Small town Maine

Today is Sarah my housemate's birthday so at the weekend we went to her parents house in Oxford for an early celebration. Kindly enough, the people across the street decided to set off some fireworks which drew us all out on to the front steps (about 12 of us). Periodically, they made some pretty impressive bangs causing us to oooh and ahhhh. I was surprised by this as I learned fairly early on that fireworks were illegal in Maine but apparently various places have just voted to make them legal. Anyhow, no sooner had the last firework exploded and the neighbours drawn down their garage door, two police cruisers turned into the drive. Cue a very stereotypical small town American cop easing his way out of his cruiser, hitching up his pants and saying 'nice fireworks'. Apparently the sight of us all standing round led them to believe that it was us causing a noise nuisance. Perish the thought! Fearing immediate deportation, I scurried into the house. It seems that whilst fireworks are now legal, in reality only the silent kind are permitted. Hmmm...maybe we should fly in these crack cops to fight the pre-bonfire night explosions in Abington Park!

On Sunday I went to see a woman called Temple Grandin talk at the University of Southern Maine about her life with autism and she was fascinating. She spoke about how she sees in pictures and compartmentalises all of her experiences into boxes. Where, if asked to envision a church steeple, we would likely think of a generic steeple, she would open boxes in her mind of different steeples - famous ones, local ones etc. She also talked about how important it was that her parents pushed her to develop her social skills but in ways that interested her. The insight was really useful for working with both children with autism and their parents. HBO recently made a film about her (called Temple Grandin) which I haven't seen but comes highly recommended. It tells the tale of her struggle to be taken seriously when she presented people with her designs for humane cattle pens and entries to slaughter houses. By thinking like an animal, she was able to isolate little details that scared the cattle and altered these to make processes better for the animal and therefore more successful. She is now widely regarded as a true expert in her field. As she put it, 'Not bad for someone who was labelled mentally retarded'.

I have also been a volunteer at the soup kitchen again. Walking around Portland in the nicer weather, it seems that there are more people than before who are homeless and it was rather depressing seeing the sheer numbers that came through the door last night. At least they have somewhere which consistently has good quality food and support available.

Race photos and statistics have been released for the Esperanza 5K. There was 1 UK runner, 1 German runner and 287 Americans. At least I was first for my country!