May in Maine

 Spring often feels like it takes forever to arrive here, compared to the rest of the lower 48.

Rains first appear in late February but, as if someone were aggressively cranking the faucets in a shower back and forth, it snows again, then kind of melts, then rains, then snows..... it goes on for weeks. In March, the snowdrops sprout, the snowpack mostly melts away with a couple of rains, but then it snows a little and then rains again, and with the last fleeting sleeting of frozen precip falling in early-to-mid April. Anyone here who puts their snow shovels away into storage before Tax Day is a fool.

Daffodils sprout up. Crocuses too. But where are the buds on the trees? Not here yet. Temperatures rise to the mid-40s during the day, then back toward freezing at night. It's April still, and people are still lighting their stoves at night to take the edge off. I keep light gloves in the pockets of my fleece, and a tuque within easy grasp in case I need it when I head out the door. The days are chilly. 

But as April shifts to May the dial noticeably starts to turn. The evening sunlight stretches past dinnertime now, and I can put away my thick winter-gauge pants in the back of the closet. The grass is getting fairly green but still the leaves on the trees have yet to flesh out. As the sun sets, I can see the glow through the woods on the west side of my house more easily than I will in the summer and early fall.

Then, finally, the peepers announce themselves. As twilight fades into night, their chirpy whistles pierce through the dark from the ponds and marshy wetlands of my neighbors. The rains are more frequent and heavy now, and the frogs and salamanders love it. I walk down the road in the murky mist, headlamp beaming from my forehead, and find them crossing the black asphalt like jumping leaves or waddling short sticks. If they have not already been flattened, I help them across, the whistles a few yards away almost deafening as the call of timeless amphibious migration propels them forward, out of my hands into the watery reeds. 

The days get warmer. I open the windows of my car more as I glide down the road, gleefully and finally free of the wintery slush that forced me to slow down. The temperatures climb above 60 and, if the sun is out for the day, it almost feels like summer's glory has fully returned, bringing with it some out-of-state plates and reopening roadside lunch takeout stands. And I already have seen some fog out in the cove.

I get out my flip flops and keep them by the door, though I can go outside barefoot if I want to. I test out the lawnmower to make sure it still works, and in my eagerness I clean up the gas grill, even if I won't use either for another week. Forsythia is blooming and plants are coming up in the garden now. We'll have to get on that pretty soon.

But no lilacs yet, and we'll have to fight our way through 3 weeks of biting black flies before the spring flowers arrive in full force. And still no leaves, though the green buds on the branches are visible now. And the peepers are still chiming at night. 

As much as I wanted February to fly by, now that we're here I want May to slow down. It's not too hot to need the shade of the trees just yet, and I'm good with the flowers we have so far. It's a sweet spot where winter is once again a memory but the heat of summer's creep from further south has yet to drive throngs of tourists and short-timers into our midst; the worst of those seasons are not upon us, for the time being.  

My window is open, yet I see nothing in the dark of night outside. The birds have gone to sleep, but the frogs not yet. I want to be awake, to feel the cool breeze through the screen and smell the hint of ocean and evergreens. Still, I am tired, and also feel the temptation to close my eyes and nod off by the window. And if I do it soon and get enough rest, I might wake with the dawn and the birds looking for their breakfast in my yard.

Orphan piano poses transport problem on remote Maine Island

NOTE: This story was originally published in 2002.

FRENCHBORO, Maine - In the film "The Piano" a 19th century Scottish woman, played by actress Holly Hunter, arrives by ship in New Zealand on an isolated beach and is left there with her belongings and her daughter. Her most prized possession, a piano, is left on the shore as her new husband insists it is too cumbersome to carry to their home through the forested, hilly terrain.

Technology has improved since the period portrayed in the film, but a similar problem exists today on Great Duck Island, a 262-acre piece of land located seven miles out to sea off Mount Desert Island.

There, a piano sits unplayed and nearly forgotten in a dilapidated building whose owner wants the structure torn down. A man who owns a seasonal home on Great Duck wants to have the piano but, with no roads connecting the properties and no boat dock on the island, there is no easy way to transport the instrument to his home.

No one lives year round on Great Duck, the vast majority of which is a nature preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy. The island is more than a mile long, about half a mile wide, and has few buildings on it. At the southern tip is a lighthouse owned by College of the Atlantic but operated by the Coast Guard. At the northern end, in an old log cabin built from trees on the island, sits the upright piano.

The conservancy, which owns the building, would like to demolish the structure to make sure it does not pose a threat to the safety of incidental visitors, according to Doug Radziewicz, the conservancy's Down East preserves steward.

"It's a beautiful building," Radziewicz said last week. "It was well put together, but it has deteriorated so much that repairs would be astronomical. It is a hazard right now."

The cabin, and a few smaller ones on the property, were built by George Cloutier, a psychologist who bought the island in 1963, Radziewicz said. Cloutier opened a Gestalt therapy clinic on the island in 1975 and had the piano brought out to Great Duck for the enjoyment of the clinic's visitors. The piano was left behind when Cloutier sold his property to the conservancy in 1985, according to Radziewicz.

Most of the contents of the cabin have been removed but because of its size the piano remains in the building. The conservancy does not want to destroy the piano with the building, Radziewicz said, nor does it want to keep the instrument, he said.

"We have no use for the piano," Radziewicz said. A piano tuner has inspected the instrument and determined that it is in "OK shape," he said, though it could stand to have its finish restored. He added that he does not know who manufactured it or how much it is worth.

A Massachusetts doctor who knew Cloutier and owns 5 acres on Great Duck would like to have the piano, Radziewicz said. Dr. Rich Borofsky declined to be interviewed, but according to Radziewicz the summer resident has the right of first refusal to the instrument.

