Living Designs

I t is actually not surprising to me what Facebook has done--sold their clients to another agency, who would then use that information for political propoganda. That doesn't surprise me at all. What does surprise me is that people continue to sign up or use Facebook. Cripes, pick up the phone or put pen to paper and write someone. Best, EM Burke Portland, Maine

It has become blatantly apparent to me that too many people have too poor an education in politics and political history. Let me cite an example: Many folks claim that making medical care a central government issue claim that this is "socialized" medicine. However, no one complains about the fact that the US govt years ago said that all children must attend school. Humph?

Gas Lighting... For all the years I studied literature, and psychology, and what was actually happening to me... but no one could actually say, yes, your father is saying one thing and doing another, and your father says one thing one thing and another thing five minutes later.... Neither did Gary Astrachan, nor Cheryl  Fuller ever put a name to such tactics.

One of the things I haven't yet understood, and perhaps I never will, is why assylum seekers from Africa or Syria choose to go back the country from which they sought refuge... they go back either yearly, or for a year or so... or ten months.  They pledge to be American citizens, but they send their money back to their original country, ostensibly to support family, rather than returning the money to the American economy, and their savings accounts, whence, if one of their family could join them, the money would be available for them... But, no, they send the money back to the country from which they fled. They go back to the country from which they fled... as if in fact there was never any real need for assylum in the first place. I understand they want to support some family member who may be destitute, but there is something weird in being committed to two countries at once. One of my new tenants said he had it great under the totalian regime, but left when the freedom fig...

1. Portland, Maine: Housing situation 2. Presidential voting situation 3. That's enough for now. 1. I have now been an Airbnb host for three years, and I actually do collect the taxes, and have an account with the State of Maine. I ask my fee, and then collect the required taxes upon arrival, as my post on Airbnb makes clear.   In Oregon, Airbnb collects and pays the taxes. That I do  know. Oregon, at least. I'm not sure about other states. My situation is that I have some free rooms that would not ever be available to full-time tenants, since I don't have a kitchen for them to use. That is not true of the other places I've seen. I am aware there are numerous places in Portland, Maine, where it is doubtful the rentee actually collects and pays the taxes. I am not above reporting such people. I actually do so. 2. After reading all the various reports, etc, about email and Benghazi, it is pretty clear to me that the Republican front is entirely dishonest. Hence,...

Brian Adam Ward Maine Driver's License No.: ME 8752340 Current Employer: Outward Bound (Maine) Former Employers: Ripple Effect (Maine) Former Addresses: 5 Oakdale Street, Portland, Maine 04103; landlord Elizabeth M. Burke, and/or John O. Burke (207-232-1455)

One of my goals over the past 5 years was to create a home for older or mature single adults... those over 48 years old. Since I have had the place to do this, given after my father's death, and the fact that I was living in, and had been rehabbing his home for well over 10 years, I've finally, this year, 2015, been able to realize that idea, dream, and desire. The attending goal, but very important goal, was to create a home for older mature single adults within a budget: To create a home for myself and a few others that was within some modest income purview. I have finally done that. I've created a home for 4 older/mature adults where the rent for my individual tenants is less than 1/2 of  their incomes, where I've provided furniture, sheets, towels.... and a decent home. I've worked incredibly hard to get to this. And I've deeply enjoyed the process, since I can't think of anything better than what I still call "living design".... where on...

My new "paper bag" kitchen floor, with a tutorial following. Oil-based stain reddish; tempera paint stain brownish.   Old rug on left, new linoleum on right. My father's 1910 house has old asbestos linoleum tiles in the downstairs apartment kitchen. During the years he rented out the apartment to students, he put down rug in half the kitchen to cover those tiles, and then newer non-asbestos linoleum tiles in the other half (where the stove and sink were). When I moved in six years ago to rehab the apartment (since it had been trashed), I pulled up the nasty rug and threw a coir rug over that area and waited for money to have the entire area retiled. I trolled the craigslist "free" list and scoured the local dump for someone's excess tiles, but nothing showed up.   One day, I came across a blog about paper bag floors. I began reading every post I could find by those who had done a paper bag floor, whether over wood, linoleum, or cem...

