October has not failed to deliver so far on some seriously warm days and cool nights and this weekend is looking to be more of the same. Go outside and enjoy the Taste of Thomaston or some apple picking in Hope or go picnic at one of the best spots we mentioned on pp.4-5 in The Wave.

Want to know where to go for happy hour every day of the week? Check out our Guide To Midcoast’s Happy Hours

Thursday, Oct. 9

· As always, the Open Mic at The Highlands Coffee House promises some great talent in the Midcoast and beyond! Drink and food specials. Sign up is at 6 p.m. and goes from 6:30-9:30 p.m.

· Free at the Rockland Public Library, at 6 p.m. is the 1946 film The Spiral Staircase, starring Dorothy McGuire, George Brent and Ethel Barrymore. A murderer is targeting disabled young women in a sleepy New England town, and Helen (Dorothy McGuire), a mute servant in a Gothic mansion, is terrified she's next.
Leonard Maltin called it a "superb Hitchcock-like thriller."

Friday Oct. 10

 · If you like Irish music, On Saturday, October 11, Irish musicians will gather at Rock City Café for an informal evening of traditional Irish tunes and a few songs from 7-9 p.m. No cover but donations appreciated.

Saturday Oct. 11

· New! Grand opening of a true-blue old-school Grand Opening of Manny's Cool Stuff. New and used CDs, Vinyl, DVDs, Blu-rays and all kinds of cool stuff.25 Mechanic St.
9:30 a.m. Free food from the Bagel Cafe. Sign up for giveaway items.

· This is a Don’t Miss event and one of our Cheap Dates picks: Knox Museum is throwing its second annual Taste of Thomaston, a food and wine festival celebrating notable local chefs, vintners, cheese artisans, brewers, fishermen, farmers, and all things delicious, local and "foodie." Admission is $12 for adults, $10 museum members in advance, and $15/$12 at the door. The tents open at 11 a.m. and the tasting continues until 2 p.m. Only guests 21 or older will be admitted to the tents.

· Gingers never get respect! Well, this guy will. The Camden Opera House presents the documentary “Being Ginger” a whimsical look into the life of a guy trying to overcome his hatred of his bright orange hair so that he can at least find love. "Being Ginger" is a wonderful, illuminating look into the life of the filmmaker, Scott P. Harris. Tickets: $8.50 available at (207)470-7066, www.camdenoperahouse.com, or at Camden Town Office M-F 9AM - 3PM

Sunday, Oct. 12

· Open House at New Sports Complex, Sun., Oct. 12, 2-5 p.m., The Pitch, 2606 Camden Rd., Warren. The indoor complex will offer pick-up soccer, lacrosse, whiffle ball, field hockey and more. FMI: MainePitch.com.

· Hope Orchards is having its 5th annual Fruits & Fibers Day 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Good time to go apple picking and then watch some fiber artists in action demonstrate hand-dyeing, knitting and spinning. Uproot Pie Co. will be on hand making apple, bacon and brie pizzas. Yum!

· While you’re in Hope, pop on over to The Hatchet Mountain Publik House. There are still quite a few spots left for the beer tasting Patriots game fundraiser this Sunday. Entry: $10 cash and a $30 (minimum) tax-deductible donation to St. Francis Inn of Philadelphia will cover all food and beer! Please call us at 763-4565 to reserve your spot.

If you have an arts and entertainment event that fits within the adult scope of fun and cool things to do for Weekend Picks, contact Kay Stephens at news@penbaypilot.com

Does this look at all remotely familiar? Can you guess where this is and the approximate date the photo was taken?

Those who Rockland Historical Society submitted last week’s Throwback Thursday photo and quite a few of you got the correct answers on our Facebook page. According to RHS, “This is a 1926 photo looking north at North Main Street and the E.O. Philbrook & Son Garage on Main Street where Dunkin' Donuts is located today.”

Photo courtesy Belfast Historical Society and Museum

Throwback Thursday needs your submissions. Send us your “back in the day” photos with a caption at news@penbaypilot.com

THOMASTON — Let’s see, is it right in the Cheap Dates price range? Advance tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for Know Museum members.

Check.

Is it food and alcohol centered? Check.

Is it a great place to bring a pal or a “special friend?” Okay, you get it.

This Saturday, Oct. 11, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., the General Henry Knox Museum is throwing its second annual Taste of Thomaston, a food and wine tasting festival, with 40+ vendors, live music, buggy rides and artisans.

Last year’s inaugural event was a blow-out, so the organizers are getting ready for it.

“Last year, we expected 200-300 people and we got close to 500,” said Tobin Malone, executive director of the Knox Museum. ”So this year we’ve added an extra tent and we’re planning on 500-600 people.”

This year’s event brings back some of the chefs and vendors from last year and some new ones as well.

When you buy a ticket, you’ll be given a special wine glass and follow the flow of people traffic all along the booths that will be set up under the tents. “You’ll just proceed from table to table,” said Malone. “You’ll get a sip here and bite here and a bowl here and plate there until you’ve tasted everything and come out the other side.” 

Some of the premier local chefs contributing some of their signature dishes include Melissa Kelly of Primo Restaurant, Kerry Altiero of Café Miranda, Scott Yakavenko of The Slipway and Manuel Mercier of The Youngtown Inn.

Molly Sholes of Spruce Mountain Blueberries, Elaine Waldron of Hootin Gluten Free Bakery, Nancy and Pat O'Brien of Fiore Artisan Olive Oils & Vinegars, Sean and Tracey Beaudry from The Highlands Coffee House, Ryan Jones from Thomaston Café and Bakery, among many others, will also be on hand to share their unique creations.

Additional specialty local products will be available for tasting from the likes of Terra Optima Farm Market, State of Maine Cheese Company, 3 Dogs Café & Sweet Sensations, and Maine Street Meats. Thomaston Farmers Market will relocate to Montpelier's grounds for the festival.

And the price of admission gets you more than wine, apparently. The festival will be serving wine from Cellardoor Winery, Sweetgrass Farm Winery, Savage Oakes Vineyard & Winery, and Breakwater Vineyards as well as brews from Andrew's Brewing Company and Cold River Vodka.

As for music and other “things to do” while there, there will be live jazz by Bel Isle Trio, and horse and buggy rides around the grounds with Crystal Daggett and her prize horse, Romeo. So, even if kids aren’t allowed in the tent, there will still be a few things to entertain them on the grounds. New this year will be jewelry and art on display in booths outside the tent. “We’re trying to open up more non-food booths,” said Malone.

“It’s looking like it’s going to be a beautiful day on Saturday, in the 60s and sunny, so we’re excited,” said Malone. there you go! Perfect date.

Tickets can be bought in advance at knoxmuseum.org; or $15/$12 at the door. Rain or shine. Must be 21 to enter the tents. FMI 354-8062.

BELFAST — When a piece of modern artwork becomes more recognizable because of the artist’s name, rather than his or her signature style, there’s going to be a debate.  This concept prompted Mike Fletcher, a part-time art instructor at Waterfall Arts, to come up with the concept of hanging a show of anonymous works at Waterfall Arts this month as a counter (might some even say protest) to the way modern artwork has been so branded.

“Anon” is a new exhibit at Waterfall Arts in Belfast that features work done by artists in something other than their customary style. In the Corridor Gallery of the Belfast art center, a wide variety of artwork is identified only with a title, medium and date of execution.

“I personally have always been interested in the idea of anonymity as an artist as a reaction to artist branding,” said Fletcher. “I think it’s a fairly recent phenomenon, maybe mid-20th century with the abstract expressionist movement, such as art critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, and the galleries in New York that would find artists that they thought they could make into celebrities. ”

Fletcher especially admits he has a hard time with superstar artists who produce nothing but a concept and have a team of assistants to execute that concept. “Then the work gets out there and is sold for outrageous amounts of money only because it’s been branded,” he said.

For working artists everywhere, he makes an excellent point. Fletcher thinks that the branding of art does a disservice not only to other artists, but also to the viewing public as well. “If I go to a museum or even a show in this hallway here and I’m looking at work and passing some work by, then realize the one I passed by was made by a recognizable name,  I come back and find myself liking it,” he said. “I didn’t mean to, but I’ve been corralled, I’ve been cajoled and this happens all the time. How much of it is a constraint on the viewer and how much is a constraint on the artist because he or she is expected to work on the confines of a certain genre or of certain expectations?”

Fletcher contacted more than a dozen local area artists to ask if they would like to be part of a totally anonymous show. He said about 85 percent of those contacted wanted to participate without their names attached. ”I was hoping that artists would put something new into the show that didn’t fit into their normal style, so that they could have fun and be liberated. And some did. But interestingly, a lot of the artists put in older, earlier work that didn’t fit in with their current style.”

Quite accidentally, the exhibit produced a fun little guessing game for viewers. So, the Waterfall Arts staff decided to put together a ballot for people to match the artist with the artwork, which will be revealed later this month when Waterfall Arts hosts an artist’s salon.

The Anon artist's salon is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 23 at 6:30 p.m. to provide an opportunity to discuss the show and share thoughts and insights. The salon is open to everyone.

The Anon show opened Sept. 26 and will continue until mid-December. For more information visit: waterfallarts.org

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

This October, in a number of Midcoast libraries from Belfast to Bath, you’re likely to walk in and find an elaborately set dinner table with empty chairs. Upon closer look, you will see personal effects at each place setting, such as sunglasses or a favorite coffee mug, framed photos and other mementos. The people for whom these place settings were set are dead—all killed in an act of domestic violence.

They were parents, children, neighbors, friends and valued members of the community, and their untimely deaths have left many empty places at the table. New Hope for Women is once again bringing back its powerful exhibit to Maine libraries: An Empty Place At The Table, a memorial it has exhibited since 2002.

The memorial consists of a dining table surrounded by empty chairs as a reminder of the tragic deaths leaving an empty place not only in the lives of their families, but in the community as well. The table is set with tableware donated by the families of those who have been killed with items that either belonged to the victims or were selected to reflect and celebrate their personalities, passions and dreams.

According to the state Department of Public Safety, of the last 10 homicides in Maine, seven of them were caused by domestic violence. The most horrific was this past summer in Saco, where Heather Smith, 36, and her three children, Jason Montez, 12, Noah Smith, 7, and Lily Smith, 4, were shot to death inside their apartment by husband and father, Joel Smith, 33, who then shot and killed himself.

In national news it took a graphic video of NFL athlete Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee (now wife), Janay Palmer, in an elevator on Feb. 15, 2014, to surface online this past month before the public and the NFL reacted. Since then, that video has lit an incendiary fire under the domestic violence issue. 

“It certainly has engendered a great deal of interest in this issue and a lot of questions,” said Kathleen Morgan, executive director of New Hope For Women in Rockland. “Ray Rice is not the only athlete, and football is not the only sport in which this has occurred. I’m glad to see the spotlight on the issue on the national level and glad to see the NFL taking a stance.”

An enormous amount of Internet backlash from both men and women came against Palmer (now Rice), when she posted an Instagram message the day after the video surfaced seemingly making an excuse for her husband’s physical abuse. To give some perspective to this situation Morgan said, “She wants what most victims want. They want the violence to end, not the relationship.  I’m sure Ray Rice has made all the correct apologies and promises to Janay. She should not be blamed for making the decision to stay. He is the only one responsible for his actions.”

One question always asked is: Why doesn’t she leave?

“Victims stay for many reasons that are complicated and complex,” said Morgan. The most common reason is that the victim still loves his/her abuser. Other reasons include trying to keep the family together if they have children, religious, cultural or family pressures, lack of income and available housing, emotional blackmail or threats from the abuser.

“The bottom line is that the victim wants the violence to stop and gives the abuser opportunities to change,” said Morgan.

The memorial is sponsored by New Hope For Women, a nonprofit agency serving victims of domestic violence in Waldo, Knox and Lincoln counties. It is available for viewing in the following Midcoast libraries on these dates:

• Patten Free Library, Bath on Oct. 7
• Topsham Public Library on Oct. 9
• Wiscasset Public Library on Oct. 14
• Skidompha Public Library, Damariscotta on Oct. 16
• Rockland Public Library on Oct. 21
• Camden Public Library on Oct. 23
• Belfast Free Library on Oct. 27
  

For more information on New Hope For Women, including a new support group forming in Rockland in October, visit newhopeforwomen.org or call 1-800-522-3304.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — At first, when Kathleen LaBree talks about her signature cocktail, it sounds like she’s saying “Chowdah-tini.” LaBree is co-owner of The Speakeasy and The Chowder House, both in Rockland at Park and Main.

Given the name of her restaurant, that’s an easy mistake to make right? But no, she’s actually saying “Chata-tini,” named after the cocktail’s most prominent ingredient, Rum Chata, a Caribbean rum liqueur with natural dairy flavors. LaBree describes it as a “Caribbean flavored Bailey’s.”

“It’s a wonderful after dinner drink, if you like your dessert in a glass,” she said. “Sort of like liquid cake.”

LaBree designed this drink herself, which is a very warming drink even though it’s shaken with ice and served up in a martini glass.

One of The Speakeasy’s most popular drinks, after one sip it tastes like a cold hot chocolate, with rum and amaretto flavors, plus a nip of cinnamon.

(Side note: Remember how Cheers in Boston used to have a ground-level bar and a fancy restaurant upstairs? Not that many places have that combination anymore, but the Chowder House and the Speakeasy do!)

To make this drink yourself at home, watch our accompanying video. The recipe also follows below.

The Chata-tini

• Start with a shaker of ice and add:
• 2 ounces of Rum Chata
• ½ ounce vanilla vodka
• ½ ounce Amaretto di Saronno

Wet the rim of the martini glass and dip into cinnamon sugar.

Shake and strain into the martini glass. Sprinkle cinnamon on top and garnish with a cinnamon stick.

To see all of our past “What’s In That Cocktail” series (with video!), check out our “Iconic Cocktails” resource page: The best craft cocktails in the Midcoast

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Submitted to us by The Rockland Historical Society, can you guess where this is and what year?

We had more than 30 guesses on last week’s Throwback Thursday photo and Mish Morgenstern was the first to guess correctly. It was indeed Freedom Village cica 1900 at the Post Office Square. Note the skyline of this image which does not include telephone and telegraph wires. Perhaps it was taken before rural electrification reached Freedom, Maine.

Photo courtesy of Rockland Historical Society.

Throwback Thursday needs your submissions. Send us your “back in the day” photos with a caption at news@penbaypilot.com

This past weekend’s ah-mazing Indian summer had you all fooled, but the changing leaves and cool nights have already signaled it’s time to get adjusted to October. Yep, gotta face it— it’s October now. Winding down with some great wine and cheese events and Whitehall Inn happenings, along with same free art and film offerings, this is your weekend to downshift into fall.

Want to know where to go for happy hour every day of the week? Check out our Guide To Midcoast’s Happy Hours

Thursday, Oct. 2

· As always, the Open Mic at The Highlands Coffee House promises some great talent in the Midcoast and beyond! Drink and food specials. Sign up is at 6 p.m. and goes from 6:30-9:30 p.m.

Worth a drive! The Spruce Point Inn Resort in Boothbay is having a cheese and wine tasting with Eventide, an olive oil and vinegar shop from 4-5 p.m.

