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Indian Food Comes To Waterville

12/4/2014

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Heavens.  I haven't made a post since April?  Ugh.  Definitely makes the blog title ironic.  I've been very busy with work, touring colleges, and real-world effort to build a creative economy in Waterville via Common Street Arts and Waterville Creates!.  The exclamation point is actually part of the name, not overenthusiasm on my part - and thus the ! followed by a period. Something I don't think Strunk & White ever covered.
Anyway, what this post is about is The Jewel of India.  (FB Page here) It's our new local Indian restaurant, braving the mercurial economic terrain of Waterville.  I've eaten there twice and people keep asking how is it, so here's my answer.  KennebecTom's official rating is "Awesome."

Simply, the food is delicious.  Really delicious.  As good as any Indian cuisine I've had - which is admittedly just a handful of places in a handful of cities.

Now, please be patient.  They are mobbed and nearly over-loved right now.  My wife and I had to wait for a table at lunchtime last weekend.  As soon as I put the first bite of chicken biryani in my mouth, I knew the wait had been worth it.  The garlic nan and vegetable samosa were fantastic.

So, when my wife won a "Teacher of the Quarter" vote at her high school, we celebrated by getting takeout.  Well, it was quite a gauntlet I ran with good humor.  
First, I tried calling from work for 20 minutes, but every time I got a message after two rings that the "user's mailbox had not been set up yet."  Whaaaaat?  I gave up and concluded an in-person order would have to be made.

I drove downtown and was only half-surprised to see every table occupied, people waiting, and the waitress busy with tallying a bill so I had to wait to report both the phone issue and place my order.  Then I learned the wait would be 30 minutes. There was some communication difficulty due to language barrier, but at ethnic restaurants I consider this confidence inspiring.  As you may recall, cornerstones of my immigration policy are that any foreigners can stay as long as they like if employed in cooking delicious foods of their country just like their grandma (or whatever their word is) taught them, or if volunteering to pay my income taxes.

 I still had enough time before picking up a daughter at dance class, so I said fine and went across the darkened, wintery Main Street to check out the new Loyal Biscuit downtown and see if they carried my favorite cat litter.  They didn't, but it's very nice inside and the clerk appeared to authentically have her own dog working the register with her.

Next I wandered down past Kringleville, set up beautifully in The Center in the front windows with a righteous Santa and helpers, but few children this early in the season.  A beautiful, warm setup behind the picture windows it is.  Much improvement over Santa's old shed with often muddy entrance of years past.

I walked down to Common Street Arts, just to make sure our snow removal guy did his job and had a chat with programming coordinator Lisa Wheeler, who is currently working hard to make this year's Holiday Bazaar even bigger and better than last year.  Having satisfied these curiosities and savored the crisp night air amongst the historic buildings (some of which have watched over 123 prior Christmases), I strolled back to wait inside The Jewel.

The place was humming.  I read the news, checked Facebook, and checked my email on my beloved iPhone, and chatted a bit with other customers, included several familiar faces.  Some folks waited, some folks decided to try an alternative, but took a takeout menu with them.  A quartet beside me began discussing the "Chinese restaurant around the corner" as a possibility, and I butted in that if they meant Jin Yuan, it is excellent and my favorite Chinese restaurant in town.  They thanked me and took off, my opinion having clinched it, and I'll stand behind that opinion any day.  It could have been a ruse to advance my position in line, but I'm not that kind of guy.  It was an honest plan to drive business to another beloved restaurant in the downtown of course.  I am that kind of guy.

So I stood and observed the slightly stressed young Indian man and two new waitresses confront their sudden and overwhelming popularity in a milder, culinary version of what Lorde must be going through.  They have all the standard startup issues of any new restaurant - wonky phones, new procedures, untested systems, etc.  I got my food, picked up my daughter, and finally made it home.  And as soon as the first bite of chicken tikka masala and basmati rice hit my tongue, I made my popular "savory face" (lips pursed, eyes closed, face turned skyward), said "Mmmmm" and knew the wait was worth it.

