Published in the Current
Seven Cape Elizabeth High School students, four of them seniors, may have to give up their high school prom in mid-May in order to participate in the All-State Music Festival at the USM campus in Gorham.
No students will be able to commute to the three-day festival, which runs from May 15 through May 17, according to Joan Hamann, president of the Maine Music Educators Association, which hosts the event.
“We have about 450 students that we are responsible for,” she said.
Students will stay in USM dorm rooms and attend lots of rehearsals and special programs. “The activities will go quite late,” until 9:30 or 10 p.m., Hamann said. Students also will have to observe a curfew.
CEHS principal Jeff Shedd had asked the organization to consider allowing Cape students to stay until the end of evening rehearsals on Friday, May 16, and then leave to attend the prom.
“They would arrive late for the prom, but at least they’d have an opportunity” to attend part of it, Shedd said. It would likely finish too late for students to drive back to Gorham, so Shedd proposed allowing them to stay at their homes and arrive back at the festival early Saturday morning.
He questioned an interpretation of the rules of the festival. Organizers said students had to stay overnight, while Shedd read them differently.
Hamann said students who knew they were going to the prom would not be focused on their music. “It’s hard to believe that that student isn’t going to be watching their watch” all afternoon, she said.
She also wants to be sure students get proper rest. “It’s so strenuous,” she said, “we’ve had students that have passed out” from exertion.
And she wants to be fair about the event. “It’s expecting (students) to make choices,” she said. “It’s trying to provide a good experience with the kids.”
She also said the national association of music educators has issued guidelines for statewide music festivals, which include a recommendation that all participants stay overnight. “Nationally there have been events” that led to the policy suggestion, she said.
No other districts have asked for exemptions, Hamann said. “We’re certainly trying to work with the school system,” she said. She noted that attendance is not mandatory. Students were selected by audition to participate, and there are more students who would want to take any open slots.
CEHS Music Director Tom Lizotte said the decision was “disappointing,” but he was glad that the association had given Shedd’s request “very, very serious consideration.”
Part of the problem is that a scarcity of prom locations means the date for next year’s prom was chosen three months ago, Shedd said. Next year’s music festival won’t be scheduled until this year’s festival actually takes place.
“I hope there will not be a conflict,” he said.
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Concannon moves on
Published in the Current
Kevin Concannon of Scarborough, formerly Maine’s commissioner of human services, has taken a job at the helm of the Iowa Department of Human Services.
That agency, like the one planned for Maine, combines health and human services and mental health. It also adds juvenile corrections.
“That is similar to the agency that I was in charge of in Oregon” from 1987 to 1995, Concannon said. Last month he had told the Current that he was looking to the private, non-profit sector. He says now that he had a change of heart on the way back from a job interview in Oregon.
“What do I really like the most?” he asked himself. “What I really like is what I’ve been doing on the public side,” he said.
Iowa is different from Maine in many ways, he said. Iowa has 3 million people spread across twice the geographic area as Maine.
“They have 99 counties,” Concannon said.
There are some similarities, however, in terms of the work he has done here. “They want to have an effect on things like prescription drugs, alternatives to nursing homes and Medicaid waivers. And I said, ‘I’m your man,’” Concannon said.
Of further interest, both the governor and lieutenant governor of Iowa are beneficiaries of the state’s human services department. Gov. Tom Vilsack was adopted, and Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson has an autistic child, Concannon said. He expects their experience to translate to strong support for his work.
Concannon expects to be confirmed by the state Senate in mid-April. He will sell his home in Scarborough and move to the Des Moines area, he said. His children, now adults, are still in Maine however, so Concannon and his wife will return to visit, he said.
Kevin Concannon of Scarborough, formerly Maine’s commissioner of human services, has taken a job at the helm of the Iowa Department of Human Services.
That agency, like the one planned for Maine, combines health and human services and mental health. It also adds juvenile corrections.
“That is similar to the agency that I was in charge of in Oregon” from 1987 to 1995, Concannon said. Last month he had told the Current that he was looking to the private, non-profit sector. He says now that he had a change of heart on the way back from a job interview in Oregon.
“What do I really like the most?” he asked himself. “What I really like is what I’ve been doing on the public side,” he said.