Friday Oct. 3

· If you like acoustic material ranging from traditional blues to the Grateful Dead, the Leaky Boot Jug Band plays at Rockland's Sail, Power and Steam Museum at 7:30 p.m.

· The Friends of the Thomaston Public Library has got some seriously subversive free films on tap! They’re showing the original War of the Worlds (1953), the frightening adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel about a Martian invasion, transplanted from 19th-Century England to contemporary USA. Starts at 6:30 p.m. Donations are accepted. Call 354-2453 for more info.

· This is the last day you can get into the Farnsworth Art Museum for free! During First Fridays, the museum will open its galleries free of charge to the public from 5 -8 p.m. You know what’s worth checking out? Edwin Austin Abbey’s Shakespeare exhibit. FMI: visit farnsworthmuseum.org.

· Wine and cheese go together with artists like Gin and Juice. So check it out—the Jackson Memorial Library is having a wine and cheese reception for Sylvia Murdock and Ed Botkin in their JML Gallery starting at 5p.m. with live music provided by By The Bay. A portion of all gallery sales benefits the Jackson Memorial Library.

· Singer-songwriter Brian Patricks will play folk, blues and rock at Rock City Cafe from 7-9 p.m. No cover, but donations are appreciated.

· The Speakeasy hosts the band Tomorrow Morning from 8-11 p.m. No cover. Give them a listen on Reverbnation!

Saturday Oct. 4

· Want to be a volunteer actor at Fright at the Fort's What's Bugging You? Come to Fright orientation at 10 a.m. at the Fort Visitor Center and learn how to be a Haunter, among other roles. For more info on Fright or to find a volunteer form visit fortknox.maineguide.com

· The Whitehall Inn is really shaking it up these days with some interesting theme events.  For their premier Culinary Theatre, they are offering Spanish Flare with paella being made before your eyes. Sip sangria  and enjoying tapas style appetizers. The paella will be traditional seafood and vegetarian, served with unlimited sangria and the option to purchase Spanish cocktails. A traditional belly dance will complete the Spanish inspired feast over dessert. The event runs from 6-9 p.m. at $49.99 per person.  Limited seating available and reservations required. Call 207-236-3391.

Sunday, Oct. 5

· The Whitehall Inn is having a poetry reading and book signing for writer Michael Paul Lund as he recites poems from his book, Quiet Thoughts For a Noisy World, reflecting on the seacoast of Maine and the creative arts. The reading starts at 2 p.m. Cocktails will be available for purchase. Vincent's Pub to open after reading featuring 1/2 price appetizers & drink specials. Psst. Little known local secret. The Whitehall Inn has some of the best Happy Hour specials around.  For more information or to reserve a seat please call 207-236-3391.

· FOG Bar & Cafe hosts Drink & Draw. They supply the art materials and you provide the raw artistic talent! Drink and food specials all night.

If you have an arts and entertainment event that fits within the adult scope of fun and cool things to do for Weekend Picks, contact Kay Stephens at news@penbaypilot.com

MONHEGAN ISLAND — This under-the-radar weekday event is an ideal way for folks without a boat to explore the abundance of the sea, the land and the community of Monhegan Island for one or two days, while getting an up-close look at its self-sustaining artists, farmers, lobster fishermen — and even a brewer.

Tara Hire, owner of a new business called Monhegan Wellness, is heading up the Fall Abundance Festival, which started Sept. 30.

For those who need to take the ferry out of Port Clyde, the next two days, look to be the most interesting of the festival.

Oct. 1

The first day of October kicks off Monhegan Island’s annual Trap Day, in which the lobster fishing season officially begins and goes until June 7.

Starting out of Port Clyde, The Monhegan Boat Line runs at 7 and 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m., and takes approximately an hour to get to Monhegan Island. By the time folks get off the ferry, the lobstering has already gotten started, but there’s still plenty to see.

At dawn, all of the lobster boats get loaded with traps, as captains and sternmen pace around anxious to start. Due to custom that goes back hundreds of years, no one can start until all of the captains are ready to go. The captains chatter on their radios to one another and once everyone is ready, they take off to their favorite fishing spots. Once off the ferry, folks will be able to observe the activity from Fish Beach, Swim Beach or near the Island Inn. The boats come back and forth into the dock several times each to get loaded up with traps before taking off again to set.

“This is a pretty special day,” said Hire. “There’s a lot of activity and action.” She recommends that participants simply observe but don’t try to interact, as the lobstermen have an incredibly full day.

There was a scheduled workshop for this afternoon, but according to Hire, it has been cancelled due to illness. She recommends staying at the Trailing Yew, which is working with the festival. Included with each person’s stay is a dinner supplied by the inn (highlighting lobster caught that day and other seafood) and a locally sourced breakfast the morning after. The Island Inn is also available for accommodations, but is not participating in the festival’s food themes.

Oct. 2

The festival’s focus this day is on the the Island Farm Project, Monhegan Brewing Co. and local artists and crafters.

At 10 a.m. participants will be led on a tour of the Island Farm Project to learn about small plot farming and permaculture.

“We’ll also harvest some vegetables, including the opportunity to harvest your own pumpkin,” said Hire. “As Monhegan doesn’t have an expanse of land, people have learned to farm on smaller plots all around the island.”

Plot farming typically uses about 20- by 20-foot gardens using permaculture techniques.

From 2 to 4 p.m., all of the artist studios and galleries as well as Winter Works will be open, allowing participants the time to visit all of the studios in one day. At 5 p.m., participants will be given a tour and tasting of the Monhegan Brewing Co. learning about the challenges of having a brewery 12 miles out to sea, as well as a tasting all of the beers on tap. Each participant will leave with a commemorative glass.

Hire, who works on Monhegan year-round, has lived on the island for 10 years. Her husband was born and raised there. Her background is in nutrition and she wanted to start a festival that would allow people from the mainland and the island a few days to “acknowledge and show gratitude for the abundance.”

Hire provided the following pricing information:

$145 per guest for a one-night stay at the Training Yew (which includes the breakfast and special dinner)
$20 per workshop (The first is the Island Farm Project Tour and the second is the Monhegan Brewing Co. Tour). The artist tour is free.
$35 round trip for the ferry.

For those who simply want to be part of Monhegan’s events for the next two days without staying overnight, the price would just include the ferry and the optional workshops. The ferry leaves Monhegan at 4:30 p.m. and arrives back at Port Clyde at 5:30 p.m.

For more information, Hire can be reached at 594-0707 or visit monheganwellness.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN—Giving a pitch to industry professionals about your documentary-in-the-making is unnerving enough, but add an entire hushed audience hanging on your words, and the experience is enough to put even the most seasoned filmmaker on edge.

On Saturday, Sept. 27, six teams of filmmakers stood before a panel of more than a dozen funders, broadcasters and producers on the stage of the Camden Opera House and gave their best presentation in the hopes of winning the Points North Pitch Prize and Modulus Finishing Fund.

Of all of the six intense and well-structured presentations, there was only one film clip and presentation that drew laughs from the judges and crowds alike. Director Pacho Velez and producer Sierra Pettengill, both from New York City, won the pitch contest with their current project, The Reagan Years, which explores Ronald Reagan’s presidency told entirely through a largely-unseen trove of archival footage.

During the pitch Velez said, “The 1980s were like this very surreal episode of American political life with a presidency, if a presidency were staged by David Lynch.”

As part of their prize package, Velez and Pettengill won a $1,000 cash prize from Documentary Educational Resources, a $10,000 post-production package from Modulus Studios and three consultations from Tribeca Film Institute.

We caught up with Velez several days after the Pitch Prize was announced.

Pilot: Watching the first two presenters back stage, how were you feeling the moment you got the spotlight?

Velez: It was very nerve-wracking. We were all at a pitch session all together the last 48 hours before we got on stage. It was stressful to be competing, to have to do this in front of such a large audience. Our film had a different tone that many of the other works we were competing against. I thought it would either go over very well or totally bomb.

Pilot: You really hooked in the judges with one scene from the archival footage where Reagan is at some kind of ceremonial event and is upstaged by a live turkey kind of flipping out and interrupting the event. It felt like parody, but yet, it wasn’t.

Velez: It feels like parody, but it was documented and that’s what actually happened. That’s the crazy thing. One thing I want to stress is that the archive was created by the Reagan administration. So, this isn’t us going out and finding these moments. This is from a historical record that his administration left to the American people at the request of the president. Sure, we’re picking out stuff and crafting our own message from it, but this is footage from how Reagan wanted to be remembered. There’s just something about this time in American politics where political discourse goes from being about speech and rhetoric and starts being about images. And that’s Reagan.

Pilot: In the pitch you made it clear that this is not a political film. 

Velez: Right. It’s not a Democrat or Republican film. Not a left or right wing film. It’s really about trying to view political history with fresh eyes. Reagan wasn’t the first ‘Media President’—that was Kennedy. But Reagan was the first archetype of being an actor in that presidential role.

Pilot: What about the footage that you’ve picked and chosen from reminds you of David Lynch?

Velez: At night I’ve been watching Twin Peaks on Netflix. It’s that same sort of feeling where I’m laughing, but it’s not quite funny. Things don’t add up. The cause and effect don’t quite add up. Usually in the real world A leads to B, but in Twin Peaks and the Reagan footage, A leads to C , it’s just the strangest thing.

Pilot: Did you walk away with any particular advice from getting feedback from the judges?

Velez: Honestly, being up there, it was such a blur. We have notes, which I’m going to go back over. When you’re in the middle of a pitch, these things can be a real crap shoot. Are they judging the pitch? Or are they judging the movie? I think we’re very fortunate that we hit the sweet spot.

Pilot: How is the prize money and opportunities going to further the film.

Velez: The full budget for the film is $25,000, so we’re still on a long-term trek, but winning this is a very sizeable investment in the project. The money is important, but the best part is the legitimacy of winning. The ball is rolling now and we’ve just got to keep pushing it.

Stay on top of what Velez is doing with ‘The Reagan Years’ through his website: pachoworks.com

To find out more about the other pitched documentaries visit: camdenfilmfest.org

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com 

DAMARISCOTTA — Another last blast of summer came through Sept. 28 for the 13th annual Pemaquid Oyster Festival on the shores of the Damariscotta River at the historic Schooner Landing Restaurant and Marina on Main Street.

Noon to dusk, oyster lovers were in bi-valve heaven Sunday. It was 80 degree weather and the town of Damariscotta was packed. The popularity of the Pemaquid Oyster Festival has gotten so big that long lines formed just to get into the event, which was free to enter. The Pemaquid Oyster Co. had 20,000 oysters on hand with a corps of volunteer oyster shuckers opening them as fast as they could get their hands on them for the hundreds who attended. According to the official count, the hungry crowd gobbled up 16,000 of them.

The oysters were served fresh on the half shell, broiled, stewed and baked, à la Oysters Rockefeller. All oyster choices were sold individually, with many in the crowd opting for the full dozen for $20, served with a variety of popular mignonette sauces provided by WaldoStone Farm, in collaboration with Schooner Landing. Nothing goes better with a dozen fresh local oysters than a Pemaquid Ale or a Bloody Mary, both of which were also available in great abundance, but not the only popular accompanying beverage choices.

The festival always aims to be both educational and artistic. On the educational side, there were exhibits and a children's activity area featuring a marine life touch tank from Darling Marine Center. The festival also included boat trips to the aquaculture leases on the Damariscotta River aboard the RiverTripper, a large vessel provided by Damariscotta River Cruises

Entertaining crowds under the tent were The Newell Family Fiddlers, Driving Charlie Home, Old Grey Goose and a closing jam session featuring a mix of many of the musicians who previously had played on-stage, with the jam group going by the name Scotti River Band.

The winner of the Main Champion Oyster Shucking contest was Jeff "Smokey" McKeen, which is hardly a surprise as he’s been a long-time volunteer of the event and works for the Pemaquid Oyster Company. The winner of the Pemaquid Oyster Poetry Contest this year was Carolyn Maunz, whose poem, Pearl and Sam appears below. The simple rules of the contest were that the poem was open to any style of poetry, as long as it included the word “oyster” at least one time.

All of the profits from the event benefited the Edward A. Myers Marine Conservation Fund, a group that has awarded more than $100,000 in grants to efforts, both large and small, to support the working waterfront and Damariscotta River.

Pearl and Sam

An oyster named Pearl, was quite a girl;
And known in Schooner Land.
She'd come out of her shell, at the sound of a bell
And was proud that she had no sand.

One eve in September, Pearl met Sam the clam
And felt a sudden new spark.
She put on her best face, and wore satin and lace
In hopes Sam wasn't a shark.

They toasted Ed Myers in the light of the fires
And pledged to have some fun;
Then Pearl jumped in a stream of champagne and cream
And suddenly Pearl was done.

Then Sam got steamed, 'cause Pearl was creamed
And that was the end of their date.
But they did have some laughs while drinking drafts
Before they met their fate.

No finer end could come to friends
Than the yearly Oyster Fest.
Where folks from all round come into our town
To taste oysters at their best.

So come get some fall sun and join in the fun,
At Pemaquid Oyster Nation.
Think of Ed, Pearl and Sam and not just Pearl Jam
We owe them a huge celebration!

 All photos by Kay Stephens

 Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — Over the weekend, the Camden International Film Festival screened a number of full length and short documentary films in which the main subject was children and teens. As someone who has worked with teens as a reporter and an author for a number of years, I was particularly interested in one of the Points North Documentary Film Forums titled “Documenting Youth,” in which four directors from the 2014 CIFF program discussed how they dealt with the ethical challenges of placing children and adolescents in front of the camera.

Moderated by Charlotte Cook, director of programming from the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, the four directors included Jean-François (Guidelines), Andrew Droz Palermo (Rich Hill), Teodora Mihai (Waiting for August) and Amanda Wilder (Approaching the Elephant)

Throughout the busy weekend, I was only able to watch two of the documentaries from directors in this panel, namely, Rich HIll and Waiting for August.  In Rich Hill, the film, described by IMdb.com: “intimately chronicles the turbulent lives of three boys living in an impoverished Midwestern town and the fragile family bonds that sustain them.” In Waiting for August, “Fifteen-year-old Georgiana is left to raise her six siblings in Bacau (Romania), since her mother has to work abroad to get by. Torn between adolescence and heavy responsibilities, the teenage girl struggles to keep everyone afloat.”

The spectacular power of a documentary film is that it forces you to abandon the drive-by judgment and compassion fatigue that occurs when you first read the log line of these films. In Rich Hill, the initial image that stuck out for me most was a ramshackle house where one of the boys lived. The house was made of poor materials, badly in need of paint, anchored by concrete cracked porch. Junk and debris flank the front of the house. The raggedy back yard is swamped by a large puddle of water, in which a push lawn mower is submerged. The defining image for me in Waiting for August, was the tiny apartment and lower bunk bed where nearly all six kids, ranging from 5 to 16 years old, huddled in sleep, like a pack of puppies. The main character, Georgiana, is sleeping, curled up in a thin blanket on the kitchen banquette because there is no other place for her.

In both films, it’s obvious that the directors built a close bond and trust with the children and teens they filmed, allowing the viewer to see something beyond the crushing reality of poverty on adolescence. That trust allowed the teens, in particular, to speak to the camera as if it was a confidant, in some cases, divulging their deepest feelings about the trauma and the chaos in which they live.  Thanks to the directors’ earned trust, in a very short time, the viewer is allowed to understand what makes these kids tick, what hurts them the most and whether they’re able to find the resilience to stay optimistic about their lives, or succumb to the same hopelessness that plague some of their parents.