"We're happy to let him have it," Radziewicz said, "but there's a lot involved in getting the piano from one point to another."

Andrew Peterson, COA's marine superintendent, said dense forest separates Borofsky's house, which is also near the island's northern tip, from the conservancy cabin. The college keeps a tractor with a trailer in tow on the island to help maintain the lighthouse and the other buildings on the 12 acres it owns, Peterson said. Though there are some paths wide enough for the tractor between the conservancy buildings and the college property, no such paths lead to Borofsky's place, he said.

Carrying the piano there by hand would be a formidable task, he added.

"The thing must weigh 600 pounds or so," Peterson said.

Radziewicz said that Leach's storm petrel, one of the protected species of birds that summer on the island, burrows underground to build its nests. Carrying a 600-pound instrument across anything but a well-established path could pose a crushing threat to the birds and cause the people carrying it to trip, he said.

"We would not alter the landscape in order to get the piano from our property to [Borofsky's] property," Radziewicz said. Because of the seasonal presence on the island of the petrels, black guillemots, bald eagles and other birds, the nature preserve on the island is closed to visitors each year from Feb. 15 to Oct. 15, he said.

Peterson, who travels to the island by boat in the summer and hitches rides on a Coast Guard helicopter in the winter, said there is no good place to land a boat on Great Duck.

"The island is too exposed to build those kind of facilities," Peterson said. It might be possible to get the piano onto a barge beach near the conservancy cabin, but there is no place by Borofsky's house where the barge could safely unload the piano, he said.

"You'd have to pick optimal weather [to even try a barge landing on the island]," Peterson said. "There aren't too many days where you could get a wheeled vehicle ashore."

It is more feasible to transport the piano by barge to the mainland than it is to take it to the doctor's house by water, he said. A cargo-capable helicopter is another option, but they tend to be expensive, he added.

Because of the lack of activity on Great Duck in the winter, the piano does not have to be moved anywhere within the next couple of months. One option is for the college to transport the piano in the spring to one of its buildings at the southern tip of the island so that the conservancy can dispose of the cabin, Peterson said.

In the meantime, the parties will continue to work together to determine the piano's fate.

"We shall see," Radziewicz said.

Acadia visits topped 3.96 million in 2024

                           

Acadia National Park had its third-busiest year ever in 2024, according to the National Park Service.

The park had an estimated 3.96 million visits last year, according to park service data. That total topped the 3.88 million visits it had in 2023, but trailed the 3.97 million visits it had in 2022 and the 4 million visits it had in 2021.

Before 2021, the park’s highest number of visits in any calendar year was 3.5 million visits in 2017. Since 2016, when both the park and the National Park Service celebrated their 100th anniversaries, visitation to the coastal national park has soared above 3 million visits per year.

The exception is 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic limited the number of visits to 2.67 million. Since then, the number of people visiting the park has increased even further, as people have avoided crowds more and sought to spend more time outside.

This past October, when conditions in the park were fairly dry and balmy, the park had a record number of visits for that month with nearly 568,000.

The annual crush of visitors, however, has turned into a divisive issue in Bar Harbor, which is the primary service town for park visitors and has a population of only 5,000 people. 

Despite objections from the local tourism industry, Bar Harbor voters have adopted limits on vacation rental properties and twice have decided to greatly reduce the amount of cruise ship traffic that the town draws each summer and fall.

Town officials also are exploring the possibility of imposing limits on hotel development in order to ease the pressure on residents, and on public infrastructure and services. 

Red Lobster - someone else's idea of Maine - declares bankruptcy

The Red Lobster logo is displayed on the door of a restaurant in Yonkers, New York, U.S., on Thursday, July 24, 2014.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

There are no Red Lobster restaurants in Maine, though there used to be. Several years ago, the Florida-based chain came to grips with the fact that it suburban locations could not compete in Maine with genuine lobster pounds for both scenery and freshness of taste. It closed down restaurants in Bangor and Auburn in 1998.

But it still sought to capitalize in other ways on Maine, which a Red Lobster spokesman once said was the company's "spiritual home." In 2007, the company sought to mimic the casual appeal of Bar Harbor's scenic downtown with new locations it was opening that year. It still offers a "Bar Harbor Lobster Bake" on its menu.

The company buys a lot of Maine lobster, of course, but has struggled to maintain its appeal. Last week, new broke that it ws closing dozens of locations natiowide. Yesterday, the company filed for bankruptcy so it can try to restructure its finances (read the AP story here).

In light of the company's financial straits, I've pasted below a BDN story from November 2007 (I can't find it elsewhere online) about the restaurant's efforts to make it customers feel like they were visiting Bar Harbor when they came through the doors:

A sense of place Red Lobster, one of state's largest crustacean customers, adopts 'Bar Harbor' design

The concept of using Maine imagery to attract visitors or customers is nothing new.

Tourism industry officials, Chambers of Commerce, resort owners and others long have disseminated images of the state's rocky coastline, its forested mountains, its abundant wildlife and its lobster boats to capture the interest of people with some disposable income. L.L. Bean Inc., the Freeport-based retailer, is known worldwide for its catalogs, which are filled with photos of attractive people hiking through rugged and scenic terrain while wearing the company's famous flannel shirts and boots.

Such marketing usually is done either to draw people to Maine or customers to a company that is based here. But there is one large national restaurant chain which has no customers or even employees in Maine that is giving credit for its new design to one of the state's most popular tourist destinations.

Red Lobster, which has more than 680 locations in North America, says Bar Harbor is the "inspiration" for the interior design it has chosen for all of its new restaurants, according to a press release recently issued by the company.

