Tag Archives: Maine

Writing fiction

I didn’t get serious about writing fiction until pretty late in my life. I found a fiction writers group at my local library in Tarpon Springs, Fla. around 2015, dusted off an old novel I had started in the 1990s and, with the help of the writers in the group, finally got it finished.

coloradas coverMuch to my surprise, it won a Silver Award in the Florida Writers Association’s annual Royal Palm Literary Awards competition. “Nailing Coloradas” is now available on Amazon in Kindle format.

So I want the term “award-winning novelist” to appear prominently in my obit.

I did a few short stories to read to the writers group, and one of them has turned into another novel, “Bernie’s Shell,” which is about 80 percent complete and will hopefully be ready for the FWA competition this year.

In doing some genealogical work on my family, and having my DNA analyzed, I came across an unanticipated story that I hope will be novel #3. There’s no way I can uncover all the facts of the story since it happened 125 years ago, so I’m going to write it in fictional format. If you don’t have the facts, make ’em up!

Here’s the link to “Nailing Coloradas.”

 

 

Should conservative Christian group participate in high school program about gay awareness?

The more I delve back into the stories I wrote 25 or 35 years ago, the more I find parallels to today’s issues. In this case, the very conservative Christian Civic League of Maine was up in arms about a gay awareness program that was being sponsored by a rural Maine high school. Much of this story from around 1990 seems to reflect the conservative positions and concerns that we see today.  I must say that Civic League President Jasper Wyman and his predecessor, Rev. Benjamin Bubar, were in my office frequently about one issue or another, and they were always friendly and polite while fighting their battles, which were often very uphill to say the least.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

READFIELD, Maine (UPI) – The conservative Christian Civic League of Maine wants equal time at a local high school’s “Teen Issues Week” because of fears that an appearance by a group of homosexuals might be seen by students as an endorsement of a gay lifestyle.

For the second year in a row, Maranacook Community High School has incorporated a visit by a group of young gays, who are slated to speak March 20 about homophobia, a hatred or fear of homosexuals, and about the problems faced by young gay people.

The gay teenagers are members of Outright, a support group for gay and lesbian adolescents in Portland, Maine’s largest city, situated about 75 miles south of the rural community of Readfield.

christian civic leagueThis year, for the first time, The Christian Civic League of Maine is demanding a chance to talk to students to combat what the group views as an endorsement of the gay lifestyle.

Jasper Wyman, head of the 93-year-old conservative organization, said students should have an opportunity to hear from people who believe that homosexuality is wrong. Wyman said he hoped a league representative would be allowed to take part in the program to explain the group’s belief that homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle.

But so far, Principal Ronald D. Jenkins has refused to invite Wyman to attend the event.

Wyman said the Christian Civic League had no objection to teaching students about homosexuality.

“We talked to Mr. Jenkins and we said we appreciated the idea of Teen Awareness Week, but we told him that it appeared to us that it could turn into a forum for the promotion of the social and political and ethical acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle,” said Wyman, whose group represents 440 Maine families and 230 churches in the state.

Wyman claims even the title of the workshop, “Homophobia and Sexual Bias,” implies that people who object to homosexuality might be labeled homophobes. Jenkins, he said, tried to assure him that the program did not endorse homosexuality.

“I said it seemed (central) to the whole argument that homosexuality should be accepted by society as morally neutral and simply a matter of personal preference, like one selects a preference for colors or flavors, and that there is no ethical or moral or cultural implications,” Wyman said. “It seems what they are saying is that it should be accepted, and that those who do not accept it are engaged in homophobia because they are bigoted. This, I think, promotes acceptance (of homosexuality).”

gay rainbowJenkins, who said he generally holds conservative views, attended last year’s session and came to believe strongly that the program has value, especially for teens who may be questioning their own sexuality.

“Personally, my own neck is pretty red,” Jenkins said. “But I came out of that session last year feeling pretty sad. Not sad because the kids were gay. I just hope in the 17 years that I taught math that I never treated anyone the way some of those kids described how teachers had treated them.”

“We are not promoting anything,” said Jenkins. “We are not trying to enter into a debate on whether being homosexual is good or bad. We are simply having young people present what it is like to be a homosexual in a heterosexual world.”

Wyman criticizes the program for failing to treat homosexuality as a moral issue.

