Lobsters, moose and cartoonists

Three of our area cartoonists -- well, none of whom was actually born here, which, in local parlance, means they're "from away," but all of whom live in Maine now -- were in Portland Saturday for a panel discussion of cartooning, as part of the "Maine Festival of the Book."

From left, it's Wiley Miller, of "Non Sequitur" and "The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Basil", Corey Pandolph of "Barkeater Lake," who is also stepping in for an ailing artist at "The Elderberries," and Lincoln Peirce, of "Big Nate."

An interesting session -- I'm so used to people who are absolutely nuts about comics talking that it was interesting to hear more ordinary citizens asking questions. I'd like to drop some big bombshells but the only news that emerged was that Wiley's got a second kid's book coming out in February and that Corey's going to be continuing on The Elderberries a little longer. Most of it was news like the reason Lincoln does so well at capturing the mind of a sixth grader is ... well, you can guess how he explains that. To which Wiley added that the normal mindset of a cartoonist also makes them really good at Trivial Pursuit, which doesn't surprise me in the least. And that was largely the mood of the session -- some good information in response to the questions and quite a few dry jokes and laughs.

For my part, what I enjoyed was that Wiley and I have known each other on-line for several years but had never been in the same room before. It was nice to finally get face-to-face. As it happens, for the past two or three years, he's been living about eight miles from my step-daughter, Paige, but we've never quite gotten it together -- the one time we did set something up, I arrived in York Harbor just ahead of a horrendous blizzard and did well just to get out of town, never mind stopping to visit anyone else on the way. Of course, now that he's doing the kids' books as well as his regular cartoon, he doesn't get out of the studio very often, so it really doesn't matter where he lives. He's a stone's throw from Brook McEldowney who divides his time between Pibgorn and 9 Chickweed Lane and so is also driven by deadlines and the two of them have never managed to get together.

Incidentally, I didn't buy any books from the guys today, for the simple reason that, when I get ready to make my annual Christmas purchases, I prefer to do it on-line so that the artists have more time to do nice signings, rather than the hurried stuff at an event like this. I highly recommend that -- I've given signed copies of cartoon collections each year and the cartoonists have been wonderful about it. (It doesn't hurt them, of course -- two years ago, I gave signed copies of Hilary Price's collection of pet cartoons, "Reigning Cats and Dogs," complete with little sketches of the giftee's dogs, and included a copy for my assistant at the paper. That copy began to make the rounds at the office and totally disrupted work for most of an afternoon -- several people logged on to Amazon to get their own copies while they were supposed to be doing something else.)

It's not a bad way to support cartoonists.


On the way home, I stopped off in Freeport to get a pair of shoes at LL Bean -- I've bought shoes from them by mail order before, but it seems sensible to try them on, since I was going right past the place anyway, and had a gift card that's been in my wallet for several months now. While there, I spotted this food stand on the street and had to get a shot of that sign front-and-center.

Presumably "vending executives" wear three-piece suits and sell "lobstah rolls" out of their briefcases.

Destry at 10

Des turns 10 this week. For Rhodesian ridgebacks, that's not young. He's probably got two or three years left at the most, but it's hard to say, because ridgebacks go fast. You don't see a ridgeback who needs five pills three times a day. One day they are healthy, the next day, they are gone. This is a bit of a blessing, because who wants to watch a dog suffer? But it also makes you nervous when your dog gets to a certain age, because you won't get much warning when the curtain is about to come down.

So I watch him turn white, and I worry about him, but I also enjoy him, knowing that we'll probably have a good time together right up to the end.

Destry is such a sweetheart that I often forget that he is the most impossible dog I have ever owned.

When I was looking for a new dog, to replace the amazing Mr. O'Malley, my first ridgeback, I told breeders I would be happy with a pet-quality, over-sized, hyper-alpha male. That was, after all, what I was used to.

A breeder in Massachusetts got in touch, saying she had the perfect puppy for me: He had only one crown in his ridge. These are the cobra-hood-like marks at the top of the ridge -- you need to have two swirls, so that, with only one, he was definitely a pet-quality dog. And he was very much an alpha -- he refused to socialize with the other pups and went his own way.

So I went down to meet him, when he was about five weeks old (that's the picture on the left, above). Only he failed his temperament test: When I rolled him onto his back, instead of fighting to his feet like a good alpha, he was pleased to have his belly scratched. The breeder was surprised, and so was I.

It turned out that his independence was not the result of a strong alpha personality -- it was because he simply didn't care what the rest of the pack was doing. It didn't register on his radar.

I should have walked away from this pup: There is no bigger challenge than training a dog who has no sense of peer pressure, of pack structure. If he doesn't care what everyone else is doing, you have virtually nothing to hold over him. This dog could have been impossible, and to some extent he was, and is.

Do dogs live up to their names? I named him Destry, after the Jimmy Stewart character who comes into town forced to live up to his father's reputation as a straight-shooting, no-nonsense lawman. This pup was following a very special dog and I wanted a name that would remind me that he didn't have to be O'Malley, that he was entitled to carve for himself.

And, boy, did he. And he lived up to the name in that he is so laid back that he makes Jimmy Stewart look like the guy in the Federal Express commercials.

Destry is frustrating to walk with because he lags back, sniffing this or that, looking at whatever interests him and generally going his own way. If you yell at him to catch up, he has no idea why you're so upset -- either he acts like nothing is happening, or, if you finally do get through to him, he's completely panicked and has no idea why you are so angry. There's no point in losing your temper because you only frighten the dog and you don't in any way change his behavior.

