by Marilou SucharThe telephone rings
Who could it be?
Gone are the days
That they want me!
The cell phone chirps
I pick up to see
Nope! – just a hoax
Not a pleasantry.
I hear a ping –
Is it my texting friend?
I stop to read
I don’t comprehend.
Gone are the days
When the telephone rings
And it’s my family
To see how I’ve been.
by Evangeline T.Hello and welcome to Maine Memories, little snippets of life from our home state. For this installment, I have a story about the wonderful Saturday nights of my childhood.
I recall when Saturday night was something to look forward to, a truly special and momentous event. My home town only had a general store, a post office, and a small service station, so every Saturday night, we’d drive to the nearest bigger town, which was 12 miles away. They had everything a family like mine could possibly want, and I looked at Saturday night there as a magical adventure. Plus, we’d top off the fun by taking in a great movie!
There were so many interesting things to do. I loved going to the restaurant, where we enjoyed grilled hot dogs. Dad liked going to the full service station, usually spending a whole dollar’s worth. A courteous young man dressed in a company shirt and cap pumped our gas, washed the windshield and mirrors and always asked, ‘may I check the oil, sir?’ That’s real customer service!
Afterward, we’d visit the five and ten cent store. What a place! The second we walked in, the enticing smell of roasted peanuts hit us like a wave. All the nuts and candy were displayed inside large sparkling glass containers. It was an experience for the senses, and even today, when I smell peanuts, I’m reminded of those long ago childhood days.
Mom and Dad bought peanuts for the movies. They allowed me to have a new jump rope or marbles or something that caught my eye, as long as it didn’t cost more than a quarter. Money was scarce during those days, and I made the most of my choices.
Next on our itinerary, we shopped at the grocery store. There, we’d get flour, sugar, coffee, tea, molasses and crackers.
Molasses was drawn from a barrel by a pump into a jug, which mom had brought with us. Most of our food was grown on the farm, like meat, vegetables and berries, but the other stuff we needed from the store. And oh, I sure loved molasses!
Once the groceries were placed carefully in our car, we headed for the movie theater, on Main Street.
Upon entering the building, you went up four or five steps, and in the middle of the floor stood a glass-topped booth. Inside was a young lady, from whom dad purchased tickets for admission. The concession stand was nearby, and there were dozens of choices! We usually settled on a big box of delicious hot buttered popcorn for ten cents.
With everything bought, a man in a red jacket and cap politely ushered us to our seats, using his flashlight to guide the way. The best spot was half way down, on the right side.
Now came my favorite part: a 10-15 minute cartoon before the main attraction. They made me laugh, especially Felix the Cat. Sometimes, there were short black and white news reels on World War II. I closed my eyes through those, as I still had sad memories of my dad being gone, and I didn’t like to be reminded.
As a child, I loved Walt Disney’s animated movies. Musicals and comedies were high on my list, too. Bambi, The Wizard of Oz, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and the Three Stooges. I saw them all.
Well, that theater is still standing, boarded up and lonely. Its faded green paint is peeling, an old relic from another time. The service station is now a vacant lot, and the grocery store an insurance company. The five and ten cent store is closed, too. Everything changes.
I have lived in that town three times, once as a baby, once as a young woman, and the last, as a wife. My husband and I even had a small business there.
But my memories remain of a town and its Saturday nights many years ago, when a little girl and her parents ate roasted peanuts and popcorn at the charming movie theater on Main Street. I remember it well!
by Debbie WalkerLast week you saw A Little Fun and the first part of the little test for couples. How did you do with the first one? The original came from a book titled Humor for a Woman’s Heart. The test was written by Bill and Pam Farrel. And here is the second part:
10. His idea of the perfect honeymoon is:
A. A week in the Poconos. B. A Mediterranean cruise. C. Anything under a hundred bucks.
11. The phrase “not in your lifetime” refers to:
A. Him cleaning the bathroom. B. Her cleaning the gutters. C. Either of you ever cleaning the stuff that grows under the vegetable crisper in the refrigerator.
12. When you think about the love letters you used to write when you were courting, you’re reminded:
A. Of a passion that burned like ancient Rome. B. Of a love that will last for an eternity. C. The writing corny love letters is not a crime.
