LINCOLNVILLE CENTER—Open since August, The Red Cottage, a crimson farmhouse store on 258 Main Street, is the latest business to add to the vitality of tiny Lincolnville Center. Co-owned by Janis Kay and her husband, Tom Sadowski, the home style store is marked by pops of red color everywhere—from the siding of the 1800s farmhouse to the red scooter under a red umbrella out front, to the red swing under the tree and a red watering can next to bountiful fall flowers.

Kay has been in the retail business for more than 50 years and it shows with her aesthetic inside the small two-story shop. Three rooms are appointed with a variety of items for the home and the garden.

“I had my first shop when I was 20,” she said. The one-bedroom house was renovated by her husband Tom, before they opened.

“We’re still renovating the back of the house, which will give us more room to expand to another room when done,” she said. “And next year, we’ll have an outdoor section.”

Kay offers linens, candles, clothing, bedding, ceramics, plants, botanical flowers, some kitchenware and gardening accessories, among other carefully selected items she has chosen from her travels.

“I specialize in textiles and items that enhance your home,” she said.

Right now, her decor is geared toward autumn harvest, but she said she will change the entire aesthetic, seasonally, once the holiday season begins.

Kay, who said she is retired, has the store open four days a week (Wed-Sat 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.) The local word-of-mouth has already driven many in town to check it out.

Their permanent sign is still in the works.

“I just want people to realize we’re in Lincolnville Center, not Lincolnville Beach,” she said.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND—When it comes to starting and running a business in Maine, Tabitha Blake Perry, owner of Crush Distributors, in Yarmouth, takes a look back on her humble beginnings and how far she’s come. She spoke Sept. 18 at the Midcoast Women’s Storyteller Series in Rockland.

Inspiration

Born in Maine, Tabitha Blake Perry moved to California in her 20s to live in California’s wine county, and there, worked every aspect of the job from production to sales.

While in Napa, she began working for a successful distribution company, McNeil Wines, a move that allowed her to career to flourish as she worked throughout Northern California, establishing relationships with professionals in all facets of the industry.

One such connection was her neighbor, Marc Imbert, who happened to take over his family’s winery in Corsica and introduced Blake Perry to several producers in the Languedoc Region in France. During that time, she rose to be the company’s top sales representative.

All of this education about the industry was getting stored away for something bigger—but she didn’t know it yet.

When she moved back to Maine in 2008 to be closer to her family, she got a job at Back Bay Grill in Portland as a server.

“I sold wine in California and wanted to live in Maine, so I felt as though I had to make it work,” she said. “The year when I moved back East, we were in a recession. Nobody was hiring, so I decided it was only fitting that I use some of the relationships that I had in California to sell wine for myself in my home state.”

Challenges

During her first year as a wine rep of her own newly formed company, Blake Perry did everything from storing the wine at a storage facility to delivering wine out of the trunk of her car. Tasting wines and choosing them selectively was her first priority.

“We choose wines with a sense of place, from the vineyard to the shelf, and we want to be confident that we are supporting families,” she said. “I select wines that truly speak to where they are from and the people who put their hearts in to them.”

Little did she know, she was in exactly the right place at the right time in the right industry.

Today, there are nearly 21 wineries across the state of Maine, comprising a list that includes mead makers, as well as cideries. This relatively young and growing industry has burgeoned over the last 20 years and Blake Perry’s company has grown right along with it. Her company is predominately female and represents a lot of female wine producers, as well as producers from all over the world.

Her biggest obstacle is to stop herself from “trying to do it all”— something all mothers with careers know all too well.

“Balancing motherhood with a career is my biggest challenge,” she said. “Knowing when it is time to turn off the computer and the phone and just be 100% present — I still struggle with that, because I could work around the clock. However, my boys are 3 and 5, I want to enjoy them as much as possible.”

Another challenge comes from being the female owner of a company in an industry that has been historically male.

“I was in Europe on a buyer’s trip,” she recalled.  “I was tasting at a winery and I loved all their wines so much, I was eager to sell them in Maine. I openly said in our tasting group: ‘These wines are truly special. I love them and think we can do really well with them in Maine.’ The winemaker looked at me and said, ‘That is great; please be sure to tell your boss.’”

Today, Crush Distributors offers more than 400 wine brands and has seven sales reps all over the state, a feat that speaks to the perseverance of a micro-business into a full-fledged company. With Maine growing concurrently as one of the best foodie destinations in the nation, there is no shortage of good wine to go with it.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN—The little garage sitting next to The Smoothie Shack at 46 Elm Street became available recently when friends and business partners Ariela Kuh and Molly O’Rourke each saw her own vision of how it could be used. The new business, both small bar/restaurant and art showroom, is called Betty Forever,  inspired by a collaborative exhibition they both had at The Steel House, Rockland in 2018.

The name is an homage to the artist Betty Woodman. 

On Saturday, September 15, the garage doors rolled up in a soft opening with grey light washing in over tables of Kuh’s artfully arranged ceramic ware, ANK Ceramics.

Kuh moved her studio to the back of the garage, where she works full time running her ceramic business. A small annex near the entrance serves as a permanent showroom for her work.

Meanwhile, O’Rourke has plans for the open, reverberant space as a small bar/restaurant and event space. They first had to renovate the garage with a new paint scheme, a built in bar with wine refrigerators and a small functional kitchen hidden by a demi wall.

“Ariela and I are good friends and we’ve each worked in the art and food worlds,” said O’Rourke. “We were looking for a flexible, open downtown space, so when we got word of the garage coming up for rent, we knew this was the right spot.”

“Personally I envision the space as a multi-faceted art and food venue geared toward our local friends and community,” she said.

“I currently run my own event design and planning business, so I'm excited to be able to make the space available for private events such as birthdays, gatherings, rehearsal dinners, and work functions,” said O’Rourke. “The venue will also be open as a bar/restaurant a few nights a week. I hope it will fill a nice little niche in the local Camden scene.”

The event space has the capacity of 48 people. The acoustics are very good within the space too, lending itself to more artist events in the future. Kuh and O’Rourke recently hosted a book launch party for the release of Echo Mask, a photo book created by local photographer and friend Jonathan Levitt.  

“We’re going to be having a series of openings so stay in touch with us on our website or Instagram page,” said O’Rourke.

For more information visit: bettyforever.com / @bettyforevermaine on Instagram

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

As we wind down from beautiful 70-degree days into cooler 60-degree days, hints of color are appearing on trees as Mother Nature whips out her paint-by-numbers. Checking the old Fall Foliage Report, here’s a rundown on where to take a road trip in the coming weeks.

“Typically, northern Maine (Zones 6 and 7) reaches peak conditions the last week of September into the first week of October. The rest of the states progression of color will start occurring from north to south in mid-October. Coastal Maine typically reaches peak conditions mid-to-late October.”

Maine Highlands

Head up through Bangor to find Etna Orchard to start, to Conant Apple Orchards. With more than 1,000 apple trees and 20 varieties, this family-owned farm makes their own candied apples and fresh cider as well. Then it’s a liesurely hour-drive up back roads to get to Turning Page Farm, a microbrewery in Monson. If you love farms in the fall, this is a two-fer, as in not only will you get to enjoy a small batch brew, you’ll get some goats to gander while doing so. They’ve got artisanal goat cheese and milk as well as two microbrews on draft, a red ale and a pale ale.

Down East and Acadia

Roberts’ Orchard is a small, family-owned and operated apple orchard located in Poland. As you wind your way up to Down East, stop off the beaten path first to pick your own apples (on a cash and carry basis) and pick up some of the hand-pressed apple cider at the packing house storefront before picking up Route 1 over to Strong Brewing Co. in Sedgwick.

Like so many breweries in Maine, Strong brewing Co. all started with leaving the corporate life combined with serious home brewing hobby. In 2012, they started Maine’s first and the nation’s third “community supported brewery (CSA) by selling shares. Try the Bluff Head, an American Brown Ale named for a nearby beautiful trail with a 500-foot bluff.

Kennebec Valley

Sandy River Apples in Mercer, is nestled along the banks of the Sandy River, and this orchard, which produces more than 40 varieties of apples, is now open seven days a week to pick your own or grab a bag of already picked. This orchard was established in 1852 and the Fenton family has run it ever since.

After that, a short hop over to Skowhegan will bring you to Bigelow Brewing Co. Their tasting room offers locally sourced brews and wood fired pizzas. Try the Jailbreak Chili stout for a seasonal brew with a kick.

Want to see more brew and apple road trips? See our related story from 2018: Three leaf-peeping, apple-picking brew-tasting road trips for October

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST— Swanville filmmaker and artist Chris Battaglia had a bit of a “Field of Dreams” epiphany in 2017.  Working as a documentary filmmaker aboard two-month canoe expedition down the Mississippi River, he got to thinking. Why not form his own community on a canoe expedition and film it? And what better, than a pack of artists doing a canoe expedition in Maine?

It took several years for his “If you build it, they will come” vision to gel, and, after a series of grant applications, he finally had his dream in the form of a 10-day canoe trip from Bangor to Brooklin, Maine.

Deeming the social experiment “The Village Canoe,” Battaglia opened his vision to an international audience to apply to live, work and create upon two canoes for a summer week in Maine. Everyone would pull his or her weight, camp at night, and use the experience to foment creativity. And at the end, they would put on a multi-venue exhibition. 

“While I loved the idea of continuing to work on the Mississippi in the future, I live in Maine and wanted to make Maine the focus,” he said. “Being in a boat was the most creative I’ve ever been and I wanted to recreate that experience in Maine. Connecting people is what I love to do.”

Out of more than 30 artists who applied from around the world, Battaglia and a jury of three, chose and organized a group of 10 artists to be on the crew. Basically, it was an artist’s residency on the water, on the move.

“We had such an overwhelming response that we decided instead of six artists, which was our original intention, we’d go up to 10 artists, adding a second canoe,” he said.

The Kindling Fund in Portland provided the much-needed grant for the momentum. Originally, Battaglia wanted to build his own 30-foot canoe, but practicality required him to hire two canoes from The Penobscot Riverkeepers, each around 30-feet, for the initial voyage, along with a Registered Maine Guide.  Each participant was awarded a modest stipend. The canoes were loaded up with locally-sourced food, camping gear, (supplied by The Apprentice Shop, Hurricane Island Outward Bound, Maine Sport Outfitters and Apeiron Expeditions) paddles, and of course, each participant’s artist supplies.

The chosen applicants came down to eight women and two men, including Battaglia.

“One woman came from the Outer Hebrides in Scotland,” he said. “One woman came from Virginia. Three of the artists came from Massachusetts and the rest were from Maine. And the ages ranged from 20 to mid-40s. It skewed young, but an incredibly mature group of people. I felt that this group was really empathic and communicative. I think the expedition sort of self-selected this type of person.”

On August 23, all of the artists met at Nibezun, the Native-led organization committed to preserving and restoring Wabanaki traditions, slightly north of Old Town and began the trip with a get-to-know-you dinner. Early, the next morning, they set off on The Penobscot River in Brewer.

As with every maiden voyage into the unknown, there were challenges and triumphs.

“The challenges were mostly internal, being away from loved ones or home, but we all camped every night, assisted in the paddling, the chores,” said Battaglia. “We had this democratic summit on the second day, which ended up being a lot of group decision-making and an intense dialogue that positively shaped the group dynamics for the rest of the trip.”

For Battaglia, the main challenge was that he’d never done this kind of thing before and had to figure out not only how to lead the logistics of the trip as well as run a simultaneous artist’s program. Some of the participants would take photographs or notes while paddling during the day. The focus much of the day, was on navigation, communicating, and the logistics of the outdoor trip.  Each night, when they set up camp, the artists had downtime to create.

“People got out their watercolors; painting, drawing, started doing illustrations, photography, fiber arts, art with found materials,” he said.

At the point where The Penobscot River met the Penobscot Bay, the canoes took them to ocean-front islands as well. The group  camped each night on islands stewarded by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and the Maine Island Trail Association.

Now that the trip has concluded, the artists have all gone back home and have begun work on an art exhibition that will take place in Belfast from September 27 to 29. For more information visit: The Village Canoe.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN—If you’re seeing spots this week, it’s no coincidence. International Dot Day kicked off September 15 and spans the entire week. Now in its 10th anniversary, Dot Day marks “a global celebration of creativity, courage and collaboration, that began when Iowa teacher Terry Shay introduced his classroom to Peter H. Reynolds’ book The Dot on September 15, 2009,” according to the website.

What’s so special about a dot? It’s a symbol and a metaphor for Reynolds’ story “of a girl who begins a journey of self-discovery after a caring teacher challenges her to ‘make her mark.’”

Shay founded International Dot Day in 2009 and more than 16 million people in 182 countries have found inspiration in this grassroots movement to focus on their creative potential and personal goals in order to “make a mark” on the world.

Educators at Camden Middle School are planning #Dot Day on Thursday, September 19.

“Every year at the beginning of the school year CRMS joins people from all over the world to celebrate Dot Day,” said Middle School teacher Kristen Anderson. “Our students and staff create a goal that they will try to achieve over the course of the school year. Last year the students focused their goal around kindness. This year the focus is on grit. Students will pick something they are passionate about, create a plan, and stick with it through frustrations and failure.”

See video.

Camden Public Library also got into the spirit of #Dot Day calling for an exhibit for local artists and creators early this month. Inspired by artist Yayoi Kusama, a contemporary artist known for her sculpture and installations, the library hosted a mini exhibition of dot-covered items in the Rotunda on September 16.

Kusama’s work ranged from child-like innocence to the provocative. Her 2011installation, “Obliteration Room,” invited members of the public to decorate a giant white room, and everything in it, with colorful dot stickers. In the counter culture movement of the 1960s, she organized a public human installation/performance art featuring naked party goers she painted in polka dots. This, and her inventive art earned her the moniker “The Priestess of Polka Dots.” It becomes obvious what she struggled with just to be true to her nature, that Kusana was brave enough to make her own mark in an era where it wasn’t considered “respectable” for a woman to be a contemporary artist.

Rockland Public Library also hosted its own version of “Dot Day” the second week of September with Children’s Librarian Katie Drago. One session involved “Dot Day” story time for pre-schoolers and another, a craft session for all ages.

“We used Q-tips to paint dots on rocks in sort of a mandala patterns to make them nice and dotty,” said Drago. “We talked about the meaning of Dot Day — how it’s all about being creative no matter how you feel and to remove self doubt. It’s the backbone of my Creative Art Crew session I host once a month at the library. It’s about letting yourself be creative. You don’t have to ‘feel like an artist’ to participate.”

Those who want to share what is inspiring them this week can upload their work to thedotclub.org/dotday/

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST—Penobscot Falls is not a real town in Maine, but it is very much a real place in the latest 3-D artwork of artist Eric Green. It’s a train set town set in 1/48th scale surrounded by buildings, tiny people, rural settings and of course, electric trains.  It was constructed in a converted-attic room on the third floor of Green’s house in Belfast. Measuring nearly 14 feet across and taking up half the room, the mill town meets the ocean.

“The town motto is ‘A drinking town with a fishing problem,’ ” said Green.

Sprawling under tracks, every single building and tiny figurine, every piece of landscape and water feature have been made by hand by Green, a process that has taken three years.

“It’s only a quarter of the way done,” he said.

His plans include lengthening the track and carving tunnels through the walls of the house so that the train can circumnavigate several rooms on the attic floor. So, it will never leave the confines of this house; if anything, it will morph into the bones of the house. Very few people will be lucky enough to see this train set in person.

This isn’t just a train set; this is Green’s childhood world set in 1956, the year Green was born, on a day in October.  The trees are all turning muted yellow and orange colors. Having grown up in a mill town in Maine, Green recreated in miniature the down-and-out the buildings, the depressive atmosphere of a working town which doesn’t know that the primary engine that runs it–the mills– will eventually die out.

“This is the kind of world I grew up in, that I feel so comfortable in,” he said.

