WALDOBORO—In life, John Stephens Sr. from Woodville, Maine, was a vibrant artist who came to his gift naturally, before going back to art school to earn his art degree in his 60s.
When he passed away three years ago, he left a studio filled to the brim with loads of art supplies, including acrylic paints, watercolors, pastels, watercolor paper, canvases, easels, and hundreds of art books.
In September, John Sr.’s widow, Barbara, passed away and the family decided to give away the contents of his studio to anyone who needed it. Early in November, Becky Stephens, John’s daughter-in-law, posted an announcement to the Midcoast Message Board Facebook group that the family was doing an art supply giveaway in Waldoboro.
John Stephens
1946 - 2017
“I began my Art career at Walt Disney World, in Florida, as a portrait artist. My main interest, in the Arts, has always been painting, photography, and recently digital art.
I believe that Art, such as a painting, should be like a beautiful memory, a golden moment in time,which expresses how creative and wonderful life can be. “
“We must have had 30 or 40 people come, mostly from the Midcoast,” said Becky Stephens. “A lot of artists came by and many people came by to pick up art supplies for schools and school programs. Some were teachers, some were friends of art teachers.”
Asked what kind of artist her father-in-law was, Becky Stephens said, “He actually did a lot of mediums; when he was younger, he did a lot of painting and drawing with charcoals. He took his first art class as a senior in high school. His teacher submitted a piece of his work to the magazine Art Education and it ended up being the cover. He worked for Great Northern Paper Company and when they shut down, he went back to his art. He ended up going to the University of Maine in Orono in his early 60s and got his degree in art. There, he learned a lot of digital techniques.”
His work can still be found on Fine Art America. His compositions and portraits are vivid, stunning, ethereal, and playful. A lot of it in physical form is still at the house of Becky and John Stephens Jr.
“He had tons and tons of stuff just sitting there in his studio and I’m not exaggerating when I say there was probably $30,000 worth of supplies there,” said Becky Stephens. “One of the people I met that day was Dawn Witham, an artist. She let me know she was struggling with the recent death of her son and she has used her art to her to heal from that. She was able to connect with us and pick up some things able to help her.”
Many people left donations for the materials.
“There were several people who even wanted to look through proofs of his artwork and keep it and Dawn was able to take one of John’s art booklets he’d made with poems mixed with artwork,” said Becky Stephens. “It was a good turnout and we met a lot of interesting people. We know that John’s supplies will be put to good use. I think that’s the best thing to come out of this.”
As John Stephens’s own words in his Fine Art America biography attest, his art created beautiful memories, golden moments in time. And his raw materials, once sitting in the dark storage area, unused, have now been rippled out through the art community and schools in Maine.
“That would have made him happy to know people were using his art supplies for their own work, especially the kids at school,” said Becky Stephens.
As we head into a fall still spiking with the COVID-19 virus, along with a time change and the results of an election that have still divided many people, it’s completely natural that feelings of tension, stress, exhaustion, and anxiety are high. We reached out to herbalist Katheryn Langelier, who has authored a soon-to-be-released book, Herbal Revolution (Macmillian, 2020), the eponymous title of her Union farm and apothecary. The book delves into 65 medicinal recipes that heal.
There are a number of ways to calm anxiety according to psychology experts, but one way to use your hands and focus on a meaningful activity is to start a medicinal herb garden. Here are four herbs and one succulent to improve your mood, body, and mind.
Aloe Vera Aloe vera is a cactus-like succulent that produces a gel and latex.
“Aloe vera is a really fantastic topical plant,” said Langelier. “I love using it for rashes, burns, and sunburns. Coming into the fall, we’re washing our hands a lot, the air is dryer, so aloe is really soothing on chapped or cracked skin. With powerful antioxidants, aloe can also be taken internally and aloe juice can be soothing to the digestive tract.”
Thyme Thyme is an herb and its flowers, leaves, and oil can all be used medicinally.
“Thyme is one of those ‘food is medicine plants’,” said Langelier. “It is antibacterial and antiviral, so it’s really great for this time of the year. Cooking with it, adding it to soup stocks, and adding it to roasted vegetables, will be very beneficial. I like to make an infused honey with thyme or a tea with thyme and fresh ginger, which helps with decongestion or sinus infections.”
Peppermint Peppermint is a plant; the leaves and oil are used medicinally.
“Peppermint is used for digestive tracts; it’s a carminative, which helps with bloating and gas,” said Langelier. “It’s good for any digestive pain and can help decrease nausea. These are best used in teas as well.”
Lemon Balm Lemon balm is an herb; the leaves are used medicinally.
“Lemon balm is an antiviral and is a fantastic herb for preventative care for the immune system,” said Langelier. “It’s great for the digestive system, helping with bloating and gas, but it’s also good for the nervous system. Lemon balm lifts our moods and reduces anxiety and stress. Again, I’d use this with tea, one of my favorites.”
Rosemary Rosemary is an herb; the oil extracted from the leaves is used medicinally.
“Rosemary is also antiviral and antibacterial, so it’s a great one for the immune system,” said Langelier. “I like it for respiratory support and it’s great for our cerebral circulation. It’s a mild brain tonic as well. I’d use this in savory cooking, make infused honey, or into hot drinks.”
Tips for Planting “The first thing you do is get seeds or cuttings and then put them in individual pots,” said Coco Hilt, Annuals Manager of Plants Unlimited in Rockport. “Peppermint especially goes crazy; it’s an aggressive plant so it has to be kept separate. You need to have good potting soil with nutrients— don’t just go out to your garden and scoop up what’s leftover from the summer. Because that soil is going to be compacted and the seedlings might get root rot. The aloe vera plant is a succulent, so it also could use a good cactus mix and should have plenty of drainage holes. As far as water, all of these plants like to be on the dry side. And the aloe vera will want to be even drier. Don’t fertilize too often; just every couple of months.”
Light in a month where Daylight Savings has cut back an hour and it starts to get dark by 4:30 p.m. is also tricky.
“You’re going to need at least six hours of direct light for these plants, so put them in a window with southern exposure,” said Hilt. “And if you don’t have that, use a grow light; you can get them at any plant or hardware store or online. I have my staple herbs in the basement, under a grow light and use a lot of them in my cooking—rosemary, parsley, basil and cilantro.”
No CMP Corridor, a grassroots advocacy PAC, sent out dozens of volunteers on Election Day, November 3, statewide to collect a new round of signatures to block the Central Maine Power’s (CMP) New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) proposal to build a 145-mile transmission line from the Québec-Maine border to Lewiston. During the day, volunteers posted updates on the Say NO to NECEC 501c3 non-profit Facebook group.
Many of these volunteers stood outside in 34-degree weather at 120 polling stations from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. explaining the issues to voters passing by. And they were fired up—for this is their second time collecting statewide signatures for a new referendum.
The quick back story: As reported by WGME, in February 2020, No CMP Corridor, delivered more than 76,000 signatures to Maine’s Secretary of State Office, to get a referendum question put on the November ballot and let the people of Maine decide on the $1 billion project.
But, by August, as reported by Bangor Daily News, the referendum was killed by the state’s high court, calling a particular question on the ballot unconstitutional, which effectively removed the question from the ballot on Nov. 3.
But that has not stopped the thousands of Mainers and visitors who support this effort from moving ahead with a new plan.
According to No CMP Corridor and Say No to NECEC’s leader Sandi Howard, the group mobilized to press forward with the goal to get 67,000 signatures in order to construct a new referendum that will ban all high-impact transmission lines in Maine without the approval of the legislature. The deadline to submit the signatures to the Secretary of State is by January 20.
The opponents to CMP’s corridor project got approval last week for the referendum effort to proceed and within days, hundreds of sign up sheets were reproduced and distributed to their polling place outposts.
At the Lincolnville Central School, No CMP Corridor volunteer, Andrea Palise stood outside the polling station by a table, keeping her hands warm. This issue, she said, was one of the few non-political issues Mainers could agree on.
“Both sides of the political spectrum can be involved in this project; it’s about nature, saving our environment,” she said. “It’s about preserving the last tracts of pristine woods in the Northeast, in North America. It’s absolutely important to me to oppose CMP and Avangrid [of which CMP is s subsidary]. They [TDI Vermont] already have permission in Vermont, but don’t want to spend the millions to bury the lines. so instead, they want to blow a Jersey turnpike-wide corridor through 53 miles of pristine wilderness. The reasons are many to oppose this project.”
Matt Wagner, from Knox, stood outside the Crosby Center in Belfast, on a cold, windy day. As one of the founders of Say No To NECEC, he said his dedication to this movement stems from his personal connection to the proposed corridor area.
“My wife and I were registered white water guides for 10 years and we lived in The Forks area, so we have a really strong sense of place there,” he said. “We go there and do a lot of hiking, camping, fishing, and boating with our two little kids, so we know the place really well. For almost three years now, we’ve been at this.”
Asked if he’d learned anything from having the original referendum struck down by legal language, he said: “They threw out our last campaign on the referendum, but in doing so, they gave us really explicit directions on what we could do on how to proceed forward. So, this referendum isn’t just bulletproof, it’s retroactive to September 1, which means CMP can’t claim that by starting to invest in this now, that they have some vested interest and they can sue the state for taking this project from them. We’re going to take this project away from them—they’re not going to build this in western Maine. Their investors are actually already aware of that.”
Given several reports from multiple Maine newspapers that the CMP corridor project is already taking place and certain sections of woods are being cleared for the transmission line is already happening, Wagner, dismissed the news, saying the photos coming out were misleading.
“They have to get their contract done, so they have to start doing something, but can’t they start cutting trees in the corridor until they have all of their permits and they don’t have all of the permits yet,” he said.
Despite the cold temperatures, COVID-19 pandemic, and record early voting in Maine, No CMP Corridor's volunteer signatures collected outside the polls from Kittery to Caribou. Volunteers reported collecting more than 23,000 signatures on Election Day, an impressive show of force on the first day of this new Citizen's Initiative effort.
Wagner said interested Midcoast citizens who want to add their signatures before January 20 or get involved, should visit the No CMP Corridor website and Facebook page, or send questions about how to volunteer or sign the petition to stopnecec@gmail.com.
ROCKLAND — Lexi Zable, owner of Port Clyde’s The Dip Net and The Barn in Port Clyde, has secured a new Rockland location for a third establishment, taking over The Eclipse and The Speakeasy on the corner of Park Street.
The Grey Owl Bar & Brill comprises both spaces and is currently in the midst of renovations, not only to improve the eatery’s aesthetic, but also to provide more partitioned space between diners per the COVID-19 mandates.
With The Dip Net and The Barn closed down for the season, the timing was right for Zable to jump on the opportunity to lease the Eclipse building. Citing the difficulties of running a seasonal establishment, Zable envisioned Rockland as a prime year-round spot for her team.
With staff helping Zable, she has already put in a number of hours painting the place (often after hours at night) with plans to refinish the floor renovate the décor and update the restaurant’s look.
“This place has so many memories for this community,” she said. “The downstairs bar has had a lot of evolutions over the years. My grandmother remembers coming here when it was the Red Jacket.”
At the time of this interview, Zable has been operating like all Maine restaurateurs under the state’s Stage 4 of the Plan To Restart Maine’s Economy. Stage 4 began Tuesday, October 13, 2020, increasing the limit on indoor seating to 50 percent capacity of permitted occupancy, or 100 people – whichever is fewer. That mandate changed on November 1, when Governor Mills announced new measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, effective Wednesday, November 4, indoor gatherings will return to a maximum of 50 people, regardless of capacity.
The restaurant was built out initially to accommodate 100 seats. Of the new change, Zable said, “We are going to follow all of the latest mandates and will have a maximum capacity of 50 people in the space.”
The pandemic has factored heavily into her opening plans, including erecting glass partitions between dining areas, installing sanitizable barnboard walls, and maintaining the proper distance between tables.
The Speakeasy space below the restaurant will function as a casual bar and dining space with a comparable menu.
The Grey Owl Bar & Grill’s menu features hearty, American comfort food. Zable created the menu with input from her chef Chad Upham from The Dip Net, who will serve as one of The Grey Owl’s chefs. “I wrote the menu, then re-wrote it, then pared it down, then made it bigger,” she said, laughing. “We’re going for American cuisine, really cozy and comfortable.”
They’ll be bringing back The Dip Net’s fan-favorite cheese curds with Maine maple aioli as well as mussels in a homemade cream sauce.
The entrées include a variety of steaks, from filet minion to ribeyes. Stick-to-your-rib dishes such as Maple Spring Chicken, Slow Braised Beef Short Ribs, (with or without mac and cheese) Veal Scaloppini, Blackened Chicken Carbonara with pancetta will be part of the menu’s appeal. “Other things we’ll have on the menu for the locals is fish tacos and fried chicken sandwiches,” she said.
Zable estimates a soft opening weekend on Friday, November 13, and remaining open for the three weekends in November, including Thanksgiving, in order to get the kitchen used to the new menu. When the bar and grill open full time in early December they hope to be open 5-7 days a week, eventually utilizing the bar as a later night establishment, “We want to be a first drink of the night place rather than the last drink,” she said.
For the weekends in November, reservations are required.
ROCKLAND—The Rockland Breakwater in all of its 4,364 feet of granite glory is a spectacular sight and experience for first-time visitors. But, like all landmarks frequently visited, it can fade into the background of everyday life, until a photography book comes along to remind you just how majestic it is—and always has been.
Author Bob Trapani is releasing his fifth book, Breakwater: A Journey Through The Seasons, in November.
A writer and visual storyteller, Trapani found himself drawn back to the Breakwater over and over again when he first began taking photographs of it in 2009.
“I’ve photographed it in all four seasons and the more I visited it, the more I started to realize there is so much more to this place than meets the eye so I knew I had to document it,” he said. “It’s probably one of the only spots I know of in Maine where you can go out to sea without leaving land.”
The 108-color photographs in the book each tell a microcosm of a story. There are so many elements that people are drawn to: the 7/8-mile-long granite walkway, the lighthouse at the end, the proximity to a working harbor, even the wildlife that can be seen from that vantage point.
“The different kinds of maritime traffic is one element to it,” he said. “Next to the Portland harbor, I can’t think of a more diverse Maine harbor with all of the working vessels, the ferry and windjammers. You will sometimes even be able to see lobstermen up close as they work. The other surprise element is the marine life. From sandpipers to seals to fish swimming along the Breakwater, it’s amazing how many things you can see there.”
The book has plenty of beautiful shots in the summer and fall, particularly shots of sunrises and sunsets, but it’s the winter photos that provide some of the most dramatic material.
“There’s plenty of weather in this book: sea smoke, rain, ice, and snow,” he said. “The Breakwater takes on a whole new personality in the wintertime. Even just walking out there, the wind coming out of the Northeast biting your face, in those harsh conditions, there’s beauty and that’s what I tried to bring out.”
There were times, as his photographs show, that walking out on the Breakwater was even too dangerous to attempt. “During some astronomical high tides; sometimes the tide was 18 inches above the Breakwater,” he said. “And when a good Northeast storm comes in, when those seas hit that Breakwater, that thundering sound is almost shocking.”
Six months into a pandemic, the recommendation from many experts is to keep going outside, keep exercising, and staying present in the moment, something the Rockland Breakwater affords in nearly all seasons.
“It is a release to walk it, especially at this point in the year,” said Trapani. “Even if other people are walking it, you are able to get a sense of solitude. It allows you to disconnect from all of the craziness in the world and at the same time, it makes you appreciate what a beautiful spot we live in. The Rockland Breakwater really does create a unique sense of place in Midcoast Maine.”
In all of the years Trapani has been going out to observe the Breakwater, he has seen his fair share of “regulars”—some who walk it every single day. “People’s emotional ties to the Breakwater are as varied as the marine traffic going by,” he said.
His book also includes a brief history of the lighthouse and the Breakwater. The book will be available for purchase the first week of November through Moments in Maine by visiting shop.momentsinmaine.com or calling 207-691-8400.
PORTLAND—Many of us played with Barbies, G.I. Joes, and Star Wars action figures growing up, but one man has taken his love of this type of childhood play and combined it with his classical music training to produce elaborate, operatic miniature theater productions in Maine.
David Worobec, 31, who lives in Portland, is the one-man showmaster behind Tophat Productions. His specialty includes a wide repertoire of live miniature theater productions from iconic Broadway shows such as Camelot, Guys and Dolls, and South Pacific to name a few.
But, it’s his fascination with gothic horror that he’ll bring to stage with a live-streamed production of Jekyll & Hyde in conjunction with Mayo Street Arts in Portland at the end of October.
“As a kid, I was always a fan of that kind of classic Gothic literature and I still love it to this day,” he said.
Toy theater, according to Worobec dates back to the late 18th to the early 19th century as an art form in Europe.
“It was a way of formal parlor entertainment,” he said. “People would buy these paper and cardboard kits and set up a stage, playing out scenes and stories from whatever was popular at the time. For the past 50 years or so, toy theatre has made a comeback and there are toy theatre festivals done all over the world."
“It’s the way I played as a kid,” said Worobec. “I always loved acting out stories and I think when I first saw Phantom of the Opera, I became hooked at a young age. I had the whole score memorized. I was acting out the whole show with Star Wars figurines. I had a PVC figure of Snow White as the opera singer Christine in Phantom of the Opera. It was while watching me act out the show with her old dollhouse that my mom decided to make me a miniature theater.”
Worobec might have come to his gift early in life while playing, but miniature theater is only part of his talent. He is a classically-trained opera singer and a talented pianist. A graduate of the Boston Conservatory, top-shelf classical vocal performer, he plays live piano for parties, and also acts in theater productions.
For Jekyll & Hyde, the mini theatrical set comes from one of his childhood creations, which he has since used many times in his productions. Different stage sets have been revised and the figurines are sourced from multiple places, including custom-made creations he buys from eBay to pre-made 12-inch scale Victorian-era dolls.
His mother, Polly Plimpton not only builds the stages and sets, but also helps with creating costumes.
As an artist, Worobec, like so many others in his field has taken a big hit from the pandemic. Not only has it curtailed his own performances in theatrical shows, but it has also drastically impacted his miniature theater performances. Prior to March, 2020, he was doing live shows. How it worked was he’d stand behind a screen and hand manipulate the figurines around the stage, while voicing the characters. With pre-recorded orchestral music playing in the background he’d also sing every character's musical parts. A camera would be pointed at the mini stage, and then would be projected onto a bigger screen, which allowed the audience to see all the details of the characters, sets, and costumes.
“Audience members have told me after seeing one of my productions that with little subtle movements, along with the voices I give the characters, they are able to see the emotions of the scene,” he said. “It's all about suspension of disbelief,” he said.
Worobec said his Jekyll & Hyde is a slightly abridged adaptation of the Broadway musical by Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse, which is based on the classic novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Some music cuts are made to help improve the dramatic tension and focus of the plot. “The first act of the musical is around an hour and 15 minutes; then we have an intermission, and the second act is around 50 minutes,” he said.
Jekyll & Hyde will be his second live-streamed performance throughMayo Street Arts where he also works part-time.
The performance will take place on October 30 at 7 p.m on the MSA Facebook page. The viewing is free but MSA recommends a donation toward the artists’ work.
ELLSWORTH —Two years ago, graphic designer Nick Sarro and Chef Daron Goldstein of the Ellsworth restaurant, Provender Kitchen + Bar, were having the kind of “what if” chat friends often do when envisioning ways to make the world a little better. That brainstorming session turned into Chefs of Maine, a statewide network connecting the restaurant industry with breweries, farms and bakeries and offering the public an easy way to locate all of it online with a website and an app.
“This was something on my back burner for a long time, and when Nick and I started talking about putting the pieces together, it took on a life after that,” said Goldstein.
The website is a free resource featuring profiles of restaurants, breweries, bakeries, and farms along with stories and reviews of the restaurants. Since both Sarro and Goldstein are both fully employed in their own industries, this network has developed as a side project — a labor of love.
“I always thought it would be so cool to have a site like this out there for people who want to know where to go and get food and just for industry people to see what’s happening and what’s going on,” said Goldstein.
Chefs of Maine provides the public with a geolocation filter to let people know what restaurants are open in their area, which ones are doing takeout, and which are open year-round, among other filters, which provides an additional publicity boost for an industry hit hard by the pandemic.
Despite Maine’s Governor Mills Stage 4 of the Restarting Maine’s Economy plan which started October 13, 2020, increasing indoor seating capacity, many restauranteurs are still very worried going into the fall and winter about sustaining their businesses.
The Chefs of Maine network is still fairly new; the app has been downloaded around 1,000 times.
“People are finding out about restaurants from our app and site in their own neighborhoods that they never heard about,” said Sarro.
“We wanted to create a site that went more in-depth into the various Maine industries,” he continued. “We also wanted to connect those industries together, so for example, maybe you go to a local brewery and see they are offering food produced by a local farm; then you can check out that farm on our site and learn more about them. I had a bakery call me last week who wanted to sell their bread wholesale, so they took a look at all of the restaurants on our site to choose the one nearest them. And we wanted to focus on chefs; to have readers learn about the kitchen, how they make their food, and a bit of a spotlight on what they do. That was the end goal to make a connection to all of these places in Maine and let you see the real people in those industries.”
For restaurants, breweries, bakeries and farms, the site allows a free personal profile. “If they join the site, they can all the photos they want; can add videos full descriptions and events for free,” said Sarro.