The Red Lobster restaurant nearest to Bar Harbor is more than 350 miles away in Wethersfield, Conn., the only New England state where the chain operates. Red Lobster used to have Maine outlets in Bangor and Auburn but closed them in 1998 without offering a public explanation for shutting them down.

Restaurants with the new design scheme have been opened in Inglewood, Calif., near Cleveland in North Olmsted, Ohio, and most recently in Sherman, Texas.

"We do consider Maine to be our spiritual home," said Wendy Spirduso, director of communications for the Orlando, Fla.-based company. "Bar Harbor is one of [Red Lobster President Kim Lopdrup's] favorite spots in Maine."

According to Spirduso, the new restaurant design does not employ any elements specific to Bar Harbor - diners will not see any re-creations of the local pier or of Cadillac Mountain - but it does try to capture the warm, casual atmosphere of life on the Maine coast without being kitschy.

Photos of the new Texas restaurant provided by Red Lobster show a bar, lobby and dining room with muted colors, finished surfaces in stone and dark wood, and brass details such as light fixtures and coat hooks. The only distinct, recognizable theme elements in the photos are a white, life-saving ring mounted on the wall of the bar and a model boat hull on display in the lobby.

Big buyer of Maine lobster

Red Lobster's parent company, Darden Restaurants Inc., also owns the Olive Garden, Smokey Bones, and Longhorn Steakhouse restaurant chains, among others. Red Lobster had $2.58 billion in sales for 2006, according to the company.

Despite its lack of a formal presence in Maine, Red Lobster does conduct business in the state. It is said to be one of the largest buyers of lobster from Maine, where nearly $300 million worth of the crustaceans were caught in 2006. With about 7,000 licensed lobstermen in a state with fewer than 1.5 million residents, the lobster industry is considered one of the top industries in Maine.

Dane Somers, executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, said that outside of processors and some supermarket retailers, Red Lobster may be the Maine lobster industry's biggest customer.

"That's probably safe to say, as far as restaurants go," he said. "They are a very large organization. We'd like to think their choice is always [to buy] Maine lobster, but that might not always be true."

Somers' assumption is correct, according to Spirduso. The company buys lobster from other parts of the world, she said, but buys at least 75 percent of its lobster from New England and Atlantic Canada. The bulk of that lobster, she said, comes from Maine.

Spirduso declined to say how much lobster Red Lobster serves at its restaurants, saying it considers such information proprietary. But she did say lobster is the second most popular item on the restaurant's menu, immediately behind shrimp.

As for crediting Bar Harbor for inspiring Red Lobster's new design scheme, Spirduso said Lopdrup has been to the town numerous times and was inspired by the setting and quality of food served at the local restaurants. Lopdrup's affinity for Mount Desert Island, she said, is one of the reasons the company sponsors the MDI Marathon.

Chris Fogg, executive director of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, said the concept of using Bar Harbor or Maine imagery as a marketing tool makes sense.

The town has a nationwide reputation for its scenery and authenticity, he said. The fact that it has fantastic views of the coast and at the same time a working waterfront where local fishermen come and go from their boats helps to draw millions of tourists to Mount Desert Island every year.

"In a lot of ways it's a quaint seaside town, not to mention the unbridled beauty of Acadia National Park," Fogg said. "I think it's interesting for people to go down to the pier and to see lobstermen going out for their daily run."

Red Lobster does not have restaurants in Maine because of competitive reasons, according to Spirduso. As the new restaurant design is implemented, she said, the company hopes it will be able to expand, which could mean reopening restaurants in the state down the road.

"We consider Maine to be the prime place for seafood," Spirduso said. "You are blessed with many, many restaurants up there that specialize in lobster."

Red Lobster does not even have any employees in Maine to serve as buyers for the company's seafood, she said, but that also could change, depending on the company's growth. Darden Restaurants has a training center for Olive Garden chefs in Tuscany, Italy, and has considered opening a similar Red Lobster training facility in Maine, she said.

"It is key to us," Spirduso said of Maine's role in supplying the chain with seafood. "It's also key in the inspiration it provides. Maine is important to us, absolutely."

Giving back to Maine

Gary Allen, the MDI Marathon's race director, said Red Lobster sponsors the race because it wants to "give back" to Maine. He said that by not having any restaurants in the state, Red Lobster has very little to gain financially by sponsoring the event.

"They contacted us [about becoming a race sponsor]," Allen said. "They feel a lot of the success of their business is due to Maine."

Allen said that in founding the race six years ago, he set out to create a high-profile, nationally known event, a goal that would be impossible without the backing of a big company such as Red Lobster.

In the past year, the company has used coasters that promote the MDI Marathon at all of its restaurants, Allen said. On average, Red Lobster serves more than 1 million beverages every week, he said.

"You can't buy that kind of advertising," Allen said. "There's no way we could afford them."

Somers said Red Lobster's use of Maine imagery does not simply boil down to a corporation co-opting the Maine "brand" for its own profit. Though Red Lobster does not employ anyone in the state, he said, its support of the lobster industry benefits Maine. And Red Lobster's customers may be inspired to visit Maine if they enjoy their dining experience, he said.

"I think it certainly does help," Somers said. "It promotes the whole lobster industry."

In Bar Harbor, the town manager viewed Red Lobster's public reference to the town much the same way.

Dana Reed said many local companies incorporate the words "Bar Harbor" into their business names but that the town is not likely to consider trademarking its name. An Ohio native, Reed said that before he moved to Maine 21 years ago to take his current job, he had heard about Bar Harbor and had always wanted to visit.

"The more times Bar Harbor gets mentioned out there, the better it is for our tourism business," Reed said. "Imitation is the best form of flattery."

Wooden piers, key to Maine's fishing and tourist economies on the coast, keep getting hammered by winter storms

 

Debris litters the deck of a large wooden pier in Southwest Harbor that was severely damaged in storms that caused coastal flooding in January.