13. Often men and women will show subtle signs of stress and strain in different ways. For each way listed below, choose the most appropriate gender.
A. Punch inanimate object, such as door or steering wheel. Male, Female, Either. B. Make sniffling noises and sigh heavily. Male , Female, Either. C. Blame clubs, bats, bowling balls, for poor athletic performance. Male, Female, Either. D. Clamp hands over face and weep. When questioned, keep saying, “Oh, nothing” over and over. Male, Female, Either.
14. When the both of you attend church together, it is best for the husband to wear:
A. A dark suit. B. A tuxedo. C. Whatever his wife picks out.
15. When the waiter asks what you’d like for a dessert, a wife’s most common response is:
A. “Chocolate mousse, please.” B. “I’ll try the cheesecake.” C. “Oh, nothing for me. I’ll just have a teensy bite of his.”
16. Your husband tries on his high school jacket and finds he can no longer snap it up.
A wife’s best response is: A. “Maybe it shrunk.” B. “I like you a little less skinny.” C.”That jacket would look dumb on a bald guy anyway.”
18. Your spouse is snoring. You should:
A. Accept it as a minor flaw in an otherwise perfect mate. B. Gently nudge him and say, “Roll over, dear.” C. Put a pair of sweatpants over his head and tighten the tie.
22. TRUE or FALSE: The husband often lets his wife answer the telephone because it’s usually for her anyway. FALSE: The husband often lets his wife answer the telephone because, if he doesn’t, he may end up talking to her mother.
23. The phrase most often heard when the two of you are alone in a quiet setting is:
A. “I love you.” B. “I need you.” C. “Zzzzzzzzz.”
27. (Wife question) To prove your love for your husband, you would gladly:
A. Climb the highest mountain. B. Swim the deepest ocean. c. Put gas in the car at one of those self-serve places where the risk of a broken fingernails a constant threat.
So how did you do? You probably noticed I skipped a few numbers, but I wanted to finish this week. I am just curious how you did. Contact me at DebbieWalker@townline.org I will be waiting. Want to share? Have a happy, healthy week. Thanks for reading!
Kay Armen
by Peter CatesArmenian American singer Armenuhi Manoogian (1915-2011), known by her stage name as Kay Armen, achieved fame during the 1940s and ‘50s with her NBC radio show, records and appearances in films and on television. Her 1950 recording of Come On A My House appeared one year before Rosemary Clooney’s megahit.
A 1945 Decca 78, 18672, featured her renditions of the wistful Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill song All At Once and a throwaway Back Home for Keeps with Satchmo’s all-time favorite orchestra, the Royal Canadians led by Guy Lombardo (1902-1977). She sang with a keen sensitivity to the meaning of the lyrics, a wonderful low, middle and high register, and a commanding individuality of presence.
Both her father Robert Manoogian and younger brother Robert Jr. were professional wrestlers; Dad’s stage name was Bob Monograph, Junior’s Bobby Managoff.
Most of the morning while writing this, I have been listening to the numerous YouTubes of this singer, ranging from All at Once to a medley of Sinatra hits, In the Wee Small Hours, Time After Tim, etc., which she performed at a social gathering in 2007 when she was 92, and still in good voice.
The 1961 movie Hey Let’s Twist featured her and the uncredited actor Joe Pesci in his Hollywood debut more than 20 years before he cashed in with My Cousin Vinnie and Home Alone.
Guy Lombardo
Guy Lombardo and his three brothers formed their first orchestra while still in elementary school in London, Ontario, constantly practicing in the back of their father’s tailor shop. The band would sell 300 million records. Lombardo was also a champion speed boat racer.
Lyricist Ira Gershwin (1896-1983) outlived younger brother George by 46 years and would collaborate with composers Jerome Kern and Harold Arlen. He loved listening to music with the volume turned up while his wife despised it. In 1977, singer Debby Boone gave him a Sony Walkman cassette player with headphones. The next day, he instructed his broker to invest in Sony.
His very extensive collection of records, books, scores and sheet music was catalogued by singer/pianist Michael Feinstein.
Composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950) was part of Germany’s avant-garde musical theater scene, until 1933, and is most famous for the Three Penny Opera and its showstopper Mack the Knife, which made the Billboard Top Ten during the ‘50s via an Atco 45 by the late Bobby Darin. Weill collaborated several times with playwright Bertolt Brecht and was married to one of his best interpreters, singer Lotte Lenya (1898-1931).
Capitol Park, Augusta. (photo by Mainebyfoot)
The Augusta historic district not yet discussed is the Capitol Complex Historic District, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. This district includes several individually listed buildings: the State House, the Blaine House (official residence of Maine’s governors; see the Jan. 21 The Town Line) and the Gannett House, home of the First Amendment Museum (see the Nov. 12, 2020, The Town Line). Other buildings are the Burton Cross Office Building, the Nash School and several 19th-century residences that now house state offices.
Capitol Park, on the east side of State Street in front of the State House, has been listed individually as a historic property since 1989, and is in the Historic District.
After Maine separated from Massachusetts on March 15, 1820, the state capital was in Portland, the largest city. An on-line story by Don Carrigan, of News Center Maine, quotes historians Earle Shettleworth, Jr., and Herb Adams as they explain why and how Augusta succeeded Portland.
Portland had two disadvantages: it was not central, and would become less central as population expanded inland and north; and it was vulnerable to attack from the sea, important when residents still remembered the War of 1812 with Great Britain.
In 1822, Shettleworth said, the legislature established a committee to find a new capital site. Augusta and Hallowell both applied, as did Portland and two other coastal municipalities, Belfast and Wiscasset.
Augusta offered the current site, called Weston or Weston’s Hill; added the land running east to the Kennebec River for a park, for a total of about 34 acres; and offered to contribute toward expenses. After often fierce debates, the legislature voted on Feb. 24, 1827, to make the move, to be effective by Jan. 1, 1832, and on June 6, 1827, the state bought the land.
Legislators also gave Governor Enoch Lincoln and his Council $500 to improve the lot, including planting trees.
Despite the vote and the follow-up actions, the two historians said, every year until 1907 some legislator introduced a bill to return the capital to Portland. On Sept. 11, 1911, voters approved an amendment to the Maine Constitution stating that “Augusta is Hereby Declared to be the Seat of Government of This State.” The vote was 59,678 in favor to 41,294 opposed. The wording is now in Art. IX, Section 16, of the Constitution.
Capitol Park is the earliest of the historic district components. The park is a 20-acre rectangle bounded by State Street on the west, Union Street on the south, the Kennebec River on the east and Capitol Street on the north.
In October 1827 the Council chose General Joel Wellington to design a park plan. In a little over a month, he spent $373.13 of the $500 to create a path from State Street to the Kennebec River. The Maine Historic Preservation Commission’s 1989 application for national recognition (written by historian Shettleworth) describes an 80-foot-wide avenue, with two 30-foot-wide tree-bordered sidewalks.
Shettleworth says Edward Williams, one of Governor Lincoln’s staff, recommended a fence to keep wandering cattle from damaging the new trees.
In 1842, a granite mausoleum was erected near the river for the body of Governor Lincoln (Dec. 28, 1788 – Oct. 8, 1829), who served from Jan. 3, 1827, until his death. The on-line Maine encyclopedia says the tomb has been empty for years, and there is no record of when, why or how its contents disappeared. (See The Town Line, July 9, 2020, for more information on Governor Lincoln.)
By 1851, more trees and paths had been added. The Kennebec and Portland Railroad crossed the east end of the park along the river.
The park’s amenities disappeared during the Civil War. Shettleworth quotes a May 22, 1862, editorial in The Maine Farmer, an Augusta weekly newspaper, listing “tents and stables and barracks” spread through the park and its grounds used for “drills and evolutions.”
After the soldiers went south, the park was leased for farmland, a use The Maine Farmer writer hailed as much more useful than a military encampment. Shettleworth suggests patriotism as the motive.
By 1878, the park was again a park, similar to the 1850s version. In 1920, after James G. Blaine’s daughter donated the Blaine House as the governors’ house, Governor Carl Milliken had the Massachusetts-based Olmsted Brothers do a complete re-landscaping of the State House, the Blaine House and Capitol Park.
