Henry David Thoreau: Surveyor of the Soul, a new documentary by Portland filmmaker Huey, is one of the hundred or so movies that will be shown at this year's Maine International Film Festival. More…
These archival articles are presented “as is.” Except for minor corrections or clarifications, most have not been updated since they appeared in print. Thus, some details may be out of date, and some hyperlinks may no longer work.
Say Yes to Summer Fun
by Esther J. Perne
Say yes to hot feet dipped in refreshing water. Say yes to a cold drink sipped in a sidewalk setting. Say yes to summer sounds of music, birds, insects, voices and laughter.
Say yes to shimmering sunsets, to knarly thunderheads, to tunes under the stars and the man in the moon.
Say yes to freshly mown grass that belongs to the neighbors and wood to be stacked that can wait and gardens someone else weeds.
Say yes to tourists and guests showing us what’s to love about being here, for actually doing outings that are on our bucket lists and for excitedly discovering what has been here right along.
Say yes to anglers and golfers for saying yes to their sports in the rain, to theaterand museumand movie-goers for showing us how to beat the rain with a smile and for good books that finally move up the list and are the world’s best excuse for staying put.
Say yes to the big, old, sentinel pines that give shade and fragrance and a reminder that this is the Pine Tree State. Or is it the loon state? Say yes to all those eerie but reassuring calls from our favorite lakesters.
Say yes to children and to summer programs for children, to having friends over for children, to activities and outings for children, and to children sound asleep at night.
Say yes to counselors and caregivers, to grandparents and non-kin who share their homes with children and youth. Say yes to food cupboards and free meals and adults that volunteer or donate.
Say yes to wet dogs and dripping ice cream and sandy bathing suits and pine needles stuck to bare feet.
Say yes to the elite bikers with their drop handlebars and toe clips and deft sharing of the roads and to the novices and beginners whose bikes have unexplainable wobbly wheels.
Say yes to small newspapers packed with directories and calendars and news and notes and ideas about some of the best that summer brings and will bring, all hard-copied in pages that can be mauled, marked up, mailed across the country or used for kindling.
Say yes to roadside produce stands, farmers' markets, grocery stores that stock "local" and to the agricultural fair season that spans the summer.
Say yes to the visionaries who remind us to plant trees, divert runoff and join the campaign against invasive plants because they understand why vacationers and visitors love this area and why they want future generations to come here, too.
Say yes to having to work all summer but knowing that waterways and trails and views that steal the breath are only a break away. So, stop.
Say yes to a free summer event, a short hike or stroll, a pause in a waterside park — tonight.
Say yes to all the season’s wildlife babies and seedlings and what they show us about nature’s perseverance, and say yes to all the newborns and infants and the lessons they show us about learning and loving and having fun in the summer.
Lights, Camera, Action: The Maine International Film Festival Is Ready To Roll!
Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith, Ray Liotta, and Margaret Colin dance at a high-school reunion in Something Wild, which is being shown at this year’s MIFF in memory of its late director, Jonathan Demme.
by Gregor Smith
Come one, come all! Come to the twentieth annual Maine International Film Festival, July 14-23, at Railroad Square Cinema and the Waterville Opera House. With movies spanning 90 years and five continents, this year’s festival has something for everyone.
The festival’s first seven days will bring screenings of diverse Maine-made movies old and new, presentations of MIFF’s Mid-Life Achievement Award to a well-known actress and model and of a new award for cinematography to a lesser-known behind-the-camera icon, the screening of a silent film with a new score, the diamond jubilee of an animated Disney classic, and a retrospective of the work of a dearly departed friend of the festival.
Catherine Eaton in The Sounding
The festival opens on Friday at 7:00 p.m. with The Sounding, which like 2015’s Centerpiece Film The Congressman features the stunning vistas of Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine. Lead actress Catherine Eaton, who also directed and co-wrote The Sounding, plays Olivia (Liv), a mute woman who was raised by her now-dying grandfather. When the grandfather’s voice falters while reading Shakespeare aloud, Liv breaks her silence, picking up the reading and creating her own way of speaking using Shakespeare’s words. A well-meaning neurologist, summoned by the grandfather to protect Liv after his passing, has her committed a psychiatric hospital, where she rebels. He then realizes his mistake and tries to get her out.
