Perspectives

June in the library was busy with our 66th birthday and volunteer celebration on the 27th. Our board worked hard on this event that honored our volunteers.

Sometimes themes or topics emerge when you aren't looking for them — and yet, they are oddly perfect for the moment. I credit this month's topic to my mother, who, like me, is a lover of poetry.

One of the cliches of our world is the "helicopter parent" who tries to protect their child from any possible harm or disappointment. We have heard stories of mothers sterilizing baby nurseries to get rid of "germs" and fathers freaking out when their toddler eats dirt. It turns out that we should all go outdoors and get muddy.

Like yours, there is ample room in my head for inflation of my ego. And the quickest way to get a firm and plump ego — just at the tipping point of bursting — is to be labeled a prodigy.

Over the years, I have seen a great many animals near our island summer home in Harpswell: cormorants, gulls, owls, hummingbirds, ospreys, red squirrels, wild turkeys, eagles, crows, terns, occasional woodpeckers, seals, fisher cats, deer (who are surprisingly good swimmers) and voles (who destroy the garden with relish). All of them are part of the local ecosystem. We habitate together. They go about their daily routines, and I go about mine.

This year, the Harpswell Anchor turned 5, my parents will celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary, and our country will turn 250 years old!

In days of yore, people spent a very long time trying to figure out exactly what was happening and why it was only happening in "yore." Even now, in the post-yore era, there remains a good deal of confusion about the exact timing of this period in history.

I'm perplexed, and I know it isn't just me who feels this way. The weather in Maine has been a bit inconsistent lately. April was rainy and cold. May was cold, wet and windy. June is supposed to be the meteorological beginning of summer, but our heat pump remained on.