Say anything: A Scarborough man’s new movie shows a lot, but tells little

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Surfers aren’t an especially verbose or articulate bunch, really. They punctuate their sentences with “y’know” and list a lot of things “it’s all about.” But the problem is not a lack of vocabulary or even a reluctance to communicate. It’s that they have a connection that’s hard to put into words.

The surfers and other oceanophiles in BlueGreen, the new film by Scarborough filmmaker and surfer Ben Keller, struggle repeatedly to describe how they feel about the sea. Keller’s first feature-length film, Ishmael (2004), explored the motivations of wintertime surfers who brave near-freezing water and icy wetsuits to ride tiny waves on the New England coast. This time he’s trying to dive deeper, asking why surfers feel what they feel about their watery playground, and — though almost as an afterthought — trying to convince the film-viewing public to get involved with ocean-conservation efforts.

Keller will show the latest cut of the film (narrated by him, for now, for lack of money to hire a professional speaker) at SPACE Gallery on Sunday at 6:30 pm, to raise money to finish the project.

While the people in BlueGreen do articulate feelings merely suggested by other surf films, they still don’t answer the fundamental questions. Describing your testiness after days away from the ocean (as two of the people interviewed in the documentary do) is not an investigation into the nature of your connection with the sea.

The closest anyone comes to an eloquent explanation is Rabbi Nacham Shifren (a/k/a “the Surfing Rabbi” — really), who talks in vaguely clerical terms about how surfers’ attitudes toward life differ from other people’s because they regularly deal with overwhelming power, and manage to connect with — and ride — positive energy in the world around them. Shifren talks of “a drive to make the spiritual physical” that moves surfers off the beach and into the waves.

Less satisfying are clinical observations from scientists (such as Don Perkins of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute here in Portland) about how the health of the ocean is crucial to the health of the planet, and the interview of a woman who lives on a sailboat, in which she discusses her ocean-centered, water-borne life — while she’s sitting under a tree.

The bulk of the film’s joy, where it is to be found, is in the surfing scenes. This is not an adrenaline-filled giant-wave surf movie in the vein of The Endless Summer or even North Shore. Surfing in BlueGreen is ponderous, soulful, full of swells that aren’t even chest-high, and long, slow runs with the occasional turn. Only one guy in the entire film hangs 10. Even the surfboard cameras (including one underneath the board) are used in slow, relatively calm waves, giving a meditative feel. (Jarringly, one more conventional shot-from-the-shore scene features a very clear plumber’s crack on a surfing California lifeguard.)

Underwater footage appears pretty frequently, and again is brooding and slow — not colorful and bright like David Doubilet’s work for National Geographic and its video partners. All of it has a mellow, soulful soundtrack — much of which is supplied by Maine bands such as Seekonk and the appropriately named Harpswell Sound, Cerberus Shoal, and the Baltic Sea.

Watching is relaxing, calming, even soporific. When, 55 minutes into the 90-minute film, several speakers (including Jim Moriarty, executive director of ocean-conservation group the Surfrider Foundation) begin exhorting viewers to get involved in protecting the sea from (unnamed) threats, it’s like face-planting into the surf and getting cold seawater right up your nose.

No wonder Moriarty — in a voiceover for footage of a litter-strewn southern California beach after a holiday weekend — says “it’s hard to get into people’s heads that the problem is as bad as it is.” His own participation in the film comes across as more whiney and lamenting than inspirational.

It’s clear that Keller and those with whom he speaks see the ocean as a friend. But without finding the words to inspire others, they’ll continue to have it to themselves. And maybe that’s what they really want.

On the Web
BlueGreen: www.bluegreenconnection.com

Music industry unites to help Portland artists

Published in the Portland Phoenix

If Austin, Texas, is any indicator, in five years’ time, Portland’s music scene may be even more vibrant than it is today. The Portland Music Foundation (PMF) is taking shape, based on a community non-profit in Austin that has helped boost that city’s bands and musicians into the national spotlight.

Founded in 2002, the Austin Music Foundation (AMF) currently has two full-time employees and one part-timer, plus a vast array of volunteers from throughout the music industry. The organization hosts classes, discussion forums, and small-group seminars about the music biz. AMF’s goal, in the words of executive director Suzanne Quinn, is to help musicians “become entrepreneurs” working to “create sustainable businesses and quit those other three jobs”

The PMF will be the beneficiary of a “Speakeasy” night of hoity-toity drinks and food hosted by booze maker Diageo on Wednesday, September 26, at 58 Fore Street in Portland.

The local group is led by Adam Ayan, a Grammy-winning recording engineer whose involvement with the foundation was inspired, in part, by his mentor at Gateway Mastering, Bob Ludwig. Ludwig lives in Portland, but makes annual trips to Austin’s SXSW music festival, where he works with up-and-coming Austin musicians.

Ayan, who holds the Sinatra-like title of “chairman of the board,” says the PMF will use the money from the Speakeasy event to support its first set of programs, which will teach musicians how to interact with the press, recording professionals, and club booking agents.

“These are three topics that local musicians would benefit from learning more about,” says Ayan, who adds that future forums will address topics suggested by local musicians, who can join the group for $20 for a calendar year. Membership benefits will include discounts at local businesses, and free admission to PMF events and workshops.

At the Speakeasy and at the PMF’s official “launch party,” slated for October 18 from 6 to 9 pm at One City Center, Ayan and the others on the group’s board (who include local radio personality Mark Curdo, music-booker-about-town Lauren Wayne, and Portland Phoenix music writer Sam Pfeifle) plan to do a lot of networking. “We’re hoping that we can just hang out and talk to a lot of people,” he says.

Down the road he sees involvement with area schools’ music programs, scholarships for musicians to help develop their skills, and perhaps even a library of local music (see “Let’s Make History,” by Sam Pfeifle, January 6, 2006).

Austin’s example says that a lot is possible. According to Quinn, the AMF’s most recent gathering drew 330 people to learn about licensing and publishing their music. Twice a month, music-industry types gather at an “Austin Music Mixer” to get to know each other, generating collaborations, ideas, and new business for members. The AMF has received grants from the city of Austin and from the Texas state government (in addition to corporate and private donors), and is applying for money from the National Endowment for the Arts.

AMF co-founder Nikki Rowling has visited Portland to meet with Ayan and others, and says the Maine group is “really quite self-sufficient and doing fantastically well.” She has given information on starting music foundations to people from more than 100 cities, but “the Portland Music Foundation is the first one to really materialize.”

On the Web
Portland Music Foundation: www.portlandmusicfoundation.com

Enjoy the air show — you paid for it

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Let’s move beyond the $320 million in aircraft you have bought that will be performing at this weekend’s Great State of Maine Air Show at Brunswick Naval Air Station. And let’s forget the roughly $12 million in annual salaries you’re paying for the people whose entire, year-round, full-time jobs are to use those aircraft to show off the military prowess of the United States by, um, flying really really fast very close to the ground.

The real concern is, and should be, the attitude of the government toward your money. John James IV, director of public affairs at Brunswick Naval Air Station, originally told the Phoenix no tax money was being spent on the show, in which five of 13 performance groups are funded by the US military. (Two of those are the biggest attractions, the Blue Angels — the Navy’s precision-flight team — and the Golden Knights — the Army’s parachute team.)

James relented under questioning, later saying that “the cost to taxpayers is negligible.” And he kept trying to steer our interview toward what he called “the important things” about the air show — such as its “family atmosphere.”

It’s that kind of cavalier attitude toward taxpayers’ money — and toward America’s military personnel — that has led the US government to spend, according to 2006 Defense Department statistics, $100,000 a minute in Iraq, and $18,000 a minute in Afghanistan. Maine Veterans for Peace members and supporters will be protesting the military’s appetite for money and bodies when they march from downtown Brunswick to the air station starting at 9 am on Saturday.

In case you care about your tax dollars more than the feds do, here’s what you’re buying.

BLUE ANGELS $276 million for 13 airplanes; $5.6 million in annual salaries for 114 personnel.

GOLDEN KNIGHTS $4 million for two airplanes, undisclosed lease payments for two more; $5.1 million in salaries for 90 soldiers.

F-15E STRIKE EAGLE DEMO TEAM One $31 million airplane; $630,000 a year to pay 13 crew members.

US AIR FORCE HERITAGE FLIGHT Older Air Force planes originally purchased for purposes other than air-show performances, with a group of pilots, most of whom are former military personnel; plus the Air Combat Command’s demonstration team, with a $9.8 million airplane and $360,000 in annual payroll for the eight crew members.

