I wonder why Angus King wants to receive pro-bono legal services from the Portland law firm of Pierce Atwood? It couldn’t be that the Senate candidate is out of money. After all, he pocketed eight million from the deal with Central Maine Power that made him a rich man. Plus, his pockets should be full with the cash Rob Gardiner just paid for Angus King’s 50 percent share of a $107 millionwind farm in western Maine in a wily attempt to shield himself from the criticism of conflict of interest. Then add all the rest of the money Angus King gets from his service to the corporate boards, banks, investment firms and various other part-time jobs, plus more than $25,000 in an annual pension from the State of Maine for his two terms as guv. Appears the dude is pulling in some serious dough. More than enough to afford four homes and still go bowling once a week.
A poll released today puts Angus King in the lead over everyone else in the universe. The news doesn’t surprise me though, since voters don’t really know anything about the candidates. Yet. But that doesn’t stop Angus King from touting the poll results using his standard third person technique.
I’m guessing Senate candidate Angus King won’t be attending the screening of Windfall tomorrow night at the Nickelodeon Theater in Portland at 7 p.m. Unless he wants to be lynched by an angry mob.
Apparently today is Angus King’s birthday. Which got me wondering: where will the birthday boy spend his big night? After all, you only turn 68 once.
There are lots of excuses why I haven’t been blogging, but mostly because the weather has been great. Here in western Maine we had a week-long stretch of amazing temps that gave us the opportunity to get ahead in the game of land clearing. Sweetgrass and I have decided to bring a cow out to Dreamstead in the autumn, so we need to recover more pasture.
I didn’t intend to mention the Portland Press Herald story about the fake Angus King Twitter account.(As you can see in the story, the PPH called asking if I was behind the gag.) But I found Angus King’s quote so amusing, I had to share.
"Already ... some bozo set up a Twitter feed purporting to be me – Angus King – with my picture, with all these crappy twitters. I mean, what kind of world is this?" King said.
With all the hub-bub connected to Olympia Snowe’s departure from the Senate, I almost forgot about Olympia’s appearance in a documentary concerning the censorship of my brother Bang-Bangs’ anti-war art. The Senator appears at about 4:15 into the film.
Sam Smith has always been one of my favorite leftist-progressive muckrakers who writes with wit and substance on the national scene. These days, the fella has retired to an undisclosed location on the Maine coast, where he steers the Progressive Review via the internet. This is what he has to say about “The Moderate Myth” in light of Angus King’s bid for the Senate.
With Angus King running as an independent for Maine [Senate], we will continue to be inundated with disingenuous talk of "moderation." In fact, those called moderates - like King and Olympia Snowe - are actually on the right, just not as far as some.
According to the Bangor Daily News, Senator-wannabe Angus King doesn't like that people view him as an elitist:
The Dartmouth College graduate and Bowdoin College lecturer also took umbrage at criticisms that he is an “elitist,” volunteering that he came from an unassuming family in which his grandparents quit schooling after the eighth grade.
“I don’t drink wine, I don’t know what brie is, I bowl every Thursday night and my idea of fun is to go RVing,” he said. “If that’s an elitist, this country is in trouble.”
I wonder if Angus King will announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate today or if he's too busy preparing for his big speech at Bowdoin College tonight about... THE BAY OF PIGS and procrastination.
Here it is, a half hour before Angus King's big speech at Bowdoin about the Bay of Pigs invasion (and his possible Senate run) and i suddenly had a flash... What if all this talk by Angus King is just part of his guerilla marketing campaign to sell more copies of his book about driving an RV across America and becoming inspired by Cali wind farms to bring invasive and industrial wind to western Maine? I mean, seriously, why would a rich dude his age wanna throw his hat into the ring for a battle to become Senator, only to become the low-dude on the Capitol totem poll. That's not the Angus King I know. His ego would be too big to fit in a junior senator's office.
Or maybe he'll suddenly realize that he'd be in over his big head. After all, his extensive experience with laptop initiatives and the Bay of Pigs invasion won't be too helpful during most Senate debates.
So it’s official, at tomorrow’s convention of the Maine Writers Party, I’m gonna endorse and throw my support behind the only real Mainer who I think could make a difference representing us down in Washington D.C.
There are millions of reasons why former governor Angus King shouldn’t be the next senator from the great state of Maine. For starters, he’s an out-of-touch, multi-millionaire one-percenter. Just another plutocrat pretending to be a moderate populist. And Mainers don’t need another millionaire representing them in Washington D.C. That’s why I purchased both the AngusforSenate.com and AngusKingforSenate.com domain names. Because if the former guv decides to run for Olympia Snowe’s seat, I’m gonna have a ton of fun with the Internet. And no, Angus, the domains are not for sale.
