A working weekend

The picture above will likely be the cover of the next issue of the Rangeley Highlander. It was taken on a river about 12 miles out of town, some 70 or 80 miles into a Saturday in which I just drove around looking for what in our business are called "grab shots" -- random photos you can use to show the weather or things people were up to on a particular day. For those who want to follow along, though the photos are in conceptual rather than chronological or geographic order, I went up through Kingfield on Route 27 to Stratton, then over on Route 16 to Rangeley and back home on Route 4, a total of about 130 miles or so.

I'll be working in the office tomorrow -- interspersed with some time to walk dogs and a break to catch a football game. But today was more of the opposite -- driving around enjoying the weather broken up by a few moments of taking pictures for work. It averages out in the end.



Moose are more dangerous at night because, while deer are light brown, moose are black and people really don't see them in time. The fact that they are also considerably larger than deer means that hitting them is no joke and there are a few fatalities each year among people who run into one, or (as often) who run into someone who had just run into one. People don't hit them as often during the day, though it does happen.

However, I didn't even see one, much less run into one today. Having a camera at the ready is probably a jinx.


Here are the dogs at the Wire Bridge, which was built in 1866 and is a local tourist attraction, though it's a bit off the main highway, on a piece of road that isn't necessary unless you actually live on it or want to go see the Wire Bridge. But there were a few of us who wanted to do just that, though not enough to get in each other's way.

Speaking of which, I am quite pleased at the way Mainers become rapturous over this time of year -- no matter how many years they've been here, they seem just as pleased to see the leaves turning as any one "from away" and they go to see the leaves just as enthusiastically as the tourists.



I blogged a photo of this stretch of the Carrabassett River a few weeks ago. It hasn't become any less attractive with the loss of chorophyll along its banks.



This is part of a set of falls just south of Rangeley called "Small's Falls" that are just off the road. There is a picnic area, trails, a few interpretative signs, etc., and it's quite popular. There were probably a dozen cars there, and people of every age.



Walking up to the falls, I came across this "stairway" of exposed roots. With all my clambering down river banks and so forth, it was about the best footing I had all day. Not sure it's good for the trees, but they've been around for years, so I suppose it isn't too bad for them, either.



I was struck by the "grooves" in the rocks towards the top of the falls. You can see the texture, and I assume this is some kind of an uplift, so that the layers are facing up rather than laying horizontally, and that there is enough variation in the minerals of the various layers that some are worn down by the water more rapidly than others. To give a sense of scale, while I didn't bother to count the needles in each bundle, these are either red or white pine needles and so about three inches long. Note also the curve and smoothly worn edge where the water runs next to the rock. Just beyond the edge, where you see the water disappear, is a fall of 30 feet or so.



Two sisters and the daughter of one of them were taking their own picture by the edge of the falls. The dark-haired sister had just set the timer and run back -- you can possibly make out their camera delicately perched in a tiny finger-thickness sapling -- quite ingenious. This is probably going to run on the front page of the Franklin Journal Tuesday, unless Sheila comes in tomorrow with something brilliant. After I took this, I went down and took a couple of shots of them with their camera, too. However, since the little girl was refusing to look straight at the scary man, the one they took with the tree stuck up in the sapling may be the best anyway.



Finally, here is something you may never have seen before, but how on earth can you do without it now? It's a 1952 Bombardier ... well, it's not a Ski-doo, but that's the company. They invented snowmobiles but wouldn't market the first of the small runabouts for another seven years. I would suspect this particular one transported skiers and other tourists, but they were used in Quebec for more mundane things like taking kids to school -- the back has two built-in facing benches, the front is a bench seat like a bus.

This was at a place that restores snowmobiles, and the first of the snowmobiles beyond this big one is more like what I was used to see running around the woods when I was a kid. But I want this one. It's only $7,500 and, according to the sign, "runs good." It even comes with an extra set of skis.

But that's for the next season. I'm going to enjoy autumn while it lasts.

This was two weeks ago.

This was last weekend.

Autumn arrived in a week. These two pictures were taken along the same stretch of the trail where the dogs and I walk. The one on top shows green leaves just showing a bit of yellow tone. A week later, you can see how much the leaves have changed.

Things are getting beautiful here and I wish I had more reasons to just drive around and marvel at it all. I have asked people if I'm wrong about the speed of the change, but most agree -- It's as if the leaves were holding back and then, pow, just took off. What everyone is hoping is that they'll stay on the trees until most of them have changed. They are starting to fall, but slowly.

Incidentally, I'm finding that apples are not nearly as big a part of the local economy as they are in the Champlain Valley of New York, but the people who do grow them seem to grow more varieties -- Galas and Honey Crisps and new types like that. There are some pretty good apples at the roadside stands here.

This is the time of year I missed most when I lived out west. The weather has been a little too warm, but we'll have some nice crisp days soon enough. Meanwhile, the scenery still blows my mind, 20 autumns after I came back to the Northeast.

Life imitates comics

The Speed Bump comic above ran in 2000. The story story below ran last week. Pity the poor cartoonists: The world is becoming ridiculous at a pace that makes it very difficult for them to keep ahead.

