Down East the Magazine of Maine

Blog Archives November, 2008



Mainers Behaving Badly

I leave the state for a few minutes, and do people behave? They do not.

Let’s start with Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s secretary of state. For weeks, he’d been predicting a record turnout in the Nov. 4 election, based on the large number of absentee ballots being cast. But as soon as I slipped away for a little break from my onerous responsibility of keeping everything in order, Dunlap told the Associated Press he might have miscalculated. All those early voters weren’t



Ridin' with the Law

In on the arrest: Westbrook police know how to time a bust. The local cops staged (and I do mean staged) the apprehension of Abbas Al-Hamdany of Gorham on Nov. 21 for maximum public exposure. Al-Hamdany was taken into custody at his Main Street convenience store in Westbrook in the



It's Money That Matters

Financial pitfall: Thomas Cushing Munjoy is back to blogging about the follies of the Portland Press Herald’s management at a new online address.

The pseudonymous critic is raising some interesting points about



Village Soup Merges Camden, Rockland Newspapers

There’ll soon be one less Village Soup newspaper. The Rockland-based chain announced today that it was merging its weekly paper in Camden, the Camden Herald, with its thrice-weekly paper in Rockland, the Courier-Gazette. The new paper will be called the Herald Gazette and will be published three



Blethen Sold

The Blethen Maine Newspapers have been sold to Maine Media Investments. According to a report on the Bollard Web site, a purchase and sale agreement was signed today, and a story on the sale will appear in tomorrow’s newspapers.

Maine



It's 10 o'clock. Do You Know Where Your Newscast Is?

Gone – almost: WCSH-TV, Channel 6 in Portland, is no longer producing a 10 p.m. newscast on WPXT-TV, Channel 51. According to the North East Radio Watch Web site, the contract between WCSH, the top-rated NBC affiliate,



Get Your Free Medical Advice From - the Beaver?

The pharmaceutical industry may be trying to change its image. After years of putting out miracle drugs with names that sounded like they were stolen from comic-book villains (“End the curse of restless cuticle syndrome with new Volterannz. See your doctor if your fingers stiffen for more than four hours, as this may be a sign of a rare-but-serious side effect for which you will need prescription-strength Glactophantec, which should not be used if you are sleepy, intend to become sleepy

 

Snags Slow Blethen Deal

No sale – yet: A month ago, it appeared the sale of the Blethen Maine Newspapers to Maine Media Investments – a group consisting of former U.S. Sen. William Cohen, developers



Absinthe Arrives and a Steer Departs

A steer walks into a barroom in Livermore Falls and asks the bartender for a glass of absinthe.

“Jeez, pal,” says the bartender, “I don’t think that stuff is legal in Maine.”

“You’re behind the times, my good man,” says the steer, brandishing a recent issue of the Bangor Daily News, featuring an article on the absinthe revival, after more than a century of the liquor being