MAJOR JOHN KLATT His custom-built Staudacher S-300D airplane (custom-painted with the graphics of the Air National Guard’s “Guarding America, Defending Freedom” aerobatic team) is hard to price; so is the contract he has for his services and those of his three-man team. But his rank and years of service mean his annual Air Guard salary is around $75,000.

Those numbers don’t include the 20 or more military aircraft on display on the ground, training all the people to fly or do their flying-related jobs, or the salaries and budgets of the military recruiters whose efforts these events are intended to support.

The air show does get some financial help from people who attend — who pay reserved-seating fees and buy food, drinks, and souvenirs — and the companies who hawk that stuff, who pay for the privilege. Some of that money goes to pay aerial performers, though not nearly enough to offset their actual costs; rather, James says, it mainly covers food, lodging, and local transport.

What about jet fuel? James says civilian performers buy their own, using some of the money they are paid for performing, but he didn’t know whether the fees paid to military groups are used to reimburse the Defense Department (er, that’s you and me) for the fuel used in the military aircraft.

Related links:
http://www.blueangels.navy.mil
http://www.goldenknights.com
http://www.acc.af.mil/aerialevents

Peace + Justice Center shutting down

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The Peace and Justice Center of Southern Maine will close in December, after 10 years as an incubator for fledgling socially-minded nonprofits. The closing displaces several groups, who are looking for new space to replace the small offices and the shared meeting room on the fourth floor of the Cinamon Building at 1 Pleasant Street.

“The [center] offered a low-cost way for small nonprofits to have their own office space,” says Betsy Smith of Equality Maine, one of the founding groups in the center.

Last summer, Equality Maine “graduated,” moving down two floors in search of more room than it had available in the center (see “Equality Maine Moves Uptown, Downstairs,” by Tony Giampetruzzi, July 21, 2006).

That left a sizeable hole in the center’s tenant revenue, which has yet to be fully replaced, though founding member and coordinator Sally Breen says another reason for the closing the center is mission related — member organizations have been so busy with their own projects that they never actually got around to fulfilling the institution’s primary goal of combining forces to host larger-scale peace- and justice-related events.

Other tenants of the four-story complex also face uncertainty: the 12,500-square-foot building, valued by the city at just shy of $700,000, is for sale, with an asking price of $1.3 million, according to its listing with Fishman Realty Group. Ground-floor Indian restaurant Hi Bombay, and second-floor tenants Equality Maine and the League of Young Voters, have no plans to leave, and will wait to see what happens following a sale. One small business on the third floor moved recently; another did not return calls.

The Peace and Justice Center is currently home to Physicians for Social Responsibility (opposing weapons of mass destruction, and promoting environmental stewardship), the Maine Animal Coalition (which works to prevent cruelty to animals, including in agriculture), Maine Interfaith Power and Light (selling renewably-generated electricity to Central Maine Power and Bangor Hydro customers), the Campaign to Defend America (an anti-Iraq-war group), the Environmental Health Strategy Center (fighting toxic chemicals in the environment), and Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights (POWER, working to abolish poverty). It also provides space for meetings of groups like Maine Veterans for Peace and World Can’t Wait (an anti-Bush group).

POWER has told Breen it will move out shortly, but Breen did not know to where, and POWER organizers didn’t return calls. Most other groups in the center are looking for new spaces at the moment, but haven’t found anything yet.

One solution may be finding another building in which to share space again, which is what Physicians for Social Responsibility executive director Melissa Boyd is hoping to do.

Some local nonprofits have already banded together as part of the Community Building Collective, which has proposed using the former Adams School building as a shared community building with residences, gathering rooms, and — you guessed it — shared office space for nonprofits.

Former Peace and Justice Center tenant Peace Action Maine has already arranged to share space with the Foglight Collective (formerly People’s Free Space), in the site of the former Tea Time Antiques and Collectibles store at 644 Congress Street.

The groups have named their office the Meg Perry Center for Peace, Justice, and Community, in honor of the People’s Free Space organizer and Frida Bus leader Meg Perry, who died December 10, 2005, in a bus crash while on a Katrina-relief trip to New Orleans (see “N.O. Peace for Perry’s Mourners,” by Jeff Inglis, December 16, 2005).

The Meg Perry Center offers a library and free Internet access, workshops on various practical skills, showing videos, art shows, and musical performances. When the relevant city permits come through, “we also will start selling more things,” starting with books and coffee, to help pay the rent, says Foglight organizer Johan Fertig.

On Friday, for the First Friday Art Walk, the Meg Perry Center will open to display works from local artists and musicians addressing the themes of peace and community, from 5 to 10 pm.

On the Web
Peace and Justice Center of Southern Maine: www.peaceactionme.org | www.peoplesfreespace.org | www.communitybuildingcollaborative.org

Press Releases: Laid off

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Here are two items major Maine newspapers would rather you not know about.

First, THE PORTLAND PRESS HERALD AND MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM HAVE LOST ONE-QUARTER OF THEIR ADVERTISING REVENUE over the past two and a half years.

That’s what they told members of the Portland Newspaper Guild, the union that represents most of the daily’s employees, to explain why eight advertising-related workers would be laid off and an unspecified number of vacant positions would remain unfilled, according to a summary of the conversation distributed by e-mail to guild members on August 17.

Aggravating those hefty losses is a cruel summer: “the company cited a very poor July [and] an August that’s shaping up to be even worse,” according to that same e-mail.

In roughly that same time period — from March 2005 through March 2007, the papers’ circulation has dropped 7.6 percent on Sundays, and 5 percent from Monday through Saturday. But compared to what the paper’s filings with the Audit Bureau of Circulations claim are its recent-history high (in September 2004), the drop is even bigger: down 21 percent in Sunday circulation, and 16 percent in daily circ (from 129,931 to 102,204, and 79,957 to 67,250, respectively).

And no wonder — by its own account back in June, the paper’s “Community Council” — the group of readers who help guide the paper’s coverage — has always had “hefty representation” from Baby Boomers and “World War II-generation” readers, whom Press Herald editor Jeannine Guttman calls “our core audience.” US government data estimates that roughly 2500 Maine World War II veterans are dying each year, which could help explain some of the decline. (In fact, if every single Maine veteran subscribed to the Maine Sunday Telegram, the WW2 vets’ deaths would account on their own for a full third of the subscription drop.)

The company’s statements about the August layoffs blame a “seismic shift” in the “newspaper industry,” without noting the particular problems in daily newspapers, or describing the shift as the solidification of a long-emerging trend in which consumers who are attractive to advertisers (the much-ballyhooed 18-to-34 set) are not reading daily newspapers.

This is, however, neither seismic nor — even if it were — unanticipated.

All newspapers have been facing the onslaught of the Internet for more than a decade. But it’s been the mainstream dailies, who experience the shift to online as a loss of new readership, who have felt it most sharply.

And while the pressure has risen sharply in the past 10 years, the Press Herald has been facing competition from community weekly newspapers — who focus exclusively on local news while the Press Herald touts its local devotion but then expends gallons of ink printing Associated Press stories about the Iraq war — since 1965, when former Portland Evening Express editor Harry Foote combined two smaller newspapers to create the weekly American Journal, based in Westbrook, which has covered all sorts of things the Press Herald staff never learned except by reading his paper, now owned by Current Publishing.

Second, THE BANGOR DAILY NEWS IS NICE AND COZY WITH SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS, who is seeking re-election in 2008. How cozy? BDN executive editor Mark Woodward is married to Bridget Woodward, who works as a “staff assistant” in Collins’s Bangor office.

Neither of them returned calls seeking comment, leaving us to wonder how their connection relates to the BDN’s outrage that Maine Democrats were videotaping Collins’s appearance in a public parade, allegedly as part of a coordinated effort to catch her saying or doing embarrassing things, clips of which could then be posted on YouTube.

With a tip of the hat to the contributor called “maineiac” on DailyKos.com.

Group seeks to hold Maine to UN standard

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Next week Portland-based prison activists will be knocking on Munjoy Hill doors collecting signatures to oppose the “legalized abuse of prisoners” in Maine and throughout the country.

The Black Bird Collective was originally formed earlier this year to support Maine inmate Deane Brown, a key source for the Portland Phoenix’s series on conditions at the Maine State Prison, whom prison officials shipped out of state in retaliation for his protests. Their latest efforts will launch a statewide petition drive as part of what the group hopes will be a national effort to enact state and federal laws requiring that “all prisoners and detainees . . . be treated in accordance with the UN Convention Against Torture.” (The US has signed and ratified the convention, and participates in its international governing body.)