Eviction cases related to  James P. Jennison , dob 5/ November 2013 Elizabeth Burke v. James Jennison , State of Maine, District Court,  Docket No. Writ of Possession granted 11/7/2013 for 11/28/2013. Address concerned: Oakdale Street, Portland, ME January 2013 Jeffrey Rockwell v. James Jennison , State of Maine, Superior Court., Docket No. SA-2012-1569. Writ of  Possession, dated 01/03/2013. Address concerned:  B Street, So. Portland, Maine Jeffrey Rockwell v. James Jennison, State of Maine, District Court, 12/17/2012: Summons, Forcible Entry and Detainer. May 2013 Emily Jackson and Jacob Simcock v. James Jennison , State of Maine, District Court, Docket No. SA-2013-367. Writ of Possession, dated 05/06/2013. Address concerned: Broadway, So. Portland, Maine 2011 (or 2012?) George Gallap v. James Jennison , State of Maine, District Court, Docket No.? Writ of Possession, dated Address concerned: Grant St. #2, Portland, Maine Property owned by: ...

A group of teenages from Brunswick High School have created several new "videos", basically shoot'em up videos. Lots of Mainers consider this "art." What is "art"? Is art only defined by skill at creating something, or are there ethics and thought required? I'll refrain from naming all those who considered the so-called videos "art." I suppose they consider war art. Tarantino is most often named. Gosh, if those who saw Tarantino thought what he was espousing was war for war's sake, they've missed his point. Elizabeth M. Burke · Top Commenter · Elizabeth M. Burke, Editing, Copyediting & Design at Elizabeth M. Burke Editing & Design I'll stick with Goethe, or even with Ai weiwei, and his chairs in some sort of open question. I'll stick with a helix.Mostly, as far as "art" goes, I'll go for what Yehuda Amichai wrote: "Not the peace of a cease-fire, not even the vision of the wolf and t...

I fell down some stairs in March of 2012, and went to the ER at Central Maine Medical Center, a few days later, as my left wrist was very very painful. What I want to write about are the bills I received, both from Central Maine Medical Center, and from the company that supplied the soft hand splints to Central Maine Medical Center--Surgi-Care Inc. Surgi-Care Inc. sent me a bill for  a "comfortform wrist-lt, xs" for $66.19. I discovered I could have bought the exact same product for $25.00 online, and, since I'd paid for wrist supports for both wrists about 6 months earlier for the total price of $42.00, at CVS, the half price of $25.00 seems about more accurate. So, I called Surgi-Care Inc, at their number: 1-888-290-8905. The representative I spoke to indicated that for Surgi-Care to provide hospitals their products, they can't get paid until their products are delivered to patients, and therefore they aren't paid up-front for their products, and they "...

Following are some thoughts about Lewiston, Maine, where I lived for a few months. I just copyedited my own initial writing (oh, so many awful initial writing errors, it was painfully embarrassing to read what I'd written, when I was finally far enough away from what I'd written, I could actually see the writing errors...): I'd long ago heard that Lewiston, Maine was the "armpit" of Maine, resounding of all the odd stinks one could smell. Nowadays, to be sure, Lewiston does NOT stink. The river is actually so incredibly beautiful, and I'd do a lot to live by its momentaries. I didn't grow up in Lewiston, but rather in the most highly taxed area of Maine (at that time, Falmouth, Maine), along the waterfront, though my parents struggled to stay there, since my father earned a USM professor's wage, which just got our initial family of 4 kids through. My father sometimes did things to help us get through I know he's not proud of. Falmouth was str...

Some people are paying more attention to their gardens, and becoming more "English," making sure they've got vegetables growing some place. They're chasing out "rodents"--whether deer, gophers, rabbits, or whatever. It's as if we've entered the Victory Garden era again, except there's no victory. We're thankfully pulling out, if slowly, from our long war in the Middle East, and trying to understand what that might mean for us--shoring up homeland security, and more hopefully throwing our wits and intelligence into non-fossil fuel energy. What we've got is a Depression, not a Recession, and there's no one daring to say this, but, still, even people with good managerial jobs are paying attention to things like how much tinfoil they use, or how to use the plastic baggies from the grocery story to store their food in, rather than buying new plastic ziplock baggies. It's so disconcerting to read articles on the New York Times' ...

