Muchness is defined by Merriam-Webster as "the quality or state of being great in quantity, extent, or degree. — much of a muchness. : very much the same." And so it is on June 10th in Portland.

Will South Portland soon become a hotbed of Hollywood-like activity? Maine is a visual paradise—from its billboard-less highways to attractively zig-zagging coastline (which, when you stretch it to full length, measures longer than California’s). No wonder people came here to film flicks like In The Bedroom and The Cider House Rules. But moviemakers have mostly spelunked into our territory to get good film footage, then headed elsewhere to complete the project.

Spring in Maine is a fleeting pleasure. Wedged as it so often is between a just too long winter and an always spectacular summer. A blush of cherry blossoms on Brackett Street near Maine Medical Center this week reminded me to enjoy what I find today because it surely will be different tomorrow. Like the mothers of young children we see tender blossoms yield quickly to riotous foliage. We are grateful to begin again...and again.

by: Chad Frisbie

We have talked before on this blog about how competition and criticism are the hallmarks of truly creative communitie

On February 18, The New York Times ran a story about how Maine’s Own Organic Milk, a collective of 10 Maine dairy farms that formed in early 2010, is struggling to stay viable selling its slow-pasteurized, organic milk.

The opening of Base Camp Gallery last week in Portland was as much about the fact of a new alternative art space as it was about the work that was shown. Everybody there was clearly having a good time and it seemed to me that the real art at play here was social.

One of the livelier points of the drive along coastal U.S. 1, at least until a couple years back, was an old farm in the town of Warren that appeared to be the forward operations post for a platoon of Marines. Actually there was only one guy in there, with three generations of his family, but he made a pretty good show of it.

The gang at the emergency room were a cheerful bunch. They bustled purposefully about, hooking me up to monitors and making polite but probing enquiries into deep recesses of my personal history and jamming me with needles into which they dribbled some actually quite pleasant drug. It wasn't how I'd planned to spend the evening but really it wasn't so bad.

On a rainy Sunday in March, the heavy doors of Portland's New Church welcomed the boisterous sounds of shape note singing. The tradition originated in New England and is now experiencing a regional resurgence, having been sung mostly in the American South for the past century. Rachel James spent the afternoon speaking with folks at the New Church.