Maine RX Plus launches amidst protest

Published in the Current and the American Journal; co-written with Kate Irish Collins

Despite a much-hailed launch, a new state prescription drug program called Maine Rx Plus is not getting support from three pharmacy chains in Maine.

RiteAid, Community Pharmacy and CVS are not participating, saying Gov. John Baldacci asked them earlier this month to accept a reduction in state administrative fees and is now asking them to voluntarily cut prices of prescriptions.

Hannaford and Shaw’s, through their pharmacies, are participating in the program, which will allow low-income people to get reduced-price prescriptions when they present a state-issued card.

Wal-Mart has not made a formal decision about the program, but a pharmacist at the company’s Scarborough store said that if someone arrived with a card, they “would likely honor it.”

The program was launched last week by Baldacci, state legislators, the attorney general and activists interested in the issue. The governor hailed the program as making Maine “a leader in bringing lower-cost drugs to our citizens.”

Cardholders will be eligible for 10-25 percent discounts off brand names and 60 percent off generic brands for a wide range of drugs that are also listed as preferred drugs in the state’s Medicaid program.

Discounts became available on Saturday.

Pharmacies participate in the plan voluntarily and can opt not to honor the cards. RiteAid, Community Pharmacy and CVS objected to a proposal in which the Medicaid program would cut pharmacy administrative fees 40 percent. The companies said they will “consider” participating in Maine Rx Plus if the governor withdraws the proposed cut, which they termed “devastating.”

Prescription drug costs have long been an issue in Maine. After the Maine Rx program was challenged by federal regulators and then upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, state officials reworked the plan.

“We have reconfigured the program to meet federal concerns, to integrate it with Drugs for the Elderly and to make it ready to coordinate with the new Medicare drug benefit when that program starts,” Baldacci said.

Maine Rx Plus will also use its volume to negotiate discounts from drug companies “later in the year,” he said.

House Speaker Patrick Colwell added, “Maine Rx Plus will negotiate lower cost prescriptions for Maine seniors and working families by using our buying power as a state. The Medicare bill Congress recently passed takes the opposite approach by forbidding the federal government from negotiating prices.”

“Until the federal government allows the bulk reimportation of prescription
drugs,” said Rep. David Lemoine, a member of the National Legislative Association on Prescription Drugs, “Maine’s Rx Plus model is by geography and price the nearest thing to Canada.”

To be eligible, individuals must earn less than $31,440; for couples it is $42,420. For a four-person family, the cutoff is $64,400. Program enrollment will be phased in. Maine Rx Plus cards will be sent automatically
to 73,000 Maine residents, who had participated in the now defunct Healthy
Maine program, which was halted by the federal government in December 2002. Others who may qualify can apply for a card by calling 1-866-Rx-Maine (1-866-796-2463).

Legislature to debate slots at non-profits

Published in the Current and the American Journal

Local lawmakers who voted in June to allow slot machines at VFW halls, Eagles lodges, and other veterans’ and civic organizations may be changing their minds.

In a June 3 vote on a bill that could come back to the Legislature as early as next week, all of the local Democrats in the Maine House of Representatives, and half of the local Republicans, voted in favor of installing up to five slot machines at veterans’ halls and lodges of nonprofit civic organizations.

The machines would accept a maximum bet of $5 and make maximum payouts of $1,250. Of the money the machines took in, 80 percent would be
returned to bettors, who would have to be over 21 and either members or guests of the organization – not the public.

Of the rest of the money, 75 percent would go to the organization hosting the machine, 2 percent would go to a statewide problem-gambling treatment fund, 2 percent to state regulatory expenses and the rest would be divided between statewide revenue sharing and payments directly to the town hosting the machines.

How they voted
Voting in favor were Janet McLaughlin, D-Cape Elizabeth, Larry Bliss, D-South Portland and Cape Elizabeth, Chris Barstow, D-Gorham, Ron Usher, D-Westbrook, Bob Duplessie, D-Westbrook, Louis Maietta, R-South Portland, Gary Moore, R-Standish, and House Republican Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Windham and Raymond.

Voting against it were Kevin Glynn, R-South Portland, Harold Clough, R-Scarborough and Gorham, Philip Cressey, R-Casco, Naples, and Sebago, and David Tobin, R-Windham. Darlene Curley, R-Scarborough, was not present for the vote.