What saves him is his gentle, kindly manner. He is without a doubt the nicest dog I've ever known. He is a big (130 pounds), bumbling, gentle giant, and, yeah, he's kind of dumb, in a genial, self-effacing way. He doesn't like to cuddle, but he does come up to you and lay his enormous head against you for a scritch, and he is so completely gentle with my granddaughters that I absolutely love him, as they do.

Oddly enough, however, under all that goofball exterior, there is a ridgeback.

A few years back, when he was about two, a group of us used to run into each other on the paths in a wooded area in Glens Falls. One of the dogs in the group was an obnoxious, pushy little border collie named Bandit, who would pick on Destry for the entire walk. His owner refused to discipline him, saying, "They'll work it out," and I must confess that I often wished for Destry to lose his temper, grab that damned dog by the neck and shake him into submission.

But it never happened. Destry would cringe and submit and let Bandit shove him around, and what eventually resolved it was that the fellow got a job in another city and moved away.

A year later, however, Nellie Bly joined us. At the time, she was a year-old bitch who had spent much of her life in kennels and had a lot of enthusiasm but not a lot of discipline. She was, however, well trained and I was working on getting her used to life as a companion dog, when, one day, we were out in those same woods and she went enthusiasitically bounding up to a large German shepherd whose owner was saying, "He's not friendly -- get your dog away!"

Sure enough, the dog broke away from her and attacked little Nell. And that was when I realized that Destry really could live up to that Jimmy Stewart name -- he was between them before the shepherd had finished pouncing. He took the fangs in his own shoulder and turned on the dog swiftly. I was able to get there in time to prevent an actual fight, but Destry had shown that, while he didn't mind being picked on himself, nobody was going to mess with his niece Nellie.

After that, I looked on his laid-back, goofy attitude with a different perspective. Like his namesake, Thomas Jefferson Destry, he had earned his right to hang up his guns and insist that violence doesn't solve anything.

So now, when he's lagging behind, sniffing the flowers and absent-mindedly shuffling along at his own pace while Ziwa and I are trying to keep some kind of sensible pace on the trail, do I get angry and frustrated with him?

Of course. This dog absolutely drives me out of my mind.

But he also reminds me of another movie, a short one that I loved as a kid, long before I knew who Jimmy Stewart even was.

Anyway, happy birthday, Des, you kindly old farthound. Many, many happy returns of the day.

My Senators are Republicans ... but also Mainers

That cussed Yankee independence is one of the things I like best about this place. Both Senators have taken some grief from anti-war purists who expect them to consistently vote against their own partyline. But they've shown a willingness and an ability to speak their minds and to buck the system plenty of times. Yesterday was a particularly good example.

"In our system, a no-confidence motion is a meaningless political gesture. Nevertheless, the fact is that I have lost confidence in the ability of Attorney General Gonzales to lead the Department of Justice effectively.

Every week brings yet another revelation of serious errors in judgment by the nation's highest law enforcement official. It is up to the President to decide the Attorney General's future, but I think his continued tenure does not benefit the Department or our country."

-- Susan Collins, R-Maine

“Today’s vote related to a non-binding resolution that would not have the force of law, and yet I voted to continue debate on the resolution because of my deep concerns regarding the conduct of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Although it is true that Mr. Gonzales serves at the pleasure of the White House, this vote sends a clear message the President must recognize that the cumulative and troubling pattern of developments that have been disclosed over the past several months have undermined confidence in the Attorney General in his ability to serve. I believe the President needs to give the facts we have heard recently very serious consideration.

Quite frankly, I have found the circumstances surrounding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and the lack of the Attorney General’s apparent oversight in that matter to be a part of that troubling pattern. In addition, the more recent allegation about a late-night visit to the hospital room of an ailing John Ashcroft, revealed a lack of judiciousness and is truly bizarre. As a member of the Intelligence Committee who has had fundamental concerns about how this government conducted the wiretapping surveillance program, the allegation, if true, is contrary to the high conduct that we expect from someone serving in this vital position in our government.

Therefore, I voted for cloture because, in fact, I have no confidence in this Attorney General. This resolution—which is the first in history for the U.S. Senate—is a proper forum to express my belief the President needs to give these recent facts very serious consideration.”

-- Olympia Snowe, R-Maine

Why goldfish will never rule the world

"Somebody's coming! Quick! Let's all hide under the snapping turtle!"

Incidentally, you'll notice that, since Howard moved out to the back deck for the summer, he's grown a lovely crop of algae on his back and tail. He's enjoying the larger pool and deeper water, and the occasional goldfish, since he's in training for next summer and the introduction of harsh cruel reality in which people don't come by and drop chunks of meat in front of your nose.

Despite being forced to catch his own dinner, however, he still expects good things from human beings, which is a matter of some concern. I was bringing him in at night because of the risk of raccoons and skunks, but he became so comfortable with being handled that I quit after a week and, instead, put a screen over the pool at night and hope anyone trying to break in makes enough noise to rouse the dogs.

Here, Howard is watching me hang laundry, or at least he was until I saw him looking up and paused to take a camera out of my pocket. (His pool is on the wooden raised platform where the laundry line runs to the barn, so I was standing over him. And I always have a camera in my pocket in case something newsworthy jumps out in front of me. Or in case I find a small turtle staring at me.)

I cropped this picture a little wide so you could check out the design on the flower pot that currently serves as his cave. I don't think he'll get that kind of decor out in the wide, wild world, either.

