It’s disgusting the way some Web sites use lurid headlines, expressly designed to exploit the public’s prurient interest, in shameless attempts to entice readers. Fortunately, here at Down East, we’ve never felt the need to promote ourselves in such an unseemly manner.

Unless somebody sends us nude video of U. S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.

The sun has finally come out in Mahoosuc Mills. Hallelujah! What a lot of rain we’ve had. And the flooding! Made me glad our doublewide doesn’t have a basement. Others weren’t so lucky, though.

As I age, I’m increasingly concerned about something the TV ads refer to as “regularity,” by which they don’t mean how close you are to being a regular, normal person as opposed to a crazed old bat chasing gangbangers out of your yard with a wooden tennis racquet and a jar of prunes with an expired best-used-by date.

Did you watch the Academy Awards last week? I just love seeing the stars all dressed up (even though they do seem to keep getting younger and younger). The last few years, they’ve looked kind of dull, haven’t they? With lots of neutral colors, beige and gray and “nude” lips. Hardly looked like they were wearing any makeup at all. But this year, the women came out sporting jewel tones, red lips. Love that glamor!

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Seth Wescott of Carrabassett Valley has been accorded the highest honor a male athlete can receive.

Wescott has been asked to pose nude in Playgirl.

My Grandmother, Dora Gilbert, used to freeze her garbage. This was in the days before garbage disposals, so there was a lot to freeze. But she didn’t let that intimidate her. For Dora, freezing garbage was more than just a way to keep it from stinking. It was an art form. I can see my grandmother now, standing in her immaculate kitchen, a little Franco-American woman with permed gray hair, full make-up, a house dress, nylon stockings, sensible shoes, and a bib apron, carefully wrapping her garbage in little foil packets.

Lewis Carroll had it right. “The time has come,” he wrote in “Through the Looking-Glass,” “to speak of many things.”

The character Carroll had making that comment was not some cute little girl who had fallen down a rabbit hole, only to end up in a Tim Burton movie.

It was none other than the Walrus, as fiendish a fictional creation as anything this side of Hannibal Lecter.

During a recent email exchange with a friend of mine at the Maine Department of Tourism, I mentioned that perhaps it’s time to start marketing The Pine Tree State as the “garden spot” of the nation.

I was only half-kidding.

Last Thursday, I’m standing at my station at the A&P, register three, when who do I see in the produce section but James Brown. Not James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, the hardest working man in show business. No, I’m talking about James Brown, CPA, father of three and the hardest working accountant in Mahoosuc Mills. Well, since his father retired, he’s the only accountant in Mahoosuc Mills! He may be sharp with numbers, but there he was, hovering over the lettuce, looking perplexed.

It’s nearly Feb. 27, the date on which Mainers will celebrate the 203rd birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with concerts, lectures, fireworks, fist fights and pizza.

Longfellow, as you no doubt already know, is best known for thinking up a clever name for a major intersection in downtown Portland:

Monument Square.