The two-toned flowers on Apricot Impression seem to glow and as a Darwin hybrid, they will have a long-lasting presence in your garden. Finish the spring season with fancy ruffled parrot tulips, fringed and lily tulips, and more single and double late bloomers. You’ll enjoy the extended show and late spring flowers to enjoy in arrangements.

Don’t overlook daffodils. You’ll find a variety of flowers with long, short, large, and split trumpets. Daffodil flowers may be one color, or the trumpet may be a different color than the color of the surrounding petals. Double varieties add a unique look to any garden. The early- to mid-spring blooming Cyclamineus Tete-a-Tete daffodil may be small in stature at seven inches but the bright yellow flowers and three blossoms per stem make it visible from a distance.

Combine some Armenian grape hyacinths with mid-spring blooming tulips, daffodils, and perennials. Their small, cobalt-blue, fragrant flowers last weeks and look good wherever they are planted.

Bridge spring and summer flower seasons in your garden with Purple Sensation allium. This late spring blooming bulb has four-inch round purple flowers high atop 24 to 30″ stems. These reliable bloomers are critter-resistant like daffodils and grape hyacinths. Enjoy them in your garden, fresh bouquets, and dried flower arrangements.

Make this the year you select and do some fall planting of various early, mid, and late spring flowering bulbs. You’ll be rewarded with a burst of early spring color and sustained beauty from a mix of spring flowering bulbs.

Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books, including the recently released Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, 2nd Edition and Small Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything” DVD instant video series and the nationally syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment TV & radio program. Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine and was commissioned by Longfield Gardens for her expertise to write this article. Her website is www.MelindaMyers.com.

SCORES & OUTDOORS: A squirrel by any other color is still a squirrel

Gray squirrel

Roland D. Halleeby Roland D. Hallee

While driving to work on the Cross Hill Road, in Vassalboro, one morning last week, I saw a black squirrel. This caused me to remember an email I received a little while back from a reader who said, “I have red, black gray and a new one – dark gray with a brown belly – what is this one? How many litters can they have? I am almost overrun with them all.”

Well, first off, mother squirrels typically have two to four babies in a litter, and have one or two litters a year.

Squirrels are different colors due to genetics, which control the amount of melanin, or pigment, in their fur. Here are some reasons why squirrels have different colors:

Red squirrel

– Gray and red squirrels: These squirrels have a mixture of light and dark bands in their fur, which create their overall color and pattern.
– White squirrels: These squirrels can be albino, leucistic, or fail to deposit pigment in their fur.
– Black squirrels: These squirrels have a genetic mutation that causes them to produce too much melanin, a dark pigment. This condition is called melanism.
– Brown-black squirrels: These squirrels have one copy of a black gene and one copy of a gray gene.
– Jet black squirrels: These squirrels have two copies of the black gene.
– Interspecies breeding: Some squirrels’ black coloring may be due to interbreeding with fox squirrels.

The MC1R gene controls how much dark pigment is added to a squirrel’s fur as it grows. A missing piece of DNA in this gene increases the production of dark pigment, resulting in darker fur.

Black squirrel

Eastern grey squirrels come in a variety of color morphs, including grey and black. All individuals contain a gene, MC1R, that controls how much dark pigment is added as a squirrel’s hairs grow. When a tiny piece of DNA is missing from this gene, it boosts the production of dark pigment and makes the fur darker.

Albino gray squirrels are the rarest form of white squirrel. Mammalogists estimate the odds of a female gray squirrel giving birth to an albino offspring are 1 in 100,000.

Biologists estimate the black squirrel is unusually rare with only one squirrel in 10,000 wearing the dusky coat. This mutant of the gray squirrel resides primarily in northern climates.

Western grays are predominantly cool gray and white and don’t have brown on their faces, in contrast to the two introduced species who have a lot of orangey-brown all over their faces. The black squirrels that are common in some areas are simply a melanistic (hyper-pigmented) version of a regular eastern gray squirrel.