Now some who voted in the favor of the slots are changing their minds.

“My position right now would be against any expansion of gambling,” said Barstow. Saying he had learned more about the gambling industry and heard more from constituents since June, “it’s best that we try to cut back gambling,” not expand it, he said.

Usher said he didn’t know why he voted to allow slot machines at veterans’ halls and lodges for other civic organizations in June and didn’t know how he would vote if it were included as part of new gambling legislation this session. “I want to get some more details on that,” said Usher.

He did say, however, that he was concerned that with the new smoking ban in bars, bar patrons may already be headed for halls and lodges of civic organizations.

Adding slot machines would be another draw to bring people into those establishments.

“What a change in environment,” said Usher. “Are we getting minicasinos?”

Duplessie said he had not changed his mind and still supports regulating slots at the organizations. With over 1,000 illegal slot machines operating in the state, he said government should regulate them and get a share of the take. “People are going to gamble,” he said.

Bliss said he did not recall the June vote, and would have expected himself to vote against it. (A House roll call shows him supporting it.)

Bliss said he would oppose the issue now. “I don’t think slot machines are the answer,” he said. “Economic development doesn’t come from slot machines.”

Glynn, who voted against it in June and said he would do so again, remembered the June vote and the 90-minute debate on the issue that preceded it. He was surprised that some legislators said they didn’t remember. “Any bill that comes out as a divided bill that we debate, I know how I voted,” Glynn said.

Back before committee
The bill passed the House by a vote of 84-53, and went to the Senate, which did not take a vote.

Instead, the Senate sent it back into a legislative committee to review after the statewide Nov. 4 racino and casino referendum votes.

Now the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over gambling legislation, is sending the proposal back to the House.

The changes could allow slot machines at veterans and non-profit organizations, as well as off-track betting parlors, while simultaneously regulating slot machines at harness racetracks. The changes could also consolidate regulations on high-stakes bingo, beano and the state lottery, according to Rep. Moore, the ranking minority member of the committee.

The request for slot machines came from veterans organizations and other civic groups, Moore said. “Usually, there’s not a lot of agonizing when, for whatever reason, a veterans group comes forward and asks for something.”

The groups pointed out their civic activities and told the committee they needed more money to do more work.

“Basically, they were saying, ‘we’re dying off because of old age, and we need a new revenue stream,’” Moore said.

He supported it in the committee and in the House vote, in part, because “there are a lot of places that it’s already happening.”

Gaming already exists
Maine State Police records indicate that 14 organizations have licenses to operate bingo, beano and other games of chance – including video poker. Most of them are for bingo or beano, though state records don’t differentiate between types of licenses.

Westbrook’s 32 licensed organizations include the Holy Name Society, granges, Knights of Columbus halls, veterans organizations, sports boosters, Little League and the fire department.

Windham’s eight licenses are held by the Rotary Club, three fire companies, the Lake Pine Association, the Lake Region Eagles, Maine Junior Chamber of Commerce and the Msgr. William Cunneen Knights of Columbus.

Scarborough’s 14 licensed organizations include the VIP Bingo hall on Route 1, as well as Bayley’s Camping Resort, the Higgins Beach Association, St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish, the Scarborough Chamber of Commerce and the Scarborough Athletic Boosters.

A license for the Loyal Order of Moose to operate a game of chance called “pull tabs” was approved by the Town Council Nov. 19, but has not yet been sent to the state, according to Moose lodge administrator, Bob Lerman.

The game involves tickets similar to scratch lottery tickets, but instead of scratching to win, you peel back a perforated tab to uncover the results. The Moose would use the roughly $800 it would make for every 4,000 tickets sold to add to their charitable donations, which total about $6,000 a year, Lerman said.

Glynn, who also serves on the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee, fears allowing the slot machines will create “little minicasinos of up to five slot machines per establishment.”

He said the state law would prevent towns from increasing regulations after the law passed. Town councils will have to approve the slot licenses the same way they now approve liquor licenses, but organizations will be able to appeal to a state regulator if the town denies a license. That would effectively allow the town’s decision to be overruled.

“A town would have to preemptively block it,” Glynn said. “If towns do nothing and this law passes, they will have slot machines.”

