Behind the mask: What we don’t know about the Valentine’s Phantom — and why that’s a good thing

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The identity of Portland’s Valentine’s Phantom is the city’s best-kept secret, bar none. And that’s not changing here, so if that’s what you expect from this article, turn the page and see what someone else will do for love, because we won’t do that.

In a city where secrets are few and far between — the PortlandPSST blogger; how much Reynolds Wrap the Tinfoil Man uses each year; the real meaning of the “Tracing the Fore” sculpture — this one has lasted. And lasted.

Each year since 1976, someone (or some group) hangs white pieces of paper with bright red hearts on doors, windows, and walls all over town, and caps off the display with a few large banners and flags slung from prominent buildings (though not the Time and Temp Building yet — we’re waiting...). A similar phenomenon has been going strong in Montpelier, Vermont, since the early 1990s, and someone from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, posted a Craigslist note in December expressing interest in bringing the tradition there.

The most surprising thing is that people don’t actually want to know who is doing it. Even here in the office, as we tried to score an interview with one of the perpetrators, we didn’t want to know. It would have been an anonymous interview. It’s much nicer to not know, really. (One person we talked to did relay a message said to be from the Phantom, saying the Phantom doesn’t want to be contacted, and that if the Phantom wanted to surface, it would have happened long ago.)

The first report of a Valentine Phantom in Portland was in the February 14, 1976, issue of Portland’s Evening Express: a photo and a long caption describing the sudden appearance of red hearts on white paper taped all over the city on Valentine’s Day morning. (The three-year-old girl pictured with the unexplained decorations, now an adult living in Wisconsin, says she remembers it “like it was yesterday,” and has a copy of that picture in her family photo album, but disclaims any knowledge of the people behind the hearts.)

There have been other media mentions throughout the years, in local papers and TV stations, and even on CNN. But only once has anyone actually interviewed the Valentine’s Phantom (and nobody has asked him, or her, or them, whether “Phantom” is the preferred term — “Bandit” is the word as often used in conversation).

That was back in 2005, when Portland City Council candidate Carol Schiller claimed to have started the tradition in the early 1980s (see “City Council Race Hearts Up,” by Beatrice Marovich, October 21, 2005).

As we said earlier, the Valentine’s Phantom doesn’t like publicity, but he apparently likes even less the idea of someone else taking credit for his work. He promptly responded with both paper evidence and a phone call to the Phoenix offices, in which he provided, among other tidbits, a receipt from a now-defunct Forest Avenue printing shop, purportedly for making the signs for the 1977 banditry (see “She Said, He Said,” by Sam Pfeifle and Sara Donnelly, November 11, 2005). And he offered more info on the phone, including the night-time temperature on February 13, 1979 (8 degrees), and the number of people helping out that evening (six).

It’s that last tidbit — long assumed by those who spend much time thinking about it — that makes this annual tradition most interesting. The fascination goes beyond amazement at the increasingly brazen and difficult nature of some of the displays — hanging a heart on Fort Gorges (the same night a Casco Bay ferry reported just barely avoiding running over a small boat containing as many as seven people), running a flag up the Central Fire Station flagpole, hanging huge banners from the Portland Museum of Art and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. The mystery surrounding the Phantom/Bandit’s secret identities is an integral part of the tradition.

If there were just one person involved, the secret could be easily kept, even for more than 30 years. But if six people helped in 1979, how many more have participated over the years? How many of them have roommates, partners, parents, children who might have noticed a door opening and closing late on Valentine’s Eve?

There are a lot of people who claim to know someone who is involved; we’ve talked with dozens of them this week. Perhaps we have actually talked to the Phantom him- or herself, but nobody admitted anything. That’s the most fascinating part of the secret — we’re keeping it from ourselves. We really don’t want to know.

“Historically, graffiti has been about fame,” says local legal-graffiti artist Tim Clorius. (He denies being part of the Phantom group or even knowing anyone who is; we are pretty sure we believe him.) Graffiti artists seek to get their tags in as many visible public places as possible, earning props from peers for particularly difficult-to-reach or especially prominent spots. But in this effort, the tag being distributed is simply a heart, making the anonymity itself the art.

Clorius sees the hearts as a suggestion for something more. He would love to see small, simple, non-destructive works of art all over the city. There is potential, Clorius says, for “all this site-specific work” to move beyond the basic, friendly message of a red heart on Valentine’s Day and raise deep, pressing questions about our society.

The Phantom’s pioneering work in this realm has made for us a model of direct artistic action, aimed dead-on at the general public — unfiltered by the media or a gallery — and with a message whose impact is heightened by serendipity.

Which, it seems, is the precious Valentine the Phantom is really giving us. That secret, at least, is out.

Heart history
1976 The first Valentine’s Phantom strikes in Portland, and garners reports in the Evening Express and Maine Sunday Telegram newspapers.

1977 Printing the flyers cost $22 at Colonial Offset Printing on Forest Avenue; a Portland Press Herald effort to discover the Bandit’s identity fails.

