Enjoying wildlife in a winter wonderland

Published in the Current, the American Journal, and the Lakes Region Suburban Weekly

There’s plenty to do outdoors during the winter, even if you’re not a downhill skier or a snowmobiler. Taking it slow – walking, snowshoeing or cross-country skiing – can be a great way to explore Maine’s winter and learn more about the wildlife all around us.

If you’re into birding, “the Scarborough Marsh is a good place to go,” said Phil Bozenhard, a wildlife biologist for the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

There are plenty of birds to be seen, including waterfowl. “Occasionally you’ll see a hawk or an owl flying around,” Bozenhard said.

Naturalist Margi Huber at Maine Audubon notes that Casco Bay is also a wonderful place to see all kinds of birds. “I think we forget what a jewel we have out there.” You can take walks along Portland’s East End Beach, which has a flat walking path, often packed down for skiing or plowed. “You’ll see a lot of birds in half an hour,” Huber said.

If you’re lucky, you may spot a peregrine falcon that roosts on the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Portland and is often spotted near the B&M Baked Beans plant.

Another great place is Two Lights State Park in Cape Elizabeth, where “sometimes you can see owls and hawks” in the back area of the park or watch seabirds from the cliffs, which are kept clear of snow by the wind.

At Pine Point Beach, you can see eiders and even loons in winter plumage. “The loons winter on the coast of Maine,” Huber said.

On the Westbrook-Portland line is the Fore River Sanctuary, along Outer Congress Street, which includes trails for snowshoeing and skiing and plenty of trees and water for spotting all kinds of bird life.

Up in the Lakes Region are some other excellent spots for checking out freshwater birds. Behind the fire station on Route 202 in South Windham, “there’s an opening in the Presumpscot River” where a hooded merganser often hangs out. “What you want to look for is open water,” Huber said.

Near the Gambo Dam, also on the Presumpscot, an eagle has been wintering there for a few seasons. You may see other birdwatchers while you’re out on these trips, so feel free to ask them about other good spots. If you’re looking for a particular bird, check out Maine Audubon’s Web site at www.maineaudubon.org. It has a “bird alert” list that’s regularly updated with bird sightings throughout Maine.

Mammals
Birds may be easier to spot in the sky and because trees have lost their foliage, but some mammals are also very active in winter. Many of them can be found along the sides of rivers and lakes throughout Southern Maine, as well as in wooded areas.

While the animals themselves may be elusive, winter is great for checking out tracks.

“A day or two after a new snow is probably the best time,” Bozenhard said. If the snow is too powdery, though, “they all look the same,” because loose snow fills the small parts that allow the tracks to be differentiated.

“It’s more interesting when you’re out there and you can identify the tracks,” he said. “It gives you a little bit of satisfaction in knowing what you’re looking at.”

Animals you may see tracks from include big ones like moose and deer, through coyote, fox, fisher and mink to small animals like squirrels, rabbits and snowshoe hares.

Some good spots to follow tracks include the Steep Falls Wildlife Management Area in Standish and Morgan Meadow Wildlife Management Area in Raymond, Bozenhard said. They have hundreds of acres to explore, including snow-covered roads and trails.

Guided adventures
If you’re looking for an expert to help you navigate and understand the winter wildlands, Maine Audubon is running several programs that may interest you. All require advance reservations, so call 781-2330 ext. 215 for times and fees.

On Saturday, Jan. 10, a family nature walk called “Surviving Winter” will teach adults and kids about how animals make it through the cold season.

On the same day, you can take a guided ferry cruise on Casco Bay to look at water birds, including possibly a glimpse of a bald eagle.

The following Saturday, Jan. 17, Maine Audubon is holding a workshop for outdoor artists, teaching not only basic landscape drawing techniques, but also how to adapt outdoor artwork to winter’s cold.

On Saturday, Jan. 24, a tracking program will teach everyone in the family how to identify tracks and other signs left behind by animals. Children
can make a plaster-of-paris mold of a track as part of the workshop. It also includes an outdoor nature walk to practice identifying tracks.

