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Maine Cannabis Film Festival explores battles for medical pot across the globe

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Maine Cannabis Film Festival explores battles for medical pot across the globe

Next month, Mainers will vote on whether to legalize recreational marijuana for adults over the age of 21. The state legalized medical marijuana in 1999, but since then, several other ballot measures to let one light up without a pot license have failed.

 

 

The Maine Cannabis Film Festival, on Oct. 22 and 23 at the Empire in Portland, features 14 hours and 17 different takes on the topic, from documentary to comedy, education to hazy fiction.

 

Tom Falby, co-founder of MCFF last year and a medical marijuana patient, didn’t know if the film festival would have an impact on undecided voters, but he said, “It would be nice if it did. Our goal is to reach a broader audience of people who don’t have a pressing need to educate themselves about medical cannabis, just so they know what’s going on surrounding cannabis in our country.”

 

Long and short-form films make up the two-day schedule, different each day, for a $15 pass that allows coming-and-going and caps each night with a Q & A with directors.

 

One of the long-form winners that especially caught Falby’s attention was “Grass Roots,” a documentary that follows a patient from the UK who has multiple sclerosis.

 

“Laws surrounding access there are restrictive,” Falby said. “The film shows him trying to treat his condition, having some success, and then frustration with a government and society that’s not allowing him to access something that will make him feel better.”

 

The patient comes to United States, to California and Colorado. It shows real time developments with his illness. The film depicts the potentially fractious nature of cannabis and familial responses to a relative who medicates with it. “It can drive a wedge into family relationships,” he said. “He has a real time hard time with his dad, who is staunchly against it until he sees the positive effects it has on his son’s life.”

 

A short film called “The Ripple Effect of PTSD” (featuring Bek Houghton and veteran Michael Harding) is part of a series by Australian producer and director Kym Melzer.

 

It’s the second set of films she’s created involving veterans and alternative health care.

 

She met her future stars at a television show “After the Parade.” In Australia, veterans are honored on ANZAC Day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), with dawn services parades. As luck would have it, Melzer was sitting in the audience next to Harding’s parents, who were there to see their son speak about alternative medicines, including cannabis and floatation therapy.

 

 

“I could see straight away how passionate he was,” said Melzer, who was inspired to submit her resulting film to festivals because of this enthusiastic advocacy, encouraging other vets to find their own alternative ways to help in recovery.

 

 

In 2010 during a deployment to Afghanistan, Harding was involved in the Battle of Derapet, a firefight that lasted three and a half hours. A section mate, Jared, was shot and killed. A few days later, Harding was having involuntary, full-body muscular twitches.

 

 

“It was a physical manifestation of trauma, instead of an emotional one,” Harding said. “I still wanted to do my job. You know, you just sort of sucked it up, put on brave face and kept doing your job. Some of my mates were like, ‘Dude, you need to get checked out.’ In our culture, when you join the armed forces in a combat role, a lot of training is based on pushing the emotions out of you, to do your job and not question your job, to not be a burden on the rest of your mates. It instills that natural male tendency to not talk about what’s going on.”

 

He hesitated to tell Houghton, his partner and carer, or his parents of his injury at first, but when he was sent home with a PTSD diagnosis, they could easily see that his illness presented itself physically. “His friends nicknamed him Twitch,” Houghton said.

 

For a while, Harding tried the traditional medicinal route, what is called the “gold standard” in the film – a treatment of pharmaceuticals and talk therapy. But Houghton knew it was not working. Harding was suffering from chronic injuries, night sweats, anxiety and depression. He had turned to alcohol and drugs and gained weight. Australia has only started considering medicinal marijuana recently, and approving it mainly for young children with epilepsy and people with cancer, according to Melzer.

 

“The families are picking up the pieces,” Houghton said. “I didn’t feel like I got the support I needed. The doctors told me Michael would be on medication for the rest of his life. They said this ‘gold standard’ helps only three out of 10 people see some significant improvement.”

 

Legislation there this past August came at the perfect time. Harding began a regimen of medical marijuana, which he smoked, vaporized, ingested and used topically, as well as a reformed diet, meditational yoga, and body floatation (in 350 pounds of Epsom salt in a huge water tank). He quit drinking and using drugs. Much improved now, Harding wants to help others help themselves, and still expects more to be done by government agencies.

 

“The defense forces are excellent at breaking a person down, for one goal and that goal only. At the end of your service, there’s no training to become human again. You’re still part of the green machine. That’s setting people up to fail.”

 

The filmmaker wants more people to talk about PTSD and alternative ways to treat it. “The film is a way of keeping that discussion going,” Melzer said, “showing how someone moved from post-traumatic stress to post-traumatic growth.”

 

Saturday, Oct. 22

11 a.m. Shorts:  All About the Truth; Green Smoke;  Honk
11:35-11:45 a.m. Intermission
11:45 a.m. Game On
1:25-1:35 p.m. Intermission
1:35 p.m. The Green Standard
2:55-3:05 p.m. Intermission
3:05 p.m. Shorts: They Need Us; Princesses; Ripple Effect of PTSD
3:30-3:40 p.m. Intermission
3:40 p.m. GrassRoots
5:10 p.m. Q and A with Directors: Dale Beaumont Brown (GrassRoots) and Clif Lord (Doobious Sources)

Sunday, Oct. 23

11 a.m. Barcelonnabis
12:10-12:25 p.m. Intermission
12:25 p.m. Shorts: Banana Pearl; Board
12:55-1:05 p.m. Intermission
1:05 p.m. Doobious Sources
2:50-3:05 p.m. Intermission
3:05 p.m. Shorts:
Grow Give; Rasta Deer; Dune Rats Video
3:15-3:25 p.m. Intermission
3:25 p.m. Druglawed
5:05 p.m. Q and A with Directors


'Powered by Girl' community event inaugurates Maine Girls' Academy

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'Powered by Girl' community event inaugurates Maine Girls' Academy

The Maine Girls' Academy held its first community evening last week, gathering together educators and activists. The discussion proposed practical ways girls could get involved to change the ways they are misrepresented in media, boardrooms and classrooms.

 

 

The monthly program, called “Girls Who Care, Girls Who Lead,” featured Colby College professor Lyn Mikel Brown, an activist and author who has written six books about gender and girlhood. She discussed the relational lives of girls at the intersection of race, class, and gender, the impact of media, and girls' creative forms of activism.

 

 

Brown had visited the school 10 years ago, when it was called Catherine McAuley High School. (It became the Maine Girls’ Academy in July.) Brown has been working with girls for 25 years and is the author, most recently, of “Powered by Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting Youth Activists.”

 

She spoke about activism as distinct from the typical ways that people think of female leadership. Building on the model of Sheryl Sandberg, who wrote “Lean In,” Brown said, “It’s more than just leaning in. We need on-the-ground activist work. The message is that we need more women at the top. That’s true, but we need more women everywhere. And women didn’t get the vote because men had a sudden change of conscience.”

 

Brown cofounded three grassroots organizations, including The SPARK movement (Sexualization Protest Action Resistance Knowledge), a national group involving 35 girls (ages 13-22) from 14 U.S. states and other countries that assists with girl-powered initiatives. One such effort had a group of girls taking on Google, to get the media giant to look at their daily “doodles” on the home page, which highlight white males, for the most part. They started a petition at change.org pushing for a more balanced representation. They even inspired a new app called Field Trip to help travelers find “Women on the Map,” with more than 200 stories of females who made a difference.

 

Brown warned against the “commodification of girl activism,” offering examples that ranged from Riot Grrrls to Spice Girls, and included Pussy Riot, the band that had members jailed for two years in Russia because of their guerrilla protests. “They covered their faces so they couldn’t be commodified,” she said, and warned that even women’s magazines tend to skew their content through a male lens. Her work has focused on reshaping these norms, offering a local example of the change that’s possible on a national level: Julia Bluhm and Izzy Labbe, two Maine teenagers whose online petition garnered 84,000 signatures and pressured Seventeen magazine to stop photoshopping body shapes.

 

After her talk, Brown shared the stage with local activists Emma Spies of Lemonade for Angels (benefiting Angel Flight North East) and Julia Hansen, founder of The Yellow Tulip Project.

 

Spies, who attends MGA, started selling lemonade seven years ago when she was 10, setting up shop with her neighborhood friends. From the beginning, she wanted to spend the profits of something that really mattered. She credits her parents for supporting her efforts, which have sponsored 48 angel flights, bringing patients in need to distant medical help.

 

 

Hansen, a junior at Casco Bay High School, told the audience about her work, borne out of tragedies. She lost two close friends to suicide within a year. Bouncing between despair and rage, she turned her grief into a powerful cause. She created and launched the “Yellow Tulip Project,” planting “hope gardens” to raise awareness of people battling depression and other mental illnesses. Like Spies, she said her parents inspired her to start her project. “They gave me a non-judgmental environment. When it’s more open, I am able to learn who I am,” she said. Passionate about bringing attention to mental illness, Hansen sees herself continuing in the field. Spies agrees, and applied the hope garden analogy to her own efforts. “I want to keep it going,” she said. “It’s been growing over the years, bringing more attention to the Angel Flight program. Even the smallest thing can make such a difference. A bunch of little kids can start something that’s a lot bigger than it seems.”

Home on the Grange: Nirvana bassist gets political vibes from community group, endorses ranked-choice voting

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Home on the Grange: Nirvana bassist gets political vibes from community group, endorses ranked-choice voting

It’s the 25th anniversary of “Nevermind,” the seminal Nirvana album that pushed grunge music into the mainstream.


The band’s bassist Krist Novoselic, of Washington state, is touring the northeast, singing and speaking on behalf of ranked-choice voting, to help raise money and awareness for the initiative (Maine’s Question 5), and to trade on Nirvana’s enduring popularity to reach out to millennials.


He arrived in Portland over the weekend to speak with the press and practice with some local musicians ahead of a fundraiser concert, held this past Monday night at Bayside Bowl. He warmed up with Scott Girouard, Mike Maurice, Chuck Prinn, and Estelle Poole, and Bridgette Semler. They created an original piece of music called “Krispy.”


“It’s a pure jam,” Novoselic said. “We met each other, said “Hello. How are you?’ then got instruments set up and started to make noise. We’re working together and everybody’s strengths come forward. The energy came together. It can be cold jamming with new people. You’ve got to give it a couple minutes before it works, and it did. It’s a blistering tune, a punk rock song.”


He’s been to Maine once before, in 1993, with Dave Grolh and Kurt Cobain while mastering “In Utero,” Nirvana’s third and final album, with ten time Grammy-winner Bob Ludwig, owner of Gateway Mastering.


“With Nirvana, we came out of the punk rock music scene; we weren’t mainstream,” he said. “Next we were the biggest band in the world. Rock-and-roll was vital again. We just changed the rules a little bit.”


Since 1996, Novoselic has been working to change the rules of politics, as well. He became involved to work against anti-music laws in his home state.


“There was a teen dance ordinance in Seattle,” he said. “If you were an adult, from 18 to 20 years old, you couldn’t go see most small scale rock shows. There was also an erotic music law, a censorship bill in the state legislature.”


He was a principal in the formation of JAMPAC, the Joint Artists and Musicians Political Action Committee, which argued that music is an asset that adds economic viability to a community. “I worked with lawmakers, bands, promoters, clubs - and fans, from whom I got my civic education,” he said. “We discovered terrible flaws in the system, with uncontested or uncompetitive elections, protected seats, winners without a clear majority.”


