Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Mind power: North Pond Hermit's secret: meditation?

Published in the Portland Phoenix


When asked what he did most of the time while he lived in the woods for the past 27 years, Christopher Knight, known worldwide as the "North Pond Hermit" or the "Hermit Burglar," had a simple answer (relayed to the Kennebec Journal by Maine Game Warden Terry Hughes): "I would read books," Knight said, "and I would meditate."
Knight may not, of course, be the ideal exemplar of a meditator. "He stole from people," points out Peter Comas, a member of Vadra Vidya, a Portland-based Tibetan-tradition meditation group. "At its best meditation allows one to become more comfortable with oneself and the world . . . Our approach is not to withdraw from the world," he says. Meditation promotes "a deep sense of ethics, (asking) what does it mean to be a responsible person and to be fully aware of the effects of your activities on other people?"
That said, when practiced regularly over the long term, meditation has been shown in scientific studies to improve concentration and emotional stability, lessening the effects of anxiety and major depression. In other words, his practice might have helped Knight withstand the mental challenges of the solitude and secret life he chose.
Bill Barry, director of the Brunswick Portland Shambala Center, another Tibetan-tradition group, says meditation "changes your material wants that most of us have." He also notes that "most of us are afraid of being alone by ourselves . . . Someone like (Knight) obviously has transcended that fear," a lesson that can come from meditative realization that we are, in fact, always all alone, Barry says.
Other important discoveries have also come from long-term hermit meditators, of which there is a strong tradition in south Asia, such as learning that "our thoughts aren't real," Barry observes.
The exact type of meditation Knight practiced is unclear, but there is evidence that different styles carry strong benefits. Katie Grose, co-director of the Greater Portland Transcendental Meditation Center, says "TM" — a standardized, uniform method of practice — has repeatedly been found in peer-reviewed studies to vastly reduce stress. It also can help heal people with post-traumatic stress; some have speculated that Knight's departure for the woods may have been related to some trauma suffered during his youth.
Meditation may have also helped Knight deal with the cold — he reportedly had no regular source of heat, apart from a stove he only used to cook. He used many sleeping bags, but he may also have used his mind. For one thing, Barry says, meditation can change a person's perception of discomfort, allowing greater toleration of harsh circumstances.
And then there's a Tibetan meditation technique called tummo ("inner fire"), which is said to allow even thinly clad people to remain warm outdoors in freezing temperatures.
A 1982 article in the scientific journal Nature documented the ability of monks trained in tummo to elevate their body temperatures despite cold surroundings. Herbert Benson, the scientist who conducted that research, also documented in a 1985 study the ability of monks trained in tummo to sleep comfortably on bare rock at 15,000 feet in zero-degree temperatures with just a woolen cloak for insulation.
Monks in other studies have been able to slow their metabolisms significantly, and to sit in cold rooms and dry wet sheets with their body heat alone. (A more extreme version is the Japanese practice of taki-shu-gyou, in which a person meditates underneath a waterfall and strives to remain warm and focused without shivering.)
If Knight goes to jail for any period of time, meditation might help him there too. The 2007 documentary The Dhamma Brothers explores meditation practice in an Alabama prison; other similar programs have shown success in reducing inmates' stress in confinement and dealing with often-violent prison culture. Knight, now being held on burglary and theft charges at the Kennebec County Jail, is no doubt already feeling discomfort in the change from living alone outdoors; perhaps his mental skills will help him endure further suffering, if the courts impose it.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Press Releases: On Walls and Laws

