The Old-Timer by Michael Caldwell

  The old-timer returned from vacation in Maine to beautiful shiitake mushrooms fruiting on the rock maple bed-logs he inoculated sixteen months ago. For months he doubted this new labor-instensive hobby, wondering if he’d ever see results. Now, as he bent down to admire these large edible fungi, it all seemed worth it.
  The article he read a year and a half ago in “Northern Woodlands” magazine, based in Corinth, Vermont, stirred his interest. Of all the cultivated mushrooms, shiitake grew best inoculated on sugar maple and oak. He didn’t have any oak so he tried sugar maple, curly birch, and American beech.
  After sugaring in the Spring of 2009, he ordered spawn from a company in Wisconsin which promised to consult with him as his new project unfolded. He cut four foot bolts from three to eight inch diameter trees that needed to be thinned, and hand-yarded them to the north side of his sugarhouse for shade, and to catch rain water off the roof in dry spells. Cultivated mushrooms need shade and moisture like their wild cousins in the woods.
  Using the same seven sixteenths inch drill bit he used for tapping maples for sugaring, he drilled holes in each log in a diamond pattern roughly six inches apart. With a handy inoculation tool, he pushed spawn into each hole. Then he built a campfire and configured a grate for melting canning wax in a large tin can. With a paint brush he coated each hole with wax, feeling like a wizard in a medieval laboratory. Then the waiting began – long waiting that led to this moment, admiring, finally, his fungi fruit.

A View From The Border
By David Ellis

  The Societe de l'assurance automobile du Quebec (SAAQ), the province's automobile-insurance board, recently released statistics on road safety in Quebec. Based on results taken from data in 2009, road deaths in the province has declined from previous years. This has been attributed to tougher measures taken by the Quebec government towards safer driving in the province. Most notably that of Bill 42 which covers new laws pertaining to drunk driving, speeding, photo-radar and a ban on hand-held cell phones.
  According to the SAAQ's statistics from 2009, Quebec recorded a drop in road deaths where 515 people died in vehicle collisions in the province compared to 557 in 2008. It is actually the third consecutive year that road fatalities causing death has decreased. The numbers in recent years is much lower than it was three decades ago when a record 2, 209 people died in 1973. By 1999, there were less than one thousand deaths per year.
  Other 2009 road-collision statistics revealed by the SAAQ showed that the biggest drop in deaths (drivers and passengers) was in the 15- to 24-age group. There were 124 deaths reported which was 24 fewer than in 2008. However, even though this age group represent 10 percent of drivers in Quebec, younger drivers still receive 45 percent of the speeding tickets and are also involved in more vehicle crashes.  

THE VILLAGE IDIOT

By Jim Mullen
  I'm starting to wonder how much of Apple's business comes from gadgets that are lost, accidentally laundered to death or unwittingly tossed into the garbage. It's been two weeks now since I last saw my iPod. I haven't a clue to where I put it. I've been through my house and my car with a fine-toothed comb. It's like looking for a cell phone on the median of I-80. Don't ask. At least you can call your cell phone and follow the ring. Try that with an iPod. No, it's sitting out there, somewhere in plain sight, teasing me, toying with me, hiding from me, playing vintage Yes songs to my cat. Should I buy another one or keep looking? As soon as I return from the frivolous doohickey store, I'm sure to find the old one within minutes. 
  At least I know it didn't go into the wash, which is how most of my friends lose their MP3 players and cell phones. My brother-in-law dropped his in the hot tub. Dropping them into the toilet bowl seems to be a very popular way of turning $89 gizmos into trash. They are so thin and tiny now that you have better luck finding a quarter at the bottom of your pocket than some of these miniature devices.