Press releases: War on the average Joe

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Right now, Maine can afford to pay its state employees' pensions for the next 10 years with no additional investment — without any sort of supplement, not even workers' biweekly paycheck deductions. The nationwide McClatchy newspaper group published that fact on Sunday in a massive, comprehensive report on public pension funds nationwide.

But that information was nowhere to be found in the pages of MaineToday Media's papers — the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal, and the Morning Sentinel. While Maine's largest newspaper chain routinely publishes national news from the McClatchy wire, they shut the door on the most revealing package yet published on the major issue under debate in Augusta right now.

Of course the papers, owned by Richard Connor, did not ignore the issue entirely — in a Sunday economic dispatch from Washington, sole DC reporter and (therefore) Washington bureau chief Jonathan Riskind wrote: "Americans understand that the country is headed off a fiscal cliff."

And the papers' lead editorial that day — the day McClatchy was telling Americans that the sky is not even close to falling with regard to pension funding — described "rampaging pension costs that can no longer be ignored." The editorial declared necessary the proposals by Governor Paul LePage to cap retirees' pensions and medical coverage, partly allowing LePage to lower Maine's effectively flat income tax by more than half a percentage point — a massive boon to the rich that will have next to no effect on moderate- and low-income families.

In doing so, the MaineToday papers have declared themselves clearly on the side of the wealthy robber barons who have stolen so much of America's bounty. (Recent stats, most prominently cited in a March 5 Michael Moore speech in Wisconsin, suggest that a few hundred ultra-wealthy American citizens are richer than half the country's people, put together.) Ironically, the editorial decried the description of this phenomenon as "class warfare," calling that term "trite and tedious."

It is only so for those people — and those media outlets — who exist to serve the rich, and not the people as a whole. For the rest of us, we are indeed engaged in a war between the classes, and nothing less than a fight to the death — whether by homelessness, cold, starvation, or broken hearts.

For Connor and his staff to go on to proclaim, as they do, that "the wrath of angry taxpayers should be aimed at politicians and bureaucrats who agreed to costly benefits over the years without giving sufficient attention to the financial consequences those benefits would eventually impose" is downright disingenuous. It is doubly so when the media organization in question has only rarely and shallowly treated these important issues of accountability when it comes to election time.

And then the editorial goes from factless to misleading to downright irresponsible, raising the specter of "the looming crisis presented by the ever-rising costs of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare." Even with no additional support, those programs won't run out of money for decades, according to independent analyses, including by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Our social safety net is strong, and so are our pension funds for public employees. For politicians to spout otherwise — particularly as justification for transferring more wealth to the super-rich — is deceitful. For newspapers to parrot that fear-mongering is shamefully abdicating their vital role as arbiter of truth in a complex society. If regular people, who are too busy trying to make their own ends meet, must rely on intentional misinformation — or, as egregious, withholding of truth — then we do indeed have a serious societal crisis on our hands. It's just not the one the politicians and the mainstream media are telling you about.

Review: A Marine's Guide to Fishing - A snapshot of a returned veteran's life

Published in the Portland Phoenix

On the one-year anniversary of a life-changing incident on a foreign battleground, a Marine (Matthew Pennington) begins to take up his old life again. In this 15-minute short, writer-director Nicholas Brennan (2009's Portland Phoenix Maine Short Film of the Year Hard Rock Havana) adroitly plumbs the depths of the manifold complications facing servicemembers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Showing samplings of eager hangers-on playing patriot games, flashbacks (including sounds of battle that even the ocean cannot drown out), and quiet support from previous generations of veterans, Fishing asks — but only obliquely attempts to answer — whether a life can ever recover from such an ordeal.

On screen an understated, moving film, its power is only amplified by knowing that lead actor Pennington is a veteran (Army, but we'll never tell the Corps . . .) and a battle-wounded amputee — and that 13 other young veterans worked on various aspects of the movie. Backed by a local score (Dan Capaldi) and Maine coast scenery that feels strong without kitsch, Fishing casts a net upon the waters of possibility. What that net catches is yet to be seen.

A MARINE’S GUIDE TO FISHING | Screening at the Nickelodeon, in Portland | March 16 @ 7 PM

Diagnosing democracy: Why parenthood is a bad model for government

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Political theory has, for centuries, come down to an analogy of anatomy, or of family: the head of the government is the head of the body politic, or the head of the household. Other government agencies are the limbs and organs of the body, or the working adults in the home. Citizens are the cells that make up the body, or the children.

In The Parent As Citizen: A Democratic Dilemma (University of Minnesota Press), Brian Duff, a Portland Phoenix food writer whose day job is as an assistant professor of political science at the University of New England, argues that view is fundamentally destructive to a democratic society. It puts citizens in a subservient role — that of children — and government officials in a paternalistic role, Duff writes. That inversion of proper accountability in a democracy — where the citizens should be in charge of the government workers — has caused unseen and untold damage to our society.

He starts with the political discussion of parenthood, showing how the experience of parenting is considered to be formative and vital in the development of a political player. Then, examining the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche (as classical philosophers and political theorists) and two towering modern political-philosophical figures, Richard Rorty and Cornel West, Duff shows why focusing on parenthood is so dangerous to democracy. He specifically chronicles the hazards — including intolerance, fundamentalism, fear, and disempowerment — that appear when equating a democracy with leaders and citizens to a family with parents and children.

This is not a prescriptive work, but rather illustrates a heretofore unseen problem, asking others to study it, examine it, learn from it, and perhaps ultimately forge a solution to this failing intellectual model of our failing political system.

Prison torture coverage, expanded

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Longtime Portland Phoenix contributing writer Lance Tapley's investigation of the Maine State Prison and the state's corrections system as a whole have reached a yet wider audience with the publication of an essay by Tapley in The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse (New York University Press, edited by Marjorie Cohn). The book is a collection of essays that describe the conditions in American prisons, and explore what political and social pressures combined to create the abusive, destructive prison system we have today. Tapley's essay, "Mass Torture in America: Notes from the Supermax Prisons," is based on his years of reporting for the Portland Phoenix, and marshals the evidence to show not only that torture (including solitary confinement) is a near-constant part of supermax prisons nationwide, but to describe the vicious and damaging nature of that abuse on tens of thousands of inmates.

Gitmo state of mind: Pingree visits Guantanamo, advocates closure

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress that keeping President Obama's promise to close the notorious military prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would be difficult because of opposition from members of Congress. Maine 1st District Representative Chellie Pingree, however, is among those who support closing the base.

Last month, she was part of a bipartisan (if 10 Republicans and two Democrats is "bipartisan") group of members of the House Armed Services Committee who visited Gitmo to see for themselves what's going on.

"Some things we see are classified," Pingree says, beginning our interview by clarifying that she might not be able to talk about certain topics related to the prison — including ones that might be unclassified, because, she says, it can be difficult to remember what's classified and what's not in a particular briefing. (For example, certain details of what the prison is like are kept secret, but other details are not; keeping the categories straight can be a challenge.)

She was able to say, generally speaking, that "living conditions for prisoners — aside from the fact that they don't know when they are going to leave — have improved tremendously," with no waterboarding, no torture, no guard mistreatment, and no disorientingly loud music (as I described in "A Night in Guantanamo," June 20, 2008).

Obama's "different attitude" about torture — specifically, that this president won't use the techniques George W. Bush authorized but claimed were not torture — is to be credited, Pingree says. "It's become clear that better living conditions for prisoners make it easier for the guards to do their work" — and more information is forthcoming from prisoners who are being interrogated, she says.

While Pingree said Obama "has not fulfilled his promise that he was going to close Guantanamo," she did give the administration credit for "working very hard to sort through the huge range of issues," primarily relating to where to move the inmates now at Guantanamo, and where they should stand trial.

A key obstacle is politics. Buck McKeon, the California Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, wants to expand the use of Gitmo, and is a strong supporter of the existing ban on bringing Gitmo prisoners to the US for any reason, including trial. (That law resulted from the firestorm around the trial of suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which was originally slated for a federal court in New York City.)

Pingree says much of the concern about bringing suspected terrorists to the US is "fear-mongering," observing that "we have a lot of trials in this country," including ones involving terrorism charges.

