Quote, Unquote: Galina Rusanova

"It's typical of me. I sometimes do crazy things."

- The Siberian-born, United Kingdom-based artist Galina Rusanova, to the FBI after she was jailed in Bangor for allegedly attacking flight attendants during a trans-Atlantic flight from Maine to Europe. According to published reports, Rusanova mixed prescription drugs with wine, chugged liquid hand soap, attempted to bite a flight crew member in the leg, and was "snapping like a dog." She has since pled "very guilty" and was sentenced to time served (22 days) in prison.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Don't Drink (Soap) and Fly (May 4, 2009)

Quote, Unquote: Mallory Shaughnessy

"Up north farmers will sometimes say what a good year it was for snowmobiling if they find more [Allen's Coffee-Flavored Brandy] bottles in the woods by their houses."

- Mallory Shaughnessy, coordinator at the Maine Alliance to Prevent Substance Abuse, in an interview on MPBN's Maine Things Considered. The drink has now officially been used by defense attorneys, writers, and farmers to explain Maine.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Happy (Belated) Birthday, Maine (March 19, 2009)
Related: Quote of the Day (March 4, 2009)
Related: Only in Maine (August 15, 2008)

Quote, Unquote: Edwin Arlington Robinson

"Two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give."

- Edwin Arlington Robinson, a Mainer who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1922, 1925, and 1928. Three collections of his poems--Children of the Night, The Man Against the Sky, and The Three Taverns--are available for free at Project Gutenberg.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Did You Know? (August 6, 2008)
Related: Good Salary. Little Work. Soft Snap! (April 7, 2008)

Quote, Unquote: Sarah Orne Jewett

"Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading."

- Sarah Orne Jewett in her book The Country of the Pointed Firs.

- John C.L. Morgan

Quote, Unquote: Trevor Corson

"Finland possesses a few features that Maine does not--for starters, a vast number of steamy wooden rooms full of naked people."

- Trevor Corson in his April 2009 Atlantic essay "Saunas and Silence" about the various similarities--and differences--Finland and Maine share. Corson also narrates a slideshow that explores many of the same concepts.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: On Blogging: Or, How This Site Got Its Moniker (November 16, 2008)
Related: The Apple Whisperer and Other Atlantic Stories (May 7, 2008)

Quote, Unquote: Old School Snow Day

"In very inclement weather the two fire whistles will signal by 8 blasts at 7.15 A.M. for no school in High school or grades below. At 8 A.M., 8 blasts of whistles for no school in 9th grades or below during forenoon session, or at 12.30 P.M., 8 blasts of whistles for no school in 9th grades or below during afternoon session."

- The antique notification system for canceled classes at Westbrook schools, as described in the 1907 municipal annual report.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Quote, Unquote: W.H.S. Ellingwood
Related: Quote, Unquote: Charles A. Carlton

Quote, Unquote

"From Zero to Holy S#*% in 5 Seconds."

- The text of an Arctic Cat advertisement in the 2005 edition of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife snowmobile regulations handbook. In response to the department's concerns that such an ad countered their emphasis on riding at safe speeds, the Connecticut printer responsible for printing the handbooks spent an extra $4,000 to cover the ads with white stickers.

- John C.L. Morgan

h/t: Down East

Quote, Unquote: Andrew Wyeth

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape--the loneliness of it--the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it--the whole story doesn't show."

- The late artist Andrew Wyeth on his favorite seasons to paint.

- John C.L. Morgan

Quote, Unquote: Robert P.T. Coffin

From Robert P.T. Coffin's book Kennebec: Cradle of Americans:

And there are days in January, after an icestorm,
for which chandelier is a pale word. It is like walking through a web of
rainbows to be up and out in such a glory. Every bush coated with cut diamonds
and the hills looking like the hills of the Apocalypse. It is a fine thing to be
alive in such splendor, and the splendor of the days gets into a man; the
splendor of nights so clear that the stars snap like sapphires overhead.

- John C.L. Morgan

Quote, Unquote: Walter Lowell

"We got calls from people saying they want to die in Maine now because they can get the death records so quickly."

- Walter Lowell, director of lean managment at Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), on the response to the department's use of kaizen to cut the number of days it takes to process a death certificate from an average of 95 to five.

- John C.L. Morgan

Quote, Unquote

"I was just so excited 'cause he smelt like a campfire, he smelt so good."

- Peggy Crowley, wife of Survivor winner Bob Crowley, when she visited him during the twelfth episode of the season.

- John C.L. Morgan

Quote, Unquote: Robert P.T. Coffin

"There are a lot of Maine proverbs for cold. It is one of the best crops of the state."

- Robert P.T. Coffin in Kennebec: Cradle of Americans, his 1937 ode to the Kennebec River.

- John C.L. Morgan

Quote, Unquote

"Sometimes you know more about them than you wish you did; sometimes you know less and make up the rest."

- North Haven resident Herb Parsons on the intimacy (or lack thereof) that exists among neighbors on small Maine islands. The quote was lifted from a WGME profile of congressional candidate Chellie Pingree.

- John C.L. Morgan

Quote, Unquote: Marion Dana

"My uncle, W.K. Dana, was prejudiced in some ways. He hoped that when he got to Heaven, there would be only Republicans and Congregationalists there."

- Marion Dana on her uncle Woodbury Kidder Dana, the founder of the Dana Warp Mill's yarn-producing operation. The quote was originally published in a 1976 edition of the Westbrook American, the local newspaper now known as the American Journal.

Quote, Unquote

"Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty."

- A character in Stephen King's novel The Gunslinger.

Quote, Unquote

To mark the beginning of the school year, I thought I'd provide words of advice to the incoming freshmen who undoubtedly sprint home from school each day to read this site couldn't care less about this site, courtesy of the Class of 1939's list of "Freshman Do's and Don'ts":

"Don't stare at statues in the Main Room for more than five minutes per glance. Respect upper classmen. Don't try to think--you can't. Don't loiter behind doors in mixed company."

Something tells me the Class of 2009's advice to the Class of '12 would be a little more, er, colorful.

- John C.L. Morgan

P.S. The source of that quote is the program from a Freshman Reception held on October 7, 1938.

Quote, Unquote

"Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought."

- U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), from her famous "Declaration of Conscience" speech in June 1950.

- John C.L. Morgan

Quote, Unquote: Paul Mann

"In the span of a single generation we’ve gone from a nation that used to enjoy a walk down Main Street to a nation that drives to the gym to walk on a moving carpet."

- Paul Mann in his essay "How to Walk," which appeared in the April 2007 issue of Downeast (electronic link unavailable).

- John C.L. Morgan

Quote, Unquote: Charmaine Daniels

"Dirty old Westbrook. I never thought I'd say it, but I kind of like the place."

- Charmaine Daniels in an essay entitled "Ode(r) to Westbrook: A Good Sense of Place is Hard to Find." It was published in September 28, 1995 edition of the now-defunct Casco Bay Weekly.

Quote, Unquote

"Dairy farming makes men steady and reliable and temperate; deer hunting makes men quiet and fast and sensitive; lobster fishing makes men suspicious and wily and ruthless."

- Elizabeth Gilbert in her 2000 novel Stern Men, which is the subject of next month's book club at Warren Memorial Library.

Hint, hint.

- John C.L. Morgan