Any time someone chooses to make a documentary about a minor child or teenager, the director requires a signed consent form. In both of these films, several parents were present during filming (even if by telephone). Still, all the while watching these documentaries, I couldn’t help but wonder if these adolescents, whose first names and home towns are mentioned, really truly understood the impact their admissions on film had on their digital footprint. One teenager, in particular, revealed a disturbing secret, which has the possibility of coming back to haunt him in his older years. That was the crux of this forum, to discuss the unique ethical challenges of placing children and adolescents in front of the camera, and how to artistically represent their experiences without unwittingly exploiting them.

In the panel, we learned that the directors were constantly asking themselves these same questions. (In this piece, I’m choosing to focus on the two filmmakers whose work I’d seen.) Moderator Cook asked what the long-term impact was on the kids.

Droz Palermo, director of Rich Hill, said “During production, I was more concerned how we were impacting them right then. But, I do think it had a positive impact on them in the long run. They felt like they were heard. People received the film well; it was very positive. But at the time, some of the harder parts of the film, I did wonder about that.” He added that small funds have been set up for the kids and when the film screened at Sundance Film Festival, a generous benefactor came forward to help some of the kids with groceries and funds toward their education. 

Mihai, director of Waiting for August, said that she developed close bonds with all the children while filming, and even took Georgiana on a trip with her to meet her family. She still remains in touch with them today.

“The main character wants to be a filmmaker, so it did have a good impact,” she said. “As far as the long-term, it’s too early to tell.”

Cook asked: “What was your consideration about what happens when they’re older and they see this representation of themselves is on the screen. You’re trying to represent reality, but in the back of your mind are you always asking what are the implications of putting them in your film?”

Both directors said that they weighed certain scenes very carefully and chose not to include certain scenes because their inclusion could have harmed the kids.

“There were two subjects in the movie that I chose not to include, which included the absence of the father figure and when a nun came from child services,” said Mihai. “I just stopped filming because I knew that my being there might provoke the nun. I wanted to show it, but could I afford it? I was constantly measuring the kids’ attention spans and mood to know when was the right time to be there and when it wasn’t.”

“It was difficult,” said Droz Palermo. “There were certainly way worse things I filmed than what was shown. But, it was always our goal to show scenes where the audience would be sympathetic to the parents.”

I appreciated the honesty and bravery of all of the directors to attend such a forum, as this topic can be thorny and I thought they did a very good job explaining their own ethical approach to the subject matter.  Clearly, these directors cared deeply about the kids they filmed and it showed in the beauty and stark reality of their finished efforts.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com.

DAMARISCOTTA — Another last blast of summer came through Sept. 28 for the 13th annual Pemaquid Oyster Festival on the shores of the Damariscotta River at the historic Schooner Landing Restaurant and Marina on Main Street.

Noon to dusk, oyster lovers were in bi-valve heaven Sunday. It was 80 degree weather and the town of Damariscotta was packed. The popularity of the Pemaquid Oyster Festival has gotten so big that long lines formed just to get into the event, which was free to enter. The Pemaquid Oyster Co. had 20,000 oysters on hand with a corps of volunteer oyster shuckers opening them as fast as they could get their hands on them for the hundreds who attended. According to the official count, the hungry crowd gobbled up 16,000 of them.

The oysters were served fresh on the half shell, broiled, stewed and baked, à la Oysters Rockefeller. All oyster choices were sold individually, with many in the crowd opting for the full dozen for $20, served with a variety of popular mignonette sauces provided by WaldoStone Farm, in collaboration with Schooner Landing. Nothing goes better with a dozen fresh local oysters than a Pemaquid Ale or a Bloody Mary, both of which were also available in great abundance, but not the only popular accompanying beverage choices.

The festival always aims to be both educational and artistic. On the educational side, there were exhibits and a children's activity area featuring a marine life touch tank from Darling Marine Center. The festival also included boat trips to the aquaculture leases on the Damariscotta River aboard the RiverTripper, a large vessel provided by Damariscotta River Cruises

Entertaining crowds under the tent were The Newell Family Fiddlers, Driving Charlie Home, Old Grey Goose and a closing jam session featuring a mix of many of the musicians who previously had played on-stage, with the jam group going by the name Scotti River Band.

The winner of the Main Champion Oyster Shucking contest was Jeff "Smokey" McKeen, which is hardly a surprise as he’s been a long-time volunteer of the event and works for the Pemaquid Oyster Company. The winner of the Pemaquid Oyster Poetry Contest this year was Carolyn Maunz, whose poem, Pearl and Sam appears below. The simple rules of the contest were that the poem was open to any style of poetry, as long as it included the word “oyster” at least one time.

All of the profits from the event benefited the Edward A. Myers Marine Conservation Fund, a group that has awarded more than $100,000 in grants to efforts, both large and small, to support the working waterfront and Damariscotta River.

Pearl and Sam

An oyster named Pearl, was quite a girl;
And known in Schooner Land.
She'd come out of her shell, at the sound of a bell
And was proud that she had no sand.

One eve in September, Pearl met Sam the clam
And felt a sudden new spark.
She put on her best face, and wore satin and lace
In hopes Sam wasn't a shark.

They toasted Ed Myers in the light of the fires
And pledged to have some fun;
Then Pearl jumped in a stream of champagne and cream
And suddenly Pearl was done.

Then Sam got steamed, 'cause Pearl was creamed
And that was the end of their date.
But they did have some laughs while drinking drafts
Before they met their fate.

No finer end could come to friends
Than the yearly Oyster Fest.
Where folks from all round come into our town
To taste oysters at their best.

So come get some fall sun and join in the fun,
At Pemaquid Oyster Nation.
Think of Ed, Pearl and Sam and not just Pearl Jam
We owe them a huge celebration!

 All photos by Kay Stephens

 Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Good thing we had a couple of sleepy weekends awhile back because this weekend is off the rails with high-energy things to do, including the 10th anniversary of the Camden International Film Festival, which spans the whole weekend with parties, workshops, films and more. Get some Red Bull in you, this is going to demand some stamina.

Thursday, Sept. 25
· As always, the Open Mic at The Highlands Coffee House promises some great talent in the Midcoast and beyond! Drink and food specials. Sign up is at 6 p.m. and goes from 6:30-9:30 p.m.

· Rollie's Bar & Grill, 37 Main Street in Belfast will host "Mugs for Maskers," a benefit for the Belfast Maskers community theater 7-10 p.m. The evening will include four hours of live music, with local musician Chelsea Benedict (pictured), and a 50/50 raffle. A portion of proceeds will help fund the Maskers' 2014 seaso. For more information, go to BelfastMaskers.com

· Camden International Film Festival kicks off the weekend with its first screening, Virunga at the Camden Opera House at 7:30 p.m. The Opening Night Party (for pass holders) takes place after that at 9:30 p.m. at the Brewster Point Barn. Individuals without passes can pay $10 to get into screenings of films only.

Friday, Sept. 26

· If you like traditional Irish music, The Press Gang, an Irish triad from Portland, is playing Rock City Coffee at 7 p.m. No cover, but donations are appreciated.

· Don’t forget that in Belfast, the Final Friday Art Walk is happening from 5-8 p.m.

· A full day of short films, workshops and clinics continues with CIFF from 10 a.m.-12 a.m. For the average film buff, PenBay Pilot picks include: the Shorts First 1 at Bayview Street Cinema at 10 a.m. ; the screening of The Notorious Mr. Bout at the Bayview Street Cinema Point at 6:30 p.m. and Point and Shoot at the Strand Theatre at 9 p.m. Individuals without passes can pay $10 to get into screenings of films.

· Who says you can’t re-live your Prom? Ladies, get out your floofy prom gowns; gentlemen, no tuxedo t-shirts please, glam it up with the real thing and go to The Speakeasy for Adult Prom Night.  Just Teachers will be playing. I’m sure punch will be spiked. Tickets are on sale for $10 and include your first glass of punch. To purchase tickets, stop by The Chowder House or call 207 596-6661 ext 606.

Saturday, Sept. 27

· In downtown, Waldoboro, the arts venue, Old Number Nine will host a folk, blues and jazz jam at 6:30 pm. Everyone is welcome to bring acoustic instruments, snacks, beverages and talent.

· Rock City Coffee presents The Kennebunk River Band with fiddler Mike Conant in the "Velvet Lounge" from 7-9 p.m. They play Acoustic, Folk, Rock, and Eclectica, don’t ya know. There is no cover, but donations are appreciated.

· Another full day of short films, workshops and clinics continues with CIFF from 10 a.m.-12 a.m. with an after-party for pass holders. For the average film buff, PenBay Pilot picks include: The Points North Pitch at the Camden Opera House at 10:30 a.m., the screening of Actress at the Bayview Street Cinema at 4:30 p.m. and Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown at 8:45 p.m. at the Strand Theatre.

Sunday, Sept. 21

· Shuck it up and get ready for the always-popular Pemaquid Oyster Festival in downtown Damariscotta ton Schooner Landing's riverside deck from 12 p.m. to dusk.(See our coverage last year. ) Besides freshly shucked oysters and cold local beer, don’t miss the Oyster Poetry recitings at 1 p.m. and the Maine Champion Oyster Shucking Contest starting at 3 p.m.

· In downtown Waldoboro, the arts venue, Old Number Nine will host an open reading of poetry and/or prose at 2:30 p.m, followed by a potluck supper of finger foods and salads. Stephen Randall Parmley will read from his collected poems, "Gaia Sutra."

· CIFF winds up its 10th anniversary from 10 a.m to 9 p.m. For the average film buff, PenBay Pilot picks include: shorts First 3 at Bayview Street Cinema at 10 a.m. The Dirigo Shorts: You Can’t Get There From Here at the Farnsworth Art Museum at 1 p.m. and the Dirigo Shorts: Growing Local at at the Strand Theatre at 5 p.m.

· FOG Bar & Cafe hosts Drink & Draw. They supply the art materials and you provide the raw artistic talent! Drink and food specials all night. A Closing Night Party is held for passholders at the Camden Opera House.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

What are we looking at here? This one is guaranteed to be a stumper but I’ll give you a hint. This little inland town in the Midcoast has never been featured in our TBT weekly feature, but the town’s name represents an ideal. Was that too obvious?

We got a boatload of guesses on last week’s TBT photo courtesy of Maine Historical Society’s archives. Your guesses ranged from: the Boat Barn on Atlantic Avenue in Camden to Bicknell's on Tillson Ave in Rockland to Newpert and Wallace shipyard in Thomaston.

The funny this, we may never know. The notes on that photo said: Written on back of photograph ”could be a shoe factory in Belfast.” ca. 1875-1920. This factory has many young men posing on the roof, and standing on platforms, looking out of 2nd floor windows.”

This week’s TBT courtesy of Maine Historical Society.

Throwback Thursday needs your submissions. Send us your “back in the day” photos with a caption at news@penbaypilot.com

Last we heard from that poetry-writing swashbuckling pirate John Bullock, a part-time mate on the Appledore, he was trying to impress a lass in a literary showdown.

But as September 22 marks the autumnal equinox, it’s time to embrace the darkness. Of the following poem, which Bullock wrote around the fall equinox in 1998, he said: “In folklore and in many belief systems, coming into this dark time of the year is considered ‘in between times’ in which the things you can’t define and can’t explain come out to play. This is the same reason that midnight is considered a magical time, as well as dawn or dusk, because it’s neither fish nor fowl, neither one thing or another, it’s something in between.”

Bullock, an avid reader of legends, attributes the inspiration of this poem to The Kalevala, a 19th-Century body of poetry encompassing Finnish oral folklore and mythology. 

“In The Kalevala, the world is created by this primordial wizard singer named Väinämöinen. He sings the world into being by naming things and thereby circumscribing what they are and what they are not,” he said. Defining something gives a person power over it, said Bullock. “When the Christian missionaries got to Iceland, they decided that all of the gods were demons and devils. Because once you call something a ‘demon’ it is no longer defined as a ‘god’ and it reduces its power considerably.”

Once again bring you some of Pirate John’s best prose and the inspiration behind it.

Dark Season

This is the advent of the dark season
When rigid patterned Day
Illuminated by Reason
Fades in the Coming Twilight

The primal Darkness now holds sway
From which everything once came
Before Logic lied-explaining away
All the secrets of the Night

We invoked the power in a Name
To cover the cracks where Chaos hides
And so we sought to bind the reign
of Nameless mysteries of the Night

But borders blur and boundaries slide
As the pendulum ever swings
And possibilities, banished, slip their ties
That once kept them from the light

Listen to the songs the Darkness sings
Escape the trap of Reason
Taste of all the nameless things
Freed in the gloaming season

Rage Not against the dying of the Light
Revel in the coming of the Night!

(my apologies to Dylan Thomas)

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — What goes into a winning lobster mac ‘n’ cheese recipe?

“Lots and lots of love,” said Graffam Bros. Seafood Market chef Becky Butler, winner of the first place professional chef category. Translation: lots and lots of butter.

The Second annual Lobster Mac ‘n’ Cheese Contest, held at the Rockland Elks Club Sept. 20, drew dozens of people who came to try the small tastings from 20 professional chefs and 10 amateurs (people not involved in food preparation for sale.)

The chefs entered were from all over the state and included Graffam Bros. Seafood Market, DiMillo's On the Water, Linda Bean's Maine Lobster, Kenduskeag Golf & Country Club, Hilton Garden Inn Auburn Riverwatch, The Lobster Shack, Mermaid at the Homeport and East Wind Inn.

Even though lobster was in every offering, the contest for the judges and the people’s choice truly came down to the taste and consistency of the mac ‘n’ cheese. Each bite of the creamy little dish varied considerably from cook to chef, with some recipes opting to use either spiral pasta, elbows or shells. Some threw in curry or cayenne, while others augmented with bread crumbs and corn.

Professional judges did a blind test of the mac ‘n’ cheese tastings before the public arrived at 2 p.m., and the results of that contest were held off until everyone had had a chance to dig into a little paper serving cup from every cook or chef.

Deb Neuman, radio talk show host from Blueberry Broadcasting, emceed the event, broadcasting live as she announced the winners.

Graffam Bros. Seafood Market won first place in the professional category as well as the People’s Choice professional category, attributing their winning recipe to Butler, who admitted she’d just come up with the recipe on the spot. They used small elbow macaroni and balanced it out with a perfect blend of cheese, which gave it a delicious comfort food taste. And when it comes to lobster, they didn’t have to go far to procure that.  Given that they came in third place last year, owner Kimberlee Graffam said this year’s win felt “fantastic.” When Graffam Bros. Seafood Market was announced, Butler’s small son announced to the crowd “We did it!”

In the amateur chef category: Maynard Stanley of Owls Head took the top honor. Stanley, who is known locally as “Critter Catcher” as he specializes in humane wildlife removal, told us his recipe was also just something he’d made up.

“This is the first time I’ve won here at Lobsterpalooza, but I won second place for this recipe at the Lobster Festival this year,” he said. “I just like competing.”

Stanley used corkscrew pasta and added several cheeses into his modified Alfredo sauce, including his secret ingredient, Butterkraft cheese from Maine Street Meats.

