First sentence

The first sentence purports a story's soul.

I learned that lesson from my high school journalism teacher, but my real favorite first phrases are in books. I'd quote some, but it's late and I'd want to do it right and I just started a new memoir called The Liars' Club. I found the first sentence stunning.

"My sharpest memory is of a single instant surrounded by dark."

It makes me want to keep reading, so back to the book.

Gone fishing

I never had to worry about my worm freezing before.

I just came in from my first casts with a fishing pole since last fall. The record early ice-out and an executive order by the governor two days ago means fishing season starts early this year, as opposed to the usual April 1. Hallelujah.

I bought trout worms earlier, but the sun was already behind the horizon when I untangled my favorite pole from the others and trotted down to the Sebasticook River behind my house. With all the rain and melting ice, the river is swollen and almost a foot higher than it'll be this summer and the water rushes by with force. Two navigational buoys downstream, one green and one red, whip back and forth in the current, pulled underwater for most of the time. It's hard to believe that I'll want to canoe this river a month from now.

Weeds, plants and sticks along the shoreline carried a thin layer of ice, like a crystal ceiling, three inches above the water. I figure that's how much the level has dropped since last night's freeze.

I grab my favorite lure, a soft rubber "shiner" with a golden spinner at its nose. It came from my dad's tackle box, so it's probably as old as I am. Dirty and chewed up, with its dull hooks and haphazard spinner, the lure has caught more fish than almost anything else in my box.

So I jumped atop my favorite rock and whipped it out there. In fishing I believe things happen for a reason, so the season's first cast is important. Hooking a fish on the first cast surely means a good season ahead, right? After the lure sunk for a few seconds I began to reel, playing the tip of my rod back and forth. I bent my knees and widened my feet, poised in a fish-slaying stance like the professional anglers on TV. About halfway in, I feel a little tug. I yanked the rod viciously, envisioning a lunker bass or brown trout. If there had been a fish on, I would have broken its neck, but there wasn't. A salad fish was hooked to the lure, meaning that little tug was not a fish, but a trip through the weeds.

A few casts later I hooked bottom and broke my line. That old lure's gone, but I'm not heartbroken. Loosing tackle and not catching fish is what I'm used to. I switched to a worm and bobber and kept at it until it was dark, but to no avail.

I suppose if I expected a fish on the first cast to prelude a lucky season, losing my favorite lure and having no bites must mean I'm doomed. Oh well. It's not the fish; it's the fishing.

Simple idea, huge impact

I think we can all agree that inventing the space shuttle or the combustion engine or the pacemaker were amazing feats of genius, but guys like Walter Fredrick Morrison impress me more.

Traveling to the moon, revolutionizing Earth-bound transportation or making the human heart beat regularly are all impressive, but the folks who solved those problem had the benefit of a problem to solve. Walter Fredrick Morrison had a plastic lid from a popcorn container and from that, he created one of the most famous toys there is: the Frisbee.

I'm not unlike anyone else in that from time to time, I'll have an idea for an invention that seems worthy and marketable. Like most everyone else, I wouldn't know where to start. Morrison had the courage to stick his neck out for a simple plastic disc, and I find that amazing.

Morrison died this week at age 90.

The worst shrapnel I'll probably ever see

There probably aren't many people who read my story in the Bangor Daily News today about a Jump Rope for Heart event at a local elementary school. A lot of journalists I know wouldn't cover such an event unless told to by an editor. In a world where there is corruption, greed and tragedy everywhere, not to mention an endless supply of positive stories, assignments like this fall by the wayside too often.

But I had a couple free hours, so I went. I talked to the teachers and a representative from the American Heart Association, but what I was really looking for was any reporter's biggest challenge in an elementary school: finding a kid who will open up a little.

I was also the photographer, so I threaded my way through the gymnasium taking pictures. Jump ropes twirled and slapped the floor all around me as the kids rotated between four jumping stations. At one point I saw a girl I'd interviewed starting to jump over a long rope swung by two friends. Next to them was another team. Hoping to find a position in time to take the girl's picture, I tried to squeeze between the two swinging ropes. One of them hit me on the right shoulder and the other struck my left ear. Both teams had to stop and start over.

At that moment I thought of some reporters I know who cover wars and natural disasters, or who have spent time in prison. I know an African reporter who has been tortured and an American who has been held hostage. I'm honored to know those people and proud of how they represent our profession. They're heroes.