Also that day, a birding expedition will visit local “hot spots,” including Back Cove, Willard Beach, Portland Head Light, Two Lights State Park and Kettle Cove, to look for a wide range of water birds.

On Saturday, Jan. 31, you can take a nature walk around Maine Audubon’s Gilsland Farm sanctuary in Falmouth to look at how plants handle the winter, and how to identify them in their winter disguises.

Highways to be renumbered

Published in the Current, the American Journal, and the Lakes Region Suburban Weekly

Get set to revamp the directions you give to friends from out of town. Starting this week and finishing in the middle of May, the state’s interstate highway system will be renumbered, with highways and exits changing their names and numbers.

The state’s main interstate highway, running from Kittery through Westbrook, Lewiston and Augusta to Houlton, will be known as Interstate 95. The toll portion of this highway, called the Maine Turnpike, will end in Augusta as it does now. There will no longer be a road called Interstate 495.

A secondary highway, starting in Scarborough and running through South Portland, along the coast to Brunswick and meeting up with I-95 in Gardiner, will be known as Interstate 295 along its whole length. At present, the southern end of this road is called I-295, but changes its name to I-95 between Falmouth and Freeport.

All of those signs will be changed over as of Jan. 10, at which point a project will begin to renumber all of the exits on both highways. The new exit numbers will correspond to the nearest mile marker. At present, exit numbers increase by 1 each successive exit, leading to complications when adding new exits (as with Exit 7B in Westbrook, between Exits 7A and 8).

It can be confusing to realize that in the six miles between mile marker 42 and 48 on I-95 are six exits (numbered 6, 6A, 7, 7A, 7B and 8), but the next exit, number 9, is four miles away, at mile marker 52. Now those exits will be numbered 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48 and 52.

The new numbers “will give travelers a better sense of where they are and how far they need to travel,” according to a Maine Department of Transportation brochure detailing the renumbering.

The exit renumbering will be complete by May 15, and the total project is expected to cost the state between $260,000 and $280,000.

Signs showing the former exit numbers will be displayed at the bottom of at least two advance signs at each interchange; these signs will have black text on a yellow background. The “formerly” signs will remain in place until after Labor Day 2004.

Downs asks Augusta for help

Published in the Current and the American Journal

Scarborough Downs, following referendum defeats in Saco and Westbrook Dec. 30, will now ask the Legislature to remove the time limit to find a community that will accept a racino and for permission to look up to 75 miles away from the track’s existing site.

The Downs will also ask lawmakers to require slot income from the Bangor racino be shared with them, to increase purses at the track, even if they can’t find a home that will allow slots.

Downs owner Sharon Terry said she will hold members of the harness racing industry – including Bangor Historic Track owner Shawn Scott – to a pre-Nov. 4 agreement to seek and support the changes.

In addition to expanding the five-mile radius to 75, which is the closest state law says racetracks can be to one another, Terry will ask for an extension and “possibly a deletion” of the time limit imposed by the Nov. 4 statewide referendum.

“We’re asking for an expansion of our business,” she said. The track needs to “take our time and make sure that we educate” people about racinos.

“They might be able to see the benefits that go along with it,” she said. “It takes a period of time to be able to talk about it logically” and get past negative advertising like what appeared before the Dec. 30 local elections in Westbrook and Saco.

“I still have confidence that we will be able to find” a new home for the track, Terry said. She said she has heard support from legislators, but does not have a new town in mind. “We’re going to have to take a look at an extension” before looking at specific towns.

Terry supports Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed changes to the racino law, including a gambling oversight commission and increased state police control over slot machines and the money that passes through them.

She said harness racing will die if slots are not allowed to expand in Maine. “If we can’t find a city, then we can’t find a city,” she said.

Citing Scott’s authorship and strong backing of the original racino referendum, Terry objected to following “a law put in there by someone who wants a monopoly.”

