Reading Time: 5 minutes Over the last 20 years, Shamus Alley — artist, advertising specialist, veteran web designer — has created a colorful collage of experiences, reflective of every place he’s been. Leaving his childhood home in Manchester, Maine, Alley’s adventurous spirit and gut instincts led him first to downtown Portland, then to New York City (twice), then Los…
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Reading Time: 4 minutes When he was 10 years old, Anders Nielsen remembers piling into the family station wagon for a Christmas Eve trip to see his Danish relatives in Portland. These were notorious hurly-burly events, his father Erik being one of seven children—six of whom were boys. With “millions” of boisterous kids bouncing about, the holiday feast would…
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Reading Time: 4 minutes In the summer of 2013, Sarah Whitling loaded her beat-up ‘98 Honda Civic to the gills to drive across the country—from Eugene, Oregon, back home to Maine. The newly-minted grad student—who’d just earned a master’s in arts administration from the University of Oregon—soon found herself driving along the nation’s highways, camping on the side of…
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Reading Time: 4 minutes Like many late-stage baby boomers growing up on suburban Long Island in the 1960s, Matt Schwach abided by the rules set forth by his parents, Dot and Sherwood, and his teachers at Boardman Junior High School. That was, until he discovered Hunter S. Thompson. For a guy who learned how to read through the world…
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Reading Time: 4 minutes Cherie Scott’s earliest memories of living in Mumbai, India, are of her family’s small one-bedroom apartment—specifically, the kitchen. She’ll never forget the smells of cumin, cardamom and coriander, or the freshly baked pao and bottled milk delivered at the door. Living in a neighborhood filled with her Hindu, Muslim and Parsi-speaking neighbors, her life was…
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Reading Time: 4 minutes There’s a saying in the performing arts to “shoot for the stars,” but bass-playing Andrew Wright and his Fugazi-inspired band “Red Medicine” never quite achieved lift off during his days touring New England as a student at the University of Maine at Farmington. A versatile musician (he plays everything from banjo to trombone), Wright was…
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Reading Time: 4 minutes Growing up in Fryeburg, Maine, Emily Holden found herself in a world where her neighbors were her relatives and almost everyone was an entrepreneur working out of their home—be it as a hairdresser, a seamstress making costumes for opera, or in her father’s case, an attorney. Holden joked that her first “legal” job was at…
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Reading Time: 4 minutes Whether the life details of Jody Robbins seep out through his creative writing—or through thousands of articles published over more than two decades—he’s got a knack for finding a captive audience. Growing up in Hardinsburg, Kentucky, his early days filled harvesting tobacco and hauling hay, Robbins found his love of literature on his family’s bookshelf….
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Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s a corner of the world known by the Iroquois as “Ska-na-wis,” or “Long Swamp.” It was the home of a legendary band of horse thieves known as the Loomis Gang, who stole steeds throughout Oneida County. In 1875 it was known as the “Hops Capital of the World.” George Eastman, father of the Kodak…
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Reading Time: 4 minutes When Halloween came to Trueline last fall, the workday was punctuated by the click-clack of high heels echoing down the hallway, worn by a man wearing Buffalo plaid and wielding an axe. That “lumberjack” happened to be the new writer David Harry, a Monty Python aficionado, avid gardener and former reporter. And like the song…
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