I don't know whether I'll ever see a war zone or natural disaster, but I do know that yesterday I was grateful that the worst shrapnel I've ever seen consisted of two jump ropes.

For a dog I've never met

I've never met Mabel the dog, but this week I sent her a small donation.

Mabel is the beloved pooch of Mandy, a member of my high school class. I can't say that Mandy and I have ever been close friends, but I've always admired her for many reasons. To start with, she was and is beautiful, which will catch the attention of any adolescent or teenage boy, including me. She was popular and definitely a member of what I considered a brat pack of girls and guys who resided in the upper crust of popularity.

Mandy was different than some of them, though. Despite the fact that she could choose her friends, Mandy is the type of person who judges people on a single criterion: their heart and how they use it in the world. After reconnecting on Facebook, she and I worked together a little last summer to organize our 15-year class reunion. I wasn't surprised that she hadn't changed.

Mabel, pictured above, was a frequent character in Mandy's Facebook posts and it was clear that my old friend was smitten with her four-legged roommate.

A couple of months ago, Mabel fell ill. Cancer. One of her rear legs was recently amputated. You can read Mabel's story here.

I've never met Mabel and it'll probably be years before I see Mandy again, but I was compelled to throw a few dollars their way. Though it was undoubtedly too small to pay for much of Mabel's treatment, I considered my donation to be a little nudge to the wheel of what comes around goes around.

Maybe you'll give the wheel another push?

When he grows up

Caleb and I were listening to some blues by Keb Mo yesterday while driving to the store. He tells me to turn it down so he can say: "Daddy, I'm going to be in a band just like this when I grow up and I'm going to play the organ. Do you know what I'm going to name it?"

"What?" I say.

"Beetle O. Beedle Um Bum."

I laugh. "That's a good name."

"Yeah. I don't think Keb Mo is a very good name for a rocking band."

I trust his judgment.

The wilds of Somerset County

Today I traveled to the town of Bingham in central Somerset County. As I'm prone to do, I took the back way.

Out of Hartland, Route 151 takes you to a wide spot in the road known to locals as the town of Athens. A store that sells groceries and hardware, a couple churches, many farms and a factory that makes wood pellets for heating are the main attractions. Instead of heading west toward Solon, which would have brought me to busy Route 201 and quickly to Bingham, I stayed on Route 151 north through Brighton Plantation.

For a good ten miles, there is almost nothing, not even telephone poles. The first part of the journey brings you steadily uphill, the second back the valley that contains the mighty Kennebec River. Picturesque views peep through the forest on both sides of the road, but they were quickly forgotten when I crested the hill. Suddenly, an expansive blue landscape stretched out in three directions. Lakes and small ponds could be seen looking down, but the eye is tugged toward the horizon, where a series of snow-capped mountain peaks loom toward the sky. These are the White Mountains.

The sudden beauty, as cliche as it sounds, took my breath away. My tires hit gravel on the shoulder of the road until I regained composure and jerked the car back to tar. If I wasn't trying to stay on schedule for my interview, I would've stopped and took it in for a while. I might have even taken some photos. For me, there's something in common between distant mountain ranges, empty oceans and crackling campfires: I could stare at them for hours.

When my family made the move last fall from beautiful coastal Bath, some people wondered why we'd trade that pristine environment for ultra-rural central Maine. If they could see a view like the one that startled me today on an barren road through out-of-the-way towns, they'd have their answer.

Hush little baby

Caleb's day care provider is sick today, so he's home with me until noontime, when I'll take him to pre-kindergarten class.

I was doing some interviews for work this morning and he was in the other room playing his electric piano and singing. "I hear some nice singing in the background," said the University of Maine professor I was on the phone with. After the call I asked Caleb what he was doing.

"I'm practicing some new lullabies so we can make a bedtime CD for the baby," he said. "Daddy, can we use your recorder?"

The recorder is a small digital voice recorder I use sometimes for complicated interviews or press conferences. I told him if he keeps practicing I'd help him make the CD, and I will. So far he has three songs, any of which would make a fantastic lullaby.

He's going to be such a great big brother. Nearly every day he suggests a name. His favorites so far are Autumn for a girl and Jason or Rusty for a boy. He has a pile of books he's grown out of set aside for the baby, as well as some toys. He's full of questions about the baby and has been to all of our ob/gyn appointments so far. After he hears the heartbeat, he talks about it all the way home.

I can't wait to see Caleb holding and feeding the baby, helping with baths and running away when it's diaper time. Part of me worries that he'll have a hard time adjusting to sharing our attention, but the other part of me thinks he'll be so busy tending to the baby that he won't notice.