The Burkes have created a wonderful blog regarding the 9 acres of land they have owned since 1954--which includes Singing Sands Beach (to the low water mark--whereever the water is at the moment), and the last 1/3 or so of Andrew's Beach, also called South Beach. It is private property, and visitors are asked to contact the owners if they wish to visit. The owners will be closing the beach to all public use from time to time.

The art of book making, or of any readable/visual material is about visual interest and ease. I can't count the number of web sites I've visited where the choice of typography and the spacing between lines of type is entirely uninformed, or where the design of the web site is uninformed. The options available for type on this site are limited, also, and that is frustrating. The more we spend time reading things on computers, the more visual ergonomics is going to be a crucial issue. What is wonderful about a two-page book that was well designed was that facing pages were harmonious--so one could read one page without being distracted with what was on the facing page. Furthermore, a two-page book allowed one to have one's eyes shielded by extraneous visual data about one. Not true for web pages, Kindle, or any of the new computer formats. Even if one views things that are set up as a two-page spread, the pages are flatly presented, so visual distraction is easy. Remarkably e...

Living Designs: The Portland, Maine mural by Elizabeth Morrill Burke

see: http://www.wlbz2.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=94110 An artist's trajectory: from a bachelor's in literature, to a 1/2 year in a Ph.D. program in Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, back to her undergraduate university (UCSC) to study art on her own for a year, living and working out of the ground floor of a rain-flooded barn, to getting accepted to a second BA program in art, but also, at the same time, getting accepted into the 5th year (post-grad) program in studio art at UCSC; returning to homeland Maine where she was granted one of the two slots for Maine painters into the coveted Maine fellows program at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, moving on to an MFA program in fine arts at Boston University, graduating only to find herself trying to make a living designing, copyediting, editing and producing books ... and then 15 years of null-hood in either painting or writing (premedical studies and a MSW and LCSW) ... not worki...

I've been hired to paint a huge mural in Portland, Maine, through the company I work with, Peerless Painting. The size is material: the wall I'm painting is 110 feet wide and approximately 60 feet high, and the image covers about 100 feet x 50 feet. Where: the Ocean Gateway Parking garage at the corner of India and Fore Streets in Portland, Maine. The City of Portland required the owner of the building to put an image up. The owners chose a section of a panaramic image taken by a photographer in 1910 of the Portland harbor (Casco Bay) from the Eastern Promenade on a day when half of all the six-masted schooners ever built were in the harbor, and this section shows those schooners. It also shows Fort Gorges, some of Peaks Island, Little Diamond, and Cushing Island, and of course other boats in the harbor at the time. While this has been a company "team" undertaking, I have done all the historical research for the image, and most of the drawing and painting, nevermind m...

The short stories previously published here have morphed into a novel, or are trying to. Sixty thousand words so far, and counting, and then figuring after proper editing, I'll have to start fresh. To give me a bit of sense of accomplishment, after months of slogging, publishing here a poem I've slogged through enough. Fishing There must be a way to move that doesn’t involve every lead sinker I’ve laid down to catch beasts I turn around and sell. I keep hoping I’ll haul—what? Something that will make the day feel more than how. There must be a way to come home with more than how to get a check, another way to see all these buoys, ropes, depth sounders and maps with cigarette burns just where I needed to see the depth. I keep coming up with the litter we make, mucking up the seas, as if we had nothing better to do than make things we throw away, eventually. I came to this life at sea because I loved it, but love gets tired and worn to ache and age, and I wonder. What would it be...

Possibilities Truths don't leap out of the darkness these days. Even the meteorite shower last night got me only half way to where you left off, at the "probably not." Though that seared through the atmosphere like the punctuation of a typewriter--you could feel the bump it left--I wasn't convinced. I could sit here for a million nights and not know anything I most want to know, such as whether the New York Times freezes to your driveway before you get up to retrieve it, or if when I use one of the words in the dictionary for the very literate you gave me you'll stop to wonder what you're doing and I'll know that. If these are magical imaginings, they know their desires. Will there be no more of love's enigmas of arrival, the way waves move outwardly when a boat docks inwardly, the way words pull time forward as they describe time backwards, the way subatomic particles know space so well they end up where they began, and we don't have a clue ...