Open space

I received a flier urging residents to attend the next meeting of the Newlin Township supervisors, which will be held at 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 12, in the hall behind the Unionville Post Office. The topic, once again, is the township's proposed purchase of a lot on Stargazers Road adjoining the historic Star Gazer's Stone. The township will buy the lot only if it receives a state grant to do so, and will keep it as open space, but apparently at least one neighbor objects to the idea.
The August meeting at which the controversy was aired drew a packed house; one resident told me he had never seen so many cars in Unionville.
According to Wikipedia, the stone "marks the site of a temporary observatory established in January 1764 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon which they used in their survey of the Mason-Dixon line."

Dollars and nonsense

I serve on the board of a local nonprofit organization, and back in June we had to make some changes to our bank account. The board president and I stopped by a local branch, and our experience could have been a case study of how not to treat customers.
One worker admitted that the bank had changed hands so many times that she wasn't sure of the correct procedure anymore. A boss cheerfully told one of her employees, in our earshot, that she could use us for practice, as she had never performed that specific transaction before. At one point I had to tell an employee how to do a computer search (the software wasn't DOS-based, but it was pretty close).
So far, so bad, but the worst was yet to come: we found out that the bank had never updated its list of authorized check-signers for our account. There were one guy listed who had not been a board member for years. Despite this, our checks were still being cashed.
We left the bank feeling queasy, and several more problems that cropped up over the next few months were the final nails in the coffin.
So the same woman and I returned to the bank to close our account. We had our game plan all ready, but much to our surprise they closed our account with no questions asked and simply handed over a cashier's check. No expressions of regret, no inquiries about why we were closing the account or what they could do to keep us as customers.
Something's wrong when it's much easier and more pleasant to close an account than to open one.

Immoderate rain and waters

Saturday morning, pre-Irene, a friend was telling me about a lecture she's organizing on Civil War surgery, complete with a demonstration. From there we started talking about how risky childbirth was back then, and how common it was for both the baby and the mother to die.
At that point I realized that in comparison to what our ancestors went through on a daily basis, the lengthy power outage that was almost certain to start that evening would be a painless and very minor hassle. And I vowed to remain cheerful throughout.
I think I did -- but only thanks to some awesome friends and neighbors who let me use their showers, e-mail access and electrical outlets and kept me wonderfully amused.
Herewith, some anecdotes.

I'll tumble for you

Whenever we lose power here, almost inevitably it's due to a tree down on the power lines along one short, wooded stretch of one-lane gravel road. It's what happened during the tornado back in the 1990s, when we out of power for 4 days. It's what happened just three weeks ago, at the beginning of August. Believe me, I've got years of photographs.
So it was no surprise to walk up there on Sunday morning and see the wires acting as a hammock for a big walnut. The clever PECO guys managed to reroute the power around it before clearing it on Wednesday.
Unfortunately, there are many more trees nearby just waiting to fall onto those lines. I'm told the homeowners along the road even "joke" about whose turn it is next.
I wonder if some judicious pruning along that stretch of road might be in order. I'd supply home-made cookies for the workers!
Other that than, there weren't too many big branches down chez Tally-ho, and most of the ones that fell off the giant sycamore were quickly cleared by the wonderful hard-working boys from the farm next door. I think most of the white pine branches that were going to fall had already come down during last winter's ice storms.
At a construction site up the road, a portable toilet did get blown over. First thing Sunday morning it was leaning, but by the end of the windy morning it was completely horizontal.
On a serious note, though, I heard that four tulip poplars demolished a house in the Hamorton Woods development. It's a complete loss.

Only in Unionville

On Sunday I sought refuge at the Unionville home of my friends Phil and Susan, who were out of power but have a gasoline-powered generator to keep the key parts of their farm running (bless them). By flashlight we rummaged around in a storage room in the basement and emerged with a jigsaw puzzle and Scrabble.
The 1,000-piece puzzle depicted a cartoon foxhunting scene. All three of us became very intent sorting through the pieces and occasionally would talk to ourselves: "YES! That's the huntsman's jacket done!" or "Is that part of a hound, or the front of the manor house?"
After a couple of hours we started getting fractious -- it was a tricky puzzle and we hadn't even finished the outside edges -- and switched to Scrabble. My best word of the game, "Diesel," was the name of Phil's horse! There should be a bonus for such a feat, don't you think?

Silence in the Studio

My power-outage soundtrack was Pink Floyd's 1970 album "Atom Heart Mother." I listened to it over and over while I was on my way to Starbucks on Sunday morning (it was closed), to the Kennett Y on Monday morning (it was closed), to La Michoacana as a Monday afternoon treat (coffee ice cream with chocolate chips!) and back and forth to the houses of friends who had power or generators. I'm glad I filled up my gas tank before the storm.

Roses and thorns

My admiration for PECO workers knows no bounds. I heard them working at about 10 p.m. on Monday and figured they were making some final adjustments, as the power had come back on for a while but then clicked off again. So I went outside to watch and -- yep! just then the outside lights came back on.
I could have kissed the workers flipping the final switches with their long-handled switch-flipper.
"Thanks!" I yelled into the night, startling the dog.
"You're welcome!" I heard back. "Have a good evening!"
However: PECO's phone system could use some work. Maybe the system was overloaded -- I mean, it WAS a bad storm -- but I never got a timeframe for repairs like I usually do. All I got was exactly the same message that I'd gotten the first time I reported the outage, which is that I was welcome to call back for an update. I called repeatedly. Every time I went through the same menu, no update was given, and I was invited to call back for an update. 
Get your act together, folks.

Gen X

Some people's generators worked perfectly, clicking into action the moment power went out and keeping the whole house running almost normally. But one Facebook friend said her high-end built-in generator turned out to be useless (she used other words).
Some generators are hooked up in a really selective way. A neighbor told me that at one point she and her family were watching TV -- by candlelight. Hope they were watching a Dracula movie!
Speaking of generators, I have to admit I got a little choked up reading a pre-storm Facebook entry from one of our township road-crew guys about his storm preparations: "I am totally ready for my family and the township."