Look up: And see what's going on in the air around you

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Victims of domestic violence are in your neighborhood, possibly even next door. We picture them in urban settings, poorer families, where alcohol or drugs are problems. And the victims are there. But they are also in more affluent communities, suburban neighborhoods.

Why do we have the picture we do? Because "the majority of times the cops show up, it’s not the wife who calls," says Michael Cruz, a USM sociology professor who studies domestic violence. Someone else overhears the altercation, and calls for help. Suburbanites buy "peace and quiet." If they’re abusers, they also buy privacy — nobody to overhear the screams, the crashing furniture.

Let’s think about a few numbers — just briefly, I promise. According to people who know these things, 60,000 women in Maine are victims of domestic violence. That’s one in 10 women.

Pictured another way, if you’re in a supermarket line on an average evening, picking up a few things before heading home, you would hear between three and five voices pipe up if you called out, "anyone here been abused at home?" That’s if you had the courage to ask and they had the courage to answer, of course.

Mostly likely, though, you wouldn’t hear a sound. Like Elysia (Tara Smith) in Sean Demers’s new play Dreams of Elysia, victims are scared to speak up. And it’s our fault — yours and mine.

After a recent performance of the play, a group of panelists held a discussion with the cast and audience about domestic violence. On the panel were several local experts in studying the problem or helping victims. In the cast, at least one abuse victim (he openly discussed it). In the audience sat another, near tears as she described her upper-middle-class upbringing, learning only later in life that she and her mother and her siblings had all been abused. She asked the experts why her mother wouldn’t leave.

The most revealing answer was not their explanation, saying it’s often the abuser’s brain-washing, telling her no one will believe her. It wasn’t even the play’s beautiful illustration that love is present in abusive relationships, tying victims’ hearts to their tormentors, giving them hope that things will change, as all lovers dream of Elysium.

The best answer came from Michael T. Toth, who played James, the gone-but-not-at-all-forgotten domestic abuser in the play: Society tells women it’s disgraceful to be in an abusive relationship. We say, tacitly or even directly, "You should be strong enough to walk away."

Battered in body and spirit, these women are not as strong as we righteously demand. Most of us don’t say to them, "I will help you be strong enough to walk away." Instead, when they start to come clean to the world about the nightmare they live in private, we blame them into further silence.

No wonder nobody in the supermarket answers your call. They’re all expecting you to abuse them further. "You knew it would happen again," you’ll point out, unwilling to listen to their explanation that maybe they did, you’re right, but they also hoped it wouldn’t. They hoped the magic moments would return, when he was happy and loving and kind, like it used to be, like it still sometimes is.

Demers, a young playwright finishing a theater degree at USM, expanded the play from a one-act. "When I first wrote the play, [domestic violence] was kind of this subtext," he says. During revision, "it became clear that domestic abuse was more than just a subtext. It was the driving force."

Elysia’s relationship with James is over, but not gone. ("Battered women are always looking over their shoulder," says a crisis counselor.) And in fact, there he is, on the stage, as Elysia tries to break free, seeking a new life, rebirth.

When they fall in love, she learns, two people surrender control to each other. "The control is just waiting around to be picked up," a character says. Sometimes one of the pair picks up too much, and is able to use love as a weapon. This is abuse.

Elysia re-establishes an old friendship, tries to avoid the helping feelers from society, in the form of a condescending, superior nurse (Marita Kennedy-Castro) who offers a way out.

But she stays in the apartment she shared with James for eight years, its battered furniture, askew doors, and picture frames silent witnesses to the maelstrom. And she visits him in the hospital, where she reprises her weak, supplicant role, even as he lies unconscious, unable to move or speak.

Elysia tells Anna (Erika Silverman) a little bit about her abuse, but like the others in the supermarket lines, is silent when questioned directly. Even when she meets Isidore (his nickname is better: "Izzy," or "Is he?"), she is subdued. Demers’s dialogue gets at the root of the issue, probing and stretching to show the audience how far Elysia will go to avoid truth.

Perhaps the best review of the play came from a member of the audience, who talked about her concern over the issue, but her wariness of being forced to look too closely before she is ready. This play, she said, allows communication and connection between audience members and victims — allows people to see into that world — without being uncomfortable.