We'll see, I guess.

Seth "Superman" Koenig

My good pal Seth Koenig, a reporter at The Times Record in Brunswick, is on fire. He recently won 2009 Journalist of the Year for the Maine Press Association. Over the weekend, he won 2009 Journalist of the Year for the New England Press Association.

Seth's greatest strengths are the pride he has in his work and the teamwork attitude he brings to work every day. He has sacrificed a lot in his years at The Times Record: a barely livable wage, countless hours away from his family and an ever-expanding beat to cover.

I sort of recruited Seth to my former beat at The Times Record; he took over when I left Maine in the summer of 2006 for a journalism fellowship at Harvard University. I knew he had the potential to overtake me and just about every other journalist in Maine in terms of accomplishments, but I didn't anticipate he'd make such quick work of it. I predict that later this year, perhaps in early May, Seth will add some other major accomplishments to his acumen.

Well done, Seth!

Finding family, part 1

Maybe there’s a quaint, ranch-style house, on about a half acre somewhere in Hazardville, Connecticut where I’d feel right at home. Or maybe that particular house is gone now, blipped out of existence in the name of progress or blight or maybe a discarded cigarette.

In 1952, though, mounted next to the front door on pattern-cut asphalt shingles, was a mailbox. In boxed letters beneath it was a name: “COUSINS.” My name.

I have photographs. My aunt sent them to me in a book she created about our family, almost all of whom are strangers to me.

It was a modest house with small wooden decks at the doors and hardwood trees out back. Other than “COUSINS,” there were no embellishments.

In one of the photographs from 1952 — page 8 in the book about my family — a young couple stands in front of the open front door displaying a swaddled infant for the camera. The couple is my grandparents, who I never met, despite only a few hundred miles between us for many years. They died. The infant in the picture was my father, Timothy Francis Cousins. He died too, in May of 2007.

The house in the photograph reminds me of another house in Paris, Maine, where my parents moved to raise my sister and I. Six months after my birth in Willimantic, they left behind a lot in Connecticut. My father severed ties with his family and for 30 years ignored letters and phone calls from his mother. My mother, who was adopted and who left home as a teenager, did the same.

Gifts from my father’s mother to my sister and I arrived on Christmases and for our birthdays. We enjoyed the toys, but the clothes rarely fit. Our grandmother didn’t know our sizes because we never saw her and she never saw us. Until I received the book from my aunt two months ago, I didn’t know what my grandparents looked like. Still, when I study the details on their faces I feel connected. They look full of hope and love, so proud of their white ranch and new baby boy.

Another photograph — my favorite — is of my father at about two years old wearing a checkered coat zipped tight and wool hat. Dad's holding my grandfather Francis’s hand for balance. Grandpa — it feels wrong using that word for a stranger — is crouching in the photograph, smoking a cigarette and studying his son. He wears a glowing smile I know well, now that I have a son of my own.

I know almost nothing of my father’s family life, except that he had a younger sister — my aunt, who sent me the book — who says they had a happy childhood. It didn't occur to me to miss my grandparents until I was well into my 20s. I didn't find it strange that most of my friends had extended families and I didn't. When people asked, I said most of them lived in Connecticut and left out the fact I’d never met them.

I remember when my grandfather died in 1993. Dad received a little box of mementos, mostly watches and pins my grandfather earned working for a telephone company. Dad cried, something I’d seen only a few times. He wore one of the watches for a few years. I sometimes wonder if he ever told anyone it was his dad’s and whether he left out the rest of the story, like I did.

My grandmother died in 2000. Dad announced, inexplicably, that he wanted to go to her funeral. He and I drove to Hartford to honor a woman who spent her life reaching out to us and grasping nothing. A few of the mourners — people I’m related to, presumably — kept glancing at us and whispering. No one said anything to us.

I didn’t realize what I’d lost, but Dad did. He showed with a drinking binge. The drive back to Maine the next day was a great opportunity to ask why he alienated his mother, but I didn't. I should have.

In 2004, my son Caleb was born. I have a picture of Dad holding Caleb, his mouth twisted in a word and his eyes ablaze with wonder. He holds two fingers slightly apart as if he's saying "teeny tiny."

Witnessing Dad’s love for his grandson made me miss my own grandparents for the first time in my life. I wondered whether they ever missed me and what they told people about their son and grandchildren. “Oh, they moved to Maine 25 years ago.” Did they leave out the rest?

