Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I made a really good pot of white bean chicken chili (even if I forgot to mash some of the beans) for my friend who came to visit for a night after she hiked Katahdin. Wow, my life is riveting right now!

• I just want to say that I have had to drive across the temporary bridge on Stillwater Avenue in Old Town many times over the past three years, while Maine DOT workers construct a new one immediately adjacent to it. Last week, that work-in-progress new bridge collapsed. While it was never fully clear how long it was gonna take to build it, I’m guessing we’ll be well into a new decade by the time the new one finally opens. The project started in 2023, so I’m gonna say… 2033? Have fun waiting in traffic once classes start at UMaine!

• Join me in attempting to make this three-legged deer in Machias nicknamed “Tripod” the next Jimothy. Tripod even has babies! Move over, Jimothy. There’s a new little freak in town. If that doesn’t take, might I suggest Doris, the Bucksport Golf Course moose?

• If you enjoy reading about cool science and conservation efforts in Maine, then I encourage you to read this well-researched article from The Maine Monitor about efforts to save seagrass habitats along the Maine coast.

• Some extremely cool documentaries are coming to the Camden International Film Festival next month, including films about icons like Carl Sagan, Desmond Tutu and Jean-Michael Basquiat, films about people who think they’re icons, like Elon Musk, and films from iconic doc directors like Alex Gibney and Barbara Kopple. Here’s the full lineup. Good stuff!

  Scheduling note: There will be no Tuesday post next week (Aug. 25). I will be out of town and away from technology. There will also be a slightly (slightly!) abbreviated Thursday post (Aug. 27). We’ll be back to our regular posting schedule on Sept. 1!

  The Other Maine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

  

  

Honestly, it doesn’t seem like the core elements of the summer tourist season in Maine have changed all that much in the past 60 years. I mean, sure, influencers didn’t exist back then. Nor did lobster rolls made with gochujang mayo or Airbnb. You could make the case that something like glamping existed - were the rusticators of the early 20th century doing it? - but more to the point: people come here for the same reasons they always have. Seafood, shorelines, the wilderness, and so on. During the summer of 1966 the Bangor Daily News asked summer people to weigh in on their experiences traveling through our fair state, and the results were about what you might expect: a mix of complaining and rhapsodizing. One fellow was upset that Bangor was cutting down beautiful old trees, and found the Paul Bunyan statue on Main Street distasteful. Another was mad that they couldn’t find a roadside farmstand that had cucumbers and tomatoes for sale. One wondered why places like Quebec and Hermon were listed on road signs, considering the former is very far away and nobody’s ever heard of Hermon (ouch). At least one person was nice enough to say that Mainers are some of the loveliest people around, and that she hoped the state would do more to encourage folks to stay put and not move away (also still true).

Music & Dance

Aug. 20: Belfast Summer Nights presents Fully Funktional and The Sugar Snaps, 5:30 p.m., Steamboat Landing Park, Belfast

Aug. 21: Liberty Tune Co. presents Rebel Daughter, Deery, Emmet Lalor and Winnie and Anise Hyssop, 6 p.m., Cedar Grove Sauna, Montville

Aug. 21: The Hot Suppers, 6 p.m., Marshall Wharf Brewing, Belfast

Aug. 21: Jessi & the Rhythm Kings, 6 p.m., Harbor Park, Ellsworth

Aug. 21-23: Live music from The Wayside 6 p.m. Friday, Hymn For Her 6 p.m. Saturday, Chris Ross 4 p.m. Sunday, Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

Aug. 21: Plague Dad, 7 p.m., Nocturnem Drafthaus, Bangor

Aug. 21: Holy Filth, Drowning in Blood, Militia, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

Aug 21: TheWorst, Gailesh, Vanity Crisis and Active Stationary, 8 p.m., Eye Candy Studio, Bangor

Aug. 22: Zach Top and The Marcus King Band, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

Aug. 22: Contradance with the Big Moose Contra Band, 7 p.m., Jesup Memorial Library, Bar Harbor

Aug. 22: Coelacanth, Wormhole, Opus Decay, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

Aug. 23: Acadian Music from Maine with Steve Muise and Robert Sylvain, 7 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

Aug. 23: Allegheny Ensemble plays Dvorak and Joplin, 4 p.m., Surry Arts Barn, Surry

Aug. 26: One Night of Queen tribute show, 7 p.m., Criterion Theater, Bar Harbor

Theatre & Comedy

Aug. 21-22: Opera Acadia presents “La Traviata,” 7 p.m. nightly, Collins Center for the Arts, University of Maine, Orono

Aug. 22: Queen City Improv, 7 p.m, Next Generation Theatre, Brewer

Aug. 22: Comedian Dave Attell, 8 p.m., Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

Aug. 25: The Firefly Experience, multimedia performance from Wabanaki artist Firefly, 6 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

Arts, Books, Film & Culture

Aug. 20: Readings from “Echoes in the Fog: Literary Reflections on the Liminal Spaces of Maine’s Coast,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

Aug. 20: “The Last Navigator: A Young Man, an Ancient Mariner, the Secrets of the Sea,” presentation by Steve Thomas, 7 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

Aug. 20: “What Should We Remember About the Declaration of Independence?” talk by Liam Riordan, 6 p.m., Alamo Theatre, Bucksport

Aug. 22: Tour of historic orchards and old apple varieties, 1 p.m., Jonathan Fisher House, Blue Hill

Aug. 22-23: Black Cat Book Fair, annual radical book fair, panels, readings, music and more; The First Church and Basil Burwell Community Theatre, Belfast

Aug. 22-26: “Steal This Story, Please” documentary screening about Amy Goodman, nightly, Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

Aug. 23: “How Lucky Can One Man Get,” John Prine documentary screening, 6 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 23: “Mobile Commoning: How Sharing is Caring in Climate Hope World,” talk, 4 p.m. The Good Life Center, Brooksville

Aug. 23-24: Studio Ghibli Fest screening of “Castle in the Sky, daily, Black Bear Cinemas, Orono

Aug. 25: Author talk with Ann Packer and Ayelet Waldman, 4 p.m., Friend Memorial Library, Brooklin

Aug. 25: Zine making workshop with the Maine Women’s Lobby, 5 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

Aug. 25: Left Bank Books presents a talk by mystery writers Tess Gerritsen and Paul Doiron, 7 p.m., The First Church, Belfast

Aug. 26: Maine Outdoor Film Festival, 7:30 p.m., Knowlton Park, Ellsworth

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

Aug. 22: Butterfly Festival, free family-friendly nature fest, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Fields Pond Audubon Center, Holden

Aug. 22: Bass Park After Dark, artisan market and food truck fair, 4-9 p.m., Bass Park, Bangor

You got a silly picture of my dog at the start of this post; now here’s a silly picture of my cat. I’m heading out of state for a few days. I need a break!

Note: This is fiction. I never worked in a seafood restaurant. Sure spent a lot of time in them, though.

I can smell it now, decades removed from the summer I worked at McCoy’s Oceanside. Thick white slabs of haddock, flecked with gray and shining in the fluorescent overhead lights, dunked in a mix of flour, egg and Budweiser and then bathed in the fryolator. Fried clams, both strips and bellies, never quite fresh or crispy enough for the old timers who always complained, but craved them nonetheless. Little Maine shrimp, too, back when you could still fish for them, fried for just a minute or two until they curled up into submission.

Something happens when seafood meets batter and oil; there’s something at the molecular level that binds to the air and produces an odor that permeates all substances, porous or not. It’s savory and sour, fishy and sulfurous, and a little sweet, like the smell of rotting flesh.

Pair that with the smell of the lobster tanks, briny and bubbling with fresh seawater, ensuring the living conditions are just good enough to keep the prisoners alive. The lobsters lay in brownish-green piles, clattering together in their suits of armor, claws banded to keep them from injuring human fingers or cannibalizing each other, though they still managed to do the latter sometimes. Their eyes - hardly eyes, really, more like black pebbles - see nothing but shadows and light, so the marine scientists say. Do they see the hand as it reaches in to grab one of them and shove them into the steamer box, to be cooked from the outside in? Do they smell themselves? Do they smell us?

There was a third smell, too; cigarettes and laundry detergent and Jim Beam. The smell of Ron, the main cook at McCoy’s. He was the only cook for half the year, for that matter, because once the tourists left in October he was usually the only one in the kitchen. In the summer, he begrudgingly brought in one or two more people to man the fryers and the griddles, and even came to apparently respect Marco, a Guatemalan guy who, like Ron, didn’t care to talk too much. The counter people - generally teenagers like me, 18 years old and freshly graduated from high school – stayed on their side of the swinging kitchen door, only coming in to grab plates or occasionally assist in lobster roll assembly.

Ron was perpetually tan, his skin leathery and deeply grooved, with an ancient tattoo of an anchor on his upper left arm, marked with the date April 14, 1972. He was around 50, about my dad’s age, I think, and had been at McCoy’s for ages. He was hired by the original owner, John McCoy Sr., and when John Jr. took over when his dad dropped dead from a heart attack in 1995, Ron stuck around. He fried the clams. He could break down a cooked lobster in under two minutes. He fixed stuff, whether it was a faulty burner or an electrical circuit that kept blowing. He didn’t suffer fools. He kept the ship afloat.

Ron wore a baseball cap that identified him as a Vietnam veteran, though I never once heard him talk about it, and I’d never have dreamed of asking. When he did talk, it was in short, declarative sentences often laced with a caustic humor, usually after we’d closed up for the night and he was smoking cigarettes and drinking a Diet Pepsi topped off with the Jim Beam he kept squirreled away. He wasn’t an asshole or anything; just gruff and no-nonsense. It was clear from his entire vibe that, for the most part, he’d rather you just leave him alone.

Ron and his tiny crew cranked out fried everything with military efficiency, plated for dine-in or boxed up for takeout, and always next to yellow hillocks of fries. In the cooler, sodas and lemonade and beer, lined up next to tubs of cole slaw and pans of blueberry pie, pre-sliced, ready to be heated up and topped with vanilla ice cream. McCoy’s was not fine dining. It wasn’t even that good, to be honest; it was just fine, and calling it “dining” was a stretch. The seating was entirely picnic tables, both inside the restaurant and outside, broiling on the blacktop beneath the Mike’s Hard Lemonade umbrellas.

We were, technically, oceanside, though ocean-adjacent might be more accurate, since an apartment building and a Central Maine Power transformer separated us from the shore. We claimed we were famous for our “secret recipe” for fried clams, and even had a sign hanging in the window proclaiming it, but you can say lots of things that aren’t exactly true, and about half of the time, you’ll get away with it.

The Mermaid, over by the bridge, was better, so people said, with prices to match. They had a fancy cocktail list and served raw oysters and were famous for their lobster bisque and sunset views, though they did plenty of fried stuff, and had a little takeout window, too. The owner, Frank, a New Jersey guy who moved to Maine a while back, pissed off John Sr. when he first opened the place. John Sr. said Frank came in to eat a few times and then copied all his recipes and stole all his ideas, as if the McCoy family had invented the concept of the lobster roll and the fried clam.

The Mermaid, to its credit, did have a better lobster roll (you could make a case for our clams, though). It also had cleaner bathrooms, nicer staff and was generally much busier – especially in the summer, when the tourists rolled in. You saw a lot of New York plates in the Mermaid parking lot. You rarely saw them at McCoy’s. No one dared tell John Jr. that he could maybe learn a thing or two from them - a little sprucing up, perhaps, try a new menu item or two. Nope. The Mermaid could have their Coquilles Saint-Jacques and cosmopolitans and live jazz on Thursdays. McCoy’s was for the regular people. It had been there for a million years, it was open year-round, and you pretty much never had to wait for anything because there was almost never a line. Ron said McCoy’s was a barnacle on the town’s ass, and it would take a lot more than some fancy competition to get rid of it.

McCoy’s seafood was fresh, that was for sure. Ron cut up the fish himself. The clams came in every day or two from local diggers. And the lobsters - scuttling their segmented legs across the bright blue floor of their bubbling tank - were very much alive. Until they very much weren’t.

I started working there a few months before graduation, to get the hang of the place before the tourists arrived. My Dad knew John Jr., and he knew Ron too, apparently, since Ron identified me as Albert’s kid on day one and that didn’t seem to be a problem. I was a quick learner, and was nice to people, and moved with some level of speed. About a month in he said that I actually seemed to have common sense, unlike most of the kids they got in during the summer. I said it takes one to know one. He smiled, and went back into his kitchen. If an 18 year old and a grizzled fry cook in his 50s can have a rapport, I guess we had one.

By mid-July, we were as busy as we’d ever be, which was only sort of busy. John Jr didn’t come in often, but when he did he usually held a tete a tete with Ron on the landing out back during the slower mid-afternoon hours. I was slicing up a blueberry pie when I overheard him saying that it was the worst summer the restaurant had had in years. Compelled to be nosy, I slipped into the darkened little pantry area next to the back doors, where I could see Ron through a crack, nodding silently as he took a drag on his Marlboro Light.

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John Jr went on about gas prices, about food prices, about people expecting too much and not wanting to pay for it. He felt bad, he said. He understood it was hard, but man, he had a business to run. He didn’t want to have to let go of Marco or me or anybody. Ron continued to nod in agreement. He flicked his cigarette into a puddle, took a look at John and said that this town wasn’t big enough for the both of us. John grimaced. He knew, he said. What are we going to do? They’re killing us.

Ron turned around toward the doors and I scurried back into the kitchen to my blueberry pie. I didn’t ask any questions. I was off to college soon, and I wanted to leave town with a little bit of money in my pocket.

The summer carried on. Squadrons of old timers parked themselves at tables and nibbled on clams, and then brought out the cribbage boards. Small children stared into the lobster tank, fascinated by the strange, slightly scary-looking creatures before them; sometimes I’d even pull one out of the water and “hypnotize” it by stroking it from head to tail for a few minutes until it went to sleep, sort of. You could make it sit up on its tail, like it was at the dinner table. You weren’t going to get that kind of a show at the Mermaid.