“We are concerned that this (homosexuality) will be discussed with a pro perspective, and we feel that is biased and unhealthy and plain old wrong,” Wyman said. “I know that is old-fashioned, but we still use (those words) and believe in them. If someone is going to come in and say there is nothing wrong with (homosexuality), then someone else ought to be invited in to say that it is wrong, and why we think it is wrong.”

Shelly Chasse, a Readfield resident and mother of four young children, was one of several Christian Civic League members to bring the Maranacook program to Wyman’s attention.  Although she does not have children at the high school, she said she objected to the program, and felt that townspeople and parents had not been given a chance to comment on the plans.

“I think it is a bad example when we bring (homosexuals) in there,” Chasse said. “It is like having the parents say that we accept this lifestyle.”

But Diane Elze, an adult advisor to the Outright group, said the program is really only about helping children and adolescents get through a difficult time, and help them deal with their feelings about their own sexuality.

“People who work with young people are hungry for this information,” she said. “They are working with young people who have questions about their sexuality and their sexual orientation, and they want to do what is best for the kids. This is not an easy topic to talk about, but the bottom line is what do we need to do for kids to have them grow up healthy, happy and whole.”

A battle over a church pew

A couple of stories down, I wrote about a court case in Maine’s York County from the 1700s, a story that came to me courtesy of the Maine State Archives. This story also came from the Archives,and  also happened in York County in the mid-1700s. Yes, people were arguing over petty BS 300 years ago, just as they do now.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

AUGUSTA, Maine (UPI) – The church in what is now Falmouth was only 13 years old, but it was already overcrowded with local worshippers on Sunday mornings, and the church elders realized that something had to be done.

Although it was more than 20 years before the start of the American Revolution, the church leaders dealt with the overcrowding in the same way that a modern church might be expected to handle a similar problem; they formed a committee to study the overcrowding, and to recommend solutions.

The committee looked over the building, and talked to people in the community who wanted to join the church, which then was known simply as a “meeting house for public worship.” The members decided to recommend that an addition be built, and that 28 new pews be added for additional parishioners.

church pews 2That seemingly simple decision threw the congregation into a bitter dispute that was not settled by the early courts of York County until more than seven years later.

The records of that case, heard more than 200 years ago in York County’s Inferior Court of Common Pleas, were uncovered recently by researchers at the Maine State Archives, who have been sifting through ancient records from York County’s courts.

The records indicate that the people who built the public meeting house in 1740 were given the right to build their own pews, and to have them permanently placed inside the building.

One of the builders had been Jeremiah Riggs. And for more than 15 years, Jeremiah and his family had spent part of each Sunday in the six-foot pew that he had built and placed inside the meeting house. Joseph Cox sat up front, and Joshua Freeman and his family sat behind.

The Meeting House Committee decided the new parishioners would build an addition to the building and, like the original, would be allowed to build their own pews. The original pews would be moved to the new section of the meeting house, and the new pews would be placed where the old pews had once stood.

falmouth signThe original members would sit in their pews in the new location, the committee members decided. If they didn’t like the new spot, the members would have the option of taking over the new pew in the old location.

No one seemed to mind that plan. No one, that is, except Jeremiah Riggs.

The new addition was completed in 1759, and the pews were set up in their new locations. But Riggs didn’t like his new spot. It was cold and drafty, he complained. But he also didn’t want to give up the old pew, which he had built with his own hands years earlier.

He complained and argued, but the church leaders stuck to their decision.

When words did not work, Riggs broke into the meeting house when no one was around one November day, perhaps to try to forcibly move the new pew from his pew’s former location. He was found in the meeting house, however, and the congregation brought trespassing charges against him.

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Maine schoolhouse one of a kind

There are more than 3,000 islands off the coast of Maine, and many great stories originate on them. The islands are rich in history and culture, and many island families can trace their roots back many generations. This story, written in 1990, was about the only schoolhouse on Isle au Haut, and the fact that enrollment had dwindled over the years to just a single student.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

ISLE AU HAUT, Maine (UPI) — The green-and-white schoolhouse on this rugged offshore island functioned this year as it has for a century, but with one major difference: For most of the year, the morning bell summoned only a single student to class.

Every morning, Meredith Mattingly , 10, the son of a U.S. Parks Service ranger, walked down to the shore just outside the only village on the island to take his seat in the 100-year-old school’s only classroom. The fifth-grader had the undivided attention of his teacher, Tanice Jason.

“I believe in individualized instruction, and that happens naturally in a one-room schoolhouse,” she said.

isle au haut school picThe old wooden schoolhouse has the smallest enrollment of any school in the state. And although most of Isle au Haut’s 30 year-round residents scratch out meager incomes from the sea, the school easily has the highest per-pupil cost in the state at $44,000.

The school can offer instruction to children from kindergarten through the eighth grade. Normally, it serves between five and 10 students, and has served as may as 30. But the populations of both the school and the island have dwindled with the decline of fishing stocks off the Maine coast.

In spite of the decreasing numbers, however, the island residents have almost unanimously supported the local schoolhouse, knowing that closing the school would force even more families to leave Isle au Haut and move to the mainland.

At the end of winter, Meredith was joined by another student, fourth grader Jason Barter, who returned from the mainland with his father, a lobsterman.

Judith Lucarelli, the superintendent of schools in the district that includes Isle au Haut, said she favored keeping the island school operating, even though it is expensive.

Lucarelli said the quality of education at the old school is excellent — not simply because of the individualized instruction, but also because the school is equipped with everything from a MacIntosh computer to a well-stocked library.

Jason said this year will be her last at the Isle au Haut school, even though she enjoys the time she has spent with her handful of students.

Lucarelli said she has already decided on Jason’s replacement, who will also help ease Isle au Haut’s enrollment problems; the new teacher has two children of her own, and they will attend the school next year.

(NOTE: I checked, and the Isle au Haut school is still operating. This year (2015), it has four students, two in the fifth grade and two more in the sixth.) 

Chrome your bumpers, get tattooed

Why would I write a story about a tattoo artist? because in 1973, this guy was the ONLY tattoo artist working in Maine (in 2013, the state of Maine issued 196 tattooing licenses).

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

NEWPORT, Maine (UPI) — Tom Breitweg can chrome your bumpers and tattoo a battleship on your belly while you wait.

Breitweg runs a chrome plating shop a short distance from his home here. But it is in the room over his kitchen that “Tats Tommy,” Maine’s only tattoo artist, does his finest work.

“I learned years and years ago in New Jersey,” Breitweg said. “My uncle taught me. He was one of the oldest down in Jersey; did a lot of handwork, you know, like Japanese handwork. I’ve yet to find anyone who can do handwork like he could.”

The Japanese, apparently, are revered in the tattoo artists’ ranks. Or at least by Tats.

“Some of those Japanese pieces take months,” he said. “They’re all over the body. When they die they take the skins off.”

popeyes-tattooThe apprenticeship to his uncle ended in 1939, and Breitweg went into the Navy where he polished his craft and collected a few tattoos of his own.

“I twirled the needle in the Navy. And I had some done on myself, too. I had one done just about every time I stopped,” he said.

Breitweg said he has between 30 and 40 tattoos, including a huge eagle and an American flag flanked by roses on his chest.

“Fellow did that for me in Australia,” he said.

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Rockefeller comes to Maine

Maine wasn’t generally a place for covering national politics. But that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes national candidates came to Maine for campaign stops. Other times they came to vacation or to hang out at their summer homes. That was the case with both the Bush family and the Rockefellers. I covered Nelson Rockefeller a number of times and spent hours on more than one occasion at his summer home in the Bar Harbor/Mount Desert Island area.

In this case, you’ll note that I mention his arrive at Bar Harbor Airport, and how he went to his summer home to do some work. What I didn’t mention is that he had a bus waiting for the press corps at the airport, and that it drove us away to a fancy restaurant where we were fed a very opulent lobster dinner. That’s not something that would be allowed today, but I don’t think we thought much about it at the time. It was paid out of Rockefeller’s pocket, and I was told it was something that he did regularly for the press corps that followed him. After lunch, we were bused to his waterfront home.

 Rockefeller still 2nd spot possibility

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

SEAL HARBOR, Maine (UPI) – Members of the Northeast Republican Chairmen’s Association have put Vice President Nelson Rockefeller’s name on a list of eight persons who could serve as President Ford’s running mate.

“The list is confidential,” said New York GOP chairman Richard Rosenbaum. “We want a candidate who will broaden the appeal of the ticket, but we are not getting into specific people on the list.”

nelson mug“Vice President Rockefeller is on the list,” he added. “There’s a great feeling about him with the association.”

The list was requested by Ford, and the party leader stresses it was intended only to help him make up his mind.

Rockefeller arrived at tiny Bar Harbor Airport in a big DC-9 Monday, climbed into a black limousine and drove to his summer home for a day of work.