1978 Hearts went up a day late, and bore a note: “It’s not only ONE day!”

1979 The weather was 8 degrees and windy, according to notes made by one of the six bandits.

1984 Massive heart banners, roughly 20 feet by 35 feet, hang from the Cumberland County Civic Center and the Portland Museum of Art.

1986 A heart banner is hung on Fort Gorges in the middle of Casco Bay.

1991 Down East magazine imagines that “the phantoms roam the city in a pack, dressed in red or white capes emblazoned with huge hearts.”

2001 A heart flag flies from the roof of Portland’s Central Fire Station; a fire lieutenant denies any knowledge.

2005 A heart banner hangs from the roof of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute on Commercial Street.

OCTOBER 2005 Portland City Council candidate Carol Schiller claims to be one of the phantoms.

NOVEMBER 2005 An anonymous phantom responds with information that his effort predated hers, and that she has never worked with them.

2006 CNN mentions Portland’s Valentine’s Phantom in a national report.

DECEMBER 2007 A would-be Portsmouth Valentine’s Bandit posts a message on Craigslist, hoping to get some pointers from Portland. No dice, apparently: “If anything does happen in Portsmouth, it won’t be any of my doing.” Sure. Like we’re supposed to believe that.

Defending the universally loathed: TV: Shopping channels

Published in the Portland Phoenix, the Boston Phoenix, and the Providence Phoenix; part of a multi-part story

TV: Shopping channels
As detestable as they are, someone loves those shopping channels on TV. They bring in more than $10 billion a year to the washed-up non-celebrities pitching second-rate knives, dresses, jewelry, and cleaning supplies.

There is, however, a very compelling reason you, too, should love the shopping channels, and thank your lucky stars they exist: your cable bill would be higher than it is now — by as much as a few bucks a month, depending on where you live — if the “basic cable” package did not include shopping channels.

In many markets, cable companies are required by federal regulations to carry shopping channels. As a result, the cable companies don’t pay to transmit shopping channels (just as they don’t pay to carry other local broadcast stations or community-access channels). But unlike those other channels, shopping networks kick back a percentage of their sales revenues. So the more knives sold, the less likely your cable bill is to rise.

(Sure, nothing is stopping your cable company from racking the rates, except competition from satellite TV and Internet video, but if the feds require cable companies to sell channels individually, you’ll pay more for the same channels, and losing that shopping-network revenue is part of why.)

So every now and again, when you’re feeling bored, check out a shopping channel, and make sure you have a knife for every occasion. If you’re missing one for, say, cutting out your own appendix, go ahead and buy it. It’s just $9.99, you can pay in 15 easy installments of just 67 cents each, and you’ll keep your future cable bills down, too.

Verizon angles to keep state business

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Democratic governor John Baldacci had a private sit-down with Ivan Seidenberg, the president and CEO of Verizon, November 30. The meeting wasn’t publicized in advance and got only a small amount of coverage after the fact.

None of that coverage mentioned the roughly $6 million Verizon earns from providing state agencies with telephone services (that total doesn’t include in-state and out-of-state long-distance calls, which, according to state technology chief Dick Thompson, are also provided by Verizon at a rate of 2.98 cents per minute).

The meeting came just days after the staff of the Public Utilities Commission issued a devastating report recommending that regulators reject the proposed buyout of Verizon’s telephone landlines by FairPoint Communications (see “No Raises for Seven Years,” November 16, and “No Raises — It Gets Better,” online November 20, both by Jeff Inglis).

Neither Verizon nor Baldacci’s folks will say specifically what was discussed, but Verizon Maine spokesman Peter Reilly says the meeting was intended “to discuss Verizon’s role in the state in the future,” specifically the fact that “Verizon is going to be continuing to invest in businesses in the state.”

It’s fair to ask what business, given that PUC analyses of Verizon’s investment in landlines and consumer services such as Internet access suggest the company has done little, if any at all, in recent years (see “Internet Disconnect,” by Jeff Inglis, 24).

The answer may explain why Seidenberg wanted to talk to the business-friendly Baldacci: Verizon will continue to invest in wireless service in Maine, as well as “enterprise services,” Reilly says. He wouldn’t explain what “enterprise services” are, but the company’s Web site does — telephone service and high-speed Internet communications for large businesses.

The meeting between Seidenberg and Baldacci was first reported on VerizonVsFairPoint.com, a blog closely monitoring the merger’s progress, where speculation ran rampant about whether Verizon was trying to cut a deal with Baldacci. All sides deny that.

Asked if Seidenberg was trying to make nice with Maine officials after the PUC staff’s report repeatedly accused Verizon of hurting Mainers by spending too little on service quality and upgrades, Reilly's answer was short: “All I can confirm is that Mr. Seidenberg met with Governor Baldacci.”

But if Verizon was trying to hang onto its revenue from public coffers, Thompson (who heads the state agency that arranges phone service for state offices) may have killed it: if the sale goes through, he says, the state’s phone provider would become FairPoint. Unless the gov says otherwise, of course.

Press Releases: Plum Creek watchdog

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Thanks to a Phoenix reader, Maine residents now know something the Portland Press Herald was not telling them: that the chief executive officer of the development company that wants to build nearly 1000 units of homes and condos plus two resort hotels in Maine’s North Woods joined the board of directors of the newspaper’s parent company 18 months ago.

