follow that qar!

The New England QSO Party has been running since 2002. I haven’t missed one yet. Nine times I've taken 1st Place Maine Single Operator QRP. In 9 other years, I managed just 1st York County QRP (usually the only QRPer in the county). For four parties I was a pooper, making too few contacts to qualify for a certificate.  I finished 2nd QRP New England in 2012 and 2021, 3rd in 2016, and 5th in both 2002 and 2020.  My top scores have been 18,283 in 2021 and 11,120 in 2010, and my average score through 20 competitions was 3,618. 2021 A New Year's Radio Resolution challenged me to set a personal best for this contest in 2021. The weekend arrived before I got to do any antenna upgrades or additions and conditions on Friday didn't seem too hot. With a lot to do IRL I was tempted to sneak out of my commitment, but by the time I put in a couple of hours on Saturday I was confident I could reach my goal. I ended up claiming 198 contacts (3 of them my first SSB QSOs in 20 years of NE...

My first cup of tea came at the end of a night's work when, vague memory tells me, the cool New England air, the convenience of Dunkin Donuts, and an experimental mood led me to order a cup. I imagined it would be unpleasant, so I assented to sugar. The girl scrunched up her eyebrow when I asked for three. That hot syrup hit close enough to the mark that I brought the drink, with rapidly lessened sweetening, into my beverage routine. At the supermarket, I managed to skip past Lipton, Tetley, Nestea, and Red Rose, instead going for Bigelow then Twinings on a friend's recommendation. Not long after, out west, I found Stash at the grocery store and discovered Market Spice 's loose-leaf array. From this point, I sought tea shops for stocking up and had pretty good luck overall, but a move back east into a semirural area meant mail order would become the new order. SpecialTeas' style, selection, and price made me a regular. I supplemented my SpecialTeas favorites, fo...

My GENERATE day was cool and bright from morning to night, an adventure for edging ahead. Its true start was the bridge walk, a brisk excursion after the drive. My aim was to log a letterbox and I did. I also enjoyed a second fortuitous find, a sign left behind. Then I was off to the Andross entry. "Accidental collisions," Adam Burk said, and my note taking began. It was TEDxDirigo Sunday and I sat self-satisfied. The first talk was excellent: Voot Yin of MDIBL and Novo Biosciences Inc focused on tissue regeneration with ZF143 (ZF for zebra fish, which regrow a clipped tail at an astonishing rate; ZF143 for "a nontoxic drug that rescues defects in regeneration"). Might humans effectively regenerate damaged tissue with such a drug? That's what he hopes to find out. Along the way, I assume there'll be scads of "induced amputations" among sacrificial subjects: fishes, salamanders, and other lesser creatures. Three cheers for Alicia ...

Unwrapping a Hawaiian Sun box is a happy-making gift experience. I love those chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, regardless of the ultimate quality of the confection. Thanks for the present! These were from last Christmas. I was just looking back through holiday-letter-worthy photos from 2012 and remembered these crunchy candies. Yum. Only nine pieces in the package. Gotta savor those. One by one through February, some for myself and some to share. Make a nice after-dinner treat. What a shock, then, to have a BLECH! moment while crunching down on one of these little morsels one evening. Acrid. Ugh. Pitooee. What was that? A little closer attention to that final wrapper told part of the tale, but it took a magnifier to allow adequate inspection. After discovering this little beauty, that moment a few nights earlier made much more sense. A girl's dessert request was met by the box. Appreciative and content, she sat as the post-dinner conversation continued. Suddenly she p...

Music (&c) Seen and Heard September 2022: The Fretbenders, Owen Marshall and Alden Robinson, Long Journey, Wells September 2019: OldHat String Band, The Reel McCoys, Wells September 2018: Elizabeth and Ben Anderson, Jason Anick Trio, Wells February 24, 2017: Hunter and the Gatherers (Hunter Burgamy, Benjamin Cousins, Colescott Rubin, Volt Jingit, Kan Yanabe, Malwina Masternak), Boston September 2016: Corey Husic, Seagrass, Laurel Martin and Jim Prendergast, Wells February 29, 2016: Christian McBride Trio (Christian Sands, Jerome Jennings), Durham December 10, 2015: Mosaic, North Berwick September 2015: Joyce Andersen and Harvey Reid, The Gather Rounders, Susie Burke and Melissa Bragdon, Highland Soles, Wells September 2014: BYOC, The Gather Rounders, Shana Aisenberg and Friends, Mari Black and Neil Pearlman, Wells September 2013: Matt Loosigian; Ellen Carlson and Todd Thurlow; Ryan McKasson, Neil Pearlman, and Emerald Rae, Wells September 22, 2012: John Terczyak,...

Why am I so captivated by the idea of drinking tasteless, slippery, crunchy-kerneled seeds? Because subja seeds sound like fun. I first learned of them by browsing The Indian Spice Kitchen , where Monisha Bharadwaj describes them, but Osimum basilicum seeds seem impossible to find. I made a special trip to Seattle's Uwajimaya to track them down, but came up empty. I stopped at Market Spice at Pike Street, where they hadn't heard of them (but they suggested another shop down the street). I went into Souk, where the gentleman understood what I was looking for only after I described it; he knew the seeds by a different name, which he couldn't remember, and said his sister gets them at a shop (the name not in his memory) on Roosevelt Avenue. But I was out of time in the city and couldn't follow up. (But before I took more than a few steps out Souk's door, the proprietor called me back in, because he had asked his arriving friend what those seeds were called. Tukmaria, ...