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Only in Maine
- Thread starter cany
- Start date
Already in the EV thread, didn't want to brag that we had the cajones to stand up to this BS. Sanity prevailed in killing that CA law clone proposal.
Maine rejects sweeping electric vehicle mandate in blow to governor's climate agenda
The State of Maine rejected a sweeping California-style electric vehicle mandate despite widespread calls from climate activists to pursue the regulations.www.foxnews.com
EVs might be fine in more urban/suburban environs, but the distances we travel is nuts. A plug in Hybrid's electric side wouldn't last for a round trip from my house to Lowes (45 mi), round trip for a loaf of bread, 22 mi.
I have no complaints about the distances, I enjoy my "remote" life, but folks who blindly push any single agenda need to consider all aspects of any situation. Once again, that funny word "Compromise" gets left in the dust...
Classic rural Maine, "We don't any invasion of your city folk. Just leave your money and GO HOME!!" Can't say I blame them. I think the bigger problem will be what happens when these folks who have traveled hundreds of miles get there and it's cloudy, which at this time of year happens 75% of the time. based on historical data?
Yes, I'm driving the 3 hrs to visit some friends who have a "Camp" up there. But besides the gas and treating them to dinner, there's not much skin in the game for us. I'd consider seeing a moose, a win even if the sky is cloudy for the Main(e) event.
Regardless, it will be pretty cool for complete darkness at 15:30 EDT...
For generations, visitors to Maine have flocked east to the rocky coastline, with its lobster boats and crashing waves, or west to ski resorts, peaceful lakes and mountains. Few ever set foot in Aroostook County, a remote northern expanse where residents are prone to suspect — not without reason — that no one south of Bangor even knows that they exist.
So the news that “the County,” as it is known in Maine, would be smack in the path of totality for next month’s solar eclipse — making it a destination for potentially thousands of visitors — has generated mixed emotions in this proudly unpretentious place. Accustomed to ceding the spotlight to showy spots like Bar Harbor, some in the county are not sure how they feel about its fleeting status as the place to be.
“It’s a little new for us here, so it is stressful,” said Lindsay Anderson, manager of Brookside Bakery in Houlton, a town of 6,000 that borders Canada, where the plan for eclipse weekend includes baking 500 whoopie pies, Maine’s official “state treat.”
Next door at Market Square Antiques and Pawn, a compact shop watched over by several mounted deer heads, Tom Willard, a co-owner, had worries of his own.
“Where are 20,000 people going to pee?” he asked.
No one knows how many people will travel to Aroostook County for the eclipse on April 8, making planning a bit of a roulette spin. Estimates range from 10,000 to 40,000, though the turnout may be curtailed by sheer distance. Extending north beyond the end of Interstate 95 to the Canadian border — where the little-known, combat-free Aroostook War raged from 1838 to 1839 — the county is about as large as Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. Caribou, near its northern apex, lies 400 miles north of Boston, a drive of more than six hours.
For eclipse fanatics, though, it might not matter. Dan McGlaun, 60, who has seen 15 eclipses and runs a website dedicated to the one next month, said he had once traveled to French Polynesia and hiked “eight miles through banana plants into the middle of nowhere” in order to be — for 1.5 seconds — the only person on earth in the path of the eclipse, by his own estimation.
“Eclipse geeks, we’re a weird lot,” he conceded.
Northern Maine is not the only remote corner of the country expecting an influx. The path of totality also crosses places including the Ozarks, the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma, and sections of South Texas, all of them hoping to capitalize on the fleeting attention.
In Aroostook County, where potato farms abound and practicality is paramount, tales like Mr. McGlaun’s only add to the general wariness. It does not help that the eclipse will take place during northern New England’s infamous mud season, when the thawing earth turns into tire-sucking muck, heightening concerns that unsuspecting drivers “from away” will get stuck on rural roads and have to be pulled out.
Also not helping: memories of the last major influx, in August 1997, when an outdoor concert festival by the band Phish drew 65,000 fans to a former air force base in Limestone, a town of 1,500. Locals who had scoffed at attendance projections were caught off guard when the crowds materialized, causing traffic gridlock and emptying grocery store shelves. (“Like locusts,” one county resident recalled.)
Conditioned by decades of population drain, some again doubted predictions of crowds when talk of the eclipse began two years ago. That’s when Houlton’s eclipse committee sprang into action, convincing the town that it needed to start planning — and capitalizing on the fact that it will be the last American town in the path.
“The biggest challenge was people not taking it seriously — saying, ‘What’s the big deal, it’s three minutes of darkness, who’s going to come here for that?’” said Johanna Johnston, a lead organizer of the town’s eclipse events. “We needed to explain that it’s not like anything you’ve ever experienced, and it’s an opportunity to show what we can do and what we have to offer.”
Many businesses have seized the opportunity. Ivey’s Motor Lodge in Houlton received its first eclipse booking in 2022, its manager said; when the hotel realized what was happening, it tripled its rates for the nights around the eclipse and tightened its cancellation policy. Most area hotels are fully booked for the event, but Ivey’s still had vacancies earlier this month, possibly because it was charging $650 per night.
Mindful that their 15 minutes of fame will last for only three minutes and 18 seconds (the phase of totality, when the moon will completely block out the sun, begins at 3:32 p.m. in Houlton), the eclipse committee has planned four days of festivities meant to entice travelers to arrive well ahead of the main event — and maybe even come back for another visit.
The town will have six designated “star parks” for eclipse viewing and a crew of welcoming “eclipse ambassadors” to offer guidance. To help feed crowds if restaurants are overwhelmed, several churches plan to offer traditional Maine suppers with baked beans and chowder.
Jane Torres, executive director of the Houlton Chamber of Commerce, has hired a performance art troupe from Rhode Island for the occasion, assisted couples looking to get married in town during the eclipse, helped arrange a NASA broadcast in a historic downtown movie theater that will show the eclipse as it moves across the country, and enlisted her yoga teacher to fill a “metaphysical tent” with tarot card readers and healing demonstrations.
She has also rented 100 portable toilets, a number she acknowledged was a hopeful shot in the dark.
“The challenge is the unknown,” Ms. Torres said.
The unknown that looms largest is the weather in northern Maine in early April. Among the 15 states in the path of totality, Maine has some of the slimmest odds of clear skies — and the best chance of snow — a factor likely to drive hard-core eclipse aficionados, known as umbraphiles, to locations where cloud cover is less likely. (Ironically, perhaps, Aroostook’s name comes from a native Mi’kmaq word that means “clear.”)
According to Priscilla Buster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou, the chances of cloudy conditions at the time of the eclipse are between 60 and 70 percent.
“It’s not looking good for us up here,” she said.
The threat of clouds drove Lynda Mitchell to cancel her hotel reservation in western Maine — Franklin County, part of which will see totality — and book plane tickets to Texas instead.
“It could be awesome in Maine, but I just don’t trust the weather,” she said. “I’m not really a bucket list person, but this isn’t going to happen again in my lifetime.”
Still, Houlton’s eclipse committee is keeping its chin up. Its hopes were recently buoyed by an article describing an “eclipse cooling effect,” observed by scientists, that causes clouds to dissipate when the sun dims and temperatures drop.
Kevin McCartney, a retired geology professor at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, will be focused on another sun on eclipse day. That morning, he plans to unveil a new 3-D model of the sun at the campus entrance, standing 40 feet high. It will serve as the new northern terminus of the Maine Solar System Model, a sprawling roadside attraction installed 20 years ago along 100 miles of rural U.S. Route 1 in Aroostook County, with “planets” spaced at intervals proportional to their actual distances from one another in space.
