Just Like Old Times Charles Bassett (American studies/English) was the primary source for an article in Newsweek's January 11 issue about similarities between present-day America and the country 100 years ago as Americans prepared for the 20th century.     In the magazine's "Millenium Notebook" section, the article says that in 1899, as now, there were worries about new technologies and fears that the country was drifting away from its roots. "The country was beginning to assert itself as a player on the imperialist stage, having just beaten Spain in the Spanish-American War, and most Americans felt a glow of national pride, but `there was the sense somehow that it wasn't the old America,' says Charles Bassett, an American-studies professor at Colby College in Maine." A Painter's Palette On December 27 the Sunday New York Times quoted painter Bevin Engman (studio art) in a review of the Portland Museum of Art's biennial exhibition of Maine art. The story pursued her suggestion that the Maine landscape affords room for reflection that manifests itself in work other than traditional landscape paintings--that it influences work like her still lifes of books: "`I came back [to Maine] because I was seeking an antidote to the information age and its fast images,' explained Bevin Engman, who paints small, moody, elegantly composed arrangements of books. Ms. Engman continues: `I need the light, the openness, the lack of impediment between one's self and the natural world.'... Because much of the work [in the Maine Biennial show] is so inward looking, `people in New York might call it tame, or not current,' says Ms. Engman, who teaches at Colby College and regularly invites urban colleagues to lecture there." Curious George Jim Boylan (English), observing George Washington's birthday in typically Boylan-esque fashion, asked listeners on Maine Public Radio's Maine Things Considered to "put aside partisan bickering for the moment and consider the most important question affecting the nation: exactly which of the presidents on Mount Rushmore corresponds to which of the Beatles?"     After deducing that "Abraham Lincoln is clearly George Harrison," Boylan asserts that "We can also relatively quickly conclude that John Lennon is Theodore Roosevelt, if for no other reason than the little glasses. Give Lennon a good haircut, and what do you have? The head of the Bull Moose Party."     In a call from Ireland, where he currently directs the Colby in Cork program, Boylan also concluded that Paul McCartney is Thomas Jefferson--"between the two of them they wrote the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and `Yesterday'"--and that George Washington is Ringo.