Novoselic joined the board of FairVote (formerly the Center for Voting and Democracy) in 2005 and became chair in 2008. FairVote worked with Portland officials in 2011 when it adopted ranked-choice voting for mayoral elections.


“I want voters to recognize the value of ranked-choice voting. It’s not some new, crazy idea. It’s established and proven, and has a lot of potential.” He cited the impact Ralph Nader had in the 2000 election and Ross Perot in 1992, and that in the last 11 gubernatorial races in Maine, nine of the winners did not have more than 50 percent of the vote.


Grassroots Efforts

Novoselic and his wife Darbury own a farm in Washington. They joined Gray's River Grange in 2003, and he later became the grange master.


“It’s a community group. One of its early tenets, in 1867, proclaimed that woman was equal with man, and could be grange master,” he said of the grange, which is in favor of public utility services, a rural post service, and election reform. They maintain a local cemetery and two parks, give money to food banks, and sponsor a spelling bee.


“There’s a wealth of tradition, ceremony, and pomp,” he said. “A positive message about the individual’s role in the community.”


Novoselic supports Gary Johnson in the national election, but says, “Each person should vote for who speaks to them, not necessarily (from) a major party or who raises the most money. Ranked-choice voting is less negative. It encourages politicians to reach out. The way the system is now pushes towards contention.”


Rock the Vote is an effort to make voters aware of the candidate choices, their backgrounds and beliefs, as well as local and national ballot measures. Krist hopes to Rank the Vote, and spoke about how music and politics often intersect, highlighting that whether you’re in the audience or the voting booth, there’s always something for everyone. With ranked-choice voting, we will feel better about the winner.


“Music can do two things. It can be transcendental or pigeonholed and pasted into a lifestyle. It depends on what is intent of the artist, and what are the needs of the listener,” he said. “If you hear glorious literature in Bob Dylan (like I do), that’s great. If you want just a great rock song, you’re going to find it.”

No mystery about Maine's beer craze: Cone offers paean to the 'old guys'

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Maine author Kate Cone is climbing on the Brew Bus to tout her new book and join fellow travelers in tasting a wide variety of the area’s best beer.


It’s been two decades since Cone penned her first version of “What’s Brewing in New England: A Guide to Brewpubs and Craft Breweries” at a time when the burgeoning beer scene was experimenting with “microbrews,” a term she said has been replaced by the more fashionable “craft beer.” By revisiting New England breweries, Cone found that much of the current regional success could be traced to brewing roots right here in Portland. For a mystery writer, this was an easy case to solve.


Her first immersion in the process of making beer came while working in a law firm in Brunswick that represented the brand new Shipyard Brewing Company.


“Back then, it was pretty much Geary’s, Gritty’s, Shipyard. Three Dollar Dewey’s and Great Lost Bear were the beer bars. Allagash had just opened,” she said. “Now, there are 10 to 15 craft breweries in the Portland/South Portland area, and as many as 75 statewide.”


A major development came when Maine State law regarding breweries allowed them to brew beer and have a tasting room where they can sell beer. “Many of those have food trucks that appear, so food is available, but the brewery doesn't incur that overhead of a brewpub and they avoid all the regulations of owning a restaurant,” she said. “There’s this new model of newly formed tasting rooms with the brewery out back. Beer is still distributed and packaged, but they can experiment with a lot of different beers at the bar. They can try out new tastes without having to distribute them, so it’s a lot less money from an overhead perspective.”


Cone is from Littleton, Mass. and attended Colby College. She has lived in Waterville for the past eight years with her husband, Patrick Brancaccio, who teaches Italian Literature in Italy. She’s going there in January for research, to enjoy immersing herself in the provincial potables and draw comparisons with her Mainestays.
“My favorite beers tend to be along the traditional British/Irish palate. I love Geary's Winter Ale, Shipyard's Prelude and their flagship Export Ale, Gritty's Stout, and Allagash's Curieux. Of course, I love visiting the new places and will try anything! Smoked and sour beers are not my thing, but I respect the brewers who make them and the people who like them.” She noted that there are some great little breweries getting into the scene, including Lone Pine brewery in Portland, Foulmouthed in South Portland, and Mast Landing in Westbrook.


“Beer tours are great because you get to taste a lot of beers in one day. At each stop, they give you a flight (think drinker’s paint palette) — three to five beers with a wide range of styles and flavors,” she said. “There’s this fascination with hops that’s coming full circle. Very hoppy beers are popular, and some places are making double and triple IPAs. Crafters are experimenting with new tastes all the time. One beer will try to fit into a trend, like ‘hoppy.’ With the other brews, they can create whatever they want. They could try honey, or flowers, or chocolate, or pumpkin — that’s really big now.”


There will be little trouble scaring up a bus full of ready samplers of all ages, swigging in Hallowe’en with nips of Smashed Pumpkin. Cone’s book launch and beer bus tour is a paean to the “old guys,” she says, as the more established breweries refer to themselves. “I started out in the business when they were young or just opening. I thought they deserved some attention after they paved the way for the rest of the younger brewers on the scene. Somebody born 21 years ago, who can drink now — they were introduced to drinking with craft beer. They didn’t have to drink Old Milwaukee all the time.”

Maine Brew Bus | Wednesday, Nov. 9 from 10:30am to 3:30pm | Craft Beer Cellar, Portland; 111 Commercial St. | The tour will visit D.L. Geary Brewing Company, Allagash Brewing Company, Shipyard Brewing Company, and features a full lunch at Gritty McDuff’s. Each participant on the tour will also receive a personally signed copy of “What’s Brewing in New England.” At the conclusion of the tour, Kate will available to the general public signing copies of her book in two locations: 3:00-4:00pm, Shipyard Brewing Company gift shop; 4:30-6:00pm, Great Lost Bear (during an Allagash Brewing Company tap takeover). | COST: $90/pp includes transportation, alcohol samples, lunch, bottled water, and gratuities paid at each stop, as well as a signed copy of Cone’s book.

Scott Nash opens "Picture This," an illustration exhibit and workshop open to everyone

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Scott Nash opens

A new nonprofit in Portland wants to make learning the illustrative arts more affordable and available to a wider audience, so it’s setting up shop at the Portland Public Library.

Scott Nash, director of the Illustration Institute, says “anyone can join in. That’s one of the reasons we want this in a public place, like a library as opposed to a typical art school or university.”

He hopes the locale and sliding scale fees will attract nascent artists to the workshops, lectures, films, and exhibits that will be held at the PPL over the next 12 months. Then, half of the exhibit will travel to public libraries in Boston, Philadelphia, and Portland, Ore. adding in local works to connect it to the community.

A new $65,000 grant from the Maine Community Foundation will go a long way to aiding their efforts.

“Illustration is a pretty wide field,” he said. “We really want to tap into a more diverse student base. In every city we go to, we’ll actively look for the type of artist who might not traditionally go to art school.”

The institute will charge varying rates. There’s no set curriculum, with visiting artists and speakers suggesting ideas for workshops. It all kicks off with an exhibit at the PPL called “Picture This…” that presents completed works by several local and national artists, along with “process or inspiration boards” that show what the finished pieces looked like in all their earlier stages.

“It’s more than an exhibit,” he said. “It’s part of a program. We want to travel and talk about how illustration connects to storytelling, and bring artists to these cities and make another connection to these illustrators.”

The works in “Picture This...” span a broad range of illustration from children’s picture books to applied illustration, editorial, animation, cartoon and tattoo art. As the title of the exhibition implies, “Picture This...” intends to provide a view into how specific media the public encounters every day are enhanced by illustration and further, how an aspiring illustrator might picture themselves in this fulfilling and diverse profession.

A series of free-range teaching workshops last year prompted Nash to create the non-profit. Nash had invited several accomplished artists, including Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, and Emily Flake, an up-and-coming illustrator based in New York, to share their insights with MECA students and alumni.

Afterwards, Bob sidled up to me and told me two alums told him it was their best experience. My nose got out of joint for a second,” said Nash, who has taught at Boston University, Northeastern University and The Art Institute of Boston. “Then I realized this is really good. I remembered that I’d had similar experiences in several ways.”

Flake’s lecture and four-hour workshop “schooled me,” he said. He invited her to come back this year and talk about her work, which is for a decidedly adult audience.

“I wanted to balance it out with darker material as well,” Nash said of the exhibit, which includes some of Flake’s work, as well as the processes involved with tattooing.

Flake grew up near Hartford, Ct. and now lives in Brooklyn. She looks forward to returning to Maine this summer to discuss her craft.

“I can take on some darker things without getting too overweening,” she said. “I can explore darker chambers of the human heart and still make it funny. It’s always been my temperament to approach the heavier things with a lighter approach – in both my work and my life.”

Flake has no particular interest in being edgy but thinks it’s important for any artist to tell the truth. “Not to expose a great human truth in cartoons, but I’m aiming for humor and honesty,” she said.

The idea of opening the arts up to non-college participants sits well with her.

“Art school can be very useful,” she said. “My only hesitation with art schools now is that the cost is getting so out of control. If you want to go the education route, continuing ed classes are a more economical way to do that. You can develop relationships with the peers you admire and from whom you’d like to learn things. One of the most important things about art school is being around other artists, but it doesn’t have to be a formal arrangement. You can go online, get out into your neighborhood, or go to a comic convention. I was very lucky to be able to go to school, but being exposed to an artist’s work ethic is just as important as instruction.”

Nash, who established the Illustration Department at the Maine College of Art and teaches there now, realized that learning about art often happens outside the classroom walls.

“As an artist, I thought back on monumental moments in my art career, with many that were in classes,” he said. “But these experiences where I would meet someone in a studio, where they worked - that has informed me as much as art school.”

The exhibit will show the broad range of illustration, from children’s books to tattoo art, and Nash predicts one of the more popular workshops will be the one on tattooing, presented by Danielle Madore of the Black Hen studio in South Portland.

“She’s doing traditional as well as expressive tattoos,” Nash said. “I think she’s planning to do a roundtable discussion with a number of tattoo artists in the area.”

The new nonprofit will not compete with other art schools, including MECA. “They are a sponsor,” he said. “There’s no competition. This idea is an addition, another way to step into this world.”

A component of the Illustration Institute will be six weeks of intensive workshops called “Maine’s Children’s Book Art,” covering the art of making children’s books. “Not so much on the business side,” Nash said. “We’re more interested in the art and how far we can take children’s books.”

Having worked previously with Nickelodeon, PBS, ABC, Comedy Central, Disney, Mattel, Microsoft, Milton Bradley, and the Boston Children’s Museum, Nash still sees the Illustration Institute as a capstone to his career.

“I’m having the time of my life with this.”

 

Exhibit Details:

Picture This... The Art and Workings of Illustration Institute will be on display at Portland Public Library’s Lewis Gallery from Oct. 7 through Dec. 17. The Illustration Institute will be providing workshops, lectures and film at the library through October of 2017.

 

As part of the exhibit, rarely seen “behind-the-scenes” process pieces are included for each final work. “The artists have generously provided early ideas, abandoned sketches, revised and reworked versions based on collaborations with their clients or editors, inviting an intimate look into the artist's studio in order to show the real effort and joy of illustrating for a living,” Nash said.

Heavyweight champ Larry Holmes hits town, talks Trump

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Russell Lamour, Jr. squaring off against Jaime Barboza.