Portland landscape architect Carl Rust Parker was in charge of the project. His ambitious multi-year plan included adding three more tennis courts to the existing two; building a “rostrum” in the southwest as the center of an area for concerts and speeches; building a river overlook and nearby pools and a zoo to house Maine fish and land animals; and adding a Maine shrub garden in the northwest.
Shettleworth wrote that legislators were reluctant to appropriate funds for the changes. The fish pools and zoo were never built, and the tennis courts were removed by the 1960s.
The elm trees Parker carefully preserved died of Dutch Elm Disease and were replaced in 1983 with red oaks. The Vietnam War Memorial in the northwest was added in 1985.
The State House, designed by Boston architect Charles Bulfinch and deliberately imitating the Massachusetts State House, is the second early component of the Historic District. It, like Capitol Park, has a separate listing on the National Register of Historic Places, as of April 24, 1973.
The State House was deliberately sited on a high point on the northwest side of the lot donated by Augusta, rather than in the center. Its cornerstone was laid July 4, 1829. Kingsbury says dignitaries at the Masonic-led ceremony included President Andrew Jackson, Vice-President John C. Calhoun and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall.
Construction was supervised by the Commissioner of State Buildings, William King, who had been Maine’s first Governor in 1820. The four-story building was near enough complete for the legislature to meet there January 4, 1832.
The State House is built of Hallowell granite. The original central section, with a cupola and two wings extending north and south, was 146 feet long by 50 feet wide, plus the 80-by-15-foot front portico with Doric columns, according to Richard D. Kelly, Jr.’s 1973 application for National Register of Historic Places listing (Kingsbury offers different dimensions). Wikipedia says it was supposed to cost $89,000; the final cost, including furnishing and landscaping, was $138,991.34, Kingsbury wrote.
As state government grew, the interior was changed in 1852 and 1860, and in 1891 a three-story wing was built on the west side. In addition to offices, it housed the state library, now in the separate Cultural Building with the state archives and museum. The Cultural Building, built in 1967-69, has been closed since late July 2020 for asbestos removal and upgrades to the heating, cooling and electrical systems.
The State House had major exterior remodeling in 1909 and 1910. The Bulfinch front and back and the rotunda were the only things left unchanged, as the building was made 300-feet long by extending the wings and the cupola was replaced by a 185-foot dome.
Massachusetts architect George Henri Desmond designed the changes; Charles S. Hichborn, of Augusta, oversaw the work. Sculptor and Gardiner native William Clark Noble (Feb. 10, 1858 – May 10, 1938) added a 15-foot gilded copper statue of Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom, on top of the dome.
Wikipedia describes and illustrates the 2014 replacement of the dome’s 1910 copper sheathing (which had been expected to last 75 years). The work took from March to October 2014 and cost $1.2 million. The Minerva statue was regilded and repaired by EverGreene Architectural Arts, a New York City historic preservation firm.
Wikipedia says legislative leaders put a time capsule in the dome with “a book of Maine laws, a legislative handbook, the September 30 [2014] issue of the Kennebec Journal, some of the old copper, and personal items from the legislators.” The dome looks exactly the same since the restoration, except that it is now a copper-brown color instead of oxidized to green.
Kelly wrote that the Maine State House is architecturally significant as Bulfinch’s only known surviving work after he completed the Capitol in Washington in 1829 and came back to the Boston area. It is also significant as the only Bulfinch building for which his original plans are extant; they were found in the lining of a safe in the building in 1941, and as of 1973 were in the Maine State Archives.
The Burton M. Cross Office Building, a multi-story grey rectangular building west of the Capitol and connected to it by a tunnel, was originally the Maine State Office Building. It is steel-framed with a granite exterior.
Portland architects Miller and Beal designed the building in collaboration with a Boston firm. Construction started in June 1954 and was finished in the fall of 1956, historian Shettleworth wrote in his application for national recognition of the Capitol Complex Historic District, making it the youngest building in the District.
