October 21, 1999 – In Which I Make My Student Seminar Presentation

I spend the morning working on my presentation overheads for this afternoon’s seminar. It’s title―Performance Budgeting: Taking Best Value to its Logical Conclusion?―is sure to raise a few eyebrows. For my first slide, “Where in the World is Maine?” I have a map of the U.S. with a big arrow pointing at Maine. I also have a picture of a moose and one of the Eastport sunrise, along with which I read part of Governor King’s memorable inaugural address:

A little less than a year from now, at the end of a cold New England night, the sun’s first rays will strike Eastport, Cadillac Mountain, and Mars Hill and a new millennium will come to Maine, and America.

The sun’s warmth will spread east to west, from coastal Washington County to Portland, to the frozen fields of Aroostook, across the forests and mill towns of our central plateau, to the mountains, and on to the border with New Hampshire and Quebec.

But for a few minutes, at least, the decade, the century, the millennium itself, will belong to Maine…As the millennium sun sweeps across Maine.

Maine Governor Angus King, Inaugural Address, January 7, 1999

Unbeknownst to me at the time, Mike Smith thinks Maine sounds so lovely that he vows to visit it. The following summer, he and his wife come to Maine and I pick them up at the Portland airport and take them to a B&B in downtown Portland that I found for them and we have dinner at DiMillo’s. They rent a car and travel down the coast ending up in Castine, where they say, chagrined, the historic signs and monuments don’t have very nice things to say about the British! They are also perplexed by signs for Maine’s naturist spots. Apparently in England, a naturist is a nudist, not a lover of nature! We continue to exchange Christmas cards for a number of years, until one holiday, his wife writes and tells me, sadly, they divorced. After that we lose touch.

I stay in contact for a while too with Olha Lukashenko, a Ukrainian student who attends my seminar and comes to the pub with us afterwards. Olha is a bit older than the other students and has a government job of some kind in the Ukraine. Her Russian accent is thick and she leaves out the articles in her speech, making her sound like Natasha in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. She is smart and realistic about Ukraine’s struggles with Russia, but says they have a growing economy. She gives me her business card, which is printed in English on one side and in Russian on the other. I am again reminded how broadminded Europeans are compared to us in America; they all speak English plus one or two other languages. They also seem to have less difficulty understanding me than I have understanding them.

It is dark and rainy on the walk home from the Staff Pub, but warmer than it has been. I look up at the clock tower and it is shrouded in heavy fog. I can see the illuminated clock face, but the top of the tower is invisible. It reminds me of London’s pea soup fog at the turn of the century. I half expect Sherlock Holmes to emerge from the swirling mist.

At Glenelg, Caroline and Tony greet me at the door. They haven’t done that all week and I learn that Caroline has been sick. She looks pale but says she is feeling better.