Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, summer barged in through the front doors and immediately began making itself at home. It brought a full catered meal, took over the music with its own specially crafted playlist, brought gifts for everyone and politely but firmly squeezed out spring and the last remnants of winter. It even installed our air conditioner for the season. Nobody complained. They were glad to have someone take over.

• Forget about New York and L.A.; what about eastern Maine, huh?! We here at The Other Maine agree with The New Yorker and believe the local newsletter is a vital balm against the rising tide of algorithmic mundanity and faceless A.I. ghouls that threaten to rob us of all our lovely messiness and humanity.

• Speaking of things made with purpose and love and real human connection: I’m one of the 50-odd Mainers featured in Buddy Doyle’s second book documenting people where they read (and what they’re reading), appropriately titled “Maine’s Still Reading.” Thanks, Buddy!

• My heart goes out to the people of Searsmont and the surrounding communities after the devastating fire at Robbins Lumber last Friday. There are many ways to donate to help those injured while saving people’s lives, but I’m going to share this link to the Maine Strong Foundation, which has worked to help families and communities during other tragedies in Maine. Give if you are able!

• Keep your head on a swivel, as Maine’s immigrant rights organizations are reporting an increased presence of ICE agents in some communities - particularly the Lewiston-Auburn area.

• Guess I’ll go eat some baked dirt about it.

• Happy Memorial Day. Check with your town about parades and other events celebrating the day. Bangor’s parade is at 10:15 a.m. on Monday morning!

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One thing you may not know about me is that I am mildly (fully) obsessed with cults. Some people are into serial killers, some are into the paranormal, but for me, I’m fascinated by how seemingly sane people can find themselves involved in groups that believe what most would consider to be completely crazy things, or, much worse, control and abuse them. One of my favorite cults of all time is Heaven’s Gate, who believed that if they followed the strict rules of their leaders Do/Bo and Ti/Peep they would be transformed into beautiful, immortal aliens and whisked away aboard a spaceship. It did not end well, as you likely know. Anyway, as I did my weekly perusal through the Bangor Daily News archive, what did I see but an article from 50 years ago this week about two emissaries from what would come to be known as Heaven’s Gate, spreading their extraterrestrial gospel in Maine? Wild. Do you have any stories of cults in Maine? I would love to hear them if you do.

Music & Dance

May 21: Swingmatism Jazz Ensemble, 6:30 p.m., Bangor Public Library, Bangor

May 22: Bangor Contradance feat. Here on the Hill with caller Alex Deis-Lauby, 5:30 p.m., Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor, Bangor

May 22: The Problematics and Razorshins, 7 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

May 22: Osmia, Cryin’ Caleb and Lynda Mandolin, 7:30 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

May 22: Sanctum Obscura goth dance night, 9 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

May 23: Whatever It Takes local hip hop showcase, 6 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

May 23: Deery and Greg Jamie, 7 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

May 24: The Soulbenders, fundraiser for FarmDrop, 6 p.m., Grand Theatre, Ellsworth

May 24: Born of Osiris, Edjinn, Stillborn Condition, 6 p.m. The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

May 24: The Wallflowers, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

May 25: Flash in the Pans community dance, 7:30 p.m., Blue Hill Town Park, Blue Hill

Theatre & Comedy

May 23: Comedian Bob Marley, two shows 5:30 and 8 p.m., Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

May 23: Drag night with host Lady D, 7 p.m., Eye Candy House of Entertainment, 128 Main St., Bangor

Art, Books, Film & Culture

May 21: Penobscot Marine Museum season opening party, 4-6 p.m., Penobscot Marine Museum, Searsport

May 21: “Historical Memory of Land Use Proposals at Sears Island,” talk by Julia Hiltonsmith, 6:30 p.m., Carver Memorial Library, Searsport

May 21: Red Rabbit Film Club screens “Multiple Maniacs,” 7 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

May 21: Bangor Beautiful screening of “The Buzz About Native Plants,” 6 p.m., Bangor Public Library, Bangor

May 21: Screening of “Clear Day Thunder: Rescuing the American Chestnut” followed by chestnut tree planting, 6 p.m., Fields Pond Audubon Center, Holden

May 23: Fred Wiseman memorial screening of “Belfast, Maine,” 12:30 p.m., Colonial Theatre, Belfast

May 23: Community screening of “The Grocery List Show,” 2 p.m., Ellsworth Public Library, Ellsworth

May 23: Bangor Historical Society Best of Bangor walking tour, 6 p.m., starts at Thomas Hill House, Bangor

May 24: Bangor Beautiful community mural painting at the Bangor Farmers Market, 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Bangor

May 26: Screening of “Bevel Up: Drugs, Users and Outreach Nursing,” 6:30 p.m., Needlepoint Sanctuary, 120 Park St., Bangor

May 27: Sci-Fi Book Club reads “Operation Bounce House” by Matt Dinnaman, 7:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc

May 23: Native Plants Festival and Sale, 9 a.m.-3 p.m., Fields Pond Audubon Center, Holden

May 23: 2026 Alewife Day, watch alewives in Chemo Pond, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Maine Forest and Logging Museum, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Bradley

May 23: Belfast Garden Club plant sale, 9 a.m.-noon, Belfast Boathouse, Belfast

May 23: Come Boating! season launch and nautical yard sale, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Belfast Waterfront

Fellow Maine Substacker Andy O’Brien has the correct take on the New York Times’ questioning of Graham Platner’s working class bona fides. Does the New York Times understand anything about the working class? For a publication that confidently assumes its readership can afford multi-million dollar homes and $95 watering cans, I suspect not.

I think rich people live under the mistaken assumption that being working class (or, in their minds, poor) means that you do not have access to anything, period - or, if you do, it’s because you toiled, ceaselessly, and pulled yourself up by your bootstraps to get it. You know, that ol’ capitalist softshoe. If you have a relative or family friend that does have access to money or connections and shares some of that with you, well then, you certainly can’t be working class, right? My great uncle was a very wealthy man who helped pay for some of my college tuition, and my (not wealthy) parents gave me the down payment on our (extremely modest and purchased pre-pandemic) house. By the NYT’s estimation, that means I’m no longer working class, despite the fact that my husband and I still live, essentially, paycheck to paycheck.

I think sometimes people that aren’t working class have one idea of what a working class person is. That person is almost always a white man who works in the trades or in a factory, and does not have a college degree. That’s the convenient stereotype that pollsters and wonks and unimaginative, disconnected folks in the media have decided is working class. Anyone who is not that person - a woman or person of color, for example, or someone that has a bachelor’s or even master’s degree, or someone who works in health care or the service industry or any job, really, where they live off their wages - is not working class.

That lack of basic understanding of the lived realities of the majority of Americans (and Mainers, obviously) is a crucial misstep on the part of the monied class. As New York Times writers and corporate Democrats sit in their offices and scratch their heads about why Graham Platner is so popular, many of the rest of us are looking for something, anything, anybody that recognizes that most of us are one catastrophe away from financial ruin. The working class - ie people who work for a living - is a much bigger tent than the rich and their enablers currently understand.

I have a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that (hopefully) make me a total delight for people like you. Skills like having committed to memory a long list of recommendations from every corner of Maine for everything from restaurants and bars to weird little art galleries and homegrown festivals.

Seriously. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but here I go a-tootlin’: I’m kind of an expert when it comes to things to do in Maine. What’s more, I know the places to go that are off the beaten path - where you’re less likely to spend an entire week’s salary on one night in a hotel and two lobster rolls (that don’t even come with fries).

Whether you’re a year-round Mainer or just visiting our fine state, I’ve compiled a selection of ten places or activities to check out this summer that will suit just about any sort of person - provided you are a person that wants to see more of Maine than whatever glossy magazines or TikTok says we are. This, of course, is by no means definitive: it’s just stuff I’ve grown to know and love over the years, and can heartily recommend.

Want to add your own recommendations for cool stuff to see and do in Maine this summer? Leave it in the comments.

Nervous Nellie’s Jams & Jellies, Deer Isle

When our beloved friends from outside Philly come up to Maine to visit family and friends each summer, they always take their kids to Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies in Deer Isle - and not just because they really, really love jam. It’s because it’s an artistic wonderland for all ages, a wild, imaginative little town called Nellieville, populated by Peter Beerits’ wooden sculptures and spread out over several acres ripe for exploration and incredibly memorable picture-taking. There’s a great artisan market, too. Every person that comes to or lives in Maine and has even the faintest whiff of a sense of humor and/or whimsy must go at least once in their lives.

Thunder Valley Mower Races, Hope

I’ve been to things like demolition derbies, stock car races, tractor pulls, snowmobile races and other such quality entertainment. I’m from small town Maine, and there’s enough redneck in my background that I actually kind of love it - which is why I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the rise of lawnmower racing in Maine over the past few years. Thunder Valley Mower Races began in Waldo County in 2018 and have since grown into a full-fledged racing organization, in which participants race souped-up riding lawnmowers and tractors around a track. Doesn’t that sound fun? I’ll take my neighbor braaaap-ing in a tractor over some rich dude in a multi-million dollar boat anyday. There are races set for June 13, July 25-26, Aug. 8. Aug. 22 and Sept. 12 at 267 Camden Road in Hope, as well as over the weekend of July 18-19 at the Owls Head Transportation Museum.

Carbohydrate tour of coastal Maine

I’m a fiend for fancy pastries. Give me laminated dough, chewy cookies, buttery shortbread, expertly proofed loaves - I want it all. If you’re like me, you will go out of your way for it. And while you can certainly go to reliably excellent places in the Portland area like Standard, Scratch and Tandem, I propose that you make an entire day or weekend of it and check out some bakeries that are a bit farther up the coast. The Place in Camden (yes, there are some things I like in Camden) deserves its reputation as one of the best bakeries in Maine, with absolutely stunning sweet and savory delights. In Brooksville, Tinder Heath has for years now been cranking out beautiful bread and massive croissants alongside fabulous pizza. And, new to the scene, La Laiterie in Jonesboro, I mean - just look at those layers! Look at that crepe!

Contradances, everywhere

If you get social anxiety or value personal space, you can skip this one. Contradances and other forms of folk dancing are all about physical contact and getting all up in the business of strangers, while learning traditional group dances on the fly. It has been an incredibly popular pastime in Maine for decades now, and you can find a dance pretty much every weekend, all year round - where at the very least you’ll get to listen to some great music and meet your neighbors. The Folk Arts Center of New England has an up to date list of dances statewide. Get over yourself and whatever concerns you have about not being able to dance or whatever. It’s fun!

Experience the vibes in Waldoboro

Waldoboro may be the “it” town on the coast of Maine this summer - it’s got the oceanside vibes you look for during the summer, of course, but it’s also got some excellent new businesses and activities that have popped up in the past few years. Despite some recent controversy, the Waldo Theatre nevertheless consistently programs some of the coolest stuff in Maine. Next door, the Waldoboro Inn hosts interesting music and community events, as well as being a favorite hangout for the Midcoast queer community. There are some nifty shops and restaurants in the cute little downtown. And, well, if you’re there you might as well go to Morse’s Sauerkraut and buy lots of delicious things, from incredible cheese to their legendary sauerkraut and pickles.

Vasquez Mexican Takeout, Milbridge

I continue to bang the drum for Vasquez Mexican Takeout in Milbridge because it’s the original and still the best. People: they make their own tortillas! They make real tamales! They make horchata! They have conchas and tres leches cake! Everything is fresh and delicious! In Milbridge! I’m obsessed. Best Mexican food north of Portland (there are others that are really good too but this is my pick; fight amongst yourselves). I actually haven’t been in a few years. Maybe that’s what we’ll do this Memorial Day weekend: go find a hike somewhere nearby, and then stuff our gobs with flautas and gorditas.

International Cryptozoology Museum, Bangor

After our fascinating interview with founder and legendary cryptozoologist Loren Coleman earlier this year, I’m very pleased to say that the greatly expanded International Cryptozoology Museum will open in its new Bangor location at 490 Broadway next month, with a grand opening set for July 11. Whether you’re a true believer or think it’s all a bunch of hooey, I can guarantee you will be informed and entertained. Pair it with an SK Tour, a concert on the waterfront or one of multiple festivals and markets happening around town all summer, and you’ve got yourself an excellent weekend.

L.C. Bates Museum, Hinckley (next to Fairfield)

If your tastes run less towards the likely non-existent and more toward the gloriously extant, the L.C. Bates Museum on the Good Will-Hinckley campus is my pick for the museum you should go out of your way to visit this summer. I would be willing to bet the vast majority of Mainers have never been, and that’s a shame. The museum itself is like stepping into a time machine and going back 100 years, with dioramas and glass cases filled with thousands of specimens of fossils, taxidermied animals, rocks and minerals and more. They have a marlin caught by Ernest Hemingway. They have a platypus. They have lovely nature trails to walk, and each year there’s a new exhibit by a Maine artist, to bring you back to the 21st century. It’s located only about five miles off the 95 exit in Fairfield, so it’s incredibly easy to visit.

Rowing with Come Boating, Belfast

No Maine summer should go by without getting out on the water; freshwater or salt, you simply must get your butt in a boat at some point. There are many different ways to do it - schooner, canoe, party barge, whale watch and so on - but I’m going to suggest that this year you look up the fine folks at Come Boating in Belfast and try rowing in Belfast Harbor. For just $35 a year you can go rowing as often as you’d like all summer long. It’s such a cool organization! Some members compete in rowing competitions in the U.K., but you can also be an absolute beginner and it’s no problem. And if you really get into it you will have some seriously jacked shoulders and arms by the end of the summer. The Come Boating season launches on May 23 with a nautical yard sale and open rowing on the Belfast Waterfront.

Eastport Pirate Festival, Eastport

I am always going to include this ridiculous event on every list I ever make about things to do in Maine, because it is a truly magical mix of heartwarming community spirit and slightly unhinged revelry. It’s exactly what it sounds like: people dons pirate gear, pirates invade the town and set up an encampment, and everybody has a great time. Parades, food, kids stuff, all the bars and restaurants are full. I attended the Eastport Pirate Fest many years ago on the recommendation of the late, great Tony Sohns, and got so drunk I didn’t get back to where we were staying until the sun came up, and I do not remember how we made it there. I somehow managed to not lose my pirate hat. It was awesome. You don’t have to go as hard as I did when I was in my mid-20s - I certainly can’t do it these days - but the fact that the option is there is a good thing. Plus: You’re in Eastport, the coolest town in Down East Maine.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, despite not being much of a reality competition show person outside of my beloved Drag Race and the original “Project Runway,” I did tune in for “America’s Culinary Cup” because I wanted to see Maine’s own Cara Stadler compete! And man, not only did she shine: she won the whole damn thing and the million bucks that come with it. Cara’s two restaurants, Tao Yuan in Brunswick and BaoBao Dumpling House in Portland, were two of the best in Maine, and I sought them out multiple times - flavorful, fun, creative takes on Chinese cuisine, made with serious thought and skill but without a hint of pretension. I was so sad when she closed both, though I understood what with the two adorable babies she and her wife have now. She’s an extremely cool person and I’m glad I got to know her a little bit in the several times I interviewed her over the years. I’m very proud of her! I hope she opens another restaurant in Maine someday!

• Spring is very sprung! I would love to see your photos of your spring and summer flowers as they arrive. I’m a not very good gardener but I certainly try my best, and I’m eagerly awaiting the blooming of my prized Fedco tulips and the rose bushes we inherited when we bought our house - the guy that grew up here in the 1970s said his dad was gifted them from the Rockefeller estate in Bar Harbor, for whom he worked as a groundskeeper. Don’t know if that’s true, but they’re beautiful either way!

• Intrigued about this new book bar, the Fireheart Tavern, that’s coming to 105 Main St. in downtown Bangor later this year! Located in the same building as Bangor Window Shade & Drapery, the owner - who is very active on TikTok - promises a “space for readers, for connection, and for community” and “a place to enjoy a great book, a good drink, and meaningful conversation.” I’m into it!

• It’s Thursday morning. Do you know where your couches are? Well you should, since JD Vance is in town in Bangor. Blech. And he’ll be bringing your racist uncle along too.

• I know it’s extremely old news that housing prices in Maine are absolutely out of control, and that the only people that can truly afford a home in Maine are extremely wealthy people who likely only plan to live in their new properties for two weeks in the summer. Nevertheless: even I was GOOPED at this $1.8 million house in Belfast, next door to where when I was a kid I used to swim in a motel pool for free in the summer because my dad knew the owner. In the New York Times no less!

• “And let’s talk about Maine. M-a-i-n...e? Huh! Really? The “e” is silent. But who silenced it and why?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You’re talking about the silent ‘e’ in Maine now?”

  “I’m glad you brought it up, Colin.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And what does that “e” stand for? Oh, I know. ‘Euphoria.’”

The Christian Civic League and its various supporters and enablers over the years are always trying to ban something in Maine. Right now, it’s trans kids being able to use the right bathrooms in their schools. Previously, it was allowing LGBTQ+ folks the rights to not be fired because they’re gay or trans, or to get married. And 40 years ago, it was pornography - or their loosely defined version of it, anyway. As with most of their attempts to get Mainers to pass ballot questions that take away people’s rights, it failed - badly, that time, with 71 percent of voters rejecting it. Keep that in mind as you make your choices at the polls this year!

Music & Dance

May 15: Sam Whitman and the Dudley Do-Wrong Duo, 7 p.m., Nocturnem Draft Haus, Bangor

May 15: Brooke Blanche, David Michael Osbourne and Nolle Bond, 7 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

May 15-17: Bagaduce Music presents American roots musician Eli West, concerts in Round Pond, Steuben and Blue Hill; FMI at Bagaduce Music

May 16: New Renaissance Singers spring concert, 7 p.m., Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor, Bangor

May 16: The Sugar Snaps, fundraiser for Waldo County Bounty, 7 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

May 16: Skyliners Big Band dance and concert, 7:30 p.m., Next Generation Theatre, Brewer

May 16: Bluegrass sextet Stillwater, 5:30 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

May 16: Wartime, Drop Out Cold, Fake Smile and Knife Biter, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

May 16: Adult Prom, 8 p.m., Eye Candy Studio, 128B Main St., Bangor

Theatre & Comedy

May 15-17: The Slightly Off Center Players present “The Sound of Music,” Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

May 16: “Magic for Non-Believers” with magician Peter Boie, 3 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

May 16: Robinson Ballet presents “PLAY!” feat. “Peter and the Wolf,” 3 p.m. Gracie Theatre, Husson University, Bangor

May 16: Dancing With the Ellsworth Stars, annual fundraiser, 7 p.m., Grand Theatre, Ellsworth

Art, Books, Film & Culture

May 14: Screening of “Canoe Dig It?” Maine-made mockumentary, Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

May 14: Red Rabbit Film Club screens “Cure,” 1997 film, 7 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

May 15: A Burrow of Rabbits and Readers romantasy book club reads “Silver Elite” by Dani Francis, 7:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

May 15-17: 2026 Great Home Expo, daily at the Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

May 16: Galacticon Mini-Con feat. three local comic book writers, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Galactic Comics and Collectibles, Bangor

May 16: “The Animal and Wood: A Hands-On Woodworking Workshop with Aaron Margolis,” 1-5 p.m., Wilson Museum Castine; $45

May 16: Penobscot County Conservation Association presents “Foraging for Wild Edibles,” 9:30 a.m.-2 p.m., 570 North Main St., Brewer

May 16: Bangor Sports Collectibles and Memorabilia Show, 9 a.m.-3 p.m., Bangor Elks Club, Bangor

May 17: Book release for “An Old Man’s Darling: A Memoir” by Deborah K. Shepherd, 5 p.m., Anodyne Books, Searsport

May 17: Bangor Historical Society’s Mount Hope Cemetery Walking Tour, 10 a.m., starts at Superintendent’s Lodge, Mount Hope Cemetery, Bangor

May 18: “Wheeling, Vamping, Fair Play and Resilience: The Story of the Belfast Center,” 7 p.m., Belfast Free Library, Belfast

May 19: “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning,” workshop by grief counselor Gisele Biron, 2 p.m., Bangor Public Library

May 19: Author talk with Marie Dion on her book “Returning What’s Sacred,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

May 19: Great Bangor Fire of 1911 Walking Tour, 6 p.m., starting at Bangor Historical Society’s Thomas Hill House, Bangor

May 20: Derry-Free Horror Book Club reads “Freakslaw” by Jane Flett, 7:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

May 13-17: Island Heritage Trust’s annual Wings, Waves, & Woods Festival, throughout Deer Isle and Stonington, for more information click here.

May 16: Fiddlers and Fiddlehead Festival, day of music and fiddlehead recipes, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Patten Lumbermen’s Museum Patten

Here are a few nuggets of cinematic and culinary gold that I’ve been particularly enjoying in the past few weeks.

“Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie”

I went into this film knowing pretty much nothing about it other than it got rave reviews across the board, and that I would probably at least somewhat enjoy a weird Canadian indie comedy. It’s based on a long-running web and then TV series about two guys in a band desperately trying to get a show at the Rivoli Theatre in Toronto, and failing spectacularly every time. That’s pretty much what the movie is about as well, but let me tell you that it is shockingly smart, heartfelt, action-packed and incredibly well-made for its tiny budget and DIY production. I cannot recommend it enough - it’s one of the best comedies I’ve seen in years, and there are so many laugh out loud moments I can’t even start to list them here. Instant cult classic. It’s streaming everywhere though it still costs money, and I don’t know when or if it’ll be free to stream. I think it’s worth shelling out for.

I love a recipe that calls on pantry items and cheap grocery store purchases to make something really delicious and easy enough for a weeknight. This NYT recipe slaps - the only fresh things you need on hand are boneless chicken thighs, cherry tomatoes, garlic and scallions, and if you don’t want to open a whole bottle of white wine, you can swap that out for a half-cup of water mixed with lemon juice or vinegar. I serve it over parmesan polenta, but any carb is good. I also add a little flour to the tomatoes to thicken it at the end.

I didn’t know Bill Bishop at all. I’d never had a conversation with him. I’d known his nephew, Aaron, for a while, but it was years before I found out he was related to Bill - the man with the long hair and massive gray handlebar mustache, who rode a neon-colored electric bike towing a little trailer around town and sold Christmas ornaments made from broken toys and painted scrap metal at area boutiques.

Bill was hard to miss. He was a local weirdo; an artist who lived in what looked like a crazy hoarder house on the west side of town. Every town’s got one, especially in Maine. The kind of guy recognizable from 100 feet away, who scared normies and the elderly just by existing. You’d see him at the post office, at the thrift shops and grocery stores, sometimes pedaling around art festivals or parades. He didn’t really talk to anyone; just waved and smiled beneath that Wilford Brimley mustache.

People assumed lots of things about him. I’d heard, variously, that Bill was schizophrenic, that he didn’t have indoor plumbing and shit in a bucket, and that he took so much acid in his youth that his brain was permanently shattered. A friend of mine said he thought he was an interdimensional being. Much of it was plausible, but I suspected none of it was true. Except maybe the acid thing. Or, for that matter, the interdimensional thing.

A Bill Bishop ornament with the plastic head of Jar Jar Binks and He-Man arms attached to a green and red bedazzled metal body hung on our Christmas tree for the past few years. I liked my alien pop culture monstrosity. I liked what it said about me. It said I was the kind of person that didn’t take the holidays too seriously, and more importantly: that I was a person who appreciated a weirdo.

Aaron, the nephew, was smoking a cigarette one evening outside the bar where he worked, and we struck up a conversation. He casually mentioned his Uncle Bill - you know, the one with the crazy mustache? The guy that does the toy stuff? That guy? Yeah, that’s my uncle. I told Aaron I’d always wanted to meet him and try to write something about him, but whenever I saw him on the street it never felt like the right time to approach him. He gave me Bill’s number. He said he didn’t have a voicemail, so if he didn’t pick up just call again later. Eventually, he’d answer.

I called him a week or two later. Bill picked up on the first try. I told him I knew his nephew Aaron. I said I wanted to come see where he made his art and see if we couldn’t tell his story somehow, in a magazine or newspaper or something somewhere. Bill said to come over on Wednesday afternoon. Why not, he said. I’ve never been in the paper before.

I pulled up to Bill’s house on Spring Street, tucked back from the road behind a front yard that hadn’t seen a mower in a while. A massive pine tree stood on one side of the lawn; shaggy, inky green and incongruous among the leafy maples. A metal spider with hot pink legs and a robot head stood on the other side, dandelions poking through its hollow thorax.

I raised my hand to knock on the door, but it swung open before I made contact. Bill held a Star Wars blaster, pointed at me, a big grin on his face. It startled me, though I tried not to show it.

“Halt! Who goes there?” he said. “Oh, it’s you! The writer! My apologies. You can’t be too careful these days. Welcome! Come on in!”

I stepped into the hallway. To the left, a staircase, with what looked like a xylophone or marimba bolted to the wall. To the right, probably 30 or 40 hubcaps, each adorned with a hundred plastic bits and pieces arranged like a mandala. Plastic tubs and cardboard boxes jammed with papers and deconstructed objects were stacked high in every corner. I told Bill that it was a lot to take in, in the hallway alone.

“Oh, that’s just the beginning. This is my little playland. I call it Planet Bill. It’s where I do my art. It’s my kingdom, and I’m king. I’m a nice king, though. I’m Good King Bill. We have a nice relationship, me and my subjects.”

He pulled a black plastic trash bag out from a Rubbermaid tub and held it open. I peered inside and saw a thousand things - Barbie shoes and handbags, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles nunchucks and swords, tiny vegetables and kitchen gadgets and Hot Wheels and circus animals and Powerpuff Girls and on and on.

“I’ve got a million of these. I’m always finding new stuff. Or maybe it finds me.”

We moved out of the hallway and into what appeared to be the living room, though the only evidence of living was a battered loveseat, an ancient, massive TV, and a big box of VHS tapes and DVDs. More Rubbermaid containers were shoved into the corners. A rough metal chandelier shaped a bit like a flying saucer hung precariously from the ceiling; an early welding effort, Bill said, something he’s much better at now. Wooden boards on the walls featured elaborate, intricate scenes, like Commander Data lecturing to a panel of Smurfs, or tiny, iridescent fairies dancing around a bonfire while Yogi Bear hid behind a tree, watching.

I told him his art made me laugh, in a good way. Was that intentional?

“Oh, yes. It’s funny to think of all these people together. I wonder what they’re saying, you know? What kind of conversation is Data having with Papa Smurf? I bet it’s pretty interesting.”

Bill started making his art decades ago, he said; he was called to it, essentially. He grew up in a deeply religious family and spent a lot of time playing with toys on his own, away from his strict parents. His older brother bullied him for it, especially when he kept doing it into his teenage years. He didn’t have a lot of friends. Toys were his friends. As soon as he got his own apartment he began messing around with metal and plastic and other things he could find at the dump or the Salvation Army or yard sales. He bought the house on Spring Street 30-something years ago. He taught himself to weld and forge and wire and paint. He was a janitor at the nearby middle school for decades. He never married. It’s just him and his 10,000 friends, living in harmony on Planet Bill.

“I’m a hermit, really. I like people, but I’m happier at home. This is all for me. Not a lot of people ever come in here. I’m very protective of my space. But you’re special.”

Why was I special? I was taken aback. Bill fiddled with his mustache, something he did constantly. He was a big guy. Tall and solid, but utterly unintimidating as soon as he started talking. Guileless, in a way. He talked in a lilting kind of cadence; it reminded me of someone at a Renaissance Faire, or an amateur Shakespeare production. He didn’t seem real; more like a movie character - the guy the heroes track down so he can forge them a new weapon, or bring someone back to life using ancient magic.

We went through more of the house; the attached garage where Bill did his welding and “messy” work; an office of sorts where he ordered things off eBay, and a kitchen that hadn’t been updated since the 1970s, at least. A child-sized doll wearing a suit of armor stood in the corner by the fridge. Bill said he spent months welding and hammering each individual piece of metal for the armor. They ate breakfast together every morning.

I asked him if he ever thought his art was observing him, or if he thought all his toys and sculptures ever came alive, a la “Toy Story.”

Bill looked at me curiously. A tinge of sadness, I thought, crossed his face, though it was hard to tell. He was a walrus mustache, with two shiny, watery blue eyes and a narrow nose atop it, all attached to a large body covered in black watch plaid.

“No. They’re toys. They’re inanimate objects. I know that. I’m not crazy. I don’t actually think that.”

He gestured toward the screen door in the kitchen and told me he’d saved the best for last. We stepped outside, and down some slightly terrifying steps into the backyard.

All around us, huge wood and metal panels were rammed into the ground, each at least 12 feet tall and covered in things; every inch of them, traced with little roads and signs and spindly wire trees, cities and fields and rivers and towns, populated by characters from what seemed like every cartoon or toy franchise from the past five decades, all talking and fighting and farming and eating and living. The remnants of the morning’s rain showers glistened in hat brims and train cars and the eaves of buildings. It was monumental, and unearthly, somehow. I snapped a photo of Bill, standing like a druid in the center of his megalithic monument.

I thought about Stonehenge. I thought about the statue of Ozymandius, in that poem; half-buried in the sand, awful and elegiac and somehow both dead and alive. I thought about discovering some alien spacecraft, hidden in plain sight. I thought that was a completely ridiculous thing to think, except that that’s what I thought about, and how I felt. For something made out of old, discarded toys - things played with and chewed on and broken by generations of children - the effect was impressive, thoughtful, intricate, made with craftsmanship and vision. Bill said he’d worked on it for nearly 30 years. He built it to last, through torrential rain and heavy snow and wind. It would never fall, he said. He’d made sure of it.

I asked him if he ever invited people over to see his work. It seemed a shame to keep it stored away.

“Not really, no. I mean, a few people. My cousin Jenny. My nephew, your friend Aaron. He’s not really my nephew, you know. He’s Jenny’s kid, so whatever that makes him. Oh, and my neighbors, of course, although that’s a whole other story. The lady who sells my ornaments. And you.” He smiled; a little sheepish, a little nervous, partly obscured beneath the heft of his mustache.

I thought to ask him if he ever got lonely, and then thought the better of it. He had 10,000 friends, who may or may not be inanimate. And I didn’t want to make him feel bad, this strange giant of a man. He seemed fragile, in a way; like he could shatter under the wrong circumstances. There were things he didn’t want to talk about, or couldn’t. He was more of a mystery than I’d previously thought.

We stood in the yard, among the towering pillars, each leading to different possibilities, different realities, molded from plastic and shaped by fire. We didn’t say anything for a minute. Bill broke the silence.

“Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my little art projects. You’re probably bored by now.” I got the picture.

He walked me back through the house to the front door. I told him I was moved by his art, and if he ever wanted help with finding a place to display it outside of his house, I’d be happy to provide in whatever way I could.

“You just write your story. Don’t get me in trouble. Don’t make me seem too weird. Even though I probably am weird.”

I wrote the article, and it was published in a local magazine a couple months later. I never heard from Bill. I called him a few times, hoping to find out if he read it, if he liked it, if I could convince him to show more people the landscapes and cultures of Planet Bill. He didn’t pick up.

A few years went by. I saw Bill ride his bike through town each summer, and waved each time; he waved back, and continued on his way. Was he avoiding me? Did I upset him? I didn’t want to chase him down. I drove past his house periodically. I couldn’t see the pillars, but I knew they were there, hiding behind a rickety fence and thick, bushy maples. The hot pink robot spider still stood guard in his front yard, but the grass grew higher and higher through its legs, almost completely obscuring it by the end of the summer.

Aaron stood outside the bar one night, as he did most nights, smoking a cigarette. I said hi as I walked to my car, and he stopped me to tell me his uncle Bill was dead. He had cancer, apparently, but didn’t do anything about it. He dropped dead a few weeks ago. No service, no obituary. Too expensive. Aaron and his mom were the only family that cared to do anything about anything. Big yard sale at his house next week. 9 a.m. Saturday. If I wanted to come by I could pick through it all. There’s a lot of shit there, Aaron said. A lot of it would probably just go to the dump.

Saturday morning, I pulled up along Spring Street. There weren’t that many cars there. Inside, I said hi to Aaron, met his mom Jenny, and noticed that someone had already claimed the robot spider out front, and the xylophone or marimba or whatever it was that hung in the front hallway, and the armored doll in the kitchen. I asked if I could go see the pillars.

I swung open the screen door and stepped outside, Aaron following behind me; the pillars were still there, of course, as firmly planted in the ground as they were when I first saw them nearly five years ago. Roads and rivers still criss-crossed its landscapes, and communities populated by Gumby and Polly Pocket and dinosaurs and glow-in-the-dark little aliens were still thriving, even if their colors were more faded by the sun. It was as impressive as I’d remembered it.

Aaron said that they’d tried to get them out, but after digging down four or five feet they realized Bill had somehow rooted the pillars even deeper, with concrete poured in to further secure them. They didn’t know how he’d done it, they said. Never saw a backhoe there or anything. They were afraid there were pipes down there. They didn’t want to call the city. They didn’t want to tell the neighbors. It was fucked, Aaron said. They had no idea what they were going to do. They might just have to rip it all up, so they could sell the damned house.

I traced my hand along one of the pillars. I felt bad for Aaron and Jenny. It was an impossible situation. Planet Bill was an immoveable object. I managed to snag a couple of hubcap mandalas for $20 each. I hung them in the hallway, like Bill had. If I’d had the money, I’d have bought the whole house myself and preserved it somehow. Bill never got the recognition he deserved - not that he particularly seemed to want it. Maybe it was better that way.

I continued to drive by Spring Street now and again, just to check on the house. It became more and more decrepit each year, with broken windows and a sagging roof. A yellow condemnation notice appeared on its door. I hadn’t seen Aaron in years; he’d gotten a new job, and wasn’t at the bar anymore. The pillars remained in the back yard, towering among the spring wildflowers and winter snow, their foundations deep and mysterious and untouched. I couldn’t see them over the fence and the trees, but I knew they were there. I could feel their presence.

I thought to check the tax maps, to see if the family still owned it. I was surprised to see that someone had purchased it a while back - or rather, an entity, the Bill Bishop Trust, run by 27 Spring St LLC, with an address at an industrial park on the outskirts of town. I tracked down Aaron and he said yeah, someone bought it. He never met them. It was all done through emails and a lawyer. He was just happy to get a check and put it all behind him. Why did I want to know, he asked. I said I was just curious. I was obsessed.

I drove out to the industrial park. The office was tiny, and empty. The landlord said he didn’t know anything about his tenants, only that they paid their rent and caused no issues. If I’d had the money, I’d have hired a private investigator. There weren’t many days that went by when I didn’t think about Bill.

One night, after a few glasses of wine, I went over to Spring Street to have a look for myself. I didn’t tell anybody - I rarely discussed Bill Bishop. I thought it would make me sound insane, going on about this weird dead guy with this fantastic, unearthly monument in his backyard. I didn’t want to be a conspiracy theory person, even if I was one, in a way. I knew something strange was going on. When I thought about it, the backs of my knees tingled. It felt like I was reaching my hand through a wall that was previously solid, now liquid.

The front door was unlocked, so I felt justified breaking in. The whole interior was empty, except for trash left by squatters, and the fridge and stove that were already old when I first visited nearly ten years ago. The frenzy of color and plastic and metal, at once chaotic and orderly, was long gone. I opened the screen door, nervous and excited to lay my eyes upon the ruins of a once mighty civilization; to step off the spaceship and set foot upon Planet Bill.

I blinked, my mouth partly open. It was all gone. The ground was flat; no pillars, no toy society, no strange genius to oversee it all. No evidence of any digging or uproot. No towering monument to something - another country? Another world? Another universe? The connection was severed. I stared for a while, knees tingling, trying to register what I was seeing.

I shined my flashlight across the yard, and slowly stepped into the middle of where the circle of pillars used to stand. It was a half moon night in late May, but the air was chilly, and the trees shuddered and bent in the wind, hissing like an old steam radiator.

I grabbed my phone, to look at the photos I’d snapped over the years of the pillars, and of Bill; a handful of images I’d pored over hundreds of times. I scrolled through to find the folder I’d stored them in, but I couldn’t find it. It had disappeared from my phone. Was it still on my laptop at home? I didn’t want to look.

I knelt down, for some reason, to examine the ground. I put my ear to it, as if I’d hear something. I ran my hand over the grass. To my eye, some of it seemed faintly discolored, roughly in the shape of where the circle was. Hard to tell, with only a flashlight and half the moon. Maybe it was the wine.

I noticed something in the grass, and plucked it off the ground. It was one of those little plastic aliens that had populated Planet Bill, faintly glowing in the dark. I looked up at the sky, half-expecting to see something up there, but it was all empty black nothingness. The trees hissed. My hand glowed, a little. I laid down flat, and closed my hand over the toy, and asked it to take me away, too.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I encourage you to watch “Widow’s Bay” on Apple TV+. It’s set on an island off the coast of a deliberately mashed up version of maybe Maine, maybe Massachusetts. It’s got Matthew Rhys, Stephen Root, Jeff Hiller and many other incredible character actors. It’s like “Twin Peaks” meets Stephen King meets “Parks & Recreation,” if you can believe it. Anybody who is familiar with the tension between working waterfront communities and the tourism industry will recognize it. It’s genuinely scary in a few places, and also genuinely funny. Highly recommended!

• Unless you’ve been living under a large, soundproof rock that PACs and Super PACs have somehow not been able to infiltrate with the most annoying political ads I have ever seen, Janet Mills has dropped out of the U.S. Senate race, leaving Graham Platner as the presumptive Democratic nominee. This happened exactly one week ago, but it feels like it’s been a month already. How far away is November?

• The Other Maine reader Sian Evans (an extremely talented filmmaker and cool person) shared this article detailing some semi-forgotten history around Bangor’s Chinese immigrant community in the early 20th century. As I noted in my article earlier this week about the Urban Renewal era in Bangor, there was a tight-knit Chinese community in that era, with restaurant and laundry businesses clustered in the area that would end up being demolished in the 1960s and 70s. There’s a Chinese Americans of Maine collection at the Maine Historical Society that’s super interesting!

• I would not be opposed to doing what this Deer Isle guy does when I’m retired: picking up returnables and trash from the side of the road. You’re literally leaving money on the floor!

• That said: the Deer Isle trashpicker better be careful he doesn’t get attacked by an “aggressive” peacock wandering the roads of the island.

• Good on ya, Newburgh residents, for rejecting a cringeworthy new town logo made with generative AI. Every time I see a local business or organization or municipality or anybody, really, using AI for anything, I can’t lie: it makes me think a little bit less of them. I get that it’s easy. It’s also ugly and stupid and lame. I’m not saying YOU, the person using AI for whatever, is ugly and stupid and lame! I’m saying AI ITSELF is ugly and stupid and lame.

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This is neither a for nor against statement about the pending plan to build a new facility for Penobscot County Jail in Hampden. It is, however, pretty wild that this story published 20 years ago about how the jail was literally crumbling and had inhumane living conditions for inmates could be published again today with almost no words changed. The current building is nearly 160 years old, making it by far the oldest functioning jail facility in Maine and one of the oldest in New England. Regardless of how best to confront the twin crises of massive overcrowding and unsafe conditions and of the sheer number of people coming in and out of the jail that instead need substance use disorder and mental health support and treatment, this building is not fit for its current use. What’s the solution? I certainly do not know. I just know that this specific facility is bad for everyone that has to be inside it. And if someday it finally ceases to be a jail, I don’t know if there’s enough sage to be burned or an exorcist strong enough to purge it of the decades of human misery haunting its hallways.

Music & Dance

May 8: Echoes of Elvis: The Concert Experience, 7 p.m., The Grand Theatre, Ellsworth

May 8: Bangor Celtic Crossroads presents Fodhla, 7 p.m., Next Generation Theatre, Brewer

May 8: Lumos Experiences presents a Vivaldi and Mozart concert by candlelight, 7 p.m., Belfast United Methodist Church, Belfast

May 8: Empty Your Pockets, Tony V, Joey Thyer and Bill Pierce, 3 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

May 9: Album release show for The Hot Suppers, 7 p.m., Colonial Theatre, Belfast

May 9: Penobscot Bay Orchestra spring concert feat. Brahms, Sibelius and more, 4 p.m., Unitarian Universalist Church, Belfast

May 9: NecroticGoreBeast, Carrion Vael, Atoll and Pariah, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

May 13: Bagaduce Music presents songwriter Mia Bertelli, 7 p.m., 49 South St., Blue Hill

Theatre & Comedy

May 7: Magician Bill Blagg, 7 p.m., Collins Center for the Arts, University of Maine, Orono

May 7-10: Penobscot Theatre Company presents “The Garbologists,” new play, nightly at Bangor Opera House, Bangor

May 8-9: Reach Performing Arts Center and Opera House Arts presents Maine play “On Island,” Stonington Opera House, Stonington

May 8-10: The Slightly Off Center Players present “The Sound of Music,” Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

May 8-10: Bangor Community Theatre presents “On Golden Pond,” Columbia Street Baptist Church, Bangor

May 8-10: Winterport Open Stage presents A.R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room,” nightly at Wagner Middle School, Winterport

May 9: Brown Hall Community Arts presents Queen City Improv, 7 p.m., Elm Street Congregational Church, Bucksport

May 9-10: Bangor Ballet presents “The Wizard of Oz,” Peakes Auditorium, Bangor High School

Art, Books, Film & Culture

May 7: Meet the BDN City Desk, 10 a.m., Bangor Public Library, Bangor

May 7: Bangor Beautiful presents a screening of “Defending the Dark: Preserving the Night Sky in Maine,” in honor of Dark Sky Week, 6 p.m., Bangor Public Library, Bangor

May 8: Wabanaki REACH presents a screening of “Remaining Native,” 1:30 p.m., Black Bear Cinemas, Orono

May 9: Saturday Matinee screening of Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” 2:30 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

May 9: Ranked Choice Voting info session, 12:30 p.m., Ellsworth Public Library, Ellsworth

May 9: Book launch for “Well Heeled” by Marjorie Arnett, 5 p.m., Anodyne Books, Searsport

May 10-14: Screening of “Canoe Dig It?” Maine-made mockumentary, Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

May 12: Night at the Museum event feat. live history actors, presentations, more, 4-7 p.m., Cole Land Transportation Museum, Bangor

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

May 9: World Migratory Bird Day Celebration, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Fields Pond Audubon Center, Holden

May 9-10: Maniac Manor’s Slasher-style haunted house, all day Saturday and Sunday, Maniac Manor, Bangor Mall, Bangor

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was quite delighted to see a robin make a nest in the giant rhododendron bush right outside our kitchen window, giving us a prime viewing platform to watch such an iconic spring ritual unfold. For weeks now, I’ve checked on Mama Bird on a near hourly basis during the day as she finished her nest and began sitting in it, puffed up and snuggled in like a lid fits a pot.

After the first week, I had to see if there were eggs in the nest, since we couldn’t see them from the angle of our window. Of course there were: four perfectly blue soon to be birdies. I was quite proud of the photo I snapped, with the sunlight streaming just so between the leaves, giving the eggs a particularly vivid shade of blue. Mama Bird sat, undaunted, through several heavy rainstorms and some rather chilly nights, diligently incubating her babies. I’m a total sap when it comes to animals. I felt, essentially, that I was co-parenting.

Yesterday, I noticed Mama Bird was spending less time in the nest - maybe she was out getting worms for her freshly hatched babies! Were they so small I couldn’t see from the window again? This morning I tiptoed around to the back of the house, held my phone directly above the nest and snapped a bunch of photos. When I looked at the screen, I was devastated. There was nothing there. The nest was completely empty.

I suppose the most likely explanation is a predator got them - a squirrel? A crow? The internet isn’t particularly revealing. Bird and/or nature experts: what do you think? Whatever you say won’t make me feel any better. Mother Nature cares not one whit for my parasocial relationship with this bird and her family-not-to-be. We’re never in control, really; we can only surrender ourselves to the rhythms of nature, the strange mix of chaos and order, and try to do our best at protecting the nest.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of leading a Jane’s Walk in downtown Bangor, as part of the statewide Jane’s Walk programming organized by Maine Preservation. My topic, unsurprisingly, was on Urban Renewal and its impact in Bangor - one of the major focuses of my book, “Downtown, Up River: Bangor in the 1970s,” and an era in the city that still impacts how we view our community more than 60 years after the project was approved.

Before we go any further: What are Jane’s Walks? Glad you asked: Jane’s Walks are an annual festival of free, community-led walking conversations inspired by Jane Jacobs, the urbanist and thinker whose 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” helped people reimagine how cities function and thrive. Jacobs died in 2006, and shortly afterwards Jane’s Walks were started as a way to honor her legacy, with the goal of helping people learn new things about and imagine new ways of living in their towns and cities. Community storytelling and connecting history to people’s lived experience and present-day issues is 100 percent my bag, so I of course love this program!

Here are all the places we stopped and some of the highlights of our walk, which took us down Exchange Street, across the Kenduskeag Stream and through Pickering Square and beyond.

Stop one: The Nichols Block, built in 1892 and located at the corner of Exchange and York streets, is the only 19th century building that remains on Exchange Street today. The Great Bangor Fire of 1911 took most of the other buildings surrounding it, and then Urban Renewal took the rest all the way down Exchange Street. It most recently housed the Bangor Arts Exchange in the third-floor ballroom, which closed in late 2024. From the 1890s until the 1960s, that space was called Society Hall, and regularly hosted dances and small musical ensembles where Bangor “society” could see and be seen.

Not only is the Nichols Block an architecturally important building - it was built in a Romanesque style and sports attractive half-moon windows, and was designed by acclaimed Maine architect Wilfred Mansur - it’s also symbolic of the drastic changes wrought by both disasters and by city policy in the early to mid-20th century. As the last remaining pre-Fire building on the street, it’s our last link to the “old” Bangor, where densely-packed clusters of buildings and businesses made the economic center of the city thrum with activity, and which attracted a diverse array of people to the downtown.

Stop two: Past the corner of York and Exchange we can see the full breadth of how the Urban Renewal era changed - not by what is there, but by what’s not there.

A little backstory: Urban Renewal was a federal program that offered cities across the U.S. large grants to tear down old, unsafe, substandard housing and build safe, modern housing. Bangor approved its Urban Renewal program in June 1964 by a slim margin, with the main goal at that time being to demolish “slum” housing in areas off Stillwater Avenue and along Hancock Street near the river. It wasn’t a bad idea, in theory - even in the 1960s, many of those houses lacked things like indoor plumbing, safe electrical wiring and any sort of heat aside from wood stoves. Along Hancock Street in particular, much of the housing stock resembled the tenement buildings you might see in images from the Great Depression. It was rough stuff, and building safe, modern housing is rarely a bad idea.

Not long after the city approved the program, however, the federal government changed the scope of what projects the Urban Renewal could fund - instead of mostly housing initiatives, cities could now use the money to do things like widen streets, tear down old commercial buildings and make way for modern economic development and infrastructure projects in downtown areas. In short: Bangor now had a funnel of federal money to undertake an ambitious redesign of much of its historic downtown.

When Urban Renewal really got going in 1968, Bangor enthusiastically began demolishing buildings all along Exchange and French streets and right up to the banks of the Kenduskeag Stream, with an eye to making the downtown much more accessible to cars, and removing buildings that the members of Bangor’s Urban Renewal Authority (URA) deemed “substandard” or “unsafe.” In reality, however, it cleared out more than a century’s worth of history and development to make way for cars: driving them and, most especially, parking them. Car culture in the U.S. was at its zenith in the 1960s and 70s, and Bangor’s URA considered accommodating those cars among its top priorities - a far cry from the housing-centric program sold to Bangor residents a few years prior.

Stop three: Many of the businesses and property owners affected by the destruction of the Urban Renewal era did not take it lying down. The way the program worked was that the city would offer those owners a federally-backed buyout for their property. If the owners refused, the city would then take the building by eminent domain - a kind of “we can do this the easy way, or the hard way” situation. Some owners were happy to take the money and run, but several - like the Waverly Hotel and Lounge and clothing wholesalers A. Emple & Co., both on French Street, and the iconic Bijou Theatre on Exchange Street - resisted the buyout, either through lawsuits or through waiting until they had no other choice. The Waverly, by the way, ended up moving to Merchant’s Plaza, where it’s still going strong 108 years after it opened!

In the end, though, none were able to fight City Hall. By 1974, the entirety of Exchange Street from York Street to the riverfront was demolished, while French Street from York to the river did not merely see its buildings destroyed - the street itself was eliminated. In downtown alone, the total devastation was equivalent to roughly six city blocks, or nearly 14 acres - and that’s just between York, Washington Street and Broadway.

Unless you were around for it - and, delightfully, many folks on our Jane’s Walk were! - it’s hard to picture the area as densely-packed and bustling. Merchants and restaurants and bars and warehouses, people busily buying and selling goods and services. Ethnic diversity, too: there were a number of Jewish, Chinese and Italian-American owned businesses in the area, in addition to the long-established Greek, Irish and Lebanese populations in Bangor. A side effect of urban renewal projects in cities all across the U.S. was the fact that immigrant families and people of color were often pushed out of the areas targeted for “renewal” - though it’s easy to see that such efforts were, in many cases, more of an intentional feature than an unintended consequence.

Stop four: In the zeal to tear down old buildings and rebuild with safe, modern buildings, Bangor’s URA seemingly forgot to line up the developers and projects that would undertake the rebuilding in that 14-acre footprint. Slowly, projects like the buildings that now house Camden National Bank and Rasa, the new Indian restaurant, began to materialize in the 1980s, with the last major project in the Urban Renewal area being the “new” Penobscot County judicial building in 2009 - 40 years after the first wrecking balls began to swing.

Across the stream, in Pickering Square and the areas immediately adjacent to it, the same thing happened - lots of leveling, little rebuilding. In fact, that part of downtown remained mostly empty until the early 1990s, when the parking garage was built - which itself replaced a huge, open parking area that subsumed all the land from Merchants Plaza down to the stream. Parking has long been a bugaboo and all-consuming problem for downtown Bangor - a direct result of American car culture and our obsession with convenience, despite its impracticality and wasteful use of precious resources. Imagine if, instead of focusing so much on parking, we could focus instead on things like attracting new businesses, encouraging walking and biking, and building a downtown that works for everyone - not just for cars? But I digress.

Slowly but surely, however, new developments have begun to reconnect the rest of downtown to the disjointed and poorly planned Urban Renewal area, beginning with the remodeling of West Market Square in 2014 and, most recently, with the nearly-finished redesign of Pickering Square and construction of the transit center. In 2021, an attractive new footbridge replaced the crumbling old one over the stream. And, as anyone that’s lived in Bangor for more than 20 years will tell you: the downtown is a much, much livelier, busier and more fun place to be than it was in its nadir in the 1980s and 90s.

That bridge, to me, represents the best of the ways in which we recommit ourselves to fixing the mistakes of the past and looking toward the future. So does the redesign of Pickering Square, to serve the dual purpose of encouraging the use of public transportation and being an accessible, useful public space in the center of downtown. 100 years ago, Pickering Square was bustling with merchants and carts and vendors and life. Finally, we have the chance to bring back some of that vibrancy - not because we tore things down, but because we built them up.

Urban Renewal has a deeply complicated legacy. Though the general consensus seems to be that it was more bad than good, as we always end up learning: things are never that simple. There undoubtedly were hazardous old buildings just waiting to catch on fire - or collapse into the stream - that likely did need to be renovated and shored up, if not torn down. There were plenty of infrastructure issues that were addressed by it. And the idea of rethinking how things work in order to adapt to new technologies and ways of living isn’t, on paper, a bad thing.

Still, it’s hard to look at the destruction wrought and say it was a success - it certainly wasn’t. Much was lost, both economically and culturally. The question, then, is: what do we do with what’s left? Clearly, nearly five decades later, we still have not answered that question. I would argue, however, that we’re a whole lot closer to figuring it out now.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where it’s shameless self promotion time: I’ll be leading one of this year’s Jane’s Walks in downtown Bangor this weekend! Jane’s Walks, in case you don’t already know, are walking tours organized in towns and cities nationwide in honor of the legacy of Jane Jacobs, the famed thinker and urbanist who helped us reimagine how modern cities function, and how they can work for all people - not just developers and the wealthy and powerful.

I’ll be leading a Jane’s Walk at 10 a.m. this Saturday, starting from the new Downtown Bangor Welcome Center at 33 State St. We’ll explore the area along Exchange Street and the Kenduskeag Stream, aka ground zero for the Urban Renewal project in Bangor in the 1960s and 70s, and how much it’s changed over the decades. I’d love to see some The Other Maine readers there - let me know if you’re coming! You can find more information about all this year’s walks in Bangor and throughout Maine at janeswalkme.org.

• The years-long saga of the estate of famed pop artist and longtime Vinalhaven resident Robert Indiana reached something of a conclusion last week, as a jury awarded a whopping $100 million in damages to the Morgan Art Foundation, which alleged that bad actions by publisher Michael McKenzie damaged Indiana’s reputation in the art world after his death in 2018. Read the New York Times story for the full background, but the TL;DR is that McKenzie, alongside Indiana’s former caretaker, abused the artist’s trust in order to make a quick buck off commercial versions of his iconic artworks, including the famous “LOVE” sculpture. It’s a pretty ugly story!

• Here’s a nice one, though: check out this piece from our pals at The Maine Playweek about a new local film, “Saving Black Bear,” shot at Black Bear Cinemas in Orono last month. The premise: When their beloved local movie theater faces closure, a group of employees hatch a desperate plan to save it. Doesn’t sound too far off from what happened in real life with Black Bear Cinemas, which was purchased in 2023 by two local guys after the old owners prepared to close the former Spotlight Cinemas.

• A judge will decide who the 1893 wreck of the schooner Delhi belongs to. I really feel like this whole story deserves its own sea shanty, or perhaps a story-song in the vein of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Who wants to help me write the lyrics?

• I love this story about a free seedling library that a Bangor resident created in her own front yard. Why, I just might pop on by and grab one of these seedlings for my own garden, by golly!

• Imagine being told by your town that it’s too expensive for them to repair the tiny bridge to your neighborhood, and that they might just, y’know. Not do it. Or that you each have to cough up $160,000 to pay for it, so you can have things like fuel and lumber and appliances delivered since the current bridge can’t carry those things. That’s happening in Hampden right now, a town with home values that are nearly 25 percent higher than in other surrounding communities.

• Here’s what the leaders of Maine’s Semiquincentennial Commission put in the time capsule featuring artifacts from all 50 states to be buried this year and opened in another 250 years, on America’s 500th birthday. These are the kinds of celebrations I’m enjoying around the 250th - more of this, less of the Trump administration trying to rewrite history, please.

• Happy birthday to my legendary father in law, Steve Robbins, who turns 80 on May 5, aka Cinco de Steve-o. Actor, comedian, musician, ad man, marketing whiz, loving dad and granddad and all-around excellent fellow. Here he is in a 1965 BDN profile of the band he was in, The Jesters, which were one of the most popular bands in Maine at the time. Love ya, Steve!

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Though a court case the year prior had all but settled the matter, in 1976, the federal government finally officially granted both the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes federal recognition. The Maliseet would receive recognition in 1980, and the Mi’kmaq in 1991. Today, none of them actually get to enjoy the full array of rights, benefits and funding afforded to them by federal recognition due to the arrangements laid out in the Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act of 1980, with the state of Maine still treating the Wabanaki tribes as citizens of Maine, and not as sovereign nations.

Music & Dance

May 1: Belfast Flying Shoes monthly dance, feat. Thunderwing and caller Annie Kidwell, 6 p.m., First Church in Belfast, Belfast

May 2-3: 33rd annual Pan New England Steel Band Festival, 7 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, Bangor Waterfront, Bangor

May 2: Foggy Notion Music Festival, feat. boy.scout, Glassfishis, Lolabelle, Love Sunshine Rainbows, Morgan the Fairy, ochrence, Robert Samantha and The Wayside, 3-10 p.m., Fogtown Brewing Company, Ellsworth

May 2: Filth, Resistor, Monochromatic Black, Inferious and Floor 13, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

May 2: Electric Luau night of EDM and hip hop, 5 p.m.-3 a.m., 263 Levenseller Road,

May 2: Sara Trunzo, Skip Bailey and Skip Gallant, 7 p.m., The Underground Lounge, Belfast

May 2: Smoked Salmon, 7 p.m., Marshall Wharf Brewing Company, Belfast

May 2: Unabomber, Horse Funeral, Vanity Crisis and Gash Pile, 7 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

May 5: Time Travel to Tin Pan Alley concert and presentation, 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

Theatre & Comedy

May 1-3: Winterport Open Stage presents A.R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room,” nightly at Wagner Middle School, Winterport

May 1: Spring Dance Showcase, 7:30 p.m., Collins Center for the Arts, University of Maine, Orono

April 30-May 3: Penobscot Theatre Company presents “The Garbologists,” new play, nightly at Bangor Opera House, Bangor

May 1: Frank Santos, the R-rated hypnotist comedian, 8 p.m., Hollywood Casino, Bangor

May 1-2: New Surry Theatre presents “The Shark is Broken,” new play about the making of “Jaws,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Town Hall, Blue Hill

Art, Books, Film & Culture

May 1: Voices of Frenchman Bay series presents Seawood Social food tasting and film screening, 4 p.m., Heart of Ellsworth, 16 State St., Ellsworth

May 2: Books in Bloom: A Spring Literary Trail, 2 p.m. multi-town literary adventure along the coast beginning at Anodyne Books, Searsport

May 2: Downtown Bangor Jane’s Walks, starting at 10 a.m. in downtown Bangor; for more information visit downtownbangor.com or janeswalkme.org.

May 2: New England REEL Recovery Film Festival, 10 a.m., Gracie Theatre, Husson University, Bangor

May 2: Book launch for Jack Cashman’s new novel, “The State of the Union,” 1 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

May 2: Book launch for “Atlas of Kinship: Stories of Connection between Seabirds, People and Place” by Alice Hotopp, 2 p.m., Anodyne Bookstore, Searsport

May 2-3: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” screenings, Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

May 5: “Dismantling Democracy: 53 Days in Nazi Germany,” talk by Tam Hyunh and Erica Nadelhaft, 6 p.m., Bangor Public Library, Bangor

May 6: Hoppily Ever After Romance Book Club reads “Toe to Toe” by Fallon Ballard, 7:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

May 6: “Cooking for Crowds,” how to make large amounts of food for community events safely and efficiently, 10 a.m., UMaine Cooperative Extension, Bangor; register here

May 6: Blue Hill Peninsula Stories: “Back to the Land,” 6:30 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

May 2: Maine Hobby Fest, day-long expo for cards, action figures, collectibles and more, 9 a.m.-3 p.m., Brewer Auditorium, Brewer

May 2-3: Maniac Manor’s Slasher-style haunted house, all day Saturday and Sunday, Maniac Manor, Bangor Mall, Bangor

I got to go to the emergency room TWICE in the past week! Relax, it wasn’t for me, though it was for two people I love very very much. The first person shall remain nameless in the interest of privacy, though he is fine and home and it’s all good. The second was my husband, Zach, who on Sunday afternoon shot a sheet metal screw through his hand while using an impact driver to put up a flagpole on our front porch so we can fly the United Federation of Planets flag I got him for Christmas last year. Don’t ask how, exactly, that happened, only know that you shouldn’t use power tools with shooting or slicing or otherwise potentially dangerous capabilities if you are angry, annoyed and distracted by other things. Zach told me to write that specifically.

I am proud of the fact that we quite calmly (many many utterances of FUCK not withstanding) got in the car, drove to EMMC, got registered at the ER and then were seen almost frighteningly quickly by a doctor. Both ER visits this week were surprisingly speedy, in fact. Two seasons of “The Pitt” have prepared me to wait hours to see a doctor even if you have, I don’t know, a golf club through your chest or ebola or something. The x-rays showed he didn’t break any bones, and the doc removed the screw from Zach’s hand with a screwdriver and it didn’t even bleed that much, and I had gone to the cafeteria to get water so I missed it (boooo). A follow-up with a hand surgeon a few days later revealed there was no nerve or tendon damage, which was the big thing we were worried about; just a big ol’ puncture wound, and damaged pride. Zach, to his credit, still went to work the next day and did everything one-handed. Zach told me to write that specifically, though I would have mentioned how much of a devoted, hard worker he is anyway.

