SOLON & BEYOND, Week of January 19, 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 has been busy in December and January. In December they adopted a family and gave them a Christmas dinner in December, collected items for the Somerset Animal Shelter, enjoyed a Christmas Party with an exchange of gifts and enjoyed refreshments. The members also made turkeys using wine glasses.

In January the members voted to do food trays for the elderly in February. Michaela Marden and the leaders will be doing demonstrations so the new members can see how they are done.

The club is planning to do a food sale to benefit the Solon Food Cupboard and a dinner to benefit the club on Solon Town Meeting Day on Saturday, March 4.

For a fun activity the members did a wood burning project.

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

Maine author Lynn Plourde spent a day at Solon Elementary School on December 7. Her visit to the school was made possible by a Donors Choose grant written by Mrs. LaChance.

While at the Solon school, Mrs. Plourde read her new book, Bella’s Fall Coat, to the student body at an assembly. She also read her book Baby Bear’s’ Not Hibernating while students and Mr. Corson acted out the parts of the story. Then Ms. Plourde visited all classrooms and worked with the students on how to write stories.

Ms. Plourde grew up in Sko0whegan and now lives in Winthrop. She has written over 30 books for children since 1997. It was a great experience for the students to work with a real author whose books they have read for years.

Thanks go to Mrs. LaChance for writing the grant and to the community members who donated to this project to bring Lynn Plourde to the Solon School.

During the first two weeks of November, the Solon Kids Care Club ran their annual Thanksgiving Food Drive to collect food items for the Solon Thrift Shop Food Cupboard. They collected 200 items for needy families. The Club would like to thank students and parents for their donations to this worthy cause.

Lief’s daughter, Cynthia Fitzmaurice, from Schenectady, New York, spent this last weekend with us. While she was in Maine she visited with several other family and friends.

I read in the police log in the paper recently of someone on North Main Street, in Solon, being scammed, and my sympathy went out to them. Lief has also been targeted and it is a terrible, mind-boggling experience!

Something for you to circle on your calendar is the Solon Congregational Church will be having a baked beans and casserole supper on Saturday, January 28, at the Solon Masonic Hall off from Rt 201, from 5 to 6 p.m.

We were invited over to North Anson on Sunday for a wonderful birthday get-together dinner for Amanda’s birthday. It was a most delicious meal.
The annual Solon Budget Committee meeting will be held at the town office conference room on Saturday, January 21, at 8 a.m.

And so for Percy’s memoir called, A Touch of Love; A little beauty to pass along, A little duty to make us strong. A bit of gladness to make us whole, A little sadness to cleanse the soul. A sense of humor to make us smile… These are the things that make life worthwhile. But more important than all the above, The greatest of these… A touch of love. (words by Carmen Boitel Adams.)