“From about the late 1920s and the 1960s there was this beautiful train equipment,” said Green. “The steam engines were masterpieces.”

In this town runs historically accurate Boston & Maine (B&M) trains, box cars, and passenger cars as they hum through tunnels and above water features on both two-foot gauge tracks which interchange with standard gauge tracks.

“I’ve always loved trains, but this place reminds me of my dad when we’d drive through the town underneath the tracks and get fresh bread from a tiny bakery, really early in the morning, when he was still sober,” said Green.

While he admits his relationship with his father was scarred, this train set and town is a tribute to the good times they had together. A column he wrote for PenBay Pilot provides much more context to he and his father’s shared hobby of building models.

“I started building train sets when I was seven years old,” he said.

It has been a lifelong hobby that he still derives deep satisfaction from.

“There are train nuts, people obsessed with trains and I think I know why,” he said. “When you’ve had a chaotic childhood, there is something calming to the relative levelness and predictability of those train tracks.  I really feel good when I’m riding on railroad tracks in real life.”

There is also something soothing to making a miniature train world piece by piece, tiny building by building.

In Green’s Penobscot Falls, there is a wee diner that looks as though it’s open til 3 in the morning; an adult bookstore, a decrepit pool room, a biker bar with two choppers out front that Green had to painstakingly craft by hand. There are two train platforms, numerous brick mill building, a hangar, even a small spot down by the bay—Hobo Jungle—where Green’s miniature bums drink and tells stories over a trash fire.

“These people want to leave Penobscot Falls,” he said of his diminutive characters.

Because he is also a writer, this town is populated with tons of back stories; each character, hand-forged by him, has a purpose and they all have a reason for being there. In the diner, for example, the cook is the bent over the hot grill and the one lone man sitting there (recalling the Edward Hopper painting) is based on a White Tower hamburger spot Green had once, while riding freights across the country, tried to patronize in Minneapolis when it closed at 1am.

The trains, with one flick of a switch, come to life and the passenger cars reveal tiny people in various poses, reading, staring out the window, while the boxcars chug along through tunnels over bridges.

“This has been an obsession,” he said. “It’s a world I want to live in and every time I go up there and spend some time on it, I’m right back in that world.”

All photos courtesy and ©Eric Green.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

MIDCOAST — It’s the 15th anniversary of Camden International Film Festival, and the small-town festival which debuted in 2005 has morphed into more than just a venue for documentaries; it has launched into Points North Institute —“a launching pad for the next generation of nonfiction storytellers.”

This year’s theme is all about power. Who controls it. Who suffers from the imbalance of it and all of the micro stories of our humanity in the throes of it.

It’s really about how we see other people through film and how do we understand the full story,” said Samara Chadwick, Senior Programmer, Points North Institute. 

This year’s “Shorts” a historically free (and low-cost) series of short films held in multiple venues over the five-day fest all have a theme as well.

“We got so many amazing short films and as we watched them, we began to group them around certain feelings, which naturally lent itself to the metaphor of the Tarot Deck, so each block of films has its own Tarot theme,” said Chadwick.  “For example, in the Strength block, these are films all about courage. But different forms; there’s quiet courage and courage that’s intuitive, feminine as well as really dangerous situations, but they all have this quality about being calm in the face of difficulty.”

The Dirigo Short Films are particularly attuned to Maine audiences. Dirigo is Maine’s state motto meaning “I direct” or “I lead.” It’s probably no small coincidence that “I direct” pertains to all of the Maine directors who have submitted their short films to CIFF. One film screening in particular, is hyper local.  Shoulder Season, a nine-minute film by director Halle Johns, looks as though it was shot at the Rockland Rec Center (whose adult teams were previously covered by Pen Bay Pilot)  The plot: “A recreational dodgeball league in Rockland pulls community members through Maine’s drawn-out winter.”

Chadwick notes that while many of the Shorts films revolve around difficult topics, she said, “The films themselves are not difficult to watch. There’s some really gorgeous images and some really funny moments; there’s a lot of lightness, and love and joy. What documentary can do is go beyond the headlines and show you the human connection.”

“Most of the filmmakers of the Shorts will also be in attendance after each block for Q & A,” she added.

The ticketed events usually sell out fast, so people might want to get their tickets as early as possible.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Note: Due to the rain, this event has now been moved to Sunday night, September 8, 2019

CAMDEN—The line up of the annual Maine Outdoor Film Festival (MOFF) has always centered around outdoor life and conservation, but when MOFF hits the Camden Snow Bowl on Saturday, September 7, a few notable and funny films will be part of the mix.

Now in its 8th year, Each MOFF screening is uniquely curated for the geographic location. According to MOFF director Nick Callanan, a couple of stand out films include:

Sea Level Rise, by the Island Institute with a 02:48 running time. Eagle-eyed viewers will recognize the animation of O’Chang Studios (married filmmakers Hanji Chang and Andy O'Brien) with “a short, animated film using colloquial, Maine-specific humor as a tool to spark and catalyze conversations around sea level rise.”

Passive Aggressive Dads is another Maine short that is one of Callahan’s favorites, because it hits so close to home. Jim Picarillo of Brooksville  directed this dark comedy “about two middle-aged dads who just want to spend a quiet day with their daughters at the park. But when an obnoxious group of teens drive by, too fast and too loud, it spurs these aging, disgruntled dads into a self-righteous act of passive-aggression.”

“The fathers take matters into their own hands when dealing with the rowdy teenagers at the local playground and as a father to two young girls, I could relate to it,” said Callahan. “It’s so well done.”

Even Picarello’s fundraising platform to finance the short is pretty funny: take a look here.

And then there is a film about an idea so revolutionary it seems almost too simple. The Official Selection of MOFF this year is a LIVINGPLANT™ a satirical take on a Ted Talk about “a product comes along that changes everything - a revolutionary product that increases productivity, creativity, health, well-being.”

“I don’t want to spoil the premise of it but when you watch it, you’ll get it, that’s one people will enjoy for sure,” said Callahan.

The festival will be held under the stars at Camden Snow Bowl with “doors” opening at 7 p.m. so people can set up lawn chairs and blankets, or grab a beer from Baxter State Brewing Company or a snack from the Bagel Cafe’s Big T Snack Shack. The films will begin at 7:45 p.m.  The cost is free but any donations will go to the Teens to Trails organization.

If Midcoast residents miss the September 7 show, there will be another one on September 12 at The Steamboat Landing in Belfast.

For more information and the line up of films visit: MOFF.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND—Photographer Jim Dugan, surprisingly, is not a “morning person.”

You wouldn’t know it from his almost surreal sunrise photos of the Penobscot Bay which pop with blues, purples, coral reds.

“I sweeten the color a bit, but try not to go overboard with it,” said Dugan.

“My routine is to get up and look out the window,” he said. “If there’s nothing going on outside I go back to bed. “But, if I see vibrant color, I’m compelled to get up to capture it. I’ve never been an early riser, but I can’t resist a good sunrise.  I only take photos when I just can’t help but to get up. Then I’ll come back and take a nap.”

While Dugan’s work favors still water with pilings, sailboats, lighthouses, he also captures brilliant color in the mundane, with his industrial landscapes.

With this one, his eye caught the juxtaposition between a neon cigar sign in the PDQ window and its corresponding neon sunset.

“I just took my morning walk and saw that little sliver of sunrise between the two buildings and said Holy Cannoli,” he said of the PDQ portrait. “It’s probably not ever a photograph that would sell, but I saw something in it.”

The one photo noticeably devoid of sunrise color is the industrial landscape of a puddle next to the Bixby building.

“The word photography literally means drawing with light,” he said. “The Bixby photo was probably a half hour before sunrise and the way the light hit that puddle in the foreground was what captured my attention.  A lot of industrial photographs came out of the 1920s and 1930s and that was sort of an homage to that.”

The ferry terminal, which is just a short walk from his house is one of his favorite subjects. The blue and yellow lines and arrows in the foreground work off the neon green steel and the light that bounces off that. “I’m always looking for foreground and those lines and arrows were exactly what I was looking for,” he said.

Dugan, who graduated from college with a journalism degree, started doing photography in college in 1981. He grew up in Pennslvania and came to Maine to the Maine Photographic Workshop in 1989 and has stayed here ever since.

He tends to shoot with a wide angle lens and prefers the time just before the sun rises and only a moment or so once the sun has broached the horizon. After that, he said, the light becomes too harsh. Most of his photographs capture that moment just before sunrise.

There are a number of “regulars” he calls them, other sunrise photographers, who gather when the sun comes up and by and large, it’s a non-competitive group. “I’m not the only one who does this, but I think there is a good camaradie between us; there’s room for everrybody to get his or her shot.”

But apart from a few joggers or dog walkers at that hour, very few people take advantage of the beauty at that hour.

“The thing that just amazes me is that every morning, there’s something to see; it’s a like this incredible show we have for about 15 or 20 minutes and sometimes only three minutes.”

We should probably take advantage of that as the summer winds down.

For more information on Jim Dugan’s work visit: https://jimdugan.com and visit his studio at 407 Main St. Rockland for First Friday Art Walks.

All photos courtesy and ©Jim Dugan.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

SOUTH THOMASTON—It may be the end of the summer season for tourists to Maine, but Waterman’s Beach Brewing is just getting started.

General Manager Heath Curtis just opened the oceanfront brewery for Labor Day weekend to an enthusiastic crowd of locals, visitors and fans of Waterman’s Beach Lobster.  But first, a little back story, so it all makes sense.

Three years ago, Waterman’s Beach Lobster, a family-owned lobster pound, announced it was closing for good after 30 years in the business. Curtis’s mother, Sandy Manahan, and his aunt Lorri Cousens had been running the shack after Curtis’s grandmother had started the business, but in 2016, the family had decided it was time to retire. However, they didn’t want to sell the property in order to keep the family name and its brand intact.

Curtis, a scallop fisherman, and self-described “avid beer drinker” had renewed plans for the space, along with his brothers, Todd Curtis and Josh Faulkingham.

“Everybody loves a good beer, so I got to thinking, why not build a brewery on the property?” he said. “It was a joint interest for the whole family. And what a great place for it. The vision took off from there.”

The three and a half-barrel system is housed right next to the lobster shack and who should be right in the service window taking orders for fresh lobster rolls? Sandy Manahan.

“My mom wasn’t really planning on re-opening Waterman’s Beach Lobster,” Curtis admitted. “She came out of retirement this summer. But, the focus is not on re-opening Waterman’s Beach Lobster, it’s really just some really good food to go along with our beer offerings.”

Note to die-hard fans of Waterman’s Beach Lobster: you can once again get your lobster fix.

While Curtis’s background was in fishing, he needed a brewmaster. He found Brad Frost through a chance meeting at a bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

“It always starts by meeting at a bar, doesn’t it?” he said. “I’m sitting next to him and saw this tattoo of Maine on his hand. I was scalloping offshore at the time and kind of homesick for Maine so we got talking and he told me what he did for a living and I told him I needed a guy like him for my new business.”

Frost, whose experience included starting the Rock Harbor Brewing Co., eventually joined Waterman’s Beach Brewery, but even before he committed, Curtis was already building the brewery from the ground up. 

“We had all of the equipment ready. I gave Brad free-range and told him what I kind of liked, and we just took it from there.”

The set up is very similar to Manahan’s lobster station in the back. A customer can order one of Waterman’s Beach Brewery’s three beers—a blueberry wheat, a pale ale or an IPA, but has to pay in cash. There is an ATM on the premise. Customers can sit under the cover of a roofed-in deck and enjoy the view or they can walk past the rows of lobster traps and grab a seat outside. Some people can even come up in their skiffs and beach it to get a brew.

“We’re going to put enclosures and some propane heat in there when the weather gets cooler and try to stay open as long as we can, maybe into November,” said Curtis.

Locals have been thrilled to see the new business open, to try some of the brews and have access to fresh seafood.

“Oh my God, people are loving it,” said Curtis. “We had people from far and wide come by on our opening weekend.”

The brewery is open Wednesday to Sunday, 2 to 7 p.m.

For more information visit their Facebook page.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST—From the outside, custom furniture maker Tom Dahlke’s miniature houses and barns resemble child’s dollhouses. But inside each custom structure, there are adult prizes to discover.

Dahlke, who lives in Brunswick, was one of the artists on hand at the Maine Crafts Guild show at United Farmers Market Event Center, August 16-18. When the boathouse opens, one expects to see a miniaturized floor plan, perhaps some Lilliputian boats, but instead, lo and behold, there’s a bottle of Jameson and Mount Gay with glassware. To the delight of many of the adults passing through the show,  Dahlke opened the boathouse to reveal the hidden contents inside. It’s an adult’s version of finding a pretty nifty toy inside a Cracker Jack box.

His house and barn structures all derive from a custom project he’d done many years ago.

“My primary source of income for more than 30 years was building custom staircases,” he said. He also has done woodworking on sailboats and cruisers. “The boats got me into taking on difficult projects. In the early 1980s, I was approached by someone who wanted a wooden, octagonal spiral staircase and everyone was telling him it couldn’t be done. I knew there was a way to do it; it was just a matter of taking the time to figure it out. So, I went and built it.”

In a way, Dahlke’s doggedness led him to his current creative outlet in making the house and barn structures.

“A couple of years later, I was asked to build a curved staircase and continued to build staircases for 35 years,” he said. “I’ve also always been a furniture maker and in the early 1980s I had a client whom I was doing restoration work for. He commissioned me to build a pair of historically accurate dollhouses. It was a fun project; everybody loved them, but I wasn’t interested in making any more dollhouses.”

Still, it was just a matter of time to figure out how to produce that feeling of wonder within a small house without spending time on all of the architecture.

‘It got me thinking, how could I take the idea and make the houses and paint all of the details inside instead,” he said.

At his booth, Dahlke displayed a number of mini “spec” houses that are used for potential clients to see the idea in 3-D. Three of the structures were barns, one was a sugar house and one house.

“I love early New England architecture and my grandparents had a farm with an old barn, so I love to make barns.”

Dahlke said each commissioned house is designed to resemble the potential client’s own house, barn or some other structure.

“Three of the mini houses have drawers within them that can hold jewelry or watches or a collection of some sort,” he said. “The other two have a lift-out tray and I also put little Ball jars within them that could be used for teas or spices.”

But it was the 2 x 3 x 4-foot boathouse that had everyone entranced. It only took him 15 years to kick the idea of it around before he made it.

“People loved the boathouse bar and I love that sense of surprise because when the boxes are closed, people have no idea what’s inside. When I opened it, no one was expecting it to be a bar.”

For more info on Dahlke’s craft visit: http://www.northforkwoodworks.com/

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND—For people trying to scrape together a bit of furniture when moving into a new place, The Ripple Initiative has them covered. Open since May, The Ripple Initiative’s new furniture bank occupies the building space adjacent to Salty Waves hair salon in Rockland—a place that is dedicated to assisting the community in times of need.

When The Ripple Initiative first launched in 2016 (see our related story), the nonprofit was a retail shop to benefit the community. After 18 months, The Ripple Initiative gained a solid foundation in the Midcoast. That shop has since closed due to the property going up for sale.

“We have always run the nonprofit as a ‘furniture bank,’ we just never had the actual space to store furniture,” said Executive Director Sharon Setz. “The retail shop was a way to raise money to purchase the things our clients needed. We’ve taken a lot baby steps forward to get to where we are now. Our model runs exactly like a food pantry. The people who come to us are already vetted in the system and they can fully outfit their new home with our donated furnishings free of charge.”

“We not only receive donations, we also buy furniture for the bank,” said Setz.

“We have a Sweet Dreams program, where we buy brand new beds —mattress, box spring, mattress cover and sheets,” said Marty Jones, Chair of the Board, who explained how they are able to do that between individual, corporate and Board donations, along with United Midcoast Charities, Camden Rotary, and United Home Furniture. The furniture bank itself got support from 100 + Women Who Care About Knox County and West Bay Rotary.

