Home Again

After a brief trip to the land of the Big Apple, I have returned once again to Maine. It is still green here, but at least it has cooled down and feels more like December.

I posted the Christmas Eve at the Smith's place on the website. Enjoy.

~jeb

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

I know I showed you those nice snowy pictures of my backyard a few weeks ago, but the summer weather has returned and we are now "enjoying" temperatures that would remind you of April rather than December. No one is dreaming of a White Christmas this year as that is clearly not a possibility unless you are in Denver or Minnesota.

I'm in New Jersey with the relatives and the temperature in Morristown was a balmy 62 yesterday. Lawns are green, golf courses are open (well they're open here year-round anyway) and my sister tells me there are cherry blossoms blooming at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens!

So here's wishing you a wonderful Christmas from the tropics of the north east US where global warming is making us the sun and fun Christmas capital of the world. Ho-ho-ho?

Check out that link to the right about "An Inconvenient Truth." The perpetual "summer" is not a good thing.

~jeb

21st Century Schools

I will comment on this topic on the Maine ASCD Blog after the holidays. Just looking for a place to keep the link for now.

21st Century Schools - QuickTime Movie [requires plug-in]

~jeb

Time Magazine's Person of the Year is Me

Yes, it's true.

I have been named Person of the Year by Time Magazine. Rather, it's not I, it's actually you. Uh, I mean, not You - you, I mean ME - you. Got it.

Oh read it yourself.

~j

Wait a Minute...

We have an old expression in New England that, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

People I have met from the mid-west claim the adage as their own stating that it is an "old farmer's expression."

Well it might be true in Illinois, but it was definitely true here in the Maine over the past week or so. Our thermometers have been getting a real work out with ranges from the teens to 50 degrees (F) up and down within 4-5 days. Yesterday it was 50 and I was walking around in a light jacket. I drove home from Portland in a rain storm that seemed to be growing in intensity, despite predictions of a "chance of a passing shower." I watched the temperature gauge on my car drop from 43 to 35 and about fifteen minutes after I got home, it was snowing.

And this morning, it looked like this.












And if you need to see this in moving images, you can download this 9MB Quicktime movie.

~jeb

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" has recently been released on DVD. I had not had a chance to see it in the cinema when it was release last spring.

All I can say is, now I know what everyone is getting for Christmas.

Buy it, see it. Do something about it.

www.climatecrisis.net

~j

Turkeyman, He's Everywhere

There were two wild, wild turkey stories to report this week; one from Maine, one from New Jersey.

It seems that wild turkeys have become a nuisance everywhere these days and may even have become vicious....well, maybe just a little aggressive.

The Portland Press Herald story on Wednesday notes that the turkeys on Mackworth Island are attacking SUVs. In New Jersey they are taking the commuter rail and heading north!

Reading the comments on the PPH site are precious.

Gobble Gobble

~j

Gobble Gobble

It's Thanksgiving Day morning and I am watching The Parade, catching up on yesterday's newspapers and just finished baking m Swedish Apple Pie. The house smells wonderful.

Despite the forecast for showers and rain, the sun is shining in Augusta and a slight breeze is stirring the pines.

I'm heading to Bob and Gail's for Turkey Day fare later in the afternoon; the apple pie is my contribution along with a couple of bottles of wine.

Random Thoughts

I'm happy to see that I am now driving around in Motor Trend Magazine's Car of the Year. My 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid was selected for this prestigious award; well not my car, but the model. I knew it would be a good choice and I am still thinking that this is the best car I've ever owned.

Yesterday I hit the malls to get some things for our Northeast ASCD Affiliate Conference which takes place next week. I had to head over to Staples to get some printing done and I also bought some last minute items at Hannaford. I know there is this phenomena called "Black Friday" or something which relates to the fact that the Friday after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year. I think the "black" refers to the financial figures expected as a result. Well Wednesday before Thanksgiving might qualify for the second busiest shopping day...the stores were mobbed especially the Christmas Tree Shops and Bed, Bath & Beyond which opened this week at the Turnpike Mall. Those Christmas Tree Shops are a "license to print money!"

