The owners of Legion Square Market, in Knightville, announced they were closing the neighborhood grocery. Locally favored for its cut-to-order butcher counter, the market had been in business since 1939.

Fort Fairfield

Native son Dick Curless is the subject of a yearlong exhibit, Dick Curless: Hard Traveling Man from Maine, at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Best remembered for 1965’s “A Tombstone Every Mile,” Curless died in 1995.

Falmouth

Elementary-school social worker Heidi Richards, who had only cross-country skied once in her life, became Falmouth High’s Nordic coach. She took the job, she said, to ensure the hitherto coachless team would have a season.

Carrabassett Valley

Sugarloaf began cutting trees for 12 new trails on West Mountain. The expansion, expected to open next winter, will increase the ski resort’s skiable acres by 10 percent and will be served by a new high-speed quad chairlift.

Rumford

For the first time in its nearly six-decade history, Maine budget retailer Marden’s closed one of its stores, citing safety concerns it couldn’t reconcile with its Rumford landlord. Its other 13 locations, carrying everything from beach toys to mattresses to hardware, were unaffected.

Bangor

Bangor Symphony Orchestra music director Lucas Richman conducted the score for White Noise, the recently released Netflix movie starring Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Don Cheadle. His prior film credits include Face/Off, Se7en, and The Manchurian Candidate.

The House of Representatives elected its first Black speaker, Democrat Rachel Talbot Ross. Her father, Gerald Talbot, was elected Maine’s first Black legislator in 1972.

Oxford

The Oxford Casino and Hotel donated $5,000 to help relocate and restore the 1857 Pigeon Hill Schoolhouse, the town’s last surviving schoolhouse, after the land it was on changed hands.

Yarmouth

A belt buckle made by artist Alexander Calder, valued at $10,000, which went missing after its owner’s death, turned up at a NewYork auction house. The owner’s former gardener was charged with theft.

Waterville

After 18 months of construction, the $18 million, 32,000-square-foot Paul J. Schupf Art Center, a joint project of Colby College and the nonprofit Waterville Creates, opened downtown.

New Sweden

At 24, Lukas Lagasse became the youngest president of the New Sweden Historical Society, which protects and celebrates Aroostook County’s Swedish heritage.

Bangor

John Dennis, a member of the Mi’kmaq Nation and a language-preservation advocate, will co-teach a new elective Mi’kmaw language course at Bangor High School.

Features

Season Unseen

Acadia National Park’s summertime splendor attracts millions of visitors, but in the depths of winter, the park takes on a different character.

Photographed by Benjamin Williamson | Text by Ann Pollard Ranco

The New Maine Classics

The last 25 years have given us a bumper crop of motley, memorable Maine storytelling. We picked out 25 Maine-media artifacts — a sundry set of books, films, digital projects, and more — that’ll stand the test of time.

The World Through Kaleidoscope Eyes

Abstract paintings by the late Lynne Drexler are suddenly fetching upwards of a million dollars apiece. Who was Drexler, and why is her immense talent only just beginning to get its due?

By Will Grunewald

+

Special Advertising Section: Retirement

How Maine came to be a pioneer in lifelong learning — and what’s on offer for those heading back to the classroom.

By Bridget M. Burns

Departments

North by East

Mainers love their pond-hockey tournaments, a novelist hates on “nor’easter,” and a new chief curator reflects on 75 years of the Farnsworth. In Maine Dispatches, Maine elects its first Black Speaker of the House.

Food and Drink

A Sunday River food truck slings sweet on the slopes, they’re lining up for waffles in Dover-Foxcroft, and a new Stephen King cookbook is more scrumptious than scary.

Good Things from Maine

Trying on our favorite Maine-y graphic tees and a Waterville mask maker’s masquerade pieces. Plus, checking in on Bangor’s vintage revival.

Maine Homes

A Bangor Garrison designed on the cheap, UMaine’s innovative 3D-printed houses, and a welcome historic designation for Portland’s Mechanics’ Hall.

+

Where In Maine

Maine Moment

Dooryard

Editor’s note, responses to December’s Where in Maine, the masthead, and more.

Columns

Room With a View.

My Favorite Place

Maine Coast Heritage Trust president and CEO Kate Stookey, on Blue Hill’s Falls Bridge.