Although they don’t have specific statistics, Setz said her perception is that the majority of recipients are women with children. “One of the ways we can determine if people are eligible for the furniture bank is that they are already in the system using social services, such as TANF, food stamps,” she said. “We get many families who have just fallen on hard times. We’ve got people who are living in a friend’s basement trying to get their own place, people who are trying to own their first homes. Our clients come predominantly from local case managers.”

Rents in the Midcoast have soared in the last decade. Maine State Housing Authority statistics show that the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment with utilities included in Rockland is $1,033, it’s more than what 67 percent of Rockland residents can afford. Now, compound that with the fact that many landlords require a first and last rent payment and deposit. What’s left over for furnishings?

“When people come to us, we provide absolute essentials: kitchen table and chairs, beds, a dresser, a couch, a living room chair and all the essentials for your kitchen and bathroom,” said Setz. The total of these items roughly adds up to $1,600 for a single mother with one child, and $2,500 for a family of four, according to breakdowns that Setz has configured.

“The cost of furishing a home is so cost prohibitive for so many people,” Setz said. “There’s not a whole lot of data nationwide, but Humble Design, a Michigan-based organization with the same mission, provided data that showed without furnishings or household essentials, 50 percent of the families will return to homeless shelters within a year,” she said.“With furnishings, that number drops to one percent.”

As for the furnishings, Setz has gotten savvy about what she will or will not accept. “If I don’t want it in my own home, I won’t give it to someone else,” she said. “In other words, I make sure that things are clean, not ripped, there’s animal smell or hair or smoke odors. I want to give people stuff that makes people feel dignified.”

All donations to The Ripple Initiative’s furniture bank are 100% tax deductible. For more ways to donate see the organization’s press release (related story) or visit the website.

Kay Stephenscan be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

UNITY— Walking through meadows of apple trees, and by clusters of wildflowers and sculptures, I entered the grounds of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association in Unity on Saturday, August 17 intent on one thing: drinking beer and eating bread.

MOFGA’s first Bread and Brews Festival did not disappoint, drawing nearly 200 people from all over the state. I’ve been to many brew fests around the state, but this one felt small and intimate with 11 breweries in the main area of the Common Ground Education Center

“We heard from many of the brewers that they appreciated how small this was,” said Torie DeLisle, MOFGA’s Director of Development and Membership. “One of the brewers told us that at the large scale brew festivals, they often feel like they are just processing orders, whereas at this festival, they got to really had time to talk about their beer and ingredients with people who were very interested. So, they felt that they got some real interaction with the participants.”

Co-sponsored by the Maine Grain Alliance, the festival highlighted the many ways that Maine-grown grains are enjoying a renaissance in Maine, in both baking and beer. Many people didn’t know until they came to the festival how much the farmers, bakers, businesses and brewers all collaborate and intersect, using Maine grains in a variety of ways. For example, many brewers are sourcing their fermentables—barley, rye, wheat and oats—locally, rather than import from gristmills and farms out of state. See my 2017 related story below.

“The connection between farmers of Maine-grown grains and brewers has really deepened over the years,” said DeLisle. “To give you one example, one Maine brewer who came here, buys the grains from the farmer and runs it through the system to make the beer. When the grains are spent, the brewer then send them to a baker, who uses them in a special beer bread, so you have this full circle process—definitely a collaboration we’re trying to foster.”

The festival was also different from a typical beer tasting in that there was an educational component with multiple demos and workshops in both baking and brewing. Eli Rogosa, founder of Heritage Founder Conservancy, was one such notable presenter, who gave a workshop on “A Taste of Ancient Grains.” A renowned “seed steward” and author, Rogosa traveled the world to collect rare and ancient wheat species, called landrace wheats, which were on the verge of extinction when she brought them back to the United States. These heritage wheats are far superior in proteins and nutrients than commercially processed wheats and tend to grow exceedingly well in Maine’s short growing season.

“We were lucky to have people like Eli and other key people in Maine who are at the forefront of the grain revolution giving classes and baking bread with the participants,” said DeLisle. “We have a wood-fired oven and were kicking out wood-fired bread all night.”

And those who chose to stay the night and set up their tents on the grounds were treated to a “breads and spreads” breakfast Sunday morning. Beyond that, the festival offered food trucks, live music, samples from other vendors and for lack of a better word, a pretty organic experience.

Based on the success of this festival, DeLisle says there’s already plans int he works for a 2020 festival. “We may not make it too much bigger, but will round it out even more,” she said. “Our ongoing role is to create an educational experience that helps brewers connect with Maine growers. We’re even starting to have a conversation about creating a MOFGA-inspired organic beer for next year.”

Now, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one after drinking all that beer and eating all of that bread to think: “Time to jump back on that diet tomorrow.”

“We were joking that maybe we should probably start out the day with a 5K run,” said DeLisle, laughing. “We’ll see: stay tuned.”

For more information on future MOFGA events visit: MOFGA

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

UNION—Linda Shepard doesn’t consider herself an artist, yet there is no denying the beauty and craftsmanship in her quilted fabric tapestries hanging at the The Art Gallery at the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge until the end of August.

A traditional quilter, Shepard never considered her sewing skills to be an art form until she took a class by fabric artist Susan Carlson. It all started with a piece of muslin and an outline of a turtle.

“We glued hundreds of little pieces of batik onto the muslin, like a mosiac and put a layer of black tulle over that, some cotton batting for the filling and then a back piece,” she said. “Then I just free motion stitched over the four layers.”

Every person’s attempt came out differently, but Shepard really liked how hers turned out, spurring her to make more.

“Because I had no training of any kind in art, it was quite a journey of exploration and facing layers of doubt, self-criticism, and judgment,” she said. “It took a lot of inner work, self talk and self acceptance to get to the point where I realized it only mattered what I thought of the piece.  I had to love it and please myself and give no thought to outside opinion.  That is what finally let me feel free and truly enjoy the process.  That’s when it became fun and more self expressive.”

Her subjects range from animals to insects and even a mermaid, but her deep rich blues and purples, greens and reds are the result of careful choices. Hundreds of choices—each time she lays down a piece of fabric to complete the fabric “painting.” But what’s even more remarkable is how she has been able to free motion stitch, swirling patterns into the quilts.

“It just takes a lot of practice,” she said as it takes somewhere between 60 to 100 hours to make each art piece.

The stitching also creates almost a topographic map of texture within each mosiac. Her art is one of those enigmas where looking at it far away produces one response and much more information is learned once it is viewed up close.

Astoundingly, once this show and one at Camden Library is over, Shepard is putting her sewing machine away. Every seven years she ends up exploring a new art form, then lets it go in pursuit of another art form.

BELFAST —Maine Crafts Guild artisans show their handmade fine craft in wood, metal, fiber, clay and mixed media at the United Farmers Market Event Center, August 16-18, 2019.

For more information visit: Maine Crafts Guild

Check out our gallery of artists, their booths and a close up of some of their fine crafts.

BELFAST—She works hard for the money, that’s for sure. Captain Sadie Samuels catches lobster all week on her own boat, FV Must Be Nice. 

The afternoon I’d stopped by her new lobster shack, located right on the Harbor Walk in Belfast, she’d already been up at 4 a.m. to go haul.

“The bait guys were late this morning, like 5 a.m., so I got a late start,” she admitted. Yet, by 10 a.m., when most of America is only an hour into their work day, Sadie got off the boat, and headed for her lobster shack, Must Be Nice Lobster Co., to begin churning out lobster and crab rolls all day to hungry customers.

And even when her day was done, at 6 p.m., she said she was still going to cook and shuck the lobsters that she’d caught today for tomorrow’s lunch menu.

Sadie is 27 and has been lobstering since she was a child. 

“I got my student license when I was seven, and then my commercial license when I was 14, which is when I got my first boat,” she said. “I was fishing off my dad’s boat, and he allowed me to fish some of his gear, like 20 traps. I wanted more but my dad was like ‘you can’t take all of my gear; you need your own boat.’ So I got a tiny little outboard with an electric hauler.”

Even though she has lobster fished all of her life, Sadie’s father insisted she go to college, but even while she was attending college in California, earning her degree in printmaking, the sea still called every summer.

After graduation, she came back to Maine and began lobster fishing full-time.

As for the boat’s name, it’s a cheeky reference to how the lobstering life is perceived by those who don’t work in the industry.

“My sister and I came up with it,” she said. “We were like, ‘what will people say when they come down to the boat?’”

“We don’t know for sure what the future of lobster fishing is going to look like, so, I’ve been expanding a bit,” she said, of the lobster shack. “For the last three years I was selling my lobster rolls at the United Belfast Farmer’s Market, and recently found this mobile truck, so this was the next step. I kind of jumped on the opportunity. For this year, yeah, it’s a lot. But, that’s what’s winters are for.”

PenBay Pilot readers may remember Sadie from a recent story on Susan Tobey White’s series painting “Lobstering Women of Maine.” (See related story).

Sadie said it has been interesting to see customer reactions when they realize she is both the captain that supplies the lobsters as well as the lobster shack owner.

“Some people look at me in disbelief, and say to me, ‘you don’t look like you could do that [haul lobsters for a living].’ But, I want little girls to see me and say to themselves, ‘I can be a fisherman like her!’”

The best part about Sadie’s shack apart from her infectious smile, is how affordable she makes her product.

She offers $16 lobster rolls and $12 crab rolls, all freshly picked. And here’s something you never see: she also offers mini rolls for half that price. A crab roll mini costs the same as a McDonald’s quarter pounder with cheese.

“I just figure a lot of the time young kids can’t afford the full roll, so that makes it affordable for them, or for people who just want to try the taste of it,” she said.

Must Be Nice is open from Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. near Heritage Park on the Harbor Walk until October.

Stay in touch with their Facebook page.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST—Every table in the conference room at Waldo Community Action Partners is filled with brand new folders, pens, pencils, notebooks, backpacks and lunch packs—just waiting to be taken home.

One hundred and sixty Waldo county children in need are coming in on a Saturday morning, August 10, to collect their free school supplies. Each child gets to wander the rows of tables and take one item to stuff into his or her new backpack.

The WCAP School Supply Giveaway is in its third year, thanks to a grant the agency received, along with a donation of school supplies from Athenahealth, totaling more than $5,000 in school supplies to give away. The supplies range from pre-K to high school, with smaller children receiving crayons and a pencil pouch, while older teens have their pick of protractors, binders and even combination locks for their lockers.

“Receiving donations for combo locks, for example, really helped us out,” said WCAP Community Partnerships Coordinator Amanda Simmons. “Many school lockers don’t have locks that come with them and these can be expensive items.”

The program is so popular, that even after the first 74 families who were able to get an appointment, there were still 36 families on the waiting list, hopeful that some supplies would be left over. The agency can’t accommodate any walk-ins today as all of the supplies are already assigned.

According to an NBC News Report, back-to-school supplies can cost as much as a mortgage. The supply list for an elementary school student costs about $650,  according to the annual Huntington Bank's Backpack Index. The story presented more sobering realities: “A middle-school student might run $1,000; up from $525. And sending a fully equipped high-schooler off to class can cost nearly $1,500 — compared to $800 just 10 years ago.”

Last year’s giveaway “cleaned us out,” said Simmons. “The parents are just so grateful for this; it gives their children the leg up they need in school and I had one little boy hug his backpack filled with new supplies last year tell me he was so excited to have a full backpack and to go back to school. It gives them pride.”

WCAP is looking for monetary donations to benefit more children next year in next year’s School Supply Giveaway which can be sent through their secure Paypal page. WCAP is able to purchase many of the supplies wholesale, in bulk, to stretch funds and serve more families.

To get involved in WCAP’s next big community project giveaway, Heroes 4 Hunger, giving away 36 tons of food for families in need during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, visit: Get Involved

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKPORT—On an overly warm July afternoon, the hallways of the Camden Hills Regional High School were strangely quiet. Inside the cavernous library, stacks of new books and popsicles were on hand for any current or incoming high school students to check out—part of an initiative to get summer readers to return their borrowed books and hit their last month of school vacation with some fresh, new titles.

From 3 to 6 p.m.,  Iris Eichenlaub, CHRHS librarian, opened the library doors to students and staff, rising ninth graders and new students, as well as community members and librarians from neighboring libraries to check out the new books.  This is the first summer they have hosted this “Book Swap Day,” an idea that came from a current CHRHS student.

With a Summer Reading Challenge in place for various levels of English classes, there is a quota of books to tear through before classes start in the fall.

“Some of our English classes have a list of required books to choose from over the summer, but in other classes, over the last couple of years, teachers have basically said ‘just keep reading and pick what you want,’” said Eichenlaub. “And when they moved toward that choice model, some of the teachers asked me if I’d allow kids to take out books over the summer.  I told them I’d love to.  Why should the books sit here all summer unopened? It gives the kids more time to read.”

Since Eichenlaub took over as the librarian in 2015, some changes were made to the library space, namely how the stacks were organized, so kids can discover books on their own.  Instead of categorizing fiction by the author’s last name as it’s traditionally done, some groupings of books are arranged by genre, the way bookstores do. One of the most popular genres for reluctant readers is a genre section of the library called “Thrills and Chills.”

“They’re action-based, fast-paced books that keep the pages turning — suspense, thriller, action, and adventure,” she said. “It’s really been popular, particularly for kids who aren’t that wound up about reading.”

“We’re trying to make a little space for independent reading in some of our English classes, no strings attached,” said Patti Forster, a CHRHS English teacher and department head, who also had a book to check out that day. “We’re really trying to figure out how to cultivate lifelong readers. If the book is chosen by the teacher, for some kids, that isn’t creating that drive to continue reading for fun. In our last unit for 9th graders, when they chose their own books, they were able to apply the skills that we’ve built on, such as analysis and interpretation, which is a great way to demonstrate their learning.”

Eichenlaub does a lot of research on what to acquire at the library, often perusing reviews and book lists. “Some of the best ways we get new books in are recommendations from students and teachers,” she said. “That’s how we create a library collection that reflects the interests and needs of this learning community.”

The titles aren’t just middle grade and young adult either. They range into the adult fiction and nonfiction area. “Some students are advanced readers and gravitate more toward adult topics,” she said.

Though the library only opened for one day in July, Eichenlaub said that the community is welcome to come in on teacher preparation days Aug. 26 through Aug. 27, or during the school year, when the library is open. She encourages people to have a look around, ask about recommendations, and find out more what the CHRHS library has to offer. Contact Iris Eichenlaub for more information at iris.eichenlaub@fivetowns.net.

CHRHS Library is also on Facebook (@CHRHSLibrary) and on Instagram (@chrhs_library)

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST—Was it a coincidence that the day I decided to check out The Only Doughnut, a new shop in Belfast, there was only one doughnut left?

Well, to be accurate, one kind of doughnut—a coconut glazed—was left. The entire racks of doughnuts had been sold, cleared out by 11 a.m. on Sunday.

Owner Sally Jaskold was kind of surprised herself. Jaskold, who co-runs the business with Matt Wheeler, began making doughnuts from a commercial kitchen in Belfast and sold them at the United Belfast Farmer’s Market before the idea to turn the business into a brick and mortar establishment took hold. The business is located at 225 Northport Avenue, next to the Aubuchon Hardware Store.

“We opened very quietly in May and it’s just been word of mouth letting people know we’re here,” she said. “I’m just reaching myself the business as I go, but it’s been steady; people love our doughnuts.”

For the last five years Jaskold worked at Moonbat Bakery where more and more customers over time asked her where they could get a good doughnut.

“I asked myself, ‘what kind of business did Belfast not already have that the public needed?’ And that was it,” she said.

Jaskold admitted she’d never made a doughnut in her life. But, a doughnut is a fairly easy recipe, one Jaskold discovered by trial and error in her own kitchen.

“I found a recipe for old-fashioned potato doughnuts and Matt and I tweaked that recipe over and over until it came out right,” she said. “Now all of our doughnuts are made from that recipe with about 10 different homemade glazes we’ve developed. Since opening, Wheeler invented two new flavors: a chocolate doughnut and a citrus doughnut made from orange zest and lemon juice. Occasionally, they’ll also sell doughnut holes and doughnut logs.

