A week rarely goes by in which we do not receive at least one letter from a reader who left a purse or wallet in a shopping cart or on a store counter or park bench and then is utterly flabbergasted that someone was nice enough to return it. We choose not publish these letters, not because we don’t think it’s nice that people are nice, but because not keeping something that doesn’t belong to you is pretty much a ground-level societal norm. When we start to publish such letters, it will be your signal to start worrying.

Maine and New Hampshire have worked out a deal in which this state will pay that state $616,704 to house 30 of our inmates temporarily while construction of our new prison is completed. Now, a New Hampshire lawmaker, obviously confused about the difference between a business deal and a favor, says Maine also should do the neighborly thing and drop the fee it charges out-of-state snowmobilers to use the trails Maine snowmobilers pay to build and groom. With neighbors like that, maybe Maine should forget about building a prison and start looking into a really, really big fence.

The late Gov. Percival Baxter is famous for his generous giving, most notably, the couple hundred thousand spectacular acres he gave the people of Maine for the state park that now bears his name. Among his many smaller acts of generosity was the library he gave to his hometown of Gorham and an adjacent two-acre parcel that came with the stipulation it be maintained as a park. Now the town is eyeballing the two acres for a parking lot and the Baxter heirs are threatening legal action. The town’s defense, of course, will be that cars deserve parks, too.

In other news of cheerful giving/grumpy receiving, the late Florence Parke donated 30 acres of land 20 years ago to the town

of Windsor, stipulating that it be maintained as a park in which local Boy and Girls Scouts could gather. Now (stop us if you’ve heard this one before) the town is eyeballing the land for a new school and an abutter is threatening legal action. The town’s defense, of course, will be that a school could be considered a sort of indoor park, really, and that local Boy and Girl Scouts won’t just be welcome to gather there, they’re be required by state truancy law to do so.

Westbrook’s Frenchtown has long had a reputation as a tough neighborhood, a place of poverty, crime and dilapidation. Now, as northern Maine moves south to get decent jobs, the Portland ‘burb is booming, Frenchtown is getting spruced up and the same people who complained about the poverty, crime and dilapidation now are complaining about higher housing costs. In other words, they want low rents without the low rent.

As the State House makeover lurches toward completion, word comes that the $800,000 project to install Maine wildlife dioramas in the tunnel between the Capitol and the State Office Building is now a $1 million project that includes granite slabs etched with stylized images of the State House – that is, Maine taxpayers are spending a cool million so people can go into a tunnel and see what they would see if they went outside or just looked around the building they’re in. Sometimes art imitates life, and it can get pretty expensive.