The map below shows where wooden piers and floating docks have been damaged in multiple winter storms between December 2023 and March 2024. Most of the damage occurred during twin storms on Jan. 10 and Jan. 13. In all storms, high winds, heavy seas and unusually high tides worked together to flood low-lying waterfront infrastructure. The overall damage to Maine's coast, which includes shorefront roads and private homes (which are not specifically labeled on this map). The cost of the overall damage from the December and January storms is estimated to be $90 million.

Tito's vodka is now the dominant booze in Maine

Tito's Handmade Vodka, the Texas-based spirit that a dozen years ago no one in Maine had ever heard of, is on the verge of doing something big in our small state. 

After Allen's Coffee Favored Brandy dominated liquor sales in Maine for more than a decade, and then Kentucky-based Fireball Cinnamon Whisky held the top spot for two years, the vodka brand in 2023 led the way with more than $19 million in bottles sold. Allen's CFB best year was in 2009, when it had $12.9 million in sales. Fireball was the biggest seller in Maine in 2018 and 2019 but had its best year in 2020, when it sold $13.3 million worth of its cinnamon-flavored whisky here. 

Tito's has been the top seller in Maine for 4 years in a row now, and its numbers keep going up. In 2020 it totaled $13.4 millon, then topped $15.7 million the year after that and in 2022 rang up more than $17.7 million in sales. Over those four years, while it held the top spot each year, its sales in the state have increased a whopping 43 percent. At the rate it's going, Tito's seems certain to exceed $20 million in sales in Maine in 2024. 

What makes the steep climb more impressive is that liquor sales overall in Maine are not rising at the same rate, which is probably good for our collective health. Since 2019, the volume of cases of liquor sold in Maine has increased 10 percent, while the gross revenue generated from those sales has increased 24.5 percent. Even as the volume of booze sales increases in Maine, Tito's is getting a bigger market share.

Of course, Fireball sells more bottles than anyone else because of the ridiculous undying popularity of its nips -- the 50 milliliter bottles that make for quick hits and sells well at gas stations and convenience stores, and which frequently can be found discarded along Maine's roadsides. Fireball sold more than 1 million of those bottles in Maine last year, bringing in $2.2 million in sales.

But the unit the dominates sales value in Maine is Tito's "handle," the 1.75 liter bottle that has (as that same size does for other brands) a glass handle that makes it easier to carry. Tito's sold 450,000 handles last year for more than $10 million -- which is more than either Tito's or Allen's earned for all their bottles sizes in 2018, when Fireball displaced Allen's, and nearly as much as Fireball's all-sizes total that year. Allen's handle placed second last year with just under $4 million in sales.

So, yes, Tito's is currently the dominant brand of booze in Maine, but how long any brand might hold that spot seems less assured than it used to be in the 2000s and 2010s, when Allen's ruled the Maine bartender's well. Some other brand easily could come along in a few years, throw millions of dollars into a hip social media campaign, and get swept into the top spot.

Which, quite frankly, makes following Maine's annual liquor sales totals little less interesting. When Allen's was #1, part of what made it fun was that Allen's was relatively unheard outside of Maine, even in Massachusetts, where it is made. Travel a state or two outside New England, and many bartenders likely won't even know what a "coffee brandy" is. Ask, and you might well be served a mug of coffee and a snifter of Hennessy.

Whether or not Allen's is among the best (it's not bad, but not great either) is beside the point. It still is a favorite among many 40+ year-old drinkers who remember going out and having only a wall-mounted TV or other bar patrons to occupy their attention (i.e., before people stared at their phones). Allen's is trying to feed that Maine-centric nostalgia now by selling its product in Maine lighthouse-shaped bottles that it promotes as collector's items.

I don't see the nationwide brands bottling their products in Maine-specific containers anytime soon. Tito's may be the popular booze of the moment, but I'd be surprised if it still leads the charts in another few years. It may never happen again, but it would be fun if Maine once more defied national trends when another brand of booze rises to the top of the state's bottle heap.  

This is why I created the Maine Mansions Map

Shown above is an online, interactive map I first created in 2013 while researching mansions on Mount Desert Island, and have been curating ever since. Now that it has gotten more than 400,000 views (as of Jan. 2024) I figured it would be worth writing up an explanation of what sort of info I post with the map.

It is not intended to be a “lifestyles of the rich & famous” sort of thing, even though that is one inescapable aspect of it. Maine predominantly is a rural state with a low ratio of wealthy year-round residents but its scenery attracts many very wealthy people from out of state who, either simply by paying property taxes or by also employing local people and helping to fund local institutions, have a significant impact on the communities where they spend their precious vacation time. Mainers cherish their privacy and afford these seasonal residents a lot of it, which is fair and appropriate, but given the impact these mansion owners can have on these small towns, there is legitimate public interest in knowing, to an extent, who they are and what kind of backgrounds they have.

I’m also motivated by my enjoyment of maps and of zooming in and exploring places with Google’s satellite imagery. Some of the houses I find appealing, though I’m not much of an architecture buff. Some of them, on the other hand, are not that attractive. Others are notable for their size or location, and still others  have modern and daring designs that make them stand out among their neighbors or surrounding landscape. Some of the houses themselves have histories that are worth noting. Some of them are quite visible from public vantage points, and others are tucked away and difficult to get a first-hand glimpse of unless you saunter up the driveway (something I won’t do and don’t recommend) or, in many cases, have the use of a boat. 

Google’s satellite imagery, obviously, has made getting an aerial view of these mansions a lot easier than it used to be. What’s more, there are a lot of them, especially along the coast– too many, frankly, to tag and identify them all. There has to be criteria for which properties get listed, lest the map turn into heaping pile of overlapping colored stars and pop-up windows, many of which may contain very little worthwhile information. 