The Augusta State Facilities Master Plan, prepared by SMRT Architects and Engineers in August 2001, says the State Office Building was “state-of-the-art” when it was built, and might have been Maine’s biggest office building. In 2001, according to the SMRT website, the building was renovated, resulting in what the website describes as “a contemporary, open-office environment that supports growth in information technologies and telecommunications and leading-edge mechanical, HVAC and electrical and lighting systems to keep employees comfortable and healthy.”
The renovated building was renamed in 2001 to honor Gardiner native, Maine legislator and Maine Governor Burton M. Cross (Nov. 15, 1902 – Oct. 22, 1998). Cross served from Dec. 24, 1952, to Jan. 6, 1953, as Maine’s 61st governor, because he was state Senate President when Governor Frederick Payne resigned to become a United States Senator. In 1952, he was elected Governor. But his Senate term ended 25 hours before his governorship began, so in the interim his successor as Senate President, Nathaniel Haskell, became the 62nd governor. Cross was the 63rd governor from Jan. 7, 1953, to Jan. 5, 1955.
Other buildings in the Capitol Complex Historic District are former residences, some built around the time Augusta became the capital city. Shettleworth’s application lists the Guy P. Gannett House at 184 State Street, built in 1911; the James G. Blaine House at 192 State Street, built in 1833; the Gage-McLean House at 193 State Street, built around 1837; the Arnold-Gaslin House at 189 State Street, built around 1830; the Edward Williams House at 187 State Street, also built around 1830; and the Gage-Lemont House at 55 Capitol Street, built around 1845.
Also part of the complex is the former Nash School, a two-story brick building at 103 Sewall Street, west of the main buildings, that the state bought in 1976.
According to Shettleworth, Augusta architect Arthur G. Wing designed the Nash School in the Romanesque Revival style; L. E. Bradstreet was the builder. On April 7, 1897, the city and the two men signed a contract for $8,973. The building was finished by September 1897.
About the designers of Capitol Park
Capitol Park designer General Joel Wellington was born in 1782 in Massachusetts and moved to Albion, Maine, early in the 19th century. The source of his military title is obscure; Ruby Crosby Wiggin found him listed as a captain in one of Albion’s companies in the War of 1812.
In 1814, Wellington was on the town committee to rebuild the bridge across the head of China Lake (then part of Albion). In October 1819 he was elected to the state convention that approved separating Maine from Massachusetts, and in the new state he represented Albion in the legislature. He was also a town selectman and Albion’s first postmaster, from March 1825 until 1831.
Around 1830, Wellington and George Pond co-founded the town of Monticello, originally called Wellington Township, on the north branch of the Meduxnekeag River, in Aroostook County. The Find a Grave website says Wellington built the road south to Houlton that is now Route 1, and eventually got repaid by the federal government.
Wellington died July 12, 1865, in Fort Fairfield, and is buried in the Village Cemetery, in Monticello. The website says Pond died the same day. It also says Wellington died at his son Albion’s home (and another website says Albion helped his father clear the land for their first log cabin); but on the same page, Find a Grave lists only four descendants: daughters Harriet and Clarissa (named after his wife, Clarissa Blake Wellington [1786-1868]) and sons James C. and George Blake.
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964).
Websites, miscellaneous
by Eric W. AustinThe world is filled with too much information. We are inundated with information during nearly every moment of every day. This is a problem because much of it is simply spin and misinformation, and it can be difficult to separate the quality information from the background noise that permeates the internet.
I think being successful in this endeavor comes down to two things: learning to discern the quality sources from the sketchy ones, and getting in the habit of viewing a variety of sources before leaping to conclusions.
Let’s deal with the first one: quality sources. How do you determine the good sources from the bad?
To visualize the problem we’re dealing with, imagine a perfect source as a dot in the middle of a blank page. This hypothetical source is unbiased and completely reliable. (There is, of course, no such source or I would simply recommend it to you and this would be a very short article.)
Now imagine each and every source on the internet as another dot on this page. The distance each source is from the center dot is an indication of greater bias and lower reliability.
Oh, but you might complain, this is such a highly subjective exercise! And you would be absolutely right. Judging the quality of information on the web is not a hard science; it is a skill you need to develop over time, but it is also a skill which has become more and more essential to life in the modern age.
As a part of this mental exercise it’s important to be aware of the subjective weaknesses inherent in the human condition that are likely to trip you up. For example, we are much more likely to judge sources which align with our existing views as less biased than those sources which do not. So, you need to compensate for that when drawing the mental picture that I described above.
When I was learning to drive, our driver’s education teacher emphasized the importance of looking at both side mirrors, the rearview mirror and glancing over my shoulder before making any move in traffic such as changing lanes. Why wasn’t it sufficient to rely on only a single method to judge the safety of an action before taking it? Because each method has a blind spot which can only be compensated for by employing more than one tactic prior to making a decision. Using overlapping sources of information decreases the chances of missing something important.
Judging information on the internet is kind of like that: no one method is going to be sufficient and each will have a particular blind spot which can only be counterbalanced by employing multiple solutions.
Certain online resources can help you with drawing a more accurate picture of the sources on which you rely. The website MediaBiasFactCheck.com assesses more than 3,600 websites and news sources for bias and credibility across the internet on both the right and the left. Allsides.com is another resource which rates the political bias of websites and often places news stories from the left and right side by side so you can see how specific information is being presented. Allsides also has a handy chart rating the bias of the most well-known news sources from across the political spectrum. I don’t always perfectly agree with the ratings these sites supply (and neither will you), but it is a good place to start and should be another tool in your information-analysis utility belt.
If you are confronted with a source you do not have any prior experience with, search for it using the above resources and also do a web search for the name of the website. There may be a Wikipedia page about it that will tell you where the site’s funding comes from and whether the site has been caught peddling false information in the past. A web search may also dig up stories by other news sources reporting on false information coming from that website. There is nothing news sources like better than calling out their rivals for shoddy reporting. Use that to your advantage.
If a web search for the site turns up nothing, that could be a warning signal of its own. On the internet, it is absurdly easy to throw up a website and fill it with canned content, interspersed with propaganda or conspiracy theories to draw internet clicks and advertising dollars. It is becoming increasingly common for politically motivated groups to create credible-looking news sites in order to push a specific ideological agenda, so look for sources with some history of credibility.
So, what about bias? Isn’t everything biased? Well, yes, which is why our unbiased and perfectly reliable source above is only hypothetical. The skill you must develop is in determining how far each source is from matching that hypothetical ideal, and then building a well-rounded collection of credible sources representing various points of view.
One thing that must be mentioned is that bias and credibility are not mutually exclusive. Although sources that are highly biased are also more likely to lack credibility, this is not necessarily a strict correlation. In determining the credibility of a source, bias is only one of the factors to consider.
Let’s take a look at two news sources on opposite sides of the political spectrum: Fox News and CNN.
Initially, you might be tempted to think these sources are the worst examples to use in a discussion of reliable sources because of their high level of bias, but I would like to argue the opposite. First, it is important to recognize the difference between news and opinion. Most large news organizations separate their news reporters from their opinion commentators. If a website does not make this difference very apparent to the consumer then that may not be a source you want to trust. Separating news from editorial content is a standard policy because bias is a well-known problem for most news organizations and separating these two areas is a safeguard against too much opinion bleeding into their news. Of course, this is not a perfect solution, but such a precaution is better than nothing, and smaller niche sites often do not have the resources or desire to make this distinction.
This does not mean that smaller niche sites cannot be valuable sources of information, especially if that information is of a sort in which the site specializes, but it is something to consider when evaluating the validity of information, especially about controversial topics.
Another reason to include several high profile news sites from both sides of the aisle in your list of sources is that any missteps by these organizations are less likely to escape notice than smaller niche news sites. You can bet CNN will be quick to pounce on any sort of shoddy reporting put out by Fox News and vice versa.
So, bias is not necessarily a bad thing. It is important that we have right-leaning news organizations to rigorously investigate left-leaning administrations, just as it’s important to have left-leaning news organizations to report on right-leaning administrations. That is the beautiful mess that is the American free press. Your best bulwark against bias is to have a diversity of credible sources at your disposal representing a wide range of viewpoints.
