"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
One of the pleasures of travel is reading the local newspaper. In the Portland Press-Herald last week the lead stories included Sen. Collins' unguarded remarks on the John Edwards matter, and Mainers in the Olympics, including the former waitress with the New Wave hair dye in the inaugural women's steeplechase, and the two rowers, one of them the great-great-granddaugher of Charles Dana Gibson, who went on to win gold in the women's eight. In Mark Trail (an Alley Oop-like perennial of the out-of-town comic section), Cherry and Kelly were trapped in a cave with a mother mountain lion and her cubs.
Now comes word the Press-Heraldmight close. Maine's largest city without a daily paper? Hard days, indeed, in the newspaper business.
* * *
"Callimachus," a newspaper copy editor who has blogged pseudonymously at Done Without Mirrors, saw ominous portents in the newsroom tea leaves and has shuttered his site.
In the current workplace climate and the likely evolution of the political scene both inside and outside the newsroom, it would be extremely unwise for me to continue blogging, even anonymously.
This is a loss. His essays were as good as any college history seminar, and better than most anything you'll find on the standard newspaper op-ed page.
* * *
Maine notes:
* You can enact your own version of Ghost Hunters in the dark narrow passages of this gun battery at Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth.
* If you sit down the left field line at Hadlock Field, there is a chance you will dodge a foul ball or three, and also that you may run across Llama Robbo at the Shipyard Ale stand, which the Irish Elk last week had the good fortune to do. Robbo is indeed a real person, and it was a pleasure toasting the Sea Dogs and the blogosphere with him.
* * *
On the radio:
Andrea Carroll, 18-year-old soprano, sings "Poor Wand'ring One" from Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.
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