 Luckily, not all “mansions” are created equal, which is reflected in the color-coded scheme of stars I’ve employed to tag the properties: White stars = properties with estimated values of less than $1 million. Yellow stars = from $1 million up to $3 million. Orange stars = from $3 million up to $5 million Red stars = from $5 million up to $10 million. Purple stars = $10 million and above. 

Some of the mansions are big and expensive by anyone’s standard – Robert Greenhill’s mansion overlooking northern Moosehead Lake and Dick Wolf’s mansion in Seal Harbor on MDI come to mind. Others might stand out in their local communities but don’t come close to rivaling large, luxury homes elsewhere in the state. This is why I have tagged so few properties in Washington County, in far eastern coastal Maine, which is considered one of the state’s poorest counties even though it has some of its most beautiful coastal scenery. Simply put, there are very few (if any) big, luxury houses there - which I am sure many locals would say is a good thing). 

 Usually I can find the estimated value of a house by looking up municipal or state property tax assessments online or, if they are for sale, by finding the list price on real estate websites. Size I don’t really consider, though frequently there is close correlation between how big a house is and how much it is worth. But if I found a really small house worth, say, $2 million, I would probably tag it because it would be pretty unusual. 

 The extent of assessing information available online varies greatly from town to town, which is why details provided on the map can be inconsistent from one town to the next. Some towns provide only acreage and land and building values, while others also provide the year the house was built, square footage, the number of bedrooms and bathroom and even exterior photographs. All online assessing information includes the name of the owner, be it the name of a person or a private LLC. 

 Some towns don’t provide any assessing information online at all. Friendship, Sorrento and Islesboro are examples of towns that do not. All four of these coastal towns have expensive, seasonal waterfront homes, however, and in the case of Islesboro some of them clearly are qualified to be listed among the most exclusive summer estates in Maine. For Islesboro (which I hope to visit at some point so I can look though the town’s public paper assessing records), I’ve made rough guesses based on local real estate listings or by doing quick comparisons with other similar oceanfront homes elsewhere in the state. 

 I try not to tag houses with an estimated value less than $1 million, though I do make some exceptions. Private ocean islands have unusual appeal, so I might identify some that have houses, especially if the islands are for sale, even though they might be listed for less than $1 million. I also make exceptions for well-known Mainers such as former Gov. John McKernan, who co-owns a summer house at Hancock Point near Ellsworth, and for UFC founder Dana White, who graduated from high school in Hermon and owns a modest property in Levant. 

 I also take into consideration where in Maine the property is located. It seems every other shorefront home in Northeast Harbor and neighboring Seal Harbor on MDI is worth at least $2 million, so I try to list only the more expensive ones or those with interesting information about them or their owners that I can find online. This same higher standard applies to the high-end communities of Prouts Neck in Scarborough, Biddeford Pool, Camden and Rockport, and maybe one or two other coastal towns. 

Conversely, inland towns have much fewer mansions, so any big house away from the coast that is worth $1 million or more is much more likely to get tagged than a house of the same value on the coast. The exception to that rule would be Washington County, where I have yet to find any luxury oceanfront house worth more than $1 million. 

If the house (not just the land) seems valuable enough to tag on the map, I’ll try to find out who the owner is. Often it is easy – sometimes surprisingly so – but often it is not. In the case of properties with an LLC as the listed owner, it can take a lot of effort to try to track down other verifying information online, usually in the form of news reports, court filings, or business information. Sometimes those efforts come up empty. My strong preference is to find out the name of the person or persons who actually own the mansion and to find basic information about how they came by their wealth. 

If I can find these things, I’ll include links in the pop-up window for that property to news reports or web pages that have information about the owners. Sometimes I will tag a luxury home even if I cannot find out or verify who the owners are, but the house itself has to be striking or interesting enough on its own merits without having to know to whom it belongs. In these cases, I make sure to provide links to information about the actual house, such as real estate listings, photos and descriptions on architect websites, or articles from architecture or home and lifestyle-focused publications. One such example of this is modern house in Camden owned by Toriko LLC which features a highly unusual design in which two parts of the house are connected by a long indoor, single-lane-width swimming pool. Evergreen Estate in Greenville, which comes with a surrounding private 9-hole golf course, is another.

One last thing: I want to stress that all the information posted about properties identified on the map is readily and legally available to the public, either from the government entities that assess property taxes or from media reports, public real estate listings, court documents, and the like. I have found some things online about people or properties that I do not fully trust to be accurate or appropriate and which, as a result, I woin't link to, on the map or anywhere else. All of the information posted with the map, including links, is provided with the intent of being objective, fair and impartial.

I Got It Wrong

But I nearly got it right! I predicted that M.S. Walker would next pick Pemqauid Light in Bristol, Maine for its next model in its lighthouse bottle series, though I did mention Portland Head Light as a candidate. I don't think there's any bad choice to be made here, though I do think Pemaquid would be an excellent pick, and would help spread the love alpong the coast between Cumberland and Washington counties.

Oh well. It still tastes the same, no matter what (clean) container they put it in.

A longtime favorite liquor in Maine is trying to boost its sales with bottles shaped like local lighthouses

In each of the past 3 years, Allen's Coffee Flavored Brandy has produced special editions of its signature product in porcelain bottles made to look like Maine lighthouses. Pictured from left to right are bottles representing West Quoddy Head, Petit Manan, and Portland Breakwater (or "Bug") Light.

Allen's Coffee Flavored Brandy has decided to pull an ace out of its sleeve as it tries to retain its cultural dominance in Maine.

It is now selling its popular coffee-flavored liquor in limited-edition porcelain bottles that pay homage to the state's distinctive lighthouses. 

