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Maine Dispatches

Opinions, advisories, and musings from the length and breadth of Maine

November Dispatches 2019Windham

Work crews uncovered remains of a colonial-era fort while tearing up River Road, which had been paved since the 1920s. A team from the Maine Historic Preservation Commission had about a month to excavate before roadwork resumed.

South Portland

In town to perform, rapper DMX visited the Maine Mall, where he picked up the tab at a shoe store for Nikki Cutchens and her daughter Grace, who were back-to-school shopping. Sometimes, X really is gon’ give it to ya.

Isle au Haut

Alison Richardson and Molly Siegel swam all the way around Isle au Haut, in stages, to raise money toward rehabbing the island’s lighthouse (swimming in water temps in the low to mid-50s). Their GoFundMe netted more than $18,000, or $1,000 per mile they swam.

Washington

Thousands of monarch butterflies took to a local farm where owner Heather Halsey let a field of milkweed go unmown for several years, knowing that the caterpillars only eat milkweed. Previous years, she’d seen one or two monarchs on her property.

Baxter state park

Director Eben Sypitkowski proposed deleting the Mount from Mount Katahdin. Katahdin means “greatest mountain” in Abenaki. “Mount Greatest Mountain,” he argued, amounts to a “grammatical and cultural error.” (We’re out in front — it’s already DE’s style to omit “Mount.”)

Hermon

Dysart’s, the truck-stop diner that had stayed open around the clock since 1967, left truckers, late-shift workers, and bar hoppers’ stomachs grumbling with news that food service would cease nightly, between midnight and 5 a.m.