"I would like a lot of people to see this," she said.

Dreams of Elysia
Written and directed by Sean Demers. With Tara Smith, Caleb Wilson, and Michael T. Toth. Two Lights Theatre Ensemble, at the St. Lawrence Arts and Community Center, through January 17. Call (207) 839-9819.

Backstage

• On the night of January 16, the youth theater ensemble at the Schoolhouse Arts Center at Sebago Lake, will perform Ayn Rand’s Night of January 16th, a courtroom drama in which the audience plays the role of the jury. Call (207) 642-3743 for tickets to the performance, by young actors, aged 10 to 20. (It will also be performed the night of January 17.)

• The Schoolhouse folks are also looking for actors who want to be in a new group of daytime actors, to rehearse and perform during the day for senior and community groups. All are welcome, "if you are old enough to vote and have a sense of humor." If you’re up for it — and can be awake in time for 10 a.m. rehearsals, call Gayle Clarke at (207) 892-4461.

Kids swap experience at laptop conference

Published in the American Journal

Over 300 middle school students and teachers gathered at Gorham Middle School on Saturday to explore ways schools can take better advantage of the state’s laptop computer initiative and to get a glimpse of the future.

A conference for the middle school students, who are on “iTeams” - groups of computer-savvy kids who help students and teachers alike with day-to-day classroom computing problems - the event taught kids not only how to do their in-school “jobs” better, but also how they can learn more through technology than would otherwise be possible.

Among the attendees were students from Westbrook, Gorham, Windham, Cape Elizabeth and SAD 6. The Cape and Gorham kids gave presentations on how their iTeams work, illustrating different ways they could meet similar needs.

Cape’s iTeam members are numerous enough that as students rotate with their normal class schedules, at least one iTeam member ends up in each classroom almost all the time. The students said they are available during class to help their fellow students and even teachers, who have problems with the laptops.

The team is also open to anyone interested in joining. “If they’re joining the iTeam, it’s because they want to know more,” said one student after the presentation.

By contrast, Gorham’s “tech team” members have hall passes and can be called out of their own classes to solve problems in other rooms. The team members talked about how they became members, often by application, or by being handpicked by teacher Tia Lord.

They have regular meetings and test out new software before other students are allowed to use it.

Members of the group dressed in their school colors and were available on a rotating basis throughout the conference, helping presenters and attendees use the school’s wireless computer network.

Students’ reactions
Students from local schools said they got a lot out of the conference. From Bonny Eagle Middle School, one student said she had learned a number of new troubleshooting skills. At lunch time, two other girls were looking forward to an upcoming session called “Let’s Chat,” helping students and teachers understand how to use Internet “chat” programs to enhance education, while keeping in mind Internet safety guidelines.

From Wescott Junior High School, student Brielle Merrifield said she had learned new stretches and important information about ergonomics while using the laptops, to avoid repetitive stress injuries. Student Spencer Graham said, “Coming here is probably going to help us and help other kids.”

From Cape Elizabeth, students said they saw important differences between the policies governing their use of the laptops, and the policies of other schools.

“I like how we get to take our laptops home,” said one student. Many other schools don’t allow students to leave school with the laptops.

Another student wanted administrative privileges for his laptop, to enable him to learn more about the computer system.

A third student not only learned practical skills – “how you can use a camcorder to make animations that are pretty smooth” – but also attended a presentation by Jen Gagne, a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

There, he learned that MIT students are being issued laptops too, though only one computer for every three students, and use some of the same software Maine’s middle-schoolers are using.

MIT students also submit homework assignments electronically, just like many of the state’s seventh- and eighth-graders. “These skills are essential,” Gagne said.

Technology projects
Other presentations explored the possibilities of laptop-enabled learning. Scarborough teacher Jim Doane showed other teachers how to plan an iMovie project, from organizing information before filming, through to filming and on-computer video editing. He used his own class work as examples, showcasing student-made videos on health issues.

After doing research projects on health subjects, students worked in groups to create public service announcement-style television ads about the issues. One on suicide had a particularly stark image: a coffee table covered in pill bottles and pills, with a hand slipping away, down to the floor.

The Maine Historical Society showed its Maine Memory project, which is looking to partner local historical societies with middle school students to digitize old photos and documents. Having them available on-line expands people’s access to them and helps reduce wear by researchers, who now must handle the artifacts. The two-year-old project has 130 organizations working together, and they have digitized 4,500 documents.

Other projects include tracking lobsters from where they are trapped to where they are finally purchased and consumed, linking Maine lobstermen to diners across the country, some of whom have begun corresponding regularly, according to a presenter from the Island Institute.

Future of program
How much learning can actually take place using the laptops depends on how far the project goes.

It is in the second of a four-year contract, in which the hardware now in use by seventh- and eighth-graders will be reused for two more years by students in those grades.

The big question is what happens to this year’s eighth-graders, when they get to high school and are forced to return to working with papers and pencils, rather than electronic documents.

“We actually will be making a bigger divide than we started with,” said Bette Manchester, who supervises the laptop project for the state Department of Education. Some state money may become available to help poorer districts afford laptops for their high schools, but many districts are already exploring buying their own machines.

Apple Computer has put together a package by which every Maine family with a child in public school can get a discount on purchasing their own Apple computer, according to Shaun Meredith, Apple’s manager of the laptop project.

School districts also qualify for a four-year lease at $1 per computer per day, if they want to buy their own computers.

One district many are looking to for insight about the future of laptops is Guilford. A small town north of Augusta, it got a private grant in 1999 to begin installing laptops in its middle school. When those students left the middle school, “they went to the high school and lost their machines,” said Crystal Priest, the schools’ technology coordinator. “It just killed them.”

Parents were in an uproar as well, because the laptops had improved student attendance, discipline and academic performance, even in a district with historically low per-pupil spending, Priest said. “It just opens up resources you wouldn’t believe.”

Last year, the schools got a grant to give each high school student a laptop. “The teachers were overwhelmed when we first started,” with only three days of training in the summer to prepare them.

Now, in the second year of the high school effort, “we couldn’t go back to teaching without them.”

In addition to curriculum-expanding work, like a planned collaboration with a school in Thailand, “the kids that normally struggle” are doing better in all their classes, discipline referrals are down 50 percent at the high school and attendance is up. A manufacturing technology teacher instructs students on how to repair hardware.

“It’s just been incredible,” Priest said.

Nobody’s doing it: What if you wanted to make a living as an actor in Southern Maine?

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Maine’s theaters and theater audiences depend, more than anything else, on the willingness of good actors to work for little or no pay. Without the actors, there would be no costumes or sets to design, no targets to aim lights at, no need even for stages.

No Maine-based stage actor is doing what non-actors might call "making it," at least financially speaking. "No matter where you live, it’s very hard to do. It’s the holy grail," says Caitlin Shetterly, who returned to Maine from New York about a year ago. She has done some acting work and is starting the Winter Harbor Theater Company, but relies mainly on her income as a freelance writer and radio journalist.

Even New York, she points out, is a hard place to make a living as an actor.

Lisa Muller-Jones has acted in San Francisco and Chicago. "I rarely got paid at all because it’s so competitive," she says. "I actually make more money here than I did there," though she attributes some of that to her increased scheduling flexibility here, running her own graphic design business.

"Being my own boss, I get to set my own hours," making her flexible for rehearsals on nights and weekends. "It’s probably the only way that I can do what I do," Muller-Jones says.

If she had a restaurant job, she’d have to give up the lucrative Friday and Saturday evening shifts to perform — after giving up weeknights to rehearse.

Christine Louise Marshall is dealing with just that. "What is living and working in the performing arts in Maine to me?" she emails. "It’s having three nearly full-time jobs, two part-time regular gigs, and any number (about three right now) of freelance one-timers (this is not counting the one I totally blew off last week because of the pipes freezing in my mother’s house, which I manage for my family . . . oop, there’s another job I forgot about.) . . . [Maine’s energetic and creative] people are maybe the real reason why I live and work here, although all the jobs put together only serve to keep me almost out of debt."

Perhaps the best shot for actors to make money in Maine is in community theaters, which draw huge audiences paying as much as $20 a ticket. They are cast almost entirely locally, and use large numbers of performers. And how much do those actors get paid, working hard in front of some of the largest theater crowds the state offers? Nothing. The irony is cruel for performers in struggling "serious" productions.

Several people are making livings doing "only theater," but none of them is a full-time actor. "Mostly, I think, those who are frequently onstage here teach or are involved with a theater in an administrative capacity," emails Muriel Kenderdine, who relies on retirement income and a job as a church keyboardist to make her ends meet.

Nancy Brown is on the "theater-only" track, teaching classes part-time at the Children’s Theater of Maine and adding costume design, set design, and stage management to her acting mix.

Even so, "it could stand to be supplemented by something else," she says. It has only been a few months, and already, "it’s been very hard."

"I don’t have very much luxury money," and could use a part-time job "just for the extras," those expenses beyond rent, food, and monthly bills. Like, say, going to the theater.

Daniel Noel agrees. Now 50 and a member of the Actors Equity union since 1978, he says, "I live hand to mouth. I could be totally destitute tomorrow, and I probably will be, after I pay all my bills."

In fact, it may be his Equity membership that’s hurting him. Equity rules are meant to protect actors from low-paying, exploitative theater managers. But when low-paying (though good-hearted) theater companies are all that exist, there’s no work for him.

What Equity work does come to Maine — at Portland Stage, Maine State Music Theater, the Theater at Monmouth, and the Public Theatre — is doled out only after national casting calls and auditions, again because of Equity rules.

"I can’t perform in any of the other theaters" except as a benefit, Noel said. If they wanted him, Maine’s small companies would have to pay him a minimum of $175 a week, including rehearsal weeks, as a "guest artist."

Compare that with how Shetterly describes her fledgling company’s compensation: They pay for tea and coffee, bottled water, flowers, and sometimes small stipends. "It felt like we were saying to them, even though it was a small amount, that we valued their work."

Or even that at Mad Horse, a long-established non-Equity theater company: "Everyone gets paid," says Muller-Jones. "It’s still a labor of love." So much so that "all of the actors that I know have another job."

The small compensation isn’t their fault. The donor pool is small, and audiences are, too. With low ticket prices — aimed at removing one excuse people use for not going to theater — the actors find themselves at the end of the line, waiting for what money is left after paying for rights to a play, set and costume pieces, renting space, insurance, and printing and mailing costs for promo pieces and programs.

Yet even with the pittance they get for their work, Noel still eyes small-company actors longingly. "I’m so jealous" of actors at Mad Horse, Good Theater, and others, "because they can work." He usually performs a couple of times a year at Portland Stage, in their Little Festival of the Unexpected and From Away play festivals, and in A Christmas Carol.

"I want to work in the community," but can’t. The reason? Equity. "Your union, that’s supposed to be helping you, and it’s holding you back," Noel said. "That’s ridiculous."

All the same, he hasn’t ever thought about leaving the union. The benefits — including health insurance, networking contacts, and recognition as a "serious" actor in larger markets — are too important.

He has had to work with producers to get around Equity rules. If they want him to perform on the cheap, it has to involve reading from a book — not a play — or must benefit some charitable organization.

Other Equity actors he knows have moved on to TV or film. Those still on stage in Maine get by with the same old tricks as the state’s non-Equity actors: They record audiobooks, appear in tiny films, do voice-over work for businesses, and travel to Boston or New York to pick up extra work.

Is there a way to fix this? Short of upping theater ticket prices — which could result in reduced audience numbers across the board — some local actors are already dreaming of ways they can make local work for themselves and others.

"Portland’s got the reputation now of being a workshop city," says Noel, where playwrights could come to collaborate with actors on plays-in-progress.

Shetterly sees Maine as a place that could be a "hotbed of theater beginnings," where budding directors and producers can "explore an idea without the kind of overhead you’d have in New York."

Muller-Jones and Marshall have done murder-mystery theme events for private gatherings.

Many actors here are growing and changing as actors and people, taking less money as a "leg up," while at the same time paying Southern Maine’s high rents. They are not whiners. All of them knew theater wasn’t a money-making business when they got into it, and stay in for love of the craft.

"There’s a long history of actors taking roles for less money because they really believe in the work," says Shetterly. But believing in food and heat and a roof don’t make them real.

"The actors that are doing their job should be compensated for that," Shetterly says. "It’s not an easy job — it’s a hard job. It’s a physical job, it’s an emotional job." Paying or compensating someone "says that you value their time and that it’s important to you."