As for the dark gray with a brown belly, that one is a mystery. The closest I can come is called the Prevost squirrel, but it is only found in Thai-Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, and northern Sulawesi.

White squirrel

Here are some things you should know about squirrels:

– What does it mean when a squirrel holds its tail on its back? In most cases a good first guess is the behavior relates directly to an individual’s survival or to its reproductive success. One suggestion has been the tail behavior has to do with protection from predation. If you look at a squirrel with its tail up, the silhouette appears to be the head looking backward.
– If a juvenile squirrel continuously approaches and follows people, then mom is probably gone. In this case, you should contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator because the baby is very hungry and needs care.
– While squirrels born in the wild may not be particularly friendly, they do seem to remember their human hosts. In some cases, they even return to reconnect with their human saviors. Squirrels are also more than willing to return to a food source over and over again.
– Do not attempt to catch a squirrel. If you try to touch it or grab it, it will likely do anything it can to escape. This will likely cause the squirrel great stress and fear and may even provoke it to attack you or contort its body in a way that will cause it pain.

Squirrels are everywhere, but do we understand them? Maybe now we can.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Combined, how many championships have Boston pro teams won?

Answer
39. Celtics 18, Red Sox 9, Bruins and Patriots, 6 each.

OPINION: Town elder concerned about seniors in China

COMMUNITY COMMENTARY

by Sheldon Goodine

The Rise of Senior Homeless in Maine?

We cannot let this happen in the China area. Maine folks are tough and try to go with the flow as long as possible, then it may be too late to solve the problem.

We tell our young children and adolescents, that if they see something wrong or are bullied themselves to “tell somebody”. That should apply to seniors as well. It may be very difficult to talk with a family member or maybe they don’t have a family member to talk to. “Tell Somebody”, the help you need may be as close as the town office. China Town Manager Becky Hapgood has agreed to act as a soundboard on a temporary basis and she can get you the help that is needed. Talk to her, tell her your problem and she will listen and find a solution. Some of the problems may be as follows:

Homelessness, elder abuse, food insecurity, transportation issues, medication, energy assistance, balance checkbook or paying bills, companionship and scams.

The list is long and varied. So do not carry the problem alone. “Tell Somebody”. Bottom line, you are not alone, there is help out there – start with Becky!

Good luck and God bless.

SCORES & OUTDOORS: With the woolly bear MIA, what are we seeing in its place?

wooly bear caterpillar

Roland D. Halleeby Roland D. Hallee

Send out a BOLO! I got that from NCIS, it means “be on the lookout”, what they used to call an APB (all points bulletin – those of you my age will remember).

Has anyone seen a woolly bear caterpillar this year? Usually, by mid-September they are everywhere. I haven’t seen a one.

However, I have been seeing a yellow, fuzzy caterpillar that has me curious.

Now that the days are getting shorter and the night time temperatures are dipping into the 40s, It’s Woolly Bear Caterpillar season once again! Remember, the woolly bear caterpillar, according to folklore, predicts the severity, or mildness, of the approaching winter with the size of the rust-colored band it wears. The wider the band, the milder the winter. Since we haven’t seen any black/rust woolly bears, let’s take a look at the yellow woolly bear.

There are actually a lot of different fuzzy caterpillars out and about right now looking for a last meal and a good place to hibernate for the winter. One of which is the Yellow Woolly Bear Caterpillar. While they may look like your favorite pair of fuzzy slippers they are so much more interesting.

Yellow Woolly Bear

The Yellow Woolly Bear Caterpillar is part of a whole tribe of caterpillars named for their fuzzy appearance. The tribe name actually derives from the Greek word “arktos”, which translates to “bear”. It’s not until the Yellow Woolly Bear Caterpillar matures and goes through metamorphosis that it turns into a tiger – moth. The Virginian Tiger Moth to be precise.