On Our Cover: Acadia National Park’s Jesup Path, by Benjamin Williamson.

Additional photos: Cait Bourgault and Benjamin Williamson.

Cafe Miranda, nearly as defining a Rockland landmark as the breakwater lighthouse, with its funky, neon vibe and flavors as big as the helpings, closed after 29 years in business due to the strain of kitchen-staff shortages.

Liberty

At Lake St. George, Belmont Boatworks launched a prototype of the first commercially available entirely solar-powered powerboat, a 24-foot Solar Sal model, which the Maine boatyard built for Sustainable Energy Systems, an upstate New York boat company.

Castine

Town officials rebuffed a proposal to turn the historic keeper’s cottage at Dice Head Light into an Airbnb-style short-term rental. The current tenant is a local kindergarten teacher who doesn’t mind that the grounds are open to visitors during the day.

Boothbay

Home-schooled high-school junior Emma Markowitz won an award at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, in Atlanta, for her work using honey’s antimicrobial properties to treat white line disease, which causes hoof deformities in horses.

Bangor

Senator Susan Collins listed her 4,250-square-foot Bangor house for $727,000 (it’s down the street from Stephen King’s old house). A spokesperson said the senator and her husband were looking for something smaller, with more yard for Pepper, their black Lab.

Bar Harbor

Acadia National Park officials halted restoration work on the Duck Brook Road Motor Bridge for a month for fear of disturbing any mother bats and their young residing in gaps in the stonework during pupping season.

Freshman Cooper Flagg led the Nokomis Regional High School boys’ basketball team to its first state championship, and ESPN ranked him the third-best prospect in the country for the 2025 college recruiting class.

Bangor

Stephen King took some flak on Twitter for an easy salmon recipe he posted, which required only olive oil, lemon juice, and three minutes in the microwave. “Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it,” he replied.

Dinner: Get a nice salmon filet at the supermarket, not too big.
Put some olive oil and lemon juice on it.
Wrap it in damp paper towels.
Nuke it in the microwave for 3 minutes or so.
Eat it.
Maybe add a salad.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 20, 2022

Millinocket

The site of the former Great Northern Paper mill, which closed for good in 2014, was rebranded with the name One North. A California tech firm’s massive data center is slated to open there next year, and an aquaculture project has been proposed as well.

Columbia Falls

Wreaths Across America founder Morrill Worcester announced plans to erect the world’s largest flagpole by 2026. It would be taller than the Empire State Building, its flag would be bigger than a football field, and the donor-funded project would cost upward of $1 billion.

Prospect

Actress and model Brooke Shields became a board member and the chief brand officer of Prospect Farms, maker of hemp-based wellness tinctures.

Bar Harbor

The driver of a Ford Bronco with New Jersey plates got stuck on mudflats between Bar Harbor and Bar Island. After two tries at towing it — and several intervening high tides that swamped it — inflatable bags were used to float it out.

The Ultimate Maine Summer Guide

Your region-by-region preview of the traditions, activities, and events that make summer in the Pine Tree State unforgettable. Time to start planning your vacation.

By Will Grunewald, Amber Kapiloff, Brian Kevin, Joyce Kryszak, Adrienne Perron, and Mira Ptacin

Running Commentary

With the weather warming and more events coming back from pandemic hiatus, our salute to the races, personalities, and unflappable spirit that make Maine a runner’s paradise.

By Adrienne Perron, Brian Kevin, Jaed Coffin, and Kathryn Miles

Lost in the Valley?

In Maine’s St. John Valley, a bastion of Acadian culture, it’s getting rarer and rarer to hear “Valley French,” once more common than English. What’s at stake if it’s lost?

By Eric Boodman

Departments

North by East

The future looms large for Prospect Harbor’s Big Jim, the past is made present at Kittery’s Wood Island Life Saving Station, and Maine’s beleaguered organic-dairy farmers find a way forward. Plus, in Maine Dispatches, a farewell to the state’s oldest drive-in theater.

Food and Drink

The nosh at a South Portland lunch spot will have you knishing you were there. Fill up at Thomaston’s gas station turned barbecue joint. A notable bunch of Maine writers take a bite out of hunger.