In the book from my aunt, there’s a picture of three women sitting on a couch: my grandmother, my aunt and my great grandmother. My great grandmother holds a blond teddy bear that I remember having as a young boy, tattered and threadbare. I’d never known where that teddy bear came from until I saw that picture. My aunt, sitting in the middle, holds a baby while my grandmother leans close. The baby is me.

All three women have a proud gleam in their eyes that only a new baby in the family can bring. It’s the same gleam my father had for my son and that, under a mailbox and the word “COUSINS,” Dad's father had for him. It's familiar now.

Good dog.

Sadie was just too good to let go.

When my mother adopted her from a shelter, all we knew about Sadie was that she once had a litter of puppies. Mom and her husband moved to a place that didn't allow dogs in 1999, so my wife Jen and I took Sadie. We didn't plan on having a dog until we owned a home, but we couldn't let Sadie go to an uncertain future. She'd already been given away once.

She was and is a calm, well-behaved and loving dog. She doesn't bark too much, or jump on company, or run away or fart too much. She obeys any of a dozen commands and is so obedient that I've walked with her on busy city streets without a leash. She loves cats but doesn't chase them and loves going for rides in the car. She even loves cats, not to chase but to give lick-kisses on the head.

She attached to Jen even before we adopted her, and showed it by jumping in her lap. Sadie is 75 pounds plus of long-haired black Labrador and husky cross - not what most would consider a lap dog.

We went camping a few years ago with another couple at Black Brook Cove campground on Aziscohos Lake in far western Maine. It was early in the season and we had the "remote" section of the campground to ourselves. I don't think there was another person for miles. As we sat around the fire at night, we heard more than a few animals pass in the dark. A few of them were big enough to break major branches, so we knew they were deer or moose. We hoped they weren't bears.

A lot of dogs would've charged off into the brush barking ferociously. Some dogs would cower under someone's collapsible chair. Sadie did something in between, borne from a mix of dog smarts and loyalty. She'd bolt to a spot about 10 feet from us with hair raised and tail puffed, and bark. Sadie barks so little that there have been times I didn't recognize it. Her bark is deep like a canyon, so deep it doesn't seem possible that it comes for her. Judging from the sound of her, you might guess she's a Rottweiler or Saint Bernard.

I've never seen her hurt anything this side of a fly, but I know she'd protect us if it came down to it. Even against a bear.

She's been almost everywhere with us over the years. On that same trip to Aziscohos we took her out in the canoe. It's a pristine lake where you can paddle for hours and only see a couple camps. We floated close to the shore and she jumped out and nosed around in the brush and forest, staying even with us as we fished and progressed up the lake. When the sky dimmed and the bugs started biting, we paddled close and she jumped in again.

We've taken her on hundreds of hikes in the woods. I used to let her off leash at most places until one day when she bit a porcupine on a hike with my son Caleb and I. It was late in the evening so I took her home thinking I could pull the quills myself. I only took out a couple before I realized they were in her mouth, too. I stopped trying, but I'll never forget how she winced but didn't pull away when she saw the needle-nosed pliers coming. She's so trusting.

When Caleb was born, our relationship with Sadie changed. There were fewer hikes in the first couple years. We walked Caleb in a stroller, but Sadie could come only if both Jen and I went. It's hard to walk a dog who wants to stop and sniff things while pushing a stroller and trying to stay out of the road.

We've always taught Caleb to be gentle with Sadie and all animals, so there wasn't really a time when she tried to avoid him like you'd expect. Today boy and dog are linked at their souls. Caleb kisses her and says goodbye before leaving for school and when he comes home, he's calling her name as soon as he walks in the door. He's shortened "Sadie, come" into his own "S'come." She comes.

In 2006 I won a journalism fellowship at the Nieman Foundation in Cambridge, Mass. It was clearly an experience I couldn't pass up, yet Jen and I knew the city was no place for a dog like Sadie. We left her with a friend who had a big yellow dog named Adidas. I was worried she'd think we abandoned her. Maybe she did, but when we returned she bulled me over and kissed me all over the face. She sat by our car and didn't move for an hour while I talked with our friend. As soon as I brought her home it was like she'd never been gone. Or like we'd never been gone.

Last fall I took a job working out of my home for a newspaper. As a reporter I'm in and out a lot, but for the most part Sadie's days of being home alone for eight hours or more are over. She and I have always had a tender relationship, but I've noticed she sticks very close since our move. She follows me all over the house. My office is a room in the basement.