Iowa is different from Maine in many ways, he said. Iowa has 3 million people spread across twice the geographic area as Maine.
“They have 99 counties,” Concannon said.
There are some similarities, however, in terms of the work he has done here. “They want to have an effect on things like prescription drugs, alternatives to nursing homes and Medicaid waivers. And I said, ‘I’m your man,’” Concannon said.
Of further interest, both the governor and lieutenant governor of Iowa are beneficiaries of the state’s human services department. Gov. Tom Vilsack was adopted, and Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson has an autistic child, Concannon said. He expects their experience to translate to strong support for his work.
Concannon expects to be confirmed by the state Senate in mid-April. He will sell his home in Scarborough and move to the Des Moines area, he said. His children, now adults, are still in Maine however, so Concannon and his wife will return to visit, he said.
Ft. Williams fee killed
Published in the Current
As expected, the Cape Elizabeth Town Council ended discussion on admission to Fort Williams Park without imposing any fees. Five councilors said they would not support the fees proposed, and most said they would not support any fee for park entry.
Councilor Mary Ann Lynch, who had proposed a $5 annual charge for cars and $40 for tour buses, said she was glad to have raised the issue for discussion, but accepted that it was not to be. The fee was projected to raise $200,000 annually.
Councilor Anne Swift-Kayatta spoke in support of the fees, but for outsiders, not Cape residents. She said just under half of the e-mails she had received were for the fees.
In the historical documents laying out the park, its use was to be “within the financial capabilities of the town,” Swift-Kayatta said.
She wanted the money to go to the upkeep of the park itself, rather than the town’s general operating fund, as Lynch had proposed.
Because of tight budgets, Swift- Kayatta said people who use the park should pay. “Right now, Cape citizens do not freely enjoy Fort Williams,” because they pay for it through property taxes. “Only the tourists do,” she said.
Councilor Penny Carson said she noticed a contradiction between the proposal and people’s positions. While the idea was put forward to decrease pressure on the property tax and allow fixed-income people to stay in town,
most of the people who spoke against the fee were from the group the idea hoped to protect.
Residents spoke for and against the idea, suggesting some realistic solutions and others more amusing. Many wore stickers saying “NO” to show their opposition to the fees.
Eleanor Baker spoke on behalf of the Fort Williams Charitable Foundation, saying the organization’s mission was to raise charitable donations “to help keep the park free and open for all.” She said the council should give the foundation a chance before imposing fees.
“The foundation hasn’t been given enough time to do its job,” she said.
Other residents also expressed their concern that charging a fee would result in decreased volunteerism at the park.
One volunteer, Ruth Pitzele, said, “the people who volunteer might change their minds” if the park was no longer free.
Another resident suggested keeping costs down by increasing volunteerism. Eric Copperman said he moved to Cape from New York, where there was “class conflict” between people who could afford things and people who could not.
“Please do not do this to our town,” he said. Instead, people could help the town budget themselves: “Go to the park, pick up the trash, do it for free,” he said.
Some also spoke about the tradition of keeping the park free for everyone to use.
Al Barthelman, chair of the Fort Williams Advisory Commission, said the fort’s operating expenses were less than half a percent of town spending.
Jack Sears said Portland Head Light would be the only Maine lighthouse
with an admission fee, and suggested opening the south road for free access to the lighthouse alone. He then drew laughs with his idea of selling sponsorships for the park; he distributed to councilors digital mock-ups of the lighthouse with a Nike “swoosh” logo on it as an example of a way to help the park make money.
Stephen Simonds said he was a member of the last original Fort Williams study committee before the park was actually purchased by the town. “The word we heard was ‘leave this Fort Williams open without a fee,’” he said.
Brian Guthrie suggested asking for donations and seeing how much that raised. He also proposed charging a fine for people who get locked in the park by staying after closing time, saying they cost the town money to unlock the gate and let them out.
Representatives of the tourism industry also spoke to the council. Both Steve Lyons of the state Department of Tourism and Don Haggett, who helps bring bus tours to Maine, said tour companies would want lead time, to be able to incorporate the admission fees into ticket prices.
Jeanne Gross, director of the Portland Head Light Museum, said the museum’s entry fee of $2 turns away half of the people who get to the door. She predicted the volunteers would quit if there were fees, and that the town would have to hire replacements for them.
