1a. I promptly forgot about the city when I got back to Portland and saw the pink sky over Casco Bay.

1b. Yes, I spend a lot of time thinking about being in Maine and being in New York and being in places in general. It’s habit by now. At least I don’t bite my nails.

2. One of the (many) things I miss about zine publishing is the schedule: one or two issues a year, 32 booklet pages. For me that is a perfect level of casual-writing output. Frequent enough to be serial, spaced far enough apart to allow for rethinking, revising and general ruminating. The truth is, if I didn’t get paid to type things on a website every day I probably would not type things on a website every day.

2a. This is one of the (many) reasons I don’t type things here every day, or even every week.

2b. Or here, even.

3. In case anyone’s still reading, here is a picture of some sled dogs I met last month.

3a. Things sled dogs eat include: raw venison, raw smelt, hard-boiled eggs with the shell still on, raw carrots.

So when I say “I went to the cell phone store to look at new phones,” what I mean is “after acquiring massive amounts of information about various phones available on my carrier, I went to the cell phone store to look at the three I liked best and also to pepper the salesman with questions about specifics and plan costs.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m never a jerk about this. There’s no excuse for being a jerk to customer service people. I don’t care if you’ve had a bad day, or if the service is subpar, even. No excuse. I know this as a former customer service worker and also as a human being — look, it’s not rocket science. Don’t be a jerk. Do ask your questions.

At the store, with the devices in front of me, I ruled out one of the three contenders while I waited for the salesman to finish helping another customer. That left two options, let’s call them the “Blueberry Concavity” and the “Mamsung Palin,” to avoid any accusations of shilling. I quite liked the Blueberry Concavity but the Mamsung Palin had a number of attractive features, so I thought I’d see what the salesman had to say about the merits of one vs. the other. After pretending to listen to my preferences and concerns, he strongly recommended the Blueberry Concavity. “It comes in purple!” he said.

It comes in purple! It comes in purple! Oh boy! I am such a special princess!

But even special princesses need to access their data, so I asked a couple of questions about data plans and syncing with multiple email accounts, and the salesman was happy to provide technical details about the Blueberry Concavity…

…to my boyfriend. Who was standing a foot behind me, staring alternately at the wall and at his own phone (which, to be honest, isn’t as slick as either the Blueberry Concavity or the Mamsung Palin). Have you ever performed “improv theater”? Shut up, yes you did, in high school. I felt like I was stuck in a terrible scene with a selfish performer who simply would not “throw me the ball,” no matter how many times I “threw the ball” to him:

Me (to Salesman): This new version of the Blueberry Concavity has built-in wi-fi, right? Is that something that’s going to activate automatically whenever I’m near a signal, or do I just enable it when I want it?

Salesman (to Disinterested Boyfriend): It’s got the wi-fi, and you turn it on if you need it. There’s a setting where you can manage your connections.

Disinterested Boyfriend: …

Me (to Salesman, loudly): Great! Thanks! I think I will buy this phone, with my money!

Salesman (to Disinterested Boyfriend): Fantastic. If you’ll step over to the register, I’ll get the paperwork going.

I know what you’re wondering. Yep, I bought the purple Blueberry Concavity (according to the package, it’s “smoky violet”). I liked it better than the black one, and I always toss my phone in my bag or my pocket, and it’s easier to find if it’s a light color. I’d have gone with silver if that were an option, but it wasn’t. Also: I happen to like purple and its variant colors. Including smoky violet. In fact, today, I’m wearing a button-down shirt that’s distinctly mulberryish.

Yet for a good thirty seconds there at the store I debated my preference for the smoky violet Concavity, thinking I should choose the black one to make a point, to keep this guy from thinking he knew what kind of customer I am. You’re not closing a sale with that “It comes in purple” line, bub, not after talking over my head for the past ten minutes. Then I came to my senses. Just as there is never a good reason for being rude to customer service people, there is never a good reason to question things like your favorite colors. What the hell is the point of that? Why should anyone ever do that? You can’t make me do that, salesguy. I’m going to get what I want, and the thing I want happens to come in a color I enjoy. Done and done.

I should add that the salesman was wearing a pink shirt. It looked very nice on him, though I personally do not care for pink.

