Category Archives: Association News

Posts about Clary Lake Association stuff.

19 November 2021: Live Stream the Clary Cams!

You’ve always been able to live stream the Clary cams IF you were technically savvy enough to install the right plugin in your browser or conversant with a program like VLC. It certainly wasn’t easy and I suspect most people have been content to simply look at the pictures that are updated every 2 minutes rather than deal with trying to get a live feed working. I’ve recently added all 3 Clary Cams to the IP Cam Live website which takes the H.264 compressed video stream from a camera and converts it to MPEG format which most modern browsers can display without special plugins. Yay!!

The pictures that are displayed on the website are beautiful 1920 x 1080 pixel images (like the one above). The live video feed uses a HD stream with a resolution of 720p and a bit rate of 512K. Not the highest resolution and not as nice as the still pictures, but certainly pleasant to look at. One reason for choosing this live stream format is the bandwidth requirement is lower. Two of these cameras (1 & 3) feed through my internet connection and I don’t want it to bog down. You may still see “buffering” message from time to time, depending on how many people are viewing the stream.

You’ll now find “Live stream in your browser” links for each camera on the Webcam page. Here are the links:

Clary_cam1: Live Stream in your browser

Clary_cam2: Live stream in your browser

Clary_cam3: Live stream in your browser

I’m interested in your feedback! Send me an email (or use our Contact Form) and let me know what you think of the streams, and if you’re having any issues.

01 November 2021: High Outflows at the Clary Lake Dam [VIDEO]

There is a lot of water going downstream of the Clary Lake dam this morning. Not record outflows by any means, but certainly impressive as this short (and pretty shakey!) video shows.

A Harvest Message

Hello to all who take an interest in Clary Lake – those who live on its shores, members and non-members alike, friends and family who come to visit lakeshore owners, those who make use of the State boat launch and those of you who are catching this message by way of just checking in on the website.

Over this last Spring/Summer season we have all been delivered a bit from the intrusions and curtailments that a climate of pandemic has generated. What a blessing it was to be out in Nature and partake of the many activities in and around the lake with friends and loved ones. We were able to safely congregate for an Ice Cream Social and to hold our Annual Meeting, seemingly without detriment to anyone’s health. We hope, as we move further and further away from precaution-minded operating in the world, that we can add to these gatherings, other events on a regular basis; events you can always count on annually, such as an annual Marsh Tour, Coffee Clutch/’Dock Hopping’ events out on the lake; 4th of July CLA float; Community Cookout; Harvest Pot Luck; Winter Ice Frolic* and February Doldrums Hors d’oeuvres Party, to name a few! Continue reading →

2021 Courtesy Boat Inspection Season Finished

We’ve concluded our 3rd season of Courtesy Boat Inspections at the State boat launch. There is still some boating activity but it has slowed down considerably since Labor Day weekend and I think it’s safe to say that anyone trailering a boat to go fishing this time of year are both avid and conscientious fishermen and are well aware of the need to clean their boats and trailers of hitchhiking plants. Most CBI programs ended their season on Labor Day. We decided to continue through September.

The main purpose our CBI program is two-fold. First is to prevent the accidental introduction of invasive plants into Clary Lake and second, to educate the General Public about the risks posed to Maine lakes from invasive plants and to encourage them to inspect, clean, and dry their boats after use. This year we removed 4 plant fragments from incoming boats, none of which turned out to be invasive. Statewide there were a total of 2,539 plant fragments removed from boats and trailers, 19 of which turned out to be invasive plants. The Maine DEP’s 2021 CBI Dashboard shows the lakes that have CBI programs on them and where invasive plants were intercepted this year. Continue reading →

21 September 2021: Dry Fire Hydrant Installation Complete

It’s been a long time coming, but finally the dry fire hydrant installation over at the Clary Lake dam is complete. The work was started on Saturday but we encountered ledge which required a redesign of the piping and a few more elbows. Work resumed on Monday and proceeded quickly. The hydrant is actually located on land belonging to Steve and Julie Cowles, adjacent to the Clary Lake dam property. Access to the hydrant is over the Association property. Many thanks to David Boynton for donating his time and equipment and for Steve Cowles for managing this project!

The Clary Lake Association provided the funding for this project and has plans to install another dry fire hydrant in Jefferson near the intersection of Routes 215 and 126 perhaps as soon as next year. Here are more pictures of this installation:

[Show slideshow]

16 September 2021: Website Done For Now!

After three days of more or less non-stop work on the website (and a couple of sleepless nights!) I’m fairly happy with where it stands. On Monday I announced I was going to install a new responsive website theme, on Tuesday I did that, on Wednesday I completely redesigned the menus (after first accidentally deleting the old ones!) and today, four days later, after making some final tweaks to the menus, I’m proclaiming the site redesign done. More or less. Sorta. One thing I’ve learned over the past fourteen years running a website for the Clary Lake Association is that they’re never done, they’re always a work in progress. Continue reading →

15 September 2021: Ain’t Life Grand?

I had a minor malfunction here in website land this morning. A simple and truly functional menu layout is the secret to a good website and I haven’t been particularly happy with the old menus since switching to a new responsive website theme. In the process of “fixing” them I managed to break them instead. Badly. I should have had that second cup of coffee before sitting down to work! Fortunately I make regular backups and I’ve restored the system. Work continues, and I appreciate your patience.

