Our friend and former colleague Cathy Tumber has written a piece about "the role of neglected cities in a sustainable future" for the latest issue of the Boston Review. While she doesn't mention Portland, or Maine, she very well could have - she discusses small cities near good agricultural land that could become central to low-carbon, low-impact living in a world with increasing numbers of humans.

Two upcoming events will take on the subject of secret lives, from decidedly different perspectives.

• On Thursday, March 5, local poets and members of the Portland Police Department (which just got its new police chief) will participate in a poetry reading called Thin Blue Lines. The police department's fundraising calendar, which contains poetry and prose about real-life as a police officer, has gotten national attention

For all we hear about kids today not knowing about popular culture, we can take heart that at least one eighth-grader in Portland knows that Bob Marley is not just some white-guy comedian with a bizarre "Mainah" accent.

We know this because the Portland Museum of Art is celebrating National Youth Art Month in March, and just sent out an announcement of their student-artwork exhibit, which will be on show from February 28 to March 29.

Stand up for urban chickens. Next week, on Wednesday, February 18, at its 7 pm meeting, the Portland City Council will discuss an ordinance that would allow city residents to keep chickens in their back yards. Folks working toward a "Sustainable Portland" by 2030 are asking residents to support this effort, which mirrors a successful effort in South Portland in 2007

Word comes that the artworld version of a major bank meltdown occurred in London a few days ago. At a big Christie's auction paintings by Mark Rothko and Francis Bacon went unsold.

As part of their efforts to draw attention to working conditions for restaurant employees, the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Maine is holding a rally today (2/13) to highlight the fact that tipped workers, including many restaurant staff, earn a minimum wage of $2.13 an hour - roughly 1/3 of the federal minimum wage and 28 percent of Maine's minimum wage for non-tipped workers.

At 9:30 this morning, a dozen Maine couples will start speaking at the Welcome Center at the State House about what gay marriage rights (or the lack thereof) means to them. Then, they'll deliver Valentine's Day cards to state legislators, along with copies of a video about three same-sex Maine couples who want to get married.

Local author Hannah Holmes, whose natural history of humans, The Well-Dressed Ape (Random House), I reviewed last month, has started a new viral campaign to help market her book. The first installment of her effort is this video, which I've embedded here:

But I'll also share with you her note introducing the video, both to give you a sense of Hannah herself, and a sense of the book world as it stands today.

The big national media news is that Congress has pushed back the Digital TV transition (see "Kill Your Antenna," by Jeff Inglis, January 16) from this week until June, ostensibly to allow the estimated 5.8 million still-unprepared households additional time to get the converter boxes they will need to receive digital television signals broadcast over the airwaves.

It may turn me into a a bitter grump, but it seems that the cold weather has an altruistic effect on other people. This week, my email box has been inundated with notices about various charitable endeavors. Here are two that caught my eye:

• Local photographer Emilie Sommer, of emilie inc photography, is holding a raffle for a $5,000 wedding-photo package.

Not much more to report from the Larry Summers press conference call, aside from his urgent tone (see the title of this post).

Summers basically offered up the same talking points outlined in my previous post. He emphasized "the committment on both the tax side and the expenditure side...toward renewables," referring to the much-hyped green energy component of the stimulus bill