Such laws would ban, among other practices, the use of “electro-shock devices, ... restraint chairs, chemical sprays, and prolonged periods of isolation,” all of which are commonly used to discipline, punish, and control inmates in Maine’s correctional centers.

Black Bird organizer David Bidler says his group is “trying to show any potential legislative supporters that there is community support” for humane treatment of prisoners. “We’re looking for someone to step up” and lead the legislative fight, he says.

The call has been put out nationally by an organization calling itself the San Francisco Eight, made up of former members of the Black Panther Party (the militant black-power/community-action group from the 1960s and ’70s), who were arrested earlier this year on charges stemming from the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Some of the Eight had been similarly charged in the mid-1970s, but their cases were dismissed when a judge ruled that some of the suspects had been tortured during interrogation.

The Black Bird Collective will meet with supporters at the Home Grown Herb and Tea shop, 195 Congress St, at 5:30 pm on Monday, September 3, to talk about the campaign, distribute literature and petitions, and begin collecting signatures.

On the Web
Black Bird Collective: blackbirdcollective.blogspot.com

Internet disconnect: Getting online in Maine can be painfully slow. And the planned Verizon-FairPoint merger won’t help.

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Most of the objections about the Verizon-FairPoint telephone-company merger proposal do not hinge on whether either of them is providing any kind of worthwhile, valuable, or useful telephone service.

The proposal, in which industry giant Verizon would sell the wired-telephone parts of its business in northern New England (including the wires, switching equipment, maintenance staff, and everything else) to industry midget FairPoint Communications, is relevant in Maine — and New Hampshire and Vermont — mainly in terms of what it would mean for rural customers who want high-speed, broadband Internet access.

Everyone involved — the two companies, the merger’s opponents, and state officials — talks about the deal’s impact on bringing DSL broadband Internet service to rural Mainers. This is indeed a concern in many remote parts of Maine, although state figures show that, overall, 85 percent of Mainers already have the option to choose broadband service via cable-Internet or wireless access, if not DSL.

While the states’ public utilities commissions technically regulate only telephone service, and not Internet access, DSL enters the discussion because it can be provided over regular old copper telephone wires, so long as those lines are properly maintained and equipped.

The trouble with this debate is that DSL is the wrong topic. We should be talking about fiber-optics technology, which transfers data over laser beams through glass wires. Because fiber-optic lines are capable of handling telephone, Internet, television, and other communications of the future, fiber optics is widely accepted as the immediate future of high-speed Internet connections. It is currently being rolled out by Verizon in major population centers around the country, including New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC. Whether the $2.7-billion Verizon-FairPoint deal goes through or not, the problem is that our state officials haven’t noticed that DSL is the wave of the past.

Lighting the world
Nationally, Verizon operates about two-thirds of the 1.3 million fiber connections to homes, according to the Fiber to the Home Council, a nationwide non-profit agency combining towns, utility companies, real-estate developers, and Internet service providers working to encourage the connection — by whomever is best equipped to do so — of fiber to every home in the US. (Today, just under two percent of US homes have fiber connections, the council says.)

Verizon’s fiber customers are primarily in large urban areas where population density (and therefore the number of prospective customers) is high enough to justify the cost of installing fiber. But many of the homes connected to fiber other than Verizon’s are, perhaps ironically, in rural places where town officials or smaller companies have decided to install it to boost economic development, according to FTTH Council president Joe Savage.

Seems like a good idea. “We’re the slowest in New England as far as download speeds,” says Peter McLaughlin, the business manager of the union representing Maine’s Verizon employees, which is a member of the national Communications Workers of America union’s research project on US Internet-access speeds. The union — looking to expand employment opportunities for its members — is lobbying to get companies to increase bandwidth, and to get government regulators to require universal Internet availability.

Through a variety of initiatives over many years, Maine has been trying to build rural economic development, including DSL-focused efforts to bring better Internet service to the hinterlands. The state is even looking to boost the number of telecommuting workers; Savage suggests fiber to the home may be faster than businesses’ office connections. But not even the few legislators who have commented to the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) about the FairPoint deal have mentioned fiber; one didn’t even mention DSL.

That’s too bad, because Maine actually has a lot of fiber already. Many Maine high schools and colleges are connected by a fiber-optic “ATM” network, which is mostly used for videoconferencing now. Maine has fiber-optic backbone running throughout the state, between telephone-company switching offices, in major connections by cable-television companies, and in downtown Portland and Lewiston-Auburn. Oxford Networks sells fiber to the home — in Maine. And Verizon is letting homes in a few Maine towns right on the New Hampshire border get fiber service from its Portsmouth center.

Vermont is in about the same place as Maine: Verizon provides no fiber to Vermont homes, though some communities have it, through either municipal initiatives (like Burlington’s) or small, independent companies. New Hampshire is better off, at least in the southern part of the state, where Verizon does offer fiber connections to homes in some areas.

In Maine, aside from those few homes next to New Hampshire, Verizon has no fiber to the home. FairPoint, which has phone customers in 18 states, offers fiber-optics to residential customers in four states (none in New England), but only in sizable housing developments being constructed on land with no previous telephone or Internet service.

Fiber free
If the Verizon-FairPoint merger is approved, FairPoint says it will spend about $40 million ($13 million to $14 million in each of the three states) to expand DSL service to some areas that don’t have it, and roll it out over the next few years to cover as much as 93 percent of their customer base here.

By that time, we’ll be behind again. Savage, from the fiber council, estimates that in 15 years, 80 percent of US homes will have fiber connections.

Not us, though: Maine public advocate Richard Davies (the state official whose job is to represent Maine consumers in public-utilities deals) just made a deal with Verizon in which the company agreed to invest $12.5 million to expand broadband in Maine, but not with fiber. “Because they’re looking to sell out, it was not logical” to ask for anything other than DSL, he says. Verizon, in exchange for installing old technology, gets to wait until next year before PUC officials will determine whether the company has been overcharging customers by as much as $30 million a year for the past six years. (By that time, Verizon won’t be here, and Davies’s agreement will leave the rate battle to FairPoint.)

The head of one telecom company in Houlton (where Internet service is provided by small, independent local companies) suggested the $12.5 million be given to the ConnectME Authority, a state agency set up to bring broadband Internet to rural Mainers without any broadband options at all.

That sum would dwarf the $500,000 the Legislature has allocated to be split among several companies seeking to debut broadband service in rural areas of Maine. The rest of the money to fund ConnectME will come from Mainers, who this fall will begin paying an additional monthly surcharge (0.25 percent) on their telephone and Internet bills.

Of course, ConnectME has no plans to roll out fiber-optics anywhere in Maine, either, and is just hoping to get any kind of broadband at all to rural Maine before we’re completely left behind. “DSL is certainly not the leading technology, like fiber,” says Phil Lindley, acting executive director of ConnectME, “but it’s certainly something that will serve people’s broadband needs for a while.”

Left in the dark
Verizon knows fiber is the real future: the company has been taking profits from Maine and other rural areas around the country (like the rural Midwest and West Virginia), and investing that money not to improve telecommunications in the places the money came from, but to put the real broadband, fiber-optic cables, in densely populated areas like New York City, Boston, and the area around Washington, DC.

Now Verizon wants to get out of northern New England — and its other rural landline businesses (see sidebar, “Verizon Unloads”) — to focus on fiber elsewhere. In getting out, Verizon would leave us to a small, heavily indebted company (FairPoint) whose best plan is to invest less money in system upgrades than Verizon ever did, and to have those system upgrades get Mainers’ service to a level city-dwellers are already beginning to discard as too slow.

What if the deal failed, and Verizon had to stay (at least until it found a new buyer)? Verizon spokesman Peter Reilly said the company wouldn’t comment on what would happen in the “hypothetical” case that the sale — which must be approved by three states and the federal government — could fall through, leaving us to put the pieces together on our own. The picture isn’t good.

In Maine, Verizon is already the subject of some complaints to the Public Utilities Commission from rural customers about the unavailability of high-speed Internet (including one titled “Request for commission action to implore Verizon to implement the use of DSL” from 21 business owners and 12 residents in The Forks and West Forks, the central-Maine home to the state’s whitewater-rafting industry).

Verizon has made clear its lack of interest in being in the landline phone and wired-Internet business here. If the sale to FairPoint is blocked, Verizon will have no incentive to maintain its services, wires, or anything else — in fact, neglecting its customers and employees will serve to shift opposition to the sale into support as people insist on getting decent service.

Davies says the PUC has “very broad powers” to force Verizon to provide minimally acceptable telephone service, though that may involve going to court if Verizon is reluctant to do what is required. And those powers don’t address broadband service, which is not regulated by the PUC or state law.

