Down East 2013 ©
SPECIAL DELIVERY
One man’s trash is another man’s . . . mail?
The twenty-five or so seasonal residents on Sutton Island, between Northeast Harbor and the Cranberry Isles, have always had a very different understanding of the term “junk mail.” For more than half a century, their letters and packages have been delivered by a local boat captain to a specially marked trashcan on the island’s main dock. Tradition held that residents both sent and received their mail from the can, which became a cherished town meeting place.
But last summer, when the U.S. Postal Service finally caught on to the practice — hey, it only took them sixty years to notice — they shut it down, citing security reasons. Ironically, the peculiar delivery method was done away with after one of the island’s residents complained to the new postmistress in nearby Northeast Harbor that the out-going mail she had placed in the can was not being picked up quickly enough.
The U.S. Postal Service’s decision to end the trashcan practice has island residents fuming, as most of them relied on it to pay bills, keep in touch with friends and family, and even receive medications. But at the heart of their complaints is the simple matter of convenience: The can is at the end of the dock. The U.S. Post Office in Northeast Harbor is two miles away. By boat.
Heidi MacGregor, the postmistress in Northeast Harbor, could not be reached to discuss the issue, but Tom Rizzo, spokesman for the Northern New England District of the U.S. Postal Service, says he stands behind her decision as “upholding our charter to preserve the sanctity of the mail.” That task, he argues, is the first and foremost duty of postal workers. Convenience be damned.
MacGregor is hard at work coming up with a delivery solution that works for everyone. Options include holding the mail at the post office until Sutton Island residents can make the trip to collect it. Or, if he or she is up for the job, a local boat captain could become the legal agent of participating residents’ mail, signing for letters at the post office and then delivering them to customers any way they see fit. In this case, the captain would assume full responsibility for all letters, cards, and packages.
In the end, Rizzo points out that this is not a bureaucratic issue; rather, it’s a matter of making sure the mail gets from the right people, to the right people, securely. “When this mode of delivery started decades ago, it was a simpler time,” reminisces Rizzo. “People had less concern about having their mail — and their identities — stolen. In today’s world, we really have to watch out for our customers’ mail.”
OF MOUTHS AND MAINE
UNE aims to shrink the Pine Tree State’s dentist shortage.
Being the fifth most toothless state in the nation is not something Mainers are proud of. We all cringed, hands to jaw, reading the New York Times feature about our collective molar shortage this past March. But the article told it as it is: “Maine has trouble recruiting dentists because many young graduates do not want to work in rural areas. The shortage is much less acute in Portland, the state’s largest city. Maine also does not have a dental school — the closest are in Boston, about fifty miles from the state’s southernmost town.”
That last reason, the lack of a school of dentistry, is hopefully about to change if Danielle Ripich, the president of the University of New England (UNE) has anything to say about it. “It’s a pretty serious problem,” says Ripich. “The average ratio is one dentist for every 1,700 people. We’re not even at one to every three thousand, and we would need fifty-six dentists to get us there. We have half as many dentists per capita as the rest of the U.S.”
President Ripich is determined that UNE will be part of the solution with an innovative program designed to recruit and retain dentists in rural Maine. The new school would implement supervised clinics around the state. At those clinics, students would train for up to two years in the same place, and treat underserved populations, like children on MaineCare who now wait up to two years for dental treatment, according to Ripich.
The University of New England is opening a pharmacy school this fall, in part to fill a similar hole in the number of pharmacists across the state. But the dental school has one major hurdle: “I can’t open it until I have the money,” explains Ripich. “Once we start up, we’ve got a business model we think will run very well. We just have to get the start-up funds in place.”
UNE was seeking five million dollars to be added to the November bond package, but the Maine legislature shortsightedly denied the request. Ripich says if the school can’t secure funds (totaling about twenty million dollars) from the state and private sources, she’ll go to Washington.
“The return on that investment in terms of scholarships for Maine kids is huge. The school will become an economic driver,” insists Ripich. “We’re creating a business.”
All Mainers have to do is open their pockets and say “Ahhhhh.”
