Articles by Dana Wilde
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Lost in space: The hope to walk around on Mars
Every so often in these pages I come staggering out of the woods with twigs in what’s left of my hair and caterpillars angling up my socks and my eyeballs dilated and aiming in different directions with notions of sinister household vehicles or what computer is trying to seize control ...
Prominent Legion priest admits he fathered child
VATICAN CITY — The Legion of Christ religious order, still reeling from 2009 revelations that its late founder was a pedophile who fathered three children, was hit Tuesday by another scandal after its most well-known priest admitted he had fathered a child several years ago. The Rev. Thomas Williams, a ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Notes on the 150th anniversary of Thoreau’s death
April was not as cruel this year as last (when by the 15th there were still 2 feet of snow in the Troy woods, if memory serves). This time winter almost kept us warm, comparatively, with no snow well into January and strange tangles of bare branches growing like botanical ...
BOOK REVIEW
Self-portrait in a post-deconstructionist mirror: Ira Sadoff’s new collection of poems
“True Faith: Poems” by Ira Sadoff; BOA editions Ltd., Rochester, N.Y., 2012; 88 pages, trade paperback, $16. One of the above-ground strands of American poetry that bubbled out of the 1950s and turbulent ’60s was called “confessional.” It specialized in meditations (sometimes direct, sometimes oblique) on specific personal recollection, pain, ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
The philosophy and science of putting clouds in focus
If you give your eyes a little while to get adjusted to the night sky, there soon starts to be more than just great sprays of lights. Here and there, when conditions are right — meaning when the sky is free of scud that gets in the way and of ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
The dogs of April
This is the time of year when winter does not want to let go of its grip, like a mean dog. When the sun is out and the wind is still, it feels like May. But if you speak too soon the wind bites you two months back to the ...
BOOK REVIEW
Wilton poet offers essences of language and feeling
“Four-Alarm House: Poems” by Carolyn Gelland; Main Street Rag Publishing Co., Charlotte, N.C, 2012; 54 pages, trade paperback, $8. Carolyn Gelland’s new collection, “Four-Alarm House,” has a powerful sense of pith. Her approach to poetry is characterized by terseness of language, sharpness of imagery, and persistent hints of the metaphysical. ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Forces of nature
I remember looking up one night decades ago through broken clouds, with icy snow underfoot, and feeling afraid. The kind of fear that creeps along the back of your neck and clogs your throat. It was a star, one pin of light among thousands, unimaginably far away. Huge distances are ...
BOOK REVIEW
A murder mystery from small-town western Maine
“Return to Sender” by Robert M. Chute; Just Write Books, Topsham, Maine, 2011; 154 pages, perfect bound, $19.95. Over in Wyman Falls, Maine, circa 1950, things are normally pretty quiet. In the summer, people enjoy Long Pond, which stretches across the northwestern border with Quebec. In the winter they hunker ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Amateur Naturalist: The Dog Star
You know Orion always comes up sideways. Throwing his leg up over the Dixmont hills he strides into the evening sky and by about 11 p.m. in winter you can see his dog behind him, too, with legs outstretched and a large bright star in its shoulder. Sirius, the star ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Messages in starlight
Just a few points of orientation are enough to find your bearings among the roughly 6,000 stars your eye can pick out in a black sky, clear of city lights. About 300 of the brighter ones have names, such as Polaris, Sirius and Vega. The rest are known to astronomers ...
BOOK REVIEW
The voices of a Camden naturalist
TRANSPORTATION: POEMS by Kristen Lindquist; Megunticook Press, Camden, 2011; 60 pages, trade paperback, $12.95. Kristen Lindquist’s higher-profile persona is development director for the Coastal Mountains Land Trust in Camden, where she also lives, and then underneath that is her life as a seemingly ubiquitous midcoast birder and naturalist, which she ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Orienting yourself to the stars
The key to stargazing is points of orientation. In the beginning, like for all beginnings, you take the simple points first, which in the case of stargazing is simply the brightest stars. There are two ways to use the bright stars, and like practically everything else in the universe, the ...
BOOK REVIEW
The rock steady voice of a former Maine poet laureate
“Impenitent Notes” by Baron Wormser; CavanKerry Press Ltd., Fort Lee, N.J., 2011; 96 pages, trade paperback, $16. Baron Wormser has been possibly the steadiest voice we’ve had over the last 30 years of poetry in Maine. He lives in Vermont now, but served as Maine poet laureate from 2000 to ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
My theory of climatology and the driveway
Two weeks later the snow was gone again. At least, gone from all of central Maine except our house in Troy, where before Friday’s rainsnow there was still an icy crust under the firs and spruces. As noted here before, it has snowed this winter, but the catch has been ...
BOOK REVIEW
The truth about the nightclub music scene, in verse
“Clubland, Second Edition: New and selected poems” by Dave Morrison; Fighting Cock Press/Lulu Press, 2011; 54 pages, trade paperback, $14.95. Dave Morrison’s poetic voice is unusual, at least for our corner of the world. His subject matter — recollections of the past, a favorite in creative writing programs for decades ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
A dark and reckless winter
Winter is a dark and reckless thing, even when it’s half asleep. By which I mean, of course, the lack of snow cover in most of Maine through the middle of last week. At my house in Troy, we’ve had disturbingly mixed feelings about this. In one way, we’ve felt ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
The once and future pole star
The great weight of winter is bearing down on us again. For younger readers this will be little more than an old guy’s grouchy personal mythology stinging their ears. But the more years you’ve lived through the apparently interminable stretch from December to March, the more the cold seems to ...
A coming-of-age novel from midcoast Maine author
‘Patch Scratching’ by Steven D. Powell; illustrated by Thomas Block; Maine Authors Publishing, Rockland, 2011; 288 pages, trade paperback, $14.95. Steven Powell’s first novel “Patch Scratching” is a coming-of-age story about a Maine coast teenager, Jed, who has spent his boyhood having a family cobbled together around him after being ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Winter frontiers
The day before the November snowstorm, a few vestiges of summer dangled like bits of grass and twigs in autumn’s last spider webs. A lone yellow hawkweed, contracted against the cold, looked up out of the grass by the gravel walk. A little viney beast with tiny white blossoms and ...
Glenburn art teacher killed in Friday morning collision in Bangor
Harvard student asked to leave bar for ‘bad behavior,’ not drunkenness
LePage blasts teachers union for endorsing same-sex marriage question
Reporting crime
A people’s revolt in Bar Harbor
Old Town football coach steps down
Perakslis helps UMaine beat Albany; Binghamton next in America East tournament
Orono baseball shuts out archrival Old Town for ninth straight victory
Stony Brook knocks out UMaine to win America East tournament
Aroostook businessman expands company out of home with hit mobile app 7 Little Words
Former CEO of MaineToday Media Richard Connor sued over $250,000 in loans
Small idea launches major project in Hampden
Diversity predicts export success, MIT professor tells Maine audience
New, old methods combine to deter scrap metal thefts in Aroostook
Gary Allan talks with the BDN leading up to Bangor concert
Out of the ashes, Central Street’s garden grows
Mid Coast Actor’s Studio provides new forum for classic plays
Signs lead artist to opportunity
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