Month: November 2016

I would hope that in every person’s life he or she has someone who they know helped them at a crucial time and to whom they are forever grateful.

I entered Governor Dummer as a junior in 1963 and had a corridor master who was cruel and eventually fired. It was a rough way to start at GDA but fortunately I made the basketball team and the coach was someone I quickly came to revere.

That fall President Kennedy was assassinated and the nation was shaken to its core. As we gathered in front of televisions to watch the news coverage that November afternoon, Dave Williams pulled those of us on the basketball team away and had us practice.

I think many of us did so while fighting back tears and feeling that we didn’t want to be in the gym, that somehow it was wrong to be carrying on as if it was just normal day. It didn’t take years for me to realize that it had been exactly the right thing to do.

Dave Williams always seemed to do the right thing and another incident that season I particularly cherish. A classmate’s father was the team dentist for the Boston Celtics.

I don’t know how much dental care professional basketball players required but the connection had a real benefit for those of us on the basketball team. Through Jeff Kane’s father we occasionally got free tickets to Sunday afternoon games at the Boston Garden.

But an even bigger thrill was when Celtics players actually came to our games and it was with “Hondo” Havlicek in the stands one afternoon that I missed an opportunity to change the outcome of the game. I missed a shot at the buzzer and we lost by a point.

I was sitting glumly in the locker room when our Celtic go between informed Mr. Williams that John Havlicek would be happy to come to one of our practices and give us some pointers.

We all perked up and I’ve never forgotten Dave Williams’ heated reply– “You tell John Havlicek that I don’t need another coach of this team!”

Again, that response seemed unreasonable to me at the time. Who wouldn’t want one of the best players in NBA history giving you some personal attention?

But it didn’t take long for my disappointment to turn into even greater respect for my coach and teacher. Havlicek was a great player but to me Dave Williams was a great man!

The following season when I had the honor to be co-captain with my classmate John MacKenzie our team won the Private School League championship.

We had talent and I won’t claim that Mr. Williams was the greatest basketball coach when it came to teaching or strategizing the game, but he molded us into that winning team by treating every player equally.

No one was ever allowed to be a prima donna nor to display even an inkling of bad sportsmanship.It was was an experience and a lesson I have valued my whole life.

And there’s one more story that I have told many times to make a point about how we should put things in perspective when it may seem our whole life is going to be determined by one moment.

Dave Williams was also my corridor master my senior year and my history teacher. We were preparing to take a test– a big test that would determine much of the last grade the colleges we were applying to would see.

Some of us felt that weight heavily and Mr. Williams realizing that said this to our class. “I know that you think this test is important but in the scheme of things, many years from now, it will not be important in your lives at all.”

The words have stuck in my head ever since and the real tests in life have been both ones I could prepare for and others for which I couldn’t. Some I know I’ve passed and others I feel I’ve failed. But I do know this. Mr. Williams was right about THAT history test 50 years ago.

Dave Williams had the admiration of every student he taught or coached and he had it because he cared about every student he ever met.

11/16/2016

Even if it seems that nature might have gotten her signals crossed winter is inevitable. The oil fuel truck backed up our driveway this morning and made a delivery. Yesterday the guys we hire to plow the driveway pounded in the wooden posts that will guide them if and when the snow arrives.
“If” is of course a wishful if but the fact is that it’s been warm enough this fall that I’ve heard people use the words “the new normal” a bunch. I have an elevation app that has determined that our house is less than 90 feet above sea level. Being a golfer I like to describe our location as the distance tee to green of a par four from the ocean. For those who don’t golf that’s about 400 yards to the Camden harbor.

I’ve thought of having a plaque made with the current elevation of 10 Kims Way and the date I’d commissioned it so that those who might inhabit our house after us have a marker and a means of comparison, especially if things change. According to a University of Maine study from 2015 the length of what’s called “the warm season” has increased in our state by two weeks in the past 100 years and is predicted to increase by two more weeks in less than 50 years from now. That’s good for golfers I guess but not so good probably for much else.

A few years ago I had dinner with Graham Shimmield who is the head of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences here in Maine. If anyone would have insight into how sea levels might change, I figured he would but I was also a bit puzzled. I had just attended a talk by Shimmield at our local library and he had shown pictures of the stunning new campus Bigelow Laboratory had recently built in East Boothbay.

The buildings were on a cliff and I’d guess maybe not that much lower than the elevation of my house above the ocean. So, I asked Shimmield if he felt confident about the future of the site Bigelow had chosen to do its research.

“I figure we have at least 100 years,” he said.

11/15/2016

I have walked the Rockland Breakwater at least a couple dozen times since moving to Maine six years ago. The Breakwater is just what its name connotes so sometimes there are whitecaps on its ocean facing side while the waters on the harbor side barely ripple.

The Rockland Breakwater took almost a decade to build and was completed in 1900. It extends over 4,000 feet and is about 40 feet wide. 700,000 tons of granite were used in its construction at a cost at the time of $750,000. Needless to say, adjusted for inflation over a century later, it was a big deal. 

11/9/2016

A reminder– It certainly doesn’t feel like it right now but those of us who oppose what Donald Trump has espoused and represents are still the actual majority in this country. Yes, it may not be by as much as we thought but it is still the case.

When I lived in California I learned about wildfires and something called a controlled burn which was exactly what it sounds like– a fire started intentionally to either fight a larger fire or to prevent a more catastrophic fire from happening at all by burning an area in advance with fire crews present to make sure things don’t get out of control.