14 September 2021: Responsive Website Theme Installed

I’ve updated the Clary Lake Association website with a new fully responsive mobile-ready and mobile-friendly theme. You might recall that I threatened to do this just yesterday! In fact I had no idea that I’d be cutting over to a new site so soon but I found a more or less suitable theme that required only minor changes and those took less time than I had anticipated. Continue reading →

We’re Contemplating Some Site Changes

I’ve grown quite fond of the look and feel of the twenty-ten “theme” in use on this website. It’s clean, simple and fast, but it’s NOT what they call in the website industry “responsive” i.e., it presents the same pages rendered for a desktop computer to all visitors whether they’re viewing the site with a desktop computer, a tablet, or a phone. This can make accessing and using this site hard for people using devices with small screens because they’ve got to continually zoom-in and zoom-out to get pages and menus sized appropriately. Those of you who have been accessing this site on your smart phones know exactly what I’m talking about. Modern themes can dynamically adjust the site’s pages to fit whichever device a visitor is using. It’s long past time when we should have moved on to a responsive website theme.

To that end I’ve begun looking for a suitable replacement. My primary goal is to implement a responsive theme while keeping our current functionality and basic layout, and without breaking the site too badly. Stay tuned and if you show up and the site looks a mess, know that I’m working on it!

2021/2022 Election of Officers and Directors Concluded

Y’all will be happy to know that we’ve finalized the election of Officers and Directors for the 2021/2022 year at a brief Special Membership Meeting held yesterday afternoon at the home of Gareth & Beverly Bowen. Five Board members showed up for the meeting (by golly, a Board quorum!) and two (count `em!) CLA members were in attendance as well (we did not encourage people to attend this meeting). The final tally of in-person and proxy ballot votes was 91 in favor of electing the slate of officers, 0 opposed. The outcome was not in question and the meeting was over almost before it started. Continue reading →

10 August 2021: CLA Annual Meeting Poorly Attended!

The Annual Meeting of the Clary Lake Association that was held last Saturday, August 7th was a fine meeting, but not all that well attended. Much to our chagrin, it turns out we did not have a quorum present, something that didn’t become apparent until a couple of days later when I was reviewing the attendance records. Oops! This means that the election of Officers and Board members and the Membership approval of our 2021/2022 budget were invalid, and will have to be redone. Our Bylaws define a quorum as 1/3 of the membership, and at any meeting of the Association, assuming a quorum is present, a simple majority can conduct Association business. We had at the time 143 members, 1/3 of which is 48. So we needed a quorum of 48 but we fell short of that mark with only 30 Members attending. While this isn’t the end of the world, it is an inconvenience that we will rectify by scheduling a Special Membership Meeting sometime next month and mailing out proxy ballots to all current Members of the Association. In the meantime, our bylaws provide for those people IN office to remain IN office until such time as their replacements are elected, so we’re not leaderless. Phew 🙂 Continue reading →

Thanks From Lake Stewards of Maine

The Clary Lake Association has been members of the Lake Stewards of Maine (formerly the Volunteer Lake Monitor Program) since 1975. We felt that this letter thanking us for our annual donation should be shared with our Membership so they can see where some of our money goes!

[pdf-embedder url=”https://clarylake.org/wp-content/uploads/LSM-Receipt-2021.pdf”]

Maine Lakes 2021 Spring Newsletter

A little late but better late than never, Maine Lake’s Spring 2021 newsletter is now freely available on line and is well worth perusing. The Clary Lake Association has been a long time member of Maine Lakes (formerly the Maine Lakes Society). Among other things, Maine Lakes administers the award winning LakeSmart program: “LakeSmart is an education and reward program that helps lakefront homeowners manage landscapes in ways that protect water quality. The program is free, non-regulatory, and voluntary.” The Clary Lake Association is considering participating in the LakeSmart program in the near future.

The 2021 Spring/Summer Newsletter Is Posted!

Wild Rice (Zizania palustris) is making a comeback in the marshes around Clary Lake. Photograph by George Fergusson

I’ve added the 2021 Spring/Summer Newsletter to our Newsletter Archive. It went in the mail less than one week ago and how gratifying it is that membership checks are already coming in! A little more information about the newsletter: we call each issue the “Spring/Summer” issue but really, it’s the only issue we publish during the year so that term may change in future issues. It is a throwback to when we actually did try to put out two newsletters a year, an initiative that turned out to be a lot like work. With email and our website, we found we really didn’t need two newsletters a year to stay in touch with out members. The last year we published two newsletter was in 2012, we haven’t done since, and we probably won’t do it again unless (or until) circumstances change. As for the name the “Clary Lake Clarion” that came from a small local newspaper that my father Stuart Fergusson and Paul MacDonald published back in the summer of 1931. I found a couple of copies of in an old closet a few years ago (see post “The Original Clary Lake Clarion“). Appropriating the name for our newsletter just seemed… appropriate! Here’s the newsletter: Continue reading →