Davies thinks that if Verizon tried harder to market its landline and broadband services — and if the company expanded broadband offerings in Maine — the company could do better here. As it is, “they’ve sort of said over the last couple of years, ‘we’re not going to invest in the state,’” Davies says.

Seeing the light
And while FairPoint talks a great game about how they will bring outdated, slow DSL to rural Mainers who are still stuck on dial-up, they’ll have to spend a lot more than they’re expecting, to do even that.

There is no outside evaluation of the condition of the wires Verizon would transfer to FairPoint (it’s protected as a company secret), but there are people who have a good idea of what they’re like.

McLaughlin, whose union members maintain the lines, estimates that FairPoint should expect to spend “a couple hundred million” dollars just to repair the existing copper wires to a condition where they can handle DSL traffic.

“Publius,” a pseudonymous Verizon employee who started the VerizonVsFairPoint.com Web site to distribute information about the sale, says FairPoint is dreaming if they think it will be relatively cheap to improve service in northern New England.

“There is absolutely no way” that the installation of the equipment FairPoint is talking about would, on its own, bring broadband to the rural masses, says Publius, who withholds his real name for fear of losing his job.

The wires are in terrible condition, he says, many having been in place for decades and repeatedly spliced back together after wind or trees or car crashes knocked them down. Not all of those splices (of between 1000 and 2000 tiny 22-gauge copper strands in each wire) are perfect, as you might imagine, and there are plenty of places — such as the Concord, New Hampshire, neighborhood discussed in an August 2 Concord Monitor article — where the combination of age and bad connections means that Verizon phone service cuts out whenever it rains.

So repairing them will be expensive. And if FairPoint is going to invest millions — much less McLaughlin’s projection of hundreds of millions — what about fiber-optics?

Rather than replacing the old copper wires with new copper, Savage of the fiber council suggests installing new fiber — he even says doing so can be cheaper in some circumstances, but not really in rural areas where the distances are great.

In places like that, he says, our best bet is to arrange some sort of joint venture between the government — local or state — and telecommunications companies, in which the government would grant some sort of benefit to the company in exchange for bringing fiber to homes.

If only our state officials thought about fiber.

Verizon unloads
For seven years, Verizon has been busy getting itself out of the landline business around the country, and around the world. Here are the highlights:

2000 Verizon sells 133,000 landlines in WISCONSIN to a couple of local telephone companies for $365 million.

SEPTEMBER 2002 Verizon sells its shares in NEW ZEALAND Telecom, a landline company in that country.

SEPTEMBER 2002 Verizon sells 675,000 telephone lines in MISSOURI,KENTUCKY, AND ALABAMA for $2.6 billion to CenturyTel, a publicly traded company based in Louisiana.

APRIL 2004 Verizon announces it will sell Verizon Dominica (serving the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC), and its shares of phone companies in PUERTO RICO AND VENEZUELA, to a couple of Mexico-based telephone companies for $3.7 billion. The deal affects 15 million landline, broadband, and wireless customers.

OCTOBER 2004 Verizon announces the company is looking to sell 15 million of its nearly 50 million landlines AROUND THE NATION, to focus on wireless service and high-speed Internet connectivity.

MAY 2005 Verizon sells 700,000 lines in HAWAII for $1.65 billion to private-equity firm the Carlyle Group (a company backed financially by both former president George H.W. Bush and members of Osama Bin Laden’s family).

MAY 2006 Verizon’s hopes to sell 3.4 million landlines and related operations in ILLINOIS, INDIANA, MICHIGAN, AND OHIO are reported in the Wall Street Journal Online, and is seeking to earn between $5 billion and $6 billion from that deal. In addition, its hopes to sell its northern New England lines for between $2 billion and $3 billion.

JANUARY 2007 Verizon announces that it will sell its NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND operations, including 1.6 million landlines, for $2.7 billion to FairPoint Communications.

Air apparent? McNallica finishes fourth in the US

Published as a Web exclusive at thePhoenix.com

Maybe New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell is a breast man. That’s at least what Jason Jones of The Daily Show implied, as Jones introduced his score for McNallica at the US Air Guitar National Championship, held Thursday at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York City.

But we get ahead of ourselves.

McNallica, the Portland and New England air-guitar champ (who works by day at a Portland mortgage company under the name Erin McNally), had traveled with about a dozen friends and supporters to NYC, after months of practice and performance (see the other stuff we’ve written about her). “I just really want to make it to the second round,” she said, knowing that would make her one of the top five air-guitarists in the country.

She was up against 13 other competitors (12 men and one woman) from around the nation for the US title, which comes with tickets to Finland for the world air-guitar championship in early September. She had prepped in a few special ways for this performance, MySpacing the last US winner in Finland (Sonykrok, from 2004) to “get her blessing,” and getting Jen Moore from Sanctuary Tattoo to bless her fingerless gloves. She was as ready as she would get.

The opening set from New Jersey-based hair band Satanicide warmed up the crowd with such timeless classics of guitar rock as “Pussy and Ice Cream,” a Satanicide original angst anthem about, well, it’s fairly obvious, and “Twenty-Sided Die,” an ode to Dungeons and Dragons.

After a few butterfly-calming PBRs and Buds with her fans, McNallica got serious to prepare for her performance, getting quiet, still, and moving her fingers up and down in the air as if, well, she were playing a guitar. Rhinestones flashed from her arms, and diamond “M”s dangled from her earlobes. “The theme of Finland this year is bling,” she explained.

McNallica went seventh in the first round, introduced by MC Bjorn Turoque, who never won a US championship, but has become the celebrity spokesman for US air guitar. In Boston, at the New England regional championship, he had been a judge and gave her perfect 6.0 scores in each of the two rounds and called her “the future of air guitar.”

This time Turoque reminded the audience that “this woman blew my mind in Boston,” and let her go. She leapt, kicked, fingered, and tongued her way around the stage to Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart,” from the 1989 album Dr. Feelgood.

And then, amid the crowd’s cheers, she awaited the scores. Up to that point, the scores – and the performances – had been dismal, slow, pedestrian, even anemic. But McNallica opened the field, and the judges’ hearts.

Jones and Gladwell (who also wrote The Tipping Point, about the effects of social behavior) were two of the four celebrity judges (the others were Rachel Dratch from Saturday Night Live and Ben Wizner from the American Civil Liberties Union).

Gladwell had given Portland and New England air-guitar champ McNallica the first 6.0 maximum-point score of the night (there would only be one more, from Gladwell to McNallica in the second and final round of competition).

She took the 6.0, and Jones’s dismal 5.2 (which got him boos and the finger from the crowd), a 5.7 from Wizner and 5.9 from Dratch, and squeaked into the five-person second round in a tie for fourth place.

In the second round, in which she didn’t get to choose the song, she went first. But as the five finalists were allowed to hear the selected song for the first time, McNallica went wild. She knew the song, chord for chord: “Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Motherfucker,” by Darkness (off 2003’s Permission To Land). She started playing even just standing there on stage with the rest of the contestants, among whom was reigning US champ Hot Lixx Hulahan.

But despite her best efforts – her extensive and complex fingerwork on the fretboard, her lip-syncing, even her throwing of the guitar and her subsequent catch – it wasn’t enough. The only woman in the final five, she landed another perfect 6 from Gladwell, a 5.7 from Wizner, a 5.8 from Dratch, and a 5.7 from Jones (who had given her the 5.2 in the first round). Her total, 23.2 points, made her the fourth-best air-guitarist in the nation. (There was a tie for third place.)

The other four’s performances included crowd-surfing (exemplified by The Rock Ness Fucking Monster’s effort, in which he stayed standing, supported by a few sturdy new friends), acrobatics that lost their grace and surrendered to drunken uncoordination, and spraying of beer and energy drinks all over the stage and the fans.

But in the end, McNallica was a good sport, applauding – even worshiping – as the new champion was crowned, the man who had the home-field advantage from the beginning: William Ocean of New York City.

Will there be a next year? Will she become a coach for other female air-guitarists? Will she get knee replacements to be able to subject hers to the abuse Ocean gives his (she thinks they’re titanium; we think they’re jelly, at least now)? For the answers to these questions, we must wait.

But McNallica, on her way back to Portland on Friday, rocks on.

McNallica heads to nationals

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Portland’s air-guitar champ, also New England’s top atmos-instrumentalist, will compete in New York City on Thursday, August 16, for the US title, which would get her a slot in the world championship competition in Finland in early September.