”That’s the only place I found it,” he said.  As for the lobster, he bought it locally and cooked it himself. ”Haven’t had a bad one yet,” he said. “Maine lobster is always good.”

The contestants were helped by sponsors Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine Lobster, which agreed to sell five pounds of lobster to participating chefs at a reduced wholesale price, and The State of Maine Cheese Co., which provided their locally made cheeses, also at a discount.

Other winners included:

Professional awards:

Second place: Josh Dudley from Mermaid Tavern

third place: Joseph Robbins from the Kenduskeag Golf & Country Club's Wrong Turn Pub

Amateur awards:

Second place: Susan Matzell of Wiscasset

third place: William Deptula of Camden

People’s Choice award:

Second place: The Lobster Shack

All photos courtesy PJ Walter, co-owner of LimeRock Inn and one of Lobsterpalooza’s committee members. Nearly a dozen committee members and volunteers worked to make the event go smoothly. The event was also sponsored by Blueberry Broadcasting and Rockland Savings & Loan.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — During the last Rockland Art Walk, Dowling Walsh Gallery was packed, as it usually is. But, something odd was happening. People weren’t just sipping wine and stopping to pause at a particular painting for several moments, before ambling on. On the right side of the gallery, people were lined up, sometimes two, three deep and staring at particular drawings. Just flat out staring—their eyes moving a fraction to the left, then to the right. To the left again. No one was moving.

Turns out local artist Eric Green, of Belfast, was the master behind this intense concentration. At first glance, his latest series, Time Diptychs, appears to play an elaborate game of “Spot The Difference.” Each pair of drawings portrays two seemingly identical views of a room in his Victorian home. As your eyes move from the left panel to the right, then back again, you start to notice that there’s a difference in lighting between the two views. That’s obvious. But then, upon looking closer, some objects remain in one panel, while disappearing in the other panel. Some objects like a fan, turn into a scale in the next drawing. Then, there’s the hidden movement. One view of a room might look pristine, undisturbed, yet in the next panel, subtle clues — like a kettle singing on the stove — suggest that a person has just been in the room. But wait, which drawing holds the truth?

“The concept of a diptych of two images joined to make one is a very old concept,” said Green. “The way I balance the two images is to show changes from one panel to the other, because when you really begin to understand life, everything changes completely all the time. Nothing is ever the same again.”

That is a crafty way of getting people to really look and spend an inordinate time getting lost in art.

“With the bombardment of media today, we forget the simple pleasures of just seeing,” said Green. “There’s been a tendency in the last 50 years of art to ‘get it’ in the first few seconds and then just walk away. I hope that having the two panels to compare, it slows people down and they want to spend some time to see. Even if it’s just to figure out what’s different between the two panels, but it’s the beginning of learning how to really look and see something.”

The Victorian house, which is the subject of his drawings, has its own story. Green was born in New Hampshire and grew up in what he described as “a modest ranch in a mill town neighborhood, decorated with a few pieces of Danish modern furniture, alongside the furniture my father banged together in an economic Spartan style.  For instance, my bed was a sheet of three-inch foam rubber resting on plywood surrounded by knotty pine with a flannel sleeping bag on top.”

He was enamored of an old Queen Anne Victorian his godmother owned that he often came back to visit. “I love patina. I love cracks. I love wear and the sense of time in things,” he said. This childhood experience led him to the Victorian house that he and his wife now own, but it would take a decade before that could happen. Green fell in love with this house the first time he saw it in the mid-1980s, but it was too expensive. He thought about this house for the next 10 years, hoping one day he would own it. The price finally came down, and after his first show was a success in New York, he was able to buy it in the mid-1990s. Then it took 18 years to fully restore. He did all the work himself from rebuilding the windows, redoing the floors, and adding larger architectural elements, such as tin ceilings and a black and white checked floor in the foyer, to the tiniest details like a rewired lamp, as if he had imagined every detail he loved in a painting and placed it physically within the house.

When Green stepped back to view each room in his house, he could see through the passing minutes, something else was going on. 

“The house is important, but what is more important in the drawings is the emotional feeling of the time of day, the light, the texture and the incredible poignancy of time passing,” he said. “I call this the sad beauty of time passing.”

A professional artist for the last 40 years, he set forth to capture the variations of light, texture and mood into an entirely unique series of drawings — 10 in all — which took 19 months to create without a day off.

“I made this world I live in, because I love it,” he said. “Then I decided to draw it. Compositionally, it already satisfied my eye as an artist. So, I sort of created this work twice.”

In his diptych, Matches, which features his front stairwell, the actual time between the rendering of both panels was only 20 minutes apart. “You can see the reflection of the light in the newel post. One side is bluer. And the incandescent lights are turned on in the hallway. But, without comparing that to the other side, you wouldn’t know it. You really get a sense of this newel post because you’ve seen it twice, in two different lights.”

As for which panel of each diptych holds the “truth” of the room, Green said, “The principle of the diptych is that you must amalgamate the two panels in your mind, so when you look at it, your mind is combining the two images. The art doesn’t exist in either panel. It’s created by your mind combining both.”

Green first worked in grisaille or a graphite under drawing to sketch the composition and perspective lines. It would then take weeks to finish each drawing with colored pencils, which cannot be erased, once drawn.

“I couldn’t make mistakes, so it was rather nerve-wracking,” he said. 

Green, who also is an author of five novels, including his most recent, LiveCell, said working as an artist takes way more out of him than working as an author.

“Sometimes, I hate painting,” he said with a laugh.

The intensity, the shifting perspective and the fact that his work is a statement more about mortality than anything else, makes these diptychs a must-see for anyone who has the time to stop by the gallery. But you must take the time to really, really look.

Eric Green’s Time Diptychs will be shown at Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland until Oct. 7.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com.

The size of this barn might give a clue as to where this might have been (or still is) in the Midcoast. Can you guess what town this barn was, and what its function was? Bonus points for guessing the year the photo was taken.

Last week’s Throwback Thursday photo courtesy of Rockland, Maine History’s Facebook page (submitted by David Feyler) was the W.T. Grants Rockland on Maverick St, taken in 1966. Readers identified it as being the J.C. Penney store that exists there today. Reader Pamela Doherty said, “My mom worked in the office there when I was a child. I remember the lunch counter and the big root beer barrel.”

Photo courtesy Maine Historical Society

Throwback Thursday needs your submissions. Send us your “back in the day” photos with a caption at news@penbaypilot.com

Whenever a movie made in Maine cycles through Netflix such as Pet Sematary, I’m on high cringe alert, waiting the character to butcher the word “ayuh.” A debate apparently rages on whether Fred Gwynne’s character, Jud Crandall, pronounces the word correctly, or if his accent comes off like a bad stereotype. Watch the two videos we’ve embedded in this story. In the first video at the 10 second mark, listen to Gwynne’s “ayuh.”

Then in the next video, “Talk Like A Mainer,” listen to Mainer Mark Messner pronounce the two variations of the word.

So, we’ll leave it to the Pilot audience, which is the correct way to say “ayuh” and did Fred Gwynne do it justice?

Some of Maine’s colloquialisms and regionalisms have crossed over to the mainstream, thanks to writers like Stephen King, comedians like Bob Marley and TV shows like DownEast Dickering (which, if you didn’t know “dickering” is a Maine expression for “haggling”) Because of this, most people already know the expressions  “all stoved up” (badly damaged), “cunnin’” (cute) “gawmy” (awkward/bad design) and “upta camp” (a camp or cottage that Mainers go to for the weekend or on vacation).

So we’re putting this out to our Pilot readers: what seldom-used-today expressions do you still use and what do they mean?

Email us at news@penbaypilot.com or respond on our Facebook page.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Cold nights; warm days. That’s what we’ve got now, love it or leave it. Wait, we can’t leave it; you’ve got NO CHOICE but to love it. That shift is being felt in the music, scenes and events in the Midcoast this weekend. So grab your lobster mac ‘n’ cheese tasting ticket, watch the rock ‘em sock ‘em roller derby gals, or pull up a chair and listen to some good funk, blues and old timey stuff at various locales. Welcome to another easy breezy beautiful September weekend in Maine.

Every year people have this total love-love relationship with the Common Ground Fair. You’ll have all weekend to appreciate it. Starting on Friday and going through Sunday, the Common Ground Country Fair is the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association’s annual celebration of rural living, with 1,400-plus exhibitors and speakers emphasizing vibrant communities, sustainable living and local economies, while highlighting organic agriculture. Gates open at 9 a.m. each day. Click for advance and regular ticket information.

Thursday, Sept. 18
Time to sing/play/recite your heart out or just sit back and watch! Go check out the Open Mic at The Highlands Coffee House, 6:30-9:30 p.m., with the great talent in the Midcoast and beyond! Drink and food specials. Sign up is at 6 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 19

If you like blues, Blind Albert plays the The Speakeasy in Rockland from 8-11 p.m.

Rock City Coffee presents Old Town Road, the father-daughter duo of Bob and Megan Stuart. Bob Stuart is a singer songwriter who has been performing originals, traditional and folk mash-ups for over 40 years. His daughter, Megan Rogers, joined him onstage when she was young and continues to sing with him. Their music style blends old folk, with revival folk, as well as folk rock, and pop. the show goes from 7-9 p.m. and there is no cover, but donations are appreciated.

Saturday, Sept. 20
Do you have your tickets for the Lobsterpalooza tastings this Saturday? For the first time, lucky ticket holders will have the chance to taste some of the fabulous Lobster Mac ‘n’ Cheese after the judging. The event starts at 2 p.m. at the Rockland Elks Club, 210 Rankin St. in Rockland. Tickets are just $10 and are limited so get them soon. To find out where to get tickets, click here.

Trackside Station is having their End of The Summer Party with DJ VJ, starting around 9 p.m.

Rosie and Opal may be happily ensconced in Oklahoma, but they are not far from our minds. Vermont-based singer/songwriter Chad Hollister and his nine-piece band will perform a concert to benefit Hope Elephants and the Jim Laurita Fund Saturday, Sept. 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the Strand Theatre in Rockland.

If you like R&B, dance and funk, Sea Train plays The Speakeasy in Rockland from 8-11 p.m.

The girls are gonna be busting out the skates with their Breakwater Blackhearts Bout, at Point Lookout in Northport. The Rock Coast Rollers' B Team takes on the Pioneer Valley Roller Derby's Quabbin Missile Crisis team. The show starts at 5:30 p.m. and benefits Midcoast Hospitality House. Tickets, $10/under 13 free, online only: BreakwaterBlackheartsFall.bpt.me.

Have you ever wanted to spend a day on the ultra-fab Hurricane Island (former base for Outward Bound?) Well, they’re offering Volunteer Day through the Hurricane Island Foundation, Center for Science and Leadership. In exchange for putting in some hours of meaningful work to help spruce up the place, they’ll provide transportation from Rockland and the Fox Islands: Email emily@HurricaneIsland.net or call 867-6050.

Sunday, Sept. 21

Rosey & The Wayfaring Strangers will be playing at Lincolnville's Whale's Tooth Pub this coming Sunday, Sept. 20, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Their style of music ranges from Hank Williams, Patsy Cline,  Alan Jackson to Merle Haggard and a little bluegrass gospel thrown in.

FOG Bar & Cafe hosts Drink & Draw. They supply the art materials and you provide the raw artistic talent! Drink and food specials all night.

This photo should look pretty familiar to those who grew up in the area. Can you guess what this building is now? What approximate date the photo was taken? Any memories of Grant’s? Please share!

We couldn’t have known when we posted last week’s Throwback Thursday photo that such a somber focus would be on the town of Hope this week (and all of you are in our thoughts), but those who guessed this building became Hope General Store were indeed, correct.

This week’s photo is courtesy of the Rockland, Maine History Facebook page submitted by David Feyler.

Throwback Thursday needs your submissions. Send us your “back in the day” photos with a caption at news@penbaypilot.com

It’s time for a bit of a breather, don’t you think? All summer it has been go, go, go and we need at least one calm weekend to catch our breath. Here’s the weekend you’ve been waiting for to just CHILL OUT, for God’s sake.

Thursday, Sept 11

This is the last day to see Woody Allen’s movie at the Strand Theatre, Magic in the Moonlight, starring Colin Firth and Emma Stone. Here’s what it’s about: Set in the 1920s on the opulent Riviera in the south of France, Woody Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight is a romantic comedy about a master magician (Colin Firth) trying to expose a psychic medium (Emma Stone) as a fake. show stars at 7 p.m. $8.50/adults, $7.50/12 and under.

Friday, Sept. 12

The  Highlands Coffee House presents Mes Amis Gypsy Guitar Duo. Steve Lynnworth and Harry Richter together will play an infectious mix of traditional gypsy, Latin and American jazz standards.

Rock City Coffee presents singer-songwriter Heather Styka. When listeners describe Heather as an “old soul,” the term applies to more than her wisdom beyond her years. Styka’s tunes have a vintage familiarity that draws inspiration from folk and Tin Pan Alley sounds, but the vivid images of her lyrics render her songs as as fresh, smart, and unexpected as they are hummable. The show runs 7-9 p.m. The event is free but a donation of $5 is always encouraged.

Blind Albert plays the The Speakeasy in Rockland from 8-11 p.m.

FOG Bar and Cafe presents Maine’s perennial string band faves, Toughcats! This is the only event this weekend that isn’t mellow. You’ll be jumping, jiving and loving the high-octane energy this trio brings to the stage. Starts at 9 p.m. $10 cover.

Midcoast Arts and Artisans Tour. If you’ve ever been on a kitchen tour, this is the same thing, only you get to explore artist studios all over Lincolnville, Camden, Rockport, Warren, Union, Appleton, and Hope and see what's taking shape. You'll discover a wide variety of media here, including ceramics, glass, wood, jewelry, sculpture, textiles, metal, fine art, photography, and mixed media. Goes for three days starting on Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Visit: artisanstour.org or call 207-594-2580 for information.

Saturday, Sept 13

Camden Opera House is hosting the comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, a stage production from the Everyman Repertory Theatre about three middle-aged single siblings, two of whom live together (Vanya and Sonia), when the third (Masha) comes to visit with her much younger boy toy, Spike. The rest of the show’s dates are on Sept. 13, 14. Tickets are $25, or $20 if purchased in advance. Student tickets are available at $10. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at www.everymanrep.org, by calling 207.236.0173. Read about “Five Things to Know About The Play With The Underpants” here.

The Old Blues Kats play The Speakeasy,in Rockland from 8-11 p.m.

Sunday, Sept 14

Camden Opera House continues running Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike with a Q & A session with the cast and crew on Sunday, Sept. 14. Evening performances are at 7 p.m, with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.

CAMDEN—The poster is hard to miss. Depicting a pair or old-school piped undies, the kind boys wore in middle-school, the poster has been plastered around various parts of the Midcoast. The poster is an advertisement for the comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, a stage production from the Everyman Repertory Theatre at the Camden Opera House, that debuted Sept. 6.

The show, written by Christopher Durang, produced by Keith Mackenzie and directed by directed by Paul Hodgson, revolves around three middle-aged single siblings, two of whom live together (Vanya and Sonia), when the third (Masha) comes to visit with her much younger boy toy, Spike.The play revolves around themes of lust, rivalry, regret, and the sudden possibility of escape.