Published in the Portland Phoenix


The West End News last week broke the story that the Portland Press Herald is resuming active exploration of erecting a paywall for its online news offerings. While the PPH site has said nothing of the sort yet, it's worth wondering how such a change could affect the larger local news ecosystem.
Right now, a lot of the news you see on television and hear on the radio comes, at least initially, from newspapers. It's a common national situation, most extensively documented in Baltimore in 2010 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a DC-based part of the Pew Research Centers. The study found that "much of the 'news' people receive contains no original reporting. Fully eight out of ten stories studied simple repeated or repackaged previously published information. And of the stories that did contain new information nearly all, 95%, came from traditional media — most of them newspapers."
Right now, most TV and radio stations subscribe to the AP's broadcast wire service, which, among other things, compiles and repackages print-media stories for on-air use. (This is what you hear when MPBN's Morning Edition host, Irwin Gratz, reads a few snippets, often including the phrase "The Portland Press Herald reports this morning...")
The paywall itself will likely not affect the broadcasters much. But they could be hit hard if the paywall's debut is coupled with a change in thePPH's membership in the Associated Press.
If the Press Herald keeps sending its stories to AP, then TV and radio stations will keep getting that information for their existing cost. But since that would mean PPH stories would be available elsewhere for free, it would make more sense to kill the AP connection. The broadcasters would be stuck either paying AP for less, or shelling out for the PPH separately.
In OPEN-GOVERNMENT NEWS, the group calling itself Maine's Majority — a far more hyper-partisan organization than the public it claims to represent — last week launched a dangerous and hypocritical assault on government transparency, by way of a political attack on admittedly loony ex-Maine treasurer Bruce Poliquin. Seems Poliquin asked for a state-compiled email list to expand the audience for his electronic missives after leaving office. MM executive director Chris Korzen sent out an email claiming Poliquin "abused" Maine's Freedom of Access Act, "to obtain (a) public list for personal use."
But the FOAA has no other purpose than to give people access to public information they want. It doesn't, and shouldn't, consider their reasons for asking, or what they'll do when they get the info.
Korzen's release admits Poliquin broke no laws. (Though it is tacky and may have violated the terms of his mass-email contract.) It went on to self-contradictingly say both that the email list (which had already been compiled for public purposes) is "publicly-owned" — and that its use by the public should therefore somehow be restricted.
When I pointed out to Korzen that trying to restrict what people do with public records once they're out of official hands is a dangerous and slippery slope (think: government-imposed restrictions on free expression), his response was almost immediate: "I really don't care. This is my job."
In an extended email conversation (see the full correspondence at thePhoenix.com/AboutTown), Korzen took harder and more sweeping swings at Poliquin, at one point saying he "would love to see the law changed so we can prosecute people who do what Poliquin did," and in another message condemning him for having "used public information to advertise himself for business/political/personal purposes."
Of course, Korzen had done exactly that too: He asked for public records (correspondence from Poliquin about email lists), got the information, and then used it for his own purposes (sending out a political-attack announcement).
Given this latest instance of shrill knee-jerk partisanship, and compounded by a clear failure to understand the important concept of government transparency, it's time to tell lawmakers something I never thought I would suggest: From now on, ignore Maine's Majority.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

BREAKING NEWS: Founder Chris Korzen ‘quits’ Maine’s Majority #mepolitics

Published on thePhoenix.com


See the following email exchange (read up from the bottom). Not sure who's empowered to accept his resignation, but it's as clear as day: Chris Korzen is leaving the Maine's Majority group he founded. Further, he admits that does not understand the difference between requesting public records from the government to use in a publicity campaign to promote a political perspective and, well, requesting public records from the government to use in a publicity campaign to promote a political perspective. He's just sure that when he does it, it's good, and when Bruce Poliquin does it, it's bad.
Here's my last message to Chris:

You have made my exact point. Poliquin would likely say he is exposing abuse of the system, and that you're advertising. All I'm saying is that I don't want the government determining whether either, both, or neither of you is telling the truth. Open government and free speech can get messy, but the mess is better than the alternatives.



On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
Please. Print this, so the world can see how ridiculous my life has become. If you don't, I will. If exposing abuse of the system is now synonymous with advertising, then seriously, I quit.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
In your 12:21 pm message you finally boiled down your argument against Poliquin to this:

"He used public information to advertise himself for business/political/personal purposes."

You did too.

You used public information (the results of your FOAA request that included Poliquin's request for the email list) to advertise yourself (your point of view, your organization, your political cause) for business/political/personal purposes (to promote your perspective on both a potential candidate and an existing state law).

(Okay, I'll let you off the hook on "personal," but with the observation that I hear more about Poliquin from MM than I do from the man himself - which is damn hard to do.)

And you do this all the time - you make FOAA requests, receive the results, and do with them what you want to.






On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 2:08 PM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
I feel like I'm in the twilight zone here. How is what Poliquin did something that we do all the time?

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
Let me summarize:

-You put out a press release accusing Poliquin of doing something you do all the time, including the exact same thing you did in order to discover and publicize his action.
-You claim that what he did is "abuse" of FOAA.
-You claim what you did is not.
-You say that releasing the 10,000 email list would be "wrong" - though not illegal (and it's clearly legal).
-You admit that Poliquin did not release the email list.

So what message was I supposed to get from the press release? 

Right now I'm at:
Maine's Majority hates Poliquin so much it'll attack him for doing something MM does all the time, and is so out-of-its-head bothered by Poliquin's behavior that MM will attempt to take down Maine's open-government act in the process.

Somehow I think that's not the message you meant to send.


On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
That's right - he has not.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
That's a fair point, and worth having a decent argument over. It's just not even close to what you said in the press release, or in any of our correspondence up until this very message. You also haven't claimed that Poliquin released the 10,000 email records to the public.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
I do understand your point. I just think you're wrong. We released a public document consisting of an email from one public official to another. We did not release the 10,000 email records - which I do have in my possession. Releasing those records would have been wrong.



-------- Original message --------
From: "Inglis, Jeff" <JInglis@phx.com> 
Date: 03/26/2013 12:32 (GMT-05:00) 
To: Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> 
Subject: Re: PRESS RELEASE: Former Treasurer Poliquin abused Freedom of Access Act to obtain public list for personal use 

My point is that you're trying to object to his actions on a principle so broad it indicts your own actions. (And if the legislature agreed with you, we'd have no more open government at all - because the government would always retain control what's done with its information.)

It's extremely simple: You "used public information to advertise (yourself/your organization/your point of view/your cause) for business/political/personal purposes."

You object to what he did, but depend on doing the exact same thing to make your objection. I simply fail to see the difference, and you haven't made it any clearer.

I think it would be equally interesting to see if a broad segment of the public thinks we should shut down government transparency in an attempt to remedy spam.





On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
I don't know where you're going with this, Jeff, but I've already answered this question.

It's a good question, though, and I hope you're planning to write about it. It would be interesting to hear what a broad segment of the public thinks constitutes abuse of the FOAA.


On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
I'm not sure you did either of those things - given that responding to FOAA is hardly collusion.

But what you're suggesting is that people shouldn't be allowed to use public information for business/political/personal purposes. That's pretty broad. So what should they be allowed to use public information for?

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 12:21 PM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
Really? We exposed the government's abuse of the public trust and collusion with big-monied outside interests. That's exactly what FOAA is for.

He used public information to advertise himself for business/political/personal purposes.


On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:25 AM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
Perhaps more succinctly: What do you see as the difference between what he did and what you did?

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:16 AM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
And so the legislature has. FOAA stands as it does, making both your actions and Poliquins perfectly legal and procedurally and morally defensible. (Private contracts with private companies aside.)

Your complaining about it fails my logic, as follows:

1. It has been for years - and is likely never to change - legal to get voter registration information from the government, and send to those addresses mailings for political purposes - whether from a campaign or a political-action committee, or even an elected official doing constituent mailings. (I'm pretty sure Maine's Majority has used this process, too.)

2. It is a long-standing principle of open government that requests must be granted without regard to the requester's purpose. Example 1: If you ask for your neighbor's property-tax record from town hall, you must get it, whether you intend to take out a newspaper ad claiming your neighbor is a freeloading crony of local politicos who gets a break on his taxes, or whether you are going to contest your own property-tax assessment based on information relating to your neighbor's property, or if you want to frame it and put it on your living-room wall. Example 2: If you ask for correspondence with a state agency or official, you must get it, regardless of whether you are going to publish it in print, post it online, issue a press release, or keep it in a safe-deposit box.

3. Poliquin asked for an email list, which is public record under FOAA. The government had to give it to him, and can place no restrictions on what he does now.

4. You asked for correspondence, which is public record under FOAA. The government had to give it to you, and could place no restrictions on what you do with it now.

5. You imply that the government should be unable to prevent you from doing what you did, but definitely claim that the government ought to stop him from doing what he did.

6. You fail to make a distinction between these two acts, which are, again, utterly identical in procedural, legal, and moral terms.

7. When offered a suggestion of a more nuanced problem you might use to refine your argument, you not only reject that argument - which is an issue of public debate - but reiterate your insistence that the government should somehow control information that is in the hands of the public (or perhaps condition release of public information on the intent of the requester).