Good Things from Maine

A paper artist pleats beautiful creations, The Vault vintage market provides a collaborative venue for antiques sellers, and a woodworker wants everyone to know about DIY coffins.

Maine Homes

A Peaks Island teardown isn’t torn down, and a humanities champion gives her Brunswick living room some animal flair. Also, Maine Preservation’s Honor Award winners by
the numbers.

+

Where In Maine

Maine Moment

Dooryard

Editor’s note, reader feedback, responses to March’s Where in Maine, and more.

Columns

History: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Maine Road Trip; Room With a View.

My Favorite Place

Space archaeologist Sarah Parcak, on MDI’s Seal Harbor Beach.

On Our Cover: Biscay Pond, Pemaquid Peninsula, by Cara Dolan.

Additional photos: Chris Shane, Nicole Wolf, and Benjamin Williamson

Buy This Issue

Best of Maine

We asked Down East readers to cast their votes for Maine’s best everything: bookstores to breweries, museums to marinas, art galleries to architects. Plus, we’ve sprinkled in picks of our own. How’d your favorites do?

Weekend Getaways

A guide to three under-the-radar, so-very-Maine, last-minute-friendly adventures for the last days of summer.

By Adrienne Perron and Brian Kevin

Changing Gear

Stonington’s Abby Barrows dialed back a globetrotting research career to take over an oyster farm in her hometown. Now, she’s out to refashion the equipment of her new profession, to keep Maine’s booming aquaculture sector from fouling the waters it relies upon.

By Brian Kevin

Departments

North by East

Rockport’s Shotwell Drive-In is a new beacon for film buffs. MOFGA has been a beacon for organic growers for 50 years. Plus, ultra-athlete Katie Spotz runs and bikes across Maine while, in Maine Dispatches, Yo-Yo Ma plays Acadia.

Food and Drink

It’s time for tea at SMCC, time for the Garrison to reopen in Yarmouth, time to explore the Maine Oyster Trail, and time to order Little Brother dumplings.

Good Things from Maine

The storied Liberty Graphics screen-printers go employee-owned. Artisanal soaps and creams go au naturel. Maine clothiers go for a runway walk.

Maine Homes

A glamp camp in the Bethel woods, a Norway garden with a rosy view, and a York hotel steeped in Maine surfing lore.

+

Where in Maine

Maine Moment

Dooryard

Editor’s note, reader feedback, responses to July’s Where in Maine, and more.

Columns

My Maine: An Aspiring Old Salt. Room With a View.

My Favorite Place

Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center executive director Reza Jalali, on Bridgton’s Pleasant Mountain.

On Our Cover: Taste of Maine, in Woolwich, readers’ pick for Maine’s best lobster roll. Photographed by Danielle Sykes. Styled by Chantal Lambeth.

Additional Photos: Benjamin Williamson, Anthony Di Biase, and Greta Rybus

Buy This Issue

Local rapper and Somali immigrant Munye Mohamed (aka Shine)’s music video for “Aspirations,” the title track on his debut album, got more than a million YouTube views within a week of dropping.

North Haven

While filming an episode of National Geographic Channel’s Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, Ramsay went clam harvesting off the midcoast island. Among the celebrity chef’s other Maine exploits: baiting lobster traps, sawing timber, and cooking with Primo chef Melissa Kelly.

Walpole

In an attempt to decrease lobster mortality between when lobsters are caught and when they’re sold, UMaine’s Lobster Institute is hooking them up to Fitbit-like monitors to measure stresses they experience during that interval. It’s probably easier to rack up steps with 10 legs.

Rockland

After closing its Camden outpost earlier in the pandemic, Maine’s oldest bookstore, Sherman’s, is opening a new spot in nearby Rockland, plus in Topsham and Windham, upping its total number of shops to eight.

Bangor

Bangor Savings Bank is the second-best bank in the country, according to Forbes’s 2021 ranking of banks based on surveys about financial advice, overall trust, and digital services. Camden National Bank came in a five-spot lower, at seventh.

Augusta

As if immunity against a deadly disease weren’t motivation enough, state officials dangled a Maine-y set of incentives to entice Mainers to get COVID-19 vaccines — L.L.Bean gift cards, Portland Sea Dogs tickets, and hunting and fishing licenses.

