Published in the Current
Douglas Green of Cape Elizabeth is learning the value of the Internet to his business, reaching customers nationwide. Unfortunately, he is also learning how others can hurt his business by using technology.
Green operates Green Design Furniture, with a store in Portland. Last Friday, one of his customers alerted him that a furniture-sales web site targeted at high-end computer users was purportedly selling Green’s own furniture.
When Green looked at the web site, MacTable.com, he was very surprised.
“The site had pulled images and copy from our catalog,” Green said.
Further, the site was advertising retail prices that were “basically double”
Green’s own prices, and then offering a discount from those inflated prices.
Green had never heard of the site, and nobody had contacted him to ask permission. Green and his employees are the only people authorized to sell his furniture.
Green called the site’s owner, Jack Campbell, of Hendersonville, Tenn., to complain. Green was furious at what he saw as infringement of his intellectual property rights. He gave Campbell an hour to remove the photos and text from the site, and told Campbell his lawyer would also call to make the point.
“It was beyond what I could comprehend,” Green said.
Campbell defended his action, saying he was setting up a trial run of a web-based business marketing “expensive, nice designer wares” to users of Macintosh computers. He is a marketing consultant and technology writer known in the Macintosh user community.
His demographic studies indicate, he said, that Macintosh owners are a good market for high-end goods.
He approached a number of vendors for possible materials. One person, he said, claimed that Green’s furniture was really his own. This person, Campbell said, sent over photos and descriptions, as well as pricing information to be used on Campbell’s web site. These were the materials Green said were his own.
The site opened Oct. 17. The following day, he heard from Green, and the material was off his web site less than 30 hours after it was posted.
“I tried to apologize to Douglas (Green),” Campbell said, but Green was upset and wouldn’t let him say much, Campbell said.
After the call, Campbell checked into all of his other prospective vendors, and he said they checked out as credible sellers of their products.
Green said he takes infringements seriously. “This is what I’ve spent the last 10 years on,” he said. “We have to be really rigorous in defending my ideas. What I own are my designs.”
Thursday, October 24, 2002
Blanche turns 101
Published in the Current
Smiling broadly after a serious game of Beano at the First Congregational Church on Black Point Road, Blanche Cook was treated to a birthday lunch Oct. 17, her 101st birthday.
“This is the best day ever,” she exclaimed to a group of assembled friends. “It seems as though I’ve had birthdays forever.”
Her secret is food. “I just eat. I’ve got a good appetite,” Cook said before sitting down to a cup of soup, a sandwich and birthday cake.
She grew up in North Pownal and then moved to South Portland and later Scarborough, said her daughter Lorraine Libby. For many years Cook hand-dipped chocolate for the Libby Candy Company. Her husband died in 1978.
She said she has had a good life and has seen a lot. “Everything has been invented since I was born,” Cook said.
She walks a mile in the Maine Mall each morning and plays Beano often. The week before her birthday, she won several games. Her friends didn’t let the birthday girl win on her special day, though they did surprise her with the party.
Cook, a spry woman who moves as if she were far younger, still travels alone. She will shortly go to Florida to visit her brothers, who are 95 and 98 years old.
“We’re all a hardy bunch,” Cook said with a laugh.
Smiling broadly after a serious game of Beano at the First Congregational Church on Black Point Road, Blanche Cook was treated to a birthday lunch Oct. 17, her 101st birthday.
“This is the best day ever,” she exclaimed to a group of assembled friends. “It seems as though I’ve had birthdays forever.”
Her secret is food. “I just eat. I’ve got a good appetite,” Cook said before sitting down to a cup of soup, a sandwich and birthday cake.
She grew up in North Pownal and then moved to South Portland and later Scarborough, said her daughter Lorraine Libby. For many years Cook hand-dipped chocolate for the Libby Candy Company. Her husband died in 1978.
She said she has had a good life and has seen a lot. “Everything has been invented since I was born,” Cook said.
She walks a mile in the Maine Mall each morning and plays Beano often. The week before her birthday, she won several games. Her friends didn’t let the birthday girl win on her special day, though they did surprise her with the party.
Cook, a spry woman who moves as if she were far younger, still travels alone. She will shortly go to Florida to visit her brothers, who are 95 and 98 years old.
“We’re all a hardy bunch,” Cook said with a laugh.
Cape board worried about non-graduates
Published in the Current
At a School Board workshop Tuesday, concerns were high about state-mandated local assessment standards for high school graduation, which will be developed by the end of this school year and will be applied to this year’s eighth-graders before they can get high school diplomas.
“We can tell already that we’re not going to be there” without additional help, said Superintendent Tom Forcella. “Otherwise we’re going to have a significant number of kids not graduating,” said high school Principal Jeff Shedd.