We'll Santa should be appearing in Herald Square in a few minutes so I had best get into the shower and ready for the rest of the day.

Wait a second, there's Mr. Potatohead - He's from Maine too!

Best wishes to you and yours!

Happy Thanksgiving

Treaty Stone - SFC: Mark Your Calendars

Treaty Stone - SFC: Mark Your Calendars

No More Bull

The last Ford Taurus rolled off the line in Georgia yesterday ending a 21 year history. My last Taurus (actually a Mercury Sable) “rolled off” this past summer when I traded the 2004 Sable for a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid.

The price of gas had just peaked past $3.00 a gallon and I had been sniffing around hybrids since they appeared a few years ago. Had Ford come up with a reasonable hybrid – instead of the ridiculous SUB hybrid (that got almost the same gas mileage as the Sable), I might have bought one.

I owned three Taurus/Sables over a ten year period. The first, a 1996 was my favorite. Unlike the average person, I loved the oval shape and Star Trek interior. I know that the radio button drove everyone crazy, but I loved them. This was my first automatic transmission in many years, and after as few weeks of driving, I had no interest in returning to the stick. Yes, the gas mileage compared to the 1991 Mazda Protégé (4-cylinder) was striking, but in those days we weren’t too concerned about these things.

The 1996 Taurus started to nickel-and-dime me at around 100K. First the heater core (all three had the same problem), the brakes (again all three had the same defect) and then the catalytic converter. I had dumped $2500 into it in six months and it needed a thousand dollars more work to make it last another year. I used that as a down payment at bought a 2000 Taurus. By then the Ford engineers had bowed to the “complaints” of the old farts running the company and had ruined the design to a box. The novelty and forward thinking elements were all gone. But it was a comfortable and relatively safe car.

At around 100K this one started to misbehave like the last one and my extended warrantee had expired. After breaking down on a road trip to DC and having to pay $500 to have it fixed, I drove back to the dealer and got the 2004 Sable.

The Sable was a step up in terms of creature comforts and I loved some of the higher tech gizmos – my favorite was the self-dimming rear view mirror. But with each successive Taurus/Sable, the gas mileage dropped. The Sable only got 26 mpg on the highway (although it got 29 mpg when we drove to Florida in spring 2005). In the winter, the best I could hope for was 24 mpg.

I reflect on this because I think it is symptomatic of what was happening to Ford in general. Their business plan was becoming more Republican with no regard to gas mileage issues and more interest in continuing to promote large gas-guzzling behemoths like the Explorer and Expedition. I was increasingly becoming ashamed of driving a Ford product and it was clear the company had no interest in changing.

So, the death of the Taurus and what it represented are clearly symbolic of the demise of Ford Motors. They have now dropped behind Toyota and are threatened with extinction.

We’ve owned Ford products in my family since the 1930s. When my father steered away in the late 70’s to Chrysler, he regretted it. But he never bought another Ford. I’ve owned seven Ford/Mercury; most bought new. But, I’ll tell you, without a major turn around in their corporate mindset, I think I’ve bought my last.

~jeb

Maine Mystery Beast Returns

It seems the Maine Mystery Beast that was all in the news a few months ago (see my blog entry) now has its very own poster.

Figures it would show up just in time for Halloween.

~jeb

Arming Teachers

While scooting through my Bloglines collection of education sites I found several references to school violence and the recent shootings in schools around the nation. But when digging further, I discovered that a Wisconsin state lawmaker has proposed the arming of teachers as a solution to gun violence in schools. I intially thought this was some kind of a joke, but then found the interview with the lawmaker on several website including a site with a link to ABC News.

But the best review is Stephen Colbert's Colbert's Report

~jeb

Pessimism

Bill Nemitz, a regular columnist for the Portland Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram had an interesting piece in today's MST regarding the "pessimism of Mainers." The column struck a note and I think Bill is on to something.

His piece deals with a Brookings Institution report that was released this week called "Charting Maine's Future" which provides a reasonably upbeat perspective of Maine's current economic picture. Coming in at this time of negativism - something always associated with the annual elections season - I found this report particularly refreshing and the Nemitz piece particularly relevant.