But it’s cinnamon sugar that people clamor for.

“If I had my druthers, I’d open at 6 a.m., serve coffee and just serve plain and cinnamon sugar and they’d all be sold out by noon,” she said.

Wheeler works full time for the Penobscot Marine Museum, then works the weekends at The Only Doughnut. Their day starts very early, but it’s a simple process.

“We had a local machinist custom make our doughnut cutter,” said Jaskold. “Matt rolls and cuts, then I fry and we glaze them."

To get your doughnut fix visit: their Facebook page

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — Math, metalsmithing and art all meld in one rippling form when it comes to the work of apprenticing jeweler, Ilianna Kahn, soon-to-be-a-senior at Camden Hills Regional High School.

Ilianna has been making jewelry for three years since her freshman year, when she took a Jewelry One class for one semester and found she enjoyed it so much, she continued to come into the art room after school and continue making jewelry on her own. 

Her first design was a pair of copper wire earrings and found that she really liked the process.

“My Jewelry One teacher encouraged me to contact jeweler Michael Good and ask if I could apprentice under him,” she said. “I was extremely nervous; I rewrote the email to him a few times, I remember.”

Good, who has encouraged student apprenticeships in the past, was happy to take Ilianna on and since then, she has continued to work with him at his studio on her off-hours, learning how to craft fine jewelry.

“He’s just been super open with all of his designs and to teaching people if they want to learn,” she said.

Good’s signature style involves Anticlastic Raising, a style that has been widely used by many metalsmiths. The technique takes a single sheet of metal and transforms it into an undulating shape using a hammer on a sinusodial (snake-like) stake.”

“The first thing I learned from Michael is how to make a hyperbolic parabloid,” said Ilianna.

For everyone who has blissfully left geometry behind them in their high school days, the shape looks a bit like a Manta Ray swimming in the ocean and translates beautifully to metal jewelry.

The way Ilianna describes it: “You start with a square sheet of metal and then you start hammering at it kind of inwards and you end up with this folding piece.”

Building on her skills, Ilianna has begun to experiment with additional techniques, adding in ruffles to her silver earrings. She has also been experimenting with wrapping copper wire around certain creations such as earrings and rings.

“I saw this wire-wrapping technique on Instagram and I wanted to try it,” she said.

At the CHRHS Fine Arts Night in June, Ilianna displayed all of her prototypes on several podiums, including a pair of copper-wrapped earrings using that wire-tapping technique.

“These were the first pair I made completely of my own design,” she said.

People often ask if she’s selling her jewelry yet, but Ilianna said, “I still have a lot to learn in terms of different ways to fold the metal.” There’s still more she said she needs to master, plus with the full-time load of school, finals and now a summer job, she has had no time to make a website much less any iterations of her prototype jewelry. Still, it’s in the future plan. Ilianna plans on going to art school when she graduates and dreams of having her own jewelry studio someday, just like Michael Good.

“I love creating something in 3-D that’s small and intricate and I also love making something that people enjoy—they love how it looks and they love on it looks on them,” she said.

Hail To The Rad Kids is an ongoing feature highlighting teens in the Midcoast with special talent. 

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

It is so easy to get caught up in the minutia of everyday life that I hadn’t really noticed, but, I was finding myself irritated every time I went to my mailbox. Every single day I was pulling out flyers, fundraising appeals, credit card offers, catalogues, phone books. In one week alone, I received probably two dozen pieces of junk mail.

It was time to do something about it.

According to the most recent Small Business Trends 2017 study, more than 150 million pieces of direct mail promotions were delivered annually. At the risk of getting blow back from direct mail companies, more than 54 percent of consumers say they do want to receive mail from brands they are interested in and 62 percent of consumers who responded to direct mail in the past three months made a purchase. So, somewhat good for business. But, what is the negative impact on the environment?

Waste-Away Group, Ltd. an organization that manages waste collection, transportation, and disposal, cites several statistics:

1. About 42 percent of all junk mail goes to landfills unopened. That fills up space and creates demand for new landfills.
2. Experts estimate 100 million trees are used every year just to produce junk mail. Many of them come from the largest forests in the world – located in Indonesia and Canada.
3. The factories that create and ship out junk mail are responsible for carbon emissions equivalent to about 9 million vehicles, according to www.forestethics.org.

As time consuming as it was, I kept each piece of junk mail and began calling, emailing and writing to the source to ask them to stop delivering to me. After a couple of days of this, I decided there had to be a better way.

According to the National Resources Council of Maine, there is one organization, that most direct marketers use: Direct Marketing Association.

You can go to their website, once you log in, you DMAchoice, which offers  a simple, step-by-step process for a processing fee of $2 for a period of 10 years. Two bucks? Worth it! Registering online is the fastest way to see results. Once registered, it takes four buttons to click to eliminate mail in the following categories: credit offers, catalogs, magazine offers, donation requests and more. You can also search for specific companies and  (Note: it takes 30-90 days to take full effect.)

DMA Choice isn’t able to eliminate pre-screened credit offers, but you can go to this free site to opt out: https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ (Once registered, however, you’ll have to print out a hard copy of the confirmation, sign it and mail it in.)

There’s also a free app, PaperKarma, where you snap a photo of the junk mail; it recognizes the company (or you search from a list if you’re not sure). Then you submit the removal request, along with your mailing address

What about the cheap paper shopping flyers? After bringing them into my local post office to inquire where they were coming from, I was told Target Marketing Maine sends most of these flyers to residents.  After asking one of Target Marketing Maine representatives the best way to get off their list, the recommendation is to call (207) 596-6203 and press #3 for customer service. A staff member will take your address over the phone and mailings should stop within three weeks.

Now, what to do with the junk mail that is already in your mailbox?

If the mail was sent First Class or has the words "Return Service Requested" or "Address Service Requested" at the top of the envelope, then it can be sent back to the sender, and the sender will need to pay to get rid of it.

Certain pieces of junk mail can be recycled.  Magazines, flyers and clean paper can go back to your recycling center, but if it is wax or foil coated, it cannot. With unwanted donation requests, remove the letterhead and recycle that. See Mid-Coast Transfer Station’s list of what can and cannot be recycled in the .pdf attached to this story.

I’m saving what I can’t return or recycle in a paper bag. Because I’m loathe to send any more “junk” to landfills, when the bag is filled, I light the sucker on fire in my fire pit and watch it burn. (Note, some experts caution that burning junk mail releases some toxic fumes into the environment.)

Want more ideas on how to get rid of all that junkmail? Here’s 9 Awesome Uses for Junk Mail

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BLUE HILL—If you’re looking for a fun little road trip this summer no farther than an hour from the Midcoast, Fairwinds Florist, a shop in Blue Hill, is an artistic destination with a whimsical attraction.  On the left side of the shop stands a vintage cigar machine. Instead of cigarettes, however, the glass partition for each knob reveals a tiny piece of art made by a local artist. For $15 you get a token to feed to the machine; the choice of artist is yours.

There’s a childlike feeling to tapping a coin in the slot, pulling the knob and watching a little white box slip out into the metal tray. You don’t know what you’ll get exactly, but the surprise is worth it.

On Monday, July 22, Fairwinds held an “Art Box Party” to celebrate the sixth anniversary of The Art Box and to invite people to try out the vending machine.

The Art Box is the idea of Michele Levesque and Michael Rossney, owners of EL EL FRIJOLES Mexican food a taqueria in Sargentville and Makers’ Market Shop & Studio in Brooksville.

“The cigarette machine dispensing art is not my idea,” said Levesque. “It’s an idea we came across in Chicago from a machine in a place called The Artomat and I was really intrigued, so I bought a piece. It stayed in the back of my head for awhile and we decided to find our own vintage cigarette machine and offer art that was more local. We wanted to do something for the artists of the peninsula and advertise their work a little, as well as provide an affordable way for people to collect art. We’ve got kids who come in here and are already art collectors because of the Art Box.”

Levesque and Rossney are artists whose work The Art Box dispenses.

“We currently have 11 artists that are involved with the project and sometimes we have artists who rotate through, but 11 is about all I can handle,” said Levesque. “ Every artist except for one lives here right here on the peninsula.”

Art ranges from hand-painted wood blocks, mixed media, altered books, found object sculpture, textiles, photography, handmade tiny books and other personalized items that can fit into the regulated sized box. For more backstory on the individual artists visit: The Art Box

One of the artists on hand that evening was Amelia Poole, who makes encaustic collages by layering vintage book pages and drawings with wax and resin. One particular piece that Carol Gregor of Brooksville bought through the vending machine was constructed from old handwritten letters.

Poole was happy to discover that someone had chosen her artwork, so she explained what it was: “This is a son in Korea writing back home to his father, in Bangor, named Sterling Diamond in 1951.”

“Sterling Diamond! What a name,” said Gregor.

The Art Box is a permanent feature of Fairwinds Florist shop. You don’t have to wait for one of their artist receptions; you  can come in at any time and purchase a token to get some art from the cigarette machine. $10 of the purchase goes to the artist.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

First, it’s important to get it straight.

She’s not called a ‘lobsterwoman’ if the person lobster fishing is female; the correct term, no matter what the gender is lobsterman.

Susan Tobey White’s latest series, “Lobstering Women of Maine” is all about the women who haul traps, bait bags, stern and lobster fish off their own boats. The exhibit is currently hanging at Penobscot Marine Museum until October 2019.

At least 300 people showed for her artist’s reception on July 14 and among those in the crowd were several of the women she did the portraits of.

“I think most of the people who showed up at the reception were in awe. They had no idea that women even did this line of work,” said White.

White said she had to gather statistics from a number of sources to actually pinpoint how many female lobstermen are at work. By her calculations, there are 200 female lobstermen out of 4,500 license holders in the state of Maine with an uncounted number of girls and women who work as sternman or apprentices.

“When I grew up, the options for women and careers were a nurse, a teacher, a secretary or a housewife,” she said. “There are a few women who strayed from that notion, but even in the 1970s, if you were on a lobster boat, you were supporting the male in the family in some way, whether it was sterning or assisting your father or husband, or helping if he was ill. I myself am in awe of these women today, who are out there doing the work.”

As White knows herself, the work is arduous, sometimes up to 14 hours a day. It’s physically demanding, dirty; there are harbor politics and lobstering is still a male-dominated field with its own set of codes and rules.

“My husband has had his license for 30 years in Belfast and along the years I’ve played a small role — and I do mean small — assisting him on his boat,” she said. “I’ve baited bags, I’ve measured and banded the lobsters, but it’s not my thing, which is why I have such respect for these women, who do this day in and day out for a living.”

Through photographs she took herself and from other professional and amateur photographs she procured, she set to paint the women in various stages of work.  Here are a few of the women, including a 10-year-old,  she has painted and a little of their backstory.

NORAH

“She’s 11 now, but this painting was when she was 10,” she said. “At that time, she had a five-trap license, but this year she’s fishing 50 traps. Her grandfather was a commerical fisherman and she goes out with her dad, also a commercial fisherman on his boat in Wells. ”

Though White wasn’t entirely sure, it is very likely that Norah is fishing with a student trap license, which allows 50 traps in her age category.

MEREDITH

“Meredith fishes out of Stonington and this painting depicts her hauling a trap, while her sister opens another trap on the same string of traps and a third sternman assists,” said White. “They’re working on Meredith’s boat and she has memories of apprenticing with her own father, standing on milk crates just to reach the traps on the rail.”

SADIE

“What you see here is Sadie, who is beginning at the season and she’s putting her new traps and gear on the boat,” she said. “This is her boat. Her dad is also a lobsterman and she went on lobstering with him since she was a child. With each painting I tried to depict an aspect of lobstering.”

RUTHIE

“She’s skewering fish on a baiting iron and is the wife of a lobster fisherman,” said White. “I love that image. Someone  at the show asked me if she was barbecuing on board.”

White plans on continuing this series, painting more female lobstermen and sternmen as they work and is considering making a coffee table book out of her paintings and their stories.

“My hope is not just to put the spotlight on women in the industry but to put more attention on all of the issues the industry is currently facing now.”

To see White’s work visit: https://penobscotmarinemuseum.org/2019-exhibits/

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST—Matthew Norwood, owner of Baby Burrito in City Park, decided with his partner, Maggie Goscinski, to sell tacos for a cause on Tuesday, July 23.

On a Facebook post the day before, Norwood announced: “It’s hard to serve Mexican cuisine without thinking about the current adversity facing immigrants and refugees at our border. Families belong together, and seeking asylum isn’t illegal. Instead of doing our usual Taco Tuesday giveaway, we’ll be donating 20% of our profits to RAICES Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.”

The idea was Goscinski’s.

“Obviously it’s in the news and on everyone’s mind,” she said. “Right now our son is in South Carolina visiting his mom and he’s very safe, but it got us thinking. It’s been really difficult for us to be apart from him and it really puts into perspective for us what’s happening with children being separated from their parents at the border and held without any time frame of when they’ll be reunited with their parents again.”

“We’ve had a lot of people come out to show their support,” said Norwood.

“You have to tread lightly in a business when it comes to being political, but I think everyone agrees that children belong with their parents,” said Goscinski.

Norwood, formerly a cook at Chase’s Daily, said he learned how to cook Mexican food from Chase’s Daily first, then researched cookbooks and recipes online, finally testing out his own recipes with his son, Ian, 8, to come up with the menu for Baby Burrito. A former self-described ”army brat,” Norwood’s parents are originally from Boothbay and he grew up in parts of England and Germany.

He started Baby Burrito on June 8 in the City Park and the business has taken off.

The menu is very simple, but ever changing, featuring tacos, burritos, quesadillas, homemade salsas, a kid’s menu and Agua Fresca (watermelon puree over ice) at very affordable prices.

“That was my number one goal is to make this food accessible to everyone,” said Norwood. “And the core principle of serving street food is that it’s for the community.”

Usually Tuesdays are Norwood’s day off. But on this day, he was back in the small kitchen making tacos with a variety of flavors: a fish taco, carne asada, a Mexican shredded beef, chorizo potato and Korean barbeque. He said his Korean barbeque, which is a fusion of flavors, have been the most popular for Mainers, perhaps because many parts of Maine don’t have access to authentic Mexican street food flavors and Korean barbeque is more of a familiar taste.

“One of the things about an ever-evolving menu is that if you fall in love with one kind of taco it might not be on the menu the next time, so it is a way for people to branch out and try something else,” said Goscinski.

Baby Burrito is open from Thursday-Sunday 11-2:30 p.m. and 4:30-6:30 p.m.

For more information on Baby Burrito visit them on Facebook

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

NORTHPORT—It’s been 10 years in the making for Carl Kosmo to fully realize his dream of being a fully stocked hunting, fishing, archery and camping outfitter, and on Saturday, July 20, Outdoor Sportsman hosted a grand re-opening to show off its new retail space.

With complimentary hot dogs, jambalaya and soda offered outside, customers walked into the 30,000 square foot space feeling like it was an entirely new store, and that’s because it was.

The building next door that previously housed the original store has been closed off for offices. This new expansion took three years to build complete with outdoor equipment and clothing, a gun room, a basement archery range, an outdoor archery course, a gun range and a third floor whose possibilities are still in the works.

“This has been my dad’s lifelong dream,” said manager Michelle Kosmo, who estimated 750 people came to the opening. “We’re excited to offer much more equipment, more Carharrt clothing for women, men and children, more fishing and camping supplies.”

In addition to rentals of canoes and kayaks, the store also offers classes and courses in archery, hunting, crossbow, ATV and trapping safety. “State law requires anyone who wants a license in these areas take a certified course and our courses fulfill the requirement of those licenses,” said Carl Kosmo.

Carl Kosmo, who has been an avid outdoorsman all of his life, offers a range of the equipment he has always used himself. “I’ve been in this business for 45 years and this location has been in operation for 28 years,” he said. “Pretty much everything in this store is something I’ve been interested in as an activity.”

