a bonus second post of the day….

….to make up for the one I didn’t post yesterday.

My mother is a very common-sensible-type person. While most everyone I know is in the same boat as me and shivering in their long-johns*, my mother just sent out an email with the subject heading:

“How to Reach Me in Mexico”

Tra la! It is a blustery winter month and she is off on a cruise. To the Baja Peninsula. To whale-watch. And perhaps indulge in a margarita or two, if she is very wise.

This morning I suffered frost-bite of the little finger as I scraped ice off the car. Really. It still hurts. I keep pressing it, to check. Yes. Still hurts. I am suffering for my art. SUFFERING. FOR MY ART.

_____________________________

*I don’t actually own a pair of long-johns, but a few days ago my class engaged in a very serious conversation about long-johns, and how wonderful they are. And quite silky and stylish these days. I had no idea. Get me LL Bean on the phone, stat.

get out the calendar

Maine Maple Sunday! March 23rd!

“Join Maine’s maple producers each spring as they celebrate Maine Maple Sunday – the day when sugar makers around the State open the doors of their sugarhouses for the public to join them in their rites of spring – making maple syrup. Here’s your chance to see first hand how 40 gallons of maple sap is turned into just one gallon of that golden delight you pour over hot pancakes…”

a clarification

A friend from Chicago wrote to let me know that she thinks it was very cruel to mock my poor snowed-in Chicago friends in my last post. I replied to assure her that I was not mocking you, my dear Chicago, I love you too deeply. I was merely offering you a shopping tip. If I was mocking you I would tell you that I went all the way to MAINE and YOU STILL HAVE MORE SNOW.

Though we are expecting more than six inches of it tonight, so we’re all pretty much equally screwed.

Despite the oncoming snowstorm of doom, I am still loving Maine, and I am especially loving the fact that here you can steal two cases of beer from the mini-mart and wind up on Maine’s Most Wanted list.*

*(’tis true…case 070035, November, 2007.)

Chicago, get your Maine on.

From today’s Associated Press:

LL BEAN TO EXPAND TO CHICAGO

L.L. Bean is expanding its retail presence outside of the Northeast, the company announced today.

The outdoor gear and apparel outfitter said it plans to open a store in the Chicago area this September. It would be L.L. Bean’s first store in the Midwest.

The 30,000-square-foot store will be located at the Arboretum at South Barrington, a retail center that is now under construction in Chicago’s northwest suburbs.

The expansion into the Chicago area is part of a larger retail expansion strategy, L.L. Bean officials said.

The company plans to grow to 32 stores by 2012. It now has 10 full-priced retail stores in nine states stretching from Maine to Virginia, and 16 smaller outlet stores.

I know how much snow y’all have been getting lately. Best to pick up a pair of these:

On another note….South Barrington???

day trip

One of the very first things I noticed about Maine was the sun. So bright, almost blindingly so, in a way we seldom see in the winter midwest. The sun went away here for a couple of weeks during all of the recent snow, but it came out again this weekend, and I took it as a good omen that if I went on a little (emphasis on the little) road trip that I wouldn’t wind up digging myself out of a ditch or accidentally caught in a storm.

Years ago I did a year abroad with a most remarkable group of people, and one of them found me here….and she’s from Maine! and filled with lots of good advice. Her name, coincidentally, is also Anne, and she left me one of my very favorite comments so far. On the subject of me wanting to see the un-touristy bits of Maine, even up near Canada, she wrote:

If you drive up towards Canada, it’ll go something like this:

Civilization, less civilization, lots of woods, moose, moose, international border … whoa, strip clubs and farms!

As much as I look forward to seeing if this is true, I set my sights a little lower today and took a day-trip to Bath. Darling. Highly darling, and I bet that if I make another trip to Bath in about four months that it will be so crowded with tourists that I won’t be able to see it properly. Bath is the “city of ships” and it’s a town with a long history of ship building. Like, 400 years of shipbuilding. How cool is that? Right there on the Kennebec River. Up from the river there are lots of little shops, all stretching along two major streets that intersect and you have to climb up, up from the water and down, down as the streets wind along, in order to see them all. It feels very English.

After Bath I wound my way down to Brunswick in the car. I had hoped to visit a bookshop there, but it was closed, so I’ll make that trip again. Instead, I sat on the common and watched some local ice skaters.

