Odds and Ends: Best of the Rest

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world music
Photo Credit: Dennis Griggs
The Bowdoin International Music Festival
For six weeks each summer the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick really does come alive with the sound of music. Since 1964, this acclaimed festival has brought some of the world’s most talented young musicians (more than 250 of them last year) to Maine to study and perform with the globe’s premier musical maestros. The festival hosts no fewer than seven public concert series — three artists’ concert series, two student concert series, and two series in which students and faculty perform together. It’s like a tour of the world’s top concert halls without ever having to leave Maine. This year’s dates are June 27 through August 8. 6300 College Station, Brunswick. 207-373-1400, www.summermusic.org [2]

woodsman

Jon Wilson
The age of sail was long gone and most of the wooden ships that Maine had launched over the centuries were wrecks in 1974 when Jon Wilson cobbled together $14,500 and published the first edition of WoodenBoat, a magazine focused exclusively on the design, construction, and repair of wooden boats. What Wilson started in a cabin in South Brooksville has since evolved into a magazine with a circulation of eighty-five thousand, a school that serves six hundred students, and an online following that still looks to Wilson for guidance about which block planes to buy. 41 WoodenBoat Ln., Brooklin, 207-359-4651, www.woodenboat.com [3]

breed
Maine Coon Cat
The stories surrounding the coon cat’s origins range from improbable matings with raccoons to the unsuccessful rescue of Marie Antoinette. Whatever. Natural selection, the Maine climate, and a polyglot gene pool of felines resulted in the biggest domestic cat in the book, with a lion’s mane and bobcat ears and snowshoe feet. The United Maine Coon Cat Association (www.cffinc.org/umcca/main.htm [4]) puts on one show a year at the Bath Middle School on the third weekend in October that’s open to all breeds but focuses on Maine’s own. Or visit the Web site (http://home.earthlink.net/~dirigo3/dirigo2.html [5]) of Beth Kus at Dirigo Maine Coon Cats in Windham. A hobby breeder for thirty-five years, Kus has assembled a treasure trove of coon cat info, including many of her own articles about the breed.

local tv show
207
Admittedly, we’re a little biased on this one since they’ve invited us on-air a few times, but Rob Caldwell and Kathleen Shannon, of WSCH6 or WLBZ2, deserve a shout-out for making 7 p.m. television time. Since September 2003, their half-hour TV show — modeled on the Today style magazine approach — has been the best broadcast grab-bag going, a fine mix of musical performances, newsmaker interviews, and cooking demonstrations. During the recent election campaign, Caldwell showed off his journalistic chops as well, when he grilled both former President Bill Clinton and former presidential candidate John McCain, asking them tougher questions than his national media counterparts. 207 Weekend airs at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday and video clips of the stories stay live online for up to six months. www.wcsh6.com [6]

makeover
The Strand Theatre
Before Rockland was a fine arts mecca it had a movie theater. Each weekend midcoast residents converged on this disheveled downtown cinema, with its faded carpets and tiny second screen on the enclosed balcony. But by the time Rockport resident Matthew Simmons bought the Strand in 2004, the theater appeared to have outlived its usefulness, superseded by a new megaplex just outside town. Simmons did something that startled just about everyone in the midcoast — he restored the old building, transforming it into a first-rate venue and independent cinema with a new marquis (actually the old one from the 1920s, restored during the restoration). 345 Main St., Rockland, 207-594-0070, www.rocklandstrand.com [7]