8. When asked for a means by which that could happen, you defer to the body that created the provisions you object to.

What am I missing?


On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:06 AM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
I'll let the Legislature write the laws.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
Okay, so what do you think should or shouldn't be allowed? And how would that be enforced?

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
I don't have a problem with the public having access to personal information. I have a problem with the notion that it's OK for the public to do whatever they want with that information.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
What you seem to be saying suggests that my guess was right - your concern is not about abuse of FOAA, but rather about public access to personally identifying information, some of which has for many years been available through FOAA, with no problems.

Unless I'm terribly mistaken, you want to be able to continue to do what you did - ask a government agency for correspondence (including with private citizens), get that information unredacted, and announce to the public that a specific person, whose name you use, has done something or other.

That's exactly what you did. But the way you constructed your release suggested that you want to outlaw doing that exact thing - because you claimed that taking a government response to an FOAA request and using it for whatever you wanted should be prosecuted. Contrary to the language of your release, I think you and I agree that it's simply not an abuse of FOAA to use public information for your own gains.

If your concern is that Poliquin can get people's email addresses in bulk from the state, that's something very different than saying the government should have control over what the public does with public records that have been released.



On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
Maybe we just live in different worlds, or maybe we just disagree. A lot of people I talk with are furious that the BDN tried to publish the names of concealed weapons permit holders. It doesn't matter that the BDN expressly said it wouldn't do this; the fact is that they could have, and that was enough for people. So, in that respect, at least part of FOAA now has a bad name. We're now likely going to lose the ability to verify that there aren't any felons running around out there with concealed handguns, because the public is afraid that information will be misused.

It seems that your point is that it's a necessary consequence of open government that your name can wind up in the paper or on an ex-treasurer's email list. It's a fair point. I simply disagree. I think we can make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate use of FOAA data, and that they way to strengthen the legitimate uses is to denounce the illegitimate uses.

It's the same thing with SPAM. The law allows you to buy lists, harvest email addresses from web sites, etc. You can send these folks an individual email or compare them with your own list. But as soon as you send them a bulk email asking them to buy something you're on the hook for big penalties. That's a legal distinction between a legitimate and in illegitimate use of information. We can do the same with the FOAA.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
Since when does open government have a bad name? People give themselves bad names. Open government is an admirable concept. And almost never are open-government rules given criminal penalties - they're civil violations at best.

But where I'm really running into confusion is with your apparent idea that the government should (or even can) control what members of the public do with information they have in their possession.

The whole point of open government is so people can get information about their government. What they do with it, and why they ask for it, is not in the purview of open-government principles. In fact, it's counter to the ideal. If the government is going to prevent someone from disseminating, analyzing, or otherwise using the results of open-government requests, then how exactly is government open? ("We'll tell you how many people we're abusing in prison, but you can't tell anyone else?" That's the opposite of the point.)

I can't believe you're intentionally advocating that the government exercise prior restraint on use of public information. It strikes me as against your goals, and your group's goals, as well as being mutually exclusive. 

What if, for example, a person or group were allowed to ask for FOAA requests made by others, and the government says "We have to give it to you, but you are forbidden from telling others. They all have to ask individually for exactly the same thing." Your press release would vaporize, as a violation of the law. What you're claiming to want to outlaw is something you did in getting this information, something you do all the time, something news organizations and members of the public do constantly, and is in fact the reality of open government: Once information it out of government's hands, its dissemination and use is no longer under government control.

If I try to imagine what you might actually mean, I wonder if you are somehow trying to argue for protecting some types of personal information when it's in the government's hands - but that's a very different thing than suggesting someone who asks for information from the government should be restricted in how they use it.




On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:43 AM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
They exist so the public can ensure that government is doing its job, not so aspiring piblic officials can build their email lists. I would love to see the law changed so we can prosecute people who do what Poliquin did. He gives open government a bad name.




-------- Original message --------
From: "Inglis, Jeff" <JInglis@phx.com> 
Date: 03/26/2013 09:35 (GMT-05:00) 
To: Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> 
Subject: Re: PRESS RELEASE: Former Treasurer Poliquin abused Freedom of Access Act to obtain public list for personal use 

He may well have violated terms of a private agreement with a private company. That's not my beef - and it doesn't seem to be yours, either, from the release.