GRAVITY ALWAYS WINS
A gifted stone on Colby College’s campus proves Sir Isaac Newton right — again.
Colby College is home to a most unusual monument. Known around campus as the “anti-gravity stone,” the rough three-foot granite slab has had, ahem, a rocky history. It has been moved several times since its original placement in front of the Keyes Science Building, mostly due to intoxicated college students reveling in the irony of rolling it down the campus’ many slopes. And as any Mayflower Hill resident can tell you, it endures regular bombardment by tennis balls as a prominent hole in “Campus Golf.” If only the students knew the odd history behind the stone, they might think twice before lowering their shoulders into it — or swinging their clubs in its direction.
It all began with Roger Babson, the successful businessman and future founder of Babson, Webber, and Utopia colleges. After losing both his oldest sister and his grandson in tragic drowning accidents, Babson began a centuries-long battle royale with Newton’s Second Law of Motion. In 1948, he established the Gravity Research Foundation with one modest goal: to find and develop a partial insulator against gravity.
With his vendetta against gravity firmly established, Babson donated $12,500 to Colby in 1960. The donation included a stipulation that the college erect a monument promoting the research of anti-gravity.
The stone might be lifted once again when the college breaks ground on a new science building on its current site. Patricia C. Murphy, director of Colby’s Physical Plant Department, says cheekily that she hopes “the relocation of the stone won’t throw off the balance of construction.”
For now, the stone now rests — solidly — in front of Colby’s Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center. Despite Babson’s best efforts, gravity prevails.
OUR OFF-SEASON SECRET
Thirty fabulous days hath September.
July and August — the high-summer months get all the love. Somehow there exists this idea, etched back to the age of the rusticators, that the proper season for eating lobster, visiting Acadia, or roaming the North Woods expires as the back-to-school bells toll.
Resident Mainers like to perpetuate this myth because by doing so it makes September all the more sweet — for us. We know that this month straddling summer and fall, this month that ushers out the tourists and brings the return of dry, crisp nights, is undoubtedly the best month to be in Maine.
But apparently this fact really is a secret. In September the Maine Turnpike boasts a sizable 15 percent decrease in traffic from August highs. And guests at the state-owned visitor centers drop by roughly 42 percent.
“All the stores are open, and everything is still in full-swing,” says Tina Hewett-Gordon, the general manager at the Nonantum Resort Hotel in Kennebunkport. Translation: There are fewer people to compete with for dinner reservations and hotel rooms. “Plus,” says Hewett-Gordon, “the inns are typically in a shoulder season, so it’s a value.”
Value is an understatement. At the Nonantum, prices drop 40 percent from Labor Day until the twenty-fifth of September, according to Hewett-Gordon. Deals can be found across the board, from lodging and dining to shopping and sightseeing.
Another perk: The weather. “What’s nice about September,” says Steve Lyons, director of marketing at the Maine Office of Tourism, “is that the weather is always very seasonable.” By seasonable, Lyons means
incredible. September’s average temperature is right around sixty degrees. It’s sunny 62 percent of the time (versus July and August’s 63 percent), and while the average precipitation is slightly higher than the summer months, it is significantly lower than October. (We’ll ignore the fact that last September was the wettest September on record in Portland, wetter, even, than this past June!)
Anecdotally, it’s hard to deny that September is, as the years go by, becoming one of Maine’s best months in terms of weather. “There’s nothing officially published on this yet,” says Butch Roberts with the National Weather Service in Gray, “but it’s something we’ve noticed.”
Unfortunately, like all good things, September’s secret savings and temperate sun come to a swift end. “After the twenty-fifth,” says the Nonantum’s Hewett-Gordon, “the fall foliage prices start to kick back in.” So as temps fall, the prices rise. Let’s keep the secret between us, though.
GREAT GRANITE
Stonecutting has returned to Vinalhaven.
Maine is one of those places where, just when you think a way of life has died out altogether, someone brings it back. That’s what is happening on Vinalhaven, where four local guys sporting more than their share of gray hair have started the first commercial granite-mining operation on the Penobscot Bay island in almost a half-century.
