Butch Lawson

52 posts

Butch Lawson is an observer of life. He lives on Bailey Island.

4 minute read

Columns

Thinking in Public: Tell me if you’ve heard this

My world has gotten a whole lot noisier. Some routine happenings are downright deafening and lots of things that were silent are no longer. I can hear the ticking of the ship's clock on the wall and the cycling of the fridge.

byButch Lawson

April 3, 2024

3 minute read

Columns

Thinking in Public: The aftermath

The roads are wonderfully quiet with winter traffic now. Some days I can walk to the post office and back, at noon, without having a single vehicle drive by.

byButch Lawson

March 1, 2024

3 minute read

Columns

Thinking in Public: Home, sweet home

We get calls all the time from low-life scammers who have just enough of our information to start a conversation, but not enough to separate us from our common sense.

byButch Lawson

February 9, 2024

4 minute read

Columns

Thinking in Public: The world is a curtain-twitching busybody

I was speaking to a service advisor at a well-known local car dealership regarding an annoying problem with my truck. Different from problems that are not annoying, such as those of routine maintenance and repair of wear parts, this one had shown up a week before as a glitch in the "Driver Information Center."

byButch Lawson

December 28, 2023

4 minute read

Columns

Thinking in Public: Rex, Red, and chicken feathers

So many topics from which to choose this month. Do I go with the tragedy in Lewiston or the indescribable beauty of the next morning's sunrise? The carnage in Israel or the discovery that chicken feathers can replace PFAS chemicals in renewable hydrogen fuel cells?

byButch Lawson

December 7, 2023

3 minute read

Columns

Thinking in Public: Let’s go to town

Nearly every week we spend time with a couple of like-minded folks who suffer my public behavior as though it were normal. By like-minded, I mean we mostly drive to town in search of some cheap food in an atmosphere quiet enough to have an actual conversation about our doctor visits.

byButch Lawson

October 31, 2023

3 minute read

Columns

Thinking in Public: The art of a non-artist

The subject of art is an interesting thing. What to one person is an inspired demonstration of the mixing of vision, movement, emotion, perspective, imagination, color palette, and freedom from objectivity is to another person a 6-year-old's prized finger painting.

byButch Lawson

October 5, 2023

3 minute read

Columns

Thinking in Public: Winter on the wharf

A bit before sunup on a cold day in February 1964, I was opening up the co-op for the start of daily business. I didn't expect many boats that morning since most of the fishermen had taken up their traps for the winter.

byButch Lawson

September 10, 2023

3 minute read

Columns

Thinking in Public: It’s what’s for dinner

I loudly slapped closed the cover on my laptop, startling my housemate working in the recliner next to me. Jerked out of whatever she was working on at the moment, she snapped, "What was THAT?"

byButch Lawson

July 31, 2023