To call the Plum Creek project controversial is an understatement, as attested by the 60 or so stories and editorials that the Press Herald has published on the subject in the past year and a half.

Yet none of those pieces — not even the editorials that questioned the deal — disclosed that Rick Holley, CEO of Plum Creek Timber, the project’s proposed developer, joined the board of directors of the Blethen Corporation (the family-owned company that owns the Press Herald) back in May 2006. Nor did they disclose that Holley joined at the personal request of patriarch Frank Blethen, as a Plum Creek spokeswoman told the Portland Phoenix last week.

In a December 2 article, PPH environment reporter John Richardson detailed Plum Creek’s donations to Maine politicians, quoting Bruce Freed, executive director of the Center for Political Accountability in Washington DC: “What they’re trying to is develop relationships and influence decision-making and policy.”

But Richardson’s story didn’t mention another way Plum Creek could influence decision-making and policy — namely, through close connections with the newspaper’s owner.

It’s possible, as Poynter Institute ethicist Kelly McBride notes, that the paper’s editorial team may not have actually known that Holley had joined the board. (If they did know, she says, they should have disclosed it earlier.) As it was, the disclosure came after the Phoenix, prompted by posts on thePhoenix.com, called Richardson and others at the Press Herald.

On Sunday, a Richardson article about Plum Creek added that Holley also sits on the board of the Seattle Times Company, though he (or his editors) took pains to distance Holley from the Press Herald, specifying that the company’s Maine newspapers (the Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal, the Morning Sentinel, and the Coastal Journal) have “a separate board of directors” on which Holley does not serve.

But not every article addressing Plum Creek in Sunday’s paper carried the disclosure: columnist Bill Nemitz left out the relationship between the people who sign his paycheck and the man at the helm of the largest private landowner in the country, who just happens to be the proposer of one of the largest land-development projects in Maine history (see “Up Plum Creek Without A Paddle,” by Yanni Peary, November 30).

That omission, and the 18 months of silence throughout the paper, fit a pattern of concealing the connections between the newspaper and Plum Creek: in the 20 mentions of Plum Creek in the Seattle Times since May 2006, none have disclosed Holley’s involvement.

Corey Digiacinto, communications manager for the Seattle Times Company, would not say how many directors the company has, nor whether Holley is a voting member of the board (versus an advisory one). She says the company doesn’t normally talk about its corporate structure, but did so “in this case, for reasons of disclosure.”

Why now, though, if Holley has been on the board for 18 months? Digiacinto referred that question to Press Herald/Telegram editor Jeannine Guttman.

Guttman and Richardson did not return phone calls seeking comment, as is the paper’s general practice when receiving inquiries from other media organizations.

But with Phoenix readers keeping watch where the Press Herald fears to tread, they’ll have to do better next time.

Disclosure: I like plums, and have swum in creeks. With a tip of the hat to the poster named “Jay” on thePhoenix.com.

Courts allow photographs of documents

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Back in September, we told you that a Maine judge had issued a secret, unwritten order barring people from taking pictures of court documents (see "Speak Now, or Forever Pay for Copies," by Jeff Inglis, September 28). The practice, a popular tactic among reporters and members of the public alike to avoid the expense of buying official copies (at $2 for the first page and $1 for each additional page), had been permitted by court officials for more than five years. Last week, a memo went out from state-court administrator Ted Glessner to all Maine court clerks and their staffs re-authorizing the practice.

There has been no formal change of policy, but that too is in the works, according to Maine Chief Justice Leigh Saufley, who says the court system expects to take another two months to finalize new rules regarding using cameras in courtrooms during proceedings. The two topics are related because the no-cameras-in-courtrooms rule at the moment bars cameras from entering courthouse buildings at all, which would obviously prevent taking pictures of paperwork.

In the meantime, regarding the specific act of photographing documents, there will be “an internal order that tells everybody it’s okay,” Saufley says.

“It’s perfectly appropriate for people to use cameras to take photographs of documents,” she says, noting that existing rules — and the ones under consideration to replace them — bar people from photographing only participants in a trial, including judges, witnesses, attorneys, and defendants, without the judge’s prior written permission.

The larger problem is that “every single cell phone sold today has a camera in it,” Saufley says — and many laptop computers, too. Cell phones, cameras, and laptop computers are banned from the federal courthouse in Portland (though laptops are allowed for a “privileged few,” such as attorneys working on cases, according to federal-courthouse staff).

Saufley says the Maine courts have a tradition of being more open to electronics than the federal courts. (Also, the federal limits are at least partly offset by Internet access to court filings, which are not available for state-court cases.)

But while people can again bring cameras into state courthouses for the purposes of photographing documents, and Saufley appears unenthusiastic about banning cell phones and laptops from courtrooms, using cameras during trials and other court proceedings will likely continue to be restricted.

Court officials have talked to members of the state’s television media about their needs, and the state’s advisory Committee on Media and Courts is at work on crafting rules that would, in effect, state that “we don’t want to stop people from bringing cameras into the courtroom,” Saufley says, but “you can’t use cameras” there without advance permission.