Larry Holmes, the former heavyweight champion of the world from 1978 to 1983, was ringside for boxing at the Portland Expo last weekend — and he didn't pull any punches in a pre-event interview where he said President-elect Donald Trump struck him as a man "guided by the damn devil."

Holmes grew up in Easton, Penn., which gave birth to his boxing nickname, “The Easton Assassin.” He waged 20 successful title defenses, making him third all time, behind only Joe Louis at 25 and Wladimir Klitschko at 22. Holmes is also one of only five boxers to defeat Muhammad Ali and the only one to have won by knockout.

Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Michael Spinks have appeared in Portland before to support the local fight game and help it continue its success across the country. Holmes settled into the action Saturday after receiving a key to the city from Mayor Ethan Strimling.

sports boxing LarryHolmes PhotoByKineoPhotography

Larry Holmes receiving the keys of the city from Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling.

Before the fight, Holmes talked about his career in boxing, what the future holds for young boxers, and his reaction to the presidential election.

“I’m like Donald Trump. I’m in the game. He says they rigged it, but Donald’s in the game. He was talking about the election being 'rigged' and it was – for him. He’s like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. I think it was rigged for him to win because (Hillary) Clinton knows more about politics than any of those people know. Sixteen years, and you tell me she doesn’t know politics more than anyone else?”

He apologized for getting riled up about the election results, but says he’s mad the country fell for Trump’s phantom punches. “I don’t like politics. I say Clinton got a raw deal. I might not like it, but she accepted it. I know Donald Trump. I boxed at his hotel. His attitude — when you get to meet him — I didn't get a good vibe from him. So what he's rich? Big deal. I guess I know God better than he does. He's not guided by God. He's guided by the damn devil.”

Holmes turned to the positives and said boxing can help young pugilists fight their way out of tough circumstances. “Young fighters — they’re tomorrow. We’re today. (Boxing) can help kids move away from crimes and criminals. I kept my nose clean. I fought for 38 years and you didn’t hear anything involving trouble with me.” He admitted that boxing involves an element of trash-talking, when it’s important ahead of a bout to get into your opponent’s head.

“Sometimes you say things you shouldn’t say, get them going, but you don’t really mean it. After the fight, you hug each other.” He views boxing as a fair way to judge the superiority between two opponents, at least from a technical, physical sense.

“You can see who’s tougher,” he said from his home in Houston, Texas, before traveling to Maine for the Portland Boxing Club’s 103rd match. “Let’s box. There are three people sitting on the side who say if you won or not. That’s the way people get along. I love the game of boxing. You can’t beat it.”

Holmes thinks he was in Maine before but can’t be sure. Either way, he was proud to make the trip in an effort to bring out fight fans and support the PBC’s continued efforts to help youngsters fine-tune their game and use the in-ring code to give structure in their daily lives, “not to curse and be nasty. It will be an important trip. It’s exciting. I get a chance to meet different kinds of people and attitudes. I’m afraid of bears and snakes, so I don’t want to go too far into Maine.”

Holmes says his proudest moment in boxing came in 1978 when he beat Ken Norton in a bruising 15-round fight. “Some many people who know me, people I grew up with, said I could not be champion. I proved them wrong. If you work hard at something, you can accomplish it. I always let people know – jobs are not just about salaries or PhD’s. They’re about common sense. I learned from the best – Ali, (Joe) Frazier, (Earnie) Shavers. I learned how to not take punches, how to not get roughed up so much I couldn’t enjoy my life after the game, with my kids and grandkids.”

Invited to check out the city's noted restaurants, Holmes said, “I want to eat but I can’t eat too much. A couple of months ago I was diagnosed with diabetes. I’m trying to lose some weight, but I just keep eating.”

ABOUT THE BOXING EVENT

Russell Lamour Jr. continued his winning ways Saturday night, besting Jaime Barboza in a unanimous decision at the Portland Expo. Bobby Russo, Portland Boxing Club founder, said it was a fitting end to an evening of tight fights. Lamour is the former New England and North American middleweight champion, but lost his title to Thomas Falawo last year. He has since won three matches in a row.

“Russell dropped him in the first round with an unbelievable uppercut. It was near the end of the round, and Barboza survived. Then he got Russell in the second round. This match was the icing on the cake, and there were competitive matches all the way through.”

Another PBC fighter, super bantamweight Jorge Abiague, won by unanimous decision over Basilio Nieves of Lawrence, Mass. In the other pro bout on the night, Casey Kramlich, a PBC fighter out of Raymond, defeated Larry Smith of Texas.

New exhibit of dinosaur bones, dung, art and animatronics educate (and terrify) visitors

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FEATHERED MONSTERS - New science suggests that dinosaurs like the Allosaurus and the T-Rex actually had feathers and were likely the ancestors of the first birds.

A new dinosaur exhibit at the Portland Science Center combines childhood wonders with an art show for the grown-ups. Dinosaurs Unearthed has enough life-sized animatronic dinosaurs, skeletons, and fossils to keep busloads of kids entertained and enthralled for hours. And a decades-long painting project by artist Philip Carlo Paratore will keep the chaperones from getting restless.

Powered by customized mechanical technology and a dynamic jointing system, the dinosaurs, ranging from a Velociraptor to a Triceratops to a juvenile T-Rex come to virtual life in the exhibit, which places each creature in naturalistic indoor landscapes.

Thirteen of the dinosaurs are fully animatronic, and more recent research has led exhibitors to add feathers to several of the creatures.

A couple of short films help ease the introduction for timid youngsters and provide elementary content for teachers to consider adding to their lesson plans.

“We did a teacher preview and the response was phenomenal,” said Matt Stone, the sales and marketing director at the PSC on Commercial Street. “Some of this curriculum has been dropped (in schools). The teachers were talking about how they can bring it back.”

The hour-long tour has parents and educators giving hands-on guidance, making sure the youngest of their entourage don’t get frightened by the sights.

“Some kids are a little bit scared to go in. Kids under six – I’d say about 25 percent of them are nervous. But going in, only 10 percent needed to be calmed down,” Stone said. “It’s noisy. There’s lots of growling.”

The PSC says their show challenges beliefs about how dinosaurs lived, looked and sounded in pre-historic times. “In relatively recent years, paleontologists have come to believe that some dinosaurs are the ancestors of modern birds - leading to the hypothesis that some dinosaurs may have been feathered.”

TJI dinosaurs StegosaurusandTuojiangosaurus skeleton

 

REAL BONES - In addition to the animatronics, the Dinosaurs Unearthed exhibit features two full sized skeletons of a Stegosaurus and a Tuojiangosaurus.

They hope this new angle will add to the attraction for grade school students. They offer a guide to help educators make connections between the material presented in the tour and national curriculum standards for STEM (or science, technology, engineering, and math) goals.

Students (primarily K-8) can participate in activities, games, puzzles, and six different lessons plans including Mesozoic Math and Dinosaur Detectives, where junior paleontologists dig into a sand pit for skeletal remains at the “Kids Dig Table.”

They can also take in genuine fossils like the egg of an Oviraptor, which is Latin, ironically enough, for “egg stealer.” The most bird-like of the non-avian dinosaurs, its nesting position found in one specimen suggested the presence of feathered wings. The PSC’s exhibit also includes a feathered T-Rex.

Students can check out coprolite, or dung stone, a deceptively valuable item in the exhibit since animal excrement is easily fragmented or destroyed and whole fossilized remains are rare. In addition to the animatronic creatures, the exhibition will feature full-sized skeletons: a Yangchuanosaurus and a Tuojiangosaurus.

Dinosaurs may seem like familiar fodder for museum exhibits, but this is the first time Dinosaurs Unearthed has made it to New England, and perhaps the biggest addition to the show is a powerful series of paintings by Philip Carlo Paratore. As a ten-year-old boy growing up in Manhattan, he loved drawing pictures of animals and taking trips to the American Museum of Natural History.

“I clearly remember that first visit,” he said from South Portland this week. “When I returned years later, I sought to turn it into a project as an adult.”

The resulting decades-long artistic venture is called The Dinosaur Portfolio, with more than 100 paintings rendered primarily in oil paints while some of the works were started in acrylic for the foundation. The exhibit has been shown at The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Canada.

Paratore, who teaches art classes at the University of Southern Maine, said his personal work and public teaching allow him “ways to discuss several big ideas – extinction, evolution, even global warming.” His art and educational experiences have informed his research, leading to journeys to Stonehenge, the Paleolithic caves at Lascaux and Fonte de Gaume, and the Olduvai Gorge (in modern-day Tanzania).

The most recent and exciting aspect of The Dinosaur Portfolio, he says, occurred when he made the connection between landscape paintings inspired by satellite photographs of earth and his earlier work depicting fossilized dinosaur bones.

TJI Dinosaurs Body LanguageStyracosaur Series Photocourtesy of Philip Carlo Paratore

SCIENCE AND ART - There are over 100 pieces of art in the Dinosaur Portfolio, all of which blend visual elements inspired by landscape paintings, satellite photography and fossilized bones. 

The images “strive to make a connection between science and art, but they are essentially metaphorical and poetic rather than explanatory. Each painting may be viewed as a visual experiment: an interplay of technical symbol, diagrammatic schema, naturalistic representation, and artistic metaphor,” said Paratore, who used to have occasional shows at Davidson and Daughters Contemporary Art Gallery, but has focused on teaching more lately.  With huge prehistoric beasts and the fine, delicate lines of art, the Dinosaurs Unearthed exhibit has exciting sights and lessons for all-aged students.

For information on the exhibition and to purchase tickets, visitportlandsciencecenter.com.

Newly opened Mini Mogadishu offers authentic Somali cuisine

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Newly opened Mini Mogadishu offers authentic Somali cuisine

Somalis in the greater Portland area can get a taste of home at Mini Mogadishu, the new Forest Avenue restaurant that opened Saturday. It’s owned and operated by Nimo and Halimo Mohamud, spiritual sisters and pioneers in an ethnic fare usually served up by men.

Al Huda, Fez Mediterranean, and Asmara offer Somali and the somewhat similar Eritrean food, as do several other markets dotted in between, but the tendency is that some can turn into hang out spots for males, making it awkward for young African women to share the same space.

Mini Mogadishu is not designed just for women of course, but the idea is to have it run by women making authentic homemade Somali food, with an enclosed space in the restaurant reserved for women where they can comfortably remove their hijabs.

Halimo Mohamud came to Portland in 1999. Nimo arrived a couple of years later. They met in 2002 through a mutual friend and discovered they were from the same Abgaal tribe. They talked about their new lives as immigrants, raising kids in a foreign community, and agreed that mealtime was a solidifying experience.

“Growing up in Somalia made you tough but empathetic. Surrounded by such uncertainty and hardship meant that sometimes the only good part of life was the time spent with family around the dinner table,” Nimo said. “I’ve watched a large group of kids grow. Some of them my own and some of them within my neighborhood and community. I remember them coming to my house with my children to have supper with us. It is a nice feeling knowing that however small, I did have a little impact on their maturity through a home cooked meal.”

Halimo and her cousin had operated a transportation company. Nimo drove for them, and plans began for the restaurant.

Operating all day, Mini Mogadishu will serve classic Somali breakfast fare including aanjeero crepes (a fermented pancake-like bread) with hilib (goat or beef) or chicken sugar. Lunchtime offerings include dalac bilash (a tomato soup), boor (fried dough), mushaari bowl (porridge), and fresh pita or jaapaati. For sipping, there'll be fruit smoothies and mango or guava juice.

