When you were nine what did you want to be? Now that you are grown up, has any part of that come true? Somewhere I read that a nine-year-old’s fantasy lies embedded in us all, that if we can look deep within and remember what we loved doing as a child we can find the key to what makes us happiest. I’m not sure this necessarily means if I wanted to grow up to be an artist, that I literally needed to make my living painting pictures. Or that my little brother had to be a major league ball player to be fulfilled. After all, how many firemen-astronauts-veternarians-movie stars-or what-have-yous does the world need?

        Rather, the child you were knew exactly what she loved doing, unfiltered by practicality or even having any particular aptitude for the thing. So the little boy who dreamed of playing big league ball grew up to be a political consultant, fascinated by strategy and statistics, by winning and losing. And the would-be artist has spent her life creating things – with her hands, hatching projects and with words. And that brings me to today, a snowy Monday in the middle of February. Cabin fever time.

         The other day I sat with a friend, Harbour Mitchell, drinking tea and talking vision. Ever since joining the Lincolnville Historical Society’s board, Harbour, known to many in town for his work as an archaeologist, has been referring to this thing he calls “vision.” I’ve been a bit slow to pick up on it, but this morning, alone on the long drive back from taking a friend to the airport, I got it. Nothing happens without someone first visioning it.

         The Lincolnville Library is a good example. Long before that old wreck of a schoolhouse ever took a single step (or slide) towards the other side of the road, a whole lot of visioning went on by a whole lot of people. They imagined it standing on the other side, they spent long hours figuring out how to do it, all the steps that would be involved from permissions and permits to measurements and calculations of weight and stresses. The human element – bringing volunteer workers on board, people willing to devote physical labor, to ask for money, to commit whole months of their time – was another huge part of the visioning.

         Think how many people said it would never happen, should never happen. “Tear it down,” they said. “It’ll collapse,” said others, (including me, whispering to myself in the dead of night “what if it collapses?”). And across that blasted lot of land, vacant for over ten years, the Jackie Young Watts Open Air Museum came together even as the schoolhouse was morphing into a library (much thanks again, to Sandy Shute for her generous dedication in getting it built with a crew of neophyte carpenters – Sandy is moving away from Lincolnville this winter – best wishes to her!).

         The Historical Society itself is the work of a person with a vision: Jackie Watts. With a houseful of children in 1975, a job and all that entails, Jackie dreamed up the LHS out of whole cloth, inviting a small group of like-minded folks to her house, collecting old photos and producing – one, two, three – the first books of Lincolnville’s history in the space of a few years.

        Jessica Day, whose program of family music was postponed last week, will be at the Library on Friday February 12, 11 a.m. to noon. Families with children from newborn to age 5 are invited to come sing, move, shake and explore musical instruments together. This Midcoast Music Together series is generously sponsored by Bangor Savings Bank. To contact the Library about any of their programs, call 763-4343 or email.

Winter Presentation

        The next Library Presentation, Wednesday February 17, will feature Emily Randolph-Epstein, a writer and musician living in Rockport. She is “currently revising an Epic Fantasy novel which blends her love of fantasy with her passion for folk music traditions around the world.” Emily, her husband Whitney and daughter Resa, along with Peter Proeller will then take the “stage” as Miners Creek, a family bluegrass band playing “a heavy sprinkling of folk, latin, Appalachian, blues, old timey, and jug band.” This month’s event is being sponsored by Windsor Chairmakers in honor of company founder Jim Brown. Tickets are $10 each and proceeds benefit the Library. Contact Rosey Gerry, 975-5432, to reserve yours.

A Revived and Renovated Community Building

         Sunday afternoon, a couple traveling on Belfast Road, saw a car go off the road at Deadman’s Curve, ending up in the field. They and the car behind them stopped, and checked on the driver, who was unhurt, as was her car. Then it was a matter of waiting for the wrecker to pull it out. One of the women stayed with the driver for the next hour and a half, and in that time no fewer than 30 people stopped to offer assistance! They were tempted to put up a sign saying, “We’re all set, tow truck on the way.” A friend relayed the story to me, ending with this: “Some people live in places where they have to hold signs that say ‘Help’. Here we need signs that say ‘Got help, go home’.” Pretty neat.

         A few weeks ago I mentioned a heater was being sold on the LBB “for a song”. Well, the heater was ultimately donated to the Maine Syria Relief Project in Camden and is currently in a container on its way to a hospital in Syria.