Articles by Dana Wilde
BOOK REVIEW
Puckerbrush Review literary magazine marks another milestone
PUCKERBRUSH REVIEW, Spring/Summer 2012; edited by Sanford Phippen; University of Maine English Department/Puckerbrush Press Inc., Orono; 144 pages, large format perfect bound, $10. The big literary news revealed in the summer 2012 issue of Puckerbrush Review, the longstanding central organ for UMaine-associated belles lettres and beyond, is that its editor ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Sky lights, far and near
At any given moment on any given evening, the stars and planets seem motionless up there. If you watch for a little while, they all together shift position westerly because the Earth is rotating, but none of them seems to move independently of the others. This is a trick of ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
The search for extraterrestrial life
A couple of years ago the eminent theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking warned that a human encounter with intelligent extraterrestrial beings could be dangerous for us, sort of similar to the way Europeans were dangerous to ancient Native Americans, “which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.” In ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
The fascinations of Titan
Saturn’s moon Titan is so big that on a clear night you can actually see it with high-power binoculars, even though it’s around 800 million miles from us. It’s about 3,200 miles in diameter, bigger than the moon (2,160 miles), bigger even than Mercury (3,032 miles), and looks like a ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Saturn and its disconcerting rings
The Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting around Saturn for about eight years, now, sending back strange pictures pretty much the whole time. There are weird pictures of the planet’s rings, pictures of Saturn backlit by the sun. Bizarre images of some kind of jets streaming from its moon Enceladus. Pictures ...
Some new entries on Maine’s literary scene
The New Guard Literary Review, Vol. 2; Shanna McNair, editor and publisher; Portland, Maine, 2011; 336 pages, trade paperback, $22. It never ceases to amaze me how many writers there are, in contrast to how badly book sales are said to be doing nowadays. The second volume of the New ...
Drug diversion suspected in NH hepatitis C cases
By HOLLY RAMER, The Associated Press on June 13, 2012, at 10:52 p.m.
CONCORD, N.H. — An employee misusing drugs is the most likely cause of an outbreak of hepatitis C among patients who were treated at the Exeter Hospital’s cardiac catheterization lab, New Hampshire’s public health director said Wednesday. “Based on all the testing we’ve done, based on all the interviews ...
BOOK REVIEW
Homespun personal experience shared in a little book
NOT IN A BOOK, poems by Ellen W. Richards, prints by Cynthia A. White; Pothole Press, Bangor, Maine, 2012; 28 pages, saddle stitched, $8. Ellen Richards and Cynthia White’s booklet with the obliquely oxymoronic title “Not in a Book” is a collection of well-expressed, homespun little poems on life’s simplest ...
AMATEUR NATURALIST
Spring reveals small faces in the grass
Once more, the slam-dance of spring is all around us. The green ones have come again from the other world. Again the violets are bowing to the bluets. The rose will soon be tearing off her skirt in the wordless exclamations of June. Red osier dogwood, hawthorn and chokecherry blossoms. ...
BOOK REVIEW
An unwillingness to ride the herd: ‘The Right No: Poems’ by William Hathaway
THE RIGHT NO: POEMS by William Hathaway; Somondoco Press, Shepherdstown, W.Va., 2012; 104 pages, trade paperback, $15. William Hathaway’s house in Surry is empty and awaiting a buyer these days, since last year he fled Maine and its cramped winters for Pennsylvania. This move turned a commonly accepted wisdom on ...
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 ...
Former Bangor YMCA building sold to new dental technology school
LePage delivers instant veto after hospital debt, Medicaid bill passes Senate
‘Knife war’ led to fatal stabbing at Bangor apartments in April, witness says
Bangor man charged with murder, escape from psychiatric hospital found not competent to stand trial
After 27 years, a father continues to search for his daughter, presumed dead
Why is DHHS always asking for more money?
The scramble to fill the 2nd District seat if Mike Michaud runs for governor
Maine GOP disappoints on Medicaid
Goodwin steps down as Brewer High School boys basketball coach
University of Maine hockey job has been offered to former assistant Red Gendron
Bucksport’s Cassidy Adams strikes out 19 in single game
Live Updates: UMaine baseball vs. Binghamton in America East championship round
UMaine trails Binghamton 8-2 in suspended game at America East baseball tourney
Maine Democrats stooped to the governor’s level with TV complaint
Maine’s beer industry continues to brew double-digit growth
‘All That’ actress Amanda Bynes arrested after allegedly tossing bong out apartment window on 36th floor
Maine School of Science and Mathematics alumni drawn to give back to magnet school