Usually the petro-industrial complex waits until the summer travel months to gouge the general public. But for some reason, the speculators have decided to start getting their profits early. Usually I don't notice the gasoline prices, since I rarely leave my house. I'm hitting the road later this week, so I was trying to come up with a budget for the trip. Yikes.
Reminds me of a film I made of my brother Bang-Bangs back in 2006 when gas prices in Washington County, Maine shot through the roof. Bang wanted to create a product that would become valuable after all the oil ran out... The Urban Yolk.
Gotta admit, I was surprised by the announcement by Gov. Paul LePage of the formation of a new prescription pill abuse task force. Actually, pissed is more like it. First of all, took him long enough. We’ve all known, for years, that Maine is in the midst of an epidemic. But my bigger problem was that Gov. LePage promised to name me the chair of the friggin’ thing. Liar. He didn’t even appoint me to the committee.
Of course the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, as an American corporation, has every right to express its views, no matter how nutty, hateful or bigoted. As Bishop Dick Malone and his hench-folk prepare to wage war against a citizen initiative to legalize gay marriage in Maine, they've upped the ante by proclaiming that gay Catholics are totally welcome to hang out in the diocese's tax-free clubhouses, provided they don't have sex. At all. At any place or any time. Gay is okay, as long as the person remains celibate.
It's good news, I guess, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe the multi-state salmonella outbreak potentially connected to ground meat sold at Hannaford stores is over. Not like anyone died from the Salmonella Typhimurium, but what interests me is the multi-state aspect of the incident, coupled with the fact that the feds, using Hannaford's own tracking system, were unable to pinpoint the source of the bacteria. Why? Probably because ground beef sold via corporate supermarket chains often times comes from multiple animals raised at multiple industrial farms, usually only meeting and mixing for the first time in the final feed-lot or processing facility. Just another reason, if you live in Maine, to buy your meat directly from the farmer. But whenever I suggest a meat CSA, people yell and scream that organic local meat is too expensive. I've had arguments with chef/owners who claim they can't get local meats the way they want 'em. All myths.
A pillhead junkie thief working at the Post Office processing center in Hampden, Maine steals at least 3,000 pills from the mail and gets 3 months in jail. Sixty miles to the north, two brothers busted for growing 30 marijuana plants in the woods near their homes in Orneville Township, get 23 months and a year respectively. The news makes me so friggin' crazy I want to scream.
Gotta admit, I did a quick double take when I walked on stage for last week’s Brown Bag lecture at the awesome Portland Public Library. Biggest crowd, so far, for a Tough Island reading. Gonna be a friendly audience, I could tell from the start, because of the laughs and giggles I heard while taking an eye dropper full of tincture as a way to demonstrate to the audience a discreet technique of attaining the wondrous benefits of Maine grown weed. That, in combination with the bowl of organic blueberry ganja I had inhaled just prior to the event, provided me with the wonderful feeling of being both intellectually relaxed and artistically energized simultaneously.
After learning that some Mainers were paying from $3.52 to $3.89 per gallon for home heating oil, I couldn't help but shudder. Again, I'm thankful for wood heat. It's becoming more and more obvious that fossil fuels ain't the heat of the future. And, gauging what's happening around here in the western part of the state, huge industrial wind farms aren't gonna be the answer, either. Myself, I'm pushing for solar electric and using wood to keep Mainers warm.
I have to wonder why the price of oil is up so much? Most likely it's the friggin' speculators playing get-rich-quick off the backs of the elderly and poor. No wonder some oldsters are selling their Oxy scripts just to make ends meet.
Sometimes a news story about a local criminal makes me want to research the perp on Facebook. That's why I checked on Arien L'Italien, the Biddeford dude allegedly involved in a shoot out with U.S. marshals on Friday night in Portland's Parkside neighborhood.
I'm having a hard time understanding the sweetheart deal for convicted thief Paul Violette, former top fella at the Maine Turnpike Authority. Apparently he "faces as many as five years" in the slammer for stealing an almost half million bucks that we know about. And while he's in the pokey, and then until he dies, he's gonna get $5,288 a month in a state pension. And his legal beagle insists that he's entitled. Because restitution has been paid.
