If you want to catch a lobster boat race, the place to be in Maine this weekend is Henry Cove for the last weekend of this season's lobster boat races. The Lorna R out of Beals Harbor is rumored to be going for a speed record of over 55 mph.
Walker's Point, February 2005
"He comes up on a holiday weekend, jams all the traffic up. We don't get any cooperation from the guy, so why should we put up with him?"Aye-uh. Some of us feel that way about all visitors. Only this one's going to be Christly* bad:
Instead of glimpses of world leaders, residents are expecting streets clogged with hundreds of protesters, who are planning to march on Ocean Avenue, calling for the impeachment of President Bush and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Hotel rooms have been booked for weeks, disappointing would-be tourists hoping for a last-minute trip to the beach. For the hundreds expected to pour into town, crowds and chaos await.
(Quotes from the Globe article on Kennebunkport's preparations for Putin).
*Local slang substitute for wicked. It's not a swear--I've been assured.
Saturday was our Budget Election. Each May, the village(s) hold an election to vote on the town budget. We have elected officials-- a Board of Selectmen (instead of a Mayor) and a School Committee. We have a Superintendent of Schools and someone who runs the Parks Department.
But none of these folks is in charge of their budgets. We the voters decide, line by line, how the school budget and town funds will be spent.
This year, it was seven 11 x 14 pages, front and back of questions to be decided. We voted on spending $11,800 to repair the recyling facility. We voted yes or no to spend $45,000 for a new harbor master's boat. We had to decide if we should spend $25,000 to repair the Cape Neddick Light Station roof; the entire town had a yea or nay on whether to spend $18,500 to repair a culvert on our street. We voted on Senior Services monies, the library budget, hiring two special education specialists and on the $15 million school budget.
By and large, all measures passed, although we decided not to hire a children's librarian or spend $6.5 million on a new town hall. We're still waiting to hear the decision on the surfing area at Long Sands. The new ordinance would allow town officials to expand the surfing zone on days when waves are high and few swimmers are in the water.
UPDATE: The surfing ordinance has passed. At least that's the rumor in town.
A year ago today, the Cape Neddick River Bridge looked like this. The Mother's Day Flood of 2006 caused extensive damage in New England and in our county. It started raining and it didn't stop. We played 100's of games of ping pong and checked the cellar for rising water. No water in the cellar, but our water saturated back yard shifted and sank and with it, our chimney shifted and sank away from the house. We were very blessed to have nothing worse happen. Businesses were flooded; our village made the front page of USAToday.
The forecast for the next few days isn't nearly as bad, but it surely does provide a reminder of our water soaked May 2006.
(photo from Seacoastonline.com--every time I go down to take a picture, the tide is too high)
Last week's nor'easter shifted enough of the beach at Short Sands enough to expose a shipwreck that was last seen in the early 1990's.
Historians believe that this shipwreck is a sloop from around the time of the Revolutionary War, although local amateur archeologists think that it might be a "pinky" a small, manueverable fishing/cargo boat. It seems to appear about once every 10 years after a big storm.
According to the village manager, Steve Burns, York has 67 shipwrecks and only 28 have been located.
This is starting to feel a bit like the Mother's Day Floods of last year (many of the same roads were closed then):
From Seacoastonline.com--Road sections closed in York as of Monday evening:
Seacoastonline.com has a new do for spring. It's quite nice and much more functional than the old site.
I discovered it while searching for an article on the York/Kittery school merge discussions.
Which will be big news if it actually comes to pass. It will be big news while it gets discussed.
Volunteers are needed to listen to frogs...if you live at our house, you don't have to leave home, as we clearly hear the peepers from the back deck, but it doesn't appear they need help in our Boston suburb (aka Southern Maine). Also, after taking the on-line quiz, it appears we're frog tone deaf.
This story leaves so many unanswered questions and is wrong on so many levels:
Claude Van Tassel doesn't want to come home.Seems he's done this once before, as well:
It was nearly five years ago that the well-known auctioneer from Lyman, Maine, and father of 12 went missing while shopping at the Dover Ames store with his wife. Van Tassel told her he was going to get a cup of coffee — and was never heard from again.
"He has asked that his location not be given out because he does not want to be found," said Interim Police Chief Anthony Colarusso. "In essence we have a person who has been missing of his own volition since 2002, but he is healthy, he is alive and well in Pennsylvania. At this stage the case is closed, the family's been notified."
"We then began to dig into the history of Mr. Van Tassel and learned that he did a similar thing and was missing in another part of the country a year previously," Colarusso said.His wife isn't buying the story, but since Mr. Van Tassel doesn't want to be found, the authorities won't tell her where he is. Wouldn't that drive you crazy? All those unanswered questions, like don't you miss your 17 grandchildren? Why not just ask for a divorce? My curiosity would be killin' me....
Van Tassel told his wife he was going for coffee before that disappearance as well. His abandoned truck was found weeks later in Ohio, and Van Tassel was found 72 days later at a homeless shelter in Iowa.
BREAKING NEWS: CNN is expected to issue an apology for causing today's series of bomb scares throughout Boston. A statement emailed to the Globe from Turner Broadcasting said: "The “packages” in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger. They are part of an outdoor marketing campaign in 10 cities in support of Adult Swim’s animated television show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Parent company Turner Broadcasting is in contact with local and federal law enforcement on the exact locations of the billboards. We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger."In all, nine devices were found scattered around Boston. Portions of highways were closed, the Coast Guard closed the Charles River, and Storrow Drive closed for a while. Boston traffic is bad enough on a good day.....
Author Anita Diamant is scheduled to speak this Thursday night at the Portsmouth Music Hall. (Tickets available on-line, but there are very few left).
Pulitzer Prize winning author and Maine resident Richard Ford (The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, among others) will read and sign books at the Portland Library this Saturday afternoon at noon. Call 207-871-1700 for more information.