The site is also a hub for job seekers and employers specific to the restaurant industry, something Sarro encourages all restauranteurs to use, as job listings are also free”
“We’re really trying to get this in front of restaurant and brewery owners and use us as a resource for them,” said Sarro.
Don’t want to face the crowds at polling places on November 3 in order to vote? Your two choices are to vote early (up to October 30 in person at your municipal office) or to vote by mail. Given this unprecedented time when COVID-19 will be requiring social distancing at the polls and limitations on how many people can be inside their municipal offices at one time, it’s important, more than ever, to get a jump on it now.
We Mainers have a strong voting turnout history. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Maine (EOC) was one of five states that had turnout rates exceeding 70 percent. However, with every election, inadvertent mistakes by voters can be made when mailing in ballots.
Results of a survey done by the EAC on the 2016 election reported: “Approximately 80.1 percent of absentee ballots that were transmitted to voters were returned and processed, with 1.4 percent of transmitted ballots returned as undeliverable and 2 percent reported as spoiled (e.g., the voter returned the ballot and asked for a replacement). Some of the reasons for ballot rejection included: missing the deadline, submitting without a signature, returning the envelope with no ballot in it or multiple ballots in it, or incomplete information on the ballot.”
To clear up the confusion on what constitutes the proper way of sending “multiple ballots” in one envelope, Seth Nelson, a spokesperson for the Maine Democratic Party, said, “A voter should only return his or her own ballots in a return envelope. However, many Maine voters will have multiple ballots they've completed themselves, i.e. a federal and state ballot, and a municipal ballot with elections for their town or city. As such, these voters will likely need two stamps to return their ballots by mail.”
Nobody wants to go to the trouble of getting an absentee ballot only to accidentally screw it up. Here are five things you must check before mailing it:
1. Mail it in 15 days early or drop off in person
According to a July letter from the U.S. Postal Service made public, absentee voters should mail their ballots in with a regular stamp 15 days before November 3. Better yet, if you’re not sure you’re going to make it in time, drop it off at your municipal office, or in the official dropbox in front of the building. Do not just drop it into any random or “official-looking” dropbox you find on the street, as in this case of the California GOP who placed illegal and unofficial drop-off receptacles.
2. Look it over twice—don’t forget to sign your name
It seems like a boneheaded move, but the reason 20 percent of ballots got rejected in 2016 was that there was no signature on the ballot.
3. Don’t get fancy with your signature
Get this, Maine compares your absentee ballot signature with the signature on your voter registration records, so do the same signature you always do and never try to forge a family member’s (it’s a crime for obvious reasons) but also because it will likely get rejected!
4. Don’t sign with non-standard ink—and keep your coffee cup far away!
That pink gel pen your daughter likes to color with is not going to work when officially signing your ballot. Follow the instructions carefully on your ballot and if it says use blue or black ink–use blue or black ink! Also, because ballots can’t have any stray marks, keep your ballot safe from coffee stains, spills, or other unnecessary marks.
5. Sign the outside of the envelope, as well
Every state requires voters to sign the mailing envelope containing their ballot in order to affirm their identity and eligibility to vote and will then match it to their signature on the absentee ballot. (Again see #3 for what not to do) So, make sure this is your final step.
Help! I might have spoiled my ballot. What do I do?
“If a voter makes a mistake when completing a ballot, he or she can call their clerk to request a replacement,” said Nelson. “The first ballot will be marked as ‘spoiled’ in the Central Voter Registration System. Alternatively, the voter can bring the spoiled ballot in person to the resident’s town office or city hall, where he or she can then cast a replacement ballot in person. Or they can vote in-person at the polls on Election Day.”
Here’s all the info you need to register, vote early and vote by absentee ballot
BANGOR—Going into a turbulent fall filled with pandemic stress, election and political pressure, and a ramped-up divisiveness America has never before seen, we all need a little kindness in our lives.
“Serve A Neighbor” was the simple idea generated in September by a group of friends in Bangor that turned into a grassroots initiative.
Cheryl Crabtree, one of the group’s spokespeople said: “We were complaining and moaning about all of the changes in 2020 that were happening beyond our control. We were all in a holding pattern waiting for things to return to normal and with three months left out of this year, we decided to switch it up and control whatever we could in our own sphere of influence. That really came down to feeling good about doing one good thing a month for someone else.”
The concept is to be of service to a neighbor, which, in turn, often inspires other neighbors after seeing the service offered.
The group’s simple edict is: “Over the next three months plan to do one thing a month that helps or uplifts a neighbor in some way. The projects don’t need to be large in scope or take a long time.”
Here are a few of their suggestions:
During the month of October, Serve a Neighbor by helping with outdoor autumn cleanup, write a note, send a card, phone a neighbor who lives alone, rake leaves, complete small home repairs, wash outside windows, or clear away brush. Ask your neighbor what would be helpful.
In November and December, Serve a Neighbor by sharing a gift of nonperishable food; write a note; send a card; phone a neighbor who lives alone; deliver food baskets; create seasonal decorations to share; shovel snow – a walkway, a mailbox, path to fuel tanks; phone a neighbor and check if they need food or fuel; call 211, the State of Maine Resource hot-line, for help identifying resources.
'A rising tide lifts all boats'
“By doing something good, it makes me feels better; the other person is lifted, and often, others who witness it, are further inspired to help someone else,” said Crabtree. “This has been a message that people have been really happy to refocus on. What’s surprising to me is how many people have told us ‘I do this anyway; this is a way of life for me.’ We hear a lot of negative sad stuff about humanity in the news, but out here in the quiet sphere are people doing good things for each other.”
Tired of being hunkered down in your home, Serve a Neighbor
Tired of bad news, Serve a Neighbor
Make someone smile, Serve a Neighbor
Shut off the TV, put down the phone, Serve a Neighbor
Isolation and loneliness are real, Serve a Neighbor
Shine the light of hope, Serve a Neighbor
Days are getting shorter, extend the light, Serve a Neighbor
Serve the one, look after the one, Serve a Neighbor
End 2020 with kindness, Serve a Neighbor
Though the initiative started in Bangor, the word quickly spread through Facebook and Crabtree was hearing back from people all over the world. “We have heard from people in Canada, Australia, Japan, England, and nearly every state on Facebook,” said Crabtree, who added we'd love to see a Midcoast Maine presence.
Citing one story shared on their Facebook page, “One woman had seen the Serve A Neightbor page and had gone into The Dollar Store where she witnessed an elderly gentleman bring up some pots and pans to the counter. The credit card he tried to use wouldn't function, so he began to put the items back on the shelf when this woman ran over to him and said, ‘Bring your things over here; I’ll take care of it today.’ He thanked her and off he went, feeling good. These are the kind of things that choke me up.”
If you’re in the Midcoast and are inspired to do a good deed for someone or are the recipient of a good deed, email PenBayPilot a photo and some description.
‘Tis the season to talk about supernatural happenings, spooky legends, and way-out-there stories —and author Earl Brechlin’s got them.
From Kittery to Eastport, from Fort Kent to Monhegan, Maine is home to natural wonders, quirky characters, remarkable inventors, and haunting ghosts and legends. Whether it’s Moxie Nerve Food, the North American Wife Carrying Competition, UFO abductions along the Allagash, or Katahdin’s role in creating Bambi, this book by long-time journalist Earl Brechlin celebrates all that makes the state unique—both real and imagined
—partial book description
In fact, his latest book, Wild! Weird! Wonderful! Maine, published by Islandport Press, has more than 300 true stories about Maine culled down from some 600 stories he gathered over a period of years as a journalist and in his travels as a Maine Registered Guide.
“When you try to define ‘Maine’ there’s no one thing that can, which is why it’s neat to find all of these legends and stories about the culture and spirit of Maine is and how it has gotten to where it is today,” he said. “All of these stories are pieces of it.”
Brechlin, a journalist for more than 35 years and author of four Maine and New England books, traveled all around the state in search of every left-of-center and unexplained story he could find.
“As A Guide, and someone who just loves Maine, I was everywhere, up in Aroostook County, over in Rangeley, down in the southern parts of the state and there are always these quirky little things about each town to discover.”
In his book, for example, readers will be introduced tothe Meddybemps Howler, the Phippsburg Screecher, the Ghost of Catherine’s Hill and the Cherryfield Goat Man to name a few.
“The early farmers, loggers, settlers, and the original Native Americans had this connection to the land and you’re walking with those ghosts everywhere you go in Maine, so the spirit of those folks is part of the landscape,” said Brechlin.
Brechlin also painstakingly acquired more than 2,500 drawings, engravings, photographs, and illustrations to go with each story.
The book is broken up into regional sections with a map and grid number that corresponds with The Maine Gazetteer, so the book itself is a road trip guide.
Best and Worst Of Baby Care Share Cemetery
(Excerpt from ‘Wild! Weird! Wonderful! Maine’) One of the saddest events in Midcoast Maine history was the discovery of the naked body of a five-month-old baby boy floating in water at the bottom of a Rockport lime quarry, near the town dump, on April 20, 1940.
Authorities determined the baby was already dead when it was put in the water. No cause could ever be determined. Birth records were checked and a $500 reward (Nearly $10,000 in today’s money) was offered but no leads were found and the body remained unclaimed.
Touched by the little boy’s plight, people donated money to give him a proper burial in the Sea View Cemetery....
A simple stone marks the spot. Caretakers frequently find toys, coins, stuffed animals, and other mementos at the grave site.
Ironically, in the same cemetery lies the grave of one of the world’s foremost child care experts, Pediatrician Benjamin Spock. In 1946 he wrote the “Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,” which became the definitive source on raising children during the 1950s, 60s, 70s and beyond. More than 50 million copies have been sold. Dr. Spock, as he was known, had a house in Camden and loved to sail his boat Turtle. He died in 1988. M14, E3
The Unknown Baby Grave in Rockport
One of his stories from the Midcoast region centers around what he calls “The worst and best childcare in Rockport.”
“There was a baby found floating in a quarry in the 1940s and nobody knew who the baby belonged to,” he said. “So, people got together and put the funds into a gravestone in the Sea View Cemetery.”
The gravestone is engraved with the words “Unknown Unwanted, Baby Boy.”
“People still leave memorials and toys at this baby’s grave, but at the other end of this cemetery lies Dr. Benjamin Spock, the best of child care, who wrote The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, published in 1946,” said Brechlin.
If any of these stories bring to mind the kind of topics that prompted many of Stephen King’s novels and stories, Brechlin said another bizarre story he collected involves a real-life pet cemetery that Governor Baxter created on his property in Portland.
“Governor Baxter created this cemetery for all of his Irish setters and one horse,” he said. “And you can visit it to this day; it’s part of a walking trail on Mackworth Island. He had 17 Irish setters and 15 of them were named ‘Gary.’ He set off a controversy in that when one of his Garys died, he lowered the flag at the capital flown at half-mast, which the opposition party didn’t care for too much.”
To read more stories —not all of them spooky, some just wacky— visit Islandport Press. Read more of Brechlin’s background on his website.
‘Tis the season to talk about supernatural happenings, spooky legends, and way-out-there stories —and author Earl Brechlin’s got them.
From Kittery to Eastport, from Fort Kent to Monhegan, Maine is home to natural wonders, quirky characters, remarkable inventors, and haunting ghosts and legends. Whether it’s Moxie Nerve Food, the North American Wife Carrying Competition, UFO abductions along the Allagash, or Katahdin’s role in creating Bambi, this book by long-time journalist Earl Brechlin celebrates all that makes the state unique—both real and imagined
—partial book description
In fact, his latest book, Wild! Weird! Wonderful! Maine, published by Islandport Press, has more than 300 true stories about Maine culled down from some 600 stories he gathered over a period of years as a journalist and in his travels as a Maine Registered Guide.
“When you try to define ‘Maine’ there’s no one thing that can, which is why it’s neat to find all of these legends and stories about the culture and spirit of Maine is and how it has gotten to where it is today,” he said. “All of these stories are pieces of it.”
Brechlin, a journalist for more than 35 years and author of four Maine and New England books, traveled all around the state in search of every left-of-center and unexplained story he could find.
“As A Guide, and someone who just loves Maine, I was everywhere, up in Aroostook County, over in Rangeley, down in the southern parts of the state and there are always these quirky little things about each town to discover.”
In his book, for example, readers will be introduced tothe Meddybemps Howler, the Phippsburg Screecher, the Ghost of Catherine’s Hill and the Cherryfield Goat Man to name a few.
“The early farmers, loggers, settlers, and the original Native Americans had this connection to the land and you’re walking with those ghosts everywhere you go in Maine, so the spirit of those folks is part of the landscape,” said Brechlin.
Brechlin also painstakingly acquired more than 2,500 drawings, engravings, photographs, and illustrations to go with each story.
The book is broken up into regional sections with a map and grid number that corresponds with The Maine Gazetteer, so the book itself is a road trip guide.
Best and Worst Of Baby Care Share Cemetery
(Excerpt from ‘Wild! Weird! Wonderful! Maine’) One of the saddest events in Midcoast Maine history was the discovery of the naked body of a five-month-old baby boy floating in water at the bottom of a Rockport lime quarry, near the town dump, on April 20, 1940.
Authorities determined the baby was already dead when it was put in the water. No cause could ever be determined. Birth records were checked and a $500 reward (Nearly $10,000 in today’s money) was offered but no leads were found and the body remained unclaimed.
Touched by the little boy’s plight, people donated money to give him a proper burial in the Sea View Cemetery....
A simple stone marks the spot. Caretakers frequently find toys, coins, stuffed animals, and other mementos at the grave site.
Ironically, in the same cemetery lies the grave of one of the world’s foremost child care experts, Pediatrician Benjamin Spock. In 1946 he wrote the “Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,” which became the definitive source on raising children during the 1950s, 60s, 70s and beyond. More than 50 million copies have been sold. Dr. Spock, as he was known, had a house in Camden and loved to sail his boat Turtle. He died in 1988. M14, E3
The Unknown Baby Grave in Rockport
One of his stories from the Midcoast region centers around what he calls “The worst and best childcare in Rockport.”
“There was a baby found floating in a quarry in the 1940s and nobody knew who the baby belonged to,” he said. “So, people got together and put the funds into a gravestone in the Sea View Cemetery.”
The gravestone is engraved with the words “Unknown Unwanted, Baby Boy.”
“People still leave memorials and toys at this baby’s grave, but at the other end of this cemetery lies Dr. Benjamin Spock, the best of child care, who wrote The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, published in 1946,” said Brechlin.
If any of these stories bring to mind the kind of topics that prompted many of Stephen King’s novels and stories, Brechlin said another bizarre story he collected involves a real-life pet cemetery that Governor Baxter created on his property in Portland.
“Governor Baxter created this cemetery for all of his Irish setters and one horse,” he said. “And you can visit it to this day; it’s part of a walking trail on Mackworth Island. He had 17 Irish setters and 15 of them were named ‘Gary.’ He set off a controversy in that when one of his Garys died, he lowered the flag at the capital flown at half-mast, which the opposition party didn’t care for too much.”
To read more stories —not all of them spooky, some just wacky— visit Islandport Press. Read more of Brechlin’s background on his website.
OWLS HEAD—The Owls Head General Store, shuttered for nearly three years, is back in operation under new owner, Maya Newsam, 27.
“We originally planned to be open the Fourth of July, and here we are, Columbus Day Weekend,” said Newsam with a laugh.
The Owls Head and peninsula communities are overjoyed to have their convenience store back and one of the most frequent questions Newsam has been asked is: “Is the 7-Napkin Burger on the new menu?”
The answer is yes. The famous burger made national news when The Food Network deemed it “Best Burger in Maine.”
“I didn’t think the burger was that big of a deal until I bought the store and it was every person’s question I got,” she said. “They told me ‘bring back this burger!’ and so I had to do it.”
Newsam officially opened the store on Friday, October 9, to a packed parking lot. Many locals dropped by just to check out the new menu, see the store and pay respects to Newsam.
Bringing the store back to life was a family affair. “I had so much help,” she said. “My step-dad did almost all of my contracting and renovating—he was amazing.”
The renovated store still has the same layout as before, but most of the inside tables have been removed due to capacity restrictions as a result of COVID-19.
“My mom cooks all of the fudge herself and she put the entire shop together,” said Newsam.
Noticeably different were a number of displays offering practical items one might need down in a peninsula, where tools and household supplies are hard to get. One sign above a shelf of practical items reads: “Would you happen to need?”
“The whole purpose of us being here is for the community,” she said. “We’ve got groceries, breakfast items, sandwiches, and everyday items you could possibly need.”
Newsam has had her hands full getting ready for the opening and dealing with the rush of visitors, getting up around 4 or 5 a.m. and leaving at 8 p.m. each night. She works the cash register, while a crew of cooks takes orders in the step-down kitchen behind her. “I have a couple of employees from the previous owners who came back and my staff is absolutely incredible,” she said.
The store’s hours are currently:
Monday - Thursday 5 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Friday & Saturday 5 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Sunday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
For more info on the store follow their Facebook page
ROCKLAND—Forty-five Maine artists have paired up with 50 downtown Rockland businesses to spread awareness of the impact of domestic violence this month for Finding Our Voices (findingourvoices.net), a nonprofit founded and led by photojournalist Patrisha McLean.
With window exhibits displaying banners and original art, as well as an online auction to help end domestic violence currently taking place from October 1 to October 31, all proceeds benefit findingourvoices.net
After several successful window exhibits of the “Let’s Talk About It” banners— featuring the faces of 20 Maine survivors and the local 24/7 domestic abuse hotline number that was displayed in 20-plus Maine towns this past summer, McLean, a Midcoast resident, wanted to focus on Rockland, and Midcoast artists, for October’s National Domestic Abuse Awareness Month. Some of the artists she contacted herself; others reached out to her and the project came together with the support of the Penobscot Chamber of Commerce and the downtown Rockland businesses.
“Bags Packed But A Pie In The Oven” Photo of artwork by Barbara Sullivan
This painting was created in 1997 about the relationship break up. "I wanted to paint a woman who was courageous enough to leave because of the abuse. There are all kinds of abuse; you don't necessarily need to be hit. I think it often takes women a long time to leave, but sometimes you want to do something good before you leave. It's the context of balance within an unbalanced relationship—softening the blow with a pie."—Barbara Sullivan
“Pretty much every business up and down Main Street was on board with the idea of putting a banner and/or artists’ work in their windows for the month of October to provide domestic abuse-awareness,” said McLean. “Sometimes artists gave me a choice of images and all the art pieces in the exhibit resonate with me, such as [photographer] Joyce Tenneson’s image of poppies, the beauty of it. Art heals. When you see something that beautiful, it represents the healing that takes place after domestic abuse.” Tenneson’s artwork can be seen in the window of the Dowling Walsh Gallery.
“There are two aspects to domestic violence—when you’re in it and when you get free and that’s what is represented in all of these artworks,” said McLean.
Given that the project was pulled together in a matter of weeks, some of the artists provided previously made artwork that resonated with the theme, and some created the artwork specifically for the auction.
“Silence” 1of 2. Photo of artwork courtesy Alan Magee
“Miss Corona” Photo of artwork courtesy Amy Lowry
“The testimonies of the women who have suffered from male violence are unsettling to hear. The discomfort we feel is the proof that we have to listen, and finally recognize, that even our silence is a form of complicity. the stories told by courageous Maine women, collecting by Finding Our Voices project, insist that we can no longer tolerate silence, nor excuse violence against women in any of its forms.” —Alan Magee
"Miss Corona" is the original title of this piece in Lowry's series of digital prints. "It had to do with the coronavirus, but extends to the theme of domestic abuse. She's a porcelain bisque figurine with firecrackers coming out of her head, wearing a necklace of crystals and shattered glass. This is a piece about emotional and physical abuse - a plague of violence. Shattered glass, shattered dreams, shattered lives.”—Amy Lowry
“During this process, a number of people let me know that they grew up with it or have been through domestic violence,” said McLean. “With others who had no experience with it, we had a good discussion of the variables of domestic abuse, to help them figure out what they might create or submit. For instance, Colin Page gave me a watercolor of the Camden Yacht Club and to me, that absolutely goes with the theme because it says domestic abuse also happens to the demographic in the Camden Yacht Club. Another example: Susan Williams gave me a painting of an island and that fits as well, because when you’re suffering from domestic abuse, it feels as though you are separated on your own island. Fred Kellogg gave me a boat in fog and yes, your brain is in a fog when you’re in domestic abuse. Or Julie Crane gave me a painting of a rabbit tumbling and it represents to me tumbling down the rabbit hole like Alice In Wonderland when you’re in domestic abuse. Domestic abuse is so complicated that if someone has been through it and they walk up and down Main Street, I can guarantee you they will find something in every one of the 45 works of art that they can relate to.”
Photo courtesy Finding Our Voices
Maggie's “Let’s Talk About It” banner paired with Antonia Munroe’s Indigo antique damask in the window of four-TWELVE. Antonia’s piece is an homage to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with the RBG initials forming the decorative pattern. Ginsburg was Maggie’s inspiration to help others avoid what she went through and that is a statue of the late Justice on her office desk where she is a court advocate for domestic abuse victims. Antonia’s artist statement in the fourTWELVE window includes this quote from Ginsburg: “We have yet to devise effective ways... to ward off domestic violence in our homes.”