I will stick with them for the long haul as long as they keeping cooking like this.  It's delicious, fresh, and savory.  I'm no regular culinary writer with a food-oriented thesaurus, so I'll have to leave it at that.  They're a wonderful addition to Waterville's Downtown Dining District - as defined by yours truly.
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The Real Maine Experience: Snow and Snowblowers

10/12/2013

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This blog, and other initiatives on the net I'm involved with were intended to reflect my attempt to do something USEFUL with the internet, rather than just frittering away precious hours of my life.  At its lightest, I merely attempt to amuse.  At its heaviest, I may attempt to affect political thought.  In the middle, I seek merely to inform.  About history.  About music.  And about Maine.

When I was considering moving to Maine, beginning as early as 1993, I sought information about it.  Over time, with the internet in its clumsy infancy, I relied upon a weekend subscription to the Portland Press Herald, Down East magazine, and statistics compiled by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  I also spent a lot of time looking at maps of the amazingly unpopulated expanses of woods in Maine, and its fascinatingly convoluted shoreline.  But all these sources fail to present an "on the ground" detail about what living here is really like.  Especially when you've moved here from away and somewhere totally different (Arizona in my case).  So let me now try to provide a service I wish had existed when I was considering the state.  A series of articles about minutiae that may not be written about elsewhere.  The series will eventually include romantic adorations of the state (for there is much to adore), and criticisms and laments of its shortcomings (which I consider lesser, but should be taken into account).  I, in my twelfth year in Maine, unabashedly love this state, and still frequently look around and think, "Damn, this is just a great, great place", mostly in reaction to its natural beauty.  But some of the negatives I consider minor might be deal-breakers for others.  So let me describe one of those negatives, and suggest a survival tool that could make the difference between you becoming a lifelong year-round resident and bagging it and heading for easy living in Del Boca Vista.

You must buy a snowblower.

It snows a lot in Maine.  Not every winter, but about half.  In just eleven years, I've experienced it all.  According to old-timers, I have apparently experienced the warmest winter, the shortest winter, the coldest winter, the snowiest winter, the rainiest winter, the longest winter, and just flat-out weirdest winter anyone can remember.  And some of these are 60 to 70 year-old people.  Well, at the beginning of our first winter, my wife and I moved into our 1968 ranch house, with a beautiful yard, and a 300-foot long driveway.  Driving around Maine for the first six months, I was baffled as to why there were so many houses with 10, 20, 60, 80, or even 100 acres of land, but the house was located right on the edge of the frickin' road.  Sometimes right near the highway.  For more privacy, and quiet, and safety of children, wouldn't you want to be farther back?  Well, then it snowed.  And it snowed.  And it snowed.  And I had three hundred feet of driveway to clear to get to work.

At first, the kindly farmer down the road offered to plow our driveway for us, for $20 a plow.  Sounded great.  But it snowed a lot.  And his interpretation of when it was time to plow was a little different than mine.  I would've picked about six inches as the trigger point.  He seemed to feel that one or two inches necessitated another $20 pass.  It was an expensive winter and it was clear we needed a different solution.

I think I valiantly went after it with a shovel once.  That was foolish and utterly defeating.  Next, my mind lighted on purchasing the snowplow attachment for my Craftsman lawn tractor.  Well, that was apparently designed for the occasional snowfall on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona or something.  With the blade in the straight position, the tractor, even with wheel weights and chains, would only move the snow about five feet before that was the end of the road.  The blade would ride up over the snow, the front wheels would drive into the compressed snow, the rear wheels would spin, and there I was stuck and unable to move forward or backward to free myself.  With the blade angled, to hypothetically push the snow to left or right, the snow instead shoved the front of the tractor to the left or right, into the parallel unplowed area, and once again I was stuck.  It was immediately clear that the blade was useless.  I imagine the resistance of the snow may be one reason why snowplowers plow early and frequently (the need for extra Christmas shopping money being the other).