The moral of this story is: don’t work angry or tired, and don’t shoot sheet metal screws through your hand. If you do decide to shoot a screw (or nail, or other similar object; your choice) through your hand, do it the way Zach did it and miss all the important things.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this past weekend, I sadly did not get to see much of the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe - perhaps five minutes looking over a bridge downtown, before I made my way down the coast for a prior commitment. Thankfully, The Other Maine reader Bill Vassar sent me some excellent photos from a race watch party he attended in Bangor during which party-goers handed out red hot dogs to passing paddlers. Is this the most Maine thing I have seen in quite some time? Indeed it is. Thanks, Bill - looks like it was a hoot!

• I did not know that the city of Bangor is allowed to tell the property owners what kinds of people they are allowed to have on their (private) property, but apparently that’s the case. After administration at John Bapst High School complained that St. John’s Episcopal Church was doing the Christian thing and letting a handful of homeless folks camp out there overnight, the city told the church no, they can’t let them do that. Did the city give those people and the church folks another option for places to stay? Nope. Aaaaaaaaand the cycle continues.

• But, hey, bright side: according to the American Lung Association, Bangor has the cleanest air out of any city in the U.S. - the only city to make all three of the ALA’s lists, including for unhealthy ozone, short-term particle pollution, and lowest year-round concentrations of dangerous particle pollution.

• Ooh la la! Un petit café-boulangerie inspired by the Breton region of France is opening in that bastion of culinary diversity: Jonesboro, Maine. La Laiterie has its grand opening today, and my oh my, those pastries look délicieuse. Always thrilled to have more laminated dough and proper baguettes in this neck of the woods - though please, I beg of someone, anyone: please open a French bakery in the Bangor region.

• I am a bit of a “Saturday Night Live” obsessive. I’ve read countless books and articles about the show, have watched hundreds and hundreds of episodes (not every one but darn close to it) and I dissect new episodes with my husband as they air, like a Patriots fan during the playoffs. I doubt I will learn too much that’s revelatory from the new documentary, “Lorne,” about Lorne Michaels, beyond one thing I’m super excited to find out about: Michaels’ legendary Washington County compound in the town of Whiting. He’s spent summers there for decades. Employees make cheese and harvest wild blueberries sourced from his adjacent Josh Pond Farm. Friends like Paul Simon and Jimmy Fallon visit him there. Now that I’m excited to know about.

• Read this beautiful excerpt from Maine scientist and nature writer Bernd Heinrich’s latest book. Woodcocks are the vibe right now.

• I want to apologize for missing this vital piece of information in last week’s Haul. The world’s oldest chicken lives in Portland. Her name is Gertie, and she’s 15 years old. She’s blind and she likes jazz. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

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I just want to state for the record that I was a co-organizer of this event - a fundraiser for the Powerhouse Teen Center in Bangor, which briefly was a really cool thing in the area - and that I was the one that went to Sam’s Club and used my parents’ account there to purchase a bunch of aluminum pie pans, multiple 5 pound cans of chocolate pudding and huge tubs of Cool Whip in order to make the “pies.” I was cruelly left out of this 20-year-old cutline!

Music & Dance

April 23: BSO Piano Trio chamber concert, noon, Wabanaki Public Health & Wellness, Bangor

April 24: Bangor Contradance featuring The Newell Family Band and caller Julie the Mirthful, 5:30 p.m., UU Society of Bangor, Bangor

April 24: Lennyfest 5, featuring Tree, DIYE, Confusatron, S.C.O.B.Y., Pig Boat, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

April 24: Bangor Symphony Orchestra chamber music series presents “Tapestries from Europe to America,” 7 p.m., Gracie Theatre, Husson University, Bangor

April 25: Trawl, Oeuvre and Loki, 7 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

April 26: Bangor Symphony Orchestra Masterworks series presents “Our American Story,” 3 p.m., Collins Center for the Arts, University of Maine, Orono

Theatre & Comedy

April 23-26: Penobscot Theatre Company presents “The Garbologists,” new play, nightly at Bangor Opera House, Bangor

April 23-26: Belfast Maskers presents “A Girl In School Uniform Walks Into a Bar,” nightly, Basil Burwell Community Theatre, Belfast

April 24: Improv show from Queen City Improv and Improve InSanity, 6 p.m., Black Box Theatre, University of Maine, Orono

April 24-26: New Surry Theatre presents “The Shark is Broken,” new play about the making of “Jaws,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Town Hall, Blue Hill

April 24: High Stakes House of Comedy presents Ray Harrington and Adam Hatch, 8 p.m., Hollywood Casino, Bangor

April 25: Delicious Drag Divas drag show, 7 p.m., House of Entertainment, Bangor

April 25: Comedian James Austin Johnson of “Saturday Night Live,” 7 p.m., Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

Art, Books, Film & Culture

April 23: “Writing Buddies,” conversation between writers Linda Buckmaster and Elizabeth Garber, 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

April 25: Independent Bookstore Day; events all day long at independent bookstores statewide; check with your favorite local shop!

April 25: “A Sneak Peek at the Maine Bird Atlas” with bird expert Adrienne Leppold, 1 p.m., Page Farm and Home Museum, University of Maine, Orono

April 25: Indie Lens Pop-Up series screens “The Librarians,” 2 p.m., Ellsworth Public Library, Ellsworth

April 27: Belfast Historical Society presents “Made in Belfast,” lecture on local manufacturing, 7 p.m., Belfast Free Library, Belfast

April 28: State of the Planet lecture series featuring NWS meteorologist Angela LaFlash, noon, Dyke Center, Husson University, Bangor

April 29: Screening of “Building Hope: Ending Homelessness in Maine,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

April 29: Red Rabbit Film Club screens “The Hunger,” 7 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

April 24: Limitless Wrestling “Can’t Kick Up the Roots,” 7 p.m., Morgan Hill Event Center, Hermon

April 24-25: Anah Shrine Circus, multiple shows daily, Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

April 25: The Emporium’s 2nd annual Goth Prom, 7 p.m., Morgan Hill Event Center, Hermon

Here are a few nuggets of televisual, musical and culinary gold that I’ve been particularly enjoying in the past few weeks.

New music from McLusky! McLusky are an insane and excellent band from Wales that I’ve been a fan of since way back when I was music director at WMEB 91.9 at UMaine. They are loud and hilarious and somehow incredibly catchy - I think some current favorites like Viagra Boys and Wet Leg owe much to them - and I was so glad to see them reunite for a new album early last year. Anyway, they have a new EP coming out next month called “I Sure Am Getting Sick Of This Bowling Alley” and its lead single, “as a dad,” rules. RIYL: Viagra Boys, Big Black, Nirvana, Wet Leg

“Margo’s Got Money Troubles” on Apple TV+. I know we’re only four episodes into this new series, but it’s already stolen my heart. Elle Fanning plays Margo, a college student who gets pregnant by her cowardly lit professor, and decides to keep the baby. Meanwhile, her retired pro wrestler and recovering user dad Jinx (Nick Offerman) and tough but insecure MILF mom Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer) take various roles in her new life as a single mom. As the title suggests, Margo needs to make some money - and how she does it forms part of the crux of this tender, funny, frank and colorful show. For all its very adult subject matter, it is a charming family comedy-drama, anchored by the magnetic Fanning, who is a fearless and sensitive actor. I love it. I hope you do too.

Rasa, the new Indian restaurant in Bangor, is awesome. They have a lunch buffet that is (according to my very unscientific social media research) an amazing deal and is always busy, even just a few weeks into them being open. We got takeout there last week and it was excellent. Highly recommended.

We squished our way through the rain-sodden fields at Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden; about ten of us, trying to be somewhat quiet so as not to disturb the flora and fauna. The sun was setting on an overcast day, and the air was thick with both April mist and the sound of thousands of tiny frogs, desperately trying to out-peep each other for the possibility of maybe, just maybe, getting to mate.

We weren’t listening for horny peepers, though, or the pair of barred owls hooting in the distance, or even the loons in the nearby pond. Our ears and eyes were keyed to one sound only; a sound so distinctive it would likely be hard to miss.

“Peent.”

There it was; the sound I’d heard approximately 40,000,000 times over the past few months on TikTok videos and Instagram reels, and now finally in the wild. 40-something years in New England, and finally, I’d heard it for myself.

“Peent.”

Our guide, a friendly and knowledgeable fellow named Nathaniel, pointed into the ever-darkening sky, and we spotted an American woodcock - aka the timberdoodle, the bog sucker, the mudbat, the Labrador twister, the hokumpoke, Nagwibagw sibs in Abenaki languages, and (my favorite) the “little russet feller.”

This little russet feller launched up into the air like a bottle rocket, arced above our heads and eventually dive-bombed back to the ground. The “sky dance,” the spring mating display of the woodcock, involves many dramatic swoops, dives and aerial acrobatics, accompanied by a high-pitched, liquid kind of twittering sound which Nathaniel pointed out is not a call or a song, but is instead made by the wind whistling as it passes through the bird’s wings. And, as you might expect this time of year: it too is all in the service of finding a mate.

The sky dance was very cool, of course. I wish I could have seen the little back-and-forth, Pee-Wee Herman-esque shimmy they make on the ground. And I’d love to have been able to get much closer to it in order to take a more in-depth look at this weird bird, with its eyes nearly on the top of its head, its long, skinny beak, and its round, fluffy body, like a little woodland chicken.

For me, though, the best part of joining Maine Audubon’s Timberdoodle Thursday walk at Fields Pond was to hear, in the wild, what has become one of my favorite sounds of all time: the sound the woodcock makes on the ground before it flies up into the air.

“Peent.”

I would not call myself a birder; rather, I am a general purpose animal enthusiast, who delights upon discovering any creature under the sun, both accidentally and intentionally. I love to be out in nature, and I’m reasonably good at spotting both common and unusual species as I encounter them, but I’m afraid I am simply too lazy to devote myself fully to the all-consuming pastime of birding. Mad respect to those who do.

I am also, however, to my significant psychological detriment, a chronically online person. And while I also think I’m a very discerning person with excellent taste, I’m extremely susceptible to cute, weird and/or silly animal memes (sure beats doomscrolling political content). I’ve followed along with Neil the Seal’s reign of chaos across Tasmania. Fat Bear Week should be a national holiday. The FDA should classify the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Instagram account as a type of antidepressant. I’m old enough to remember the Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger. My TikTok FYP is regularly dominated by parrots, ravens, crows, geese, owls and other charismatic birds. I love all the creatures of the Earth - living, extinct, rare or right outside my window.

So, yeah, my little expedition last week made perfect sense. The American woodcock is the internet’s favorite bird right now, and that’s the main reason why I went to go find one.

Why is the woodcock having a moment? I asked Nathaniel, our guide at Fields Pond, why he thinks some people are obsessed with these lil guys, and he thinks it boils down to the fact that they’re very cute and very weird. That’s the obvious answer, and it’s the correct one - the big eyes, the roundness, the “dance” they do in the leaf litter as they look for worms, their primary source of food. It’s adorable. It’s silly. It’s irresistible.

It’s also a weird bird! Woodcocks are technically related to shorebirds like the sandpiper and the curlew, even though they’re almost never found near the ocean. Did you know that the woodcock’s brain is upside down? Because their beaks are lower on the skull, their eyes are higher on the top of their heads and their ears are closer to their lower jaws, their brains have evolved to flip upside down to accommodate. Their long beaks are equipped with sensory organs so they can root around in the dirt and schlurp up worms and larvae; they also have a little wiggly tip at the end of the beak so they can manipulate their food and not swallow a mouthful of dirt. A flexible beak! Weird!

And then, of course, there’s the peent - or is it a meep? A beep? Whatever it is, it’s an objectively hilarious and ridiculous sound.

There have been scattered incidents of American woodcock peent memes in years prior; this one featuring Collective Soul’s 1993 alt-rock hit “Shine” has long been a favorite. That clip, I suspect, is what has more recently inspired an entire universe of timberdoodled memes utilizing its remix-ready “peent” or “meep”. There are entire meme accounts dedicated almost entirely to them - my favorite is There I Meeped It, by user martin_gr.exe. I don’t know which one makes me giggle more - Rick James’ “Superfreak”? Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” (with a cameo from another ridiculous bird, the willow ptarmigan)? The one that’s probably made me laugh the most is “Sultans of Swing.” I have watched this video probably 30 times. I have laughed out loud for each of them.