Finding Our Voices marshals Survivor Voices and community creativity to promote awareness and understanding the insidiousness and ubiquity of intimate partner abuse, including emotional, financial, physical, and sexual, while ending the shame for victims and empowering them to safely leave, heal, and thrive.
The event’s business sponsors are Pen-Bay Glass, Reny’s; McLean Hospital (parent company of the local Borden’s Cottage); Rockport Automotive, Camden Real Estate Co. and Camden Hospital for Animals. For more information on the auction visit: FindingOurVoices.net/Auction
ROCKLAND—The day after the first presidential debate is the perfect time to talk about Chris Gamage’s latest art piece.
Gamage, a Rockland sculptor, got the idea to make a giant aluminum coin with the pun “Common Cents” as his theme. One side depicts the United States with the other phrases “Common Courtesy” and “Common Decency.” A flip of the coin reveals the unmistakable caricature of Donald Trump next to a partial Thomas Paine quote: “O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!”
“Five or so years ago I had the idea for this art piece given how this world was lacking common sense, but after Trump got elected, and everything started going haywire, the piece changed and started focusing more on him,” said Gamage.
Gamage said he thinks Trump’s decisive and belittling conversational style has had a negative impact on the way most Americans discuss issues. After watching the Sept. 29 presidential debate he said: “Focusing on this piece right now couldn’t be better timing. It was obvious from last night’s debate he doesn’t have any decency or courtesy—even for his own peers.”
The 300-pound welded aluminum art piece was fashioned in his studio and encased with concrete. It was given a greenish patina to resemble an oxidized coin. Each letter was hand carved.
Gamage decided to unveil his message with his art piece in a very stealthy way: he and some friends loaded it up to a truck and took it down to the Rockland Ferry Terminal and rolled it into place.
“The Ferry Terminal has three sculpture pads already there; there hasn’t really been much on them, so, people don’t even know the sculpture pads are there,” he said. “But, that’s what they are made for, so this piece was a perfect place for it. Plus, it was prime location for traffic.”
The only caveat? The Ferry Terminal had no idea that the sculpture would be there. It’s sort of a guerrilla installation, one might say.
However, it has not been removed, so it might be worth looking at in person before anything changes.
Chatter about town has gotten back to Gamage. Some knew exactly who the piece belonged to given his signature “G” mark on the rim of the coin.
“Some have been confused about what it means; some have thought it was great,” he said. “And it’s been re-posted on friends’ Facebook pages, so it’s getting all kinds of back and forth comments.”
It’s not ironic that the art piece itself would generate discussion—the only question being, would people be civil about their opinions?
Whether people agree with the content of his art piece or not, Gamage thinks last night’s debate gave the American people nothing of substance.
“Everything’s become a lack of reason, logic, and common sense,” he said. You can’t argue with emotion.”
Spectators used to pack the Rockland Breakwater to watch the Great Schooner Race from Islesboro to Rockland every year, but this year, with the race canceled due to COVID-19 restricting public gatherings, the seas were pretty quiet.
According to Marti Mayne, spokesperson for the Maine Windjammer Association, most of the schooners were grounded this summer, many still sheathed in plastic.
But, Capt. Noah Barnes co-owner with his wife, Jane Barnes, of Stephen Taber, wasn’t going to end the season with “there’s no joy in Mudville.”
On Friday, September 18, he and his crew put the challenge to Ladona, the sister ship co-owned by both Barnes and J.R. Braugh to compete in a friendly race using the same route setting out from Islesboro.
By 3 p.m. with Barnes helming Taber, the Coaster just passed the tip of the Breakwater when a thunderous cannon boomed, signaling their win. Ladona came in shortly after.
Flanked by several daysailers, Taber and Ladona decided to keep the fun going in the afternoon.
The Hodgepodge Sailing Club, started by Sam Sikema of the Victory Chimes, wasn’t operating this season, but they came out for the afternoon. Barnes invited Club members and everyone else to have a race around the schooners and handed out lobster rolls, beer, bags of Fritos, and awarded prizes for best costume, best listener, and saltiest rig.
‘In seasons past, we’d all be operating at 95 percent for years running and this year, we’re at 20 percent.
‘If you’re not making money with them, they are one step closer to being an oyster bar in Red Hook.’
—Noah Barnes
It was a celebratory moment after a solemn season for Windjammers.
“The reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic for the entire Windjammer fleet was to cancel the season—many didn’t even take their covers off,” said Barnes. “We didn’t even have protocols from the government to resume operating until mid-July, so along with bars and restaurants, we’re all struggling, operating half of our season with half capacity.”
Asked why he would take his boats out while others chose not to, Barnes replied: “I would say many of my colleagues had good reasons to not operate. Some in their families were immune-compromised or most of their business dried up. Going into January we were 70 percent full before the blood bath started. Cancelations were coming in so fast, it looked like we weren’t going to operate either, but in July, we’d had just enough reservations still clinging on to say ‘Let’s give this a try.’ ”
For Barnes, who has spent his life on these Maine waters, the thought of shuttering Taber and Ladona was too much to bear.
“These boats are very expensive to own; it costs about a quarter of a million dollars just to maintain them,” he said. “But, we’re stubborn. We could keep some continuity going with the fleet; we could maybe get some lessons in on how to operate because let’s be honest, there’s no guarantee that next year is going to better.”
The dire reality is that if some these boats go two seasons without operating, they are vulnerable to going out of business.
“I fear for the industry,” said Noah. “Many businesses are holding on by a thread, and state and federal assistance may be necessary to keep this industry from going out of business and perhaps leaving the state. As our industry is unique in the country and made up primarily of National Historic Landmark vessels, we are fighting to keep that from happening.”
“Tell your friends who live out of state and for those of you who live here and have visiting relatives who’ve never experience Penobscot Bay on the water, to come sailing,” he said. “Book reservations for next year, if you can. We’ll take you to spectacular places. We’ve learned how to do it safely—and what we have is a lot of fresh air and open spaces. And we’re doing more with deserted islands and to some select islands who welcome us there.”
Currently, Stephen Taber and Ladona are the only two large Windjammers operating, along with the Schooner Mistress out of Camden, until the season ends in mid-October. Other daysailers are also still operating. Check each page for more information.
To stay current with next year’s Great Schooner Race visit: sailmainecoast.com
What else does 2020 have in store for Mainers? The browntail moth rash, ticks, Lyme Disease, a pandemic...and now you can add great white sharks to the mix.
Award-winning journalist Ret Talbot gave a Zoom talk last week on the return of the white shark to New England (see embedded video). As a science writer who covers fisheries and ocean issues, he has spent the last year researching the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). After Maine’s first recorded shark attack fatality in July, there has been a renewed public interest over this predator, which has roamed New England waters for thousands of years.
While Talbot understands the fear and fascination over the tragedy and wanted to convey respect toward the woman’s family, he didn’t want to focus on that angle for his talk. Instead, he wanted to highlight the fact that the increased white shark presence in Maine waters is actually a conservation success story.
“It is remarkable to have an apex predator return to an ecosystem in larger numbers,” he said. “It’s not something we see all that often.”
A mistaken conception about why white sharks are appearing in higher numbers in New England waters has been attributed to global warming and ocean temperatures rising, but in fact, according to Talbot, and other shark experts, it is the causal relationship between two simultaneous factors.
Jaws didn’t help matters
“People have always hunted sharks, but we know during the ‘70s and ‘80s, shark populations declined due to commercial fishing. And yes, the movie made it acceptable to go out and kill this ‘monster.’”
Ret Talbot
In 1972, Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) which prohibits humans from hunting and killing seals.
“In 1973, a census of gray seals on the coast of Maine found something like 30 animals total,” said Talbot. “Today, their population has swelled into the tens of thousands.”
Then, in 1997, due to a decline in sharks in U.S. waters, the National Marine Fisheries Service banned the killing of five species of sharks, including white sharks, allowing their populations to swell, as well.
“The ban on killing sharks combined with the ban on killing their preferred prey contributed to this resurgence,” he said.
If it happened once, can it happen again?
A shark attack is extremely rare, according to numerous scientists who have equated its occurrence on par with getting struck by lightning.
“Depending upon whom you talk to, there have been 12 unprovoked shark attacks in Massachusetts between 1724 and 2018 and if you break that down, six of those attacks occurred between 1724 and 1965,” said Talbot. “But, if you look at the data between 2012 and 2018, that’s six recorded attacks in just seven years with the most recent fatality, the first in more than 80 years, in 2018. There have only been three recorded unprovoked shark attacks in Massachusetts.”
Talbot was careful to say some of the evidence he has researched is anecdotal, “but it does suggest that there may be an abundance of white sharks in the northwest Atlantic is on the rise,” he said. “And that is certainly borne out by the anecdotes and the data that researchers are still in the process of collecting.”
“We’re going to have a lot more data soon,” he continued. “The state has partnered with the Department of Maine Fisheries in Massachusetts to connect their research with Maine researchers. By tagging sharks, they will be able to track sharks into Maine waters. At least 20 percent of the sharks that are showing up on the outer Cape are making their way north to Maine.”
Talbot clarified that this data is not an immediate cause for alarm.
“I think it’s important to point out that the majority of unprovoked attacks are usually the case of ‘mistaken identity.’” he said. This tracks with this incident in Maine, whereby the victim was wearing a black wetsuit when attacked. Sharks have poor eyesight and officials surmised the attack occurred because the swimmer resembled a seal on the surface of the water.
“When we have more data about their predatory behaviors, it will help public safety officials forecast when and how they are attacking their prey and how better to avoid them,” he said.
To learn more about Talbot’s work, blog, and upcoming speaking events, visit www.rettalbot.com
STONINGTON—My neighbor, a long-time lobsterman, told me the other day: “There’s this guy you gotta check out, named Leroy. Friend told me about him. On YouTube, old guy like me whose been in the business all his life. He’s answering people’s questions and I hear he’s pretty funny.”
He was talking about Leroy Weed, 79, a Deer Isle lobsterman who is getting some statewide and national attention as a spokesman for the lobstering life in an online video series by the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, where he answers any and all questions about fishing and commercial fisheries in Maine.
Last summer, the Center hired Leroy to be an educator in their interpretive center in Stonington Harbor called “Discovery Wharf.” Leroy greeted visitors, answered questions, and told stories to more than 7,000 visitors. You could say Leroy was one of the Center’s biggest attractions. He loved his role and told Executive Director Paul Anderson it was the “best job he ever had.”
But with COVID-19 changing the Center’s summer plans, they decided, instead, to ask their visitors to call in questions for Leroy and sit him down in front of a camera with a microphone to answer them. The results have been a viral hit on the Internet called “Ask Leroy.”
The big part of Leroy’s appeal is his dry and cheeky humor. In Episode 5, the video starts with Leroy pressing the wrong button on an Amazon Echo speaker, when Alexa pipes up with a complaint that she can’t connect to the WiFi network, to which Leroy answers: “Is that a question or what? You send Alexa down there and I’ll straighten her out. She’ll be connected to sumpin–I don’t know what.”
Weed grew up in a family of 10 children on Deer Isle, which he explains in Episode 10.
“Growing up was very rural, a lot of big families on the island, six to 10 kids per family was common,” he explained. “Everybody worked for the group. You worked for the good of everybody and working the water was our mainstay. Scalloping was a winter project and most of the lobster fishermen stopped in November and then went scalloping. Lobster wasn't worth a whole lot back then, maybe 30 cents a pound. We worked year-round—daylight at 3:30 a.m. until it got dark. It was hard work, but we learned how to be self-sufficient. We knew how to dig clams, catch scallops, mussels. Important staples. And we built our own traps, half rounds. We learned and how to work on the house, how to butcher animals, pigs, chicken, ducks, geese, and goats. We could hunt...could pick blueberries, blackberries, apples. There was never a shortage of something to do. You never forgot the lessons because they were hard lessons, and you stayed at it until you learned it.”
We decided to ask Leroy a couple of questions of our own.
Q: Some lobstermen are annoyed by tourist questions—after a lifetime of them, what made you want to jump right in and answer them?
A: Well, I don’t tell them how much money I make, and that’s the only one I won’t answer. Some people will get upset if you ask how much money they earn, and then they’ll just stop answering questions. They’ll say ‘Yup, I gotta go, can’t be bothered, and that’s the end of that.’ So, if you want to know what’s involved in how lobstering works, we can answer that. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but I’ve been doing it for 58 years, so it’s a learned profession—learn by doing. We’ve had questions on how boats are designed, how a trap works, how to cook up a lobster and get the meat out. Well, wouldn’t you know, we had all kinds of calls from restaurants too! Some chefs don’t know how to get all the meat out of a lobster. They just rip the claws off and throw the rest of it away. We’re gonna do a video to show them how to use the whole lobster. You grow up the way I did, you eat everything but the eyeballs.
Q: Speaking of, I was most interested in learning how you grew up on Deer Isle...
A: Well, I haven’t growed up yet—I’m still a kid! If you grow up, you get serious, you see? And then you won’t have any fun...
Q: I was going to say, with the pandemic and even before then, there’s been this resurgence in learning self-sufficient outdoor and homesteading skills—what do you think of that?
I think that it’s a good thing—if it drives them, go for it. My son goes fishing and tonight, he brought in a big cusk. That’s what we’ll have for supper tomorrow night. I got seven grandkids. And my grandson went lobstering with me. He wanted money for college, so he got on the boat and earned it.
Q: What’s the craziest questions you’ve ever gotten from the public?
A: Well, some of ‘em have asked me, ‘How do you know there’s lobsters in the traps?’ so, I tell ‘em, ‘We got this fiberoptic line; we look down the line and see if he’s in there.’ The other question we get a lot is ‘Why are the boats all parked in the same direction?’ And I just say, ‘So, they can all get out and not run into each other.’ But, then, I follow up with them and explain it and say ‘It’s the way the wind and the tide turn them.’
According to the Anderson, the Center just completed Episode 11 right now and plan on continuing through October. They have the videos posted on their website, on their YouTube channel, and on Facebook. The series has been very popular with some episodes racking up nearly 20,000 views and their YouTube channel gaining more than 500 subscribers.
ROCKPORT—Italian born-and-raised restaurateur Sante Calandri was not about to let a pandemic stop him from opening his new restaurant, Ports of Italy, in Rockport last week.
With a sister property in Boothbay Harbor, he’d always had his eye on the Midcoast and when the Helm restaurant came up for sale, he jumped on the opportunity. For the last year, he set to work on redesigning the place, adding two decks that overlook the forest-covered river in back. Set originally to open this past spring, the pandemic put up obstacles to his plans.
But, you don’t start working in a famous Italian restaurant at the age of 13, move to New York City at the age of 24 to work as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Little Italy, and then earn your way up the restaurant ladder, absorbing everything you can about the industry in one of the most competitive cities on earth just to quit when a few obstacles come up.
A driven self-starter, Calandri imbues the same level of excellence to his food and service. Having brought Italian chef Alessandro D'Alessi with him to Rockport, Calandri ensures his pastas are all made by hand with semolina flour, no egg.
“Egg is too heavy; we just use water and flour—it’s nice, light pasta,” said Calandri. “And we don’t do anything fried,” he said. “I won’t do it.”
D’Alessi has 35 years in the kitchen, and like Calandri, also moved from Italy to New York as a youth to work in Italian restaurants, bringing the craft of fine Italian cuisine with him.
His dishes, such as the Ravioli Di Astice, made with Maine lobster and local ricotta floats on a dream of creamy prosecco and aurora sauce. It’s something with which you want to curl up with on the couch and watch your favorite movie.
With a simple menu consisting of appetizers, salads, vegetarian options, homemade pasta dishes, and Secondi—or traditional Italian meat dishes, Calandri and d’Alessi aim to introduce the real flavors they grew up with.
Most Americans who’ve never had those flavors, might come to expect that “Italian food” consists of lasagnas, chicken parmesans, or spaghetti and meatballs, but he prefers to surprise people with handmade sauces and fresh, local ingredients in dishes they can’t get anywhere else.
Diners have raved about the Calandri’s Rollantini Di Melanzane, rolled eggplant stuffed with local ricotta and parmesan cheese, fresh herbs, garlic, tomato sauce and topped with fresh mozzarella. The Porchetta Di Ariccia, is another hit, an arricia-style roasted suckling pig.
With a couple of friends-and-family soft opening nights to work the kinks out behind them, the new restaurant officially opened Friday, September 4, for dinner. It was fortuitous that he contracted with Colson's Excavation & Landscaping Inc. to construct a deck and patio seating into the building plan, because for the remainder of the fall when the nights are still warm, outdoor dining is an option, with seating for 60 inside with spaced-out tables and a cozy bar that is ideal for individuals or couples who want an even more casual ambiance with a nice dinner and a glass of wine.
Speaking of wines, Calandri’s extensive wine list is a veritable book, and it has taken him 27 years to compile it, tasting and vetting each one.
“If I don’t like it; it won’t be on the menu. These are all the ones I like,” he said.
For Calandri, the move to Maine after a long stint working and living in New York City, has been the right move, both professionally and personally.
“It’s relaxing up here,” he said.
He will divide his time between Boothbay and Rockport, with a trusted friend, Jeff Teel, general manager, overseeing the day-to-day operations.
Ports of Italy opens at 4:30 to 7 p.m., seven days a week. For more information, visit their Facebook page.
ROCKPORT—Italian born-and-raised restaurateur Sante Calandri was not about to let a pandemic stop him from opening his new restaurant, Ports of Italy, in Rockport last week.
With a sister property in Boothbay Harbor, he’d always had his eye on the Midcoast and when the Helm restaurant came up for sale, he jumped on the opportunity. For the last year, he set to work on redesigning the place, adding two decks that overlook the forest-covered river in back. Set originally to open this past spring, the pandemic put up obstacles to his plans.
But, you don’t start working in a famous Italian restaurant at the age of 13, move to New York City at the age of 24 to work as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Little Italy, and then earn your way up the restaurant ladder, absorbing everything you can about the industry in one of the most competitive cities on earth just to quit when a few obstacles come up.
A driven self-starter, Calandri imbues the same level of excellence to his food and service. Having brought Italian chef Alessandro D'Alessi with him to Rockport, Calandri ensures his pastas are all made by hand with semolina flour, no egg.
“Egg is too heavy; we just use water and flour—it’s nice, light pasta,” said Calandri. “And we don’t do anything fried,” he said. “I won’t do it.”
D’Alessi has 35 years in the kitchen, and like Calandri, also moved from Italy to New York as a youth to work in Italian restaurants, bringing the craft of fine Italian cuisine with him.
His dishes, such as the Ravioli Di Astice, made with Maine lobster and local ricotta floats on a dream of creamy prosecco and aurora sauce. It’s something with which you want to curl up with on the couch and watch your favorite movie.
With a simple menu consisting of appetizers, salads, vegetarian options, homemade pasta dishes, and Secondi—or traditional Italian meat dishes, Calandri and d’Alessi aim to introduce the real flavors they grew up with.
Most Americans who’ve never had those flavors, might come to expect that “Italian food” consists of lasagnas, chicken parmesans, or spaghetti and meatballs, but he prefers to surprise people with handmade sauces and fresh, local ingredients in dishes they can’t get anywhere else.
Diners have raved about the Calandri’s Rollantini Di Melanzane, rolled eggplant stuffed with local ricotta and parmesan cheese, fresh herbs, garlic, tomato sauce and topped with fresh mozzarella. The Porchetta Di Ariccia, is another hit, an arricia-style roasted suckling pig.
With a couple of friends-and-family soft opening nights to work the kinks out behind them, the new restaurant officially opened Friday, September 4, for dinner. It was fortuitous that he contracted with Colson's Excavation & Landscaping Inc. to construct a deck and patio seating into the building plan, because for the remainder of the fall when the nights are still warm, outdoor dining is an option, with seating for 60 inside with spaced-out tables and a cozy bar that is ideal for individuals or couples who want an even more casual ambiance with a nice dinner and a glass of wine.
Speaking of wines, Calandri’s extensive wine list is a veritable book, and it has taken him 27 years to compile it, tasting and vetting each one.
“If I don’t like it; it won’t be on the menu. These are all the ones I like,” he said.
For Calandri, the move to Maine after a long stint working and living in New York City, has been the right move, both professionally and personally.
“It’s relaxing up here,” he said.
He will divide his time between Boothbay and Rockport, with a trusted friend, Jeff Teel, general manager, overseeing the day-to-day operations.
Ports of Italy opens at 4:30 to 7 p.m., seven days a week. For more information, visit their Facebook page.
“Maine offers a quality of life that appeals to those living in highly populated and more congested areas of the U.S.”
This quote from a July press release from the Maine Association of Realtors is not news to those who live here year-round.
The COVID-19 pandemic that has upended the world has also produced a silent shift felt in Maine with more out-of-state residents fleeing to the state in search of home and rental properties.
A July report by Maine Listings, a subsidiary of Maine Association of REALTORS shows a sales jump of 12.43 percent with “evidence of increasing out-of-state buyer activity” from 2019 to 2020.
“It’s definitely a mix of in-state to out-of-state buyers and has been a mix for the last 10 to 15 years,” said Chuck Brawn, a real estate agent with Dwelling In Maine. “COVID-19 has likely accelerated some things that were already in place. I would say 10 years ago, one in three home buyers was from out of state and now it’s more like 50 percent—there are definitely more.”
Nancy Hughes, owner and Designated Broker of Camden Coast Real Estate, said that it’s not just home buyers moving into Maine. She estimates 40 to 50 percent of the inquiries she’s getting from people out of state are to rent apartments and houses.