School funding also came into the discussion. Kevin Stack said he saw a councilor on television say that the town is “wealthy and can afford to pay for a park.” He differed, saying “if we were a wealthy town, there would have been no problem” to pay for the school construction project discussed the previous evening.
Elaine Moloney, finance chair of the School Board, who spoke as a private citizen, said “the schools are struggling in maintaining programs.”
She challenged the town’s statement that its contribution to the county budget is “beyond their control,” while the schools were held to account for reductions in state funding totaling nearly $1 million over the past two years.
“We must look at both the school and the town budgets as one,” she said.
When faced with cutting programs or charging fees, she saw the latter as “the lesser of two evils."
As expected, the Cape Elizabeth Town Council ended discussion on admission to Fort Williams Park without imposing any fees. Five councilors said they would not support the fees proposed, and most said they would not support any fee for park entry.
Councilor Mary Ann Lynch, who had proposed a $5 annual charge for cars and $40 for tour buses, said she was glad to have raised the issue for discussion, but accepted that it was not to be. The fee was projected to raise $200,000 annually.
Councilor Anne Swift-Kayatta spoke in support of the fees, but for outsiders, not Cape residents. She said just under half of the e-mails she had received were for the fees.
In the historical documents laying out the park, its use was to be “within the financial capabilities of the town,” Swift-Kayatta said.
She wanted the money to go to the upkeep of the park itself, rather than the town’s general operating fund, as Lynch had proposed.
Because of tight budgets, Swift- Kayatta said people who use the park should pay. “Right now, Cape citizens do not freely enjoy Fort Williams,” because they pay for it through property taxes. “Only the tourists do,” she said.
Councilor Penny Carson said she noticed a contradiction between the proposal and people’s positions. While the idea was put forward to decrease pressure on the property tax and allow fixed-income people to stay in town,
most of the people who spoke against the fee were from the group the idea hoped to protect.
Residents spoke for and against the idea, suggesting some realistic solutions and others more amusing. Many wore stickers saying “NO” to show their opposition to the fees.
Eleanor Baker spoke on behalf of the Fort Williams Charitable Foundation, saying the organization’s mission was to raise charitable donations “to help keep the park free and open for all.” She said the council should give the foundation a chance before imposing fees.
“The foundation hasn’t been given enough time to do its job,” she said.
Other residents also expressed their concern that charging a fee would result in decreased volunteerism at the park.
One volunteer, Ruth Pitzele, said, “the people who volunteer might change their minds” if the park was no longer free.
Another resident suggested keeping costs down by increasing volunteerism. Eric Copperman said he moved to Cape from New York, where there was “class conflict” between people who could afford things and people who could not.
“Please do not do this to our town,” he said. Instead, people could help the town budget themselves: “Go to the park, pick up the trash, do it for free,” he said.
Some also spoke about the tradition of keeping the park free for everyone to use.
Al Barthelman, chair of the Fort Williams Advisory Commission, said the fort’s operating expenses were less than half a percent of town spending.
Jack Sears said Portland Head Light would be the only Maine lighthouse
with an admission fee, and suggested opening the south road for free access to the lighthouse alone. He then drew laughs with his idea of selling sponsorships for the park; he distributed to councilors digital mock-ups of the lighthouse with a Nike “swoosh” logo on it as an example of a way to help the park make money.
Stephen Simonds said he was a member of the last original Fort Williams study committee before the park was actually purchased by the town. “The word we heard was ‘leave this Fort Williams open without a fee,’” he said.
Brian Guthrie suggested asking for donations and seeing how much that raised. He also proposed charging a fine for people who get locked in the park by staying after closing time, saying they cost the town money to unlock the gate and let them out.
Representatives of the tourism industry also spoke to the council. Both Steve Lyons of the state Department of Tourism and Don Haggett, who helps bring bus tours to Maine, said tour companies would want lead time, to be able to incorporate the admission fees into ticket prices.
Jeanne Gross, director of the Portland Head Light Museum, said the museum’s entry fee of $2 turns away half of the people who get to the door. She predicted the volunteers would quit if there were fees, and that the town would have to hire replacements for them.