Archery has been one of Carl’s primary interests and the store reflects that. The store has the only indoor archery range in the Midcoast with 10, 20 and 30 yard lines along with 30 acres behind their facility with 30 Rinehart and McKenzie targets, along with an impressive section inside the store containing every kind of bow (new and used and even left handed models) and arrows.

Michelle Kosmo provided a glimpse of the store’s third floor, a fully finished attic space which could potentially be used for speakers, authors, yoga, classes and more. “We’re still in the process of figuring out how to use that space,” she said and welcomed ideas from the public. She can be reached at sports@maineoutdoorsportsman.com

For more information on Outdoor Sportsman visit: www.maineoutdoorsportsman.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN—To the untrained eye, an electric bike —or ebike— looks just like any other mountain bike, except with a bulkier frame.

A compact electric motor and battery mounted in the center of the bike (within the down tube) allows the rider to pedal as normal, but with pedal-assist technology, power is stored within the motor as the rider pedals, which in turn, boosts the bike’s ability to maintain certain speeds.

Sidecountry Sports is at the Camden Snow Bowl on Saturday, July 20, giving the public free demos and rides on Specialized ebikes from 12 to 5 p.m. to show people what they feel like. “The sensation you get is a boost of power when you ride,” said Sidecountry Sports’ owner, Andrew Dailey.

In conjunction with the Maine Lobster Ride on Saturday and Sunday, an annual bike ride through Camden, Sidecountry Sports is working with their sponsor, Specialized, to introduce a curious public to the advanced technology of ebikes.

“There are different classes to ebikes,” said Dailey. “A class I ebike would cut out at 20 m.p.h whereas as a class III ebike would cut out at 28 m.p.h. And it’s all pedal-assist; there’s no throttle on these ebikes, so you still have to pedal; you still have to shift. That motor inside controls the power and it matches your pedaling cadence, so if the bike ‘feels’ that you’re struggling, the bike will boost you. The bike will match to the power of where you were previously pedaling. ”

Daily said ebikes allow people to pedal a lot further and effortlessly up hills. “Ebikes have been around for a few years, but the technology keeps getting better,” he said. “The weight of the bikes is coming down; they’re going further. These bikes we are using for the demos this weekend go 70 miles to a charge. So you can make this bike your daily commuter.”

“Fifty percent of all bicycles sold in Europe right now are ebikes,” he added.

Dailey said the biggest question Sidecountry Sports gets is the price difference that people are seeing on Amazon versus the two biggest ebike brands: Specialized and Trek.

“The ones you see on Amazon that are half the price aren’t really ebikes because they have a throttle,” he said. “That doesn’t fit the definition of an ebike; that is more of a motorized scooter, because you don’t have to pedal. Additionally, the Amazon product’s wiring may have issues. We had one customer buy a bike off Amazon and take it to us to put it together for them. Two months after purchasing it, the bike needed re-wiring and we had to wait eight months for Amazon to ship us new wiring.”

When you buy from one of the big brands, he said, the bikes are better built and have the same battery technology as Tesla. In addition, the customer has the backing of these companies that are investing hundred of millions of dollars into this platform. “If something breaks, they produce their own parts,” he explained.

Another issue with ebikes made with a throttle is that they may not be allowed on regular bike trails. “They may not be appropriate to ride on a trail because you can’t really control the motor,” he said.

Given that the technology is still so new to Maine, there is no language in the Maine Revised Statutes to define what ebikes are and where they can be used. Bicycle Coalition of Maine is currently working with People for Bikes and Maine legislators to develop a class of ebikes and determine where they can be ridden.

One enthusiastic rider who identified himself as The Ebike Apostle said, “It feels like magic. I truly call myself a Wizard and everyone else is a Muggle when you’re on one of these. You just become a super human.”

For more information on Sidecountry Sport demos, visit: Facebook

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

MIDCOAST—Meet, Dallas a Belgian Malanois, a breed known for their intelligence and loyalty. He is one of six new law enforcement teams of police and their canine partners that graduated from the State Police Canine School in late June.

After 14 weeks of training with his handler, Trooper Hunter Belanger, Dallas was ready to go home, and start his new job as a police K9.

Responsible for the Midcoast area of Maine (Sagadahoc, Lincoln, Waldo, Knox counties, the southern half of Kennebec County and part of northern Cumberland County) Trooper Belanger and Dallas may be seen from time to time in a cruiser— Belanger in the front, Dallas in the back seat.

“They have a very high drive, they love to work and they are very loyal and reliable,” said Belanger, of his new partner.

Historically German Shepherds have been the choice for police K9 training, but in this group, only one German Shepherd was trained along with two Dutch Shepherds and four Belgian Malanois. 

“We’ve found that the Malamois breed has just as much drive as German Shepherds,” he added.

Each dog was selected for training through a breeder used by the Maine Criminal Justice Academy and special care was taken to match each dog with the personality and temperament of each trooper as well as the dynamics of the trooper’s family.

“Some dogs are naturally calm, and some bounce off the walls,” said Belanger.  “We had a special K9 Trainer who worked with each team, assessing each dog’s personality, not only with each trooper, but with the trooper’s family. Some law enforcement have young children in the family and you don’t want to match them with a dog that is super hyper active.”

Belanger lives with his fiancée, and with no children in the house, Dallas was the perfect fit for them.

“Dallas and I had almost an immediate bond, Once he saw me it was like he knew ‘this is my person,’ ” he said.

Belanger describes Dallas as a calm dog who is able to switch effortless between “work mode” and down time.

“He knows when it’s time to relax,” said Belanger.

Most their interaction is nonverbal and Dallas has been trained to differentiate when to be alert and when to be relaxed.

“They can read us better than we can read them,” Belanger said.

Not every person in law enforcement can handle or even wants a police-trained K9.

“It’s a huge commitment, because the training doesn’t stop outside the normal duties of patrol,” said Belanger. “Every day I go home after my shift, I work with my dog, keeping him proficient at his training. A regular dog owner on a day off can take his dog to the beach and relax. I have to go to the park and keep his skills up.”

In K9 Patrol School, the very first skill a dog learns is obedience to the commands of its master. A police dog must also make it through endurance and agility training. Next, comes specialty training with built-in scenarios.

In Dallas’s case he was specially trained in tracking and apprehension skills. For example if a suspect is trying to escape through the woods, Dallas will be able to track where that person went, find the trail and use force if necessary.

Dallas will always be at Trooper Belanger’s side during an arrest of a perpetrator.

“In one of the training scenarios we did, Dallas was by my side and we were going through the motion of patting down a hypothetical suspect, when the trainer made a sudden move and turned around to attack me,” said Belnager. “Dallas immediately sprang into action. Since dogs can’t use their paws to detain a suspect, they will use their jaws to apprehend him.”

The feeling of safety an officer gets from his police dog is immeasurable. When they work together, Dallas curls up in the back seat and only sits up and takes notice if Belanger stops the car.

Belanger said: “Maine’s a very rural place. When you think of police in Boston or D.C. there’s always two partners to a squad car. But here in Maine, you are largely alone and might be in a place where it takes 30 minutes to get back up. Dallas is my immediate back up.”

For the rest of his life until he is too old to perform his duties and retires, Dallas will be with Trooper Belanger.

“After he retires, and as long as everything goes right, Dallas is going to find a home with me and my family," he said.

So if you see Trooper Belanger and Dallas around in the Midcoast, remember, while Dallas is a beautiful and majestic dog, take care to approach and always ask permission prior to contact; after all Dallas is always on the job.

For more information on police K9 training visit: Maine Criminal Justice Academy

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

People always want to know where authors get their ideas. Ask Margaret Broucek, author of the 2018 novel, The Futility Experts — and recent winner of the of the 2019 Maine Literary Awards in fiction — how she came up with her characters and plot and she'll tell you it all derived from a one interesting news article.

"I read this article about this middle-aged guy who was just living this boring life,” said Broucek. “He had a wife and a kid and never really did anything with his life, but he also liked playing online games. He started impersonating a much young younger soldier that was his avatar and got into all kinds of trouble. Then he got into an online romance with a young woman, and then his co-worker got into an online romance with the same woman."

If the old phrase, truth is stranger than fiction is starting to come into play here, you're not off base.

"In the real-life situation, the colleague was a much younger man and the middle-aged man ended up murdering his colleague over this woman,” she said. “But in my book, which is a comedy, when my character got to the part where he could murder the coworker, he declined."

The Futility Experts features character Tim Turner, a guy in a stagnant marriage and dead-end job who takes on the persona of a 21-year-old marine online. At the same time, Davis Beardsley, a professor of zoology with an unhealthy obsession for imaginary creatures, helplessly watches his chances for tenure circle the drain when a new department head takes a less-than-favorable view of his teaching methods.

"This book has all the elements of middle age and how people try to deal with it,” said Broucek. “What I love to do is populate this real story with characters from my imagination; that's been a lot of fun for me."

"The Futility Experts is my pick this year for fans of A Confederacy of Dunces,” —reads the review from The Book Maven, Lit Hub. “I loved this book and hope others will, too."

"Like Confederacy of Dunces this book is what some people would call an absurdist comedy,” said Broucek. “I love those kind of stories and I actually think they are truest to life."

Broucek also wrote the novel in primarily the male point of view, something she said was fairly easy for her.

"The way the story is structured it has to be told that way, told with alternating points of view but when you get to the end, you realize it's not just a male middle-aged story," she said.

A Baby Boomer herself, Broucek grew up in the age before the internet and has insights on the way it has affected people's communication skills particularly online.

"This novel has a lot of texts interspersed into the narrative, and descriptions of Snapchat videos, which was a lot of fun," she said. When asked about the enigmatic title of the book, she explained that "most people long to be great at something. Many of us try in one area or another. But I think for the most part when we get to middle age, the only thing we really become an expert in is the futility of trying.

Broucek is currently working on a new novel called Baby Queen set in her childhood hometown of Topeka. Having been raised in Kansas, she moved to Portland 14 years ago and was able to submit her first novel as a Maine Literary Awards contender. The novel, which had already won the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature, to her great surprise snagged the top category of fiction for the 2019 awards.

The book published by Schaffner Press, can be found here.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND—On Saturday, July 6, the Points North Institute will host the annual CIFF Summer Preview Party at the Bicknell Building in Rockland, featuring a band worth coming out for.

Sinkane is the featured band for the After Dark party that evening, up from Brooklyn, and along with some fiery, danceable music, their music taps deeply into today’s social and political climate. Sinkane is a Sudanese-American, five-piece band who blend krautrock, prog rock, electronica, free jazz and funk with Sudanese pop.

Ahmed Gallab is the main force behind the band. Born in London to Sudanese parents, raised in Ohio, and now calling New York City home, the former skate punk turned afro funk whiz Ahmed Gallab penned an essay on the release of their new album. “I’m not a newbie to hate: I’m black, Muslim and even though I'm an American, I'm often made to feel like a foreigner in my own country,” he wrote. “And sometimes I do feel like a foreigner...I’ve made a lot of music out of my life story but I’ve always kept things vague enough that anyone listening to my music could relate to it on their own terms.”

Other members of the band include guitarist Jonny Lam who is Chinese, keyboardist Elenna Canlas, who is is Filipina, drummer Chris St. Hilaire , who is Trinidadian, and bassist Michael “Ish” Montgomery, who is Black American.

The band’s latest album, titled Dépaysé — comes from a French word that basically means “to be removed from one’s habitual surroundings.”

“It’s easy to be angry in moments like now,” he said. “And that’s OK. But it takes courage to turn that anger into productive energy. The previous Sinkane album, 2017's Life and Livin' It, was released at a very crazy time: things like the Muslim ban, police shooting unarmed people of color, massive corruption in my native Sudan, fake news, Donald Trump, Brexit and so many other calamities all really forced me to think about my place in the world as a musician. I beganto think about how I could use my music in a constructive way —not only to help myself but to help others who feel frustrated and powerless.”

Annie Brown, Points North Institute’s Operations & Communications Manager said they are excited to showcase Sinkane. “We discovered Sinkane through our friends at Space Gallery in Portland,” she said. “First off, we love the spirited, enthusiastic music. And, secondly, we love the band's message and ongoing discussion about what is happening here. Truth is an important commodity these days."

Check out their first single "Everybody,” (embedded video) filmed at Brazil’s world renowned samba school in Rio de Janeiro, a song that takes that feeling of being a foreigner and turns it on his head. Instead of feeling along, this song embodies what Sinkane is about, a celebration of inclusivity, of well, everybody.

Tickets to the Summer Preview Party are tiered to provide the most accessibility, and are available at pointsnorthinstitute.org/rsvp. Tickets to the entire evening, including the After Dark Sinkane performance start at $95. Tickets to the After Dark portion only are $30.

For tickets and more information: pointsnorthinstitute.org/rsvp/

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Now that it is feeling like the start of real summer, June is almost over! And we all know well the festivals and big events that come to the Midcoast, but with 24 agricultural fairs, art and music festivals, and no shortage of food and craft beer happenings all over the state, here are four festivals and events to make sure you hit this July to squeeze the most out of summer.

Bar Harbor’s 4th of July Festival

July 4 —Bar Harbor

If you want July 4th to go out with a bang this year, get  up to Bar Harbor. Bar Harbor’s Fourth of July has been voted the #1 Fourth of July celebration in America by the Today Show, and recognized by National Geographic as one of the top ten in the U.S. Get ready to fast the night before because starting at 6 a.m. there’s a Blueberry Pancake Breakfast, followed by an artisan craft fair, a parade through downtown at 10 a.m., and at 11 a.m., a seafood lover’s paradise with a Seafood Festival until 2 p.m. From 3:30 p.m. there is live music throughout the day followed by spectacular fireworks around 9 p.m. FMI: Schedule of Events

Yarmouth Clam Festival

July 19 to 21 —Yarmouth

This annual Ode to the Clam festival is not only a family-friendly event that takes over the entire town of Yarmouth, but, thanks to the thousands of volunteer hours nearly 30 non-profit groups put in to make it happen —it’s also one of the rare festivals in Maine that is free. If you want to get that old-timey feel of a Friday night parade (with folks in lawn chairs scoping out the best seat on the sidewalk, people in red, white-and blue garb and little kids sitting on their parents shoulders) this is the kind of festival that will take you back to your childhood. There’s fireworks on Saturday night, live music from three stages, arts and crafts shows, races..oh and of course, the almighty clam. Each year, the festival serves more than 6,000 pounds of clams, 6,000 lobster rolls, 2,500 pancake breakfasts, 2,000 shore dinners, 400 homemade pies, and 6,000 strawberry shortcakes and more than 13,500 Lime Rickeys (a festival favorite). And random this year? Barry Williams from the show The Brady Bunch will also be there! FMI: Yarmouth Clam Festival

Old Halloway Day

July 20 — Hallowell

Hallowell is one of those little under-the-radar towns that have become arty and adorable, and since 1968, they’ve been celebrating their town with a small-town celebration.  Because so many of its citizens volunteer to underwrite this annual tradition, residents and visitors celebrate all day, starting from the 7:30 a.m. 5K road race to a bake-off contest, an Arts & Crafts Festival to live music on the street, and finally the fireworks finale on the banks of the Kennebec. Here’s a look at the schedule for last year, so you can plan your day accordingly.

Maine Brewers Guild Summer Session Beer Festival

July 27— Portland

Maine Brewers Guild, the official mouthpiece for the more than 140 craft breweries that dot this state whoops it up big time twice a year, hosting the state’s largest beer festival, once in the summer and once in the winter. This July, more than 70 brewers will be chatting, smiling and pouring away with beer geeks and newbies who want to try the eclectic tastes that all of the regions have to offer. Featuring a new venue, located directly on the oceanfront in South Portland, surrounded by beaches, islands, and within the walls of an old military installation – this is going to be a scenic, sun-soaked festival better than they have ever done. Here’s a list of brewers, food truck s and live music. But buy your tickets early, this is one event that always sells out. Tickets are on sale now: summersession2019.eventbrite.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

HOPE — First, listen to the sweet and haunting ukulele rendition of “Where The Rainbow Ends” in the embedded video. Next, you’ll be asking yourself: “Who is that?”