The Obama administration has been working with other nations' governments to repatriate their citizens when the US is ready to release them; as a result the inmate population has dwindled to 172 from a high of nearly 800 in 2002. Of the inmates remaining, Pingree notes, as many as 48 are "in limbo," with US officials believing they could be dangerous if released, but lacking (or unwilling to declassify) evidence that could aid in a conviction. Other inmates, such as several Uighurs, a central Asian ethnic group largely ruled by the Chinese, cannot return home because their home government will persecute them. (Ironically, that leaves them being incarcerated by a foreign power under the argument that being locked up by the US in Gitmo is better than a Chinese prison — or execution. And sadly, that argument is probably accurate.)

"The problems have now sort of shifted a little bit to how the trials will be conducted, where the trials will be conducted," Pingree says. At the cost of "an enormous amount of money," the US has built a massive courthouse at Gitmo, with room enough for trials with multiple defendants and extensive capability for closed-circuit televisions and teleconferencing with witnesses and attorneys elsewhere, including the US.

But even that initiative faces what Pingree calls "an increasing stalemate" because of complaints about the fairness of the military tribunal system set up to handle inmates' cases.

And ultimately, it is those kinds of problems that convince Pingree the prison does need to close. "To the rest of the world, Guantanamo is a symbol of a country that says it lives by the rule of law, (but) that denied habeas corpus, that used torture to get evidence," she says. If we do close it, we will affirm our belief in the law; if we don't, "they'll say we're just American hypocrites."

Literati: So you thought you were special

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Reading Hannah Holmes's work is enlightening and entertaining — even when it's at its most depressing. And that is how the South Portlander's latest book, Quirk, starts. The intro smacks you with it: There is no "divine spark" that makes humans more special than other animals. Mice, which are as much a subject of the book as people, can be bred to have any of the behavior variations that we call "personality." Holmes goes for the jugular: "Personality isn't personal. It's biological," she writes. There is no "nature-versus-nurture" debate — 90 percent of what we think makes each of us unique is, in fact, embedded in our genes.

When you're done crawling under your rock, though, if you've managed to bring her book with you, it's a real treat to learn exactly how similar we are to cuddly, furry mammals — and cold, slimy reptiles — after all. But Holmes disputes the idea that we're being somehow demoted. Rather, she argues, animals are being promoted to the level of wonder we people have previously reserved for ourselves. (It's not just animals, either — Holmes is presently working on an article about the personality of bacteria.)

It turns out that's the only way we've managed to survive — and it may be the only way anything survives. "Every living thing contends with an unstable environment," the energetic, affable Holmes says over coffee. "The world is too chaotic for one personality type to be adequate for every situation, every challenge."

As a result, you're in luck: "for the most obnoxious person you can think of, there is a role in this world," she says cheerfully. For Holmes, these discoveries, laid out in her clear, smooth, amusingly self-aware prose, are "liberating," because they give us more to appreciate about the world as a whole. "We love what we love and there's no arguing it," she says, noting that no matter who we love, we have to get along with the wider group to stay alive in a world of threats, limited resources, and changing surroundings.

And at the end of the day, what we really have to do is behave as if personality is just like the color of our eyes, hair, or skin — something we're each born with, that we didn't choose and can't really change. So we're better off quitting sniping, and just getting along.

Hannah Holmes | reads from Quirk | February 23 @ 7 pm | Nonesuch Books, 50 Market St, South Portland | February 26 @ 2 pm | Bull Moose, 456 Payne Rd, Scarborough | March 2 @ noon | Portland Public Library, 5 Monument Square, Portland | March 8 @ 7 pm | RiverRun Bookstore, 20 Congress St, Portsmouth NH | March 10 @ 7 pm | Longfellow Books, Monument Way, Portland | hannahholmes.net

Gubernatorial scorecard: LePage’s numbers

Published in the Portland Phoenix

This week, we introduce a regular feature, Gubernatorial Scorecard. We'll evaluate Governor Paul LePage's recent moves. We'll score him from 1 to 10 on his political savvy, and on whether what he's trying to do is good policy, and keep a running total. This first marking period, LePage got 43 out of 100 possible points. For a minority governor who garnered only 38 percent of the vote, that might not be too bad.

RACE RELATIONS | LePage has rhetorically run roughshod over the state's minuscule but vocal population of African Americans — it will be a long time before anyone forgets his "kiss my butt" moment with the NAACP.
POLITICS • Making enemies unnecessarily | 3/10 POLICY • Anti-equality | 1/10

BUSINESS RELATIONS | LePage has made no secret of the fact that he's going to be a pro-business, pro-industry governor. That includes courting wealthy out-of-state interests (many of which bankrolled his election campaign). He has promoted business-centric industry insiders to every cabinet post yet announced, and proposed environmental-protection rollbacks that please the chemical industry.
POLITICS • Doing exactly what he said he would | 4/10 POLICY • A scorched-earth job-creation effort | 4/10

MEDIA RELATIONS | LePage made a joke out of a claim he doesn't read newspapers. He has previously said he doesn't care about editorials.
POLITICS • Good play to his base, but overlooks that supporters too can use the media | 7/10 POLICY • Palin-like wilful ignorance is silly | 1/10

FEDERAL RELATIONS | For a guy who said he would tell President Obama to "go to hell," he's certainly asking for a lot of federal money, including disaster-relief funding that could give four Maine counties more than $1 million in federal cash to recover from December flooding.
POLITICS • Mixed message: Sensible people will applaud but rabid Tea Partiers might be disappointed | 7/10 POLICY • More help cleaning up rural Maine is always welcome | 10/10

EMPLOYEE RELATIONS | LePage has complained that some people he approached with offers of government positions declined because the pay cuts to move from the private to the public sector would have been too steep.
POLITICS • Not getting who you need could have consequences down the road | 3/10 POLICY • A pre-emptive defense that the best people won't serve? | 3/10

Running total | Politics 24/50 | Policy 19/50

Press releases: Talk time

Published in the Portland Phoenix


The state's largest newspaper company is about to negotiate its contract with its employees. With workers seeking a share of the company's newfound profitability, and owner Richard Connor striving mightily to stay in the black, this could go very smoothly, or be a bloody, destructive battle — with the quality of information available to Mainers hanging in the balance.

Let's start with the basics. When Connor bought the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, Kennebec Journal, and Central Maine Morning Sentinel in 2009, he did so with the help of the local chapter of the Newspaper Guild (part of the Communications Workers of America union).

To make the sale work, Connor not only laid off 100 people (a quarter of the company's unionized workers), but gave those who remained a 10-percent pay cut (under an agreement expiring June 30) and terminated company contributions to retirement funds. In exchange, the workers created an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, under which collectively the employees would own 15 percent of the company's value, in accounts that can be tapped for income upon retirement.

With the 15-percent stake, the papers' employees are the largest shareholder in Maine, according to Tom Bell, president of the local guild chapter and a staff writer at the Press Herald. (Larger shares of the company, he says, are held out-of-state by investors affiliated with the Texas-based HM Capital investment firm.)

Since taking over, Connor has announced that all three papers are profitable. Bell says the employees want to see some of the profits of the streamlined company.

"Our members' expectations are pretty high," Bell says. "We make 10 percent less . . . and our health-care costs are higher." (The company still pays 80 percent of employees' premiums, but co-pays and deductibles have increased, Bell says.)

In case there's any doubt, he clarifies: "The papers' finances have stabilized, and we'll be looking for raises" to make up the lost cost-of-living ground.

It's an unclear proposition, even in a company that looks stronger on paper than it was two years ago. Connor has sold off significant real-estate holdings (including the landmark building in Portland), but the proceeds have largely gone to pay down debt incurred in buying the papers. It's unclear how much of the company's profitability is due to an increase in revenue, as opposed to cost-cutting measures. That may mean that despite the lower debt load, there is no more operating cash than there has been.

Connor's not talking — he didn't return multiple requests for an interview for this piece, and Bell says he "had expected by now to have met with the company," but neither the union nor the company has yet asked the other to come to the table for a discussion.

• For those enjoying the spectacle that Governor Paul LePage and the Republican leadership in the State House have been creating, an excellent resource has been MAINEBIZ, the state's twice-monthly business newspaper. Most of its material, whether online, in print, or e-mailed to readers, has been culled from other media (with links and attribution). And that has its own usefulness. But when doing its own reporting, the publication has the sterling reputation and strong business-community connections to allow it to ferret out what really is — and isn't — affecting Maine businesses' efforts at job-creation. Since the LePage inauguration, Mainebiz has put out only two print editions, so a lot remains to be seen. But if the paper can separate itself from the business community enough to clearly discern what is partisan rhetoric claiming to be pro-business, and what is really something that would help Maine businesses and residents, Mainebiz will be a must-read.

