Mary Phillips-Sandy lives here.

This is what happens when well-intentioned people write about my homeland. The Kennebec Café, named after the Kennebec river, is located in Fairfield (pop. 6,573, mostly blue collar families and the occasional moose) and also serves adjacent Waterville (pop. 15,605, including the 2,000 barefooted students of Colby College). I can’t remember the last time a [...]

Developments in the burgeoning Portland* blogroll, of which this Nut House is** a part: a tempest flares and is calmed (?) over at the anonymous Point (who is this fractious critic?). Meanwhile, someone or something who is obviously (?) a pseudonym is reviewing baked goods on the city’s preeminent music blog (??). (Related, will I [...]

All day long people have been chatting and Facebooking and Twittering and starting phone calls with discussions of the rain, and yet no one has taken the initiative to flap-ball-change down the street, at least not in Portland, at least not that I’ve seen.

…there was a Bavarian immigrant’s dry-goods shop in Montgomery, Alabama. Reading such things makes me wonder: Decades from now, will upstart politicians deliver a variant of John Edwards’ “I Had a Mill” speech, only substituting “investment bank” for “mill”? My father worked 120 hours a week, fighting his way up the ranks from analyst to [...]

I’m going to be on the Blog Talk Radio program “Unusuable Signal” tomorrow night, 11 p.m. EST, to discuss the economy, comedy, Ben Bernanke’s eerie resemblance to a walrus, etc. You can listen to the whole thing through your computer, and I believe you can also call in to ask questions/make walrus noises. Click here [...]

This is someone Facebook just suggested I “may know.” I did not click any further, for fear of rending the space-time continuum.

…whilst spring cleaning: The red canvas tote bag someone bought for me on the street outside the Bedford L stop Favorite Nivea lip balm Six (??) pillows Two large, authoritative-looking binders Two small, calcified piles of cat vomit hidden behind the furniture Three dust- and hair-covered cat toys hidden under the furniture An empty cardboard [...]

This afternoon three burly men stood smoking outside Colucci’s, directly below the sign advertising 3 HAM ITALIANS $10.99. They coughed and lifted cigarettes to their lips, their bare arms moving through shadow to light and back again. “You have mustard on your leg,” one said to another as I passed. Everyone looked down. Mustard-leg was, [...]

“Oy” edition: A week-long break from any activities involving typing or thinking or both at the same time A burger, medium-rare, with no condiments except charred onions Some quality time with the acupuncturist, followed by a nap A hovercraft Meanwhile, here is a picture of my cat pretending to be shy: