The book is out! Our View 2016: Camden and Rockport, Maine as Photographed by the Eighth Grade Class of Camden-Rockport Middle School just dropped on iTunes as a free download.

As originally featured in our story, Twenty five years later kids photograph a ‘Day In The Life’ of Camden-Rockport, this 86-page photography book is the result of a trimester long interdisciplinary study around community, self-expression, and digital media.

The project was an update to the original publication published in 1991 by the seventh grade class of the the Mary E. Taylor Middle School and funded by Eastman Kodak and Youth Arts.

In the introduction to the 2016 ebook, CRMS Technology teacher Ian McKenzie said: “Twenty five years later, many things have changed in Camden and Rockport. Mary E. Taylor Middle School is now called Camden-Rockport Middle School. 35mm cameras have been largely replaced with digital cameras on phones, tablets, and other electronic devices. Fashions have changed. Many of the businesses and faces in our respective towns have come and gone. Students live faster paced lives and don’t always have the time to slow down and appreciate the world around them; however, when they do have that chance, don’t always take advantage of it.”

CAMDEN — The Camden Snow Bowl just got a new eatery. The only thing is, you can’t get to it by walking.

Brian Beggarly, owner of Boynton-McKay in Camden, just opened a pop-up weekend taco shop mid-mountain at the Snow Bowl on the weekend of Dec. 16-18 and plans to continue his new venture, Cold Toes Tacos, all winter long.

“I learned how to snowboard in Vermont and all of the bigger mountains have these foodstands and mini pubs mid-mountain where you can grab a burger and a beer so you don’t have to go all the way down the mountain when you’re hungry,” he explained. “So, in trying to think of things I could do in the wintertime, I came up with the idea of applying the foodstand concept to the Snow Bowl on a smaller scale. Tacos fill you up, but aren’t too heavy, so you can keep on skiing or snowboarding. My goal is to have people get through the line in five minutes.”

Tacos are easy, he said. “I can prep much of it beforehand and all I have to do is heat up the fillings an tortillas on a grill. ”

Getting the product up the mountain, however, took a little more thought.

“We took a snowmobile up the service road towing a lot of stuff. My wife actually knocked together this incredible sled with an old pair of skis locked into an Igloo cooler and then we found a really old sled in the maintenance shed that looks like something out of the Iditarod and hooked that up. So, we got all of the heavy gear up Saturday, where it will live all winter.

“I’ve done a lot of catering, but it’s mostly been on sandy beaches in Florida,” he said. “I though that experience would apply. Some of it did; some of it didn’t. It takes a few more extra layers and having to take my gloves off a lot. But, other than that, it was super cool.”

Beggarly hopes to make the concept a moveable feast by moving the taco stand around to various areas on the mountain.

“We are now set up for where the little chairlift drops off, because right now, that’s the only part of the mountain that’s open,” he said. “But, as we get more natural snow this winter, that will open up opportunities where we can be. We’ll be flexible where we move. We have to check in with Ski Patrol so we’re not causing a traffic jam. And we want to be accessible to a lot of levels of skiers, so we’re probably going to stay somewhere around mid-mountain.”

His first weekend was a huge success, and he ended up selling out of many of his signature items.

“I probably had five days worth of food up there,” he joked. “We got a lot of positive feedback.”

Cold Toes Tacos plans on being open each weekend Friday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Check with the Snow Bowl or their Facebook page to learn whether they will be open during both holiday weekends.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — A century ago, the bohemians and artists who wandered into a café for their afternoon “happy hour” of absinthe were all too familiar with rituals of absinthe preparation and pouring. But, because absinthe has essentially been illegal to manufacture for more than 100 years — until recent years — very few people in modern society know how to make, or drink, the cloudy green concoction.

Bruce Olson, founder and owner of Tree Spirits Winery and Distillery, went to the Vintage Room in Camden with his business partner Karen Heck Saturday night, Dec. 17, to demonstrate how absinthe is poured and sampled. Tree Spirits, based in Oakland, is the first distillery in this state to receive federal approval to make and sell absinthe since the U.S. ban on it was lifted in 2007. See our 2014 story: Absinthe, once illegal, is making a roaring comeback in Maine.

Made from a recipe from the 1800s, Olson distills his homemade applejack with grand wormwood, fennel and anise, then colors with an infusion of petite wormwood, lemon balm and hyssop.

As a small crowd gathered on a snowy night in the Vintage Room on Bay View Street, Olson provided tiny sips of the straight absinthe for people to sample. The initial taste is strongly alcoholic and aromatic of licorice.

“It its pure state, absinthe is 130 proof,” said Olson. “What you’re tasting is anise, fennel and wormwood — that’s what they call the holy trinity.”

A traditional ritual of pouring starts with an ounce of absinthe at the bottom of a bulbous glass. An elaborate contraption called an Absinthe Fountain has four spigots that drip ice cold water over a square lump of sugar balancing on an absinthe spoon across the lip of the glass.

“The idea is that as the water drips into the glass, it dilutes the drink’s potency, but it also goes from a clear green to this cloudy green,” said Heck. “Today you probably don’t need the sugar, but when it was originally created, absinthe was very bitter due to the wormwood herb.”

Once diluted, the drink’s hot sharpness mellows, but the licorice taste is predominant. Then there’s the famed hallucinogenic properties of the drink to consider.

“There’s no question that all of the herbs have an effect on you,” he said. “I think if you have enough, you’ll feel a little altered.”

To find out more about the history of absinthe, watch our video.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

We’re following A&E Networks' History survivalist show Alone, Season 3, thanks to local survivalist, Zachary Fowler of Appleton, one of the remaining nine contestants on the unscripted show as they try to survive all alone in the Patagonia wilderness. See our recent article on him.

Episode 2 aired last night, (Dec. 15, 2016) and today we find out what happened:

Pilot: Seems like some of the contestants were having trouble finding food in the first week; how did you do?

Zach: I did okay my first week. I set out a little spring line the way Meghan did and a static line. I think I had about three lines and was finding worms while flipping over rocks at the water’s edge to bait my hooks every morning and evening. I think I caught about five fish in that first week. And the days I didn’t catch a fish, I had fish head soup. I didn’t have as much luck foraging because my location was so dense and dark, but I had quite a bit of nutrients from the fish.

Pilot: How was your mental outlook the first week?

Zach: It was really hard; I really was thinking over and over about having to leave my family. I kept worrying about them. Would my wife, Jami, get a chance to fix our broken down vehicle that I had to leave them in on the side of the road? I just had to trust her that she would and do what she has to do. Missing home was really a big part of the first week.

Pilot: For the brief clip you got on the show this week, it showed you using that shovel you debuted in your casting video? How useful was that tool?

Zach: Oh yeah, I used it to flip over rocks and work the bamboo and for some other projects I started out while in Patagonia. I used that shovel all of the time. I made fishing poles and I think that clip showed a little of what I was working on; stripping down poles.

Pilot: Once you got your camp set up, how did you spend the rest of your time?

Zach: I worked on a lot of projects just to stay busy and make myself more comfortable.

Pilot: Like what?

Zach: I did a horrible job filming it, but that first week I made a spoon. I figured with pot and making soup, I needed to scoop out little bits. I made something similar to a miso spoon that was flat on the bottom but to be honest, it looked more like a toilet with a big handle.

Pilot: Is there anything else notable behind the scenes from your episode this week?

Zach: When we were watching this at Threshers [Brewing Co.] last night, my one scene showed a tree and of course I knew what was going to happen next, but the audience didn’t. So, when I threw the shovel to hit the tree, I snickered out loud in the bar, but it just so happened to coincide with me snickering exactly the same way on the screen, so you had this stereo effect and that made everyone in last night’s audience laugh out loud.

Stay tuned to watch Fowler in History’s next episode of Alone, airing Thursday at 9 p.m.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

LINCOLNVILLE — It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it building, but well worth circling back around to. The Red Barn Baking Co., just on the Camden/Lincolnville town line on Route 1, is known for its insanely coveted baked goods, but the other half of the century-old barn is a treasure trove. And it’s only open for another two weeks until it closes for the season.

Inside the two-story barn, one quarter of the first floor is dedicated to the bakery. The rest of the space is for approximately 30 individual vendors who share it, featuring there an eclectic mix of upcycled art, refinished furniture, vintage repurposed housewares, textiles  and original creations. Each “booth” has its own distinct personality —sort of like 30 micro-stores within a store.

“There’s a lot of unique talent here,”said retail manager Kris Brown.

Many of the people who have space in the Red Barn have full time jobs, but they go on search missions for unique items, are able to curate them and successfully use the space to display and sell them.

“It’s been amazing to watch what goes in and out of here,” said Brown.

There’s even gourmet food items, such as jams, jellies and sauces from Northwoods Gourmet Girl and the Maine Chef near the front entrance.

“From what I understand, this barn was an antique place for 40 years,” said Brown. “I’ve had several people come in and tell me about a restaurant that used to be opposite the road from this place so it’s well known.”

Co-owners Katie Capra and Dale Turk originally purchased the large barn in 2014 with the intent to just sell Capra’s baked goods.

“For the first year we were open, the other half of the first floor and second floor was just sitting open and empty,” said Capra. “Knowing that it used to be an antique store, we thought ‘why not make it one again and kick it up a notch?’ Not only would it support local people, but it would serve as a draw for the bakery.”

The idea and investment paid off and the first year of the marketplace, has been very successful. “The marketplace has definitely grown along with the bakery and we’ve been pleasantly surprised,” said Capra. “We’re always keeping our eyes and ears open for new ideas to do with it.”

For the holiday season, the biggest sellers have been homemade wreaths and vanilla candles. For people who love shopping local and supporting locals, it’s a place worth checking out.

“The energy is here is amazing,” said Brown. “Positive people, all around.”

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

A new season of History’s Alone debuted on the A&E Networks on Dec. 8, 2016. And Zachary Fowler, one of the show’s 10 contestants, happened to catch the episode surrounded by friends at Thresher’s Brewing Co. in Searsmont.

The show’s survivalist premise plunks 10 participants in the wilderness of Patagonia, where they will be put to the ultimate test of will and human endurance–surviving as long as they can, completely isolated and alone, with nothing but the contents of a small backpack. Each individual must create their own shelters, catch food from the land, overcome harsh terrain, bitter cold and contend with a host of deadly predators. They will truly be on their own.

Unlike other reality shows, there is no camera crew several feet away. The last one standing wins.

Of course Fowler cannot tell (and doesn’t yet know) who is the winner of this season, but he’s now back in Appleton with his wife, Jami, and two young daughters.

Fowler, 37, has lived off the grid on his 2.5 acre small farm Appleton for nearly a decade, living in a yurt with a greenhouse. He has always been self-reliant and practiced homesteading skills. As a Maker, he loves to forge his own tools, slingshots, catapults and rocket stoves—anything that captures his interest. Just for the fun of it, he even created a YouTube series called Makery and Mischief.

A fan of survivalist shows like, Alone, which began two seasons ago, he decided to write to the creators of the show last January. To his surprise, out of 50,000 applicants, he was invited to apply as a contestant on Season 3.

“They went on my Facebook page and scrolled through all of the photos I’ve taken of the knives and slingshots I made and then got back to me quickly,” he said. “They directed me to this website to apply, then sent me a camera to take a video and now that’s on their YouTube channel.” See his accompanying casting video.

The show invited 20 people initially, knowing some people would drop out. Each participant was given a very specific list of 10 items they could bring with them, and Zach chose to bring one of his handmade slingshots, among other handy items.

This past spring, he had to leave his boatbuilding job at Northeast Boat Yard, and his family, and immerse himself in a boot camp in upstate New York with the other participants to prepare for their trip — and no one knew where they were going to be sent off to.

“I was only able to tell people I was going away for a survival show and my boss was like ‘all right, see ya later,’” he said.

After a ton of paperwork, interviews, doctor’s evaluations and a three-day wilderness survival evaluation by experts, not everyone made it out of boot camp.

“A couple of people quit right off the bat, overwhelmed by it all,” he said. “When I first saw all of these people, who come from around the world, on the first day I was horribly intimidated. One of these guys was like ‘I’ve spent 50 days out in the wilderness and can rub two sticks together to make fire.’ And I was like, I don’t know how to rub two sticks together to make a fire. But, as time went on, I could see everyone was just human. And it was really fun. We all got along well.”

This past summer, the top 10 cast learned they were to be flown to the wilderness of Patagonia, outfitted with just their 10 items and a camera to shoot the raw footage for Alone.

Self-effacing, humorous and genial, Fowler is already one of the show’s stand out “characters,” not just because of his bushcraft skills, but because he doesn’t take himself as seriously as some of the other contestants do.

“My goal was to get in front of the camera as much as possible,” he joked.

Though he’s not allowed to reveal many details about the show itself, Fowler was just as excited as the rest of the patrons of thresher’s Brewing Co. to watch the first episode. Everyone cheered when he showed up larger than life on screen.

At various points in the show, Fowler gave Mystery Science Theater-like comments on what the audience was seeing. As far as the guy who could rub two sticks together?

“Yeah, but what you didn’t see is that it took him like 50 times,” he commented, sparking laughter from the audience.

Stay tuned each week to watch Fowler use his bushcraft and survivalist skills to stay alive. Will this Maine boy stay in the game and make our state proud? Only time will tell.

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

CAMDEN — Food isn’t just fuel; it directly impacts our emotions. Award-winning chef and local restaurateur Kerry Altiero will be covering this topic in a talk on Dec. 12 at the Camden Public Library titled “Mood Foods” centering around foods that make us happy, foods that make us sad, and sometimes mad.

If you’re thinking about the calf liver with smothered onions you were forced to eat as a child, that’s not quite the “mad” Alterio means.

“Think of food that’s precious, but soulless,” he said. “Where you look up from the plate and want to say out loud, ‘You can do better than this!’”

Whether it’s bland mac and cheese food at a chain restaurant or an expensive comfort food meal at a hot new joint that fails to deliver, the results are the same.

“Maybe the disappointment is heightened the more you pay,” he mused out loud. “But the essence of this talk is that the more mechanized and robotized and disconnected we are, the more it’s apparent when someone really does care about the food and the customer.”

This is where the “food makes you happy” line of reasoning is going.

“As I’ve often said, at Café Miranda, we do comfort food from around the world,” Alterio said. “There’s a grandma behind every one of our dishes. Farmer Anne Perkins of Head Acre Farm will be joining us for the talk and she’ll talk about what she grows and the pleasure she gets from eating food that goes back to her childhood.”

As Alterio points out, this soil-to-plate connection is even more important now than it was 40 years ago. “We used to have this front porch culture in the 1950s, where everyone sat out on their porches and knew their neighbors; where you had a personal relationship with your seamstress, your butcher, your haberdashery, your department store and soda shop,” he said. “As the decades went by, the houses moved father back on the properties and the front porch culture turned into a more closed-off backyard culture. Fast forward to the advent of the Internet and now we sit in our dark living rooms, plugged into one device or another and order from Amazon.”

“You can’t get a good restaurant quality meal online,” Alterio said with conviction. “And the restaurants, bars and coffee shops used to all be the ‘third’ place people typically went to when they weren’t home or at work. Where’s your third place? Restaurants, bars and coffee shops are still filling that need.”

Join Alterio on Dec. 12 from 12 to 1 p.m. and bring along your favorite mood-food recipe. The talk is sponsored by Destination Wellness, whose mission is to make health and wellness a mainstay of life in Midcoast Maine.

For more information, visit: destinationwellnessme.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Brattleboro, Vt., musician Brandon Taaffe is coming to Maine this weekend with a unique twist on using art to visually illustrate his music. Using the 19th century art form of a crankie (scrolling illustrations hand-cranked through a wooden frame), he has found a particularly haunting way to tell a story.

“It’s like making a music video..if you were in 1840,” he said.

A multi-instrumentalist on guitar, fiddle, banjo and mbira, a thousand-year-old thumb piano derived from Africa, he will be playing in multiple venues and singing ballads to accompany the “moving panorama” of his crankies.

Taaffe is self-taught in crankie making. “We just had our third annual Crankie Fest in Vermont, which I curate,” he said. “There’s a lot of musicians coming back to this old art form, essentially to visually represent the music, especially with traditional ballads because there is such a clear story line. It’s such vibrantly visual language.”

Take a look at the crankie video accompanying this story: When The World Comes To an End that Taaffe created along with several teenagers at a summer camp. The deceptively simple back lit paper silhouette scroll took 40-50 hours just to create the three-minute video performed by The Bright Wings Chorus from Vermont.

“There are a lot of ways people make crankies, but the majority are back lit with silhouettes with a shadow puppetry imagery,” he said. “Actually, the most common way is to have the background be white and the images black, but we decided to do the opposite with this one using black as the background and the cut out images back lit in white. I think that’s what people responded so much to it, because it was so striking.”

This weekend, he sweeps into the Midcoast for a couple of events. The first is on Dec. 9, at 7 p.m. at Sweet Tree Arts in Hope, where Taaffe will be singing a cappella ballads to accompany four or five of his hand-made crankies. 

On Saturday, Dec. 10, he’ll perform more ballads at the Belfast Dance Studio at 8 p.m., while playing mbira, which he has been studying for more than nine years after traveling to Zimbabwe twice to study with master players.

“I think the sound of mbira is so evocative, so perfectly balanced on the knife edge between joy and sorrow — which is what makes it such a perfect instrument to accompany ballads” Take a listen to one of his songs on mbira: Can’t Hold The Wheel, in which he blends African rhythms with Appalachian ballads.

For more information visit: brendantaaffe.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — Looking for a monumental-sized Bloody Mary that takes an hour and a half to consume? The Camden Sea Dog just debuted an impressive Bloody Mary Bar on the last weekend of November and it is a sight to behold.

First off, forget the dinky pint-sized Mason jars; this drink comes in a quart-sized Mason jar. Bar Manager Amanda Dennison said, “We just started brunch service and wanted something big and over-the-top to go with it. One of our managers used to put on a Bloody Mary bar in Boston with these giant quart-sized Mason jars, so we’ve adopted that.” Everything else comes from Dennison’s own imagination.

There are the typical offerings such as: celery, olives, pickles and gherkins, horseradish, lemons and limes. But Dennison has kicked it up with some truly inspiring additions, such as the candied pork belly strips and natural casing sausage links, blue cheese stuffed olives, asparagus, caprese skewers of mozzarella and cherry tomatoes, fresh herbs, stuffed sweet peppers — and if you go for the $3 up-charge — even a skewer of four Cajun shrimp.

“Let’s do it huge, let’s make it big,” she said.

The bar uses their signature Ice Pik vodka and offers a choice of either infused lemon and lime vodka, spicy jalapeno, bell peppers and cilantro vodka, or just plain. Combine that with their housemade Bloody Mary mix and you get your choice of a coated rim with either: celery salt, sea salt and black pepper and Old Bay seasoning.

One can then further play with the alchemy of the taste with the full range of horseradish, clam juice, lobster juice hot sauces, Worcestershire and mustards available on the bar.

The perfect Bloody Mary is boundless, but the one I made included:

• Vodka: Plain Ice Pik vodka
• Rim: Old Bay seasoning
• Fruits and Vegetables: Celery, gherkin, lemon, lime, blue cheese stuffed olives and asparagus stalks
• Meats: Candied pork belly and skewer of Cajun shrimp
• Flavor additions: Horseradish, Cholula Hot Sauce, Worcestershire and pepper

Asked what she’d create for herself, Dennison said, “My ultimate would be the spicy Ice Pik vodka, the sea salt and pepper rim, some caprese skewers, pickles, pork belly, celery, lemon lemon and lots of hot sauces.”

“Our customers loved it last week when we opened for brunch,” she said. “This past Saturday, you could look down the entire length of the bar and nearly every single person had one of these giant quart-sized Mason jars in front of them.”

For $9 (not including the shrimp), this is also a gargantuan deal. You won’t need two and give yourself at least two hours to consume it!

Related stories:

• Try The 16 Bayview Hot Toddy on a Blustery Day

• Three Tides whips up a Thin Mint Cocktail just in time for Girl Scout Week

• Meanwhile In Belfast’s Egg Nog Winter Sherry Flip

• Mercy! Will someone hand me a Maker’s Mark Maple Julep at Francine’s?

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN—In Night Kitchen, John Burstein’s newest musical comedy, when the last patron leaves the restaurant and the chef switches off the lights, the inanimate objects —pots and cans, spoons and ladles — and foodstuffs come alive and take over.

As Slim Goodbody, winner of numerous Parent Choice Awards, Burstein conceived of this musical while working with the Meals on Wheels committee, trying to come up with a way his writing and directing talents could provide some revenue for the nonprofit.

What started off as a theatrical one-act vignette turned into 14 months of play-writing with 17 original musical numbers, he said. Its final result was Night Kitchen, an hour and a half play with 100 percent of the ticket sales benefiting Meals on Wheels in Rockland.

“I went around and interviewed a lot of chefs,” said Burstein. “I spent a lot of time with Brian Hill of Francine, James Hatch of Home Kitchen Cafe and Anne Marie Ahern of Salt Water Farm, to see about what it’s like to be a chef-owner of a restaurant and the problems and difficulties of running it.”

All of that research turned into his first musical for adult audience, exploring the inner workings of the restaurant business, and the importance food plays in people's lives. With imaginatively costumed characters from the kitchen coming alive and singing about their joys and sorrows, there is (like any restaurant) highs and lows on any given night.

“It’s a romantic comedy,” said Burstein. “You’ve got the chef trying to find his place in the world, trying to get his own cooking show, never happy with what he has, always focused on more. During the day all the things in the kitchen—the appliances, the utensils, the pots and pans and spoons soak up the energy of the people who work there. At night, it becomes the Night Kitchen and all of those things relive what they’ve absorbed from the people.”

Burstein’s fanciful characters also include a frying pan dreaming of flambe'ing, a dish and spoon who fall in love, and the Pasta Nostra Clan plotting to take over the kitchen.

Burstein has plans for the musical beyond the opening weekend.

“I’d like to take it down to Portland and put it on the Portland stage for a couple of weeks in the summer,” he said. “The other plan is to possibly travel to other Meals on Wheels around the state.”

The show takes place Dec. 9 and 10 at the Camden Opera House. Tickets are $25. Box Office opens at 6:30 p.m. - Auditorium at 7:00 p.m Fireside will offer their gourmet pizza, craft beer, wine and other refreshments beginning at 6:30 p.m. through intermission. FMI: The Night Kitchen

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

 It seems with every Christmas commercial, there’s a suburban McMansion twinkling with lights, a 20-foot tree mounded underneath with presents and a happy, supportive family gathered around an expansive table filled with food.

Cut to reality and imagine being a single mom holding your child on your lap in the living room of the Knox County Homeless Coalition/Hospitality House. You’re grateful for the shelter in your temporary home, but you don’t have enough money to buy your child socks for Christmas, let alone the excesses of what they see on TV.

But Hospitality House families do have each other — and a great community to help them through an emotionally and financially challenging season.

For the last two years, generous benefactors have helped the Hospitality House’s families with holiday gifts, but this year, the Hospitality House is taking a different approach, gathering wish lists from their families and asking the community to 'adopt a family' for the holidays. Those who wish to help will have the opportunity to choose a family for whom they would like to shop.

“Many of our families have a hard time with the flood of warm, happy Christmas images this time of year,” said Jessie Harriman, shelter manager. “ As a result, they feel the pang of not having the family support. It’s not like they can reach out to their immediate families and say, ‘Could you loan me a little money so I can buy some Christmas gifts for my child?’ When you’re homeless, you’re constantly worrying about what to eat and where to live. The pressure of the holidays puts even more stress on our families.”

The way ‘Adopt A Family’ works is any individual or group can contact the Hospitality House and express their interest in adopting a family of whatever size that’s comfortable. You can designate a certain dollar amount you want to spend or choose the number of family members you’re able to adopt. Then, Ev Donnelly, their volunteer coordinator, will pair up the potential donors with a particular family. You would then shop, wrap the gifts and deliver them to the family. Or, if you prefer, the staff at the Hospitality House can deliver the gifts.

Donnelly is currently organizing the wish lists for 78 families in the Midcoast.  Some of the items on the wish lists speak to one’s needs rather than wants such as clothes, diapers, books. Some want services. 

“We have one client who just wants driving lessons,” said Dawna Hilton, assistant to the executive director. “So, your gifts can be service-related and maybe you even want to teach the client to drive yourself. We’re keeping that flexible.”

“You can shop for them, wrap the gifts and in some cases, deliver directly to the family,” said Donnelly. “We’re hoping to generate a closer connection to the act of giving between a family and our community, and may even build relationships with our families.”

A press release for ‘Adopt A Family” went out last week. Many of the area’s churches have already reached out, as well as individuals, who’ve expressed interest in helping.

“When you put that change in the Salvation Army bucket, you knowing you’re helping someone in need but, you don’t know who it is going to go to,” said Hilton. “By adopting one of our families, you will know exactly who your gifts are going to and maybe even make a personal connection.”

The matches of families will be completed by Dec. 16. To adopt a family, contact Donnelly at 207-593-8151 or email edonnelly@homehelphope.org

Stay tuned as Penobscot Bay Pilot will do a follow up story on a particular family in a forthcoming story.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKPORT —  Just four months ago, Justin Roig’s world was a lot different than it is now. As the front of the house manager of Primo, Roig was working six days a week along with his wife, Emily, who worked in the office of Primo. As a father of a 4-year-old son, he had very little time for his artwork, but like many Maine artists, continued to chisel away at it.

In August, while driving home from work to Augusta, he fell asleep at the wheel. His car hit a large rock and flipped, leaving Justin with a broken back and sternum. Consequently, both he and Emily were forced to step down from their jobs at Primo and take extended family leave.

While he is now out of a back brace and moving around, he is still not physically able to handle much of the activity he did before the accident. The financial hardships have been a challenge, and Emily took two more jobs closer to where they live in Augusta.

“I used to be able to do pretty much anything physically, but now I’m relearning a lot of things,” he said. “At first, it totally changed our lives and our jobs, but it has also been a whole new chapter for our family.”

The time off to heal has had unexpected positives for Justin and his family. He has been able to spend more time with his wife and his son, and has been steadily working on a new body of artwork, commissioned after the accident.  Just in time for the annual Christmas by the Sea weekend in Camden, Lincolnville and Rockport, the Michael Good Gallery Annex in Rockport is hosting a special benefit exhibition for Roig titled Justin By-The-SEE, from Dec. 2 to 4.  

A self-taught artist from the age of 3, Roig predominantly works in colored pencil, creating extraordinary hand-drawn portraits on old boards and doors. The detail in his art is so finely tuned, oftentimes, when people are viewing them for the first time, they mistakenly assume the portraits are photographs transposed onto the wood.

A deeper examination of these colored pencil portraits reveals imperfections and abrasions in the grain of old doors and boards, which adds depth and character to the pieces.

“Found wood has its own personality. Though I would in no way compare myself to him, Michelangelo believed that when he was sculpting a block of marble, the statue was already inside and it was his task to bring it out. It’s comparable to drawing on found wood as a medium and I believe in that same concept.”

An avid history buff, Justin picks historical characters he finds personally compelling to portray.

“I am fascinated by American history as well as the old West,” he said.

The three portraits behind Roig in the lead photo, from left, are Kit Carson, the American frontiersman; Dr. David Livingstone, the Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary and African explorer and the man who coined the legendary quote, “Dr. Livingstone I presume”; and Sir Henry Morton Stanley, a Welsh-American journalist and explorer.

“I find with portraiture, it makes people stop and think: “Oh who is that? Do I know who that is?” Roig said. “Faces seem to capture people’s attention much more than abstracts.”

His pen and ink drawings are more whimsical.

“I never did pen and ink with the concept in mind that they were headed for a gallery, so it gave me more freedom to do whatever I wanted,” he said. “These are much more irreverent, much more playful.”

In addition, he’ll also have small self-published books of poetry for sale called: Poems to be Sung in an Off-Key Puppet Voice.

The Michael Good Gallery is going a step further by raffling off a gift basket filled with its own handcrafted objects, valued at $1,000. Tickets will be sold at the Annex for $20 each, with 100 percent of the proceeds to benefit Roig's family. The Michael Good Gallery Annex is off Route 1 in Rockport. The event is free and open to the public, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 2, 3 and 4, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and a "meet and greet" with Roig is planned for Saturday, Dec. 3, noon-4 p.m.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — Richard Allen is a wanderer. Having grown up in Thomaston and served in the army, he spent his youth traveling through Europe, and working as a painter and sculptor all over the country, including a stint in San Francisco, before heading back to his home state.

His six-foot-tall driftwood horses and moose sculptures embody so much of his free-range aesthetic. Their “muscles” are made from bleached bits of knobby driftwood he collects on beaches. Currently, a “herd” of them stand on the lawn of Michael Good Gallery in Rockport.

Allen doesn’t have a studio, representation or a website and prefers to use his Rockland backyard as a scrap pile for his latest creations.

“I’ve been doing this for 40 years,” he said, unveiling another piece under a tarp in his yard. “I’ve done hundreds of these horses all over the country. I love the serenity of working on it as the piece grows.”

One day while playing accordian on the street in Camden, he happened to see one of his driftwood moose riding in the back of someone’s pick up truck. A woman standing next to him saw it as well and remarked, “‘Wow, I’d love to know who the artist of that thing is, I’d love to buy one.” And Allen turned to her and said, “Hello, Madam. You’re talking to him.’”

The horses and moose take several months to create. He spends several days a week combing beaches and inland areas for driftwood, which is getting harder to come by he admits.

“Everybody is taking it off the beaches,” he said. “But, it’s not easy, you’ve got to be determined.”

Once assembled, he covers every inch of the pieces with sealant so that they can withstand the elements year after year.

Allen used to work in oil paintings, but found the competition to be too much.

“Every artist has a certain style and I wouldn’t say these sculptures are for everybody but I don’t really have the competition for these,” he laughs.

Allen does other animal sculpture work as well including wood-carved pigs and he was commissioned to make the giant iconic lobster that sits in front of Claws, the Rockland lobster shack on Route 1.

While Allen heads down to Florida for the winter to work on some more pieces his herd of moose and horses will remain all winter on the lawn at Michael Good Gallery.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — Three years ago on one of the worst days of her life, Mary Latham, 29, was sitting in the hospital with her relatives, waiting to hear news of her beloved mother, Pat, who was dying of breast cancer.

While sitting in the sterile lobby trying to occupy her thoughts, she checked a Facebook page she and a friend had started two weeks earlier to collect anecdotes of random acts of kindness. After the Newtown shootings in Connecticut had left Latham feeling depressed, she wanted to do something positive. They called the Facebook page GrAttitude Project, and asked people what they were grateful for and discovered that the page had been flooded with emails of kind stories.

As the family sat in the waiting room, taking turns sitting beside Pat during her final moments, Latham began reading aloud stories from the GrAttitude Project’s Facebook page. At an especially dark time, the tales lifted the family’s spirits.

“There are always terrible things that will happen, but you've got to focus on the good out there,” her mother had once said to her. “There are always more good people.”

Her mother died three days later and as Latham worked through her grief the next few months, she kept thinking back to the day in that waiting room and how those little positive stories gave she and her family comfort. The idea came to her that the GrAttitude Project needed to morph into something bigger. Rather than wait for more people’s stories to hit her inbox, she decided to go out and interview people in every U.S. state and compile their stories in a book with the end goal of donating the books to hospital waiting rooms. This quest would become renamed into More Good.

First, Latham had to figure out where to stay and reached out through her GrAttitude Project Facebook page to anyone who’d let her couch surf while she was in their town. She got back dozens of offers and with a GoFundMe page to cover gas and incidentals, six months later she was ready to start her journey.  On Oct. 29, 2016, Latham began driving her mother’s 2008 Subaru up to the northeast, staying with strangers in multiple towns in Connecticut and Rhode Island before entering Maine in mid-November.

Thomaston resident Libby Schrum offered Latham a guest room, and introduced her to a local woman, Barbara Sullivan, who had a random act of kindness story of her own to share.

As Latham recounts: “Barbara’s 21-year-old son, Patrick, had a stem cell transplant while he was in college and it was a terrible two years for her. When Patrick was just about to go into surgery, Barbara went down to the chapel of the hospital and found a lady playing harp and gravitated toward her. Barbara told the harpist it gave her comfort to listen to her play and the harpist asked her what her situation was and what her son’s name was. Barbara then left to attend Patrick’s surgery and minutes later, outside the hallway, everyone could hear this beautiful sounds of the harp once again. The harpist had found out where Patrick’s room was in this huge hospital and played for two straight hours while he underwent surgery.”

The stories she’s collected from people in Maine and other New England states so far have been largely around finding strength and resiliency after heartbreak or tragedy.

“I cry at least once a day,” she said.

Far from being an escapist road trip, Latham has been working every day as a photojournalist, while still managing clients as a freelance wedding photographer, editing her work on the road. She hadn’t realized how emotionally overwhelming it would be to process so many people’s stories day after day while traveling. She anticipates she’ll be traveling up to a year around the contiguous United States and will make special trips to Alaska and Hawaii to finish the journey.

“So far, everyone has been so supportive,” she said. “I’ve met incredible people who started off as strangers. And everyone is on board with this because it’s positive.”

Her trip has caught the attention of multiple media outlets, including Fox News in Connecticut and the Portland Press Herald. Once she left Maine, her next stops were to include Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts before heading south.

“I thought I’d better hit the New England states before the snow flies,” she said.

People can follow her live journal and website every day at moregood.today. Every day she’s not on the road, she will be updating the blog with snippets of the stories she encounters along the way.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

One of PechaKucha Midcoast’s most recent presenters was Elaine K. Ng, a multi-disciplinary artist working with sculpture and architectural installation. After a 10-year career in nonprofit management, she returned to the studio to focus on her own artwork and completed her Master of Fine Arts at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2014.

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

Slide One

One of the things I've always loved about a long Maine winter is how it can erase away the year and give us a fresh start in the spring, like how a night's sleep can make yesterday's problems seem a little smaller. This is one of my favorite images of winter from a plane.

I have always traveled a lot, and I love how being on moving vehicles can put us in this strange, suspended space both physically and psychologically. For me, this is often a good place for ideas to percolate with or without my knowing.

Slide Two

A couple years ago, I realized that the landscape image was really similar to this ceramic tile piece I'd made, called Winter is for Forgetting. It was totally subconscious; in fact, I don't think I even realized I was making a landscape piece about winter until after I'd finished it.

This subconscious process is pretty typical of how I work: ideas swim around in my head for a long time, and I might research and think about things, but it could be months or years before anything comes out of my hands that matches up with those thoughts. This process also has a lot to do with what I'm interested in conceptually with my work, which is: the relationship we have with objects and spaces; what influences the way we take in visual information; and how all this affects us as we have new experiences.

 Slide Three

This piece is titled, How to Illustrate a Pause.

I was thinking a lot about how we notate for silence, and how important it is in speaking, and music, and writing. These kinds of underlying systems and structures are really interesting to me because even though we don't really think about them, they're so crucial in helping us to understand things.

Slide Four

I think my interest here has something to do with growing up between two cultures — a Chinese one at home, and an American one in public. It's made me very sensitive to context and nuance, and how we interpret and process information. Sometimes we're conscious of it, but most of the time I don't think we are.

I think a lot about the idea of psychological inattention, and how we can sometimes be blind to things that are physically in front of us. We have to know about them to learn how to see them. I play with this kind of thing a lot in my work — trying to focus people's attention on something that's a bit unnoticed, or making a sort of parallel universe for people to enter. I think really I'm asking people to stop and slow down, to be quiet for a minute so I can show them something and maybe let them experience a little wonder in a regular space.

 Slide Five

This is another window piece that I did at Perimeter Gallery in Belfast (in the back of Chase's Daily). It's called If on a sunny day a window. I watched this window over the year — how the light would come through and change direction and color. And how it drew people toward it, maybe just because it was an opening to the outside.

I work a lot with different types of spaces and architectural elements, and some of the best pieces have been with windows. Windows are interesting because they're so important to telling us where we are inside a building. They define "inside" versus "outside"; however, most of the time we don't think about that and we just look through them.

 Slide Six

In the end, I think I made a kind of portrait of that light, or an echo of it, for people to discover slowly as they moved toward it. This is basically what I do with all my sculptures and installations: they're my attempts to show you things hidden in plain sight, kind of like what snow is about to do for us here, when all of the sudden you're going to see branches you never saw, on trees that you pass by every day.

My work is often very subtle and quiet. I think it's probably because I'm asking people to stop and slow down, to be quiet for a minute so I can show them something and maybe let them experience a little wonder in a regular space.

To see more of Elaine Ng’s work visit her website: elainekng.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST — Last April, local entrepreneur Kathi Langelier, owner of Herbal Revolution Farm and Apothecary, was dropping off an order of her plant-based products at a Midcoast store when she had a chance conversation with an acquaintance who asked her how her business was going. The friend mentioned Greenlight Maine as a potential funding source.

Greenlight Maine is very similar to ABC’s Shark Tank, in which small Maine entrepreneurs get a chance to bring their dream businesses before a host of reality show judges, with the ultimate goal of winning $100,000.

“I was so busy that afternoon getting ready to fly down to a trade show in Chicago, when I realized the deadline for application was the very next day and they needed a video,” she said.

Some people might have just let the opportunity go with such short notice. But, she filled out the application and had her husband, Gus, shoot a quick video at their organic farm in Union.

“It was so horrible,” she said of the application video. “I didn’t have time to keep trying to film a pitch and it came out blurry.”

To her surprise, she heard back from the producers of Greenlight Maine a month later in May. “I was shocked. I was like, ‘Wow, I wonder what the rest of their entries were like.’”

Langlelier was invited to pitch the producers with 50 other potential contestants. Out of that round 26 candidates for the show would be considered.

It kept getting better. Or worse, depending on how Langelier saw it.

“I’ve never pitched anything in my life,” she said. “And I had no time to practice. I went down to Portland in a room of four judges, who all have varying backgrounds in business, marketing or funding. I had mixed feelings about how I answered the questions. But, I found out a week later I made it to the next filming round of Greenlight Maine.”

Not only that, but one of the judges whom she thought she hadn’t really impressed happened to be from Island Institute and he nominated her for a $3,000 grant.

“It was a life saver and has gone completely into the capital of supporting the business,” she said,

The practice pitch day in front of the host was in Bangor in July. They picked Langelier to go first and then they saw the look on her face. “They saw me hesitate, so they let someone go first, but when I got up there and my mind went completely went blank. I couldn’t speak. I stood there like ‘Yup, I’ve got nothing,’” Langelier said.

Luckily they didn’t boot her out at that point. “I took the next couple of days off, wrote my pitch and practiced it all day long,” she said. “I’d grab people and ask them to critique me.”

Two days later, she was back up in Bangor for the first live taping of the show in which Herbal Revolution was competing against Mike Mwenedata, founder of Rwanda Bean Company. Each contestant had to pitch the judges and answer questions. Comparatively to the last two times, she felt better about her performance.

“For how nervous and sweaty I was, I was just happy I made it through,” she said. “The key information I managed to get out was that there is a need to take control of our preventative health.”

Langelier appeared on the sixth episode and like all of the contestants, did not know the outcome until it aired on Nov. 5. After a turbulent week, she gathered her family around her as they watched the show and when the judges announced that she’d won that round, everyone in the room whooped, screamed and hugged.

“I was stunned. I just took a second trying to process it,” she said.

The last of the 13 episodes of Greenlight Maine airs Jan. 21, 2017.

“Once all of the rounds are over, all 13 of us have to go back to Portland again and pitch to judges once more,” she said. “The judges will choose the final two to compete, plus a wild card people’s choice. The three people advance on to pitch for the $100,000.”

Stay tuned as Penobscot Bay Pilot follows Langelier’s journey.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Two local grassroots efforts have sprung up this week in Camden, one to unite women, minorities and LGBTQ people, the other specifically to champion women.

The informal group, Stand Up Speak Out, is holding a peaceful protest march starting at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 40 Washington Street in Camden, in the public parking lot that the farmer's market uses.

“This is a gathering to show support for women, minorities, LGBTQ people and others who frightened to speak out and in fear for their safety,” said 19-year-old spokesperson Yanmei McElhaney. “This is not a group to protest Donald Trump; instead, it’s to show a group of people who are suffering that we stand with them. It’s important that we unite as a community with a peaceful protest.”

The gathering has a Facebook event indicating more than 200 people are interested in showing up, with 90 people confirming they will. The group has been working with Camden police to ensure that there will be no altercations. 

The Facebook page said the march will continue to downtown Camden.

Jess Small, co-organizer of a Midcoast chapter of the larger Pantsuit Nation Maine chapter also has an event planned that Saturday at 2 p.m. to provide a discussion for women, including trans-women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who are significantly female-identified. (Note: at the time of this story, the second event has been filled to capacity and cannot accommodate any more sign ups.)

“While the discussion isn't affiliated with the peaceful protest happening earlier that day, I think it's great that so many people are feeling motivated towards positive action,” said Small. “The intent of this discussion is to create a safe space for women to talk to each other. It was what I felt I needed after the election results, and I assumed that other women might feel the same. The response to the event has been immense, much bigger than I could have imagined. It's really inspiring to see so many women wanting to come together and support each other. The plan is to allow the group to dictate what comes next, and I’m very excited to see what that is.”

There will also be a smaller gathering Thursday, 6 p.m., Nov. 17, at Zoot in downtown Camden for an informal discussion about ways the community can work to negate negativity and discrimination while cultivating empathy for different points of view, organizers said.

“This is our chance to step up in a positive way and to share local and national resources we can support moving forward,” they said. People are invited to that, as well.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST— James Duff, the former director of the Brandywine River Museum of Art, has spent much of the last 45 years of his career contemplating the works of Andrew Wyeth. He has observed various misconceptions that critics, scholars and the public have had about Andrew Wyeth's intentions and the content of his work.

Repeating the presentation he gave for the Farnsworth Museum last July at the Strand Theatre, Duff will offer some of his observations in a presentation titled "Conceptions of Andrew Wyeth from the Mistaken to the Absurd" at the Old Professor's Bookshop, Saturday, Nov. 19, at 3 p.m.

"It's a look at how critics and scholars and people interested in the fine arts have mischaracterized his work over the years, in some cases with great hostility and in other cases just with misunderstanding of what he was doing," said Duff. To illustrate an an example of the absurd, Duff said, "Many dozens, if not hundreds of writers, have compared Wyeth to Norman Rockwell."

Duff and his family moved to Belfast last year after retiring five years ago from the Brandywine River Museum. He has authored a book coming out next spring published jointly by the Brandywine River Museum and Rizzoli titled Andrew Wyeth's Snow Hill.

The Brandywine River Museum located in Chadds Ford, Penn., the birthplace of Andrew Wyeth, is the only other museum besides Maine's Farnsworth Art Museum in the country with an extensive Wyeth collection.

The presentation is free to the public and will run one hour. For more information about the eventvisit: Old Professor’s Bookshop

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — Kids growing up in the 1970s and 1980s who were invited to a midnight screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show were never quite the same afterwards. It became a shared cultural experience for left-of-center young people and it was the first time an audience ever interacted live, ad-libbing with the characters on the screen.

Now, a live version of the movie is coming to the Strand Theatre Nov 17-20. The Barn Arts Collective, a theater performance and residency organization based out of Mount Desert Island, first debuted their production of the live show on Halloween weekend at Bar Harbor's Criterion Theater in 2015. Lindsey Hope Pearlman, an NYC based director, was invited to lead the production.

“The group of artists that were in residency at the time happened to make up the perfect cast to the show,” she said. “And since someone from the Strand was in the audience,that is why we’re coming back to do the show again in Rockland.”

The very same cast, who now all reside between Maine and NYC, will be coming back to reprise their roles. The high-energy live production will combine the interactive elements of the movie’s cult midnight screenings with the drama and spectacle of a live rock show.

To find out how it all started, a Rocky Horror fan site shares that the 1975 American premiere of the Rocky Horror Picture Show first took place in the Westwood Theater in Los Angeles and limped along with an uninspired following, until a year later when the movie played at the Waverly Theater in New York City. Actor Sal Piro and his friend Marc Shaiman, who’d seen the flick multiple times, began throwing out ad lib lines, much to the glee of the audience. Those lines repeated by audience members at every subsequent show catapulted the movie into cult status.

Pearlman remembers the day she first attended a midnight screening of Rocky Horror herself as a virgin. (Note: The Rocky Horror definition: 1. VIRGIN / v noun/ (n) - anybody who has never seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show).

“I loved how free and joyful and silly the audience was,” she said. “I was also watching it as a director thinking about how to incorporate those elements in our own production, but now I’m fully in the Rocky community today.”

The audience is encouraged to use props, such as newspapers and playing cards, when they appear on stage and the production at the Strand includes a pre-show event to warm up the crowd.

“We are going to rock Rockland with Rocky,” Pearlman promised. “You can expect all of the songs from the film that you love and performances in full costume. You can get up and sing and dance.”

For the Rocky Horror virgins who don’t know what to expect, here is a primer. And a prop list. The performance will also include props for the audience to use. One is also encouraged to dress up as a character from the movie, but it’s not required. Read carefully and thank the poor staff of the Strand when you exit.

Tickets are $22 in advance and $25 at the door. Showtimes and tickets can be purchased here.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST—While some people may be exhausted with political topics this week, it is a continuing conversation through Kenny Cole’s art. A Maine visual artist, Cole’s work has been described as a visionary mix with an activist inspired political thrust.

With a show called "Like There's No Tomorrow" solo currently hanging at Win Wilder Hall in Rockland and another, “The Promise of Tomorrow,” on view at Chase’s Daily Perimeter Gallery through December 31, Cole has tried to make sense of a turbulent political climate and what it means to be an American man.

Cole grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1976 studying “a reductionist’s approach to painting, with a consciousness toward the painting object’s physical relationship to the maker/viewer and the physicality of mark-making.”

After moving to Maine in 1994 with his wife and two children, he soon began getting involved with organizing several political art actions.

In 2002, he met the political artist Luis Camnitzer, who had a strong influence on him. Cole states: “I decided to commit myself more fully to creating politically engaging art. I have since then begun to re-visit making more elaborate two-sided interactive painting structures and have become even more determined to expansively explore the allure of the military economy.”

Technology plays heavily into his artwork. Having grown up on the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation, he said, “I often examine our relationship with technology and how through our infatuation with it we sell our souls a little bit.”

Santa Claus and leprechauns appear in several of his paintings in gouache.

“I like to take popular symbolic characters with uniforms and imagine how they might relate to warfare,” he said. "As an artist, I'm interested in schematic colors, pageantry and national colors, such as how they appear on flags, and redefining what they mean."

In “Four Uniforms,” he copied Air Force uniforms he saw in an old encyclopedia he had from the 1960 one for winter and one for summer rendering the Santas cheering on the winter side and the Leprauchans cheering on the summer side. All of the flying insignias in the painting also came from that Encyclopedia page.

In the painting “Three coffins flag,” he said: “While the shape of the flag is familiar, the colors are not and your brain is trying to make connections with national colors. You want to understand what that means.”

“Man Carrying A Cross” at first glance doesn’t make sense until you realize that each truncated Google link refers to an online image of modern day men carrying crosses down a road.

“I first saw this in Belfast, twice actually over the last two years, men carrying a giant cross down the road,” he said. “And if you Google this image, you’ll find thousands of people do this. I was going to do hyper realistic paintings of these photos, but I decided to create the shorthand for what our eyes would be imagining with these photos, so that you would have to disengage with the art and consult your handheld device.”

Asked why he chose to engage with this subject, he said: “It’s just this weird phenomenon of white men carrying a cross for miles and miles all geared up with compartments in the cross where they carry all of their clothes as sort of this self-flagellating quest. What they are telling the world by doing this is that they are suffering, and I think that’s what happened in this past election. Many people didn’t like Trump or what he had to say but then there was the other side, the working class white male who that Trump identified with them and listened to them and that’s why Trump successfully won. We’ve now heard them loud and clear.”

