SOLON & BEYOND: Pine Tree 4-H Club still active

by Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percy
grams29@tds.net
Solon, Maine 04979

I am so happy to have some recent news to share with you this morning. And I would like to thank Hailey Dellarma for sending it.

Solon Pine Tree 4-H met on Saturday, March 13, at the Solon Fire Station. In attendance were: Cooper and Kaitlin Dellarma, Lindsay and Charlotte Hamilton, Jillian and Desmond Robinson, Katelyn and Devyn DeLeonards, Autumn and Matt Ladd, and Isabella Atwood. There wasn’t any craft project during this meeting. Demonstrations were given by the following members: Devyn DeLeonards and Matt Ladd: DIY Knife Sharpener; Isabella Atwood: Guinea Pig Treats, Charlotte Hamilton: Fabric Guinea Pig Shelter; Linsay Hamilton: How to make a rope halter; Katelyn DeLeonardis and Autumn Lass: Kiss Cookies.

New News:

The club raised $209 on March 6 for the Solon Food Cupboard. The club members will be thinking of a possible Educational Exhibit for the Skowhegan Fair. The next meeting will be Saturday, April 9, at 9:30 a.m., at the Solon Fire Station.

I am so very pleased that the Solon Pine Tree Club is still going on for the young people in Solon, it is a wonderful group.

I also received an email from Margaret Chase Smith Library: It was this time a year ago that COVID-19 was beginning to shut down daily life in the United States. Since then we have all had to adapt to the new normal of restricted movement, limited capacity, and social distancing. While we have made progress, and hopefully crested the peak of the pandemic, the library is still operating under restrictions that will once again not make an in-person Maine Town Meeting possible this spring. They will, therefor, use the same format as last spring and offer another Zoom event. They are sticking to the original theme, although in greatly extended form, of using the Maine Bicentennial as a time to assess where the state has come from, where it is now, and where it should be headed in the future. Professor Liam Riordan from the Department of History at the University of Maine laid the groundwork last May with his lecture on Maine’s origins as a state. Next up on Friday, April 9, at 10 a.m., will be Bill Green. Drawing upon his four decades of experience as a broadcast journalist for WLBZ in Bangor and WCSH in Portland.

The final talk in the Maine Bicentennial town meeting series will also be via Zoom on Friday, May 21, at 10 a.m. “Thank you for staying ‘in this together’ through these unprecedented times. While the internet and Zoom have been indispensable tools during the pandemic,” said Director David Richards. They look forward to the day when they can welcome back everyone without the need for contact tracing forms, face masks, and social distancing signage. Now for a short explanation of why I didn’t have a column last week: Lief and I had gone to see if a store had the airplane models that he likes to put together and I had gone with him. There was a long flight of stairs to climb, and I made out just fine, but on the way down, I got to only two or three stairs left, and I don’t know what happened, but I fell, and I have a lot of black and blue places on my body. So I had to spend a few days in the hospital! It is great to be back at home and I’ll try to be wise and stay off stairs, ( for a while.)

My many, many thanks and love go out to all of you who have called or sent get well cards, it means a lot!