I spent this morning looking at a couple of people’s variously rotten porches, and now know what I’m doing on a couple of weekends in early June: I’m helping fix them!

I spent this afternoon while the rain was still deciding whether it wanted to stop gathering signatures in Brunswick to get on the ballot, and a couple more people signed up to help in Brunswick, Auburn, and Lewiston (adding to other volunteers in Dresden, Edgecomb, and Pownal) so I am still on track to qualify for the November general election. While I was out there I did what I always do: admire people’s flowers and pick up litter from the sidewalk, so Brunswick is now one pocketful cleaner than it was before I woke up. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who signs and volunteers, you all mean the stars to me!

It’s really fun getting to meet all my neighbors! We talked about childhood, and growing old, and healthcare, and friendly neighborhood shortcuts around our various childhood backyards, and all the things we do and don’t like about the current political landscape. I got to meet the person whose flowers I always stop to take pictures of in the summer.

It makes me really happy to see folks get excited about someone younger than 30 running for office. I’ll have to start an FAQ page on here because some patterns have definitely started to emerge. How old are you (28)? What political party are you with (there is no political party behind me)? Where are you from originally (I grew up here in Southern Maine, and I am hoping to stay!)? Have you heard of Tristram Coffin (yes I have his name)? Among others.

Anyhow I have to go get my things ready for another week of work and print another couple hundred copies of my platform. Now that I’m out talking to people they’re just flying off of the shelves. Hopefully I’ll see some of you in Portland tomorrow at Novare Res, and here is a lovely dandelion enjoying this evening’s sunshine!

I am the illustrator for this month’s Birthday Edition of Small Acts Maine, a local zine that runs in the southern midcoast! I had a ton of fun with these very nautical-themed illustrations (and others if you read the zine!), especially the lighthouse (not pictured) and the snail.

In other news, I collected the first signatures to qualify for the congressional ballot this November, and a few people I talked to offered to circulate for me as well so I have met my goal of 100 signatures for the day (including ones that have not been signed yet but other people will be collecting for me) in a big win for teamwork!

I will be at Novare Res Bier Cafe on Monday evening for the monthly Pub Sing from 7-9pm. If you live in or around Portland and want to find me to sign a nomination petition (I am currently overseeing petitions for Westbrook and Portland) that’s where I’ll be. Or we can just sing wonderful songs together, and that will be fun, too!

As described on the new homepage, I am running for Congress! I have been to Staples. I have donated to Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program. I have fought for my life against my printer to get petitions printed on legal sized paper (it can handle the paper just fine but needed to be persuaded to print more than two forms at a time out of 70). I have failed to print business cards (because the paper is too thick for my printer). I have 25 days to collect 2000 signatures in order to qualify for the ballot. I should absolutely plan a party for Memorial Day weekend. I am excited to hopefully be your next Representative to Congress: the clock starts now.

This beautiful drizzly day was perfect for a springtime walk around the Hamilton Audubon Sanctuary in West Bath. I heard lots of birds and saw lots of lovely moss and a couple of fiddleheads, and the sounds of the water dripping off of the branches was very peaceful. It’s wonderful to have such good access to nature, and I thought it was really cool how the paths make just enough of a break in the canopy of trees for moss to grow in the sunlight, leading to gorgeous strips of moss alongside the walking trails.

Last year (in 2025) Maine’s Bureau of Insurance held a public forum on whether or not health insurers should be allowed to increase their premiums by an average of over 20%. I spoke at that forum, and here is what I said:

“I’m glad to see some folks here from the health insurance carriers, and I know it’s been a while already so I really hope they’re still listening. I also hope there are a couple of lawmakers and policymakers from the State hanging around, as this all seems quite relevant to their work. And also in the future, I hope the insurance carriers will also limit their own presentations to three minutes apiece so that we can all save our time a little bit: it seems to me that they are just as much guests here as we are.

“That all aside, the money that the insurance carriers are asking for with these rate increases is money that does not exist on an individual/personal level in the state of Maine. You’re mentioning annualized premiums of $20,000, $24,000 but this is a state where the median personal income is still only about $40,000, and that’s just the people who actually earn wages, and before we even get into copays, coinsurances, and deductibles. These are insurmountable costs.

“We cannot continue, every time we go to the doctor, to not only pay for our doctors and their offices, but also pay for an insurance minion to tell us not to go, an extra clerk at the doctor’s office to argue with that minion, an insurance executive’s salary and new wig (or whatever it is they get in their “compensation package” aside from direct wages), a shareholder, and three lawyers. Every time we go to a doctor we pay for six to seven peoples’ time, only two of whom are actually trying to help us. We do not have the money to keep paying for them all.

“It needs to be the carrier’s responsibility to balance their own budget like the real grown-up businesses they allege themselves to be, and to every once in a while to show even a fraction of a spine and stand up to pharmaceutical and specialized technical companies who think that they can charge whatever price they want and the world will just turn belly-up and fork over. There is nothing left to fork.

“At this point it would probably be cheaper for the state to just pay people’s medical bills directly and cut out the middle-men. […] If insurance carriers cannot keep their businesses in order then Mainers will have to take our own place in the free market and innovate our own way out.”

The outreach coordinator for CoverME.gov called me afterwards to talk about some things, and one of the questions she asked me was what I would say to the Mainers who cancelled their health insurance plans this year because of the increased premiums. “There is nothing I can say,” I told her, “that would give them the $10,000 or more they’d need to afford health insurance this year.”

This is not a problem of people whimsically declining health insurance. It is a problem of health insurance being too expensive to buy.

I spent a Friday evening in Portland to hear the Shank Painters play, and was joined by a couple of friends I haven’t seen in way too long! The music was excellent as always; my photography, unfortunately, was not, so here is a little drawing instead 🙂

I spent an April weekend helping replace these porch steps (and a couple pieces of the porch itself, too) with a fellow who found my ad in a local zine. This was a very fun project to work on, and I think it turned out quite well!

On February 25th I had the pleasure of singing in public with friends! We assembled to raise a little money for a group that reaches out to Portland’s homeless by offering support however it is needed: clothes, tents, gift cards to anywhere they can sit and get warm for a while. Attendance was not record-setting, but more people were listening (and merrily singing with us) than were performing so I will call it a success. Now to figure out what to do with all the leftover chorus booklets we printed so that people could sing along! Thank you to Charlie for assembling the poster.