McNallica, whose unassuming day job is at a mortgage firm, says she has been contacted by some of her 13 competitors, asking for video. No dice, she says. Portlanders, of course, know what her routines look like (see “Music Seen,” May 4, by Sonya Tomlinson and Jeff Inglis; “Support the Portland Air-Guitar Champ,” June 8, and “One Step Closer to Finland,” June 15, both by Jeff Inglis).

But even Mainers who attend will get to see new material, as she has a serious practice regimen: “yoga, the gym, finger exercises, lots of rocking.” Tickets ($18.50) are still available to the show, which starts at 8 pm at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza, between Third and Park Avenues on East 15th Street (near the Union Square subway stop). And Greyhound Bus Lines have a $30 round-trip Boston-to-New York special if you book online.

Live Earth 2007: Where to go, who to see, what to know — even if you don't have a ticket

Published as an online exclusive (with excerpts in the Portland Phoenix and the Boston Phoenix)

So you’re headed to a Live Earth gig somewhere, whether outside New York City or in a remote outpost in Antarctica. Maybe you’re staying home to watch the various simulcasts online. But Live Earth is more than just a concert — or at least it’s supposed to be. Organizers are calling it “a concert for a climate in crisis,” and what better way to honor Al Gore’s dream of world climate awareness than by thinking green thoughts and seeing a few unsettling sights, to soak in a bit more the waning days of our nice, comfy climate?

Herewith, a brief list of the Live Earth concerts (the one in Istanbul, Turkey, was canceled because the government and potential sponsors are distracted by upcoming elections), what musicians you’ll hear, a (relatively) nearby place to each concert where you can actually see the effects of global warming, and — for the homebodies preferring to use their exercycle-powered computers to experience the human decline — links to Webcams where you can see the real effects of human innovation on our big blue marble.

ANTARCTICA
WHERE: Rothera Station, Adelaide Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula

WHO: Nunatak (an utterly unpublicized and mostly ad-hoc group of scientists and support staff at the British station)

WHAT TO SEE: Open water just south of Cape Longing on the Antarctic Peninsula, where the Larsen A and B ice shelves used to be (before their sudden collapses in 1995 and 2002, respectively). Researchers in February reported that they had found several new species that had been living under the ice shelves for thousands of years, as well as species that moved in after the collapses, abruptly changing the seabed environment.

WEBCAM: Check out life at Rothera Station

And at the other extreme, a North Pole Webcam

AUSTRALIA
WHERE: Aussie Stadium, Moore Park, Sydney, New South Wales

WHO: Blue King Brown, Crowded House, Eskimo Joe, Ghostwriters, Jack Johnson, John Butler Trio, Missy Higgins, Paul Kelly, Sneaky Sound System, Toni Collette and the Finish, Wolfmother

WHAT TO SEE: The Macquarie Marshes Nature Reserve, north of Nyngan, New South Wales, which are drier than they should be because irrigation systems upriver from the marshes are taking more water than they are allowed to, as farmers do everything they can to minimize the effects of a years-long drought that has turned many Australians’ attention to global warming.

WEBCAM: This vineyard is not that close to Macquarie Marshes, but is well irrigated, and feeling the effects of drought

BRAZIL
WHERE: Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro

WHO: Lenny Kravitz, Pharrell Williams, Macy Gray, Xuxa, O Rappa, Marcelo D2, Jorge Ben Jor, Jota Quest, Vanessa Da Matta, MV Bill

WHAT TO SEE: The Amazon Rain Forest, which is actually drying out. As the forest area drops, so does the amount of rainfall. The effect is increased by rain-preventing smoke from the slash-and-burn practices of poor farmers destroying the wilderness to make fertile farmland.

WEBCAM: Keep an eye on very localized deforestation in a residential garden in Olinda, Brazil

CHINA
WHERE: Oriental Pearl Tower, Shanghai

WHO: Sarah Brightman, Eason Chan, Winnie Hsin, Evonne Hsu, Huang Xiao Ming, Anthony Wong, Joey Yung, 12 Girls Band, Soler

WHAT TO SEE: Linfen, Shanxi province, a city the World Bank says has the worst air quality on Earth, as a result of vast amounts of factories, mines, and homes that all burn coal. China is opening an average of two coal-fired electricity-generating plants each week. The country’s carbon-dioxide emissions surpassed the US level for the first time in 2006, though Chinese officials note that per capita, China’s emissions are one-fourth of America’s, and half of Britain’s.

WEBCAM: Shanghai’s air isn’t that clean, either. See what the folks attending the concert are breathing.

GERMANY
WHERE: Arena at Hamburg, Hamburg

WHO: Chris Cornell, Jan Delay, Juli, Katie Melua, Lotto King Karl, Maná, Michael Mittermeier, Sasha, Silbermond, Reamonn, Roger Cicero, Snoop Dogg, Mando Diao, Enrique Iglesias, Shakira

WHAT TO SEE: The Vernagtferner glacier, in the Otztal Alps, near Innsbruck, Austria. This glacier is one of the fastest-retreating in the world, having lost one-third of its area and more than half its mass in the past 100 years.

WEBCAM: This view of a ski lift at a mountain resort in Bayerisch Eisenstein, Bayern province, will tell you how much snow is falling and how fast it’s melting — both key elements of glacier-mass changes. (Yeah, it’s summer now. Keep checking back.)

JAPAN
WHERE: Makuhari Messe, Tokyo, Kanto region, Honshu island

WHO: Linkin Park, Rihanna, Ai Otsuka, Cocco, Genki Rockets, Kumi Koda, Rip Slyme, Rize, Ayaka, UA, Abingdon Boys School, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Rihanna, Bonnie Pink, AI, Michael Nyman

WHAT TO SEE: Well, there’s always the Kyoto International Conference Hall in Sakyo ward, Kyoto, where the Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions was negotiated back in December 1997. (Nearly a decade later, and the US Senate hasn’t ratified it.) But also head to the Tohoku region, north of Tokyo, to the rice paddies, which are seeing increased production of the country’s staple food as a result of warmer temperatures. At the same time, wheat production throughout the country is falling.

WEBCAM: Pay attention to the streets of Tokyo — if a massive rice-fed monster isn’t trampling through them, maybe there’s hope.

SOUTH AFRICA
WHERE: The Cradle of Humankind, Maropeng, Gauteng Province (near Johannesburg)

WHO: UB40, Joss Stone, Angelique Kidjo, Baaba Maal, Danny K, the Parlotones, Soweto Gospel Choir, Vusi Mahlasela, Zola

WHAT TO SEE: The Karoo National Park, a desert ecosystem designated as a “biodiversity hot spot,” with as many as 2000 plant species found nowhere else on Earth. The area is being monitored for its reaction to climbing temperatures, and scientists have already found that some young plants aren’t doing well, because they can’t store enough water to survive the heat.

WEBCAM: Watch for signs of plants in distress in the forest and mountain view.

UNITED KINGDOM
WHERE: Wembley Stadium, Wembley, London

WHO: Beastie Boys, Black Eyed Peas, Bloc Party, Corinne Bailey Rae, Damien Rice, David Gray, Duran Duran, Foo Fighters, Genesis, James Blunt, John Legend, Keane, Madonna, Paolo Nutini, Razorlight, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snow Patrol, Metallica, Kasabian, Terra Naomi, Spinal Tap, Pussycat Dolls

WHAT TO SEE: The London Underground subway system, which in 2006 was partially disabled because of skyrocketing electricity demand from people around the city trying to beat the heat. (Also check out the M25 motorway encircling London; a segment between Junctions 26 and 27 melted in the summer heat in 2003.)

WEBCAM: If London’s roads are melting, be among the first to see them on the BBC’s “jam cams” monitoring traffic around the city.

UNITED STATES
WHERE: Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey

WHO: AFI, Akon, Alicia Keys, Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews Band, Fall Out Boy, John Mayer, Kayne West, Kelly Clarkson, KT Tunstall, Ludacris, Melissa Etheridge, the Police, Roger Waters, Smashing Pumpkins, Keith Urban, Taking Back Sunday

WHAT TO SEE: Almost any stretch of the legendary Jersey Shore, where storms (of both increasing frequency and severity) continue to do serious damage to beaches, shorefront areas, and homes. As ocean levels rise, areas near the shore will be inundated, according to a recent report by Environment New Jersey, an activist group.

WEBCAM: Look for rising waters in the beach view.