Remco Houtman-Janssen, who goes by the stage name Ukulelezaza, is one of the premier ukulele instrumentalists in the world. Hailing from his home in Ghent, Belgium, Houtman-Janssen made a special stop in Hope on Tuesday, June 25 on his American tour this summer. A sought-after workshop teacher at international ukulele festivals, Houtman-Janssen was invited by local uke player, Howard Greenberg, to teach one of his workshops at Sweet Tree Arts.

There, about a dozen beginner and experienced ukulele players spent several hours with him, learning new skills and tricks.

Jeff Weinberger, a ukulele teacher himself at Waterfall Arts and Bay Chamber’s Music School, was thrilled to learn from Houtman-Janssen in person.

“Remco is world-famous, incredible,” said Weinberger. “He is very well known in Europe. There’s casual ukulele where you just smile and strum and have a great time and then there is serious ukulele, technically proficient ukulele.”

Serious ukulele. Who knew?

A workshop teacher and performer in Europe, Scandinavia, the U.K., Japan, Australia and beyond, Houtman-Janssen is quite easy going in person. He doesn’t have a website (but he does have a Facebook page and YouTube Channel). Having just arrived from teaching a workshop at The Midwest Ukulele and Harmonica Camp in Michigan, Houtman-Janssen made a very out-of-the-way stop in Maine, before planning to go back to the Midwest to finish his tour.

It’s a profession he was born to do. He first picked up the ukulele when he was 10 years old.

“My mom and a good friend of hers taught me and my sister how to play and I got the basic chords down,” he said. “And then, when I was a teenager, it became ‘uncool’ to play ukulele, so I put it down for about 10 years until in my early 20s I picked it up again. It took another 20 years before it became popular again. Since 2006, ukulele has gotten a real revival. In Europe you have a big scene there and in America, it caught on, as well.”

People love to play ukulele “because it is such a sweet an easy instrument to play,” he said. Unlike other larger instruments that take time to pack up and lug around, many folks just tuck their ukuleles in a bag and go, making it a much more spontaneous instrument to play with. “With only four strings, it doesn’t require many chords to play,” he said. “It’s very low profile.”

His workshop started with strumming techniques, gradually layering in other chords and rhythms, including a sleight of hand signature move, where sound comes out of the ukulele even though it looks as though his hand isn’t even touching the strings.

“I think everyone came out of this workshop with a few more tricks up their sleeve,” he said.

For anyone interested in picking up ukulele in the Midcoast visit: Ukes Midcoast

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST—A new brewery has quietly opened in Belfast, but unlike most hyper-local rural breweries, Frosty Bottom Brewing is choosing to operate not as a public tasting room, but as a “brew share,” similar to the Community Supported Agriculture model of farm shares and fish shares that currently enjoy a popular following in the Midcoast.

Roy Curtis is the owner of Frosty Bottom Brewing, with friends and shareholders Zafra Whitcomb and Jon Thurston helping him brew. All three were individual home brewers who enjoyed getting together as sort of an informal club and experimenting with a variety of styles before Curtis started the company this year.

Frosty Bottom Brewing’s rough-sawn pine brewery and tasting room sits at 18 Hunt Road in Belfast adjacent to Curtis’ house, which he built with friends using a stand of pine that was specially reserved for the brewery located on Frost Hill Road. 

For that reason, “Frost” was incorporated into the name as well as the logo.

In addition, Curtis built an apartment over the tasting room that he intends to rent out in July as a unique Airbnb listing calling it “room with a brew.” Downstairs, half of the structure is the “brewing side” with a one-barrel brewing system that produces 30 gallons when they brew every two weeks.

“Ultimately, our goal is to have 60 gallons each month,” said Curtis.

The company’s model was born out of a hobby and aims to remain a hobby; that is, the purpose of the brewery is to generate enough product to sell to shareholders, who pay an annual fee and get in return, a growler (one gallon) of two different brew style each month—or 24 styles annually.

In addition, every shareholder has the privilege of stopping by the semi-private tasting room for an exclusive free tasting of whatever the brewers are currently making. Right now, the brewery has sold all of its 2019 shares, primarily to friends and family, many of whom, helped to construct the brewery.

“We’re excited to try brewing new styles we’ve never done before and the ideal shareholder will be someone who is open to trying absolutely everything,” said Thurston.

While the CSA model for brewing isn’t new in other parts of the country, it is unique in Maine. Only one other Maine brewery has adopted this model. Side by Each Brewing in Lewiston, also offers a Community Supported Brewing program.

As both Curtis and Whitcomb are both currently employed full time and Thurston is retired, they aren’t looking to expand much more beyond this original goal, until the time is right.

Given their limited license with the city of Belfast, the brewery cannot sell beer at its tasting room location, but may only offer free samples to those in their shareholder program. For interested parties in a brew share, Curtis said he’s always willing to give a mini tour of the facilities when it works with his schedule and that those looking to sign up for a brew share may email him for consideration on the 2020 list.

“When we open up shares for 2020, we’re hoping to take on 40 shareholders,” said Curtis. “Forty of the gallons will be for them and the other 20 gallons per month will be for tastings.” 

“Waldo county is pretty rich with the CSA-movement and brewing for us is very connected to local agriculture,” said Curtis.

Along with using hops from Thurston’s farm, the brewery buys Maine grains from Blue Ox Malthouse and once the grain is spent, it is fed to local pigs.

“And the brewery is really an outgrowth of the community-supported model,” he said. “As home brewers we all shared in the cost and labor to make a product, so this is really an outgrowth of that.”

For more information visit Frosty Bottom Brewery on Facebook.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

A lot can be learned from digging up people’s trash, said local archeologist Harbour Mitchell, who did a six-month dig at Merryspring Nature Center in 2018. Merryspring, in Camden at the end of Conway Road, was once the site of the Asa Hosmer farm, with a large, two-story, Federal-style farmhouse built circa 1800 by an unknown person or people, before Hosmer bought it. But in less than 20 years, all of the farmhouse occupants would be gone, the home abandoned.

Based on all of his findings and research, this is likely what happened.

“The year of no summer, we’re in a post-Revolutionary War period,” recalled Mitchell, setting the scene. “There are militias, but little law enforcement, and little to no governmental rules or regulations. People are living in an unrestricted place.”

Having worked for the University of Maine, Maine Historic Preservation Commission in Augusta, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, and as a professional research archaeologist throughout the region, Mitchell put together a piece of the puzzle at the Merryspring site to explain what happened after the war. According to Mitchell’s archeological summary:

While the War of 1812 no doubt took a toll on the new farm’s occupants, and made economic sustainability tenuous, the coup de grâce was likely the so called “year without a summer” — 1816. Global cooling, resulting from the eruption of Mount Tambora, in Indonesia in 1815, caused massive die-offs of vegetative and flowering fruits, grains and other necessary crops. Throughout Maine and the broader region, in 1816, every month saw frost, and snow fell in July.

“It is the single largest volcanic eruption in historic memory,” he said. “Of course, the people living there can’t see what’s coming. They could not have known what caused the global cooling, but that climactic response cooled the globe a half a degree and changed the seasons. If I were to animate this for you: The normal cycle, the birds, the bees, the pollination, the trees, and crops, are no longer normal. Every month had frost in 1816. No trees produced fruit or maple sugar. Hay was stunted. The farmers living at the Hosmer Farm site might have gotten one hay cutting in an entire summer into fall, whereas in a good season you’d get two or three cuttings. They made it through the summer and winter of 1816 with enough food from butchering their animals. But, by 1817, people were in desperate straits. A clam shell dump at the Hosmer Farm site suggests the occupants walked miles to and from the local clam flats and subsisted to a significant degree on clams to get by.”

Based on his excavations at the Hosmer Farm site at Merryspring, and the Philip Ulmer site, near Tanglewood, in Lincolnville, clams were likely a significant percentage of the locally available food supply for several years.

Imagine little more than a diet of clams on which to survive. Back in the days when prisoners protested for being fed lobsters three times a week, here you have people virtually imprisoned by Nature refusing to dole out its seasonal bounty.

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that anyone ever came back after 1820, or lived on the Hosmer farm, ever again. What was once a vision of the future now sat abandoned, a testimony only to what might have been.

Visit Merryspring Nature Center this summer to go look at the site where the old Asa Hosmer farmhouse once stood and let yourself glide back to the past.

ROCKPORT— It’s June and it’s “Grow Time.” Heidi Baker and her two young daughters, Isabelle, 9 and Zoe, 7, have a 3’ x 5’ raised bed at Erickson Fields on Route 90 for 12 weeks they get to call their own.

Beginning in early May, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, in collaboration with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, started its six-month session of Kids Can Grow, a program to introduce children and parents to growing vegetables and healthy eating.

Twelve families with children between the ages of seven and 12 signed up. Baker, who also happens to be the manager of Aldemere Farms and Erickson Fields, has always gardened herself, but said, “This is the first time my daughters have been able to experience it.”

Not only did the children learn in the first couple of sessions how to put together the raised beds with hammer and nails, but they took the skills back home with them part of the program’s overall aim. Each participating family receives materials – lumber, soil, nails, seeds and seedlings – to build their own raised beds at home.

“I love the idea of how they learn something here and then they take that knowledge home and apply it,” said Baker.

“Some of the plants need more sun and some need more shade,” said Isabelle, who added she’s looking forward to seeing the peas develop, so she can pluck them and eat them.

“We eat a lot from our garden at home, too.”

In one month, the children are beginning to already see the results of their labor. In their square-raised bed at Erickson Fields, cordoned off in square foot sections by twine, seedlings have sprouted into red and green lettuce, peas, scallions, carrots, and kale.

Group sessions are run by Aaron Englander, Erickson Fields Preserve program manager.

“He really knows how to get down to their level and show them how this works,” said Baker.

“Every month, we all get together to build on their skills a bit and then at home they utilize some of those skills in our own gardens,” she said. “Everybody gets a mentor who actually comes to the home and checks out how the garden is doing and offers suggestions and tips. If we have any issues with the garden with pests,  invasive species or interference with wildlife, they are there to help us.”

The girls got to name their garden “Belted Galloway Garden” by painting handmade sign at one of the sessions.

“I think it would be cool to try and make a whole meal with what we have at some point,” said Baker.

The program goes until October. Currently the Kids Can Grow program is full, but anyone who is interested in joining any of their gardening programs next season is welcome to contact Joelle Albury at jalbury@mcht.org or call 207-236-2739 to be added to their contact list.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

SEARSPORT — It’s taken the staff of Penobscot Marine Museum nearly five years to painstakingly comb through thousands of photographs from the magazine National Fisherman, but now that project has come to an end and The National Fisherman Collection— an online database of some 24,000 images — is available to view on their website.

“It was a huge collection,” said Photo Archivist Matthew Wheeler. “When we took possession of it, it filled four tall filing cabinets–mostly print photographs but many accompanied by 35mm negatives. We knew this would take dedicated funding to go through, so we managed to secure two federal grants for the project. ”

Photo Finding Pro-Tips

National Fisherman Collection

To find specific photos in the PMM National Fisherman database, type in a person’s name or subject you are interested in in the “Description” field (where “lobster” is below) and town in the “Place” field (where “Belfast is below). Don’t try to find the photo by the “State” field below: that is more for internal reference.

Most of the photographs were submitted by freelance photographers over the life of the magazine between the time they first published in 1946 to when they switched all of their photography submissions to digital in the mid-1990s.

According to the magazine’s history: “The roots of what has become the only U.S. national commercial fishing publication can be traced back to a fish report in a local Maine newspaper, the Belfast Republican Journal, which started in 1921.”

A small number of the photos come from the archives of the magazines Atlantic Fishermen and Maine Coast Fisherman, both of which predated National Fisherman and which the latter magazine eventually absorbed.

PMM has created a “microsite,” a page on their main website, which highlights the National Fisherman Collection and serves as a portal for browsing the images topically. The purpose of the site is to help visitors get a clearer perspective on a photo collection whose huge volume could make navigating it a challenge. While this tool makes it easier to explore the photos, it also helps give some sense of the scope they encompass. As the museum states on the National Fisherman page, "[The collection] illustrates the panorama of American commercial fishing, from the processing floor to the computerized bridge to the fabrication shop to the engine room to the greasy deck.”

Given the magazine’s earliest focus on Maine fisheries, it’s no surprise that many of the photos depict Maine people and professions. True to its name, however, the magazine has excelled at keeping an eye on the national scene, as evidenced by the collection's thorough coverage of the east coast fisheries, Chesapeake Bay and Louisiana, Texas, the many fisheries on the west coast from San Diego to Seattle, and on up to Alaska.

“Many of our fishing photos in other collections were taken before the 1970s,” added Wheeler, "so it's pretty interesting to see depictions of later practices, modern vessels, fishermen who are still alive today." 

The 12 topics of each sub-collection are varied. Among the Maine images, lobstering, groundfishing, boatbuilding, the sardine industry, and other professions are widely covered.

There are so many to look through that we’ve broken out several photos from just the “People” collection alone, which tells a story of the way people made their living in Maine. See more detail of each photos in the captions:

Note: All of the photos in this story have been given “fair use” permission to use.

Although the Penobscot Marine Museum has Fair Use rights to the images, if you wish to publish, transmit, use electronic copies, or receive a paper copy of any of these photographs, you will need to

1. obtain written permission from the copyright holder and determine what, if any, fees apply to usage, and
2. provide PMM with a copy of the document granting permission.

For more information visit: https://penobscotmarinemuseum.org/national-fisherman/

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — Rockland has always had the North Atlantic Blues Festival and Belfast has its All Roads Music Festival; it’s about time Camden got into the action. This weekend, a number of local organizers are putting on Camden’s first-ever Jazz in June Festival at multiple venues all weekend (June 14-16).

“There was a strong desire from various Midcoast folks to have an exciting event in June, as a way to kick off the season,” said Dave Morrison, Manager of the Camden Opera House, which is hosting some of the events. “While there is a Blues Festival, and a Folk Festival, there wasn’t a concert series that really shone a light on jazz, not just national and international acts, but some of the very fine local players. Matt Brown stepped up, and started creating what we hope will be an annual festival that celebrates jazz in all its forms, and the beautiful Midcoast."

Matt Brown is the leader of this community volunteer-produced event.

“It started about four years ago when members of the Camden Area Business Group wanted some kind of event to bring people here in June, earlier in the summer season,” said Brown.

The idea originated there and the lodging group knew that I had put on jazz shows at the Camden Opera House previously, so last summer, we began looking for the right line up for a Jazz in June Festival.”

Brown said the Saturday night headliner concert featuring the Kenny Barron Trio is a, “top-notch international act who has played with the greatest jazz artists for 60 years and he’s got a great reputation.”

“We’ve really been cognizant about doing something low cost and for free,” said Brown. “We’ve got five bands at the Camden Snow Bowl Saturday afternoon for $15 or $25 for the entire family. We’re featuring a good combination of national acts with great local acts, trying to balance it out for locals, for people coming in from out of town.”

Here’s the Line Up:

Friday, June 14

Camden Opera House
The Opera House doors will open at 7 p.m. for the 7:30 p.m. performance by the Bill Barnes Duo, featuring the veteran New York session guitarist, up on the third floor. Admission is free, and 40 Paper provides a cash bar.

Camden Snow Bowl
A Jazz in June Dance Party featuring The Right Track begins at 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. The high-energy 11-piece multi-genre outfit boasts a full horn section and outstanding vocalists. Tickets are $15, in advance at camdenoperahouse.com and at the gate (cash/check, only). Note, in case of rain, the event will be re-located to the Rockport Opera House. 

