Some people “from away” wonder what we residents of Maine do all winter. Well, there is so much to do in the Portland area, despite wintry winds, ice and snow, that we can keep ourselves pretty busy.

For example, Portland Public Library offers their wonderful Brown Bag Lunch series, featuring authors, young and old, producers of fiction or non-fiction. We missed Richard Ford this month (too busy), but we had the pleasure of hearing two fascinating writers, Stacy Mitchell and Wesley McNair.

Mitchell wrote an expose entitled “Big-Box Swindle, the True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses.” The subject is obviously dear to the hearts of Mainers – the auditorium was full to overflowing.

Mitchell made the point that today’s big boxes are far different from their predecessors, the Woolworth’s and A&P’s of our childhoods. They have grown enormously in the last 20 years. For instance, Borders and Barnes & Noble control half of all bookstore sales, and Home Depot and Lowe’s half the sales of all hardware and building supplies, according to Mitchell. Wal-mart is now the largest retailer in the world, with 6,000 outlets – and it accounts for 10 percent of what Americans spend in stores.

The big concern is that the money made by these big-box retailers generally goes back to their corporate headquarters whereas the money made by local businesses tends to stay in the area.

McNair read from his most recently published book of poetry, “The Ghost of You and Me.” He likes to think of poetry as an intimate conversation with the reader. Its purpose, “to talk to one another – one life to another.”

His poems seem to tell stories, connecting to everyday life. “My Town” describes life in a small town (he lives in Mercer, hardly a dot on the state map – blink an eye and you’ve gone by already, said McNair) where people go to the Town Hall on a winter’s night to hear one of the residents read “The Cremation of Sam McGee” in its entirety and where picking a bag of fresh rhubarb and eating a stalk raw is a big event.

Some of his poems are autobiographical, describing his relationships with his biological father (absent for most of his childhood) and his stepfather, who was not interested in his daydreaming but wanted him to tend the goats and do his chores. Another, “The Boy Carrying the Flag,” tells of what it was like to be in the color guard of the local high school marching band that played for the Saturday football games.

Gently humorous poems included “Hymn to the Comb Over,” describing futile tries to hide bald spots, and “Mistakes About Heaven,” an attempt to correct misconceptions about the afterlife. McNair has a delightful manner and listening to him reading his poetry was sheer delight.

Is there anyone who hasn’t seen the MGM movie, “The Wizard of Oz”? The Portland Players, our local community theater, has produced a wonderful version that kept its sell-out audience enthralled.

Dorothy was the perfect heroine in her blue pinafore and pigtails and Toto was her perfect companion. The Wicked Witch was truly wicked and Glinda the Good Witch of the North seemed to arrive on stage by floating down in a very pink bubble. It was remarkable how Dorothy’s three farmhand friends transformed themselves into a wobbly Scarecrow, a shiny Tin Woodman and a roaring Cowardly Lion with a twitchy tail. The Lollipop Guild was a special treat -three little boys, first- and second-graders in local schools, sang and danced their hearts out and stole the show while on stage.

The special effects were exceptional – who would think that a cyclone could happen on a small stage in South Portland, or that a wizard could take off in a hot-air balloon or that monkeys could fly? To top it off, the singing voices were excellent and the orchestra, featuring strings, English horn, trumpet, piano and percussion, did a first-rate job.

Michael Donovan, director and choreographer, is to be congratulated for producing such a great show – managing 35 cast members, myriad costume changes and many special effects – and everybody on stage seemed to be having the time of their lives.

When I think of Francisco Goya, the Spanish artist, I think of two of his most famous paintings that we saw at the Prado in Madrid. The “Family of Charles IV” depicts the king, front and center, bedecked with medals and sword, standing next to his wife, Maria Luisa in an elegant gown, surrounded by other members of the royal family. The painting is gorgeous – the silks, satins, laces, jewels are exquisite. At the same time, however, Goya has managed to portray his scorn for this sham court, which he considered to be degenerate in both body and mind.

The second painting, the “Shooting of the Rebels of May 3, 1808,” is shocking – with a firing squad in regular file along the right side of the painting and the terrified victims in an irregular file along the left. Light from a lantern falls directly on the central figure of the victims, a man in white with arms upraised in a passionate gesture. It is an unforgettable expression of the horrors of war.

The Portland Museum of Art presents us with another aspect of Goya’s talents, his 80-plate print series, “Los Caprichos,” engravings that, with stinging satire, exposed Spanish society in all its weakness. The first plate is a self-portrait of the artist – his sneering, disdainful expression tells us that he means to uncover the depravity and greed of the Church, the idleness and corruption of the nobility, the horrors and prevalence of prostitution, the superstitions and ignorance of the common people and the folly and cruelty of arranged marriages. After looking closely at the first few engravings, I found myself moving more rapidly – too much vulgarity, too many demons and goblins, too many nasty old men and vicious old ladies.

No doubt that Goya’s engraving technique is masterful, but the subject matter was just too depressing and I wished I were back at the Prado, surrounded by his beautiful oil paintings.