Music Seen: Marie Moreshead + Ellen Tipper at Blue, January 28

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The dual CD-release party for Ellen Tipper's The Juggler and Marie Moreshead's self-titled full-length album was a stripped-down affair, which was a relief because Blue was packed to the gills.

Tipper opened with her keyboard folk, playing several songs based on her experiences spending time in other countries (Vietnam and England among them). She proved a mellow mood-setter for Moreshead's soulful guitar-based ballads.

The pair of duets they sang — one from each's album — showed the stylistic contrast between the two. When backing Tipper's song, Moreshead seemed to handle the literal story-telling lyrics awkwardly, as if missing the metaphors that season her work so richly. When playing Moreshead, Tipper's fingers flowed more smoothly than when her keyboard was center stage.

Despite a few technical problems (ably handled by semi-official roadie Pat and honorary roadie Drew), Moreshead's performance was strong and smooth, and well received by the standing-room-only house. (Her first show at Blue, a few years back, was in front of her mother and just one other person, Moreshead announced.)

Her words are often happy, but then laid over spare, sad melodies. In some ways it's an inversion of the work of 10,000 Maniacs, which told horrific stories in catchy riffs. And the deep, twangy edge in Moreshead's vocals also evokes Natalie Merchant (with perhaps a sprinkling of Erin McKeown). But whether set up that way or aligned on a single emotional axis, as in "Romans" and the brand-new "Secrets of the Bluebird," her songs really shone.

Out of the woodwork: John Birch Society alive and confused in Maine

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The Maine arm of the John Birch Society, founded in 1958 to combat communist influence in government, visited the State House in Augusta last week, calling for legislators to, well, do nothing, as it turns out.

But that's not how it started. On January 20, the local Birchers joined a nationwide effort asking state legislators to rescind longstanding legislative calls for a federal constitutional convention. At various times state legislatures have raised issues with the US Constitution by passing resolutions asking Congress for a constitutional convention to address them, such as in the early 20th century when many states called for direct election of senators, legalized in the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913.

Patricia Truman of Hallowell, who has been a JBS member since 1964 and is a longtime local-chapter leader of the society here in Maine, was unclear when asked by the Phoenix about what requests Maine has made, but she was sure she wanted lawmakers to rescind them anyway, fearing that revisiting the Constitution could result in reversal of important protections now enshrined there.

Mike Hein, a John Birch Society member and publicist who is a former spokesman for the Christian Civic League of Maine, a right-wing advocacy group, issued a statement claiming Maine has four outstanding calls for a convention. He later specified three, adding that he had "heard from others" of a fourth. First on Hein's list was Maine's 1911 call for direct election of senators, which is no longer outstanding because that request passed as the 17th Amendment in 1913. Second was a 1941 call for repeal of the 16th Amendment (which allows a federal income tax). Third on his list (with a specific Congressional Record citation of "CR 099, page 04434"), is not a new call for a convention, but rather a 1953 resolution rescinding the 1941 repeal request. Which leaves no active calls to be rescinded by Maine lawmakers.

Birchers have a long history of ill-informed beliefs about government. They considered President Dwight Eisenhower a communist, and objected to his policies; they also opposed the civil-rights movement in the 1960s on the conspiracy-theorist grounds that the movement's leaders were, or were influenced by, communists. (Conservative icons Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, and William F. Buckley repudiated those claims and made clear that Birchers are on the extreme right wing of the right-wing movement.)

And that string continues. Truman claimed that during her visit to Augusta she learned of a call she said was proposed by Seth Berry, a Maine House Democrat representing Bowdoin and Bowdoinham: "He wanted our state to call for ConCon," she said. "I just know that Representative Berry does want to have the state call a ConCon," and insisted Berry's move related to the US Constitution and not the state's, she said.

But she's wrong. When reached on his cell phone, Berry said he had indeed proposed a convention, but to discuss the state constitution, saying anyone who thought otherwise "probably should have called me before they assumed that."

All you can learn: A new online program at SMCC puts you to the test

Published in the Portland Phoenix


Yes, taking classes online is the wave of the future. And you've figured out that the house always wins: Tuition for those classes is vastly more profitable for universities than the traditional in-person, in-classroom instruction.

Students live off-campus (requiring fewer dorms), don't even visit campus (less parking), are too far away to use the gym or the library (allowing smaller facilities), and only interact with faculty through computers (fewer tenure-track profs mucking around with academic freedom).

What's the benefit for students? Well, you can keep your full- or part-time job, you don't have to move, and, uh, you get to shell out basically the exact same tuition rate as the on-campus students who get all the perks you're paying for but can't have. The theory, of course, is that the piece of paper saying you earned X credits at your university is worth the same amount of money whether you attend class in person or virtually. (Yes, we know that's ridiculous, because you're not paying for the piece of paper, but the learning experience — right?)

Fortunately, Southern Maine Community College has found a middle ground: Super-extra-cheapo courses, with a basic online learning experience that won't make you poor or frustrated. At $99 for 90 days of as many courses as you can take (some will soon be available for college credit!), even if you snicker at the class notes (as I did, a few times, during a trial run), you'll still be getting your money's worth. The system is available to anyone, anywhere — no Maine residency required.

As many as 5000 different courses will be available when the system is fully up and running in the next few months, according to Julie Chase, assistant dean for professional education at SMCC. Let's not get silly; many of these "courses" might more properly be called "class sessions" — they take anywhere between 90 minutes and five hours. But still, that's a lot of options.

You can search for classes or career paths. I started by testing the system with something I know well — I searched its directory of potential careers and found "reporter," which led me to several courses it suggested I take to prepare for my career: "Foundations of Grammar," "Generating Creative and Innovative Ideas," "Writing With Intention," and "Crisp Composition" were among them. All in all, the units totaled 27.5 hours of time, if I sat through every explanatory session.

I began with "Foundations of Grammar" — a surprisingly nitpicky class that nevertheless had some grammatical errors itself (one example sentence handled a possessive in a way best described as Very Wrong: "Mr. Neal, our bookkeeper's, office is on the second floor.").

The not-so-secret secret key to this type of class is that success is defined by the score you get on the tests. If you like, you can start each class with a pre-test, which, as it turns out, is the same as the post-test.
If you pass enough on the pre-test, you are considered to have completed the course, and can move on to the next. (Yes, you can click through the class slides anyway, but why?) If you haven't passed, it'll tell you what parts you need to work on.

I found it easiest not to suffer through the boring 1980s-style graphics and dull questions (read aloud, if you wish, by a horribly bored voice-over actor probably wishing she could take a class to start a new career). Instead, I just kept taking the tests, focusing on the parts I did the worst on. (Okay, I had to take a couple parts of the grammar test a couple times. But seriously, the level of obscurity of some of this stuff was ridiculous. You try: Please identify how many verbs in this paragraph are in the past progressive case. Your answer is wrong too.)

Eventually, though, I was able to game the system. The courses I took (which also included ones on InDesign and a class about something called "Six Sigma") seemed to have two sets of questions for each section of the test, so taking the test three times guaranteed familiar questions. Couple that with the facts that 1) the test shows you the correct answer for each question before moving on, and 2) you can take the test as many times as you like with no penalty, and you're on Easy Street.

Paying decent attention while taking and retaking the test (multiple-choice questions, with more than one answer allowed at times) allowed me to "pass" a good number of courses without ever enduring a single "lecture" session. It took a lot less time, too.

However, I wouldn't consider myself proficient in InDesign as a result; the test only taught me about three things, none of which is particularly useful. (The most practical item on the test was how to insert a new layer into a document, rename it, and make it the bottom layer.)

And of course I played the averages; in the Six Sigma class, I lucked out and scored well on certain parts of the test just by reading carefully and guessing. When choosing which portions of the test to retake, I skipped the things I bombed completely and homed in on the topics I had a fighting chance at passing. The system looks for an overall average, and you pass or fail based on that.

That's an obvious flaw, because I passed the introductory Six Sigma class without knowing what a "kaizen event" is, or even, quite frankly, getting a clear explanation of what Six Sigma is in the first place.

