Articles
Connecting a pair of unrelated existential questions
OK, two questions: why be cheerful and what is the value of innocence? The first question begins with the enduring impression I have of my father-in-law in his final years and months, while he was much reduced by open heart surgery, followed by a stroke from which he struggled mightily to regain his mobility and
About Nemo finding us
This past weekend a northeasterly blizzard, named Nemo, roared across the outer edge of the Gulf of Maine and buried the Maine coast and islands with over 30 inches of snow and then whipped its icy cargo into drifts six and seven feet high to help us all with upper body strength exercises.Weather makes you
From King Crie to Admiral K
Why do small island communities seem to produce such outsized characters every generation that define an entire era? Criehaven certainly has. Criehaven is the outermost inhabited harbor in the lower 48 of the United States, 28 miles off Midcoast Maine on Ragged Island, also known as “Ragged Arse.” For three quarters of a century, the
Downeast, the Movie
I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas T.S Eliot One thing the new documentary, “Downeast,” from the experienced filmmaking pair David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, gets right is the title. For many outsiders, “Downeast,” begins almost anywhere east of Portland on the Maine coast. But
The Worst Gift Ever
What is the worst gift you have ever received? (And no bad stories about fruitcakes from your aged aunt.) In my case it is not hard to recall the worst gift I ever received, which I got from my wife (don’t worry, she already knows), for reasons which will soon become apparent. The gift was
Chasing Science, Art and Politics
How do you make a piece of art out of something most people think is about as interesting as watching paint dry? The movie “Chasing Ice,” is about watching nature work, in this case watching ice melt at time scales the human mind is not programmed to experience nor understand. Therefore, most of us do
Objects in Mirror Are Longer Than They Appear
The past year’s online columns have alternated between serious (not to say dull) and personal (not to say frivolous) topics. The serious columns are collected under the rubric of “The Long View,” while the others share the heading of “Objects in Mirror,” derived from the cautionary admonition engraved on the rear view mirrors of all
Lessons from the Gift Front
They have homed in from all points of the compass for Christmas, six of our seven children in our modern American blended family have returned to the hearth to participate in a Nativity scene of their childhood reimagined. I used to do this too, like most everyone else I knew who had left home for
A Light in the Dark
In the wake of this month’s great Christmas festivals, you may have missed the recent religious news from Urfa in eastern Turkey. For the past decade, archeologists have been uncovering the ruins of the world’s oldest religious site ever discovered. The site, an enormous temple 11,000 years old, predates the Great Pyramids by over six
Is a Carbon Tax in Our Future?
When you pull up to a gas station, you might notice a little sticker on the pump that tells you the amount of state and federal taxes that are added on top of the basic fuel price to determine how much you pay per gallon. In Maine, we pay approximately 18 cents in federal taxes