“Ready to travel the solar system from the comfort of your car?” its website asks.
The largest such model in the Western Hemisphere, and a top tourist attraction in the county, it attracts families and, “believe it or not, solar system model enthusiasts,” Mr. McCartney said. The new sun, visible from Route 1, will be easier to find than the old, two-dimensional one, painted on the walls inside the university’s science museum — and it will shine even when the county’s skies are cloudy.
“People are always wandering the campus asking, ‘Where is the sun?’” he said. “Now they won’t be able to miss it.”
Yes, I'm driving the 3 hrs to visit some friends who have a "Camp" up there. But besides the gas and treating them to dinner, there's not much skin in the game for us. I'd consider seeing a moose, a win even if the sky is cloudy for the Main(e) event.
Regardless, it will be pretty cool for complete darkness at 15:30 EDT...
A Quiet Maine County Braces for the Eclipse. ‘Where Are 20,000 People Going to Pee?’
Businesses and planning committees are eager for visitors, but some in remote Aroostook County are not sure how they feel about lying smack in the path of totality.For generations, visitors to Maine have flocked east to the rocky coastline, with its lobster boats and crashing waves, or west to ski resorts, peaceful lakes and mountains. Few ever set foot in Aroostook County, a remote northern expanse where residents are prone to suspect — not without reason — that no one south of Bangor even knows that they exist.
So the news that “the County,” as it is known in Maine, would be smack in the path of totality for next month’s solar eclipse — making it a destination for potentially thousands of visitors — has generated mixed emotions in this proudly unpretentious place. Accustomed to ceding the spotlight to showy spots like Bar Harbor, some in the county are not sure how they feel about its fleeting status as the place to be.
“It’s a little new for us here, so it is stressful,” said Lindsay Anderson, manager of Brookside Bakery in Houlton, a town of 6,000 that borders Canada, where the plan for eclipse weekend includes baking 500 whoopie pies, Maine’s official “state treat.”
Next door at Market Square Antiques and Pawn, a compact shop watched over by several mounted deer heads, Tom Willard, a co-owner, had worries of his own.
“Where are 20,000 people going to pee?” he asked.
No one knows how many people will travel to Aroostook County for the eclipse on April 8, making planning a bit of a roulette spin. Estimates range from 10,000 to 40,000, though the turnout may be curtailed by sheer distance. Extending north beyond the end of Interstate 95 to the Canadian border — where the little-known, combat-free Aroostook War raged from 1838 to 1839 — the county is about as large as Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. Caribou, near its northern apex, lies 400 miles north of Boston, a drive of more than six hours.
For eclipse fanatics, though, it might not matter. Dan McGlaun, 60, who has seen 15 eclipses and runs a website dedicated to the one next month, said he had once traveled to French Polynesia and hiked “eight miles through banana plants into the middle of nowhere” in order to be — for 1.5 seconds — the only person on earth in the path of the eclipse, by his own estimation.
“Eclipse geeks, we’re a weird lot,” he conceded.
Northern Maine is not the only remote corner of the country expecting an influx. The path of totality also crosses places including the Ozarks, the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma, and sections of South Texas, all of them hoping to capitalize on the fleeting attention.
In Aroostook County, where potato farms abound and practicality is paramount, tales like Mr. McGlaun’s only add to the general wariness. It does not help that the eclipse will take place during northern New England’s infamous mud season, when the thawing earth turns into tire-sucking muck, heightening concerns that unsuspecting drivers “from away” will get stuck on rural roads and have to be pulled out.
Also not helping: memories of the last major influx, in August 1997, when an outdoor concert festival by the band Phish drew 65,000 fans to a former air force base in Limestone, a town of 1,500. Locals who had scoffed at attendance projections were caught off guard when the crowds materialized, causing traffic gridlock and emptying grocery store shelves. (“Like locusts,” one county resident recalled.)
Conditioned by decades of population drain, some again doubted predictions of crowds when talk of the eclipse began two years ago. That’s when Houlton’s eclipse committee sprang into action, convincing the town that it needed to start planning — and capitalizing on the fact that it will be the last American town in the path.
“The biggest challenge was people not taking it seriously — saying, ‘What’s the big deal, it’s three minutes of darkness, who’s going to come here for that?’” said Johanna Johnston, a lead organizer of the town’s eclipse events. “We needed to explain that it’s not like anything you’ve ever experienced, and it’s an opportunity to show what we can do and what we have to offer.”
Many businesses have seized the opportunity. Ivey’s Motor Lodge in Houlton received its first eclipse booking in 2022, its manager said; when the hotel realized what was happening, it tripled its rates for the nights around the eclipse and tightened its cancellation policy. Most area hotels are fully booked for the event, but Ivey’s still had vacancies earlier this month, possibly because it was charging $650 per night.
Mindful that their 15 minutes of fame will last for only three minutes and 18 seconds (the phase of totality, when the moon will completely block out the sun, begins at 3:32 p.m. in Houlton), the eclipse committee has planned four days of festivities meant to entice travelers to arrive well ahead of the main event — and maybe even come back for another visit.
The town will have six designated “star parks” for eclipse viewing and a crew of welcoming “eclipse ambassadors” to offer guidance. To help feed crowds if restaurants are overwhelmed, several churches plan to offer traditional Maine suppers with baked beans and chowder.
Jane Torres, executive director of the Houlton Chamber of Commerce, has hired a performance art troupe from Rhode Island for the occasion, assisted couples looking to get married in town during the eclipse, helped arrange a NASA broadcast in a historic downtown movie theater that will show the eclipse as it moves across the country, and enlisted her yoga teacher to fill a “metaphysical tent” with tarot card readers and healing demonstrations.
She has also rented 100 portable toilets, a number she acknowledged was a hopeful shot in the dark.
“The challenge is the unknown,” Ms. Torres said.
The unknown that looms largest is the weather in northern Maine in early April. Among the 15 states in the path of totality, Maine has some of the slimmest odds of clear skies — and the best chance of snow — a factor likely to drive hard-core eclipse aficionados, known as umbraphiles, to locations where cloud cover is less likely. (Ironically, perhaps, Aroostook’s name comes from a native Mi’kmaq word that means “clear.”)
According to Priscilla Buster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou, the chances of cloudy conditions at the time of the eclipse are between 60 and 70 percent.
“It’s not looking good for us up here,” she said.
The threat of clouds drove Lynda Mitchell to cancel her hotel reservation in western Maine — Franklin County, part of which will see totality — and book plane tickets to Texas instead.
“It could be awesome in Maine, but I just don’t trust the weather,” she said. “I’m not really a bucket list person, but this isn’t going to happen again in my lifetime.”
Still, Houlton’s eclipse committee is keeping its chin up. Its hopes were recently buoyed by an article describing an “eclipse cooling effect,” observed by scientists, that causes clouds to dissipate when the sun dims and temperatures drop.
Kevin McCartney, a retired geology professor at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, will be focused on another sun on eclipse day. That morning, he plans to unveil a new 3-D model of the sun at the campus entrance, standing 40 feet high. It will serve as the new northern terminus of the Maine Solar System Model, a sprawling roadside attraction installed 20 years ago along 100 miles of rural U.S. Route 1 in Aroostook County, with “planets” spaced at intervals proportional to their actual distances from one another in space.
“Ready to travel the solar system from the comfort of your car?” its website asks.