YONKERS - The spooked cat that was stuck 60-feet high in a willow for a week was at last blasted out of the tree last night by a high pressure water hose and landed - soaked but perfectly safe - into an outstretched sheet.

"It was so exciting," says Yonkers artist and animal rescuer Greg Speirs, who was among the crowd of 50 people assembled at the foot of the tree on Rockledge Place. "Everyone was cheering."

Before the cat came down, a crew from the Yonkers Fire Fepartment took a shot into the tree with the water hose and missed the furry target.

The volunteers watched where the water fell on the other side of the tree and adjusted the location of the outstretched sheet, Speirs said.

Good thing, because the next shot knocked the orange and white kitty clear out of the tree and perfectly into the safety blanket.

"As soon as the cat landed it jumped out and ran into the woods," said Speirs this morning, still animated about the dramatic dinner-time rescue. "Some kids helped us bring the cat back, and a man said he would adopt the cat right on the spot."

The cat seemed to be more hungry than anything else, chomping handful after handful of cat food, Speirs said.

"You can't come up with a nicer ending than that," he said.

(Thursday's "Lio" by Mark Tatulli, reminded me of this column I wrote nearly 10 years ago. The granddaughter, now in sixth grade, has turned out to be well able to see through
commercial hype and comment perceptively about it.)

Poohaphernalia just another storybook sell-out

My granddaughter loves Pooh.
"Pooh!" she says, as we walk through the mall together, and there are many opportunities for her to point him out.
Pooh is everywhere, selling everything.
She's not old enough for the original books, for "Winnie the Pooh" or "House at Pooh Corners," but there are a lot of Pooh picture books, videos, clothing, toys and so forth geared for someone about to turn two, and, like every other toddler in America, she has been showered with Poohaphernalia by all her friends and relations.
In fact, by the time she's old enough for the A.A. Milne books, she'll probably know so much about Pooh that she won't want to bother with slower-paced, less hilarious versions of the bear. We can probably skip those gentle, wise witty sources of make-believe and go straight to, oh, I don't know, maybe Snoopy or Garfield.
The rich, wonderful stories that once warmed our children's hearts and fired their imaginations have been glitzed up, dumbed down and turned into profit centers.
It's certainly not just Pooh. When NBC sought to turn Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books into a TV series, producer Ed Friendly approached Roger McBride, the adopted son of Laura's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, and current holder of the rights.
McBride was reportedly afraid of seeing his grandmother's stories turned into Hollywood glitz, but Friendly assured him of the respect he had for the originals, and persuaded him to allow the project to proceed.
The pilot was a made-for-TV movie that followed the first book faithfully, and the first few episodes of the series picked up the storyline of "On the Banks of Plum Creek."
Then Michael Landon took over creative control of the program, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's version of her own life was thrown on the trash heap along with her champion, Ed Friendly. The resulting TV series was politically correct, historically ridiculous and immensely popular.
Now we're seeing the television ads that came from Maurice Sendak's sale to Bell Atlantic of his 1963 classic children's book, "Where the Wild Things Are."
A December, 1997 press release from Bell Atlantic crowed over the Wild Things "first appearance in mass media advertising:"
"The book is a fitting metaphor for the current state of the communications industry. This campaign will remind Bell Atlantic's customers - and reassure them, too - that we are there for them through this figurative jungle of communications choices."
Well, maybe. It reminds me that nothing is sacred when it comes to making a buck. I am reassured that the most precious moments of childhood are available for the right price.
More often, the kids sell out. It was the heirs of A.A. Milne and Laura Ingalls Wilder who let those wonderful visions be sold for a mess of pottage.
Christopher Robin Milne was an unhappy child who hated being identified with the Pooh stories, so it's hardly surprising he was willing to cash in his inheritance.
And, if McBride didn't mean to betray Laura, her innocent pioneer memoirs had already been edited and shaped by her politically minded daughter to emphasize the hardy independence of orthodox Libertarian ideology.
Sendak's business decision is like those bumperstickers that say, "We're spending our children's inheritance." He sold out so he could enjoy the profits himself.
But why not? After all, he wrote the books to make a living, and kid's authors are under no obligation to be idealists.
Nor are they, often. For instance, Danny Kaye's movie and the Central Park statue notwithstanding, Hans Christian Anderson was no child-cuddling storyteller. He didn't even like writing children's stories, but he could make a living writing that stuff, and, apparently, couldn't make one writing what he preferred.
Generations of kids didn't know any of that, though. Whatever flaws their authors possessed were irrelevant, whatever motivations lurked behind their writing were invisible. You couldn't tell from the outside. None of it was inherent in the stories.
The stories were sweet and imaginative, and they created dreams, they inspired make-believe, they made children think about things beyond the specific images contained in them. They were part of a fading world of imagination and storytelling.
Today, our children grow up in a world of commercialism, little more than a target demographic to which simplified, shallow, market-tested images are spoonfed.
Theirs is a world in which Pooh is a cartoon character, the Wild Things sell telephones, Laura is in syndication and the only time storytelling involves a rocking chair is when you pull it over in front of the VCR.

copyright 1998, Press-Republican, Plattsburgh NY

A Young Man's Game

A while ago, I wrote about how the Houston Texans' new runningback Ahman Green and long-time defender Jason Simmons worked out a conflict over uniform numbers, with Green, at Simmons' suggestion, buying the rights to Number 30 by helping a single mother purchase a home.