One shift I burned my arm on the griddle grabbing a toasted bun. Ron told me to suck it up, and then later brought me a Band-Aid. Were we becoming friends? Not really, but he certainly liked me more than the other young people working the counter. Ron called Devin, who was in the grade below me, a moron, though not to his face. He wasn’t wrong; Devin was kind of an idiot. He accidentally charged a couple’s credit card twice, and when they came back in to fix it Devin accidentally charged them again. It was pretty funny. For me, anyway.

The last week of August, John Jr. came in early one day, ahead of our 11 a.m. open time. He gathered everyone together in the dining room and sat us all down and offered us lemonade. He and Ron stood before us, John his usual animated self; Ron taciturn, arms crossed. John said that, depending on the numbers at the end of the tourist season, this might be the last year for McCoy’s Oceanside. He didn’t want us to panic, but he didn’t want us to be surprised, either. He swore us to secrecy, but said he’d make a decision by the end of September.

If I was a less sensitive person, I’d have shrugged and said oh well. The day after Labor Day my parents were driving me a couple hours south to move into a dorm at the little liberal arts college that offered me a pretty good scholarship, and classes started the next day. I’d done what I’d set out to do; make enough money to not have to work during my first semester. Instead, I felt terrible. I knew McCoy’s wasn’t a particularly great restaurant, nor was it particularly well-run. But I’d grown to love it anyway, and I didn’t like that something that had worked for more than 30 years wasn’t working anymore. It didn’t seem right.

It was a subdued week. Ron hardly said a word, which wasn’t out of character but somehow felt even quieter than usual. We had a busy Thursday and sold out of clams. We had a sleepy Friday. Saturday was somewhere in between. I was scheduled to work right up until Sunday, two days before I would leave everything I’d ever known behind and start a new chapter as a sort-of adult. If I’d been able to get out of working that weekend, I probably would have, but I was too loyal to bail.

Sunday was weird. Usually, Ron was there when I got there, already prepping in the kitchen, but that day, I had to wait 15 minutes, sitting at a picnic table with stupid Devin, waiting for Ron to show up and unlock. When he did finally drive up in his old GMC Jimmy, he mumbled an apology and said he had shit to take care of. It was not like Ron to be late. Maybe he’d given up, thinking he might be out of a job later this year. Maybe he didn’t care anymore.

By 6 p.m., it was clear we weren’t going to be having a busy night, and Ron sent Marco home only a few hours after he’d shown up for dinner shift. We closed at 8, but at 7 p.m. Ron poked through the swinging doors and announced that we could start closing up. He took a swig off his Diet Pepsi bottle. The day before Labor Day is always dead, he said. Nobody wants to spend any more money on going out to eat after shelling out money all summer. We were done for the night.

Devin and I cleaned up. It was an anti-climactic end to my five-month stint in the restaurant business. Nobody I recognized had come in; not even the old farts that played cribbage, or John Jr. to wish me well. Devin gave me an awkward hug and told me to have a nice time at college, and then hopped on his bike and headed back to his parents house - or more likely, to hot box someone’s car parked over by the baseball field.

I stood in the parking lot. It was just about 8 p.m. and the sky was fringed with orange and purple. I walked back into the restaurant, the sweet, salty stench of fried seafood now imperceptible to me. I peered into the lobster tanks and silently said goodbye to the doomed crustaceans, and then pushed through the swinging kitchen doors and out onto the landing, where Ron stood, leaning on the metal railing, smoking a Marb Light.

He turned to look at me, and then looked back, his gaze fixed toward the sunset. The Mermaid stood just before the bridge, and from our vantage point we had a clear view of the twinkling string lights lining their custom-made deck. It was less than a mile away, but it felt like another planet compared to our sun-faded umbrellas and never-changing menu. Ron motioned to me and patted the railing, and I joined him. We stood silently for a few minutes.

“You know your dad worked here for a little bit, way back when we first opened?” he asked, to which I nodded and said yes, that’s probably how I got the job.

“Your dad’s a nice guy. He was real good to me when I got out of the service. I was a live wire back then. Same with John Sr., and John Jr. Bunch of good people. I’m lucky. You know? I’m lucky.”

This was more revealing than Ron had ever been. We stared out at the horizon, and the bridge, and The Mermaid. A fire siren cracked the quiet, followed by another, and I could make out their red lights, now careening across the bridge from the station on the west side.

“I just want to keep my head above water, you know,” Ron said, after a deep swig of his special Pepsi. “I’ve worked real hard to keep this place going, keep myself from going off the deep end. I love this place. I’m good at what I do. And I respect the people that come in here. They’re just regular people, you know? They’re mostly locals. We don’t try to make it all hoity-toity. That’s not what they want. Makes them uncomfortable.”

The firetrucks turned down the little side street toward The Mermaid, which now had a cloud of smoke rising out of it. I stood up straight and asked if the fucking Mermaid was on fire. “Appears that way,” Ron said. “They close early on Sundays, don’t they? They probably were slow like us. Probably pretty empty over there.”

I looked at Ron. He looked straight ahead. He took a drag on the stub of his cigarette and handed me his Diet Pepsi bottle. I took a sip, the taste of Jim Beam foreign to me, like caramel-flavored rubbing alcohol. The cloud of smoke off in the distance was black and angry-looking. The fucking Mermaid was on fire.

“Listen, kiddo, whatever happens, I wouldn’t worry about it. You’re gonna go off and make something of yourself. You’re not stupid. Just don’t forget where you came from. You can get rich and famous if you want, but don’t be a phony. There are some wicked phonies out there. Don’t be like that.”

Ron’s face registered no perceptible emotion. He polished off the rest of his Pepsi and chucked it into the dumpster. I looked at him, horrified but fascinated; maybe even a little impressed. He did know how to fix anything. He could probably un-fix it, too. He was a live wire back in the day, he said. Did he have it in him? I think so. Or not. I don’t know. We watched the fire against the deepening night sky, like it was the end credits of a movie, the red lights of the hose truck blasting The Mermaid with water, the air filling with the odor of scorched wood and plastic and seafood.

A few weeks later, the fire marshal would say the blaze was caused by some faulty wiring in the kitchen, and that no foul play was suspected. Frank, the owner from New Jersey, collected a hefty insurance payout, but he sold The Mermaid to another guy who reopened it a few years later, a shadow of its former self. It closed for good the year after I graduated college.

McCoy’s carried on, like the barnacle on the town’s ass that it was. Ron stayed at McCoy’s, still serving fried clams to increasingly addled old timers. They upgraded the picnic tables and even began to sell some local craft beers alongside the Bud Light, but for the most part, nothing changed until a couple years ago, when Ron had a stroke and Marco took over the kitchen. When Ron died, he didn’t have a funeral, and the local newspaper only ran a short death notice. There was nowhere to visit to say goodbye, or to ask him posthumously what really happened with The Mermaid, or what happened to him in Vietnam, or if he ever reconciled with his daughter, or what his secret fried clam recipe was, so I bought a little pint of Jim Beam and ordered some takeout and a bottle of Diet Pepsi from McCoys and sat by the ocean, knowing that, alive or dead, he’d never have told me any of it.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I discovered that you can, in fact, be stung by a bee or wasp or something and not realize it until the back of your lower arm starts developing a huge, angry welt, and you think “Oh God, am I allergic to bees now!?” and then you take a benadryl and fall asleep and wake up and it’s fine.

• I love the fact that Devo came to Bangor a day early before their concert on Tuesday and recorded some stuff for their new album at Main Street Music Studios in Brewer.

• I also love the fact that the Waldo County pool playing team, Happy Little Accidents, came in 33rd place out of 833 teams at the American Poolplayers Association World Pool Championships last week in Las Vegas. They play out of All Play Entertainment Center in Belfast, and I went to high school with Melissa, one of the players.

• Nice piece in the New York Times about Presque Isle-born actor and playwright John Cariani’s series of plays about Maine, from his megahit “Almost, Maine” to “The Darker The Night, the Brighter the Stars,” currently in production at the Stonington Opera House. My friend and former colleague and local theater critic Judy Harrison notes that the latter play was also produced by Penobscot Theatre in Bangor over the winter, but naturally, a New York Times writer would prefer to be in Stonington in August than Bangor in February.

• A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I would love to go on a donkey hike in Searsport. Well, add to the list of ridiculous adorable animal adventures the corgi hikes in Ellsworth. In a fairy garden, no less. There are also goats and ponies. According to the booking site on Airbnb, there are as many adults participating as there are kids. I really feel like these are the kinds of things that will eventually heal the world.

• This is just to say / I have purchased an ad-free YouTube premium account / which seems like a waste of money / Forgive me, but I can’t handle any more smarmy pro-Susan Collins ads and assholic anti-Troy Jackson ads without being compelled to throw my phone or TV in front of a speeding semi truck

30 years ago this summer the Bangor Blue Ox, one of only a handful of minor league baseball teams to ever exist in Bangor and the first in more than 80 years at that point, played the first of its two total seasons. The Blue Ox - who obviously did have a very cool mascot in Babe, Paul Bunyan’s buddy, featured in the above BDN story - weren’t affiliated with any major league teams. Despite the name, they didn’t actually play in Bangor, with their home stadium instead being Mahaney Diamond at the UMaine campus in Orono. All that said, the team actually had a pretty decent 1996 season, finishing at third in the Northeast League at 46-33. Famously, former Red Sox pitcher Oil Can Boyd was attempting to mount a comeback and pitched for the Blue Ox during that first season. The team didn’t do so well for its second season in 1997, and then in 1998 the team was sold and moved to Canada, where it became the Quebec Capitales, who still play today. The main legacy of the team seems to be that charismatic mascot and the vintage Blue Ox tees and other merch from that era, which fetch quite a pretty penny on the resale market - both of which were the subject of this sweet article from earlier this summer on the NYT’s Athletic, about a Bangor girl and her letters to Babe being featured at the Baseball Hall of Fame symposium this year.

Music & Dance

Aug. 13: Sea chantey singalong, 4 p.m., Penobscot Marine Museum, Searsport

Aug. 13: Belfast Summer Nights presents Jay Brown and Aditi Sethi, 5:30 p.m., Steamboat Landing Park, Belfast

Aug. 13: G. Love and Special Sauce, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 14: Stillwater bluegrass ensemble, 6 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

Aug. 14: Guitarist Juanito Pascual, 6 p.m., Surry Arts Barn, Surry

Aug. 14: The Crown Vics, 6:30 p.m., Milbridge Marina, Milbridge

Aug. 14: Viqueen, Black Vinegar, The Burial Curse and Revenant, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

Aug. 15: Riley Green, Justin Moore, Zach John King and Hannah McFarland, 6 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

Aug. 15: Roots, Rhythm & Dub, Marshall Wharf Brewing, Belfast

Aug. 15: Skip Bailey, cellist Joan Silver, Matthew Hawkins and Phil Hummer & the White Falcons, The Pine Farm, 419 South St. Blue Hill

Aug. 16: Bagaduce Music presents multi-instrumentalist Joachim Cooder, 7 p.m., Emlen Hall at the Bay School, Blue Hill

Aug. 16: Judy Collins and Loudon Wainwright III, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 17: I’m With Her, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 19: Darlin’ Corey, bluegrass band, 5:30 p.m., Alamo Theatre, Bucksport

Theatre & Comedy

Aug. 13-16: Some Theatre Company presents “Dear Evan Hansen,” daily at their Bangor Mall theater space, Bangor

Aug. 13-16: Opera House Arts Presents John Cariani’s “The Darker The Night, the Brighter the Stars,” nightly, Stonington Opera House, Stonington

Aug. 14: Penobscot Theatre Company presents “Broadway Rocks,” benefit showtunes concert, 8 p.m., Bangor Opera House, Bangor

Aug. 15: Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers presents “Everybody Loves Pirates,” 1:30 p.m., Union Hall, Searsport

Aug. 18: The Gottabees Family Theater presents “Squirrel Stole My Underpants,” 6 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

Arts, Books, Film & Culture

Aug. 14-15: “The Lost Boys,” retro screening, nightly at the Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 15: Remembering Sam Neill series screens “Jurassic Park,” 1 p.m., Colonial Theatre, Belfast

Aug. 16: Bangor Historical Society presents “Founders and Freedom: A Revolutionary War Walk Through Mount Hope Cemetery,” 10 a.m., meet at superintendent’s lodge, Mount Hope Cemetery, Bangor

Aug. 16: Talk on Wabanaki swordfish fishing with anthropologist Bonnie Newsom, 4 p.m., The Good Life Center, Brooksville

Aug. 19: “No Sleep ’Til Brooklin: Pack Dodge and the Haven Colony,” talk on Maine summer communities, 6 p.m., Rockbound Chapel, Brooklin

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

Aug. 13: Farm tour and film screening with MOFGA, noon, The Good Life Center, Brooksville

Aug. 14-16: Downeast Art and Antique Show, daily, Alexander Field House, Maine Maritime Academy, Castine

Aug. 15: Blue Hill Maritime Heritage Festival, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., historic village area, Blue Hill

Aug. 15: Jonathan Fisher House annual Antique Show, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Jonathan Fisher House, Blue Hill

Aug. 19: Jackson Gillman’s “Riot in the Garden” family science show, 6 p.m. Ellsworth Public Library

As a Mainer and New Englander, it is my sworn duty to proclaim that candlepin bowling is the best bowling. Who cares if it’s an odd regional variation on big ball bowling that’s only played in this neck of the woods and Atlantic Canada? It’s the best. And not just because my dad was a semi-competitive candlepin bowler on the north shore of Boston when he was a young lad in the 1960s and 70s (he still smokes us on the rare occasion we end up playing together). Watch our friend Ricky Leighton’s beautiful short documentary on “little ball” bowling if you’re new here and aren’t familiar with it.

