Just in time for autumn apple pie, cranberry raisin and pumpkin, too, and pot roasts, roast turkey, and pork and braised beef ribs, we received our new gas range. It’s shiny black, perfectly clean and level!

We were happy to buy locally and to enjoy the perks attendant: free delivery of the new, and disposal of the beastly old, range. One of its burners had to be lit with a match, and we could have lived with that for another eon. But when the oven went . . .

One afternoon last week I proposed to roast a chicken. Roast chicken is to a new oven what champagne is to a new ship. But, in my haste to see the last of the old stove, I’d failed to remove the roasting pan from its drawer. After a meeting at the library and a trip to Marden’s for a new roasting pan, the ceremonial chicken was roasted.

Speaking of meeting at the library, the Sun Journal interviewed Kim Sequoia and I there last Tuesday. I like attention as much as anyone, but was chagrined to see my name written large in Wednesday morning’s paper. I’m a newcomer to the Rumford Performing Arts Committee. The seven who have been meeting and working since mid-August are Mitzi and Kim Sequoia, Carolyn Nash, Dick Lovejoy, Burt deFrees, and especially Chairman Jim and Carrie Rinaldo. Their names should be written large!

Blood donors

Rumford Hospital partners with the Rumford Area Rotary to sponsor three blood drives a year. Jane Bubar coordinates the donor programs at the American Legion, which also conducts three drives a year. Donors know where to go.

Volunteers Dot Benedix and Patsy Merccier staffed the registration table at last week’s drive. Dick Lovejoy, Joe Sirois, Sonya Robinson and I plied donors with water, juice and snacks. We also timed their 15-minute apres-blood draw rests. And we visited with George Kimball, Reggie LaPointe and Tammy Houghton, who was on a long break from Carlisle’s.

One young donor said he is considering enrolling in the Bangor Job Corps, and described the dorms, work, rules and regulations. The Corps is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. There are two “campuses” in Maine, one in Bangor and another in Limestone.

Nancy Allen, adult education director at Vocational Region 9, said candidates for the program must be between 16 to 24 years old, and meet other requirements. There are, we all know, lots of young people in the River Valley for whom the Job Corps would be a boon. To find out more, call 1-800-733-JOBS, or go to the web site: www.jobcorps.dol.gov.

Linda Farr Macgregor is a freelance writer. E-mail her at ljm@gwi.net