"It's damn easy to get into a war, but if it's going to be awful hard to ever extricate yourself if you get in."

LBJ talks to McGeorge Bundy, at a time when only 260 Americans had died in Vietnam.

A Saudi Arabian detainee died of an apparent suicide early Wednesday afternoon at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military announced today.

The death marked the fourth detainee suicide at Guantanamo Bay since the U.S. began jailing suspected terrorists at the U.S. Navy base in January 2002, said Jose Ruiz, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command in Miami.

The detainee was found “unresponsive and not breathing in his cell by guards,” according to a Southern Command press release. A physician pronounced the detainee dead “after all lifesaving measures had been exhausted.”

Ruiz said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service has launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death and that the command “will release the details as soon as they become available.”

Ruiz, based in Miami, did not yet have details such as the detainee’s age, where the detainee was captured or the length of time spent in captivity.

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
And all they will call you will be "Deportee."
-- Woody Guthrie

Johanna schmoozes

"Now, when I hand you back to Daddy, I want you to spit up on that Green Party t-shirt ... "

Winter appears to be over

Boy, when the snow is gone, does this place green up! This scene is on my way to the office, across the road from the high school. When I prepare pictures, I usually fiddle with the contrast, since my camera tends to shoot a little flat. But this one I left as is. The depth of green here is stupefying.

And apparently delicious, these girls say.

Here we have Des and Ziwa on the Whistlestop Trail, one of our new favorite walking spaces. This is an old railbed set up primarily as an ATV/snowmobile trail that runs from here to Jay and Livermore Falls, which is close to 20 miles, I guess, though we only need a small portion of that. We walk a mile or a mile-and-a-half and then come back, and often without running into anyone at all, rarely seeing more than one or two other people.

On this particular day, we ran into two good-sized groups of ATV riders, but these are not the motor-revving hotdogs who would make it unbearable -- just family groups including grandparents and little kids, putting along at more than a walking pace but nothing that stirs up any dust or comes up on you like Marlon Brando in "The Wild One." I grab the dogs' collars and stand off to the side, we wave, everyone smiles.

Incidentally, I've noticed that folks around here don't leave for vacations. They stay and work on their houses, go out on ATVs or snowmobiles, depending on the season, and basically do the stuff they don't have time or energy for during the work week.

I mentioned this to one of my neighbors and she said she and her husband like rural Florida but don't have much use for the city. They went to Disneyworld once because everyone told them they should. They found themselves standing for two hours waiting to get in and someone said, "You know, once you get in there, you'll do this again for anything you want to do." That was the end of their trip to Disneyworld -- "We were out of there," she said. "Who needs that?"

The concessions are cheaper on the Whistlestop, too.

This is the view from a bridge near the trailhead. That's Temple Creek below, but quite far below. I was taking this, with the dogs standing around saying, "Why are we stopping?" and looked up to find one of the groups of ATVs we encountered quietly putt-putting towards the bridge, then turned around to see a guy alone on an ATV at the other end, waiting for the larger group. I shooed the dogs off ahead of me and we let everyone pass before moving on.

That was the closest we've had to a "Stand By Me" moment. When Stephen King was a kid, this was probably still a train line, but he grew up about 50 miles south of here and I'm sure his childhood rambles didn't take him THIS far.

Howard goes swimming

Just a quick update on Howard at nine months of age. The upper left is a picture of him as a hatchling, the one next to it is Howard at six months.

As you can see, the last three months have seen some real changes in the boy. I had been under the impression that, because they don't need a great deal of food, you should be careful of overfeeding them. (Possibly because I read this on a Web site about raising snapping turtles.)

However, a few months ago, I read another Web site on the same topic that said you should go ahead and feed them when they were hungry. Howard was very much in favor of this approach.

The result is that he has somewhat outgrown his tank. The timing is good, though, because he can be in a nice sweater box on a platform on the backporch much of the summer and in his original tank at other times. This also gives him a chance to work on his swimming skills, since there's more water in his sweater box than in his little tank.

At the moment, we're having a Call of the Wild moment as he goes to the edge of the tank and swims as if he would get through the translucency and into the Big World Outside, but I expect him to settle into his new home soon enough.

His sudden growth made me pause and wonder if he should, indeed, go back to the Big World Outside this summer rather than next, but he's still, at this point, snack-sized as far as any raccoons, skunks or other opportunistic feeders are concerned. By next spring, he'll probably be bigger than any snapping turtle I would like to have as a roommate, but a fine size for being released.

In the meantime, I'm scouting for ponds that I can get to with the canoe but where he won't run into a lot of people, since he is apt to think of them as food sources. He's still no more gentle and cuddly than ever, but he's become more trusting than is likely good for him. Fortunately, this part of Maine is sparsely settled and honeycombed with water sources, so it won't be terribly difficult to find him a quiet corner somewhere.

Ranking W, Covering Carter ... and those annoying grasshoppers

I was looking for the audio link of the Carter interview which demonstrates clearly that his remarks on W were not misinterpreted, misquoted or taken out of context, but it appears to have disappeared.

However, I did find this interesting blog about religion and journalism, which not only wraps up the entire incident but offers some interesting moderated commentary. Apparently the bloggers are not only willing to delete comments that are irrelevant to the purpose of the blog but weigh in to keep things on-topic. This amazing secret keeps the flamers to a minimum and makes the blog worth a visit regardless of the actual subject matter. I'm bookmarking this one.

