FESTIVAL/VORTEX

A festival, but Center for Cultural Exchange calls for $30 to walk partitioned segments of Congress Street, public property, they’ve no right to sequester. "Hey, Bob!" I hear, echoing from under one of the alcove porticoes of the museum façade. It’s Kyung, my friend & fellow worker from the factory in Freeport, whom I know something about, including the fact he’s a "Route Kid" from the seventies in Korea, where parents, so poor, put children up for "adoption" dropping them off at the side of the road. Kyung’s a twin with tattoo carved into his arm, gist of which is: Twin Peaks Reaching toward Sky Staring at Earth.

Came back, drank a cup or two. I know, I know, the kid’s living out of his car, also writing his life story. That’s all I can help him with: homemade tomato soup, wolf fish, secrets of writing like being the most open person possible, living in the moment, starting from where you are, & the absolute Now Walter Benjamin distinguishes from Presence, giving the former precedence in its ability to draw the past, present, & future into the heady vortex of the word.

Letter/poem by Robert Gibbons, Portland

NEAL LIVES

I just wanted you to know that your story on Neal Dow (see "Neal Dow’s Ghost," Aug 26, by Sara Donnelly) helped me make a connection in the present to the history of the past in a powerful way.

I am teaching history on special assignment here at Falmouth High, and read it with interest, and then while cleaning out a closet to get ready for the onslaught, I found an original copy of the autobiography of Neil Dow (Reminiscences of Eighty Years) published in 1898! I placed it on one of those plastic book displays with your article on the board over it, and Neal Dow lives again.

So thank you very much — field trip, anyone?

Karen Franciose, Falmouth

AW, SHUCKS

I very much enjoyed your Phoenix article (see "Neal Dow’s Ghost," Aug 26, by Sara Donnelly). I think you caught a facet of Maine Historical Society and independents like Matt [Barker] quite deftly. Good work. Nice insight.

As for the "Neil" in the headline, we all know how that happens in the layout and nothing’s to do with the writer, since it became "Neal" in text. We have all had our share of Edgar Alan (sic) Poe type banners.

I learned from your essay, which is my measure of a substantive and well as enjoyable article.

Bill Barry, Maine Historical Society