Changing from a bear to a tiger isn’t this critter’s only trick. The Yellow Woolly Bear Caterpillar isn’t always yellow. Sometimes it’s a reddish or brownish color. While some caterpillars may decide they like yellow and stick to it, others start out yellowish and then change to a darker color when they molt. They are either all yellowish, all orangish/reddish, or all brownish. If you find a super fuzzy caterpillar that is part black and part orange, or some other mix of hair colors, it’s a different critter.

The Yellow Woolly Bear Caterpillar is native to the United States and can be found throughout much of North America, from Canada through Mexico. There are even some records on iNaturalist of the species being found in the more northern parts of South America.

Orange Woolly Bear

The Yellow Woolly Bear can live in many habitats as well, anywhere from wooded and forested areas, to meadows, fields, gardens, and occasionally agricultural areas. The broad distribution range of and variety of favorable habitats for this species is likely due to its generalist feeding behavior. The Yellow Woolly Bear Caterpillar will eat a wide range of plant leaves from basil, to the clover in the yard, to maple trees – it will even occasionally eat milkweed plants. Luckily the caterpillars are not particularly numerous, preferring to put distance between themselves and their siblings, so the caterpillars rarely cause enough damage to be considered a pest.

The fuzzy Yellow Woolly Bear Caterpillars eventually turn into lovely white moths with yellow and orange patches on their bodies. While not nearly as hairy as the caterpillar, the moths do retain some fluffy looking leg warmers and hats. Once the caterpillars turn into moths, they are usually called Virginian Tiger Moths.

Virginian Tiger Moth

The moths don’t eat. At the most, they may take a quick drink of nectar from a nearby flower. While the caterpillar’s primary goal was to eat and grow as big as possible (without being eaten itself), the moth’s goal is to find a mate and bring the next generation of woolly bears into existence. Here’s where it gets really interesting, though. Remember those pictures of crazy looking moths with tentacles coming out of their butts that went viral for a while? Yeah, these moths can do that, too. Or at least a similar variation of the tentacle butt thing.

The tentacle looking things are actually organs the male moths have and can inflate to produce and spread pheromones that attract female moths. Kind of like a cologne. While they look different depending on the species, some are tentacle-like, others more like pencils or feather dusters, most male moths have them.

So, now that we know a little more about these woolly bear variations, I will know they are of the woolly bear family. The only thing I wasn’t able to find was if they have the weather predicting powers like the traditional woolly bear.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

In 2014, which versatile Red Sox player become the first to start in seven different positions in a single season?

Answer
Brock Holt.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) spent a number of years as a boy in Raymond, Maine, with an uncle, Dr. Richard Manning, who built a huge mansion with lavishly expensive wallpaper, fireplaces and Belgian glass windows – local natives referred to it as “Mannning’s Folly.” It was later used as a church and tavern and is now listed as a historic site and tourist attraction.

During later years when Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, (where his classmates included former President Franklin Pierce and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), he often visited his uncle.

However, even though Hawthorne graduated with the class of 1825, he had a very jaundiced view of his time as a college student, as revealed in an 1850s letter to Richard Henry Stoddard:

“I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.”

In his American Note-Books for July 5th, 1837, during a visit to Maine, Hawthorne describes looking out the window at the Kennebec River:

“Then there is a sound of the wind among the trees round the house; and, when that is silent, the calm, full, distant voice becomes audible. Looking downward thither, I see the rush of the current, and mark the different eddies, with here and there white specks or streaks of foam; and often a log comes floating on, glistening in the sun, as it rolls over among the eddies, having voyaged, for aught I know, hundreds of miles from the wild upper sources of the river, passing down, down, between lines of forest, and sometimes a rough clearing, till here it floats by cultivated banks, and will soon pass by the village. Sometimes a long raft of boards comes along, requiring the nicest skill in navigating it through the narrow passage left by the mill-dam. Chaises and wagons occasionally go over the road, the riders all giving a passing glance at the dam, or perhaps alighting to examine it more fully, and at last departing with ominous shakes of the head as to the result of the enterprise.”