In the midst of thinking about these matters I flew to New York to help a friend move to the West Coast — so much transition in so short a time — and on a rainy Saturday morning, muscles aching, I woke at six o’clock to put on my black dress and nice shoes, because that is what you do. Smith Street was still except for pigeons and the lingering smell of Friday’s beer, but Atlantic Avenue was bustling already, mostly with men muttering to themselves in doorways. After five years of city living I learned to ignore men who hurl insults or come-ons, but that day, suddenly, I was indignant — couldn’t these cretins see my black dress? Didn’t they know this wasn’t standard garb for Saturday morning? Wasn’t it obvious where I was going?

No and no and no. A man with animal eyes stumbled after me. “Hey pretty. Pretty lady. Come here. You know you want to. I’ll pay you to come over here. Hey!” I kept walking, feet and face forward, brisk, holding back fists and tears. He screamed. “I’ll pay you money! You look like you should buy a thesaurus!”

New York, like death, is at once obvious and incomprehensible.

The train to Long Island was almost empty. My fellow passengers and I stared out the streaky windows at the grey buildings and sipped our paper cups of coffee. I had a copy of The New Yorker on my lap but I couldn’t read it, there were too many words. I skipped around my iPod — the only thing I’ve wanted to hear lately is music involving British and/or Kiwi men, pre-1990, this has been going on for weeks — and none of it sounded good, so I listened to the train’s rattle and those blasted piercing beeps it emits at each stop. I was relieved yet not relieved when the next stop was mine, because it meant finality.

Catholics, of course, do casket viewings and then full Masses. I was less prepared than I thought I would be for both of these things. It had been some time since I’d set foot in a church, especially with the entire family around, and in the middle of the proceedings an urgent whisper spread from one pew to the next: someone had meant to to mention that the granddaughters would be presenting the gifts before Communion, so, a little freelance altar serving, and as it turns out the sense memory of carrying a small glass cruet of wine remains intact after twenty years. I’d forgotten how well I remembered that.

This sounds so weighty and sad and it is weighty and sad. But it is also, in my family, un-weighty and un-sad. The use of the phrase “family-friendly” to indicate an absence of cursing or sarcasm has always amused me, given the things my people say, and at a funeral no less. What pride I felt, when my youngest cousin — #14 of 14 — took an opportunity to crack wise about the names of the dead buried in marble vaults around our grandmother’s casket! How soothing to hear my uncle do the one about the meth addict trying to study! What Zen to reminisce about Ozarka bottled water, a beverage we have been discussing at length for no particular reason since 2006, when we encountered it at my cousin Joseph’s wedding! And by the time Matt was explaining his travails with an freakishly deep ladle it was almost as if rain and death weren’t possible, as if nothing could hurt and there were no mean words in the world, as if our clothes weren’t black and time could stand still long enough to be grasped.

In case you couldn’t stomach it yourself, the Palin tribute shows a clip from her Jan. 19, 2009 appearance on Beck’s inaugural Fox News show:

BECK: I think the problem with most politicians is they haven’t been at a Wendy’s drive-through in quite some time. You know what I mean? They’ve never actually said, “Yeah, just give me a Frosty, please, with the Oreos crunched up inside.” I think that’s a problem. I’m gonna ask politicians, “When was the last time, Governor, that you were at a Wendy’s and had a Frosty? And you ordered it yourself.”

Now flash back to the December 10, 2008 episode of Beck’s radio show, in which he described his speaking tour in Idaho:

BECK: The only problem with it was, I’m sorry, Idaho, but you have far too many signs that say “Next exit, 47 miles.” And when you are at least 47 miles away and you can’t trust that that exit has some sort of dispenser that could give you a Frosty, I just don’t know. You know what I’m saying?

Some guy named STU: It’s very, very understandable, Glenn, when you are away from Wendy and her services. I know you get very disappointed.

Mind you, this was just one month after Beck suffered a horrific assault at a Wendy’s where he was “going to get Frosties” because “everyone wants a Frosty.” You’d think the trauma of being verbally attacked by a racist Nazi truck driver might sour a man on this particular brand of frozen corn syrup, whey, and cellulose gum, but apparently not.

I can’t find any mention of an official deal between Wendy’s and Beck, but it seems to me a savvy fast-food exec might start thinking up ways to monetize this shillfest — also too, I hear Glenn could use a side of sponsorships with his Frosty these days. (They are delicious if you dip them.)

Yet as he spends his days in his family’s mansion on the outskirts of Chapel Hill, N.C., Edwards can’t help but fret about how Washington and the country are getting on in his absence.