Nemitz based part of this column on the comments of former governor Angus King who, for the sake for full disclosure, was involved in the funding of the report. King has been reported in the media this past week as praising the report and is quoted in the Nemitz piece as saying: "That's their stock and trade, telling people how bad off they are." This is in reference to the nature of partisan politics that, as Nemitz states, "run increasingly on pure negatives."

If I see one more TABOR ad or one more for that Woodcock telling us that Maine is the "most highly taxed state in the Union," I'm gonna throw up. All I can say is I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and brother you do not know what taxes are. Long before there were sales taxes or rooms and meals taxes in Maine we had them in New York. And we paid them. I'm sure there were people complaining about them 50 years ago, but they didn't have an ad on the TV every five minutes. Geez, people might actually start to believe that nonsense.

All I can tell you is that a couple of years ago I attended a wedding in Plymouth MA for the son of one of my cousins. Attending the wedding were the groom's aunt and uncle who live in Westchester County, NY. These are people I remember meeting at family gatherings 40 years ago and I know them to be good Westchester Republicans - at least that's what mother used to say. Well they are very well off; he a retired VP from some multimillion dollar international company; she a socialite, and the live in one of the more high priced areas of Westchester. At the wedding, we got talking about local real estate and they were absolutely astounded at the fact that they had gone and looked at several beautiful new homes being build along the Massachusetts shore with price tags in the close to a million dollar range. They expressed their surprise that the taxes on the properties were only about $6,000 per year. According to the rich cousins, a similar property in NY would be taxed over $10,000. I guess it's all relative.

One of the more enlightening pieces of information coming from this Brookings report is the fact that the Maine population is actually growing. And our population is not growing because we are being overrun with Mexicans and migrant workers from Third World Countries. Maine's population is growing because rich retired people are coming to Maine because of our beautiful way of life. Imagine that.

Don't they know were the most highly taxes state in the nation? I guess not.

Or, perhaps they know what I know. That the Woodcocks and the Republicans and the pro-TABOR people are just a bunch of rich farts that want more money for themselves and they are trying to convince the few folks whose houses are in areas of Maine where there have been incredible increases in value of the land and are being "taxes out" that it's those "devils" in Augusta that are doing this to them and that by voting in the Pubs and TABOR all of their problems with go away. Sorry sister, TABOR ain't gonna do anything to save your house.

Nemitz best comments come at the end of the column:

King, who helped fund the Brookings report, likens Maine's funk to the advice he received during a motorcycle safety course: Focus on the road ahead and that's where you'll go. Stare too long at the roadside ditch, on the other hand, and guess where you'll end up?

"Maine looks in the ditch all the time," King said. "And lo and behold "

Oh, as lest you believe I am a Angus King fan, I'm not. I was one of the thousands of State workers who were fired when King came into office.

~jeb

ED

I wish there was some way I could capture this and post it... I was just cruising MSNBC's video selections and the story about the Congressman from Florida sending inappropriate e-mails to a 16 year old boy popped up first - but not before an advertisement for medication for erectile dysfunction.

You don't supposed they did this intentionally?

Hi Ho

~j

Fall Color

It's that time of the year when Mother Nature provides us with the most vivid colors.

The leaf peepers are arriving like the swallows at Capistrano and the Fryeburg Fair starts tomorrow.

~jeb

Where the Heck Have I Been?

We did come home from Canada. And, I had hoped that I would be blogging almost daily from the Maritimes. But life got very busy after I returned and work occupied all of my time.

I heard from an all college friend (I was almost going to say "college chum" - eeek!) who was involved with me in a loose band of "hippie types" at St. Francis College. We called ourselves "Treaty Stone" and our main claim to fame was the fact that for about six years we hosted a series of "folk festivals" on campus. They were usually on a Friday night and drew a nice size crowd who drank cheap wine and cheese and crackers while we watched and listened to each other play guitars and attempt to sound like the leading folk rockers of the time.

My own specialty was doing covers of Stephen Stills. I parted my hair down the middle and tried to perfect that slighty pre-nasal, Texas voice. It all seems rather silly now, but we had fun at the time.