When 28-year-old Rachel Moyse moved from Portland back to her hometown of Bangor, she noticed something missing: there were no restaurants serving the Middle Eastern–inflected Mediterranean food she craved. Growing up, she had never heard of, let alone tasted, falafel or tabbouleh. Her appetite was whetted as an undergrad, in Rhode Island, where she befriended a Lebanese woman who ran a restaurant near her dormitory. Moyse would help out in the kitchen as the woman talked about family traditions and introduced recipes. It became a sort of one-on-one apprenticeship, and Moyse was hooked. So even though she’d been working in real estate in Portland, and even though her restaurant experience was in front-of-house roles at diner-y and pubby places like Dysart’s and Pat’s Pizza, and even though it was the middle of a pandemic, she opened Utopia last year, wearing the hats of both chef and owner.

Utopia owner Rachel Moyse and her house-made baklava.

Moyse’s menu — which incorporates other Mediterranean influences too, including Greek and North African — puts emphasis on bright flavors. Star-anise simple syrup and pink grapefruit brighten roasted Brussels sprouts, and crispy falafel comes with zingy pickled Persian cucumbers, fried goat cheese, and goat-cheese–stuffed olives. Although many of Moyse’s dishes lean toward fine dining, they’re true to their humbler roots. Swordfish souvlaki, for instance, is glistening skewers of grilled fish and colorful vegetables, but it’s also still, at its core, a kebab. And freshly baked pita and naan nod to street-style eating, folded around falafel, chicken, veggies, or shrimp for handheld meals.

For dessert, there’s baklava, naturally. Cannoli and chocolate pie are on the menu too. But kanafeh is the most interesting option: shredded filo is soaked in honey and then layered with mozzarella and ricotta and sprinkled with pistachios. It plays sweet against savory and gooey against crunchy, and it’s a fitting end to a meal packed with diverse flavors.

The space, on Hammond Street, sits by two of Bangor’s upscale mainstays, the Fiddlehead and Novio’s Bistro, but it has nonetheless churned through tenants in the past five years — an Italian restaurant, a steakhouse, and an Italian restaurant again. Utopia brings something altogether different to the table. You could go elsewhere in town for pasta or sirloin but not for grilled Halloumi cheese with stewed eggplant salad and berbere-spiced fried chickpeas.

Skewers of chicken and oyster mushrooms; duck tagine; berbere-spiced chickpeas atop grilled Halloumi cheese.

Inside, the restaurant is airy, with banks of windows in the front and on the side, a marble bar top, and a color scheme of Tiffany Blue and turquoise. Of course, owing to the pandemic, many customers have yet to experience that interior or the stylish way Moyse plates meals when they’re not in to-go boxes — Utopia has been open for indoor dining but also offers takeout and no-contact delivery.

“The fact that the pandemic happened around the same time I was opening didn’t really concern me, because once I make up my mind, off I go,” Moyse says. “You don’t open a restaurant because it’s easy. You just do it because you love it.”

Maine Summer Is Back

Your region-by-region preview of the traditions, activities, and events that make summer in the Pine Tree State unforgettable.

By Bridget M. Burns, Joyce Kryszak, Mira Ptacin, Samuel Wheeler, and Brian Kevin

Same as It Ever Was?

Residents have long enjoyed Kittery’s livable, leafy vibe, but some worry that a recent influx of tourists and house hunters will erode the town’s character. So they’ve hatched an ambitious plan: to change Kittery in order to preserve it.

By Will Grunewald

Catching Fish Is the Easy Part

Once robust, Maine’s groundfishery is on the ropes, leaving the future uncertain for even the most dedicated fishermen — and the harbor towns that give the Maine coast its flavor.

By Susan Conley

Special Section: Boothbay Region

A sparkling seaside playground that retains its working waterfront, the Boothbay region offers plenty of reasons to visit and to stay.

By Jennifer Van Allen

North by East

A pair of cobblers in Skowhegan carry on a forgotten trade, a new book remembers Maine inventors’ contributions, and scallop aquaculturists won’t forget the lessons of their Japanese colleagues. In Maine Dispatches, an Eagle Scout’s memorable achievement.

Food and Drink

A truckload of exotic hot dogs comes to Belfast, Utopia offers Mediterranean specialties in Bangor, and a Hermon gin distillery becomes an innovative juniper farm.