“And many Italian foods,” said Abdul Yousef, Nimo’s son who painted the left side of the wall blue with a large white star to reflect the Somali flag. “Italians were settlers in Somalia and part of their culture was left behind. Lasagna, ziti, spaghetti — there are a lot of pasta dishes in our culture.”

Yousef's sister Hanan and brother Abdi helped renovate the restaurant from its former days as Nur’s, Abdi Rahman’s Halaal Market. In addition to painting the walls, the family tackled the kitchen and bathroom, and tore up layers of tile floors. But they kept the brick oven to consider serving pizza.

“There’s a big difference for what you need in a kitchen between a restaurant and a market,” Yousef said.

The changes were a necessary attempt to put their mark on the building, but the look will keep evolving. According to Yousef, conformity is not so important in Somali culture, so he'll have a mix of rearrangeable booth and single seating, a café and a more private section for women only.

With family style seating available, Mini Mogadishu can accommodate eight to ten people.

“We want to reflect how people do things in their own homes, and try to do our best to recreate that,” Yousef said.


Members of Jaw Gems reflect on the success of their latest album, Heatweaver

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Members of Jaw Gems reflect on the success of their latest album, Heatweaver

Get in shape for New Year’s Eve by grooving to local neolegends Jaw Gems, who open for Lettuce and Tauk at the State Theatre on December 30, a funky all-ages affair. We caught up with Andrew Scherzer, the band’s electric bass player to talk about their new album Heatweaver and its reception, their upgrade in venue size — hopping from a residency at Local 188 to Portland House of Music and Events to the State — and the band’s reaction to winning Deli Magazine’s New England Artist of the Month award this week.

 

Andrew Scherzer: The band hasn’t been together as much lately, each busy with individual works and Thanksgiving, but when [the album] came out, we were very excited. It’s cool and sort of surreal. Anytime we find out that people like the way we play — it’s awesome, exciting and very weird too. No matter what happens, I’m like, 'people like us?' It’s like the surprise when getting the job and saying ‘What? You believed my resume?’ Anytime anyone takes some time out of their day to recognize some sort of art that you are putting out is a real honor.”

 

Tim Gillis: You’re touring with Lettuce. Tell us what that’s like.

 

AS: We’ve played with them before. Last year, we played with them at the State and did three or four shows with them, including one in September Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in Providence. They’ve taken us out for some one-off gigs. I would say they’re my favorite band. And in meeting them, we found that they’re the funnest guys to hang out with.

 

TG: Where is the tour headed in the New Year?

 

AS: We’re tagging along on the East Coast side of their tour, from Boston to Florida for a couple of weeks, playing quite a few shows with them. Then we are heading to LA to play a hip-hop showcase, then linking up with Papadosio for some of their tour in the Southwest and finishing up in Atlanta. We’re going on the road for about two months.

 

TG: There’s been a big buzz around your recent release. A lot has been happening for the band since the release of Heatweaver. The response, both critically and from newer fans from farther away; what’s that been like?

 

AS: It’s been great. Our second album, Blades Plural, got a great reception, but it was before we were brought out nationally. We were playing other places, playing with great bands, and then put out the new album. Portland and the Maine music scene has to be one of the most supportive communities in the country. We couldn’t be a band without it, but putting out an album and have people who don’t know you, to have those people pick it up … it’s not better than when you play in Portland, [but] it’s just different and new. I probably speak for the whole band when I say it’s a great and weird feeling when people have no reason to like your music — they’re not your friends’ friends. When you know that the reason they dig your music is all their own.

 

TG: How does an improviser practice?

 

AS: That depends on the intent of practice. If we’re rehearsing to get ready for shows, we’re not really writing new things, not changing things. We’re just trying to play the music and not stagnate. You want the thing to sound like it’s new and fresh. And it probably sounds counterintuitive, but you don’t want to practice too much and just move your hands mindlessly. So we don’t put too many rules on how we’re going to play. We don’t want a dance song to turn into a happy ballad, but other than that, there are no rules.

 

Jaw Gems is made up of Ahmad Hassan Muhammad and Tyler Quist, both on keyboard and samplers, D.J. Moore on drums, and Andrew Scherzer on electric bass. Each of them plays in at least two different bands, but Jaw Gems is now their main project and focal point for playing live.

The Mallett Brothers will end a busy year at PHOME

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The Mallett Brothers will end a busy year at PHOME

Coming off a whirlwind tour of the United States this past year and playing as many as 190 shows, the Mallett Brothers say it will be “cool to cap it off at home,” on New Year’s Eve at the Portland House of Music and Events.

“In 2016, it turned into gigging harder than ever,” Luke Mallett said in a recent interview with The Phoenix, “playing five days a week throughout the summer. We’ve gone to Texas twice, and back and forth to Colorado.”

After several years as a tight, cohesive group, the band has been practicing overtime to fit in two new musicians — Adam Cogswell on drums who replaced Brian Higgins, and Andrew Martelle, formerly of North of Nashville, on fiddle and mandolin.

“In seven years, we’ve gone through more than one lineup change,” Luke said. “When we lost Brian and started with Adam, it took some adjusting. With these two new additions, we now have even more renewed energy when we play live. Martelle is a great element to add. Having a fiddle brings things to life.”

The band is based around Luke and Will Mallett, on vocals and guitar. Along with the new additions, Wally plays guitar and dobro and adds vocals. Nick Leen plays bass guitar. Their release last year, Lights Along the River, garnered widespread acclaim and raucous crowds.

What may surprise their loyal following is a secret work they’ve been honing for several years now. Expected to come out in February of 2017, The Falling of the Pine is a return to their musical roots with a typical added flourish. It is inspired in part by their time in the Maine woods while working on their last album and a book Will found on his parents’ bookshelf. The Falling of the Pine offers up ten tunes based on lyrics discovered in that book, Minstrelsy of Maine, a 1927 collection of folk songs and logging lyrics written by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm of Brewer. The band met each day for a few hours, delving into some of this rich Maine history for the new material.

“We’ve been working on it long enough. It took us quite some time,” Luke said of the upcoming LP, for which they added musical score to the words. “We picked at this in-between (live shows and other studio work). We’ve got the record finished, the artwork back, and we’re feeling close.”

The band plans a Maine theater tour for the spring, playing in some opera houses as well, a fitting backdrop for these traditional tunes. Acknowledging the value of the stories behind the songs, The Falling of the Pine is the band’s first record for which they will release a booklet of lyrics. “We’ve been asked for years to do that, and finally thought this is the one. It has the lyrics as well as quotes from the author,” Luke said.

The two Mallett brothers come from a family with a strong folk tradition. Their father Dave has churned out Maine folk songs and ballads for four decades and is featured on their last album. Their mother Jayne Lello worked with a University of Maine professor, Sandy Ives, back in the 1960s, collecting and archiving traditional songs when she first learned of Minstrelsy. Although the researching duo created some vinyl versions of the songs, the Mallett Brothers were keen to keep away from their influence and, in the folk tradition, rework the music.

“They were singing some of these songs in the traditional Irish folk way. Our mother has a copy. We heard it and knew about it, but we tried to avoid it,” Luke said. “We had a pretty good idea anyway, but we started from scratch. We wanted to match the feeling of the lyrics to the instruments we are playing now and the general feel of the whole thing. It is different, definitely not a traditional record. We did traditional songs in a non-traditional way.”

Excitement brims for the new work with the old songs, but the singer took a moment to reflect on the hubbub of the outgoing year. He said a high note was playing at Floydfest in July.

“It sets the bar for festivals,” he said. “It’s smaller than some, tucked in the mountains in Floyd, V, in Blueridge. It’s a real scene — a collection of music lovers like I’ve never seen. The people are cool, and the bands they brought in offer a lot to up-and-coming bands.”

Turning their sights on the year-ending show, the band is thrilled to be billed with Samuel James and his full band. They see the “grit and gravel” performer as a perfect fit for their folksy, countrified sound. “We have been trying to put a show together with him for five years, and it just finally worked out.”

Dave Gutter shares his year's high moments

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Dave Gutter shares his year's high moments

Rustic Overtones open for Matisyahu at the State Theatre on New Year’s Eve in an all-ages show. For Dave Gutter, the band’s frontman, it has been a year of collaboration and fruition for projects that highlight his wordsmithing for others and influence on their musical careers.

“A lot of stuff I’d been writing the last three years culminated this year,” Gutter said in a recent interview with The Phoenix.

Aaron Neville released “Apache,” with lyrics Gutter co-wrote with Eric Krasno based on Neville’s poems.

“Working on the Neville record has been a dream gig,” Krasno said of the release. On it, he worked with Gutter, imagining Neville’s life through at least 50 poems he had sent them.

“The cool thing for me was laying down music and melodies, like painting a picture. We created the sketch and Aaron would add the color. He was very involved in the process, something he had not done on his records in a very long time,” Krasno said. “The excitement level between all of us was high.”

Gutter pushed Krasno, the songwriter, to move to the front of the stage and sing his own songs, which resulted in Krasno’s debut album, Blood from a Stone. Krasno credits Gutter and other Maine musicians with helping him make the jump, giving him the necessary confidence in his own voice.

Another high note, literally, for Gutter was his work on a single from GRiZ’s new album. In addition to the novel song, Grant Kwiecinski, who at 25 is already an electronic funk icon, also introduced GRiZ Kush, the artist’s own strain of weed that is sold legally in Denver, Co.

“With the writing thing, it’s been a busy year,” Gutter said, but added that the creative, collaborative process dates back even longer. “We started that four years ago. So sometimes after you write the songs, the bands tour and play them, record them. Now we’re at a place where it’s looping around and seems current.”

Over time, Gutter’s vocal range has moved from sandpaper scratchy rock anthems like Paranoid Social Club’s “We All Got Wasted” to hauntingly mellow love ballads, like those off his new album Armies, a duo endeavor with Anna Lombard.

His songwriting may have been overlooked comparatively, but industry insiders know he can crank out catchy bumper sticker lyrics and social commentary with music’s best. In a year that saw Bob Dylan win a Nobel Prize for Literature, the establishment types are starting to appreciate songwriting as a serious art form.

For Gutter, a low note this year was the death of David Bowie. The Maine minstrel joined up with other local legends in a tribute to Ziggy Stardust held at the State Theatre days after news came down. He played “Sector Z” with Jeff Beam, Dominic Lavoie, and Mat Zaro.

Another high point for Gutter — again, literally — was when he and fiancée Kaitlyn Gradie had their engagement photographs taken on the side of a cliff in the White Mountains.

“We went to the top in the early morning dark,” he said. “They dropped us down with harnesses, and as the sun came up, they took the pictures.” Philbrick Photography provided the aerial hijinks on Cathedral Ledge. The couple plans to get married, perhaps in the new year, but they are waiting to announce a date, “waiting to throw a crazy party."

More big news for the coming year: Rustic Overtones have begun work on a new album, one that will be a decidedly different product than in years past.

“It’s a collection of instrumentals I’m currently writing over,” Gutter said. “A world music vibe, heavily South American and Brazilian. I discovered some cool music from the late ’60s and ’70s, from Brazilian psychedelic rock bands. We love to make music like that, always trying to push forward.”

From the studio to the stage, the band continues to break barriers. “We resurrect all of our music when we play live,” he said of the upcoming State show, “and we’ll have fresh new versions with a different feel.”