The men, who range in age from fifty-seven to more than seventy years old, call themselves the Four Fossils and have leased part of the long-dormant Swenson Quarry on the north side of the island. There they are using a circa-1955 diamond-wire saw to slice away slabs of the island’s famous granite, which, during the industry’s heyday in the nineteenth century, was so valued that it was included in structures such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the New York Custom House. But where the columns that Vinalhaven stone-carvers once shipped for the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City were up to sixty feet long, the pieces the Four Fossils are cutting are closer to a dozen or so feet long.
Still, the mere presence of a granite saw — the nineteenth-century carvers used to drill and split the stone to mine it, so the Fossils’ saw is believed to be the first ever used on Vinalhaven — is arousing plenty of local interest on this rocky isle. This year the Four Fossils won the bid to create a forty-inch-tall retaining wall on East Main Street in downtown Carvers Harbor, allowing island residents to enjoy local granite instead of standard, ugly concrete blocks. In addition, the youngest Fossil, local real estate agent Wes Reed, has secured commissions to build stairs for a client on North Haven and a Stonehenge-style entryway for another. (Reed holds a master’s of fine arts degree, in addition to his Realtor’s license.)
But Reed is quick to point out that while he and his fellow stone-cutters are enjoying their new activity, they have no intention of bringing Vinalhaven all the way back to its granite glory. “I was up there at the quarry this morning from five-fifteen until noontime,” he remarks. “It’s not my day job, and I tell my wife that if anyone says I’m getting out of the real estate business, tell them I’m just selling smaller pieces.”
TEN YEARS BEFORE THE MAST
After more than a decade, sailors still spot something out of place in Searsport.
Certain details within the Maine landscape go unnoticed by all but a select few. Passing through Searsport, at the head of Penobscot Bay, most motorists are struck by the impressive brick buildings that make up the town’s commercial district and the stately white church that lords over the campus of the Penobscot Marine Museum. For sailors, however, this idyllic view is marred by the modern sailboat mast and boom that stand prominently on the museum’s front lawn alongside Route 1. Why would an institution that boasts one of the finest collections of maritime art and artifacts in Maine want such an anachronistic appendage in its dooryard?
Ben Fuller, the museum’s curator and a world-renowned maritime historian, doesn’t know. “I think maybe it came here because it was inexpensive, and we needed a mast to stick up on the lawn,” Fuller guesses.
Turns out he’s right. “It was a gift from someone who was replacing their mast at Lyman-Morse in Thomaston,”
explains Renny Stackpole, the former director of the Penobscot Marine Museum who accepted the donation in the late 1990s. Stackpole says he decided to raise the mast on the lawn — done the old way, with block-and-tackle instead of using a crane — in the hope that it would appease locals who were angered when the museum bought and razed a garage that had stood in the same spot for many years. No such luck, he remembers. “I got a lot of flak at the time because it was not a period mast, but at least it served a purpose in getting some attention for the museum.”
Stackpole admits that he never intended the mast to stand forever on the museum’s campus, and curator Fuller says he would be open to other options. “We’d love to have a nice wood one, with all the real gear and stuff like that, but that’s never really been organized,” he says.
It sounds like the project just needs a healthy gust of wind to get moving.
MAINE EMOTICONS
<<<-- Welcome to the Pine Tree State.
X : > Get your deer yet?
Zl:¬)= I’m at the farmstand.
:) o> Mmm. Ice Cream.
?:-{ Isn’t that Angus King?
SB-) No, it’s Stephen King.
;-) Oh yes, you can get there from here.
ONE MAINER TO ANOTHER:
“I am completely recognized as an authentic painter of Maine born in Maine, but this recognition comes, I am happy to say, from the state itself and the native spirit which recognizes the authenticity of my private and local emotion. And for exactly this reason and no other I returned to my tall timbers and my granite cliffs — because in them rests the kind of integrity I believe in and from which source I draw my private strength both spiritually and esthetically.” —Marsden Hartley
Links:
[1] http://openx.downeast.com/www/delivery/ck.php?n=56422394