Still, if your boss suggests you learn something, check out the course list at smccme.edu/continuingstudies. If there's something there that could help, maybe your employer will shell out the $99 for you to learn. The system remembers your progress, and you can even print a certificate of completion to prove the company's money was well spent.

Out of the Governor's Mouth: LePage’s black friend is not his son, and other ‘kiss my butt’ fallout

Published in the Portland Phoenix; co-written with Shay Stewart-Bouley

About two weeks into his term, Governor Paul LePage has gone local as a follow-up to his telling President Obama "to go to hell," setting off a national media firestorm with an off-the-cuff remark literally telling the Maine NAACP "to kiss my butt." Seems the foot-in-mouth disease he suffers from wasn't limited to the gubernatorial campaign.

It started when the NAACP extended an invitation to LePage to attend various Martin Luther King Day events in the state, the most prominent being the Bangor chapter's breakfast held Monday, January 17, and the NAACP's annual dinner in Portland (actually held Sunday night). LePage declined to attend any of the events, despite the fact that Maine governors for the past 30 years have been in attendance, along with other state dignitaries of all political stripes.

As has been reported extensively from here to Washington to San Diego and beyond, LePage dismissed the equality-for-all NAACP as a "special interest" he would not "be held hostage by." The governor, a 62-year-old white man, went on to suggest that a 25-year-old Jamaican man would be better equipped to talk to the NAACP than the governor himself, saying, "My son happens to be black," and offering to send him to talk to the civil-rights group.

But a few elements went missing in the national narrative — and even went undercovered in the Maine media.
First, LEPAGE DOES NOT HAVE A BLACK SON. As Maine Public Broadcasting Network's Susan Sharon reported, 25-year-old Devon Raymond, who is not a US citizen but rather a Jamaican national, has never been formally adopted by LePage, though the governor and his wife are helping Raymond pay for college and have invited the man to family gatherings for several years.

Second, while some commentators have suggested that LePage's comments are attractive to his base (even while being repugnant to the majority of Americans), even some of the CONSERVATIVES AT THE CONSERVATIVE-BEACON ASMAINEGOES ONLINE FORUMS HAVE EXPRESSED CONCERNS about LePage's lack of tact and his inclinations to create controversy rather than progress.

Third, LEPAGE ALSO DIDN'T SAY HE WAS SNUBBING THE NAACP IN FAVOR OF THE MLK BREAKFAST HOSTED IN WATERVILLE by Spectrum Generations (a non-profit elder-services agency) and the local Rotary Club, which he did attend; announcement of that might have defused the controversy — except his appearance wasn't on the governor's schedule until after the brouhaha erupted.

And fourth, on Saturday, LEPAGE SPOKE AT MAINE RIGHT TO LIFE'S "HANDS AROUND THE CAPITOL" RALLY. No word on whether he exempts them from the "special interest" label or if they were holding him "hostage" — as he claimed the NAACP tried to.

Press releases: Stenographers

Published in the Portland Phoenix

"Stenographers" is an inflammatory word to use to describe journalists, but it's the only accurate way to respond to news coverage of Paul LePage's inauguration as governor.

Not five minutes into his term, LePage uttered a verifiable untruth. And all three of the state's major daily newspapers quoted him without noting that it was false. It wasn't some throwaway line, but rather a description of the Maine Constitution, which was central to LePage's campaign (along with the US Constitution), and which he has promised will be a touchstone of his governorship.

Here's what LePage said: "The word 'people' appears in the Maine Constitution 49 times. You cannot find a single mention of the words, 'politics,' 'Republican,' 'Democrat,' 'Green,' or 'independent' in 37 pages of preambles, articles, and sections of our state constitution."

The Portland Press Herald, the Lewiston Sun Journal, and the Bangor Daily News quoted that line completely (and accurately) in their reports about the inauguration. And to read those articles, you would believe LePage is right. He's not.

Fact-checking that claim was as easy as it gets, even for lazy journalists who are (or feel) chained to their desks. As I watched the live online stream (from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network), all it took was a quick Google search; the full text of the Maine Constitution appeared on my screen, a PDF from the state's own Web site.

And yes, LePage was right about the number of times the word "people" appears, and about the first four items on his list of absent words: "politics," "Republican," "Democrat," and "Green" are not in the Maine Constitution.

But "independent" is, three times: in the Preamble ("We the people of Maine . . . do agree to form ourselves into a free and independent State"); in Article I, Section 1 ("All people are born equally free and independent"); and in Article IV, Section 1 ("the people reserve to themselves power to propose laws and to enact or reject the same at the polls independent of the Legislature").

LePage's context was about political affiliation, but of course someone who is politically "independent" is by definition unaffiliated. If LePage were being careful with his words, he might have chosen "unenrolled," the technical term for someone who is a registered voter in Maine but who is not listed as a member of any political party. That word indeed does not appear in the Maine Constitution.

Instead, Maine's new governor chose to claim that a very important word, which appears in three very important places in the Maine Constitution, was not there at all. And the state's three major newspapers didn't even bother to determine whether his claim was accurate — despite the complete ease and simplicity of doing so.

I've warned the Maine media before about laziness when it comes to government scrutiny (most recently in "Brave The New World," November 19, 2010). LePage will be making more complex statements over the next four years, and many of those claims will be far harder to assess for veracity than a simple statement in an inaugural address. While LePage's inauguration may have set the tone for his administration, let's hope that the media's coverage of that event is not the harbinger of its performance as his term continues.

• One other note: the PORTLAND PRESS HERALD'S ADVERTISING DONATION TO THE PRO-MAYOR CAMPAIGN THROUGH THE PORTLAND REGIONAL CHAMBER was explained to me by chamber CEO Godfrey Wood in very simple terms. "We have a sponsorship agreement" with the Press Herald, in which the paper donates advertising space to the chamber, he said. "They asked if we wanted additional ad space for this (the pro-mayoral campaign) and we said, 'Yes.'" Whether that places the Press Herald in violation of Maine campaign-finance disclosure laws or not is presently in question, but the mechanism by which the Press Herald indicated its support for an elected mayor in Portland is not.

Starting points: A critical reading of LePage’s inaugural address

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Governor Paul LePage's inaugural address was fairly short, and was filled with rhetoric much like that from his campaign. On our blog (thePhoenix.com/AboutTown) we broke the news about his first misleading statement told while in office (see how the media handled that here). He said some other interesting stuff too.

WHAT HE SAID "Our programs have to be focused on Maine residents." WHAT WE LEARN New arrivals to Maine (whether US citizens, refugees, or immigrants documented or otherwise) may not have access to public programs that can help them get a good start in their new lives.

WHAT HE SAID In holding up a single mother and nursing student as an example of how Mainers can use social programs to better their lives, he described the woman as having, "like me, Jennifer has escaped some very tough times." WHAT WE LEARN His prepared remarks worded that as "like me, Jennifer has escaped domestic violence." While that is a key part of his campaign's homeless-to-governor story, he chose to sidestep a politically charged term.

WHAT HE SAID "I do not care about editorials, opinion polls, or the next election." WHAT WE LEARN While he may be declaring his independence from the political and journalistic whirlwind, it will be fascinating to see whether he cites supportive editorials and polls in promoting his programs, simply dismissing opinions he does not like, or whether he indeed operates independent of all outside opinions — even those supporting him.

WHAT HE SAID "At the end of my term, I will be ready to stand accountable for the jobs that we create, for the prosperity that we bring to our state." WHAT WE LEARN Given that his influence in job creation is based on the indirect results of policy decisions (and only directly by hiring more people into state government), LePage is really hoping the global recession ends soon. On that, we can all agree.

Private eyes are watching you: The year in tech

Published in the Portland Phoenix; co-written with Nicholas Schroeder

This year saw some tech wins (public information), some losses (privacy), and many more questions for the future of an increasingly wired world. (Example: Is anything secret anymore?) And there was the appearance of yet another grassroots David, and, as if a warning to future Davids, the epic collapse of a bloated Goliath.