Gutter has not played with Matisyahu before, but knows several of the guys from his band, having met them through Krasno. “I’ve never even seen Matis live, so I’m looking forward to do my set and then just chill, hang out with the drunk guys who know every word to your songs.”

 

Details:

Matisyahu w/ Rustic Overtones & Alec Benjamin

Doors: 8 pm / Show: 9 pm

$20 Early Bird / $30 Advance / $35 Day of Show

This event is ALL AGES

Builder of the House release a gender-bending music video ahead of their first full length album

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Builder of the House release a gender-bending music video ahead of their first full length album

Local folk-pop duo Builder of the House is moving to the big time. Robert Cimitile (acoustic guitar, vocals) and Elliot Heeschen (drums and electric guitar) are set to release Ornaments, their first full-length work, with eight new tunes and a couple of reworked songs — “There Is No Hourglass, Only Sand” and “My New Eyes.”

An early peek at one of the new songs, “Look at the Man,” has been making rounds via YouTube, garnering widespread praise as a poignant look at former Maine celebrity Conor Leigh Tubbs (who recently moved to New York City). It’s a sublime video narrative, similar in tone to images by local photographer Smith Galtney, who captured Tubbs's vivid transformation to the drag artist Cherry Lemonade for a documentary film project for the Salt Institute.

The band’s music videos have always been their hallmark. “This Is No Hourglass,” directed by Cimitile and co-directed by Derek R. Brigham, won best video at the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema and CutOut Fest. “A Plot in Falmouth” won best music video at the MOVE Music Festival and is based on the story of Cimitile's great-great grandparents, “on a ship that sailed from Liverpool to Maine” in 1895. He researched the history of it at the Portland Room of the Portland Public Library. The video plays like a silent film and is set in southern Maine.

“It’s super personal, and seemed like an excellent story to be a song,” he said. “Writing lyrics is a lot more challenging for me than the music. On that album, a lot of the songs were introspective. I was listening to a lot of Bright Eyes, mirroring that style. When we started writing tunes for the new album, we were trying to break away from that.”

So they moved from public research for private songs to domestic inspiration for more accessible hits. “When writing lyrics, I pace around my house thinking about a song. Then a phrase will come to me. I write it down, then keep pacing, over and over,” he said. “A lot of songs on the new album are based on sayings, for example ‘you are who you are when no one is looking’. Writing this way, I’m able to pull myself away from singing about myself; it’s not so personal.”

 music BuilderoftheHouse

For Ornaments, the duo worked with Todd Hutchisen at Acadia Recording Company. The Lucid’s Dominic Lavoie provides whistling for the new work. Colleen Clark, Clara Junken and Ashley Storrow add vocals. Bass duties were split between Andy Scherzer of Jaw Gems, and Drew Wyman, who also plays with Pete Witham.

Dan Capaldi helped them arrange the record. “On some songs he was super-involved,” Heeschen said. “Others not so much, but he listened to every track and throughout the album was able to come up with something we had not thought of that made the songs complete.

Forward to Go Back

Builder of the House may have expanded their repertoire, but their music has always retained that creative element. They both played in the Maine Marimba Ensemble — “a fun enterprise where there’s not as much pressure as playing your own stuff,” Heeschen says. When the two began playing with the MME, “Rob was already working on the first EP and he was looking for someone to drum live. He was playing with a lot of local musicians, and I seemed to be the common denominator. Then it became more like we were the band.”

Their name comes from a meditation retreat Cimitile once attended. A recorded recitation of Buddhist scripture was playing, and he was particularly moved by the story of Siddhartha sitting under the tree, awaiting divine revelation.

“He refuses to get up until he achieves enlightenment,” Cimitile recalls. “When he finally does, he opens his eyes and says ‘Ah, builder of the house, I have seen you and you can no longer build a house for me because I’ve taken all your mortar and smashed all your bricks.’ I was in a rough spot at the time, and whenever I thought of this phrase later, it reminded me of trying to be better.”

And the band is. A little bit Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, a simmering blend of story and song. And a new album for the new year.

 

Watch "Look At The Man" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkdPkizADUk

Forget about politics at the Wicked Good, Halfway Decent Un'naugural Ball

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 Jenny Van West, Troy R. Bennett, and award-winning gospel singer Fiston Bujambi Seba.

What better way to celebrate the inauguration than to skip it altogether and spend the evening laughing, dancing and raising money for a great cause?

The Mayo Street Arts Center is hosting the Wicked Good, Halfway Decent Un’naugural Ball on Friday, Jan. 20, to benefit Mayo Street Arts and the Maine Immigrant Musical Instrument Project, which helps new arrivals reconnect with their musical roots by finding them instruments and introducing them to local like-minded communities.

The Wicked Good Band will team up with the Half Moon Jug Band for the event. Troy R. Bennett, on guitar and banjo, says he is known as the Van Gogh of the banjo since “I only give the impression that I’m playing it.” He’s joined by “Frost” Steve Brewer on bass, kazoo, and sax and Jeff Hamm who plays a suitcase drum set made from old American Tourister luggage.

Bennett says the idea for the show came to him after the presidential election but stresses that it’s all about positive vibes, not protesting ones. 

“Everyone’s getting worked up over it,” he says of the election results. “They feel like they’ve lost control. We wanted to have a fun concert in town, where you aren’t spinning your wheels, to think about our own neighbors right here.”

That desire to help Portland’s new neighbors led him to Jenny Van West, the founder and director of the Maine Immigrant Musical Instrument Project. Bennett had written about her efforts for a local newspaper and quickly realized her story went on from where he’d left off.

“She had run into a new Mainer from Africa, who commented on the guitar she was carrying,” he says. “She found out that he’d fled Africa but was not able to bring his guitar. You know, while immigrants are waiting for a ruling on a work permit, they are barred from working, but it’s free to make music.”

After that initial chance encounter, Van West started work on the project, which is part of a larger effort called “Welcoming the New American Family,” orchestrated by Pastor Maurice Namwira. It brings together recent arrivals with folks who've been here longer, “making sure they are oriented, have household items, know what they need to do next for their asylum cases, and getting together to eat and play music and relax,” she said.

An early gathering at her house brought in “a mélange of people from 10 different African countries. We had all kinds of music - country, folk, traditional African music. Out of that, a grassroots network started to grow. There are a lot of them in Portland and they are starting to connect, moving into a more formal direction to tackle issues like housing and education since a lot of people are afraid to speak up. For now, we quietly see what can we do for someone to help them feel a little more integrated.”

She notes the various and deep psychological pressures on immigrants, based on what they've been through and how well they acclimate to their new surroundings.

“Music is a common thread. They could be from several different countries, but they all know all these songs,” she said. “Recently I delivered guitars to two people on the same night, men who are living in the same apartment. Typically, roommate situations for recent arrivals seeking asylum are not by choice - more like they are thrown in together because they all need a room and one is available in a particular apartment. One knew that I was coming; the other one did not. The one who knew I was coming is from DR Congo. There, when you receive a gift, the polite thing to do is to put it behind a closed door and open it later. To open it right then is considered rude. So that's what he did and quietly returned to talking with me. While my American self was disappointed that I would not see his reaction, I knew he was receiving this gift in absolutely the most respectful way possible, which made me feel great. The one who did not know I was coming is quite extroverted, and when he got the word I was there, came running out of his room so completely excited. He opened the thin case right up and pulled out the guitar. He sat right down, started playing and singing in a big gorgeous voice.”

Moving experiences like this one are not only felt when she delivers instruments to immigrants, but also when she receives a donation that has been played for generations.

“One of my African friends told me that giving instruments is an act of family,” she said. “If you’re here with no biological family, you feel like you’re at home.”

That sense of family pervades these organizations and is the driving force for the Un’naugural Ball.

“We’re totally into having a good time,” Bennett says. “Whatever happens with the new administration, people are going to need good times. We’re not against anybody. We’re just for stuff – for good times and making sure musicians get instruments in their hands.”

Wicked Good, Halfway Decent Un’naugural Ball | Friday, Jan. 20 at 7:30 p.m. | Mayo Street Arts, 10 Mayo Street, Portland | mayostreetarts.org |

Scott Cairns on poetry, politics, and the possibility of peace

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Scott Cairns on poetry, politics, and the possibility of peace

Scott Cairns was born in Tacoma, Washington. He earned a BA from Western Washington University, an MA from Hollins College, an MFA from Bowling Green State University, and a PhD from the University of Utah. This interview was conducted by Tim Gillis ahead of Cairns' reading in South Portland on Jan. 30.

 

TG: How does geography influence your poetry?

 

SC: I don’t know that I consciously am aware of how it might. I do know I’ve been in exile for 40 years, wandering in the wilderness, as it were. I grew up here in the Pacific Northwest, but left for grad school in ’77 and then didn’t really get back until just now. Despite having lived and taught all around the country, this landscape has always been the landscape of my imagination. Maine is similar, the evergreen trees that creep down to the shore, the low skies on a cloudy day — I found it analogous to the kind of quiet that one pursues when settling into writing a poem or saying a prayer.

 

Besides writing poetry, Cairns has also written a spiritual memoir, Short Trip to the Edge (2007), and the libretto for the oratorios “The Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp” and “A Melancholy Beauty.”

 

TG: Talk about the element of spirituality in your work.

 

SC: When I started out, I was like most of my American contemporaries, working off of my own experiences and trying to find something useful to talk about. I guess at some point, around my second book, I started writing to find out, instead of writing what I thought I knew, poring over the language on the page, and looking for a glimpse of something I hadn’t previously apprehended. Most of my career now has been comprised of composing that way. Not too far along that way, I started attending to my own personal obsessions with God — using that practice to lean into an understanding of the nearness of God, developing through the poems, meditations, through that contemplative compressing of language, to appreciate how I might thereby commune with God. Not every poem, but most in the past 30-plus years have commenced that way.

 

Cairns has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was awarded the Denise Levertov Award in 2014. He has taught at numerous universities including University of North Texas, Old Dominion University, Seattle Pacific University, and the University of Missouri. He also directs a low-residency MFA program at Seattle Pacific University.

 

TG: Tell me a bit about the nitty-gritty of your writing process?

 

SC: I use a legal pad and a pencil, and am usually reading something. What I’m reading is varied — a great poem or some theological text — Patristic Greek texts, the fathers of the church, early saints, and their writings.

 

TG: Can you contrast the processes of writing poetry, memoir, and libretti?

 

SC: They require a different filter of the head. With poetry, my primary mode, I write to find things out. If I have an idea before I start, I wait for that idea to go away. I want the language to tell me something I don’t yet apprehend. With the memoir, one begins with a template of actual events that I allow into the text in a way I wouldn’t have done with a poem. I want the events to be recorded and re-examined. Memoir is a way to revisit those occasions and glean from them a more useful sense of what to make of them, these visits to holy places and discussions with holy men. The contents of the libretti were pretty much determined by historical occasions — e.g. the martyrdom of St. Polycarp of Symrna. I worked with a composer who did the music. I supplied verses for moments in the score, then the composer worked from those and deduced from that matter the musical phrases he then composed and arranged.

 

TG: You’re founding director of Writing Workshops in Greece, a program that brings writers to study and engage with literary life in modern Greece. How did that enterprise come about?