“They don’t know if they want to commit to living in Maine full time before buying, and not all want to completely cut ties with the larger cities that they are coming from,” said Hughes. “The intent is to live here to escape what is happening in the more populated and dense areas for a simpler way of life while keeping the door open to return in a year or so when things will hopefully revert back to 'normal'.”
Still, she added it will be a culture shock for some. “A lot of people who are moving here are still city people and they know that they can’t be in a small community for the long term; it's such a disparity in the way of life, such a change,” she said.
(Photo by Kay Stephens)
What is ‘cottagecore” and the appeal of rural life?
A recent NPR article points to Taylor Swift’s new album as she frolics like a wood nymph in a primordial forest as an indicator of a new trend: “cottagecore.” As NPR’s author Emma Bowman explains, the trend “epitomizes a romanticization of the rural lifestyle...sourdough bread starters, foraged mushrooms, open meadows, freshly picked flowers, homegrown produce, knitting, baking pies, and, yes, rustic cottages.”
However, those who aren’t into pagan cosplay or laboring under fiddlehead foraging delusions have more practical reasons for moving to Maine.
“Ten years ago, you saw people moving up here up for the culture, the quality of life, a sense of community, and natural beauty but two other things also stand out,” said Brawn. “Most of the major towns have reliable Internet access for people working remotely. And waterfront or waterview property is still relatively cheap, than say on the north shore of Boston or the Hamptons, so Maine is still a relatively good value for oceanfront property in New England and the Northeast Corridor.”
With Maine’s diligence in containing COVID-19 comparatively to other states and as one of two states where coronavirus cases are decreasing, the appeal to breathe fresh air, have plenty of physical space to move around in and encounter fewer people is all too understandable in its attraction.
‘In the past there was a saying: people come to Maine because there's no crime. Well, now there's no crime and (low) COVID-19.’ —Chuck Brawn
Cities with high concentrations of people are losing their appeal. One only needs to read a slew of urban-bashing articles proclaiming that NYC is ‘dead forever’ to understand why so many city people want to trade their bustling lives to become country people.
How urban flight is affecting Mainers
But for all of those people coming in from out of state who are still retaining high-paying jobs remotely, it feels to many Mainers, whose average earnings fall well below the median income across the entire U.S., that they are getting priced out of the market for homeownership as well as squeezed out for apartment rentals.
The ability to afford a house or an apartment in Maine was already stretched to a thin edge—and that was before a pandemic that put 80,000 Mainers out of work, according to recent state data. An April 2019 report prepared by the Maine Development Foundation for Maine Economic Growth Council concluded that housing affordability in Maine has been declining since 2014.
The report stated: “In 2017, homeownership costs met or exceeded the affordability threshold... in nine of Maine’s 16 counties, but rental housing was not affordable in any county.”
“There is a small, local housing supply,” said Hughes. “Presently, there are only 32 houses available for sale in Camden. This is opposed to the last five to eight years where there were closer to — and sometimes over — 100 housing units to choose from. As such, there are actually more brokers in Camden alone than there are houses available to sell.”
She went on to say, “Of those homes available, there are more homes listed for sale for over $400,000 than under that figure. The accelerated market values are rapidly outpricing locally-waged people who want to buy in the area, and are opening the door more to buyers from out of state with higher waged occupations than can buy at the accelerated price points.”
"It’s 100 percent true that if the average Maine homebuyer who has a price limit is put in a competitive situation with an out-of-state buyer who can buy in cash, and doesn’t have a financing contingency — that the Maine home buyer at a strategic disadvantage,” said Brawn. “There is a shortage of affordable housing that has been evident for the last 20 years and now is getting worse.”
A 2014 photo of the Midcoast Mini Maker Faire by Kay Stephens
The upsides to a diverse population
People “from away” have always moved to Maine. I happen to be one of them who moved here by myself in 1993, when apartments were still cheap and plentiful. Since then, I’ve seen scores of young people moving out of state. This has been in tandem with the last decade of steady demographic growth and “bumps” such as the years after 9/11 with incoming residents. Throughout, I have taken a particular interest in observing the impact of out-of-state attitudes and behaviors on Maine residents and vice versa.
There is sufficient evidence that people from away have strengthened the arts and cultural side to Maine since the back-to-the-landers started coming here in the 1970s. Bringing diverse experiences and knowledge with them, they have undoubtedly contributed to Maine’s burgeoning arts, entertainment, restaurant, and brewing scenes in the last 20 years. Not to mention, their contributions to local tax bases. This winter, people who stay past the summer in Maine’s economy who have the means to work remotely and continue to bring in substantive income will also contribute to an economy that has taken a bashing from the pandemic.
“When someone from out of state buys a house, they often do improvements, additions and I think a lot of contractors, the builders, the septic companies, the landscapers, etc are a lot busier than they've ever been, so it's keeping people working,” said Brawn. “A lot of people who make their income somewhere else are spending it locally.”
“I do know a number of people who have what are typically summer residences and who are planning on staying in those summer residences well into the winter season,” said Hughes. “The upshot is that community businesses may benefit from this shift, because the loss of business through March, April and May through COVID-19 may be recovered in September, October, November, and December because there will be more people here using those commercial services.”
Fishing/lobster industry is fundamental to the Maine economy and way of life. Photo by Lynda Clancy
The long and short of it
But, those who choose to come to Maine right now as a “safety net” state would do well to open their eyes to the entire Big Picture, not just their own little slice of Vacationland.
COVID-19 has scared a lot of people be it from away or from Maine. An out-of-stater wanting to flee a city that is ravaged by the novel coronavirus and political violence is understandable, particularly if they have vulnerable members of their family at risk.
To echo Maslow’s Hierchary of Needs, everyone has the right to safety and security. However, those who move here to escape a lifestyle they no longer want must also empathize with year-round Mainers who also have the right to those very same needs as well. People who think they are escaping to the safety that is rural, bucolic Maine, are arriving at a time when tens of thousands of people are under- and unemployed, fearful, and out of their wits that they may be homeless themselves by winter.
Tensions are high in our small communities; we’re seeing it in more road rage incidents, confrontations over masks, ugly online comments. The sternman with a girlfriend who now cannot afford an apartment in Rockland where he works is fearful. The young couple with a baby on the way who consistently get outbid on an affordable house is fearful. The teacher who is watching more and more students from out of state enrolled in local schools this fall, now knowing her exposure to the virus will now be compounded, is fearful.
Those who are moving to Maine at this time must recognize that despite their cultural and economic contributions, there is a verifiable squeezing of housing resources. And native Mainers who are seeing their neighborhoods gentrified, or cannot compete economically to afford the homes and apartments in their own state are experiencing negative feelings—and to a degree, deep resentment—over these dwindling resources. These are the realities. And if you’re coming here from away, accept those realities with humility, empathy, and awareness.
I will never say anything as corporately trite as “We are all in this together.”
But we are here together. Let’s do whatever it takes to understand and help each other out.
CAMDEN—Patrons looking for your garden variety dogs and burgers will be pleasantly surprised to see what’s on the menu at the newly opened roadside takeout shack just outside Camden Hills State Park. Deirdre’s Roadside, co-owned by Chef Ean Flanagan, former owner of Ebantide and Kenny Corson formerly of the catering/banquet department of Point Lookout, are putting out an elevated comfort food menu with the emphasis on high quality, eclectic tastes.
After only being open two weeks, the owners said people are not just discovering them as they drive by, but their Facebook followers are also going the distance just to try the food. Already out of the gate, the hot sellers are the smoked slow-roasted pork Cubano sandwich—roasted for 16 hours— followed by the Bahn Mi. The Duck Confit Empanadas are another delight.
“I cook the thighs and legs for about 12 hours so it falls apart, cook it down and make the empanadas ourselves,” said Flanagan . “It comes with traditional Spanish beans and rice with sauteed onions, garlic, and spices. This is my passion. I’m taking my French training and updating roadside food.”
“People are very happy to see an eclectic, interesting menu, especially those folks who’ve never come by here,” said Corson. “They’re raving about the food and people have been back again and again in the very short time we’ve been open. We’ve already built a very good community.”
Speaking of burgers, the Roadside Burger is dressed up a bit on Flanagan’s menu. “I take an 85-percent chuck six-ounce burger and form into a hand patty, put a bourbon bacon marmalade on it, along with a fried egg and local cheddar cheese, then serve it with truffle fries,” said Flanagan. "People are shocked; they take a bite and tell me it’s the best burger they ever had. ”
He’s also bringing back Ebantide’s famous pork cheek po-boy, a 12-hour roasted pork cheek with fried green tomato served with a mustard gastrique.
They also do ice cream and custom shakes and located at the bottom of the menu is “The Obligatory Lobster Roll with Salad”—something for the tourists.
“We’re doing a Gypsy street food theme,” said Corson. “We just want people to come, have a nice time. We always have music playing; we’re happy to chat through the window.”
The decor is not the only colorful element of Deirdre’s — named after Flanagan's Irish grandmother. [See related story of Ebantide’s culinary inspirations]. Corson decided he wanted his tattoo of Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” painted on the opposite garage wall. So, armed with multiple cans of spraypaint, he did the artwork himself.
Given how late in the summer season they just opened, the time to reap a profit is growing short. “We’re going to stay open definitively until October 15, but if the demand is high enough, we’ll attempt to go longer into November,” said Corson.
Woodward said fans of the Facebook page will see perks for following their page. “We’ll have a special menu for locals with a special code phrase you can ask for,” said Flanagan. “I love the locals and we’re doing this for the community.”
Dierdre’s will be open six days a week, except on Mondays. For more information follow them at Deirdre’s Roadside.
NORTHPORT—In the trailer for the new PBS digital series SELF-EVIDENT which premieres on Monday, August 17, Moxie R., 10, has some important thoughts about being a kid in the era of COVID-19.
“I just like embracing my childhood, while it’s still here,” she says to the camera in the digital series trailer. “Embracing being able to order from the kids' menu because soon I’ll be 12 and I won’t be able to...”
With her bold purple glasses, Moxie is one of a diverse group of 10-year-old kids from all over the U.S. who were interviewed for the premiere episode, titled “Being Ten in 2020,” in which kids open up and talk about the ways they’ve adapted and stayed resilient in world upended by a pandemic. Some of their thoughts range from thoughtful to downright funny.
Moxie’s mother, Taylor, happened to be friends with some of the producers of the show, which is how she got involved. Residents of Rhode Island, Moxie and her family have ties to Northport, where her grandfather lives in Bayside and were up here for several weeks this past June and July.
Moxie just turned 11 this summer. “Being ten is in your pre-teen years, where you are kind of figuring out who you are and what you want to do in your life,” she said. “I loved being the oldest of my cousins, but not too old, so I was still in charge— but not too old to not be having fun.”
This is most definitely a weird summer to be a kid, as Moxie acknowledges; she hasn’t been able to see her friends very much. “They asked me how I was feeling about all this [COVID-19’s after-effects] and what have I been doing to calm myself down,” she said of the show’s producers. “While we were in Maine, I just played a lot with my cousins at the beach.”
The episode touches upon one important thing Moxie did this summer. With the help of her parents and younger brother Frank, she organized and led a socially distant Black Lives Matter protest in Bayside.
“We did make some flyers and print them out and were all out there in person, wearing masks,” she said.
Being interviewed remotely by the producers on Zoom didn’t faze her, as she and her friends had mastered Zoom even before the pandemic.
“Before this all happened, me and my friends started using Zoom as a way to talk. After school, there was still stuff we wanted to talk about and didn’t have time to, so at night, we’d all get on a Zoom chat and it was like being in person. So, we were already used to Zoom already.”
Having fun in a pandemic summer may seem an anathema to certain adults, but for kids such as Moxie, it is precisely that resilience that allows her to still feel optimistic about the future.
“I think this year can turn around; I don’t know if we’ll go back to hugging people again, but at least I’ll see my friends again,” she said.
Now back in Rhode Island, she still isn’t sure whether she’s going back to in-person school or remote learning, which starts September 14. “I think it’s gonna be great, because my teachers and my brother’s teachers have been really working hard to get school ‘back.’”
Watch the trailer where Moxie appears at the 1:46 mark.
SELF-EVIDENT is inspired by PBS’s 50th anniversary storytelling initiative AMERICAN PORTRAIT and is informed by the central question that PBS AMERICAN PORTRAIT examines: “What does it really mean to be an American today?”
View the episode on PBS’s website on August 17 at 11 a.m. (EST) or its YouTube channel, PBS Voices, its Facebook page, and PBS Video App.
THOMASTON—Sixteen-year-old Alexa Barstow is about to see her first book of short stories published later this month — an enviable accomplishment for someone so young.
A soon-to-be-senior at Oceanside High School, she has been able to see her dream come true through Portland’s nonprofit writing center for young people, The Telling Room.
The Telling Room is a writing program and youth publisher, focusing on writers ages 6 to 18. It is an emerging niche of the publishing industry, as it teaches kids and teens writing and publishing skills alongside professional editors and designers.
Her forthcoming book, Truth Be Cold, contains 16 short stories around the concept of home and family and about discovering truths within ourselves.
Her book description reads: “We all have ghosts, specters of our past we’re too afraid to confront. The young characters in these sixteen stories, which blur the lines between the supernatural and the real, face their phantoms. Haunting but hopeful, ‘Truth Be Cold’ is a debut collection about fear in its many forms and the liberating truth to be found within it.”
“The earliest story I remember writing was in third grade, a Nutcracker retelling, which was about 20 pages,” she said.
Writing since then, Alexa got involved with The Telling Room in ninth grade, when she learned they were hosting a four-day February camp in Damariscotta.
“I persuaded my mom to drive me down there all during February vacation,” she said. “It was an amazing experience and I met a lot of young writers there who influenced me.”
One of the exercises at this camp was called Paint Chip Poetry.
“They give you a paint chip and ask you to create a story or poem from that color,” she said.
The camp’s objective was to complete a story by the end of that week. Alexa wrote a story from that four-day immersion, titled, “Greased Lightning,” which subsequently won the Maine Literary Awards for Youth Fiction in 2019.
“I’ve gone back to the camp every year,” she said.
With momentum behind her, she decided she wanted to continue her commitment to The Telling Room.
Last year, Alexa applied for The Telling Room’s Young Emerging Authors program, a year-long writing and publishing fellowship that offers successful applicants the chance to plan, write, edit, design, and publish their own books in a single year. Out of applicants from all over the state, Alexa was chosen as one of the four teenagers selected for the fellowship.
That meant Alexa would now have to produce a book in a year’s time.
“It was a lot on my plate as Portland is 90 minutes away, but my dad would drive me down every Tuesday,” she said. “I‘d miss class every Tuesday afternoon, but I’d write in the car, I’d write at night, I’d write on the weekends. Any free time I had, I was writing.”
With a program leader and a writing coach she laid down the first draft, then polished it with input from professionals in the writing and publishing industries, including authors, editors, agents, designers, and publishers. From there, she learned how to re-arrange the structure of her writing, how to copyedit, how to give select a cover design, and even how to market her book once it was launched.
“I felt nervous about making big changes to the manuscript at first from what I originally planned, but then going back and looking at it now, I see that I made the right decisions,” she said. “It’s partly letting your own walls down a bit and trusting that people in this business know what they’re doing.”
Where some teen writers are shy, Alexa is self-assured and it’s easy to see that her entire experience with The Telling Room has laid the groundwork for a future writing career. She now knows what it takes some adults in an MFA program or a writing & publishing college degree years to learn.
While she said the soon-to-be-launched book is thrilling, the pandemic has put somewhat of a damper on the physical in-person launch itself—as many authors releasing a book in 2020 have been disappointed to experience.
“I do think this is the saddest thing about the pandemic for me, personally,” she said. “Okay, missing out on my junior year is fine, but missing out on the book launch is disappointing. But, The Telling Room is always there for us and making the best of the situation.”
With movie theaters closed half of the summer and most concert venues canceled during the Covid-19 pandemic, trying to find innovative ways to provide entertainment to crowds has been an extraordinary challenge for Midcoast’s arts and theatre venues. As a result, some have taken a page from history and revived the old-fashioned Drive-In. Here’s a look at three venues that are making it work.
The Shotwell Drive-In
CIFF films, Rockport
The Shotwell Drive-In is the Camden International Film Festival’s latest brainstormed solution as a way to offer the Midcoast community a place to come together and enjoy films during COVID-19 and beyond. “The Shotwell Drive-in” is named in honor of Bob Shotwell, a longtime supporter of CIFF and member of the Points North Institute’s Board of Directors. In August, the outdoor theater will be screening the best in new and classic documentaries, with a few special community films mixed in. On Sunday, August 2, CIFF is screening “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” a film that explores Lewis’s 60-plus years of social activism and legislative action on civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health care reform, and immigration.
The Shotwell Drive-In will be used as the primary venue for 2020 CIFF events, October 1-12. Space is extremely limited and due to COVID-19 safety precautions, they will be limiting attendance. All screenings are pre-registration only, with no tickets sold at the door. Tickets are $20 per car. The doors will open at 7:30 p.m. and no cars will be admitted after 8:15 p.m. The film will start at 8:30 p.m. Concessions and restrooms will be available on site. For more information on upcoming films visit: their website and follow CIFF on Facebook.
Strand Theatre Drive-In
Owls Head Transportation Museum, Owls Head
The Strand Theatre had to completely re-think how to screen films during COVID-19 when movie theaters were banned from re-opening until July 1, per the Mills Administration’s Stage 3 Restarting Maine’s Economy Plan. First, they had to find a place to host a large-enough parking lot complete with a giant screen. Collaborating with the Owls Head Transportation Museum, they began their screenings Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights throughout July at the museum campus. Coming up Thursdays in August, Jurassic Park (August 8) and Get Out (August 13) will be on the docket.
Tickets are $20 per car, and will be available starting at 2 p.m. each day for that evening’s show. Availability is limited, so movie-goers are encouraged to buy their tickets early to guarantee their spot. Showtime will be at 8:30 p.m. each night, with gates opening at 7:30 p.m. Though a concession stand will not be available, a complimentary bag of popcorn will go to each car, and attendees are welcome to bring their own snacks. Film audio will be broadcast over FM radio on 87.9 FM; movie-goers can listen with their car radios or with a portable radio.
Tickets can be purchased on the Strand Theatre website, or by calling 594-0070 between 2-4 p.m. For more information about each screening visit their website.
Outdoor Film & Music Festival
The Pour Farm, Union
Additionally, socially distant outdoor movie events have become a popular way to gather. Union’s only nano-brewery, The Pour Farm, is showing an outdoor film every Friday and Saturday evening in September on their wooded property. Interestingly, most of the films chosen are from the silent era of the 1920s. That’s because owner Bill Stinson had the idea to pair each movie with a live band who will be playing throughout.
“One day we were sitting on the deck and looking out in the woods and said ‘This would be a great place to screen a movie,’ so we’re going to put up a big 13-foot-screen and hang it from the trees,” he said. “It’s more than just a film festival though; I’ve got a few friends who are composers and musicians and they want to write original scores to these old movies and perform live during the screenings.”
Some of the vintage movies are family-friendly such as The Red Balloon (1956) and Balloonatic (1923) along with The Lost World (1925), but Stinson is throwing some horror genres in there —Nosferatu (1922) and Night of The Living Dead (1968), along with Reefer Madness (1936), so you might want to leave the kiddies at home for those ones.
For more information on the film details visit their website.
ROCKLAND—Something sweet has come out of the Summer of 2020 and it has rolled out in a pink-and-white food truck with a logo of the Eiffel Tower.
Eric Boyce has always had the dream of opening a breakfast spot; it just has taken awhile.
“I’ve been in aviation for 58 years, both as a helicopter and airplane pilot and as an aircraft maintenance engineer, and lived in Alaska for 21 years, but with COVID-19 happening, and losing my job in April, this seemed like the right time.”
With his partner, Shirley A. McAfee, Boyce launched the grand opening of his new food truck on July 25, which is parked on the Rockland-Thomaston line (next to The Zack Shack) calling itself Crepes Crepes Crepes.
How did a pilot go from crosswinds to crepes?
“My mother was a French cook who learned under a French chef in Quebec and she taught me to cook,” he said. “I’ve always loved cooking. I ‘ve always loved crepes and have always had tastings at my house. They’re my own recipe I’ve modified over the past 30-40 years.”
McAfee, who also owns a bed and breakfast has the “breakfast” part down pat.
Their breakfast-and-dessert menu comes from Boyce’s many years perfecting the perfect crepe. Their best-selling crepe, so far, is the Banana Nutella with Strawberries, with recipes focused on sweet offerings such as Lemon Ricotta and Cheese and Apple Cinnamon. They also offer Creme Brulee and Flan, amongst other handheld desserts.
“We’re open until the batter runs out.”
-Daughter, Erin Hustus, on the food truck’s hours fo 6 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Women make up about 75 percent of their business right now, said Boyce, who deliberately chose the pink-and-white theme for his menu and truck. It took four months to completely renovate and paint the camper and turn it into a mobile food truck.
“We have a few bistro tables outside and ladies like to come by with their friends and have coffee and crepes or dessert,” he said.
On Thursdays, Boyce and McAfee are working with Rockland’s Salvation Army to give away free pancakes and coffee to those in need, as a way to give back to their new community.