We asked Hodgson some questions about the upcoming show and here are five things to know about Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,

1. What’s with the poster?

Rafi Baeza designed it. You’d have to come to the show or else I’d be giving much too much away about the underpants are about. I told Rafi about the themes behind the play and that’s the poster he came up with. It’s bang on.

2. Is this a play about Russian immigrants?

No, these characters had professors as parents who designed to name all of the kids after the works of Anton Chekov.

3. What’s the gist of this play your own words?

The play is about two sisters and a brother and the younger sister and brother were left at home to look after their parents who have Alzheimer’s and died. The oldest sister went off and became an internationally famous movie star. She comes home occasionally to visit them. This is is one of those occasions when she turns up with her boy toy, Spike and the adventures start there.

4. What kind of audience will appreciate this play?

The play works on a lot of different levels. It was written by a guy in his late 50s who looks back on his past with some fondness and reality and looking at the future and getting a little pissed off about it as well. David Troup gives a speech about Twitter, Facebook and video games and compares them to shows and films that were popular in the 1950s like Old Yeller and I Love Lucy. Let me say this, Twitter, Facebook and video games don’t come out on top in that speech. In some ways it plays to an older audience, but there are a lot of contemporary references as well as two with-it young characters.

Has this show ever been produced in Maine before?

No, this play won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play. It was a huge hit on Broadway. We’re just the first company to do it in Maine.

The rest of the show’s dates are on Sept. 13, 14, 19, 20, 21 with a Q & A session with the cast and crew on Sunday, Sept. 14. Evening performances are at 7 p.m, with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.

Tickets are $25, or $20 if purchased in advance. Student tickets are available at $10. Tickets are available at www.everymanrep.org, by calling 207.236.0173, as well as at the following retail venues: Owl and Turtle and HAVII in Camden, the Reading Corner, Rockland, and Bella Books, Belfast.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN—The second annual Mini Maker Faire was held in the Camden Amphitheatre on Sept. 6. Hundreds of people of all ages attended to see more than 20 exhibitors strut their stuff. From robot making to a solar Merry Go Round, from an electric car to illustrated word memoirs—here are more of the Makers, Tinkerers and Artists who made it a success.

See more of the “behind the scenes” in our new gallery.

If you missed the original article, check it out: 2014 Mini Maker Faire a swinging success.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — You know what’s a refreshing change to see? Kids getting their hands on technology that doesn’t involve a cellphone, iPad or a videogame.

This year’s Midcoast Mini Maker Faire had more than 20 tables, exhibits and hands-on activities involving robots, LEGOs® and funky art creations for kids and adults. The scene resembled a homegrown version of the Museum of Science in Boston. Despite a sweltering humid day, hundreds of adults and kids roamed the Camden Amphitheatre, checking out the unusual displays.

One of the biggest hits of the Faire was the solar Merry Go Round invented by Arthur Haines (see accompanying video). Haines said he’d always wanted to invent a carnival ride and with a few canvas lawn chairs, a metal structure and a couple of small solar panels, he had everything he needed to make it happen.

“I have been designing this for a long time, but we put it together in a week,” he said. Going full speed, this ride packed some serious punch. Kids had to be paired with kids and adults with adults so the weight imbalances wouldn’t topple the ride as Haines chose various songs from his iPad to accompany the Merry Go Round.

On the lawn, a Photo Booth by Darling’s allowed people to dress up in costume and play with the controls inside while on the other side of the lawn, kids were taught how to make enormous bubbles that swarmed around the Amphitheatre, and burst in the faces of people not looking.

Inside the tent, some of the popular activities from last year were back, such as the cardboard robot making clinic taught by Jared Paradee, (a.k.a. Robot Overlord) and CMCA ArtLab, which allowed kids to choose from a wide buffet of LEGOs®, trinkets and an electric drill to make sculptural key chains and pendants.

“My son donated his LEGO® collection for this,” said Marcie Bronstein, an educator at ArtLab.

Techgeeks were in their element as the students of the Regional School Union 13 Lego Robotics Team and The Rockland RoboGeeks showcased some of their LEGO® robotic creations. One was a robot that could be programmed to push a soda can into a recycling bin. (But can they program it to clean up their rooms?)

New exhibits and activities that capitalized on people’s sensory intuition, creativity and imagination included modular origami making by Eva Szillery, who obtained her doctorate in mathematics in Hungary at the prestigious Eotvos Lorand University. She invented fantastical ball-shaped origami models as a way to teach kids mathematic principles.

So many of the exhibits inspired simple projects that can be done at home using household products. Jason Philbrook led a Cynotype hands-on workshop using a simple, 19th century photo process that uses good old sunshine to make a photogram and print negatives. Kids got to coat their papers, make a design, expose it to sunlight for a few minutes, rinse it, then walk away with a blueprint of their design. On the other side of the the tent, Meghan Boyle led her Funky Fermentation demonstration on how to make sauerkraut, using cabbage, sea salt and a basic jar with a lid.

“The microorganisms in the air will simply ferment it,” she said. “I was never really good at canning, so this is much simpler.” Now everybody can be all Martha Stewart when making a Reuben sandwich.

Surprisingly this year, with all the focus on technology, there was an equal focus on art and literary workshops at the Faire. Nancy Tyndall, a puppeteer from Montville, created The Wee Museum of Maine, featuring little books replete with clues and riddles about Maine that kids had to guess in order to open the books in her display. The Farnworth Art Museum’s Ilustrated Six Word Memoir workshop, led by personal historian Meghan Vigeant and artist Alexis Immarino, was equally as popular with people of all ages.

The workshop was inspired by Ernest Hemingway said Vigeant. “It all came from a challenge to Hemingway to write a six-word novel and his was: ‘For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.’ So, we created this workshop giving people all the tools they need to tell a six-word story about themselves.”

Several tables over, author Dena Davis was working on a Little Free Library, a small, mailbox-like structure that houses free books. There are nearly 15,000 Little Free Libraries across the country, but only about a dozen in Maine.

There were many more exhibitors than we could even cover, but what a creative free for all!  Check back for a photo gallery, which tells more of the story and features more exhibitors — coming soon. To find out more about the Midcoast Mini Maker Faire, visit midcoastmakerfaire.com.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Some cuh-razy events are coming to the Midcoast this weekend and it won’t be easy to choose which ones to go to.

Friday, Sept. 5

Art Walk (Rockland)

One of the best things about small towns in the summer (yes it’s still summer. I don’t care!) are the Friday night art walks that Rockland and Belfast offer. Arts In Rockland will be hopping tonight for August's First Friday, from 5 to 8 p.m. in Rockland. FMI: www.artsinrockland.org

Temp Tales, Trackside Station (Rockland)

If you have been following Maine’s cult favorite animation series, Temp Tales, by O’Chang Comics (see our story here), they just released their latest episode, Crittah Gittaz, which focuses on the working guys of Maine and the hazards of the summer workplace situation.They’re on a statewide tour right now (seriously, even in Millinocket, guys are overheard repeating  the show’s signature line “Drive ah, MaGuyvah!) They’ll be at Trackside Station this evening after the art walk; the show starts at 7:30 p.m.

Belfast Peace Festival (Belfast)

The inaugural Belfast Peace Festival kicks off tonight with a Street Dance from 6 to 9 p.m. on Spring Street between Court and Church streets. DJ Erik Klausmeyer spins 60s, 70s and current tunes while broadcasting live on Community Radio WERU 89.9 FM. This is offered as a family event and suggests bringing bring a blanket & picnic basket, or buy snacks from vendors. There is a full day of activities planned, and you can check out the schedule and details here and here.

Primo Cubano, Speakeasy (Rockland)

This will be a great place to get your salsa groove going! Primo Cubano plays traditional Cuban dance music dating back to the turn of the 20th Century, and they have a large following, so call ahead to reserve a ticket if you can. Tickets are $10 in advance, and limited. Music is from 9 p.m. to midnight. FMI: 596-6661 Ext. 606 or email kathleen@2ParkDrive.com.

Saturday, Sept 6

Medieval Tournament, Fort Knox (Prospect)

Knights jousting. Monks knocking back mead. Lords and ladies frolicking about. There are people who love dressing up and pretending that it is still the 16th century, and I, for one, am grateful they exist. Fort Knox transforms itself Saturday, when the 6th annual Medieval Tournament unfurls its banners on the old fort's parade ground. The event is hosted by the Barony of Endewearde, a branch of the East Kingdom in the Society for Creative Anachronism, which studies the Middle Ages by recreating the pastimes and crafts of the period. Last year's event gave hundreds of visitors a taste of the Middle Ages with demonstrations of fencing, youth fighting and fencing, thrown weapons, combat archery, live music, dance, exhibits and a fashion show, too. The event starts at 9:30 a.m. and goes until 4 p.m.  Regular Fort admission fees apply ($1 ages 5-11, $3 12-64), plus a suggested donation of $3 per person is requested. FMI: Barony of Endewearde

Midcoast Mini Maker Faire (Camden)

Last year, we covered the first-ever Mini Maker Faire, and to no one’s surprise it was an out-of-left-field hit with everyone. Most of the events in this round-up are for adults, but this was one of those ultra-cool events where kids and adults intermingled seamlessly. With its resourceful do-it-yourself science and technology, robots, crafts and art, this event celebrates the quirky side of the creative economy. This year, there will be at least 20 exhibitors, including many hands-on presentations like the ever-popular robot-making demonstration (thanks Robot Overlord!), sauerkraut making, a solar-powered merry-go-round swing, "modular" origami, a LegoLab, illustrated six-word memoirs, and more. The Faire will be held in the Camden Amphitheatre along Atlantic Avenue at the head of the harbor. Admission to the Faire is a $2 donation, $5 for families. FMI: midcoastmakerfaire.com.

Movie on the Green: Spaceballs (Thomaston)

Now here’s a chance to laugh your fanny off. The Friends of the Thomaston Public Library is sponsoring a showing of the 1987 Mel Brooks Star Wars parody and cult classic, Spaceballs, starring Brooks, Bill Pullman, John Candy and Rick Moranis. Movies on the Green are shown on the wall of the old Maine State Prison, which is a pretty neat way to use that big wall. The film starts at sundown and Playin' Possum folk trio will entertain everyone awaiting the sun to drop low enough for the movie to begin. Bring a chair, a blanket and bug spray too. Popcorn and bottled water will be available for purchase for $1.

Sunday, Aug. 7

Maine Weinerfest (Belfast)

The question is not why would you, it’s why wouldn’t you want to see a bunch of Dachshunds dressed in little costumes? Last month Rockland had a Cat Film Festival, this month, Belfast hosts the 11th annual Maine Wienerfest, a waterfront event at Steamboat Landing Park from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Organized events include the Grand Parade of Dachshunds, a costume contest and a series of hilarious races. One of the most unusual activities will be ongoing demonstrations of teckeling, the age-old hunting technique that uses dachshunds to burrow after badgers, rats and other prey. (Um, all of it—yes.) Gates open at 10:30 a.m. Admission is $2 for adults. Children under 12 years old and dogs are free. Food booths and dog-related vendors will be available on the site. FMI: friendsofbelfastparks.org

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — On Aug. 22, Cheryl Denz got a call that no business owner wants to receive. As the owner of the Tera Optima Farm and its eponymous Farm Market on the southern end of Rockland’s Main Street, she learned that the store had been robbed that morning. She recalls being stoic and calm.

“We gave the store a pretty thorough going over before I called police,” she said. 

In a “Farm Report” blog Denz writes for the Farm Market, she shared this news with the community that day, as well as her reaction:

My feelings were not of anger, but of confusion.
And I still was holding out hope that perhaps it wasn't true.
But it was.
Someone had come into the market and stolen all the deposit money.
There was a somber atmosphere in the market, when I arrived.
I asked a few more questions and called the police.
I can't go into too many details here, because the police are conducting an investigation.
My day was full of phone calls and anxiety.
Now what?
The market cannot afford to have a loss like that.
Last week, I removed a shoplifter I believed had been stealing from us since we opened.
It took me this long to catch the person, definitely in the act.
This week, our entire deposit was taken.
I am beside myself.
I went to see my friend, Suzanne later that day.
I had held myself together all day.
But when I saw her, I burst into tears.

Nearly two weeks later, the crime is still under investigation, but a whirlwind of emotions has broadsided Denz. 

“This is such a new business,” she said. “Everything I had was put into this store. I even sold cattle to make this store happen and I do whatever I can to keep it going. So, any amount of money that is taken by shoplifting or an outright theft is downright devastating. If you came to me and said you were in need, I’d do whatever I could. And if I couldn’t personally do it, I’d find someone who could.”

Within a day, dozens of people in the community who found out about the loss expressed their support on her Facebook page and in person.

Denz wrote on her blog the next day:

I was overwhelmed yesterday by the out pouring of support from my community for me and the market.
Calls, emails, personal visits...
Offers of help, hugs, handshakes...
The postings on this Facebook page were also heartwarming and informative.
Still, the events of the previous day loomed large inside me.
I felt a little flat, almost as if I had experienced a death in my family.
As soon as was reasonable, I left the market, to see my cows.

“My first love is my farm,” she said. “I could work there 24 hours a day. This market is tougher than anything I’ve ever done. Tougher than chasing pigs in the woods, shoveling cow manure, or felling trees.”

Days later she was still struggling to make sense of her own personal loss and try to figure out how to make up for the stolen money.

In that following week, a customer contacted her to ask what happened and a day later Denz received a check in the mail.

“It was a significant amount of money. I was speechless,” she said. “In her note she said this was her way of paying forward. I just cried. Then after that, I got the sweetest letter from a teenage girl named Pearl I’d met at the Union Fair auction the night before the robbery, asking me to not give up. There was $20 from her and $20 from her parents in the envelope. And once again, I had to leave the store, my eyes were welling up.”

Denz said that the community has surprised her again and again. People have sent her little gifts in the mail and restaurant and business owners in Rockland have gone out of their way to buy some produce from the store.

“I really didn’t think anyone cared,” she said. “This is just a store, for God’s sake.”

At this, Denz has to take a second to wipe her eyes and compose herself.

“You would think after a couple of weeks, I’d have gotten this out of my system,” she said with a little laugh.

The best was yet to come. A friend of Denz named Todd Bross, who happened to be a member of the Facebook community Midcoast Eating & Drinking Society, organized a cash mob through the group to benefit Terra Optima Farm Market Aug. 30.

In a partial statement to the group he posted: “We need businesses like this and people like Cheryl in our foodie community. She has given much, some idiot(s) took from her. Let's give it back many times over....”

“I didn’t even know what a cash mob was,” said Denz. For the uninitiated, a cash mob is a loose, grassroots group whose purpose is to gather at one store with $20 to spend and to flood it with revenue on a predetermined day.

“All week people who were part of the cash mob were coming in and on that Sunday, we already had people at the door before we opened,” she said.

All in all, she estimates 100 people who were part of the cash mob, including friends and neighbors as well as people from out of state came through the store that week.

“That night I went home,” she said. “I was worn out in a happy way. I never thought the community would rally like that. People told me they hoped these good things would outweigh these bad things and it has helped tremendously. But when I walk through the store, there is still this feeling of violation and I don’t know how long it will take to shake that.”

In the final words of her blog that addressed this issue she stated:

Through the events of the last few days, I have felt your kindness and support in a way that I have no words to describe.
You are a wonderful community to be a part of.
I feel blessed. Truly.
Thank you.
I'm off to the barn.
I'll be back later.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Hope this looks familiar. Guesses?