You're claiming it's an "abuse" of open-government laws for a requester to get information from the government and use it for whatever the requester wants. 

Problem is, there's no other purpose of open-government laws - they exist so that people can ask questions of their government and get answers, and then publicize those answers, for whatever purpose the requester has.

Go ahead and shout about him breaking the rules of Constant Contact. Nobody cares, and you know that - which is why you made the release sound like he had misused open-government laws, when he used them exactly properly. And so did you, in announcing to people that he did this. The issue comes when you call both of those things - which are procedurally, legally, and morally identical - "abuse."

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:31 AM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
He's going to lose his Constant Contact account over this. I'll take my chances with the court of public opinion.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:27 AM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
If it's "abuse" to make FOAA requests and use the resulting information for whatever your private purposes are, you're as guilty as Poliquin. Which, by the way, is not guilty of anything at all.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
And your job? Pretending that abuse doesn't happen because you're afraid of the consequences? The only reason why we know he did this is that we were obtained his request through another FOAA request. The system works. Go write that story.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
Sucks that your job is weakening open government.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:
Jeff, Jeff, Jeff... I really don't care. This is my job.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Inglis, Jeff <JInglis@phx.com> wrote:
Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris - 

It's a VERY slippery and dangerous slope to try to start dictating what can and can't be done with public records after they're released to the public. Please don't weaken Maine's existing open-government laws further by pursuing this.

Jeff

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:07 AM, Chris Korzen <chris@mainesmajority.org> wrote:

Inline image 1


For Immediate Release
March 26, 2013


Contact:
Chris Korzen



Former Treasurer Bruce Poliquin abused Freedom of Access Act to obtain public list for personal use

Portland – In February 2013, mass emails from a personal account of former state treasurer and U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Poliquin began inexplicably turning up in some Mainers' inboxes. A Maine's Majority investigation has determined that Poliquin obtained the emails through a Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) request, and subsequently used this public information for his own personal gain.

In the early hours of December 9, 2012, Poliquin submitted an FOAA request to the Treasurer's office for “a copy of all email and other addresses used in the Office of the State Treasurer's Outreach Program.” In response, he received 10,742 email addresses. Five days earlier, the legislature had confirmed Neria Douglass to succeed Poliquin, effectively ending his tenure as treasurer.

Some two months later, Mr. Poliquin began sending bulk emails to the owners of those addresses through a Constant Contact email marketing system. The emails are political in nature (titled, for example, "How to Fix Maine's Ongoing Budget Crisis”) and point recipients toward a brucepoliquin.net web site.

“Although Mr. Poliquin legally obtained his former office's email records, his personal use of this public information constitutes a blatant abuse of the Freedom of Access Act,” said Maine's Majority executive director Chris Korzen. “Poliquin is clearly trying to set himself up for a future election bid, and he's now using state resources to build his communications infrastructure. He should stop using this publicly-owned email list immediately.”

Ironically, at least one influential Maine Republican appears to agree. Earlier this month, Sportsman's Alliance of Maine director and former state representative David Trahan told the Maine Heritage Policy Center's Maine Wire blog, “FOAA was designed for citizens to keep government in line, not for political targeting.”

While Poliquin does not appear to have broken any laws, he has likely violated Constant Contact's Anti-Spam policy, which requires users to obtain informed consent from recipients before sending bulk email.

###

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Underground downtown: Looking beneath the streets