The largest such model in the Western Hemisphere, and a top tourist attraction in the county, it attracts families and, “believe it or not, solar system model enthusiasts,” Mr. McCartney said. The new sun, visible from Route 1, will be easier to find than the old, two-dimensional one, painted on the walls inside the university’s science museum — and it will shine even when the county’s skies are cloudy.
“People are always wandering the campus asking, ‘Where is the sun?’” he said. “Now they won’t be able to miss it.”
Nothing more Byzantine than Maritime Law, but all this fuss over a late 19th century sailboat wreck carrying granite pavers? Is there something more exciting there?????
It has sat at the bottom of Maine’s coastal waters for more than 100 years, a simple schooner that transported granite from the state’s quarries until its untimely demise in the 1890s.
And now there’s a warrant out for its arrest.
JJM, an LLC out of Southwest Harbor, filed a maritime claim last week in U.S. District Court in Bangor seeking ownership of “one abandoned and submerged vessel” found about six nautical miles off the coast of Bar Harbor.
It’s not a treasure hunt, according to an attorney involved in the case. But those hoping to explore the wreck won’t say exactly what they’re looking for – or its specific coordinates.
“This is not a sunken World War II submarine, or buried treasure,” said Ben Ford, the attorney representing JJM LLC. “This is granite pavers. … It’s not particularly sexy cargo.”
Nor has JJM said what it plans to do with the salvaged ship, how the company found out about the wreck and why it’s so important.
“It is something that people in the general vicinity have known about for a while,” said Gregory Johnston, a co-manager of JJM.
There are many legendary wrecks around the coast of Maine, said Nathan Lipfert, an expert in Maine’s shipbuilding history and a retired curator for the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.
“But I’ve never heard of a stone ship that people are hot to find,” Lipfert said.
CONTESTING CLAIMS
Adhering to maritime law, JJM lists the vessel as a “defendant” in court records and filed a proposed warrant for her arrest by the United States Marshal for the District of Maine.
The judge signed the warrant Tuesday morning, starting a 14-day clock for anyone claiming an interest to announce themselves. They then have 21 days to respond to JJM’s claim.
That’s not to be confused with a criminal arrest warrant, Ford said. It simply means JJM will turn over the artifacts it seized during a November scuba diving search for the court to keep while it waits to see if anyone responds to a public notice regarding the vessel’s existence and JJM’s request for ownership.
Maritime laws over salvaging sunken ships were created to help the original and rightful owners, said marine archaeologist Warren Riess, who is a retired professor from the University of Maine’s History Department.
In claims like these, where one party is seeking ownership of a century-old vessel, it’s not unusual for people to come out of the woodwork contesting that claim.
In the 1980s, a famed treasure hunter from Columbus, Ohio, said he had successfully located a steamer off the Carolina coast that sank in the 1850s, carrying tons of gold. Upon that announcement, insurance companies who had paid claims after the ship sank challenged that treasure hunter in court, arguing the gold was theirs. A judge agreed they had some rights to gold, but The Columbus Dispatch reported they were awarded less than 10%.
In 2003, the Historic Aircraft Recovery Corporation filed a maritime claim to get ownership of a set of World War II fighter planes at the bottom of Sebago Lake. A federal judge dismissed the case after the state of Maine said the lake was state property. The court also heard objections from the United Kingdom, which owned the planes and argued that the company was seeking to “exploit” a “military gravesite.”
The fighters were flown by two Canadian pilots stationed at the Brunswick Naval Air Station. They crashed over the lake on May 16, 1944, and the wreckage still sits on the lake bottom at a depth of about 200 feet.
The stone pavers aboard JJM’s mysterious schooner – the same kind of rock used to fill gaps in cobble streets – likely won’t raise the same objections, Riess said.
Riess said the judge’s order will most likely come down to historical significance. If there’s archaeological or public value, sometimes federal law will bar commercial entities from salvaging a boat.
But the boat described by JJM in court records is hardly remarkable, at least according to the people who want to bring it up.
Johnston wrote in a statement to the court that the ship “was not in any way unique or materially distinguishable from other, similar coasting schooners of the 19th century, many of which continue to sail the waters of the Maine coast today.” Johnston doesn’t believe there were any injuries or losses of life in the wreckage, so the company wouldn’t be disturbing a submerged gravesite.
A MYSTERIOUS SHIP
The nameless vessel is believed to be a two-masted ship with a wooden hull, about 100 feet long and 20 to 30 feet high, according to court records.
When JJM sent a diver down to explore, he found the ship sitting about elbow-deep in the mud, but loose enough that he was able to remove artifacts without tools. That included a 28-inch plank of wood with holes drilled into it, a piece of the ship and a stone paver from the ship’s cargo.
There were thousands of schooners like these off the coast of Maine in the 1800s used for cargo, historians say. They weren’t particularly sustainable. Their lifespans were usually about 15 years. They stayed local and didn’t go on long voyages.
“Granite was a major cargo out of Maine, but pavers are kind of the least fancy of all the granite products,” said Kelly Page, curator for the Maine Maritime Museum. She said this particular style of ship was basically the “box truck” of its era.
Neither Page nor Lipfert could imagine why this particular vessel matters to JJM.
Perhaps, based on how well preserved the ship is, Page speculated it would have scholarly value. Most submerged wrecks disintegrate in saltwater. If there were still significant pieces of this boat intact, historians could learn more from the type of wood that was used and its fasteners.
What’s even more mysterious is how the vessel came to JJM’s attention. In court records, Johnston mentions conducting historical research and reviewing records.
Page said there’s no central database for documents like these. To even start looking for a small boat’s enrollment papers or business records, you have to have a few candidates in mind.
A schooner like this one likely didn’t have a lot of shareholders, and therefore would have fewer records, she said.
However, if there was a wreck, it’s possible there would have been local news coverage of the event or records from emergency responders.
“It isn’t easy,” Page said. “It’s not like the information is just compiled somewhere and easy to find. It takes legwork to find out.”
AN ‘EXPLORATION VENTURE’
Johnston said in a brief interview last week that the company was formed by himself and several others who have long been interested in this shipwreck. Court records describe JJM as an “exploration venture.”
He declined to describe who else is involved in the business. He said the company’s acronym title was “arbitrary.” He wouldn’t discuss any ultimate endgame for the salvage without knowing what is down there and how the court process will go.
JJM became an LLC around the same time they say they located the wreck’s coordinates via sonar and visited the site with a certified diver in November. An affidavit from the diver detailing what he discovered and the exact whereabouts of the vessel have been sealed from the public.
In court records, Johnston said the company has the equipment and expertise necessary to salvage the vessel.
Ford and Johnston said they look forward to sharing more information about the vessel and its story in time.
“We’re curious to explore further,” Johnston said.
Wanted for arrest: One mysterious sunken vessel off the coast of Maine
A Maine company is asking a U.S. District Court judge to 'arrest' a boat it found near Southwest Harbor so it can salvage the wreckage.It has sat at the bottom of Maine’s coastal waters for more than 100 years, a simple schooner that transported granite from the state’s quarries until its untimely demise in the 1890s.
And now there’s a warrant out for its arrest.
JJM, an LLC out of Southwest Harbor, filed a maritime claim last week in U.S. District Court in Bangor seeking ownership of “one abandoned and submerged vessel” found about six nautical miles off the coast of Bar Harbor.
It’s not a treasure hunt, according to an attorney involved in the case. But those hoping to explore the wreck won’t say exactly what they’re looking for – or its specific coordinates.