Local versus ‘from away’
Her complaint strikes a chord with Sen. Karl Turner, R-Windham and Raymond. He doesn’t like seeing a Maine-based business run down by someone “from away.”

“I’m not interested in seeing the expansion of racinos on the one hand. On the other hand,” the racino referendum was written by Shawn Scott and designed to hurt the Downs, he said.

“Scarborough (Downs) should be given some additional opportunity” to make up for it. At the same time, he does not believe towns would welcome a racino. “My guess is you’d be hard-pressed to find a community that would want to take on the problems associated with a racino.”

As a result, he is prepared to support a portion of the Downs’ request: that some revenue from Bangor’s slot machines be sent to the Downs, as well as to the agricultural fairs. Currently racetrack revenue supports Maine’s fairs.

“That makes it less important that we have a second one,” Turner said.

Rep. Harold Clough, R-Scarborough, Gorham, opposes the Downs’ requests, saying the money is the real issue and objecting to sending Mainers’ money to an out-of-state corporation. The slots at Scarborough Downs would be operated by Pennsylvania-based Penn National, which owns racinos and casinos across the country.

Though Mainers favored racinos at the statewide referendum, they know more now, he said. “People have finally learned what this is all about,” he said. And with that information, Scarborough, Westbrook and Saco have all said no.

Clough believes other towns will vote similarly.

“I just don’t see any reason to keep beating a dead horse, so to speak,” he said.

Deal-making
Politically speaking, making laws in the January session of the Legislature is harder than in the fall. Because the session is technically an “emergency” session, two-thirds of the members of each house must vote in favor of a proposal for it to take effect.

Some legislators wondered whether the Downs’ requests might be linked to Baldacci’s, as proponents try to gather enough support to win a vote.

Clough stands firm, saying he would not change the governor’s proposals for regulations to allow the Downs more leeway.

Rep. Chris Barstow, D-Gorham, is also “against any amendments to the proposed law,” except those requested by the governor. He would oppose any bill in which the governor’s changes were linked to the Downs’ requests.

Rep. Gary Moore, R-Standish, will be among the first to handle the requests from both the Downs and Baldacci. He is the ranking minority member of the Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee, which oversees gambling.

“I’m very much opposed to tinkering with legislation that the citizens have passed,” he said. “In a sense you’re saying people didn’t know what they were doing.”

Still, he admits he would have to be “stupid not to want a strongly regulated” gambling environment in Maine. (He does question whether all of Baldacci’s proposals are necessary.)

And he believes that if the Downs doesn’t get slots, it will fail and harness racing will “perish.”

A longtime harness racing industry member – his family owned horses “for generations” but does no longer because the industry is not a money-maker anymore – he doesn’t want to see that happen.

“I’m inclined to view (the Downs’) suggestions favorably,” Moore said.

Counting votes
Rep. Ron Usher, D-Westbrook, and Rep. Joseph Bruno, R-Raymond and Windham, were leaning toward letting the Downs have their way, though both wondered if any town would welcome a racino.

Sen. Carolyn Gilman, R-Westbrook, Gorham and Standish, opposes the racino and is working “to get slots out of Maine entirely.”

Janet McLaughlin, D-Cape Elizabeth, opposes the Downs’ requests, saying they have “had their chance” with the statewide referendum and should have
voiced any objections then. If the Downs gets its way, Terry is not saying where she’ll look.

Moore, the Standish Republican, said, “I think that there is a town” that would accept a racino. “I don’t know which one.”

Pointing to Gorham’s tradition of harness racing, he wondered if it might go for the redevelopment of the track on Route 202.

Barstow of Gorham disputed that. “I don’t think Gorham would be a feasible option,” he said. “I think Westbrook and Saco are a good reflection as to how these communities in Southern Maine view this entity."

Wishing well: Runs wet and dry

Published in the Portland Phoenix

When making New Year’s wishes, it’s important to keep a sense of perspective. Wishes, after all, don’t always come true. So if I did wish something, but the Great Wish-Granter in the Sky didn’t quite get to do the whole thing, would a small gesture at least be a push in the right direction?

