From Kittery, up the coast

[Holding the line against chain stores]

[Not a Maine-owned business in sight!]

[The Kittery Trading Post--outfitting yuppies for their next shopping adventure]

[York Harbor, exuding old money and its stately homes along the water's edge]

[Maybe pigs really do fly--if not, its one kick-ass brand of locally baked bread]


From Kittery, up the coast-

Crossing the Piscataqua River, from New Hampshire, back into Maine, I rarely leave the Maine Turnpike and travel coastal Route 1. Friday morning, on my way back from a Thursday night show in Cambridge, I decided to spend some time along this coastal roadway, which has a storied history, although it was painfully obvious to me that Maine’s southernmost section of this auto route has lost any sense of uniqueness.

I have a new book project in the works, which will once again be my own skewered take on Maine, as I see it. Planning to take the day off, Friday, I made the decision to catch the show and rather than head home, I got a room in Portsmouth and hoped to spend some time scouting York County for some ideas. Armed with a camera, I took some photos as I meandered north, on my way back home.

I won’t go into great detail here, but I wanted to catch a Texas-based band called Centro-matic, who were playing at the Middle East in Cambridge. I’ve blogged about it in considerable detail over at my own MySpace page. I created the page to capitalize on any networking that might come from another online venue. While skeptical at first about the phenomenon, I have come to embrace MySpace and found it to be an effective networking tool and even a bit addictive.

The Middle East, while purported to be a legendary rock club, doesn’t have anything on Chicky’s in Westbrook. I find it inevitable as I get older that going to shows where there is a high number of the 20-something college crowd takes away my enjoyment of the music. But, I don’t want to spend much time on that issue, as I’m going to provide some commentary and context for some of the photos.

Like other Maine communities such as Ellsworth and South Portland, which have given their towns over to the corporations and an outlet mentality, Kittery has little that I find redeeming, at least that part of Route 1, near the New Hampshire border, teeming with its multitude of discount outlets. Does anyone see the irony of calling one grouping of stores the Maine Outlet, but not one of the stores is based in Maine?

I always get a kick out of the Kittery Trading Post, a poor man’s L.L. Bean knockoff. Like Bean’s, the KTP was once exclusively for hunters and outdoors people, but is now more likely to be frequented by folks looking to outfit themselves for trips from that offer the rigors of leaving their climatically-controlled SUV and walking to their next consumer conquest down the road.

While Maine has an abundance of great locally-grown vegetables, Maine-made breads and other unique products, Kittery’s shopping experience offers shopping sustenance via the chain method of food prep.

Once drivers exit Kittery and head north, the outlets thin out and it is possible to get some flavor of local culture. While this area’s retail and service economy once was the domain of locals, over the past two decades, chains continue to creep northward, dotting the landscape with their ubiquitous branding that is devoid of uniqueness and local flavor.

If you’ve never had bread baked by When Pigs Fly, you haven’t had bread! This local bakery is still one of Maine’s better-kept secrets, although you can find a limited offering of breads at some of the Hannaford locations. The Kittery store, however, is where you can really get a sense of the variety and possibilities for bread making with an eye toward creativity. With over 25 varieties on display and beckoning me with their mouthwatering aromas, I was happy I stopped by, leaving with my own freshly baked loaves to take home and compliment my Friday night dinner.

Up the road, apiece, I met David, a local farmer whose farm stand and gardens bordering Route 1 serve as a buffer to out-of-state developers and other interlopers whose primary interest is to extract as much profit as they can from the real estate, with little regard for local culture or preserving the area’s heritage. Ironically, David is from “away,” a transplant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

York Harbor, with its abundance of 18th century architecture offers travelers a chance to step back, a sense of some of the old money the area is built upon, as well as beautiful views of Maine’s rocky coastline.

Traveling north into Ogunquit, visitors will find theater, antiques and numerous local eateries and locally-owned shops. While the main drag still has plenty of seasonal shops offering trinkets and other merchandise geared for the tourist crowd, this section of one of Maine’s renowned tourist areas is much more palatable than nearby Kittery.