“This is not a sunken World War II submarine, or buried treasure,” said Ben Ford, the attorney representing JJM LLC. “This is granite pavers. … It’s not particularly sexy cargo.”
Nor has JJM said what it plans to do with the salvaged ship, how the company found out about the wreck and why it’s so important.
“It is something that people in the general vicinity have known about for a while,” said Gregory Johnston, a co-manager of JJM.
There are many legendary wrecks around the coast of Maine, said Nathan Lipfert, an expert in Maine’s shipbuilding history and a retired curator for the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.
“But I’ve never heard of a stone ship that people are hot to find,” Lipfert said.
CONTESTING CLAIMS
Adhering to maritime law, JJM lists the vessel as a “defendant” in court records and filed a proposed warrant for her arrest by the United States Marshal for the District of Maine.
The judge signed the warrant Tuesday morning, starting a 14-day clock for anyone claiming an interest to announce themselves. They then have 21 days to respond to JJM’s claim.
That’s not to be confused with a criminal arrest warrant, Ford said. It simply means JJM will turn over the artifacts it seized during a November scuba diving search for the court to keep while it waits to see if anyone responds to a public notice regarding the vessel’s existence and JJM’s request for ownership.
Maritime laws over salvaging sunken ships were created to help the original and rightful owners, said marine archaeologist Warren Riess, who is a retired professor from the University of Maine’s History Department.
In claims like these, where one party is seeking ownership of a century-old vessel, it’s not unusual for people to come out of the woodwork contesting that claim.
In the 1980s, a famed treasure hunter from Columbus, Ohio, said he had successfully located a steamer off the Carolina coast that sank in the 1850s, carrying tons of gold. Upon that announcement, insurance companies who had paid claims after the ship sank challenged that treasure hunter in court, arguing the gold was theirs. A judge agreed they had some rights to gold, but The Columbus Dispatch reported they were awarded less than 10%.
In 2003, the Historic Aircraft Recovery Corporation filed a maritime claim to get ownership of a set of World War II fighter planes at the bottom of Sebago Lake. A federal judge dismissed the case after the state of Maine said the lake was state property. The court also heard objections from the United Kingdom, which owned the planes and argued that the company was seeking to “exploit” a “military gravesite.”
The fighters were flown by two Canadian pilots stationed at the Brunswick Naval Air Station. They crashed over the lake on May 16, 1944, and the wreckage still sits on the lake bottom at a depth of about 200 feet.
The stone pavers aboard JJM’s mysterious schooner – the same kind of rock used to fill gaps in cobble streets – likely won’t raise the same objections, Riess said.
Riess said the judge’s order will most likely come down to historical significance. If there’s archaeological or public value, sometimes federal law will bar commercial entities from salvaging a boat.
But the boat described by JJM in court records is hardly remarkable, at least according to the people who want to bring it up.
Johnston wrote in a statement to the court that the ship “was not in any way unique or materially distinguishable from other, similar coasting schooners of the 19th century, many of which continue to sail the waters of the Maine coast today.” Johnston doesn’t believe there were any injuries or losses of life in the wreckage, so the company wouldn’t be disturbing a submerged gravesite.
A MYSTERIOUS SHIP
The nameless vessel is believed to be a two-masted ship with a wooden hull, about 100 feet long and 20 to 30 feet high, according to court records.
When JJM sent a diver down to explore, he found the ship sitting about elbow-deep in the mud, but loose enough that he was able to remove artifacts without tools. That included a 28-inch plank of wood with holes drilled into it, a piece of the ship and a stone paver from the ship’s cargo.
There were thousands of schooners like these off the coast of Maine in the 1800s used for cargo, historians say. They weren’t particularly sustainable. Their lifespans were usually about 15 years. They stayed local and didn’t go on long voyages.
“Granite was a major cargo out of Maine, but pavers are kind of the least fancy of all the granite products,” said Kelly Page, curator for the Maine Maritime Museum. She said this particular style of ship was basically the “box truck” of its era.
Neither Page nor Lipfert could imagine why this particular vessel matters to JJM.
Perhaps, based on how well preserved the ship is, Page speculated it would have scholarly value. Most submerged wrecks disintegrate in saltwater. If there were still significant pieces of this boat intact, historians could learn more from the type of wood that was used and its fasteners.
What’s even more mysterious is how the vessel came to JJM’s attention. In court records, Johnston mentions conducting historical research and reviewing records.
Page said there’s no central database for documents like these. To even start looking for a small boat’s enrollment papers or business records, you have to have a few candidates in mind.
A schooner like this one likely didn’t have a lot of shareholders, and therefore would have fewer records, she said.
However, if there was a wreck, it’s possible there would have been local news coverage of the event or records from emergency responders.
“It isn’t easy,” Page said. “It’s not like the information is just compiled somewhere and easy to find. It takes legwork to find out.”
AN ‘EXPLORATION VENTURE’
Johnston said in a brief interview last week that the company was formed by himself and several others who have long been interested in this shipwreck. Court records describe JJM as an “exploration venture.”
He declined to describe who else is involved in the business. He said the company’s acronym title was “arbitrary.” He wouldn’t discuss any ultimate endgame for the salvage without knowing what is down there and how the court process will go.
JJM became an LLC around the same time they say they located the wreck’s coordinates via sonar and visited the site with a certified diver in November. An affidavit from the diver detailing what he discovered and the exact whereabouts of the vessel have been sealed from the public.
In court records, Johnston said the company has the equipment and expertise necessary to salvage the vessel.
Ford and Johnston said they look forward to sharing more information about the vessel and its story in time.
“We’re curious to explore further,” Johnston said.
At the height of the storm like 250,000 people along the coast were without power, including @Old Mud, due to an ice storm. Portland had almost 3/4" of ICE!!! As of today it's down to just over 100,000 and Don's back on. Somehow my peninsula lucked out; my lights didn't even blink.
Up in the mountains they got almost 30" of powder, biggest snowfall up there of the entire 23/24 season!!??
Old Mud
Well-Known Angler
It's NOT where they have that dot !!. Send money for more information.
Born in Maine, she traveled & scammed the world. Guess things got too hot for her a few years ago and she returned hoping to disappear in the rural towns of Maine north Woods, but she couldn't lay low enough. While in Maine, she has registered at least one business, called Satan’s Eye of the Storm LLC, incorporated in Kennebunk. Smyth, under the name Lucia Belia, purported to offer hypnotherapy, ritual magic and satanic self-help services. She also offered similar services through a website named Lucia Belia, and wrote a book called “Eastern Star Rising: How Satan’s Eye of the Storm Was Created.”During her time in Maine, Smyth also allegedly solicited donations for purportedly running rescue missions to help refugees in Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia in February 2022, according to The Guardian.
Scammer jailed in Maine claimed to be a psychic, witch and Irish heiress
A hearing next month will decide whether Marianne Smyth can be extradited to the United Kingdom over a scam dating back more than 15 years in Northern Ireland.BOSTON — She has crisscrossed the country saying she’s an Irish heiress, a psychic and good friends with a movie star in order to run scores of scams, her victims say.
But now Marianne Smyth is in a Maine jail awaiting a hearing next month that will decide whether she can be extradited to the United Kingdom over a scam dating back more than 15 years in Northern Ireland. The 54-year-old American is accused of stealing more than $170,000 from at least five victims from 2008 to 2010 in Northern Ireland, where a court issued arrest warrants for her in 2021, according to legal documents. She was located and arrested last month in Maine.