 

SC: In college, I started reading patristic texts in translation, which eventually led me to becoming an Orthodox Christian. I suppose that the most noticeable Orthodox Christians in America are Greek Orthodox. My developing understanding of the faith led me to pay more attention to these early writings — many of which were written in Greek. I started learning Greek and also going to Greece to visit the monastic enclave of Mount Athos. As you probably know, the Byzantine Empire covered much of the Mediterranean from Venice east, and subsequently succumbed to Islamic takeover. The peninsula of Mount Athos is the last vestige of the Byzantine Empire. That world continues to this day, a part of Greece but not exactly, sort of like the Vatican in terms of self-governance. I initially developed the writing program as an excuse to go to Greece more frequently. As of this past December, I have gone to the holy mountain 24 times.

 

TG: A sharp contrast to disturbing recent news of religiously motivated attacks and threats of violence nationally. In Portland last Thursday (Jan. 19), a bomb threat was called into a Jewish pre-school. You’re reading at Congregation Bet Ha’am, a Reform Jewish congregation in South Portland, at an event hosted by the BTS Center, a United Church of Christ affiliate that’s ecumenical in nature. Talk about these intersections of politics and religion, and the possibilities for peace. And how can contemporary poetry speak to that end?

 

SC: Orthodox Christianity is probably the most Jewish of Christian expressions. In Orthodoxy, that connection with the Jewish faith has been maintained, even in the way the priests dress. Our original liturgies were composed by men who were Jews, adapting preexisting Jewish practices. As for myself, I’ve studied a good many rabbinic texts — Talmud, midrashim — early writings that result from one’s poring over perplexing moments in scripture. One writes poems from a place of understanding words, understanding the power of words, and honoring the discoveries that this uncommon degree of attention can avail. If there is a relationship between the poet and the politician, I’d say the poet examines the language of the politician for veracity. Poets in our culture now are in a position to challenge careless or misleading uses of language in the political realm. We are obliged to call attention to such abuses. We have an obligation to share what we see, speaking and writing against euphemism or obfuscation.

 

Poetry Reading by Scott Cairns, hosted by the BTS Center | Congregation Bet Ha'am, 81 Westbrook St., South Portland | Monday, Jan. 30 7-8 pm

Cairns is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Theology of Doubt (1985), The Translation of Babel (1990), Philokalia (2002), Idiot Psalms (2014), and Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems (2015). His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Poetry, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Best Spiritual Writing and Best American Spiritual Writing.

The Ghosts of Johnson City revisits America's dark history with The Devil's Gold

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The Ghosts of Johnson City revisits America's dark history with The Devil's Gold

Portland's Ghosts of Johnson City romp through town to kick off their new album, The Devil’s Gold, an epic collection of 15 songs that celebrates the near-forgotten lives of classic American archetypes.

 

The February 11 concert at the Portland House of Music and Events will showcase the band's rich, evocative music, with its stories populated with gold miners, settlers, sailors, and lumberjacks. Present in the album is tragedy and poignancy and a depth of personal insights into the rugged past.

 

Amos Libby — founder, lead vocalist, and guitar and banjo player — teaches Middle Eastern and Indian music at Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby colleges. He also plays in the Okbari Middle Eastern Ensemble, but is now steeped in headlining the Ghosts’ with Douglas Porter on guitar, banjo, and vocals; Erik Neilson on baritone ukulele and vocals; Erik Winter on pump organ; and Ian Riley on upright bass.

 

Recently, they added Sarah Mueller on violin and Bethany Winter on vocals, who “bring a different texture to everything we do,” Libby says. “They have really changed us a lot.”

 

The band’s second album is a follow-up to the critically acclaimed Am I Born to Die?, a collection of rare covers which were reconstructed and interpreted in a current vein. Libby rewrote the melodies for that album, but all the lyrics (and most of the music) were traditional. They formed the seed for the new record, for which he wrote all the music and lyrics, and the resulting effort is a full bloom of Appalachian music and the stories of oft-overlooked ancestors.

 

The material for the new work was mined from various archives, letters back and forth from men in search of gold and their hopeful wives and families back home. The album crosses the country, collecting musical gems along the way. One song dips into Winter’s family history and relates a tragic drowning.

 

“You can find historical letters that range ones written during the Gold Rush and the Civil War,” Libby said. “Some of the songs are based on actual events that occurred. Others are how I imagined these people as they struggled to survive early America.”

 

All 15 songs were recorded and mixed in two days at Acadia Recording Company in Portland. They intended the concentrated music marathon to give the new release an album concept and capture the essence of these myriad characters, and the result is an overwhelming success.

 

The album begins with the mournful and plaintive “Jordan’s Golden Shore,” which features a tinge of Irish harmonies. Next, comes the title track, based on letters written by doomed gold miners sending word to their loved ones about their prospects for fortune. It’s about greed and people losing their moral compass in the space of looking for profit.

 

“To Rest in California” is an answer to “Devil’s Gold,” inspired by letters written to the miners, imagined from the point-of-views of the wives, much more pragmatic and cautionary.

 

“I remember reading the miners’ letters (of which, many more are accessible) and wondering what the letters going to these miners were like,” Libby said.

 

All of the songs read like classic short stories of Americana, and listeners would do well to take their time with the album, reading along with the lyrics for a virtual history lesson.

 

“When we started this, I didn’t know what it would look like,” Libby said, “But telling stories in music is one of the oldest things people have done.”

 

One song is a powerful addition to Maine folklore, drawing on a band member’s personal family history. “A Drowning at the Stillwater” is about Nora “Mabel” Henderson Cole, drowned in the Stillwater River in Old Town in 1911, leaving behind her husband and young daughters, Flo and Frances. Cole was Winter’s great-grandmother. This song tells the story of that sad day and the mystery surrounding Cole’s death. “The portrait that graces the inside cover of this album is that of Mrs. Cole, and we hope that she rests in eternal peace wherever she may be,” the album’s liner notes read.

 

“He grew up in Old Town,” Libby said of Winter. “The photos in the center of the (album’s) booklet are at the spot at the Stillwater where she disappeared. Erik had a copy of his great-grandmother’s obituary and knew the family lore around that tragedy. It inspired me to write a song about it.”

 

“These Last Fond Words of Mine” is a sort of sea shanty in reverse, this time offering a landed man’s lament over his lost love in her watery grave. “The Northern Timber” is a wonderful anthem, conjuring The Mallett Brothers Band and their recent album of 20th-century Maine working songs, The Falling of the Pine. And “The Murder of the Pioneer Preacher of Deadwood” has all the visual elements of a great music video, something the band plans in the near future, depending on the album’s reception.

 

Getting the album down to 15 songs may have been Libby’s biggest challenge.

 

“In the last year, I’ve written about 50 of these songs,” he said. “It was difficult for us to decide how to populate this world, where all of these people are struggling through their own circumstances. The end for all of us is the same journey, and we all take that journey alone. It was tough to pare it down. I know it’s asking a lot of the listener to take such a long trip, but it made sense. It felt like the right world.”

 

The band’s name comes from Libby’s biological father, “a musician who was out of my life from a pretty young age,” he says. “In the summertime, after he left Maine, we would spend summers in Johnson City, Tennessee. He would play gigs there. A lot of my childhood memories are of him playing folk music. He died when I was 25. I flew down for the funeral. Since then it was in my mind, someday I would pick up the musical thread that he left.”

 

The Ghosts of Johnson City have done just that, and the resulting creation is an all-covering canvas of American lives, letters, and songs. To spend time in the album’s company is like getting the history lesson too many of us forgot.

 

Details:

The Ghosts of Johnson City

Sat. Feb 11 at 9 p.m.

Portland House of Music & Events

25 Temple St., Portland

with Dark Hollow Bottling Company


Bridging gaps through music with the Portland Culture Exchange

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Bridging gaps through music with the Portland Culture Exchange

Protesters gathered on Monument Square Friday night, with sign-holders chanting to passing cars and each other that “Hey Ho! Donald Trump has got to go.” The woman on the bullhorn implored art walkers to come out each month in similar fashion.

 

Across the street, in the atrium of the Portland Public Library, critics of the current regime took another approach, gathering musicians from several immigrant communities for the Portland Culture Exchange’s music jam and dance party. They had “Mainer” shirts especially made for the day, crafted by Pigeon, the street name for artist Orson Horchler.

 

This first public event comes after a year of several impromptu house parties, introducing newcomers to the city to their neighbors and future friends. Lilly Pearlman anchors the group and plays fiddle and bass guitar. She grew up in Portland, went to college in New York, and then spent time in Brazil.  

 

“When I moved back, I wanted to know a Portland that wasn’t as homogenous as the one I grew up in. I thought ‘What stands in the way?’ I realized that we’re not homogenous, we’re segregated.”

 

She wanted a project that called upon peoples’ various skills and yet somehow united them. She started going to English classes, where she met new Mainers and talked about their interests. Almost everybody she met loved music; most played an instrument. Cuisine and culture quickly became two additional distinguished commonalities. They started holding monthly French-English discussions, and the group plans to add Spanish and Arabic exchanges to the mix. Despite national concerns with immigration policies and the swirling confusion of their effects on locals, the Portland Culture Exchange has remained intent on sharing traditions, food, and music.

 

“We are bridging the gaps between American-born and new Mainers through common passions to create the opportunity for building relationships, friendships between communities that are usually segregated,” she said. “Frequently, even when there’s interest between multiple groups to get together, it’s uncomfortable. There are cultural barriers. Sometimes people think the differences are greater than they are.”

 

The group started having informal parties that turned into Monument Square street jams. The library’s atrium was packed at Friday night’s event, and they’re considering moving to a bigger space the next time. But for the group, it’s not all song and dance.

 

They’re planning a big event called “We Sing for Peace,” using some of the Jewish traditions of Eastern Europe, especially the notion of a tisch – a joyous public celebration with a meal set up on a long table, often held on a Friday, “when Orthodox Jews aren’t supposed to play musical instruments, so they sing into the night,” Pearlman said. “Niggunim, or traditional melodies, for example. Based on that, we are going to have people lead easy songs in their languages that call for peace. We’ll probably need more space, perhaps the auditorium.”

 

“The notion of a tisch comes from my Jewish (Ashkenazi, Eastern European) heritage,” said Pearlman, who teaches ceilidh dances from her Scottish heritage at their jams. She says the project works to build a real multicultural view of what ‘Portland culture' is, based on Portland's residents and their multifaceted histories and traditions.

music KingbenMajojaNeilPearlmanandLillyPearlman

 

“We Sing for Peace” is modeled after a tisch because that, too, is part of Portland's traditions. “While the project is grounded in the sharing, appreciating, and exchanging of traditions and cultures, we put great value on the people who bring Portland's cultural richness,” she said.

 

“When Eric Simido sings an Angolan song, he makes his Angolan culture essential to Portland culture. When the folks at Chez Okapi — a Congolese restaurant on St. John Street where we host our French-English language exchanges — cook fufu and pundu in Portland, they bring their home with them, and they build Portland's culture. When any brilliant foreign-born Mainer uses their ingenuity to create a new business in Portland, their unique way of thinking and being makes its way into this community’s roots and foundation. So we see our exchange as part of an intertwining of long histories in the place where we all now share common space: Portland.”

 

The musical regulars include Pearlman and her brother Neil on the keyboard. Majoja, on the drums and guitar, and Eric Simido, vocals and guitar, are both from Angola. Ness Smith-Savedoff, who grew up in Portland and Switzerland, plays drums. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda are regularly represented. Everyone is invited to bring an instrument and come and dance. At “We Sing for Peace,” tentatively scheduled for April, they hope to have as many as ten countries joining voice.

