Mark is 31-years-old today. It’s sounds clichéd to say it, but it feels like only “yesterday” that I was driving Mary to the hospital like countless other nervous fathers-to-be before. We were living in Indiana at the time, 1,500 miles from family and familiar surroundings. To a then 21-year-old dad-in-waiting, this was terrifying. It was also one of my high-water life experiences
Mark at 18 months (I think).
I enjoyed being his dad. I still do. Continue reading
Pages & Pints Outline
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this one might be worth 750, or so.
It’s my talk given at Friday’s Pages & Pints at Lewiston Public Library, in a photo. Well, technically not my talk, since flip charts suck as an audio platform, but an outline of my 30-minute blast on Moxie, beer, and a few thoughts on the craft of writing (and Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft). Continue reading
Thirty years ago, I thought I had all the answers. At 21, life seemed simple in some ways. Economically, things sucked—I was working at a job that paid 25 cents above minimum wage and I had a newborn son and wife to take care of. I was 1,500 miles from my family and support system in a post-industrial part of the country where the unemployment rate was hovering around 15 percent. But I was okay because I was in the center of God’s will.
It’s interesting when you believe that the answers to life’s questions are contained in a book that was written by men who lived 2,000 years ago. Whenever things didn’t go right for Mary and me, the solution offered by our spiritual leaders was to pray, give more money to Jack Hyles, and drag a few more converts down the aisle to get baptized at First Baptist Church of Hammond. Continue reading
In the world of alternative weeklies, topics covered aren’t usually the same ones that the mainstream dailies cover. If they are, there’s often more depth in reporting, or, a slightly different angle offered. Writing for an alternative weekly (or monthly) often allows a bit more leeway, also.
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I have the 3,000-word front page feature in this week’s Portland Phoenix. It’s about growth in the city of Portland, the current frenzy of real estate development, and whether or not this is best for all of the city’s residents, or just the few that are able to extract value from the current assets.
The article also looks backward, considering past boondoggles in order to have a better understanding of what might be the best way forward. I also am pretty upfront that I’m not enamored with most of the development ideas and plans coming from city hall.
My first extensive piece of writing about Portland and its economy was published back in 2004. It was about Hadlock Field. It’s hard to believe 10 years have passed on this. I’m still employing the same tools of the trade—research, putting boots on the ground and talking with those on the street, and remaining diligent in finding the narrative thread for the story I’m working on. No one has ever bothered to get this kind of up-close-and-personal look at baseball and whether it’s an economic benefit to the city, or not.
The June 2004 cover story in the late, great Portland Pigeon. “Direct Action Journalism” indeed!
[I’m a big fan of Yelp, one of the apps I never leave home without. I check it whenever I’m looking to try a new restaurant, or some other hotspot. I am also a Yelper, meaning I write reviews of new places that I try, offering my own thoughts and opinions via the site. Oh, and it also helps satisfy my inner food critic when it needs expression.—jb]
There’s a history behind Stephen Lanzalotta’s migration from India Street (and Sophia’s, prior), where he was selling a famous style of pizza out of the back of a well-known Italian bakery, to Portland’s Public Market, on the corner of Cumberland and Preble. If you don’t know about it, then either you don’t follow Portland’s food scene closely, or more likely, couldn’t care less about history of any kind. Actually, there’s a great two-part interview with Lanzalotta at Eater Maine that you should check out from December, 2013, if you’d like more on this.
Pizza is a food that’s ubiquitous and can be found in all manner of styles and varieties in Maine and elsewhere, most not terribly cutting-edge or awe-inspiring. It’s also one of those foods that when I read people raving about others making it, I’m generally nonplussed (kind of like I am with barbecue). I find that with both of these foods, people like what they like, and often, their affections don’t mirror mine. Continue reading
On Tuesday, Maine officials, including the governor, rolled out a brand new initiative aimed at preventing drivers from texting on their phones while driving. Teaming up with three trucking firms, Maine is placing messages on 16 commercial vehicles traveling the state’s roadways, warning drivers of the dangers of texting while driving. They’ll be sporting messages like, “one text or call could wreck it all.”
Truck drivers in Maine are helping to spread the word that distracted driving can be deadly.
I’ll give Mr. LePage the benefit of the doubt that this isn’t just a cheap election year gimmick that signifies very little. According to one of the reports I read, LePage, who hasn’t had to drive since being sworn in as Maine’s 74th governor in 2011, has been sitting back and observing all manner of behaviors among fellow Mainers while traveling up and down the state’s highways and byways. Continue reading
On a daily basis, we are bombarded by a myriad of messages, all carefully crafted and coordinated by our corporate overlords. In case you haven’t been paying attention, we don’t live in a democracy, a democratic republic, or whatever else we were brainwashed into believing our American government was supposed to be during our 12 years of indoctrination in public schools. And then, of course, we’re convinced to add another four, six, or eight years on top of that, just for the privilege of tacking a few letters after our names for the purpose of “prestige.” And at what cost does this so-called honor come?
It’s too easy to succumb to this onslaught and get caught up in all the finger-pointing and ideological blame-gaming—it’s so much easier to control and subjugate a people divided. But this isn’t intended to be a screed, a diatribe, or even a jeremiad. No, I’m here to talk about simplicity in its most basic form—local food. Continue reading
For nearly 50 years, America has been at war against poverty. Actually, the battle has been raging for much longer than that, I was merely thinking back to Lyndon Johnson’s bold Great Society initiative, which was launched in 1964, mainly to address issues of racism and systemic inequality.
Actually, much of the social safety net was assembled 30 years prior, during the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the enactment of New Deal programs like the Social Security Act, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and a host of others that were a direct response to the crushing economic collapse caused by the Great Depression. Historians refer to Roosevelt’s focus being on the “3 Rs”: Relief for the unemployed and poor, Recovery of the economy to normal levels, and Reform of the financial and banking system in order to prevent a repeat of the depression. Continue reading
As we cross the seasons of life, we make observations on our journey. The longer we live, the more experience we bring to the table. Sometimes our observations become nostalgic longing for the “better days” of the past. Other times, our assessments indicate that a structural shift of some kind has taken place.
I get to watch a good deal of baseball these days. I am a baseball umpire, after all.
In this age where quantification is king, my qualitative assessments about baseball skill may not impress members of the scientific crowd—the research types. However, it has been clear to me during the 13 games that I’ve officiated, from middle school, up through junior varsity that today’s players don’t throw as well as similar age groups in the past. Continue reading