The comments on Columbia Journalism Review's blog, by contrast, are useless -- a handful of flamers ranting at each other and none of them making serious points about the various entries. Religion isn't the only thing the media apparently don't get -- Over at the Poynter Institute, there's a discussion of how to keep things civil but allow "The People" to be heard.

IMNSHO, there are a lot of people who don't deserve to be heard. If there is one thing my brief stint in talk radio taught me, it's the difference between who thinks and who dials the phone. The frequent callers are not representative of the average person. However, there is a fascination in extreme behavior that will provide an audience for movies like "Jackass," for radio shock jocks, for exploitive reality shows and for what, in an earlier age, would have been called inappropriate material.

Is this the first time in history we've seen crowds gather to sup the swill? Certainly not. In post-medieval times, the entertainment in the public square was coarse, bawdy and frequently cruel and violent, and people crowded to enjoy it.

But those people were disenfranchised cogs in the machine. They were flesh-robots and cannon-fodder whose views and opinions were not part of what guided the polity. Once we began to count on them to participate in governing, we also started a system of public schools and general attempts at moral uplift.

Today, that's seen as oppressive, and the Voice of the People is revered. Well, that's theoretically a good thing, but, if the media were really interested in hearing what people think, and not just gathering a throng of gape-jawed peasants for their Punch-and-Judy show, they'd invest more money in polling and in competent reporting rather than simply opening the gates to the loudmouths who represent our basest instincts while intimidating and shouting down our better sides.

One of my favorite quotes on this topic is from Edmund Burke:

Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

And as far as ranking presidents goes, I consider Jimmy Carter a representative of our better sides. But what he said about the Bush administration would have been correct no matter who said it.

Thy Servant Kirstie

One of the features of our paper is a church column, in which the various churches can briefly (250 word limit) share what they've got going on.

In summing up last Sunday's service, a Baptist minister mentioned a reading from First Samuel about Hannah.

I emailed him back saying that it was probably a good choice because half the little girls in his congregation are probably named Hannah. The trick to reaching the other half, I suggested, would be to find a biblical verse about someone named Kirstie.

His response not only made me laugh out loud but will now, for better or worse, surely pop into my head every time I hear the name:

Ecc 7:21, 22 Also take no heed unto all words that are spoken; lest thou hear thy servant curse thee; For oftentimes also thine own heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise hast cursed others

Ignorance and freedom

Someone asked me for the complete Jefferson quote about newspapers and government. In digging it up, I came across a column of mine which ran October 2, 2001, less than a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center.

If truth is, in fact, the first casualty of war, it may be a victim of friendly fire.

While Washington ponders the difficulty of fighting an enemy with no particular base of operations and no concrete goals to achieve, American journalists are pondering the ethical boundaries of their profession and erring on the side of caution.

It is a delicate balance, reporting the news in a time of crisis. There certainly is an obligation to be responsible and to, as the physicians say, "Do no harm."

But doing no harm works both ways, and it's shameful that you can log on to the Australian press and read stories about our own nation's activities that are missing from the American press.

For instance, the New York Times wrote a nice feature story this past week about the town where the top-secret Delta Force is stationed. Nobody knows where they went, the story said, but all those quiet young men seem to have disappeared.

Somebody knew. A day earlier, the Age, of Melbourne (www.theage.com.au), reported that about 1,500 American special forces and British SAS troops were in Uzbekistan, on the northern border of Afghanistan.

Is the argument that you can put 1,500 troops on the border of Afghanistan without the Taliban or al-Qaida finding out? Are we to believe that Osama bin Laden reads the American press, but doesn't know Australia also has newspapers?

Or is it that the American media has become such a corporate entity that they tailor the news to suit the spirit of the times? The Boston Globe reports that, when USA Today finally got around to reporting the American presence in Afghanistan (a secret only if bin Laden doesn't read the Pakistani press), talk shows assailed the story as disloyal.

Granted, in a time of crisis, news organizations must weigh freedom against responsibility. But the real disloyalty comes when a timid press fails to report the news so citizens can make their own decisions on crucial issues.

This is not a new mission. When the French Revolution was degenerating into terror, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter from Paris stating that he felt a literate, informed citizenry was a better safeguard against mob violence than any government security force:

"The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right, and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them."

It was never a perfect system. Upon reaching the White House, Jefferson dismantled the anti-democratic Alien and Sedition Acts, but then conducted his own private war with the vicious, partisan newspapers of the time.

Apparently, he didn't like their approach to keeping public opinion "right."

We no longer have opposition papers, at least in the sense of each town having a different paper for each major political party.

But it sure is scary being a journalist who doesn't wear a flag lapel pin and reproduce the White House press releases exactly as written.

Item: White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer attacked "Politically Correct" television show host Bill Maher for making, um, politically incorrect remarks. Fleischer warned reporters that they need to "watch what they say" and then deleted his chilling phrase from the transcript of the press conference.

Item: A columnist in Grant's Pass, Oregon, and a city editor in Texas City, Texas, lost their jobs for questioning the president's leadership in the hours after the attack.

Item: Missouri state legislators are threatening to cut off funding for the state university's school of journalism, after the news director of the school's TV station told on-air news staff not to wear flag lapel pins, since it might suggest a lack of objectivity.

The old phrase "All the news that's fit to print" takes on an anti-democratic tone when subjected to a political litmus test.

Jefferson also wrote "If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. ... If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."

To that end, it is the responsibility of the press to report the news, even when those in power do not wish it.

Especially then.

Who's my mommy?