Rise of Kickstarter
The arts just don't pay like they used to. What to do, then, when the ideas keep coming? In 2010, the people turned to Kickstarter, a user-friendly, low-risk database of not-for-profit projects seeking financial backing. The trick is simple: grant-hungry innovators provide a clear mission statement, project outline, and timeline for their projects. Like a virtual gallery of ideas, Kickstarter organizes projects and tallies pledges, freeing the project organizer to promote the fundraising effort.
Locally, it's been a minor revelation. In 2010, private pledgers funded Didn't Die Young Yet, a book of fiction by Jacob Cholak (who wrote one short story for each $1-and-up pledge received), the mastering of Theodore Treehouse's much-lauded debut album, and a $1500 steamroller rental for public printmaking demonstration by local art collective Pickwick Independent Press during September's Block Party.

Death of MySpace
Where Kickstarter represented the virtual vox populi, the web still produced its share of audible groans. Once a teeming online metropolis, Rupert Murdoch's MySpace is now a truly disgusting city, reduced to a collection of flashy billboards pasted onto blocks of empty housing units. 2010 witnessed a public resignation (some say firing) of Owen Van Natta, the company's CEO, and by July, operating losses for the year had passed $575 million. MySpace is still most convenient way to sample low-quality selections of fledgling rock bands, but individual accounts — the lungs of a social network — are inert.
Say what you will about Facebook, but they did get one thing right. Like the majority of humans (and most primates), it can differentiate between a person and a thing. According to Facebook's logic, both have presence, but only people have agency. Things — and this includes Malaysian sexbots — do not.

WikiLeaks
A free press, and the associated power of the Internet, to disrupt governments and expose secrets is trumpeted by the US in its policy toward China. Not so in its ongoing investigation — and threatened prosecution — of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. In addition to its April release of classified video footage of a US Army helicopter crew shooting and killing a group of men (including two journalists) in Baghdad in 2007, WikiLeaks struck fear into the hearts of American policymakers when it began releasing as many as 250,000 State Department documents in November. The real significance, however, was the populist rise of the computer-hacking community to defend Assange by attacking sites that caved to government pressure and ended business dealings with WikiLeaks (Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal). This response showed that there are many more people willing to defy the US government than officials would like — and that the feds can't catch them.

Privacy kickback

While studies show that younger people are less worried about loss of online privacy (in part because they're better at self-editing and using privacy tools that are available), Facebook and Google both spent big chunks of time under government microscopes this year. Facebook drew negative press and congressional concern for its ever-changing privacy policy and continued tweaks to both refine self-protection ability and encourage people to release just — a — little — more to those advertisers who keep FB in the black. Google faces increasing inquiries worldwide, particularly for its Google Street View service, which often ends up showing private citizens going about their daily lives — it shows a baby being born on a German street, for example — and has also been found to have collected data on private wi-fi networks in the areas its cars have mapped, leading to concerns about not just one-time privacy violation, but ongoing e-surveillance.

E-readers
The Kindle, the Nook, the Sony Reader — books really began to go mobile in 2010. The biggest boost, though, was from Apple's iPad, the small tablet computer that is effectively a large, powerful iPhone, without the ability to make calls or send texts. While many of the commercial e-book readers can access data in several e-book formats, only the iPad's system allows a private company complete control over software and the content that software delivers. If the iPad proves as dominant in its niche as the iPhone in its, this could give Apple a serious stranglehold on the marketplace of ideas.

Press Releases: Pay what?

Published in the Portland Phoenix

How much would you pay to watch TV programs you can already get for free?

This month, WMTW (the Hearst-owned ABC affiliate on Channel 8) and WGME (the Sinclair-owned CBS affiliate on Channel 13) are asking you, their viewers, to call your pay-TV provider and declare your willingness to do just that.

Both stations pay big bucks to the federal government for permission to broadcast over the public airwaves, using the new digital-TV signals that can be detected by up-to-date televisions and antennas. The stations are also carried on several pay-TV networks, including TimeWarner Cable and DirecTV. Most TVs these days can handle doing both — it's really easy to switch between your cable box, your DVD player, and your video-game console.

But the bulk carriers don't want you to do that — they want to keep you locked in to their systems. So they pay the local stations (or their corporate parents, at least) for the privilege of providing local shows to viewers in the station's geographic coverage area. The bulk carriers, naturally, pass on those costs to their audiences — charging viewers for the privilege of watching TV they could have at no cost, if only they were willing to press a button on their remotes.

WMTW's deal with DirecTV and WGME's with TimeWarner both expire December 31, and both stations have issued notices to viewers saying their bulk-carrier channels may go dark if the behemoths don't pony up, often to the tune of millions of dollars.

For example, executives at WGME parent Sinclair minimize their rate increase by describing it as "less than a penny a day per subscriber." But do the math: both WGME and TimeWarner estimate that 250,000 to 300,000 TimeWarner subscribers could be affected in Maine alone — that's right around a million dollars of increase (neither party will disclose the present payment amount). Of course, this is really one behemoth pushing another to get money from you: the Sinclair deal covers 32 other TV stations around the country, and whatever TimeWarner ends up paying will ultimately be covered by TimeWarner customers in their monthly cable bills.

And let's put that extra "penny a day per subscriber" into individual terms. Sinclair is asking TimeWarner to approve charging you an extra $3.65 a year to get access to TV signals Sinclair already distributes at no charge over the airwaves.

Is that a big boost to Sinclair? Yep. Does TimeWarner skim off a percentage for its own coffers? Bet on it. And what do you get? Nothing more or less than what is already being broadcast to your home. (Satellite, cable, and over-the-air providers bicker about relative "reliability" during thunderstorms and the like, but you're generally more likely to lose TV access because of a power outage than anything specifically related to how video gets to your home.)

Of course the other thing it gets for the local TV station is a whole pile of additional prospective viewers, which boosts advertising prices. WMTW president and general manager David Abel says 20 percent of his station's audience watch using DirecTV. Losing access to those viewers would require him to slash his advertising rates, which are higher for stations reaching more people.

Throwing that into the mix makes this financial equation even more fascinating: WMTW and WGME want you to pay DirecTV and TimeWarner more, to allow those carriers to pay the stations more, to give the stations more viewers, for which they can then charge advertisers more, a cost covered by the advertisers raising their own prices. You're paying for the privilege of watching television ads that make everything in your life more expensive. How does that feel?

Fighting censorship: SPACE to screen video banned from Smithsonian

Published in the Portland Phoenix

A video banned from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery last week in the wake of threats from conservative politicians will be on view in the front window of SPACE Gallery (538 Congress St., Portland) this week and next, as part of a nationwide show of solidarity between art galleries and the organizers of the Smithsonian's show.

The show, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture," includes works by a large number of renowned American artists, including photographers Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Annie Leibovitz; and painters Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jasper Johns, Thomas Eakins, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Marsden Hartley (a Mainer of whom a photographic portrait by George Platt Lynes is also included).

On November 28, nearly a month after the exhibit's October 30 opening date, the conservative Web site CNSNews.com reported that it had asked incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (an Ohio Republican) and incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (a Virginia Republican) to comment on one element of the show, an excerpt from David Wojnarowicz's A Fire In My Belly (A Work In Progress), which includes a scene of ants crawling on a crucifix.

Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith told CNSNews.com, "While the amount of money involved may be small, it's symbolic of the arrogance Washington routinely applies to thousands of spending decisions involving Americans' hard-earned money at a time when one in every 10 Americans is out of work and our children's future is being threatened by debt."

Cantor, who is Jewish, denounced the exhibit as "an outrageous use of taxpayer money and an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season," according to CNSnews.com. "When a museum receives taxpayer money, the taxpayers have a right to expect that the museum will uphold common standards of decency. The museum should pull the exhibit and be prepared for serious questions come budget time," he said.

Both politicians seem unclear on how federal funds are used by the Smithsonian. The organization reports that public funds do not pay for specific exhibits, which are instead funded by private donations. Federal funds cover the costs of building maintenance, care of the artworks in the museums' custody, and staff, including exhibit curators.

Nevertheless, the Smithsonian removed the video from its exhibit, without consulting the show's curator, Jonathan Katz. (Katz registered a powerful objection, decrying the decision as a capitulation to bullying: "appeasing tyranny has never worked and can never work, for tyranny wants only obedience, and blind obedience is antithetical to what this nation stands for; we were, as a people, born in protest to tyranny," he wrote in a formal statement.)

"When a work of art is censored because of a minority opinion about the work, it's cause for alarm," says Nat May, executive director of SPACE Gallery. The ants, according to the artist's own statement of purpose, are his metaphor for society, particularly during the AIDS crisis, which claimed Wojnarowicz's own life in 1992.

