All right, some news, such as it is

O.K., I acknowledge it's a lousy hostess who invites a bunch of people to her blog, and then has nothing to serve them for over a month. What can I say? I haven't done a damn thing of interest in ages. I did live through the dregs of Hurricane Irene, which by the time it reached this neck of the woods was just a "tropical storm." While Vermont got pounded, because the storm had turned inland, here in central Maine we had some heavy rain in the morning of Sunday, Aug. 28th, then the wind arrived at 1:30 in the afternoon, continuing for several hours with no accom-panying rain. At 2 p.m. here in Gardiner the power went off, and for most of us remained off until the next morning. That was the biggest impact the storm had on this area.

I had made ice for my two coolers, as I planned to put food from the refrigerator in them if the power went off (and it always does). I left stuff in the refrigerator for about three hours -- hoping against hope that the power would come on soon -- then moved it to the coolers. I spent the afternoon taping photos into a photo album -- getting my pictures into albums is a long-term project I've been working on for some time -- as that was something I could do at the front window, where the light remained fair until about 6 p.m. (everywhere else in the house it was depressingly dim, since of course it was overcast out). I have an old waist-high chest there on which I keep framed photos of family and friends; I cleared off those pictures so I could spread out the photo album and work away.

My getting bored with the task at hand and the fading of the light occurred at about the same time. I was now sure we wouldn't be getting power back until the wee small hours, if then. I called one of my staff who lives in Hallowell, to see if she had power. And of course she did. Hallowell never loses power. I don't understand the difference; we're something like three miles apart. I've asked myself: whom are they paying what in Hallowell, to insure that their electric service is maintained, come what may?

At any rate, I decided to take my food to the refrigerator at the library. I did not want to be losing a lot of food, as I did the last time we had an extended power outage. While I was talking to Barb she invited me to dinner, which was welcome since I had no way of cooking. She mentioned that she had only two meatballs (giant ones), and funnily enough, I just happened to have a leftover turkey meatball in the refrigerator (or rather, in the cooler). So I took that as my contribution to the meal, packed up the car in the warm wind, and took off for Hallowell.

When I got home it was only 9:30 but I went to bed. Read-ing by candlelight is not easy, besides which I find sitting in candlelight by myself to be depressing. Because what it mainly is is dark, with only this bit of flickering light to keep you company. It has occurred to me that the purchase of an oil lantern might not be amiss, though I don't know how much that would help.

Still had no power when I left for work the next morning at 10 a.m., but when I got home at 2:30 that afternoon, the blinking clock on the electric range told me (after I'd done a little adding and subtracting), that the power had been restored a little after 10:30 a.m. Eighteen and a half hours. But of course there were people without power days later, so yes, I have to count my blessings. I'm better off than they, the folks who live in Hallowell are better off than I. There's always someone better off, someone worse.

But whenever this sort of thing happens I wonder: how on earth did they manage back in the bad old, pre-electricity days? How did they keep food from spoiling? I know they drank milk at cow temperature, I know they smoked and otherwise cured meat. But how did they keep leftovers? Or did they just never have leftovers, or feed 'em all to the hogs? I would have made such a terrible pioneer.