Well, no good deed goes unpunished. Yesterday, having proved his off-field class, Simmons finally got a chance to ramp up his on-field status as well. Here, from the Houston Chronicle, is how it went:

Texans safety Jason Simmons had waited 10 NFL seasons before he was named a starter heading into opening day.

When the special day finally came Sunday, it turned into a nightmare.

Simmons' season came to a premature end in the second quarter of the Texans' 20-3 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs after the strong safety tore his left patellar tendon.

"I just was going to avoid a lineman and put my foot in the ground, and it just gave way," Simmons said. "Nothing more to it, just a freak accident. I was so upset. You finally get your chance — I wait to start my whole career — but I never could question God's timing. I'm fine."

Still a pretty classy guy, but this is the kind of injury that would be better happening to a 21-year-old rookie than a 31-year-old veteran.

At this stage of life, 31 seems awfully young, but it's not young when your body is your instrument, and it reminded me of a conversation I had back when a friend from college, Austin Carr, was playing in the NBA and his team came to Denver. I was going to say I was just about 31, but looking him up, I see that he had his jersey retired about four weeks before I hit that age, and, poking around a little more, I see that he and I were 27 and 28 respectively at the time.

Another friend from the college team was living in Denver then, so the two of us met Austin after the game for a beer, and Fatty Taylor, one of the Denver Nuggets, came over and sat with us. He and Carr started talking about Bobby Jones, the young Nuggets phenom who was the talk of the league that year -- and who was only 5 years younger than Taylor, 3 years younger than Austin and 2 years younger than me.

Austin had attracted some media attention at the time for being a vegetarian, which in 1977 was pretty unusual for a professional athlete, but he was serious about tuning the instrument. I mentioned to him that Kathy and I had gone veggie until she got pregnant, at which point her OB/GYN told her there were certain amino acids necessary for fetal brain development that you could only get in meat. Austin nodded, but then named three things you could add to a vegetarian diet that would fill that gap -- one was watercress, I can't remember the others. I was pretty impressed, considering that he was a young single guy with no kids at that stage.

How young? When Bobby Jones's name came up, Fatty Taylor started laughing about how this kid had an enormous contract and the team had a very, very generous per diem when they went on the road, but Jones would eat at Red Barn, a burger joint of the time, and pocket the rest of the money.

"Well, he can do that," Taylor chuckled, "he's young yet." And Austin nodded his agreement, and it was the first intimation I had that we weren't kids anymore.

Austin played until he was 30 and Fatty Taylor left the court at 31. Bobby Jones, despite his penny-pinching penchant for Barnbusters, played to the ripe old age of 34.

Jason Simmons may well rehab that knee and come back next season, but, if it isn't the end of his career, it's a sad end to what was shaping up as a year that would be a nice payoff for ten long years of hard work. (And I note that he is actually three months younger than my younger son, who probably doesn't think of himself as an old man yet.)

Stupid Web Site
of the Week

Study: Editors sometimes don't quite get it

I was going through some things and came across this clipping, which I wanted to scan before it got any more yellowed and wrinkled. It's a favorite, and it still makes me laugh, even now that I am in a position to come up with equally perceptive headlines of my own. (If you click on it, you can make out the story, but the basic point is that the average college athlete drinks more than the average non-athlete student.)

Another day at the office

I've been working insane hours since my job changed temporarily. This week, we put out the usual 12-page Livermore Falls Advertiser and the 16-page Franklin Journal for Friday. It was also an every-other-week when we put out the 50+ page Rangeley Highlander, and then on Friday we put together the 8-page Tuesday Franklin Journal. And we had a special publication, "Our Towns," another 50-plus paper we do once a year.

This is a slightly nuts pace, but somehow we all got through it without any blow-ups or freak-outs.

However, the 8-page Tuesday paper and the Our Towns special publication will actually be wrapped up Monday morning, so I drove up through the Carrabassett Valley this morning (Saturday) to pick up a few extra things for them.

The above is just a grab shot for the Our Towns tabloid. This isn't a magic spot up in the wilderness anywhere ... I just pulled over and walked down to the riverside and took a few shots. Admittedly, there was a cutout by the road, so I'm not the first person to think it was a nice spot on the river, but there were any number of other places I could have stopped.

This is near the Sugarloaf ski resort, but the whole area is like this. It really is a privilege to be able to pop out on a Saturday and find yourself here in less than an hour.

This is where I was actually going ... Stratton Lumber in Stratton, Maine. The Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association was having a lumber-graders contest, with 19 graders from about half a dozen mills in Maine and Quebec. Each grader had five minutes to inspect and grade 50 pieces of lumber and classify them as #1, #2, #3 or Economy. The top grader got a $200 prize and the top mill, based on the scores of its top two graders, got a trophy and bragging rights.