On the Web
Live Earth: liveearth.msn.com

Sources
Antarctica: http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/einzigartiges_oekosystem_unter_dem_ehemaligen_larsen_schelfeis/
Australia: http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Irrigators-want-probe-into-water-theft/2007/06/26/1182623882590.html; http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052407R.shtml
Brazil: http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov; http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/AmazonFire/
China: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2111124,00.html
Germany: http://www.unep.org/geo/geo_ice
Japan: http://www.epcc.pref.osaka.jp/apec/eng/earth/global_warming/dounaru.html
South Africa: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0804_030804_karoo.html
Turkey: http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=5b7285ea-7f09-4b9a-a4bd-10cae6a51ea7
UK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/08/07/nhot07.xml
US: http://www.environmentnewjersey.org/reports/global-warming/global-warming-reports/an-unfamiliar-state-local-impacts-of-global-warming-in-new-jersey

'Ugly' story wins third prize

Published in the Portland Phoenix

A dark trip through Portland’s eyesores written by former staff writer Sara Donnelly and illustrated by Westbrook freelancer Mike Gorman has been honored in the small-papers division of the newspaper competition the alternative press takes most seriously.

The story, “Ugly Portland,” published July 28, 2006, took third place in the “format buster” category in the national Association of Alternative Newsweeklies competition. (AAN defines a “format buster” as an article whose thrust and graphic presentation are contrary to usual newspaper conventions.)

One step closer to Finland: McNallica wins!

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Well, obviously.

Portland-based karaoke star McNallica won the regional competition in the US Air Guitar championship series, held last Friday at Boston's Harper’s Ferry. Next stop, the Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York City on August 16. Then, if she beats the 13 contenders there, she’ll head to Finland for the world title in early September.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. McNallica, operations manager at a local mortgage company, creamed the local competition at Portland's SPACE back in April. Last week down in Allston, Bjorn Turoque, one of the world’s greatest air-guitarists, gave her perfect scores in both rounds, and called her “the future of air guitar.”

Perhaps the best part (other than that level of praise) came the moment she and the four other finalists heard the song they would perform in the compulsory round: “Metal Health,” the title track off the 1983 Quiet Riot album. While she hadn’t worked up a routine for it, she knew the song, and spent the few minutes she had before going on stage planning a kick-ass routine.

“The whole left side of my body hurts from doing all the windmills,” she said Monday.

McNallica beat — among others — a woman who had flown in from Colorado, a guy who drove up from Washington DC, and Boston hometown favorite Mike “Godfather of Air” Torpey, who won that city's regional competition last year. She now has her eyes on beating Andrew “William Ocean” Litz, two-time New York regional champ, who will be among the most experienced air-guitarists in the national competition.

We’ll keep you posted on the dates, the other challengers, and vicious rumors about the personal lives of air-guitarists near and far, so keep checking back.

Support the Portland air-guitar champ

Published in the Portland Phoenix

McNallica, Portland’s air-guitar champion (see “Music Seen,” May 4), will head to the next phase of the US Air Guitar Championships on Friday, in Boston. And she’s inviting you to go with her.

McNallica could use the support — even though this contest will be judged by actual judges (rather than by popular acclaim, like the local championship at SPACE). She’s polishing up her air guitar for the performance, which she promises will feature “two signature moves” she couldn’t perform at SPACE because the stage was dampened by a previous performer’s fake blood. She’s hoping those, and her extensive prep work (she has choreographed three different 60-second routines to different songs, so as not to repeat music used by another contestant), will get her a ticket to the national finals in New York in August.

The judging will be “based on figure-skating,” she says, with a scale from 4.0 to 6.0. No word on whether there’s a Russian judge, but we prepped her with a couple Russkie niceties to drop, just in case.

To get you there, McNallica is coordinating rides down to the 21+ show at Harper’s Ferry (158 Brighton Ave in Allston, Massachusetts) on Friday evening, arriving in time for the event’s start at 9 pm. If you want a ride, e-mail her at emcnally@meridianmg.com. Get your $15 tickets in advance atwww.usairguitar.com or call 800.594.8499. You’ll also get a glimpse of Air Guitar Nation movie star (and non-winner) Bjorn Turoque, the celebrity MC.

Portland Phoenix Best Music Poll on WCSH's 207 (with Samuel James)

Aired on WCSH's 207

Air guitar competition: Music Seen at SPACE Gallery, April 28, 2007

Published in the Portland Phoenix; written jointly with Sonya Tomlinson

ST For those wondering how the Air Guitar competition went down — the event was beyond sold out. Even when the space available for the film portion came down to standing room only the audience did not hesitate to express their enthusiasm. Despite the close quarters, the laughing, cheering, and clapping during the movie mimicked what would take place in a living room full of your closest friends.

JI In fact, some of the movie’s scenes — and the live post-movie competition — might have been best done in a living room, rather than on a stage or in front of a camera. But with a movie like Air Guitar Nation, if you can’t react to the events and commentary on the screen, there’s fairly little point in seeing it at all. Air guitar is as much about the art of performing as it is about the act of spectating.

ST Let’s get back to that live competition part. There were nine contestants for the first-ever Portland Air Guitar competition. I believe you were in the front of the crowd, right? Something about your wife being sprayed with fake blood by one of the competitors?

JI Yeah, there were supposed to be 12, but a few backed out and a few signed up on the spot, motivated by the movie, no doubt. Anyway, one of them — HammerSmash — had a cup of fake blood, poured it all over himself and drank it, and then tossed it into the crowd. He was one of the few who appeared to have actually rehearsed, and he ended up in the final three. Sadly, as the youngest contestant in the finals, he appeared to be less familiar with the compulsory song — the contestants had chosen their own songs for the first round — and ended up finishing third. That compulsory song, Poison’s “Talk Dirty To Me” (from 1986’s Look What the Cat Dragged In, if you must know) was a brilliant choice on the part of the organizers, and played right into the hands of the woman who stole the show — McNallica. She’ll be competing in Boston sometime soon, and we’ll keep you posted on that.

ST And we can’t fail to mention Free Bird, who came in second. Even his fans dressed up to support him. If you missed out, be sure to catch the local action at http://www.vimeo.com/clip:179839. And you can catch the film, Air Guitar Nation, at the Movies on Exchange May 2-8.

On the Web
More photos at: http://flickr.com/photos/space538/sets/72157600161646975/

Activist says legalize all drugs, not just medical marijuana

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Peter Christ wants to legalize drugs. “Heroin, crack cocaine, methamphetamine, LSD” — all of them. They are so dangerous to people and to our society that “they must be regulated and controlled,” he says, conveniently leaving any specifics to others (doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, almost anyone but a retired police officer, which is what he is).

And Jonathan Leavitt, director of the Maine Marijuana Policy Initiative, wants Christ’s message (Peter Christ’s message, that is — his last name rhymes with “wrist”) to sway Maine lawmakers into relaxing Maine’s medical-marijuana laws in this legislative session, by passing a bill (LD 1418) sponsored by state senator Ethan Strimling (D-Portland).

But Leavitt may have the wrong guy, and Christ may have the wrong message.

Christ is vice-president (pun unintended) of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of former cops, prosecutors, and judges who say drugs should be made legal, controlled, taxed, and regulated by the government, much like tobacco and alcohol. Then, Christ says, society needs to address the social problem of drug addiction seriously, the way it has with tobacco use — cutting consumption significantly by teaching people what’s actually wrong with a legal product.

Christ is, in fact, opposed to Leavitt’s immediate goal. “If they succeed at what they’re doing,” he says, “then we don’t succeed,” because if lawmakers — and citizens generally — agree that drugs should be banned except for small, narrowly defined reasons (such as medical needs), there’ll be no impetus for wider legalization.

Christ does admit that Leavitt’s effort gets him access to newspaper offices and Rotary clubs. And he says that if LEAP wins its crusade for legalization — and control — of all drugs, then Leavitt’s group will also get what it wants. Leavitt believes slow, incremental change has a better long-term success rate in the political realm.

Much of Christ’s bluster is about his real push: to reform media coverage of society in general (and drugs in particular), because he says that is a necessary precursor to legalization of drugs.

Christ wants newspapers to stop writing about “drug-related” violence — saying that suggests a drug-induced high caused the incident — and instead call it “drug-business-related” violence, reflecting that the participants are usually having a dispute over money, or selling territory, or quality of the product.

“Part of the problem is the press,” Christ says, also lamenting reporters’ “failure to question” authorities, calling police “for balance” when doing stories about him and his activism, but not calling him “for balance” when doing stories about the latest drug bust, and whether it’s an effective way to reduce the availability of drugs on the street.

