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.

But the credit card is on lockdown, and airplanes are expensive, and frankly, you don’t want to catch the swine flu. So you do the next best thing:

You obtain a candle and make some long-distance wishes on a maple frosted.

Here’s hoping they all come true, eh?

Hark, a seagull. Or a rat in a seagull costume.

Fun fact: In olden times, banner ads were made out of bricks.

The city of Belfast has strong feelings re: literature, and is not afraid to say so via magnetic poetry on a sidewalk board.

The city of Belfast is also rich in history. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Watch the Frederick Wiseman documentary, if you are interested in a more recent perspective.

Fun fact: Putting elephants atop cinemas is a festive Maine tradition. We switched from gazelles in the mid-1940s.

Here are some guys in makeshift kilts launching a rowboat. Another festive tradition.

Here is why I turn up my nose, literally and metaphorically, at roses from florists.

Maine is not really all that great. The black flies are terrible. The mosquitoes are worse. We got eight feet of snow last winter. I saw a pothole the size of my car just the other day. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice for a visit, but you don’t want to leave the city and move here.

Also the natives are shifty.

Here you go.

I have already told him that they need to move this business to Tumblr and get a book deal, stat.

…identify ‘em all and I’ll buy you a hot dog and a box of sparklers.

The task: Turn this spam headline into something entertaining: Police end funereal striptease acts.
The format: Short story, comic, photo essay, pop tune, whatever, as long as it is bloggable
The prize: A box of awesome from tryharderland sent straight to your door!
The deadline: Friday, July 3

Want to enter? Of course you do. Go here.

Item! Tri-named virtuoso John Dermot Woods has a sweet offer for those who pre-order his forthcoming novel by July 15.
Details go a little something like this:

My novel (with drawings), The Complete Collection of people, places & things, is being published by BlazeVOX Books next month. To celebrate we’re offering the book for $12 with free shipping (that’s 25% off) to everyone who pre-orders by July 15. AND, the first 50 people who order will also receive:
- a signed and numbered silkscreen print, to commemorate the book’s release
- a personalized copy with a signed, limited edition book plate

Take advantage of John’s generosity right here.

Item! I once played a newsboy in a production of Irwin Shaw’s Bury the Dead. My only line was “Extry, extry, read all about it!”
Delivered with gusto, and a little tweed cap.

ps. Mary, did you wake up this morning and start googling “rock opera” + “Lehman Brothers” “Bear Stearns,” almost before the coffee started brewing? MAYBE. POSSIBLY. Not telling.

If you ever find yourself hungry in Lennoxville, PQ, be advised that “Jerry’s Special Chicken Sandwich” at Jerry’s, which sits on the right-hand corner just after the beer hall, consists of the following: a processed breaded and fried chicken patty, crackling hot; one slice tomato; two slices iceberg lettuce; three small strips of bacon; and a demure schmear (this is not a word in French Canada, I know) of mayonnaise, all on a sesame bun toasted within an inch of its life. It will cost you $3.95 Canadian and it is delicious.

By that point you’re not far from Sherbrooke, which feels simultaneously like a frontier city and a university town and a manufacturing hub and as far as I can tell is all of the above. The girls outside the convenience stores have restless eyes, they’ve already plotted their escape. If you are from New England the rest of the drive will feel familiar-yet-alien and you will notice that the land looks as if a large hand had lifted Western Maine and tugged its edges, spreading it out, giving the hills more space. The barns lack the distinctive roofs of La Beauce to the east, but the houses are pinker, tidier, giving off an ineffable whiff of something you might be tempted to call European. Depending on your inclinations you may also indulge in the greatest Canadian sport of all (high-speed, competitive driving).

The nice thing about a destination where there isn’t much to do is that there isn’t much to do except stroll one way and then the other, stop for tea, watch people and dogs strolling one way and then the other, repair to your room and read, rinse, repeat. A decade had passed since we last drove through Magog and in the interim things got built up, more shoppes, more traffic. The finished product is a little ode to various mindless pleasures at the northernmost tip of Lac Memphremagog, and therefore it contains elements of Old Orchard Beach: the line of Harleys at the outdoor bar, the bronzed women in denim bustiers, the men with potbellies and blinking cell phones. But everybody was happy because there was no reason not to be.

At the local version of Reny’s I found these wigs, not to mention provincial flags for hand, home, and car; fleur-de-lis beer cozies and pendants; blue-and-white garlands. I laughed even as I recognized the sentiment. Il y a longtemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai.

The creaky remnants of my French were a source of great shame, and I sheepishly anglais’d my way through most transactions — knowing words but afraid of how they’d sound — until a late-evening stop at an ice-cream parlor put an arrêt to all that. “Non, pardon,” shrugged the teenager at the counter. Not wanting to fail my traveling companion and her dietary restrictions, then, I managed a rendition of “Do you have anything that’s sugar-free / Oh, good, a sugar-free mocha for her / Yes, one scoop / Thanks.” A man looked up from his strawberry sundae and said “You speak French well,” ahh, sir, but you tell me in English….

We dawdled our way out of town, stopping in the shoppes to buy souvenirs to prove we had been there. Which, I suppose, is the same reason we write books and have children and establish historical societies.

But I want to end at the beginning: a notch in the woods between Us and Them, the fiat geography that people obey and deer disregard. For a moment I thought should turn off the music but Britt was singing she’s never been the places she oughta so I let it play, and then the Canadian guard ambled over to ask how we were and where we were headed and was it business or pleasure? (A hearty chuckle to think there was work to be done in the town on our map.) We had our documents and we handed them over for inspection, official-like. No guns, no knives, no pepper spray? Well who knows, ladies, you might meet a bear. And that was that. Window up, accelerator down, the southern edge of the Laurentian shield ahead, Welcome and Bienvenue.

When it finally came the envelope read With a United States passport the whole world is yours. I am a reasonably articulate person but I cannot even begin to tell you how true this feels.

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.

File under: personal heroes.