Not too long ago, Allen's had no need to try to offer something special (other than the brandy, of course) to its customer base, which for years consumed the coffee-flavored booze at rates that all liquor makers envied from a distance. Allen's had an unprecedented run as Maine's top-selling brand from the 1990s until recently, outpacing all others by millions of dollars in annual sales.

That changed in 2018, however, when Fireball Cinnamon Whisky eked past Allen's for a total of $10.1 million in sales to Allen's $9.6 million. Since then, Allen's sales have slipped even further and now ranking behind Fireball and Tito's Handmade Vodka. in 2021, Tito's sold the most with $15.7 million in revenue while Fireball had nearly $13 milllion. Allen's was a distant third at less than $8 million.

But the executives at M.S. Walker, the Massachusetts-based firm that created Allen's decades ago, know they still have an advantage in Maine that the national brands don't: it retains a deep identification with the state unmatched by other liquors, even if it is no longer the top seller.

During its long stretch of sales dominance in Maine, Allen's sales in other states paled in comparison and, outside New England, they didn't exist at all. The company has long embraced its "Champagne of Maine" nickname and on its website proudly promotes the product as "a Maine tradition."

The lighthouse series clearly aims to build upon that. By issuing a different Maine-specific, collector's-edition lighthouse bottle run each year (three more are planned, including one later in 2023), Allen's can charge more for a bottle of brandy and at the same time remind liquor lovers that Fireball (which actually is made in Maine) and Tito's and all others cannot provide their customers with a uniquely Maine experience the way that only Allen's can. In other words: It's a cunnin' move.

M.S. Walker has yet to say which lighthouse it will pay homage to this year, but there are a few candidates that come to mind: Bass Harbor Head Light? Portland Head Light? Boon Island? Owl's Head? Goose Rocks? Seguin? All would be good choices. 

But -- without any inside information -- I'm going to place my money on Pemaquid Point. It is definitely one of the more recognizable lights in the state, and it will add a midcoast beacon to the list of those honored by Allen's. And it will look great on the shelf in my kitchen.

Eastport, Maine is a Noir Paradise Waiting to Happen

Howard Cook 1928 lithograph print “Fog in Eastport” (part of the TIMA collection)

 Eastport is unlike any other place on the Maine coast, though I can think of a couple of towns (Lubec and Rockland) that aren’t too far off.

Much of it feels like a noir movie set, and the terrain is more dramatic than those other towns. The city is an island, accessbile by a causeway from the Passamaquoddy tribal communuty of Sipayik. It has an undulating landscape, a downtown grid of old brick buildings and mostly clapboard houses, a shipping cargo port, and a waterfront that stares straight at Canada just a few hundred yards away. It also has a creative/artistic/historical vibe, thanks in no small part to the Tides Institute and Musuem of Art, also known as TIMA.

PHOTO: a scene from the film ‘Sunrise at Campobello is shot in Eastport in 1960 (BDN photo by Velton Peabody)

Much of the time, it also feels relatively empty, which no city (yes, Eastport is a city) strives to be. But at least there are no rich people around, and the cutesy Maine tourism trappings that have ensnared many a Maine coastal town are largely absent (though Eastport has the best whale watching tours along the entire Maine coast).

The lack of crowds is part of its appeal. It has its iconic fisherman statue (left over from a one-off season of a reality TV show), and with Lubec hosts a ‘pirate’ festival every summer, but I find the waterfront infrastructure and many of the old buildings to be more intriguing.

Water Street, 2016 (photo by Linda Coan O’Kresik/Bangor Daily News)

There is a hulking, empty sardine cannery that protrudes from the waterfront into the bay, as does a breakwater pier that collapsed in 2014 but was rebuilt the following year. Around every corner are reminders of early 20th century history that includes herring weirs, liquor smuggling, Franklin Roosevelt, small-scale fishing and even tribal whaling. If there is any place in Maine that should still have a telegram office, Eastport is it.

There is a mix of business and vacant storefronts downtown, where the buildings seem to be in a constant state of limbo, teetering on disrepair and irrelevance. In the local village of Quoddy, several brick chimneys jut up into the air where a decrepit former Navy barracks burned down in 2017. Behind the large windows of an empty diner on Water Street, you can almost see the ghosts from Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ painting sitting on stools at the dusty counter.

In some of the neighboring storefronts, there are studios for visiting artists-in-residence at TIMA. They generally come from places far outside Maine for a few weeks to bring their visions to Eastport and to be influenced by the city and surrounding landscape. And they are not the plein air painters you often see along the state’s coastline in the summer. They are abstract, conceptual, sculptural -- what you would expect from a big city art scene but what has become accepted and expected in Eastport. The artists come and go, but they leave lasting impressions behind in this city, even if their art is temporary.

Alicia Eggert, a former artist-in-residence at TIMA, erected a temporary installation called ‘FOREVER’ on Dudley Island off Eastport in the summer of 2016.

Like the rest of Maine, the weather in Eastport can vary greatly and, being right on the water, at times it can be harsh. Winters can dump mounds of snow on the island city, creating plowed walls and canyons as state law prevents the plow trucks from pushing it into the ocean. But come summer, when fields of wildflowers spring forth from the empty lots and a gentle breeze drifts in on the ocean, there almost is no place on earth as serene or inviting.

Eastport has elementary and high schools, it has local politics, it has cemeteries, a microbrewery, a supermarket and a mustard museum. It has Trump flags, Pride flags, a small airport, small fishing boats and an immigrant-owned pharmacy. It has a local performing arts center and gets occasional visits from minor celebrities and cruise ships.