Leavitt, meanwhile, has hired some lobbyists — Betsy Sweet and Bob Howe (who represent various healthcare-related organizations in the state, among other clients) — to push his bill, which would allow any medical professional who can write a prescription — any doctor, physician-assistant, nurse-practitioner, optometrist, dentist, or podiatrist — to permit someone to grow or buy small amounts of marijuana for personal medical use. (Leavitt says doctors are too conservative, and the prescribing power needs to be expanded to let people get access to marijuana for medicinal purposes. No state agency has any data on how many people take advantage of the law as it stands now.)

The bill would also create a state registry of people who are so authorized, permit the creation of nonprofit stores where marijuana could be purchased by authorized buyers for medical use, and allow such stores to be located anywhere retail businesses are permitted under local zoning laws. And it would bar state, county, or local police officers from assisting federal agents in investigations of medical-marijuana use. It is slated for a hearing before a legislative committee on April 23 at 2 pm in the Cross Building (part of the State House complex) in Augusta.

Straight from Peaks to NYC

Published in the Portland Phoenix

It startled even her. Becky FitzPatrick, a Portland cut-paper artist, heard through the grapevine that someone from the Ralph Lauren company was trying to get in touch with her. And when the call actually came, she was again startled to learn why the company was calling.

“Most of my work is small 2-D,” she says, including a piece in the just-completed “Body Parts” show at MECA’s June Fitzpatrick Gallery. But the giant clothing-maker wanted to talk about The Wishing Room, her second-ever piece of installation art, which had been shown at the Sacred and Profane festival on Peaks Island last fall.

The piece, assembled with the help of fellow artist Lisa Pixley, involved hanging hundreds of white paper birds from the ceiling of a large space inside the harbor’s former fort. Visitors were invited to walk through and among them. Ralph Lauren wanted something similar.

It turns out that “the wife of one of the windows team members at Ralph Lauren in New York City,” had had her picture taken with her kids in among the birds. When her husband saw the pictures, he wanted to see more, thinking perhaps a similar work would be good for a smaller display in the store.

“They didn’t even know who I was,” FitzPatrick laughs, noting that Sacred and Profane works are installed anonymously. After seeing more of her work and talking to her at some length, the company brought FitzPatrick to New York for a week to put together her first-ever show in the city. She and a windows crew of full-time and freelance Ralph Lauren workers pulled four all-nighters — installing 600 birds above Ralph Lauren-clad mannequins in the store’s four main windows at the corner of Madison Avenue and East 72nd, a block from Central Park, in the heart of the city’s fashion district. It will be on display for the next six weeks. And FitzPatrick — catching up on her sleep — is now back in Maine, hoping to find more installation work.

Sidebar: The League: A short history

Published in the Portland Phoenix

APRIL 2004 After six weeks of prep work, Justin Alfond (who later becomes the full-time state director of the League) and local activist Jo Horn host a League kickoff event, a book launch for How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office, edited by two of the national leaders of the League of Young Voters. Fifty-six people attend.

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2004 League members help Falmouth Democrat John Brautigam campaign door-to-door against Portland Republican David Elowitch for a Maine House seat representing parts of both towns. Brautigam wins by 55 votes. (See “The Year in Citizen Activism,” by Alex Irvine, December 24, 2004.)

2005 Members get more involved in local issues, including the Portland School Committee’s debate on whether to ban the distribution to students of fliers from discriminatory groups like the Boy Scouts of America, and a proposal to allow Portland high-school students to remove their personal information from records released to the US military for recruiting purposes. Members also help coordinate the college-campus campaign of Maine Won’t Discriminate, successfully defeating an attempt to overturn the state’s gay-rights law.

FEBRUARY 2006 The Portland group changes its name from the League of Pissed Off Voters to the League of Young Voters, with the intent of attracting more members and more grant funding.

MID-2006 National organizations step up funding to the League, for its efforts in connecting with people who are not registered to vote and getting them informed and voting. The Maine Blueprint Project, a coalition of activist organizations, asks if the League will help fight the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, a tax-reform bill, on college campuses. League organizers notice that young people — whether college students or not — tend not to know much about TABOR, and launch a widespread campaign to inform voters and oppose the initiative.

NOVEMBER 2006 City Council and School Committee seats in Districts 1 and 2 are filled by first-time candidates, all four of whom are under 35. TABOR fails. The League claims partial credit for each of those results, even though both successful School Committee candidates beat League-endorsed opponents.

JANUARY 2007 A group of Republican legislators introduces a bill to bar college students from voting in the towns where they live while attending college. The League backs a proposal from Portland Democrat Jon Hinck for “instant runoff voting,” a change to the present electoral system that would result in an election’s winner being the person most favored by the largest number of people. Both bills die in committee.

APRIL 4, 2007 The League is honored at the Maine State House, with a proclamation by the governor as well as resolutions by both houses of the Legislature.

INTO THE FUTURE League representatives may be included in discussions of youth issues with state legislators, nightlife policies with Portland city councilors, and other consultative groups. And the League will work to publicize the requirement that landlords disclose apartments’ energy-efficiency data to prospective tenants.

Sidebar: Celebrate with them

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The League is hoping to get enough members and fans together to TAKE A BUS UP TO THE STATE HOUSE on Wednesday, April 4, to represent young people’s political power and energy in the halls of state government. Visit their Web site, portlandme.indyvoter.org, to sign up.

After the trip to Augusta, come back to Portland and stop by City Hall, where the city council will be talking about studying a revised formula-business ban and having an elected mayor, and may make its own PROCLAMATION OF LEAGUE DAY IN THE CITY, if councilor Dave Marshall’s request is approved.

Their REACT FILM NIGHT is held at 6:30 pm every third Thursday of the month at the League offices, on the second floor of 1 Pleasant Street in Portland. (But in April, it's moving to Wednesday, April 18, and will be at SPACE Gallery. The League likes to keep members on their toes.) Their “REAL DEAL” ISSUE-BASED DISCUSSIONS are at 6:30 pm on the second Tuesday of the month at the Reiche School in the West End.

Speaking youth to power: The League of Young Voters heads to the State House

Published in the Portland Phoenix

A hip-hop artist will perform in the halls of the State House on April 4. Perhaps that’s all that needs to be said to explain what lawmakers will experience when the League of Young Voters heads to Augusta to receive the traditionally staid honors with which state government rewards public-interest achievements.

Yes, the League is getting their very own day at the State House — a building League state director Justin Alfond regularly refers to as “our house” — including a proclamation from the governor and laudatory resolutions passed by the House and the Senate. It’s the sort of honor that Alfond and his fellow Leaguers seriously considered before deciding to accept — weighing whether it would be too legit, too mainstream, just too downright stuffy to mean much to a group of civic-minded 20-somethings and 30-somethings who really just want political power for themselves.

The group, formed in early 2004 (just in time to really hit its stride in the ’06 election), is a hybrid political-action group. They mix national political idealism with local activism — taking people who are upset at the direction the country is going and turning their energy to making reforms at the local- and state-government levels. They combine grassroots-style door-to-door campaigning (just like old-time politicians) with software that tracks who reads their e-mail messages and Web postings (just like multinational marketing companies). They get young people out for an evening of hip-hop, spoken-word acts, and art exhibits, and mix in some politics to produce what may be the truest representation of a “political party.” And they cross traditional lines between what activists call “education” (teaching people about the democratic process and informing voters about candidates) and outright advocacy (picking issues behind which to throw their youthful backing).

What the League learns here, and in five other pioneer League states (California, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), will be applied nationally in the coming years, says national organizing and training director Rob “Biko” Baker. The League is working toward a national political takeover, saying on its Web site, “We want a progressive governing majority in our lifetime.”

Data mining
The League’s ability to develop that depends in part on their capacity to motivate people to participate, often using art or music to draw people in.

The Portland League has fit in very well with the city’s hip-hop scene, says SayLove, a hip-hop artist who helps to organize League events. “Hip-hop has always been a social-political movement,” she says, noting its beginnings in efforts to divert inner-city young people from gangs and into more productive, creative activities.

“You really have to find a unique way of grabbing someone’s attention,” says 29-year-old Portland city councilor Dave Marshall. He used his paintings to great effect in his own election bid, setting up a display in Monument Square with both art and campaign information, attracting people with his art, and then engaging them in a political discussion.

But the real muscle behind League efforts is provided by a technology-driven campaign that allows grassroots activity to be measured, quantified, trialed, and refined over time.

As progressive political organizations strive to measure their effectiveness (useful for getting grants from foundations, which are increasingly looking for detailed results of funded projects), they are having to find ways to differentiate themselves from spam e-mails, from the deluge of text messages and cell-phone voicemails, from unsolicited MySpace messages, and from any number of other intrusions attempting to grab young people’s attention. The League is no exception, and indeed is leading the effort in Maine politics.