May's own opinion of the video is that "it's pretty harmless. I think we see more challenging and much more disturbing work every day on TV."

When he learned that other galleries around the country were showing the video as a sign of support for the censored artwork, May called the gallery representing Wojnarowicz's estate to ask if SPACE could show the film as well. "They got back to me immediately — within minutes" asking for his address and saying they would send the DVD.

The video will show in the front window of SPACE, along with printouts of various opinions about the work, including several objecting to it.

"I'd really like this to be an opportunity to discuss censorship," May says. "The biggest concern is that you have a couple of loud voices critical of something and before a conversation happens, the piece is removed. That's not how the rest of the world works. Because it's art and because it's in a public place" the standards should not change, he says, though apparently they do.

The SPACE exhibit will include the full statement by Katz, which ends with a quote from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself:" "Unscrew the locks from the doors!/Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!/Whoever degrades another degrades me,/And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. . . . Through me forbidden voices,/Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,/Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd."

Maker's Mark: Portland nerdcrafters turn old ideas into new items

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Galen Richmond may work in the best tradition of Maine craft artisans, forging functional creations out of everyday materials most might consider junk, but there the comparison stops. Richmond is very much a craftsman for the 21st century, perhaps something of a refugee from one of those far, far away galaxies that populate the Star Wars saga.
He creates new musical instruments out of old electronics, such as a Casio SK-1 synthesizer keyboard that looks quite normal until your gaze expands to encompass the matrix of toggle switches attached to its right end and the Atari joystick (complete with button) on the left. The switches and joystick are so seamlessly integrated, so tightly put together, that for a moment it becomes hard to envision the keyboard without those add-ons, all wired into the keyboard's internal circuitry, allowing the instrument to produce music far beyond what its manufacturers intended. Sure, the keys and pre-recorded drum rhythms are still there, but flipping switches and playing with the joystick morph the sound into new realms, warping standard keyboard tones into warbles, groans, creaks, and screeches. (If you still haven't gotten the picture, go check out the setup — and its music — at one of Richmond's numerous local club gigs; he performs as Computer At Sea.)

The term "nerd-crafting" has emerged in the popular culture to apply to work like Richmond's, which goes beyond traditional crafting (think the knit hats and handmade jewelry that are also so popular in Portland) into something related to geek- or nerd-dom, like electronics, comics, or video games. Richmond says his work is part of "the increasingly visible maker culture." It's more than traditional crafting (think knit hats and handmade jewelry), also popular in Portland.

Another of his devices is an OmniChord, an '80s-era electronic instrument with a touch-sensitive strip of metal a player can use to "strum" it. Not satisfied with that capability in a machine made a couple decades ago, Richmond pierced the case with several dozen furniture tacks and then opened it up and wired each tack to a different area of the internal sound-creation or -modification electronics. Now, pretty much wherever you touch the device, the sound it is making changes. (Richmond does wire those and other instruments into an un-modified MPC 2000 drum-machine/sampler/sequencer, in an effort to create music from these sounds, rather than simply making different noises.)

He started this sort of work, called circuit-bending, in 2007, modifying existing — often obsolete — electronic devices to create new sounds. Inspired by a circuit-bent Speak & Spell he spotted on eBay but could not afford (it was selling for hundreds of dollars), he decided to figure out how to make his own and discover what he calls "unheard sounds in the universe."
 

"The idea is that there's these other sounds just lurking in the hardware that weren't designed by anyone and weren't made to be heard," he says. As recently as a few years ago, it was possible to discover entirely new sounds. As more people have gotten involved — and as an online community has gathered to share techniques and recordings — it's rarer to make a new discovery totally outside an existing "family" of sounds (made from similar modifications to particular devices).
But it's still tantalizing, Richmond says: "There's always the chance that you could uncover a totally never-before-heard sound."

The craft comes not only in the workmanship of his customized devices (which also include an oversized circuit-board on display at the Children's Museum of Maine, and old books hollowed out and reconfigured with knobs and audio jacks to modify whatever sound signals are sent through it), but in the artistic repurposing of concepts, characters, items — saving them from the literal and figurative dustbin. Richmond puts it more humbly: "Salvaging this sort of useless-to-everyone-else technology and making something compelling out of it."

Finding niches
There's definitely an element of play in this kind of pursuit. Christian Matzke of Brunswick likes the idea of "taking something extremely adult in material and making a child's toy out of it." It helps him — and others — to hang on (or perhaps rediscover) the childlike wonder and fantastical ideas of youth, which adults so easily lose as they grow up.

For example, he has built a "NosferatView," a vampire-spotting device that is based on established techniques for spotting vampires (perhaps it's not such a toy: "you have it on the shelf in case someone comes to your house who is pal and has sharp teeth," Matzke says). And he created a life-size time machine, complete with valves, dials, tubes, gauges, and everything else you might imagine such equipment requires.

But while those appeal to the growing number of vampire/steampunk aficionados, he has also begun developing another small niche based, perhaps, more on nostalgia for the simplicity of childhood: making Lego scenes for bands. It started with a model he made of Laibach, a Slovenian band, of the band on stage (he customized the Lego figures' faces based on famous incidents, like the time the band's singer was hit in the face by a bottle thrown onstage, and bled while singing the rest of the show). "The band is buying it from me," Matzke says with surprise and pride.
Now he's at work on Lego dioramas of other bands, including Romanian electronic group NSK. While he prefers to create his own work and not derive it from others, Matzke admits that having a "built-in audience" can be an advantage when it comes to finding people who appreciate the effort.

It helps, too, when trying to make some money. Tristan Gallagher runs Fun Box Monster Emporium on Congress Street, selling action figures, games, accessories, and all sorts of nerdish ephemera, selling to those who share these types of interests. "It's about referencing stuff that you love," Gallagher says. He also makes T-shirts based on the Star Wars series, Nintendo videogames, and the occasional comic-book character (though he is careful to stay away from DC Comics characters, for fear of incurring the wrath of the phalanx of lawyers employed by DC parent Warner Bros.).

"Lucasfilm is very cool about making T-shirts, making artwork," he says. In fact, they almost use fans like Gallagher as product research. "If they like it, they'll take it," Gallagher laughs, describing how Lucasfilm will find a design and, rather than sending an attorney's nastygram, the company's staff do the design themselves and start selling it directly.

For fun or profit?Uniqueness, it turns out, is crucial to this kind of work. Ben Bishop, a local creator of custom action figures, bases his decision on whether to make a custom toy in part on whether he thinks the companies that actually own the characters he builds would issue their own versions. If something is already on the market, or is about to be, Bishop will skip it. For him, it's not just the creative process — "I guess I just wanted toys that didn't exist," he says with a grin.

He bought lots of toys, mixed and matched the parts, sculpted headgear and accessories, and meticulously repainted each part to create, for example, Lion-O from Thundercats out of a Skeletor figure from He-Man.
He even goes so far as to make box labels and design the packaging — reusing other action figures' plastic boxes — "to make them look like they're from the store."

Now, after roughly a year, he has finally settled on a kind of paint that both looks right and sticks to the plastic figures, and is getting requests for specific characters from fans around the world.

Bishop sells some of his custom-made figures to help fund his hobby; he recently took an order for 100 Sgt. Slaughter figures, combining the GI Joe figure with aspects of the '80s-era professional wrestler by the same name. (A tip for others who might be interested in starting this kind of work: "People are dying for Thundercats," Bishop says.)

Often Bishop comes up with ideas of what figures to make and then sorts out how to do it, with what parts from what original figures. But sometimes new techniques or even new toys open other opportunities, as recently happened with a Jack Knight Modern Starman figure, which has pants on and makes it much easier to create other figures that have pants (as opposed to shorts or bare legs).

Bishop has a love-hate relationship of sorts with this hobby. It takes a lot of time and creative energy from other work, like comics (yes, he made an action figure of Nathan the Caveman, the star of his graphic novel). But then again, "this is really fun."

Which is why he and Ben Asselin, a friend and fellow character-builder (who does more sculpting than repurposing existing toy parts), are considering partnering with a couple of other friends to form a concept-art business capable of designing and prototyping characters and figures, laying out storyboards, handling Web comics, cartoons, and even packaging materials. "We're all sort of doing all the stuff that would be required," Bishop says.