It was very loosey-goosey away from the actual grading. While they waited around the corner for their turn at the lumber, graders and their friends answered trivia questions, based of course on lumber grading, with the first person to answer getting a lottery ticket. There was a lot of laughter and, naturally, a lot of good-natured complaining about the low payoffs on those tickets.

This fellow, Bernard Isabel, was also acting as "translator" for the francophone graders, a couple of whom really didn't speak much English, during this trivia session. However, there was so much laughter and kidding back and forth that his efforts were as humorous as they were helpful.

The winning grader got 37 out of 50, but, the $200 and bragging rights aside, this was serious fun, because after the competition, each grader went back with the judges and looked over the pieces he had missed. (And I'm assuming they chose tough pieces to grade, since the standard is for grading to be accurate within 5%) He was able to ask questions and get answers about why it fell into a grade other than where he had put it, and this is a fun way to sharpen skills. I'm told that the fellow who won had never won before and, in fact, had really improved his scores in the past couple of years through this process.

Besides the beautiful drive ... and I took a loop back home so I could pick up more pics for the Our Towns section, as well as for the scenery ... it was really fun to be among people who are good at what they do and have so much pride in their work. Times like this, I really miss being a business reporter.

Fortunately, once we pick up a publisher and some of the pressure comes off my back, I'll be able to do more of this sort of thing. Meanwhile, it does mean that I won't have had a day off this week (I'll put in five or six hours in the office tomorrow).

But if you're going to have to work on your day off, this wasn't such a bad way to do it.

My friend Sherwood has been reliving his 2006 trip to Ireland in his blog, and every morning it brings this song to mind. If you're going to get a song stuck in your head, this is a pretty good one. Planxty was a legendary Irish band of the 1970s and I consider it the apex of the ballad movement begun by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Nor am I alone in that assessment.

So hit play, and then open another window and read Sherwood's blog with this as background.

Lovely.

Quagmire

For once, I'm agreeing with the guy.

A chip off the very old block. This is my granddaughter, playing with a dog her parents are dogsitting for. They didn't add a soundtrack, but I'm assuming it is a melange of growling and giggling. I particularly like the part where Johanna turns away and Anna drops the toy over her shoulder in front of her as if to say, "Wait! I'm still playing with you!"

UPDATE: Gabe posted a version with the soundtrack -- it's quite understated but that makes it even better -- two non-verbal types engaging in an intense bit of play and negotiating the rules as they go along. I tried to swap it into the original posting, but ran into enough snags that I decided to just re-do the whole thing, losing a couple of comments. But I like the small giggles and protests that went along with the game. So there.

Say hello to my li'l friend!

The grass in this picture is slightly-shaggy lawn length, which gives you a feel for just how tiny this youngster is -- about squirrel size, though with a more delicately shaped head.

And the position of the tail gives you a feel for just how much my tiny friend cares about relative sizes.

And little people know
When little people fight
We may look easy pickings
But we've got some bite

It did occur to me that this incredibly cute little critter was at an age where, with some slow, cautious feeding and gentle coaxing, you could end up with a house pet that wouldn't spray. I know people who have done just that.

However, not being out of my mind, I made this as an observation and not something upon which to act.

And in any case, this encounter happened about a mile from the house, which is a good thing, since I suspect mon petit Gavroche, if encountered in our backyard, would have no scruples against showing Des and Ziwa what lies beneath that fluffy white plume.

ove and Honor

A 1902 guide to romance, from a book I hadn't thought of for a while, until I read this wonderful posting of advice from a 1928 book on letter-writing.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

No doubt there is such a thing as love at first sight, but love alone is a very uncertain foundation upon which to base marriage. There should be thorough acquaintance- ship and a certain knowledge of harmony of tastes and temper- aments before matrimony is ventured upon.

CONDUCT OF A GENTLEMAN TOWARD LADIES

A gentleman whose thoughts are not upon marriage should not pay too exclusive attentions to any one lady. He may call upon all and extend invitations to any or all to attend public places of amusement with him, or may act as their escort on occasions, and no one of the many has any right to feel herself injured. But as soon as he neglects others to devote himself to a single lady he gives that lady reason to suppose he is particularly attracted to her, and there is danger of her feelings becoming engaged.

CONDUCT OF A LADY TOWARD GENTLEMEN

Neither should a young lady allow marked attention from any one to whom she is not especially attracted, for several reasons; one, that she may not do an injury to the gentleman in seeming to give his suit encouragement, another that she may not harm herself in keeping aloof from her those whom she might like better, but who will not approach her under the mistaken idea that her feelings are already engaged.

