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Mary Kate Barnwell, a member of the Hale YMCA Riptides swim team, recently created quite a splash at the Eastern Zone Age Group Swimming Championships.
She finished tied for 9th in the 100yd freestyle with a time of  :54.05. Additionally, her time of :24.93 in the 50yd freestyle earned her a 12th-place finish, according to Head Coach Brian Reilly.
The Eastern Zone swim meet capped off a series of championship meets for Barnwell. These included three first-place finishes at the SENECY Championships March 5 as well placing in the top at the YMCA New England Championship meet on March 18.
Hundreds of swimmers from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New England, and New York converged at the Eastern Zone meet.
Each day, swimmers competed in preliminaries in the morning, and then the Top 20 finishers would compete again at night.
March 29, Barnwell competed in the 50yd Freestyle. She started off ranked 20th out of the 91 swimmers, but by that evening she had worked her way up to 12th place.
On April 1 she was ranked 35th out of the 90 swimmers who competed in the 100yd Freestyle. By that evening, she had propelled herself all the way up to earn the ninth-place tie. Both of Barnwell’s freestyle finishes are very close to the qualifying times for the Women’s YMCA National swim meet, which she hopes to compete at next year.

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You Gotta See This
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
Never heard of psychic phenomenon Wayne Hoffman? Well, Penn & Teller have — because he fooled them on their “Fool Us” show!
As part of the Putnam Rotary Club’s 100th anniversary celebration, Hoffman will bring Mind Candy to the Loos Center for the Arts from 8 to 9:30 p.m. June 3.  The out-of-this-world experience is one show only! Tickets are $45. Get your tickets now at: https://boxoffice.theloos.org/w/event.aspx?id=1355
The mentalist and award-winning illusionist will demonstrate thought reading and psychological stunts. He reads “the minds of audience member, demonstrates seemingly psychic phenomenon, predicts the future, travels through time and does it all with a comedic charisma.” He has performed in 74 countries at some of the world’s most prestigious venues.  Incoming Rotary President and committee chair Amanda Kelly said the club was looking for something special for a very special 100th year anniversary that would celebrate the impact Rotary has made and will continue to make in the community. Celestial Centennial is “an opportunity to bring the community together to celebrate what Rotary has done in the past and will continue to do in the future under the theme ‘Imagine’,” she said.
Rotarian Jenn Brytowski of Jennerate came up with the idea of the mentalist.
Mind Candy is “an interactive production that is structured on audience participation and every twist and turn involves the audience.” Hoffman said “Mind Candy is a crazy melting pot of serious mind reading, hilarious laugh-out-loud comedy and unbelievable mysteries.”

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I would not consider myself a very handy person. When it comes to understanding the mechanics of how things work, I become very right-brained in that my logical, methodical and organized left-brain decides to suddenly and unexpectedly, leave the building. I think I have always been this way as I can remember trying very hard to build my own tree house as soon as I reached an age wherein my father allowed me to use a hammer, but I could never quite figure out how to nail together the wood so that it formed a flat floor. I recall that I kept asking my dad where the really LONG nails were…
Even today, as much as I still love building with Legos, I can’t seem to construct anything substantial unless I am following along with the step-by-step instructions, complete with pictures. And when someone (like my husband) starts talking about how a light bulb was first made, or how an airplane lifts off the ground, or why the garage door suddenly stopped working … I stop listening: And not because I am rude or bored, but rather because I simply, don’t understand. However, right-brain characteristics also include being creative, spontaneous and good at solving problems. And so, when the electronic stove top recently stopped working, I embraced my inner right-brain and did what I usually do to try and resolve an electronic-type problem…I kept pressing buttons!
When the stove stopped working, I did not have the first notion of understanding about why it wasn’t working. I could see that, when pressing the power button, the light turned on, indicating that it was not a “flip the breaker” issue. I could also see that some sort of red light resembling the shape of a small key kept lighting up as well. In my quest to try and get the stove to work before having to enlist my (very handy) husband’s help, I figured that if I tried to press the buttons in some unknown yet effective order, the red key light would go off and the electric burner would go on. I pressed the power button again and the stove went off. I then, gently, pressed the power button and the stove turned on. I followed up this action with a gentle pressing of the red key light and a quick, yet gentle, pressing of the burner light. When this didn’t work, I tried pressing the buttons in reverse order. When that didn’t work, I started pressing more firmly and in random order of combinations, all the burner and temperature buttons. After repeated failed efforts of my secretly coded button pushing, I gave up and called to my husband. He assessed the situation and dug out the manual. Turns out the stove was in a child safety lock mode. I am sure that at some point, I would have eventually tried the ‘firm pressing of the power button and hold for 4 seconds’ combination that released the safety lock, but I am not sure how long it would have taken me to get there…
Right? Left?  
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!

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caption, page 1:
Tim Stabile of Narragansett Flags put the new pole into place. More photos on page 4. Expanded photo array Wed. night on FB: Putnam Town Crier & Northeast Ledger. Linda Lemmon photo.



captions, page 4:
Clockwise from top left:
Rob Challinor, left, and Mayor Seney wait to help peel the paper off the pole.
Sand went into the pipe around the pole to stabilize it.
Retainer ring and counterweight help keep the bottom of the flag down.
Alan Joslin, left, and Challinor unfurl the flag.
Tools of the trade


By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM — The old one was more than 100 years old and “We’ll all be dead and gone” by the time the new flagpole at the Grove Street Monument is done for.
Rob Challinor, chairman of the Veterans Advisory Committee, said as near as they can figure the old flagpole was put in in 1912 and surprisingly, it wasn’t actually a “pole.” It was a few sewer pipes melded together.
The paint peeled; anytime anything had to be done, haul out a ladder. Veterans and town officials have been working on the replacement for maybe 10 years.
May 4 Tim Stabile of Narragansett Flags installed a bright shiny anodized aluminum 25-foot flagpole that doesn’t require a ladder. The cable and mechanism is in a locking box on the side the pole. It includes a solar light that will illuminate the 4-foot by 6-foot flag. It also has a “truck,” the spinning part of the flagpole that holds the rope. There is also a retaining ring and counterweight that holds down the bottom of the flag.
Some $5,300 was raised last fall and the pole took only about $4,800 so the balance will be transferred to the next veterans’ project, Veterans Park at the corner of Bridge and Church streets.
Challinor and Mayor Barney Seney, along with Alan Joslin, — all veterans — got a quick lesson on using the internal mechanism for flag raising and lowering.
The fact that the ground didn’t freeze this winter slowed the installation down a bit. Stabile said 14 bags of concrete went into a deep hole first, around a pipe that would be the home for the pole. After the pole was raised, Stabile packed sand into the pipe hole, all around the pole. It will harden a bit, naturally and stabilize the pole. When it’s time to replace the pole, it means just sand removal, not taking a jackhammer to concrete.
Challinor and Seney were thrilled, both saying “no more ladders. No more chipping paint.”
Challinor said when the reconstruction of the sidewalks on Grove Street is finished, they will come back in, level it out a bit and put in plantings and metal benches.

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