That’s why it warms my heart to see that Autumn Mowery, the 24-year-old phenom who took over the Ellsworth Candlepin Alley in 2020 and has since transformed the place, got her flowers when she was featured in a segment on CBS Sunday Morning last weekend. The spot mentioned a GoFundMe she started a while back to help her and her fiance actually buy the business - she’s been managing it for the current owners this whole time, and now wants to buy it outright. That fundraiser went from just a few hundred dollars to nearly $300,000 as of this morning. Plenty to buy the joint and then some. Mowery hosts tons of events to raise money for worthy causes and also provides free space for survivors of domestic abuse for counseling and community. This is exactly the kind of thing we want to thrive in all our towns in Maine. Good on ya, Autumn.

Let Proust have his madeleines. For me, the taste that brings a flood of memories is a little more downmarket but no less sublime: griddled hot dogs topped with fried onions, served up at the Kiwanis Auction in Orono.

Orono, my hometown, is often a place that people pass through rather than set down their roots - college kids, grad students, itinerant faculty families, I am looking at you. That makes the roots that do exist here all the more important: the 90s music eternally queued up in the booth jukeboxes at Pat’s Pizza, the soft ozone smell of the Stillwater River after a rainstorm, the sound of bleachers full of fans belting out the OHS school song during a football game.

To that list, then, add the Orono-Old Town Kiwanis Auction & Yard Sale, which will celebrate its 79th event on Friday, Aug. 21 and Saturday, Aug. 22 at the auction barns at 168 Forest Ave. in Orono. Doors open at 3:30 p.m. both Friday and Saturday for the yard sale, and the auction action starts at 5:30 p.m.

Inside the normally quiet barns, busy Kiwanians like my mom, Rose Marie, sell a huge variety of used goods, including books, bikes, toys, sporting goods, furniture, and kitchen supplies. Next door, under the auction pavilion, a different energy takes hold as Kiwanian auctioneers work hard to gin up excitement for donations deemed good enough for the block.

Bargains abound, but all the funds raised are for charity, so there’s no harm in being as generous as possible. The Kiwanis Club typically raises $30,000 or more during the auction. They spend the money on local youth programs, scholarships, and small grants to worthy causes like the Old Town Little League and Orono High School’s Project Angel Tree, which provides Christmas presents and essential items for local kids in need.

The Kiwanis tradition grew out of the Progressive Era, when early 20th-century Americans grappling with political division, economic inequality, and rapid societal shift (sound familiar?) looked for practical ways to strengthen their local communities. Service organizations boomed, with the first Kiwanis club founded in 1915. By 1935, a group of local businessmen had chartered the Orono club, and by 1946, the Orono-Old Town Club held its very first auction. If it weren’t for the pandemic, this year would mark the 80th anniversary of the auction.

The club has helped local communities in lots of ways since then, many of which I’d hazard a guess most people no longer know about. I didn’t. Until I started researching for this story, I didn’t realize that the Kiwanians built the Nickerson Municipal Pool in Orono in 1953, a place where I took swimming lessons and spent countless childhood summer afternoons. They also began Orono’s school lunch program, helped to found the first Orono Festival Days, supported both the Orono and Old Town public libraries, provided a dictionary or thesaurus to every third grader in six area elementary schools, gave each incoming kindergartner a book, ushered at UMaine sports events, and much more.

Kiwanians, in short, are dedicated civic volunteers, and they do a lot. But the heyday of the service clubs is in our collective rear-view mirror. Membership has declined in the Orono-Old Town Kiwanis Club, as it has across the country. Younger people are more likely to see such clubs as anachronistic or old-fashioned; donning the red Kiwanis blazer or the Shrine Club fez no longer seems relevant to our lives today.

But if the last 80 years have taught us anything, it’s that Kiwanians can do hard things. Their hair may be greyer, but their smiles are no less bright as they welcome visitors to the auction, which has been a highlight of the summer for as long as I can remember.

My favorite place at the auction was always the book barn, where the smell of bug spray and old books mingled into an unforgettable perfume. I would scour the shelves for old favorites and new worth-a-reads, the stack of dogeared paperbacks under my arm growing to Herculean proportions before one of the kindly Kiwanians let me fill a grocery bag to pick up later. As a young teen, I would dig into my pocket for dollars earned babysitting to pay for teen romances, anything from Madeleine L’Engle’s oeuvre, books like Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden which were probably too young for me, and books that looked daunting but thrilling, like The Color Purple by Alice Walker. You could lose yourself in the crammed aisles. I know I did. I only had to make sure that I checked out by closing time, when the book barn Kiwanians gently teased me and asked about my family. They were never very far away.

In the trash-and-treasures barn, my mom would let people dicker over items you’d have to squint hard to find the utility in. Over at the auction block, my late dad, Ted Curtis, took his turn as an auctioneer, urging folks to bid ever higher on antique furniture, Old Town canoes, and what-have-you. I remember storied weekends in the 1990s when the bidding was fast and furious, and went on so long that sometimes my parents wouldn’t return home until midnight, tired but elated and ready to do it again the next day.

If there’s a heaven, I sometimes think it’ll feel like the Kiwanis Auction on a starry summer night, hot dog in hand, books in a bag, with everyone I loved milling around me, and my dad behind the microphone, making dorky jokes that people laughed at mostly because they liked him.

Still, Kiwanians must change with the times. In the last few years, they have switched the dates of the auction from July to August to fit better with the back-to-school schedule for students at the University of Maine, and built a beautiful three-season book barn. Nowadays, rather than just opening to the public once a summer, they hold periodic Saturday events in the spring, summer, and fall to sell books, bikes, household and holiday items to the community.

They are adapting because the work still matters, even if the world looks a lot different than it did in 1946. Institutions like this can’t survive on nostalgia alone; they survive because people keep showing up to carry the box, call the bid, or buy the book.

So if you find yourself on Forest Avenue later this month, pull into the Kiwanis parking lot. Buy a paperback, bid too much on a paddleboard or armoire, or just grab a hot dog topped with fried onions and listen to the neighborly chatter all around you. The world changes, but for one weekend every summer in Orono, the best parts of it remain right where they belong.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where I can’t believe I’m saying this, but given some of the news this week, I am just confirming what I assume (hope?) is obvious: I have never and will never use artificial intelligence to write anything that appears on The Other Maine. Like, isn’t that obvious? I think it’s obvious. Maybe it’s not. I would feel really bad about myself if anybody thought I had asked Chat GPT to write this. I’ve never used Chat GPT and I feel a smug kind of satisfaction about it, quite frankly.

• I’m super interested in Troy Jackson’s very specific flavor of Maine accent, as this Press Herald story gets into a little bit. It’s certainly a different beast from the “r”-less coastal accent - an inland variety, perhaps, informed more by Irish and French ways of speaking than by the southern English folks that migrated here centuries ago. That’s just a guess, though. I’m no linguist, though at one point I thought I might want to be!

• Congratulations to Maine writer Virginia Schaffer on the publication of her culinary memoir, “Oyster Society,” out this week via Islandport. I think she and her crew are doing Maine culinary tourism in a way that respects the locals while also appealing to the tourists, and her story is very cool.

• Putting this very cool music festival on everyone’s radar: the second annual Farmer Fest Downeast. Three days of music, arts and makers, food, dance, yoga and much more, all at Swiftwater Farm in East Machias over the weekend of Aug. 28-30. Nearly 30 local bands! Screenprint your own t-shirt! Support local food and farmers! We love a homegrown festival experience.

• Happy birthday to my mom, Nancy, who turns 80 today! She is a Waldo County gal, through and through. If you leave a comment saying happy birthday to her I will read them to her and it will make her smile.

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Remember a while back when they increased the speed limit on Interstate 95 in Maine from 65 to 70? People claimed at the time that there would be an increase in serious crashes, but that hasn’t ended up being the case - and the crashes that do happen almost always have to do with distracted driving (i.e. people on their goddamn phones). Anyway, that’s nothing compared with the statewide kerfuffle that occurred 70 years ago, when the state of Maine considered enacting speed limits at all. The plan then was to set a mandatory limit of 60 miles per hour (55 at night) on rural roads, 40 in residential areas and 30 in business districts, though the latter was eventually lowered to the still-standard 25. Though the limits weren’t officially approved until the summer of 1957, the public debate actually centered on “slow pokes” - folks that drove between 15 and 20 mph literally everywhere. The slow pokes sought to defend their glacial ways in letters to the editor. In the end, the only minimum speed that ended up being set was 45 on the highway - a highway that, in 1957, did not yet extend to Bangor.

Music & Dance

Aug. 6: Belfast Summer Nights presents The Class Machine and The Speed of Sound, 5:30 p.m., Steamboat Landing Park, Belfast

Aug. 6: Benefit concert for hospice volunteers feat. Rugosa Rose Trio, Andy Revkin, Bob Litman and Geoff Warner, 7 p.m., Burnt Cove Chapel, Stonington

Aug. 6. Sunset Series feat. DJs King Puma and Gonzo, 7 p.m., Hayford Park, Bangor

Aug. 6: How High The Moon: The Music of Ella Fitzgerald, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 6: Nipmuck flutist Hawk Henries, Passamaquoddy singer Lauren Stevens and Salt Bay chamber musicians, noon, Wabanaki Public Health & Wellness, Bangor

Aug. 7: The Marshall Tucker Band, 7 p.m., Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

Aug. 7: Swingmatism jazz ensemble, 6 p.m., Surry Arts Barn, Surry

Aug. 7: The Sugar Snaps, 6:30 p.m., Milbridge Marina, Milbridge

Aug. 7: Mamma Mania, Abba tribute act, 8 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 8: Caroline Cotter, Tom DiMenna and Louisa Stancioff, 4 p.m., Steamboat Landing Park, Belfast

Aug. 8: Whatever It Takes local hip hop showcase, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

Aug. 11: An Interdisciplinary Performance feat. Laura Cromwell, Philip Greenlief, Claudia La Rocco, Leslie Ross and Meg Wolfe, 7 p.m., The Cannery, Penobscot

Aug. 11: Billy Idol and Devo, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

Aug. 12: Trio Mundo, Cuban-inspired chamber ensemble, 5:30 p.m., Alamo Theatre, Bucksport

Aug. 12: Bagaduce Music house party feat. Indian-Roots fusion duo Aditi Sethi and Jay Brown, 6 p.m. 49 South St., Blue Hill

Aug. 12: Twisted Swing Big Band, 6 p.m., lawn area, Bangor Public Library, Bangor

Theatre & Comedy

Aug. 6-9: Opera House Arts Presents John Cariani’s “The Darker The Night, the Brighter the Stars,” nightly, Stonington Opera House, Stonington

Aug. 7-9: The Belfast Maskers present “Pippin,” nightly, Basil Burwell Community Theatre, Belfast

Aug. 8: Comedian Matt Rife, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

Aug. 9: Comedian Bob Marley, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 9: “The Log of the Herring-Pumper Beryl,” live play reading based on herring boat logs from the 1950s, 4 p.m., Sargentville Chapel, Sargentville

Arts, Books, Film & Culture

Aug. 6: “Grow Food Safely in Urban Soils,” panel presentation, 5:30 p.m., Food AND Medicine, 20 Ivers St. Brewer

Aug. 6: Book reading with author Nomar Slevik, 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

Aug. 7: First Friday Art Walk, 4-8 p.m., throughout downtown Bangor

Aug. 7: Book talk and reading with author Laura Emack on her two new novellas, 6:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

Aug. 8: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts public open house, 1-5 p.m., Haystack, Deer Isle

Aug. 8-11: Studio Ghibli Fest screenings of “Tales From Earthsea” and “Only Yesterday,” daily, Black Bear Cinemas, Old Town

Aug. 8: Historical cooking demo and campus tour, 1-4 p.m., Jonathan Fisher House, Blue Hill

Aug. 8: Sam Neill memorial screening of “The Piano,” 7 p.m., Colonial Theatre, Belfast

Aug. 9: “How To Find Hidden History,” talk by writer Avery Yale Kamila, 2 p.m., The Good Life Center, Brooksville

Aug. 12: Sailing heritage and ship talk with Capt. Daniel S. Parrott, 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

Aug. 12: Left Bank Books presents talk and book signing with Richard Russo, 7 p.m., The First Church, Belfast

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

Aug. 6-Aug. 9: Bangor State Fair, daily at Bass Park, Bangor, click here for full schedule

Aug. 7-9: Belfast Harborfest, annual waterfront celebration feat. music, food, boating, kid’s activities and more, Belfast waterfront; full schedule available here

Aug. 9: Bucksport Arts Festival, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Bucksport waterfront

Aug. 12: Mr. Drew and His Animals Too, animal presentation, 6 p.m., Ellsworth Public Library, Ellsworth

Aug. 12: Blue Hill Heritage Trust stargazing party, 8-10 p.m., Blue Hill Mountain, meet at Hayes parking area, Blue Hill

All summer long, the coast of Maine along the midcoast and Down east has been absolutely packed with whales - mostly humpbacks, but fins, too – following record schools of menhaden (aka pogies) into the bay and getting unusually close to shore. While our cetacean friends gorge on fish, Mainers and visitors have been treated to free whale watching from the comfort of dry land - something I personally have not yet been witness to, and which I am incredibly jealous of.

Have you had a close encounter with a whale this summer? Let me know in the comments. If you’ve got a photo or video, I’d love to see it! If I get a few I’ll share some in next week’s post. Oh, and just so we’re clear and so I can do my due diligence: if you happen to be out in a boat, don’t get too close to the whales! Stay 100 feet away, at least. We are so lucky we get to share a planet with them!

Imagine a room - a big, cavernous room - filled wall to wall with people, most of whom are in their teens and twenties. Some of those people are playing loud, intense music, but most of them are in the sweaty, visceral fervor of the crowd, pushed up against each other, sharing a loud, intense experience.

That could describe a bunch of things - a house of worship, for example. In this case, however, it’s The Kave, the Bucksport music venue that between 2001 and 2016 brought hardcore, punk and metal bands to a rural corner of Maine, where “Kave Kids” from across the state flocked most weekends. During its heyday, The Kave was not only a place to hear loud music, but was also a safe haven for those kids, many of whom struggled at home and at school, and who found community and identity through the bonds of music and friendship.

That’s a powerful story, and that’s what drew Maine filmmaker Ricky Leighton to spend the past three years of his life telling the story of the Kave - a place so unlikely some of the out-of-town bands that came to play there didn’t think it was real, and so unexpectedly vital to its community that it ended up changing lives.

“Downeast Hardcore: Stories from The Kave” premiered last month at the Maine International Film Festival, and is an entertaining, often deeply moving portrait of rural Maine and the power of music. It’s also a love letter to the woman at the heart of the Kave - Kathy Findlay, the queen mother of Maine hardcore, who recognized the positive impact live music was having on the youth in her community and built a place for them to experience it together.

“It’s hard to underestimate how much of an impact Kathy had on a whole generation of kids in eastern Maine,” said Leighton, who previously directed “Candlepin: The Documentary,” a short about candlepin bowling in Maine. “She was the hardcore mom. She made kids that felt rejected feel cool, and accepted.”

Findlay is a Bucksport native and was a longtime occupational therapist in local schools. In the late 1990s, she noticed her daughter was going to DIY hardcore shows around Maine with friends, and decided to check out a show to make sure it was safe for her kids. She emerged the biggest hardcore fan of them all, and began putting on her own shows in churches and halls across eastern Maine. When the former Cadillac Ranch, a long-closed honky tonk bottle club at the end of Silver Road in Bucksport, went up for sale, she took a big chance and bought it, moving into the house next door. A few coats of paint and some elbow grease later, The Kave opened in December 2001.

If the writer of this story may interject, a 2005 article about The Kave1 was one of the first big feature pieces I ever wrote for the Bangor Daily News (or for any publication, for that matter). I’d been to several shows at The Kave at that point, and knew how special it was that such a place existed in rural Maine. I grew up in Searsport in the 1990s, just down the road from Bucksport, and if I’d had something like the Kave when I was a kid, it would have changed my life too.

Flash forward more than 20 years, and now yours truly is actually in the documentary - Ricky interviewed me for “Downeast Hardcore” a while back, and boy, let me tell you, it is weird (and cool!) to see yourself in a proper film for the first time. I was honored to play a tiny role in its creation.

Leighton - a skilled filmmaker with a keen eye for Maine stories - recognized from the start that a documentary about The Kave and about Findlay would not just be about the hardcore scene in Maine. Hardcore is the soundtrack, the setting and the catalyst. The story, however, is all about the people.

“I almost get kind of wary of people calling it a movie about hardcore, because at its heart it’s really not. On the surface, sure, but it’s really about the tremendous difference one person can make in a community,” Leighton said. “It’s also about teenage angst and frustration. And it’s about community in general. Those are universal stories that I think people can understand, whether they like hardcore or not.”

Over the course of 15 years, The Kave hosted hundreds of bands from all over the world - from major hardcore and metal bands like Hatebreed, Biohazard, Madball, Unearth, All that Remains and Agnostic Front to local bands too numerous to mention. Though the stereotype of hardcore is a large, hyper-masculine man covered in tattoos and smashing into people in the pit, Leighton says that “Downeast Hardcore” reveals that beneath that tough guy surface, there’s an emotional intelligence and sensitivity present in many in the hardcore community.

“I wanted to create a story where, if we could convince somebody who doesn’t listen to this music or who might even write off this scene to come in and sit down and watch it, hopefully they can walk away from it understanding more about it,” Leighton said. “And, you know, not judging a book by its cover. Not assuming things about people because of how they look or the music they listen to.”

The Kave closed in 2016, after a leukemia diagnosis put Findlay’s life on hold for several years - running a music venue while fighting for her life was clearly not an option. Since her cancer went into remission a few years ago, Findlay has remained a presence at Maine and New England hardcore shows at venues like The Old Town Theatre and Geno’s in Portland, and stays close with her Kave Kids.

When Leighton began putting out feelers for people to talk to for the film, the response was overwhelming. In total, he and his crew interviewed more than 60 people, all of whom were eager to share their stories of Kathy and the Kave. Ten years after it closed, its impact is still being felt.

“I think that speaks to how important Kathy and the Kave were to people,” Leighton said. “When someone sits down and says that the Kave was the first place she ever felt love, or there’s some big, burly, tatted up guy being completely raw about his emotions… that’s really gratifying.”

“Downeast Hardcore” will screen at 6 p.m. Saturday, Aug 8 at Geno’s in Portland, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27 at the Alamo Theatre in Bucksport, and on Saturday, Oct. 3 at The Old Town Theatre in Old Town. More local screenings will be announced in the coming weeks; Leighton is working to secure funding for the licensing for some of the music so that they can get theatrical and streaming distribution. You can chip in to help them cover those costs at the “Downeast Hardcore” GoFundMe.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I celebrated my 44th birthday by drinking margaritas and eating chips with guacamole and queso with friends in our backyard. We also had a little bonfire and burned two Christmases worth of wreaths which had been sitting in the back of the brush pile “curing”. They went up like a friggin’ house on fire! Well, no house on fire - coupla Lowe’s buckets full of water right nearby. Safety first, guy.

• I feel that I must alert you to the fact that there is a business in Searsport where you can pay a small amount of money to hang out and go on a walk with donkeys. It’s called Downeast Donkey Walks, and it is quite astonishingly adorable. I won’t deduct points for it not technically being located Down east.

• Congratulations to the staff of The Maine Monitor for the formation of a union, and the voluntary recognition by management that shortly followed! The News Guild - of which I am a former member - does amazing work supporting journalists and media staffers in an incredibly tumultuous industry.

• And happy birthday to the Belfast Co-op, which in August celebrates its 50th anniversary! I have been going to the Co-op for literally my entire life. As an OG member of The Game Loft (RIP), as a teenager, I ate a truly incredible number of snacks purchased from there. It is still my go-to place if I need a quick lunch in Belfast, and it has the best community bulletin board in Maine.

• As a survivor of the Great Bangor Coyote Invasion of 2024, allow me to offer the fine folks of the town of Bath some advice now that they too are seeing their pet cats are being made into feline sushi by local wildlife. 1. We live in Maine and wild animals are everywhere - even right in the middle of town. 2. If the people in your neighborhood Facebook group start popping off about how they are going to shoot the first coyote they see or that their “fur babies” just have to be outside, I recommend putting your phone down and going outside and screaming into the void. And, 3. Keep your cats indoors, or be prepared for this to happen.

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It shouldn’t be quite so difficult for an organization like The Together Place, the peer-run recovery center on 2nd Street in Bangor, to keep its doors open and continue to offer its vital services to folks in the community struggling with their mental health and with substance use disorder. I would imagine that most of us with basic human empathy can agree that there should be free, easily accessible resources available to those folks, and that both challenges are directly connected to the ongoing homelessness crisis that Bangor has long struggled to effectively address.

Which is why it blows my mind that The Together Place, which for more than 40 years has offered these services, is struggling to maintain its offerings and even keep the lights on. It is the only daytime shelter for unhoused folks in Bangor right now, and in addition to its many peer-run support groups it also offers meals, art therapy and help with finding jobs and housing. These are the things that help people. This is how change is made - one person at a time.

Given that the City of Bangor - despite its professed plans to invest in these services - has yet to come through with any municipal funding, it’s up to us to step up and help save this important community resource. You can help directly by going to The Together Place website and clicking the donate button. I just donated. You should too.

Music & Dance

July 30: Belfast Summer Nights presents Primo Cubano, 7:30 p.m., Steamboat Landing Park, Belfast

July 30: St. John’s organ concert feat. Ray Cornils, 7:30 p.m., St. John’s Roman Catholic Church, Bangor

July 30: Rebel Daughter, Americana duo, 6 p.m., lawn area, Ellsworth Public Library

July 31: Rik Eckstrom, singer-songwriter, 6 p.m., Marshall Wharf Brewing, Belfast

July 31: Peace Breaker, Last Hand Laid, Black Liquor and Cape Heart, 7:30 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

July 31: Badfish: A Tribute to Sublime, 8 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

July 31: Joe Bonamassa and Gov’t Mule, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

Aug. 1: Circus Mutt acoustic duo, 5 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

Aug. 1: The Walrus, Beatles tribute band, 8 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 1: Hank Williams Jr, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

Aug. 4: Cassatt String Quartet, 6:30 p.m., Colonial Theatre, Belfast

Aug. 5: Barcelona, Spanish music ensemble, 5:30 p.m., Alamo Theatre, Bucksport

Aug. 5: Dirigo Strings roots band, 6 p.m., lawn area, Bangor Public Library, Bangor

Theatre & Comedy

July 30-Aug. 2: The Belfast Maskers present “Pippin,” nightly, Basil Burwell Community Theatre, Belfast

July 30-Aug.2: Ten Bucks Theatre Company Shakespeare Under the Stars presents “Julius Caesar,” nightly at 6 p.m., Fort Knox State Historic Site, Prospect

July 31: High Stakes House of Comedy presents Kelly McFarland, Jack Burke and Adam Hatch, 8 p.m., Hollywood Casino, Bangor

Aug. 2: A Grand Enchanted Evening, musical and theater showcase, 7 p.m., Grand Theatre, Ellsworth

Aug 3: David Sedaris, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Aug. 5-9: Opera House Arts Presents John Cariani’s “The Darker The Night, the Brighter the Stars,” nightly, Stonington Opera House, Stonington

Arts, Books, Film & Culture

July 30: “Chekhov and the Art of Atmosphere: A Playwriting Workshop,” with Eliya Smith, 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

July 31: POP Studies series “How to Preserve Family Letters, Heirlooms and Antiques,” 10 a.m., Penobscot Marine Museum, Searsport

July 31: “Salt of the Earth,” documentary screening and discussion, 7 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

Aug. 4: Author talk on “An Armsfull of Birds: A Personal Field Guide to Love, Loss, and Commitment,” by Cara Benson with Kathryn Miles, 7 p.m., Left Bank Books, Belfast

Aug. 5: Jonathan Fisher House Symposium, “Commemoration, Liberty, and the Abolition Movement,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

July 30-Aug. 9: Bangor State Fair, daily at Bass Park, Bangor, click here for full schedule

July 30-Aug. 2: Tall Ships in the lower Penobscot, feat. workshops, sailing excursions and more, from Bangor to Castine and Searsport; click here for full schedule

July 31: “Birds Love Bugs: Aerial Insectivores,” walk and talk with Maine Audubon, 8 a.m., West Penjajawoc Grasslands, Bangor

July 31-Aug. 2: Midcoast Gem and Mineral Fair, Bayview Point Event Center, Belfast

I’ve been reading up this week on a topic that’s been of perennial interest to me: the periodic attempts to do away with the twice-yearly time changes, and to institute at the national level either permanent Daylight Savings Time, or permanent Standard Time. The matter is once again before Congress, with the U.S. House passing a bill a few weeks ago to enact permanent Daylight Savings, and the U.S. Senate poised to eventually take it up as well, though its prospects for passage there seem much more unlikely.

This New York Times article went through the pros and cons of all three potential approaches - always DST, always Standard, or keeping the time changes - in a way that I thought was useful and thoughtful. It did not, however, help me come to any further conclusion about which option is the best - though I must admit, permanent Standard Time doesn’t seem particularly appealing, given that between May and July in Maine the sun would come up before 5 a.m., which is, in my humble opinion, too goddamn early.

With permanent DST, for at least several weeks out of the year most of the country would not see the sunrise until well after 8 a.m.; in much of Maine in most of December and January, sunrise would be closer to 9 a.m. That seems entirely too late, doesn’t it? The upshot would be that it would remain light outside until well past 5 p.m. for nearly the entirety of winter, which does seem nice - albeit literally cold comfort, considering how generally unpleasant it is to be outside in January in Maine.

We could also just keep the time changes, and accept that they are a pain in the ass and disrupt everyone’s schedules for a few days in November and March.

What do you think? It’s always interesting to hear people’s different opinions on what, if anything, to do about the issue. Is it inherently unhealthy that we mammals are often untethered from the natural cycles of the lifegiving sun? Is when you wake up in the morning simply a matter of personal preference or need, and whether or not the sun is present at that time is of no real consequence? Is it just something we like to bring up every so often when we’re a little bored and need something to argue about? I welcome your thoughts.

One of the most purely enjoyable hiking experiences I’ve ever had was about ten-odd years ago, when we loaded into the souped-up pontoon ferry boat at the Rockwood public landing and crossed a portion of Moosehead Lake to land at Kineo - the great volcanic monolith that towers 800 feet over the water, jutting out of the landscape like an evergreen Sphinx.

You can only get there by boat, though the mountain and the land it sits on is not technically an island. Despite Kineo being a state park, the narrow strip of land that connects it to the mainland is privately owned, so even though you could theoretically drive there, you’d be trespassing while doing it. But no matter, because the boat ride - either the public ferry, or via canoe, kayak or a friend with a boat - is a zippy, choppy adventure on its own.

It’s not nearly as tall or as strenuous a climb as other famous monoliths - El Capitan in Yosemite springs to mind, of course, as does Devil’s Tower in Wyoming - but to my extremely biased mind, it’s just as beautiful. That’s not what gets me really excited about it, though: it’s the fact that for centuries, Kineo was not only a sacred place for the people that lived nearby, but was also the engine of a vast trading industry that, at its peak, spanned nearly the entire breadth of the east coast of North America.

We were there in late August, when summer begins its slow turn into fall and as all those interesting plants and fungi begin to pop up. It was particularly colorful along the craggy slope up to the summit - which we ended up climbing, since we missed the turn for the easier trail to the summit, and instead went all the way along the shore and up the backside of the cliff. We barely made the last boat back to Rockwood. A two-hour hike turned into three or four. Oops.

I’m glad we messed up, though, because the kaleidoscope of mushrooms and late-season flowers dotting the climb up was well worth traversing the rather soggy trail to get there - deep purple and fluorescent yellow and cartoonishly perfect-looking red-and-white, nestled among the endless hardwood greenery and against the steely backdrop of Moosehead. It was glorious.

At that time, I’d only recently learned that Kineo was far more than just a beautiful place to hike and observe nature. As was so often the case, when I told him we were going to camp at Moosehead and hike Kineo, my naturalist friend Tony Sohns told me to be on the lookout not just for the growing and living things, but for the rock itself - the rhyolite that composes the majority of the mountain itself.

Though sandstone and slate can also be found in the geological makeup of the mountain, it’s the rhyolite that makes Kineo special both geologically and historically. Rhyolite is an igneous rock that can take a number of forms, including obsidian, a.k.a. volcanic glass, and, in the case of Kineo, as a silica-rich rock that is uniquely suited to being shaped into stone tools like arrowheads, scrapers, chisels and hatchets. The rock itself formed millions of years ago, but Kineo, like so many other mountains in Maine, was shaped by the receding glaciers of the last Ice Age, around 14,000 years ago.

Thousands of years ago, the first people that lived in what is now Maine realized the rock at Kineo was particularly good for making a variety of tools. The Penobscot people, who considered Kineo, with its imposing cliff face, a sacred place, have visited it for centuries, both as a spiritual pilgrimage and to collect the incredibly durable and useful rock. The name Kineo derives from the legendary Wabanaki protector and leader, Kinneho, and the lore holds that the mountain was formed when Gluskabe, the ancient Wabanaki culture hero, picked up a rock and slew a cow moose. That moose became the unique Kineo rock that for millennia afterwards would help future hunters provide food for their people.

Over time, those arrowheads and other Kineo rhyolite tools radiated their way out from Wabanaki homelands and into the well-established trading networks that pre-date the arrival of Europeans. While it’s relatively common to find Kineo tools in coastal Maine, archaeologists have also found them throughout New England and Maritime Canada, and even as far south as Georgia. How do they know they came from Kineo? Because Kineo is the largest single deposit of rhyolite in North America, and because its unique mineral properties are unlike any other rhyolite found anywhere else in the world.

As my fellow UMaine alum Milo Rossi, a.k.a. miniminuteman, explained in one of his highly entertaining archaeology and anthropology videos: “[Kineo is] one of the most important geologic features in the East Coast… [and] because the Indigenous people of North America knew this, Mount Kineo became the epicentre of an enormous Paleo-Indigenous trade network.”

@miniminutemanMt. Kineo #archaeology #anthropology #history #lesson #earth #science #geology #earthscience #interesting #fact #learn #stone #tools #ancient #artifact #east #maine #newengland #fact #truth #indigenous #foryoupage #foryou #fyp #fypシ #greenscreen

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Kineo wasn’t the only well-known source of rock for tool-making in Maine. Not too much further north in Piscataquis County, another mineral deposit - this one of chert, a fine-grained stone with bands of red and green in it - was found by Wabanaki people along the shores of Munsungan Lake, a remote body of water about 30 miles due north of Katahdin. Like those from Kineo, tools and weapons made from Munsungan chert have been found all over the Northeast - and, in turn, Kineo artifacts have been found at Munsungun.

It’s not shocking, then, that stone from places even farther away, like Ramah chert, a semi-translucent stone found only at Ramah Bay in Labrador, has also been found in abundance in what is now Maine. Long before Europeans began harvesting timber, furs and fish from Maine’s woods and waters and exporting it around the world, Indigenous people were trading their own goods far and wide.

One of my favorite unsolved archaeological mysteries in Maine is that of the Maine penny, also called the Goddard coin - a Norwegian coin dated to around 1070 AD, found at Naskeag Point in the town of Brooklin. If the coin is genuine and had been laying in the mud for centuries, it begs the question: did the Norse people that visited what is now Newfoundland in the 11th century trade that penny with the Indigenous people of the region, who then traded it with other tribes down the coast until it ended up in the hands of Wabanaki people, in what is now Maine? Scholars have debated its origin since it was discovered in 1957, with some saying the coin is a hoax, and others saying it is evidence of far-reaching Indigenous exchange. Ramah chert artifacts, after all, were also found in that same archaeological site.

Kineo, like so many other natural features across what is now Maine, is a place with far deeper significance than surface-level explorations might indicate. You’d think all its unique characteristics - its unusual geology, its deep history, the quality of its hiking and natural beauty - would make it as popular a destination as other inland Maine hikes, like Tumbledown, Borestone or Gulf Hagas. And yet, when we were there, we saw only a handful of other people on a beautiful late summer day - aside from the small groups playing golf at the nine-hole course at the base of the peak. I’m sure it’s a great place to golf, but man, it feels incongruous next to what feels like a sacred mountain.

At the end of the day, however, it’s probably a good thing that places like Kineo aren’t as popular as Acadia or Katahdin. Thousands of years ago, when the first peoples of this land were making goods out of Kineo rhyolite, they probably knew they had something special - something that had to be visited respectfully, and harvested with great care.

It’s easy to look at hikes, summits, landmarks and bodies of water in Maine (or anywhere) as places to conquer, or to check off a list. It is far more rewarding, in my opinion, to experience them as many things at once. As places of great natural beauty, of course, home to complex, fragile ecosystems that must be protected in addition to being cherished. As places that challenge the body and the mind, to climb higher and think deeper. And as sites where history, both geologic and human-scale, can be felt in the very rock beneath your feet.

If you want to read more about archaeology in Maine and throughout northeastern North America, you should definitely check out this incredibly informative book, “The Archaeology Of The Atlantic Northeast,” by Matthew W. Betts and M. Gabriel Hrynick.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week I am pretty damned overwhelmed with gratitude by the number of you that upgraded to a paid subscription. You can read more about why I’m asking for your support in my other post this week. And don’t forget: through July 31, you can get 20 percent off a full year’s paid subscription by clicking here! I promise: the shameless self promotion will not be a recurring feature around these parts.

• And just like that, the parachute journalists who arrived in Maine last week to cover our last-minute Democratic Party convention to pick a new U.S. Senate candidate have packed their bags full of their unused hot takes and headed back to New York. Good luck, Troy. You’re one of us, and I believe in you.

• This article about Mainers seeking Canadian citizenship after Canada changed its immigration laws to include Americans of more recent Canadian descent is fascinating. I personally know at least four people who are in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship because their grandparents or great-grandparents were Canadian. For some folks it’s a chance to connect with Canadian roots. For others, it’s an opportunity to obtain safe haven for themselves or their families due to the volatile political situation in the U.S. - especially for trans and nonbinary folks.

• Apparently Cooper Flagg is opening a cards and collectibles shop with his cousin in Bangor? You can watch a video on the shop’s Facebook page and hear him talk about it while he’s sitting in a metal bathtub next to Kevin Hart.

• I’m late to the party: I tried a scone from The Rolling Pin Bakery in Winterport the other day and it was really good! What a cute little spot they have there. The donuts looked great. I’d like to try their regular breakfast menu. We love an adorable hometown cafe!

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50 years ago this year, Maine said goodbye to one of its oldest and most storied traditions: the log drive. For more than 300 years, log drives sent tens of thousands of recently-harvested logs down both the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers, making their way to the saw mills closer to the coast. A majority of those logs were floated to world’s greatest lumber port, Bangor, where logs were cut up and then shipped around the world - the westward expansion of the U.S. into the Midwest and beyond was built, in part, by Bangor lumber. River drivers (known on the Penobscot as '“Bangor Tigers”) were outfitted in spiked boots and equipped with peaveys, and guided the logs down the river so nothing got caught up. It’s one of the most iconic practices of historic Maine, the legacy of which can still be seen in both imagery and in the little man-made islands that dot both rivers. By the mid-20th century, technology made this practice mostly obsolete. Per a new state law, all log drive activity had to cease by Oct. 1, 1976. The last log drive on the Penobscot had already been held in 1971, but the very last one in the state was held on the Kennebec River, 50 years ago this year.

Music & Dance

July 23: Belfast Summer Nights presents Faux Paws and Aidan Boardman and Friends, 5:30 p.m., Steamboat Landing Park, Belfast

July 23: Patty Griffin, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

July 23: Toto, Christopher Cross and The Romantics, 6 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

July 24: Dashing Rock Celtic Trio, 6 p.m., Surry Arts Barn, Surry

July 24: Hymn for Her, 6 p.m., Harbor Park, Ellsworth

July 24: Ernie Smith and the Wee Dram Band Scottish bagpipes concert, 7 p.m., Fort Knox State Historic Site, Prospect

July 24: Not Strictly Classical feat. pianist Danny Holt, 7 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

July 24: The Princess Concert, night of Disney and pop songs, 5 p.m., Cross Insurance Center, Bangor

July 24: Billy Currington and Kip Moore, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

July 25: Songwriters Cormac McCarthy and Bruce Pratt, 7 p.m., Winterport Union Meeting House, Winterport

July 25: Rap Battle Night with local MCs, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

July 25: Smoked Salmon, 6 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

July 25: Motley Crue and Tesla, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

July 26: Opera House Arts presents Downeast New Music premiere of “Thanksong,” new chamber music piece, 7 p.m., Burnt Cove Church Community Center, Stonington

July 26: Songwriter Dan Nicholas, 4 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

July 26: Thunderchief, Coelacanth and Hands of Stone, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

July 28: Rhiannon Giddens, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

July 29: Bagaduce Music presents Palaver Strings, 5 p.m., David’s Folly Farm, Brooksville

July 29: Men at Work, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Shonen Knife, 6 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

July 29: The Maine Steiners, vocal ensemble, 6 p.m., front lawn, Bangor Public Library, Bangor

Theatre & Comedy

July 23-26: Ten Bucks Theatre Company Shakespeare Under the Stars presents “Julius Caesar,” nightly at 6 p.m., Indian Trail Park, Brewer

July 24-26: Counter/Current Collective presents “Uncle Vanya,” 7:30 p.m., Serebriakov Farm, Appleton

July 24-25: Acadia Dance Festival performances feat. Nimbus Dance, two days, Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

July 28: “Blanc sur Blanc,” clowning performance by Iman Lizarazu, 6 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

Art, Books, Film & Culture

July 23: Talk by anthropologist Bonnie Newsom on significant anthropological discoveries in Maine, 6 p.m., Old Town Museum, Old Town

July 23: Author talk by Isaac Butler on his book “The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America’s Culture Wars,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

July 23: Historic Ellsworth images presentation with historian Holly Hendricks, 7 p.m., Ellsworth Public Library, Ellsworth

July 25: Severin Films pop-up film sale and screening event, all day, The Emporium Spooky Goods, Bangor

July 25: Bangor Historical Society’s “Founders and Freedom: A Revolutionary Walk through Mount Hope Cemetery,” 6 p.m., 1048 State St., Mount Hope Cemetery, Bangor

July 25: “Joseph Plumb Martin: The War of the American Revolution for a Common Soldier,” talk by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor, 6 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

July 26: “The Influence of Helen and Scott Nearing: A 50-Year Journey,” talk by Sherrie Lovler and Norm Lee, 4 p.m., The Good Life Center, Brooksville

July 27: Author talk by Steve Kemp on his book “An Exaltation of Parks: John D. Rockefeller Jr,” 7 p.m., Criterion Theater, Bar Harbor

July 28: Book event with Julia Cooke on her new book “Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World,” 7 p.m., Left Bank Books, Belfast

July 28: Screening of “The Blueberry Blues,” fundraiser for Wild Blueberry Collective, 6:30 p.m., Colonial Theatre, Belfast

July 29: Book talk on “Captain Drew’s World: Dispatches from the Age of Global Sail” by author Bill Bunting, 6 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

July 29: Sci-Fi Book Club reads “What We Are Seeking” by Cameron Reed, 7:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

July 29: Red Rabbit Film Club screens “Lady Snowblood,” 7 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

July 25: Heavy Metal Day, demonstrations of machinery and blacksmithing, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Maine Forest and Logging Museum, Bradley

July 26: 37th annual Open Farm Day, visit farms statewide; click here for a list of participating farms

July 26: Armenian Picnic, annual celebration of Armenian food, dance, arts and more; 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Searsport Shores Ocean Campground, Searsport

July 29: Monthly full moon paddle, 7:30 p.m., Hirundo Wildlife Refuge, Old Town

Sometimes I really enjoy going on a deep dive on YouTube, looking for forgotten nuggets from weird little corners of the internet - from anywhere, really, but especially, of course, from Maine. While Maine Public is certainly not a forgotten corner, their YouTube is chock full of surprising tidbits from their broadcast archive: documentaries from the 1970s and 80s, interviews with famous Mainers, musical performances, old TV shows and short video features. Sometimes it’s exactly what you’d expect (Margaret Chase Smith, Bud Leavitt, old-timey Maine recipes, etc) and sometimes it’s a feature on an outsider artist from Houlton, who decorated his home with aliens and dinosaurs. This 1997 feature on Jerry Cardone, who died in 2016, starts at about the two-minute mark in the below embedded video, from an old news magazine show on Maine Public called “True North.” Cardone shows off his yodeling skills, and he tells the story of his art, his fraught relationship with his neighbors and the town of Houlton and, most importantly, his experience being abducted by aliens. I find this utterly delightful. Enjoy!

Let’s start with the big life update, and cut straight to the point: I was laid off from my job last month. Man, does it feel weird to share that publicly.

For the first time in decades, I find myself without full-time employment. It’s been anxiety-inducing and exciting, simultaneously. There are times when I don’t know what to do with myself, but they don’t last. I struggle to not be busy. For better or worse, I’m an inveterate hustler. I can’t sit still for too long. Is it work ethic? Is it ADHD? Dear reader, I am fairly sure it’s both.

I’ve spent the past six weeks thinking deeply about what, exactly, it is I want out of my life, and I think I’ve landed on something of an answer: I’m going to choose myself, and my writing, my editing and all the other talents I’ve spent my life honing. I’m going independent, or freelance, or self-employed, or whatever you want to call it. To paraphrase LeBron James, I’m taking my talents to anyone that wants them, and I’m joining… me.

It’s a little scary, sure, and it opens up much potential for uncertainty. It’s also the most excited I’ve felt about anything in a long time. When I check in with my mind, my heart and my gut, it feels deeply correct.

I’ve had a busy freelance side hustle for some time, writing and editing for various publications and individuals, and doing a bit of fundraising, event planning and grant writing here, a bit of social media management there. I’m turbocharging that now, as a writer, editor and consultant for both businesses and nonprofits. Got an idea you want to work with me on? Hit me up. I would love to edit your book, or be your writing coach. I’d love to work on creative branding, fundraising and social media for your business or small nonprofit. I’m open to any and all ideas.

Substack factors heavily into this next chapter of my life. I launched The Other Maine exactly one year ago today, because I wanted to recommit myself to my writing, and I wanted to tell real Maine stories in order to fill the void left by the gutting of features and arts writing in newsrooms statewide - and because I love to do it. It’s been an absolute joy, and I feel like I’m just getting started. But I can’t do it without your help.

Those of you that have supported me with a paid subscription to The Other Maine: I am profoundly grateful to you. You have made this work possible. I cannot stress that enough. If you want to do a little extra, you can share this or any post as a note on Substack, or on your social media.

For those who haven’t paid yet, however, now is the time to pony up! Monthly subscriptions are just $7 per month, and are the easiest way to enjoy my work and the work of other Maine writers. I want to be featuring more Maine writers and Maine voices. I want to be able to travel to the far-flung corners of this state. I want to work with photographers and visual artists to illustrate these stories. I want to pay people! And I want to be able to still offer the majority of new posts here for free, because it’s important to me that it’s accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they pay for it or not.

The better - and technically less expensive! - way to support my work is through a yearly subscription, which is $75 per year. You save about 10 percent off a monthly subscription, and those reliable larger chunks of funds help me do things like, say, pay the internet bill or put gas in my car. That’s not an exaggeration. When people talk about the creative economy, this is the kind of thing they really mean: being able to pay your bills while making your beautiful art or doing your beautiful writing or making your beautiful food or building your beautiful things.

HOWEVER! As a little one-year anniversary special, for the next ten days, yearly subscriptions are 20 PERCENT OFF! That’s right: you can get a full year of The Other Maine for $60 instead of $75, along with the satisfaction of knowing that not only do you support creators here in Maine, but you also made a savvy financial decision. You must click this magic link in order to redeem this offer, which only runs through 11:59 p.m. on Friday, July 31.

The best way to support this work is, of course, through a founding member subscription, which is $150 per year. My friend Nicole tells me I need to stop being a weenie and know my worth and say that this is the kind of support I really need and deserve, and that women need to not be afraid to ask for what they want. She’s right, of course. We all go to her for life advice. She has a t-shirt that says “I may be wrong, but I doubt it.” It’s accurate.

Besides following my passions, reaching for the brass ring, going for the goal and all those cliched sayings, I also have to admit: the idea of being my own boss is incredibly appealing. I’ve never not worked for somebody else. Now, the only person I can get mad at is me!

My first job was at age 14, when I sold vegetables from a farmstand on Route 1 in Searsport. I was paid $4.25 an hour to weigh tomatoes and smile at tourists. Next, I worked for Mr. Paperback in Belfast. I sold books, magazines, CDs, greeting cards and candy, and smiled at lots more tourists. I also worked for a catering company one summer, slopping baked beans and potato salad onto paper plates at events along the coast. Teenage jobs; a rite of passage.

In college, I took a very random job for an English major: a field and lab assistant in the plant, soil and environmental science department at the University of Maine. I spent one summer hiking a mountain in Washington County to collect samples from a forest soils test site. I learned how to work in literal clouds of black flies and not completely lose my mind. I also worked for Bull Moose Music in Bangor one year, where I got to live out the real-life cliche of being a jaded record store clerk. And I spent several years as music director and program director at WMEB 91.9 FM, the UMaine college radio station. I got to listen to music and pick the best things to play and talk about it on the radio and receive money for it! Incredible!

That was my first job in media, a career path I knew I wanted to pursue. More importantly, I knew from a very young age I was a writer. I got a typewriter for my 9th birthday - the computer came a few years later - so I could write stories and poems that, were I to read them today, would surely give me a mortification-induced aneurysm. I applied for an internship with the Bangor Daily News in the summer of 2004, and then it was off to the races.

I was with the BDN for just over 20 years, where I learned almost everything I know about storytelling, about listening to people, about cooperation and collaboration, and about our strange, spectacular state. It was like graduate school, and it was like family, in some ways, for a very long time. Almost every major life event of my 20s and 30s happened while I was there.

It was incredibly hard to leave the BDN, but at the beginning of 2025 I went to work in nonprofits, to try something new and to put some of my skills to work trying in some way to make Maine a better, more just and accessible place. I still want to do that. I’m still going to do that.

That job ended, very suddenly, on June 3, and here I am; at a crossroads, five days shy of my 44th birthday, making a huge life decision. It was always the goal to do this. Things like this rarely happen exactly when you want them to, but when they do happen, you’d better go for it.

I’m asking for it, world. I’m going all in, as they say. I’m going to try to do the thing I was born for, for real this time. I’m betting on myself. I hope, maybe, you’ll want to bet on me too. I know I’m a good bet. I know I’m worth it.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I’ve taken solace in small things: my Asiatic lilies and my bee balm are blooming, an ice cream sundae from Gifford’s, a very long nap in the air conditioning. It’s enough.

• You’d think this should go without saying, but we should not have an armed, unregulated paramilitary force harassing and harming communities because of where they were born. We should not allow certain people to act with impunity and no accountability based on the whims and opinions of others who think our basic human rights are dictated by where you are born. People should not be killed because of where they were born. I will never, ever understand the obsession some people have with punishing immigrants, who are just trying to build a better life for themselves and their families.

• You can support immigrants in Maine by donating to the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition, or by donating to the Maine Solidarity Fund, which helps people with things like bonds and legal assistance. You can also give directly to Johan Sebastian Guerrero’s family through this GoFundMe. You can attend one of many protests around the state, and in November you can vote out the people who allowed this to happen. May his memory be a blessing.

• Please, please, spirits of nature, allow me to see a humpback whale feeding close to shore in Maine this summer. I will maintain a very respectful distance, but please, let me see them, doing stuff like what’s seen in this video that was posted last week. In my hometown of Searsport, no less!

• I was all geared up for the massive thunderstorms that were supposed to pummel Maine on Tuesday, but apparently that was replaced at the last minute by wildfire smoke from Canada and the Midwest. The sun is orange in parts of Maine. In a different period in history, this would be considered an omen.

• This clear-headed NYT opinion piece calls for this country to treat the spread of tick-borne diseases as the public health emergency that it is, on a par with diseases like malaria and polio, both of which were widespread in the U.S. a century ago and now either eradicated or exceedingly rare. As a child that grew up in Maine woods and meadows, I do not recall ever having any fear of ticks. Today, I check for them on my body almost daily. Given that right now we can’t even seem to effectively track food-borne illnesses, however, I won’t be optimistic about such a thing happening until other big things change.

• I know this video was taken in Prince Edward Island, but let’s be real: this is also Maine. Flip flops, margarita, camper, lobster dinner. Sounds real nice right about now, doesn’t it?

• Hey Bangor: remember how that bar and restaurant, Salt North Taproom, opened last year where Carolina’s used to be? And then it closed a few months ago because the owner literally did not pay his employees? Now it’s an Italian restaurant, apparently, called MJ’s Italian Bistro and Catering.

• I love that the town of Castine has a $45,000 annual elm tree care budget.

70 years ago this week, Bangor (and much of the rest of the country, for that matter) once again held an emergency drill for civilians to practice getting to safety should an atomic bomb be dropped on them. Putting aside the fact that people don’t really survive direct hits from a nuclear blast, such a drill first occurred in Bangor in 1955 as part of the wider national Cold War-era “Operation Alert” series of annual mock attacks. In 1955, Bangor area residents dutifully filed out of town towards the hinterlands, emptying out the city for the day. In 1956, however, people were far less compliant; many of them seemed to shrug at the evacuation request and stay put, with city leaders lamenting “public apathy” around the whole affair. Operation Alert drills continued in some capacity nationwide through 1961, before the project ended due to public protest and different civil defense being instituted.

Music & Dance

July 16: Belfast Summer Nights presents Springtide and The Gawler Sisters, 5:30 p.m., Steamboat Landing Park, Belfast

July 17: The Milbridge Theatre presents The Whiskey Bent Band, 6:30 p.m., Milbridge Marina, Milbridge

July 17: Somes Sound, 6 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

July 17: Em & Company, 6 p.m., Harbor Park, Ellsworth

July 17-18: Deer Isle Jazz Festival feat. Yosvany Terry, 7 p.m. each night, Stonington Opera House, Stonington

July 17: Casual Fifth, Japanese taiko ensemble, 7 p.m., Surry Arts Barn, Surry

July 17: The Problematics and Phil Hummer and the White Falcons, 7 p.m., American Legion Hall, Belfast

July 17: Vanity Crisis, Darth Brandon, A Band Called Eden and Mr. Greyy, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

July 17: Gonzo Radio EDM dance night, 8 p.m., Barliman’s, Bangor

July 18: Noel Paul Stookey followed by contradance, 7 p.m., Central Hall, Blue Hill

July 18: Caamp, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

July 18: Slampig, Thousand Mile Fall, Midnight Possession and Under the Horizon, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

July 18: Dar Williams, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

July 18: Bleak Mass, monthly goth and industrial dance night, 8 p.m., Eye Candy Studio, 128 Main St. Bangor

July 19: Chris Ross, 4 p.m., Fogtown Brewing Ellsworth

July 19: Ethan W. Olsen, JES and MorningDove, 5 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor

July 19: “Weird” Al Yankovic, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor

July 19: Spaced, Stab and Free to Think, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

July 19: Masters of the Telecaster guitar revue show feat. G.E. Smith, Larry Campbell and Jim Weider, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

July 20: Flash in the Pans steel drum band, 7:30 p.m., Blue Hill Town Park, Blue Hill

July 22: Florentis, 6 p.m., Bangor Public Library lawn, Bangor

July 22: Five Finger Death Punch, Cody Jinks and Eva Under Fire, 7 p.m., Maine Savings Amphitheater

July 22: The Punch Brothers, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Theatre & Comedy

July 16-19: Ten Bucks Theatre Company Shakespeare Under the Stars presents “Julius Caesar,” nightly at 6 p.m., Indian Trail Park, Brewer

July 16-19: Some Theatre Company presents “Macbeth,” reimagined one-act version, nightly, Some Theatre’s Bangor Mall theater space, Bangor

July 18: Delicious Drag Divas, 6:30 p.m., Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

July 21: Bluebird Improv feat. Matt Walsh, Tim Meadows, Brad Morris, Marc Evan Jackson, Joe Canale and Stephanie Weir, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

Art, Books, Film & Culture

July 16: Authors Cassandra Neyenesch and Jessica Berger Gross in conversation, 7 p.m., Left Bank Books, Belfast

July 16: Poetry reading with Christine Yurick and David Rezzi, 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

July 17: Book signing and reading with author and journalist Douglas Rooks, 5 p.m., Anodyne Books, Searsport

July 17: Romantasy book club reads “Broken Dove” by Dani Francis, 7:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

July 18: Town Talk with Dar Williams, Johnna Blackman, Carrie Jones, Puranjot Kaur, John Zavodny and Andy Revkin, 1 p.m., Hidden Barn Books, Bar Harbor

July 21: Screening of “1776,” 6:30 p.m., Colonial Theatre, Belfast

July 21: Author event with Libby Edwardson on her book “We Sent Them Down Singing,” 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

July 22-23: Maine Silent Film Festival, two days of screenings and music, 7 p.m., Alamo Theatre, Bucksport

July 22: Left Bank Books presents a reading by Marilyn Moss Rockefeller from her new book, “Time is the Substance,” 7 p.m., The First Church, Belfast

July 22: Derry-Free Horror Book Club reads “The Children” by Melissa Albert, 7:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

July 17-19: Maine Celtic Celebration; full weekend of music, events, vendors, food and more; Steamboat Landing Park, Belfast

July 17: Night of Nocturnal Insects nature walk, 8 p.m., Fields Pond Audubon Center, Holden

July 18: Morning paddle with the Maine Women’s Lobby, 10 a.m., Hirundo Wildlife Refuge, Alton

July 18: Food AND Medicine annual self-guided Urban Garden Tour, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. throughout Bangor and Brewer; full list of locations is here

Given that the album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts last week, I’m the approximately four millionth person to say that Madonna’s new album, “Confessions II,” is a massive hit and her best album in 20 years. It’s a lush, sonically dense one-hour dance party - the last dance pop album that felt this good to listen to was Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia.” It’s going to feel great to listen to on the dance floor. It’s going to feel great to listen to in the car. It’s going to feel great to listen to while cleaning your kitchen. It moves your ass, and your mind.

I bring this up, however, because I’ve been thinking a lot about getting older, and about being in a female-presenting body, and about the delicate navigation one must do as one moves into different eras of life and as challenges both expected and not arise. And here comes Madonna, well past the age when society believes women should be put out to pasture, putting out an absolute banger and showing the children (that includes me?!) how it’s done.

Obviously, Madonna is one of the most famous and culturally influential people ever, and is incredibly wealthy and has unlimited resources to do pretty much anything she wants. She’s also nearly 70, and just put out an album that puts most of the current crop of pop girlies to shame. Regardless of what anyone thinks about her controversies, her shapeshifting, her plastic surgery or anything she’s ever done in her wild, incredible life, she’s never been anything but fully, gloriously herself. She gives a fuck about some things, surely, but in the grand scheme of the universe, she simply does not give a fuck - especially about what our society thinks is correct for certain people. I find that extremely reassuring; dare I say, inspiring? Whatever chapter you’re currently in - and even if pop music is not your bag - I hope you can find the courage to care less about what others think of you, and care more about what matters to you.

At around 5 a.m. on June 21, 2011, Kierie Piccininni awoke to a loud crash on the street outside her then-boyfriend Gabe’s apartment on French Street in downtown Bangor. She ran to the window to see what had happened.

An SUV had smashed into a granite marker at the corner of Exchange and York streets, and was close to falling off an embankment into the parking lot below. Piccininni called 911 and rushed outside, fearing the worst for the driver and any passengers in the vehicle.

“I was expecting to see someone slumped over and severely injured,” she said. “The car was totally empty. The door was open. Whoever was driving, they just took off.”

If the driver, a 27-year-old Bangor man, was injured, he didn’t seem to notice or care. He’d jumped out of the vehicle and run down Exchange Street toward the Penobscot River, where he began stripping off his clothes before he got in the water, splashing around and screaming. That’s where the cops found him.

According to the Bangor Police Department, the man had injected synthetic cathinones, a drug better known as bath salts due to their resemblance to therapeutic salts you’d toss in the bathtub - also known as monkeydust, kryptonite, white lightning and other colorful names. Regardless of what it’s called, the drugs are a powerful and volatile mixture of synthetic chemicals that can cause severe agitation, hallucinations, psychosis and dangerously high blood pressure and body temperature.

It was one of the first public incidents in what was to become one of the strangest summers Bangor had ever experienced. For most of the rest of the year, Bangor was ground zero for bath salts - not just in Maine, but nationally. Local news ran near-daily stories about unhinged people under the influence of the drugs – threatening people with firearms, experiencing intense, terrifying hallucinations and running naked down the street. Bath salts could, in extreme cases, cause a person’s body temperature to spike as high as 107 degrees, and make a person so agitated their muscles begin to break down and their kidneys begin to fail. In 2011 alone, 152 people in Maine overdosed on bath salts, and at least three died.

The drug known as bath salts is composed of three active ingredients: methylenedioxypyrovalerone; 4-methyl-N-methylcathinone, also known as mephedrone; and 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylcathinone, or methylone. Methylone has the same molecular structure as MDMA (i.e. ecstasy or molly) but with the addition of one extra oxygen atom, which dramatically increases its potency. All three chemicals share structural similarities with amphetamines.

The drugs first reached the U.S. in 2010, and at the time were completely unregulated by either the FDA or the DEA. The chemicals were mostly manufactured in China and India, and were shipped around the world - Britain had a bath salts problem long before the U.S. did. At first, they were available to buy as a powder in individual packets, in gas stations and head shops, under a variety of names. Not long after, homemade blends of the three active ingredients also began to circulate, cut with a wide array of other substances, ranging from lidocaine and anti-depressents to sugar and cornstarch.

Emergency rooms in Bangor began to encounter patients under the influence of bath salts in spring 2011, who had both snorted and injected the drugs. The influx was sudden and unexpected, and caught staff off guard with the severity of the symptoms and behavior of the people coming in.

Dr. Anthony Ng, who arrived in Bangor in 2010 as Acadia Hospital’s new medical director of psychiatric emergency services, said it wasn’t immediately clear what was wrong with them. Traditional sedative drugs didn’t work on them, and many had to be physically restrained.

“At first, I thought perhaps these people were on PCP, which was something I’d encountered when I was in Philadelphia and which can have similar effects,” Ng said. “Pretty quickly, though, we realized we were dealing with something else. The people that found their way to the ER were just incredibly combative. Psychotic. Completely out of control.”

At that time, the drug was in all 50 states, but several states in particular were hit unusually hard. Florida saw bath salts usage skyrocket, as did parts of Appalachia and the Midwest, including western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana.

And, most notably, in Maine, where in 2011 hospitals and police departments statewide saw a dramatic increase in people in serious physical and psychological distress from taking even small amounts of the drug.

“It makes the brain go crazy,” Ng was quoted by the Bangor Daily News in a September 2011 article. “It’s frightening.”

Nowhere in Maine was hit more suddenly and severely by the bath salts epidemic than Bangor. Ron Gastia, who in 2011 was Bangor’s chief of police, said that starting in Spring 2011 and into early 2012, Bangor was, in many ways, the national epicenter of bath salts.

“I got calls from departments in California, in Texas, asking us ‘What the heck do we do?’” said Gastia, now retired from law enforcement. “I think Bangor was actually instrumental in helping the rest of the country learn how to deal with this specific drug, because we had such a huge crisis going on. People looked to us for help, because we were so disproportionately affected.”

That year, Bangor and bath salts became synonymous. The city was the butt of jokes, and the subject of intense, relentless questioning from residents of other parts of the state and New England.

“Is it really that bad?”

“Have you seen somebody freak out?”

“What’s it like living through the zombie apocalypse?”

Some stories are well-documented, as evidenced from the news headlines. The guy that smashed through one of the front windows of the Brewer Hannaford with a shopping cart and then crawled into the ceiling. The guy that destroyed the bathroom at the Main Street Circle K in Bangor. The guy that spent hours hanging off the underside of the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge, as rescue boats angled themselves in the river below, hoping to catch him if he jumped or fell. A video of that incident went viral, and now has nearly a million views on YouTube.

Some are more colloquial in nature, though are no less true and upsetting. David Chapman was working at American Retro, a former vintage clothing shop in downtown Bangor, and said someone clearly under the influence burst into the shop one day, brandishing a knife. Chapman escaped unharmed, but the incident terrified him.

Later on that summer, Chapman was sitting at the bar at Paddy Murphy’s - a bartender friend had just closed up on a slow night, and he was hanging out with a few people as the staff finished up - when a man smashed the tail light of a parked car, grabbed the glass from the housing and began cutting his arms open.

“He was actually smearing the blood on the window of the door,” Chapman said. “They’d just closed up and the door was locked, so we were just sitting inside, watching this horrible thing unfold, waiting for the cops to show up. It was completely insane. It really was like the zombie apocalypse that summer.”

So how did Bangor end up being the bath salts capital of America? After 15 years, no one - not even the people most directly involved in coordinating the city’s response to the crisis - has a very good answer to that question.

Former police chief Gastia said that, based on his experience, he doesn’t believe there was an out of state source that was shipping the drug in through established trafficking pipelines. Dr. Ng, from Acadia Hospital, said there was some overlap between bath salts users and distributors and people using and distributing meth in the Bangor area, but that certainly wasn’t a full explanation. In Bangor, most users were purchasing bath salts from local businesses, or from basement chemists cooking up their own versions of the drug.

“I remember seeing it literally next to the cash register at one convenience store,” Gastia recalled. “This totally volatile and dangerous drug, as easy to buy as anything. And incredibly cheap, too. And the thing is, it was available like that in other parts of the country. Why didn’t it happen in Connecticut or New Jersey? Why here? I just genuinely don’t know. It’s all baffling. It’s still baffling to me.”

Between 2010 and 2011, drug-related crimes in Bangor jumped by 35 percent, a statistic Gastia attributes entirely to bath salts. He said he and his officers were too busy combatting the problem at hand to ask “why” types of questions.

“At the time, we were deep in the midst of a public health and public safety emergency. I think we decided that it was much more important to stop it, and to help people, than to spend time on figuring the rest of it out,” he said.

Once law enforcement and medical professionals learned how to more effectively deal with people under the influence of bath salts, Bangor-area public health providers mounted an educational campaign to warn about the dangers of the drug, with reading materials and videos distributed throughout the region that fall, and community forums held.

Though the Maine Legislature had banned the drugs in July 2011, in October of that year, the federal government banned the three main chemical components of bath salts. By 2012, the availability of the drugs in not just Bangor but nationwide had plummeted, and multiple trafficking arrests had been made, cutting off supply even further. The flood of unhinged emergency room patients had been reduced to a trickle. In July 2012, President Obama signed a bill banning a wide array of synthetic drugs, including bath salts and synthetic marijuana.

Less than a year after it started, the bath salts crisis in Bangor was, for the most part, over. Isolated incidents continued to pop up over the next few years, and trafficking arrests continued into 2014 and 2015, but the overwhelming influx of 2011 had ended. Today, few people other than those that actually lived in Bangor at the time remember it even happened - though those that do remember have it permanently seared into their memories.

Despite the bans, synthetic drugs are still out there. It’s relatively easy for home chemists to change one molecule in a banned substance and make a new drug formula that escapes the ban. And ban-skirting drugs are still widely available in gas stations nationwide - from sketchy pills that claim to give men a massive erection, to addictive substances like kratom and tianeptine, both of which are presently 100 percent legal and available to purchase in stores in Maine.

In Bangor, the bath salts crisis presaged other issues currently facing the city, like the twin public health crises of homelessness and substance use disorder. Looking back on the crisis, Dr. Ng, who now leads community services at Acadia Hospital, said that he believed it helped organizations and service providers Bangor learn about the value of collaboration - and that there’s a lot that can be learned from it for people struggling to combat the crises of today.

“In a public health crisis - which is what this was - you can’t have people on their own islands. You have to communicate with each other, and collaborate with each other. And you have to have follow-through on every step of the process. Otherwise, you won’t actually solve the problem,” Ng said. “I think how we responded to the bath salts crisis and the urgency with which we had to respond are useful when we think about how we deal with homelessness, or the opioid crisis. The community has to see it as an urgent priority, and you have to get buy-in from everyone that can help. It’s hard, and it’s complicated. But it can be done.”

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week… YIKES. And we had such a nice weekend, too! I’ll get to the big political news of the week later. Let’s talk about far less pressing matters first, shall we?

• This weekend, we survived a heat wave, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, potentially limb-threatening fireworks, ODing on hot dogs and the Taylor and Travis wedding. And we found out robots will soon begin roaming the streets of Bangor. I have to admit: the latter news deeply unsettled me when I first read it, as it is a general truth that most applications of robots, AI-powered or otherwise, is a recipe for either disaster or annoyance. In this instance, however, I welcome our new robot overlords, as they will be engaged in the noble task of analyzing all of Bangor’s sidewalks and crosswalks to improve pedestrian accessibility - something that would take us fleshy humans many weeks longer to accomplish. Or at least, that’s what they’re telling us.

• Really cool science reporting from the Boston Globe on an experimental forest in the Penobscot County town of Edinburg, where scientists are researching tree microbes that can consume methane as a potential way to reduce the amount of methane in the atmosphere. Kind of like the astrophages in “Project Hail Mary,” except for good!

• RIP to Victory Chimes, the historic Maine schooner that sank during a storm in Brooklyn, New York over the weekend. Though she was built in Delaware, she’d called Maine home for nearly 80 years, and was named Maine’s “state windjammer” in 1990 and appeared on our 2003 state quarter. I guess two guys bought it in 2023 with plans to turn it into a floating restaurant in NYC, a plan that hadn’t yet materialized, apparently. Owning a boat that’s just for fun, regardless of the size, seems like a huge pain in the ass, doesn’t it? I don’t know a single person that’s bought a boat for fun that hasn’t had tons of trouble.

• This weekend is the grand opening of the new and greatly expanded International Cryptozoology Museum on Broadway in Bangor! The museum is open from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and will have lots of vendors, special guests, presentations and more on hand, all accessible with regular museum admission (only ten bucks for adults). True believer or total skeptic, is it not incredibly cool that something like this is now open in the Bangor area? Now, where’s my $10 million, so I can buy 74-78 Central St. and turn it into a museum and cultural center?

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Top five, or seven, or ten lists about things to see/do/try in Maine are a dime a dozen. Yours truly has written more than her fair share of them over the years. I was surprised, however, by this interesting list from the BDN 40 years ago, which named the seven wonders of Maine - none of which are places that regularly appear on any list even today. I’ve heard of most of them, but I have to admit I’ve only ever been to one: Height of Land, way out in western Maine, near Rangeley, on a glorious fall day many years ago. I’d love to check out the Debsconeag Ice Caves, though! And paddling in the Great Heath sounds super cool as well. Have you been to any of these places? Let us know in the comments.

Music & Dance

July 9-15: Bar Harbor Music Festival, classical music, opera and jazz performances throughout Bar Harbor including Criterion Theatre, Jesup Library and more; click here for full schedule

July 9: Monthly sea chantey singalong, 4 p.m., Penobscot Marine Museum, Searsport

July 9: Belfast Summer Nights presents Rockville and Very Greasy, 5:30 p.m., Steamboat Landing Park, Belfast

July 9: Traveling Wilburys Revue, 7:30 p.m., Center Theatre, Dover-Foxcroft

July 10: Lucy and Gus, Shrimp Jesus and the White Falcons, 5 p.m., 419 South St., Blue Hill

July 10: Ring and Strings acoustic duo, 7 p.m., Milbridge Theatre, Milbridge

July 10: Two Piano Jazz Duo with Scott Martin and Tom Porter, 6 p.m., Surry Arts Barn, Surry

July 10: Lazers in the Jungle, 6 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

July 10: Waterfront Concert Series presents Chris Ross, 6 p.m., Harbor Park, Ellsworth

July 10: Madison Lake, Black Box Recovery, Empty Your Pockets and R0B1N Gaming, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

July 10: Songwriter Ashley McBride, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

July 11: Oodelally, 6 p.m., Fogtown Brewing, Ellsworth

July 11: In The Kingdom of Nightmares, Paradise is Cancelled, Manuel, Castle Crusher and Melody of a Car Crash, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town

July 11: Jammy Buffett, Jimmy Buffett tribute band, 7 p.m., Criterion Theatre, Bar Harbor

July 13: Nina Emery and Ellis Sanchez Jazz Duo, 6 p.m., Hey Sailor, Searsport

July 15: Panstorm steel pan band, 6 p.m., Lura Hoit Pool Gazebo, Hampden

July 15: Summer Music Series presents the Silver Duo, piano and cello, Bangor Public Library, Bangor

July 15: Sonja & Friends Jazz Ensemble, 5:30 p.m., Alamo Theatre, Bucksport

Theatre & Comedy

July 9-12: Penobscot Theatre Company presents “The Fantasticks,” daily at the Bangor Opera House, Bangor

July 10: Opera House Arts presents “Late and Alone: An Intimate Portrait of Johnny Cash,” 7 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

July 11: Eye Candy Dance Studio presents The Night Circus, a night of neon-lit circus arts, 8 p.m., Eye Candy Studio, Bangor

July 12: “Bait and Switch: From Hollywood to Haulin’ Traps,” one-woman show by Anna Conathan, 7 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

July 14: The Norman Magician Experience, 6 p.m., Stonington Opera House, Stonington

July 14: Comedian Juston McKinney, 7 p.m., Colonial Theatre, Belfast

Arts, Books, Film & Culture

July 9: Reading and signing with Rylan Hynes of their book “Grafting,” 7 p.m., Bookspace, Columbia Street, Bangor

July 10: Reading and signing with Christina Baker Kline of her new book, “The Foursome,” 10 a.m., Bangor Public Library, Bangor

July 11: Reading and signing by horror author David Wilson, 11 a.m., The Emporium Spooky Goods, Bangor

July 12: “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” 1 p.m. screening, Colonial Theatre, Belfast

July 12-13: “My Neighbor Totoro,” 7 p.m., Black Bear Cinemas, Orono

July 14: “What Should We Remember About the American Revolution?” talk by Liam Riordan, 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill

July 14: “Jonathan Lowder’s Truckhouse, 1776-1779: History and Archaeology of a Revolutionary War Trading Post,” talk by Chip Lagerbom, 6:30 p.m., Belfast Free Library, Belfast

July 15: “Researching Women in the American Revolution,” talk by Melanie McComb, 2 p.m., Belfast Free Library, Belfast

July 15: Reading and signing by mystery author Paul Doiran, 6 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor

July 15: Leonard Lecture Series presents artist Thuan Vu, 5:30 p.m., Zillman Art Museum, Bangor

Fairs, Festivals, Markets, Outdoors & Misc.