To see more of Cole’s work visit: http://kennycole.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Area businesses are showing their appreciation for Veterans in a number of ways today on November 11, 2016. Here is a list:

Restaurants

American Legion in Rockland is offering a free Veterans Day dinner of prime rib, potatoes and veggies, roll and dessert to all Veterans. $8 for adults and $4 for children.

Rockport Diner is offering 50 percent off a meals for Veterans and current service members.

Moody’s Diner in Waldoboro is offering 75 percent off a meal for any veteran or on active duty.

Graffam Brothers Seafood in Camden is offering $5 lobster rolls for Veterans, EMS, police and fire personnel.

Threshers Brewing Co. in Searsmont would like to thank all Veterans by buying you a pint of fresh ale for your service to our country. Any World War Two vets able to make it will be given an additional free T-shirt.

Boynton McKay in Camden is offering a free meal to Veterans.

Rock City Café in Rockland is offering Veterans a free drink and lunch item.

Waterworks Restaurant will be giving a 20% discount on a food item to any active or retired service member all day today.

Four Corner Variety in Union will be giving away a free meal to any Veteran that comes in with a military ID.

Trackside Station in Rockland is offering 30 percent off an entree for Veterans and current service members.

Bluewater Bakery on Islesboro: Veterans eat free today.

Applebees in Thomaston is offering a free meal to all Veterans and active duty military.

Organizations

Owls Head Transportation Museum is offering all veterans a complimentary museum admission and special activities including a tour with the curator, a membership raffle, and free Model T rides will be offered during the course of the day.

Ocean State Job Lots is offering a 25% discount with proper ID.

Paracraft Unlimited, an apparel designer in Rockport is offering a free bracelet (550 Cobra) to Veterans. Also, 50% of proceeds are donated to help Veterans.

We will be updating this list as more offers come in. Please email news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — At the beginning of October, Betty McBrien, a professional cleaner at Lyman-Morse, noticed a herring gull in Camden hanging around the boat yard, looking for food. “I first noticed him walking around begging for food, but I didn’t know if he could take off and fly. He’d been hanging around so long, some of the guys at the boat yard started calling him ‘George.’ It was getting cold out at night and I didn’t want to see him die.”

McBrien called Avian Haven, a rehabilitation center in Freedom dedicated to the return of injured and orphaned wild birds to the wild. George the gull had already been on their radar from other calls they’d received from people in Camden. On Oct. 17, one of their volunteer staff members, Selkie O’Mira, met McBrien at the boat yard to investigate.

According to Avian Haven’s Facebook summary of events:

“Selkie met Betty at the boatyard and they found George huddled on some rocks up against the seawall, alone. Betty tried to lure the bird close enough to capture, but he flew off. Out across the harbor he went, landing somewhat clumsily on some rocks on the other side.”

The first mystery was solved; he could fly, just not well. “Later that day, Selkie and her husband, Abe, went out again and found the gull in the same location on the other side of the harbor, where he had apparently spent the day. They drove around, climbed down on the rocks, fish in one hand, net in the other, and the gull was soon settled comfortably in a carrier, en route to Avian Haven. The gull had parasites, which we treated. He was also unsteady on his feet and had a deep laceration on his beak. It's an old injury, but George is in remarkably good shape, apparently surviving on soft foods.

We've been offering George an easy-to-manage high protein diet while we waited for the scab on that wound to slough off so we could see what was underneath. Beaks are made of keratin, like fingernails, hooves and antlers, so they continue to grow and can self-repair. The scab came off last week, and we could see that the beak injury was mending very well.”

On Nov. 5, George was well enough to be released back at Camden Harbor, at Lyman-Morse. Avian Haven’s staff came back with him and Betty McBrien was there to witness it.

“I thought there would be a crowd, but it was just me so I was the one who got to open his cage and let him free,” said McBrien. “I was so happy that he was not only healed, but that he could come back to the Camden harbor.

Added O’Mira: “George took his sweet time making an exit from the carrier. Then he scooted over to the seawall where he enjoyed the view for quite a while before flying off beautifully into the inner harbor. Betty is amazing; her concern for this gull and her kindness toward him saved his life.”

To see what else the volunteers and staff do to rescue birds, visit Avian Haven

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — In the spring of 1991, the Eastman Kodak Co. operated out of a brick building on Mechanic Street that is now Knox Mill Senior Living. Through a project funded by Youth Arts and Kodak, each student in the seventh grade class of the the Mary E. Taylor Middle School got to use a 35-mm camera and several rolls of film and go around town for one day on May 1 for several hours shooting images that stood out for them to represent their community. Kodak assigned professional photo editors to select the photos for publication and paid for it, titling the student-created photography book, Our View: A Day in Camden-Rockport Maine.

Ian McKenzie, the technology teacher at Camden-Rockport Middle School, has revived this project twenty five years later for the eighth-grade class. “I was actually an eighth-grader when the seventh-grade class got to do this,” remembered McKenzie. “So, I watched them with pure envy. I came to teaching through media and I love media, photography and creation. This year, the students all received new iPod pros with beautiful camera capabilities and I realized that this year was the 25th anniversary of the Our View book. So, this has become the culminating project.”

McKenzie noted how far technology has come since the original photos were shot. Flipping through the Our View book, he pointed out one of the photographs that depicts a bank of pay phones. That’s not something today’s students would see. That, and the students would not need traditional 35-mm cameras because their iPads function the same way.

“Kids today live in a time of unprecedented ability to create and share through photography, video and social media,” he said. “The editing tools they have on their phones are far superior technology than anything we would had access to at their age. You would have had to owned thousands and thousands of dollars of equipment to get the same quality.”

The theme of this new photography project integrates kids’ natural inclination toward self-expression with technology with a shared sense of community. This project takes it a step beyond the original Our View book. The photos that the students took will be accompanied by writing and video and the final book will be not a coffee table printed book, but rather, as an appropriate sign of the times, an ebook with a link to each student’s personal digital photography profile.

“It’ll be free and we hope to drop the book through Kindle and iTunes Dec. 6, 2016,” he said.

Like the students 25 years before them, the CRMS students were given a crash course in photography techniques with additional training in digital filtering and color correction. On Oct. 20, McKenzie and other chaperones separated the 90 eighth-graders into 18 groups of kids (no more than five in a group) and shot photos over the course of three hours.

“When the original students shot their photos on May 1, there wasn’t much in the way of beautiful scenery at that time, but here we were in peak foliage, which made for a better time to shoot the photos,” he said. “We had a group of kids going to  the top of Maiden’s Cliff, to the top of Beech Hill to both harbors, up and all over towns. We had one girl who hiked to Maiden’s Cliff at 10 a.m. and hiked it again at 5:30 in the evening and got this shot of the sunset in the same spot as her first shot.”

McKenzie said each student has to pare down his or her five best photos for submission, at which point, McKenzie will personally curate 270 photos. “We want the ebook to represent the group’s idea of what defines Camden-Rockport.”

Stay tuned as Penobscot Bay Pilot follows the rest of this project as it gets closer to the book’s release date.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — 16 Bay View has closed off its rooftop deck, the View, for the season and now invites the public (not just guests of the hotel) into their cozy Bay View Street pub for a nice hot toddy.

Marcus Carter, the bar manager of the hotel’s Vintage Room said, “I could have made something with six or seven different ingredients, but since this bar has a vintage feel, I thought we’d go with a vintage drink.”

Inside the small bar large stencils of Mae West and Clark Gable grace the the hearth of the fireplace while on the far wall, images of Camden and the Midcoast throughout the 19th and 20th centuries are prominently displayed. With the weather downshifting into the 40s and rainy storms shredding the leaves off the trees, now is the time to cup your hands around a warm honey-infused whiskey toddy.

The Toddy, also known as a tottie as well as a hot whiskey (no brainer) in Ireland and Scotland is usually a hot water drink infused with herbs and spices and sugar or honey and alcohol. Victoria Moore author of How to Drink describes the drink as "the vitamin C for health, the honey to soothe, the alcohol to numb.” Carter affirmed, “It is medicine for the soul. But what’s important to me is that when you’re here you enjoy the drink because it’s made from good ingredients.”

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

The 16 Bay View Hot Toddy

• Start with a pot of piping hot water
• .75 oz Knob Creek bourbon whiskey
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp Maine honey (Beth’s Farm)
• Lemon to garnish

Add the whiskey, cinnamon and honey into a cup and stir in hot water. Squeeze lemon and float into the drink and drizzle with a sprinkle with cinnamon.

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

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — Last year, Rockland resident Sharon Hobson, and Rhonda Nordstrom, owner of RHEAL day spa, came up with the idea to locally collect donated purses filled with sanitary items such as pads and tampons as well as comfort items such as shampoo, body creams, etc. They gave the purses away to homeless women and women at risk in the Midcoast, and their delight, more than 190 filled purses were donated last year — all making their way to New Hope For Women and The Hospitality House.

For the second year, RHEAL Day Spa its Midcoast version of The Purse Project. And rather than wait until December like last year, the spa began collecting the items on Oct. 17.

The whole idea behind this movement was to assist homeless women with sanitary items and personal care supplies as it’s hard enough to go through traumatic life changes without having access to items to keep clean. We started with asking people to provide donated purses filled with sanitary items and then build from there,” said Nordstrom.

The idea has caught on and more women are not just donating purses and bags but also buying new purses filled with items geared toward emotional comfort.  Some of the purses resting on the display area inside the RHEAL day spa are filled with high-end cosmetics and brands such as body wash from Herbal Essence.

“This one woman came in donating four purses, each wrapped in a warm scarf, which is her own personal fashion signature,” said Nordstrom.

Stephanie Primm, executive director of the Knox County Homeless Coalition/Hospitality House, explained how much women helping other women means to one of their clients.

“A vast majority of our families come from a generational poverty scenario, with long histories of low education levels, domestic violence, abuse, addiction and other challenges,” she said. “Many have lost hope, or simply have forgotten what it's like to feel joy, or that inner sense of being excited by something beautiful or comforting. Because they are in 'survival' mode when they reach our doorstep and are generally in trauma, kindness, respect, dignity and caring are the primary focus in all we do.”

“The Purse Project has had a profound effect on our clients. The way these beautiful gifts are created, with care and individuality, it makes them feel special, makes them feel cared about, and gives them something beautiful, often for the first time in years or decades,” said Primm.

Kristi Braun, development director of New Hope For Women had a story to share. “Last year, after receiving a delivery of purses via the Purse Project, one of our advocates at New Hope for Women started working with a mother of two who had just lost her home, due to it being condemned. A victim of verbal and physical abuse for years, the woman finally mustered the courage to call 911, and was connected with our advocate when the police gave her our hotline number. She was emotionally devastated, physically bruised and financially destroyed.

“After hearing the woman’s story, our advocate excused herself from their meeting and quickly picked a purse that she thought fit the woman’s personality. When the advocate returned and handed the purse to the woman, and explained what the Purse Project was, the woman started to cry and thanked her profusely. She said that she truly appreciated the thoughtfulness that went into it and hoped that one day she could return the favor,” said Braun.

“In addition to the actual purse and the contents inside, a Purse Project purse can also provide a much-needed boost in morale and self-esteem for a client who is going through a particularly challenging time. We often hear from our clients that just knowing someone cares means so much to them,” she said.

The co-founder of the project, Sharon Hobson, has gone a step further and brought packs of 20 sanitary items like tampons and pads to the AIO Food Pantry in Rockland.

“Studies have been done [showing] that women having their menstrual cycle need about 20 sanitary items, so we’ve put together these packs for any woman who is also looking for food assistance,” said Nordstrom. “Our next phase will be a toilet paper giveaway since the food pantry can only give one toilet paper roll per family once a month.”

To donate to The Purse Project, fill a bag or purse with feminine hygiene products, necessities and niceties (excluding non-perishable food items) and drop your bags at RHEAL Day Spa, 453 Main St. in Rockland, before Oct. 29, after which they will be given away. FMI: Call 207-594-5077.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

Election Fatigue: It’s real and we all have it. Pew Research Center’s latest poll shows that more than one-third of social media users are worn out by the amount of political content they encounter.

Close To Home Subs & Burritos co-owner Susan Schiro was also feeling election fatigue. The restaurant is on Main Street, in Rockland.

“It’s customers, it’s employees, it’s people online constantly complaining that there’s no one to choose from,” she said.

She had a light bulb moment and created a batch of butter cookies in the shapes of donkeys, elephants and the good old U.S. of A. with the appropriate colored icing, calling them “This Election Bites” bipartisan butter cookies.

“I thought, how can I tie this in?” she mused.

“I have to say, they are really good butter cookies,” said Schiro. “You can give it to your friends who are really depressed about what’s going on in the political landscape. You can hand them out on election day. Do whatever floats your boat.”

Schiro not only created the concept and the cookie, she designed her own packaging. “My background is in graphic design,” she said. “I owned a T-shirt printing business for 21 years. My background was not in cooking,” she laughed. “but I know how to make a package look pretty.”

No matter who wins on November 8, a number of your friends and neighbors are going to be pretty upset. You might need to hoard a bag all to yourself.

The cookies can be purchased at Close To Home or the Home Sweet Home bakery next door.

All Hallow’s Eve is fast approaching and we have combed every cool event going on we could find to bring you a comprehensive rundown of Halloween-themed events. We've color-coded these events for Adults and Parents and Kids to make finding them easier. Don't forget that there is also a Candy Drive for the Camden and Belfast neighborhoods most hit up for Halloween.

Tuesday, Oct. 25

· Adults and Parents and Kids: Stephen King’s Thinner is being screened at the Colonial Theatre in Belfast starting at 6:30 p.m. With props from the movie and extras on hand to tell some stories, this will be one fun event for all ages. See our recent story here.

Wednesday, Oct. 26

· Parents and Kids: A Halloween Spooktacular is happening at the Camden Public Library from 5-6 p.m. with stories, games, crafts. Great for the little ones and don't forget to come in costume! Spooky snack volunteers, please call Miss Amy at the library at 236-3440.

Thursday, Oct. 27

· Parents and Kids: Local author, Liza Walsh will be holding a launch party for her new book Ghost Hunter's Handbook. You'll get to explore the library for ghosts, make Halloween crafts, hear some scary stories, and get some spooky surprises from 3:30 o 4:30 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 28

· Parents and Kids: The Union Fair turns the Union Fairgrounds into a Trail of Terror. Children under 12 must be accompanied by adult. For safety, no costumes or visitors allowed.  The cost: $10 per person. There will also be a free, all-ages maze, fire pit and food, drink and s'mores. This event goes every night up to Oct. 31. from 6-10 p.m. For detailed directions or for more info visit unionfair.org

· Adults: The Thomaston Public Library is showing a free screening of Dressed to Kill, a 1946 Sherlock Holmes movie in which two victims are found dead after buying the same music box. The film starts at 6:30 p.m.

· Adults and Parents and Kids: The Morrison family in New Harbor opens their Haunted Castle's Keep Oct. 28-30, 5-9 p.m. each night, at 2634 Bristol Road. Free event. FMI: 677-3741.  Read our story about it here.

· Parents and Kids:  Ashwood Waldorf School’s annual All Hallows’ Eve Walk. takes place from 5-7 p.m.FMI: Ashwood Waldolf Walk

· Parents and Kids: The Boothbay Railway Village will once again be cloaked in mystical moonlight and creepy candlelight for the annual Ghost Train 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.. Just once a year the ghouls and goblins come out to haunt the otherwise peaceful museum. Witches and other monsters will assist the engineer and train crew with departures every 30 minutes, the last leaves the station at 7:30 p.m. The event happens again on Saturday, Oct. 29.

· Adults: and Parents and Kids: Fright at the Fort’s theme this year is Out of this World. Admission is $10 per person ($5 for those 12 and under) Additional information on Fright at the Fort may be found on the fortknox.maineguide.com  Starting at 5:30 p.m., the haunted fort tour goes Oct. 28-29. Pro-tip: Don’t arrive any later than 8:30 p.m. and buy your tickets online to avoid the long lines. See our recent story about the scary clown phenomenon here.

