No thanks! This documentary clip
> should probably be requisitioned for the Maine Loo Museum?

And, No thanks!

We Alnarians already suffer from otter confusion, and can't make scents of
boundaries as it is.

That sea captain who translated the program from the Polish for you; His
name wasn't Conrad by any chance? No? Stromother Polish sea captain?

I just thought of a sad and curious variation of the facadectomy theme
right down the block from me (25 years in the Maine woods, well, fields &
woods, and I still perceive my geography in NY terms).

Standing on a rise of land, in a field, is what was, when I arrived here,
one of the finest rural vernacular Federal houses in Maine. It looked
peaked, but not at all downtrodden. It was owned by a son of the soil who
had gone off to Longguiland to seek his fortune; which he did with great
success, becoming a muckamuck in a Fortune 500 Corp.

Well, a few years after I arrived here he arrived back, flush with a golden
handshake and rarin' to bring his ancestral home up to contemporary
standards of comfort.

The first thing he did was to completely gut the interior, removing any
remaining traces of splendor, like wide pine floors with original stenciled
patterns, cornice moldings with dentils below...etc.

That was bad, but at least we didn't have to look at it as we drove by.

His real fun began when he carefully removed a fine, large and expressive
Palladian door surround, followed by less careful removal of the wooden
quoins, and all the original moldings, window trim and clapboards from the
exterior of the house. After decking out the joint in marvelously
maintenance-free vinyl, he then replaced the door surround, but not without
first reducing it by about two feet in height AND width.

In one three month rampage he managed to reduce his stature in the
community from Mr. Jones to "that asshole". Even the guys in the
doublewides wanted to string him up.

Bruce