Many if not most of the "musicians" continued to play and I even enjoyed a brief stint doing the bar scene in Brooklyn and at some other similar college affairs. In the early 80s I even was involved with a musical duo and we played in bars in the Mount Washington Valley of NH. That too was short lived as I moved away and basically lost interest.

Now all of my music is played at the 5:30 Saturday Mass at St. Mary of the Assumption here in Augusta. I think my skills have actually impoved over the years.

So, I responded with some enthusiasm when John Kiely contacted about a reunion of Treaty Stone. In all of the excitement of nostalgic replay of the past, I offered to create a website for the affair and have just starting collecting stuff for what will likely be a blogged site. This will allow for multiple users to access and update the information and unlimited resources for posting images and other files. So, stay tuned.

~jeb

Hanging Out in NB

On Wednesday we made the trip south to Houlton from PI and crossed over into New Brunswick, Canada. The weather was beautiful, albeit at bit cool. The clouds had that “wintry” appearance and the brisk northwest wind had a taste of autumn.

We took Canadian RT 2 to Fredericton and much of this road is under construction. The Canadians apparently anticipate that the Americans will be sending more business up through Maine and have the superhighways ready for all the added traffic.

Fredericton is a happening’ place with lots of new development and people plus a great historic downtown. The main attraction downtown is an 18th Century garrison which now provides places for lots of tourist activities and shopping. The Canadians are masters at tourism. Every town, no matter how small, has some historic and tourist related attraction; all the information is published in full color tourism brochures provided by the provincial government and free to tourists. The US could learn a lot about tourism from the Canadians.

One of the neatest attractions in beautiful downtown Fredericton is the Lord Beverbrook Art Gallery which contains three masterpieces by Salvatore Dali. This summer they are also boasting an exhibit of Rodin sculpture. It is absolutely amazing that a small city like Fredericton could have a treasure like this. With a population of under 50,000 the town has a nice feel and good combination of things to do and places to see.

We hit the Mactaquac Provincial Park and played golf on Thursday. A splendid 18 hole course with beautiful views of the Mactaquac dam and hydroelectric facility. The dam holds back the St. John River which flows from northern Maine to empty in the Bay of Fundy in St. John, NB. Good golf – I shot a 104.

~jeb

Hanging out in PI

I've been hanging out in Presque Isle, ME since Sunday as the first leg of my golfing vacation with my friends Bob and Kathy. Bob and I played PI Country Club yesterday in the rain. It was cool in the temperature sense but we didn't get too wet.

The course was in excellent condition and relatively empty. I shot a 105 which is good for me and didn't lose any golf balls; a rarity.

Today we played one of the most unique golf course in the world. Aroostook Valley Country Club actually straddles the Maine/New Brunswick border. That's right, the course runs through the U.S. border with Canada and there are no customs stations or guys with walkie talkies in site.

AVCC was built during Prohibition and has the club house in Canada so the locals could come over and play golf and drink legally. People still do. I shot a 106 and lost two golf balls. The course is much more challenging than PICC and very slopey...not sure if that's a word. There is a lot of slope which basically means there are lots of hills and valleys.

After our round and a couple of Alexander Keith's on the deck, we drove over to Perth, NB and had dinner at York's Dining Room. York's is also rather unique because it has a "fixed price" menu that includes everything from soup to nuts as well as an opportunity to sample one of the other items on the menu. Good food and lots of it. We always make a stop at York's when were in The County.

Tomorrow we move on to Fredericton, NB and plan to play three different courses there. See you later.

~jeb

Beta

I just switched over to Blogger beta and re-set the template. It deleted some of the customization I had on the page. We'll see how this works. Taking it for a spin...

~jeb

Mystery Beast

It must have been a slow news day today.

The buzz was regarding a strange "mystery beast" that was killed in the western Maine town of Turner. Apparently for 15 years the locals have reported seeing a strange beast and now question if this is the "monster."

The Animal Control and State Wildlife people think its a mix-breed dog. This thing looks like it has human teeth!

Here's the news report

~jeb