Plowing snow is big business in Maine.  Every contractor, boat dealer, and basically any guy with a truck has a plow attachment.  Some have drop-in sand/salt spreaders that fit in the bed of their truck.  They plow driveways all winter, until building season arrives, after mud season (more on mud season in future posts).  I'd guess about half of people go the plow route.  Every plower has a list of regular customers, and during storms these guys plow all night and all day till the storm ends, and then for a good while after.

But the problems with plowing are the possible runaway cost and the ever decreasing size of your driveway.  For when the plow truck begins the season, they plan ahead.  They shove the snow way beyond the edges of the driveway, driving right onto your lawn and plowing the snow across it.  Where they stop and back up, you're left with a 2-3 foot high wall of really densely packed snow.  It can't be shoveled.  It's too densely packed.  With subsequent warm-ups and re-freezes it will get even harder.  Also, with the next plow, it may get a little taller.  3-4 feet.  Now, in Maine the snow usually stays.  It doesn't thaw and disappear like in Arizona.  Your early December snow may well stay till April, with each subsequent storm adding to it.  And each time the plow truck comes, it can't push that wall of snow any farther.  So its next plow run is a little shorter.  And a little shorter.  And so on.  

Your driveway area slowly decreases with every storm.  Eventually, you've got these 3 foot high walls of rock solid snow ringing your driveway.  If you back into one turning around, it can actually collapse a modern plastic bumper. When things get really desperate, the only way out is to bring in a guy with a front end loader to actually scoop it up, dump it in a truck, and take it away.  It's not that way every winter.  But in winter 2010-2011, we had one of the heaviest snow years anyone one could remember, and certainly the heaviest in my eleven years.  And things were pretty bad.

That is where a snowblower has the advantage.  Instead of shoving snow around, the snowblower steadily and methodically eats it up and blows it up the chute and out in a giant arc, placing it wherever you like with surgical precision.  

There's two kinds.  Walk-behind ones about 24  inches wide or so - kind of like a slow moving push-mower - and tractor mounted ones that hook to your ride-on lawn mower or lawn tractor.  Since I already had a lawn tractor, I decided to hunt for the blower attachment for it.  New, the price was a little daunting, but by knowing the specific model number I needed, and with 6 months of patient scanning of Uncle Henry's classified ads every week, I had the luck of locating a used one that was the specific fit for my tractor.
Picture
Picture
An annual tradition, the infamous Mower to Blower conversion.
The first time I put it on was at the beginning of a raging snowstorm.  I had been dilly-dallying at doing the conversion, which involves removing the mowing deck and installing certain rigging and rear wheel weights and chains - and then mounting the blower itself.  Somewhere around midnight, with the snow outside now a foot deep and the family all gone to bed, I realized I was missing a couple of key parts.  Necessary parts.  So (after a lot of cursing and rechecking box everything came in about ten times) I actual made poor but functional versions of the parts from some scrap metal I had.  Around 2 AM I had the thing in operable condition.  Nowadays, with the right parts and experience, I can convert the tractor in about one hour.

Generally, it valiantly and effectively clears the driveway and sidewalk in about 30 minutes.  It has the most difficulty with heavy, wet snow.  But the most miserable experience is when the wind is blowing in random patterns and suddenly whips the stream of snow right back on me.  I'm coated in powder, but my body heat soon melts it and leaves me wet.  They make soft plastic and nylon cabs that fit over the tractor and prevent this from happening, but I've never purchased one.  Seems to me it would greatly obscure vision, especially in evening, night, and early morning conditions.  And after being showered with a blowback.  I generally oppose this unpleasantry with a water resistant hooded coat and ski pants.

So there you have it.  The straight dope on coping with snow in Maine.  Think twice before buying that house with the long beautiful driveway.
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Busy Reality Limits Virtuality

7/12/2013

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I haven't been prattling on as much here on The (non)Daily Consternation because I've been working hard on making arts and music happen in the real world.  It's very exciting that many of my dreams are actually becoming reality. 