TRIFLING WITH A MAN’S FEELINGS

Some young ladies pride themselves upon the conquests which they make, and would not scruple to sacrifice the happiness of an estimable person to their reprehensible vanity. Let this be far from you. If you see clearly that you have become an object of especial regard to a gentleman and do not wish to encourage his addresses, treat him honorably and humanely, as you hope to be used with generosity by the person who may engage your own heart. Do not let him linger in suspense; but take the earliest opportunity of carefully making known your feelings on the subject. ... Let it never be said of you that you permit the attentions of an honorable man when you have no heart to give him; or that you have trifled with the affections of one whom perhaps you esteem, although you resolve never to marry him. It may be that his preference gratifies and his companionship interests you; that you are flattered by the attentions of a man whom some of your companions admire; and that, in truth, you hardly know your own mind on the subject. This will not excuse you. Every young woman ought to know the state of her own heart; and yet the happiness and future prospects of many an excellent man have been sacrificed by such unprincipled conduct.

A POOR TRIUMPH

It is a poor triumph for a young lady to say, or to feel, that she has refused five, ten or twenty offers of marriage; it is about the same as acknowledging herself a trifler and a coquette, who, from motives of personal vanity, tempts and induces hopes and expectations which she has predetermined shall be disappointed. Such a course is, to a certain degree, both unprincipled and
immodest.

A STILL GREATER CRIME

It is a still greater crime when a man conveys the impression that he is in love, by actions, gallantries, looks, attentions, all -- except that he never commits himself -- and finally withdraws his devotions, exulting in the thought that he has said or written nothing which can legally bind him.

THE REJECTED LOVER

Remember that if a gentleman makes a lady an offer, she has no right to speak of it. If she possesses either generosity or gratitude for offered affection, she will not betray a secret that does not belong to her. It is sufficiently painful to be refused, without incurring the additional mortification of being pointed out as a rejected lover.

UNMANLY CONDUCT

Rejected suitors sometimes act as if they had received injuries they were bound to avenge, and so take every opportunity of annoying or slighting the helpless victims of their former attentions. Such conduct is cowardly and unmanly, to say nothing of its utter violation of good breeding.

DEMONSTRATIONS OF AFFECTION

It may be well to hint that a lady should not be too demonstrative of her affection during the days of her engagement. There is always the chance of a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip; and overt demonstrations of love are not pleasant to remember by a young lady if the man to whom they are given by any chance fails to become her husband. An honorable man will never tempt his future bride to any such demonstration. He will always maintain a respectful and decorous demeanor toward her.

A DOMINEERING LOVER

No lover will assume a domineering attitude over his future wife. If he does so, she will do well to escape from his thrall before she becomes his wife in reality. A domineering lover will be certain to be still more domineering as a husband; and from all such the prayer of the wise woman is “Good Lord, deliver us!”

Hence the term "bird brain"

Okay, I did notice that the bird feeder was getting low enough that the birds had to reach their little heads inside if they insisted on using the top rail and top set of feeding ports. But I had some things to do and I figured, once they couldn't reach the seed from the top, they'd just go to the bottom rail and feed from there.

I figured wrong and came home from the paper (my usual Sunday two-hour last-minute-clean-up stint) to find this little fellow inside the feeder. Apparently it's a lot easier to find your way in than to find your way out. Especially if you're foolish enough to climb inside in the first place.

Please don't tell Fish & Wildlife. I don't want to have to post little labels on the feeder saying "Caution: For External Use Only."

(Mike is on vacation. In his absence, Billy is blogging.)

When $50,000 means nothing to you
but class does

When the Houston Texans signed veteran running back Ahman Green during the off-season, there was only one, small problem.

The 10-year veteran had worn the number 30 throughout his career, and he wanted to keep it. It seems a silly thing, but when your face is covered with a helmet, your number is what fans see, and football players are strongly identified with their numbers.


But on the Houston Texans squad, #30 is defensive back Jason Simmons. Simmons is no Hall of Famer, but he's a solid dependable 10-year veteran who has been with the Texans since the franchise began in 2001.

This problem has come up before, and you can imagine there's some pressure from management to bend and make the new guy happy. Usually that incoming superhero shells out some money to the guy with the magic number. But, really, what does money mean to these guys, given the huge paychecks they command during their active years?

So Simmons set the price for #30 at $50,000. Only he didn't want the money.

This year, Ahman Green will be #30 for the Houston Texans, and Jason Simmons will be #22.

And, thanks to $25,000 from Green and $25,000 from Texans owner Bob McNair, Regina Foster and her seven-year-old autistic son, Reginald, have their own house. The price of that uniform number was, by Simmons' terms, a down-payment for a single parent.

Classy guys.

24 hours at a small newspaper

I covered the Harry Potter release at our local bookstore Friday night. The party started at 10 p.m. and was very corny and a lot of fun. They probably had 300 people there. I know that they ended up selling about 225 books, and there were a lot of families who put the kids to bed at their regular times and then got them back up for this -- so you'd have a couple of parents and a couple of kids, but they were only leaving with one book. 300 is a conservative estimate, then.

The doors were locked until 10, but, just as they were about to open, a group of witches and warlocks from the Ministry of Magic came striding down the street, loudly announcing that there was to be no release and that everyone was to disperse. The store owner, dressed in robes, came out and negotiated and argued, and eventually the MoM people left furiously and the store opened.

