January, supposedly a quiet month in the lodging business, was gangbusters. Go figure. Alex was the entertainment factor in Unity during the month. He is the 16 year old whose Philadelphia high school allows a special project in the junior year. Lauren, Melissa's sophomore weekend B&B helper, helped him feel welcome in town. After a month of independent living at the Heron, the life of a regular high school student must be a bit of a shock to him. Imagine him at McDonald's for breakfast realizing that some people actually eat those rubbery egg mcmuffin things. What, no fresh squeezed juice? No locally grown shitakes in the omelette?

For his going away dinner Melissa cooked shrimp creole and jambalaya. Dave Potter, the biology prof he worked for, and Lauren's mother Sue attended. Alex and Lauren made a great puff pastry dessert with strawberries and custard. Other guests this month included Robert Coram, a writer of mysteries and biographies from Atlanta. He was here to interview Mike Wiley whom you'll remember from the ABC Nightline episode of As the Heron Turns. We couldn't find any of his books to have him autograph so he sent us two from Atlanta with this inscription: "to Jean and Melissa who run a house of great repute." He left on the day a snow storm was socking in most of the lower East Coast and spent 24 hours in the Bangor airport waiting to leave. Bangor is never the problem; it's those places farther south that don't have one snow plow per resident. Then there was Darryl and his brother Darryl from Nashville who had driven up a load of cubicle furniture to install in the new call center going in above the post office. Call centers are replacing shoe factories in Maine as the chief employment for people with high school educations.

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