First, I organized a classical concert June 29 at Common Street Arts.  This has come about through the ripening of a number of factors.  1) My involvement with CSA. 2) My casual discussions with my daughter's cello teacher.  3)  My law partners' willingness to sponsor the event. 4) My increased familiarity with various online event calendars. 5) My ongoing discussions with Atlantic Music Festival and Daponte Quartet.  And there's a whole lot more subtle discussions, conversations, and research, but suffice to say all these simmering ingredients have finally cooked themselves up into a real manifestation of musical goodness.   It was a wonderful evening at the gallery, with great music, but more than a little residual stress for me.  I learned a lot during this first concert experience and have ideas to make it smoother and less laborious next time.

I feel like I've realized and am at peace with the concept that, at my age, I'm never going to be the musician or be the artist.  But it seems my lot in life, and where I can really be useful, given my skill-set as a lawyer and problem solver - but one who happens to have had a 4-year art education and has a BFA and a self-taught love of music and theater - is to be a patron of, advocate for, and organizer of musical events.  Essentially, a friend of the arts.

To that end, my service on the Board of Directors for Common Street Arts has been very personally rewarding, and I feel I'm in for the long haul, with no real eye on any horizon for not being involved.  There's so many exciting opportunities for enhancing this community and it's downtown and economy  through CSA that I can't imagine not being a participant.  I find it comes naturally to launch into a prolonged and passionate advocacy speech on behalf of CSA - genuine and spontaneous - reflecting to me and presumably others my sincerity (or insanity?).

Atlantic Music Festival is the other organization I have great enthusiasm about helping to become a bigger factor in Waterville.  I have been helping out on a small basis with providing local information to the artistic director about venues, fill-in musician contacts, junior high and high school music directors, housing possibilities, and other "local knowledge" kinds of issues that have been difficult for AMF to sort out due to their remote headquarters in New York City.  Their presence here each summer strikes me as a gift and an incredible fluke, and I would hate to see them choose to locate elsewhere because they felt unwelcome and unappreciated in Waterville.

If I can weave together the strands of CSA, AMF, downtown revitalization, and my historical pursuits, I'll really be at the nexus of all the things I want to be.
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The Thought Chamber

9/6/2012

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The shower is where I wake up every morning.  The steam clears breathing passages, and slowly I reach the point where I can open my eyes all the way and endure the light and the coming day.

That early in the day, perhaps unrestrained by normal daily concerns, my mind takes off.  Like an engine being over-revved, the thoughts, ideas, problems, and solutions come so rapidly you can almost hear the whine of an engine.  In complete free association, even the categories they fall in are manifold.  The problem is capturing them before they evaporate like the steam from the shower.  I can't take an iPhone or a laptop in the shower with me, paper won't work, and I don't fancy writing on the shower walls with a grease pencil.  So I just have to recite them to myself like a mantra, hoping to remember until I'm out and dry.

Sometimes my mind is ranging so far afield that, at several points, I have to stop and try to remember what's been washed and what's yet to be done.  Don't worry if you have to sit next to me, I always err on the side of re-washing.

Today, a sampling of what crossed my mind:

How about a version of Cyrano de Bergerac wherein the communication aspect is via text-messages?

What would be an interesting study/essay would be to interview a current teenage couple, their parents, and their grandparents on dating practices, communication and interaction frequency and forum, and how it was done in each era - because the current generation's pervasive text-message communications are interesting.

Do Facebook and text messaging reduce teen pregnancy rates because teen couples spend time with each other electronically instead of physically?

The structure and corporate status for Common Street Arts moving ahead.

The Waterville Arts Collaborative acting as an agent or "pusher" to feed events to the MPBN Community Calendar instead of re-inventing a new calendar system on its own website.  Maybe the MPBN calendar could be embedded in the WAC website.

Inviting area businesses to bring their employees to CSA for "art breaks" or retreats or lunches.