The skating rink is what they do with the town green in winter and there is a bandshell at one end, and a lovely inn overlooking it. Mark – you asked me for a picture of an out of the way motel….but so far I’ve only seen charming inns, so this picture will have to do:

my piece

If the weather cooperates, this weekend I may go for a drive. But not sure where. I’ve had some great suggestions from people who have commented here, and I’ve had an interesting time this evening with the map. Maine towns have great names. Here are some of my favorites so far:

Moosehead (natch)

Skowhegan

Kokadjo

Mattawamkeag

Wytopitlock

Squapan

Oquossoc

Passadumkeag

St. Agatha

Then there are towns that make me wonder if, after awhile, the founding fathers of Maine didn’t perhaps get a little bit overwhelmed by the whole thing and just threw darts at a map:

Denmark

Paris

Norway

Mexico

Poland

Scotland

Peru

I’m a little daunted by the size of the state. Maine is a heck of a lot larger than it looks on a map. However I need to find a story, as I need to produce a six-minute documentary radio piece in the next 3 months, and I need to find my story quick. Have you ever read the Shel Silverstein book, “The Missing Piece”? I’m probably horribly bastardizing the story, but as I remember it, it’s about a circle that is missing a triangular piece, and it rolls around finding various bits of triangles and asking each triangle, “are you my missing piece?” And none of the triangles fit properly, and none of them want to join him, and the circle just rolls sadly but determinedly along until, one day, in the most unlikely place, he finds a triangle that fits just right, and then he’s all complete and happy. The end.

This is how I envision myself in the next few weeks – doing all kinds of research, and driving out to all kinds of odd and fabulous and interesting places, and asking all kinds of people, “are you my story?” And probably a lot of them won’t be quite right, and they won’t want to join me, but eventually I will find my story, and produce my piece, and then I will be all complete and happy. The end.

very, very bad!

Is it bad that I passed a real estate office this afternoon and thought, “maybe I should stop in…”?

learning curves

Fun and helpful things that I have learned thus far:

• If you are doing a Vox Pop in very cold weather, go talk to the smokers huddled outside office buildings. Everyone else is in a rush to get inside, but get quality time with a smoker before the cig runs out, and good tape can be had in two minutes or less.
• Art students give good answers, mostly because they don’t censor their replies. Ask a question and they’ll tell you what they really think. Excellent.
• Crazy people may not be much fun to talk to in a bar, but wow are they helpful when you need filler. My crazy person just talked and talked. Anarchy is nigh! Steal while you can!
• When someone you are interviewing finishes talking, go ahead and wait a moment or two – quite often the person will pause and then carry on talking to fill the slightly awkward silence – and quite often that’s when the really interesting stuff gets said.
• Pro Tools is very Pro and full of Tools. It’s like learning French in high school. You may not understand it all exactly, but conjugate a few verbs and all of a sudden you’re wearing a beret and dreaming about going to Paris.

It’s the Valentine Bandit, Charlie Brown

Last week the woman that I am renting this apartment from wrote me an email to tell me to make a special trip to the Old Port neighborhood on Valentine’s Day to look at all of the hearts. She wrote, “they will be everywhere, on doors and windows, and sides of buildings; it is one of my favorite special things about Portland.”

So before class on Friday I went for a walk and pretty much, I have to say, it would be impossible NOT to see the hearts. There were hundreds of them, on every shop window, every advertising board, and every door. Simple red printed hearts on xerox type paper. I think this is kind of neat – clearly the chamber of commerce sends out a picture, and all the shops print it out and tape up all the hearts. I also think it’s nice that every shop agrees to participate. But I don’t think it’s something that I would say qualifies as a very favorite thing about Portland. But still…I take a few pictures.

But then….BUT THEN….I read this article, and what do you know, now I get it.

The shopkeepers don’t put up the valentine hearts. They simply appear all over the city. No one knows who does it, and their appearance every year since 1976 is attributed to the work of the Valentine Bandit (also called the Valentine Phantom). However, there are so many, many, many of them that it has to be the work of an entire Valentine Bandit Collective. No one has ever seen him (them?), and no one has ever publicly claimed credit, but every year the city of Portland wakes up on February 14th covered in hearts. And every year people think it’s wonderful, and it’s one of their favorite things.