Okay, here are four eggs, with a quarter to give you some sense of perspective (though observe that the quarter is against the drawers while the eggs are touching it, but sticking out more).

The question is, what kinds of eggs are they? The hints I'll give are that no wild nests were disturbed in making this photo, and that I have already eaten some of the evidence and intend to eat the rest, too, while it's still fresh.

Answers at the end of the weekend.

(Love this country living!)

Guest blogger

Hannah Gay is a local woman who graduated from our high school a few years ago and, after college, is now teaching at a middle school in Crownpoint, New Mexico. Periodically, she sends us a column. I wish she'd write more often, if she could keep up the level of inspiration and quality you're about to see. Mostly, I wish my granddaughters would have her for English when they reach middle school. I asked her to let me post her latest column here because it's not at all the sort of thing I would, or could, write, but I sure liked it a lot.

They say Chicago is the windy city. They, whoever “they” may be, have never been to Crownpoint.

Spring is wind season, and the gusts here have, at times, exceeded the highways’ speed limits.

Desert sand blows into coughing mouths and keeping the windows open, despite the summertime temperatures, becomes risky should one wish to refrain from spending an hour picking dirt out of a computer’s keyboard.

Occasionally, a freak hail or sleetstorm will accompany the blustery wonder.

Ten minutes later, peace temporarily arrives and I find myself cheerily washing dishes and gazing out my kitchen window into yet another one of the most beautiful sunsets in the world, made possible in part by the organic smog of fine dust lingering in the air of the Navajo Reservation.

I hear there’s snow in Maine, and my mother left me pictures after her recent visit here of the trenches she dug in the March coat of white covering my hometown.

My friends in New York send me messages about monsoons, and a recent flight I was scheduled to take was canceled due to tornadoes in Dallas.

Strange weather, it seems, is everywhere.

Yet inside Room 3 in Crownpoint Middle School, things are unseasonably calm and in order.

I began school last fall wishing to do nothing other than lead my students toward publishing some kind of class anthology.

People told me to have high expectations for my students, to accept nothing less than what kids in more affluent areas would be producing.

Kids in a wealthy private school in Albuquerque had published an actual book; certainly my students and I could aspire toward that.

Yet in my first semester of teaching, overwhelmed by textbook methodology and the prescriptions of various supervisors, I temporarily forgot the bigger picture.

Then, as the frost began to disappear from early morning windshields and desert shrubs, so did my care to follow anything the books and authorities said.

Our state standardized test was over, and as a successful English major, I finally trusted myself to know what it took to be a successful reader and writer.

My kids are well on their way into creating an anthology of personal narratives, writing about everything from breaking their pinky in fourth grade to grandparents’ deaths to their first encounter with drugs on the reservation to a recent unexpected explosion in their science class.

Today we spent class trying to figure out if memoirs and personal narratives ever were really true non-fiction if they were written from memory, and we read and discussed excerpts from and articles about the controversy surrounding James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces.

We even got to watch and respond to a clip from Oprah. Tomorrow we’ll be discussing a Navajo memoir set around here that was similarly found to be fabricated (Nasdijj’s “The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams”), and I am finally confident that my students are actually thinking and questioning the world in my classroom, not just memorizing and mastering sometimes irrelevant standards.

And with that, I’m starting, just a little bit, to feel at home here.

On Friday I could barely hear my principal speak at our weekly staff meeting, as the drums and singing of a small pow-wow happening in our gym drowned him out.

My art teacher, a Navajo herself, shouted jokingly to the darn Navajos to quiet down in school, and I had no self-consciousness laughing at her joke.

Yesterday about twenty of my girls arrived at school in traditional Navajo dress, with velvet skirts, yarn in their hair, handsewn moccasins and immaculate silver and turquoise jewelry.

It was a stark contrast to their usual KSwiss sneakers, blue jeans from Hot Topic and black hoodies.

They were going on a field trip to the Navajo Nation government in Window Rock, Arizona, and they were beautiful.

And for the first time, I felt comfortable gazing at their traditional dress, smiling that I knew the people inside those clothes, the girls who liked to listen to Godsmack or Akon and couldn’t figure out apostrophes and wouldn’t chew gum unless it was yellow.

I’m a Mainer by birth, and will never be a New Mexican, much less a Navajo. This is not my home, and I feel humbled every day how welcomed I am here and that I have such an opportunity to live on the beautiful reservation.

Yet I now secretly laugh at tourists who can’t figure out how to eat an unwrapped tamale as I used to laugh at people from away eating, or attempting to eat, a lobster back home.

The wind doesn’t bother me as much as it did in the fall, when it kept me up awake at night, kept me longing for the protection of my Maine woods.

Now I often fall asleep to its howling lullaby as I rest for yet another day in the life on the reservation and despite the violence of the weather outside, things feel a bit more peaceful all around.

The Big Backyard

I have always loved the fact that reporters basically get paid for satisfying their curiosity. Of course, since I'm an editor and not hourly anymore, working on Saturday doesn't actually pay anything. But the paper is going to get some mileage out of a Saturday that was a whole lot of fun for me.

The Small Woodlot Owners Association of Maine had a workshop on vernal pools this weekend, about 20 miles east of town. (Vernal pools being depressions that fill with water each spring long enough that some small critters from fairy shrimp to wood frogs can go through a breeding cycle there.)

