An Interesting Day and a Small Rant

Today turned out differently than we planned.  We thought we might take a day trip a few miles south of here to visit the Portland Head Light, but when we got up, we were socked in with fog.  We checked the weather and it looked like it would stay cloudy and possibly rainy most of the day, so we switched our plans around and decided to try that trip tomorrow.

Instead, we opted for a Walmart run to get the oil changed on the car and see about my regular prescription refill.  For whatever stupid reason, my insurance will not allow me to pick up a 90 day supply of my cholesterol med at a retail outlet.  I can use their mail order service through their pharmacy, but I sometimes hit a Walmart that gives me a better price than the insurance covers, so I have been reluctant to go the mail order route.   Instead, I dutifully march myself into the nearest Walmart pharmacy every month for my refills.  But after this last SNAFU, I might rethink that.  I went to the doc back in Colorado Springs in June, got my bloodwork done and came away with a full year of refills on my prescription.  Sweet!  That is, until I got my prescription filled at a New York Walmart last month.  When I got it home and looked at it, it said ZERO refills – what????  Turns out New York has some screwy laws regarding prescriptions that are transferred from out of state.  They canceled all my refills, the rats.  I thought maybe Maine could go back to the month before, when I still had 11 refills, but no, New York in their infinite stupidity, really canceled them forever.  I needed to call my doctor’s office, of course they are 2 hours earlier, so I had to wait for them to open.  I had to explain what happened to my refills, and ask them to please send in a new prescription to the Walmart here in Maine. 

Meanwhile, we did some shopping while we waited for the car to get done and the doctor’s office to open.  All of that got done and we came home to have a sandwich for lunch. 

After lunch, we went to the Joshua L. Chamberlain Museum, which is located adjacent to the Bowdoin College Campus about a mile or so from where we’re staying.  Chamberlain was an instrumental participant in the Civil War, particularly in the Battle of Gettysburg.   He had been promoted to colonel just weeks before that battle; it was the first battle in which he was a commander.  His role in the battle is memorialized in the novel, The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, and the movie "Gettysburg", which was based on that novel.  He also had the honor of presiding over the parade of the Confederate infantry as part of their surrender at Appomattox in April 1865.  Some thirty years after the war, Chamberlain was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in the battle of Gettysburg.

Chamberlain was born in Brewer, Maine in 1828.  He taught himself to read Ancient Greek in order to pass the entrance exam to Bowdoin College where he graduated in 1848.  He met his wife in Brunswick. They were married in 1855 in the church where her father was the preacher.  A few years after their marriage, they bought a house.  After he returned from the Civil War, he ran for Governor of Maine and served 4 one-year terms.  When he was governor, his wife did not want to live in the governor’s mansion, so they had their house moved and enlarged.  I thought the remodel idea was pretty ingenious, instead of adding to the top, Chamberlain had the house lifted eleven feet and a new first floor was built under the original house.

Following his run as the governor of Maine, Chamberlain became the president of Bowdoin College.  He served in that capacity for about 11 years.

The museum is actually a tour of his house.  It was very interesting, but the weather fooled us by becoming very warm and humid this afternoon, so it was uncomfortably hot after about an hour in the un-air conditioned house.  We ducked out right at the end of the tour when one of the guests kept the docent answering questions.

We got back home and cooled off under the air conditioner, and then I fixed a pork chop dinner and prepared to settle in for yet another evening with the Olympics.

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to take our day trip – after I pick up my prescription, of course.