What Eastport doesn’t have is a lot of people (fewer than 1,300 residents at the most recent official count), or jobs, or -- like most of Maine these days -- much affordable housing. It could use more of all of these, but it doesn’t need a whole lot more. With the right mix, Eastport can keep its working-class feel and its creative zeal and become more than a remote, sleepy Maine town.

It has the potential to be a tiny, vibrant, year-round coastal Maine city that known not for beaches or sail boats or flip flops, but for its scenery, grit, art, architecture and cultural institutions. The right mix of people, year-round jobs and, yes, limited tourism in Eastport could help add needed cultural and economic diversity to Maine's eastern coast.

An early morning newspaper delivery in Eastport in 1949. Photo by Kosti Ruohomaa.

Chimneys stand where a former Navy barracks burned to the ground in the Eastport village of Quoddy.

Former Eastport resident John Pike Grady dresses in costume for an Independence Day parade

A man stands next to a sign on Route 1 in this 1957 photo.

'Grand Manan Cliff' by John Doyle, 1994. Part of the TIMA collection.

Farm-raised salmon are harvested off Eastport in October 2008 (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty,

Egg Rock

 

Egg Rock, Frenchman Bay, Maine, Aug. 2, 2020.

Eating in Ellsworth

Food is essential to keep our bodies going, but its significance often transcends just the need to address our immediate hunger.

Food also draws people together and often reflects or creates a culture. Different styles of food vary from one locale to the next, and can help boost a town or state's profile, such as gumbo in New Orleans, deep-dish pizza in Chicago, or barbecue in Texas.

And in some places such as Portland, Maine, a vibrant restaurant scene itself -- not necessarily a particular type of dish -- can be a draw that pulls people in from far and wide looking for a rewarding and fulfilling experience. Even Biddeford (!), the esrtwhile mill town where once the air reeked of industry, is getting spillover from Portland's congested and increasingly expensive food-and-beverage

That said, I realize Ellsworth is nowhere close to being Portland or any other type of nationally-renown dining destination. But I like food, and trying different types of food, so I pay attention to who sets up shop in Ellsworth, and which ones succeed and which ones fail.

Unfortunately, there are a few cases of recent failure to report, though some may say that a few of the departed enterprises outstayed their welcome, or that their appearance was doomed from the start.

Let's start with Bangin' Whoopie. The Bangor-based whoopie pie store opened a satellite location downtown in the Maine Grind building in May 2019 but was a flop, closing again 6 months later.

I'll be honest -- it never made sense to me. The pies were not made on site (trucked in from Bangor?) and the presentation was weird: a few smallish whoopies in clear plastic bags, with different flavors arranged on shelves you could just walk up to and choose from. And much of the time it looked like no one was in there. It took me a few times peeking in to realize that the clerk usually was sitting unseen on the floor behind the counter, scrolling through his/her phone.

Selling trucked-in whoopie pies in the same building as a cafe that serves fresh-baked goods, sandwiches and other items also seemed like a recipe for failure. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic -- which appears to be why the local Denny's closed down this past May.

As brief as Bangin Whoopie lasted in Ellsworth, it last longer than Mi Sombrero, an authentic Mexican restaurant that opened in the former Thai Siam space on High Street. I had high hopes for Mi Sombrero, but every time I went in there I could tell they hadn't quite figured things out. The food was genuinely good, and they had customers, but there was someone new staffing the front counter with each visit who seemed mostly confused about how to ring orders up. Too bad.

But, even during the pandemic, there is reason to be optimistic. Siam Sky, the good Thai restaurant in Blue Hill, has expanded to Ellsworth, opening a second location in the former Mi Sombrero space. And

after some early difficulties, Jamaican cuisine seems to have established a presence in Ellsworth, in the form of Taste Jamaica at the intersection of State and Oak streets, near the Mill Mall.

A decade or so ago, there was a Jamaican jerk-chicken cart that opened at Newland Nursery on outer State Street, but it seems to have closed with the nursery's move to Washigton Junction. Taste Jamaica came along a few years later, opening next to an oil change shop on the one-way section of High Street, going up the hill toward MDI.

Taste Jamaica has since moved and, imho, has improved -- a lot. The jerk chicken, pan-seared haddock, and fried plantains all are really good, and I have no reason to dis anything on the menu. They, like most every restaurant still operating, are focusing on their takeout business during the pandemic.

Also, despite the COVID economy, Margarita's seems to be progressing toward opening at some point on Main Street -- with a brand-new front dining deck -- where The Mex closed last year.

I don't have the time to go into details about all the eateries in Ellsworth worth trying out, but there are several: Manny's Greek Grill and DragonFire at the Mill Mall, Finelli's on Downeast Highway (Route 1 heading east from High Street) Serendib, 86 This, Flexit Cafe, Finn's Irish Pub, Provender (all downtown), and Eat at Joe's, the food truck-in-residence at Fogtown Brewing, all are good/very good options (there's also good beer, and decent food, at Airline Brewing) -- and I am probably forgetting some. 

I've not tried Wicked Munchies, but I intend to -- and, as always, I encourage other people to do the same and to form their own opinions.

Let's now have no more 'jokes' about punching, shooting, or bombing the media

Maine is getting a new governor today. Janet Mills is the first woman ever elected governor of Maine, the first (as she likes to point out) from Franklin County, and the first newly-elected Maine governor in 52 years to win with more than 50 percent of the vote, since Ken Curtis defeated incumbent John Reed in 1966.

Congrats on all that, but let's get on to the point of this post. There's is one aspect about being governor in which Mills should emulate her predecessors -- with the notable exception of the one who just left office. She should not, as Paul LePage did several times, threaten violence against the news media.