I thought it would be mostly small loggers with questions about regulatory compliance, but, as the photo above suggests, it was mostly people who have bought several acres of land and are interested in taking care of it. They weren't all city transplants, and a few genuinely were working their woodlots rather than just living on them. Nearly all, I think, want to improve their property not in the sense of developing it but in the sense of cleaning it up and making it green in the metaphorical sense. (And, as it happens, there aren't a lot of regulations about these things for the timber industry -- it's a matter of them wanting to know how to do the best for the forests, which many of them do want to do.)


Our host for the event was Warren Balgooyen, a naturalist who is active in the county extension and serves on a state committee for the future of Maine's land. I suspect he's one of those people who is more active now that he's retired than he was when he was working. He's got a good sized spread on which he has built several small ponds and, no kidding, a salamander crossing.

One of the issues for the turtles and amphibians in this kind of countryside is the number that get splattered crossing roads. They move from pool to pond to pool over some surprising distances, but their world wasn't set up with automobiles in mind. If you've driven at night in this sort of country, you've seen those nights when the frogs are just teeming across the roads, but apparently that happens pretty much every night to some degree. We'd see the results more if the ravens and raccoons and other scavengers didn't get out at dawn and clean most of it up. But Warren was saying that, if you took all the salamanders in a three acre forest, and all the birds, and piled them up, the salamander pile would be considerably taller.

So he created a crossing under the road near his house by getting a grant so the town could put in a culvert at no cost to the taxpayers, and then threading a soaker hose through it, with the end in a 55-gallon drum of water so it has a steady supply of wetness. And he has seen it work.



We walked around on his property for about three hours and he would just take his net and scoop around and, each time, interesting stuff came up, like this salamander egg mass. Notice how much more cohesive it is than frog eggs, which would be running off the woman's hand.


This is a red eft, which would have been a yellow newt if we'd seen it sooner. They start out living in the water as newts, with external gills, and then they become these land-dwellers and wander off to wherever efts and salamanders go -- nice damp abandoned mouse holes, under logs, down in the duff of the forest floor. Then, after about six years, they come back to the pond and move back in again, which is when they lay their eggs there. Pretty interesting little critter, and this was the first time Warren had seen one scooped out of a pond in its "just about to split for a few years" form.

We also saw caddis flies, damson flies, frogs and a whole lot of other things. And, as we walked down to the final pond, he and I spotted a painted turtle sunbathing on a rock in the middle of it. The turtle quickly scrambled off into the water, but the interesting thing was that Warren didn't know he had a turtle in that pond. So, for all the ones that get mashed on the highway, here was one that found a new place to hang out. (And last year one of his other ponds acquired a turtle from who-knows-where.)

Now, like I say, I'm not really getting paid to go out and do these things anymore. I'm just getting paid to make sure cool stuff ends up in the paper, no matter who actually does it. But needing to get that stuff in the paper, with the accompanying fear of the blank page and empty folders, is a great way to motivate me to get off my butt and go see all this stuff that, otherwise, I would sit around planning to do later, some other time, when I get round to it.

This weekend was a good example of something that I might have done sometime, but did right now, instead.

Happy Birthday

To a daughter-in-law who makes me smile.

BAGHDAD, May 2 -- The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.

Have you ever noticed that datelines don't include the year? Okay, usually they don't include the date, either. Anyway, here's the source of that encouraging report.

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair where I sit:
There isn't any other stair quite like it.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top:
So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up, and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town:
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!"

(A A Milne)

Gwen Ifill slices through the fog

I was a fan of Gwen Ifill before yesterday. She's got a straightforward way of cutting through the rhetoric that would make her a good mediator and makes her a terrific interviewer and anchor. Yesterday, she brought that talent to "Meet the Press" for a discussion of the Don Imus flareup with two of the good old boys of the media -- Tim Russert and the NYTimes' David Brooks, as well as Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal.

The transcript of that session is here (The conversation starts at the bottom of Page 2.)

Here are some samples of what she brought to the discussion:

*****

There’s been radio silence from a lot of people who’ve done this program who could’ve spoken up and said, “I find this offensive” or “I didn’t know.” These people didn’t speak up.

Tim, we didn’t hear that much from you.

David, we didn’t hear from you.

What was missing in this debate was someone saying, “You know, I understand that this is offensive.” You know, I have a seven-year-old goddaughter. Yesterday, she went out shopping with her mom for high-top basketball shoes so she can play basketball. The offense, the slur that Imus directed at me happened more than 10 years ago. I like to think in 10 years from now that Asia isn’t going to be deciding that she wants to get recruited for the college basketball team or be a tennis pro or go to medical school and that she’s still vulnerable to those kinds of casual slurs and insults that I got 10 years ago, and that people will say, “I didn’t know,” or people will say, “I wasn’t listening.” A lot of people did know, and a lot of people were listening, and they just decided it was OK. They decided this culture of meanness was fine until they got caught. My concern about Mr. Imus and a lot of people and, and a lot of the debate in the society is not that people are sorry that they say these things. They’re sorry that someone catches them.

When Don Imus said this about me when I worked here at NBC, when I found out about it, his producer called and said, “Don wants to apologize.” Well, now he says he never said it. What was he apologizing for? He was apologizing for getting caught, not apologizing for having said it in the first place. And that, to me, is the debate that we need to have. David’s right, about the culture of meanness, about the culture of racial complaint, about the internal culture in our community, about the way we talk to one another. But this week, just this week, it was finally saying “Enough.”

*****

MR. RUSSERT: (quoting the concept) “If you don’t want to watch it, you turn him off. It’s the marketplace that should govern.”

