About a week ago, a century-old dam, a decades-old diner and a meetinghouse still standing after nearly a quarter of a millennium, all kept hanging onto the Earth as always, through our planet’s daily rotations and on its yearly revolution around the sun. Head Tide Dam that once powered a lumber mill had nature’s wear, but overall was the same massive structure it has been since the town has owned it.

It still is; but for those who drive or walk past it daily, or for years and even generations have swam at it, the look on one end changed with an abutment’s careful takedown within a few of the Earth’s rotations. To see, in that one section, the other side of the river, with the abutment’s debris cleared, was a surprising, breathtaking sight Tuesday night, in place of the old look’s equally breathtaking sense of constancy. The only different things we are used to in that view from the bridge are the seasons, the river’s speed, caught debris, and the salmon traps.

Soon the look will change again to its new permanent one including an overlook. And the dam will continue its second hundred trips around the sun.

The Alna Meetinghouse has already passed its first 200 times around the sun and about 30 more times, thanks these days in great part to the work of volunteers who have kept it looking good and like itself. So what changed in one rotation of the Earth?

Maybe just what we know about it: At selectmen’s July 24 meeting, Second Selectman Doug Baston said as Maine gears up for its 2020 bicentennial, it turns out the 1789 Alna Meetinghouse was one of the places people voted in 1819 on whether or not to leave Massachusetts. He understood the vote there went against leaving. 

It was just a very old piece of news, but news to many attendees because it was new to them, including me. And it makes me wonder, among other things, which local and state votes we take in all our towns’ buildings across the region will be news to area residents who follow us, many trips around the sun from now?

This week’s closing of the latest chapter in Miss Wiscasset Diner’s long history was sad for fans of its latest incarnation.

The diner, again and again by that quaint name, has been there for generations. If it takes on any other name or use, it will probably take a little getting used to. Maybe it will keep being a diner, maybe keeping the name, or maybe becoming something entirely new. Whatever comes next, all of us might still associate that piece of Route 1, near the Woolwich line, with the diner.