Van Gogh's angst on a Maine bulletin board

Comment and photo by WILLIAM MORGAN

The community billboard is a feature of many small New England towns.

Notices of town meetings, public hearings, cultural events and lost cats appear on these pre-electronic message boards. A friend of mine in Dublin, N.H.,  died a few years back and a notice of his death and memorial service were chalked on a board in front of the headquarters of Yankee Magazine in that town.

But there is something a little different on the bulletin board between the town landing in Round Pond, Maine, and the Muscongus Bay Lobster restaurant there: a tribute to Vincent Van Gogh.

These hand-written recitations from the angst-ridden painter's last year in this unexpected place are legions more real than the tacky reprints of his work, the museum shop tote bags, and the eternally dreadful ballad "Starry, Starry Night."