The Sweater

I’ve written about the place where I grew up. Various arcs incorporated baseball, my personal recollections about the town from an earlier time—as well as creating my own take on Moxie.

I once contemplated updating the history of the place, post-Plummer. I’m glad I didn’t bother breaking that rock, fashioning it into a story; the scenario of a significant investment of time and research without much of a return seems likely for that kind of project—people no longer seem to appreciate the necessary effort required to dredge up the past, and get at what’s behind the façade of the place where they reside.

After 26 years of living across the river from the place where I was born and put down my initial roots, just moving one community to the east feels just about right to me—actually, somewhat overdue. If my writing emanates from place (which I think it does), then my new home proffers up all kinds of new opportunities and material to mine.  I’m looking forward to learning more about a place I’ve observed as an outsider and semi-regular visitor.

But it is the holiday season. A period each year-end that delivers a personal mix of sentimentality, sadness, and even anger thinking back on Christmases past. Despite Perry Como’s musical refrain that there’s “no place like home for the holidays,” I’m apt to demur. Continue reading

Five Years in a Row: Boston Book Festival 2013

In 2009, a cohort concerned that a city like Boston with its rich literary history and tradition no longer had a major book festival, got together and relaunched a major festival focused on the book, in Beantown. The Boston Book Festival became the city’s new, reconstituted festival celebrating books and the writers that write them. I’m glad they did.

Families develop and celebrate various traditions. Sports, art, railroading; for my son and I, attending Boston’s Book Fest in the fall is one of ours. 2013 was our fifth consecutive one, as we’ve been at every festival since the relaunch.

A plethora of writer/book panels to sample.

A plethora of writer/book panels to sample.

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Leading by example

Leadership is a subject that I’ve had an ongoing fascination with, probably for the last decade, if not longer. My interest in what characterizes effective leadership was born from a place where there weren’t abundant models of leadership available, at least based upon what my minimalist expectations were in leaders in the workplace at the time.

At that point in my career, I was employed by a well-known insurer, an industry leader. This company regularly received recognition as one of the best places in Maine to work, year after year. That surprised me because my 3+ years there were not a pleasant stretch. The best thing I can say about my time with this employer is that it provided me with the push to begin developing my craft as a writer, searching for books about self-improvement and personal growth, and launching me forward on the journey that I’ve been on for the past decade. So I’m grateful for the prompt they provided me in developing a new approach, and helping me begin figuring out what I was good at, instead of continuing my procession from one mediocre employer to another. Continue reading