A ruling by a federal appeals court yesterday said that the Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger, which has already closed four Wild Oats stores (including the one in Portland) and "reflagged" 27 others as Whole Foods, may have taken place without adequate consideration of the effect on the marketplace for natural and organic foods.

First things first, a correction: My too-fast fingers misspelled Cyrus Hagge's name in my piece about reporting operations on the Hill. My apologies to Mr. Hagge.

Secondly, some others have weighed in on their thoughts about the Observer, including former MHNO board member Heather Curtis.

"In my personal opinion, the Observer exists to provide a public forum," she wrote in February (while she was still on the board).

It’s an article of faith among art organizations that public art is unquestionably a good thing. The fact is, most public art is far from a good thing; most of it is plain awful.

Making art good enough to hold its own in a pubic space is special skill, and most artists, even very good artists, can’t do it. Even if they could, most committees, and Portland’s is no exception, can’t make a decision for quality art, even if they were offered it.

I'm getting a feeling of deja vu. Jamilla El-Shafei, of the Kennebunks Peace Department, is helping to organize a weekend protest march to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport.

An independent film, co-written by Kennebunk resident Steve Hrehovcik, filmed some scenes in Kittery over the weekend.

27 Down, due out in 2009, tells the story of a Boston cop who gets involved in a hit-and-run and then moves to the fictional town of Canada, Maine (Hrehovcik is obviously fascinated by the abudance of shared place-names in Maine; see below).

It’s in the nature of newspaper scheduling that you don’t always get to write about those interesting events, so I haven’t had the time or column inches to devote to a veteran painter of considerable interest, Charles DuBack at Jameson Gallery in Portland. His show ends this weekend, July 26, so here’s a somewhat belated appreciation.

As Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, wraps up a rare visit to war-torn Darfur -- where he is accused by the international community of being an accomplice in ethnic cleansing and genocide there -- a leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement will visit Portland on Saturday to speak about the situation in that region, where close to 300000 have died

More Avesta Housing news, strangely. They cut the ribbon today on the Pearl Place Apartments, "Maine’s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified affordable housing development," according to a press release sent out today. The 60 (cat-friendly) units, located at Oxford and Pearl streets, are also endorsed by the U.

This didn't quite fit in Sibilance this week, but we didn't want you to miss out:

F The Portland music scene is getting all kinds of Web-friendly. On July 24, Spencer Albee and Dave Gutter of Rustic Overtones (and As Fast As and Paranoid Social Club) will join Bull Moose co-owner Chris Brown as part of a live chat hosted by the Bull Moose group on Facebook

Most 20th-anniversary celebrations are a little more involved than this:

The Gritty McDuff's folks knew 2008 was their 20th anniversary year. But the word on the street is that yesterday a Gritty's staffer (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) realized that July 21 was the actual, on-the-day, 20th anniversary of the founding of Gritty McDuff's.

You will undoubtedly see a great deal of media coverage of the upcoming Beach to Beacon road race, slated for Saturday, August 2, in Cape Elizabeth. But the dirty little secret the newspapers and TV stations never tell you is that many of those stories, and even the story ideas, are not generated in the newsrooms of Maine. Instead, they are dreamed up in Arizona by the capable - and friendly - folks at Wolfe PR (they used to be based in Scarborough, but aren't anymore), and spoon-fed to Maine journalists.

As reported on the New Yorker's books blog this morning, Maine gets some attention in A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-Day Iraq (Atlas & Co), due out this September. Sure, we'd rather get noticed for other, less close-minded reasons, but the story of the Lewiston "Anti-Harry Potter Conference" -- at which activists cut up Harry Potter books rather than burn them (because they couldn't get a fire permit from the city) -- is undeniably entertaining.

For the past couple of decades or so quite a number of artists have been trying to push the limits of decency in art. It’s good business. Remember the piss Christ, the elephant-dung virgin, Mapplethorp’s special nasties? Feces and bodily functions have been a staple of reputation-building.

All that derives from the artistic career model that grew out of the avant-garde offending the sensibilities of the bourgeoisie, as happened in Paris in the late 19the century when Impressionism and its antecedents descendants outraged the art public.