Some 10 years ago an ad hoc committee formed, at the suggestion of the selectmen, to see if there was any interest in preserving the old Center Schoolhouse. The building had been gutted long ago, after its 100 years as a one-room school ended in 1947. In the early 1950s the Center Fire Station was built a mere 10 feet away from its window wall, an awkward placement that effectively cut off light in the cavernous room. At some point the original wooden floor structure had been removed and replaced with a concrete slab. Over the years it had been used as a carpenter’s shop, then a garage, and eventually, a place to store unwanted equipment. The back wall was long gone, replaced by a low, dirt-floored shed. There were few people in town who even remembered it had once been a schoolhouse.

The ad hoc committee met in the fire station, seated on folded chairs amongst the fire trucks on several hot summer evenings. The Historical Society, with its interest in preserving Lincolnville’s history, was well-represented, with no particular idea for its future use, just a desire to see it used in some way. Since the Fire Department was in the process of building a new station on Camden Road, their old complex, which included the schoolhouse, would soon be empty.

Empty buildings were becoming quite the thing in the Center in those years. One woman had stated that she could see seven abandoned buildings from her house on Main Street. Then, at one of the meetings, Betty Heald spoke up: “I want a library in town. This should be a library.” The seed was planted. Though it would take another four or five years to actually germinate, a library did indeed grow from that simple statement on a hot summer evening.

By the summer of 2012 much had happened. The Fire Department had moved on to their new station, the Lincolnville Boat Club had purchased their old buildings, and the Historical Society had leased, from the town, the empty Dean and Eugley lot across the road. Sitting around a table at the Whales Tooth one night, Boat Club and Historical Society folks signed papers, shook hands and, for a dollar, ownership of the Center School transferred to the LHS. Meanwhile, up the road in a building at the corner of Main Street and Heal Road, long known as “Grampa Halls”, the Lincolnville Community Library had already been born.

Funny how so much energy flickered to life in the same few years here in town, in the Center. Probably few people were aware of the group calling themselves the Lincolnville Community Alliance; its energetic and enthusiastic volunteers had a vision for what could happen. They rented Grampa Halls and started a popular Saturday morning Farmers Market there, with one corner dedicated to the newly-born Library.

These were the same people who took a single wacky idea – to move the gutted hulk that had been the Center School across the road to the barren, gravel lot that had once held Dean and Eugley’s Garage – and then made it happen.

150 of us pulled it across the road on a chilly October morning that year, onto the slab that had been prepared earlier. To say it was a drafty building would be a joke: with no back, no floor and no front, it spent the winter wrapped snugly in blue tarps. Come spring the next year a crew of volunteers began the year-long project of turning it into the library of everyone’s dreams.

Today, with solar panels providing all the electricity for the heat pump, the lights and computers at the Library (plus enough credits to pay the Lincolnville Improvement Association’s electric bill as well) the once-wreck of a building is showing many in town a way forward with solar power. Librarian Sheila Polson and a healthy number of volunteers provide a variety of services:

• The library now has more than 3500 books and other materials such as CDs for patrons to borrow and we continue to add new ones. 
• The interlibrary loan service is now free—we recently decided to start covering the entire cost of postage for borrowed books.
• Great opportunities for people to get involved by volunteering.  
• The book group, which meets one Tuesday each month.
• Monthly free talks on every imaginable topic
• Activities for children such as story time, music, and crafts
• Needlework time the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. 
• Workshops on things like knitting, felting, notecard making. 
• Free access to the Maine InfoNet Download Library, where patrons may download audio and e-books to devices such as Kindles. 
• Computers for people to use within the building. 
• Free Ancestry.com access
• The high-speed Internet service is better than what most of us get at home and it even works in the parking lot!
• Free book delivery service for local residents who are homebound. 
• Free library cards for all Lincolnville residents.

 So, the last Sunday in July of 2012 the Lincolnville Library Committee, helped along by the Alliance and the Historical society, held their first annual fund-raising Summer Picnic and Auction in the Boat Club/former fire station. The menu hasn’t changed; pulled pork, cooked to falling-apart perfection in Rose Lowell’s wood-fired oven along with vegetarian beans, a wide variety of salads, watermelon, lemonade and Kathleen Oliver’s delicious homemade cookies. Long tables are set up in the Boat Club, with the overflow crowd seated outside. After the dishes are cleared away Rosey Gerry takes over with his not-to-be missed fund-raising auction show.

This year, the fifth Summer Picnic and Auction, will be held Sunday, July 31, 5-7 p.m. at the Boat Club. The Library and Jackie Young Watts Open Air Museum will welcome visitors from 4 p.m. on. There’s more to see this year, as the fenced garden and plantings have matured this summer, and just beyond, the new Veterans Park is taking shape.

We here on the coast of Maine literally live in Rock Land. The things are everywhere. A local fellow was gathering seaweed for his garden at Ducktrap the other day, filling the 5-gallon compound buckets we all use to haul stuff around, when he noticed a couple filling their own buckets with Ducktrap’s rocks. Not a rock or two prized for its heart shape or pretty markings, but many bucket-fuls. So is it possible to be taking rocks illegally? Yes, apparently it is.

 A quick check with the town office, which made a call to the Department of Marine Resources, reports that it is illegal to take/steal rocks, soil, sand etc. from someone else’s property, things that make up the structure of that land. And in this case the property belongs either to the state (if it’s submerged), or to the town. What about the guy who reported the theft? He was taking away seaweed. That’s not on the list. It’s evidently okey dokey to take dead stuff. Nice to know.

Library Needleworkers Meet

The other day, sitting at our dining table which looks out on the front garden, we spotted a bird with a funny topknot come strolling around our woodpile, followed by half a dozen more just like it, all in a row. They wandered through the flowers and weeds barely 6 feet from us on the other side of the glass. Baby partridges! we each called out, and then one by one they took off and flew, more or less in a straight line, across the yard followed by Mama who’d managed to keep them all together. A first for us, so close to the house….

 Then this morning a snowy egret was standing regally among a flock of seagulls on the edge of the sea, slender and pure white. It took off and flew down the Beach and around the seawall in front of the Pound, disappearing from sight.

Cardinal Flowers

From Michelle Terry, ‘a wildflower fan on Townhouse Road’: ‘Several years ago you mentioned in your column in the Republican Journal, Cardinal Flowers on Slab City.  I have not seen them there since they put in the new culvert, until today! Not at that location.  Closer to Rte. 52, across from Mass Pike.  There were 3-4 stalks down near the water.  I had to wear long pants and bog boots to get close enough for a picture.  Also, there was Agrimony, Butter and eggs and Bouncing Bet before the mower came through and them down (the Bouncing Bet, that is.)  Glad the Cardinal Flowers are back.