The systems they use are similar to those commonly applied in corporate public-relations campaigns, which can determine how many people receive an e-mail message, how many actually read it, how many of them follow a link in that message, and how people move around an organization’s Web site.

The measurements aren’t static. With each new e-mail message, each new posting on the Web site, each tweak of a message or page’s design, the results change, letting League organizers constantly fine-tune not only their messages, but also the messages’ presentation, to get maximum attention from as large a group of people as possible.

One recent e-mail, for example, asked in its subject line, if readers were “down with OPP?” — both a reference to League pet project Opportunity Maine (a student-loan-payment tax-credit initiative) and to a 1991 rap song by Naughty By Nature whose refrain asks whether a listener is willing to cheat on his or her lover. The tone and brief content of that message put off Jeff Ferland, a 22-year-old who ran for the Maine House as a Republican last year but ended up withdrawing from the race and endorsing a Green Independent opponent. (Ferland says he may run again, but most likely as a Green.) He says messages like that make it “hard to take them seriously.”

But while it was an honest attempt to convey information to League members, it was really just another trial balloon — if not enough people read it or responded to it, the League will adapt, again.

They are missing a key piece of information, though, one that has an important bearing on the League’s grip on politicians’ attention. Julie Flynn, deputy secretary of state for elections, says there is now no convenient way to gather demographic data on new-voter registrations or to determine the demographic makeup of voters (such as their ages) under the state’s long-held system of election record-keeping. A new statewide computerized system that is “80 percent complete” will allow that to happen, because it will capture voter participation in the same database that will include a voter’s birth date. The Portland city clerk’s office doesn’t track voter ages, either. So the League is left with anecdotal data to make a guess at how many more young people have signed up to vote, and how many actually went to the polls.

Accountability
Even without that data, League efforts are getting broad notice. US representative Tom Allen says the League is “an increasingly important voice for younger voters,” who, he points out, are bearing the brunt of casualties in Iraq, are the least likely to have health insurance, are struggling to pay for higher education, will pay for most of the massive national debt now being incurred, and have “the most to lose” as global warming becomes more severe.

Governor John Baldacci, who was 23 when he first was elected to the Bangor City Council, talks about his own efforts to bring young people into government — including working closely with student interns and encouraging young people to talk about Maine’s future — as a way of saying the League’s efforts are important.

Councilor Marshall, who represents “the youngest district in the city,” the West End, acknowledges the support he had from the League and from young voters generally, in defeating two older candidates.

When League candidates win, “there’s sort of an expectation of reciprocity,” he says. Indeed, Marshall says he will nominate League communications director Brian Hiatt to serve on the city’s formula-business task force. It goes both ways: Marshall says if he ends up needing a petition drive to get a citywide vote on whether to have a directly elected mayor (an idea that has League backing), he would look to the League for manpower to gather signatures. (The League has a couple hundred active volunteers in Maine, according to Baker, the national organizing director.)

Marshall shouldn’t count too definitively on their support, though it’s likely to arrive if needed. Alfond notes that the League’s method of decision-making is largely by committee, whether by an 11-person steering committee (which includes staff and community volunteers) or by a vote of the active members (those who spend eight hours or more with the League over the course of a year). So if enough of them don’t like the idea, Marshall will be on his own.

Ferland, the former Republican, says that committee-style approach results in too little coherence for the group overall. As an example, he cites the League’s opposition to TABOR, rather than “why what issue came up.” Because the complaint was that “people won’t get aid from the state anymore,” the League missed the larger point, Ferland says, that “people are having trouble because the state isn’t functioning.”

Progress
But that’s part of the point for the League — making sure that what they’re doing is what actually interests people, even if it doesn’t always fit into a predetermined plan. And what happens next isn’t clear, even for League leaders.

More young people, like Marshall and others at the city level, may continue to get involved: Maine House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, who first won election at age 25 and is now 30, observes that several legislative leaders are younger people — like Jeremy Fischer (D-Presque Isle), who is the House chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and fellow Appropriations member Emily Cain (D-Orono), who are both 27. House Minority Leader Josh Tardy (R-Newport) squeaks into the “young” category, too, at 38.

And while Alfond correctly notes the general prevalence of left-leaning votes among people under 30, Maine House Speaker Glenn Cummings (D-Portland) says his research showed that people under 18 are more conservative than their slightly-older peers, except in the area of environmentalism. He says he used that information to convince wary Republican legislators to allow 17-year-olds to vote in Maine primary elections, if they’ll turn 18 before the November general election date.

What will happen in Augusta on April 4? Alfond is planning to have hip-hop and spoken-word artists perform, to display visual art created by young people, and will bring “youth culture” to the halls of power. He smiles when asked how he thinks lawmakers will react, and hedges: “I think it’s going to be quite different.”

Portland Democratic representative Anne Haskell, who made the initial request for League Day at the State House because of the League’s efforts to get involved in politics, laughs, “I bet it’s going to be real interesting.”

Baldacci hopes that his peers — and those lawmakers older than his 52 years — will “realize that they have as much to gain, if not more, from younger people” than vice-versa. (He also notes “there will be a lot more rhythm than there is otherwise” in the State House.)

Pingree thinks the reception will be warm. “Older people in Maine love having young people get involved,” she says. Many of them are still serving in part because no one else has been willing. She sees “a real interest — almost desperation” among older Maine leaders to turn over the reins to younger people.

And those younger people may, 30-odd years from now, be in the same position. Haskell makes an analogy between recreation and politics — some things, when you start them early enough, become “lifetime sports.”

Corrections Department obstructs free press

Published in the Portland Phoenix

This week is Sunshine Week, a time when media organizations around the country draw attention to state and federal Freedom of Information laws, to remind citizens and government workers about the importance of government openness and accountability. Maine’s law guaranteeing open government is called the “Freedom of Access” law, a name that is especially poignant in view of the Corrections Department’s restrictive attitude toward the media.

A national press organization — as well as several statewide ones — are joining the criticism of the Maine Department of Corrections, which has over the past several months attempted to block reporters from contacting inmates, in the wake of a series of Portland Phoenix articles (based in large measure on interviews with inmates) exposing mistreatment, poor healthcare, and lack of official accountability in the Maine State Prison — and particularly in its Supermax unit.

The criticism is based primarily on a proposed revision to the prison’s media-interview policy, drafted by associate corrections commissioner Denise Lord and Diane Sleek, the assistant attorney general who represents the department. Ironically, Sleek is paid by the people of Maine to uphold the law — including its provisions that government be open to public scrutiny — while at the same time defending the Corrections Department’s actions, including those that seek to bar scrutiny of the publicly funded agency. (Sleek has objected to my calling her job duties a conflict of interest, but has not responded to my question asking which piece of her job I inaccurately described. The fact that she holds a job in the AG’s office speaks for her responsibility as a public official; her actions on behalf of the Corrections Department clearly demonstrate her opposition to public oversight of the agency.)

Sleek has even defied a judge’s order to move a mentally ill inmate out of the Supermax and into the state’s mental hospital, saying she would keep him in prison until the end of his actual prison sentence — for another ten years — before sending him to get the medical care a judge ordered (see “Arbitrary Imprisonment,” by Lance Tapley, July 21, 2006).

After months of not responding to requests to interview prisoners, in mid-December, the department gave longtime Portland Phoenix contributing writer Lance Tapley a new form he would have to sign before being allowed to talk to inmates. The new rules were so obviously unconstitutional — including allowing prison staff to read a reporter’s notes from an interview — that the Maine Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (of which I am vice-president) began coordinating a letter from objection from other Maine press groups, including the Maine Press Association and the Maine Association of Broadcasters.

A Maine Public Radio story in mid-January about the complaints broke the news that the governor — who has for months refused to comment to the Portland Phoenix about the prison series — had ordered Sleek’s boss, attorney general Steven Rowe, to revise the media policy in accordance with the state’s constitution and laws. That promise forestalled the sending of the protest letter, but not for long.

After weeks of delay, the department issued a draft of a revised policy, adding more restrictions — including attempts to completely ban video and still cameras and audio recording, and trying to control both the content of interviews and how the material gleaned in them might be used. Several restrictions sought to give prison officials the right to control the content, substance, and nature of both questions by reporters as well as answers from inmates.

The new draft has raised even more objections than the previous attempts by corrections officials to limit reporting on their agency and on their official acts. It has already been protested by the Maine Civil Liberties Union. (The Phoenix wrote a letter as well, arguing that the entire policy was still so blatantly unconstitutional that it should be scrapped and rewritten from scratch.)

More letters are in the works, from SPJ, MPA, and MAB, and the national office of SPJ.