But then the conversation shifts back to fun. Bishop and Asselin are planning on making a façade of Castle Grayskull scaled to fit the 3.75-inch-high action figures. And Asselin, a huge GI Joe fan, is busy creating all the characters from a specific scene in the 1987 animated film GI Joe: The Movie — which means getting or making the more generic figures of each character and then adding clothing and accessories to match the movie.

Bishop says a lot of the appeal for him is "having something that you've created — and something that no one else has." He laughs: "I want to be able to stop doing it, but it's too fun."

Where can I find it?
• COMPUTER AT SEA will be releasing an album in early 2011, downloadable online (myspace.com/computeratseamusic) or you can buy the 12-inch white-vinyl record.
• BEN BISHOP's work can be seen at bishart.net. BEN ASSELIN's work can be seen at benasselin.blogspot.com. They will have a joint display at Fun Box Monster Emporium (656 Congress Street, Portland) during a First Friday Art Walk in early 2011.
• CHRISTIAN MATZKE's work is harder to find, but is sometimes featured in short films shown around the area.

Press releases: Brave the new world

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Maine is in crisis — big budget shortfalls, lots of people unemployed, a cold winter approaching. And there's this new governor, talking about making life easy for business.

But since that often means making things hard on people and the environment, we need a press who will stand up and look out for Mainers.

This of course means making sure that promises from politicians end up being delivered — with the effects promised. John Baldacci touted Maine's job growth during his first term when he was seeking reelection. But as his second term ends, Maine has lost all of those jobs, and possibly more. Anybody (except us at the Phoenix) asking him if he's responsible now? No.

But it also means remembering the lessons of history. Some of those pesky environmental regulations businesses hate came about, in part, because paper companies — in the absence of regulation and enforcement — dumped dioxin into Maine's major rivers, killing everything downstream. We're smarter than that now — and better protected as a result.

Much of that protection is thanks to journalists, like those at the defunct Maine Times, who acted as true watchdogs, badgering the public and its elected and appointed representatives into action to clean up the environment and restrict future pollution.

But today's journalists and media outlets are out of practice at doing that sort of work. With rare and infrequent exception, many — most egregiously, the local television news, but let's not spare the newspapers — appear to believe that news is what officials say it is, rather than what is actually happening in the world. These outfits are more likely to be lapdogs for authorities, to wait for "official" comment before doing a story, to let coverage be driven by that scourge of citizens seeking real information (though savior of many a lazy or overworked journalist): the manufactured press conference.

Any Maine journalist who finally steps up to do a good job now risks being labeled partisan. "You slacked for eight years with a Democratic governor," that argument might well go, "so your renewed vigor now must be because you dislike Republicans."

Fortunately, there's an easy answer reporters can give: "We shouldn't have slacked — and we recognize that it helped get us into this mess we're in. We have realized the error of our ways, and, like everyone else in Maine, want to be part of the solution. So we're jumping into the game with new energy, and we'll be watching you the way we should have watched the Dems."

Early indicators are mixed. Even before the Republican sweep of Augusta, media outlets like the Portland Press Herald and the Lewiston Sun Journal were restoring lost staffers to the State House beat. That's a welcome sign indeed, and if sustained (dare we dream that the regrowing corps could be expanded by other media outlets?) bodes well for informing the public.

But there are also serious problems. Press Herald business reporter Jonathan Hemmerdinger gives us a recent example in his 800-word story on November 7, in which numerous businesspeople and politicos, including Paul LePage, lamented the strict state of business regulation in Maine.

The only example of problematic regulation given in the article, though, was a requirement that "developers planning projects larger than 75,000 square feet must conduct a nine-point project review that examines factors including community impact and traffic patterns." Would we really prefer to remain ignorant of how a massive big-box store would change traffic use, and affect other businesses in the community?

No other specific regulations came under any fire at all. That shows the journalist didn't ask for examples — if he had and gotten answers (or no-comments), the responses would have been in the piece. We can do better — and we'll need to.

Election prep: County races could use competition

Published in the Portland Phoenix

All five Cumberland County posts up for election this year have unopposed candidates — and four have incumbents seeking reelection. That's a verdict of sorts, though a surprising one, given that at budget time municipal officials regularly complain about the burden of county taxes and lament their inability to reduce the cost of county government.

But if the only person who could be called a newcomer for a county post is Kevin Joyce, who is running for sheriff after serving as a deputy here for a quarter-century, then citizens, at least, must be moderately happy about the job being done. Otherwise, someone would have run for something.
Still, it's not too late to run a write-in campaign if you want to challenge Joyce, judge of probate Joseph Mazziotti, treasurer Diane Gurney, register of deeds Pamela Lovley, or district attorney Stephanie Anderson.

Press Releases: Surrender Monkeys

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Most journalism professionals agree that it is appropriate that media organizations should ban reporters from attending certain types of events in the name of objectivity and limiting perceived bias. For example, events supporting specific political candidates are typically considered out-of-bounds, unless a reporter is actually on the job, putting together a story about the event or the candidate for broadcast or publication.

But of late, media outlets are falling all over themselves to declare even non-partisan events off-limits to off-duty journos. The most recent example is the recently renamed Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear," which made its biggest splash in the mainstream media when National Public Radio issued a memo saying employees attending the admittedly left-leaning rally would violate the organization's code of ethics. Many other mainstream outlets are doing the same, saying the event is political in nature, so attendance by journalists — other than those covering the event for their news organizations — could raise questions about bias on the part of the journalists or their employers. (No similar edict became public in advance of Glenn Beck's August 28 rally in DC, suggesting the news execs couldn't fathom their minions wanting to attend that event.)

I understand that news organizations don't want their journalists holding signs promoting a particular candidate or referendum question. But are these news outlets truly so confused that they object to their employees potentially holding up signs supporting sanity and reasonableness? Apart from being badly needed in all aspects of American life today — including newsrooms — sanity and reasonableness are things that real journalists endeavor to support, rather than shilling to the shrill extremes.

But let's move beyond the fact that this kind of ban is tantamount to banning journalists from attending shows at which stand-up comics make jokes about politics or current events. That alone makes it completely ludicrous.

This ban is far more damaging to the media outlets that promulgate it, because it prevents journalists from going to see shining examples of real journalism. Both Stewart and Colbert have won Peabody Awards for their television reporting — Stewart twice for coverage of elections, something the mainstream media should be trying to be better at.

Stewart and Colbert are people who despite their claims to be comedians, and despite the fact that they are on Comedy Central, are actively engaged in seeking truth, context, and insight about modern American and global affairs.

They and their staffs are well-informed, talented writers, brilliant at making their information not just palatable but actually enjoyable to consume. They are doing what the mainstream media is failing at, and has been failing at for a long time — getting people interested in public affairs.

Little wonder, then, that both men are significant threats to existing media. A Rasmussen Reports poll in 2009 found that nearly one-third of Americans under the age of 40 believe their shows are replacing "traditional" news outlets.

So how to mainstream media outlets respond to an opportunity to observe some of the most important journalistic figures of the early 21st century? By issuing edicts that ensure their newsgathering employees are uninformed, non-participating scribes forbidden from involvement in a world that increasingly demands the engagement of professional skeptics. This is very clearly a surrender to irrelevance, a declaration of retreat from the field of journalistic inquiry, albeit under the cover of a professed adherence to unachievable ethical standards.

If reporters are not allowed to attend gatherings of groups of people who care about an issue (or a set of issues), how are they to find out what's going on in the world?

Must they, like the public at large, be held hostage to mainstream-media reporters' skewed views of the world? Must they, like the general public, hear and read primarily whatever is contained in statements read by officials at podiums, or, for some sense of "balance," wildly inaccurate statements by people so detached from reality that they can look at a blue sky and call it red? Journalists and their corporate masters have a lot to learn from Stewart and Colbert.

Tall tales: Maine storyteller heads away for audiences

Published in the Portland Phoenix

We here at the Phoenix don't pull this kind of thing often, but this weekend you're missing out. Lewiston native (and Munjoy Hill dweller) Michael Parent has headed 1000 miles southwest from Portland to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, this weekend. 

He'll be telling up to eight hours of stories over the course of the weekend — not all at once, but in chunks ranging from 15-20 minutes up to a full hour. Sadly, Parent, a 64-year-old of French-Canadian descent, doesn't do a lot of performing around here. He's been in a few theatrical productions and has done some one-man storytelling shows around town — and is hoping to line up some appearances this fall — but most of his work he does elsewhere. "The further away you go, the more they pay you," he laughs wryly.
In Jonesborough, the International Storytelling Center hosts one of the country's largest annual festivals for storytellers; attendees number between 12,000 and 15,000, spread among several tents. Parent will regale his audiences with selections from his extensive repertoire.