They had stations both in the store and on the sidewalk where you could solve various riddles, test your magical vocabulary, decode runes and so forth -- a botany professor from the college dressed up and brought a collection of truly strange plants for young Hogwarts students to identify. There were, admittedly, more than a few moments when I was thinking that it was the most fun you could have without learning Klingon, but everyone really was having a good time.

Well, except me, because the room was crowded and dark, and all I really wanted was a photo for the front page. But between the cramped shooting space and the bad lighting it was tough to get anything, and every shot that seemed half decent had someone in the crowd picking his nose or just wandering into the middle of things.

I decided to try for a shot of the books being passed out. I ran into the local arts critic and he introduced me to a local doctor. So we're chatting away and then it was 10 minutes before midnight and they threw us all out of the store so they could set up the book distribution. (The owner had the sense to pre-sell throughout the evening so there was nothing left to do but check off names and hand them out.)

The problem was, there had been half the people in the store and half the people out on the street at any given time, but now everyone was at the door and I suddenly realized that I wasn't going to be able to get back in -- I should have used my status as press to stay in the store and be ready. Oh well, something would come about.

And it did. As I'm standing in the group funnelling slowly towards the door, people start coming back out, and this girl comes out, sees a friend in the crowd and shouts excitedly, "I can't believe it! I got the first one!"

And I said, "Oh, come here, darlin', bless your heart, you have just rescued my job."

That's her.


So I got home about 12:45 and into bed about 1:15. The dogs let me sleep in an extra half hour, so I didn't get up until 4:30, whereupon I fed them and would have gone back to bed except that Saturday was Kingfield Days and the festivities began at 9 a.m. So I stayed up, did a few things, walked the dogs, went to the dump and drove the half hour up to Kingfield.

Kingfield is an interesting little crossroads town, because it's part mill town and part resort. Oh, and the Stanley Steamer was invented there, because it's the kind of town where most people know how to tinker with stuff, but the Stanleys knew how more than most.

These young people I took to be brother and sister, but in fact they aren't related -- they know each other because she used to babysit him when he was much younger. They had teamed up for a day-long contest that paid $100 to the winner. This was the portion of the day that involved eating worms, and he is telling her that, having eaten two of the three required worms, he expects her to take on some of the responsibility. It was a very funny series of pictures, though the fact that they were under the tent made the lighting problematic.

What was interesting was that, when they took off to do whatever they had to do next, I just turned to someone and asked for names. Now, it happened to be her mother, but afterwards, I realized that I could have asked anyone. It's that kind of small town -- very much the size and feel of Star Lake or Cranberry.

This is the bike parade. The "parade" itself was only about a block long and a bit more like a dog show -- they have everyone just ride down and back in a big circle so the judges can have a look. Only the dogs in a dog show are on leashes and each has a handler making that trot right alongside. In this case, there was a certain "cat herding" quality to the affair that had people on the sidelines in stitches. Of course, since everyone is related to a couple of the riders, it's good spirited and everyone tries to stifle themselves, but, as Dave Barry once wrote of a school play, "There wasn't a pair of dry underpants in the house."

There were also several craft booths. The woman in blue was collecting money for AIDS in South Africa on behalf of her church. She had with her a four-month-old cairn terrier, and this little 23-month old girl wanted to pet it. It was a little hard to tell which of the two puppies was more excited -- the four-legged one or the two-legged one, but if dogs could giggle, they'd have both been giggling.

The Stanley Museum was going to be open that afternoon, and I would have loved to have gone and had a look, but I had to get back down to Farmington because there was a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament going on. I didn't really have space for it in the paper, but this fellow (the one officiating above) has sent me a couple of releases and I wanted to have a look and maybe get a few pictures for future use, for instance, if we did a story on his school. It's better to have some serious competitive shots than the usual shots of nine-year-olds flailing around.

So I go into the gym (and immediately see those yellow lights that make photography such a nightmare) and this voice calls out, "Mike!" and it turns out that the guy's wife is a woman I'd met before because she had been doing publicity for a drama that a women's group was presenting a few months ago. So here I am suddenly very well oriented, because she's one of the organizers of the tournament (which drew competitors from throughout New England). And it doesn't matter that I didn't get any really useable shots -- that one above is a little dodgy, and it's the best -- because Melissa said she'd get me some, not to worry.

But the day wasn't over.

That's my boss, making a small speech about 9:30 that night, at a going-away party. He's headed to take up a similar position about six hours from where he and his wife grew up in Oklahoma, which is understandable since their parents are not in the best of health and this is a long way from there. The crown and wings were added earlier in the evening by the head of the United Way, and there were also several other indignities heaped upon him by state legislators and various other folks.

So while we're at the bar before the shindig begins, I'm talking about the Harry Potter party, and said I had a shot of this young girl for the cover of Tuesday's paper, and someone says, "Who was it?" I happened to remember her name and the response was, "Oh, good! She's such a nice girl -- and so bright!"