Our routine is always the same. She watches me through my morning routine. About when I finish reading the paper she knows it's time to go to work. When I descend the stairs, she's on my heals. I let her out the back door and while I'm checking messages and police logs. Before long she's done her business, marked her territory and sniffed the edge of the river in the backyard. A single tap with her nail on the glass sliding door tells me to let her in.

For the rest of the day she's asleep on the floor next to me or following me around the house. Even for the 25-foot walk to stoke the woodstove, she's there. If I head upstairs but realize I've forgotten something, I run into her when I turn around. Sometimes she'll try to anticipate where I'm going by walking in front, sensing me with her tail and letting me bump into her so she knows I'm following. Too often, my response to that is "Sadie MOVE!" No matter how often that scene plays out, she still wants to be close.

In the course of a day I might go up and down the stairs eight to 10 times, and she always follows. I figure Sadie's at least 14 years old and sadly she's starting to show her age. She's always been a bit gray in the muzzle - people have been asking us if she's an old dog for 10 years - but these days the gray is overtaking the black. Her trips up the stairs are slower than they used to be. There's a turn at the bottom of our stares. Sometimes she stumbles coming around the corner, especially going down. When I hear it my heart hurts because I know it's a sign that the end of her life is drawing closer.

Last weekend we took her ice fishing. She ran and played and snuffled her nose in the powdery snow. She followed us around as we set the traps, then laid near us while we waited for bites. Caleb threw a bunch of snow on her until she had an inch-thick white blanket on her back. She'd shake herself clean then go over and bump into him for more.

I don't know what we'll do when she dies. We've tried to prepare Caleb, and he seems to understand. But no one understands death until they see it. I'm dreading the day we come home from somewhere and Caleb, as always, beats us to the door.

"S'Come. S'Come!" he'll call. "S'COME!"

By then I'll know something's wrong.

Some days are better than others

In 12 years of being a reporter, I'd never covered a murder.

In my first few months working for the Bangor Daily News I've covered three plus an attempted murder where a guy was shot multiple times in the back and neck. Of those four cases, two remain unsolved.

Since joining the BDN I've been at the scene of three fatal accidents and at least five fires where the owners lost everything. I wrote about three infants in my area who died within four days of each other after bed-sharing with their parents. Journalism can be ugly, and the ugliness can start at any moment.

On the other hand, there are days when you meet people like the Logiodice family.

Those are the good days.

J.D and me

I once held the crazy notion that J.D. Salinger might grant me an interview.

I was a college student in New Hampshire, not too far from Salinger's home. Having been an active student journalist since the tenth grade, I thought the fact I was a student might somehow persuade the great writer to end his decades-long silence and sit down for a chat. I wanted to know what I imagined everyone else wanted to know: why would he deprive the world of his gift?

Catcher first caught my attention in the eighth grade when I heard of a controversy in a freshman English class at the high school. Students were working on a group project that involved decorating bulletin boards around pieces of literature. One group titled theirs "The Goddamn Catcher in the Rye." Once again, Salinger's use of profanity had sparked a debate in a public school community. The incident was enough to spark my interest the novel and I received a crimson red copy of it that Christmas from my parents.

I read the whole thing in a few days. A few weeks later it rained one day and I read the whole thing again, sprawled across my bedroom floor until late that night. In the end, when Holden mentions being in a mental hospital, I realized the destructive power of pent-up emotion. Not since Beverly Cleary's "Dear Mr. Henshaw" had a book touched me so deeply. When it came my time to do a project in my Freshman American literature class, I chose Salinger's "Franny and Zooey." More importantly, writing became my emotional outlet.

In addition to striking a coming-of-age chord in me, my experience with Salinger triggered a life-long love of serious literature. Reading wonderful books continuously humbles me as a writer and makes me my own harshest critic. For that I am grateful. When I think I've put words down that I can be proud of, I measure them against Ernest Hemingway, or John Irving, or when it comes to character, J.D. Salinger. Part of mastery is never being satisfied.

I've thought of starting a blog for years. On most days, I experience something and think to myself, I could make a good little essay out of that. I call them "eyes wide open" experiences. When I heard of Salinger's death this week, I figured this is as good a time as any to start. So this is the beginning. Of what, I don't know.

I regret that I never tried for an interview with Salinger. Thanks to his death this week providing a little push that I needed, I no longer dream of being a blogger. I am one.