Her case has similarities to Anna Sorokin, a grifter convicted in New York of paying for a lavish lifestyle by impersonating a wealthy German heiress.
They grew close over several years in Los Angeles, when she bought him expensive dinners and luxury vacations, he said. But her story began to unravel when Walton realized she was jailed for stealing $200,000 from a luxury travel agency where she worked. She was later convicted of stealing from him and briefly served time in prison.
“She has no shame. And she has no conscience,” the 49-year-old reality television producer, author and public speaker said. “She revels in casting countless victims as unwitting actors in her elaborate schemes to defraud.”
Smyth’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment. From jail, Smyth referred questions to her attorney.
The podcast has drawn tips from dozens of victims from California to New York, Walton said. The tipsters described a fake charity for Ukraine as well as lies that she was an emissary for Satan, a witch, a hockey coach, a cancer patient and best friends with Jennifer Aniston. She often changed her name and appearance, her victims say.
“She honed in on our vulnerabilities and got all our information and bank accounts,” said Heather Sladinski, a costume designer in Los Angeles who said she was scammed out of $20,000 for psychic readings, fake life coach sessions and cult-like retreats that included rituals, breathing exercises and yoga. Smyth was funny, smart and had credentials and other documents to back up her claims, Sladinski said.
The 50-year-old from Los Angeles blocked Smyth after she wanted to do a bizarre ritual involving a chicken to win back her ex-boyfriend, who had a restraining order against her, Sladinski said. Smyth then started making threatening phone calls and Sladinski “was so scared” that she moved homes. But after connecting with Walton, Sladkinski filed her own police report against Smyth and testified at Walton’s trial.
Tess Cacciatore, who owns a production company and nonprofit charity, never lost money to Smyth, but met her in 2016 through a business partner who had employed her as a psychic. Smyth claimed to be a cancer patient, even sending her a photo of her in a hospital gown, and said she was set to get a $50 million inheritance. Smyth also showed Cacciatore emails purportedly from Aniston and, at one point, invited her to join them at the Golden Globe Awards before abruptly canceling.
In Northern Ireland, government officials say Smyth stole money that she had promised to invest and arranged to sell a victim a home but took the money. She remains in the Piscataquis County Jail in Dover-Foxcroft pending the extradition hearing on April 17.
“She should have been an actress,” Cacciatore said. “She would have worked a lot and not gone to jail. She is so good at what she did.”
longcast
Well-Known Angler
Maine GOP lawmaker sounds alarm on 'sanctuary state' proposal for abortions and sex changes
Hearings continue for controversial bill in Maine that would make it a sanctuary state for abortions and gender-transition procedures.
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Maine's Republican Senate Minority Leader, Trey Stewart, is sounding the alarm on a bill moving through the state's legislature that would make it a sanctuary state for abortion and gender-transition procedures for minors.
longcast
Well-Known Angler
Maine college student found dead as authorities investigate cause
A 20-year-old Maine college student was found dead in a parking lot Sunday near the Frank J. Woods Bridge in Topsham. Officials are awaiting autopsy results.
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When they settle in a place where people work hard, they want to join in. Just F-ing common sense...
Maine has a lot of lobsters. It also has a lot of older people, ones who are less and less willing and able to catch, clean and sell the crustaceans that make up a $1 billion industry for the state. Companies are turning to foreign-born workers to bridge the divide.
“Folks born in Maine are generally not looking for manufacturing work, especially in food manufacturing,” said Ben Conniff, a founder of Luke’s Lobster, explaining that the firm’s lobster processing plant has been staffed mostly by immigrants since it opened in 2013, and that foreign-born workers help keep “the natural resources economy going.”
Maine has the oldest population of any U.S. state, with a median age of 45.1. As America overall ages, the state offers a preview of what that could look like economically — and the critical role that immigrants are likely to play in filling the labor market holes that will be created as native-born workers retire.
Nationally, immigration is expected to become an increasingly critical source of new workers and economic vibrancy in the coming decades.
It’s a silver lining at a time when huge immigrant flows that started in 2022 are straining state and local resources across the country and drawing political backlash. While the influx may pose near-term challenges, it is also boosting the American economy’s potential. Employers today are managing to hire rapidly partly because of the incoming labor supply. The Congressional Budget Office has already revised up both its population and its economic growth projections for the next decade in light of the wave of newcomers.
In Maine, companies are already beginning to look to immigrants to fill labor force gaps on factory floors and in skilled trades alike as native-born employees either leave the work force or barrel toward retirement.
State legislators are working to create an Office of New Americans, an effort to attract and integrate immigrants into the work force, for instance. Private companies are also focused on the issue. The Luke’s Lobster founders started an initiative called Lift All Boats in 2022 to supplement and diversify the fast-aging lobster fishing industry. It aims to teach minorities and other industry outsiders how to lobster and how to work their way through the extensive and complex licensing process, and about half of the participants have been foreign-born.
They included Chadai Gatembo, 18, who came to Maine two years ago from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr. Gatembo trekked into the United States from Central America, spent two weeks in a Texas detention center and then followed others who were originally from Congo to Maine. He lived in a youth shelter for a time, but now resides with foster parents, has learned English, has been approved for work authorization and is about to graduate from high school.
Mr. Gatembo would like to go to college, but he also enjoyed learning to lobster last summer. He is planning to do it again this year, entertaining the possibility of one day becoming a full-fledged lobsterman.
“Every immigrant, people from different countries, moved here looking for opportunities,” Mr. Gatembo said. “I have a lot of interests — lobster is one of them.”
A smaller share of Maine’s population is foreign-born than in the country as a whole, but the state is seeing a jump in immigration as refugees and other new entrants pour in.
That echoes a trend playing out nationally. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the United States added 3.3 million immigrants last year and will add another 3.3 million in 2024, up sharply from the 900,000 that was typical in the years leading up to the pandemic.
One-third to half of last year’s wave of immigrants came in through legal channels, with work visas or green cards, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis. But a jump in unauthorized immigrants entering the country has also been behind the surge, the economists estimate.
Many recent immigrants have concentrated in certain cities, often to be near other immigrants or in some cases because they were bused there by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, after crossing the border. Miami, Denver, Chicago and New York have all been big recipients of newcomers.
In that sense, today’s immigration is not economically ideal. As they resettle in clusters, migrants are not necessarily ending up in the places that most need their labor. And the fact that many are not authorized to work can make it harder for them to fit seamlessly into the labor market.
It’s a common issue in the Denver area, where shelters were housing nearly 5,000 people at the peak early this year, said Jon Ewing, a spokesman with Denver Human Services. The city has helped about 1,600 people apply for work authorization, almost all successfully, as it tries to get immigrants on their feet so they do not overwhelm the local shelter options.
Most people who gain authorization are finding work fairly easily, Mr. Ewing said, with employers like carpenters and chefs eager for the influx of new workers.
Nationally, even with the barriers that prevent some immigrants from being hired, the huge recent inflow has been helping to bolster job growth and speed up the economy.
“I’m very confident that we would not have seen the employment gains we saw last year — and we certainly can’t sustain it — without immigration,” said Wendy Edelberg, the director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy research group at the Brookings Institution.
The new supply of immigrants has allowed employers to hire at a rapid pace without overheating the labor market. And with more people earning and spending money, the economy has been insulated against the slowdown and even recession that many economists once saw as all but inevitable as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 2022 and 2023.