To learn more about Crepes Crepes Crepes, visit their Facebook page.
MIDCOAST—A barbeque restaurant and a food truck serving Middle Eastern street food have opened on the coast in recent weeks. Here’s the skinny on both.
RasDal Falafel — Belfast
Canaan Jordan recently opened his new food truck, RasDal Falafel on Front Street by the footbridge earlier this month. Specializing in Middle Eastern street food, which is mostly vegetarian and vegan, Jordan said, “I’ve been cooking for almost 20 years and this is the kind of food I really like to eat, so I’ve been cooking this for a long time tweaking recipes.”
“Ras means the ‘head’ or ‘top’ and ‘dal’ means a bean, sort of a ‘top bean’ Falafel,” he explained of the food truck name.
His menu is very simple with only three or four items.
“We do a couple of wraps with flatbread that I get from a bakery in Portland,” he said. “I make mostly falafel and a sandwich called Sabich, which is fried eggplant, egg, and a tangy, pickled mango sauce, which people really like. We also do a kebab, which rotates out depending on what kind of meat I get.”
With a take-out food truck model, Jordan was already positioned to do better in the pandemic. “People are finding me, they’re liking the food and they’re coming back and telling people,” he said. “Some people love Falafel and are happy to find it here in Belfast and some have never tried it and want to, so it’s a good mix of customers.”
Learn more about Rasdal Falafel through their Facebook page.
Troy Crane and Andrew Bridge opened a BBQ restaurant, Station 118, located at 118 Main Street in Thomaston on July 16 to a crowd that formed a line around the door.
“We probably had close to a couple hundred people come through before we sold out,” said Crane.
The garage where the converted restaurant is located has been completely remodeled and it took Crane and Bridge a little over four months to put the finishing touches to it, along with adding three outdoor smokers and some outdoor seating.
Crane describes their version of BBQ as “Maine-style” featuring brisket and Louisville ribs, pulled pork, and chicken.
“Both Andrew and I really love barbeque and the process behind it,” said Crane. “We pay a lot of attention to the food, which we get from local farms and use our experience to make it our own.” Both Crane and Bridge have worked as chefs in the area for a number of years and say that their biggest seller has been the brisket and ribs, along with a brisket taco. “
The owners didn’t feel that opening in a pandemic was a hindrance.
“I felt pretty confident that we didn’t have a huge outbreak of COVID-19 in the Midcoast, so we just played it day by day,” said Crane.
With only outdoor seating available for the summer, they said they plan to open up some tables in the interior of the restaurant in the fall.
Given their local popularity since they opened, they are poised to do well.
“It’s been great,” said Crane. “we couldn’t ask for a better reception during this time.”
Learn more about Station 118 through their Facebook page.
Like most restaurateurs, Jordan Benissan expected he’d be running his popular restaurant Mé Lon Togo in Waterville this spring, but the pandemic had other plans for him. Not able to keep the restaurant open, and falling behind in rent, his landlord evicted him. These setbacks led to his announcement to close his restaurant in March.
An acquaintance, a food blogger, who followed Benissan on Instagram, reached out to the food community in Portland and organized a Go Fund Me campaign for him, generating $16,000, which put Benissan back on his feet again, and allowed him to acquire a location in Camden at 56 Elm Street, formerly a furniture showroom next to Children’s House Montessori School.
Benissan, who also owns another restaurant of the same name in Searsport, has decided to focus all of his energy on the Camden location in 2020. He brought all of his furniture, kitchen equipment, and even a full bar down from Waterville and has been busy painting and renovating with the aim to open for dine-in service by the end of July.
Some might think it’s risky to open a restaurant during a pandemic, but Bennissan is optimistic that the 2,000-square-foot space is large enough to socially distance diners, and with multiple dining rooms, a private area, outdoor dining with five tables and a 40-seat capacity, he’s hoping he’ll be able to turn a profit.
Benissan, who moved to Maine from Togo, a country in West African, 20 years ago, started off his career as a professional traveling musician. A music professor at Bowdoin and Colby College and a musician who specializes in West African drumming, Benissan has roots in Camden, having taught high school students at the Watershed School.
He’s also done cooking classes through CHRHS and Adult Ed, which has introduced his food to a variety of people in innovative ways.
“I’ve always been part of the Camden community, quietly, and have done fundraising dinners for the Watershed School,” he said. “So, now I’ve been given an opportunity to really be part of Camden and to have people get to know me.”
Known for his West African cuisine fused with European influences, his menu will be prix fixe at $40 per person with four courses. His Cognac Chicken is one of the more popular dishes.
“It’s a European recipe, but I put my own spin on it,” he said, with spices he imports from West Africa.
Mé Lon Togo translates to ‘I love Togo.’ Self-taught as a chef, Benissan uses as many local ingredients as he can in season. But, it’s the flavors, he creates, that people cannot get anywhere else.
“People love the Gumbo and the West African Chicken in Peanut Sauce,” he said, of his signature West African dishes.
He cites his vegetarian stew as another hit, made with sweet potato, plantain, eggplant, zucchini, portobello and shiitake mushrooms, celery, garbanzo beans, and spices.
While Maine is known for its creative culinary scene around seafood, Benissan said, “I have a different idea of how to prepare seafood than other restaurants. When I think of really modern seafood dishes, I am inspired to create a Cioppino. This is a dish, when presented to you, you know you’re going to enjoy seafood in a way you haven’t before.”
Traditionally, an Italian-American fisherman's stew, Benissan makes it his own with lobster, shrimp, scallops, crabmeat, and snow crab legs with a vegetable broth cooked with wine and spices.
“That flavor is gold,” he said.
The restaurant will also be offering curbside take-out. Follow the restaurant’s Facebook page at Mé Lon Togo.
MIDCOAST — Charles Darwin had it right when in The Origin of Species he said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
As Maine enters mid-summer during a pandemic that has changed how businesses operate in absolutely every way, four Midcoast businesses have pivoted toward a new model of business—doing what they do best—in order to reach more customers.
Hoxbill rebrands to BLAZE Camden
Following a pop-up test kitchen weekend on July 4, Hoxbill owner Matt Haskell has rebranded the oceanfront restaurant into Blaze Camden, a signature member in his stable of Blaze restaurant group with locations in Bar Harbor and Bangor. Citing that the move was in place before COVID-19, the changes will include a new pared-down menu featuring wood-fired grill dining, a new sign, and premiere outdoor seating on the Camden waterfront. The brewing company Blaze is attached on-site and the restaurant/brewery will now be open seven days a week. FMI: Facebook
Bell The Cat’s Spin On ‘Hello Fresh’
Two years after the Belfast deli restaurant Bell The Cat re-opened in a new location, as we reported in 2018, owner JoJo Oliphant, has taken his model of fresh, locally sourced breakfasts and deli-style lunches and added on a new component, a meal plan system, offering organic fresh meats and produce and menu items and vegan meals with delivery on Mondays. FMI: Website
Boynton McKay Turns to Tacos and Donuts
With a tight space inside the Camden eatery, owner Brian Beggerly announced in May that COVID-19 had altered their summer plans, and instead, starting June 1, they would operate as a take-out only service offering two signature items: tacos and donuts. Cold Toes Tacos is one side of the business with locally sourced ingredients such as halibut and lobster tacos as well as pre-order taco kits, nachos, and other goodies. The other side of the business is Ruckus Donuts. FMI: Facebook
Trillium Caterers Opens New Division: Trilly
In April, Belfast-based Trillium Caterers owners Abigale Avey and Michael Casby saw the writing on the wall when COVID-19 prevented large gatherings of people—a very necessary component of their Wedding and Event business. From there, the couple decided to expand on their cooking skills to provide a new delivery service that is part meal kit, part take-out with an emphasis on “being fancy to yourself.” They call it Trilly—a pet nickname their staff gave the business.
From homemade dips, sauces, and appetizers to Meals & Sides for Two, as well as to-go pre-batched cocktails, the service allows you to order on the weekend with a Thursday/Friday delivery to areas in the Midcoast. “We provide you with everything such as edible flowers or pea tendrils so that it looks beautiful on the plate at home and that’s a really big component we’re trying to push,” said Avey. FMI: Website
ROCKLAND—For serious bibliophiles, it was like being a kid in a candy store. For Dooryard Books owner George Parks, who was giving away all of the books, ephemera, and materials his used bookstore has carried the last 23 years, the moment might have been a bit more somber.
A Facebook post on June 23 announced that Parks was offering the giveaway to anyone who walked in. The post got 1.5K shares in 24 hours.
“I’m 88,” he said. “It’s time to retire.”
Other bookshop owners might have gone the way of a reduced price sale, but Parks had another idea in mind.
“I’m giving them away to people who love books,” he said. “I’m happy. If I had to put them in the dumpster, I wouldn’t be happy.”
By June 25, many of the titles were already hauled away by people carrying boxes and bags. Parks said the first to go were town histories. Among other titles in his collection included classics, history, nautical, art, antique and fiction. He also had used books going back to the 1830s. Additionally below the shop, the basement area contained more paperback novels that people could browse.
Parks said he became a bibliophile in high school himself and said his favorite genre was fiction and world history. “History of the wars is something I’ve always been interested in,” he said.
Despite all books being free, Parks had a donation basket out, which was filled with money.
“I just need to cover my expenses to shut down the shop and pay someone to help me,” he said, adding he expected to close for good sometime at the end of July.
All of the bookshelves were for sale; by June 25, most of them had been already sold.
A man was overheard telling Parks, “This is like Christmas for me; it’s wonderful.”
For a book lover, the free giveaway was a mixed bag of emotions. To see all of those books being carried out meant they were getting a second life, but a melancholy feeling settled in, seeing all of the empty shelves, knowing yet another bookshop was closing for good.
Dooryard Books at 438 Main Street in Rockland will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The shop doesn’t have a website or a Facebook page, so the hours may be unpredictable. See info on Yelp.
ROCKPORT—With restaurants continuing to navigate seating challenges during COVID-19, one brick and mortar eatery has the perfect solution to stay operating—and the perfect location.
The Big T Snack Shack food trailer, co-owned by husband-and-wife Mark Senders and Rebecca Neves, was approved by the Rockport Select Board to set up full-time operations in Rockport Harbor this summer and fall.
The couple, who also own the Bagel Cafe in Camden, have operated The Big T Snack Shack at the Camden Snow Bowl for the past three years. But, when the coronavirus forced the closing of the Snow Bowl until August 14 and subsequently the CDC guidelines limited indoor seating for the Bagel Cafe, Senders and Neves knew they had to come up with alternative options if they wanted to stay in business.
“My original plan was to operate the food trailer here at Rockport Harbor only occasionally, and move around,” said Senders. “We were going to be part-time at the Snow Bowl, at Cellardoor Winery and do this circuit, but when this [the pandemic] all went down, I decided to stay in one spot, keep it consistent, and make it easy for people to enjoy their food outdoors, socially distant.” He looked out to the harbor. “Plus, you can’t beat the view.”
No one could have predicted that food trucks would naturally be better suited to the economic limitations of COVID-19, so it was fortuitous for Senders and Neves that they already owned one.
“I’m fortunate because a lot of my business was take-out already,” he said. “We haven’t opened indoor seating for the Bagel Cafe, so now, I can use my cafe to produce all of the fresh-baked items for this food trailer.”
Senders, who will be doing most of the baking at the cafe in the early morning hours, will rely on a small, but steady crew he’s had working for him to operate the food trailer Wednesday through Saturday, serving breakfast and lunch. He said along with his consistent menu items, he’ll rotate in specials, such as a blackened halibut sandwich, as local items are in season.
For Senders, going back to Rockport Harbor, is like going back home again.
“Earlier in my career, I worked at Rockport Marine, the Sail Loft and Shepherd’s Pie,” he said. “I really like Rockport.”
“We just want to provide a comfortable, consistent, accessible place for families and people looking for a quick bite in Rockport,” he said. “We’ll all be wearing gloves and masks and you can choose to sit six feet apart on the benches outside and enjoy your food looking out at the harbor.”
The Big T Snack Shack will be open for its first day on Thursday, June 25, at 8 a.m. To stay on top of the rotating specials on their menu visit their Facebook page.
BELFAST—Watch out Grubhub, a new food delivery service is in town.
Matt Burke, owner of Sweet Monkey Business, an artisan cookie company and Kate Hall, owner of GRAZE Maine, a producer of microgreens, have teamed up to offer a custom delivery service with their new website Belfast Delivers, which allows customers to shop from more than 20 local farms, food vendors, shops, and restaurants and have it brought directly to their door.
The way it works is customers can browse the website and shop for items every Wednesday. At the end of that day, Burke and Hall place all of their orders with the vendors, who then deliver the items on Thursday to their custom kitchen at The Crosby Center, where the items are packed and refrigerated. Then, with a small team in place, the organizers schedule all of their deliveries Friday to Belfast and the surrounding towns in Waldo County.
The new venture kicked off on June 17 with the choices of farm-raised meat, cheese, produce, herbs, restaurant to-go meals, and even locally made products for sale on the website.
Inspired by an online market started by the restaurant, The Lost Kitchen where Hall sold her microgreens, the co-organizers of Belfast Delivers decided this was a service people in the community needed during a pandemic.
“We both come from cities and both had access to any kind of food you wanted, but up here in Maine, the area lacks that resource,” said Hall. “There are a lot of people that can’t venture out to get what they need because of the risk of Covid-19, and at the same time, there are a lot of small businesses that are impacted by farmer’s markets and stores that have closed. We wanted to create a local delivery service that sourced from high-quality locally grown food, farms, bakeries, and other products. We’re just trying to keep everybody’s heads above water with a unique sales outlet to get through these times.”
Even though Burke and Hall still work full-time on their own businesses, they said that they plan to operate Belfast Delivers for the long term and will continue to add more vendors to their website as well as add more days for delivery.
“We have lots of ideas we’re going to explore,” said Burke.
Delivery within Belfast (and all of 04915 including Waldo and Swanville) is $8 per order. Delivery to Northport/Lincolnville (04849), Belmont/Morrill (04952), Searsport (04974), and Stockton Springs (04981) is $12 per order.
Spring/Summer 2020 is worse for the brown tail moth infestation than even the year before say pharmacists, entolomogists, and particularly the victims in the Midcoast, who are suffering from the poison-ivy-like itchy rash.
This story was first published June 21, 2019. With the brown tail moth infestation and misery imposed on the Midcoast even worse in 2020, we are bringing the story back again as a resource.
Tom Schmeelk, an entomologist with the Maine Forest Service told Maine Public, “Infestations have been getting worse since 2015.”
The Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry suggests wet vacuuming (with a HEPA filter) the caterpillars, and in a couple of weeks, the pupae. Then, hose down your field or lawn with water to keep the toxic hairs from floating up into the environment.
Wear personal protection around browntail moth areas and keep your skin covered. Take a cool shower after working in an infested area. This will help wash away any hairs on your body.
The problem, according to The Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, is that the caterpillars’ tiny barbed hairs are toxic and go airborne. They can cause a skin rash and respiratory difficulties, which can last anywhere from a few hours to several weeks. The hairs can remain toxic for one to three years. And anytime you mow your lawn or a strong wind kicks up it stirs up the hairs and cause a reaction for months, even after the caterpillars become moths. The greatest risk for exposure to the toxic caterpillar hairs is between April and July.
While the infestation is itself a whole other topic for another story, Midcoast residents have been feeling the itch and have been sharing their stories on social media. There’s a lot of information out there on how to provide relief from the bumpy rash.
Home remedies provided by PenBay Pilot readers have included:
Wipe the area with rubbing alcohol then applied calamine lotion and Benadryl extra strength gel
Cucumber witch hazel body mist
Purell
Advil and ice packs
Bite Balm at Fresh off The Farm
Vick’s Vapor Rub and Witch Hazel
Benedryl amd hydrocortisone cream: same amount. Mix with Witch Hazel
Sarna, Benadryl cream, witch hazel and calamine...Lidocaine lotion
1/4 cup witch hazel, 1/2 tube hydrocortisone cream, 1/2 tube of diphenhydramine cream, 1/4 tube aspercream or Lidocaine cream. Place all in plastic spray bottle and mix. Apply twice a day
Nita Nuhaj, Pharamcist at Kennebec Pharmacy + Home Care in Rockport said: “I have to admit, this year, we are seeing a lot more inquiries for itch relief due to the brown tail moth caterpillar compared to other years. If I had to place a number, I’d say we’re getting about 40-50 per day asking about it.”
The compound Kennebec Pharmacy doesn’t have a pharmaceutical name: it is just referred to as the brown tail moth spray or lotion.
“We make a compound mainly targeted to relieve the itching symptoms of the brown tail moth caterpillar hairs,” she said. “People coming to us with a clinical case of brown tail moth symptoms are looking for instant relief.”
Meredith Downing, pharmacist of Coastal Pharmacy & Wellness,in Portland, said she is seeing approximately 10 people call a day about getting relief from the itching, ranging from mild to severe.
“If someone has repeated exposure to the toxic hairs, the rash gets worse,” she said. “The compounds we make here are available with a prescription. Most insurances don’t cover compound prescriptions, but the spray and lotion run about $50 to $60. They contain a steroid, an antihistamine and a topical analgesic, which numbs the itch. It lasts awhile. Most people will stick it in their refrigerator after a season and use it again next season.”
Downing added: “All of those things in the compound are also available over-the-counter strength such as tubes of hydrocortisone, Benadryl and Lanacaine, which is a little less expensive,” but as Nuhaj commented, “Not that over the counter remedies are not effective,but they probably won’t provide as much of instant relief as the compound spray.”
Downing said the spray is best for a widespread rash on the body, but the lotion is better if the rash appears on one’s face.
Thomas Edge, a pharmacist for Pen Bay Medical Center, also said the pharmacy is creating its own gel compound. “The Pharmacy at Pen Bay Medical Center will have it's own prescription-only remedy, an anti-itch gel made with a topical steroid, antihistamine, and three topical analgesics, available for $25," he said.
Both Downing and Nuhaj said they haven’t yet encountered anyone come to the pharmacy who has been respiratory issues, but that if one does experience these symptoms, the serious and warrants a visit to a primary care physician or urgent care.
CAMDEN—Like the bellows of an accordian, Maine Sport Outfitters has expanded over the years and has now contracted, essentially splitting the square footage of the storefront in half and re-opening with renovations to its Main Street, Camden, location.
“The original Maine Sport store was in this exact space maybe 25 years ago,” said Tyler Smith, Director of Property Management and Development Bayview Management. “Before that, it had been on Bay View Street in two locations in the mid-1980s, before we moved to Main Street.”
In the 1990s, after being in the Main Street location, the store had gone through an expansion.
“At one point the candy store, Candy Harbor, was next door,” said Smith. “Then Maine Sport took over both spaces and we put in an archway to connect it to the other storefront space.”
But, for the summer of 2020, and Smith said well before the COVID-19 pandemic began, plans had already been in place to reduce the store back to its original footprint. On the other side, Conklin Mercantile now has taken up residence.
Among the renovations to Maine Sport include the removal of granite sills to make an entrance ramp ADA-complaint.
Inside, the archway to the other side of the store has been bricked over, the floors have been refinished and a new tin ceiling has been installed.
“We put in a brand new ceiling for both Conklin Mercantile and Maine Sport, so it harkens back to the building’s original architecture and provides a little nostalgia,” said Smith.
The industrial decor inside Maine Sport Outfitters’ Camden location takes a page from a section of its Rockport location.
“We partnered with Patagonia [an outdoor clothing and gear company] and brought some of those same elements from the Rockport store to the Camden location with exposed brick and task lighting instead of fluorescent lighting,” said Smith.
Tying in a local aesthetic to highlight Maine artists, Maine Sport ran a photo contest last year and awarded the winner, Amanda Shelmerdine a prominent display of her lakefront photograph behind the register. And as part of the Poetry on Windows campaign that ran early June, writer/poet Kristen Lindquist’s oceanic poem graces the glass window.
To comply with COVID-19 regulations, Maine Sport only allows five customers into the store at a time and masks are required. For more information about Maine Sport Outfitters visit: https://mainesport.com
When May 18 rolled around, restaurants in 12 Maine counties were allowed to open again after coronavirus restrictions eased—and while many saw this as a green light to get back to normal, it was a day of dread for those unsure if they should—or could—ever open again.
Among the health standards in the new restaurant guidelines, seating capacity has to be reduced with tables being placed six feet apart.
John Stowe, owner-chef of Rustica in Rockland, went into his restaurant one day and took out 10 tables to see what that would look like. He couldn’t also use his small bar space.
With seating now reduced at 50 percent under the new guidelines and profit margins already razor thin in a pandemic, he looked at his 14-year-old business and wondered if staying open was worth it.
“To be honest, after I saw what we’re were truly working with, I sat down in the window seat and cried,” he said.
Cautiously opening
There is no definitive list of Midcoast restaurants that have opened to dine-in service once again, but several have already opened.
“My perspective is from a solid business standpoint,” said Stowe. “How do you decide to go forward to or not? It’s come down to the financial risk, especially in my industry. The state government is asking us to re-open in very poor conditions in an industry that is decimated. Everything I’m looking at screams ‘run in the other direction.’ In Maine, restaurants make their money, June, July, and August, and I can guarantee there will not be that cash flow this summer. Where most of us will be hurting is this fall and winter.”
Stowe said he is going to wait until the second week in June to re-open.
