Bill and His Family Keep Their Health Insurance, at Least for Now
categories: Cocktail Hour / Don't Talk About Politics
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A little neck repair–while I still had COBRA coverage.
Happy this week to know that at least for a while, my family’s insurance (and of course that of many millions of fellow citizens—or really all citizens, as the ACA’s protections extend into everyone’s insurance) is safe. It’s been disheartening to watch republicans try to make good on their campaign pledges to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which they made sure to call Obamacare. They didn’t fail because democrats wouldn’t work with them—they didn’t ask democrats to work with them. They failed because their bill worked from a lie, that the ACA is in some kind of death spiral. It isn’t. Continue reading →
Guest contributor: Bill Lundgren
Lundgren’s Lounge: “One Eyed Man,” by Ron Currie
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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Ron Currie, with David Foster Wallace upon his forearm
A disclaimer is in order here: Ron Currie is a friend of mine. We watch baseball together while drinking beer and it is my fervent hope that the upcoming Red Sox season will help to ameliorate the execrable political situation we are presently wallowing in. However none of this has anything to do with the review that follows. Continue reading →
Guest contributor: Bill Lundgren
Lundgren’s Lounge: “The Peregrine,” by J.A. Baker
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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Somehow this once obscure, extraordinarily unique book found its way into my hands, transporting me for a few days to the coastal fenlands of eastern England and the world of the peregrine falcon. The Peregrine by J. A. Baker was originally published in 1967 during a period of steep decline in the population of these magnificent raptors and perhaps that was part of what motivated the author—to attempt to describe the life of a creature at once so ferociously singular and powerful, before it was gone forever. But what Baker accomplishes along the way is much deeper, achieving “… an account of a human obsession with a creature that is peerless.”
My Inaugural Poem
categories: Cocktail Hour / Don't Talk About Politics
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All eyes on 2018! Let’s take these fuckers down!
Our Portland, Maine, Other Inaugural Read-In was yesterday, huge turnout, great sister feeling with millions of marchers worldwide and tens of thousands right here in Maine, huge multicultural turnout for the Ball, thousands of dollars to go to the Immigrant Legal Assistance Project of Maine. All eyes on 2018. Let’s take these fuckers down! Here is my Inaugural Poem, since Trump didn’t have one:
Continue reading →
OFF TO WASHINGTON FOR THE MARCH
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Nina and Hadley head up this morning!
The Other Inaugural Ball!
categories: Cocktail Hour / Don't Talk About Politics
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Some artist friends and I have been putting together a day of anti-inaugural events in Portland, Maine. These to complement marches and other actions taking place all over the country, and around the world. Read my Portland Press Herald op-ed piece at the link or below to get a sense of the impetus behind our action. And if you live in the area, come join us for one or all of our events! Continue reading →
Finally, a Victory!
categories: Cocktail Hour
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In one of his last acts as President, Barack Obama created the Bears Ears National Monument, preserving more than 2000 square miles of land, land that not incidentally includes my favorite campsite of all time, in southeastern Utah. To which I say: yes! Who knows how long it will take the coming Bozo squad to try and overturn this, as well as the Antiquities Act itself, but for now let’s raise a glass and celebrate something good. At last.
In saving this land of twisting stone and desert, Obama has, of course, been part of a political tradition, one most famously exercised by Teddy Roosevelt, of preserving land when leaving office. But there was another tradition at play here, a literary one. The tradition began with none other than Wallace Stegner. In 1955 Stegner, in an effort to stop the building of a dam Continue reading →
Selling the House
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Photo by Mark Honerkamp
This is a hard one. As some of you know, our family house in East Dennis is now for sale. About the same year I was born, fifty five years ago, my parents bought a plot of land on a hill across from Sesuit Harbor. Not long after that my mother was driving through the town of Middelborro when she saw an old house that was scheduled to be torn down so that the new highway could be built. The house had been built in 1726, a Cape Codder with cedar shingles, wide oak floorboards, and thick hewn beams the color of chocolate. Before my mother pulled out she had purchased the beams, floorboards, and paneling for $50 and had them transplanted down to the land in East Dennis.That was the house where we were most a family, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been a writer without the house. My first book’s title, A Wild, Rank Place, referred both to a Thoreau quote about Cape Cod and the house itself.
A State of Insanity
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Now it’s official. We live in the most crazy-ass state in the whole crazy-ass country. Any nice houses for sale up in Maine, Bill? Any jobs?
Imagine how angry he would have been if he had lost…..
categories: Cocktail Hour
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So today, for whatever reason, was the first day since the election that I fully pulled my head out of the sand and really watched the news. So is this what passes for a normal day now? A day where 1.The North Carolina legislature tries to strip the power of the incoming governor in a move that would embarrass a banana republic. 2. Everyone in the world but the incoming President admits the Russians hacked the election, and 3. Trump admits that the “Drain the Swamp” line was a cynical ploy for votes that he thought would be too hokey to ever work. So: what will tomorrow bring?
P.S. I’ll BE ANGRY EVEN IF I WIN.