Published in the Portland Phoenix


For years, many people have heard rumors about secret spaces beneath our feet on the Portland peninsula. Now the Portland Phoenix can reveal the truth about several of these. We have three categories: places I've been and seen myself; places that exist as confirmed by historical records or accounts of people I've spoken with; and places whose existence is third-hand at best (even if the details are startlingly specific) and must therefore remain somehow in question. This is obviously in addition to the tunnels, such as those related to liquor-smuggling during Prohibition or helping slaves escape to Canada, that once existed in Portland, but whose locations have been lost to time, development, or Commercial Street's construction.
"There are a lot of tunnels in Portland's history," says local historian Michelle Souliere. "The question is how many of those still exist in some form or another." If you have any information about any of these things, please send me an email at jinglis@phx.com and let me know!
PLACES I'VE BEEN
The first place I've actually been is also the most commonly known, and least interesting: the TUNNEL UNDER CONGRESS STREET built in 1966 between the former Portland Press Herald building at 390 Congress Street and the paper's former printing plant across the street, next to City Hall. I've been in it, as have many Press Herald staffers over the years. It looks exactly like the hallways in your junior high school classroom, and is about as exciting. The tunnel allowed workers to go from one building to the other without going outside or dodging traffic; also, a conveyor belt carried heavy lead printing plates from the stereotype room in the main building to the printing plant across the street. As built, it was 154 feet long, 13 feet wide, and 10 feet high, according to a Press Heraldreport of its construction. "The tunnel, with its average five to seven feet of gravel, the concrete slab and the paving overhead, makes an ideal bomb shelter," says the report, now available on the Press Herald's website (see above). It will be sealed off, according to plans for renovating the main building into a hotel.
I have also been to the SPACE UNDERNEATH THE PORTLAND STAR MATCH BUILDING on West Commercial Street; formerly the bunkers for the sulfur and other chemicals used to make the matches (and you thought Waterville had the monopoly on making trees into tiny bits of wood!), the cellars are very tunnel-like, and have several caves with thick brick walls, and a climate that might be excellent for storing wine.
LOCATIONS THAT EXIST (OR DID)
The old BOWLODROME BOWLING ALLEY underneath the Forest Avenue parking lot next to Portland Stage Company and behind the old Strand Theater building on Congress Street. Vin Veroneau, president of JB Brown and Company, a major downtown property owner, recalls bowling there as a child. Harold Pachios, one of the owners of the building, believes something is still there: "I understand that there's the remains of a bowling alley," though he was unsure what might be left after more than 50 years of disuse. (Gerv says the bowling alley is "real and quite beautiful.")
ANOTHER BOWLING ALLEY, also on Forest Avenue, in the basement of a building across from the Portland Stage Company building, as shown in a map of the city's downtown from 1954.
A THIRD BOWLING ALLEY, this in the basement of the Portland YMCA on Forest Avenue (yes, indeed!) and reported by the Evening Express as one of several activities at a 1965 Y "family night." Michelle Souliere, owner of the Green Hand Bookshop and curator/publisher of the Strange Maine blog and its associated Gazette zine, recalls taking gymnastics lessons down there in the '80s: "We did pommel horse stuff on the lanes."
FOURTH BOWLING ALLEY, the Bowlaway, on the site of the Portland Museum of Art. Though it's very clearly on 1948 and 1954 maps of Portland, museum spokeswoman Kristen Levesque says she had never heard of such a thing.
The ARCADE/MALL ON THE GROUND FLOOR OF THE TIME AND TEMP BUILDING extends downstairs, with old long-abandoned shops and bathrooms with marble countertops; Veroneau says the space hearkens back to the Dick Tracy era.
UNDERGROUND BRICK ARCHWAYS near the corner of India and Commercial streets. Perhaps the source of the persistent "unfinished subway system" rumors — which remain unsubstantiated — they were the remains of an old "interim train station that served the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad back in the 1840s," former Portland transportation director Jeff Monroe told PortlandMagazine in 2008.
Sets of SLIDING DOORS IN THE BASEMENT of the Maine College of Art that connect it with two neighboring buildings to the east. (Though several downtown buildings have connecting basements, a rumored tunnel connecting the Oak Street student housing with the old Porteous building does not exist, according to MECA president Don Tuski.)
SPACES DIRECTLY BENEATH THE SIDEWALKS on several areas of Congress Street. According to Veroneau and Tuski, the State Theatre, the old Porteous building, and the Mechanics Hall all have basements that extend beyond their buildings, reaching underneath the sidewalks but stopping around the point the actual street begins. It's not unreasonable to think other buildings are similarly equipped, but those are the three I have specifics on.
A TUNNEL BETWEEN THE OLD PORTLAND HALL BUILDING AND GENO'S Rock Club. Christian Matzke, a former Portland Hall resident assistant has spent time in both buildings' basements, and says "without a doubt there's a tunnel," though it's blocked off by rubble at both ends. There also appears to have been a tunnel heading across the street, Matzke says, though that's also filled in.
A TUNNEL IN BAYSIDE underneath the a building at the corner of Oxford and Preble streets that once housed an office of Congressman Tom Allen. Matzke, who once worked as an intern for Allen, recalls finding a door locked from the outside that served as storage, but also contained something else: "There's a hole in the floor larger than a manhole cover, with a large piece of metal put across it." With another intern, Matzke removed the metal and descended to a chamber that had a mattress in one corner, and was obviously an intersection of several tunnels coming from other locations.
RUMOR-ONLY
Tunnels connected to the foundation of the MASONIC HALL.
A tunnel CONNECTING THE MCLELLAN HOUSE TO THE CUMBERLAND CLUB; its existence was simultaneously posited and denied by PMA spokeswoman Kristen Levesque.
An entrance to the tunnels in one of the buildings off MONUMENT SQUARE.
The LEN'S MARKET TUNNEL. "The story went that there was a tunnel that connected Len's Market to the Eastland" hotel, Matzke says. Souliere has also heard tell of this tunnel, from a descendant of the original Len; a parking lot is now on the site, leading her to expect that the tunnel has been filled or collapsed.
Which leads us to the most-rumored tale: the TUNNELS STARTING AT THE EASTLAND PARK HOTEL that "used to run out into different points in the city," says Souliere. After initially being very responsive to an inquiry and inviting me to an in-person meeting a few days away, Jeff Cappellieri of the Westin Portland Harborview called to cancel just three hours before the interview was to happen, and was not able to reschedule before deadline. We'll have to leave that in the "rumors" column — for now.