“We want to see what’s going on nationwide and to make sure there are no additional spikes in coronavirus,” he said.
Rockland and Belfast have both explored options to open sidewalks on the streets to allow restaurants to set more tables outside. Rockland’s plan is to close a section of downtown to vehicle traffic in June, while Belfast’s plan started May 22 to allow restaurants and retailers to conduct business in outdoor public spaces.
Closed for good
For small establishments, such as The Drouthy Bear in Camden, the new restaurant guidelines have proven to be insurmountable.
Owners Andrew and Shannon Stewart told patrons on their Facebook page May 26: “One of the words we have always used to describe our little pub is ‘cozy’ and the intimate space we have created (and love) does not allow us to provide a safe environment for our patrons or staff that can adapt to our current, albeit temporary, reality. After much soul searching and consideration of the months ahead and with huge sadness we have decided that we will close permanently.”
Lisa Wardwell, owner of The Chin-ah Diner in China, also told her patrons on Facebook March 18 that the diner was permanently closing.
Wardwell had six years of running her establishment before the restrictions around tourism this summer canceled her plans to re-open. The mandate requires out-of-state visitors to self-quarantine for 14 days before venturing out to public places.
“The thing that we depend on is tourists and lake people in the summer, 100 percent,” she said. “We save all summer long to pay our bills all winter long. Not to say we didn’t have the best ‘regulars’ in the world, because we do, but there’s just not enough people in China to support the overhead on such a huge restaurant.”
Seating capacity for the diner was previously at 150 people, Wardwell said, and to operate under the guidelines, she’d have to cut that seating in half, another factor that contributed to her decision.
Wardwell said she used her savings to keep the diner open for as long as she could. But ultimately, it was the announcement of fairs canceling for the summer that tipped the scales.
“We did a huge business on the fair weekends, but once it was announced they were closing this summer, that was it,” she said. “We knew we were done. It was crushing to make that decision, absolutely the worst. I grew up in South China; I know everybody out there. That’s my family.”
Wardwell said from a business standpoint, she didn’t think Gov. Janet Mills made the right call in terms of the 14-day quarantine for travelers to Maine.
“She should have put together a forum of five to 10 businesses and asked them questions before making that decision,” said Wardwell. “She never said, ‘I need to protect the general public and make it so that you [the restaurant industry] can survive.’ ”
Permanent adaptation to takeout
Gary Oliver, owner of Oliver’s Bistro in Camden, took a hard look at the numbers and decided opening to dine-in service would not work; they would have to operate as a takeout service all season.
“The dining room, once you take out all of the tables, only accommodates 10 people,” he said. “You can’t use the bar. If I had someone order a $6 hot dog basket and stay for an hour, I’m paying the waitresses and losing money because I’m not turning tables over.”
Oliver, a former co-owner of Mt. Battie Take Out at the base of the Camden Hills State Park, is already well-versed in the takeout model. He’s hired back a small number of cooks and staff.
“We’ll have an ice cream window and a food window both 13 feet apart,” he said. “We’ll stay with this model unless things change; if they do, of course I’ll open the restaurant open again.”
PPP loans, not so useful
All three restaurateurs said that the federal government’s solution to help small businesses with the Paycheck Protection Program loans doesn’t work for the restaurant industry.
The amount of forgiveness for a PPP loan depends on the business’s payroll costs over an eight-week period.
“It doesn’t mean eight weeks from when you re-open your business, it means eight weeks when you get the funding,” said Stowe. “So, if I don’t use it before we open, it becomes a debt —not a forgiveable loan.”
“I’ve been paying staff for four weeks now and we can’t even open, so that money’s gone,” said Oliver. “As long as business picks up, I can get through the summer.”
For Wardwell, who secured a PPP loan, she said she had to give most of it back due to her circumstances.
Right now, there’s only one thing locals can do to support the restaurant industry
“Eat local. Live your life, go out and enjoy yourself,” Wardwell said.
“Community support has been amazing,” said Stowe. “But, the reality is the pivotal moment won’t take place this summer; it’ll be after the winter where you’ll see more restaurant closures. So, if locals love their favorite restaurants, the best thing they can do is continue to go there, get gift certificates and continue to support them past the summer.”
BELFAST—The town of Belfast has come together to help the very artists, chefs, and creatives that give the town its vibrancy and life.
During the COVID-19 crisis, the hardest hit economically has been small business owners, many of them self-employed Maine artists seeing a 25 percent decline in revenue.
The summer-long events are spearheaded by The Belfast Creative Coalition in solidarity with local art galleries and organizations, theatre groups, performers, visual artists, dancers, musicians, writers, poets, and chefs.
Other supporters include: Belfast Community TV, Belfast Community Radio, Waterfall Arts, Waldo County Bounty, the city of Belfast and poster artist Krista Odom
Belfast Creative Coalition is behind the latest venture to lift up these artists and restaurateurs with a new city and county-wide project called The Sky is Rising, a venture to replace the lack of crowds that typically flock to the galleries, workshops, classes, and restaurants in the summer.
“When anything needs to be designed, built, promoted, or performed, the artists are the first ones we call,” said BCC Director Larraine Brown. “They’re always beyond generous, often the first ones to donate their time and work. We put out an assessment to our arts communities. And the stories we’re getting back from artists speak of tremendous loss during this time. They work in a gig economy and also the first ones to be cut. Right now—summer— is the time when people come to Belfast to buy art, hire artists to do work, take classes to learn and that’s not happening.”
Case in point: Belfast Harbor Artisans, an Artisan Co-op on Main Street, was forced to close its doors on May 18, returning many unsold works back to the artists, which is an unfortunate blow to their livelihoods.
The Sky Is Rising held its first outdoor event Saturday, May 23, in downtown Belfast hosted by Mayor Eric Sanders with local artists, performers, musicians, dancers, singers, and actors performing all afternoon.
“This is the first in a series of events as we learn how to promote and sell art and performance online,” said Brown. “It’s building and there will be much much more this summer. We’re featuring art on our website, we’re broadcasting videos. We’re essentially saying, ‘Support us online; buy art online, buy a meal and theatre tickets online.’”
With the Belfast Fourth Friday Art Walk series— a popular venue for locals and tourists—canceled this summer, The Sky Is Rising aims to replace that.
“We’re funneling all of the proceeds back to the artists—the Belfast Creative Coalition is taking none of it—but one more thing to note, many of these artists are donating their proceeds back to the food banks for people who have food insecurity,” she said. “I have to tell you many of the artists told me to give from 20 to 100 percent they earned from a painting or a certain artwork back to their neighbors through the food banks.”
That’s how a community strengthens itself and survives—and as always, the artists are the first ones to donate.
LINCOLNVILLE BEACH — New owners have taken over The Beach Store, a popular sandwich shop directly across from the beach. A family-run business, owners Owen, Shannon and Jonathan Weyers have added multiple grills and expanded a new menu that includes locally sourced Green Tree coffee, Boar’s Head meats and cheeses, burgers, hot dogs, subs, salads, pizza, ice cream, and even a summer favorite—fried dough.
The Weyers bought the building in January, hoping to open the first of April, until the coronavirus shifted their plans. For now, until the middle of June, they are operating as a take-out service. When they open for good, they will also be licensed to sell beer and wine. They will also be adhering to safety guidelines with limited customers within the store.
The building itself has a utilitarian history. According to Owen who researched it, the building was once an auto showroom in the 1920s, before it turned into a Grey Line bus terminal. However, he remembers it fondly as a kid who’d spend every summer in Maine.
“I was born in Camden and my family would always go down to the beach,” he said. “It was always known that if you liked seafood, you went to McLaughlin’s, but if you didn’t like seafood, you came to The Beach Store.”
Son Jonathan Weyers could be found back behind the line expertly tossing freshly made pizza dough. Having spent nearly 10 years on the west coast in the food industry, he moved to Maine several years ago and is now behind the line, making most everything from scratch.
As with most eateries, they are unsure how business will look if tourists, who make up the majority of the location’s summer sales, will not be in abundance due to the mandatory 14-day self-quarantine for out-of-state travelers.
However, there are a number of perks for locals. For one, they will be open at 7 a.m. every morning for ferry workers who want grab-and-go freshly made breakfast and lunch sandwiches, drinks, and chips before they hop on the ferry.
“We have a number of ideas to adapt to the new reality of the summer,” Owen said. “One, is that we’ll hire someone to go down to the beach and take individual orders from people and bring the food to them. That, and we’d also like to let people who are waiting in line to get on the ferry to call us with orders and we’ll bring it right to them before the ferry leaves.”
More items will soon be added to the menu, including in-house roasted chickens and “Heat and Eat” take out options in the fall.
The Beach Store is open seven days a week. See their menu for hours. They can be reached at 207-789-5199 and on Facebook.
Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com
Meat shortages across the country caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have led more consumers buying locally raised beef, pork, and poultry, and that’s good news for Maine farms.
The shortage problem is not due to production, according to industry experts. The problem is that the food supply chain has broken down because processing plants have had to close down due to workers getting sick, as was the case of Tyson Foods, one of the biggest meat processors in the U.S.
Last month, Tyson had to close down a large pork processing plant in Iowa after several workers contracted COVID-19. According to the Associated Press, other processing plants that had to close down for the same reason included a Smithfield Foods pork plant in South Dakota and a JBS beef plant in Colorado.
That fact alone should be enough to turn the stomachs of most meat consumers. Luckily, a sustainable solution has existed in Maine all along.
Sheep, goats, hogs, cattle, and poultry have always been an agricultural staple on Maine farms with the beef industry rapidly expanding and finding important new markets, according to Maine’s agricultural statistics.
“For the last 10 years we’ve been focusing on a local market and local supply, so we are insulated from what’s been happening with the national and international livestock markets,” said Ben Slayton, co-owner of Farmers’ Gate Market of Wales, Maine, a collaborative organization that bridges the gap between nearly 24 Maine, pasture-based livestock farms and consumers.
“People are reading the papers and seeing the Tyson plants shutting down and seeing the shortages but due to the coronavirus, the demand for meat has skyrocketed, whether it’s panic buying or the national pipelines not able to keep the shelves full,” he said. “We’re now getting customers we didn’t see four months ago, so there has been a crush of demand for the farm products, which is frankly long overdue, in my opinion, but we’re grateful. A lot of our customers were restaurants, and that business has dwindled off due to the global pandemic but now, the individual customers have increased.”
Value of meat more than just price
Chicken is the one product that sees the highest price differences between farm-raised and factory-raised, said Slayton. And with a cash-strapped Maine economy during COVID-19, it’s easy to see why many people choose a $1-2/lb chicken on the grocery store shelves, rather than a farm-raised chicken product at $4-6/lb.
However, the cheapest cost of chicken comes with a steep price.
“Mass-produced chicken and the kinds of cramped methods of raising them and the kinds of growth-hormones added to them are what make this product cheap,” he said. “You can look online and read about the unhealthy conditions; they’re not hidden.” [See: Facts about Industrial Meat Chicken Farming.] So the way you get to a $1-2 per pound chicken is by cutting corners; you’ve got chickens grown in cramped spaces; contract growers working in bad conditions. There are cut corners in every single facet of how that chicken comes to the market as a product. So when customers look at a pasture-raised local chicken, that’s actually the true cost of what a responsibly raised chicken is.”
“If you ask any of our customers who go from an industrially raised chicken to a pasture-raised chicken, every single one of them is blown away by the amazing taste,” he said.
The pandemic has opened the eyes of many new customers of locally raised products.
“Our business has raised tremendously,” said John Barnstein, owner of Maine-ly Poultry in Warren. “We can barely keep up with the orders we have now. I know the farm stands we sell to are selling a ton of meat and the farmer’s markets are extremely busy. I don’t know what will happen when things go back to ‘normal’ is again, but I hope that people will consider where they’re going to buy their food in the future and support local agriculture.”
One point Barnstein made further exemplifies further why buying local strengthens a weakened Maine economy.
“We process all of our chicken in Gardiner at a plant that employs 30 to 40 people, so buying local is good,” he said. “It supports everybody.”
“We’re grateful for the business we have at a time when people are really struggling,” added Barnstein.
When it comes to buying local, grass-fed animals, Mainers have a plethora of purchasing choices.
Eat Wild has a map and directory of all Maine farms that produce grass-fed meat, eggs and dairy products.
BELFAST—Opening a new business is stressful enough without it being smack in the middle of a pandemic.
But, CG Bikes owner Chris Gardner and business associate, Nathaniel Baer, are taking it in stride and using the extra time to get all of the finishing touches done on the side-by-side businesses on Main Street.
Gardner had opened CG Bikes beneath the United Farmer’s Market last year and decided the time had come to put the bike shop in a visible place with more foot traffic.
“When the space on Main Street opened up, it was a big enough space to accommodate another business, and I knew that Nathaniel had some interest in starting a specialty coffee shop,” he said. “I’ve seen the bike and coffee shop model in other places around the country. There once was a Bikes ‘n Java in Rockland, but I think we’re the only one doing this in the Midcoast now. It’s a good way to create a nice, community atmosphere.”
“When we open we hope it will create a bit of buzz in town—pun intended.”
-Chris Gardner, owner CG Bikes
Gardner said repairs and rentals are the biggest part of their business with a small expansion into selling more bicycles and accessories.
“We sell mostly bikes for the casual rider, and for road enthusiasts, especially gravel road bikes,” he said. “That's a pretty fast-growing industry with people looking to get off busy roads and onto dirt roads.”
The plan was originally to open March 19. Gardner said they’ve been adapting to COVID-19 precautions.
“Since we do have a food service business under the same roof, we’ve decided just do pick-ups and deliveries for now and it’s been working. We’ve done several deliveries right to people’s doors. We’re finding a way to scratch by.”
Downshift Coffee is planned for the other side of the retail space.
“I’m a long-time cyclist myself and thought it would make a great joint venture to go with CG Bikes,” said Baer. “Downshift has a few meanings; obviously the bicycle reference, but also it means to slow down, take a break, and simplify.”
“It’s definitely been a mix of emotions,” said Baer, of the delays caused by the pandemic. “I’m still very excited to launch the coffee shop. We’re thrilled with the space we’re in and being part of the joint business of the bike shop. We’ll have everything completely ready by the time the restrictions are lifted.”
Baer said that the cafe name is also the brand of the coffee that he personally roasts.
“We’ll have a house espresso roast, a rotating roast, a house drip blend, decaf, and we’ll do pour-over coffee. We’ll have a range of excellent coffee beverages all using the beans we roast ourselves.”
SOUTH THOMASTON—A new food truck opened May 8 to complement Waterman’s Beach Brewery, and fans of the old Waterman’s Beach Lobster, will be thrilled to know that the new venue has some unique ties to the old.
Joshua and Charmen Spearing are heading up “On A Roll,” a traditional lobster shack on wheels in the same spot where Waterman’s Beach Lobster shack originally operated for the last 30 years,
Joshua, a lobsterman who fishes out of Spruce Head, and Charmen, a former employee of Waterman Beach Lobster, are excited to finally open for the season. Their original launch had been set to open in March, until the Covid-19 crisis pushed their plans back.
“I used to babysit for Sandy and Lorri while they were working at their family-run Waterman’s Beach Lobster for years,” said Charmen. “I was like the Waterman Beach Road babysitter.” She joked. “My senior year in High School, I started working my summers at the lobster shack and that continued through my college years. I loved working down there it’s such an incredibly relaxing and gorgeous spot to be. In fact, Josh and I got married right there in the field next to the brewery. We will celebrate 25 years this summer. Coming back to run the new food truck is like coming back full circle.”
Charmen said the personalities of the customers were always her favorite part of the job, something she’s looking forward to experiencing again this spring and summer.
“We’d have the most unique, interesting people come up and talk to us,” she said. “At the same time, you’d have your regulars and the moment you saw their truck pull into the parking lot, you started getting their usual order ready before they even hit the window.”
Charmen said the location, the brewery and the built-in Waterman’s brand associated with their business is “like winning the lottery.”
The lobster shack/food truck model is what many lobstermen have had to do to cut out the middleman and make any kind of profit.
“For us, it’s exactly what we need to do with the market fluctuating so much. To be able to bring the lobsters directly from the boat and serve it to the customer is amazing.”
Charmen also said their love of the community and customers will prompt the entire family, including their lobster fishing sons and daughter to do some hands-on demos this summer.
“In the summer, we’re planning it out so that my husband and our sons and daughter will drive right up to the dock, so the customers can see how a working boat operates they’ll be able to watch them unload the catch and meet their future lobster roll.
Like all food establishments complying with certain mandates during the pandemic, On A Roll has had to modify their take-out service with Covid-19 safety guidelines.
Note: the establishment only takes cash; an ATM is located on the premises. They will be open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 11:30 am to 6:30 p.m. for the month of May. Starting June 1, they will add hours and new menu items.
Senioritis—that age-old slump that hits high school seniors in the spring of their last year of school, has historically come about when seniors felt they had college or a secure job locked in for the summer and/or college locked in for the fall—so why try any harder?
The graduating classes of 2020, unlike any other generation that has come before them, are facing a new twist on senioritis —and it comes with the five stages of grief.
Emily Boynton, Senior Class President of Oceanside High School, summed up what most seniors are going through perfectly in an essay she penned for the school newsletter titled, “A New Kind of Senioritis.”
Here’s the start of her essay: “As the school year comes to an early and unexpected end, people in our community have mixed emotions. Some fearful, some sad, and some kids may even be excited to have an extra-long summer to run around and play. But one group of people that is undeniably united in their grief due to the worldwide pandemic is the Senior Class of 2020. Seniors across the globe have been left grieving their last few months of their childhood, only to be thrust into a harsh world of uncertainty.”
Set to graduate June 9, Emily and her classmates have been remote learning at home since March 15, 2020.
“I think in the first two weeks we were told to stay home, everybody was sort of in denial, like ‘Oh, it’s only two weeks, then we’ll be back at school,’” she said. “It almost just felt like a vacation. Then, as more news started coming out and the school opening was postponed again, a lot of the seniors started to get more nervous. We began to wonder if we were going to be able to go to prom or if we were going to graduate. The anxiety kept building.”
Unable to see friends face to face, Emily and her friends have been texting and Facetiming to discuss their future.
“Seniors, please don't let the cancellations, postponements, and circumstances cause you to think that you are not important. You may be tempted to think that who you are and what you've done is of no value, but that's not true. You matter. Even if we can't get together on June 9 to communicate this to you... you matter.”
-Jesse Bartke Principal, Oceanside High School
A section of her essay pinpoints the other hidden losses that come with this pandemic.
“The weeks that followed brought with it spiraling emotions as different realities set in. Seniors now wonder if they have already seen their friends for the last time, if they will ever see their favorite teachers again, and if they will ever get a chance to walk across a stage to receive a diploma. But our grief doesn’t simply stop at graduation. We are left wondering if we will get scholarship night, Trekkers Graduation, inspiration, and an honors brunch. We wonder when we will go on our final Trekkers trip that has been hyped up for the past six years. We mourn the loss of senior performances, spring sports seasons, a senior rafting trip, a senior prank, a senior skip day, a project graduation night, and a class sleepover. We wonder if we will ever get to go to a final prom with our high school sweethearts.”
For Emily, merely expressing these feelings added to the guilt of appearing superficial, when people were dying at alarming rates due to Covid-19, businesses were failing, economies were collapsing.
The adults rule the news cycle and their fears have dominated the news since early March, but teenagers are certainly allowed to mourn their own losses in their own way.
The plans for graduation at Oceanside have not been canceled, according to Emily, who has been in communication with Principal Jesse Bartke. For now, the official word is that the ceremony has been postponed, but according to Bartke: “it will look different.”
Still, it’s unclear to many seniors exactly how that will pan out.
“With my friends, we talked a lot about the fact that we’re lacking closure,” said Emily. “All of these pieces are supposed to end our childhood and signify moving on to the next phase of our lives, but I think a lot of us were caught in this limbo. We’re feeling pretty much done with school at this point, but we haven’t graduated yet, and don’t even know what graduation even going to look like. Will it be in August? Will it be virtual? Or if it is in person, will it be limited to just my parents? Does that mean my grandparents can’t come?”
“There’s a lot of sadness,” Emily said. “We’re not going to get to experience what every other class before us has.”
Emily said anger is also present for many of her peers. “But we’re just not sure what to be angry at,” she said. “Some kids are angry because the virus has just ripped away everything we’ve been looking forward to this our entire lives. Some are mad at Gov. Janet Mills for the social distance restrictions. Personally, I have no place to direct my anger. I’m kind of angry at the world.”
Seniors are trying to find things in their life to feel better about and look forward to. A summer job and college, typically the two milestones that follow graduation, are also uncertain.
“I always work with my grandparents at a gift shop, but that business relies on tourism, so I’m not sure how that’s going to work out,” she said. “And a lot of us are facing going to college in the fall, but we don’t know how that is going to look either—will students be allowed back on campus?”
For Emily, and so many graduating high schoolers in Maine this spring and summer, the key to finding some balance will be in appreciating the little moments that make them happy.
“I’ll be happy when I can see my friends again,” she said. “But, I think we’ll all just reach this phase where we accept [that we can’t control it] and find other things in life to look forward to. In the grand scheme of life, graduation isn’t everything. In the meantime, I’ve been going outside a lot more. When my sister and I were younger, we used to walk this little trail behind in my grandparents’ house. Recently I’ve gone back to exploring that as well as the forest behind my house and it’s been kind of cool to have that time to be a child again.”