Good Things from Maine

In Dixfield, Flower and Jane spreads the gospel of botanical realism, and Belfast’s new community glassblowing studio is heating up. Plus, a new gladiator-themed card game enters the arena.

Maine Homes

A 1930s home in Gorham is revamped with DIY projects. A pro wrestler turned housebuilder plugs away on a Portland project. A new book sheds light on Maine author Rachel Field’s island home.

+

Where in Maine

Maine Moment

Dooryard

Editor’s note, reader feedback, responses to March’s Where in Maine, and more.

Columns

My Maine: Called to Cliff Island. Room With a View.

My Favorite Place

Instagram influencer Katie Sturino, on Camden’s Mount Battie.

On Our Cover: Pemaquid Pond, by Cara Dolan.

Additional Photos: Benjamin Williamson, Anthony Di Biase, and Ryan David Brown

Buy This Issue!

Like plenty of other Americans, Dan MacLeod was up late on Thursday, November 5, glued to the couch at his home in Unity, watching presidential election returns trickle in on his phone and laptop. Some 48 hours since the last polls had closed, the race was too close to call, with key swing states still counting mail-in and provisional ballots. MacLeod, managing editor of the Bangor Daily News, made chocolate-chip cookies, put on a Star Wars movie, and habitually clicked refresh.

That evening, he’d opened an email from Decision Desk HQ, or DDHQ, an upstart election-data firm that sells its race projections to the media. DDHQ wasn’t yet calling the race, the email said, but given the ballots yet uncounted in Pennsylvania — and the political lean of the districts they came from — the math looked good for Democrat Joe Biden. MacLeod asked BDN politics editor Michael Shepherd to prep a story, which MacLeod edited before having a cookie, watching Luke destroy the Death Star, and then getting a little sleep. 

The projection from DDHQ came in at 8:50 the next morning, as MacLeod was en route to the office, where a skeleton crew had been working during election week. By the time he arrived, the BDN home page was already updated: “Joe Biden Wins.” At 9:04, Shepherd tweeted his election story, noting the BDN was likely the first paper in the country to announce the result. At 9:34, MacLeod retweeted Shepherd’s observation, tacking on a single word: “Dirigo!”

It would be another 26½ hours before the Associated Press, CNN, and other major news organizations projected Biden as the winner. The BDN was out in front because of the paper’s unique relationship with DDHQ. As the firm’s president, Drew McCoy, explains, “Maine is a hard state to collect in — it’s a very unique place.” For starters, many of its votes are collected at the township level rather than at the county level, the norm elsewhere. The state’s recent adoption of ranked-choice voting is another wrinkle. So while DDHQ collects its own election returns in 49 states, it relies for Maine data on the BDN’s robust collection apparatus — notably, its reporters on the ground and relationships with clerks. In exchange, DDHQ provides the BDN with race projections. It’s an arrangement the organization has with no other newspaper.

“We haven’t found anybody that’s faster than us anywhere else,” McCoy says.

A few all-digital media orgs, including Vox and Business Insider, pay DDHQ for its projection models, and some of these called the race for Biden Friday morning, but McCoy knows of no other newspaper that ran with the call. Around the newsroom, MacLeod says, the thought was that “within a few minutes, maybe an hour or two, you’d then have the AP and all the others.”

“I expected us to be alone with it for a bit,” Shepherd says. “I certainly didn’t think we’d be alone for 27 hours. I thought, later in the day, people would see the same emerging patterns and make a similar call. But obviously, that didn’t happen.”

Instead, Americans of all political stripes spent another anxious day and evening watching returns, some pausing to applaud, chide, or simply puzzle over the BDN’s projection. At 3 p.m., New York Times New England bureau chief Ellen Barry tweeted, “Bangor Daily News still alone on this lol.” At 5:43, author Joe Hill — Maine-reared by author parents Stephen and Tabitha King — tweeted, “The big networks are scared to call it. The Bangor Daily News is not. Never been prouder of my ol hometown.”

“It was a strange experience. . . . We did get a little notoriety from it,” Shepherd says. “Everyone is wondering, why the Bangor Daily News in particular? And I don’t blame them — it’s weird.”