That one of the vast spaces in my Gymnopedie project could be a venue dedicated to hosting large art installations and performance artists - possibly one of the few venues around permanently focused on providing a forum for such?

Have downtown "malls" built on the idea of antique malls, but for different products, like local furniture/cabinet makers.  Each would have their own booth, and would still work and sell out of their current facilities/homes, but would also have an unmanned display booth with examples of their product and the information to contact them.  The overarching store space would be coordinated, negotiated, and all the headaches dealt with by WAC, or WMSt. or some such entity.

I should add more video content to this blog and KennebecTom could be something of an Arts Reporter, actually doing visits and interviews and such regarding arts related spaces and events.  They may or may not be in the "wacky fun" motif, with faux accents and such.

Find an image of an underwater river observation station that could be installed at the fish elevator adjacent to the Hathaway Building (I have and it will be on "There Oughta Be" soon).

Holding open art critiques for artists who want honest, critical and challenging feedback (not just endless "wonderfuls" and pats on the back).  The kind of critiques it is hard to find outside the academic arena.  One critic could wear little red horns from a Halloween costume and be the designated "Devil's Advocate", intentionally focusing on challenging the artist to defend their work, and challenging the other critics present to argue against them in defense of the work or in defense of the issues raised or their interpretation of it.

And I'm pretty sure there were a few more that I did forget....
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Webtivism and Blogging

8/14/2012

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When I first started this, I was trying to make The Daily Consternation something like a print version of The Daily Show, wherein I would generally migrate my news headline-mocking from Facebook to here.  I was seeking to gain more control than Facebook afforded.  But a key feature of riffing on news headlines is being able to link to news articles in such a way that the headlines are displayed in a little window the way Facebook does it - and I haven't been able to figure out how to replicate that here.
Next, as you can see, keeping up the "Daily" part is difficult.  Blogging takes a lot of time.  I really wish I could type as fast as I think.
And then, I failed at the "Consternation" part, since I have spent a hefty amount of time on praise and enthusiasm over joyous things rather than continual dismay and concern over the idiocies of humanity (which I still comment on on Facebook from time to time).
What we have instead is Webtivism.  This is another offshoot of my midlife crisis, which has been ongoing since turning 40.  Upon realizing that my life is finite, and that I'm now at the point where I notice the minutes ticking off the clock in The Final Countdown.  And I began to wonder at the worth of every minute spent.  I began to wonder if I could be, on any level, influential.  If I could do anything that would outlast my time on this Earth, if only for a month or maybe a year.
Well, I was spending a lot of time every night clicking around on the internet, cycling through the same sites repeatedly looking for gratification.  Like a mouse in a cage pressing some pedal that would distribute a treat every 20th push.  And at the end of the night, I'd learned nothing, done nothing, and was unsatisfied.  Since the internet came along, I've marveled at the fact that now, for free almost, I could communicate with the entire world in a manner formerly reserved to the very rich or famous.  And yet I was squandering it.  Numerous times I considered building a personal website, even before Facebook, but the technical challenges and expertise necessary for even something rudimentary were daunting.  Well, along came Weebly and made things like this site a piece of cake.
So I decided to turn my internet/computer noodling to useful purposes.  To spend the same amount of time I was wasting on equally digital things with purpose.  Hence, I applied my efforts to areas of historical preservation, promotion of the arts, furtherance of local business, ending the Drug War, and helping others find useful information about Maine.  And also to making people laugh.  These efforts are present on this site and the others listed on the "Other Site & Pages" link.  And that's what I call "Webtivism."  Internet activism.  Fighting middle-age with technology.
And I'm beginning to be encouraged by the results.  People from afar have begun contacting me with questions about Winslow History, or to contribute historic materials to the Town.  The hits on this site have risen to a steady flow, with occasional spikes of over 100 or even 200 visits in a day.  Some of the blog posts have garnered quite a few Facebook Likes, though I am blind to the identity of the Likers.  And I've seen myself quoted once or twice on other's blogs or Facebook pages.
So I suppose I'll continue for now, as I'm pressing on the pedal and being rewarded fairly frequently.  But I'm still waiting for a rich venture capitalist to call me and say, "Tom, I like your idea for this Gymnopedie thing...."

