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The Maine Minute
Everything You Need to Know TodayJuly 2 2009
‘O’ My Goodness
The first jabs of the 2010 Maine gubernatorial race are being thrown, and the candidates are already fighting over each letter in their campaigns. Former Red Sox owner, ski mogul, and Republican Les Otten says his marketing firm was just being creative when it used the first letter of his last name as the logo for his campaign. Not so fast, Democrats say, citing the similarity between the new logo and accompanying Web site and the one used by Barack Obama in his successful bid for the White House last year. The similarities between the logos is undeniable — there’s only so much you can do with an ‘O’ — but will the similarities between the candidates next year be so dramatic?
Read more at the Portland Press Herald.Posted at Thu, 07/02/2009 - 4:40pm.
Add new commentSpike on the Turnpike?
Dan Paradee, spokesman for the Maine turnpike, predicts that traffic will be up at the York Toll Plaza this Fourth of July. Paradee is basing his prediction on the Center for Tourism Research and Outreach (CENTRO) at the University of Southern Maine. Paradee expects 45,000 vehicles or more to head north through the York tolls, with 695,000 vehicles taking to the road between York and Augusta over the entire holiday weekend. For the month of June, traffic was down 3 percent from last year. What are the reasons for the anticipated increase? Lower gas prices than last year, an improving economy, and the possibility of better weather, says Paradee.
Read more at MPBN.netPosted at Thu, 07/02/2009 - 8:48am.
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July 1 2009
Two New Maine Pharmacy Schools
The Husson University School of Pharmacy received good news in its quest for full accreditation this week. The Accreditation Council on Pharmacy Education notified the Bangor school of its pre-candidacy status meaning that the school will officially matriculate its first class of doctor of pharmacy students in the fall. So far, Husson President William Beardsley and Rod Larson, the dean of the new school, say that 72 percent of the pharmacy students (out of about one hundred pre-pharmacy undergraduates and the sixty graduate students with deposits that were awaiting this accreditation) are from Maine. UNE, which also received pre-candidacy status this week, is opening their own pharmacy school this fall in a new $12.3 million facility on Portland’s Stevens Avenue. The school received nearly 800 applications for its first class of one hundred students.
Read more at the Portland Press Herald.Posted at Wed, 07/01/2009 - 10:05am.
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June 30 2009
Survivor Winner Sworn to Silence
Last December South Portland physics teacher Bob Crowley won national fame — and a million bucks — for outwitting, outplaying, and outlasting his competitors on the CBS game show "Survivor." Now Crowley has penned an autobiography, with help from a friend. But here's the weird thing: Crowley's contract with CBS precluded him from writing a single word about his experiences in Gabon. Instead the now retired teacher, who took home $660,000 after taxes, recounts his eccentric life growing up in the Pine Tree State. Crowley says the experience prepared him well. "When I was [in Gabon]," he tellls the Press Herald, "I found out there's a lot of things people in Maine know how to do, like tie up boats in the dark or land boats on a beach." That's true enough. But if you want the straight dope about what went down in the jungle, you'll just have to corner Maine's own survivor at one of his book signings. There's one scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 1 at Nonesuch Books in South Portland. 207-799-2659.
Read more at the Portland Press Herald.Posted at Tue, 06/30/2009 - 2:44pm.
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June 29 2009
For the Love of Whoopie
Cake-like discs sandwiching a creamy center is the stuff of baking legend in Maine, where the whoopie pie is celebrated and pushed to its limit with unlikely flavor combinations. (Strawberry Mocha Whoopie Pie, anyone?) Soon, perhaps, the whoopie pie will be elevated to the distinction of Maine's official dessert. Amos Orcutt, president the University of Maine Foundation, hopes to make the ubiquitous dessert as synonymous with Maine as black-capped chickadees and white pines. (Vote here in an online poll.) In the meantime, the good folks of Dover-Foxcroft are already clearing the calendar for next year’s Whoopie Pie Festival.
Read the winners of the bakeoff and more in the Bangor Daily News.Posted at Mon, 06/29/2009 - 2:29pm.
Add new commentRain Weakens Coastal Bluffs
Seside camps in Stockton Springs are closer to the ocean — or, rather, the ocean is closer to the camps. Saturated water tables undermined the structural integrity of high, coastal bluffs, parts of which slid into the ocean last week. According to the Maine Geological Survey, some 200 feet of shoreline road at Fort Point Cove slid into the Atlantic and the remaining bluff is now 30 feet shorter than before. The threat continues this week as water tables become saturated and soil turns from solid ground to soup-like goop. The MGS warns tilting trees and cracks in the soil surface are among landslide indicators.
Read more from the Maine Geological Survey.Posted at Mon, 06/29/2009 - 12:42pm.
Add new commentA Day for Andrew Wyeth
Governor John Baldacci slates July 12 as a day all Mainer’s should recognize the cultural contributions of Andrew Wyeth and his family. The youngest son of illustrator N.C. Wyeth, Andrew was born July 12, 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He would go on to learn from his father and hone his skills to become America’s most popular artist of the twentieth century. He died January 16, 2009 and was buried next to Christina Olson — the subject of what most consider to be his best-known painting, Christina's World — in a family cemetery on Hawthorne Point, Cushing.
Read more about Andrew Wyeth from Down East.Posted at Mon, 06/29/2009 - 9:08am.
Add new commentEastport Plans Rousing 4th
Why limit the July Fourth to a single day? Eastport residents begin a week of celebrations July 1 under the theme “Home is Where the Heart Is.” Organizers have extended a hand to the town’s nearest neighbor: Canada. Planned events start on Canada Day (July 1) with a barbeque, fireworks, road races and more. From the arrival of a United States Coast Guard Cutter Jefferson Island to the King of Silly, Eastport residents have planned five days of festivities.
Follow Eastport's Fourth of July schedule here.Posted at Mon, 06/29/2009 - 8:45am.
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June 26 2009
Legendary Gem Store to Close
Perham’s Minerals has been a fixture in the Maine gem scene since the start of the state's mining craze in the early 1900s, or some 80 years after the first major discovery of tourmaline. Tourmaline, aquamarine, morganite, amethyst, smokey quartz — the gems and minerals mined from the West Paris quarries have been the stuff of legend and has prompted generations of gem and treasure hunters to look twice at average rocks found along Maine trailsides in Oxford County and beyond. The current owner, Jane Perham, attributes a poor economy, declining tourisn in western Maine, and a lack of interest in gemstones to the store's closing after 90 years in business.
Visit the Perham site.Posted at Fri, 06/26/2009 - 11:20am.
Add new commentClammy Conundrum
Maine’s spate of rainy weather has done more than helped coin the phrase “Rain Rage,” it’s limited access to clam flats and is keeping one of the state’s better-known mollusks off of dinner plates. The threat of runoff contamination from abnormally heavy rainfall has closed clam flats from Cape Neddick to the Canadian border. As a result, it's getting harder to order a clam dinner made with Maine clams. Supplies of other mollusks, such as farm-raised mussels, have not been diminished.
Read more from the Boston Herald.Posted at Fri, 06/26/2009 - 10:52am.
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