Obviously, sprawl and the specter of the McMansion serves as a warning to many of us that Maine could easily lose its unique sense of place without some vision for our future. I saw more of these types of homes recently constructed, than I have in the past.

Wells Beach and Wells were where I ended my initial fact finding on Friday. Wells, like its neighbor to the north, Kennebunk, are solidly working class towns, where the locals depend upon tourism and walk a fine line between enjoying the fruits of tourism, but despising having their faces rubbed in the conspicuous consumption of the guests that fill their coffers and crowd their roadways every summer. Like Bar Harbor and other Maine towns that see their prosperity rise and fall due to the visits of interlopers from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere, Wells is a prime example of what tourism produces—chintzy shops, bottle-necked local roads each summer and if the weather cooperates, enough money to make it through the winter to next year’s tourist season.

As a state, Maine has ridden the tourist rollercoaster for as long as I can remember and it will continue to do so, until our economy begins producing jobs and opportunities for the locals. Until then, we’ll continue to play reluctant hosts to the hordes of visitors who swarm into our state every summer.

"Now...this"

I know that I'm about to commit the blogging equivalent of what Postman called the, "Now...this" seque. In fact, he spent an entire chapter talking about what he called, the "Now...this" worldview in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

You see, I want to blog about Meredith Viera, Katie's replacement on The Today Show and more precisely, Meredith Viera's blog.

While I was never much of a fan of Katie Couric, I used to find it amusing how so many men, particularly conservative men, could hurl so much vitriol and venom poor Katie's way. I guess when you host a show so amazingly popular and watched by millions, especially millions of women, apparently that's enough to get you hated by the knuckle-draggers of America.

When Katie made the switch over to her new position, as the CBS Nightly News anchor, my wife insisted that we watch her first night and subsequent nights afterwards, for at least a week. It was then that I actually felt somewhat bad for her; almost sympathetic, as she obviously was trying to hard to make it work.

Recently, I watched her do her nightly half hour and I think she's relaxed enough and almost looks comfortable. My wife thinks she made a mistake, however and I'm inclined to agree. I do respect her, however, for making an honest attempt to at changing her modus operandi later in her work career, something I can certainly identify with, on some basic level. But I'm not here to talk about Kaie. No, I'm here to talk about her successor, Meredith Viera.

Meredith Viera has a blog. While it would be natural to think that someone is probably "ghostwriting" Meredith's daily posts, according to something I heard somewhere (NPR?), she actually does her own writing and is enjoying doing the blog, after first thinking it would be just a bunch of "busywork."

While it would be easy to write off Viera, after her recent stint as moderator on "The View" and her current gig as host of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," Viera actually has a career vitae that includes hard news and journalism, having worked on 60 Minutes, Turning Point and CBS News. You see, unlike the bimbos that Fox pays to read teleprompters, with their collagen enhanced lips and other accoutrements, Viera actually does have some credibility and talent for reporting. In fact, Viera created a bit of a fuss in some news circles, after having marched in an anti-war demonstration and then, talking about it on "The View," saying that the "war was built on lies."

Meredith's piece on getting to dance with the Radio City Rockettes was actually very personal and showed her human side, which should help her win the women over who will ultimately decide whether Viera can emerge from Katie's shadow and carve out her own unique niche as the new must-see maven of the morning.

A death goes unnoticed

I've always prided myself in finding new, under-reported and often, obscure material, via the web, but before that, it came from scouring the underground press, free papers and other cultural detritus.

Of late, my time has been much tighter than it has been in some months, so having the luxury and even allowing myself some extra time to dig deeper has been lacking. Today, despite spending several hours getting done some essential work for a new RiverVision release that is slated for the spring, I had some time to peruse other small press operations, such as Akashic Books, a unique literary arts organization in Berkeley, California, Small Press Distribution, among others and finally to the PunkPlanet.com site.

It was there that I encountered the following item that's been virtually buried, receiving little or no national dispersion from a media that seems to fixate on the trivial, mundane, or the painfully obvious.