There were a flurry of guesses for last week’s Throwback Thursday photo, but it appears the correct answer to where these row of buildings were located came from a member of the Facebook group: “You knew you grew up in Camden-Rockport when...”   Valerie Goodman said: “This is in Northport. My parents bought it in 1954(?) On the roof of the house was written ‘NUT HOUSE’ on the side headed to Belfast. I don't think I ever saw this picture, thanks for sharing. They sold GULF gas and opened a restaurant ‘Penobscot Bay Trading Post’ which later moved to Lincolnville Beach.

Photo courtesy Penobscot Marine Museum at penobscotmarinemuseum.org

Throwback Thursday needs your submissions. Send us your “back in the day” photos with a caption at news@penbaypilot.com

Pen Bay Pilot has worked tirelessly to assemble every notable Happy Hour offering in the Midcoast (and yes, it was hard work doing all of that sampling) into a guide that is easily accessible for the person who instantly wants to know, “where should we go today?” From upscale chic inns to hotspots with an urban feel to the local neighborhood taverns, every establishment in our list “Guide to Midcoast’s Happy Hours” has a list of their specials, days and times offered and even notes on the mood of each space.

Click to see guide.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com If you are the owner of any of these establishments and have a correction, please email her.

ROCKPORT—Retired attorney John Galley from Rockport had never used the popular crowdfunding website Kickstarter before and wasn’t quite sure to expect last month when he and his business partner, Kirk Kreutzig launched a Kickstarter campaign for their unique sunglasses called ORION4Sight.

Of all the other crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and GoFundMe, Kickstarter is probably the most recognized platform specializing in helping artists and entrepreneurs raise funds for creative projects. Kreutzig, who holds four patents on his vision enhancement technology, has been making eyewear and other products using his technology for almost two decades. His biggest customers are the elite U.S. Special Operations Commands and members of the Navy Seals and other “dark ops” groups. Kreutzig and Galley decided to team up and make a a spin-off version of Kreutzig’s military eyewear for consumers, a sort of “sunglasses on steroids.”

But first, they needed funds for research and development, production, marketing and legal expenses. So, they turned to Kickstarter.

With about two weeks to prep the campaign, including creating a video with his campaign “guru” Lucas McNelly at DreamLocal, Galley recalls what happened after pushing the “launch button” on Aug. 12.

“In 30 seconds or less, my email notification showed me that two people had backed the project, instantly,” said Galley. “I thought, ‘How in the world did that happen so fast? Were they lurking around on Kickstarter waiting for me to start it?’ Then in 20 minutes, 10 people backed us. In less than three hours, 50 people had claimed our allocated 50 pairs of sunglasses on our Early Bird special. In less than 24 hours, we sped right through our $9,000 goal. By the second day, we got an email from Kickstarter choosing us as one of their prestigious and coveted staff picks. By the third day, this Amazon seller’s community I belong to contacted me to be interviewed for their newsletter. It just kept going. It hasn’t stopped.”

At the time of this interview, the campaign was still 13 days from finishing with nearly 1,500 backers. As anyone who has ever backed a project, or started one of their own in Maine, Galley’s experience is unprecedented. “As of last Sunday, we became the number one Kickstarter campaign in Maine, regardless of category,” said Galley. “We’re now number two in the sunglasses category in all time and it’s likely to be a lock that we will be number one shortly.”

Asked his secret in how he got to this point, Galley said, “I think you’ve got to have a couple of things. First, you’ve got to have a good product and a good story. Then you have to have a compelling offer. All of these things are standard Marketing 101. What I was I totally unprepared for was the size and the breadth of the Kickstarter community. There are what I call ‘Kickstarter groupies’ who hang around because they are always looking for new and interesting things. They are what marketers call early adopters. They want to be the first kid on the block to have the new widget. And this looks like one hell of a widget.”

Galley estimates no more than five percent of the people he knows personally are backers. “The majority of these people I don’t know personally and they are driving this bus,” he said. The current numbers show the majority of backers are male. Interestingly enough, around 35% of their backers are from overseas. “I would never have known Kickstarter had that much of an international audience,” Galley said.

“There’s a viral component to this campaign,” adds campaign manager McNelly. “There’s a misconception that crowdfunding is asking your friends and family for money. It’s more about spreading out to lots of different people and communities. It’s kind of the same thing that fuels the TV show Shark Tank. People really want to see the process and how cool things happen and they’re willing to put their money toward it. Here, they’re getting a good deal on a good product faster than anyone else, and at a discount. In my experience with film projects, what you’re really pitching to is the guy in the cubicle in Nebraska who always wanted to do something artistic and has never really been able to and really wants to be a part of [a Kickstarter project.]”

All of this being so new to Galley, he stresses the need to stay on top of the comments section and in-box messages from backers. In fact, he spend about 15 hours a day upon this campaign. “Right now, we have close to 300 comments,” he said.  “The private messages are 5-10 times above that. I always send everyone a message back, because I want to reinforce their participation. In some cases, if I don’t respond within a reasonable time frame, it starts to take a different turn.”

With their unexpected monster success has come a small percentage of backlash, which is what typically happens in virally successful Kickstarter campaign. While the majority of backers are happy to ride along, a very small percentage of backers have persistently tried to question the validity of Galley and Kreutzig’s eyewear product. With more than two decades of work on this technology and four patents on it, they shouldn’t have to defend their company. But Kickstarter, in recent years, has had its reputation slightly marred with fraudulent campaigns, which has left some backers wary about fast rising campaigns.

Another form of backlash has occurred when certain backers began to see that Galley and Kreutzig’s campaign was surpassing nearly 1937% times its original goal and began asking them to give more back to the backers. Galley addresses this by emphasizing that the original goal of $9,000 was deliberately smaller than the anticipated expenses and that it will cost immeasurably more to cover the R&D, production, marketing, legal fees and costs of shipping the reward sunglasses out to the backers in the U.S. and abroad. ”The goal really has nothing to do with how much this will cost us, but you have to choose a lower goal so you don’t get shut out,” said Galley.

Finally, one strange turn no one on the campaign anticipated, is that an Australian scam artist lifted the text, videos and other elements of their Kickstarter campaign and tried to run a fraudulent mirror campaign under the same name on Indiegogo.  After he raised several hundred dollars on the scam campaign before being detected, that situation, has since been resolved.

All in all, it has been a wild ride for Galley, Kreutzig and McNelly. Asked for their advice on what to tell other Maine creatives who are interested in starting a campaign on a crowdfunding site, McNelly said, “I wouldn’t advise anyone to do a Kickstarter campaign unless they really have a good project and are going to put the time into it. If you’re just going to throw something up against the wall and see if it sticks, it will probably be unsuccessful. In the film community, we did a survey to see how many hours it takes to put into a successful Kickstarter campaign and the average was 10 hours a day. For an unsuccessful campaign it was four. And some people don’t even have four hours to put in.” 

Just to show how fast backers are contributing to this campaign, at the start of writing this article, the number of contributions was at $173,808. At the time this article went live, that number jumped to $188,556 and it shows no sign of stopping in the next 10 days. There’s no doubt that this campaign will end on a high note. Asked what they’ll do when the end date of Friday, Sept. 12 comes around, McNelly jokes, “Sleep.”

Galley remarks, “Our real work has just begun. You don’t quit when Kickstarter ends. We wouldn’t be on here if there wasn’t a plan beyond Kickstarter.”

To follow their campaign visit: www.kickstarter.com/projects/johngalley/orion4sight-sunglasses-on-steroids

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND—The Farnsworth Art Museum’s group The Collective has been shaking up the Museum’s buttoned down, traditional image in recent years with edgy art environments, but last Saturday night, they threw out a whole kit and caboodle with The Walker Arts Center’s Internet Cat Video Festival presented by The Farnsworth held Saturday Aug. 23.

That’s right, an event dedicated to viral cat videos.

If you’re thinking five middle-aged single ladies showed up in cat sweaters smelling faintly of Fancy Feast, get this—somewhere between 500-700 people showed up to the festival and fair, according to Kelly Finlay, the Farnsworth’s Education Coordinator.

“The reel of films were divvied up by genre,” she said. “The first part featured comedy videos and was my favorite, personally. It was so wonderful to hear the group laughing.  We also had a Hall of Fame collection, if you’ve ever seen the Grumpy Cat Internet meme. We also had an animated film category, like the Nyan cat, based on another Internet meme of an animated cartoon cat with the body of a Pop-Tart, flying through space. It also featured a selection of videos of the Henri Le Chat Noir videos, which depicts this cat with these existential ponderings in subtitles.” (Click on the videos to see Grumpy Cat and Henri Le Chat.)

For many, an introduction to these pop cultural phenomenons was secondary to the excellent people watching that took place in the first few hours of the festival, held in Rockland’s Harbor Park. Photographer Michael O’Neil roamed the crowds and reported seeing a lot of “hard core cat enthusiasts of all ages” in the early part of the evening. ”People who just really love cats and the event itself—this was their chance to come out. For the most part, 80 percent of the people there was wearing some feline-based paraphernalia, whether it was a hat, a t-shirt, a sticker, or face paint,” he said.

The event billed itself as a way to “raise questions, challenge assumptions, surprise people, and create a real, multi-sensory experience.” In the daylight hours before the films took place, the fair featured games, art activities, and food vendors, as well as “MASH" unit where stuffed animals could be surgically repaired. P.A.W.S. Animal Adoption Center also provided a "Cat Cuddle Booth" featuring adoptable cats.

The Farnsworth Art Museum is not the first to get in on the cat film festival craze.  In 2012, the world's first #CatVidFest was held at the Walker Art Center, a contemporary art museum in Minneapolis, which drew more than 10,000 people in 2012, launching comparisons to a new sort of “Burning Man” festival.

We can’t wait to see what The Collective has in store next. To see a gallery of the craziest cat photos, click here.

All photos courtesy Michael O'Neil from the Walker Art Center’s Internet Cat Video Festival, presented by the Farnsworth Art Museum.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Does anyone know where these building used to be in the Midcoast or have any stories about them?

Thanks to Rockland, Maine History’s Facebook page, last week’s Throwback Thursday photo was submitted by Maynard Dean. It was the Socony Service Station, on a 4th of July sale at the corner of Main and Rankin Streets. One of PenBay Pilot’s commenters, Mike McMahon said, “This was my grandfather's [Charles (Chick) McMahon] gas station. It was on the corner of Main and Rankin Streets where the newest addition to the Rankin Block is today. My grandfather started the business during the second World War. The station was torn down and replaced by another gas station run by Veto Leo in the 1960's. The photo was probably taken in the 1940s.”

Photo courtesy of the Facebook group: “You knew you grew up in Camden-Rockport when...”

Throwback Thursday needs your submissions. Send us your “back in the day” photos with a caption at news@penbaypilot.com

OWLS HEAD—A year ago, Stephanie Williams, a personal trainer from Owls Head, had a random conversation with some of her students in an exercise class about how much fun it was to buy school supplies in anticipation of going back to school and how as adults, we don’t get to do that anymore.

“Out of that initial conversation, we thought that we could all collaborate and put together a couple of backpacks with school supplies and drop them off at the local school,” she said. “We thought we’d have just a few, but we ended up with 10 full backpacks. Word got around really quickly, and 10 backpacks turned into 110 backpacks. As the news spread, local businesses and media helped spread the word. And everybody wanted to help.”

That grassroots community effort has mushroomed into a movement that Williams is calling Backpacks For Kids, a local, fundraiser to supply kids with new backpacks stuffed with school supplies for the new school year. Last year, Williams donated the backpacks to RSU #13 comprising of Rockland, Thomaston St. George, Owls Head and Cushing. This year, that effort has spread out to more local school districts, including donations from Camden-Rockport. To date, more than 274 full backpacks have been donated with around 10 local businesses contributing.

“More are coming in as we speak with extra school supplies and I think we’ll be adding a third school district,” she said.

According to a 2011 Maine Kids Count Report, nearly 20% of children in Knox County are living in poverty and 45 percent are on the school lunch subsidy. “In doing this, I’d learned that more than 40% of children in our local area don’t really know where their next meal is coming from,” said Williams. So, if we can take a little bit of stress off these families by supplying a backpack with school supplies, it is worth it.”

“It feels good just to be able to put a smile on a little kid’s face,” said Williams. “I get a lot of feedback from teachers and ed techs who work with the kids. They also appreciate the help because they’re spending a lot of money out of their own pockets to supply the kids with the necessary tools.”

Out of last year’s effort, she said, a teacher told her the story about a little girl the teacher worked with who owned a ratty, old backpack that her mom bought her at GoodWill. She loved the backpack, though because her mom had given it to her. When the backpacks were distributed last year, the teacher made sure this little girl got a new backpack.

“She said the smile on this kid’s face was incredible. And for about a week, this little girl ran up to her, grabbed her, and gave her a hug, thanking her again for the backpack. This is such a small story, it’s such a simple thing, but if this is going to impact these kids on their first day of school and have a little bit of higher self-esteem, then it is all worth it.”

Still, the effort has grown to a point where it might be more than Williams can handle on her own. “I wasn’t even sure if I was going to do it this year, but everyone in my community said, ‘You’ve got to!’,” said Williams, who works on average of 40 weeks. She said that she started taking donations in July and now, more than half of her garage is filled with items. “The last few months I’ve been coming home from work and go in my garage for a few hours, trying to organize everything to stay on top of it. I reached out to some friends and they’ve been over to help me. I’m seriously considering putting together a ‘Backpacks for Kids’ committee for next year.

Williams said the feedback she’s gotten from her friends and community has been inspirational as well.

“To buy a new backpack and supplies is around $40 and for some people, that doesn’t put them out, feel good about doing it. This year has proven that.”

The backpacks will be distributed next week. The deadline for donations is now over, but if someone wants to contact Williams about the committee, she can be reached at stephhillerpt4@hotmail.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Welcome to our ongoing feature Behind the Slides, where we meet up with an artist who recently presented at a local PechaKucha night and find out the deeper story beneath the images he or she chose to portray.

Artist Margaret Rizzio was one of the presenters at PechaKucha Night in the Camden Public Library’s Amphitheatre on Aug. 15. Born and raised in Maine, her current work uses a wide range of mediums, including printmaking, mail and assemblage, to embrace the idea of memory and the passage of time.

Note: Rizzio's PechaKucha slides appear in the right column. Click on the photos to match them with the actual slide notes (in italics). Beneath the slide notes will be the deeper story.

Ephemera

I have always been in love with ephemera, postcards, boxes labels, games, matchbooks You name it. Anything printed I love. But very specifically vintage ephemera from the 1950s and 60s. The rich color saturation of things printed during this time is true perfection to me. I especially love the printed color red from the 1950s. It is richer than a modern day red.

This image and the previous are from a series of 120 matchbooks I made using pieces of my prints from my Bennington days and a collection of playing cards and small toys.

Bennington and Purchase

At Bennington and Purchase I discovered the most wonderful print studios and quickly became obsessed with making my own ephemera and also incorporating the old ephemera that I collect into the work.

Bennington was an amazing school to attend. I learned so many wonderful things about printmaking. At Purchase I got to work in the most beautiful letterpress studio.

Assemblages

These assemblages, which I am showing here become little worlds. I like the idea that at first glance you don't really get everything and hopefully want to come back to discover each layer, uncover mysteries. See where each element came from.