Remember that the best safeguard against our own biases is to seek out opposing opinions in order to constantly challenge our preconceptions and force ourselves to regularly reevaluate our conclusions. Nobody is right all the time, and most of us are wrong more often than we’d like to admit. Cognitive dissonance – that sense of discomfort we feel when encountering information which threatens to upend our carefully set up boundaries and views of the world – is not something to run from but to embrace. Finding out you are wrong is often the only way to discover what is right.
Eric W. Austin writes about local issues and technology. He can be reached at ericwaustin@gmail.com.
211 Maine, a statewide initiative providing access to health and human services, has announced the relocation of its management office to 50 Elm Street, in Waterville, after the sale of the United Way building at 150 Kennedy Memorial Drive. The new office is co-located with the Mid-Maine Chamber of Commerce, Central Maine Growth Council, Maine Technology Institute (MTI), and Coastal Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) Small Business Development Center (SBDC).
Knox-Lincoln Soil & Water Conservation District is offering a hands-on workshop to teach pruning apple trees on Friday, March 19, from 9 a.m. to noon, and Saturday, March 20, from 9 a.m. – noon, at MacDougal Park, in Rockland. The same information will be covered on both days; you only need to attend one workshop.
Cheryl Denz, owner and operator of Terra Optima Farm and Landscaping, in Appleton, will teach pruning techniques needed to keep your trees productive. Whether you have a small home orchard or one old tree that feeds the deer, this workshop will teach you the basic pruning techniques needed to keep your trees alive – and bearing fruit.
Prior registration is required by Wed., March 17, for this class as space is limited. Dress appropriately for the weather and please bring any pruning tools you may have (pruners, loppers, handsaw). A limited number of additional tools will be available. In the event of cancellation for really bad weather, they will get in touch by email by 8 a.m., the day of the workshop. There is a fee: $15/individual; $25/2 members of one household (plus $1 online payment processing fee).
To register, go to Knox-Lincoln SWCD’s website: https://www.knox-lincoln.org/events-workshops. For more information, please call 596-2040 or email julie@knox-lincoln.org.
Teresa Gagne
New Dimensions Federal Credit Union (NDFCU) has announced its new Digital Branch Manager, Teresa Gagne, who began in the credit union industry, as a teller, over 30 years ago. Since then, she has worked her way up and has landed in the lending department, where her indirect lending expertise has been second to none over the past 25 years.
The directors and staff of NDFCU are excited to have Gagne join their team as her extensive experience will be valuable as she settles into her position. Her focal point will start in executing new processes and procedures that will create efficiencies department-wide. She states, “I am really excited to be part of the New Dimensions family and to join a growing team of wonderful people. I have been in the credit union industry with a lot of focus and attention on dealerships and know I can help our members find the car of their dreams. I am also very excited to be able to assist the current indirect team so they can achieve success within their career paths.” Gagne has lived in Waterville for most of her life and enjoys spending time with her husband Steve. Together they share time with their two children, grandchild, and walking their dog.
Ryan Poulin, CEO, states, “We are excited to have Terri join our team. Her years of indirect loan experience will bring our loan department to new levels not only in house but in the dealerships that work with us every day. Terri has hit the ground running since she started, and I look forward to getting her started with our current indirect lending processes and workflows. We welcome her and look forward to working with her in the years to come.”
Knox-Lincoln Soil & Water Conservation District (KLSWCD) is once again sponsoring an annual trout stocking sale for your home or farm pond. They offer two sizes, 4 – 6-inch rainbow trout and 7 – 9-inch brook trout, as well as oxygen bags that hold up to 50 fish. Minimum order is $50.
To order, you must have a current stocking permit from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (IF&W). Permit applications must be on file with KLSWCD before May 19. Please allow two weeks for IF&W to process your application. Permit applications and trout order forms are available on the KLSWCD website at http://www.knox-lincoln.org/trout-sale or contact them to receive one by mail.
Trout sale pre-order deadline is May 19 with pick-up at noon on Wednesday, May 26, at the District Office, located at 893 West St. (Rt 90), in Rockport.
For more information, visit: https://www.knox-lincoln.org/trout-sale, call 596-2040, or email rebecca@knox-lincoln.org.