Adriana Hernandez, 24, a mother of four from Caracas, Venezuela, is living with her family in a one-bedroom apartment in Aurora, Colo. After journeying through the Darién Gap and crossing the border in December, Ms. Hernandez and her family turned themselves in to immigration authorities in Texas and then traveled by bus to Colorado.
They have no work authorization as they wait for a judge to rule on their case, so Ms. Hernandez’s husband has turned to day labor to keep them housed and fed.
“Economically, I’m doing really badly, because we haven’t had the chance to get a work permit,” Ms. Hernandez said in Spanish.
Ernie Tedeschi, a research scholar at Yale Law School, estimates that the labor force would have decreased by about 1.2 million people without immigration from 2019 to the end of 2023 because of population aging, but that immigration has instead allowed it to grow by two million.
Economists think the immigration wave could also improve America’s labor force demographics in the longer run even as the native-born population ages, with a greater share of the population in retirement with each year.
The nation’s aging could eventually lead to labor shortages in some industries — like the ones that have already started to surface in some of Maine’s business sectors — and it will mean that a smaller base of workers is paying taxes to support federal programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Immigrants tend to be younger than the native-born population, and are more likely to work and have higher fertility. That means that they can help to bolster the working-age population. Previous waves of immigration have already helped to keep the United States’ median age lower and its population growing more quickly than it otherwise would.
“Even influxes that were difficult and overwhelming at first, there were advantages on the other side of that,” Mr. Tedeschi said.
In fact, immigration is poised to become increasingly critical to America’s demographics. By 2042, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, all American population growth will be due to immigration, as deaths cancel out births among native-born people. And largely because immigration has picked up so much, the C.B.O. thinks that the U.S. adult population will be 7.4 million people larger in 2033 than it had previously expected.
Immigration could help reduce the federal deficit by boosting growth and increasing the working-age tax base, Ms. Edelberg said, though the impact on state and local finances is more complicated as they provide services like public schooling.
But there are a lot of uncertainties. For one thing, nobody knows how long today’s big immigration flows will last. Many are spurred by geopolitical instability, including economic crisis and crime in Venezuela, violence in Congo, and humanitarian crises across other parts of Africa and the Middle East.
The C.B.O. itself has based its projections on guesses: It has immigration trailing off through 2026 because it anticipates a slow reversion to normal, not because it is actually clear when or how quickly immigration will taper.
National policies could also reshape how many people are able to come to — and stay in — the United States.
The influx of immigrants has caused problems in many places as the surge in population overwhelms local support systems and leads to competition for a limited supply of housing. As that happens, immigration has become an increasingly critical political issue, surging to the top of the list of the nation’s most important problems in Gallup polling.
Former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has warned of an immigrant-created crime wave. He has pledged to deport undocumented immigrants en masse if he wins the presidential election in November.
The Biden administration has used its executive authority to open a back door to allow thousands of migrants into the United States temporarily, while also taking steps to repair the legal refugee program. But as Democratic leaders have joined Republicans in criticizing President Biden over migration in recent months, he has embraced a more conservative tone, even pledging to “shut down” the border if Congress passed a bill empowering him to do so.
Politics are not the only wild card: The economy could also slow. If that happened, fewer immigrants might want to come to the United States, and those who did might struggle to find work.
Some economists fret that immigrants will compete against American workers for jobs, particularly those with lower skill levels, which could become a more pressing concern in a weaker employment market. But recent economic research has suggested that immigrants mostly compete with one another for work, since they tend to work in different roles from those of native-born Americans.
At the Luke’s Lobster processing plant in Saco, Maine, Mr. Conniff has often struggled to find enough help over the years, despite pay that starts at $16 per hour. But he has hired people like Chenda Chamreoun, 30, who came to the United States from Cambodia in 2013 and worked her way up from lobster cleaning to quality assurance supervisor as she learned English.
Now, she is in the process of starting her own catering business. Immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial than the nation as a whole — another reason that they could make the American economy more innovative and productive as its population ages.
Ms. Chamreoun explained that the move to the United States was challenging, but that it had taught her how to realize goals. “You have more abilities than you think.”
Immigrants in Maine Are Filling a Labor Gap. It May Be a Prelude for the U.S.
A wave of rapid immigration is taxing local resources around the country and drawing political ire. But it might leave America’s economy better off.Maine has a lot of lobsters. It also has a lot of older people, ones who are less and less willing and able to catch, clean and sell the crustaceans that make up a $1 billion industry for the state. Companies are turning to foreign-born workers to bridge the divide.
“Folks born in Maine are generally not looking for manufacturing work, especially in food manufacturing,” said Ben Conniff, a founder of Luke’s Lobster, explaining that the firm’s lobster processing plant has been staffed mostly by immigrants since it opened in 2013, and that foreign-born workers help keep “the natural resources economy going.”
Maine has the oldest population of any U.S. state, with a median age of 45.1. As America overall ages, the state offers a preview of what that could look like economically — and the critical role that immigrants are likely to play in filling the labor market holes that will be created as native-born workers retire.
Nationally, immigration is expected to become an increasingly critical source of new workers and economic vibrancy in the coming decades.
It’s a silver lining at a time when huge immigrant flows that started in 2022 are straining state and local resources across the country and drawing political backlash. While the influx may pose near-term challenges, it is also boosting the American economy’s potential. Employers today are managing to hire rapidly partly because of the incoming labor supply. The Congressional Budget Office has already revised up both its population and its economic growth projections for the next decade in light of the wave of newcomers.
In Maine, companies are already beginning to look to immigrants to fill labor force gaps on factory floors and in skilled trades alike as native-born employees either leave the work force or barrel toward retirement.
State legislators are working to create an Office of New Americans, an effort to attract and integrate immigrants into the work force, for instance. Private companies are also focused on the issue. The Luke’s Lobster founders started an initiative called Lift All Boats in 2022 to supplement and diversify the fast-aging lobster fishing industry. It aims to teach minorities and other industry outsiders how to lobster and how to work their way through the extensive and complex licensing process, and about half of the participants have been foreign-born.
They included Chadai Gatembo, 18, who came to Maine two years ago from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr. Gatembo trekked into the United States from Central America, spent two weeks in a Texas detention center and then followed others who were originally from Congo to Maine. He lived in a youth shelter for a time, but now resides with foster parents, has learned English, has been approved for work authorization and is about to graduate from high school.
Mr. Gatembo would like to go to college, but he also enjoyed learning to lobster last summer. He is planning to do it again this year, entertaining the possibility of one day becoming a full-fledged lobsterman.
“Every immigrant, people from different countries, moved here looking for opportunities,” Mr. Gatembo said. “I have a lot of interests — lobster is one of them.”
A smaller share of Maine’s population is foreign-born than in the country as a whole, but the state is seeing a jump in immigration as refugees and other new entrants pour in.
That echoes a trend playing out nationally. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the United States added 3.3 million immigrants last year and will add another 3.3 million in 2024, up sharply from the 900,000 that was typical in the years leading up to the pandemic.
One-third to half of last year’s wave of immigrants came in through legal channels, with work visas or green cards, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis. But a jump in unauthorized immigrants entering the country has also been behind the surge, the economists estimate.
Many recent immigrants have concentrated in certain cities, often to be near other immigrants or in some cases because they were bused there by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, after crossing the border. Miami, Denver, Chicago and New York have all been big recipients of newcomers.
In that sense, today’s immigration is not economically ideal. As they resettle in clusters, migrants are not necessarily ending up in the places that most need their labor. And the fact that many are not authorized to work can make it harder for them to fit seamlessly into the labor market.