Members of the association met with him for more than two hours in his imposing glass-and-stone hideaway and came up with the list which will be sent to Ford.

rockefeller and fordRockefeller has written to the President, asking that his name not be considered, but some observers feel the move was made to give Ford the option of choosing a new running mate. The vice president has not said he would not accept the nomination.

“I went to Washington expecting nothing but to preside over the Senate and act as an assistant to the President,” Rockefeller aid Monday. “I have been satisfied and deeply honored to do just that.”

Indian dig reveals much on life 7,000 years ago

Since I just posted a story dealing with Maine’s Indians, let’s keep the theme going with this story written in September of 1975. I found this clip in the Brownsville (Texas) HERALD.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

ALTON, Maine (UPI) – The Indians camped next to the Pushaw Stream because the fishing was good. And they stayed for thousands of years.

A University of Maine anthropology professor, a group of associates and students spent the summer scraping away the dirt covering the campsite and learned a lot about the Indians who lived along the stream starting about 7,000 years ago.

Prof. Dave Sanger said the Indians who lived here were not the forebears of the Indian tribes who now live in Maine.

“In my opinion these people were not the ancestors of the modern Indians, such as the Penobscots,” he said.

Sanger said work at the campsite has shown that different groups lived in the area during the years.

“They came in at a time when the forests in Maine were changing their character. I think they were following the forest type they were accustomed to from the St. Lawrence Drainage area,” he said. “They stayed here until about 3,000 years ago and then all traces disappear and they seem to be replaced immediately with different tools and burial techniques.”

The Indians who lived along the Pushaw spent at least part of the year along the coast fishing and harvesting shellfish. But Sanger thinks it took them some years to learn to take advantage of the sea.

“It may be that some of the earlier people were not adapted to this coastal interim migration pattern,” he said. “I think we are getting evidence of some of the very earliest people who came into Maine not being tuned in to the marine resources. I have a suspicion that the first of these people may not have been fully aware of the potential of the Gulf of Maine.”

“These people made use of inland resources. There was good fishing. They also went to sea on occasion.”

Perhaps the best aspect of the dig site is that it has never been disturbed. Sanger said there used to be many potential dig sites in Maine, but most of them have been destroyed through construction or farming. Many of those left have been dug by amateurs. Sanger’s site is on private property and has never been dug before.

“It’s a big site and it contains several components, each representing different people at different times,” he said. “The first starts about 7,000 years ago and is right down on the glacial till. Then we come up to about 4,000 or 5,000 years ago, the so-called Red Paint people, and then 3,000 years ago we have the Susquehanna. That goes to 2,000 years ago and then we have a break.”

The site was found about five years ago and Sanger said work has been conducted slowly ever since. He estimated only about 15 percent of the site has been dug.

Maine Indians want some Baxter State Park land for reservation

During my working days in Maine, I enjoyed writing stories about the state’s Indian tribes – the Penobscots, the Passamaquoddys and the Micmacs. The big story about them (or at least the Penobscots and the Passamaquoddys – the Micmacs were excluded) was the Indian Land Claims Case. A sharp young lawyer in the 1970s found that a key treaty between the state of Maine and the Indians had never been signed by the state and, as a result, the two tribes had a legitimate claim to a huge portion of Maine’s land. The Indians had a great case and the state agreed to settle it (using federal funds – thanks, President Jimmy Carter), and the two Indian tribes suddenly became big players in Maine’s economy.

But there were other stories involving the Indians. In this particular story, the Wabanaki Confederation (made up of Passmaquoddys, Penobscots, Micmacs and Malaseets) wanted a new reservation that would include all the tribes, and they took a step in that direction by briefly occupying part of Baxter State Park. They didn’t get what they wanted, but they did draw some crucial attention to their cause.

I wish there was an Internet back in the mid-1970s. If there had been, I could have done a better job of researching this story. I would have learned that the Wabanaki Confederation was an organization that stretched back to the late 1770s, that it played a key role in the American Revolution, and that under the Treaty of Watertown signed in 1776, Wabanaki soldiers, even those from Canada, had the right to join the U.S. military, a right some have exercised as recently as the war in Afghanistan.

Not sure when this was written, probably around 1976.

 By ARTHUR FREDERICK

INDIAN ISLAND, Maine (UPI) – One of the Indians who had camped in Baxter State Park for nearly a week said Thursday his group hopes the state will provide land for a new Indian reservation.

The Indians were members of the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, MicMac and Maliseet tribes, but all belong to the Wabanaki Confederacy.

wabanaki mapStanley Neptune, who had spent six days at the park with 27 other Indians, said the Wabanakis hope to leave their own reservations and start a new reservation. He said the Wabanakis feel the present tribes are losing their culture, and the new group hopes to preserve the Indian ways.