 

Majoja is the nickname or artistic name for Kingebeni Kilaka Kelorde, who is originally from the north of Angola. “I had to go to DR Congo, the country where I lived for about two decades because my country was in civil war.”

 

He studied art in high school, and is now a painter and musician. “I have loved the music since my childhood because it has been part of my traditional culture,” he said.

 

“I have been in Portland since October 2015. It was not easy for me to be accustomed with the weather, oh nooo! So cold, the lifestyle is so fast and busy. When I met with Jenny van West, she connected me with Pigeon and he connected me with Lilly Pearlman. She talked to me about the Portland Culture Exchange. It seemed to be an interesting project and I promised her to give all my energies because I believe that everyone has something special to share to make Portland a better place for everyone. I live in the US , and I love this multicultural country. Culture is the identity of people. I'd like to see Portland growing up like all the metropolitan cities around the world. Portland Culture Exchange is our first step.”

 

For more information, contact portlandcultureexchange@gmail.com.

"Protecting the environment is not a partisan issue" Why Mainers resist Trump's EPA pick

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Scott Pruitt was confirmed twice last week. First as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. The second confirmation was of his suspected ties to oil, gas, and coal companies after thousands of his emails to fossil fuel execs were leaked.

 

Environmental groups fear the worst, but there are specific steps you can take on an individual, local level to fight back.

 

Several area non-profits have teamed up to create “protester primers,” workshops on environmental crises and actionable ways to combat them.

 

“Resist: Skills to Fight Back for Maine's Environment: Portland” will be held on March 8 at the University of Southern Maine. While many attendees may be of a similar political persuasion, the intent is to avoid politics.

 

“We really want to highlight that this is not a partisan event,” said Sophie Halpin, communications and development coordinator at Maine Conservation Voters, the lead organizer. “We’re not talking about resisting Trump because he’s a Republican. It’s because of his statements and cabinet picks. We want everyone to come together to say that the environment is not a partisan issue; it’s a basic human right.”

 

The idea is to draw attention to President Trump’s policy proposals and cabinet picks.

 

“It’s not normal that Scott Pruitt is heading the EPA, which he has sued several times,” said Melissa Mann, advocacy coordinator. “We were thankful that (Senators Angus) King and (Susan) Collins voted against him, but he’s still in charge so we’re looking at what that means for the Clean Air and Water Acts.”

 

“There has been an outpouring of support,” Halpin said. “There’s a waitlist to get into training, so we’re looking to do more for staff members of organizations that want to expand what they do into advocacy work as well.”

 

For more than two years, the Maine Conservation Voters group has worked to increase the number of Mainers talking about climate change and taking on civic engagement around environmental issues around the state. As part of that foundational effort, she worked with community members and students from Unity College and the University of Maine to identify major areas of concern. Interest in organizing informational and action sessions peaked at the end of last year.

 

“After the election, there was fever pitch of people who wanted to do this work on a higher level,” Mann says. “We knew we needed to do more, to build on that activist energy. And to do that within our mission, we needed to give Mainers the means and method to respond. We also wanted to make sure it wasn’t a one-man show.”

news environment kids at solar hearing

Maine students advocating for renewable solar energy. 

Maine Conservation Voters worked with the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Maine Public Health Association, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, and the Wilderness Society to create the events. In addition, speakers and workshop leaders representing several other groups, including Revision Energy and Knack Factory, a multimedia production company based in Portland, will provide information about the current threats to national parks, how to grow solar power in Maine, and effective measures to defend the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

 

Once well armed with this environmental information, work-shoppers will get a quick lesson in Organizing 101.

 

Next, attendees will get busy with workshops on how to put all this info into action.

 

They’ll learn how to lobby legislators on issues that matter the most to them, how to make an impact with unique stories, and how to get messages out using social media and letters to the editor.

 

Maine Speaker of the House Sara Gideon (D-Freeport) will address Portlanders and lead the session on how to lobby legislators. Majority Leader Erin Herbig (D-Belfast) will speak at the Belfast workshop.

 

One of the most important issues to Mainers is arsenic in well water. According to Mann, York and Kennebec counties have some of the highest reported incidents of toxicity. In some counties, more than 20 percent of their wells are contaminated with arsenic above federal safety levels.

 

“We’re working to get increased testing,” she said. “There is arsenic in well-water across the state. Education is key. In Kennebec County, children with arsenic in their well water had lower average IQ scores than their peers. Arsenic is also linked to kidney failure, as well as skin, bladder, and lung cancer. Arsenic in water is a social justice issue.”

 

These specific examples from our state offer credible evidence of national concerns.

 

“On a bigger scale, it relates to why protecting water and air are so important,” Halpin said. “So we can make these environmental issues protect all families in Maine.”

WHAT IS A CRIMINAL? The intersection of racial justice and policing in Portland

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WHAT IS A CRIMINAL? The intersection of racial justice and policing in Portland

Jean Valjean is hungry so he steals a loaf of bread. He cannot work and his family is starving, so he commits this necessary act.


But Javert, the local police official, considers it a threat to society and pursues the protagonist of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables for hundreds of pages, convinced he is a criminal who will always return to committing crimes. The reader, on the other hand, roots for Valjean.


Rodion Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky's protagonist in Crime and Punishment, does not consider himself a criminal. He's an ubermensch, a superman who does not have to abide by the laws of men. When he kills a worthless pawnbroker, he thinks his premeditated murder no crime; in fact, he considers it a benefit to rid society of this usurious wretch. Only when he kills her younger sister, when she happens upon the scene, does he begin to feel the remorse that will be his undoing. The reader delights in the just suffering he endures.


What we think of these fictional criminals might be straightforward enough: a misdemeanor and a felony, respectively. But the settings of these novels — Revolution-era France and St. Petersburg in the 1860s — were relatively homogenous and told stories of class, not race. Today’s Portland, Maine, has an increasingly mixed population and a predominantly white police force. Issues of racial profiling are prevalent.


These issues were on tap for the season’s first Think & Drink, presented at SPACE Gallery on Feb. 28. Titled “What Is a Criminal?”, the event was the first in a four-part series of panel discussions called “Policing, Protection, Community, and Trust in the 21st Century,” sponsored by the Maine Humanities Council and moderated by Samaa Abdurraqib of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence.

criminalstory crowdshot2

Portland shows up to talk about policing in Portland at the SPACE Gallery's first "Think and Drink" event. 


Anne Schlitt, assistant director of the MHC, knew the first subject area needed representatives from all perspectives to weigh in.


“We collaborated deeply with the moderator to develop the content, and since it’s such a hot-button topic, we called together an advisory board,” Schlitt said. That group included Westbrook Police Chief Janine Roberts, Phippsburg Police Chief John Skroski, who brought a smaller rural policing perspective, Dr. Leroy M. Rowe, assistant professor of African American History and Politics at USM, Rachel Healy from the ACLU, Jim Burke from UMaine Law School, Danielle Conway, who in July of 2015 became the seventh dean and the first African American to lead Maine’s public law school since its founding in 1962, and Dr. Darren Ranco, chair of Native American Programs at the University of Maine.


“When we started, our interest in the topic of policing wasn’t immediately polarizing," Schlitt said. "We needed to dig in and understand the broader topics of policing and racial injustice. That’s the way we created the four sections [of the series], and tried to represent that with our panelists.” She adds that the theme was decided before the elections. Since that time hate crimes across the country — including bomb threats to Jewish schools, mosque burnings, heightened KKK presence, and destruction of cemeteries — have risen dramatically.


Schlitt has a personal interest in the subject, she says. Her husband, Erick Halpin, is a patrol office in Damariscotta. “It’s not one of the larger immigration populations. It’s largely white. His experience with race has been more theoretical.”


Abdurraqib doesn’t deal with incidents of police profiling in her work at the MCEDV, but works indirectly with both sides of policing. “I support advocates across the state who do direct support work, but they work more closely with police,” she said. “In my job, I’m providing training for law enforcement for risk assessment tools, so when they go to a domestic violence call, they can go through risk assessment to see whether a person who committed a domestic violence offense before is more likely to commit another one.”


For the discussion, the decision to do prep work with several members of law enforcement turned out to be crucial foresight. The panelists for the evening were Alicia Wilcox, from the School of Legal Studies, Husson University; Michael Rocque, a sociology professor from Bates College; and Carl Williams of the National Lawyers Guild. (The Portland Police Department was not represented, neither on the panel nor in attendance.)
Williams later voiced concern of the representational imbalance in an email.


“I don’t have experience with the police in Portland. As far as I know, no one from the police came to the community discussion. That seems unfortunate,” he wrote, stating that he was not commenting as a representative of the ACLU or the National Lawyers Guild. “I have heard of multiple incidences of Portland police killing community members. That is chilling. I am aware of the police and district attorney pursuing cases against Black Lives Matter protesters. That is upsetting. I have read and seen videos of Maine's governor saying things that appear to be openly racist. That is unacceptable.”

criminal fullpanel

The panelists: Michael Rocque, Alicia Wilcox, and Karl Williams. Photos courtesy of the Maine Humanities Council. 


These issues provided added impetus for the series’ content this year. “We’re deeply aware of the questions around race, and the way policing has been fraught over time, and how the issues have been bubbling to the surface,” Schlitt adds. "There’s no right or wrong answer. We’re interested in creating the conversation so people will be better informed as they go about the work of policy or policing. We hope members of law enforcement come to the sessions. Certainly, the panelists will provide a variety of perspectives to help the audience examine their own beliefs with fresh eyes.”
The consensus of the discussion, of panelists and audience alike at the packed SPACE Gallery, is that we are all criminals, whether of street or white-collar crime, misdemeanor or felony, and especially whether or not we get caught. Some of us are perceived as criminals beforehand and are policed accordingly. These perceptions are often based on race, gender, age, but also such factors as what neighborhood we’re in, what time of day or night it is, and what we’re wearing.  Language barriers can also present all kinds of problems. Drug use or mental illness can alter dramatically the nature of a police call.


Over the past 25 years, Maine averaged 2.5 police-involved shootings a year. But there were six shootings last year, and three already this year. At a point during the event, the most recent shooting, of a man with a BB rifle, was referenced.  “Say his name!” someone in the audience called. “Chance Baker,” another responded.


Of the panelists, Abdurraqib asked, “What is a crime?” and “What is the process you have to go through to be labeled a criminal, to be charged with a crime?”


The group provided a range of answers. “If I got a ticket for driving over the speed limit, maybe get a verbal warning or get a ticket, but I don’t consider myself a criminal,” Wilcox said. “When you’re a kid and experiment with drugs and don’t get caught, and your neighbor doesn’t know, you don’t feel like a criminal. Did you sleep with someone before their age of consent? Probably everyone here has committed a crime. If we got caught, we maybe get a warning. We think of it as an ‘us’ and ‘them,’ but is it really? Or is that just what we have been taught?”


The less personal and more theoretical classroom perspective was added. “When I ask students to list the top 10 crimes, they all include the ones we expect —murder, rape, theft,” Rocque said. “I ask them why pointing a gun at someone is a greater crime. There any many more millions of dollars lost to white-collar crime than street theft.”


The ACLU lawyer took a more direct approach. “Look at who uses drugs and who sells drugs. Even though whites and blacks both sell and use drugs, each within their own communities, black folks and brown folks get arrested,” Williams said. “Then the cycle starts — small crimes, prison, parole violation. Then they go back in. When they get out, they can’t get a job and they go back in again. They are more likely to get picked up for violating parole and they go back in. Cops profile a car, pull it over. A driver has four packets of heroin. There are four people in the car. Police charge all four of them with collective trafficking. A crime is whatever the dominant society deems is the most threatening. But dominant society uses violence, the threat of force, to make us appear in court, for example.”