This Rabbit Piece is one of my favorite pieces that I have in an upcoming show at the Good Supply in Pemaquid, Maine. It is made from a vintage cigar box, labels and antique post cards.

The Hunt

Another aspect of my work are the stories of where all this material comes from. I think that might be one of the most frequently asked questions...Where did you get all these things? Where did you find that label or frame? The answer is Maine. From my favorite antique shop, in Belfast to auctions up north. The hunting and collecting of material becomes part of the work. After not having access to a print studio on a regular basis my work began to move towards assemblage.

In these pieces I use all original vintage or antique ephemera. That is very important to me not to use reproductions of anything.

Mail Art

So thinking about breathing new life into otherwise lost things I started to send a lot of mail. It started with my mom who, in the past 10 years, has received hundreds of pieces of mail art and post cards. These are just a few pieces of things sent. What really got me into mail also is post cards.

Doll Arm

I have always collected post cards but never really reflected on how brilliant they are. They are tiny pieces of art work that can be sent anywhere in the world for just the price of a stamp. I like to think of people receiving this mail amongst bills and catalogues and they can stop and enjoy this little piece of art.

I was sending so many postcards and decided to take it further by sending mail objects. Here we have a doll arm I sent. I wanted it to greet the recipient when they opened their mailbox. I also sent all the other limbs to different people in the United States. I was sending so much mail and I really love doing it, so I decided to start a mail art subscription service, which I started about a year and a half ago, and now I have several clients across the country who subscribe who have been given the gift of mail. It is like a magazine subscription but more frequent and with mail art.

Toast

A piece of toast sent. One thing I love about mail is that it can be a reflection of time, what place were you in your life when you received this toast? Would you do that with an email?

In a screen-obsessed time, it is really important to slow down and unplug. I want my work and my mail art to do this. I wanted this PechaKucha presentation to make people, even for a brief moment once again, appreciate mail, cookbooks, labels, bingo boards or other otherwise overlooked printed matter.

She is currently showing work at The Maine Farmland Trust Gallery, Turtle Gallery in Deer Isle and has an upcoming show at the Good Supply in Pemaquid. For more information about PechaKucha visit them on Facebook.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Going viral all over social media and on national talk shows, people far and wide are participating in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

In just seven days, donations to the ALS Association have gone from a reported $10 million on Aug. 16 to more than $62 million as of Aug. 23. It’s all due hanks to the challenge that has swept the country, according to the ALS Association’s website.

National sports teams and local little league teams have done it. ALS sufferers have done it as have countless celebrities, public officials, municipal first responders and everyone in between. What to do is easy. Fill a bucket with ice and water and dump it over your head after “calling out” at least three new people to accept the challenge and dump a bucket ice water over their head as well.

Some say the fundraiser has run its course, and there are certainly some people who have no interest in it. It’s not that they are ungiving, but likely a combination of things, least is which is be willing to be drenched with freezing cold water. No amount of preparation, commitment or courage can prevent the seemingly bravest and steeliest from squealing, wringing their hands or wishing they were anywhere but standing there waiting for the big drench.

Following are links to videos posted by some local businesses, familiar faces and even Maine celebrities, dumping buckets of ice water over their heads to raise awareness and donations for ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Celebrities in Maine

Stephen King-Click to see video

“Go to http://www.alsa.org/ and kick in some dough. I did.”

John Travolta-Click to see video

“I like all kinds of ice. The round kind. the spiral shaped kind...”

George W. Bush-Click to see video

“I don’t think it’s presidential to have a bucket of ice water dumped on my head, so I’m just going to donate $100.”

Kirstie Alley-Click to see video

Ice ice baby. “From the great state of Maine, which has the BEST lobsters in the world.”

Local businesses and familiar faces

Camden Opera House-Click to see the video

Kerry and Nate rise to the challenge (the Ice Bucket Challenge, that is!)

Horch Roofing-Click to see the video

“Thank you to our friend James Day for nominating the Horch Roofing Team for the ALS #IceBucketChallenge! Our crew gladly accepted the challenge this morning and will also donate $1,000 to help fight ALS. We nominate Phi Home Designs, Knickerbocker Group, North Atlantic Painting - Rockport, Maine, Maine Home+Design Magazine, Maine Magazine and the Belfast, Camden and Rockland branches of EBS Building Supplies to do the same!”

Adventure Advertising-Click to see the video

“When our friends at Maritime Energy challenged us to the ALS Bucket Challenge, or course we had to accept. Now, we're challenging Slim Goodbody, John Viehman, Rockport, Maine Fire and Police, and Penobscot Bay Pilot.”

Samoset Resort-Click to see video

The Samoset resort's Leadership Team accepted the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge today. We will also be making a donation in support of this worthy cause. We now call out all staff of the OPL corporate office in Portsmouth, N.H. to do the same!

Loyal Biscuit Company - click to see video

Woodlands Memory Care - Click to see video

Penobscot Bay Pilot-Click to see video

High Street in Lincolnville - Click to see video

“If we were going to do it, we would have called out Tom Groening of Working Waterfront, Derek Anderson of Athena Health and Peter Berk of North Atlantic Painting.” Oh snap!

Did you do it? If so, send us a link to your video to be added to the list.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Care to guess where this garage was once located (what street?) And the date of the photo?

Finally a stumper! We got no guesses on last week’s Throwback Thursday photo, courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum, which depicted a fire at Gay’s Store in Waldoboro, February 22, 1962.  The fire destroyed the business building housing the store and Waldoboro Press.

Photo courtesy (and as always a big thank you!) of Rockland, Maine History Facebook Page.

Throwback Thursday needs your submissions. Send us your “back in the day” photos with a caption at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — Over the last 50 years, who knows how many budding artists have used their time sequestered on a Hurricane Island Outward Bound School course during solo to truly look around and recognize their creative potential?

On Aug. 9, nearly 22 Maine artists working in oil painting, watercolor, sculpture and photography took the boat ride out to Hurricane Island to participate in the school’s 50th Anniversary Art + Auction Invitational. Hurricane Island is comprised of 180-acres and located in Penobscot Bay, off Vinalhaven. The school was founded by Peter Willauer in 1964 . The purpose of the Aug. 9 trip was to create original works of art to be auctioned as part of the Anniversary Bash, a benefit dinner and art auction, being held this Friday, Aug. 22, at Point Lookout Resort in Northport.

One artist who made the journey was Eric Hopkins, one of Maine’s most renowned artists, who also happens to be an alumnus of Outward Bound.

“Outward Bound is close to my heart,” he said. “I was 16-years-old in 1967, the youngest kid on the course at the time. It was the third year they were in existence. We called it ‘Crazycane Island’ because it was crazy what they made you do: cram yourself into a little rowboat, jump overboard, stay on an island four days by yourself. But, it didn’t sound crazy to me, it sounded like fun.

Hopkins, who has been painting since the age of 2, didn’t use his time on solo, however, to dream up new landscapes. “I was just taking everything in,” he said. “I was a licensed lobsterman at the time and I’d found some old junk parts of a lobster trap on Hurricane Island. So, I spent a lot of my time fixing up that lobster trap. I found a bait bag, got mussels and clams for bait, put my life jacket out and went out and set the lobster trap to see if I could catch some lobster on solo.”

He didn’t catch any lobster, but he did catch some crab. And these are memories he’ll never forget.

“It’s an amazing program,” he said. “For a young guy who was full of piss and vinegar, it really helped me sort through values and what was important in life. It was both philosophical and spiritual and pushed me to serve, to strive and not to yield—their motto. It also taught me to not pay attention to what anyone else thinks. E pluribus unum, ‘Out of many, one’ and that was really important.” Hopkins wasn’t able to participate in the Art Invitational, but he donated a painting he did of Hurricane island from his boat in 1990.

Asked why artists play so prominently in the school’s’ 50th anniversary, Eric Denny, executive director for the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School said, "We’re blessed to live in such an amazingly beautiful place and we’re also blessed to have artists who do such wonderful representations of Maine's wilderness areas and coasts. These are essentially Hurricane Island Outward Bound School’ classrooms. It is those very qualities, which enhance the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School educational experience, and it is those same qualities that inspire these artists to do their work."

Endorsed by renowned art critic and writer Carl Little, the auction will feature artwork from more than 30 notable artists with ties to Maine and Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, including  Kevin Beers, named one the 60 most important artists in Maine, Joyce Tenneson, considered among the 10 most influential women photographers in the history of photography, Lois Dodd, an elected member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and of the National Academy of Design, and T. Allen Lawson, master landscape artist acknowledged by PleinAir magazine as an artist certain to show up near the top of lists of “the painters most admired by other painters.”

Other artists and photographers include Joel Babb, Sam Cady, Dan Corey, Phillip Frey, Jill Hoy, Alison Hill, Janice Kasper, Colin Page, John Santoro, Marianne Smith, Emily Trenholm, Susan Headley Van Campen, Greta Van Campen, Jessica Lee Ives, Mary Bourke, Monica Kelly, David Little, Ed Nadeau, Chris Pinchbeck, Peter Ralston, Barbara Goodbody, Rick Perry and Cooper Dragonette.

To purchase tickets for the Bash and participate in the auction, visit www.hiobs50.org. A silent auction will begin over cocktails and continue through much of the evening. The evening will culminate with live bidding for a handful of selected pieces. Proceeds from the artwork will support getting students on Hurricane Island Outward Bound School courses.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — To complete the high-energy, jam-packed summer the Midcoast has seen this summer, Necessary Music Productions is hosting a blow-out show at The Camden Opera House this week, featuring award-winning artists The Mallett Brothers Band, Waylon Speed, and a public debut of the next episode in the O'Chang Comics cartoon series Temp Tales, called Crittah Gittahz!

The Mallett Brothers Band, which frequently visits venues in the Midcoast, was named the Best Band in New England for 2014 by New England Music Awards. Their sound has been described as having “the natural feel and ease of old school alternative country songwriters such as Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle with the driving spirit and rocking attitude of current Southern rockers such as Drive-By Truckers from Muscle Shoals, Ala.”

As one of Maine's most popular touring bands, they have worked hard to create audience buzz and have been very popular in the Midcoast for the last five years.

Will Niels, the organizer of this event said, “The Mallett family is arguably the living embodiment of one of the greatest songwriters that this state has ever known. I also wanted to present an opening act that I thought brought a commensurate level of artistry and intensity. What they’re going to bring to the show is a sweet and smooth vocal style of country with the urgency of speed metal in a genre called speedwestern. Imagine Waylon Jennings crossed with Slayer. Their way of making music is that they don’t stop at the boundaries where people usually stop.”

Like the Mallet Brothers Band, Waylon Speed was named New England Music Awards’ Best Band in Vermont for 2014. Their shows have earned them legitimate comparisons to Hank Williams III, the grandson of Hank Williams Sr., unarguably one of the fathers of country music.

“Our audience for this show is multi-generational, everyone from teens into their 70s. When I was just down at the Mallett show in Rockland during the Lobster Festival, there was a huge diversity in their audience of ages, genders and socio-economic backgrounds,” said Niels.

Lastly, if these two bands weren’t enough, Niels, who has voiced some characters in the O'Chang’s Temp Tales (which Penobscot Bay Pilot reported on exclusively in Maine’s animated series ‘Temp Tales’ develops cult following) is proud to host a public debut of the series’ next highly anticipated episode, in which cartoon versions of The Mallett Brothers Band appear. Atom and Hanji O'Chang are the creators of the Temp Tales series, which has now taken off on YouTube. Each new episode commands as many as 100,000 views within weeks of its release.

“One of the reasons we chose the Camden Opera House for the debut of this next episode is because it was so popular we had to turn away 100 people at The Speakeasy in February when the last episode launched,” said Niels. “The next Temp Tale episode is called Crittah Gittahz, which is about the hazards of the summer workplace situation. There are so many different types of people who are on these work crews in Maine and the O’Changs’ observational style is reflective of the diversity that we have in the Midcoast. You can expect a pretty humorous reflection of some of the circumstances that work crews find themselves in. But, keep in mind, these are adult cartoons, not appropriate for kids. Anyone not already acquainted with the salty language of Midcoast work crews, or doesn’t want to be, might consider taking a short walk during this part of the evening’s performance.”

There will be food and beverages available on the third floor of the Camden Opera House in the “Temp Tales Lounge,” with at least one local Temp Tales celebrity bartender.

The show is Thursday, Aug. 21, at the Camden Opera House. Doors open at 6 p.m. The show starts shortly after 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 and available at the Camden Town Office, Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. or online at camdenoperahouse.com. Any remaining tickets will be available for purchase at the venue. For more information, contact Neils at 390-0987 or email: hilloperationsman@gmail.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

UNION—Close to 30 cars were revving and raring to go for the Union Fair’s annual Demolition Derby event held this past Saturday night. Jaden Eaton, 19, from Union was one of the drivers, using his great grandmothers old beater, a Ford Contour, which his family was saving just for this event.

“It wasn’t going to get an inspection sticker anymore,” said Eaton.

If you can’t re-use it, recycle it or repair it, then smash the hell out of it — that’s the Maine way.

Eaton and his stepfather Bob Keene decided that the Ford Contour had to look slick.

“We wanted to put flames on it and make it look like something no one has ever seen before, so we took the car, stenciled flames on the hood and the trunk and used a plasma cutter to carve them out,” Eaton said.

Keene works at R. W. Gliddens in Waldoboro and that is where they were able to use the plasma cutter.

They proceeded to paint the rest of the car with fire-orange paint and stenciled No. 58 across the doors.

“We cut off the exhaust to make it nice and loud, but other than that, we kept it pretty original,” said Eaton.

Eaton had never driven in a Demolition Derby before. 

“It was a blast,” he said. “The initial countdown got my heart racing. I didn’t know what I was getting into. When they said ‘Go,’ my foot hit the pedal right down to the floor and the next thing I knew, we were all crashing into each other. There was smoke coming up from all places. I backed into the first one then I got sandwiched in between a bunch of cars. My car ended up stalling and I had to re-start it. Then, I was off again, and got stuck again. Next thing I know, my car wasn’t driving; I couldn’t figure out why. Then, when I got pulled off, I got out of my car and saw my whole front axle had broken sideways. My front tire was sideways on the ground. It was a way more fun version of bumper cars.”

Scooter Chadbourne has been running the Demolition Derby for the past 12 years. The event itself Chadbourne estimates has been going on for more than 20 years and the two Derby events that take place at the Union Fair every year draw the biggest crowds. Chadbourne says each car has to undergo a 40-point safety inspection before it can be entered into the Derby. For more than two hours the drivers go at it, smashing and ramming until the car is disabled. Then several scrappers come in and buy the damaged vehicles from the participants.

“This past Saturday’s event was smooth,” said Chadbourne. “I’ve seen it all. The cars were well prepared. The idea with the crowd is to keep it moving. If there’s too much time and a lag in the action, we start losing them.”

Of the 30 cars, there were multiple classes. Eaton’s Ford Contour was among 10 entrants in the sixth cylinder class, with his car coming in sixth. “As soon as I got done, I told my parents, I wish I had another car to do it again,” he said. “I’ll definitely do this again.”