MS. IFILL: But here’s the thing—you know what, that’s—there’s something to that. But here’s the thing, for parents of kids, like your—like John, here, he needs to know what these, what these kids are listening to. He needs to hear what the words are. You need to make your judgment. I don’t completely turn it off, I watch it just to know. Now, I don’t watch it for long, because I find it so offensive, but I need to know. And that’s what everybody — people can’t say, “Oh, I had no idea.” Especially when you’re trying to raise a generation of right-thinking kids.

*****

MR. ROBINSON: But back up, back up a step. I mean, we should have the discussion about, about rap music, about gangster rap and, and, and that language, and, and I—and that’s a discussion, for example, those are issues that Al Sharpton has raised, that Jesse Jackson has raised. And, and, by the way, I got a lot of mail on—when I wrote about the Imus situation as well, and, and one strain of it was, was, “Well, who appointed Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to, you know, to be spokespeople?” And my answer was this business did. You know, we’re, we’re the ones who call them up every time anything happens and kept going back and kept going back. And what does he think today and what does he think tomorrow? So...

MR. RUSSERT: And it was fair to ask Jackson about Hymietown, and it was fair to ask Sharpton about Tawana Brawley.

MR. ROBINSON: Of course, it—of course it’s fair, but, but the idea that, that, in this case, they were self-appointed is not really quite right because that was certainly abetted by, by a news media establishment that, that went to them, you know, 50 times a day.

MS. IFILL: And it, and it should be added that it wasn’t just Jesse and Al—Reverend Jackson and Al Sharpton talking about this. It was C. Delores Tucker, who took this. It was Calvin Butts, who steamrollered CDs. It was, it was, it was Essence magazine, which did an entire series of articles about what was happening to girls. Now, everybody who’s suddenly so concerned about what Ludacris and Timbaland have had to say, they weren’t concerned two weeks ago. So if this means we’re going to have this conversation, that’s fine. But let’s not pretend that certain elements in our community haven’t been trying to have this conversation with much less success.

*****

MR. BROOKS: I think if you’re Howard Stern or Bill Maher or Glenn Beck or Michael Savage, you got to watch out. I mean, I mean, this, what happens is people change their standards. The only caution I’d, I’d, I’d say there’s comedy. A lot of this is comedy. And when you look at “Borat,” for example, Frank Rich....

MS. IFILL: Doesn’t comedy have to be funny, David?

MR. BROOKS: Well, it, it tries to be funny. But, but there is a, there is sometimes, like, for the example of Borat. Borat’s a guy who spews anti-Semitic stuff. Everybody knows he doesn’t mean it. And I’m not comparing Borat to Don Imus, but there is a carnival atmosphere, and that if we judge everything by the standards the comedians, the carnival people in our culture, by the standards of politicians, well, then we’ll have no comedy because all of the stuff that they say is, is nonliteral.

MR. HARWOOD: Well, exactly, and “Saturday Night Live” last night begins the show with a send-up of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Do people, you know, flyspeck a presentation like that for what, what kind of stereotypes are they playing to? Yeah, it’s hard to know where you draw the line in the entertainment realm.

MS. IFILL: You know, except that it’s really not hard to know where you draw the line. We know where the offense is. We know what’s acceptable and what’s not, and the best way to dilute the argument in the moment we’re in is to say, “What about this? What about this? What about that?” The fact is, we have a moment where we can talk about the things which have been bugging us. I know a lot of people who aren’t really crazy about something—about, about “Pimpin’ All Over the World” or about what—something that Snoop Dogg would say. And you know what they do, they’ve been doing? They swallow it. They just turn off the TV. “I got—I don’t watch these shows. I don’t listen to these videos. I, I just don’t watch it.” But somewhere deep inside these girls becomes this little—you’ve heard what the Rutgers basketball players said when they were asked about this. They didn’t say, “Oh, well, yeah, I think it’s fine.” They don’t think it’s fine. And after a while it builds in them. And that’s what we saw happen this week. So if we want to—you know, we can, we can say it’s not a big deal because it’s happened all the time or it’s been happening for a long time. It’s precisely because it’s been happening a long time that...

MR. HARWOOD: But I’m not, I’m not saying it’s not a big deal. Look, Gwen, it’s harder than you think. And take the example of “Borat,” which David mentioned. I’ve not seen that movie, but I’ve heard people intensely on both sides of that issue. Some think it’s hilarious and fun, and some think it’s grossly offensive and racist and all sorts of things.

MR. BROOKS: Right, and I mean, I’m not saying, I’m not comparing “Borat” to, to what Don Imus said. What Don Imus said is so obviously over the line that it’s not worth debating. But the hard choices come further in, and “Borat” is a good example. I thought it was a very funny movie, extremely cruel. He is picking on people who aren’t good on TV or in the movies. And so I think those are the hard cases. And I don’t think it’s unfair to ask the question of this case, of that case, how much of it is just make believe. Human beings are extremely good at separating make believe from reality.

MS. IFILL: Yeah, unless they’re the targets. And when you’re the target, somehow it seems a lot more real.

************

She also had an Op-Ed in the New York Times on the topic, and on Imus's slur against her. Not sure how long it will be available there, so I've linked to the Houston Chronicle's reprinting. And here's a quote:

Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It’s more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well.

So here’s what this voice has to say for people who cannot grasp the notion of picking on people their own size: This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field.

*sigh*

Cathleen ni Houlihan
and other reflections on Revolutionary Ireland

"It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer
the most who will conquer" —Terence MacSwiney

Oh, father why are you so sad
On this bright Easter morn’
When Irish men are proud and glad
Of the land where they were born?