July 10-19: Orrington Old Home Week, annual community celebration, multiple events throughout the week, throughout Orrington; more info here

July 11-12: Dawnland Festival of Arts & Ideas, presented by the Abbe Museum, College of the Atlantic campus, Bar Harbor

July 11: Downtown Bangor Summer Sidewalk Arts Festival, art and craft vendors, food, music and more, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Central Street, Bangor

July 11: Annual Strawberry Shortcake Festival, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., Old Town Museum, Old Town

July 11: Twilight nature walk, 8 p.m., Fields Pond Audubon Center, Holden

… so yeah. This week sure is something. “Something” is a word. So aren’t the words “hot mess.” “Chaotic.” “Implosion.” “Men are disappointing.” Plenty of other words spring to mind when I think about the past four days and a certain disgraced Maine oyster farmer. There are also sayings, like “Don’t believe the hype” and “Opinions are like assholes; everyone’s got one.” Honestly, what is wrong with the New York Times, who claimed - falsely! - that Heather Cox Richardson and Patrick Dempsey were both considering running to replace Platner? Patently untrue and pure unsupported speculation from some overpaid political consultants. Please, large national media outlets: please just shut up and let us figure this out. I know you won’t. But please? We might make a mess of it. Please just let us do it ourselves.

Here are the words I’ll much more gladly paraphrase from my friend Rob, a compassionate scholar of politics, who said that anger, confusion and disappointment are all correct emotions to feel - but that the cold comfort of cynicism is incompatible with the belief that a better world is possible. An even more cock-eyed optimist view would be to say that the messenger isn’t as important as the message. It’s not him. It’s us. We are the ones we’ve been looking for. We’re the ones that showed up every weekend to rallies and house parties and town halls to share our fears and frustrations and to be seen and heard by one another. It is a movement - a deeply imperfect one, but a movement, bent on improving the lives of everyday people and opposing the corruption now rotting our system from the inside. As this shitstorm rains down on us over the next few weeks and, for better or worse, we eventually emerge with a new Senate candidate, I will cling to that life raft. I will hang on for dear life.

Katie Aselton and her cast and crew had already packed up and returned to Los Angeles before almost anybody knew they’d spent two weeks shooting a film in Bangor in November 2024.

Aselton, a director and actor known for her roles in shows like “The League” and “Legion” and for directing films like “Mack & Rita” and “Black Rock,” quietly filmed her latest directorial effort, “Their Town,” in Bangor, with small, highly focused crew and cast, including lead actors Chosen Jacobs and Ora Duplass - Aselton’s own 18-year-old daughter, in her film debut. “Their Town” tells the intimate, deeply personal story of two teenagers finding connection through big emotional and philosophical questions, over the course of one chilly fall night. It will have its Maine premiere this Friday, July 10, at the Maine International Film Festival in Waterville.

Almost nobody knew Aselton and company were shooting a movie on location in recognizable Bangor places like Broadway Park, 2 Feet Brewing, the Bangor Waterfront and others. Some may know, though, that Aselton is herself a Mainer - she grew up in Milbridge, and graduated from Narraguagus High School in 1996. She and her husband, Mark Duplass - known for his Emmy-nominated role in “The Morning Show” and producing films and TV series with his brother, Jay, including the acclaimed “Wild, Wild Country” and “Somebody, Somewhere” - shot their first feature film, the delightful micro-budget comedy “The Puffy Chair,” in Maine more than 20 years ago. “Their Town,” also written by Duplass, is the third film the pair have shot in Maine, and is a love letter to teenage yearning - and, in many ways, to Maine, and to Bangor in particular.

Aselton sat down last week for a chat about filming in Maine, her youth Down East, and the family business of moviemaking.

Did you and Mark always have Bangor in mind as the setting for this story, and as the place you’d shoot the film? Why here?

Mark wrote the script with Bangor in mind, because there’s this great quality of Bangor where it feels - and I mean this with the most respect and love - it feels a little time-stopped. Like, the downtown area feels very untouched by big box stores and whatnot, and it’s very separated from the area of town that does have that. Although I do have to say, the Bangor Mall was my mecca as a kid. We drove there all the time. An hour and 20 minutes just to go to the Bangor Mall! It was such a destination. And now it’s kind of run down and deteriorating. It’s kind of a graveyard. And then downtown is on the upswing, and it’s so charming. I think the look and feel of it really ended up being a big part of the story of the film.

It was also so great to shoot it in November, when it’s kind of chilly and cold and you can see your breath. It just felt kind of romantic. Everywhere we pointed our camera was beautiful. Nothing beats Maine in fall. There’s something so crisp about the light. Everything feels and looks crackly and crisp. And we only shot for two weeks, and in that time, the leaves fell. The film is supposed to be one day, so we had to kind of contend with that.

So, by all accounts, “Their Town” is an incredibly intimate film. Mark wrote the script, and you directed it, so it’s also obviously very personal. What made this film in particular the next project you wanted to take on?

I just loved the dignity that Mark treated these characters with. And I think in my experience of having two teenage daughters… there’s so much depth there, and they’re so thoughtful. They’re almost, like, too thoughtful, right? They’re in their heads all the time. And I think we do them a disservice by being like, ‘Ugh, kids, am I right?’ These kids are so incredibly thoughtful and deep, and they have big takes on the world. I still remember that feeling of being discounted because I was a teenager or a kid or whatever, but their feelings are incredibly valid and should be considered. I think very often in teen movies they get sort of stereotyped as like, mean girls, or catty, or whatever, and it’s like, no, they’re really weighing their life decisions. Their loves are big, and their feelings are tumultuous. I think there’s so much there to explore, and I also think they hold a lot, and their insecurities are so big, and they’re taking the pressure that we put on them as adults very seriously. It’s a scary world to be growing up in. I think it’s a very different world than what you and I were growing up in.

And I really just loved the way Mark wrote these two kids. I loved the way Chosen and Ora brought these two characters so sensitively to life. I think there’s so much to be said for the rare moments that we as people, regardless of what age, feel truly seen and to have that sort of be the crux of the story was so cool, and, like, that can happen at any age, but I think it’s very rare that we allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to be truly seen by someone else. Those are those nights that are so magical, you know?

I saw somewhere else someone very aptly compared it to like the sort of teen version of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy [“Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight,” all starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy and set over the course of one day in Vienna, Paris and Greece, respectively - required viewing!].

Definitely. Without question, that’s a direct influence. Those are some of our favorite movies.

And, you know, Bangor and Paris are very similar, obviously.

Oh yes, they get compared every day. They say Bangor is the Paris of New England.

Truly, nothing says romance like a giant Paul Bunyan statue. Anyway, speaking of being a kid, you grew up in Milbridge, in Washington County. Were you an artsy kid? Were you a theater kid? Where did your path to where you are now begin?

I was all of those things. My mom was the high school art teacher at Narraguagus, so art was definitely always very much a part of my childhood and creativity. She was very great about going down to Boston, and taking me to the theater. I remember she took me to see “Les Miserables” when I was 9, and I, like, looked up and saw Cosette, who was the same age as me, and had the same, like, long blonde hair, and I was like, wait a second. We loved watching movies together, and we loved “Saturday Night Live,” We had the box set from Time Life, so that was major. I was a member of the drama club at Narraguagus all four years but we didn’t put on one play. I got my picture in the yearbook though. My parents had us in ballet, at the Libitski School of Dance in Ellsworth. I was also the youngest by far - my closest sibling is 6 years older than me - and so I was sort of on my own a lot to go out in the woods and my imagination would just run rampant. I grew up right on the ocean, and so, the rocks were my playground. I was always creating these fantasy worlds. My imagination was wild.

That is definitely a specific kind of Maine thing. The imaginative little girl out in the woods or on the shore, all alone, making up her own fantasy world. I speak from experience!

I should also mention, however, that my sister Mary directed a lot of plays in our home. She was the director, and I would often get cast as, like, the deer running through the scene. So those were my first roles.

You’ve come back to Maine a lot, not just to visit family, obviously, but to film - you’re one of the rare filmmakers that actually films in Maine! Three movies now, including “The Puffy Chair” and “Black Rock.” The conventional wisdom about filming in Maine is that it’s basically impossible, and super expensive and complicated because there’s not a lot of film infrastructure, and there’s no real tax breaks, and on and on. How do you make it work?

I will say it’s easier now than it was when we shot “Black Rock.” When we shot that, the closest rental house for cameras and whatnot was Boston. For “Their Town,” we were able to work with a company out of Portland, which was definitely more convenient, but we still had to drive it all up from Portland to Bangor. It is definitely tricky when it comes to the logistics of shooting.

That being said, what you get production value-wise is unbeatable. Like, you turn the camera on, and you have a gorgeous shot. It is a real gift. And, truthfully, the communities we’ve shot in are incredibly supportive. You make a movie in Los Angeles, everyone wants to make a buck. In Maine, people just want to show how beautiful their town is. ‘Oh, you’re from here? How can I help?’ It makes the technical trade-off so worth it.

You and Mark have such a family business going on, between Mark and Jay [Duplass, Mark’s brother and producing partner), you and your sister Mary [a producer on “Their Town”], and your daughter Ora now. What are the best parts of having this close-knit family relationship in both your personal and professional lives?

I think there’s a couple answers to that. One is that there’s something really nice about knowing what the people you’re working with are truly capable of. I know what Mary is capable of. Mark knows everything I am capable of. We know when you push and when to pull back, and it’s so much easier to calibrate a working relationship if you have such intimate knowledge about the people you’re working with.

The second level is that we have a very strict no-asshole policy. I won’t do it. I won’t work with someone that makes my life difficult. We’re so lucky. We’re not tasked with curing cancer. Our job at the end of the day is entertainment, and that is such a privilege. If you don’t show up every day acknowledging that, I have no time for you.

[A beat]

Can I tell you a great story about my sister?

Please do!

So, the climax scene in “Their Town” is shot in a park at night, with a swingset and everything. We found the perfect park in Bangor [Broadway Park], and we scouted it in October. Come November, however, there was all this construction on 95, over by TJ Maxx and that area, and it was all happening at night, and we’re shooting at night, and it’s actually our last night of shooting. They are just dismantling that bridge. Constant bang, bang, bang. Our sound guy was like, ‘This is gonna be an issue.’ We’re praying it’ll shop, or that maybe we can fade it out in the mix. And then all of a sudden, Mary just disappears. And then within like 30 minutes, the banging stops. This is a federal construction project, a multi-million dollar multi-year project. I don’t want to know what Mary said to them, but the rest of the night it was pin drop quiet. Isn’t that so Maine?

That is a powerful woman. If I need to stop traffic some time, I know who to call.

Maine International Film Festival passes are now on sale. Tickets for the 6:30 p.m., July 10 screening of “Their Town” at the Waterville Opera House are available online at miff.org.

Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I’m taking a fun-sized vacation, such as it is; i.e., no Tuesday post from me. I’ve got some very cool stories I’ve been working on for a long time that’ll be going up in the next few weeks, and I’m about to head into the woods for a few days for festivities with family and friends. And, as you’ll see be…

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Good morning (OK, afternoon I guess) from eastern Maine, where this weekend, you’ll see me at Bangor Pride! Don’t forget: the parade starts at 11 a.m. Saturday, and the festival is on the waterfront this year - not in West Market Square, as it has been in years past. Read my piece from a couple weeks ago about the history of LGBTQ+ activism in the Bango…

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Nobody remembers anyone’s phone number anymore. If you asked me to reel off the number of any of my closest friends and relatives without looking them up, I could not do it. Our phones aren’t phones, and we really shouldn…

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Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, I discovered that I’m mildly psychic, apparently, since the Orrington trash plant caught on fire on Tuesday night not two weeks after I brought up the last garbage fire there on this here Substack. It was a very…

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I have a skincare routine, the current iteration of which I’ve followed for the past year or so. I switch between various face washes in the shower …

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Good morning from eastern Maine, where last weekend, I walked down to the Maine Savings Amphitheater on the Bangor Waterfront and shook my ass to rapper-producer Big Boi’s set (alongside Sleepy Brown!) on Saturday, as the special guest on the bill alongside Kid Cudi and others. It was, essentiall…

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