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Why I Write About Decriminalizing Drugs

5/11/2012

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Having formed this opinion over 24 years ago and growing more convinced ever since, why do I care so much about the topic of drug prohibition in our society?  First, let’s cover a couple of things.

1) I do NOT want to legalize drugs so that I can use them.  I can actually say I have never used any of the drugs currently categorized as illegal.  (My parents will be relieved to hear that)  I am not a closet pothead who is chomping at the bit (or joint) to toke it up the day marijuana is legalized.  You won’t see me chanting “Free The Weed”.  I have no emotional attachment to the drug.  I don't even want to wear hemp clothes.  Like a lot of Americans, I do occasionally consume alcohol.

2) I do NOT believe that legalizing drugs will solve our nation’s, nor our species’, problems with drugs.  It may actually increase drug use and possibly addiction, at least for a time.  However, I do believe that it will improve or even solve many of our society’s problems with crime, violence, national security, foreign affairs, immigration, governmental overspending, invasion of privacy, and erosion of our civil liberties.  And I powerfully believe that those problems have reached levels of severity wherein it is better to choose the problems of drug abuse and addiction and deal with them outside the context of the criminal justice system.

3) I do NOT believe that abusing any substance, including drugs, is “good.”  But by the same token, I don’t believe that doing so is necessarily “bad” or “evil.”  The badness comes from the effects of the behaviors of drug abuser on their family, their neighbors, and their community.  Human history demonstrates that humans enjoy altering their minds with substances, for medicinal, spiritual, recreational, and social purposes, even discounting chemical addiction behaviors.  Rather than call it evil, we should accept this aspect of ourselves and responsibly and openly learn how to manage it.

So, why am I outspoken on this topic?  Well...

1) Maybe, and I emphasize maybe, I might actually change the opinion of a person or two.  But that is unlikely.  Changing a person’s opinion about anything is almost impossible through mere rhetoric.  Usually, it takes a significant, direct life event to move a person to a change in their beliefs.  But hey, it could happen.  It’s more likely that I may influence a few people who have just never previously thought about the topic at length.  People are going to start having to confront this issue as the mainstream media has finally taken up the topic, and as it starts to affect each of us personally through rising burglary and robbery rates all across the nation.  And of course, initiatives to legalize at least marijuana are springing up on ballots everywhere.

2) Mostly, I simply hope to publicize that this is one of the most significant issues confronting and hampering our nation, and the world, at this time.  By introducing the topic into daily dialogues and showing how it is connected to so many current issues, I hope to help bring the subject of drug legalization into mainstream discourse, and to make others feel comfortable talking about it without feeling like they’ll be labeled a druggie.  There are many, many reasons for people of all political persuasions and all walks of life to support the decriminalization of drugs.  

3) I hope to provide an example of a responsible citizen, a lawyer, a father, a community-oriented person, and a non-user, who neverthless believes that decriminalization is the best thing to do for the preservation and improvement of our society.  To some degree, I feel I also have a special responsibility to speak out as a lawyer.  Lawyers should take the lead in advocating for changes in the law they believe necessary to preserve our nation’s governance by law, our judicial system, our prison system, our Constitutional rights, and the respectability and safety of our law enforcement officers.

By providing such an example, I hope to create an atmosphere where other lawyers, judges, police officers, and especially politicians can feel confident expressing their true beliefs - because in my informal conversations with such people, I believe many have come to the same conclusion as I have.  They just don’t think it’s “safe” to speak out yet.

4) I hope to increase awareness that this topic is not one to merely shrug your shoulders about.  It affects everyone.  Its tendrils creep out into every area of our lives as Americans, even if you have never had an issue with drugs, nor even any family member or friend with addiction issues.  You may not realize how embedded in our society this hopeless effort has become and how many people’s careers and how many industries, political decisions, and even wars are based upon it.

