Perspective

Then my Ella came

Today I took my lunch break in Orono. I'd just finished talking with a goat farmer for a few hours for a story and was already in town. I called my sandwich in as I drove my 97 Saturn down the pothole speckled dirt Bennoch Road.

"An Ella on basil focaccia if you have it, hot."

"It will be 15 minutes."

I broke for the red light at the intersection of Bennoch and Main. I smelled the smoke of wood fire and smiled. I love that smell. I then remembered that on July 2 it wasn't the smell of someone's wood stove, it was the three-story home that burnt down a few weeks ago, displacing 30. Mostly people I'd gone to school with.

I picked a parking spot across from the Ampersand and climbed the three steps to harvest Moon and took a bar stood at a shiny, varnished wood table. I looked over. There were no white paper-packaged sandwiches waiting on the metal shelf. My sandwich must not be ready. Under the shelf five grease-soaked orders hung. I needed to think of a lead for this goat story while it's still fresh. Despite filling my entire, brand new reporter's notebook on one side in the last three hours, I pulled my pen out and pushed it between my fingers which had red sore spots from writing already.

I sat back thinking that I must have the best life.

Then my Ella came.

The thing I pulled out of my car

The thing I ripped out of my car ...

Sunday, June 7, 2009 at 4:13pm | Edit Note | Delete

So Friday night I was driving back from Stella's in Castine. It is the best non-Bangor restaurant in Maine. All was well until CLUNK. Followed by CLUNKCLUNKCLUNKCLUNK. I pull over, put my flashers on and tell the man in the car that something is wrong. Men are supposed to know why things clunk, something about testosterone.

No ideas.

So I clunkclunkclunk back to Orono, freaked. I do not call my father. That would be the wrong thing for a 21-year-old woman who just graduated from college and is trying to prove her independence to do.

I silently freak, and drive to work Sunday. I watch kids play baseball in Glenburn for my story. When they are done, I get back into Ms. Clunker and bumble over the dirt road. Then, when my 1997 Saturn SL2 and I meet the tar it's gone. No clunking.

I am pumped. I don't have to turn my stereo up anymore -- this is good as I hate loud noises.

Then.

Clunk.

CLUNKCLUNKCLUNK.

OK, car, now you've pissed me off.

So I pull over in IGA. A woman is sitting in a car across from me. NH license plates and a pink baseball cap. She watches as I get down in my polo and bermuda shorts and start poking.

I notice something rusty moves when I touch it. I don't know much about cars, and that's an understatement, but I do know that things shouldn't move. It's supposed to be solid.

So I yank it out.

I look at the lady in the car with the flat, rusted plate in my blackened hands and shrug my shoulders. She shrugs back. I throw the plate in my car through the back window and go to buy a head of cabbage to fry later for dinner.

I come back, the engine turns over -- sans clunk.

So I'll attach a picture of how I fixed my car. My friends tell me it is a plate that houses my brakes.

The deterioration of culture - a rant

Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 6:06pm | Edit Note | Delete

My agenda was simple. Get out of work, deposit my check, buy the opera Carmen on CD, buy The Eames Era's CD and buy the Oxford English Dictionary.

I started at Bull Moose per a style writers suggestion. "Do you have The Eames Era?" I asked after shuffling through a few rows of CDs. "No, that's a little under our radar." He said the band popped up on his computer screen and that I should buy it from the band's Myspace. Not only do I not have a myspace, but I could get it off Amazon for $5.

"OK, what about opera? Do you have a section for that?" The guy showed me a dismal rack of their opera selection. No Carmen.

On to Borders, where I had a 25 percent off coupon. After pursing for my Eames, to no avail, I went onto find Carmen. They didn't have it. I guess Borders just couldn't fit one of the best operas of all time onto their shelves, which were instead crammed full of Nickleback. Frustrated, I went downstairs to find the OED.

On the shelves of reference Webster dominated. All types of Webster. I have nothing against the guy, I own at least two of his reference books, but I need an OED -- it's one of those writer things.