In Maine, self-employed workers have been waiting nearly six weeks for financial help through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), and are the last group to receive any financial assistance during the Covid-19 crisis. According to many who attempted to navigate a confusing ReEmployME website over the weekend, frustrations were high.
Among the biggest complaints:
Many were getting kicked out of the system multiple times while attempting to file a claim Friday into Saturday;
They were getting locked out of the application due to an error in username/password;
They were unable to reach an MDOL customer service representative by telephone.
In March, the COVID-19 crisis spurred an unprecedented amount of claims filed through Maine Department of Labor (MDOL), which overwhelmed both their staff and website systems, to the point where they had to train new staff to keep up with the demand.
Self-Employed workers include:
Farmers/Fishermen
Independent Contractors
Nonprofit employees not already covered by regualr state unemployment benefits
Gig Economy Workers
On Friday, May 1, MDOL announced the website was open to receive applications.
According to NewsCenterMaine.com, while 3,000 people were able to get through by noon Friday and successfully process a claim with thousands more expected to be processed over the weekend, hundreds of comments on every MDOL Facebook post update expressed anger and frustration over the confusing intake questions, difficulty navigating the application form, unclear messaging around expired claims, a cryptic statement stating weekly benefits of $0, and an inability to get their questions answered by the telephone helpline.
Update: According to an MDOL statement on May 7, roughly 10,500 claims were filed under Pandemic Unemployment Assistance in the last week.
It appeared that MDOL was listening to the complaints with updated posts over the weekend. On a May 1 post at 11:34:
“We hear you, and see your messages and comments. While we cannot reply to them all, please know we are monitoring and are aware of the frustrations some of you are experiencing, and are working to help resolve issues popping up.”
Another post at 6:17 p.m. stated: “We urge you to be patient with the system. Claims can be filed at any time, including throughout the weekend and into next week. PUA is available until December 2020. All payments will be made retroactive to the date of loss of employment. Applications are accepted 24-hours-a-day.”
Website Design Issues
User Response to MDOL’s Website Errors
“What are we supposed to do if we did it wrong? There’s no way to edit the application, as far as I can see. why weren’t there instructions on how to fill it out before Friday?!
“Could have really used that information last Friday. There were no instructions about it anywhere online and it took me two hours to figure it out trial by error.”
From a personal standpoint, the MDOL website was far from user-friendly, and those who aren’t computer savvy will experience problems, particularly if all they have is a mobile phone to work from.
First, the website application form lacked basic instructions in the form of informational pop-ups for each intake question.
Second, the application form also seemed to be cobbled together from the general employment form, leading to confusing questions such as asking if you worked for any employer after October, 2018.
Third, if you selected an option by accident, the form would not allow you to deselect that option, prompting errors in moving forward, so you have to hit the back button to start all over again.
Fourth, due to the convoluted questions, many filers made mistakes and filed the wrong information. However, once the application was completed, there is no “edit” button.
The only recourse was to call MDOL to file an appeal, which leads back to a Catch-22 of not being able to reach a customer representative by phone.
Finally, instructions on how to confirm your email and select a Direct Deposit option were tacked on after the application was completed and required extra steps to complete.
MDOL posted on March 4, three days after unveiling the application: “ATTENTION Self-Employed: If you are self-employed and have no wages with an employer in the calendar year 2019 or 2020, you must select “NO” for Question 4. DO NOT select a state on Question 5. To deselect a state, double click on your selection to remove it.”
Already frustrated, many self-employed workers vented on the Facebook post that this information should have been provided prior to launching the application on May 1.
MDOL should have provided a step-by-step tutorial on how to navigate each page. Because they failed to do so, they have been attempting to answer common questions via Facebook posts. And, as record numbers of people reported being unable to call and get a real person on the phone, a number of Facebook groups have tried to function as a de facto resource, such as Covid-19 Small Business Group Facebook page, which took it upon themselves to try and help their fellow appliers as outlined below.
This is where you create your account. For the best results, file a claim on a desktop or a laptop. A mobile device might get you kicked out.
You need to choose an option that is related to COVID-19. Select as many as are applicable. Screenshot courtesy COVID-19 Small Business Resource Group
Q. Have you worked for any employer since October 1, 2018? #4. Unless you have and the info appears, select NO and make sure the box for Maine is NOT check marked to advance to the next screen. #5. If you answered No to #4, DO NOT check Maine in #5 or else it will cause an error. Screenshot courtesy COVID-19 Small Business Resource Group
For your retroactive certifications enter any income you received. If the answer is $0, easy. If you earned income as an employee, report your gross earnings BEFORE taxes. If you earned income as someone who is self-employed, add your earnings AFTER expenses and keep documentation to show the business expenses you paid. For example: if you’re a lobsterman and went to haul for two days and made $800, but then bought $800 worth of rope, your net earnings were $0. Screenshot courtesy COVID-19 Small Business Resource Group
There have been so many issues with this ham-handed roll-out of the MDOL application that Mainers already stretched beyond their reasonable capacity and desperate for a simple way to receive much-needed assistance are justifiably enraged. And they have every right to be. Are you listening MDOL?
It’s hard to believe that Maine, once the 19th century pearl-clutcher of New England responsible for enacting Prohibition before any other state, has relaxed its alcohol mandates during the COVID-19 crisis, but here we go.
While all restaurants and bars are prohibited from conducting dine-in (and drink-in) services until June 1 and July 1, respectively, beer and wine was allowed to be sold along with a food order.
Additionally as of March 18 (updated March 24), Gov. Mills’ Order also included specific instructions for spirits-based Cocktails to Go.
Basically, it has to be created individually in its own container, not exceed 4½ ounces of spirits, and has to accompany a take-out food order.
Here’s who is jumping on that trend and creating memorable Cocktail Kits and Cocktails To Go to get us through the sobbing wall-slide of May.
Rockland/Thomaston
Ada’s Kitchen is serving up its Negronis, Old Fashioneds, and Margaritas...and more!
PrimoRestaurant is offering a Bellini Kit of Prosecco + trio of Primo syrups (rhubarb, peach, blueberry) $30 as well as individual cocktails such as a Charred Orange Negroni.
Myrtle Street Tavern is serving cocktails to go with their menu; changes nightly. Stay tuned to their Facebook Stories for details.
Eclipse Restaurant is offerings Cocktails to Go like an Eclipse-tini with their daily specials. ($8 and up).
Thomaston Caféis offering nightly specials on cocktails to go. Call 354-8589.
Camden/Rockport
Nina June is offering Chip’s awful good cocktails to go...($12). Negroni, LovageGimlet, Manhattan, Bloody maria mix (you add the vodka)...($10.) Please call your order in or email ninajune24@gmail.com before 1:00 pm.
40 Paper is serving up their famous half-price cocktail kits (serves 2) such as a Grapefruit Mule, Bourbon Ade and Ranchito Verde ($6).
Belfast
The Front Street Pub is batching up a great mix of cocktails such as a watermelon margarita, just in time for Mardi Gras.
Rollie’s Bar & Grill is now offering curbside pick up and delivery including Cocktails to Go (16 oz for two people).
Note: if you are a restaurant/bar that serves Cocktails To Go or Cocktail Kits and want to be listed here, please provide all of the details exactly as you see other listings above and make it easy to cut and paste directly into this article. Be sure to add your phone number and hotlink your Facebook page. Direct your update to news@penbaypilot.com
This list was created in March, 2020 when Gov. Mills’ Executive Orders prohibited dine-in service, which prompted eating and drinking establishments to either close or come up with more creative solutions. As part of the Governor’s proclamation, beer and wine have also been approved for take-out. Here is a working list of all area establishments that are offering delivery, take-out and curbside pick-up. Note: As of June 1, many establishments have already opened to dine-in and outdoor seating service. Please check individual websites or Facebook pages for updates.
Delivery services
Belfast Delivers is a custom delivery service, which allows customers to shop from more than 20 local farms, food vendors, shops, and restaurants.
Craft Delivery Service delivers food, groceries, alcohol, and prescriptions to the Camden, Rockport, Rockland and Lincolnville areas.
Bell The Cat is offering curbside pick-up, delivery and drive-through window options for customers who prefer to remain in their vehicles. Call 338-2084 or go to: Bellthecatinc.com
The Belfast Dairy Queen is open via drive-through or curbside pick-up if you order on the app or via phone 338-2352. Credit card is the preferred method of payment at this time.
Neighborhood has changed their model: they are now offering limited Curb-Side Take-Out on Wednesdays; beer and wine to go. Call-In Time: 2:30 to 4:30p.m. 505-0425. They will also be offering limited take-out at their old food truck location, Good ‘N You.
The following are offering take-out.
Belfast Food Co-op High Street Belfast 338-2532
Belfast Variety High Street Belfast 338-5236
Belfast Variety Rt. 52 Belfast 338-5119
China One Starrett Drive near Sherwin Williams 338-0523
Dunkin Donuts Belfast 338-3005
Jacks Grocery High Street Belfast 338-1700
Lang Xang Thai food lower Main Street Belfast 338-6338
Maritimes Farms Belmont Rt. 3 342-5355
McDonalds Belmont Ave Belfast 930-3670
Subway Belfast Starrett Drive 338-1241
Wentworth’s Qwik Stop Waldo Ave. Belfast 338-4342
Meanwhile in Belfast Federal + lower Main Street 218-1288
Rice and Noodles Rt. 1 East Side Belfast 207-218-1525
Satori Sushi Belfast Main Street 218-1563 delivers
Grandpas’s Kitchen 19 Miller Street is doing take-out; sausages, lasagna, bacon. Call 341-1669.
Eat More Cheese You can order cheese as well as custom order fresh baguettes 218-7009.
Camden
40 Paper has actually changed their entire model and is offering Knox Mill Take Out, a new menu, inspired by 40 Paper, serving two to six people, curbside & take out, and open Wednesday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m with new menus here daily. Call 230-0111 and they’ll meet you at your car with your order.
Blue Barren Distillery is offering gin and tonics to your door. Delivery within Camden, Rockport and Rockland. All orders must be in by 3 p.m. and after an ID check through the window, it will be left on your doorstep. Call 207-542-7741 to order and pay. Deliveries between 3 and 5 p.m. daily Monday-Saturday for the foreseeable future.
Camden House of Pizza is serving seven days per week 11 a.m. to 8 p.m Sunday through Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Call ahead 230-2464. Delivery service is coordinated through us with Craft delivery services. If you would like curbside service, mention it during your order placement.
Franny’s Bistro is offering To Go, Wednesday- Saturday 3-7 p.m. They have curbside pick up, or delivery provided by Craft delivery of Camden.
French and Brawn in Camden will deliver groceries and other orders to your home. For a small fee, ($5 for Camden and Rockport addresses) F&B makes home deliveries on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Simply call 236-3361.
Megunticook Market is open Monday - Saturday 7-7 and Sunday 8-6. Call ahead 207-236-3537 for curbside service. Delivery is coordinated through Craft delivery services. Lunch menu, Pizza menu, Bakery, Prepared Dinners and Catering To-Go menus are available every day. Call 207-236-3537 or visit us online at www.megunticookmarket.com.
Subway, Camden. Open 10 a.m.-8 p.m., offering Take-Out through the Subway App (available free through Apple store or Google Play), online ordering at Subway.com, or call 236-4447. Full menu online at Subway.com. Delivery available for business platter orders.
Camden Deli is open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. for curbside, takeout and free delivery in Camden/Rockport with a $10 minimum order. Full breakfast menu remains available until 10:30 a.m.; lunch is served all day, along with our prepared salads and homemade desserts. Call (207)236-8343 to order.
Zoot coffee shop, Elm Street in downtown Camden, is offering front door take-out service every day 7:30 a.m.-12.30 p.m. Coffee, tea and espresso drinks, hot or cold, as well has many baked goods.
Natalie’s Restaurant is offering take out dining and all profits will go to a fund to financially help their staff. It's available between 4 and 7p.m., except for Wednesdays. You can choose to have your Natalie's dinner delivered or opt for curbside pickup. Orders can be placed between 9 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. daily by calling 236-7008. Menus will be posted on Natalie's website, Facebook, and Instagram. For more information visit: https://www.nataliesrestaurant.com/.
The Lincolnville General Store is offering take out and delivery as well as curbside pick-up. Any grocery item can be packed up as well; hours are from 8 to 6 p.m.
Dot’s is offering curbside pick-up and counter take out at Lincolnville Beach Rt 1 207-706-7922.
Cellardoor Winery will open at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and Saturdays with pick-up from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. at 367 Youngtown Road. Call (207) 763-4478 .When ordering wine by email via info@mainewine.com, leave your name and telephone number and they’ll return your call as soon as possible.
Morrill
Morrill General Store Morrill 342-557
Northport
The Stone will offer takeout, curbside pick-up and delivery with Wednesdays being a free delivery day within 10 driving miles.
Port Clyde
The Black Harpoon is open for take-out from 4:30 to 7 p.m.See daily menus on their Facebook page.
Rockport
Nina June is offering take-out and curbside pick-up. Call your order in at 236-8880 or email ninajune24@gmail.com before 1:00 pm. They will have your food packed up and bagged outside the restaurant in the hall on the bench. Take out will be available between 2 and 6:00 pm.
Fresh off the Farm in Rockport offers same-day curbside pickup no minimum and same-day free home delivery $10 minimum within a 30-mile radius.
Graffam Bros Seafood Market, in Rockport, is offering take-out and curbside pick-up. Call ahead at 207-236-8391 211 Union St, Rockport.
Flatbread Company in Rockport is open offering takeout and curbside pick up and delivery through Craft Delivery Service. Located at 399 commercial street Rockport 04856. Phone number - 207-706-4146
Spice Pizzeria, 148 West Street, Rockport, is serving from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m every but closed Mondays. Call 230-9097 for curbside pickups and delivery. Free Deliveries are available in Rockport to Camden, along with online ordering. Spice Pizzeria is a family-run, one household, take-out restaurant.
RAYR is open for curbside or delivery Tuesday through Saturday 10:30 to 5:00 and has beer, wine, and numerous prepared food items, cheeses and specialty foods. 207-230-7009 or jason@rayrwine.com
Rockland
Primo is offering take-out and curbside pick-up. Call 207-596-0770. Pick-up is between 3 to 6 p.m. They'll bring your order right out to your car. Any and all gratuities are being donated to the local food pantry.
Atlantic Baking Co. is offering free delivery within the town of Rockland 11:30 am to 2:30 p.m. and within 10 miles of Rockland after 3 p.m. Call 596-0505 anytime after 7 a.m .to place your orders. Each day between 2:45 and 3 p.m., they will be offering leftover items to those in need. All someone needs to do is bring a bag and come to the bakery at that time.
Main Street Markets is offering take out, curbside pick-up and delivery from Thomaston to Camden (grocery items, prepared foods, hot food specials, cafe menu, staples, etc.). Call 594-8515 or email hello@mainstreetmarkets.com
Ada's Kitchen (pizza, fresh pasta) is offering a delivery service, in addition to their takeout and in-house options. Call 207-593-7735.
Rockland Cafe is offering take-out and curbside pick-up. Call 596-7556.
Cafe Miranda is offering curbside pick up from 12 to 7 p.m. Call 594-2034.
Waterworks Restaurant is offering take-out and curbside pick-up between 12-7 p.m. seven days a week. Call in orders from 11:30 am (for food pick-up at noon), and the last order will be taken at 7 pm (for pick-up by 7:30ish). Call 596-2753.
North beacon Oyster: Update: the restaurant is now offering dine-in service. Call for take-out options. 207-466-9120.
Rock City Coffee Roasters is open Monday through Friday 8 am. to 2 p.m, for take-out and coffee bean pickup through www.rockcitycoffee.com call 594.4123 option 2. Local delivery for coffee beans coming soon.
The Wine Seller, in Rockland, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday, and is offering curbside pickup and delivery only. Deliveries are through its partner Craft Delivery Service. The Wine Cellar has a broad selection of wine, cheese, gourmet foods, and beer. Call us at 207-594-2621 or email us at wine@midcoast.com to place an order. www.thewineseller.biz.
Suzuki’s Sushi Bar, 419 Main Street in Rockland, is offering take-out service Wednesdays through Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m. Please call us at 596-7447 after 3 p.m. to place your order. Special items on the menu; pick up your order inside, or park directly in front and your order will be taken out to you.
Atlantic Baking Company is offering take-out, curbside pick-up and free delivery within the town of Rockland 11:30 am to 2:30 p.m. and within 10 miles of Rockland after 3 p.m. Call 596-0505 anytime after 7 a.m .to place your orders. Each day between 2:45 and 3 p.m., they will be offering leftover items to those in need. All someone needs to do is bring a bag and come to the bakery at that time.
Park Street Laundry and Drycleaners is offering free pick-up and delivery of laundry in their regular delivery areas. Monday-Friday – call 594-9393 for more information or email info@parkstreeetlaundryanddrycleaners.com.
Sidecountry Sports is offering pick up and delivery for bicycle service, repairs and sales within 15 miles of our Rockland location. Sidecountry is also offering curbside drop off and pick up for repairs or purchases by appointment at our Rockland location. All service bikes are sanitized before customer pick up. Open seven days, call 207-701-5100 to make an appointment or to schedule a pickup/delivery. Reservations also available online at www.sidecountrysports.com or by email at shop@sidecountrysports.com.
Domino's Pizza in Rockland; 207-594-9494, dominos.com, is open our regular hours of 10 a.m. to midnight Sunday thru Thursday and 10 a.m. to 2 a.m .,Friday and Saturday. Offering Carryout and Delivery, including Contactless delivery.
Searsmont
Threshers Brewing Co. located in Searsmont Maine is offering pick-up and delivery within a reasonable distance. You can call the tap room 342-2337 or 242-0285 for ordering and pick-up times. You can place online orders at threshersbrewingco.square.site
Searsport
Dino’s Pizza Main Street Searsport
Toziers Family Market Searsport 548-6220
Stockton Springs
Just Barb’s Rt. 1 Stockton 567-3886
Swanville
Swan Lake Grocery Swanville 338-4029
Tenants Harbor
The Quarry Tavern at The East Wind Inn in Tenants Harbor is offering take-out three days a week, Friday - Sunday, 5:00-8:30 p.m. Visit website for full menu at eastwindinn.com. Call 207-372-6366 to place an order.
Union
Four Corner Variety is offering takeout, curbside pick-up, and delivery within seven miles of the store. Call in and place your order between 4 and 7 p.m., 785-2111. If you paying with a debit/credit card, give the information over the phone. If you are paying in cash, they will handle that at pick-up.
Sterlingtown Public House is now open for dine-in service. Weekly menu posted Wednesday’s on Facebook and Instagram. Simply call with your order, pay over the phone, and it will be delivered to your car when you arrive. Call 785-0037.
Waldoboro
Subway 10 a.m.-8 p.m., offering Take-Out through the Subway App (available free through Apple store or Google Play), online ordering at Subway.com, or Phone-in 832-5737. Full menu online at Subway.com. Delivery available for business platter orders.
East Forty Farm Store has barnside pick-up Monday-Saturday 10 a.m to 6 p.m. and Sundays 12 to 5 p.m. In addition to Lakin's Gorges Cheese and farm-raised pork, they are making lasagna and ravioli with handmade pasta and cheese, also cannoli. Availability changes daily. Pre-order at eastfortyfarm.square.site or call Allison at 207-230-4318.
Washington
Washington General Store is delivering and doing curbside pick-up. Mon-Sat 9:30 a.m. till 7 p.m. with curb side pick up available during open hours. Home deliveries 11 a.m. till 6 p.m. each day. Delivering up to 10 miles out and over $25 order is free, under $25 order will have a $5 charge. Any questions, call Sean at 542-9213
Note: if you want your restaurant/bar or service listed, please provide all of the details exactly as you see other listings above and make it easy to cut and paste directly into this article. Be sure to add your phone number and hotlink your Facebook page. Direct your update to news@penbaypilot.com
The humble Maine potato, like most agriculture products, is undergoing its own crisis within a pandemic.
According to a April 18, 2020 press release issued by U.S. Senator Susan Collins: “Maine potato farmers have lost nearly half of their business and could see advance orders for next year’s crop drop by as much as 20 percent due to COVID-19 closures and restrictions on restaurants. To help mitigate these losses, the Maine Delegation sent a letter to USDA, urging the agency to directly purchase Maine potatoes from farmers.”
“Maine produces around 1.6 billion pounds of potatoes a year,” said Maine Potato Board’s Executive Director Donald Flannery. “About 60 percent of Maine’s production goes to food service, which is everything from fast food restaurants to cafeterias to hospitals and what has happened with the closure of commerce is that business has gone away.”
“The amount of money Maine farmers aren’t going to put in their pockets this year is $20-22 million.”
-Donald Flannery, Maine Potato Board
There is no way to recover or repurpose that market, according to Flannery.
“The sheer volume of those outlets is gone,” he said. “Right now, the 2019 crop is still in storage, but the economy won’t get flowing fast enough to use that crop. We’re looking at probably 200 million pounds that will not have a place to go come the first of June.”
Flannery said the lost time, effort, and labor is immeasurable.
“We’re putting twice as much as we can into food banks, but the rest of those millions of pounds will be taken out of storage and disposed of or to compost,” he said.
And he isn’t optimistic that the repercussions from the Covid-19 shut down will resolve next year.