Saturday, June 15

Camden Snow Bowl
From noon to 5 p.m., it’s music on the mountainside, thanks to a full lineup of regional performers at the Snow Bowl. Included are the Wayne Delano Quartet, led by the award-winning reed master; emerging roots singer/songwriter Katie Matzell; local progressive jazzmeisters the Whitehead/Dean Group and jazz/funk fusion Hyperphonix; and The Extension Chords, a youthful jazz combo that just won the MAMM Slam. Tickets are $15, free younger than 6, $25 per family. Jazz on the hillside will feature music, a food tent and fun for the whole family. Note, in case of rain, the event will be re-located to the Rockport Opera House.

Camden Opera House
At 7:30 p.m. is the Jazz in June Feature Concert. Headliner is the acclaimed Kenny Barron Trio, led by jazz pianist, composer and music professor Barron. The NEA Jazz Master and American Jazz Hall of Famer has been called the most lyrical piano player of our time by Jazz Weekly. The Feature Concert also showcases the Greg Abate Quartet. And pianist and educator Peter Dembski will bring his piano jazz group to the opera house stage. Tickets are $48 in advance, $53 at the door. All Access Pass holders ($99) get priority seating around 6:45 p.m.; general admission doors will open at 7 p.m.

Sunday, June 16

16 Bay View
A sumptuous live Jazz Brunch in the Curtis-Bok Banquet Room of downtown boutique hotel 16 Bay View. takes place 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Brunch is included in the All Access Pass, is $35.

Camden Amphitheatre
There will be a free outdoor performance by the beloved local Mondaynite Jazz Orchestra, 2 to 3:30 p.m. in the Camden Amphitheatre adjacent to the library.

Tickets and passes are available at camdenoperahouse.com

For complete festival information, visit jazzinjunecamdenme.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

NORTH HAVEN — What we used to call ‘shop class’ in my day (and yes, I took shop, not Home Ec) is now called Diversified Trades, and Kaylee Ames, 17, a junior at North Haven Community School, took to it like a clam to water this trimester when she recreated a clam rocker out of pine with power tools.

Kaylee is one of five students in NHCS’s Diversified Trades class, which is a program of Mid Coast School of Technology, in Owls Head. According to Kaylee’s Diversified Trades instructor, Joel Rowland, MCST offers instructors in this field of study at three island schools: North Haven, Vinalhaven and Islesboro.

“We had the students practice using a variety of hand tools and power tools, and one of the projects was to design and build a toolbox,” he said. “Kaylee first built a toolbox for her grandfather. The clam rocker was Kaylee’s second effort after that.”

To go clamming in Maine, one needs a couple of pieces of equipment: a clam fork (also known as rake), a roller, and a clam hod (or its more old-fashioned term: a rocker).

The school had an additional project for Kaylee. They wanted some kind of basket to go with a raffle of items that NHCS was putting together for the Penobscot Bay Chamber of Commerce Expo in April.

At the Expo, Kaylee and one of the magnet students, accompanied their instructor, Amanda Labelle, at a booth where the clam rocker stood out as the display for the raffle tickets. The lucky winner of that raffle will now get the chance to spend a couple of nights on North Haven this summer at Nebo Lodge, where, waiting in the person’s room will be the clam rocker to be taken home.

Kaylee has gone clamming with her dad all of her life, hitting certain beaches at North Haven three seasons a year.

“My dad makes his own clam rockers out of scrap wood and we have about three of them at home,” she said. “Everybody in my family has a certain one they like to use and that’s where I got the idea not just to make a wooden basket, but to make the basket out of a clam rocker. I knew how to design one because I know how it works.”

In Rowland’s class, she said she used a band saw, a table saw and a thickness planer on pieces of pine to construct the clam rocker.

Sure beats the spice rack that we had to make in our day.

To find out more interesting stuff students are doing at visit: NHCS on Facebook

Hail To The Rad Kids is an ongoing feature highlighting teens in the Midcoast with special talent. 

Photos courtesy Kaylee Ames

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKPORT— The Camden-Rockport Elementary School ChangeMakers, a group of 12 third and fourth graders led by parent Katie Urey, have been on a mission to move the CRES cutlery from single-use plastic utensils to reusable silverware. ChangeMakers estimated that 600 pieces of plastic utensils are used at their school for lunch each day, costing the school about $1,000 per year.

As reported in the Related Story below, the ChangeMakers were on track to reach their $1,500 goal when, in the month of May, the group reached out to GoodWill NNE for additional donated silverware.

On Tuesday, June 4 Goodwill NNE dropped off approximately 500 sets of forks, knives and spoons for the school to use to help its sustainability effort. They came from the company’s warehouse, which received the donated cutlery from all over Maine.

“The ChangeMakers were initially able to collect about 600 pieces of silverware for the cafeteria, but in order to be successful, we were going to need more than 1,300 pieces,” said educator and leader of ChangeMakers, Katie Urey. “So with GoodWill’s donation, it has put us over the top. We have reached our financial goal and this project is now happening.”

She said that through the support of Food Services Director Susan Boivan and CRES principal Chris Walker-Spencer, the ChangeMakers project will start to be implemented in the next school year.

“We will now purchase eight trays that fit in the school dishwasher that will clean the silverware as well as some special industrial magnets that can be retrofitted to the cafeteria’s garbage containers so that silverware that is accidentally thrown away can be retrieved,” said Urey. So, with this equipment, along with the silverware donation, we hope to keep the silverware in use for many more years to come.”  

In addition, the students created a video for the rest of the school to show them how to maintain the silverware.

GoodWill NNE regional sales director, Shawn Nichols said, “If all the people who donated their silverware to GoodWill knew that some of it ended up in this program, they would have been very happy about that.”

GoodWill NNE external communication manager Heather Reeves told the students that the utensils went unsold in GoodWill stores and before they were recycled, they were reserved for the ChangeMakers’ project, adding: “We all know that reusing something is better than recycling, so you guys actually helped us re-use the silverware and we can’t thank you enough.”

To that, one student, Isabelle Baker said in astonishment, “We’re helping you?”

Steeves answered, “You’re helping the whole planet.”

Walker-Spencer added, “It sounds like a ‘win-win.”

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST— The 17th annual Senior College Festival of Art at Hutchinson Center is currently exhibiting 120 artists in a variety of mediums: photography, oils, mixed media, watercolor, sculpture, inkjet print, metal and more.

Artists have to be 50 years old or older to participate. On Saturday, June 1, documentary filmmaker Richard Kane will be screening his film about Maine artists, J. Fred Woell: An American Vision (2017, 51 min) which according to the Kane, is  “about a political artist who believed deeply in the power of the creative spirit.”

Check out the virtual gallery of some of the artists below. If it is something you like, go see the exhibit Friday and Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 12 to 3 p.m. At the entrance there is a greeter’s table for those interested in purchasing artwork. 

On Sunday, the Festival of Art committee have decided once again to hold a social/networking time for the artists, many of whom will be driving from hours away to collect their artwork. “The only time the artists get to interact is the drop off night, so we wanted to give them a chance to talk, meet each other, discuss their process and ideas and inspiration,” said Catherine Bradbury, a committee member. This built-in event will begin at 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. which will overlap with the public viewing, so that the public will have an additional chance to meet with the artists. Nearly 70 of the artists are signed up to participate.

For artists interested in participating next year, contact the Senior College and they will put you on a mailing list. Generally the Committee starts searching for artists by January every year.

Check out our gallery (a sample of some of the art available) along with the artist’s name and title of the work in the caption.

FMI: https://hutchinsoncenter.umaine.edu/

Memorial Day in the town of Lincolnville honors the legacy of those who died serving in the military. The parade started at 1 p.m. and ended at the Lincolnville War Memorial Honor Roll for a ceremony with wreath laying and rifle salute until 2 p.m.

Photos by Kay Stephens

Gary Oliver, the former co-owner of Mt. Battie Take Out at the base of the Camden Hills State Park, has a message for the shack’s loyal patrons who were disappointed to learn it was closing this season: “Don’t fret. We’re back and better than ever.”

The Beloin family, which owned the property the roadside restaurant was situation on, retired last October and sold their iconic lodging, Beloin’s to a young couple, as written about in a PenBay Pilot story, “After 80 years, Beloin’s gets new owners, new name.”

“So, it was time to do something different,” said Oliver. His business partner, Kevin Defoe, decided to opt out of the new venture and get back into lobstering instead. Oliver and his crew spent some time repainting the interior, laying down new floors and replacing the old decor with black and white vintage photos of Camden. The 65-seat restaurant, has a cozy, unfussy ambiance, very similar to the original Cedar Crest location and the price points for Camden are ideal for locals and families.

Now open at the former Cedar Crest Motel restaurant at 115 Elm Street, Oliver is back in the kitchen, serving up some of the best Maine seafood around. Having won the Trip Advisor Certificate of Excellence for the last four years for his simple, fresh and affordable menu, he’s bringing back the local favorites of fish and chips, lobster, crab rolls, burgers, homemade soups, chowders, sandwiches, subs and quesadillas and has expanded with a new breakfast menu of crab cakes and eggs, omelets, waffles, pancakes, and Eggs Benedict.

“Some of my old customers who’ve been coming to the take out shack for years and have swarming in here like mad since we opened,” he said.

Oliver himself has been a fixture in the Midcoast culinary scene for decades, having opened his own restaurant in Massachusetts, prior to coming here to work as a chef in a number of local restaurants. He co-owned Mt. Battie Take Out for nearly 10 years after that.

Oliver’s Bistro is currently open for breakfast to lunch from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. with plans to open additionally for dinner service by mid-June. Around the same time, Oliver has plans to open outdoor seating with a screened-in deck and bar featuring craft Maine brews on tap as well as wine.

For more updates visit their Facebook page: Oliver’s Bistro

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Welcome back Snowbirds. If you've been away all winter and are eager to see what has changed and what’s new in the towns of Camden, Rockport and a bit beyond, read on!

What Will Open This Spring/Summer

Spice Herbal Pizzaria

For several years, Aphiwat Raklittikul, aka Mr. Wat, rolled sushi at Mr. Wat’s Sushi and Noodles in Rockport and Rockland. In 2017, he stepped aside from the food entrepreneurship due to health reasons. Now a tenant of 148 West Street, a small, one-story commercial structure east of Erickson Preserve. “Spice Herbal Pizzeria” is the business name printed on the application. It is described as a take-out pizza restaurant.

Oliver’s

The former Elm St. Grille, in the Cedar Crest Motel was last Horsefeather Grille before they closed. Gary Oliver and his business partner Kevin DeFoe are moving their popular takeout business Mt. Battie Takeout (across from the Camden Hills State Park) and moving into this spot and plan to serve fresh seafood, salads, burgers and more with plans to open in May.

Blue Barren Distillery

Blue Barren Distillery, a small-batch craft distillery and tasting room has been slated to open in May to the public. Located in a renovated machine room that sits right next to Rhumb Line on the Lyman Morse marina side of the Camden Harbor, the distillery had its first public tasting of their debut blueberry brandy, Eau de Vie in March. By May they expect to have some tables out and the distillery open. Read that story here and here

Page Gallery

Colin Page has been a painter in the Midcoast since he moved here in 2003, but this year he is taking on an additional role as a gallery owner on Bay View Street in Camden, launching May 9. See that story here.

Business News

FatFace

FatFace, an international clothing store for men, women and children, opened at 10 Bayview Street in March. Great story: the store was founded by two ski bums. See our recent story here.

Barefoot In Denim

Barefoot in Denim, a new clothing and accessories boutique for women opened at 24 Bay View Street in March in the former Theo B. Camisole space. See our recent story here.

Funky Farmhouse

Funky Farmhouse an eclectic store offering urban farmhouse decor, moved to 53 Bayview Street and plans to open late May. See our recent story here.

Mid-coast Recovery Coalition

Mid-coast Recovery Coalition bought the house on 63 Washington Street and has recently transformed it into a recovery house for women See more details here.

If we've missed any new businesses that would be interesting to folks coming back to Maine, shoot us an email with the subject line "Add to Camden story" and we'll add it into the list! Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST — Over the winter, Belfast opened a number of new businesses.

Why do Camden and Rockland get Snowbirds and Belfast, Snowbats? It’s because in 2013, when Pen Bay Pilot did their first spring round up of what changed over the winter, our former writer, Ethan Andrews, took the Belfast slang term for its citizens ‘Moon Bats’ and turned that into Snowbats. So, if you've been away this winter, Penobscot Bay Pilot has an update on everything that opened, closed and changed while you were gone.

What Has Opened

Restaurants

The Stone Brick Oven Kitchen, opened on Route 1 in Northport, just past Wentworth’s Grocery, on March 1 in the space that was formerly the wood-fired pizza restaurant, Pizza Permare. Two friends, Nicole Pearse and Stacy Schlensker, are running the new business which aims to provide fresh, affordable food to an under-served community. Read more of that story here.

Crumbs Provisions, a new restaurant at 2 Spring Street, plans to open Mother’s Day. Crumbs (as they will call it) will serve breakfast, lunch, baked goods and prepared meals to-go. They will have a “mid-day bites and sips menu,” and are getting their wine and beer license. They will be a small eatery, and also will offer pre-packed picnic lunches as well.

Perennial Cider Bar, a cider bar and farm kitchen has opened in April on 84 Main Street. See our most recent story here. 

Jamaican Vybz, a Jamaican food stand in the United Farmer’s Market, opened in mid-April and will now be open for lunch each week Tuesday through Friday 10:30 a.m.  to 4 p.m. at 19 Miller Street. They are planning a grand opening sometime this spring. Meanwhile, the United Farmer’s Market will still be open Saturdays 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and has quite a few new vendors for the summer season.

Vinolio announced they are starting to do Test Kitchen Tuesday using their oils and vinegars such as Balsamic Mustards to marinate party wings. Stay tuned for more of their Test Kitchen recipes on their Facebook page.

Businesses

Tusk, a lifestyle store (housewares, art, skin care, music etc) is moving into the old Alder & Vine triangular shop on 9 Beaver Street. Owned by Nora Wormwood, they will be opening Saturday, May 4. For more information: Facebook

What Has Moved/Changed

The Belfast Bay Inn on Main Street underwent a change this winter after many visitors inquired about a long-term rental or a seasonal residency there, so they are now no longer a hotel, but instead, The Suites at Belfast Bay Inn, advertised as “elegant, furnished, year-round vacation rentals.” They do state however, that during their transition to vacation rentals, they will honor all exisiting reservations. (See more here) As such, they no longer needed their dining room space and that has opened space for more retail businesses. (See below).

In March, two Belfast businesses moved spaces.  Katwalk (70 Main Street), a women’s boutique, moved to the lower part of Main Street. EPOCH, (72 Main Street) a lifestyle vintage market, which had briefly closed, is now back on Main Street, as well, right next to Katwalk.

Town News

Our Town Belfast announced that they will no longer be part of the annual Belfast Summer Street Party. “After many thoughtful conversations and careful consideration, Our Town Belfast has decided that we will be stepping away from the summer street party in 2019. This doesn’t mean that the street party won’t take place. There are parties who have expressed interest in continuing the street party. Be on the lookout for further details.”  (will it?) The Annual Street Party will take place in August. Over the next few months, Our Town Belfast will finalize the details of a new event set to launch in the fall of 2019. The goal of this event is to introduce a low cost, family friendly event to our community when our Main Street is a little quieter and our downtown businesses and our community can truly participate. Read more of that story here.

If you are seeing a lot of yellow daffys all over the place, you can thank the idea of Elisabeth Wolfe and her husband, Michael Cunningham, after they conceived of a city project to plant 50,000 daffodil bulbs. After local fundraising got the bulbs delivered to Belfast in early October, the couple and a slew of volunteers planted them all over the town, where they will pop up this spring. See more of that story here.

If we've missed any new businesses that would be interesting to folks coming back to Maine, shoot us an email with the subject line"Add to Belfast story" and we'll add it into the list! Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

There’s been the usual reshuffling of spaces in downtown Rockland over the winter. Here's what happened over the fall and winter— what's open, what's closed, what's new.