Malachi Ritscher R.I.P.
by anne elizabeth moore 11/09/2006 in obituaries

On Friday morning, Nov. 3rd, During rush hour in Chicago, local activist and sound engineer Malachi Ritscher doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire, by the millennium flame near the Ohio St. exit off the Kennedy expressway. He set up a sign that read: "thou shalt not kill" and also set up a video camera on a tripod and recorded the whole thing. (The videotape is with the police).

Longtime supporter and participant of the Chicago experimental music scene for many years, Malachi Ritscher was behind many live recordings for musicians in town and throughout the world. He kept up his savagesound.com page, a useful and comprehensive list of creative music events in Chicago. Perhaps more importantly, Malachi was an activist and vocal protester of political and social ills that stem from, but are not limited to, the Bush administration.

Readers were directed to several other links pertaining to Ritscher's music, politics and life, including this one, which takes readers to the site of the alternative weekly, the Chicago Reader, which has a brief article, followed by a number of comments from people who knew Ritscher and were touched in some way by his life.

Lending credit, where credit is due, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Richard Roeper, had a pertinent piece about suicide, mentioning Ritscher's final act, which included the following:

"It makes no sense to pretend suicide is a rare and scandalous thing. The sad truth is that every 18 minutes in this country, somebody makes the unfathomable (to the rest of us) decision to leave this life forever. "

Here is Ritscher's self-penned obituary.

Will the women get it done in DC?

As the results surged in Tuesday night, a Democratic wave washed over both the House and the Senate, changing the composition of both legislative chambers. While that tidal shift, resulting in the Democrats handily gaining control of the House and narrowly claiming the Senate, by a whisker, it also brought about a historic event, one that bodes well for the women of America.

Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will be the first ever woman speaker of the House. Not since 1992’s “the year of the woman,” which saw the election of a class of woman Senators who would become influential leaders in the Senate, has the election of a female been accompanied by such a bevy of media attention.

Women in politics are no longer an anomaly. With Pelosi’s ascension to speaker, they’re now edging closer to that ultimate goal—seeing a woman in the White House. Seeing that it is the year, 2006, the question becomes, “Why the hell not?”

With the votes all counted and the campaign signs being picked up and stored away, women now hold historically high numbers in the Congress—16 Senate seats, as well as 70 seats in the House. Yet, despite gains made by women, those numbers still only represent 16 percent of the total number of possible seats available in both chambers.

So, is 2006 the new year of the woman? Not according to Vivian Eveloff, director of the Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life at the University of Missouri.

“Oh, I so don’t like that expression," Eveloff says. "I think every year ought to be the year of the woman until we get a Congress, and we get legislators, and we get statehouses that reflect the diversity of this country. We’ve made a little progress this year. But we certainly have a long way to go.”

Therein lies the crux of the problem. While women continue to make their way up the political ladder, there remains work to be done. Obviously, Pelosi’s role is an important one in many ways. For both her party, as well as her gender, how she performs will resonate and could play a pivotal role in just two years, when we elect a successor to George W. Bush. If Pelosi can bridge the partisan divide and put a face of honesty, competence and accomplishment on her speakership, then it could be very interesting for Democrats in choosing their candidate to lead the party in their quest to retake the Oval Office.

The Democratic Party has a real opportunity to lead a nation that is divided by partisan politics, a war that has become an economic albatross and is stealing vitality and services from our own, and a perception that politics and politicians are incapable of getting the job done. Can Pelosi reinvigorate her party, as well as gain the support of most Americans? It won’t be easy. One place where the carping had already begun, before the election, was right-wing talk radio. I guess it's to be expected, but good lord, even a member of the "sisterhood," Laura Ingraham, (who along with Ann Coulter, are two of the meanest, nasty females I’ve ever encountered) was bashing Pelosi’s pending position, before she even had a chance to oversea any legislation or perform her first official task. I can only imagine how vitriolic it will become if Hilary is the Democratic nominee.

