Light snow, freezing fog This was a description of the day’s weather in the NOAA forecast that greeted me first thing Monday. Seriously, is this a real thing? I’m still getting used to the polar vortex and now we have freezing fog? It sounds like a weather condition that might exist on one of the […]
Mark LaFlamme
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: Three questions for Christmas
It’s a miracle. A Christmas miracle. Just when I thought I was to come up empty in a search for this week’s column, an epic rant lands in my newsroom telephone mailbox. In this message, a fellow named Daniel poses three questions on the nature of the holidays — questions that I am to research […]
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Talk of the town: I got nothing
Black Friday I’ll bet you that if the dollar store announced Black Friday savings, people would line up outside just like they do at the high-falutin’ stores such as Kmart. I think they should do it just so that the rest of us can witness the marvel of people throwing hands and sweeping legs over […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: On victims and villains
Somewhere out there in the November gloom is a 54-year-old woman about whom most people have forgotten. A few weeks ago, it was a different story. A few weeks ago, she was public enemy No. 1, a woman deemed reckless, negligent and irresponsible by people who used multiple exclamation points to declare her so. A […]
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Talk of the town: Things I see when I’m driving around
Greetings from the other side There’s a sign in front of a business at Lisbon and Pleasant in Lewiston that I’m pretty sure is a link to the afterworld. The sign says “6 cents,” which is clearly a reference to Cole Sear and others who possess a paranormal ability to speak with the dead. In […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: Surviving car safety with clean underwear
There’s been another shooting downtown and I’m on the prowl. I’m using the wife’s car for some reason, but it should be all right. Getting there is half the battle. The easy half, as it turns out. All I wanted to do was quietly park, surreptitiously surveil the area and unobtrusively roam the scene of […]
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Mark LaFlamme: You make me feel like dancing
Let it bleed Well, it finally happened. I made myself bleed by playing the piano. I think we all knew that I would eventually find a way to suffer a piano-related injury. The problem is this: I chew my fingers in full wolf-biter fashion, so when my very excellent piano teacher asked me to attempt […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: Things that used to be things in Lewiston
All I wanted to do was eat my steak and three-cheese tortellini. It was a London broil, I believe, seasoned with garlic and grilled to a just barely warm center. I imagine it was delicious. I don’t know for sure because, as it did most nights during that period, the police scanner began to howl […]
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Talk of the town: It was a night just like this one
Newsroom of the living dead At some point while I was off on vacation, somebody left a cool plant (it came from Party’n With Plants Maine) on my desk. In it, a ghost boy in a news kiosk is surrounded by newspapers held down by leering jack-o-lanterns. Hanging above ghost boy are several news pages, […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn, Mark LaFlamme
Street Talk: How to evade political discourse like a ninja
These are treacherous times. You’re meeting your girlfriend’s parents for the first time. You’re crazy about the lass and want to marry her, but you’ll have to get by Daddy, first. “So,” the old man says, the very moment you get settled in at the dinner table. “This has been some crazy election, hasn’t it?” […]