“Financially, as far as producers go, it will affect them into the 2021-2022 crop,” he said.
Maine Potato Week started in 1918
In an ironic cyclical turn of events, Mainers were being encouraged by the state just over 100 years ago to eat more potatoes as well at this time of year.
During World War I, wheat was rationed as bread made from the wheat flour was being sent to American and Allied troops abroad. April 28, 1918 kicked off “Maine Potato Week,” a campaign to encourage Mainers to eat potatoes instead.
Campaign slogans included: “Every potato you eat is a bullet fired point blank at a made-in-Germany peace.”
How Can We Support the Industry? Eat More Spuds and Drink Vodka
The potato is the second most-consumed food in the United States, with about one-third (34%) of its production turned into frozen foods such as french fries, tater tots, hash browns and home fries and 28% supplied to the fresh market.
The good news, according to Flannery, is that the retail side of business is still viable because people are buying Maine potatoes and bringing them home to cook.
McCain Foods USA is one of the largest frozen potato operations on the East Coast.
To encourage people to buy Maine brands, Flannery suggested, “When you go shopping, look at the bottom of the bag of potatoes for the ‘packed by’ label and check that it’s a Maine town.”
Cold River Vodka is a producer of handcrafted Maine potato vodka and spirits.
Chris Dowe, owner and master distiller said that the Covid-19 crisis has not affected the sourcing of potatoes because his business partner owns Green Thumb Farms in Fryeburg, which produces most of the culls (not tablestock) potatoes used in the vodka.
When Green Thumb runs out, they source from The County. About a million pounds are used to make the vodka per year.
“On the other hand, our sales have been affected due to restaurants and bars being shut down,” he said.
Like a lot of smaller farms, Green Thumb is also impacted by its halted sales to Sysco, a major supplier to restaurants.
So pour a shot of potato vodka, while you toss some McCain curly fries in the air fryer. While we can’t save our Maine industries, our grocery choices and purchasing power goes a long way to supporting them.
UNION—Sarah Hewitt, and her business partner, Graham Raymond, owners of the Victory Hemp LLC, are like all farmers struggling under the Covid-19 crisis, these days. Earlier this month, the USDA announced a federal $19 billion immediate relief program aimed at farmers and ranchers. Prior to that farmers had been cut out of the stimulus packages. Hewitt took a look at their 10-acre farm and wondered what they were going to do with it. Then she had an idea:
“We’ve been growing hemp at this property for two years and cultivate between four and seven acres at any given time,” she said. “The hemp market is kind of floundering due to the fact that it’s a new industry and trying to balance itself out. We were interested in diversifying anyway, but this [the Covid-19 crisis] made it all the more important to do so.”
Typically they’d grow hemp in mid-May through mid-October.
“We’re going ahead and planting hemp seeds anyway,” she said.
But this summer, they might be going back to old-fashioned farming.
Hewitt posted on Facebook’s Midcoast Message Board page to gauge the community’s interest in offering a part of their land for a public Victory Garden where people can get outside and yet remain an acceptable social distance from others, while getting some good garden therapy and increasing food security.
“We wanted to engage with the community more in general,” she said of her offer.
Milpa garden growing. Photo courtesy Green Cover Seed (greencoverseed.com)
Victory Gardens were food gardens of vegetables, fruits, and herbs planted at private residences and public parks in the United States during World War I and II. They are making a comeback during the pandemic with seed supply companies such as W. Atlee Burpee & Co. and Johnny's Selected Seeds reporting their sales are “through the roof.”
“We notice that people’s sense of security is tied into access to food and resources so that was part of the impetus to our idea,” said Hewitt. “Seeing this experience of isolation that we’re all going through during this time has really brought to light that we do need each other.”
Maine Land Share Project
All over Maine this collaborative project seeks to connect those who wish to grow their own food (who don’t have the land) with those who have the land available to offer.
By filling out a questionnaire, they will make a match.
Hewitt and Raymond have been noodling around a couple of options.
One idea is to offer a plot of their land to people who want to bring their own seeds and tools and pay a nominal fee for essentially renting the plot for the season.
“We don’t have a lot of money to pay people to tend to the farm right now at this time, so that’s one possibility, although what we’re getting for feedback is a lot of people just don’t know how to grow food from seed,” she said.
The other version is for Hewitt and Raymond to start a giant vegetable garden that people can come and work on in as a time bank in exchange for vegetables at harvest. Currently, they are calling that endeavor Heart 2 Harvest and have created a Facebook page for it as the concept evolves.
“That way people who don’t have money can put in time and effort and people who do have money are welcome to contribute to support the project,” she said. “And it will teach people how to grow and get them outside doing an activity that still stays an acceptable social distance apart.”
Another tangent to that idea would be to create some sort of CSA around the bounty. “We could get paid upfront and cover some costs of labor, tools, and seeds and at the end of the season, they’d get a share of storage crops,” she added.
Still, a third option is to grow a section of the field called a Milpa Garden, which Hewitt explained was a traditional Mezo-American practice where people would clear a portion of the forest and scatter seeds.
“It would come up as this hodgepodge of corns, beans, and squash, the ‘three sisters’ essentially, a wild forage situation.”
“Because we don’t have a lot of labor, this might be the easiest option, and whatever is leftover, we could donate to food pantries,” she said.
Right now, Hewitt’s suggestions are still in the idea phase and she’s looking for more feedback from the public. The best way to reach her is by email: victoryhempco@gmail.com
Stay tuned as we follow this story through the summer.
Taking a grassroots approach to solving economic shortfalls during Covid-19’s lockdown in April, Midcoast’s community—and those who love Maine from afar—have come together to pledge financial support to the restaurants, nonprofit organizations, inns, small and businesses that keep the local economy’s gears humming.
An idea that came out of a conversation between software developer and cofounder of the Steel House in Rockland, Nathan Davis and his friend, Paul Coster, on how to buy credit from businesses to keep them afloat has turned into a momentum. Opportunity Knox, an online platform, took shape in the first week of April.
“We just wanted to put all of the businesses who are offering gift certificates and those that need donations all in one place,” said Davis. “People make a purchase by PayPal and it’s a ‘one-stop shopping’ option to support a number of businesses with one payment.”
At the time of this article, nearly 70 essential and nonessential businesses have signed up under the umbrella of Opportunity Knox, including 18 nonprofits and 12 restaurants. There is no cost involved in signing up. In nearly three weeks, the website has generated $5,750 in pre-paid gift certificates and donations via nearly 80 transactions.
The building and marketing of the website have been entirely on a volunteer basis.
By Location, or Business, choose a business and read what they need the most help with.
Decide how much you want to pay in the box above. For example, say you want to spend $100. Use the sliders under each organization’s profile to reach $50.
Each contribution ends up being either a gift certificate you can redeem later or a donation; you will receive a receipt for each to verify your purchase.
Vanessa Santarelli, owner of Your Maine Concierge, is handling the public outreach side of the website.
“We’re thrilled that the community has been incredibly supportive,” she said. “Certainly there’s tons of local and statewide support, but we also know from the numbers that visitors from away who love our restaurants, galleries, shops and nonprofits have also contributed to help to support the businesses they want to see open when they can come back.”
The website is encouraging organizations and businesses to self-add, along with a writeup, explaining what the business is going through and where it needs the most support.
“When you start to read what each business needs, it’s not just this generic description, it’s how they are handling the Covid-19 crisis from their perspective,” said Davis.
The community effort of Opportunity Knox has come at a time when many small businesses in Maine have felt hung out to dry. The initial federal $350 billion PayCheck Protection Program (PPP) was supposed to help small employers harmed by the Covid-19 crisis, but ran out of money in two weeks.
Maine has 142,000 small businesses. Of those, Portland Press Herald reported that nearly 17,000 Maine businesses were able to secure loans, but many more felt they were passed over in favor of larger corporations and chain restaurants who took advantage of the rules of the loan.
Even as the White House and Congress work to pass another bailout package, local businesses can’t afford to wait and hope for the best.
“We’ve gotten lots of positive feedback from the businesses who’ve signed up when they get the notice someone has bought a gift certificate or donated for future use,” said Santarelli. “Given the fact that the federal programs, while they were well-intended, were not necessarily having immediate benefits that are necessary to keep these businesses afloat. Local efforts like this are critical and we’re going to do everything we can to play a small but important role in supporting each other.”
Santarelli said that each business on the website specifies in its description whether the pledge is a donation or buys a gift certificate to the business’s goods or services.
“You can buy now, reap the benefits later,” she said. “You’ll get a receipt of your payment and the business owner will as well, so you both have an electronic copy of payment. The businesses will connect with the purchaser on further details. It’s understood by the businesses participating that once they’re open again those receipts will be able to redeemed.”
When Maine schools closed in mid-March due to COVID-19, it was supposed to be temporary with schools switching to a remote learning option for only two weeks. Gov. Mills’ stay-at-home order then extended that date until April 30.
On April 8, the deadline changed again, when Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin recommended all Maine schools cancel in-person classes for the remainder of the year and rely on online learning instead.
This might be a workable solution for many households, but only if families have an internet connection at home.
According to a 2018 U.S. Census study, 80 percent of Maine households had a broadband internet connection. That leaves some 70,000 Maine households without Internet access, according to the United States Census Bureau from a 2018 American Community Survey.
“Children without connectivity are at risk of not only being unable to complete their homework during this pandemic, but being unable to continue their overall education,” wrote Senator Angus King and colleagues in a March 23 letter to Congress.
Maine State Librarian James Ritter said Maine was suddenly overwhelmed by the immediate need for internet access for all.
“We’ve been talking about the Digital Divide for a very long time in Maine and now we got hit with a situation, where all at once, for an extended period of time, we need to solve the problem of inadequate internet access,” said Ritter.
The state needed an immediate solution. That’s where Maine’s libraries, K-12 schools, the University of Maine System and a handful of internet providers stepped up to offer free WiFi. NetworkMaine started a “Study From Car” Initiative (see sidebar) using a wireless initiative for schools and libraries to open their wireless connection outside the building to the public, while the University of Maine opened wireless access to multiple Campus and Center parking lot locations. In the Midcoast, that includes the UMA Rockland Center (back parking lot) and the Hutchinson Center in Belfast.
"It is not just K-12 students needing Internet access,” said Jeff Letourneau, executive director of NetworkMaine. “It is students of all ages and grade levels that find themselves struggling to complete their school year because they do not have Internet access at home. The Study From Car Initiative attempts to provide an immediate option, but Maine needs to get serious about solving its broadband problems."
“It’s a complete triage approach,” said Ritter. “You’re seeing companies and municipalities giving you unlimited data, turn a library parking lot into an Internet hotspot and basically taking that initiative, which is terrific. The Maine School Library Network (MSLN) is offering connectivity through more than 900 schools and libraries and in some rural communities. That’s why we have said to anyone with an MSLN connection: ‘Open up your WiFi; don’t password restrict it. Create a guest network and throw that signal out for people to be able to park in your parking lot and access the internet. While it’s not ideal for parents to try to be teaching their kids in cars—what kid wants to do homework in a car? It’s something, better than nothing.”
“There are about 600-plus schools on this MSLN network that have this high-speed connection that have, in fact, opened their WiFi so people can drive up to the school, that may not be on this map,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is get schools and libraries to self-identify on this map, so that more may join.”
“Open up your WiFi; don’t password-restrict it. Create a guest network and throw that signal out for people to be able to park in your parking lot and access the internet.”
—Maine State Librarian, James Ritter
Some rural libraries are the only hotspot locations for the internet connection, yet, not all are yet participating.
“Libraries in the MSLN are receiving a publicly paid-for internet connection and we know some libraries create a password, but many do not,” said Ritter. “What we’re trying to encourage them to do is contact us so we can show them how to do this. We hold weekly Zoom meetings for any interested libraries or staff who are interested in attending. This is not the time to restrict access.”
Right now, this is the best that the state can offer in terms of a temporary solution.
If your library or school wants to participate in this internet hotspot initiative, drop an email to: NOC@maine.edu or fill out this form For those older libraries that need help boosting their signals past the physical boundaries of library walls, see this helpful tip.
ROCKLAND—An article found in the October 4, 1918 issue of Courier-Gazette reflects an eerie similarity to what Midcoast citizens are reading daily from their local newspapers in the spring of 2020. The title of that story was: “Situation in Rockland.” The subhead read: “Physicians report 250 cases of influenza, mostly mild ones—three deaths—schools, churches, theatres, etc. are ordered closed.”
In 1918, the “situation” in Rockland was happening all over the state as health commissioners were urging mayors to close public spaces to prevent the spread of what was then called “Spanish influenza” or “the grippe.” Nurses were making gauze masks and authorities were urging the halting of all “unnecessary travel.”
It was only a matter of time before the disease infiltrated the Midcoast. On Friday, October 11, the Camden Congregational Church was converted into a hospital and on Friday, October 18, the Narragansett Hotel, long popular with train travelers, was the area’s first hotel converted into a temporary hospital, in response to the state prison in Thomaston having reported 80 cases of influenza with eight deaths.
Friday, October 18, 1918
“The State Prison in Thomaston reports 80 cases of influenza with eight deaths. In order to meet the unusual conditions arising from the influenza epidemic in Rockland, the Narragansett Hotel has been opened as an emergency hospital, for the care of all classes and creeds, and without reference to financial circumstances.”
Fast forward more than 100 hundred years later and the Covid-19 pandemic has once, again, deeply impacted the hotel industry. On April 3, Gov. Mills issued an Executive Order that “also suspends lodging operations, including hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, inns, and short-term rentals” with the exception of Essential Business and Operations.
And once again, history repeats itself as hotels and other lodging properties adjust their business models to shelter people directly affected by a pandemic.
Greg Dugal, Director of Government Affairs of Hospitality Maine, a trade group that represents the hospitality industry, said: “A small amount of branded and independent properties are remaining open to essential workers from Presque Isle down to Scarborough, everyone from health care workers to truck drivers. Basically the Order limits who can stay in a hotel, but at the end of the day, these are the people who most need a place to stay.”
The Clarion Hotel in Portland per WGME is donating 50 rooms per night for working medical staff at Maine Medical Center and Mercy Hospital.
Dugal also said that the Acadia Hotel Downtown in Bar Harbor announced they are accepting essential health care workers at no cost through April 30.
In the Midcoast, only a handful of hotels are open to essential workers and other vulnerable populations directly impacted by Covid-19.
The Penobscot Bay Chamber of Commerce has a “Who’s Open” button on their website, naming eight hotels, motels and inns still open under the stipulations of the Executive Order.
There are different reasons why people still need to leave their homes and travel. Besides essential workers such as traveling health care workers and those in the transportation industry, there are vulnerable populations affected by the state’s Executive Orders, including children who need emergency placements, people at risk of domestic violence, and homeless populations. “These eight properties that we’re aware of are open and will continue to be open under the Executive Order,” said the Chamber’s Executive Director Tom Peaco. “Properties could choose to open as quarantine facilities too if they wanted to. Some are more comfortable with that than others.”
In the middle of writing this story, one more wrinkle to the Executive Order came in the form of an April 9-10 snowstorm that blanketed the state, took out numerous trees and left some 250,000 households without power.
“As a result of that storm, we now have a lot of Central Maine Power line workers from out of state trying to get people back online with power,” said Peaco. “As they are also essential workers who need a place to stay, we now have several more properties not on that [Chamber] list who opened back up just to accommodate them. And not only that, we also have local people who are without power for a certain amount of time who need a place to stay, which is permitted under the provision of that Executive Order.”
In the larger scope of things, not being able to celebrate your birthday while social distancing isn’t as important as what is going on in the front lines. But, for most children and teens, birthdays are highly anticipated moments of their lives. For those looking forward to a birthday or a milestone celebration while the state is prohibiting group gatherings, the disappointment and frustration of not being able to have friends and family surrounding them are real.
For Lyla Tibbetts, who turned 11 on April 1, the day before Gov. Mills “Healthy At Home” mandate took effect, a birthday party was out of the question.
“There is a lot weighing on our minds as parents and on our children’s minds with the Covid-19 pandemic,” said her mother, Christina Tibbetts. “As we educate our children on the challenging times our world is going through and the importance of distancing, they understand to a degree, but are saddened where most of their life is a social adventure. At 10, turning 11 my daughter is at an important stage where her friendships mean so much to her. So with her birthday nearing we had discussed postponing our family gathering with immediate family to possibly the summer, as well as having a friend get together. You could see instantly her disappointment. yet she understood, due to the situation. As a mom, you think: ‘How can we show our kids you mean everything to us and are not forgotten even in our stressful times in life?’”
Thinking outside the box, Tibbets had another idea.
“I reached out last minute on Facebook, asking if friends and the community if they would like to just drive by our house, honking and waving to let my precious girl know she is celebrated and loved,” said Tibbetts. “Within moments, I had some of my coworkers reaching out to friends for my daughter’s surprise. A neighbor down the road with two girls of her own that are friends with my kids, came first thing in the morning and decorated the end of our driveway with sidewalk chalk and ribbons, paper and flowers!”
The Camden family even recruited the Camden Fire Department in their plans, so that a fire truck was part of the parade.
“We had about 15 cars gather up the street,” said Tibbetts. “It put a very surprised look on my daughter’s face, as one by one, cars came honking down our street. Lyla was speechless for the first time I can even think. At the end of the parade, I could see she was fighting back tears. It pulls at your heartstrings when you know how much the small acts of kindness by others makes such an impact on our lives. My daughter told me numerous times throughout our day that it was the best birthday ever.”
Here are some more creative ways to pull off a celebration while still maintaining social distance.
Alternative birthday ideas
A Scavenger Hunt with presents set throughout the neighborhood or in a large open outdoor space.
A half-birthday celebration scheduled six months out with a small celebration on the actual birthday and the promise of a big party on the half-birthday.
A virtual surprise party via Facebook Live, Google Hangouts, Skype or Zoom with cake, presents and greetings from friends and family all over the country. For teens, organize on the Houseparty app.
A social media request for birthday cards and greetings to be sent to your mailbox. This idea is modeled after a mom’s plea on social media to ask strangers to send her son cards went viral. For those who’d prefer a no-contact way, the alternative is to ask for e-cards and iPad drawings.
Turn your living room into a dine-in theater with a favorite take-out dish and a movie kids can watching simultaneously and comment on with friends, such as Netflix Party a Chrome extension for watching Netflix remotely.
For tweens and teens, do a Reverse Parade and plan out a route to drive your child past friends’ houses that are decorated outside and then to a favorite outdoor spot to have a picnic.
For young people celebrating a milestone 21st birthday, turn a garage or shed into a makeshift nightclub, as this mom did for her son.
If you have alternative ideas on how to celebrate a child’s birthday, please let Penobscot Bay Pilot know on our social media channels.
Well, it appears we have four more weekends to shelter at home and if you’re like me, stress eating and carb-loading like you’re preparing for a half marathon, it might be time to check out some of the virtual fitness sessions and free dance classes popping up all over the ‘Net. Taking a stroll in the outdoors is still allowable under the latest state order, so be sure to follow the guidelines: Advice to heed if you don’t want to see your favorite outdoor areas close down
Dancing Alone Together
Every day there is some kind of dance class all over the world that is being live-streamed while most of America is on lock-down. This is a treasure trove of online classes every day of the week (many of them free) from Beginner Hip Hop to Ballet—more than 13 forms of dance. Platforms range from Instagram Live to Zoom. FMI: dancingalonetogether.org/classes
Fitness From Your Living Room
Photo courtesy MetroCreative
OrangeTheory is offering daily at-home workouts using whatever weights you can improvise around the house. NYC’s leading HIIT studio, Fhitting Room is offering 30 days complimentary to their digital subscription service: Fhitting Room On Demand. Bandier, a women activewear shop, is offering Instagram Live workoutsevery day at 4 p.m. EST that can be done at home.
Virtual Game Night
Photo courtesy MetroCreative
You’ve heard me mention Zoom multiple times in the last couple of Weekend Quarantine columns (no I don’t own stock in the company) well, it’s also a great platform to play virtual board games such as Pictionary or card games, including a virtual version of Cards Against Humanity (called Remote Insensitivity) with your friends and family. Home, alone and bored? Boardgamearena allows you to play a bunch of board games, card games, and backgammon with other players around the world for free. You can play with friends in real-time, or turn-based (you are notified when it is your turn.)
Read To Your Heart’s Content
Photo courtesy MetroCreative
Openlibrary.org is a vast online library for the world. Always wanted to read that 19th-century classic? Now's the time. Browse by subject and genre. Manybooks.net has 50,000 free ebook titles in every genre along with Editor’s Choices. Audible just made hundreds of free audiobook titles available free during the coronavirus shut down and while the service is geared toward kids and teens, there is also a great literary classics section and fairy and folk tales section open for adults Just visit stories.audible.com from any web browser to get started. No log-ins, credit card or passwords needed.
Quarantine Karaoke
Photo courtesy Quarantine Karaoke
Mainer Joe Meyers from Brewer created a public Facebook group called Quarantine Karaoke, earlier this month, where people can upload videos of themselves singing and watch others. The page has since amassed 455K followers. “The only rules,”’ he wrote on the Facebook page, “are to be kind to one another and have fun.” For many people stuck at home during their birthdays in March and April, this group is providing some much-needed joy and celebration.
My past Weekend Quarantine columns all contain resources that can be utilized all month.