It’s a common issue in the Denver area, where shelters were housing nearly 5,000 people at the peak early this year, said Jon Ewing, a spokesman with Denver Human Services. The city has helped about 1,600 people apply for work authorization, almost all successfully, as it tries to get immigrants on their feet so they do not overwhelm the local shelter options.
Most people who gain authorization are finding work fairly easily, Mr. Ewing said, with employers like carpenters and chefs eager for the influx of new workers.
Nationally, even with the barriers that prevent some immigrants from being hired, the huge recent inflow has been helping to bolster job growth and speed up the economy.
“I’m very confident that we would not have seen the employment gains we saw last year — and we certainly can’t sustain it — without immigration,” said Wendy Edelberg, the director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy research group at the Brookings Institution.
The new supply of immigrants has allowed employers to hire at a rapid pace without overheating the labor market. And with more people earning and spending money, the economy has been insulated against the slowdown and even recession that many economists once saw as all but inevitable as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 2022 and 2023.
Adriana Hernandez, 24, a mother of four from Caracas, Venezuela, is living with her family in a one-bedroom apartment in Aurora, Colo. After journeying through the Darién Gap and crossing the border in December, Ms. Hernandez and her family turned themselves in to immigration authorities in Texas and then traveled by bus to Colorado.
They have no work authorization as they wait for a judge to rule on their case, so Ms. Hernandez’s husband has turned to day labor to keep them housed and fed.
“Economically, I’m doing really badly, because we haven’t had the chance to get a work permit,” Ms. Hernandez said in Spanish.
Ernie Tedeschi, a research scholar at Yale Law School, estimates that the labor force would have decreased by about 1.2 million people without immigration from 2019 to the end of 2023 because of population aging, but that immigration has instead allowed it to grow by two million.
Economists think the immigration wave could also improve America’s labor force demographics in the longer run even as the native-born population ages, with a greater share of the population in retirement with each year.
The nation’s aging could eventually lead to labor shortages in some industries — like the ones that have already started to surface in some of Maine’s business sectors — and it will mean that a smaller base of workers is paying taxes to support federal programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Immigrants tend to be younger than the native-born population, and are more likely to work and have higher fertility. That means that they can help to bolster the working-age population. Previous waves of immigration have already helped to keep the United States’ median age lower and its population growing more quickly than it otherwise would.
“Even influxes that were difficult and overwhelming at first, there were advantages on the other side of that,” Mr. Tedeschi said.
In fact, immigration is poised to become increasingly critical to America’s demographics. By 2042, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, all American population growth will be due to immigration, as deaths cancel out births among native-born people. And largely because immigration has picked up so much, the C.B.O. thinks that the U.S. adult population will be 7.4 million people larger in 2033 than it had previously expected.
Immigration could help reduce the federal deficit by boosting growth and increasing the working-age tax base, Ms. Edelberg said, though the impact on state and local finances is more complicated as they provide services like public schooling.
But there are a lot of uncertainties. For one thing, nobody knows how long today’s big immigration flows will last. Many are spurred by geopolitical instability, including economic crisis and crime in Venezuela, violence in Congo, and humanitarian crises across other parts of Africa and the Middle East.
The C.B.O. itself has based its projections on guesses: It has immigration trailing off through 2026 because it anticipates a slow reversion to normal, not because it is actually clear when or how quickly immigration will taper.
National policies could also reshape how many people are able to come to — and stay in — the United States.
The influx of immigrants has caused problems in many places as the surge in population overwhelms local support systems and leads to competition for a limited supply of housing. As that happens, immigration has become an increasingly critical political issue, surging to the top of the list of the nation’s most important problems in Gallup polling.
Former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has warned of an immigrant-created crime wave. He has pledged to deport undocumented immigrants en masse if he wins the presidential election in November.
The Biden administration has used its executive authority to open a back door to allow thousands of migrants into the United States temporarily, while also taking steps to repair the legal refugee program. But as Democratic leaders have joined Republicans in criticizing President Biden over migration in recent months, he has embraced a more conservative tone, even pledging to “shut down” the border if Congress passed a bill empowering him to do so.
Politics are not the only wild card: The economy could also slow. If that happened, fewer immigrants might want to come to the United States, and those who did might struggle to find work.
Some economists fret that immigrants will compete against American workers for jobs, particularly those with lower skill levels, which could become a more pressing concern in a weaker employment market. But recent economic research has suggested that immigrants mostly compete with one another for work, since they tend to work in different roles from those of native-born Americans.
At the Luke’s Lobster processing plant in Saco, Maine, Mr. Conniff has often struggled to find enough help over the years, despite pay that starts at $16 per hour. But he has hired people like Chenda Chamreoun, 30, who came to the United States from Cambodia in 2013 and worked her way up from lobster cleaning to quality assurance supervisor as she learned English.
Now, she is in the process of starting her own catering business. Immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial than the nation as a whole — another reason that they could make the American economy more innovative and productive as its population ages.
Ms. Chamreoun explained that the move to the United States was challenging, but that it had taught her how to realize goals. “You have more abilities than you think.”
Sure, but only the ones that want to work, not the ones that have become accustomed to fine hotels and pre-paid credit cards.Can we send you more?
NY made its bed and now it has to sleep in it. And you can't blame the "Dems" as a group. Both houses here and the Governor here are "Ds", but the majority "have their minds right" and know how important a balanced budget is. Maybe there's a lesson for "Democrats From Away" here...
This raised my hackles too. I've been watching net they took down for over 17 years, a very visible one that I always check it when driving by. Last week I noticed that the nest was gone and the barrier installed against future nests. There were also 2 very confused ospreys there saying DAFQ??????
Two ospreys circle a utility pole off Route 1 in Bath that used to be home to a nest, which Central Maine Power removed and replaced with yellow spikes. Kristian Moravec/The Times Record
Bird watchers were outraged after Central Maine Power removed a long-established osprey nest from atop a utility pole off Route 1 in Bath this spring, putting spikes in its place to prevent future nesting. The utility is promising to install a nesting platform for the raptors to set up a new home.
CMP officials said the nest was removed to protect the birds and prevent outages along the key line that connects more than 5,000 customers to power. The utility added that it is working with local authorities to install the new platform, which will be placed 50 feet from the original nesting site on the southbound side of Route 1. That platform is expected to go up on or before April 19.
Joanne Adams, a Bath resident and longtime osprey photographer, frequently watches what she refers to as the Leeman Highway nest.
“I know CMP says that nest is a danger, but it’s been there for years,” Adams said. “There’s been no problem with [the nest] as far as power outages.”
Adams said she last saw the nest on April 1 around 6:30 p.m. It was gone the following morning. The ospreys, which are a protected species, returned from winter migration that same day, Adams said, only to find large yellow spikes where their nest used to be.
Concerned about the impact the removal might have on the birds’ mating season, Adams started to organize in her community. She created a Facebook page, “Leeman Highway Osprey Advocates of Bath Maine and Beyond,” which has already collected 1,000 followers.
On April 9, she announced on the Facebook page that she wrote to CMP questioning the nest removal.
She received a reply Friday afternoon stating that CMP workers removed the nest during the winter due to the risk it posed to both the birds and power line. CMP later clarified with The Times Record that the nest was removed between the March and April winter storms.
For ospreys, a large raptor known for building large nests atop dead trees, utility poles seem like an ideal place to build their seasonal homes, according to Maine Audubon staff naturalist Doug Hitchcox.
