In Henry Beston’s eloquent classic of nature writing, The Outermost House, he worried about the decline in birds he was seeing on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. Even in the 1920s when he spent his year on the Beach, humans were adversely impacting birds and other parts of nature. Beston identified a “new” danger: […]
The trouble with taxes is that no one likes to pay them. We want the services of government (good roads, public schools, national defense, a functioning court system, etc.) but would rather that someone else pay for these things. Yet taxation is necessary in modern society. Taxes are needed to fund what economists call public […]
For the New Year I have been reading again many of my old favorite works of fiction. Re-reading good books is a pleasure. Included in my list are things like Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief (the great Canadian novel?) and John LeCarre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (every time I read the […]
The new administration in Washington is filled with climate change deniers. They reject the consensus among scientists that human behaviors emitting greenhouse gases contribute significantly to climate change. The reality — climate change is part of a larger problem better known as global change. Over 9 billion humans, many living relatively sumptuous lifestyles like ours […]
One of the first blogs I did for Stirring the Pot was “Maine Roads Stink.” The blog confronted our ambivalence in Maine about how and by how much we fund transportation infrastructure. We complain about roads and bridges, particularly during mud season, but we want someone else to pay. In particular, we fail to ask […]
The new administration in Washington continues to limit immigration to the U.S.A. with policies questioning the suitability of people from various countries to become Americans. This made me think of immigrants in my own family. In 1913 my grandfather, William Oliver Anderson, immigrated to Massachusetts from Glasgow, Scotland. He made a career in the shade-grown […]
Mainers are proud of our forest heritage and we often claim to be the “most forested” state in the Union. Those forest lands are best thought of as a mosaic of uses and ownership types. We have industrial forest lands owned by corporations, families, and various investment schemes like Real Estate Investment Trusts. Some lands […]
Our gardens are less ambitious undertakings than when we were younger. We still have some raised beds with sun gold tomatoes, carrots, radishes, and several different herbs. The Brewer farmer’s market now makes up the bulk of our local summer and fall vegetables. This year the raised beds got put to bed mostly in October; […]
One of the fun stories from Maine this year to help take our minds off natural disasters, Presidential elections, and ill-behaved Olympic athletes is the tale of Wessie. In case you have been living under a rock, Wessie is the affectionate name given to the large snake reported in the Presumpscot River in Westbrook. Reported […]
The idea of what makes a Mainer intrigues me. Years ago I wrote about authenticity in Maine literature in an essay about E.B. White and R.P.T. Coffin called Two Pigs from Maine. More recently, my colleagues and I in UMaine’s School of Economics wrote about survey research we did on environmental values of Maine citizens. […]