· Adults: Swing and Sway Halloween Dance at High Mountain Hall, 5 Mountain St./Route 52, Camden from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Cost: $10; $15 with 6:30 p.m. warm-up class. Prizes for best costume. Open to the public, no partner or experience necessary.

Saturday, Oct. 29

· Parents and Kids: Five Town Basketball hosts a Halloween fun day at Lincolnville Central School for kids with pumpkin carvings, hot cocoa and candy. Lunch items, such as hot dogs and hamburgers along with cold beverages and hot apple cider will be served. RSVP by Oct. 27 with number of pumpkin carvers to jalcala@fivetownhoopdreams.net.

· Parents and Kids: Trunk or Treat hosted by Aldersgate United Methodist Church, 15 Wesley Lane, Rockland, from 4 to 7 p.m. It will be a festive night with games, face painting, crafts and, of course, treats from the trunks of cars that are decorated for Halloween.

 · Parents and Kids: Trunk or Treat host by PTF of Warren Community School, 117 Eastern Road Warren 3-6 p.m. Event will move inside in the event of rain. Concessions will also be sold for an easy, convenient dinner.

· Parents and Kids: Pumpkin Palooza: Jack-o'-lanterns will be at the Amphiteatre in Camden. Bring pumpkins to the Amphitheater or drop them off during the day in the children's garden with your name on them. All ages and carving talents welcome and encouraged to participate in the event that begins at 7 p.m. Take your pumpkin home right after

· Adults: Splyce-o-Ween: Join the Halloween costume dance party with local modern/alternative/classic rock band at the Wentworth Event Center in Belfast. Cost: $10; $15 couple. Cash bar, appetizers, snack bar.

· Adults: Invitation-only screening of Island Zero written by Tess Gerritsen and filmed locally this year at the Camden Opera House from 7 to 9 p.m. Free/donations for Camden Fire Department and the opera house. Cast and crew will be in attendance. To get an invitation, email:  islandzeromovie@gmail.com.

· Adults: The Midnight Riders are excited to be playing the Halloween Costume Ball at the American Legion Hall in Rockland from 7 to 11 p.m. Boogie with old and new friends. Open to the public, tickets are $10 at the door with refreshments available.

· Adults: FOG Bar Halloween Bash: Have a horrifically good time with local band Diamond in the Rough. Starts at 9:30 p.m. and goes to 12:30 a.m. $5 cover, 21+, costume contest with prizes live at 11 p.m.

· Adults: Rock City Café hosts their annual Halloween party after the musical set of Slippery Slope ends from 7 to 9 p.m. People are encouraged to come in costume.

· Adults: Shizzleween is happening at Myrtle Street Tavern featuring the band The Shizzle. Music starts at 9 p.m.

· Adults: Halloween bash at Trackside Station in Rockland with TWO DOLLAR PISTOL playing. Cash prize of $100 bill for the best costume voted by crowd’s applause. The event starts at 9 p.m.

· Adults:  Thresher’s Brewing Co. in Searsmont will be hosting their first ever Halloween costume party SPOOKtacular! Lincolnville’s blues rock trio / and Thresher's very own house band, The Tune Squad will be kicking everything off at 7 p.m. with some top shelf rock & roll for all you ghouls & boys! The Grinning Dog BBQ will be handy-by serving up some frighteningly delicious BBQ / pork & brains that is sure to satiate any appetite! No cover just bring a costume!

· Adults:  Front Street Pub in Belfast celebrates Halloween at 9 p.m. DJ D-Vice will be spinning, the shot girls will be roaming the room, and the bartenders will be slinging crazy drink specials all night. $200 cash prizes for the scariest and most unique costumes.

· Adults: CMCA’s annual kickin’ Halloween party Glitter & Glow takes place at the Bicknell Building in Rockland from 8 p.m. to midnight. Cost: $20; $10 Center for Maine Contemporary Art members. Tickets at cmcanow.org. Prepare to wear reflective, glow-in-the dark or glittery, sparkly costumes. Live music, 40Paper cash bar, Fox on the Run food truck, Kinetic Energy Alive dancers and more.

· Adults: Speakeasy’s Zombie Prom with The Dolphin Strikers. Prizes for the most creepy and creative zombie. 9 p.m. to midnight. $5 cover

Sunday, Oct. 30

· Parents and Kids: Family Flashback Film Fest showing Beetle Juice is happening at the Strand Theatre at 12:30 p.m. Tickets: $3. Doors open at noon.

· Parents and Kids: The Waldoboro Fire Department will be hosting its annual haunted house at AD Gray School, from 2 to 4 p.m. for younger children. That same evening, from 6 to 8 p.m., the haunted house will come to full life for all ages to experience the elevated terror. Each visitor is asked to make a $1 donation to enter the haunted house. Event continues on Oct. 31

Monday, Oct. 31

· Parents and Kids: Trunk or Treat: Vose Library in Union hosts a not too scary event with vehicles decorated in kid-friendly  fashion for Halloween. Children will trick or treat at the vehicles, and can enjoy cider and a small snack at the library as well. There are places for 24 vehicles; those who want to take part should sign up by Oct. 26.

· Adults and Parents and Kids: Children, parents and friends are invited to the Spooky Halloween Radio Show outside the former church on Spring Street between Court and Cedar streets on Halloween night from 4 to 8 p.m. to experience broadcast radio at its most basic. Kids of all ages are invited to explore their inner radio personality, honing their announcer voices at a live microphone; a show will be edited from the material and together with photographs of the evening, posted to Belfast Community Radio’s website belfastcommunityradio.org.

Parents and Kids: The Lincolnville General Store is hosting a pumpkin carving event starting at 4 p.m. at Grampa Hall’s Yard with a costume contest, chili contest, Halloween dessert contest and pumpkin carving contest. Email lincolnvillegeneralstore@gmail.com for more info.

 We will be updating this list as we go. Please email any corrections/updates to news@penabypilot.com

CAMDEN — The Smokestack Grill is done. On a 70-degree afternoon, Oct. 17, staff and friends of the Smokestack Grill in Camden were clearing out the contents of the bar, carting equipment out of the front door past stacked bar stools.

Smokestack Grill is on the first floor of a building on Mechanic Street, which overlooks the Megunticook River and waterfall. Co-owners and brothers, Zachary and Seth Cohn started the bar and restaurant in 2009. Prior to the Smokestack Grill, Sea Dog Brewing Company operated in the space during the MBNA days. And like Sea Dog, Smokestack had a large bar hosting both live music and DJs.

Beginning in 2004, real estate developers began converting Building Six, part of the Knox Mill into 26 condominiums, complete with roof decks and gardens. Over the course of the Smokestack’s run, noise complaints from residents of the neighborhood continued to dog the business. In an Aug. 7, 2012 Camden Select Board meeting, Chairperson Martin Cates said  it was unfortunate that the Knox Mill condominium owners did not know the bar existed when they bought their units.

He said that the Board had discussed the right of businesses to exist and expressed a concern about setting a precedent by telling businesses how to operate. As a compromise, the owners erected noise-reduction curtains when bands and DJs played. See that story here. 

The Knox Mill directly above the Smokestack sold last spring, and former offices have been converted to residential apartments. According to the Camden Town Office, no permits have been received for any new enterprise to fill the space. A permit application for any use by the mill’s owner would be necessary, per the ordinance.

Still, the ever-evolving nature of the Midcoast restaurant scene has claimed another local hangout, and some might even say — the last of the gritty bars.

Bartender Kristen Wallace took a few moments out helping the owners move out of the space.

“We’re definitely sad; it’s the end of an era for sure,” she said. “It’s been a good long run. The camaraderie of the staff is what I’ll miss most and the customers’ became family. We had a lot of fun during the Toboggan Races.”

Former employee Alex Schellhaas was also on hand to help out.

“After Gilbert’s closed, the guys who used to arrange the live music open mics came here to see if we could keep that going and we did,” he said. “It’s a nice space for music. It’s really cool inside.”

On Saturday night, the local band 2 Dollar Pistol played and the place was rocking with the Camden-Rockport High School Class of 1981, which just so happened to have scheduled its class reunion there.

It was pure ‘stack: noisy, friendly, unpretentious, and full of familiar faces.

Sunday night was the last night open.

“The customers were really sad, all the regulars,” Schellhall said. “It’s done; they don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Staff can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — Lobster and blueberries might get most of the media attention when it comes to Maine’s most iconic foods, but salmon and seaweed are the hottest products these day. On Oct. 16, Good Tern Co-op in Rockland put the focus on Maine’s most promising up-and-coming exports with their Salmon Cookout & Seafood Celebration. The event took place from noon to 4 p.m with the Co-op offering grilled salmon and seaweed salads, and free iced tea and spring water.

“The cookout was really a way to draw attention to sustainable fishing already happening in Maine, and bring the community together in celebration of the work of the Island Institute and our fishermen,” said Hannah Woodman, organizer of the event. +“This is a great time to highlight it, especially with what the Island Institute is doing around aquaculture.”

Last spring in the WAVE magazine, PenBayPilot.com highlighted the collaborative relationship between fishermen and kelp farming in our story Kelp Farming is a win-win when it comes to healing the ocean. The story highlighted how kelp as sustainable super food also reduces the ocean’s acidity.

“We also wanted to highlight what Matt Luck, a commercial fisherman out of Bristol Bay, is doing,” she said. “He has been a fisherman for decades, his passion is to talk about the wild salmon he catches as an amazing resource.”

Luck has been working for 40 years to promote the sustainability and traceability of seafood in Bristol Bay. He’s served on multiple boards and commissions and actively works with scientific panels to improve how his industry catches the fish.

As the marketing chair of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, Luck advocated to develop a “Bristol Bay Brand.”

“My main goal was to tell the story, create a connection with the consumer and reach the huge demographic that will embrace this story,” he said. “Long story short, our industry is a bit mired in a tired old commodity model and we just couldn’t get any traction. Basically, I decided to pursue this myself. I trademarked the name Pride of Bristol Bay, negotiated access to product with the leading producer of high quality fillet product from Bristol Bay for whom I harvest and away I went. I currently supply wild salmon through my website, www.prideofbristolbay.com through a buying club model in select locations across the country. In September I will launch a nationwide, order online, deliver to your door program exclusively with Bristol Bay sockeye. The product will be affordable and shipped through a green shipping model using 100 percent bio –degradable material by a certified B corporation, Crystal Creek Logistics.”

"I always look forward to my trip to the coast of Maine,” said Luck. “It is a joy to spend time with peers who understand the value of responsibly managed fisheries and love to fill their freezers with the clean, pure protein of wild Alaska salmon."

To learn more about Pride of Bristol Bay visit: prideofbristolbay.com

to learn more about the Island Institute’s ongoing integrated aquaculture projects visit: islandinstitute.org/aquaculture

(Photos courtesy Lux Butcher)

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penabypilot.com

BELFAST—There is Maine, the real place and then there is Stephen King’s Maine, full of backwater mill towns, neighborhoods with dark secrets and sewers inhabited by psychotic clowns.

In 1984, King published Thinner, under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, about an overweight lawyer who ends up hitting a Gypsy woman with his car by accident and killing her. Because of a crooked small-town justice system, he escapes jail time, but soon after is accosted by the victim’s Gypsy, father who puts a curse on him, causing him to lose weight at an alarming rate.

According to a 1985 article in The Washington Post, King’s inspiration for the novel derived from a conversation he’d had with his physician. 

"I used to weigh 236 pounds, and I smoked heavily," King admits. "I went to see the doctor. He said: 'Listen man, your triglycerides are really high. In case you haven't noticed it, you've entered heart attack country.' Resentful that he had to quit eating so much and smoking, he began to gradually lose weight. ...I began to think about what would happen if somebody started to lose weight and couldn't stop.”

On October 25, the Colonial Theater in Belfast along with Our Town Belfast is hosting special 20th anniversary screening of Thinner with some movie props and extras in the film on hand before the show.

Along with locations in Belfast, the campy thriller was shot in Camden, Appleton, Kittery, Thomaston, Port Clyde, Augusta and Portland.

Our Town Belfast Executive Director Breanna Pinkham Bebb discussed several of the locations shot in Belfast. 

“I took some screenshots of the iconic Belfast locations in the film and assembled them in a Facebook invite.” (Due to potential copyright issues, we won’t reprint the screenshots, but you can see them on Our Town Belfast’s Facebook event page here for comparison.)

“Right here on Main Street, below our office, you can see in the 1996 film a shot of what looks like Quigley Realty and beyond that Threads and Weaver’s Bakery before they moved out of town,” Pinkham Bebb said. “Today, the white border around the sign is still the same but it is now Realty of Maine and beyond that are the signs for City Drawers and Man on Main.”

The shot of actor Robert John Burke who plays the lawyer, Billy Halleck, can be seen in a phone booth on Main Street, which Pinkham Bebb estimates might have been right where the lamp post is.

“If there any young people watching the movie, they’ll probably look at the phone booth and say ‘What is that thing?’” laughed Pinkham Bebb.

“There are some other scenes that were filmed in Rollie’s Bar and Grill, but I believed for the exterior, they shot footage of the Consumer Fuel Building, the red brick building at the intersection of Maine and Front Street,” she said. “So, that will be kind of fun for people to figure out what’s happening there.”

“The Belfast Landing is another place that they filmed the movie, which is kind of hilarious, because it was meant to be Old Orchard Beach. But they put a bunch of carnival equipment down there to simulate that.”

Extras and anyone involved in the filming of Thinner 20-plus years ago are especially encouraged to attend. PenBay Pilot reached out to the community to ask if any extras from the film had any stories to share and Midcoast resident Fred Carey had this to share:

“One of the members of the film crew showed up at my company Steel-Pro in Rockland and asked if I could dull and age the hunting knife to be used in the movie,Thinner and remove the manufacturing name I said sure and hit it with a grinder and then a sandblaster and passed it back to him. He said, ‘What do I owe you?’ I said "’Nothing; when you’re done filming can I have the knife back?’ A couple of weeks later they showed back at the shop and gave me the knife and I have it to this day.”

Carey never saw the movie, so he doesn’t know when the knife was actually used in a scene, but perhaps a savvy viewer will.

The screening will be held October 25 at the Colonial Theatre. In true Halloween spirit, there will be a prize awarded for the best Stephen King character (from any book or film – not just Thinner) costume. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. with the film to begin at 7 p.m.  The screening will allow some time for the extras in the film to share a few minutes of reminiscing with the audience. For more information, event details, and to RSVP, visit: their Facebook event page

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

DAMARISCOTTA — If you happen to see a mysterious figure in a red cloak wandering through a cemetery in the weeks leading up to Halloween, do not be alarmed. Her name is Sally.

Ten years ago, Sally Lobkowicz, an experienced genealogy researcher living in Damariscotta, was working part time as a substitute teacher and providing elder care when she felt compelled to take her career in another direction.  She found it by setting up walking tours that would share her love of history, but not just Maine history...haunted Maine history. She found a red cloak, a unique branding element, and launched Red Cloak Haunted History Tours in Damariscotta, taking people both native and from away on lantern-lit evening tours of historic sites and ghostly haunts.

“It just snowballed from there,” said Lobkowicz, who now offers the evening walking tours in eight villages of Maine, including Camden and Rockland. In addition, she offers daytime tours, cemetery tours and private tours with the help of seven other red-caped tour guides she employs to be her surrogates.

Lobkowicz began looking into local ghost stories after hearing tales from locals. “I discovered that there are quite a lot of buildings that people feel are haunted in each of these towns, and some of the stories are quite chilling,” she said. “There are also plenty of interesting historic tales to recall.”

The tours take people through back streets and by buildings that even most locals don’t know have connections to hauntings. Take, for example, the Camden Post Office.

“There are a couple of different stories related to the post office,” she said. “It had a couple of jail cells in the basement used as a temporary holding area. There was also one death in that building.” See Camden historian Barbara Dyer’s story about its construction 100 years ago in a Pen Bay Pilot story.