Meme-i-fied woodcocks can be found shopping at Home Depot for worms (würms), enjoying a würm buffet, and enjoying a croissant (quaso?). A friend of mine got a woodcock tattoo earlier this year. And a few weeks ago, New Yorkers suddenly became obsessed with woodcocks as a few appeared in Central Park and Bryant Park. While they’ve been semi-regular visitors to the city for a while now, for some reason, this year’s visit inspired a kind of Timberdoodlemania, with huge crowds gathered in both parks to watch the little guys poke around.

Nathaniel from Maine Audubon said it’s not surprising the woodcock can thrive in a dense urban area like New York - they’re generally pretty used to having people around, whether it’s at Fields Pond, the Bangor City Forest, or in the middle of Manhattan. They’re also relatively common birds, especially here in Maine, despite my never having seen one before last week - if there’s a shrubby, wet field near some forestland between Atlantic Canada, the Mississippi River and Virginia, there’s a very good chance you’ll hear some peents from March well into the summer.

We didn’t have any trouble finding our woodcocks at Fields Pond. Within 15 minutes of stepping outside, we heard our first peents, and we identified at least three birds, possibly more, in the hour or so before night fell. We didn’t get particularly close; certainly not close enough to admire their plumage, a camouflage so precise that people have accidentally stepped on them in the woods while they’re hiding in the leaf litter from predators during the day. And not close enough to see them dance, much to my chagrin; I wanted to make my own woodcock remix video to add the meme universe, but alas, all I recorded was a handful of peents.

There are lots of bad things about the internet. Most of this place is trash, if we’re being honest; an ever-deepening morass of AI slop, scammers, hateful people and advertising. It’s engineered to be addictive, and one must remember to look up, to step away, to go outside, to remember that you are a human animal who must also look for food and mating opportunities, and who also may, occasionally, wish to dance around in the dirt and then dart into the sky in the search for love.

And yet, there are corners of the web that lead you to places that are full of wonderful things - things that make you laugh and cry, that inspire you to think new thoughts, that teach you a new skill or connect you with a new friend. You can be led to a portal of sorts, that sends you into the real world to do something you’ve never done before - like walk through a muddy field with a bunch of strangers to find a weird little bird on a drizzly Thursday night in April.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I watched in delight as a pair of robins built a nest in the giant rhododendron (more of a tree, really) directly outside our kitchen window. This is not a particularly rare development, of course, but it’s very exciting to me. My bar for joy is quite low in these times. I will report back on eggs and babies as they (hopefully) arrive.

• One big win for Maine against the tech billionaires, even if they still are succeeding in infiltrating our towns and cities. I certainly did not think the Bangor Drive-In was ever coming back - RIP, double features - but I also did not foresee it turning into an Amazon warehouse. At least it’s in Hermon and not Bangor!

• The Maine Legislature also passed a new 2 percent surtax on people making more than $1,000,000 per year. Can they also do something about vacation homes in Maine that are unoccupied for 10 months out of the year? Mamdani’s hoping to do something similar in NYC!

• The expanded International Cryptozoology Museum will open in its extremely cool new Bangor digs next month, and host a grand opening party the weekend of July 11-12!

• Anybody running the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race this weekend? Or hosting a watch party if you’re lucky enough to live streamside? I’d love to see your photos or hear your stories! If I get some good ones I’ll share it next week.

• Non-Maine-related music critic corner: Was I deceived? Am I gullible? Do I have bad taste? The internet is claiming the huge, sudden success (for a rock band in 2025, anyway) of the band Geese and its frontman Cameron Winters is an elaborate public relations psy-op designed to manipulate white hipsters like me into raving about them. I loved “Getting Killed”! I listened to it constantly for weeks last fall/winter! I feel like this “psy-op” is actually just… marketing? I’ve seen lots of bands be touted as the Next Big Thing only to have it all collapse almost immediately. I don’t feel like that’s what’s happening here? I’m glad a really good band broke through amid the sea of solo artist pop stars. Why is that bad? This tastes like Haterade to me.

In one of the last times Maine granite was used for a prominent, historically significant public monument, 60 years ago this week the granite quarried from Stonington’s Crotch Island began making its way to Arlington National Cemetery to be used as part of President John F. Kennedy’s memorial gravesite. At the turn of the 20th century, Maine was the number one granite producer in the country, and there were more than 100 granite quarries statewide. Today, there are less than ten in operation.

Music & Dance

April 16: Fury of Five, Brick by Brick, Forked Tongue, Stab and Half Step, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

April 17: Experimental guitarist Tim Mellinnod, 5:30 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

April 17: Coelacanth, Earthwyrm, Hobo Wizard and Brady’s Grownup Time, 7 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

April 17: The Driver Era and Almost Monday, 7 p.m., Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

April 17: Wild Cranberries Collective presents Morning Dove, the Knife Kickers and the Gerry Manderers, 7:30 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

April 18: Folk duo 40 Thieves, 5:30 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

April 18: Alt-country band Rebecca Porter and the Rhinestone Roses, 7 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

April 21: UMaine Symphonic and Concert Band, 7:30 p.m., Collins Center for the Arts, University of Maine, Orono

April 22: Reason, Slackjaw, In the Kingdom of Nightmares and Militia, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

Theatre & Comedy

April 17-18: New Surry Theatre presents “The Shark is Broken,” new play about the making of “Jaws,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Town Hall, Blue Hill

April 18: Penobscot Theatre Scripts in the Spotlight presents staged reading of “Bakersfield Mist,” 7 p.m., The Stage Door, Bangor

Art, Books, Film & Culture

April 16: 24th annual Poets/Speak, readings feat. 16 Maine poets, 4:30 p.m., Bangor Public Library, Bangor

April 16: “Conservation, Climate and Our Community,” talk by Coastal Mountain Land Trust’s Jack Shaida, 6:30 p.m., Belfast Free Library, Belfast

April 16: Leonard Lecture Series presents Josias Figueirido in conversation with ZAM Executive Director and Curator George Kinghorn, 5:30 p.m., Zillman Art Museum, Bangor

April 18: World Circus Day open house with Curio Cavalcade, Eye Candy Studio, Bangor

April 18: “Restoring America’s Perfect Tree: Bringing Back the American Chestnut to Our Eastern Forest,” 1 p.m., Page Farm & Home Museum, University of Maine, Orono

April 18: Saturday Matinee screening of “Watership Down”, 2:30 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

April 18: The Maine Women’s Lobby presents a screening of “Thelma & Louise,” panel discussion to follow, 2 p.m., Colonial Theatre, Belfast

April 20: “No More Wasted Food by 2030? Maine’s K-12 Schools Are Proving It’s Possible,” talk by William Brenneman, 3 p.m., Norman Smith Hall, University of Maine, Orono

April 20: “Marx’s Theory of Labor,” talk by Yale University Prof. Michael Denning, 5 p.m., Bangor Room, Memorial Union, University of Maine, Orono

April 20: Talk by artist Melissa Wilkinson, 6 p.m., Lord Hall, University of Maine, Orono

April 21: State of the Planet lecture series with marine biologist Jessie Muhlin, noon, Dyke Center, Husson University, Bangor

April 22: “Maine is Weird,” talk by birder Bob Duchesne, 6 p.m., Bangor Public Library, Bangor

April 22: Derry-Free Horror Book Club reads “Wolf Worm” by T. Kingfisher, 7:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

April 22: Red Rabbit Film Club screens “Night Moves,” 7 p.m., Red Rabbi Bazaar, Bangor

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

April 18: 59th annual Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race, launches at 8 a.m. in Kenduskeag Village and ends in downtown Bangor

April 18: Lost and Found Vintage Market, Maine’s largest vintage market, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

April 18: Maine Audubon Natural Communities Visit explores willow trees in Maine, 3 p.m., Essex Woods, Bangor

Work is finally beginning on the revamp of the Interstate 95 Hogan Road exit! This long-awaited project will result in Maine’s (and northern New England’s) first-ever diverging diamond interchange. What is that!? Former Bangor city councilor and Person Who Is Very Enthusiastic About Public Infrastructure Gretchen Schaefer explains!

Here’s the thing - you can leave elected office, but what you learn while serving never leaves you. In my first term on the Bangor City Council, I learned about the magic of a diverging diamond interchange (DDI) when it was proposed for the Hogan Road I-95 interchange. Yes: magic!

If you’ve lived in Bangor for any amount of time, you’ve dealt with that Hogan Road bridge. You’ve probably seen someone pull too far ahead to make that left turn from the northbound off-ramp to head over to the shopping areas, or you’ve watched drivers ignore the yield sign as you get on the on-ramp to head back south as cars are turning left in front of you with the same intentions. And it’s a rite of passage to feel really bad for whomever decided to play IRL Frogger when they try to walk across the bridge, which has absolutely no shoulder, let alone a sidewalk. Some will decide the raised median is their best bet, but getting to it is its own risk.

That interchange is the site of not one, but THREE high-crash locations, many which involve injuries - according to the Maine Crash Public Query Map, there have been 25 accidents there already in 2026. A diverging diamond would increase safety by 50%, and decrease congestion.

The biggest complaint I hear about DDIs is something like “I’ll get confused” or “I won’t understand it.” A DDI just makes sense as you go through it, like a roundabout, another traffic intersection that improves safety and efficiency. You instinctively know not to stop and put on a blinker to turn left at a roundabout, the asphalt guides you through it. As a parent who has recently spent 140+ hours supervising newly permitted drivers, trust that I am much more comfortable with them using a roundabout than I am with them using Bangor’s Union & 14th intersection.

The nearest open DDI is in Providence RI, but there are many around the world. I am thrilled that Bangor will be home to Maine’s first DDI, and for naysayers, I promise you it will make that section of road a much more efficient, safe and sensible path of travel than we’re used to. - Gretchen Schaefer

For a year between 2022 and 2023, University of Maine English professor Caroline Bicks spent hundreds of hours behind the iconic wrought-iron gates of the house at 47 West Broadway in Bangor – the first person invited to access Stephen King’s personal archives since it was moved in 2018 from UMaine’s Fogler Library to King’s former home in Bangor.

Bicks, who came to Orono in 2017 as the inaugural Stephen King Chair in Literature, may be best known as a Shakespeare scholar - but as her title suggests, she shares equal amounts of fascination with the Bard of Bangor as she does the Bard of Avon.

Bicks poured over first drafts, manuscripts, correspondences, notes and ephemera associated with early King books like “Carrie,” “The Shining,” “‘Salem’s Lot,” “Night Shift” and “Pet Sematary,” in search of insight into the process, meaning and mind behind such legendary horror novels. The resulting book, “Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King,” – out on April 21 – doesn’t just document that exhaustive research, but also sheds exciting new light on books that have become integral to American literary and popular culture.

I spoke with Bicks about her year in the archives, the ways in which Shakespeare and King are similar, and the all eerie, creepy coincidences that popped up as she did her research - only appropriate, given the subject matter.

Why did you choose only to focus on King’s works from the 1970s and early 1980s? With such a massive bibliography you obviously had to choose just one era - but why that one?

I wanted to have a personal connection to what I was doing. I can analyze Shakespeare until the cows come home, but I’m not bringing my own personal story to it. Those 1970s books were my first King books and were the ones that have stuck with me for my entire life. They authentically terrified me when I was kid. And as a literary scholar, who studies the power of language, I wanted to really understand exactly how he crafted it. And, of course, to have the opportunity to have access to these archives, it was such a gift. To be one of the first people allowed into the archive in Bangor, and to see all these manuscripts lined up next to each other… it was just incredibly special.

I also wanted to write a book that was for a general audience; not something for academic readers. I hope they enjoy it too, of course, but I wanted to write something for everybody - from King fans to anybody who is interested in how books get written. And I feel that those ‘70s books have a particular cultural capital. They keep getting made into movies and TV shows! Why do these books have such staying power after 50 years? So to have this chance to really study them and see how, say, a character like Carrie developed, and how much she changed, was extraordinary.

I also was struck by how much Carrie changed from his early drafts to the finished product! What was the biggest revelation to you, in terms of how a book or character changed from first draft to final?

Carrie was definitely a big one - I don’t think that if she had stayed the way she was at the beginning she’d have become an icon. It’s hard to feel bad for her, in the first draft. Really though, I would say “The Shining” research was the one that really blew my mind. The first draft was called “The Shine,” which I don’t think a lot of people know. I got to see that very first draft, which has a very different ending from the published book. Wendy is called Jenny!

