Meanwhile, Back in the USA

Canada was a breath of fresh air, with everyone all cheery and laid back from living in a country nobody else cares about, one that does not see itself as the solution to the world's problems, thereby putting pressure on its citizens to pony up and do something. Here in America, what with us always jumping into the middle of things and making a messy situation worse, folks get mean and stirred-up, which always causes havoc among the masses. Take for example the particular member of the masses who defaced the front window of my art gallery sometime during my three-day absence.

I arrived to find my storefront covered with thickly applied scribbles and scrawls in two colors of lipstick--one a bright cherry red and the other a screaming magenta. It took quite a lot of Windex, half a roll of paper towels and considerable elbow grease to undo the mess, giving me plenty of time to practice my cursing and to wonder what sort of inconsiderate boob thought that was a good idea.

I suppose I should be happy since if my gallery were located in another American city I might have arrived to find the windows covered in blood from a drive-by shooting (East St. Louis, #1 crime city), or perhaps smashed to smithereens after an attempted break-in (Flint, #2 crime city), or maybe smeared with feces after a drunken night of alcohol, drugs and debauchery (any college town in America). Only in Maine could a lipstick be wielded as a tool of defacement.

I may be down on America, but I still love Maine.