When the heat got hotter last Thursday, Rumford’s road crew appeared to clean the winter sand from our road. There are worse hot-weather jobs — felling trees, mowing hay — but sweeping sand is right up there.

The Rumford Falls Municipal Auditorium is right up there for punishing heat, too. When the public hearing began last Thursday at 5:30 p.m., the temperature outside was still off the charts, and who knows how much hotter the temperature was within. Lots of papers fanning glowing faces.

About fanning: Fanning face and neck seems, briefly, to make you feel a bit cooler. But it takes no time at all to discover that the fanning motion itself is making you still warmer. So you quit fanning until you’ve forgotten its heating effect.

I’m not a select board junkie, but, over time, I’ve taken in quite a few meetings of the Rumford Board of Selectmen. That makes it fair to observe a renewed civility of last Thursday’s public hearing that was notable and welcome.

The board’s decision to run another 180-day moratorium on wind power is also welcome — whatever your stance on the issue. River Valley residents are increasingly aware of the pros and cons of wind power farming. But we’re not up to speed yet. And the question, “What are we leaving our children and grandchildren?” compels all of us to slow down and study the economics, science and aesthetics of wind farming.

A confession.

It has always seemed as if Hosmer Field gets a lot more TLC and money, too, to the detriment or neglect of other public spaces in the town of Rumford. True? Maybe, but why?

Everybody else in Rumford probably knows that the school district pays for the use of the town-owned Hosmer Field — everybody but me. That’s how it is, Dan Richard told me. “You take the high school in Dixfield. The school owns the playing fields.”

Running Hosmer Field for nighttime athletic events, Friday night football, for instance, is expensive. The cost of lighting the field is hundreds of dollars for just the one night.

No one wants to do without those and many other school sports at Hosmer, but as chairman of the Parks and Recreation Commission, Dan has worked successfully to ratchet up the school district’s share of costs there.

Another confession

I met Dan Richard for the first time last Wednesday, this after almost a decade and a half of year-round Rumford residency. We were sitting on the beautiful wall of River Park’s upper trail head on Rumford Avenue. Drivers of at least every other car that passed us honked and waved at Dan, so you’d have to think most people around here know and like him.

People know that he runs an automotive business in the Virginia area. They know that he is continuing as chairman of Rumford’s Parks and Recreation Commission. Does everybody know that Dan has been teaching at Region 9 for several years? Yes, and he said it’s wonderful work with wonderful committed students.

We were meeting to consider how to complete work on the River Park trail and to repair and maintain what’s there. Prospects are promising, if not guaranteed, and that was worth the trip. Getting acquainted with Dan doubled the value.

Linda Farr Macgregor is a freelance writer; contact her at [email protected]