I feel sorry for the workers over the Portland Press Herald. Their former boss allegedly squandered the company's remaining equity, and stiffed the newsprint supplier, so now the vultures are circling the rented newsroom, trying to get employees to agree to ill-advised concessions. Thankfully, the union seems to be holding strong. They rejected the latest nickel-and-dimer, but it's gotta suck, trying to focus on reporting while worrying if your desk will even exist at the end of the week.
Been wicked busy getting ready for the Brown Bag Lecture in Portland this week, only to be distracted by the scandalous goings on in the Republican presidential race. Never would have thought that Newt's open marriage and Mitten Romney's funny underpants would play so central a role in politics. What's next? Rick Santorum is gay and Ron Paul slept with his horse? Leave it the Republicats to make sex so unsexy.
Since I've been obsessing about lettuce, I thought it would be a good time to show the docu-film I made about my brother, Bang-Bangs, Island Conceptual Artist, and his chicken, Buddy, and the importance of local food and art. Sensitive viewers be warned, the chicken does die.
The proposed lettuce factory and greenhouse aquaculture industrial complex being discussed for Windham smelled bad to me from the very start. As someone with a fundamental understanding of how food is produced, both on farms and at sea, I'm always wary of anyone who proposes an easy-to-maintain, perpetual food machine. I'm skeptical because growing food requires either lots of chemicals and poisons (the agri-business model) or countless hours of hard, labor-intensive work by humans and animals working together in conjunction with nature. So when the follow-up story to the Windham proposal appeared in the Press Herald, I read it carefully, to see if I could learn anything that would lessen my skepticism. Then I spent 14 minutes on Google and discovered that the company behind the company proposing this mammoth project is... nothing. A digital shell company with no apparent real world experience. The mumbo jumbo is here. A shell company that is, according to the PPH, on the "fast track" for approval, with help from local and state officials.
Every day, it seems, there is another reference in the Maine media about the scourge of all drugs: BATH SALTS. So much so, some have started calling the Bangor Daily News the Bath Salt Daily News. Constantly, it seems, someone in Maine going nuts on the stuff, either trying to eat their own faces or ranting and ravin’ about how Governor Paul Lapage is trying to eat their face. The salts even turned up in a buried in a story about Rev. Bob Carlson, the well-respected Bangor area religious leader who turned out to be a child-molester with fraudulent credentials. Truly scary stuff. I mean, I’ve done lots of mind altering substances over the years, and never once was I tempted to light the car on fire while it was still moving and I was a passenger. The salts phenomena doesn’t seem to have taken over Portland, yet. But this past October, I was Bangor for less than 24 hours before an encounter with someone under the influence of Methylenedioxypyrovalerone.
Two decades ago today, on the stormy night of January 16, 1992, the tugboat Harkness went down in the deep waters off Matinicus, Maine’s most remote inhabited island. The tug’s three-man crew abandoned ship and bobbed in the frigid North Atlantic, thinking they were about to die. But they didn’t know Captain Vance Bunker and two of his island friends were looking for them. I re-tell this story in my book Tough Island. But, today, in honor of the 20th anniversary of this dramatic rescue, I've recorded an audio version of the tale. (click here to listen vance.mp3) I hope you enjoy a story with a happy ending.
These days, Sweetgrass and I are trying to raise as much of our own food as possible while re-claiming an old farmstead in the foothills of western Maine. This winter has been amazingly mild, conveniently allowing me to finish lots of projects ignored for far too long 'cuz I've been wicked busy. Cut and stacked seven cord. Winterized the chicken shack. Burned brush piles. And the day before yesterday, I removed the plastic cover from our 20 foot long hoop house. The New Year's cold snap finally killed the kale. Wilted and sad, I ate a last couple leaves before the roaming gang of a dozen hens discovered the bounty and took over, scratching and pecking in joy. Winter greens. Such a luxury.
That's why I think a proposal being floated in Windham to build 37 acres of greenhouse space to grow lettuce, fish, herbs and tomatoes is absolutely nuts...
According to the Press Herald, the suspect was holding about a 1,000 oxycontin. I wonder how many different dealers -- I mean Doctors -- the Oxy came from? Or how many bottles are needed to store that many pills? Or do you keep 'em in baggies? But most importantly, how does someone hold on to that many pills? Often, people learn of a pill bust and write to me to say "it's just like in Sex, Drugs and Blueberries." Well, in my novel, Ben and Richard and Ganeesh cruise around Washington County, visiting poverty-stricken friends and relatives, buying pills at wholesale black market prices with the plan to re-sell to dealers in southern Maine.
In real life, there are parts of Maine where people will keep a cancer diagnosis secret from loved ones, 'cuz they don't want anyone to know they have pain meds in the medicine cabinet...