And now I do, too.

dry

Hello winter. You are very dry. I was moaning about telling a friend about my allergy attacks – about the itchy throat that comes out of nowhere, the violent sneezing that comes after, etc. etc. – and she seems to think the problem might be dry air, since there is no other common denominator. My only resistance to this idea is that it’s just as dry in Chicago and I’ve never had this problem.

A phone call was placed to my friend the herbalist, who pointed me in the direction of the drugstore. Almond oil on damp skin, really good moisturizer (glycerin, no mineral oil), lots of water. I am resisting buying a humidifier, on the theory that it’s a lot cheaper to put a pot of hot water on top of the radiator. That, and I don’t want to have to carry it back to Chicago.

Tomorrow afternoon I will take a break from work to go here with a new friend. I will ask for “dry inside the nose” tea and see what gets produced.

a-choo

This weekend I’ve been invited to a play. The problem is that I can’t remember where it is or the name of the play. The play itself is apparently about grief and dying and maybe it’s being done by college students? But I could be wrong? ‘Cause uber-depressing plays about death done by college students are always a fun time? Hmmm. Can’t recall the details. Though I think the people going are nice. The frozen tundra has extended to my brain.

A man named Ian has (thank you) commented to mention that Portland apparently has a great theater scene, which makes me very happy. I do love me a good theater scene. Last year when I was scoping out Portland briefly I went to see the Richard Dresser play “Augusta” at Portland Stage, and it was good, though what I really liked was the theatre itself. The script had some problems as I recall. It was a new-ish play at that time, about low-income women who work for a cleaning company in Augusta, Maine, cleaning the summer homes of wealthy clients. Interestingly enough, just before I left Chicago I noticed that American Stage Company is now doing the play, directed by Nora Dunn from Saturday Night Live.

Ian recommended the American Irish Repertory Ensemble, and the Mad Horse Theater, and the North Star Cafe. North Star – check! Just got back from there, saw a great concert. Also, their decaf vanilla chai latte rocked.

On another note, I’m allergic to Maine. How could this be? I’ve had four massive sneezing attacks in the last two weeks – complete with super itchy throat and red, itchy, watery eyes – and normally I get about one a year. A woman at the market, where I was sneezing violently in the cereal section, said “it’s that time of year.” What does this mean? OH NO.

moose bits

In response to the last post, a very nice person named Shawn, who I don’t know, who must have stumbled across my little blog here, was kind enough to point out that beano is bingo. (Thank you, Shawn.)

I kind of think it might be fun to go play beano/bingo in Rockland. If it wasn’t cancelled. And if I knew where Rockland was.

But I will learn. The woman who rented me this apartment was kind enough to leave me a large Maine atlas before she left. One of these winter nights I am going to curl up with it and study the state. I’m pretty clear on the coast up through Camden, and I’m getting a very good marginally decent sense of Portland. But that’s kind of it.

Before I leave in June though I want to explore the un-touristy bits of Maine – the deep woods bits and the moose bits and the French speaking bits up near Canada. And the outlying islands bits. And the moose bits. I know I already said that part, but I really, really want to see a moose. So it’s worth saying twice. Did you know that moose have floppy upper lips? It’s true.

Federal and Exchange

The architecture here is lovely, big mix of styles. I’ll take more pictures over the next few weeks.

wintah weathah

Oooo, vox pop on the news. “How are you handling the winter weather?” Interesting. Though the reporter is talking to people who are currently out in the weather being pelted by sleeting rain, and in snow and puddles up to their butts, so the only answer I’m prepared to believe is “not very well.” An older man with a great Maine accent just said, “well, it’s wintah. All wintah long.” I love this man. I would like to eat clam chowdah with him.

Plow Cam!

I quite like watching the ticker of closings that scrolls across the news here continually during poor weather. If you are a member of the Rockland Elks Group, please note: Beano has been cancelled.

public service announcement

My upstairs neighbors have learned the hard way what I learned (also the hard way) a couple of years ago:

If you use your car key to chip ice and snow off your car and then stick it in your ignition, the moisture on the car key will leave moisture in the ignition, which will eventually freeze solid.  And just in case you don’t fully have this picture yet, spending time in sub-zero temperatures getting a frozen ignition unfrozen is, like, totally a fun time.