I was half listening to TV coverage of the shootings in Lewiston when I heard the phrase "weapons of war" from Jared Golden. I looked up to see him publicly change his position on banning assault rifles. May it be a harbinger of change in Maine and the whole country. No other country suffers these horrific killings. It's a national insanity. Democrats tend to view issues in terms of policy solutions: guns are a public health issue that can be dealt with through policy change. Republicans see killings as defects in human character, matters of the heart, and therefore not solvable. If the problem is directly tied to your funding, you will not seek solutions. Instead you will make up illogical and nonsensical explanations and get your people to parrot them.

The new handmaid speaker of the house is a creepy little theocrat from Shreveport. Britten remembers him from high school. His affect screams closeted gay man; national exposure will drag all the skeletons from his closet if he lasts long enough for that to happen.

Meanwhile back at the happy place, we are having a book sale/obstacle course/craft thingy on a 75 degree day at the end of October.

• -- Here is the most interesting construction project in town. Looking forward to seeing it finished with some stained glass windows and animals peeking out and holiday lights.
• -- Just put three flyers up for library events and all of them are the work of volunteers. All I have to do is make flyers and push them out onto social media.
• -- Watched Dune the other night and it was just like a continuation of the news with the stupid war in Israel which no one will win and which will cause untold suffering on all sides. We're on Arrakis and there are no Fremen.
• -- $4500 later maybe I will be able to hear the selectmen mumbling in the big room with terrible acoustics. Maybe I'll understand what Mac with his scottish accent is saying.
• -- Would it be good to belong to a book club just for English majors or retired English teachers? I think so.
• -- Books whose central character is a bot or an AI are best narrated by that character; otherwise the writer has to deal with pronouns for entities that do not have gender. Reading Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden.

Although the reason to go to Monson was to eat at the James Beard award winning restaurant, the Quarry, the real winner of the trip was Monson. With a population of 609 in the 2020 census and the only items of note being that it's on the way to Moosehead and near an AT crossing, it has become an art powerhouse, with galleries and restaurants and the best damn general store in Maine. How does an economic development thing like that happen? Monson is the last town that northbound hikers encounter before embarking on the One-Hundred Mile Wilderness, or the first town southbound hikers encounter after completing it. I've always supposed that it was the constant informational stream of People From Away that made the little town more aware of possibilities, but actually it was a huge infusion of money from the Libra Foundation, founded by wife of the co-inventor of the microchip, that bought most of the downtown buildings and created an art residency and related things. Here is the whole story. Kind of like how Colby money is transforming downtown Waterville.

In another item of economic development and saving a local resource, the movie theater in Belfast that was closed and for sale has been bought by some people who could afford to buy it, but it will be run by a new nonprofit. I'm thinking that means a part-time director and a lot of volunteers. That is a model for saving a resource that could work for our great small theater in Unity that is currently owned by the college and closed down. The theater was created by Burt Clifford, then passed to Unity Foundation, then given to the college. The campus is for sale but, like the park, I'm not sure the theater could be sold. It could be gifted to the town and run by a new nonprofit in the director-plus-volunteers model. That would be a huge draw for the town.

The fancy restaurant with fixed price for many courses is not really my thing. My bank account and peasant digestive system is not built for it. But I do like the adventure and social part of it, the surprises (balsamic pearls, garlic crisps) and analysis of each course. We stayed in a startup airbnb with no reviews because there has to be some questionable part of an adventure. The overgrown front yard out of Edgar Allen Poe and neighboring goats and chickens was unnerving to my city visitors, but the inside was fine, ok rustic, but fine. At home the tail end of a hurricane brought us 3.5 inches of rain.