Naturally, the “fake news” chorus bleated, but news editor Lindsay Putnam, whose team oversees the BDN comment section and social channels, says vitriol didn’t overwhelm good-faith inquiries from readers wondering about the mechanics of race projections. “Especially in an age of misinformation,” she says, “we were happy to answer people’s questions.” Shepherd wrote a follow-up post explaining the paper’s relationship to DDHQ and touting that organization’s bona fides. (Among other things, it was the first to call 2016’s race for Trump.)

“I never doubted the call,” MacLeod says, “but there’s an excitement and almost an anxiety whenever you publish anything that’s a big deal first, because then you’re part of history. You feel that weight.”

The next morning, most Saturday papers announced an election yet undecided — not until after 11 a.m. did the New York Times, AP, and broadcast networks call the race for Biden. The front page of Saturday’s BDN, meanwhile, declared in large font, “Biden projected as winner.”

“It’s a cool memento for Mainers,” says Shepherd, whose girlfriend grabbed the last copy at their local Hannaford. McCoy, at DDHQ, says he’s framing a copy. That afternoon, MacLeod tweeted a photo of a reader holding the front page. Then he took a few days off: he went deer hunting, worked around the house, and didn’t look at Twitter once. 

The young guy with the pressed shirt and unassuming smile handing out groceries from a tent outside Brewer’s Northern Light Cancer Care? That would be Matt Dexter. The executive director and sole employee of the Christine B. Foundation was 13 when he lost his mother, Christine, to stomach cancer, and he has since followed her example in what he calls “very simple acts of kindness, practiced constantly.” Dexter was a junior at UMaine when he established his foundation, six years ago, but he shrugs off any suggestion that this is a feat for an undergrad.

“Starting a foundation came naturally,” he says. “Anyone can do it.”

Dexter, who grew up near Boston, fell in love with Maine during trips with family friends to the Belgrade Lakes. UMaine was an obvious choice, and he has since stuck around eastern Maine, in part because he feels it’s where he can do the most good. Cancer is Maine’s leading cause of death, with the highest incidence in eastern Maine’s Piscataquis, Penobscot, Hancock, and Washington counties. His foundation’s original initiative was a relay run from Portland to New York City, called the Eastern Trek for Cancer, that’s raised some $160,000 since 2015. Some of those funds helped support a network of “cancer navigators” at two eastern Maine health organizations, trained to help patients manage their care. Some funded scholarships for college students affected by cancer, and some the foundation distributed to other Maine orgs focused on increasing access to care.

Heading into 2020, Dexter hoped to broaden the foundation’s operations. “We had spent a lot of time understanding what the community really needs,” he explains, “and food assistance stood out.” Working together with Brewer’s Eastern Area Agency on Aging, the Christine B. Foundation hatched a plan to provide free, healthful grocery packages — the equivalent of 1,000 meals — to cancer patients, survivors, and their families. “We planned to kick it off over the summer,” Dexter says. “Then March happened.”

Expediting its plans, the foundation began distributing grocery packages every weekday outside Northern Light. And it’s been able to scale up the program dramatically, thanks to a partnership with the Brewer Area Food Pantry and donations from individuals and foundations. Through the United Way of Eastern Maine, Dexter has recruited drivers to deliver groceries directly to homes throughout the four counties. As of late August, the foundation and its partners had distributed the equivalent of 20,000 free meals.

Nutrition isn’t the program’s only benefit, Dexter explains — he and his volunteers also lend their ears for “unconditional nonclinical conversations.”

“We don’t know what patients have gone through right before seeing us,” Dexter says. “Kindness is so important in a proud community like ours, where people don’t always embrace vulnerability.”

Outside of the foundation, Dexter admits, he doesn’t have much of what many 26-year-olds might consider a life. Recently, he made his first-ever trip to Acadia, and he savors his daily runs. But mostly he works. “I learned early that life is very short,” he says, “and I’ve committed mine to this. I want to leave a value legacy, and there’s no better time to start than when you’re young.”

Read more about the Mainers we saluted in our November 2020 Giving Back Issue, all doing their part to make the Pine Tree state a better place.

Plus, five nonprofit organizations making a big impact. [Sponsored]

---

BUY THIS ISSUE!