Students who do not have high school diplomas are allowed to enroll in school until July 1 of the year in which they turn 20, according to state law.
Board member Kevin Sweeney said that could prove costly. “We could potentially be looking at having them in school full time for (an additional) one, two or three years,” Sweeney said.
The board discussed with Shedd the study skills class offered to non-special education students. Shedd said the class serves 13 students, whom he described as “high-risk non-special ed students.” The class teaches them organizational skills to help them perform better in class.
School Board Chairwoman Marie Prager said she felt as if there were three large groups in the school, the average students, special ed students and the ones in between, which she called “marginal.” Serving the needs of the three groups, she said, puts a large strain on the school department’s resources.
“We’re building three schools within our one school,” Prager said. “That’s what I think is scary in terms of dollars.”
Board member Kevin Sweeney said there was a broader spectrum than just those three groups, including honors and advanced placement students, as well as special education students with very large needs (such as one-on-one assistance), and special education students with fewer needs.
Claire LaBrie, director of special education, said students in special education often take college placement and honors classes in some disciplines while needing assistance with other subjects.
Middle school Principal Nancy Hutton said the schools will need to change some of their efforts to reach all students, using more people, equipment and time. “There’s going to be a price to pay for all of that,” she said.
“We’re going to do the best we can for all the kids,” Hutton said, not just “most of them.”
Forcella said the schools had to be careful not to create “a new special ed for non-special ed students.”
Shedd agreed that there were ways to be cost-effective, but said, “a part of the solution is inevitably going to take time, and time costs money.”
At a School Board workshop Tuesday, concerns were high about state-mandated local assessment standards for high school graduation, which will be developed by the end of this school year and will be applied to this year’s eighth-graders before they can get high school diplomas.
“We can tell already that we’re not going to be there” without additional help, said Superintendent Tom Forcella. “Otherwise we’re going to have a significant number of kids not graduating,” said high school Principal Jeff Shedd.
Students who do not have high school diplomas are allowed to enroll in school until July 1 of the year in which they turn 20, according to state law.
Board member Kevin Sweeney said that could prove costly. “We could potentially be looking at having them in school full time for (an additional) one, two or three years,” Sweeney said.
The board discussed with Shedd the study skills class offered to non-special education students. Shedd said the class serves 13 students, whom he described as “high-risk non-special ed students.” The class teaches them organizational skills to help them perform better in class.
School Board Chairwoman Marie Prager said she felt as if there were three large groups in the school, the average students, special ed students and the ones in between, which she called “marginal.” Serving the needs of the three groups, she said, puts a large strain on the school department’s resources.
“We’re building three schools within our one school,” Prager said. “That’s what I think is scary in terms of dollars.”
Board member Kevin Sweeney said there was a broader spectrum than just those three groups, including honors and advanced placement students, as well as special education students with very large needs (such as one-on-one assistance), and special education students with fewer needs.
Claire LaBrie, director of special education, said students in special education often take college placement and honors classes in some disciplines while needing assistance with other subjects.
Middle school Principal Nancy Hutton said the schools will need to change some of their efforts to reach all students, using more people, equipment and time. “There’s going to be a price to pay for all of that,” she said.
“We’re going to do the best we can for all the kids,” Hutton said, not just “most of them.”
Forcella said the schools had to be careful not to create “a new special ed for non-special ed students.”
Shedd agreed that there were ways to be cost-effective, but said, “a part of the solution is inevitably going to take time, and time costs money.”
Little damage in Black Point Inn fire
Published in the Current
A small fire started in a light fixture in a corner of the laundry at the Black Point Inn, sending guests out the door and firefighters racing down to Prouts Neck just after 6 p.m. Tuesday evening.
The historic inn, which had a new sprinkler and alarm system installed throughout the building during a renovation four years ago, had about 45 guests, as well as 65 staff members, all of whom had to be evacuated, according to Scarborough Fire Chief Michael Thurlow.
Firefighters hooked up their hoses to feed the inn’s sprinkler system, which took care of most of the fire. Fire crews took care of the rest quickly.
Firefighters spent several hours on the scene after the fire was out, cleaning out burned areas to make sure the fire was completely extinguished, and clearing smoke from the building.
“It’s a big building and it takes a while to get the smoke out,” Thurlow said.
Guests and staff were kept out of the inn’s main building for a while, but were able to keep warm in some of the inn’s cottages and outbuildings, according to innkeeper Dick Schwalbenberg.
No one was in the laundry at the time of the fire, and no one was hurt in the evacuation or in fighting the fire. Damage to the building was not extensive, and Schwalbenberg said he expected the laundry to be back in service by the end of the day Wednesday.
