So, we’ve stepped over the line into another month. And already, schools and colleges are rattling their scholastic sabers. Parents should mark your calendars for Sunday, Aug. 16, from 1 to 3:30 p.m. for “Set for Success,” a back-to-school event for all area elementary students, to be held in the Field House at the Boothbay Region YMCA.

All students from BRES, Southport Central and Edgecomb Eddy Schools are invited to attend, but you must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Free backpacks and teacher-required school supplies will be given out.

Taran-Tara Trace: Hunter Reid has received First Honors on Clark University’s dean’s list, signifying outstanding academic achievement during the spring 2015 semester. Congrats!

The next Edgecomb Congo Summer Supper will be Saturday, Aug. 15, from 5 to 6:30 p.m., or whenever the food runs out. As always, the traditional menu: homemade baked beans, casseroles, salads and desserts. And this time, if my memory serves me right, lobster! You can sit under the tent if you prefer outside dining. Funds raised by these suppers go toward the ECC’‘s outreach projects, from local causes to global. Anyone who wishes to help out with preparation or clean-up, please call Gail Boudin, 207-882-7972, or the Church office, 207-882-4060.

Historically, August is always the hottest, most humid month in Maine. But the hottest time I remember was back in 1962, in a third floor West Philadelphia apartment with only a window air conditioner which chugged the way an overloaded dump truck chugs going uphill. We were all packed, ready to go adventuring for a year in Beirut in Lebanon. Only one thing stood between us and the airport: the version for publication of Bruce’s doctoral thesis. Pennsylvania University School of Medicine gave us very exacting forms on a specially coated paper within which the text must be fitted, so there was I, seven months pregnant, sitting on a pile of suitcases, typing this masterpiece of equations and polysyllabic words, while, as today, wiping the sweat from my brow, hoping any stains would not disqualify him from his degree.

The key word above is “typing.” I was usin a Remington typewriter of uncertain vintage. My mother had taken it on her trip to Europe in 1929-30. (No, she was not of the ultra-rich, she was a paid chaperone to a bunch of ultra-rich teenaged girls who weren’t much younger than she.) Therefore, if I transgressed over the margins, or made typos, I had to type the whole page over again, as erasures would smear on the special coating. Never was I so glad to see the Philadelphia airport!

But here, on July 31, as I sit writing this column, I must confess, I understand how lobsters and clams feel when put on a rack in a steamer. Hoping you see no blotches on this copy from 234 River Road, 207-633-2978, and jocam@tidewater.net.