Your Scribe recently wrote about green wood - unseasoned firewood - and then strolled down memory lane of fireplaces I have enjoyed.

I neglected to mention my most impressive, that in Portland (on Falmouth Street, near the law school). I am referencing an open brick hearth in a paneled library, and it made the room a delight to spend time in.

I recall an evening when Herb Ludwig of the pop-folk singing group Devonsquare came over to a small party. He was a fun, likable guy and spun tales of the challenges of a trio writing their own music, performing it around New England and trying to break a national album. This is a hard thing to do but he made the effort sound greatly amusing.

(Herb played roles other than storyteller. His day job was as a lawyer, and once he helped get my babysitter out of jail when she was run in on a bum rap by Portland police. She "resisted arrest" when a group she was with was ordered to leave Monument Square).

Herb died during an operation a couple years ago. Everyone who knew him and/or the group was shocked. I still think of him, though, standing along that cozy fireplace, telling rollicking stories of the music business.

As a lifelong introvert (not by choice), it has been my wont to listen to others more vibrant - or talkative - than myself.

Here are a few recollections, though no fireplaces are involved:

Sen. Ed Muskie. I covered the senator on the campaign trail in the '70s, and one day observed him visiting some of the filthiest, most un-OSHAesque workplaces in Maine. At the end of his "tour" of a small sled maker in the Norway area, he cheerfully posed for photos with the wealthy owner. The manufacturer should have been closed down, not buoyed up by a photo session with one of the nation's top lawmakers.

Jean-Bertrande Aristide. He was a key political figure of Haiti when I interviewed him in Portland. Later he rose to be president. He was friendly and spoke with the love and optimism of a later-day Martin Luther King. "Love and brotherhood can save our country." Strange that every Haitain cab driver I have encountered in the last few years has said he is a heavy-handed tyrant who helped ruin the country.

Ken Rosewall. This tennis great played in Portland years ago at an event called the Downeast Tennis Classic. The diminutive Australian was battling in the third set against a rising star named Gene Mayer when the chair umpire, local character Perry Rockafellow, climbed down from his perch and began leaving the building. Rosewall, a low-key guy, quietly asked him where he was going at such a key moment. "I've got to get to the terminal," Rockafellow replied without a trace of self-consciousness. "I don't want to miss the last boat to Peaks Island."

Derrick Sanderson. He once was a well-known hockey star for the Boston Bruins, and was the most self-absorbed newsmaker I have ever encountered. I met him following a lunch he had with several friends. (I didn't eat). He was obnoxious during our interview (which he requested), and then tried to hand me the lunch bill even though I didn't have as much as a glass of water. No wonder he ended up broke and almost friendless.

Audrey Hepburn. Big transition, I know. But I attended one of her last press conferences in Hollywood. A woman reporter asked the actress how she had stayed so slim all her career. Diet? Exercise? "No," she said, in a soft but resolute voice. "I was a child when the Nazis invaded my hometown in The Netherlands. We had to flee them almost every week, and I never had enough food. Doctors told me my stomach didn't fully develop. So as an adult I could never eat very much at all."

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