What is New

Maine Mead Works

In October, the Portland-based meadery “Maine Mead Works” opened their third Maine tasting room in Rockland at 483 Main Street. Find out more here.

Rock City Café

In March 2018, Rock City Employee Cooperative, a cafe and coffee roastery, officially became a worker-owned cooperative, with 17 employees buying the business from its previous owner and founder, Susanne Ward. Business continues to thrive and they are still providing coffee, food, live music, and recently, threw a dance to raise funds for Trekkers.   They can be found on Facebook and at www.rockcitycoffee.com.

Eat Soup Food Truck

Eat Soup, a food truck business owned by Kate Grinnell Miller and Mike Miller (formerly of Grapes and Bricks restaurants) took over renting a truck from another operator who only uses it for the summer. As such Eat Soup, (located at 1 Commercial Street) provides affordable sandwiches such as grilled cheese and a rotation of four daily soups. However Snowbirds, eat Soup  is only open between November and March of each year in order to give the food truck back to the original owner for his summer business. See that story here.

The Slipway

Locals and fans of the Thomaston waterfront restaurant, The Slipway, were bummed last summer when owner Scott had to put his focus on his other Camden restaurant/bar The Rhumb Line, but will be mighty pleased to know that The Slipway plans to re-open for the 2019 season. FMI: Facebook page

Threshers Brewing Co.

Threshers Brewing Co., which opened in Searsmont in 2016 by two carpenters and brewers Ethan Evangelos and Scott Bendtson, just wanted a chill place for families to gather and to enjoy some good beer. They’ve now expanded and are currently working on 1 Starr Street in Thomaston (the blue building that formerly housed Billy’s Tavern). Now open, Thresher’s Brewing Co.’s second location will be a tasting room and restaurant. See that story here.

Ollie’s Food Truck

Down near Moody’s Diner, a new food truck is emerging from a former restaurant/grocery store in Jefferson, Ollie’s Place. Owners Vickey and Ralph Tolman Jones plan to open their red mobile food truck in May with mobile  subs, wraps, burgers, Reuben sandwiches with Morse’s sauerkraut, lobster and crabmeat rolls, pan-fried haddock sandwiches and quesadillas. They will also carry Gifford’s ice cream. Read that story here

What Has Closed

Rhonda Hilchey Nordstrom, owner of RHEAL day spa, announced in March that after 20 years in the business, she was retiring. “Dear friends, Twenty years ago I had a dream to return to my home town and open a business. Not just any business but a special place for women to retreat to for ten minutes or three hours.” While RHEAL Day Spa is physically closed, they continue to sell their products online. www.rhealskincare.com

The Flower Goddess quietly closed without notice. The space is now open to renters.

The Pearl, the restaurant, at the end of the pier at Rockland Harbor Park, will not be open for the 2019 season, according to a Faceook post by owner Larry Reed citing the need to get work done on the place that will take all summer. He said that the intention is to re-open May, 2020.

What Has Changed

DAUGHTERS, a clothing and accessories shop, has expanded and is currently moving to 442 Main St. (formerly Periscope Shop) opposite from Ada’s Kitchen. DAUGHTERS will no longer solely a vintage shop and will also be an online store. FMI: Facebook page.

Curator, had a grand re-opening, after discovering an empty space below their store. Now with two floors, they are offering vintage menswear and a whole new floor of womenswear in the basement space. Read that story here.

Business News

Bull On The Run, a new all-inclusive minivan tour to Midcoast breweries, distilleries and wineries, plans on opening by Mother’s Day, with tours starting at Rock Harbor Brewing Co. Find out more of that story here.

In April, Leggings Republic, a new clothing brand, located at 8 Lindsey Street, across from the Waterworks opened to the public.

In March, Midcoast Habitat for Humanity announced the on Philbrook Ave. they purchased from Madeline Philbrick’s estate, Jan. 1, 2017 would be the site of a subdivision of affordable housing through small houses (A Tiny House is anything less than 400-square-feet in size). See more of that story here.

Also in March, Lincoln Street Arts Center received an ordinance change allowing renovations to four classrooms to be turned into living spaces for tenants as a way to support local artists by providing a studio for one to six months, along with a $1,000/month stipend and second, to bring in artists from away “to add diversity.” See more of that story here.

City News

On March 3, the city of Rockland opened its new seasonal public ice rink at Harbor Park. Sorry Snowbirds, you won’t be able to enjoy this when you come back, but it provided a great way to enjoy the outdoors this winter with hot chocolate.

If we've missed any new businesses that would be interesting to folks coming back to Maine, shoot us an email with the subject line "Add to Rockland story" and we'll add it into the list! Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN—Nine students in Margo Murphy’s Gardening & Horticulture Class at CHRHS get to spend their time outdoors on a fine day in May, cranking the tunes while they work in around the greenhouse to prep for their annual plant sale May 18 & 19.

Since January, the students have been learning how to grow seedlings in the greenhouse and with 500 plants consisting of perennials, annuals, herbs and flowers, they are ready to let them all go to the public.

“We have a small but mighty crew this semester,” said Murphy. “Each year that number fluctuates between nine and 20 students.”

The annual sale isn’t just the final celebration of their hard work; it’s the beginning phase of their next project, and some of the proceeds to begin work on the spring garden in the terraces next to the greenhouse. “The money is used for a couple of sustainability projects,” said Murphy. “We’re putting in a aquaponic system, an orchard, and our new composting system as well.”

The terraces will produce fruits, vegetables and herbs that the cafeteria uses for its school meals.

The Horticulture & Garden Club goes full circle with regard to sustainability. Four Compost Managers oversee the class’s newest project to make their own compost from the trash, and food scraps collected from the cafeteria.  Ad Weisbruch, a freshman, is one of four Compost Managers, who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.

“We’re learning how to deal with organic waste,” he said. “We have to sift out the trash and run it through a shredder.”

“We’ve got two things we’re working on systems-wise in the cafeteria,” said Murphy. “We’re trying to make it so that whatever kids have on their plate is compostable, but we’re not there yet. So, the Compost Managers take everything that comes out of the cafeteria and go though all the garbage and when they have all of this organic, shredded up food and paper, we combine it with horse manure to make our own compost. We’ll use it in our spring plating project and on our grounds. It’s saving us money; it’s saving the landfills from a good portion of waste and it’s teaching the students how to bring these skills home.”

“I was interested in learning about composting and how to manage waste,” said Weisbruch, who said he’s already doing this at home with his family. He’s pretty sure he sees himself in some kind of outdoor job when he gets older.

The annual sale takes place Saturday, May 18 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and on Sunday, May 19 from 9 a.m. to noon. All containers are $3 each. Buy three and get the fourth for free. On Sunday, everything is buy one, get one free from 9 to 11 a.m. and the last hour everything is $1. They will also have their first batch of CHRHS compost for sale. Bring your 5-gallon bucket or there will be pre-packaged bags.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ST. GEORGE — Heading toward Port Clyde on Route 131, just about a mile past the Route 73 turn off, a big yellow house, circa 1811, sits on the left. Not visible from the road, however is the brand new Siemens VersiCharge Gen 2 30Amp Electric Vehicle Charger that Robert Skoglund, a.k.a. the humble Farmer, installed in his barn two weeks ago. The charging cord can go out the nearby window and charge any electric vehicle that happens to be down this far.

The house runs entirely on solar power from 30 PV panels that Skoglund purchased, 24 of which he and some young neighbors installed on a rack he built himself.

“I’d made smaller PV panels myself, but they could only be used with a battery system and were not compatible with the grid,” he said. “When I asked my friends at ReVision Energy for help, they installed six 230 Watt panels on my rack. I’ve added 24 more, eight at a time, as I got enough money from rhubarb sales to pay for them. Right now I pay about $135 to be hooked to the grid for a year and I’m very pleased with my system.”

Long known for his dry, self-deprecating wit as the radio personality and columnist ‘humble Farmer” (the ‘h” is lowercase...because it’s more humble that way) Skoglund runs a bed and breakfast at his home with his wife, Marsha. He purchased the electric vehicle charger to give people with electric vehicles one more reason to visit St. George. They get a free charge when they stay overnight at his B&B.

In the 10-plus years that Skoglund has been running his appliances with solar power, he has managed to use exactly as much as he has generated. But last month, for the first time, he didn’t run his electric heaters long enough and was startled to see that 87 KWH was erased from his account. Although they had enough electric heat to keep the house warm, Skoglund said he’ll be glad to see his surplus power put to good use by his friends who own electric cars.

“I might break even on the charger after four people with an electric car book a room,” he said. “Because we are on the cusp of a new technology, I’ll be pleased if it takes two years. But in 10 years when the electric car technology has improved I doubt if you’ll see anything else.”

Cars are a big interest for Skoglund and he’ll give you a tour of the property where a number of his old Model Ts are stored. One such Model T, a 1926 rusted relic sitting in the barn, has a good back story.

“In December of 1952, I was 16 and coming home from school, when I rolled that one over,” he said. “I didn’t have a tire; I was riding on the rim—you could do that in those days—and the pounding on the road shattered the wooden spokes and the car went over in the ditch and flipped. But, I landed on my feet and shut it off. Back then you didn’t have to report an accident if the damage was under $50 and the car was only worth $42. I played for a dance that night at Rockland high school and didn’t dare tell my mother I’d rolled over in my car until after the gig.”

There are a number of websites such as Charge Hub that list all of the places in the U.S. that hosts electric car charging stations

“People with electric cars want to know where they can get a charge when they come to Maine,” he said. “It’s still a new thing but it’s becoming more commonplace. It’s just a matter of time. I’m in the vanguard.”

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN—Every spring, Camden brightens up with color, but the town just got a turbo boost with painter Colin Page’s new gallery set to open on 23 Bay View Street tonight, May 9, at 5 p.m.

Painting professionally for the last 20 years, Page was always content to just focus on his own body of work until he’d reached a certain level. “For a long time, owning a gallery wasn’t something I wanted to get involved in, but I was at a place in my career where I had enough of a following and wanted to share the work of other artists I know in a way that would fit with my vibe.”

Page Gallery is a contemporary art gallery exhibiting American paintings, drawings and sculpture. Beyond a few of Page’s works, the gallery also represents painters Gideon Bok (Camden), Jessica Ives (Camden), Tim Lawson (Rockport), and Peggi Kroll Roberts (daughter in Appleton), and three dimensional work by Simon van der Ven (Lincolnville).

Kay Stephens ca be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND— Book spine poetry started off as a lark, a meme in the 1990s, after artist Nina Katchadourian took photographs of stacked book titles that, when read top to bottom, created short sentences and stories.

In April, the Rockland Public Library put out a contest for book spine poetry.

“Book spine poetry has been around for a long time, but we wanted to offer a contest for the month of April, which is Poetry Month with something that was alternative to the traditional poetry contest,” said Librarian Jessica Blanchard. 

Approximately 30 people submitted photographs of poems they created from stacking the titles of books in a certain order.

“We had people use their own books, books from the library, even books from the inter-loan library, because certain people had titles in mind that they needed to complete their poem and didn’t have a certain word to go with it, said Blanchard. “From the children who submitted, we had a few kids who submitted spine poetry from our after-school program as well as a few students from RSU 13 and homeschooled students.”

Clare Zall won Rockland Public Library’s “Best Overall” category of book spine poetry with her politically-themed entry which reads:

My American Heritage

Stars & Stripes Forever

A Nation of Immigrants

The Audacity of Hope

Dog Days at The White House

Vanishing Americana

“I have a lot of books on American History,” said Zoll. “Scanning my bookshelves, the poem came together quickly. On the poem’s subject matter, she explained, “I grew up 20 miles from D.C. and patriotism was as natural as breathing, even during the Nixon scandal. When I moved to Maine as a young bride, I was happy to find Mainers had great civic pride. Small towns, granges, celebrations keyed to local history. I met young leaders like Chellie Pingree and Jeff Evangelos who had a strong desire to serve the people. Patriotism unites people. Together, we can do more than we can do individually.”

Delving more deeply into the political context, she said: “The last elections I worked to register young voters. Their jaded views surprised me: most had to be convinced that the power of one vote was essential to a healthy America. Some did not know they were eligible to vote, some did not know they could vote with no party affiliation, some even seemed wary of voting. It's deeply disturbing to hear someone say they only see negativity and division in America today. President Obama said America is a work in progress. I agree with that statement. We're a very young country when you think about it, and there's a lot of work to be done. In 2019, I see Nationalism, not patriotism. A patriot is proud of his country for what it does and what it stands for, while a nationalist is proud of his or her country no matter what it does.”

Others who won categories include Best Love Poem: Kalen Darney; Best Nature Poem: Betsy Headley; Best Haiku: Eileen Fitzgerald; Most Humorous: Phyllis Merriam; Best Nature: Rosabelle Humiston and Abby Goode; Most Humorous: Jessa Blackman; Best Kid Haiku & Best Overall: Jared Blackman.

For more examples, check out #bookspinepoetry on Twitter or read this Scholastic article on how “Found Poetry” spurs creativity.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — The jazz-inspired trio The Extension Chords, representing Camden Hills Regional High School, is the only Midcoast band competing in the Maine Academy of Modern Music’s annual rock off dubbed the MAMM Slam to be held at the Empire in Portland on Saturday, May 11.

Myles Kelley (keyboard), Katherine Bowen (electric bass) and Owen Markowitz (drums) make up the ensemble.

The band name came out of a musician’s worst fear: Right before their first public gig, they forgot the extension cords in order to plug in their instruments.

“It was eventually resolved,” said Myles, “but that provided the band name.”

Here’s a video of that exact moment after they got their electrical issues fixed.

All three met and began playing together at the Midcoast Music Academy. Owen, 15, is a sophomore and Myles and Katherine, are both 16 and juniors at CHRHS.They were only a handful of students through MMA playing jazz and naturally, the school put them all together. For the last two years, they’ve been working on original songs and standards. And, they just like to hang out together.

To get a sense of their style, listen to their Sound Cloud: https://soundcloud.com/theextensionchords 

If you want to hear some complicated and sophisticated arrangements, listen to Freedom Jazz Dance. For a little sweet nostalgia, check out their cover of My Funny Valentine. And for a fantastic keyboard cover of Stevie Wonder’s classic hit, listen to You Are The Sunshine of My Life.

It’s no surprise that all three students began their musical careers early, in elementary school. Given such talent at such a young age, their choice of musical style begs the question: why jazz? Why not rock or hip hop?

“I think jazz is coming up more, like more of a popular form,” said Owen.

“In jazz, you have to learn a lot of the basics, that you’d find in other genres, like rock,” said Myles. “It’s not easy, but it makes for a better transition when playing other styles.”

The kids point to Anderson Paak as one of their musical inspirations for jazz being played in a modern way. In the NPR Tiny Desk video embedded in this story (warning: some explicit language), it’s evident what they find exciting about his music. Paak plays drums in some funky, hip hop jazzy dragged beat while effortlessly rapping and singing.

“You can tell this is exactly where our inspiration comes from,” said Myles.

“And a lot of hip hop is also our influence,” said Owen.

As the only Camden band to register for the MAMM Slam, The Extension Chords guaranteed a spot to compete among nearly a dozen bands. In fact, they may be Camden Hills Regional High School only teen band that participates in professional gigs.

All three know this is one of the biggest tests of their music careers this coming weekend that on top of the fact that it’s a heavy testing week at school for them. They only have a few minutes to play their set have to bring their A game. As an instrumental band, they are fairly that they won’t be nervous once they get on stage. (Although Katherine admitted she and Myles do have a little work to do when it comes to stage presence.)

The winners of the MAMM Slam will not only take home a $1,000 cash prize, but will receive a slew of opportunities to boost their career.

No matter what happens, The Extension Chords already have gigs lined up afterward, and plan to play in an upcoming performance at the new "Jazz In June" Festival slated to be held in Camden this summer.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com