I recently read that as we grow older, we are only older on the outside; inside we are forever young. In reflection of that adage, I wholeheartedly agree. As I approach my 89th birthday on Aug. 25, it seems only yesterday that I was a barefoot boy with a mop of blonde curls and blue […]

It’s the winter of 1979 and I’m sitting in a booth in some godforsaken little diner outside of Windham, and he says it again — for the umpteenth time — by way of introducing the next thing he feels like talking about. “As a matter of little or no interest …,” he says, before going […]

What is a “Real Mainer”? My initial response to that question is that many of us have been and still are survivors and strivers. What else do you call a man who went into the woods with an ax and a rifle and made a living? How about the ones who went to sea, built […]

I’m a Mainer. I have lived my entire life in two Maine towns. I married my hubby here and we raised our family here and hopefully will return to dust here. I go to bean “suppahs,” make whoopie pies and needhams, eat “original” Italian sandwiches, red hot dogs, lobster rolls with mayo and fried clams […]

I wanted to go to my Aunt Flavie’s dairy farm to work with my cousins. My cousins were there to meet us when we arrived. As my mother drove off I instantly became homesick. My cousin told me that we had to go to bed early because we had to milk twice daily; we were […]

It was the 1980s in Camden. I was a newly single mom. Often on the weekends my boys would go to their dad’s house. It was hard to get used to their being gone, a desolate feeling. Having their dad in their lives was of huge importance, but I was not from Maine, and I […]

When I was young, I realized that I had a lot of friends whose parents were from Maine. And most of the time, their grandparents and great-grandparents had also been born and raised in Maine. My family was not like this. Both of my parents had moved to Maine for work and for its beauty. […]