Capt. Larry Legere of Casco Bay Lines came to the Scarborough Historical Society to entertain us with slides of the wooden steamboats that ferried people and their belongings back and forth between Portland and the islands of Casco Bay before World War II.

One of his wonderful slides showed the “Aucocisco” at Central Landing on Great Chebeague. Two women in long dark skirts and white long-sleeved blouses are leaving the boat and an old gentleman with a white beard and a straw hat is walking up the pier beside them, trundling their valises on a wheelbarrow.

The “Aucocisco” was built in South Portland in 1897 and served the islands for more than 50 years. She was the boat that passengers took to Orr’s Island to enjoy a full shore dinner at noon. We also learned about the “Sabino” that began service with the Casco Bay Lines in 1927. Painted gray during World War II, she transported soldiers to Fort Preble and Fort McKinley. She is one of the few wooden steamboats that has been preserved, and can now be seen at the Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Conn. Capt. Legere regaled his audience with many more slides and stories for a fascinating evening.

SAGE (Senior Adult Growth Exchange) presents nine programs every fall and spring on the campus of USM. Participants meet on Tuesday mornings for two hours, to hear programs that cover a broad range of subjects, from history and science to the arts and current events.

Each program has a different presenter and on Oct. 11, Bill Nemitz, columnist for the Portland Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram, enlightened his audience on “The Life of a Journalist”. Mr. Nemitz is as good a speaker as he is a writer. He first described his life right out of college, back in 1977, when he was freelancing for a Rockland newspaper during the day and working for a cleaning company at night – one of his favorite jobs was cleaning the offices of Down East Magazine!

He then got a real job, reporting for the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and five years later moved down to Portland where he is now a roving reporter, choosing his own stories and writing a column several times a week. His job has taken him all over the state of Maine, to Ireland with George Mitchell for the peace initiative, and to New Orleans to cover the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

However, most interesting to me were his trips to Iraq where he and a photographer were embedded with the 133rd Engineering Battalion. He described participating in the memorial service for the Maine National Guard soldier killed in Mosul – a particularly difficult time as most of the members of the Guard have served together for many years and are close friends.

He also told of going back to Mosul just before Christmas 2004 and experiencing the horror and fear of being near the dining hall when it exploded, killing 22 soldiers, two of whom were from Maine. Mr. Nemitz traveled down to Fort Drum to welcome the Guard back to the United States and was with them when they arrived back in Maine to cheering crowds and a big celebration in Monument Square in April. He concluded his talk with a plea to remember our soldiers and to understand how difficult it is to return to civilian life after surviving such horrendous experiences.

On a happier note, the Scarborough Garden Club enjoyed hearing how home gardeners can grow cranberries right in their own back yards. John Harker of the Maine Department of Agriculture gave a PowerPoint program on the subject, explaining that harvesting cranberries can be done by hand without having to flood your garden!

He presented Betsy Kelley with a cranberry plant for knowing that the name comes from “craneberry”, as the colonists thought the flower resembled the neck of the crane. Nancy Hunter thanked the 10 members of the club who worked many hours on their hands and knees putting the gardens at the Hunnewell House to bed for the winter, especially our two new members, Virginia Nicoll and Janet Dumas.

Also in preparation for the winter, the Friends of Scarborough Public Library brought Linda Woodward of Maine Audubon to tell us about the birds we may expect in our gardens during the next few months. She had gorgeous pictures of our fine feathered friends and also information on how to keep them happy and healthy with the right kind of food despite snowdrifts and cold winter winds.

She suggested using black oil sunflower seeds, which appeal to the greatest number of birds (use meaties if you don’t want shells littering your garden), and plain suet, without seeds, suspended at least five feet from the ground in a net onion bag, as a great way to attract insect-eating birds such as chickadees, nuthatches and titmice.

The Portland Harbor Museum ended its current lecture series with “Ships for Liberty: World War II Shipbuilding in South Portland” an illustrated talk by historian Joel Eastman. It is hard to imagine now, but during World War II, the Todd-Bath Shipbuilding Corporation (the East Yard) and the South Portland Shipbuilding Corporation (the West Yard), built 30 Ocean class merchant ships for the British and 236 Liberty ships for the USA between 1940 and 1945.

At its peak, the shipyard employed 30,000 workers, including 3,700 women, working in three shifts, 24 hours a day, through winter cold and snow and summer heat. Mr. Eastman particularly spoke of the foresight and imagination of William S. Newell, President of Bath Iron Works, who conceived of a more efficient shipyard with basins rather than ways, and who planned and created from scratch two yards to supply the USA with much needed merchant ships.

The only surviving South Portland-built Liberty ship, the Jeremiah O’Brien, is now a museum ship berthed in San Francisco. It visited Portland in 1994 on its return voyage from visiting Normandy on the 50th anniversary of D-Day. If you visit South Portland’s Bug Light Park, you can see a huge, metal representation of a Liberty ship and view many informative panels describing the shipyards and listing all the ships by name and sponsor.