
Yeah, all sunsets are in the west, but this looks like something out of a cowboy movie finale. Even if it’s in Downeast Maine.
You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall

Yeah, all sunsets are in the west, but this looks like something out of a cowboy movie finale. Even if it’s in Downeast Maine.
The Green Store, Belfast
has banded men’s shirts
almost Amish
before collars became acceptable
God created man and woman or
wuz it boy and girl
fit for a jungle
a place where values and faith
are unencumbered

The bark siding really captures my imagination.
Miles between houses in dense forest
Irving
Wood
Lands
Grange halls falling into disuse
First, at the general store and then the produce market, the dim light the interior required some readjustment for us. We expect electrical illumination, after all. Instead, this was truly natural, apart from a few white-gas lanterns.
What we’re used to is like the sun came indoors, even the first 30-watt bulb in a store.
Or so my brilliant travel companion observed.
~*~
Light brown Amish
sheds, barns, homes
the men with mustaches!
~*~
As we’re backing out of the parking
two Amish kids
stare at me through a window in a door
but don’t respond to my wave:
Did I look like I belonged to another Plain people?
Maybe from somewhere in space?
Even though I was driving a simple white car?




At the top of Penobscot Bay, this is the principal welcome to Downeast and Acadia. Or for those of us going the other direction, to the rest of America.
You can even go to the top, the equivalent of 40 floors, for a spectacular panorama.
These shoulder elections, where nobody’s running for national office, are still important.
In small places like Eastport, getting someone to run even unopposed for local office can be a challenge. We had all the bases covered, although the surprise was when a write-in candidate won one of the two city council seats.
I can’t imagine that happening in a bigger setting, but who knows. A write-in for president? My!
Statewide, a radical proposal to take over the two widely hated electrical utilities failed. Big money is hard to comprehend, even if we’ll be paying it one way or the other. The frequent storm outages won’t be going away, nor will the continuing higher-than-national bills customers here receive. Somehow, I don’t think the issue will be going away, despite the lopsided tallies.
Just how much do those emergency home generators cost altogether, anyway, as insurance against the current setup? It’s not that many households before we’re talking billions.
Otherwise, the initiatives moved in a progressive direction, including the right-to-repair measure.
I am relieve to see opportunities for right and left to come together at a local level, however gingerly.

As you can see, Stephen Sanfilippo is more than a maritime historian. He can sing his research findings. Small concerts like this one upstairs at the Pembroke public library are one of the delights of living Way Downeast.






Cobscook Shore’s 15 well-maintained reserves around the bay offer the public prime opportunities for hiking, picnicking, fishing, and water access for kayaks and canoes. This is a personal favorite.