School funding also came into the discussion. Kevin Stack said he saw a councilor on television say that the town is “wealthy and can afford to pay for a park.” He differed, saying “if we were a wealthy town, there would have been no problem” to pay for the school construction project discussed the previous evening.
Elaine Moloney, finance chair of the School Board, who spoke as a private citizen, said “the schools are struggling in maintaining programs.”
She challenged the town’s statement that its contribution to the county budget is “beyond their control,” while the schools were held to account for reductions in state funding totaling nearly $1 million over the past two years.
“We must look at both the school and the town budgets as one,” she said.
When faced with cutting programs or charging fees, she saw the latter as “the lesser of two evils."
Maine blood heads to Navy
Published in the Current
The U.S. Navy has asked the Maine Blood Center in Scarborough to send donated blood to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to respond to additional need for blood by the armed forces.
MBC normally collects blood donations from around the state and provides blood and platelets to Maine Medical Center and other local hospitals. One place that has hosted blood drives over the past eight years is the Supervisor of Shipbuilding facility, a U.S. Navy site near Bath Iron Works, according to Kathy Carmichael at MBC.
In exchange for permission to collect blood at a Navy site, MBC had to agree to send blood to the Navy upon request, Carmichael said.
“The time has come,” she said. Mainers have benefited from blood donations by Navy personnel, and now it is time to repay the debt, she said.
Carmichael declined to be specific about how much blood MBC is sending to the Navy. “It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to put a bit of a strain on us,” she said. She also did not know how long the Navy would need MBC to continue to send blood.
Carmichael did not know why the Navy needs the blood, but speculated that some prospective donors in the military may have been inoculated against smallpox, making them ineligible to give blood.
Kevin Sforza, a spokesman for the National Naval Medical Center, said MBC sends two units of platelets to the hospital each Friday.
Platelets are in high demand because they expire in five days and cannot be frozen like whole blood can.
Many of the hospital’s usual donors have been rendered ineligible, either by being vaccinated against smallpox or other diseases in preparation for war, or by being exposed to West Nile Virus, Sforza said. “Having sufficient blood supplies ready to use is crucial to military effectiveness,” he said.
The U.S. Navy has asked the Maine Blood Center in Scarborough to send donated blood to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to respond to additional need for blood by the armed forces.
MBC normally collects blood donations from around the state and provides blood and platelets to Maine Medical Center and other local hospitals. One place that has hosted blood drives over the past eight years is the Supervisor of Shipbuilding facility, a U.S. Navy site near Bath Iron Works, according to Kathy Carmichael at MBC.
In exchange for permission to collect blood at a Navy site, MBC had to agree to send blood to the Navy upon request, Carmichael said.
“The time has come,” she said. Mainers have benefited from blood donations by Navy personnel, and now it is time to repay the debt, she said.
Carmichael declined to be specific about how much blood MBC is sending to the Navy. “It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to put a bit of a strain on us,” she said. She also did not know how long the Navy would need MBC to continue to send blood.
Carmichael did not know why the Navy needs the blood, but speculated that some prospective donors in the military may have been inoculated against smallpox, making them ineligible to give blood.
Kevin Sforza, a spokesman for the National Naval Medical Center, said MBC sends two units of platelets to the hospital each Friday.
Platelets are in high demand because they expire in five days and cannot be frozen like whole blood can.
Many of the hospital’s usual donors have been rendered ineligible, either by being vaccinated against smallpox or other diseases in preparation for war, or by being exposed to West Nile Virus, Sforza said. “Having sufficient blood supplies ready to use is crucial to military effectiveness,” he said.
Heavy, dense, slow to move: Copenhagen like natural uranium
Published in the Portland Phoenix
Copenhagen
Written by Michael Frayn. Directed by Michael Rafkin. With Alison Edwards, Lee Godart, and Glen Pannell. At Portland Stage Company through March 23. Call (207) 774-0465.
Uranium in its natural form includes two subtypes: U-238, a heavy metal that absorbs energy without flinching, and U-235, the fuel for nuclear reactors and the first nuclear bombs. Volatile U-235 must be extracted from the surrounding material and gathered together in a tiny space to form a crucible of powerful material that explodes in a fury of energy and light.