According to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, permits are required to remove osprey nests between April 1 and Sept. 1 if eggs, young ospreys or mating pairs are present. CMP said it did not require a permit for this removal.
Mark Latti, a spokesperson for MDIFW, said the department worked with CMP to remove the nest on Route 1.
“We need to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people,” Latti said, adding that power poles are not good homes for ospreys. “Adult osprey may be able to avoid wires; fledgling osprey aren’t as coordinated.”
Kerry E. Nelson, a West Bath resident, started photographing birds 15 years ago and has noticed a few nest removals in the area. One osprey Nelson watches – nicknamed Oliver – had his nest torn down on New Meadows Road a few years ago before his return from migration.
Nelson said that when Oliver came back, he and his mate attempted to rebuild in the same spot, but ultimately had to move across the road and build there instead.
“It’s upsetting to local folks,” Nelson said. “I understand (CMP is) a business, but they are purposely coming and taking nests down right in the mating season.”
CMP tracks an estimated 100 osprey nests across the state and installs platforms built by local schools or organizations on a case-by-case basis, according to CMP spokesperson Jonathan Breed. The newest Bath platform was built at Somerset Career and Technical Center.
“We work very proactively to resolve the issue, because the worst outcome is (that) something happens to the bird or an outage, and I don’t think anybody wants that,” Breed said. “So I credit our team for identifying an issue and taking some quick action and working with the right state authorities to get this issue resolved quickly and in a way that’s best for the animal.”
The osprey admirers are worried the platform will come too late.
Typically, Adams said, when a nest is removed, ospreys rebuild quickly – in as soon as three days, by her observation. But the Leeman Highway ospreys keep working to rebuild in the same place, with little food for fuel as they gather materials, according to Adams. She worries this mating season will be disrupted for the pair.
“We would like (CMP) to take the barriers down,” Adams said. “Let them build, and take the nest down in the fall.”
CMP’s removal of Bath osprey nest sparks outrage; utility plans to give birds a new home
A Bath osprey nest was removed before the April nor'easter, sparking outrage among some residents. Now, CMP announced that it plans to remedy the removal by installing a nesting platform.Two ospreys circle a utility pole off Route 1 in Bath that used to be home to a nest, which Central Maine Power removed and replaced with yellow spikes. Kristian Moravec/The Times Record
Bird watchers were outraged after Central Maine Power removed a long-established osprey nest from atop a utility pole off Route 1 in Bath this spring, putting spikes in its place to prevent future nesting. The utility is promising to install a nesting platform for the raptors to set up a new home.
CMP officials said the nest was removed to protect the birds and prevent outages along the key line that connects more than 5,000 customers to power. The utility added that it is working with local authorities to install the new platform, which will be placed 50 feet from the original nesting site on the southbound side of Route 1. That platform is expected to go up on or before April 19.
Joanne Adams, a Bath resident and longtime osprey photographer, frequently watches what she refers to as the Leeman Highway nest.
“I know CMP says that nest is a danger, but it’s been there for years,” Adams said. “There’s been no problem with [the nest] as far as power outages.”
Adams said she last saw the nest on April 1 around 6:30 p.m. It was gone the following morning. The ospreys, which are a protected species, returned from winter migration that same day, Adams said, only to find large yellow spikes where their nest used to be.
Concerned about the impact the removal might have on the birds’ mating season, Adams started to organize in her community. She created a Facebook page, “Leeman Highway Osprey Advocates of Bath Maine and Beyond,” which has already collected 1,000 followers.
On April 9, she announced on the Facebook page that she wrote to CMP questioning the nest removal.
She received a reply Friday afternoon stating that CMP workers removed the nest during the winter due to the risk it posed to both the birds and power line. CMP later clarified with The Times Record that the nest was removed between the March and April winter storms.
For ospreys, a large raptor known for building large nests atop dead trees, utility poles seem like an ideal place to build their seasonal homes, according to Maine Audubon staff naturalist Doug Hitchcox.
According to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, permits are required to remove osprey nests between April 1 and Sept. 1 if eggs, young ospreys or mating pairs are present. CMP said it did not require a permit for this removal.
Mark Latti, a spokesperson for MDIFW, said the department worked with CMP to remove the nest on Route 1.
“We need to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people,” Latti said, adding that power poles are not good homes for ospreys. “Adult osprey may be able to avoid wires; fledgling osprey aren’t as coordinated.”
Kerry E. Nelson, a West Bath resident, started photographing birds 15 years ago and has noticed a few nest removals in the area. One osprey Nelson watches – nicknamed Oliver – had his nest torn down on New Meadows Road a few years ago before his return from migration.
Nelson said that when Oliver came back, he and his mate attempted to rebuild in the same spot, but ultimately had to move across the road and build there instead.
“It’s upsetting to local folks,” Nelson said. “I understand (CMP is) a business, but they are purposely coming and taking nests down right in the mating season.”
CMP tracks an estimated 100 osprey nests across the state and installs platforms built by local schools or organizations on a case-by-case basis, according to CMP spokesperson Jonathan Breed. The newest Bath platform was built at Somerset Career and Technical Center.
“We work very proactively to resolve the issue, because the worst outcome is (that) something happens to the bird or an outage, and I don’t think anybody wants that,” Breed said. “So I credit our team for identifying an issue and taking some quick action and working with the right state authorities to get this issue resolved quickly and in a way that’s best for the animal.”
The osprey admirers are worried the platform will come too late.
Typically, Adams said, when a nest is removed, ospreys rebuild quickly – in as soon as three days, by her observation. But the Leeman Highway ospreys keep working to rebuild in the same place, with little food for fuel as they gather materials, according to Adams. She worries this mating season will be disrupted for the pair.
“We would like (CMP) to take the barriers down,” Adams said. “Let them build, and take the nest down in the fall.”
longcast
Well-Known Angler
Dems will make state sanctuary for kids' gender transitions, abortion over GOP protest
Maine could soon shield from liability those who perform abortions or gender surgeries for minors from other states under a bill heading to Gov. Janet Mills' desk.
www.foxnews.com
Come & try to get us suckers!!!Dems will make state sanctuary for kids' gender transitions, abortion over GOP protest
Maine could soon shield from liability those who perform abortions or gender surgeries for minors from other states under a bill heading to Gov. Janet Mills' desk.
The votes came after attorneys general in 16 states, including Tennessee, threatened legal action if Maine proceeded with a shield law preventing out-of-state repercussions for those who provide abortions and what they called “gender transition surgeries for children.”
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey called those accusations “meritless” and said shield laws were necessary due to other states’ efforts “to punish beyond their borders lawful behavior that occurs in Maine and other states.”
“Harmony between our states would be best preserved and promoted by the exercise of restraint by all parties seeking to control health care related policy choices in other states,” Frey said previously in a statement.
Interesting how State's Rights advocates are fine until another state decides to pass laws different from theirs, and the supposed State's Rights folks immediately tries to get the laws enacted in the differing state.
One end of the goose or the other, you can't have both, and yes both color of states like to try to force their agenda on others.
Regardless, the key issue here is the desire of states to extend their legal reach out of their jurisdiction into other states, a definite "Don't Tread On Me" moment.
longcast
Well-Known Angler
Probably should clarify. Agree each state should be able to govern their constituents. Just would not brag about the issue at hand. Quite sick if you ask me what the state is defending.
Not sure how I feel about the issue involved, personally not a fan, but to each his own...
I'm always looking at the bigger picture, and when hypocrisy rears its ugly head, I lose it.
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