It is in that spirit that I offer these wishes, requests to the Theater Deities in hopes that someone will take them up and make some progress, if not go all the way.

First off, I wish that more Mainers took the time to see the theater that surrounds them. Some of it is pure entertainment, and those theaters that focus on fun pack houses all the time.

But Mainers are a political bunch — at least if you believe the banter around diner counters and coffee-shop tables — and we could stand to have some of our ideas both illuminated and challenged. So if you’ve read this far, take $20 out of your next paycheck and go see a play. Not a musical — though they are fun! — but a spoken-word and physical-movement story performed live in front of your very eyes.

Not only will you enlighten yourself, but you’ll also help struggling "serious" theater companies around the state.

As a move toward further helping them, I wish for a greater spirit of collaboration between Maine’s theater companies, including not only administrators but directors and actors, too. There’s quite a bit of this already, and I have been watching with glee the recent discussions on a Maine theater email list about finding a space to store sets, props, and costumes, where anyone could come to borrow from what would effectively be a library of resources. It would prevent duplication of efforts, cut costs, and improve the quality of productions, as well as give everyone great ideas to build on.

I would also hope that theaters not just pick up the shows that were successful elsewhere in the area. I say to producers: If you want to bring a national show here, please do so. If you want to do it because it did so well up the road or down the coast, choose another, perhaps even a similar production. Help improve the diversity of theatrical offerings in Maine.

Aside from the obvious overabundance of A Christmas Carol performances, other shows seem to make the rounds of Maine playhouses. Everyone needs to make some money, but try doing it by being exciting and innovative, not by being copycats.

And now for some specific wishes:

• I wish for a full run of any play by Somali-born, Maine-dwelling playwright Omar Ahmed. It’s the next step, as Maine’s theater community explores issues its mainstream media won’t, including race, immigration, and discrimination.

• I wish for The Cast to begin to tell people when their shows are, in advance of opening night. They’re wonderful actors, and have wonderful lighting designers and stage managers as friends. They just need audiences to pay attention.

• I wish the Stage at Spring Point would put on a full run of an important show, and succeed at it. They figured out how to handle some of the bugs — quite literally — last summer. Let’s hope they continue to push their comfort zones and give a second effort to show their mettle. There’s potential there, which was misguided last time. Let it run free.

• I wish for Winter Harbor Theater Company to get its feet a bit more underneath them, and put on a full run of a play before the year is out. They cancelled one show, which had been scheduled for early in 2004, because they couldn’t get all the pieces together the way they wanted them. In keeping with the words of innovator Phil Daniels — "Reward excellent failures" — we applaud them for making a hard choice and not raising the curtain on something they thought wasn’t right. We hope they are able to get money, script, and actors together before the year is out, to continue their important, ground-breaking and status-quo-challenging work.

• I wish for the influences of theater centers from around the Northeast to bear fruit in Maine, as well as for Maine theaters to influence performance choices in other states. While there are too many wonderful New York theater companies to list (and some so small they must literally be stumbled upon in the streets), Long Wharf Theatre Company in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Vermont Theater Company in Dummerston, Vermont, both are in the midst of interesting seasons including wonderful shows Mainers would certainly enjoy. Among Long Wharf’s selection this season are The Syringa Tree (about black and white families handling the post-apartheid transition in South Africa), A New War (about news coverage of war), and The Story (about media coverage, privacy, and community life).

• Finally, I wish that I and all Maine theater-goers this year find our hearts aflutter, our bellies aching from laughs, our eyes wide, our fundamental beliefs in question, and our minds forced a bit more open, by performers on stages in or near our hometowns.

The ghost of theatrics past: The best of 2003 on local stages

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In this space at the very beginning of 2003, the Phoenix made several wishes and voiced those of others in the theater community.

The big challenge was to improve the diversity on Maine’s stages, and it was wonderful to see that happen this year, though I take no credit for the efforts of others.