So it is with a play. Dense words, dark on the page, must have their meaning and potential extracted and then presented on the crucible of a stage to enlighten and excite the audience. Copenhagen is a hard play to do this with, and resisted being distilled by Portland Stage Company.
Playwright Michael Frayn delved deep into theoretical physics to understand a historical event: German physicist Werner Heisenberg traveled to Nazi-occupied Copenhagen in 1941, where he spoke with his former teacher, Niels Bohr, the discoverer of atomic structure and grandfather of nuclear science. The subject of their conversation remains unknown. What Frayn surfaced with is a play that demonstrates in art two important concepts in physics, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Bohr’s idea of complementarity (or duality).
Both are attempts to infer reality from what can be observed about the way particles move in the world, much as Frayn has tried to figure out what happened that night in Copenhagen by learning what Bohr and Heisenberg said and wrote about their meeting.
Frayn’s play is an example of the challenge of the uncertainty principle: It looks closely at one event, the meeting in Copenhagen, and tries not to lose focus of the rest of the context, including the Nazi occupation of much of Europe and the nascent arms race pitting the US and the UK, which had offered asylum to German Jewish physicists, against Germany itself. Further, it has a powerful physical duality: both a historical lecture and a play in one.
The historical value of it is a bit dubious, at least according to Heisenberg’s son Jochen, now a theoretical physicist at UNH, who told the PSC audience after a recent show that he thinks much of it is accurate, but his father was more rational and less emotional than Frayn allowed him to be. For that, we should thank Frayn: If any of these characters were less emotional, they would be dead, as indeed they all are today.
Combining science and art is a commendable undertaking, and one which this newspaper rewarded by sponsoring the play at PSC. However, the brutally spartan set and lighting force unwavering attention on complex speeches delivered by two of history’s most towering scientists. They discuss the moral role of a scientist who is pushing the limits of human capability, and whether people who know how to create terrible weapons should do so, or should delay politicians eager for new power.
Director Rafkin has chosen a play with strong contemporary tie-ins, weapons of mass destruction, scientific ethics, and the role of science in war. But he has not distilled the volatile, powerful emotion from the dense and deadening dialogue. The actors are perhaps put through their physical paces on a three-dimensional set unlike any other, but their passions are fettered and hidden. Brief bursts of energy are not reflected or amplified by the others, but are instead absorbed, stopping the chain reaction before it even starts.
Copenhagen
Written by Michael Frayn. Directed by Michael Rafkin. With Alison Edwards, Lee Godart, and Glen Pannell. At Portland Stage Company through March 23. Call (207) 774-0465.
BACKSTAGE
• Copenhagen is PSC technical director Ted Gallant’s 100th show. Since he started in 1987, he has climbed the exterior of a forklift to load a set into the building (Triple Espresso), designed two beds that fly for A Christmas Carol, built the lobster boat at the Children’s Museum of Maine, and ripped out a third of the stage to make room for a three-foot-deep swimming pool for Church of the Sole Survivor.
He called the set work for Copenhagen easy, saying the set for True West was much more challenging. It had to be constructed both in intricate detail and in super-sturdy form. Not every telephone gets ripped out of the wall daily, nor kitchen drawers thrown on the floor every evening. He has to work with actors, directors, and lighting crews to get things that look good and work properly but also fit in the space allotted and suit the rest of the performance.
" I never thought I was going to do a 100th show, " Gallant said, and laughed at the idea of 100 or 50 more, saying he would see what happens. Don’t be too surprised, though. After 15 years, " it has become what I do. "
• With no warning or explanation, Cauldron and Labrys’ run of Carolyn Gage’s Thanatron has ended prematurely at the Portland Performing Arts Center studio theater.
• For an evening of free theater, check out Eggs over Eric, written and directed by Tim Rubel, in a workshop production at PPAC’s 25A Forest Avenue studio theater at 8 p.m. March 27, 28, and 29.
• PSC’s 14th Little Festival of the Unexpected is coming April 23 through 26, showcasing new women’s voices in theater and preparing Women and the Sea for its debut at PSC next season.
• Registrations have closed for the Maine Association of Community Theaters’ one-act festival. Keep your eyes open for many of Maine’s local stars at Great Falls Performing Arts Center in Auburn, May 2 and 3.
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