Son, I see in mem’ry's view
A far off distant day
When being just a lad like you
I joined the IRA.

Where are the lads that stood with me
When history was made?
A Ghra Mo Chroi, I long to see
The boys of the old brigade.

From hills and farms the call to arms
Was heard by one and all.
And from the glen came brave young men
To answer Ireland’s call.

‘T' was long ago we faced the foe,
The old brigade and me,
When by my side they fought and died
That Ireland might be free.

And now, my boy, I’ve told you why
On Easter morn’ I sigh,
When I recall my comrades all
From the dark old days gone by.

I think of men who fought in glen
With rifle and grenade.
May heaven keep the men who sleep
From the ranks of the old brigade.

Where are the lads that stood with me
When history was made?
A Ghra Mo Chroi, I long to see
The boys of the old brigade.

My friend Sherwood has compiled -- he doesn't just write, but researches and illustrates -- a wonderful blog reflecting on the Easter Rebellion, in light of the astonishing rapprochement in Ireland today. The very notion that Ian Paisley, for decades the face of violent, racist Unionism in Ulster, would sit down peacefully with Sinn Fein leader (and thus, ex officio, a member of the board of the IRA) Gerry Adams was absurd. To see it happen was stunning.

I was going to post a comment for him, but the number of associations it touched off was too much to confine to a "me too" and so here we are.

As Sherwood notes, I had said to him that, for Irish nationalists, the urge, the instinct, to bury guns against a future need must be overwhelming, it is such a part of the political memory. In fact, the Howth guns he writes of were memorialized in a ballad about a fellow burying his "old Howth gun" after the truce, knowing "a day will come again, O my old Howth gun, when I'll join the fighting men, O my old Howth gun. With some brave determined band, proudly there we'll take our stand, for the freedom of our land, O my old Howth gun!"

The song I posted at the top is a Republican ballad that emerged during the recent Troubles and which neatly encapsulates the sense of historic memory that has been part and parcel of Irish nationalism for at least the past 175 years or so.

As is the case with much of political art, it is sentimental and ahistorical, because there really wasn't that large a turnout for the Easter rising, which gained 90 percent of its impact not from the stirring declaration read by Padraic Pearse but from the brutal overreaction of the British government in executing the leaders of the rebellion.

And yet, as is the case with much of political art, that hardly matters. Unlike those Vietnam revisionists who continue to insist that the Tet Offensive was a stunning defeat for the communists, historians on both sides of the Irish question accept that, military significance aside, the Easter Rebellion was a landmark event that helped make Irish independence inevitable.

One of the advantages the Irish revolutionaries had was a wealth of artists capable of transforming relatively minor events into popular ballads, combined with a British opponent that insisted on executing people it didn't need to, thus turning minor figures like Kevin Barry into major heroes, and upon enforcing blindly foolish policies like the one that allowed Terence MacSwiney, the mayor of Cork, die on hunger strike.

They wrote a song about MacSwiney's death -- "Shall my soul pass through old Ireland" -- set to the same traditional tune as was used in "Kevin Barry," but I can't find the lyrics on line and barely remember them. His words at the top of this page, however, sum up not just Ireland but Algeria and Vietnam and, now, Iraq.

Part of that suffering, that enduring, lies in remembering, which is best done not through dry history but through living art. The fact that so many world leaders have studied history and learned nothing from it is proof enough of that.

As for the beautiful woman at the top of this post, she is Maud Gonne MacBride, one of a number of English citizens who fell in love with Ireland and its revolutionary cause. She was married briefly to John MacBride, who was later executed for his role in the Easter Rising, and their son, Sean MacBride, won the Nobel Peace Prize and founded Amnesty International.

Sean MacBride also instituted the MacBride Principles which helped, through fair employment and investment practices for US firms doing business in Northern Ireland, to pave the way for peace there. It should be noted that Ireland's hearty economy is very much responsible for the current peace: People find other ways of dealing with political issues when they have meaningful employment and decent day-to-day lives.

Who Maud Gonne never married was William Butler Yeats, who, though they were great friends and he proposed to her several times, was too much of an artist and idealist to ever appeal to such a committed revolutionary. He immortalized Maud Gonne in his idealized symbol of Ireland, "Cathleen ni Houlihan," but the two never connected on the level he wished they would.

Hardly surprising. There have been a few revolutionary artists -- Pearse, for one, and Jose Marti and others -- but for the most part there is a gulf between them, so that the artist ends up memorializing rather than joining them. And, of course, Yeats typified this with his own reflection on this day, an admission that he never quite understood those who were so "full of passionate intensity." (The woman is not Gonne, who was in France at the time, but Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markiewicz. The lout, however, is MacBride, an abusive alcoholic Gonne had left some 12 years earlier. But even he is, if not forgiven, reassessed.)

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Chapter CVI

in which I say to hell with it

April 5, I woke up to discover 18 inches of snow in the front yard. And the back yard. And what in Maine they call the door-yard.

So, of course, when I came home from work, I discovered that all the snow on the roof had slid off and was piled in front of the door.

The guy who plows had just done the first 20 feet or so, enough so that I could pull off the road. I guess he saw that, with the ground no longer frozen, he was pushing up as much dirt as snow.

What this meant, aside from my having to walk back to the house in my footprints from the morning, was that nothing had been added to the snowbank at the side of the house. So, if you look to the right, you'll see that I just said to hell with it and walked around to the back porch and came in that way.

Which I will continue to do until lilacs next in the door-yard bloom.