LePage usually would say he had been joking, and sometimes even apologized, but such "jokes" are not befitting of the position. Just as average citizens are not allowed to make "jokes" about violence when getting screened by security personnel at courthouses or airports, the governor should know that her words are taken seriously, and that whatever sarcasm may be present in the statement likely won't translate when it gets published or broadcast.

Violence against the media is real, after all, and hearing such words from an elected leader can be the catalyst that turns thoughts of violence into tragedy.

Whoever lives in the Blaine House should be held to a high standard -- and usually is -- when making comments in public. Undoubtedly, at some point she will get frustrated with the media and will want to keep them in check and to control her own narrative. And at times there will be times when a news report is inaccurate or misleading, and criticism of it will be entirely appropriate.

But anyone who serves as governor needs to have a thick skin. Lashing out and threatening violence, whether or not she has a smile on her face, would continue to sidetrack the task of governing and undermine the office, the broader system of government transparency and accountability, and the public's confidence in it. Whether a voter is a Democrat, and Republican, or an independent, overall confidence in the system is a vital component of the broader social contract that enables us to live among each other, even when we disagree.

No governor has to be cozy with or like the media, but the antidote to unfavorable coverage is not to make Mainers distrust the information they get on a daily basis. Openness, accessibility and, when needed, specific criticism of media reports make for a much better approach.

Let's all hope Mills understands that. And enough with the "jokes."

Mainers (full-time, part-time, and former) who died in 2018

These people either lived in, spent time in, or had a substantial impact in Maine  -- and all died in 2018. As always, any such 'notable deaths' list will be incomplete, so forgive me if I left out anyone who deserves mention.

Rev. Robert Bryan, along with Marshall Dodge, formed the comedy duo "Bert & I" in the late 1950s, which helped to introduce Maine accents and the state's distinctly dry humor to a nationwide audience. Later in life, he became an Episcopal priest and founded the Quebec Labrador Foundation. He died Dec. 12 in Sherbrooke, Quebec, at the age of 87.

George H.W. Bush was the 41st president of the United States. He spent every summer for much of his life at his family's oceanfront compound in Kennebunkport. He died at the end of November at the age of 94.

Eugene Cole was not that well known, but his death gripped the state when he became the first law-enforcement officer in Maine in nearly 30 years to be shot and killed in the line of duty. His death on April 25 ignited a large-scale manhunt for his alleged killer, who police caught four days later as he was trying to hide in the woods a few miles away from where Cole was shot. He was 61 years old.

Donald Collins, a longtime state politician and father of U.S. Senator Susan Collins, died in March at the ago of 92.

Chris Cousins was a newspaper reporter who became best known for covering politics for the Bangor Daily News.  He began his career in 1999 at the Norway Advertiser Democrat, later worked at The Times Record and then ran the State House News Service in Augusta. From 2006 to 2007, he was the Donald W. Reynolds Fellow for Community Journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He was 42 when he died in August of a heart attack.

Milton Dysart, a co-founder of Dysart's Truck Stop in Hermon, died in May at the age of 84.

John Ford, Sr. was a former Maine game warden and Waldo County sheriff who chronicled humorous episodes from his law enforcement career in a newspaper column and multiple books. He also was criticized in October 2016 for saying at a Trump campaign rally in Bangor that he was with racists, xenophobes, homophobes, and islamophobes "all the way." He was 71 when he died in November.

Chuck Foster was a longtime Bangor-area radio disc jockey who, according to famous author Stephen King, had "the perfect DJ voice." He died in August at the age of 64.

Al Hawkes learned bluegrass music as a teenager in the 1940s while growing up in Westbrook, and grew to national prominence in the genre, both for his mandolin playing and his recording expertise, which he put to use at his Event Records recording studio in the basement of his television repair shop on Route 302. He died Dec. 28 at the age of 88.

Merton Henry, a prominent moderate Maine Republican who advised U.S. senators Margaret Chase Smith, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, died in April at the age of 92.

Stephen Hillenburg credited the summers he spent earlier in his life on Little Cranberry Island with helping to inspire the creation of SpongeBob Squarepants, the Nickelodeon television cartoon that spawned two feature films, a Broadway musical, and grew into a multi-billion dollar retail licensing powerhouse for the children's programming television network. Hillenburg, 57, died in November from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Sue Hubbell was an author, farmer, beekeeper and essayist for the New York Times and New Yorker. A Michigan native, she lived in Milbridge for many years before increasing dementia led her to move in with her son Brian Hubbell in Bar Harbor this past summer. She died in October at the age of 83.

Robert Indiana, the world-famous pop artist best known for his 1960s “LOVE” series, moved from New York City to Vinalhaven in 1978. An Indiana native, the artist was known for his desire for solitude. His isolation later in life raised concerns among people who could not get through to him and led allegations of fraud against his publisher and caretaker. He died in May at the age of 89.

James Knott invented the wire lobster trap in the 1950s in Massachusetts, but it took another 20 years before the design -- which is more durable and easier to both maintain and use than the wooden traps they supplanted -- became the tool of choice in the lobster industry. Knott, who died in August at the age of 88, never lived in Maine but his invention had a huge impact on Maine's signature seafood industry. Because of it, he received an honorary degree from University of Maine in 2006.

Doug Rafferty was a longtime reporter and anchor for WGME, the CBS affiliate in Portland. He suffered an on-air stroke in 2006 and later filed a discrimination lawsuit against the station, which was settled out of court in 2013. He died at age of 66 in October, hours after arriving in Hawaii to visit his daughter.

John Wulp, an award-winning director, producer, playwright, designer, visual artist and educator, moved from New York to Vinalhaven in 1992. In 1978 he won a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for his production of “Dracula” on Broadway and, after moving to Maine, staged many plays with local students and other community members at Waterman's Community Center on Vinalhaven. He died in November at the age of 90.