I was just a young punk rattling around Camden when Charlie Cawley swept into town in the early 1990s, suddenly transforming my hometown from a former mill town-turned-tourist community into a color-coordinated, idealized seaside community, complete with granite curbs and period lamp posts. At the time, Cawley represented everything I disliked in the world: arrogance, greed, and a seemingly unstoppable ability to get whatever he wanted. Never mind that he took an old woolen mill that by all rights

I have a confession to make: I've always really loved fog. I know fog is bad for windjammers and campgrounds and all sorts of Maine businesses, and so I feel guilty about liking misty weather. But to me, fog is mystery. It's Sherlock Holmes and the "Wolf in the Fold" episode of Star Trek. It's lighthouses and ghost stories and the smell of the sea. But most of all, fog to me is quintessential Maine. Fog reminds me of places I have lived here: Scarborough and Portland and Rockland.

My wife

I suppose I'm one of the few people who consider being called a tree-hugger to be a note of approval. I pocket cigarette butts and other garbage I find littering the trails on Mount Battie, and I do what I can to keep my yard and community as green as they can be. I also recycle, which in Camden means separating plastic (colored and translucent each get their own bin, clear plastic goes in the trash), cardboard (can't put the corrugated in with the boxboard!) and of course making sure the aluminum

On good days, the fact that Maine is essentially one big small town is part of what makes living here so special. The person you meet at the Sea Dog in Bangor may well be the same person you bump into two days later at Target in South Portland. But that same closeness can be especially difficult when things don't go as planned. Last night as I was heading home, for instance, I was catching up on the day's headlines on Maine Public Broadcasting when an item came across the radio about a plane