Thursday’s second Demolition Derby event will again, be held at the Union Fair at 7 p.m. Chadbourne anticipates another 30 or more cars to be added as entrants. For more information visit: The Union Fair.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

NORTHPORT — Inside Stephen J. Hemenway’s converted garage in Northport, it feels like one has entered a time warp back to the 1800s. It’s an old western parlor room complete with antique couches, campfire utensils, a 1898 Edison and an old-fashioned piano. What gives it away that this is, in actuality, the studio set for his children’s program, The Children’s Corner, is the ceiling mounted professional lights, video cameras and a green screen.

The Midcoast has had a children’s educational performer in our midst once before, Slim Goodbody, John Burstein’s character. Burstein was a pioneer on health and body education. Sheriff Stephen J., as he goes by, is a retired deputy sheriff from Los Angeles County who moved to Maine with his wife in 2011. Comparatively, he  has a similar educational programming mission, to create a family-friendly show using humor, music and odd characters.

The difference is, he has an underground following, mostly on public access TV, in more than 4 million households across the United States and on 11 Maine channels. The other difference is that he is a one-man show, independently financed and produced, operating on a non-budget while he builds his platform. He’s a self-taught musician/producer, a children’s author and the producer/star of his own 26-minute TV series based on the settings and characters of three of his nine books.

“When I was a kid, I either wanted to be a comedian or a deputy sheriff. The deputy sheriff career won out because it was more achievable than breaking into show business,” he said.

Much of Hemenway’s back-story involves being in the right place at the right time with one creative project mushrooming into another. He had been writing and producing music since he was a teenager. In the 1990s, technology got cheap enough for him to buy a high-definition camera. At first, he just did his own music videos, set to his songs. While still in California in the early 1990s, he decided to run for office in Chino Hills. In an unusual way to build his political platform and drum up some notoriety, he decided to write a children’s Christmas song about Chino Hills, using many members of the community to collaborate on the song.

Although he didn’t win the election, the song was a hit. One thing led to another and he soon found himself writing short stories for children, which a local magazine there printed. The more he wrote, the more they wanted, titling his story series, The Children’s Corner. The stories led to his first self-published children’s book titled Slouch In The Couch, a homage to Dr. Suess rhyming text centered around a fantasy-filled world that encourages kids to do their homework. Hemenway went on to publish three more of his books and created a studio in California with three friends to play his book’s gang of characters — Black Bart, One-eyed James, Gibbering Bob and Gutless George — with — playing One-eyed James.

When he moved to Maine, he continued to produce shows, with his Sheriff Stephen J. character serving as The Children’s Corner’s host. The TV series picks up where the books left off. The imaginary world that Stephen J. created is located within a magical couch with all kinds of towns like The Children’s Corner, including Slouchville and Fantasy Forest. The Slouches are the mischievous characters who eat the schoolbooks of children and encourage laziness and bad behavior. His mission as Sheriff Stephen J. is to climb up out of the World of the Magical Couch (on a rope ladder) and capture the Slouches in the real world before they have a chance to influence the children.

Meanwhile, while he’s up there, he might as well do some educational field trips around Maine and other places of interest. So, he takes his camera and goes on location to film segments of the show around local places that kids would find interesting, like the Hope Elephants, the beach to learn how to dig for clams, the forest to learn how to do tap a maple tree and the farm to learn how to do organic farming.

Meanwhile, his old gang still plays cameos. “I left a camera in California and go back twice a year,” he said. “And when I do, we film some more episodes together.”

Within the last two years, Hemenway has, without advertisers or any other sponsors, taken it upon himself to shoot 16 episodes per season. He’s already completed one season and is currently half way through the other.

“The show is still in its infancy,” he said. “Like anything else when you first start doing anything, you’ve got to get into your niche and now I’m in it. I want this TV show to be as close to anything you’d find on national TV. I’m hoping a company like the Maine Public Broadcast Network will see the potential down the road.”

Within the show, he performs in the tradition of Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers, introducing educational concepts, new vocabulary words, recipes, music, humor and models good behavior. With him, as always, is his sidekick, Mr. Dill, a 7-inch pickle in a cowboy hat.

“Saturday Night Live had Mr. Bill,” he said, “I’ve got Mr. Dill.” When he laughs at that, it’s infectious cackle; it’s easy to see how much a kid at heart Hemenway is himself.

“People who have actually seen the show, their feedback is all positive,” he said.

Despite how many channels his show is on in Maine, in the Midcoast, the only local channel that currently runs The Children’s Corner is Maine TV 85 (Rockland, Rockport, Camden and Augusta); however, this channel only runs on cable packages. Those with basic cable in the Midcoast won’t be able to find it. Hemenway said he is working on trying to get Channel 7 to still run it. That said, people can find previous episodes on his YouTube channel, under the moniker, Slouchman. The one episode he recommends is: Love’s Day, which features himself as four characters and highlights a trip to Wilbur’s of Maine candy shop in Freeport.

 Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com.

CAMDEN — To complete the high-energy, jam-packed summer the Midcoast has seen this summer, Necessary Music Productions is hosting a blow-out show at The Camden Opera House this week, featuring award-winning artists The Mallett Brothers Band, Waylon Speed, and a public debut of the next episode in the O'Chang Comics cartoon series Temp Tales, called Crittah Gittahz!

The Mallett Brothers Band, which frequently visits venues in the Midcoast, was named the Best Band in New England for 2014 by New England Music Awards. Their sound has been described as having “the natural feel and ease of old school alternative country songwriters such as Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle with the driving spirit and rocking attitude of current Southern rockers such as Drive-By Truckers from Muscle Shoals, Ala.”

As one of Maine's most popular touring bands, they have worked hard to create audience buzz and have been very popular in the Midcoast for the last five years.

Will Niels, the organizer of this event said, “The Mallett family is arguably the living embodiment of one of the greatest songwriters that this state has ever known. I also wanted to present an opening act that I thought brought a commensurate level of artistry and intensity. What they’re going to bring to the show is a sweet and smooth vocal style of country with the urgency of speed metal in a genre called speedwestern. Imagine Waylon Jennings crossed with Slayer. Their way of making music is that they don’t stop at the boundaries where people usually stop.”

Like the Mallet Brothers Band, Waylon Speed was named New England Music Awards’ Best Band in Vermont for 2014. Their shows have earned them legitimate comparisons to Hank Williams III, the grandson of Hank Williams Sr., unarguably one of the fathers of country music.

“Our audience for this show is multi-generational, everyone from teens into their 70s. When I was just down at the Mallett show in Rockland during the Lobster Festival, there was a huge diversity in their audience of ages, genders and socio-economic backgrounds,” said Niels.

Lastly, if these two bands weren’t enough, Niels, who has voiced some characters in the O'Chang’s Temp Tales (which Penobscot Bay Pilot reported on exclusively in Maine’s animated series ‘Temp Tales’ develops cult following) is proud to host a public debut of the series’ next highly anticipated episode, in which cartoon versions of The Mallett Brothers Band appear. Atom and Hanji O'Chang are the creators of the Temp Tales series, which has now taken off on YouTube. Each new episode commands as many as 100,000 views within weeks of its release.

“One of the reasons we chose the Camden Opera House for the debut of this next episode is because it was so popular we had to turn away 100 people at The Speakeasy in February when the last episode launched,” said Niels. “The next Temp Tale episode is called Crittah Gittahz, which is about the hazards of the summer workplace situation. There are so many different types of people who are on these work crews in Maine and the O’Changs’ observational style is reflective of the diversity that we have in the Midcoast. You can expect a pretty humorous reflection of some of the circumstances that work crews find themselves in. But, keep in mind, these are adult cartoons, not appropriate for kids. Anyone not already acquainted with the salty language of Midcoast work crews, or doesn’t want to be, might consider taking a short walk during this part of the evening’s performance.”

There will be food and beverages available on the third floor of the Camden Opera House in the “Temp Tales Lounge,” with at least one local Temp Tales celebrity bartender.

The show is Thursday, Aug. 21, at the Camden Opera House. Doors open at 6 p.m. The show starts shortly after 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 and available at the Camden Town Office, Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. or online at camdenoperahouse.com. Any remaining tickets will be available for purchase at the venue. For more information, contact Neils at 390-0987 or email: hilloperationsman@gmail.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Can anybody tell us where this building, which burned down, would have been? Care to guess the year it happened?

Last week’s TBT photo got tons of hits and comments and 17 shares on Facebook. Thanks to everyone who chimed in. J.P. Fecteau took this photo in either July 1981 or Sept. 1982 while attending the Maine Photographic Workshops. The building on the left was Ingraham’s a grocery store/emporium. On the right was the original Guido’s Pizzaria. On Facebook, Jill Morton said: “ I can remember going to Ingraham's store with my grandmother when I was really little and chatting with Maynard Ingraham, and Billy Lermond who worked there...also my mom was a stay-at-home mom and had no transportation while my dad was away at work with the vehicle, so once a week she would call Ingraham's with her grocery list and one of the Lemond boys would deliver it in their delivery van...it's was the only grocery store in this area that I am aware of that did deliveries.”

Of Guido’s Pizza, Patrick Rowling said, “Here's a memory ... "Silly-Fug-Moo." My brother and I ordered one at least once a week from Guido's: It was the kitchen-code for a large Sicilian pizza, with fugazzi and mushrooms. At the time, EASILY my favorite pie in Maine.”

This week’s photo courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum. Visit: penobscotmarinemuseum.org

Throwback Thursday needs your submissions. Send us your “back in the day” photos with a caption at news@penbaypilot.com

THOMASTON — Producer and star Bill McLean, a lifelong resident of Poland and Auburn had a pivotal chat one day with his 18-year-old son, Ben, about a very serious subject — zombies.

“My son told me he was terrified of zombies,” said McLean, laughing. “We were goofing around one night talking about which film I should shoot next. I’ve got seven or eight scripts ready to go and he said something about being afraid of zombies and the only way to cure that was to write a story about it. I started thinking of all the zombie comedies like Shawn of The Dead, Zombieland, and Fido, and I thought he might be able to write himself out of this unreasonable fear.”

So, Ben wrote a short story and came to his dad with it. “I read it and he asked, ‘Do you think this would make a good book?’ and I said, ‘Hey, this will make a great film! So, we wrote the script together,” he said. “My wife, Tiffany was the director and editor. So, we all sat down and wrote it together with all three perspectives coming together. The script basically wrote itself and the comedy jumped right out at us. And the actors really took it and ran with it.”

Dozens of Mainers act in the film, along with Bill and his son, with more than 200 cast and crew, who all volunteered their time and talent for the three-month shoot in Yarmouth, Lewiston, Sabbatus and Litchfield last fall and winter. McLean’s production company, Freight Train Films, has produced several award-winning films with a light-hearted nature such as Scooter McGruder and She Feast.

He purposely hires talent from Maine and New England to make quality, entertaining feature films.  “The first horror movie that ever made an impression on me was Psycho. I saw that at a disturbingly young age and it stuck with me,” he said.

One of his “zombies” was sitting right with McLean in the interview. Tristan Korpinen, who just graduated from Waldoboro’s Medomak Valley High School. “I played a few of the zombies in the film,” Korpinen said. “And I had a couple of great death scenes,” he said, with a hint of pride.

“We literally stuck him with a fork and then screwed a screwdriver into him,” McLean said.

Another zombie, Meaghan Lyndaker, is a parapalegic and her life’s dream was to be a zombie extra in a film. “Not only did we make her a zombie, we made her the lead zombie in the film,” said McLean. “She crushes it. People laugh so hard when she comes into a scene.”

It took two years from the concept to final editing to shoot the movie, which runs feature film length at 92 minutes. The film was independently financed as well.

“Our worldwide premier was at Flagship Cinemas in Auburn,” McLean said. “It came in second at the box office, up against nine Hollywood films and we really kicked some teeth in with that.”

The film was just picked up by Maxim Media and will be distributed world-wide later this fall and winter to more than 180 countries. Flagship Cinemas all around Maine have been supporting the film as well.

“It’s a real movie,” McLean whispered.

What can film buffs of the zombie genre expect?

“Zombiephiles will absolutely love the way we dispatch some of the zombies,” he said. “It’s extremely campy. Some people laughed so hard, tears were coming out of their eyes and they couldn’t breathe,” he said. “Luckily, we know CPR.”

How to Kill a Zombie premieres at Flagship Cinemas in Thomaston on Friday, Aug. 15, at 7 p.m. It will run through Thursday, Aug. 21 at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. daily. Actors from the film will be attending the Aug. 15 showing at 7 p.m. and will participate in a question-and-answer session after the film.

The movie is family friendly for children ages 10 and up.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com.

BELFAST—Belfast is for boating enthusiasts this weekend for their annual Harborfest and The Belfast Rotary Club is sponsoring the Boatbuilder’s Challenge on Saturday, so the night before, Marshall Wharf Brewing Co. is throwing their own launch party to kick off the weekend’s activities this Friday, Aug. 15 at the Steamboat Landing location.

David Carlson, co-owner of Marshall Wharf Brewing Company and the neighboring bar/restaurant Three Tides said he’s a huge supporter of the Belfast Rotary Club and even though the effort of putting on the Harborfest event coincides with Three Tides’ biggest night of the summer, he does it every year to support Rotary. “It’s absolutely insane that we do this every year, because we never break even, but eventually we’ll get there. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up. And we usually have about 50 people, including friends and family working that night. The Rotary really loves the support. And we like being part of this weekend event that has grown every year.”

“Basically in a nut shell The Rotary Club spend a lot of money on this huge 9,000 square foot tent for this weekend event, right at the mouth of Belfast Harbor. It’s one of the most picturesque places you can imagine to have an event. So my wife Sarah and I pay them a $3,000 fee to have our own party under this tent. We build everything else around it. We have bands, we have open container. We’re pouring 10 of our own beers and wine. It’s one of those fun events; you show up, you pay $10 bucks for five hours of fun. It’s grown and grown over the years.”

Beyond the beer and wine, four food trucks will be on hand such as Fishin' Ships, The Uproot Pie Co., PB&ME, and the Belfast Lion's Club Grille. Marshall Wharf and Three Tides, known for attracting hot musical acts to Belfast, will also be featuring the bands Tricky Britches, When Particles Collide and Toughcats (after whom one of their beers is named).

“The Toughcats are really the backbone of this event. It’s just real fun, big energy. It’s also family friendly, not a 21+ event. We’re pouring our own root beer for this event as well.

The gates open at 6 p.m. The music starts at 7 p.m. and goes to 11 p.m. There is a $10 entry fee. For more information about the Belfast Harborfest 2014 visit: belfastharborfest.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND—Hot Pink Flannel, the madcap party planners of the Midcoast, are throwing their final public party of the summer at Rock City Cafe Saturday, Aug. 16, and sunscreen is required. The theme of the night is centered around an offbeat summer camp called Camp Sunburn, on the night of its closing camp ceremony when everyone celebrates before saying goodbye to their best friends. The organizers wanted to throw one last bash in tribute to its founders, Rock City's manager Erica Sanchez and her wife, Starcia Willey, before they move to Seattle. The Vistas will be playing and summer camp attire is encouraged. Part dance party, part camp-inspired shenanigans, this is Hot Pink Flannel's swan song of the summer. The party starts at 9 p.m. A $5 cover at the door is required. 21+ Hot Pink Flannel will continue its party planning in the fall under new leadership. For more information visit: Hot Pink Flannel on Facebook.