from the album Have I Faded From Your Mind?

MUSIC FOR MARCH 2025 'COKE STREET' Four decades ago, Portland’s Old Port Exchange was the go-go ’80s writ small and embellished with seagulls.

MUSIC FOR FEBRUARY 2025 'I NEVER DRINK ALONE' When my band Day for Night performs “I Never Drink Alone,” I like to joke that it’s the most depressing...

MUSIC FOR JANUARY 2025 'BLUE SHADOWS' (encore presentation) First posted as the Song of the Month! for December 2022, “Blue Shadows” certainly qualifies as a Yuletide number — although, as a song about lovers disappearing without a word, it may serve better to end your holiday party than to launch it. But that melancholy theme

MUSIC FOR DECEMBER 2024 'LOOKING FOR THAT CHRISTMAS FEELING' Digitally colorized in later years, the image above started out as a black & white rendering of a storm dumping snow on Portland, Maine, in 1980. I took it with an ancient Kodak Brownie that stayed in my Volkswagen Squareback for just such opportunities. I was

from the album Why Why Why?

from the album Why Why Why?

MUSIC FOR NOVEMBER 2024 'MR. SPECIAL' Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Red-scare monger shown above, was a great example of the personality type celebrated (or something) in “Mr. Special.” The brains behind that outfit, though, was McCarthy’s chief counsel during the 1954 Army–McCarthy hearings, Roy Cohn. And once Cohn has been mentioned, who should come to

from the album Obsessive Christmas Disorder

Opening another front in Bates’ endless battle against marine clay, workers began laying a new FieldTurf playing surface at Leahey Field this week.

MUSIC FOR OCTOBER 2024 'SOMEPLACE ELSE' The narrator never can say goodbye as Day for Night performs a 2021 lament about a lover who moved on to more exciting things (and, apparently, people). Recorded in performance on Sept. 21, 2024. Doug Hubley and Gretchen Schaefer, guitars and vocals. Hear “Someplace Else” below! Buy it on

‘TROUBLE TRAIN’ Signs along the Androscoggin River in Brunswick and Topsham, Maine, warn that operations at a nearby dam could cause the water to rise suddenly. A good metaphor for the often unpredictable nature of problems, the signs started me…

Arriving at Russell Street Field on Sept. 16, we watched with interest as a young man set up electronic equipment on the brand-new surface of the soccer field. Our first thought was that he was preparing to broadcast via satellite the news about the…

‘LAST CALL WALTZ’ Here’s a plain country song for a sultry summer night. It’s also a nod to an old country-music tradition, as exemplified by “Tennessee Waltz” and “New Partner Waltz”: the waltz of romantic betrayal. This time around, though, the…

Since Aug. 19, Bates students have been sleeping, socializing, and preparing for the new year in the college’s newest campus residence, now open for business following a renovation that began last December. With fresh paint, stylish furniture, and a…

Others may look ahead to summertime eagerly anticipating beach trips, camping, cookouts, etc., but for Campus Construction Update, summer means just one thing: facility projects at Bates. Here’s how the summer went down, CCU-style: Campus…

Begun last year, a facilities project with a powerful resonance for Bates people — a resonance both historic and literal — was completed last week. Since July 30, a new mechanism has been tolling the noon hour every day on the venerable Hathorn Hall…

MEDLEY: ‘(WAITING FOR A) WESTBOUND TRAIN–JUST A MOMENT IN THE NIGHT’ Trains have rolled through my songwriting since 1981’s “Shortwave Radio,” and the two songs offered as a medley for my July 2024 “Song of the Month!” share that motif, as well as a…

Bates’ recent architectural adventures, as longtime readers of Campus Construction Update know, have emphasized bringing daylight indoors. We’ve seen it in new construction, such as the Bonney Science Center with its two-story glass-walled Beacon and…

MUSIC FOR JUNE 2024 ‘ROBIN TIME (NIGHT LOGIC)’ For robins themselves, it’s robin time whenever they want it to be. But for me, robin time occurs in late spring, specifically around 3 o’clock in the morning. It’s the interlude when night is on the…