For me, Hawthorne had a phenomenal gift of drawing the reader into any scene he was describing out of direct experience or as a result of being transformed into his novels such as, for example, the Scarlet Letter, and the Blithedale Romance, as well as such short stories as Young Goodman Brown, The Minister’s Black Veil, Feathertop, etc.

Sergio Mendes

Sergio Mendes

On September 6, pianist/orchestra leader Sergio Mendes passed away at the age of 83 due to several months of the ill-effects of Covid. Back in 1970 when I was attending the University of Southern Maine at Gorham, a friend in the dormitory room next to mine in Anderson Hall introduced me to his Brazil 66 albums; I began buying my own copies, enjoying Mendes’s immensely charming soft pop/jazz/Bossa Nova arrangements and particularly relishing the lead vocalists Lani Hall and Karen Philipp.

Herb Alpert

Herb Alpert

One 1968 LP Fool on the Hill, released on Herb Alpert’s A&M label, has remained on my frequent play list. The renditions of the title song – itself superior to the Beatles own performance in my opinion; the slowly paced lyrical love ballad Canto Triste sung exquisitely by Lani Hall (She later married Herb Alpert); and the infectiously upbeat Upa Neguinho leave the album’s remaining seven very good songs in the shade.

The entire album is accessible on YouTube.

Bernard Haitink

Bernard Haitink

In January, 1905, Czarist troops fired on peaceful demonstrators in front of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, killing over 400. In 1957, Dimitri Shosta­kovich’s 11th Sym­phony in remembrance of that tragedy was premiered in Moscow.

It has been recorded with distinction by a number of conductors, one of them being the late Bernard Haitink (1929-2021) on a Decca/London 1985 release still in print and accessible also on YouTube. The Symphony has four movements of searing eloquent beauty and savage power.

 

 

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FOR YOUR HEALTH: Back to School Means Recommended Vaccines for Preteens Too

Today is the day to protect your kids with HPV vaccination.

by Ruth Stefanos, M.D.

(NAPSI)—As a pediatrician, I hear many questions from parents. As their children grow from babies to adolescents, so does the number of questions they have about how to continue protecting their kids. This makes sense, since we are all navigating a changing world with social media, peer pressure, and more homework and scheduled activities. Parents are juggling these things every day, and the bottom line is that parents want to know how they can protect their kids.

One of the most important things we know to protect your kids – now and as they grow – is vaccination. While most parents are familiar with getting their babies vaccinated, they might not realize that there are vaccinations specifically for preteens that can protect them against serious diseases like cancer and meningitis.

HPV vaccination is given when kids are about 11–12 years old to protect them from ever getting the HPV virus that can cause cancers later in life. Both preteen boys and girls need this vaccine now, before they are ever exposed to the virus. Stopping that virus in its tracks can protect them from things like cervical cancer in women, and head and neck cancer in men.

While it can be hard for parents to look at their preteens and see the young adult they will become, vaccinating them now means not having to worry about HPV-related cancers as they grow up. We know that this virus is common—about 13 million people in the United States, including teens, become infected with HPV each year. Every year in the United States, HPV causes about 36,000 cases of cancer in both men and women. This is why I strongly recommend that parents vaccinate their kids. I also know that the HPV vaccine has a reassuring safety record that’s backed by over 15 years of monitoring and research. What’s amazing is that we are really starting to see the impact of this vaccine. HPV infections and cervical precancers have dropped substantially since 2006, when HPV vaccines were first used in the United States.

I feel very confident telling parents that today is the day to get their kids protected with HPV vaccination. It’s a good reminder that while you can’t stop kids from growing up, you can protect them against cancer later. Back to school healthcare visits are a great time to take this step to protect them. Please call to schedule your kids’ appointment today. You can learn more at www.cdc.gov/HPV.

Dr. Stefanos is a medical officer in the Division of Viral Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Preven­tion (CDC).