"The Concise Oxford English Dictionary." I pick it up. This might do. I look up "excoriate." Yup. "Melee?" Yup. One more to test it, an easy one so I may move on with my life and a $20 book (with my coupon would be $15 plus tax). Easy, "Deterge." NO. I can't own a dictionary that fails my vocabulary test.

No deterge? Well then, my too concise book, I must deterge my hands of you -- not that you know what that means.

On my way out, as I shift along the shelves near the checkout, waiting for someone who looks polite who I can pass my coupon off to - as I won't be needing it - I find a 2 foot by 3 foot book of Ansel Adams' work on the bargain shelf. $19.99 + coupon. Perfect Father's Day present -- we have a shared love of Adams.

I go home to Main Street, Orono and start my reduced fat kielbasa dinner with potatoes and onions. My roommate walks in. He owns many stolen copies of classical music CDs.

"Hey Michael, do you have Carmen?"
"What?"
"Carmen. Oh never mind," I say.
"Is that some sort of food additive?" he asked.
"No, it's an opera."

Amazon it is.

Little fish

The little fish

Monday, June 1, 2009 at 12:19pm | Edit Note | Delete

After two years of having the freedom to assign myself only what I deemed the most important articles for the UMaine student newspaper, I've been thrown back to the "little fish" status and do not have the luxury of gracing page A1 on a twice-weekly basis.

Now I'm either buried in the state section or making the cover of a weekly. In that, I get the lowly, just above intern-status assignments. Super local. I no longer choose my assignments. Instead of rushing to Augusta for a 21-hour workday watching a legislative session debating gay rights, I talk to kids at skate parks, speak with the elderly and children with autism. The small stuff.

What I'm reminded of is how easy it can be to take 20 plus hours of substantive information and throw a story on page one. What isn't as easy is making a couple doxen kids in skinny jeans who gathered to rally against drugs interesting.

What's more is that I'm reminded how much more difficult, and satisfying, it can be to be given a crappy assignment and come out with something decent -- opposed to being given something wonderful and come out with something decent. It's oddly gratifying.

The crank

Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 1:41pm | Edit Note | Delete

In the depths of the Bangor Daily News office, in the far corner beyond sports, news and even the copy desk is a corner office. My corner office. ... OK, Roxanne, Ardeana and my corner office. Behind me, lurking is Ardeana. She has barricaded herself behind two large desks, peering out into the newsroom, but not to be seen by reporters. The most peculiar thing by far about the weaker of the two desk-barricades is the crank. It's a small crank, attached to the top of the two-level desk. It's black and sleek. The top, where a hand would grab, is shaped like a hot air balloon, forever stuck. "What does the crank do?" I asked her. I hoped with all my strength that the answer would be something evil and cunning. A crank that started a device Edgar Poe wrote about in Pit and the Pendelum. Something that would trigger more cranks that would yank at ropes in the basement -- a basement filled with old press machines -- yank at ropes attached to human limbs to rip them apart. "It raises this part of my desk for ergonomics."
Stupid question.

Today I saw a firetruck

Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 12:16pm | Edit Note | Delete

The scream ricocheted off my building, swam -- as if chased by a shark -- through the parking garage across the street. The firetruck three stories below bellowed hard and pushed past the stoplight, its yell echoing, trapped inside the tunnel the two buildings created. Sound bouncing between, like a fly caught between two panes of glass in a window.

Mistakes were made - cooking

Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 7:18pm | Edit Note | Delete

I'm not sure what went wrong. I'm not a cook.

So I buy an ear of corn (well two, but one will not be eaten, read on) from Hannaford.

Then I let it sit on my counter for a week.

Then I take the husks off and put the ears in tinfoil in the fridge.

I then boil them for 4 minutes.

And take a bite.

Raw.

So I throw it back in the water for 40 minutes.

And take a bite.

I didn't know corn could taste bad. Vile. Like the cacti of corn.

I'm sure mistakes were made.

Anyway, I need cooking lessons. Offers?

Perspective

Thursday, July 2, 2009