Fuel Price Watch: Chavez dies; will poor be cold?

Published in the Portland Phoenix


Last week, a man whose determination to embarrass the American government extended to helping US citizens when their own government wouldn't died, reportedly suffering a heart attack.
In 2006, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez made a laughingstock of George W. Bush by taking advantage of climbing oil prices to do something Bush would not. At a time when Bush was refusing to release supplies from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve and Congress was resisting granting additional funds to help poor people with heating costs, Chavez stepped in.
Through Citgo, whose owner is the Venezuelan government, Chavez ordered discounted heating oil supplied to needy Americans. At the time, Maine Governor John Baldacci hailed the offer — of a 40-percent discount for 8 million gallons of heating oil to low-income Mainers, Native American tribes, and homeless shelters — as filling a gap left by the federal government's inaction.
According to Citizens Energy, the non-profit led by Joseph P. Kennedy II that has been a US coordinator for Venezuelan oil subsidies to this country, Maine has received more than $30 million over the past eight years, including $27 million in heating aid directly to 60,000 households (an amount that is still growing because the heating-season-long assistance program is still running). Maine shelters have received more than $300,000 in help, and Maine tribes have gotten more than $3 million in assistance.
Kennedy issued a statement after Chavez's death that should have caught more attention in Washington DC than it actually did:
"President Chavez cared deeply about the poor of Venezuela and other nations around the world and their abject lack of even basic necessities, while some of the wealthiest people on our planet have more money than they can ever reasonably expect to spend. There are close to two million people in the United States who received free heating assistance, thanks to President Chavez's leadership. Our prayers go out to President Chavez's family, the people of Venezuela, and all who were warmed by his generosity."
Whether the program will carry on in the future will depend on the Venezuelan government. It seems likely, though, that American citizens will continue to require this sort of direct foreign aid — unless Congress suddenly finds the ability to provide for the American people, as opposed to multinational corporations.
• In related news, if you want CHEAP GAS, mark your calendar for April 20. And no, this isn't a US government program; Citgo's involved again, as is a somewhat higher authority.
Next Level Church, an ecumenical Christian church with branches across the country (including at 1053 Forest Avenue), is bringing gas prices down below $3 per gallon on that day, at one gas station: the Citgo Xtra Mart at 865 Brighton Avenue in Portland. It'll only be for 2500 gallons, but that's enough to make a big difference.
Apparently, starting at 11 am and running until the 2500 gallons are gone, the price at the pump will drop to $2.99, with donations from the church making up the difference between that amount and whatever the current market price is. A similar effort last month in Epping, New Hampshire, resulted in nearly 300 people getting discounted gas.