We went to the wake for Rich Kubler. 

At his Firehouse in Hackensack, New Jersey, he was known as “Richie”. He was on the job 22 years.

You’ve heard of Kubler on this page before.  For almost a year he fought the cancer the doctors say came from his selflessness in being a first responder on 9/11. He passed away a week ago.

Rich and his wife, Susan, moved to Wiscasset about two years ago.  So it is natural that his memorial service would be here. What surprised many of his friends was that dozens of Rich’s fellow Jersey firemen came to the Midcoast for the week and have been helping Susan and the rest of her family and plan a service at First Congregational Church.  A 24-hour color guard stood watch outside the Daigle Funeral Home in Bath for several days.  

We talked to some of the Hackensack firemen and came away impressed by their love for Kubler.  Being a firemen, it’s clear, is not just a job.  It’s a family thing.  The memorial service was attended by about two dozen people in person while Facebook and Zoom live streams  had about 100 viewers.

Here’s a link to the Wiscasset Newspaper’s story about the services, written by Susan Johns

On Thursday, the first Walk Around Wiscasset drew a few dozen locals and visitors to downtown’s new safer, wide brick sidewalks, comfy benches, art galleries, shops and classic-looking street lamps. Several merchants and a few eateries were open.  The significance of the WAW is that it happened at all, in this age of The Virus. Everybody was wearing masks and distancing - but mainly they were talking and smiling and enjoying seeing friends and neighbors. WAW #2 is scheduled for this month on the 27th.

The weather for the Walk was a little iffy early in the day, but it all cleared up by starting time of 5pm.  But an hour later, the rains came, wet and strong ... putting an early end to the event.  The temp dropped to a more Mainey 78 or 79.  Over the past week, we’ve had high 80s or even 90 (according to my car thermometer) - as Donna said, “We didn’t come Maine for THIS!”  She’s a believer in long range forecasts and she says we can take the air conditioner out of the window now; the hot stuff is done.

I checked and see that we’ve been here six weeks.  Quarantining for the first two and then behaving ourselves and hunkering for the rest of the time.  Three times this week, I got into the car because I wanted to buy some landscaping tools.  Twice, I got to the store and turned around and came back to the house.  I kept saying to myself, “It’s not safe.  Is another tool on the workbench worth it.” The third time I went out, I ran into a sales clerk who waylaid me for about 10 minutes telling me about features of a weed whipper. Thank goodness he was, like me, wearing a mask.  For the future, I’m staying close to the home.

By the way, if you’ve been following me, I cut the grass this week - and the mower is still working.  So, this week, I watched where I was walking.  The mower still works. Darn thing doesn’t like to mulch rocks.