That John Edwards! Always thinking of others, etc. etc.

Only thing is — and if wanton displays of naïveté aren’t your bag, you should leave right now — I liked this guy. No. I believed in this guy. Not so much in previous campaigns, or when he was yoked, uneasily, to Gore. This time around it was different. (Maybe I was just extra-susceptible.) Sure, the “son of a millworker” schtick wore thin. A lot of people heard it and called it phony, coming from a millionaire trial lawyer. Me, I thought about the men and women I knew who’d stitched shirts for a living, and the way the 4 p.m. sun shone straight through the empty brick buildings in my hometown. I thought: self-made wealth doesn’t mean you can’t understand that. I thought: some people become lawyers because they believe everyone deserves a representative in the halls of justice. That’s why my parents became lawyers, though in the middle of rural Maine lawyers aren’t millionaires.

I’m biased. It’s true. We all are. We gravitate toward politicians who best reflect the particular beliefs and values and ideas we’ve absorbed in our lives, from our parents, our schools, our communities. And it just so happened that I was raised with a certain set of beliefs and experiences, and these included things like soup kitchens and Dorothy Day and serviam, to say nothing of George Orwell and Upton Sinclair. And here comes John Edwards, shaking off his Ken-doll coma, speaking reasonably directly and with a believable (inasmuch as any of this is believable) passion, and with good ideas to boot. It was a hard time. I had no illusions left to lose, and I wanted to believe in something.

I am not a sucker, not often, anyway. But what can you do when you grew up with Pete Seeger and dinner table conversation about homelessness and a man in a suit uses his podium to say this:

I have walked into courtrooms alone to face an army of corporate lawyers with all the money in the world. I have walked off the Senate elevator and been besieged by an army of corporate lobbyists. And I have beaten them over and over again.

But let me tell you one thing I have learned from my experience — you cannot deal with them on their terms. You cannot play by their rules, sit at their table, or give them a seat at yours. They will not give up their power — you have to take it from them.

Don’t lecture me about speechwriters and strategists. I’ve been paid good money to put inspiring words in other people’s mouths. I know how this game goes, and even in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I believed.

Which is why, without telling anyone, I decided to enroll in the Democratic party for the first time in my life, a fact that might amuse those peg me as a rank-and-file lefty. Since my 18th birthday, which I celebrated by going to City Hall and registering to vote, I’d clung to my flanneled-Yankee Independent status on principle, even though it meant forgoing Maine’s lively caucus proceedings. I was in New York in 2006-07, so I mailed in my request for a change of party and an absentee ballot for the Maine Democratic caucus.

While I waited for my registration to be confirmed I spent a lot of time in debate with my politically-engaged friends, all of whom were squarely in the tank for Barack Obama. I stayed up late and woke up early to read speeches and policy reports, sending emails with side-by-side comparisons of health care plans, arguing and defending the man I wanted to be president — although, see above re: illusions, I knew full well he’d lose.

I could not afford make large contributions, much as I wanted to; New York rent and student loans and a useless freelancers’ health insurance policy brought my balance to zero each month. I did, however, hear that a family friend was doing some sort of organizing work with the Edwards campaign, slated to be on the ground in New Hampshire and then South Carolina, and I began investigating the logistics of a bus to Greenville. Work commitments made it impossible. I decided it was all right: the most important thing would be my vote in the Maine caucus.

South Carolina Democrats voted on January 26, nominating Barack Obama by a decisive margin. Four days later I sat on the floor and cried harder than I could remember crying over anything in years, and somehow I didn’t even have the presence of mind to feel embarrassed. John Edwards looked tired, there in New Orleans. He stumbled over a few words and squinted in the wind. He waved and it was over. I sat on the floor for a long time after the newscast moved on to whatever else was happening that afternoon.

The next day I received confirmation of my enrollment in the Maine Democratic Party.

I wish I could tell you how I felt when news of the affair broke. I think for a long time I felt nothing, on purpose. Very few people knew the extent of my emotional commitment to his primary campaign, and for the most part they were tactful. I made careful show of shrugging, but I found myself reading every article, looking at the photos, watching the videos. The story was squalid. His attempt at spin was even more so. The knives came out but for once I couldn’t muster a word, no scorn, no outrage, no jokes. The whole thing seemed small and exhausting.

