J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.

PHB

My photo
Brooklin, Maine, United States
We own a 1975 GMC Sierra Grande 15 in Maine and a 1986 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 10 in West Texas. Also a pair of 1997 Volvo 850 wagons. Average age in the fleet is 28 years--we're recycling. I've published 3 novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (2006), THE O'BRIENS (2012), and CARRY ME (2016). Also 2 short story collections: NIGHT DRIVING(1987) and TRAVELLING LIGHT (2013). More of my literary life is at www.peterbehrens.org I was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. I'm an adjunct professor at Colorado College and in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. In 2015-16 I was a Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Autoliterate office is in Car Talk Plaza in Harvard Square, 2 floors above Dewey Cheatem & Howe. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTOLITERATE DAILY EMAIL by hitting the button to the right.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Japanese Teenagers, Eliot Cutler, Franco-Maine, & The Blue Hill Fair


If you read E.B. White's Charlotte's Web as a kid, or read it to your kid, you already know something about the Blue Hill Fair, which happens on Labor Day Weekend. Maine's largest pig and largest cow are usually on display. Some of Maine's largest people too. Apart from  agricultural exhibits and the draft horse pulling competition, which are wonderful, there's a tawdry midway, and dozens of booths selling fried, wildly overpriced food. Kids of a certain age love the fayuh but the whole operation feels like a scam to me. The last time I remember money pouring out so fast was an afternoon walking around Paris. Eliot Cutler, the "Independent" candidate for Maine governor, was trolling the Fair, doing the meet & greet. He's a smart and accomplished man, but I'm afraid he's going to do the same thing he did 4 years ago--by splitting the Democrat vote he could throw the race to our Tea Party Gov, Paul Lepage. Lepage is a smart pol but wildly unthoughtful, with a lot of terrible instincts.  It's painful to watch a man as intelligent as Lepage willing himself into ignorance. It's all about anger, I guess. Some of it ethnic. There's a lot of buried anger in Franco-Maine. See my post on Biddeford. Lepage is from Lewiston, another Canadien mill town with some bad memories.  Anyway, here in North Brooklin we're hoping Mike Michaud, who has been our (Democrat) Congressman for the 2nd District, wins the governorship in November.

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