Neptune also said the Indians left the park because they had accomplished what they wanted, and not because of pressure from park and state officials.

“Everything that happened was good,” Neptune said.

Neptune said the Indians had gone to the park hoping that part of Baxter could be allotted to them. Mount Katahdin, located within the park, is considered a sacred place by the Indians.

“Our idea was to have a place to live,” Neptune said. “We want a place for the Wabanaki Confederacy.”

wabanakiflagcolorNeptune said lawyers are negotiating with the state to see if some land, perhaps some of the state’s public lands, could be set aside for the Wabanakis.

“It was our hope at first to get part of the park, but we found we couldn’t stay there,” Neptune said. “It was a place to go to get answers, and we got answers. We left because it was time to leave.”

Neptune said the state agreed to drop illegal entry charges against nine Indians who were arrested when they tried to join the original group. He also said that tribal governors, who had opposed the action at the park at first, seemed to be changing their minds, and said a meeting between the governors and those who took part in the encampment at Baxter was set for Friday.

“The governors were against us, but now they are changing their thinking.” Neptune said. “We’re trying to save our culture. Not too far in the future, there won’t be any more Indian people.”

Another Indian who had gone to Baxter, Sam Sapio, said the Wabanakis had taken part in some spiritual events at Baxter, but he declined to elaborate.

“We went up there to do some of our traditional things,” he said. “I can’t tell you about that.”

Mount Katahdin has been a spiritual place for Maine’s Indians for many years.

“When they had trouble in the tribes, they would go there to meditate,” Sapio said.

Gov. James B. Longley, who on Wednesday said the state would remove the Indians by force if necessary, said he was glad they had left on their own.

“It is a fine example of how reasonable people can accommodate what is right without needless conflict,” he said.

Jud Strunk uniquely remembered by his sons

Jud Strunk was a well-known folk singer and entertainer who lived in the western mountains of Maine — right in the middle of ski country. His career had a couple of highlights; he had a hit single called “Daisy a Day” that did well on the pop and country music charts, and he spent a season as a regular on the hot comedy show “Laugh-In.” But mostly he was a talented Maine guy who never really wanted to leave his native state. In 1981, at the age of 45, he died when he suffered a heart attack while flying his vintage airplane near Maine’s Carrabassett Valley Airport. I didn’t know him very well, but I do remember drinking with him and a group of people at a bar in Winthrop, Maine in the late 70s. This is a story about how Strunk’s sons memorialized him several years afte rhis death.

Cross-country trip, film evoke folk singer’s windswept ways 

By ARTHUR FREDERICK 

KINGFIELD, Maine (UPI) — Jud Strunk, a folk singer and a regular on the TV show “Laugh-In,” was best known around Maine’s ski country, where he played music and raised hell until a plane crash killed him in 1981.

jud strunk album picJust before his death, Strunk, 45, and his teenage son Joel loaded up a battered Volkswagen Thing and headed out on an 8,000-mile trip that took them to Colorado and Texas and a lot of places in between.

Twenty days after their return to Maine, Strunk’s World War II-vintage plane crashed in the woods near Carabassett Valley Airport in Maine’s western mountains.

Joel and his brothers, Rory and Jeff, wanted to find a suitable way to make note of their father’s life. After talking about the trip and about a poem Strunk had written entitled “Bury Me on the Wind,” they decided to re-trace the route in the same old orange Thing and scatter their father’s ashes along the way.

Jeff couldn’t make the trip, but Rory and Joel set out in the convertible, vowing to keep the top down throughout the journey because of their father’s love of the wind.

A videotape Rory made of the trip, entitled “Bury Me on the Wind,” premiered last month at a local ski resort tavern and has been gathering plaudits ever since. The video won second prize in a national contest sponsored by Sony, and also placed in the American Film Institute’s student video contest.

“After my dad passed away, we were listening to his music and we got the inspiration to retrace the trip,” Rory said. “He loved the wind, he loved flying, and we thought that scattering his ashes on the wind during the trip was a most appropriate way of saying goodbye.”

The original trip was part work, part play. Like many musicians, Strunk went on tour during the summer. During this tour, he and his son combined gigs with visits to places that had special significance to Strunk.

The memorial trip faithfully followed the route of the original tour, with the brothers scattering their father’s ashes at important spots along the way.