The small size of the fire was a relief to Schwalbenberg and Thurlow.
“It’s the kind of building you worry about,” Thurlow said, referring to the
inn’s wood-frame structure.
A small fire started in a light fixture in a corner of the laundry at the Black Point Inn, sending guests out the door and firefighters racing down to Prouts Neck just after 6 p.m. Tuesday evening.
The historic inn, which had a new sprinkler and alarm system installed throughout the building during a renovation four years ago, had about 45 guests, as well as 65 staff members, all of whom had to be evacuated, according to Scarborough Fire Chief Michael Thurlow.
Firefighters hooked up their hoses to feed the inn’s sprinkler system, which took care of most of the fire. Fire crews took care of the rest quickly.
Firefighters spent several hours on the scene after the fire was out, cleaning out burned areas to make sure the fire was completely extinguished, and clearing smoke from the building.
“It’s a big building and it takes a while to get the smoke out,” Thurlow said.
Guests and staff were kept out of the inn’s main building for a while, but were able to keep warm in some of the inn’s cottages and outbuildings, according to innkeeper Dick Schwalbenberg.
No one was in the laundry at the time of the fire, and no one was hurt in the evacuation or in fighting the fire. Damage to the building was not extensive, and Schwalbenberg said he expected the laundry to be back in service by the end of the day Wednesday.
The small size of the fire was a relief to Schwalbenberg and Thurlow.
“It’s the kind of building you worry about,” Thurlow said, referring to the
inn’s wood-frame structure.
Local students above state MEA averages
Published in the Current; co-written with Kate Irish Collins and Josh Williamson
Local students beat state averages on the Maine Educational Assessment tests, but still many are not meeting the standards set by the state.
The scores, released last week, have changed little from last year’s results. Since then, student scores in grades four, eight and 11 have held steady, landing predominantly in the “partially meets” standard in each of the
seven testing areas: reading, writing, math, science, social studies, health, and visual and performing arts.
Locally, Cape Elizabeth 11th-grade students led the way in every area of testing, with Scarborough and South Portland landing within just a few points, in most areas.
Students in all three communities scored at or above the state averages in every category except math, in which South Portland was one point off the state average.
One statewide trend shows that the gender gap in math and science has disappeared, with girls scoring just as well as boys.
However, boys have not caught up with girls in reading and writing, traditional strong areas for the girls.
“Clearly, we need more students to begin to show progress from ‘does not meet’ to partial mastery, and from ‘partially meets’ to meeting the standards,” said J. Duke Albanese, Maine’s commissioner of education.
The stronger than average showing in Cape Elizabeth did not surprise Superintendent Tom Forcella.
“As a whole, they were what we expected,” Forcella said.
The teaching staff in each Cape school will look at how students did in individual areas of each test, to pinpoint where students need to bone up.
Forcella said overall scores can disguise specific subtopics that either need work, or in which students already excel.
Forcella stressed that the long-term view of MEA scores is the important aspect of the test, allowing school officials to see how students do over the years. Further, he said, the MEAs are only part of a larger local assessment system now being worked on extensively in the district. “I think we’re using the results well,” Forcella said.
He expects to have a framework for a K-12 assessment system in place by the end of this year, as well as the specifics of a high school local assessment program, as required by state law.
In Scarborough, scores held steady within one or two points of the scores from last year.
Scarborough students are consistently meeting the standards in reading and writing and are also steadily climbing towards meeting the standards in social studies. However, in the last two years, students in Scarborough have only partially met the standards in math and science.
Fourth-graders did better in the five basic content areas last year than this year, while the eighth-graders did better this year. The 11th-graders also did
somewhat better last year.
Monique Culbertson, Scarborough’s director of curriculum and assessment, said that it is statistically impossible to match up reading scores with math scores because the standards are very different in each content area. What she likes to do instead is to conduct an individualized item analysis of each content area, looking at the questions that were asked and how the students responded.
“We are better able to look for trends and possible gaps in instruction by conducting such a detailed analysis,” Culbertson said. “We really are trying to stay away from the comparison that our students did better in reading than in math.”
Culbertson also said that it is sometimes difficult to know whether the fourth-graders, for instance, truly did do better on the test in previous years because of what they have been taught or whether fluctuations like that are based more on the individual class profile.
She said Scarborough schools are currently working on a comprehensive assessment model that should give the district a better understanding of the system’s strengths and weaknesses instead of relying solely on the MEA test scores.
Culbertson also said the MEA test scores are just a snapshot of where students are as a group and does not necessarily reflect individual achievement and learning.
Wendy Houlihan, assistant superintendent of South Portland schools, said that when the Learning Results standards were incorporated into the revised MEA test, they were intentionally set high.