Williams feels that perception of a “criminal” is too-often formed from a tilted system, rigged towards the rich or powerful.


“The profession that commits the most cases of domestic violence? Cops. But you don’t see too many cops get arrested for that. What is the cause of that? Privilege? Fear of retribution from the dominant society?” he asked, in contrast to “the kid stopped three different times by police who are profiling. The kid in the hoodie eventually loses his cool, gets arrested for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, trespassing — all because the last bus has left so the bus stop is closed.”

After the event, I asked Abdurraqib, “Beyond panel discussions and demonstrations, how can police and community get in the same room to address racial or religious profiling?”


“It’s not the function of the panel discussions to propose legislation," she said. "Sometimes people at an event meet like-minded people and go out and encourage legislators to make changes.” Abdurraqib notes that two legislators and a city councilor were present at the Feb. 28 event.

“The goal is to have community conversations, but not come out of a conversation with a bullet-point platform on how to change social climate or policing.” The MHC is trying to find more of the blue perspective, “but it’s kind of difficult to have police officers sit on stage and have that conversation,” Schlitt said.


Upcoming Think & Drinks: in the series, “Policing, Protection, Community, and Trust in the 21st Century.” Social discussions on policing in Maine, its intersection with race, and how local experience connects with what we are seeing across the U.S.


April 5: “What Makes a Police Officer?: Training and Expectations of Law Enforcement”.
May 3: “Who’s Watching Whom?: Physical Surveillance By and Of the Police.
June 7: “What’s the Harm?: Emotional Challenges of Policing and Being Policed.
All events are free and run from 6:30–8 p.m. at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St., Portland | https://mainehumanities.org/blog/think-drink-blog/think-drink-portland-2017/ 

Have Fingers, Will Travel

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Have Fingers, Will Travel

While much of Maine was hunkering down and getting ready for another big snowfall, a few lucky ones made the trek to Mayo Street Arts on March 12 to get schooled in a guitar lesson that blends East and West.

Hiroya Tsukamoto, a New York-based guitarist and singer from Kyoto, Japan, led a workshop on “Cinematic Guitar Poetry,” a program which includes music, storytelling, and poetry.

In this intimate workshop, Michael Libby of Lewiston, Jon Sweeney of Eliot and Steve Bizub of Cape Elizabeth learned various techniques of fingerstyle guitar, wherein one plays guitar with the fingers or fingernails in place of a pick. Tsukamoto demonstrated various chords as well as basic musical theory.

In the workshop, he shared techniques that blend contemporary stylings with traditional aspects of the music from his home country. His musical influences growing up were decidedly Western — a lot of American rock and folk music, and of course some Axl Rose. He often enjoys mixing traditional Japanese music with an experimental side, using a loop pedal to record his voice and guitar in real time, and then creating layers on top of that.

“Though I play by myself, it sounds like an orchestra atmosphere,” Tsukamoto tells us. “I also improvise and some songs I keep very simple. I tell a lot of stories during a show, giving the Japanese background and history so people can connect with the music.”

Tsukamoto has been leading concerts internationally for several years now, including several appearances at Blue Note in New York City with his group and on Japanese national television. He performs more than one hundred shows a year across the U.S. and internationally.

 music fingerstylingsofHiroyaTsukamoto

My first instrument was a five-string banjo,” he said from the Big Apple ahead of the Portland workshop. It’s an instrument he picked up when he was five. “I’d been playing different kinds of music, but listened to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel, the Carpenters, as well as bands like Guns ’N’ Roses. After Berklee, I became more focused on jazz, which made me think of moving to Boston permanently to study deeper.”

He stuck around Beantown for a year and then moved to New York City.

“I thought it would be good, but there are too many musicians there. It’s so competitive. In the beginning, I was more focused on jazz, after seeing all these talented guitar players, I started thinking about doing something different,” he said. “I became more of a solo guitar player and did whole concerts by myself. It was a big change. Also, after I moved to New York, I tried to follow the ‘train’ of the city, the contemporary vibe, but six years ago, I decided to go back to my past, all the way from where I came from. Now I try to compose songs with that base.”

In 2000, Tsukamoto received a scholarship to Berklee College of Music and came to the United States. In Boston, he formed his own group called Interoceanico, or Inter-oceanic, which consists of unique musicians from different continents (including Latin Grammy nominee Colombian singer Marta Gomez). The group has released three acclaimed records, “The Other Side of the World,” “Confluencia,” and “Where the River Shines.” Tsukamoto has released two solo albums, “Heartland” and “Places,” on the Japanese record label 333 discs.

Tsukamoto appeared as part of Mayo Street’s International Heritage Music Series, which is based on the idea that music is inherent to strengthening community in cultures around the world. The series celebrates regional music and dance traditions.

Music Matters: Marcia Butler's Memoir The Skin Above My Knee at Print

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Music Matters: Marcia Butler's Memoir The Skin Above My Knee at Print

One would think all childhood discoveries are the joyous sort, filling the young ones with wide-eyed wonder and doting parents with pride and love. But the rite of passage Marcia Butler describes in her new memoir, about being a professional oboist while living a complicated double life in New York, sounds a definitive down note.

As professional musician for 25 years, Butler performed as a principal oboist and soloist on some of the most renowned of New York and international stages, with many high-profile musicians and orchestra players — including pianist Andre Watts, composer and pianist Keith Jarrett and soprano Dawn Upshaw. But her early home life in the 1950s was full of physical and sexual abuse, perpetuated by her father and tacitly condoned by her mother.

“Music saved my life,” Butler said last week, ahead of her visit to Print bookstore for a reading from her new work, The Skin Above My Knee, on Thursday, March 16. But it was a life that would always be beset by depression, substance abuse, and dangerous decisions.

When Butler was young, the memoir tells, her father regularly abused her older sister, Jinx, while her mother ignored her pleas to step in. The household was always on edge, the family members awaiting his next violent outburst while attempting countermeasures to assuage his rage.

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In order to get her father to drive her to music lesson, Butler has to sit on his lap, a recurring act she perceived to be perverse. Even at four years old she senses something was wrong about it, but she trades on those intuitions so she can get to class.

Her life under the lights, she tells The Phoenix in a phone interview, always distracted others from her secrets and herself from their resulting pain. “My mother was profoundly distancing. My father acted on Jinx in an overt, physical way and on me in a covert way,” she said. “I always thought she had the harder time because my father’s abuse toward me was secret. We had this unspoken childhood agreement: he was brought to arousal while I was on his lap, and he would bring me to oboe lessons.”

Her memoir, published last month by Little, Brown and Company, details this harrowing journey as Butler, inspired by an early love for classical German opera, finds the drive to become a professional musician no matter the cost.

Along the way, she provides wonderfully rich and detailed interludes on classical music and the instruments and personalities that populate it, along with vignettes describing what musicians experience on stage before the lights go up, and what the stomach, head, and fingers feel during a performance. These passages blend with first-person accounts of her fractured home life, damaging relationships, tales of resorting to theft for survival, drug abuse, suicide attempts, cancer diagnoses.

“I was living parallel lives, of a professional oboist as well as living on a seedy level, and I wanted to delineate those two narratives,” Butler says. “This way of psychologically separating my personal life with my professional life was actually the way I lived my life.”

While the sections may seem thematically discordant, they both come back to the music. When she was a child, her mother would vacuum to the strains of Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. Norwegian opera singer Kirsten Flagstad sang Isolde’s final aria, the Liebestod, while Butler lay on the carpet, feeling and hearing the buzzes.

“I didn’t know what it was about, but I sensed that this was a profound universal expression of love,” she said. Liebestod means love-death, and it was not too long before the young music student learned that the two go hand-in-hand.

“It was quite the experience for a four-year-old to have,” she said. “As instruments dropped in my lap as I grew older, I instinctively knew to hang onto this thing.”

“It’s a great book for musicians to read,” says Kate Beever, a local musician and founder of Maine Music & Health, a music therapy organization in southern Maine. “It tells her story, but also gives that extra thing to think about. If you go back and listen to the music and think about how she related to it, you start to think of it in a new way. If I learn about the composer’s life, I learn there’s a different aspect to the music.”

Beever employs music therapy with disabled clients, using instruments to help them find tactile and audible treatment. Her professional clients struggle mainly with developmental and intellectual disabilities, and she works with them in medical settings. She’s also taken them on the road, one time visiting the State Theatre to have them perform on stage, to feel the thrill even if in an empty venue.

While she says parts of the memoir made for tough reading, she loved the way Butler references actual pieces of music as we’re carried through the plot.

In Butler’s story, when not steeped in her music (or obsessively hand-making reeds), she lives a meager existence, surviving on a head of lettuce and saltines for meals. She steals from her roommate and uses phony subway tokens until she’s able to land a restaurant job. That work introduced her to a lifestyle of late nights, drinking and using drugs, and eventually the promiscuity she says she was initiated into at a young age.

“There was so much shame,” she says. “It felt devious, secretive, like everything was hidden. Growing up, not much was said about sex. Nothing was explained by my mother, of course, but I was experiencing sex (albeit in an abstracted form, which was really about power) with my father. It was a destructive, devastating exchange. When I got to New York City, I didn’t have a healthy understanding of what sex or love meant and I was unable to say no to anyone. I thought if a man wanted to be with me, I had to say yes. You think it’s freedom to say yes, but it’s a cage.”

Her relationships came to include such toxic exchanges that suicide seemed a viable escape. But for the intervention of a passerby, her suicide attempt walking into New York City traffic would have succeeded.

“I darted out and within seconds she pushed me to the side,” Butler said of the time she walked into traffic, amazed that someone had been watching her. “I was saved. It’s amazing what people see in New York City. Sometimes you see nothing, sometimes you see everything.”

Through that story and the many other tales within The Skin Above My Knee, Butler keeps the lens focused squarely on what she can be accountable for.

“I’m careful in the memoir not to take prisoners,” Butler says. “I report what happened to me. I wanted my book to be very clean and just about my own interactions with these people. Who knows what made these men behave the way they did? But you need a wide bandwidth of compassion.”

The art of using music as medicine, and practice and performance as therapy, has long been an industry truism. Portland has renown as a musical town, and musicians and their fans alike often seek the stage lights for solace from hard times. But not everything works toward the cure.

“Music therapy, in terms of self-medication, can be an escape, especially for children when they’re dealing with stuff they don’t understand,” Beever says. “It seems like there could be nothing wrong with music, but for some it can be detrimental. In same way you can drown yourself with anything — working out, for example. It’s the same with music. A person could be playing all the time and blocking out the world.

“I sometimes worry about people who say ‘music is my therapy.’ It’s good to have other activities — writing poetry, getting together with friends, getting out in nature.”

Beever says the Portland music scene doesn’t always provide the greatest of settings. “In bars, at parties — it’s like a cycle of unhealthiness. The music, the art itself, can be really healing, but the setting where a lot of us are forced to present our music can be detrimental, especially the rock scene. You go play, everyone’s drinking, you’re up late.”

But for Butler, music was the only way out, and well worth the risk.

Marcia Butler discusses her memoir The Skin Above My Knee | March 16, 7 p.m. | Print: A Bookstore, 273 Congress St., Portland | printbookstore.com

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