Maine is my default position. I now spend most of my time in Livermore Falls, boring my grandchildren, hopefully recovering from various foreign ailments, and my ever-diminishing wits.

I'm no longer working (more or less by popular demand) for an international consulting firm. I celebrated my retirement by sailing to Bermuda and back this past summer. In the past 3 decades I have labored in Africa, the Middle East, South America, and that strangest of all foreign capitals, Washington, D.C. I have learned throughout my checkered "career," not to tell Maine jokes to people from away, unless they ask. Unfortunately, a substantial and apparently growing number of Americans are simply no longer smart enough, or focused enough, to make it through a Maine Winter or failing that, a Maine Joke. If you need proof of my Spenglerian views, merely compare a 1948 Readers Digest, with one from the check-out line at Wal-Mart, Anytown, USA.

Formerly married to Miss Kennebunk Dump, I have occasionally held elective office and been rather ignominiously dumped from same, and by the aforementioned Miss KD.