Life

Campaigning has been a very interesting trip. The most memoroable aspect of running for select board so far has been finding people standing up along side me and asking how they can help me gain a seat at the table. Mostly, that’s because I tend to think of myself as a relatively unimportant person. And I am, even now. Yet my desire to serve the town intersects with a lot of other folks' desires for their town, and I’m amazed that they see me as someone who can help them.

This is my second year coaching the middle school soccer team here in Castine. Each year I am filled with apprehension about the make up of the team, and wether coaching is actually something I can do. All those kids, just looking at you to say something, anything really, so long as it relates to soccer.

And yet here I am. My second year of telling kids what to do. Interestingly, what’s most stood out from year to year is the growth of the players. Fifth graders last year who had trouble paying attention and looked at me like I was speaking Greek when I told them to hustle to the ball, have become easily motivated. Older players seem almost excited to step into leadership roles, whether in the goal or taking a midfield position with lots of running.

We’re all entitled to having off days, but it doesn’t make them any easier to work around. I woke up today without much ambition, despite the fact that we have chickens that need to be slaughtered. To add insult to injury, after we decided not to worry about slaughter, I went downstairs to discover that the toilet is not filling. There’s simply no water in the supply line. To make things weirder, the sink that’s on the same line works fine. We’ve been working thorugh issues with sediment in our well water, and it seems like this is probably related. But we really have no idea.

I’m officially going to be on the ballot in Castine for selectmen this year!

Turned in my nomination papers, and, pending a review of the voter signature, I will be on the ballot along with Patrick Haugen and Buzz Layton. It was a lot of fun talking to folks about the town while collecting signature, and I’m feeling really blessed to be in a community that not only provides me the opportunity to run for public office, but one where my friends and neighbors are actively enthuiastic about my campaign.

I knew that monarch butterflies were born somewhere in the north and then migrated to Mexico for the winter. But today on a hike on Sears Island we got to see a field of wildflowers, predominently milkweed, that was set aside specifically for monarchs to develop in.

Indeed, we saw a few monarch caterpillers, which interesting actually share a color pattern with their flying form.

Our enthusiasm was dampened slightly when the flying insects came out. They specifically seemed to want our lunch and recent traumatic events involving ground hornets meant we had to make a hasty retreat.

An interesting discussion occurred at work today where I was forced to put into words some thoughts I’ve been kicking around for a while on the nature of leadership. None of my thoughts are original, mind you. This one was cribbed from a blog post about leading without authority. I’ll drop the link when I find it. The long and the short of that post was that leadership has only the loosest relationship with authority. In fact, it’s often a sign of dysfunctional leadership which depends on having someone give you authority.