The consistent scores of Maine students over the past three years could indicate that the test standards are not appropriate to the actual curriculum for students, Houlihan said. If this were the case, she said, it still wouldn’t pose a real problem.
“With these high standards, partially meeting the goal is pretty good,” Houlihan said.
Unlike states such as Massachusetts, which demand minimum scores in order for students to graduate, Maine does not place this emphasis on the MEA results.
“If this was something that could hurt a student’s future, then we might want to think about looking at the standards again,” Houlihan said. “But the MEA tests are just one of the tools we use to provide an assessment of student learning, and it doesn’t hurt us to keep that target high.”
At the same time, Houlihan thinks that Maine students could improve their scores and meet the higher demands of Learning Results.
“We always want the students to be improving from year to year,” Houlihan said.
Local students beat state averages on the Maine Educational Assessment tests, but still many are not meeting the standards set by the state.
The scores, released last week, have changed little from last year’s results. Since then, student scores in grades four, eight and 11 have held steady, landing predominantly in the “partially meets” standard in each of the
seven testing areas: reading, writing, math, science, social studies, health, and visual and performing arts.
Locally, Cape Elizabeth 11th-grade students led the way in every area of testing, with Scarborough and South Portland landing within just a few points, in most areas.
Students in all three communities scored at or above the state averages in every category except math, in which South Portland was one point off the state average.
One statewide trend shows that the gender gap in math and science has disappeared, with girls scoring just as well as boys.
However, boys have not caught up with girls in reading and writing, traditional strong areas for the girls.
“Clearly, we need more students to begin to show progress from ‘does not meet’ to partial mastery, and from ‘partially meets’ to meeting the standards,” said J. Duke Albanese, Maine’s commissioner of education.
The stronger than average showing in Cape Elizabeth did not surprise Superintendent Tom Forcella.
“As a whole, they were what we expected,” Forcella said.
The teaching staff in each Cape school will look at how students did in individual areas of each test, to pinpoint where students need to bone up.
Forcella said overall scores can disguise specific subtopics that either need work, or in which students already excel.
Forcella stressed that the long-term view of MEA scores is the important aspect of the test, allowing school officials to see how students do over the years. Further, he said, the MEAs are only part of a larger local assessment system now being worked on extensively in the district. “I think we’re using the results well,” Forcella said.
He expects to have a framework for a K-12 assessment system in place by the end of this year, as well as the specifics of a high school local assessment program, as required by state law.
In Scarborough, scores held steady within one or two points of the scores from last year.
Scarborough students are consistently meeting the standards in reading and writing and are also steadily climbing towards meeting the standards in social studies. However, in the last two years, students in Scarborough have only partially met the standards in math and science.
Fourth-graders did better in the five basic content areas last year than this year, while the eighth-graders did better this year. The 11th-graders also did
somewhat better last year.
Monique Culbertson, Scarborough’s director of curriculum and assessment, said that it is statistically impossible to match up reading scores with math scores because the standards are very different in each content area. What she likes to do instead is to conduct an individualized item analysis of each content area, looking at the questions that were asked and how the students responded.
“We are better able to look for trends and possible gaps in instruction by conducting such a detailed analysis,” Culbertson said. “We really are trying to stay away from the comparison that our students did better in reading than in math.”
Culbertson also said that it is sometimes difficult to know whether the fourth-graders, for instance, truly did do better on the test in previous years because of what they have been taught or whether fluctuations like that are based more on the individual class profile.
She said Scarborough schools are currently working on a comprehensive assessment model that should give the district a better understanding of the system’s strengths and weaknesses instead of relying solely on the MEA test scores.
Culbertson also said the MEA test scores are just a snapshot of where students are as a group and does not necessarily reflect individual achievement and learning.
Wendy Houlihan, assistant superintendent of South Portland schools, said that when the Learning Results standards were incorporated into the revised MEA test, they were intentionally set high.
The consistent scores of Maine students over the past three years could indicate that the test standards are not appropriate to the actual curriculum for students, Houlihan said. If this were the case, she said, it still wouldn’t pose a real problem.
“With these high standards, partially meeting the goal is pretty good,” Houlihan said.
Unlike states such as Massachusetts, which demand minimum scores in order for students to graduate, Maine does not place this emphasis on the MEA results.
“If this was something that could hurt a student’s future, then we might want to think about looking at the standards again,” Houlihan said. “But the MEA tests are just one of the tools we use to provide an assessment of student learning, and it doesn’t hurt us to keep that target high.”
At the same time, Houlihan thinks that Maine students could improve their scores and meet the higher demands of Learning Results.
“We always want the students to be improving from year to year,” Houlihan said.
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