And later in the evening, I'm sitting at the table with my camera out, and I am showing one of our state legislators some of the pictures from Kingfield and we get to the picture of the puppy and the baby and he says, "Oh, that's Anne!" and begins to tell me more about this woman who had the dog.

It is a very small town we have here, and I am fast becoming fond of it. Which is probably a good thing, since (A) I am going to be filling in for the publisher until a new one is hired, (B) the editor of our weekly newspaper in the next town just quit, so I'll be filling in for him, too, and (C) I toddled home at 10 p.m. Saturday, just 24 hours after the beginning of the Harry Potter release party.

Thing is, small-town life is not as slow-paced as the stereotypes suggest. It's a matter, rather, of priorities and preferences. One of the things we talked about at the party was the number of writers and artists you find up in the woods around Kingfield and throughout this area, and yet it's not an artsy sort of place. The artists who come here come to be part of what's going on, not to transform it into something else. And that's the way this place is -- people really value a certain type of small-town life and are quite conscious of what they've got.

In short, the people-who-know-people here know 15 year old girls who love Harry Potter and women with puppies and kids who like to decorate their bikes and guys who teach judo.

Which made last night's bash a whole lot more fun than the White House Correspondents Dinner. It just naturally attracts a better class of people.

Small touches

I realize that about 80 percent of my readership is probably already tuned into this strip, but this morning's "Watch Your Head" struck me as exemplifying something important about cartooning.

Robin, the young woman receiving the present, is the crush-interest of the strip's protagonist, but dates Steve, who is portrayed as an insincere egotist, although, in the spirit of this often subtle strip, most of his negatives are being seen through the eyes of the guy who wishes Robin was in love with him.

But that is not the small touch of which I speak.

I was struck this morning by the differences in how Cory Thomas draws Robin and Steve in the first panel, when they are all lovey-dovey, and the way he draws each of them in the subsequent panels when they are just hanging out with their roomies. Of course, it's not unusual for a cartoonist to depict a character as smiling, laughing, looking more animated on a date or in the middle of a ball game, and then more relaxed at home, but Cory does it with a subtlety that maybe could be called "cartoon realism."

It's made all the more striking in that the gag is not particularly fall-on-the-floor hilarious, though it does, in the context of the ongoing strip, add another element of Steve's manipulative nature. Or is he just being a guy? There's your subtlety all over again.

There's also a very interesting flow in the placement of the word balloons that significantly improves the strip's timing.

This is quickly becoming, not just one of my favorite strips, but one of my most admired. Cory does stuff that other people aren't doing, and I wonder if anybody out there notices, or if subtle grace is wasted in this medium?

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day ...

"The report released today is further indication and affirmation of the failure of the political leadership in Iraq to initiate the passage of the political benchmarks that would achieve national reconciliation," said Senator Snowe, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "The Iraqi government has failed to meet the deadlines and goals they established as far back as last September. The surge was designed to provide the Iraqi government with breathing room to work toward a national reconciliation, yet they have failed to take advantage of this time. The interim report released today states that movement toward new elections, legislation to fairly distribute oil revenue, and reversal of existing "de-Baathification" laws that limit Sunni participation in the government is "unsatisfactory." Indeed, the Iraqi government has consistently bypassed, overlooked or set aside critical deadlines for achieving these goals. One must question whether the Iraqi government and its political leadership is more interested in enacting an agenda on behalf of all of Iraq rather than consolidating power for sectarian interests. And this is the key issue – if the Iraqi government is not prepared to integrate the minority population and to move forward in a manner representative of the entire country, than clearly our military should no longer be on the front lines making an extraordinary sacrifice when the Iraqi government is unwilling to unify its own nation.

"As we are coming off of the bloodiest quarter for Americans since the war began, the number of attacks across Iraq has remained steady, and the Iraqi government has failed to enact or implement any of the benchmarks necessary for national reconciliation, then it is time to send a strong message from the United States Congress on behalf of the American people that the current strategy is unacceptable and that we must move in a different course."


Mr. President, I rise today to join my distinguished colleagues from both parties in offering a bipartisan way forward on what is the greatest challenge facing our country: the war in Iraq.

I have repeatedly expressed my opposition to the President's strategy of sending tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq.

Despite my opposition and that of many others, the Administration pushed forward with its plan, arguing that the surge would give the Iraqi government the time to make the political compromises necessary to end the continued sectarian violence. Unfortunately, my initial concerns with this misguided policy have been proven to be well-founded.

First, there has been a terrible loss of life among our troops over the past few months. Three hundred thirty-one American soldiers were killed from April to June, the highest three-month level of the war. One such soldier was Sergeant Joel House, a brave and patriotic Mainer whose funeral was held last week in his hometown of Lee.

Second, the Iraqi government has utterly failed to pursue the political reforms that are necessary to quell the sectarian violence. When you combine the increased sacrifice of our troops and the unwillingness or inability of the Iraqi leaders to act, it is not surprising to see a steady erosion of support for the President's policy.

It is clear that our country needs a new direction in Iraq. We need a new strategy that will redefine the mission and set the stage for a significant but gradual withdrawal of our troops over the next year.

