I’ve been going through a raft of documents on a CD that David Hodsdon gave me recently and I came across this piece written by Ed Grant and decided it needed to be posted. I don’t know if it was ever published anywhere, but it certainly deserved to be. Perhaps he wrote it for use in a newsletter. In any event, his recent passing makes this piece seem all the more poignant. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.
THE LOONS OF NEW ENGLAND
by Ed Grant
The Common Loon (Gavia Immer)
There is no other sound quite like it, the tremulous wail that floats across a northern lake at dawn, the haunting voice of the northern wilds.
Few people can hear the call of the common loon without being moved, it is truly the sound of the north woods, the wail of the wilderness, and for many visitors to New England, hearing one laugh in the night is a high point of a trip.
The common loon, with its necklace of white and checkerboard pattern on the back, is the species that comes to most people’s mind when they think of loons. There are four other species, the yellow-billed, the arctic, the Pacific and the red-throated, but only the common loon is found south of Canada in the summer, with the southern edge of its breeding range stretching from the Adirondacks through northern Vermont and New Hampshire to Maine. It is strictly a warm-weather resident in the region’s inland, migrating in late fall to the sea from the Maritimes to Florida. Continue reading
I’ve updated the 
I saw Tim Chase at the store the other day, he told me that Paul Kelley finally responded to 
Finally got around to posting the proposed agenda for the Annual Meeting scheduled for this coming 
Many of you were subjected the other day to the first mailing of the Association’s E-NEWS Newsletter which I liken to an Emergency Broadcast System but that’s just my flare for the dramatic. In reality it’s just another way to disseminate information in a timely, cost effective way to a targeted audience and one which we have no intention of over-using: the ability to drop emails into your inbox is a privilege we don’t want to abuse or lose. We’re happy most of the time to let you drop in and peruse the website at your leisure but there will be times when we want to get your attention sooner rather than later. And of course there is an 
Paul Kelley has fought this water level petition tooth and nail ever since it was filed over a year and a half ago. All his efforts have been futile while costing him a lot of money. Stalling is a fine tactic I guess when it leads to a tactical advantage; when it simply delays the inevitable, then it is just a waste of one’s time and money. He has lost the battle and he knows it. He is now on record saying that he just “wants out” and he’s looking for an exit strategy. What he’s come up with defies understanding: he sees his petition for release from dam ownership or water level maintenance resulting in a breach order from the Department. Once he has that in hand, he hires a backhoe to come in and dismantle the Clary Lake dam and then he just disappears. His development plans thwarted through his own incompetent efforts to ram them through the town planning process, he lashes out leaving destruction and devastation behind him as he departs for greener pastures. What a guy. Well, that scenario will only happen in his dreams. Reality I’m certain has a less pleasant outcome in store for him. 
Plans are well underway for the Association’s Annual meeting to be held Saturday August 3rd at 2 PM at the home of Robert Antognoni. Robert lives on the south side of Clary Lake at the end of Robert E. Dow Road in Jefferson. For those of you who don’t know where it is, here’s a 
Kelley did not get a “permit” from DEP to “lower the lake level” to “fix the dam” despite what he keeps saying to the contrary. He’s made that statement at the public hearing, he’s made it in official documents of record since then, he said it at a Whitefield Selectmen’s meeting last spring, and he said it again in his 23 July 2013 interview with Channel 13’s reporter Marissa Bodnar. Kelley would like you think he’s has an official Department of Environmental Protection sanction for his negligent dewatering of Clary Lake, but he doesn’t. He’d also like you to think that he was going to fix the dam until we filed the water level petition. Does anyone really believe any of this tripe?He had the fall of 2011 to fix the dam but he did nothing- I didn’t file the petition until January of 2012. What was stopping him?
A few days ago I posted about the 
Mary and Ernie Shaw completed the 2013 Audubon Loon Count this morning. While they headed east from their place along the south shore, my wife Margaret and I headed up the west side and the along the north shore. We met up not far from Ed Grant’s place and stopped to compare notes. The loon count takes place all over the State between 7 am and 7:30 am on the 3rd Saturday of July and includes more than just the number of loons counted. Mary will be giving a report on the count at the Annual meeting.