Eventually I realized that what I felt was resignation, that and the cold slap of inevitability. I had been foolish. I chose to believe in an idea of someone, an idea of someone’s ideals — a politician, no less. I knew better. It’s a lesson I won’t forget again and for that, more than anything, I’m grateful.

*Full disclosure: I did, in the end, joke about it. But not well.

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 moose wandered through downtown Fairfield, though I’m sure it’s happened (we have those Moose Next X Miles signs for a reason). But of all the adjectives I might use to describe Colby* students, ‘barefooted’ would not make the top hundred. It’s damned hard to play beer pong or drive up to the condo at Sugarloaf if you’re not wearing shoes, or boots. Or sandals and socks, in some cases.

Central Maine is a place where Souter-style New England understatement and back-country flannel folksiness come together. Like the other Mainer old salts who line up outside before every 5 a.m. opening and hunch over their coffee and doughnuts until closing, Ann and John are at once the friendliest people you’ve ever met and the most reserved.

Dear heavens. Let us parse. Souter, okay, fine, he’s an exemplary Yankee jurist. But for the love of Bean, is it impossible to write a paragraph about central Maine without falling back on ‘flannel’ as a descriptor? Why is the equally-ubiquitous chamois always overlooked? As for ‘folksiness,’ I can’t even- this is maybe one thing I have in common with Southerners ex. Atlanta, a lifetime of being haunted by this word, this cheap nonsense. Ma and Pa in their dungarees. The ol’ red pickup truck. Haw haw, ayuh. No, ‘folksiness’ isn’t just redaction. At best it’s a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation. At worst it’s a form of calculated dismissal.

And ‘old salts’? If there are any aging sea cap’ns in Kennebec County, an hour or more from the coast and a full two and a half hours from anything that could even remotely be called Down East, well, I haven’t seen them. Perhaps they swam upriver and got disoriented before they could spawn? (I am flashing back, now, to a television report last summer in which a national newsman stood on one of Portland’s piers in his crisp navy windbreaker, describing the scene here ‘Down East’ now that our daily paper is on the rocks. He was only off by 200 miles and a million more.)

In conclusion: I get far too worked up about these things, the Atlantic’s new food blog is an excellent read, and the doughnuts are just as good as they say.

*Full disclosure: I attended Colby for a semester and a half in 1997-98. But I never once walked the campus without shoes.

Via the local paper, obvs.

Quick, what does it all mean?

[T]his makes the GOP Senate caucus that much more conservative, and could perhaps put pressure on the Maine Republicans to consider following suit, especially Olympia Snowe who may not want to remain a forgotten member of a deep and long-lasting Southern-based minority.

Can we try that in headline form?

Snowe says GOP isn’t ‘encouraging’ of ‘moderates,’ will she follow Specter?

Once more, with a pretend British chap:

Second, I bet I’m not the only one who’s wondering how Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are taking this news. The two Maine GOP senators are now more isolated inside their increasingly rightwing and increasingly regional caucus. Are they – especially Snowe, who’s really more liberal than even a couple of the Senate’s Democrats – now asking themselves why they’re still Republicans? You bet they are. It wouldn’t be the most shocking thing in the world to see one or both of them follow.

Beleagured sigh. Listen, flatlanders, here’s how it works. Snowe and Collins sometimes go against the GOP party line because if they didn’t they would lose their seats in a heartbeat, not because Maine wants more progressive representation necessarily, but because the only thing Maine hates more than a RINO or a DINO is a yes-woman or a yes-man. Our problem with legislators who “toe the party line” has nothing to do with the “party,” and everything to do with the “toeing.”

While I’m at it, a common misperception is that Maine’s Senators are popular, and this misperception has spread because they keep winning elections with large chunks of the vote. EH. It’s more like, we are used to having them around. Name recognition goes a long way up here, plus, competent people keep not running against them. And! Having two occasionally-semi-progressive-ish Republican Senators gives us twice as much to complain about: they are either too liberal or too conservative or both at the same time. Complaining about elected officials is our favorite sport, better even than shooting things or fishing for things, and frankly, I sometimes think we keep re-electing Team Purple-ish because we have so many years of memories, such a rich backlog of references, with which to assault them in the comment section of the local newspaper’s idiotically-designed website.

All of which is to say, your speculation is unfounded.

I can still tell you how to subway from 6th Ave. and 13th St. to Clinton Hill.

I still can’t remember how to parallel park.

This time next year these things will probably be reversed.