That was most shocking to me, because if I had to pick a favorite King book, “The Shining” would be it. I think it’s genius. Not just because it’s so incredibly scary, but because it’s just so psychologically compelling. This is why Stanley Kubrick’s film, it’s like - fine, it’s great, but it’s not the book at all. The book is about intergenerational trauma. Seeing where he originally thought the book would go, and then where it did go, was really profound for me. And I did learn that he was imagining a Shakespearean tragedy when he wrote it. The first draft was divided into scenes and acts! There were points when I was doing my deep dive into “The Shining” that I had to take a step back, because my head really did kind of explode at one point - the eerie coincidences I was having, these revelations about how the story changed.

I know I’ve had lots of those kinds of eerie experiences while reading King books. I remember reading “11/22/63” right after it came out and literally looking out the window of my apartment in downtown Bangor and seeing exactly the spot in town King was describing in the passage I was reading. It was genuinely unsettling. Where do you think that comes from? Is it just your mind finding the connections and giving them outsize meaning?

It’s really creepy! I mean, I take Route 15 from my home to the archives in Bangor, which passes through exactly where the Kings lived in Orrington when he was inspired to write “Pet Sematary.” I would drive that road every time I went there. And then there’s the fact that, in the book, Louis Creed also moved from a city to rural Maine to work at the University of Maine, which is exactly what I did. And that the copy of “Pet Sematary” I got at the Big Chicken Barn was the same edition I read as a kid. I don’t know if I’m looking for those connections, or if it’s the universe trying to tell me something, but whatever it was, it freaks me out.

You allude to this throughout the book, but I’m curious - as a Shakespeare scholar, and now as a Stephen King scholar, what DNA do you think the two of them share? They’re separated by centuries, but I suspect there are more similarities to them as actual writers than people might expect.

One thing that I always come back to is that they both are such intentional craftspeople. Both of them understand the sound of language, and the way that it sticks in your head. Shakespeare’s doing it because he’s writing for theater, of course, but the end result is similar. One of the things that was really a revelation for me in the early conversations I had with King was his saying how he has to think about how the words are going to “clang” in the reader’s ear, and how it actually sounds to them. And I think both Shakespeare’s and King’s words often have the same effect on readers. There’s something quite sensory about how they both put words together in such a way that it activates human emotion - fear, humor, grief, rage.

Both wrote for popular audiences. Not only are they incredible craftspeople, but also they are highly accessible. The two certainly are not mutually exclusive. It’s not like Shakespeare was revered as this highfalutin writer in the 16th and 17th centuries. He was raked over the coals by the University-trained elite, who said he’s just some upstart crow. I see a lot of similarities in how they were treated by the elite.

You hook upon a really telling line from one of your interviews with King in the last section of your book, on “Salem’s Lot”: he says, “You come to Maine through rock.” I would love to hear what you think that says about Maine - a place, a people, an idea.

That was one of my favorite conversations that I had with him. I had just visited Durham, which is where he and his family moved when he was 11 years old. I didn’t really appreciate it until I talked to him how important that town was to him. It was the first time he’d lived in a rural community. He talked about how he hated [Durham] at first, and then fell in love with it - not just things anybody loves about a town, like your favorite teachers and friends, but the hard stuff too. And, especially, the people. He loved the town gossip. He loved the regular people, with all their quirks and specificities. I think that’s why towns in general really are also characters in his books. “‘Salem’s Lot” is a love letter to Durham.

So when I think about what “You come to Maine through rock” means, I think about how apt a metaphor rock is for Maine. Rocky-minded Mainers, you know, who are a little rocky, a little tough to get to know. “We’re not gonna make it easy for you to know who we are.” It doesn’t mean you never will, but - you’ve got to work for it. You’ve got to be genuine. There’s a steely - rocky, maybe - kind of pride in Maine. Rock is part of the landscape, with all this granite and the rocky coast. And, in terms of King’s work, I think there’s a sense that if you start poking around beneath the surface, you’ll find something much older and denser and harder beneath the soil. There’s an exterior, and then there’s an interior that’s hidden.

It’s quite a metaphor, if you start thinking about it!

Of course, as I was sounding off on this, King didn’t stop me, but he did say “You don’t want to eviscerate a metaphor.” Which, of course, is true.

There are two Maine book launch parties for “Monsters in the Archives” next week - at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21 at Orono Brewing Company in Orono, and at 6 p.m. April 22 at Longfellow Books in Portland.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, you may have noticed that I did not send out a Tuesday afternoon post! I tried, friends, truly I did, but I’ll be honest: life is lifing. Work is working. And sometimes, you simply don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done. I promise we’ll be right back on schedule next week. I take this very seriously! That’s a The Other Maine promise.

• When Mainers decide they don’t like something, they make their feelings known - quick. Especially when it involves stupid corporations run by greedy out of state billionaires trying to take advantage of Maine resources. See: the energy corridor vote a few years ago, and banning data centers right now.

• Let’s start taking bets now on which of the big, fancy promises the redevelopers of the Bangor Mall are making will actually happen. Sure, people will pay $300,000 to live at the Bangor Mall. Sure, they’ll have glass walls and spiral stairs that mobility-challenged people won’t be able to use. I’m sure they’ll use top-notch materials, too. Super high quality.

• That said: surely somebody wants to rent a “sex house” in Ellsworth? I wonder how much the cleaning fee costs.

• Pro tip for Bangor region paddlers: the annual Old Town Canoe Scratch & Dent sale is set for April 10-12 at Ski Rack Sports in Bangor. This is THE place to get a new canoe or kayak for not a lot of money, and all that’s “wrong” with it is there’s a little ding or scrape somewhere. Perfectly good watercraft otherwise, however, so if you’ve always wanted to buy one, don’t miss this yearly chance to get a real good deal on the best canoes and kayaks in the world! Old Town Canoe is not a sponsor of The Other Maine (though if they want to be please contact me).

50 years ago this week, one of the most mysterious and gruesome murders in Maine history occurred - and all these decades later, no one knows who committed the crime, or what the true motivation was. An anonymous call alerted Penobscot County sheriffs to a burned-out car on the side of Route 9 in Amherst, with a body burned beyond recognition inside. They quickly learned the body belonged to James A. Cassidy, a Boston-area bank executive wanted for embezzling over a million dollars, who went missing from his home in Brookline a few days prior. It’s believed Cassidy died in the fire after an autopsy turned up no sign of bullet wounds - though his body was burned so badly investigators couldn’t find any other evidence of foul play. The case quickly went cold. There’s speculation there was a connection to organized crime, though nothing is proved. Why did he end up in Maine? Was he already dead when the fire was set? It remains a mystery. Maine State Police are still accepting tips to this day.

Music & Dance

April 9: False Gods, Coelacanth, Revenant and Only the Few, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

April 10: So Good: The Neil Diamond Experience, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

April 11: Very Greasy, 7 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

April 11: The Sugar Snaps, 7 p.m., Marshall Wharf Brewing Company, Belfast

April 11: Minor Gold, 7 p.m., The Underground Lounge, Belfast

April 11: The Wild Cranberries Collective presents Angusisdead, Dad Doxxer and Mannequin Republic, 7:30 p.m, Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

April 12: Shanghai String Quartet, 3 p.m., Minsky Hall, University of Maine, Orono

April 12: Goodnight Moonshine, 4 p.m., Clifford Arts Center, Unity College, Unity

April 12: One Night of Queen: A Tribute Performed By Gary Mullen & The Works, 7 p.m., Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

Theatre & Comedy

April 10-12: Maine Masque presents “The Glass Menagerie,” daily at Hauck Auditorium, University of Maine, Orono

April 9: Greater Bangor Music Showcases presents “Music Off Broadway,” 7 p.m., Peakes Auditorium, Bangor High School, Bangor

Art, Books, Film & Culture

April 9: Screening of “Marcel Duchamp: The Art of the Possible,” 6 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

April 10: “From Refugee to Neighbor: Rethinking What it Means to be American,” talk by Abdi Nor Iften, 4 p.m., Belfast Free Library, Belfast

April 10: “Enmax, Iberdola and the Globalization of Maine’s Power Industry,” talk by Dr. Stefano Tijerina, 2 p.m., Chadbourne Hall, University of Maine

April 10: Screening of “National Treasure,” 6 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

April 10-11: Friends of the Bangor Public Library Spring Book Sale, Bangor Public Library, Bangor

April 11: “Our Maine Fibershed,” talk by Pat Harpell, director of the Maine Fibershed, 10:30 a.m., Page Farm and Home Museum, University of Maine, Orono

April 11: Bangor Beautiful presents live plant staking workshop, 1 p.m., Kenduskeag Stream Picnic Area, 30 Valley Ave, Bangor

April 12: Let Cuba Live presents benefit screening of “Cuba and the Cameraman,” 4:30 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

April 12: Screening of documentary “The Stamp Thief: A Holocaust Mystery,” 2 p.m., D.P. Corbett Building, University of Maine, Orono

April 14: State of the Planet lecture series with UMaine geoarchaeologist Dr. Dan Sandweiss, noon, Dyke Business Center, Husson University, Bangor

April 14: Opera House Arts Film Club presents “The Shawshank Redemption, 6 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

April 14: “The Doctrine of Discovery from an Indigenous Perspective,” talk by Passamaquoddy language keeper Dr. Dwayne Tomah, noon, Memorial Union, University of Maine, Orono

April 15: Screening of “Sludge: A PFAS Uprising,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

April 11: Souadabscook Stream Canoe Race, 9 a.m., 265 Bog Road, Hermon

We’ve made it, everybody: the finale of the March Madness of Maine Characters. Quite frankly, I simply cannot believe the results.

In a truly shocking turn of events, we have an out-and-out tie between Joshua Chamberlain, Lion of the Round Top and former Maine governor, and Charlotte the Spider, hero of “Charlotte’s Web.” Legit: it’s a tie. Each character got 17 votes. 50/50.

I can see how it was a tough decision. Both are icons, for wildly different reasons. It kind of makes me proud - that equal numbers of people love a real historical Maine figure, and a fictional, sentient spider from a classic children’s book.

That said: I did not really prepare for this outcome. Thankfully, I’ve consulted with the co-commissioner of the Maine Characters Athletic Association (MCAA) - my partner Zach - and we have come up with a solution for how to honor both winners. Charlotte, wise woman that she is, will become a permanent advisor to Chamberlain. And, in honor of his legendary charge during Gettysburg, she will weave the phrase “BAYONETS!” in her web, as seen below in this obviously excellent image I made in Canva because I’m totally a professional graphic designer.

Thanks, everybody, for participating! This was so much fun. Should we do this again next year, with some also-rans that should get another chance, as well as some new characters? Let me know in the comments.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I went to see “Project Hail Mary” and emerged completely obsessed with Rocky, the genius scientist alien who becomes Ryan Gosling’s best friend in the movie. The movie itself is delightful, but I love everything about Rocky - the character itself, the species he is and how he evolved, the incredible pupp…

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Johan Alexander's written work has received support from Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, Periplus Collective, StoryStudio Chicago, and Anaphora Arts Writing Residencies, and he was an inaugural Maine Lit Fest Fellow in 2022. His most recent stories appear in print in The Telling Room’s 20th Anniversary Anthology, and online in LatineLit and Eunoia …

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Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, if I’m being perfectly honest, not a lot happened to me personally. I was sick all weekend. It snowed. I got an oi…

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As an engineer, Old Town resident Bryan Wells tends to look at things through a practical, process-oriented lens. That’s why astrophotography appealed to him as a hobby - it takes many days of planning to capture…

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Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I inadvertently shared a piece of AI slop on one of my social media feeds; Godzilla salsa dancing, if you must know. Upon realizing that I’d shared something so cringe…

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For most of my life, I’ve feared math. I don’t mean paying bills or figuring out a tip or anything like that - I mean math math. Algebra. Geometry. Numbers and symbols on a piece of pap…

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Good morning from eastern Maine, whe…

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200,000 people reportedly greeted Joseph Knowles when he arrived in Boston in October 1913, eager to see the man who’d spent more than eight weeks alone and mostly naked in the Maine wilderness, living off whatever he could hunt and forage in the woods.

When Knowles disappeared into the woods near Spencer Lake in far northern Somerset County in August of…

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