So, why do will still see women under-represented in our politics and why are we still so squeamish about the thought of a woman president? In other areas of the world, women have reached the pinnacle of power—think Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and recently, Angela Merkel, elected German Chancellor, in 2005 and Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria, elected president of Chil, in March, 2006, when she beat out billionaire businessman, Sebastian Pinera, in runoff election. Even better, in my opinion, Bachelet is a socialist, who campaigned on a platform of continuing Chile's free market policies, while increasing social benefits to help reduce the country's gap between rich and poor, one of the largest in the world. Now there’s a strategy in the making for Democrats—instead of always running towards the center, try mixing in a few actual liberal, or progressive ideas and really live up to the label of “liberal” tossed their way, spit out and even “hissed” by so many conservatives.

The next two years will be pivotal. While I’m no fan of the Democrats, at least in their current DLC modus operandi and I’ve had my issues with Pelosi, I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Her performance could have a lot to say about whether Republicans ultimately lose the White House in 2008 and continue their freefall.

The will of the people (who vote)

The mid-term elections are over. After months of campaigning and disruption of their lives, candidates can go back to the normalcy of their everyday routines. With voter turnout approaching 60 percent in Maine, our state once more showed our greater engagement in all things political.

Contributing to the higher than normal turnout for a non-presidential election was the TABOR initiative, Maine's "slash and burn" attempt at tax relief, which went down to defeat, 54 to 46 percent. This is the second sound defeat of a taxpayer "rights" referendum by Mainers, but knowing some of the ideologically-driven leaders of the pro-TABOR side, I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar in two years, when we vote again.

The day after an election can be a bit of letdown, particularly when your candidate finishes a distant fourth. Pat LaMarche ran a grassroots, issue-oriented campaign, championing healthcare for all Mainers, an emphasis on a living wage for all workers, a commitment to renewable energy and some positive proposals for getting a handle on escalating property taxes.

As a Green Independent, LaMarche offered a clear, third party alternative to the traditional choice between elephant and donkey. LaMarche's female counterpart, the perpetually "catty" Barbara Merrill made a strong showing, gathering 20 plus percent of the total vote. As she conceded, however, she managed to show her less than gracious side, once more, which is what ultimately led to me go over to the LaMarche camp, late in the race. It is my sincere hope that Pat, gracious and genuine to the very end, will remain engaged in the political process. We need her ideas, energy and passion for all the people of Maine, not just the ones who drive luxury sedans and SUV's.

Maine faces a multitude of challenges. Governor Baldacci cannot allow his final four years to be business as usual. The Brookings Institute report has given anyone in a leadership position, a clear blueprint for taking our state forward, into the 21st century. Partisan posturing and political cronyism won't get the job done for the people of Maine.

Nationally, it appears that Democrats have been given a clear message from the voters--they are fed up with perpetual war, fear mongering, political scandal and ideological divisiveness. Regaining control of the House for the first time since 1994, Democrats must step up to the plate and lead.

As votes were counted last night, it became clear that Republicans had lost their hold on power across the country. In distrcts of all stripes--conservative, liberal and moderate — as well as in urban, rural and suburban areas, exit polls revealed that many middle class voters who fled to the GOP a dozen years ago appeared to return to the Democrats.

With this so-called mandate, the Democrats, or "the gang that couldn't shoot straight," now have a responsibility to address some of the most serious issues in our nation, including finding a way to unite a divided populace. For me, I saw several races, won by conservative Democrats, as offering very little substantive difference between them and the GOP incumbent. Joe Lieberman, who lost the primary to anti-war candidate, Ned Lamont, won as an Independent.

Will we see a troop pullout from Iraq, a push for universal healthcare, a closing of the income gap and a push to develop alternative energy sources? The pessimist in me says Democratic control of the House and even the Senate, won't alter business as usual.

As I've been preaching regularly here, during the latter days of the campaigning, our electoral process needs an overhaul. Until third party candidates, fueled by ideas rather than ideology can get into the game in a meaningful way, little if nothing will change for the working class people of our land. Obscene amounts of money, sent down from the corporate suites have poisoned our political well. Until we find the will to tap into the well of populist reform, I don't harbor any real hope that anything meaningful will result from all the hoopla surrounding last night's election returns.