The top prize goes to Portland playwright John Urquhart, who interviewed plenty of immigrants while putting together Lion Hunting on Munjoy Hill for the Children’s Theater of Maine. In two hours, it provided a thrilling look at the possibilities of diverse theater, a wonderful story and a strong warning about the plight of many refugees even after they reach the relative safety of Maine.

Just behind — and perhaps rightfully ahead of Urquhart — was the L/A Arts one-weekend production of Love in the Cactus Village, by Omar Ahmed, a Somali playwright living in the Twin Cities. I hope next time they get the word out beyond Androscoggin County.

I applaud these significant efforts to allow theater to play its true role, enlightenment during entertainment, and I look forward to more.

Also providing insight into other aspects of Maine’s diverse communities was Les Acadiens, again a Children’s Theater of Maine production, exploring the French-Canadian communities of Maine during the Second World War; and Thanatron, by perhaps Portland’s angriest playwright, Carolyn Gage, literally bashing men in the head with the empowered-lesbian brand of feminism.

Beautifully illustrating other cultures without relating them to Maine was USM’s magical production of Shakuntala and the Ring of Recognition, including puppets and traditional Indian music in the telling of an ancient Sanskrit legend; and Portland Stage’s production of Fences, setting an all-black cast on their stage in August Wilson’s story of a black man struggling with his identity before the civil rights movement.

This year also had a large helping of social and political commentary on stage. The most powerful was Winter Harbor Theater Company’s performances of Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, by the politically outspoken American playwright Tony Kushner. Brilliantly performed, it carried a message so clear that it kept my wife and me up that night mourning children, the real casualties of American foreign policy. Those who didn’t see it missed a truly important experience.

Shakespeare’s timeless Julius Caesar at the Theater at Monmouth provided clues about how power is used and how people can reclaim it. The performances were stellar, and the environment — including cherubim watching from the ceiling — was stunning.

The intimate dialogical dances of the two characters in The Mercy Seat, put on by Mad Horse Theater Company, were beautiful and instructive about human nature, shedding light on post-9/11 life.

Also illuminating important issues was UltraLight, based on playwright Michael Gorman’s loss of his commercial-fisherman brother to heroin; and To Bear Witness at the Players’ Ring, focusing on the crucial developments of the teenage years, and the choice between struggle and survival, or surrender and suicide.

The work of Kittery playwright Evelyn Jones rounded out the year with reprise performances of her award-winning play Not On This Night, about a French farm girl defending Christmas from the inhumanity of war.

All of this is not to say that theater should not also entertain. Indeed, each of the above shows had strong acting and directing, with interesting scripts to expand the mind and heart beyond the everyday.

There was plenty of that from other quarters, too, this year. Among the best were the Public Theatre’s productions of Proof, a heartfelt drama with a light touch, and Red Herring, a film-noir piece with plenty of laughs.

At Maine State Music Theater there was Hans Christian Andersen, a reworked original with a fantasy feel and wonderful, wonderful singing.

And there was the side-splitting (and crotch-splitting) antics at Arundel Barn’s showing of Grease, including a very real moment when an actor’s acrobatics got the better of his costume and his castmates had to, well, cover for him.

For sheer acting quality and local hard work, the Cast — J.P. Guimont, David Currier and Craig Bowden — were a true highlight of the year in theater. Humble guys with a passion for finding good scripts and doing them simply and well, these are three we should hope to keep. (Guimont has threatened to escape to points west; anyone who loves Maine’s own theater should wish otherwise.) They don’t draw big audiences, but they should.

Their production of Pvt. Wars, looking at war and home from the perspective of combat-wounded soldiers, was a funny and heartening, yet deadly serious, portrayal of the effects of violence on humanity.

Their festival of one-act plays, Hey, We’re Acting Over Here, enlightened, amused and provoked thought, as these talented actors explored nuances and foibles rarely portrayed so well on stage anywhere.