I Thought She Looked Familiar

I've been watching the show Swords on the Discovery Channel. It's a documentary series about swordfishing boats and their crews working on the Grand Banks, in the Atlantic.

One of the Captains, Linda Greenlaw, has looked very familiar to me, but I could not figure out why.

Now I know.

My Alumni newsletter from Colby College in came in by e-mail today. The Out of the Blue newsletter for September 2009 includes a brief note that explained it to me:

Linda Greenlaw '83, author of The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey and five other books, is one of the captains on a new Discovery Channel series called Swords: Life on the Line, about swordfishing boats around New England.

She's an old school mate. I'm class of '84, so it's likely that I met this woman somewhere on campus a bit more than a quarter-century ago.

I had thought that she seemed familiar because of her New England accent. I had noted to myself that she reminded me of my college days and the sort of folks I new when I lived in Maine.

Turns out that I was right.

Now, That's an Alumnus

John Miner turned 100 years old this past Sunday. The Calais, Maine, resident is a retired dentist. He graduated from Colby College in 1929, two years before my father was born and 55 years before I graduated from Colby.

Dr. Miner was already wicked old (as we used to say) when I was a student at the small college in central Maine. Think of the changes he's seen.

As a boy he played with the young Prince who would some day be the King of Siam. He knew Roy Rogers. He only ever bought General Motors cars, starting with one he bought from one of the first auto dealerships in the state of Maine.

Right now he owns his 63rd and 64th GM cars.

What is his secret to long life?

"I never ever went on a diet in my life. I eat anything. I joke about it that it has to stand still long enough for me to take a bite, and as far as exercise, the only kind of exercise was when I had to attend gym classes at Colby College."