And in Rockland, Lobkowicz knows of one house that is haunted — by a dog. “This lady shared with me that she has a ghost of a dog in her apartment,” she said. “In the night, she has felt the impression of a dog jumping up and laying down at the end of her bed. She said she discovered the woman who owned the apartment before her had a little dog and and that she and the dog passed on the same day.”

Unlike other pararnormal investigators who can “sense” a ghostly presence without equipment, Lobkowicz is forthright that her main focus is on the haunted history of a place.

“I have very little sensitivity to the spirits around us,” she said. “I’m more researched based, but my husband, Greg [Latimer], does have a little more sensitivity than I do. We tend to rely on instruments that are more scientific.” However, she added, her tour guests have been known to see or “pick up” on spirits that she can’t.

She and her husband have co-written two books on ghostly presences in Damariscotta and Boothbay and continue to work together on paranormal investigations. After the season wraps up at the end of the month, she and Latimer will travel down to the Caribbean to research a number of haunted areas there. What they discover will likely end up in another book or another tour.

Having lived in Maine for just short of 40 years she is very knowledgeable about Maine in general as well as specific areas. The one night she hangs her “off duty” sign is on Halloween.

“There’s a lot going on that night and we’re wrapping up our busy season at that time. This year, we’re actually volunteering at two different haunted houses on Halloween night.”

To learn more about Red Cloak Haunted History Tours visit: redcloakhauntedhistorytours.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

DAMARISCOTTA — If you happen to see a mysterious figure in a red cloak wandering through a cemetery in the weeks leading up to Halloween, do not be alarmed. Her name is Sally.

Ten years ago, Sally Lobkowicz, an experienced genealogy researcher living in Damariscotta, was working part time as a substitute teacher and providing elder care when she felt compelled to take her career in another direction.  She found it by setting up walking tours that would share her love of history, but not just Maine history...haunted Maine history. She found a red cloak, a unique branding element, and launched Red Cloak Haunted History Tours in Damariscotta, taking people both native and from away on lantern-lit evening tours of historic sites and ghostly haunts.

“It just snowballed from there,” said Lobkowicz, who now offers the evening walking tours in eight villages of Maine, including Camden and Rockland. In addition, she offers daytime tours, cemetery tours and private tours with the help of seven other red-caped tour guides she employs to be her surrogates.

Lobkowicz began looking into local ghost stories after hearing tales from locals. “I discovered that there are quite a lot of buildings that people feel are haunted in each of these towns, and some of the stories are quite chilling,” she said. “There are also plenty of interesting historic tales to recall.”

The tours take people through back streets and by buildings that even most locals don’t know have connections to hauntings. Take, for example, the Camden Post Office.

“There are a couple of different stories related to the post office,” she said. “It had a couple of jail cells in the basement used as a temporary holding area. There was also one death in that building.” See Camden historian Barbara Dyer’s story about its construction 100 years ago in a Pen Bay Pilot story.

And in Rockland, Lobkowicz knows of one house that is haunted — by a dog. “This lady shared with me that she has a ghost of a dog in her apartment,” she said. “In the night, she has felt the impression of a dog jumping up and laying down at the end of her bed. She said she discovered the woman who owned the apartment before her had a little dog and and that she and the dog passed on the same day.”

Unlike other pararnormal investigators who can “sense” a ghostly presence without equipment, Lobkowicz is forthright that her main focus is on the haunted history of a place.

“I have very little sensitivity to the spirits around us,” she said. “I’m more researched based, but my husband, Greg [Latimer], does have a little more sensitivity than I do. We tend to rely on instruments that are more scientific.” However, she added, her tour guests have been known to see or “pick up” on spirits that she can’t.

She and her husband have co-written two books on ghostly presences in Damariscotta and Boothbay and continue to work together on paranormal investigations. After the season wraps up at the end of the month, she and Latimer will travel down to the Caribbean to research a number of haunted areas there. What they discover will likely end up in another book or another tour.

Having lived in Maine for just short of 40 years she is very knowledgeable about Maine in general as well as specific areas. The one night she hangs her “off duty” sign is on Halloween.

“There’s a lot going on that night and we’re wrapping up our busy season at that time. This year, we’re actually volunteering at two different haunted houses on Halloween night.”

To learn more about Red Cloak Haunted History Tours visit: redcloakhauntedhistorytours.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

DAMARISCOTTA — If you happen to see a mysterious figure in a red cloak wandering through a cemetery in the weeks leading up to Halloween, do not be alarmed. Her name is Sally.

Ten years ago, Sally Lobkowicz, an experienced genealogy researcher living in Damariscotta, was working part time as a substitute teacher and providing elder care when she felt compelled to take her career in another direction.  She found it by setting up walking tours that would share her love of history, but not just Maine history...haunted Maine history. She found a red cloak, a unique branding element, and launched Red Cloak Haunted History Tours in Damariscotta, taking people both native and from away on lantern-lit evening tours of historic sites and ghostly haunts.

“It just snowballed from there,” said Lobkowicz, who now offers the evening walking tours in eight villages of Maine, including Camden and Rockland. In addition, she offers daytime tours, cemetery tours and private tours with the help of seven other red-caped tour guides she employs to be her surrogates.

Lobkowicz began looking into local ghost stories after hearing tales from locals. “I discovered that there are quite a lot of buildings that people feel are haunted in each of these towns, and some of the stories are quite chilling,” she said. “There are also plenty of interesting historic tales to recall.”

The tours take people through back streets and by buildings that even most locals don’t know have connections to hauntings. Take, for example, the Camden Post Office.

“There are a couple of different stories related to the post office,” she said. “It had a couple of jail cells in the basement used as a temporary holding area. There was also one death in that building.” See Camden historian Barbara Dyer’s story about its construction 100 years ago in a Pen Bay Pilot story.

And in Rockland, Lobkowicz knows of one house that is haunted — by a dog. “This lady shared with me that she has a ghost of a dog in her apartment,” she said. “In the night, she has felt the impression of a dog jumping up and laying down at the end of her bed. She said she discovered the woman who owned the apartment before her had a little dog and and that she and the dog passed on the same day.”

Unlike other pararnormal investigators who can “sense” a ghostly presence without equipment, Lobkowicz is forthright that her main focus is on the haunted history of a place.

“I have very little sensitivity to the spirits around us,” she said. “I’m more researched based, but my husband, Greg [Latimer], does have a little more sensitivity than I do. We tend to rely on instruments that are more scientific.” However, she added, her tour guests have been known to see or “pick up” on spirits that she can’t.

She and her husband have co-written two books on ghostly presences in Damariscotta and Boothbay and continue to work together on paranormal investigations. After the season wraps up at the end of the month, she and Latimer will travel down to the Caribbean to research a number of haunted areas there. What they discover will likely end up in another book or another tour.

Having lived in Maine for just short of 40 years she is very knowledgeable about Maine in general as well as specific areas. The one night she hangs her “off duty” sign is on Halloween.

“There’s a lot going on that night and we’re wrapping up our busy season at that time. This year, we’re actually volunteering at two different haunted houses on Halloween night.”

To learn more about Red Cloak Haunted History Tours visit: redcloakhauntedhistorytours.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

PROSPECT — The scary clown sightings all around the country may be someone’s idea of a sick prank, but they are damaging the reputations of clowns both good and evil everywhere. 

By day, Andy Hall, 27, and Jeremy Sawyer, 28, are a post office clerk and a custodian, respectively. But every weekend in October when night falls, they don their oversized shoes and horror makeup. But make no mistake, these “scary clowns” are not the same as the ones marauding and terrorizing neighborhoods.

The two started off as friends at Searsport High more than 10 years ago, where they first shared the same love of dressing up as horror clowns for Halloween. Then, Sawyer had the idea to formalize their shared hobby. When they had enough clowns (to presumably fill one small car) the group named itself CarnEVIL, for the purpose of providing entertainment at Fright At The Fort, the Knox biggest Halloween haunted tour in Maine.

The one thing CarnEVIL does not do is go rogue. The “scary clown” phenomenon first developed in South Carolina with police reports of clowns trying to lure kids into the woods. The internet caught on and soon clown sightings spread to other states, including, naturally, the most haunted state in the U.S.— Maine—home of Stephen King’s penultimate evil clown Pennywise in the novel “It.”

For Sawyer, the phenomenon is not funny.

“Whatever these people are doing is overstepping boundaries, peeking in windows and getting in people’ personal space,” he said.

“The thought of people dressing up as clowns and going out to scare people alone and not part of some controlled situation for entertainment is something I can’t understand,” added Hall. “There’s a legitimate phobia of clowns as it is; it’s called coulrophobia. So, if these people dressed up as clowns coming out of the woods are trying to scare people randomly because they are bored or they’re trying to get attention, I don’t think it’s right. They’re not helping our group at all. It just perpetuates a stigma against our group and the Shriners. The Shriners dress up as clowns every year, not to be scary, but to volunteer at events and parades. They’re doing really good things for the community. If you think of a five-year-old kid who has been hearing about all of these scary clowns wandering in the dark, it doesn’t help us or the Shriners. We’re just trying to give people in a unique setting a good experience.”

Hall said his group has discussed the recent events of scary clown sightings in Maine prior to their Fright at the Fort appearances throughout October. Last week, police in Waldoboro investigated a report from multiple students at Medomak Valley High School who saw scary clowns on Manktown Road. Before that, a clown confronted a woman in Auburn, pointing his finger at her as though it were a gun and said “bang.” In response, the woman drew a handgun on the perpetrator and scared him off. Hall said, “I followed that story as well. My group has been concerned about it.”

There is one room dedicated to scary clowns at Fright at the Fort, and this year, Sawyer said, “We’re going to know everyone in that room and who is behind each costume. I’ve had to have extra precaution this year because of this.”

Though the Fright at the Fort events always have security and police monitoring the crowds and prohibit people from bringing in any weapons, Hall said the flight or fight in people is so strong in a haunted house environment that they are always prepared for inadvertent contact, probably even more so this year than any other year. “We’ve always been trained never to touch any of the participants of Fright at the Fort, but in the past, we’ve been punched and we’ve been hit. But, we’re ready for it and we have an amazing amount of volunteers who also keep an eye out for any trouble.”

He’s part of the 100 volunteers who orchestrate the haunted tour each year as nearly 8,000 people make their way through the Fort’s creepy corridors.

“I’m part of a group of 15 people who do what I do,” Sawyer said. “We all get along and have a lot of fun doing this each year. We’re very supportive and we help teenagers [who volunteer with CarnEVIL] get through high school with service hours.”

Keep that in mind lest you think this is all funny business.

To find out more about Fright at The Fort visit: fortknox.maineguide.com/Fright/

Related story: http://www.penbaypilot.com/article/freak-show-gonna-scare-you-silly/22428

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

BELFAST — A group of die-hard DJs and fans of community radio are trying to lay the groundwork in getting Belfast’s first community radio station established by the new year.

Jennifer Hill and Karen Nelson are two Waldo County DJs, who have affiliations with WERU in Blue Hill. Along with a group of about 18 others, Hill said the idea has been in the works for awhile, but now the timing is right.

“The City of Belfast can only get an FCC license every 15 years for a low-watt station and recently they applied for it and got it and now want to turn it over to our group to make it happen,” said Hill.

The group envisions that the low-power station will have a broadcasting area of 5-10 miles and will be operational by January 2017. A small 20-foot by 20-foot room in the basement of Waterfall Arts will be the site of the broadcasting studio.

Nelson’s background wasn’t originally in radio, but when she lived in North Carolina in 2001, she always had an interest in music. 

“I always wondered how do people got those jobs [to be a DJ] and one day, my favorite radio host said they were looking for trainees," she said. "I think my hand was on the phone before he stopped talking.”

After moving to Maine to 2010, Nelson took a radio spot at WERU called Maine Sunday Best, which she still currently hosts.

“To start something from the ground up here in Belfast from the ground up is intriguing," she said. "And now I can answer the question: ‘How do people get these kind of jobs?’”

“A lot of the people involved with this project are involved with WERU,” added Hill, who not only worked as an office manager for WERU but also hosted a show on the side.

“I think the best part of radio is the access,” she said. “You don’t need a computer or high-speed -nternet. All you need is a transistor radio you can buy at a yard sale for a buck.”

Modeled on sort of the same community feel as WRFR in Rockland, the Belfast Community Radio station slated to be on 100.9 FM will offer a diverse amount of live and recorded talk radio and music curated to individual tastes of their volunteer DJs. Programming ideas and principles are coming together right now as committees meet. “Belfast is such a cool community," said Hill. "There are all kinds of people here, old, young, people born here, people from away. And here’s a chance to coalesce the community in a way that we can hear each other. People always say ‘no one’s listens anymore.’ Well with radio, it’s all about listening.”

To make it happen, the group’s fundraising goal is to raise $20,000 by December 1 in order to purchase sound equipment. They plan on three major live fundraising events in addition to a Go Fund Me page and in-person donations being taken at Belfast City Hall.

The first event will happen Friday, Oct. 14, at 6 p.m. with a potluck supper and music jam at 17 Court Street in Belfast. The public is invited to bring a meal or beverage to share to this free event, which will be held at the former Court Street church.

Fundraising Committee leader and DJ Erik Klausmeyer will be spinning with other musicians to raise funds for the new station.

The group has various subcommittees working to follow through with their efforts and meets at the former Court Street Chuch on Monday nights. To learn more about the future station visit: www.belfastcommunityradio.org

ROCKLAND — Craigslist may be the largest classified advertisement websites in the world, but meeting up with strangers can get sketchy. And enough deals have gone bad —robberies, rapes, assaults, even homicide — that police stations around the country have begun to set up clearly marked, well-lit areas under surveillance for Craigslist exchanges.

In September, the Rockland Police Department decided to establish two safe exchange zones as well. One is designated right in their own parking lot at 1 Police Plaza and the other is in J.C. Penney’s parking lot in the Rockland Plaza.

“A couple of other agencies in the state have been doing this and Officer William Smith brought the idea to me, so I told him to to go ahead put it together,” said Deputy Chief Christopher Young. “Obviously, our parking lot is probably one of the safest places to exchange or sell an item, but the representatives from Rockland Plaza were willing to get on board and offer another site. They have great surveillance in that area as well.”

 Young said he hasn’t seen any incidents prior to setting up these zones, but said, “Any time these exchanges take place, there’s is always the potential for something to go wrong. It’s not just a matter of personal safety, but if something were fraudulent in the exchange or a theft, we’d have a license plate on camera and identification of someone on camera.”

Another advantage of preparing to meet at a safe exchange zone is to gauge the intent of the person you’re trying to meet.

“If that person did not want to meet at this designated space, that would be a red flag, a real concern if I were on the other half of that transaction,” said Young.

Young had other common sense tips for setting up a safe exchange.

“Meeting in broad daylight is always better,” he said. “I understand that people have to work, but try to make the exchange on a day off rather than at night after work. Also, bring another adult with you. If someone intended to meet up with you for nefarious purposes, having another adult there is probably going to curb anything he or she intend to do. And when you do the exchange, conduct it outside the vehicle. Don’t ever get into the other person’s vehicle.”

Beyond Craiglist, these safe zones are also useful for selling household items, virtual yard sales, car sales and money exchanges. One exception, which Young stresses, is that gun sales at these zones are prohibited.

“Given the climate across the country right now, the last place we want to see gun transactions taking place are in the middle of a busy parking lot. The decision to limit the sale of firearms was not done to infringe upon anyone’s second amendment rights.  It was the decision of the police department to limit these transactions to avoid a potential tragedy. It’s that simple.”

Young points out that if someone has a constitutional right to carry a gun (and is not meeting for the purpose of selling it), that’s different and allowed.

“I would just say for your safety, and the safety of our officers, keep it concealed,” he said.

If you have any questions about these safe exchange zones, contact the Rockland Police Department at call: 207-593-9132

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

This is our last weekend of above-average summer-like temperatures until Hurricane Matthew decides to ruin our fun, so enjoy all the leaf peeping, festivals and food and beer-wine pairings for your Columbus Day Weekend. 