Mr. President, we do not have to search far and wide for this new policy. It is already mapped out for us in the unanimous recommendations of the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. The Iraq Study Group's recommendations chart the path forward and remain just as viable today as they were when they were released last December.

The Iraq Study Group has laid out three core principles for salvaging a measure of stability in Iraq and the surrounding region. First, the ISG says that the U.S. must shift the primary mission of military forces in Iraq from combat to training, with the goal of removing all combat brigades not necessary for training, force protection, and counter-terrorism by March 2008.

Shifting the mission of our troops to a new and more defined set of goals will ultimately encourage the Iraqi military to step up to the plate, while lowering U.S. casualty rates, relieving our servicemembers of heavy deployment schedules, and improving the long-term readiness of our units.

Second, the ISG states that U.S. support for the Iraqi government should be conditional on Iraq's making progress in meeting specific benchmarks. Senator Warner and I authored legislation in May to require the President to provide two reports to Congress, on July 15 and September 15 of this year, on whether the Iraqis are meeting a number of benchmarks essential to achieving political reconciliation. The first of these reports will be released tomorrow. Although we have not yet seen the report, from everything I have heard, the Iraqi government is unlikely to have met any of the benchmarks we laid out.

The Warner-Collins proposal also included a provision that I authored to condition the release of reconstruction funds to progress made by the Iraqi government. If the Iraqis are not doing their part to meet their own goals, the United States should not continue to provide reconstruction funds. This is also consistent with the ISG's recommendations.

Third, the ISG says that the U.S. must launch a new diplomatic offensive in the region to ensure Iraq's long-term stability. Iraq cannot be addressed effectively in isolation from other major regional issues and interests. Both the international community and Iraq's neighbors are clearly not doing enough to foster its stability, and it is time that this changed.

Senators Salazar and Alexander have incorporated these recommendations into legislation, S. 1545, which I have cosponsored, and into the amendment we will offer to the Defense Authorization bill.

Mr. President, Iraqi leaders must reach political agreements in order to achieve reconciliation, and their failure to do so is greatly contributing to the spiraling violence in Iraq and the causalities among American troops. The responsibility for Baghdad's internal security and for halting sectarian violence must rest primarily with the Government of Iraq and Iraqi Security Forces. An open-ended commitment of American forces in Iraq does not provide the Iraqi government with the incentive it needs to take the political actions that give Iraq the best chance of quelling sectarian violence. Ultimately, resolving the sectarian violence requires a political, not a military, solution in which the Sunni minority is more fully integrated into the power structures and oil revenues are more fairly distributed among Iraq's citizens.

This war, and the way it has been prosecuted, has cost our nation much over the past four years. It has cost us the lives of our men and women in uniform, and it has cost us billions of dollars.

While our nation's armed forces have sacrificed greatly, they continue to persevere. They inspire us. Many of our nation's soldiers have been to Iraq more than once. This, of course, has been very hard on them, and it is also difficult for the families they leave behind. We especially need to thank our reservist and National Guard members, who continue to answer the call of duty. Far too much is being asked of these citizen-soldiers, their families, and employers. Whether they are from Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, or Mississippi, these citizen-soldiers are willing put their lives on the line and their jobs and families aside to answer the call of duty. But we as a nation are asking too much of them given the failures of the Administration's policy in Iraq.

Now it is time that we stand up and show these service members, and the American people, that we in Congress can move past politics on the most critical issue facing our country today. That we can build a bipartisan approach to bring a responsible conclusion to this war. That is exactly what this amendment will do, and I ask my fellow Senators to join us in supporting this measure.

A Name From the Past

My house in Maine is out in the country but it's set back quite a way from the woods and I don't have the huge numbers of birds hanging out in the backyard that I did back in New York, where the woods were about 30 feet from the back wall and there was a huge old tree in the yard.

But what they lack in numbers, they make up for in color. I did have goldfinches and purple finches in New York, but here there are also indigo buntings, which add a shade of blue that's a little surreal in nature ... or at least in zoological nature. This picture, of a very colorful group who showed up at the same time the other day, was shot through the window and is not very clear, but you can see which bird I'm referring to.

When I was very little, we had a game called "Bird Lotto" that featured cards with a lot of very colorful birds. I don't remember much of the game itself -- my memories of playing it are set in a house we left when I was in the first grade, and either the game didn't make the move or we had simply lost interest in it -- but I learned a lot of birds' names, including the indigo bunting. It may have been my first exposure to nature and, whether or not Bird Lotto sparked the interest, I soon began to acquire lots of books on the topic, and to follow Disney's nature films closely. For that matter, one of the first comics I followed with any sustained attention was the Sunday version of Mark Trail.

The result is that there are lots of animals I know about but have never seen. The first time one of these intensely blue little birds appeared on the feeder this spring, I immediately thought, "That's got to be an indigo bunting!" and looked it up and, sure enough, there it was, only 52 years or so after I learned its name.

Which goes to show you that no knowledge is ever wasted, if you live long enough.