I Doubt The Blanket Has Smallpox On It

Every once in a great while, something comes into your line of sight that renews your faith in humanity, at least a little, for a little while.

I’m forced to read the local newspapers. They are uniformly and intensely stupid and useless, written by illiterates, edited by dullards, and read by… well, me, now. Yikes. I’m constantly amazed that my fellow citizens read the newspaper or watch the television and think it’s hard information. It has no more fellowship with information than a ransom note assembled out of words clipped from a magazine resembles a novel, and has much the same purpose: A demand for money by lowbrow losers for holding a hostage for a short period. The hostage in this case is a siamese twin consisting of you and whatever they’re writing about.

When I read a newspaper, I don’t believe the writers would tell the truth if they knew it, wouldn’t recognize the truth if it bit them on the leg, and don’t know how to read and write well enough to accurately portray facts in a useful format anyway. But other than that, you can find out all sorts of things from the newspapers. I found out there are still people in this world that are kind to one another, even at some risk and inconvenience to themselves, and despite the fact that the object of their kindness might need kindness a lot more than they deserve it.

FARMINGTON — A resident of Spruce Lane called police early Sunday to
report a man sleeping in the foyer of their house, police officer Wayne
Drake said.

The resident was concerned for his safety and covered him with a blanket as he slept, Drake said.

Drake added that when he arrived the man was still intoxicated. The
man had also been in a fight the night before and had a black-eye and a
ripped T-shirt. He didn’t remember entering the residents’ house or the
fight, Drake said. (Farmington Homeowner Issues Blanket Pardon To Intruder from The Rumford Meteor)

The homeowner didn’t want the police to arrest the fellow, and they didn’t. They drove him home.

The tedious imbeciles that put out the Lewiston Sun Urinal, the original home of the story, don’t know how to connect any dots but imaginary ones, so I will; in the not-too-distant past an elderly woman was murdered in a home invasion in Farmington. It was in their own paper so they probably didn’t read it. I know by the spelling and homonym warts I regularly see sprinkled about their paper the editors don’t read it. Or more amusingly, maybe they do, and it starts out even worse than it ends up.

For the most part, there isn’t much in the way of crime in Maine. The murder of a stranger is a very rare item around here. An unsolved one is even rarer. But someone in Farmington saw a very disreputable-looking person asleep in their foyer in the middle of the night and was kind to them, because they looked like they needed it.

Maine is not like Massachusetts, where I moved from. I am trying to get the hang of living around here still. You can walk into the Wal-Mart here with nothing but a little cash and buy a shotgun, for instance, something I couldn’t do in Massachusetts. One aisle over is blankets. People here have both, and use both, as the situation warrants.

I think I like it here.

(Read The Meteor, or you won’t know what it says)