Author Archives: Alan Gauvin
Welcome to Maine (Best of “Hubris”)
“Last year, I took a trip to Maine to look at some property and, as luck would have it, found a parcel I thought ideal: woods surrounded by miles upon miles of woods, on a dead end dirt road about a mile from East Grand Lake. Profound solitude was mine for a paltry sum and […]
Curing Winter’s Doldrums: “Still Hunting” & “Stolen Portraits”
“There are those who hunt in groups, driving deer through the forests and fields towards another hunter or group of hunters, often using dogs in those states where it is legal; and those who sit in a tree and wait for a hapless deer to walk beneath them. The deck is heavily stacked against the […]
Curing Winter’s Doldrums: “Still Hunting” & “Stolen Portraits”
Maine Cat by Guest Columnist, Alan Gauvin HOULTON, ME—(Weekly Hubris)—1/31/11—At the moment, there are three to four feet of accumulated snow on the ground, with drifts over six feet, and house-sized mounds created by the plows and front-loaders pushing and piling excess snow out of the way in anticipation of the next storm (which is […]
The Necessities
Maine Cat by Guest Columnist, Alan Gauvin HOULTON, ME—(Weekly Hubris)—1/3/11—In his youth, along with many of his schoolmates, Dad was often late for class during the spring log drives down the Kennebec River. As he told the story, on his way to school he had to cross a railroad trestle that spanned a rocky gorge. […]
First Spark & The Lair of The Creature: Part 2
Maine Cat by Guest Columnist, Alan Gauvin HOULTON, Me—(Weekly Hubris)—11/22/10—My mother, Catherine Elizabeth Crosby, grew up in North Carolina one of two daughters and six sons of an Episcopal minister. In her teens, she became pregnant and her father, an exceptionally stern and maniacally religious man, saw fit to cast her out as punishment for […]
First Spark & The Lair of the Creature: Part 1
Maine Cat by Guest Columnist, Alan Gauvin HOULTON, Me—(Weekly Hubris)—11/8/10—That jazz caught my ear as a youngster is scarcely odd, since both parents were huge fans. More to the point, they enjoyed most kinds of music but were particularly fond of jazz and standards, the two, happily, being infinitely interchangeable. Aside from taking up the […]
Fishing For Memories In The Shadow Of Mt. Katahdin (& Dr. Jazz)
Maine Cat by Guest Columnist, Alan Gauvin HOULTON, Me—(Weekly Hubris)—9/27/10—My father, Aime, was brought up in Maine, by his French Canadian grandparents for the most part, and spent his youth fishing, reading, and learning to draw. In 1929, at age 19, he journeyed down to New York to become a painter and, when he wasn’t […]
Dopey In Wonderland
Maine Cat by Guest Columnist, Alan Gauvin HOULTON, Me—(Weekly Hubris)—8/30/10—As the legal intrigues surrounding the transfer of my new property to my control ran their course, the owner, as if he weren’t doing enough for me already, let me squat in an old gravel pit on his own property, which is adjacent to mine. The […]
“Welcome to Maine”
Maine Cat by Guest Columnist, Alan Gauvin HOULTON, Me—(Weekly Hubris)—8/23/10—When my career in music flatlined a few years ago I was forced to return to the Ferrari restoration shop I helped found in 1979 with an old high school chum and, although I had enjoyed this work in the past and was highly skilled, my […]