For me, therefore, increasing awareness, establishing importance, and creating an atmosphere of “safety” about the topic is enough.  From there, I have every confidence that the facts and the crushing economic burden of the situation will inexorably lead to decriminalization.  The question is only how much longer we hold on to the failed policies and how much further damage is inflicted upon our society before we muster the courage for change.   
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Waxing Poetic

4/9/2012

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Well, as I grow older, I find myself returning to some of the interests of my past.  Back before I was a lawyer, I was a fine arts major for four years.  I have a BFA in Photography.   Pointless now, since it was a BFA in chemical photography, which has now gone the way of the daguerreotype and left me with a bunch of formerly priceless cameras that are now, well, priceless in a whole different way.  But in addition to my love of music, I'm beginning to feel a reawakening of interest in the fine arts - painting and photography, and the existence of some small art galleries in Waterville, like the Common Street Gallery.  I'm such a loser I haven't actually dragged myself down to the Common Street Gallery, but I like to follow their Facebook page, and I like knowing that it's down there just in case my inquisitiveness wins out over sloth and hectic family schedules one fine day.  I also enjoy watching the photography posted by some Facebook friends, as it is their hobby or true passion, and I reminisce about the countless hours I spent in critiques over those four years of my past, discussing every possible way a work could be interpreted until you wind up all the way back at either "I like it" or "I don't."  

Anyway, last week at Rotary we were reminded by the Waterville librarian that it was National Poetry Month.  So I thought to myself, "Alrighty.  Next week I'm gonna use a happy dollar* to read a favorite poem to the group."  Why?  Why the hell not?  Life is short and I'm 42 now and time is running out, so why not read a good poem?

* - a "happy dollar" is an opportunity at Rotary meetings for member, for the fee of one dollar, to command the podium (and the microphone) for the purpose of announcing something that makes them happy - such as an anniversary, a birth, a wedding, a sporting victory, a nice vacation, an accomplishment, etc.

Well, first I thought I'd pick "Jabberwocky",  "Ozymandius", "The Tyger", or "The Charge of the Light Brigade."  "The Raven" naturally leapt (or fluttered) to mind, of course, but it's a bit long for a happy dollar.   But then the streetsweeper drove by my office and inspiration struck.  I have long railed against the sanding of the roads (to dramatic excess) during the winter here.  And then against the cleaning up of that same sand in the spring.  So I wrote a poem about that madness instead and read it for a happy dollar.  No word yet on whether I've been kicked out of Rotary.  I've added a Poems page to the site, and put it up for your viewing pleasure.  Titled, "Streetsweeper Sysiphus."   Maybe more will follow.


(by the way, from junior high through law school, I wrote a lot of poetry, from serious attempts, to journal-like catharsis, to random silliness; it was a great way to kill time during boring classes at every level of education; during undergraduate school I even took a couple of poetry courses and had the distinctively poetic experience of having a graduate-student teacher commit suicide two thirds of the way through the semester - by shooting himself no less;  it was truly tragic - he was a great poet, and a great instructor)
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Grand Opening

9/24/2011

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Frustrated with Facebook controlling my expression more than I'd like, I have ventured to create a personal website to have more control over what I present and how it's presented.  It's only just begun, but I think I've got enough on it now to share it with all of you.  Right now, the primary feature is a little calendar of mostly classical and jazz music events taking place in the area.  I hope some of you find it of interest.  Future plans are for more content related to music, Maine history, the community of Winslow/Waterville, and other things you've seen me post about on Facebook.  There may be some weirdness as I figure out the technicalities of how this site and FB interrelate.  Anyway, as you can see here, I even splurged $12 to register the domain KennebecTom.com.
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    The Daily Consternation 
    ​covering Maine, music, and more.

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    Tom lives on the east side of the Kennebec River and works on the west.  He relocated from Arizona to Maine, by pure choice,  in 2001 and loves music and history.  He may change any viewpoint expressed on this site at will and without warning.

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