This Week's Haul, Nov. 20: These boots were made for shoveling

And: Extravagantly expensive ceramic figurines

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, in addition to being overwhelmingly grateful to all our new subscribers both paid and free (HI EVERYONE), I am also very glad to be in a new mutual appreciation society with our buds at The Bollard.

• Food And Medicine do amazing work in our communities - including the Solidarity Harvest, which is coming right up and which distributes tons of local food to families across eastern Maine. They also helped get really good people elected to the Bangor City Council, and kept a literal neo-Nazi from getting on there.

• Absolutely essential reading from Emily Duggan at the Kennebec Journal, about the big money coming from right wing organizations to help a bunch of profoundly unpleasant bigots disrupt the functioning of school districts in small towns across Maine, and make life worse for people more generally.

• Rich people - even the richest of the rich, like the Zuckerbergs - have a long history of swooping in and buying up a bunch of property in Maine and then being horrible neighbors, and acting like it is their own personal kingdom and that the rules don’t apply to them. That, unfortunately, is nothing new.

• RIP to the last remaining Irving Big Stop truck stop in Maine. There was one in Searsport when I was growing up, and let me tell you that drinking coffee at 9 p.m. on a school night dressed in my finest Army Surplus Store pants and Hot Topic t-shirt is a treasured high school memory for me.

• On the upside: Currywurst kann man jetzt in Bangor bekommen. It won’t be as good as eating it streetside in Berlin, but, you take what you can get. Freitag German Kitchen is now having pop-ups in Veazie, and you can get schnitzel and knockwurst there too.

• I am in the midst of watching Ken Burns’ “The American Revolution” on PBS. A new Ken Burns documentary is always a Big Deal (at least for people like me) and this is his Biggest Deal since “Country Music” in 2019. It is beautiful, thoughtful, provocative, exquisitely researched and a vital watch. I have already learned so much, which is always the case with his films. I feel fairly certain that Trump is going to ruin the official commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. next year with a bunch of white nationalist revisionist garbage, so I am going to treasure this important piece of work as the true celebration that it is.

It probably won’t shock you that not a lot of super newsworthy things happen in Maine during the week of Thanksgiving. I spent quite a while combing through BDN archives and came up with very little to share. Instead, enjoy this advertisement of all the crap you could buy at the Bangor Mall on Black Friday in 1990. How about that Charles Dickens-style ceramic carolers figurine from My Maine Bag? $41.95! For the pair! Man, they better be stuffed with money at that price. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about 100 schmackos in 2025 money. That seems quite extravagant, especially since you can probably buy them for two bucks at Goodwill at this very moment. Same with the four Led Zeppelin tapes for $54.99 from Musicland. Yikes. Back then you could tape most of those songs off WKIT 100.3 for FREE!

Music & Dance

Nov. 21: Dakha Brakha, Ukrainian folk ensemble, 7 p.m., Collins Center for the Arts, Orono

Nov. 21: Sanctum Obscura goth night feat. DJ Infant No. 1, 8 p.m., Old Town Theatre, Old Town

Nov. 22: Pihcintu and Akiwacu, international girl’s choir, 3 p.m., Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

Nov. 22: WERU-FM presents songwriter Sara Trunzo and her band, and Wild Greasy, 7 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

Nov. 22: Death’s Hand, Kaiju and Krull, 7 p.m., Old Town Theatre, Old Town

Nov. 22: Randy Travis, 7 p.m., Collins Center for the Arts, Orono

Nov. 22: Singer-songwriter Ingrid Andress, 8 p.m., Hollywood Casino, Bangor

Nov. 23: Blank Space, Taylor Swift tribute band, 7 p.m., Gracie Theatre, Husson University

Nov. 24: Unearth, Forked Tongue, Destination Void, Holy Filth, 7 p.m., Old Town Theatre, Old Town

Nov. 26: Songwriter Chris Ross, 7 p.m., Nocturnem Draft Haus, Bangor

Theater & Comedy

Nov. 20-23: Belfast Maskers present “Puffs,” nightly at the Basil Burwell Community Theater, Belfast

Nov. 21-23: New Surry Theatre presents “Conscience,” about Margaret Chase Smith, Blue Hill Town Hall Theatre, Blue Hill

Nov. 21: Comedy night with George Hamm and Mona Forgione, 8 p.m., Hollywood Casino, Bangor

Nov. 22: Spanksgiving Burlesque Show with Eye Candy Burlesque, 8 p.m., The Stage Door, Bangor

Arts, Books, Film and & Culture

Nov. 20: Author talk with mystery author Bruce Coffin on his new book “Crimson Thaw,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

Nov. 22: Horror Film Club screening of “Maniac,” 1980 slasher flick, 8 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

Nov. 23: Screening of 1925 “Phantom of the Opera” with live piano accompaniment by Doug Protsik, 3 p.m., Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

Nov. 24: “Housing as a Sustainability Challenge: Perceptions of risk and the quest for affordable housing in Maine,” talk by Sarah Sturtevant, 3 p.m., Norman Smith Hall, University of Maine, Orono, and on Zoom

Nov. 26: Bob Ross Paint-Along, 11 a.m., Ellsworth Public Library, Ellsworth

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

Nov. 21: Owl Prowl nature walk, 5 p.m., Hirundo Wildlife Refuge, Town

Nov. 21-23: Festival of Trees holiday event and fundraiser, opens at 10 a.m. each day, Anah Shrine Temple, Broadway, Bangor

Nov. 22: Phoenix Pro Wrestling, 6 p.m., Bangor Parks and Recreation, Bangor

Nov. 22-23: Maine Harvest Festival, two days of food, shopping and Maine farms, Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

Can we talk winter footwear for a minute? I recently purchased a pair of Blundstones that I’ve had my eye on for a while, and while I really like them overall - and I love the way they look - the Mainer in me feels like they are too fancy for the crappiest of Maine weather.

You know what I’m talking about: when you have to dig your car out of wet, heavy snow first thing in the morning, and it gets in around your ankles and gets your socks a little wet and everything sucks for the rest of the day. When you step into the wrong puddle, and now your boots have this weird ring of salt and dirt on them that is impossible to get rid of. That kind of weather. It can sneak up on you, and then you’re wearing your fancy new boots and you ruin them a little bit and then you feel like you both wasted money and were a silly fancy person. By you, I mean me.

There are tons of other options, of course. I love Bean Boots, but as with most lace-up boots I don’t like how long it takes to get them on and off if you’re going into and out of places where messy, sloppy boot removal is needed. Bogs are nice, but man, they make your feet sweaty. I’ve heard good things about Sorel. I wouldn’t be caught dead in Uggs - I was there for the basic bitch backlash of 2015 - but I guess they do actually make nice boots.

Anyway, all this is to say: What are your recommendations for the best winter footwear for a place like Maine? Men’s, women’s, genderless, whatever. My personal criteria is that they must be actually waterproof, comfortable, non-sweaty, not look specifically tactical or athletic, and ideally look kind of cool. Your mileage, of course, will vary. Leave your recs in the comments!