Killer Road Trip: Bring Your Own Apples Free Cider Press

Friday, Oct. 7—Bangor

Want to make your own cider (hard or non-alcoholic) from fresh local apples, but don't have access to a cider press? Wouldn't it be cool if a local homebrew shop offered a free Bring-Your-Own-Apples cider pressing event this fall...? Central Street Farmhouse in Bangor is offering to press your apples for free from 2 to 8 p.m. The event takes place in the Pocket Park, right next to the store.

Taste of Thomaston

Saturday, Oct. 8—Thomaston

Here’s some tasty goodness. Knox Museum's wildly popular annual food and wine tasting festival is back, celebrating everything local, featuring 30+ signature bites and sips from Midcoast Maine's finest chefs, growers, vintners & brewers, cheese artisans, bakers, and more. The event rain or shine goes from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. $55 Museum Members/$75 General Admission/$125 VIP passes ($100 for Knox Museum Signature Society Members). FMI: Taste of Thomaston

Killer Road Trip: Swine and Stein Octoberfest

Saturday, Oct. 8—Gardiner

Get your porky fix with the 6th Annual Swine & Stein Octoberfest,  a trifecta of beer, food, and music. A beer tasting will showcase the incredible diversity and quality of Maine craft beers. Restaurants and local food vendors from Gardiner and across the state will serve up a variety of interesting culinary dishes featuring local pork along with other quality menu items. Adding to the festivities, a line-up of favorite and emerging Maine bands will entertain throughout the day, including Gunther Brown..11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. downtown Gardiner. $20 day of, $10 designated driver. FMI:
For tickets and other info, visit http://www.gardinermainstreet.org/events/swine-and-stein-oktoberfest/

Hope Orchard Fall Festival

Sunday, Oct. 9—Gardiner

Apple pie and hard cider lovers, this one’s for you. Fiber, yarn, candles, household ornamentals, fabric creations, & glasswork will be featured along with wood-fired pizza and harvest sandwiches will be for sale, provided by Uproot Pie Company and Washington General Store. Music on Sunday from noon to 2 p.m featuring Rosey and the Wayfaring Stranger.

Great Pumpkin Drop

Monday, Oct. 10—Damariscotta

Since this is an extended weekend, we’re including a Monday event which is sure to thrill the kiddos and the little kiddo inside you. Watch as  600-pound Atlantic giant pumpkins will be dropped from a 180-foot crane onto targets ranging from a local police department’s junked-cruiser to double-decker junked-cars stacked on top of one another! In the green-spirit of recycling, the splattered pumpkin pulp is gathered for eventual pig feed at a local farm, and the previously junked-cars are recycled as scrap metal. The renowned rock band “Nikki Hunt Band” will be performing from 1 to 4 p.m. FMI: mainepumpkinfest.com

Kay Stephens can be reached atnews@penbaypilot.com

DAMARISCOTTA — Last winter, Quinn Gormley, an organizer for the Mid Coast Queer Collective based out of Damariscotta, got a call from a member of the organization at 2 in the morning. “It was in the middle of February and this person had just been kicked out of his house after coming out to his family,” she said. “He was 10 miles from downtown with no transportation. He didn’t even have good winter clothing; it was 10 degrees below and they had no place to go.”

It was a scary moment for the organization, which scrambled to try and find this person some short-term help; it was also a watershed moment.

Of all of the homeless youth under the age of 24 in the U.S., 40 percent identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, said Gormley, adding they are at the highest risk of homelessness.

MCQC operates a drop-in program at Skidompha Library. “Homelessness is showing up more and more in our drop-in program,” said Gormley. “Frequently it was happening at times when the individual was coming out and housing instability or homelessness would then occur very suddenly.”

In the Damariscotta area, the nearest youth homelessness shelter is an hour away, in Portland, and there are frequently no beds available. More importantly, homeless shelters by and large are are not necessarily welcoming places to L.G.B.T.Q. people, according to Gormley, who has heard this time and again from MCQC members who fear for their safety.

The larger solution — providing an L.G.B.T.Q.-welcoming homeless shelter in that area — is not a reality at this time. What these homeless youth do instead, is couch surf at friends’ places, sleep in cars or shuffle around to extended family.

“These are really temporary solutions,” said Gormley.

The organization has been working since last winter to find alternative solutions. “We realized we can’t solve homelessness, but we can do something about helping youth who are thrust out of their homes suddenly,” she said. “When they are in temporary shelters and need basic resources and supplies to survive, we thought to put together “safety packs.”

Like a military bug-out bag, a portable kit that normally contains the items one would require to survive for 72 hours when evacuating from a disaster, MCQC has put out a call to the community to donate items for safety packs for immediately homeless L.G.B.T.Q. youth.

“The idea is when we learn someone is coming out and think it’s not going to be safe, we give them the backpack ahead of time,” said Gormley. “So, if they get kicked out, they have the go-bag with school supplies, warm clothing and that kind of stuff. And eventually, we’re going to add TracFones.”

The items needed for a safety pack include:  A large backpack (rolling bag or duffle); a tiny lock that fits on a backpack zipper; an emergency blanket; a face cloth; a basic first aid kit (bandage strips and butterfly bandages in assorted sizes, over-the-counter pain relievers, alcohol wipes, elastic wrap bandages); basic toiletries (travel-size toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, comb, nail clipper, hand sanitizer, 18 tampons-they have multiple uses, roll of toilet paper); no. 2 pencils and a small pencil sharpener; a box of black pens; a small notepad; and a Reny’s or similar gift card. Donated items do not have to be exactly as described above; a close approximation is fine.

Asked about the tampons, Gormley said, “All of the items in the bag aren’t just randomly assembled. We actually reached out to homeless L.G.B.T.Q. youth and asked them specifically what they needed, and they said that tampons are really useful for bloody noses. If you’re outside all night, you’re going to get a bloody nose.”

The drive to assemble the safety packs started in June and at this time, they now have five completed packs to give away.

“Our target is to assemble at least 50 of them before the snow flies,” Gormley said.

Items may be dropped off either at the Second Congregational Church’s office or at the office of Skidompha Public Library Executive Pam Gormley.

Related link:

• Maine State Housing Authority Emergency Shelters

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — Though there are wonderful qualities to Maine, it’s not always “vacationland” and for some, life can take an unexpected downturn. The breadwinner in the family loses a job, and stable housing. A woman beaten by her husband, takes the kids and runs. A veteran with posttraumatic stress disorder comes home to a broken marriage. A drug addict finds herself without a stick of furniture as she works to better her life and start fresh.

These are the realities that a life-time resident of Rockland, Sharon Setz, and her friend of 30 years, Lori Alice Friant, know only too well. Setz and Friant started a nonprofit last spring called The Ripple Initiative. In September, The Ripple Initiative opened their shop in the converted garage of a friend at the corner of Union and Willow streets in Rockland.

The shop is the physical manifestation of Setz’s decades of networking throughout Rockland, finding donated furniture and goods from neighbors and friends that she can turn around and pass on to families impacted by poverty.

Setz has always been one of those community members who has helped out her neighbors. A former house painter and house cleaner, she has spent many years organizing a Secret Santa drive for neighbors in need, something she said she wished she could have done full-time. Friant, a former waitress, did the same kind of community giving in Lewiston and Portland before she moved to Rockland.

“I never thought I had anything to offer, other than some charitable giving, but Sharon took it to another level,” said Friant.

“For years, I’ve been dreaming about doing this year-round,” Setz said.

A chance meeting with a friend who works in nonprofits told her she could do this full time. After a year of getting their ideas into a business plan and the nonprofit status complete, Setz and Friant have established their mission and opened their doors.

“The idea just came together, that we would just find quality things at estate sales or donated items and would sell them to people who could afford it,” said Setz. “The income would allow us to do things for free for people who can’t afford it. For example, when the Hospitality House finds permanent housing for their homeless families, we give them a number of household items, all free.”

Essentially the Ripple Initiative’s mission is three-fold: to sell quality items in the shop and pass the profits into more resources for the areas’ impoverished; to collect donations of household goods and furniture through a neighbor-to-neighbor clearinghouse and give them away free to families in need; and to eventually set up a website registry, similar to a bridal registry, where they can match individual needs with specific donations.

“My garage and basement is constantly filled with items like mattresses and household furniture,” said Friant. “If we get a call from Hospitality House or from someone moving into an apartment or house with absolutely nothing, we want to give them a bed, a dresser, coffee maker, a microwave, silverware, shower curtain, a toilet scrubber—hundreds of dollars worth of items for free that it would cost them to set up a proper household.”

“We also go to estate sales, and people make appointments to donate something to us,” added Setz. “I know a lot of people here.”

Asked why people should choose to donate  their items to The Ripple Initiative, Setz said, “The donations and profits go to charitable endeavors in this community—your neighbor, instead of going to people out of state.”

The Ripple Initiative thrives on the premise that when people are given a helping hand by neighbors, the person is uplifted and pays it forward in donations when they’ve successfully broken the cycle of poverty.

“I’ve seen it time and again,” said Setz, pointing to several pieces in the store. “These are beautiful donations from several people we’ve helped before.”

The shop is beautifully appointed with quality antiques, mid-century furniture, artwork and necessary household items.

“We’re very selective in what we take in from people,” said Setz.

“We don’t take anything broken or chipped,” added Friant. “The items you get are in very good shape. We only take in things you’d be proud to have in your own home.”

Unlike Goodwill, people are not encouraged to “drop off” items; instead donations are accepted by appointment only.

For more information visit: The Ripple Initiative

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKPORT — Wait, The Wizard of Oz is a banned book?

For Banned Books Week, Rockport Public Library’s Youth Services Librarian Ben Odgren pulled some beloved classics and newer literary sensations off the bookshelves on Wednesday night,September  in a presentation to exemplify which books are still being banned in school libraries all over the nation.

Take the book by L. Frank Baum that first introduced the world to the Yellow Brick Road in 1900. According to Kristina Rosenthal from the University of Tulsa, the reason provided for the book’s banning in all public libraries in 1928 was because the story was ungodly for “depicting women in strong leadership roles.”

Then there’s Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the best novels of the 20th Century and yet, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, one of the most challenged and banned classical books. The reasons have varied over the years from institutionalized racism to vulgar content.

The more young adult literature adapts to the culture of modern times, the more challenges and bans libraries are bound to see. Contemporary favorites such as the ‘Harry Potter’ series has been banned by religious parents for glorifying witchcraft while the dystopic ‘Hunger Games’ novel series has been banned for being anti-family, anti-ethnic, violent and dabbling in the occult/satanic. Even the children’s picture book, ‘And Tango Makes Three,’ which topped the 2010 banned list, got targeted for “homosexuality, religious viewpoint” as reported by the Office of Intellectual Freedom. Based on a true story, the picture book depicts a Central Park zookeeper who observed the close companionship of two male penguins and had built a nest together. So, the zookeeper gave them an egg from another penguin couple to care for. When it hatched, the baby penguin chick named Tango had two daddies. When it was published in 2005, it challenged assumptions about what constitutes a family.

 According to Banned Books Week’s website, “Hundreds of books have been either removed or challenged in schools and libraries in the United States every year. According to the American Library Association (ALA), there were at least 311 in 2014.  ALA estimates that 70 to 80 percent are never reported.”

“It’s mainly school libraries where books gets challenged, which is what has to happen first,” said Odgren. The library has to provide a challenge form which allows the person to provide written reasons for wanting the book removed. The library then has to appoint a committee of citizens, a book jury, if you will, in order to review the complaint and ultimately uphold the ban or dismiss it.  “We’ve never had a book challenged or banned in the Rockport Library, as far as I know,” said Odgren. “I think what parents who do challenge a book want to see happen is that the book is replaced by another on a particular English curriculum. Either they want the book removed for everyone or just want the book changed out for another for their child.”

Odgren said often a banned book has the opposite intended effect, making the young adult want to read it more. “The young adults are wondering ‘what’s in that book that they don’t want me to know about?”

“That’s the problem with banned books in general,” said Odgren. “One person who decides that the book is not fit for his or her child is making the decision for everyone not to read it, once it is banned from a library.”

To learn more about what made last year’s Top Ten banned books on Banned Books Week visit: http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

ROCKLAND — The kidnapping of a Rockland woman as she left work Wednesday night has shocked this community. Violent crime of this nature is not something that people in small towns generally have to worry about and the aftermath of the attack has left many women feeling vulnerable.

According to police, a Portland man drove to Rockland and waited in his car until he spotted his victim. A young woman left work at 11:30 p.m. to walk home. She was walking on Main Street, near the intersection of Cedar Street.

According to the police report, she noticed the perpetrator open his car door with a ski mask on. When he grabbed her and tried to pull her into the vehicle, she fought back, until he got her in a choke hold and caused her to lose consciousness. The man dragged her into the passenger’s side of his sports utility vehicle where she regained consciousness. Soon after, she realized a police cruiser was following them with blue lights on. Despite the perpetrator trying to shove her out of the car and threatening to kill her, the woman grabbed the steering wheel in an attempt to jerk the vehicle off the road. As a result, the perpetrator was apprehended by police officers as he attempted to flee the car.

Deputy Chief Christopher Young received the call when it happened and has advice for women on how to protect themselves.

“I would say this is an isolated incident, “ he said. “The perpetrator had no connection to the area, which makes this that much more disturbing, but Rockland is still a safe community.”

From the beginning of this incident to the end, he said the young woman did everything right.

“First, women need to be vigilant when they are walking to their cars or down the street in the dark,” said Young. “Pay less attention to your cell phone and more attention to your surroundings. I know with modern technology, you sometimes want a little bit of entertainment as you’re walking home, but I think the number one preventative behavior is put the phone away and look around to your surroundings. Let someone know when you are leaving late at night from one location and when you plan to arrive at the other. Let them know the route you intend to take.”

On comment boards in reaction to this article, several women have indicated they will start walking around with a gun or pepper spray from now on.

Young said: “One thing I would always caution is that if you feel the need to go out and buy pepper spray, you need to know how that will affect you. There are environmental factors that can work against you, such as wind shift, which can blow it back on your face. If the perpetrator were to get the pepper spray away from you, it could be used on you instead. You really need to know how to react to that. We don’t allow our officers to carry pepper spray until they’ve been sprayed in the face, so they understand the effects and their incapacitation level.”

As far as a gun, the same advice applies.

“You need to be familiar with any type of a weapon you intend to carry to deploy as part of self-defense,” he said.

Young said that women need to trust their gut instinct.

“If there is any issue, I don’t care how insignificant it is where you feel uncomfortable going somewhere by yourself, call us. We’ll make sure you get to your car safely.”

At the very least, he said, ask a male co-worker or friend to walk you to your vehicle or to a safe place.

The police and community point to the young woman’s willingness to fight her attacker, despite his threats, as the reason for her survival. At one point, she was actually able to make a 911 phone call, as well.

“If women want to feel safer, they can also sign up for a local self-defense class and learn some counter attack strategies,” said Young. “In this particular case, with this particular victim, she put up a fight. And that fight more than likely caused the car accident that ended the chase.”

For more “street-smart” self-defense tips for women visit: attackproof.com To reach the Rockland Police Department call: 207-593-9132

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

From Belfast to Waldoboro (and a Portland road trip), we’ve got an eclectic lineup of hot jazz, cold bourbon, Maine craft arts and brews, a fashion show and art-comedy-music fest in Portland.

Kentucky Bourbon Tasting with Workshop

Friday, Sept. 30—Waldoboro

Kentucky native Scott Byrd will be giving a three-hour presentation through the Medomak Arts Project in Waldoboro about why the best bourbon originated in Kentucky and how Maine’s Prohibition affected its production and sale, among other interesting history tidbits. An optional tasting will also occur. The event runs from 6 to 9 p.m. and costs $20. They strongly encourage you to check before just showing up by emailing jminzy@gmail.com or calling 832-4774. FMI: Medomak Arts Project

Maine Craft Weekend

Saturday, Oct. 1 to Sunday, Oct. 2—Midcoast

It’s going to be a great weekend for a road trip throughout the backroads of the Midcoast. As part of the annual state-wide self-guided tour of Maine’s craft studios and breweries, not necessarily on the beaten path, here’s an opportunity to explore the life and work of craft artists featuring participants all over the state who are not regularly open to the public or who have planned special MCW events and demonstrations at their locations. Plan a route to include a pottery wheel lesson and a glass blowing demonstration in the morning, swing by a brew pub for lunch, wrap up the day perusing a craft show.  Here’s what’s going on in the Midcoast. Also, see our recent story on one man who created his own dream job by foraging in the forests and beaches.