He has one story retelling the fable of "Beauty and the Beast" from the Beast's point of view; another is a series of vignettes called "Heroes and Sheroes, Working Class and Otherwise," which includes one tale about a sanitation worker "who puts pizzazz in the collection of garbage," he says.

He tells folk and fairy tales, but many of his pieces are based in fact, though embellished for the telling. "I take events that actually happened and try to capture the spirit of the event, whether or not I have all the facts straight," Parent says.

A favorite of his is "The Beautiful Game," a story centered around the fire that destroyed Lewiston's St. Dominic's Arena in 1956, crushing the spirits of hockey players and fans alike in that economically troubled town. It's based on the facts of the event — including research into newspaper archives on microfiche — but his descriptions of residents' reactions are based on his own experience growing up in Lewiston as a player on one of Maine's five high-school hockey teams at the time.

Parent begins his stories by writing them, but before they are ready for delivery, he tries them out on friends, preferring to hone his work in the telling. "You'll come up with things on your feet that you'll never come up with sitting on your butt," he says.

And when honed, they're ready. "You have 1000 people in a tent, and as soon as a story starts, it's just dead silence," he marvels. "I think people are longing for that kind of connection with the spoken word." (He mixes guitar music in with his stories, and seeks audience participation from time to time — whether singing along or performing on stage with him: "I seem to have a gift for getting people to be a bit silly," he says.)

Parent has been performing as a storyteller since 1977. "I feel I'm really getting the hang of it, after 30-plus years," he says, only half-joking. His first Jonesborough performance was in 1981; "it isn't quite the career catapult that it once was," because there are so many more storytellers and so many more festivals. In fact, after Parent leaves Tennessee, he's heading to another storytelling festival in Washington. He swears he'll come back at some point soon — keep an eye out for him in our listings pages and around town in Portland or Brunswick.

Hear some of Michael Parent's work at michaelparentstorytelling.com.

Press releases: Could it happen here?

Published in the Portland Phoenix


The news a few years back that the Bush administration had convinced the big telecom companies to allow the authorities to spy on customers without warrants, in the name of fighting terrorism, caused a ruckus. Americans tend to worry about protecting our privacy from the government or big Internet-based businesses. But what if it was newspapers doing the snooping, hacking into phone and e-mail records of celebrities and politicians, and then publishing what they discover?

In the United Kingdom, just this question has come up in light of revelations that a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, News of the World, had journalists hack into cell-phone voicemail messages of Prince William and Prince Harry and report on personal details revealed in them.

Two men went to jail in 2007 in connection with the scandal, but recent concerns have arisen that the hacking may have been much more widespread, targeting leading politicians, sports stars, and celebrities — as the New York Times put it in a recent story on the scandal, “anyone whose personal secrets could be tabloid fodder.”

(A Parliamentary investigation found that the News editor at the time, Andy Coulson, had not known the phone hacking was taking place, and definitely did not approve it. Coulson is now the chief spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron, giving the new attention to this scandal a strong political bent.)

Britain’s culture of celebrity-crazed tabloids looks a lot like American pop-culture lunacy, and as US media outlets continue to compete for ever-shrinking shares of an ever-shrinking financial pie, desperation for audience attention is certain to increase.

Still, this level of invasiveness is one we can hope will not darken our shores. Mainstream news organizations tend to see themselves as above that sort of stunt. Even Murdoch’s empire in the US, primarily the Fox network, has so far been content with ambushing public figures on the street and asking them unpleasant questions. (The Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, it must be said, seems particularly unlikely to stoop to UK-tabloid style activities.)

Celeb-focused publications and blogs haven’t debased themselves this much yet either, but they might, given the brazenness — and phenomenal popularity — of outlets like TMZ and PerezHilton.com.

The question there, and here, boils down to free-press guarantees. Some people want to outlaw this type of behavior by journalists. But that gets into a slippery slope of the government exerting control over journalists. In the UK, which has a free-press tradition but no written constitution, that is easier than here, with our First Amendment enshrining media liberty.

Some have worried that such a law would have unintended consequences, though that is being debated too: Would new restrictions prevent true public-interest disclosures of very private information, as happened in 2009, when reporters investigating lawmakers’ expense accounts revealed that some members of Parliament watched pornographic pay-per-view movies on the public’s dime?

Under existing laws, UK celebs have, with the help of a cooperative judge (who was replaced last week amid this debate), been increasingly able to get injunctions preventing publication of private information, even if what they’re trying to protect is accurate. (Which brings up other concerns about press freedom.)

In the US, judges have traditionally been much more leery of granting those kinds of “prior restraint” injunctions, preferring to let story subjects seek redress in court after publication. In a shift that shook the American legal landscape, though, a federal appeals-court ruling last year held that a person can be libeled if private information, even if true, is published with “actual malice.”

When that case was reheard in a lower court, a jury reversed the ruling. But injunctions are decided by judges, not juries. It may be just a matter of time here.

Cybersecurity: Maine breaches

Published in the Portland Phoenix

When many Mainers think of "cybersecurity," they probably remember the 2008 HANNAFORD SECURITY BREACH, when 4.2 million credit- and debit-card numbers were stolen from shoppers at the grocery chain's stores.

What received little coverage amid the hype about the vastly overstated threat of identity theft (only 1800 accounts were actually used to make fraudulent charges — 0.04 percent of the stolen numbers) was that the breach was the first documented case of a new way of stealing this kind of information.

Previously, most security breaches resulting in theft of credit-card, bank-account, or even Social Security numbers had come from a single incident — either a physical theft of a computer or drive containing that information, or by connecting to a computer via the Internet and breaking through whatever security it might have in place. (This happened, for example, to THE UNIVERSITY OF MAINE HEALTHCARE CENTER'S COMPUTERS in June, when an unauthorized person accessed data on about 4600 students who had sought mental-health help at the university.)

But Hannaford's data was stolen over the course of several months, during transmission of the data from store cash registers to the system that the company used to verify card transactions. This process takes only seconds, as shoppers know, and became a target for thieves because protection had been beefed up on physical computers and their electronic defenses.

The fact that some credit-card information is not encrypted when traveling over private corporate networks remains an issue for retailers, banks, and credit-card companies to resolve. (When traveling over public networks, the data must be encrypted.) Also, the Hannaford hack was claimed by some to be an inside job — and there's little defense against data theft by a person who is allowed into a data center.

Most Mainers likely do not know that THE MAINE LEGISLATURE'S WEB SITE WAS HACKED just three months ago, resulting in some mild confusion about the lawmaking process. Specifically, the site's ability to designate the status of bills moving through the Legislature — including keeping users up-to-date on amendments and voting — was modified so that a user who clicked on various links would be taken to a Web site that would attempt to download viruses or other harmful software onto a user's computer.

State computer-support staff took the site offline entirely for several days while they fixed the security hole and reloaded correct information into the database. This went largely unnoticed because the Legislature was not in session at the time.

Dueling ideas: Maine's senators on cybersecurity

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Both of Maine's senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, have backed cybersecurity legislation in hopes of avoiding or averting the catastrophes described in David Scharfenberg's main piece. But their approaches have been different, leading to conflicting bills in the US Senate.

Collins's effort, also backed by senators Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and Tom Carper (D-Delaware), is most controversial because it would give the federal government significant authority to monitor, or even shut down, the Internet or portions of it, if the president declared a cybersecurity emergency. (The fact that the Department of Homeland Security would be in charge of actually doing this doesn't exactly make us feel warm and fuzzy inside, either.)

But beyond that — and despite creating two more federal agencies (the Office of Cyberspace Policy and the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications) — the bill does make some sense, because it also addresses education and training of future cybersecurity professionals, even introducing some concepts as early as elementary school.

Snowe's plan, proposed jointly with Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia), would not go quite so far. It would create a new office in the White House (the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor) and set new federal standards for cybersecurity, with which private companies and government agencies would have to comply. It would also provide for licensing and certification of cybersecurity professionals.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is reportedly working to combine the two bills and bring the merged proposal to a vote in the Senate sometime in September.