SOLON & BEYOND, Week of February 16, 2017

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

Good morning, dear friends. Don’t worry, be happy!

The Solon Pine Tree 4-H Club met on Saturday, February 11, with President Michaela Marden presiding.

The members are planning to attend an officer training and record workshop in Skowhegan on February 20, at 10 a.m. One member is planning to take some of her sled dogs and do a demonstration with them.

On Saturday, March 4, the club will be doing a food sale to benefit the Solon Food Cupboard and a dinner at the Solon Elementary School on the annual Solon town meeting day to benefit the club’s activities. Hope more of you will go to these events to support them.

As one of their community projects 17 food trays with lots of homemade goodies and two fruit trays were made and delivered.

Leaders Lois Meader and Eleanor Pooler did demonstrations to show the new members what to do.

The next meeting will be on Saturday, March 11, at 9:30 a.m., at the Solon Fire Station. The members will be doing demonstrations.

As I sit writing this week’s column we are in the middle of a very bad blizzard! Have been saving the following information for just the right occasion…and this is certainly it! As I look outside, the snow is almost completely covering some of the windows and the wind is blowing a gale and snow still coming down.

Have been studying an old book that I gave to Frank for Christmas back in 1973. It is called, The Old Farmer’s Almanac Sampler. On the inside cover it states, “Along about Thanksgiving time, when turkey and pumpkin pie are gladdening the inner man, a familiar friend, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, arrives upon the scene as it has each year since 1792. Now more popular than ever before in its long history, it goes into over a million homes throughout the country and in the far corners of the world.

“From its beginning that almanac has played an intrinsic part in our nation’s life. In the homes of countless pioneers, the Almanac and the Bible constituted the entire library. It served as a calendar, weather man, agricultural adviser, medical consultant, and a great many other things. Its miscellaneous information ranged from the signs of the zodiac to the latest gags, and its well-thumbed pages were consulted daily. For The Old Farmer’s Almanac Sampler its editor has brought together for the first time a choice sampling of the wit, wisdom,and entertainment of the almanac in other years. Here, in selections reflecting the times in which they were published, are bits of homely philosophy; anecdotes, comments, and advice on the daily life of a changing America….(And this book was published in 1957.”

There is one thing I’m going to share with you, if it gets past the editor, “A country farmer, not long since, having married a second wife, complained much of the rheumatism in his hips. He asked his wife one day what was the matter with her goose, that she did not hatch; she answered shrewdly that she supposed the gander had the rheumatism in his hips.” (That saying was in a 1796 issue of the Almanac!)

I really enjoyed Debbie Walker’s column in The Town Line issue of February 9 about Old Farmer’s Almanac.

So now for Percy’s words of wisdom memoir: “Only one principle will give you COURAGE—that is the principle that no evil lasts forever nor indeed for very long.” (words by Epicurus, 271 BC).