Knitmaine-ia Fashion Show to Benefit New Hope for Women

Saturday, Oct. 1—Belfast

Fashion shows are so few and far between up here, this one is worth a mention. An afternoon fashion show is taking place at the Belfast Boat House from 2 to 4 p.m. For the seventh year, Knitmaine-ia celebrates diverse fiber arts traditions with hand-knitted, crocheted and felted garments and accessories both modeled and displayed. Tickets are $12 and all proceeds are donated to New Hope For Women

Killer Road Trip: Waking Windows Fest in Portland

Saturday, Oct. 1—Portland

Here we go, something for everybody. I love daytime festivals. Waking Windows is a music, arts, comedy, and literature festival that will take place in downtown Portland, and will feature more than 60 performers in 10 venues. Tickets are $25 for a day pass and can be bought here. All of the events kick off at noon. FMI: more info.

The Hot Sardines at the Strand

Sunday, Oct. 2—Rockland

Coming in with a band name that would sure to be on Opus the penguin’s iPod, The Hot Sardines are up from New York City to play the Strand Theatre. This jazz collective that Downbeat called “one of the most delightfully energetic bands on New York’s ‘hot’ music scene,” is steeped in “hot, foot-stomping jazz, salty stride piano, and the kind of music Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhardt and Fats Waller used to make.” General admission is $45 and the show starts at 7:30 p.m.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

MONTVILLE — As Maine Craft Weekend approaches, there’s one artist in Liberty who is living the artist’s dream. Mark Guido, like many people who live in Maine, had to get by on multiple jobs, working as a mason, a builder, and even a teacher, before he discovered his true path. 

“I started making rustic furniture out of found materials in the woods, such as Speckled Alder,” he said. “Initially, I was introduced to a guy who made furniture like this and I figured out how to do it on my own, making chairs, tables, shelves and magazine racks. But, then, I began to collect stones. I was still working as a mason at the time and still had a lot of tools to work with brick and stone, so I just started making decorative pieces out of them.”

For the last six years, Guido has been self-employed making and selling rustic furnishings in a business called Timberstone Rustic Arts. His studio can be found in  Montville on Route 3.

Guido said he goes out to approved areas, such as certain islands and private landowner’s beach areas with permission and find smooth rocks, mostly granite.

“Mother Nature shaped it; I just collect it,” he said.

His smallest stone pieces are toothpick holders and beautifully Japanese inspired single flower vases. The largest pieces are shallow birdbaths and fountains.

“When I see a stone, I’ll instantly see what I’m going to make out of it,” he said.

Guido said some of his ideas have come from other stone workers, and some just come from seeing items in stores or online made out of wood plastic, such an an iPod holder.

“If I see something like that, a functional piece of art, I just figure out a way to make it out of stone,” he said. 

A few of his crafted pieces are his own original concepts such as the stacked stone lamp. The stones range from biggest to smallest and he works with a 14-year-old apprentice down the road named Dylan Marsh to create the handmade paper lampshades. Dylan is homeschooled and helps Guido three hours a day on his orders, from polishing and drilling rocks to constructing the lampshades by hand. Learning this kind of craft from Guido has prompted Dylan to make his own stone crafts.

“Mark said he’d come hunt me down if I competed with his business,” Dylan joked.

Another original concept Guido invented is a liquor dispenser made from a chunk of granite he finds in a Frankfort quarry. After shaping and polishing the rectangular block, he drills the top down in and affixes a spigot, with the bottle resting upside down at the top and a spigot below, an invention he’s currently getting a patent on.

He said other ideas come from customers themselves. At a recent craft show, he said a customer came up to him and said, “Mark, when are you going to make sponge holders?”

That, as they, say,was a no-brainer. All he had to do is drill out a slot in a relatively flat round rock. 

“I probably sell about 500 a year,” he said.

Guido collects rocks probably about five times a year, enough to keep him working and selling year round.

“Figuring out how to create cool things out of found materials, and knowing that people love them is probably the most satisfying part of this,” he said. “A finished piece starts in the woods or on a beach and I know that’s going to keep me in a job for the next year.”

Guido, like other crafters, artisans and brewers is gearing up for the Maine Craft Weekend in the Midcoast October 1-2. The Midcoast section of the self-guided tour features participants who are not regularly open to the public, or who have planned special MCW events and demonstrations at their locations. Tour-takers are invited to plan a route that includes a lesson, a demo, a craft beer lunch and a craft exhibit to name a few. For more information about Maine Craft Weekend, visit mainecraftweekend.org

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

CAMDEN — P.A.W.S. Animal Adoption Center has had a wild ride in September, with a nearly overwhelming influx of animals rescued from certain death (see our recent story:P.A.W.S. walloped by discovery of 20 sick barn cats,) but one project they’d been planning for has been fulfilled.

“We regularly bring up animals from high-kill shelters from the south,” said Executive Director Shelly Butler. “But with all of the flooding in Louisiana that has been happening recently, shelters down there are even more crowded than usual.”

Six puppies, (ranging in age from 11 weeks to 7 months) were set to be euthanized when P.A.W.S’ partner rescue organizations and volunteers in Georgia and Texas scooped them up from the county kill-shelters, in some cases on their last day of life.

“These organizations literally pull the dogs off the floor and get them healthy,” Butler said. “They either then find foster homes or adopt them out and we’re the third party down the line. When they cannot find any other no-kill shelters to take them in, then they’ll transport them up in a van to us in Maine.”

Both Butler and Claudia Eekels, director of operations, have probably worked 50-plus-hour weeks this month, with all that’s been going on.

“On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 11, after dealing with the influx of the barn cat colony, I met the volunteer van driver at midnight and got all the dogs comfortably in the kennel,” said Butler. “It’s just what we do.”

The Southern U.S. tends to have an overpopulation of dogs as opposed to the Northern part of the country. According to Southern Roots Rescue, “Despite the low cost spay and neuter programs that are offered to low income families, pet owners do not have their pets altered and this is the major factor in why most southern shelters are consistently overcrowded.” Hundreds of dogs that are strays or surrendered by their owners are placed into shelters on a weekly basis. And when the shelters become overcrowded, the staff often has to make the agonizing decision to give a dog a certain number of days to live before they are forced to euthanize them.

In the last three months, P.A.W.S. has transported in 20 dogs from their rescue partners, San Antonio Pets ALIVE! and Doggie Harmony. In the upcoming months, they also plan to continue helping their partners and plan to transport 10 dogs a month to the shelter.

“These dogs from our partners are just some beautiful, healthy, energetic dogs that need a loving home,” said Butler. “They’re here getting a fresh start.”

Barn Cat Update: To date, through the generosity of the community, P.A.W.S. has raised $9,500 for the medical care of the barn cat kittens and their mothers. All of the cats are responding well to the antibiotics and the staff anticipates all of them to be available for adoption in the next two weeks. (Read about them here: P.A.W.S. walloped by discovery of 20 sick barn cats

“We are so grateful for the compassion and overwhelming generosity from our community,” said Butler. “Not only does it reinforce the true reason we are here — to care for those animals that cannot care for themselves — but it warms our hearts knowing the community supports our mission and cares so deeply for animals in need.”

To learn more about how you can adopt an animal, volunteer or donate, call 236-8702 or visit P.A.W.S. at 123 John St. in Camden.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

LINCOLNVILLE—When we last checked in with Wesley Henderson of Lincolnville, the soon-to-be eighth grader had competed with his peers from Studio Red in a New England competition at Westbrook Performing Arts Center this past spring, after which he’d been awarded one of five $500 scholarships to the prestigious Hollywood Summer Tour in Los Angeles, California.

Wesley fundraised for the trip himself and in July, he and his mother flew to Hollywood.

Now back in Maine, he told us of his experiences, starting with flying for the first time.

“Not a lot of people like flying on a plane,” he said. “My mom was just like ‘ugh.’ But, when I got on, and all the little things like being given peanuts made me so happy.”

The Hollywood Summer Tour is an invitation-only dance career intensive intended for advanced dancers who are serious about learning about the commercial dance industry in Hollywood. The kids were mentored by top industry professionals who are actively working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, including
dancers for Britney Spears, Madonna, Will Smith, Mariah Carey, Justin Bieber, Rhianna, Missy Elliott as well as those who’ve performed on shows like Cirque du Soleil, So You Think You Can Dance All-Star, The X-Factor and America’s Got Talent to name a few.

Once ensconced in L.A., Wesley, along with dancers his age all around the country jumped into the first of six days of intensive dance lessons.

His first class was taught by a French ballet teacher.

“She’s a professional ballet dancer who has been on Broadway,” he said. “It was kind of nerve wracking. You look around and see all of these really good dancers here and ask yourself am I going to stand out?”

Turns out a few kids in that first class felt the same way.

“It was really hard for a couple kids,” he said. There was one girl I could see getting upset. She was really good, but I could see how frustrated she was that she wasn’t getting the moves down. Same with me. Ballet wasn’t my strong suit. You kind of have to trust yourself that no one is going to judge you. You’re still dancing, you’re having fun.”

Along with a variety of dance classes in hip hop, street jazz and acrobatic dance, he also got to participate in Q & A sessions with industry professionals, do a head shot and red carpet photo shoot and a professional dance demo reel, which he now use as part of his dance resume.

On the last day he met Adam Sevani, an American actor and dancer, known for playing Robert Alexander III (or "Moose") in Step Up movie series, one of Wesley’s favorite dance movies. “Meeting him was so cool,” he said. “When I saw him come up on stage, I was like...”

And here, without saying anything, his face said it all. He was mesmerized.

In addition to being able to see Disneyland, Universal Studios and other parts of California, he and his mom packed a lot of experiences into one week. “I feel like I got much stronger,” Wesley said. “After getting home, I had jet lag, but we had dance camp the next day, so I just toughed through it. Being out there for a week actually pushed me harder to be a better dancer.”

The Hollywood Summer Tour has been known to cultivate exceptional young dancers and bring them into the industry when they’re older, something Wesley has his sights on.

“I’m already planning on going back out there when I’m older,” he said. 

Related story: Twelve-year-old Lincolnville boy heads to Hollywood on dance scholarship

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

As we ease on into the first official weekend of fall, the shift is being felt in the music, scenes and events in the Midcoast this weekend. This time of year in Maine it’s like walking around on Tatooine during the day and Hoth at night, so layer up and enjoy the outdoors ad nighttime events.

Last Belfast Art Walk of Summer

Friday, Sept. 23—Belfast

This is the last Belfast art walk of the summer before the snow flies, so get hoofing. Explore the galleries in downtown Belfast from 5:30 to 8 p.m. and catch the former artists of Aarhus Gallery at the Belfast Framer & Betts Gallery for a special show and opening reception at 5:30 p.m. Featured performers for the September Art Walk are Kate Hall singing to the accompaniment of pianist Lincoln Blake. Special changes include the ever-changing and always enticing Pop Up Art Tents, full of sly surprises, courtesy of Our Town Belfast. Maine Farmland Trust will be coordinating ‘farm to gallery’ food tastings, celebrating the synergy of local food movement and art.

Toughcats play Three Tides

Saturday, Sept. 24—Belfast

They may not be around as much anymore because they’re touring the country, but Toughcats, Three Tides favorite go-to band is coming back for a show from 8-11 p.m. This Americana Pop Rock band originally from The Fox Islands will be back to thump and pluck their way into your heart.

The Common Ground Country Fair

Friday, Sept. 23 to Sunday, Sept. 25

Every year people have this total love-love relationship with the Common Ground Fair. You’ll have all weekend to appreciate it. This annual celebration of rural living, with 1,400-plus exhibitors and speakers emphasizes vibrant communities, sustainable living and local economies, while highlighting organic agriculture. Gates open at 9 a.m. each day. Click for advance and regular ticket information.Toughcats play Three Tides Saturday, Sept. 24—Belfast They may not be around as much anymore because they’re touring the country, but Toughcats, Three Tides favorite go-to band is coming back for a show from 8-11 p.m. This Americana Pop Rock band originally from The Fox Islands will be back to thump and pluck their way into your heart.

Pemaquid Oyster Fest

Sunday, Sept. 25—Damariscotta

Shuck it up and get ready for the always-popular Pemaquid Oyster Festival in downtown Damariscotta on Schooner Landing's riverside deck from 12 p.m. to dusk. As always, the Pemaquid Oyster Festival will feature a great line-up of entertainment, food, educational exhibits and thousands of oysters fresh from the Damariscotta River. Besides freshly shucked oysters and cold local beer, don’t miss the Oyster Poetry readings at 2 p.m. and the Maine Champion Oyster Shucking Contest starting at 3 p.m. FMI: Shucking and Poetry

The Muppet Movie

Sunday, Sept. 25—Rockland

Admit it. You love this movie. It doesn’t matter if it’s for kids; Muppet movies have always had a sly wink for the adults as well. The Strand Theatre is hosting the original 1979 “The Muppet Movie” for audiences of all ages. It’s only $3 and the show starts at 12:30 p.m.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com

SEARSPORT — September’s Mini Maker Faire in Camden produced some wonderfully strange inventions, but perhaps most noticeable was a large, brown, square structure on the street, something looking like a tool shed with an accordian-shaped facade. It was, in fact, a giant camera obscura, or pinhole camera, designed by John Bielenberg and constructed by him with the help of carpenter Richard Mann.

“It was created last summer for Penobscot Marine Museum’s Magic of Photography exhibit,’ said Kevin Johnson, Penobscot Marine Museum’s photo archivist.

There’s a small door to the walk-in camera. Inside there are benches on either side that can accommodate up to 10 people. On a sunny day, the only light to come in from a 1-½ inch aperture reflects on a white screen on the opposite wall. Once inside the camera and your eyes adjust, watching the images come through the aperture seem like you’re watching a a silent movie. Only...something’s off.

“It’s very educational, because once inside you see how a camera actually sees the world, which is upside down and backwards,” said Johnson.

“A camera obscura is the Latin word for ‘dark room,’” he said. “It’s a natural effect. It wasn’t invented. It was discovered nearly 2,000 thousand years ago, that light passing through a pinhole produces an inverted image on the opposite wall of a darkened room."

An experienced photographer with vintage cameras himself, Johnson explained how it worked. “Rays of light travels in a straight line, so light reflected off the sky is reflected in a downward angle and light reflected off the ground is reflecting back up. Believe it or not, your eyes actually see the world the same way as this upside down backward image on the wall. Your pupil is the pinhole, but your brain corrects the image so that it is right side up.”

Camera obscuras are not new. They were created as simply a box with a tiny aperture to let in daylight.

“They didn’t have a way to capture images at the time, but it was used extensively by Italian Renaissance painters to trace the landscape upon paper or canvas,” said Johnson. “They desired to capture perspective and depth-of-field to pinpoint accuracy. Then, they’d take the paper and turn it right side up again and use that to create their art.”

With any invention, there’s a bit of trial and error. “When we first constructed this piece, we had an aperture the size of a dime and the images projected upon the wall were incredible sharp,” he said. “But you’d have to sit here about 15 minutes before your eyes could properly see the images.” Carving out a slightly larger aperture sped up the time the human eye could register the images.”

Johnson said the camera was a huge hit at the Mini Maker Faire and was full from start to finish. The only thing they didn’t think about is how hot it would get inside. “When we constructed it the winter of 2015, we weren’t thinking it would be a sauna in the warmer months,” he joked.

The giant camera had to be specially moved by Belmont Boatworks using a crane and boat trailer and has now been re-positioned back on the front lawn of the Penobscot Marine museum in Searsport for the remainder of the season, which ends Oct. 17.  Johnson is hoping to find funding for a custom trailer for the structure, so it can be moved to travel to schools, festivals and fairs.

For more information about Penobscot Marine Museum’s past photography exhibits visit: Penobscot Marine Museum/Photograph

Kay Stephens can be reached atnews@penbaypilot.com