This Week's Haul, Jan. 22: Snowflakes falling on my head
And: Perry's, Famous for Clams
Good morning from eastern Maine, where this week, while walking to my car in my workplace parking lot, I witnessed a small avalanche of snow slide off the porch roof of a neighboring building and narrowly miss completely taking out a woman walking her dog. We shared a brief acknowledgement of the situation, agreed that it was a “close one,” and went about our days.
The madness continues. Protect your neighbors. Tell everyone where the goon squad is. Maine won’t stand for this shit. At least NATO managed to convince this addled old man to drop his idiotic Greenland plan. Or did they? I don’t know anymore. Keep the faith, friends.
Hey, the guy that plays the guy forced to take care of the baby of the vault overseer with the eyepatch on Amazon Prime’s “Fallout” is from Maine! And so is the woman who glued her eyeball shut while applying fake lashes on “The Pitt”!
The factory that makes official Lincoln Logs toys and manufactures golf tees used by professional golfers is based in the Waldo County town of Burnham (no relation, I swear). It’s closing later this year. Maine used to be the world’s leader producer of wood products like these - toys, tees, toothpicks, drumsticks, popsicle sticks, and on and on. What’s left of that legacy today? Not much.
Other worthy candidates for how rural a place really is besides the presence of a large grocery store: has a traffic light and/or a four way stop, has a post office that’s open regular hours, has more than one person working at the town office, can get decent internet, has a library, has a Dunkin. When my hometown of Searsport got a Dunkin it was earth-shattering news.
Anybody want to buy the old Bangor Grange Hall with me? It’s only $200k, even though it probably needs at least that much in work. We could start a cult! Bangor could use a good cult, right? Big kitchen for preparing big, bland vegan meals. Big stage for holding hours-long mandatory ecstatic dance meditation sessions. Big enough parking lot for the spaceships to land. Whaddya say?
A couple years ago I was perusing the t-shirts at a local vintage shop and came across a seemingly never-worn tee emblazoned with the phrase “Perry’s Restaurant, Bangor, Maine: Famous for Clams, Shucked by City Hall.” I knew exactly what it referred to: in the mid-1990s, the owners of Perry’s Restaurant (famous for clams) on Main Street in Bangor fought a losing battle against Bangor City Hall and the developers of the new Shaw’s Supermarket, who wanted their land for their project. As is so often the case, the little guys lost, Perry’s (famous for clams) closed after 47 years, and it and all the buildings around it were demolished to make way for Shaw’s. Hard to picture anything else there, these days. I know the secret to their famous fried clam recipe, however. Ask me sometime. I might tell you.
Music & Dance
Jan. 22: Songwriter Ben Cosgrove, 7 p.m., The Underground Lounge, Belfast
Jan. 23: 40 Thieves, folk duo, 6 p.m., Marshall Wharf Brewing Company, Belfast
Jan. 23: Songwriter Chris Ross, 6 p.m., Fogtown Brewing Company, Ellsworth
Jan. 23: Snake Lips, Gunshot Glitter and Care For; Radon, Orono
Jan. 23: The Leftovers Americana ensemble, 7 p.m., Black Moon Public House, Ellsworth
Jan. 23: FOCOism, Blunt Force Trauma, manismurder, Rhys and Floor 13, 7 p.m., The Old Town Theatre, Old Town
Jan. 23: In the Kingdom of Nightmares, Wormhole and Revenant, 7 p.m, Hey Sailor, Searsport
Jan. 23: Bangor Contradance feat. Gus LaCasse, Pepin Mittlehauser and Alice Slater, 6 p.m., Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor
Jan. 24: Salsa Rueda Latin dance night, 6 p.m., Fogtown Brewing Company, Ellsworth
Jan. 24: Trixie, Dungavenhoover, Horse Funeral, Gash and more; benefits Project Relief Maine, 7:30 p.m., Red Rabbit Bazaar, Bangor
Jan. 25: Burns Night Dinner feat. music by Castlebay, piper Ernie Smith and Scottish country dancers, 4 p.m., Bangor Masonic Center, Union Street, Bangor
Theatre & Comedy
Jan. 22: Staged reading of “A Number” by Caryl Churchill, 6:30 p.m., Pulling Corks, Pendleston Street, Belfast
Jan. 23: “Peter and the Wolf,” theater performance with live orchestra, 6 p.m., Grand Theatre, Ellsworth
Jan. 23: Forbidden Broadway tour presents “Merrily We Stole a Song,” 7 p.m., Collins Center for the Arts, University of Maine, Orono
Jan. 24: Scripts in the Spotlight readers theater presents “The Shark is Broken,” 7 p.m., The Stage Door, Bangor
Jan. 24: The Met in HD screens “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” 1 p.m., Collins Center for the Arts, University of Maine, Orono
Jan. 27: Dancing With The Stars Live national tour, 7:30 p.m., Cross Insurance Center, Bangor
Arts, Books, Film & Culture
Jan. 22: “Discover Your Nearby Land Trusts,” talk by local outdoorspeople, 6 p.m., Bangor Public Library, Bangor
Jan. 24: “Jump Start Your Writing in the New Year,” free workshop with Linda Buckmaster, 10:30 a.m., Belfast Free Library, Belfast
Jan. 24: “Ten Inch Movie Stars,” stop motion animation workshop with Katherine Blakeney, 11 a.m., Ellsworth Public Library, Ellsworth
Jan. 27: Screening of short documentary “In and Out of Maine: The New People,” with panel discussion on back to the land movement, 7 p.m., Blue Hill Public Library, Blue Hill
Jan. 28: Derry-Free Horror Book Club reads “Dark Sisters” by Kristi DeMeester, 7:30 p.m., Bookspace, Bangor
Jan. 28: “The Acadian Tragedy and its Suppression in Canadian History Books,” talk with Richard Mullins, 5:30 p.m., Bangor Public Library
Oscar nominations were just announced (literally just announced as I am writing this!) and though there’s a little schadenfreude for me as a “Wicked” hater (it was so boring to me) that it got completely shut out, I am also so delighted to see Delroy Lindo was nominated for “Sinners.” He’s an incredible actor - he was robbed of a nomination for Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods.” And, I just watched him on “Finding Your Roots” on PBS, and he was perhaps the most articulate and sensitive guest of that show’s entire history. Fascinating man. I’m also so pleased that Amy Magidan was nominated for “Weapons.” We love an overdue recognition moment. And, don’t forget that the nominated documentary “Come See Me In The Good Light” is about poet Andrea Gibson, a Calais native! The Oscars are really the only awards that I care about, for some reason. It’s my Superbowl, in that it’s an excuse to make predictions and eat snacks and drink too much wine and talk to the TV on a Sunday night.