January 17, 2008

By my estimation we're right in the thick of winter, judging by the fact that my parched furnace doesn't seem to pause and my car battery appears to be getting weaker by the day. This also means that the legislature is starting to roll up its sleeves as it chips away at the more than 2,000 bills put forth by senators, representatives, and everyday Mainers. But does that mountain of legislation, less than half of which will ever become law and which cost up to $10,000 apiece

January 16, 2008

Leave it up to the New York Times to get my blood boiling. While I usually take a gander at the grey lady's pages - actually, I look at the free electronic version, which brings up a different topic altogether - an article about Maine recently slipped under my radar until a colleague alerted me to it. Seems that a 75-year-old Mainer's imbecilic threat to shoot any African Americans attending a NAACP meeting in Bangor had attracted the newspaper's attention, and

January 15, 2008

The January thaw ended with a certain finality yesterday when a nor'easter blew through our part of Maine and dropped upwards of twelve inches of fresh snow. Last night, while I was moving the snow from my driveway to my lawn, it occurred to me that Maine needs a new holiday, and it should be December 17. That was the day in 1876 when Arthur Sicard was born in Qu`bec.

Sicard is the man who invented the snowblower.

Back in 1986 my neighbor across the street,

January 15, 2008

When I moved back to Maine in late November, I knew the transition from the groomed streets of Manhattan to coastal Maine wasn't going to be flawless, but the joys of a rural life (perhaps it's a stretch to deem the village of Camden rural) abounded in my head. I would have a car. And a normal sized kitchen. And a garage. And more than one room. And my very first full-sized Christmas tree. I dreamed of a white Christmas, gazing out to my new yard, dog in lap, watching

January 11, 2008

When I was growing up, we had lots of names for MBNA, the credit card company that Charlie Cawley brought with him to Camden in the early 1990s. The Giant, the Death Star, and the most popular one of all: the Evil Empire. We gave the company, which before too long shifted most of its operations to Belfast, these names because of all the stories we heard about the pressure heaped onto employees to suck every penny out of MBNA's clients, regardless of ethical considerations

January 11, 2008

Any short list of economists in Maine will start with Charles Colgan's name. (Although, let's face it, any list of Maine economists would necessarily be short. Charlie and Laurie Lachance pretty much have the state sewn up tight.) Charlie has an admirable track record when it comes to making predictions about the future direction of Maine's economy, so when he speaks Mainers tend to listen.

That's what happened earlier this week when Colgan predicted during his annual

December 11, 2007

The recent news that the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone was chosen as thirty-fifth on a list of the top 100 high schools in the United States is especially satisfying considering all the efforts made over the years to close it. The residential school, founded in 1995, has constantly fought complaints of elitism over its mission of

December 10, 2007

The new mayor of South Portland, James Soule, recently caused something of a stir when he suggested that southern Maine - York, Cumberland, and Sagadahoc counties - secede from the rest of Maine and form their own state. Soule argued that southern Maine gives Augusta far more than it receives, especially in state aid to education. "The state of Maine needs South Portland more than South Portland needs the state of Maine," Soule said.

It was an ironic twist on an

November 28, 2007

I've spent plenty of time harping on the times when Maine and Mainers make fools of themselves on the national stage, but today the Pine Tree State stands up for a value that I think we can all be proud of. It seems like a no-brainer that we should do whatever it takes to keep tobacco away from kids, and Maine's strict requirements that shippers ensure the recipients of mail-order tobacco products are over 18 go along way toward that goal. That's not the way the shippers

Generally speaking we don't like to give away the stories in forthcoming issues of Down East magazine, but the news of Harold Alfond's death, at age ninety-three, is a special circumstance. Alfond, for those who don't know, was the retired head of Dexter Shoe, a minority owner of the Boston Red Sox, and one of Maine's premiere philanthropists. The Associated Press lists some of his major gifts as $1.7 million for a new gym and recreation center at St. Joseph's College in Standish; $3 million for