Dana Andrews, Anne Revere, Dean Stockwell, and Jean Peters in Deep Waters
His current film’s subject is best known for Walden, the book of essays he wrote about his two years living in a rustic cabin on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau later became a land surveyor and made several trips to northern Maine in the 1840s and 1850s — journeys which Huey retraces. The film will be shown again on Tuesday, also at 3:30.
At 12:30 on Sunday, one can see a rare print of Deep Waters (1948). Adapted from a novel by Mainer Ruth Moore and partially shot in Maine, the film’s main characters are a lobsterman with a enduring love of the sea, a fiancée so afraid that something terrible will happen to him on the ocean that she breaks off the engagement, and an orphaned 12-year-old boy, whom the lobsterman befriends.
At 6:30 that evening, MIFF will present the silent film Sunrise (1927), with the world première of a score composed by Downeast Maine trumpeter Mark Tipton and performed by his quartet, Les Sorciers Perdus ("The Lost Wizards"). According to Tipton’s website, Les Sorciers Perdus "is a pan-genre contemporary chamber ensemble that blends jazz, classical, world folk, rock, popular, [and] experimental … music, and which specializes in the live performance of Mark’s new silent film scores," of which he has composed fourteen so far, including that for Sunrise.
George O’Brien and Margaret Livingston in Sunrise
One of the last silent pictures, Sunrise tells of a simple farmer who becomes enamored of a city sophisticate and plots to kill his wife. According to the Sundance Institute, "Moving from grim tragedy to delirious farce, Sunrise presents a fable of love and lust, light and dark, town and city that remains thematically contemporary…. Its camera movements are masterfully, breathtakingly choreographed."
The man responsible for that breathtaking camerawork was Karl Struss (1886‑1981), whose work on the film earned him the first-ever Oscar for cinematography. (A cinematographer choreographs the lighting and cameras to give the film the "look" the director wants.) Struss was student of still photographer Clarence H. White, who founded an artists colony on the Georgetown peninsula, which projects into the Gulf of Maine. That colony, Seguinland, flourished from 1900 till 1940 and was home to, among others, Struss and Marsden Hartley, whose paintings are currently on exhibit at the Colby College Museum of Art.
Roger Deakins on the set of Prisoners
In Struss’s honor, MIFF has created the Karl Struss Legacy Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cinematography. According to festival programmer Ken Eisen, "MIFF decided to initiate this award because the look of films is something that, ironically, often gets overlooked; we’d like to recognize the work of great cinematographers whose work is certainly noticed by everyone who watches a movie, yet who remain popularly anonymous. Who better to start with than Roger Deakins? Deakins, despite his 13 Oscar nominations, has been overlooked for getting a statue. This is our attempt to rectify that."
Over the past four decades, Deakins, 68, has been cinematographer for some 64 documentaries and feature films and also a few shorts and TV miniseries early in his career. His credits include A Beautiful Mind (2001), O Brother, Where Art Thou?(2000), The Big Lebowski (1998), Fargo (1996), and 1984 (1984).
On Monday, he will receive his award at a screening of Prisoners (2013), the crime thriller for which he received one of his thirteen Academy Award nominations. Three of the other films for which he was nominated will also be shown during the festival. They are The Shawshank Redemption (1994), a film based on a Stephen King novella (another Maine connection!); Skyfall (2012), the James Bond flick starring Daniel Craig; and No Country for Old Men (2007), the Coen brothers' adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel.
Jonathan Demme
To mark its twentieth anniversary, MIFF has invited some of its favorite filmmakers, all past guests of the festival, to return, each to present one of his or her favorite films, although not necessarily one that he or she helped to make. One of these films, The Whales of August (1987), will be of special interest to local audiences.
Presented by Mike Kaplan, a producer who worked with another festival favorite, the late director Robert Altman, The Whales of August was shot on the coast of Maine and starred four screen legends, Lillian Gish, Bette Davis, Vincent Price, and Ann Sothern. It will be projected Tuesday at 3:30 in Railroad Square’s Cinema 1 and will be accompanied by The Raw Whales Interviews, a new documentary compiled from the only interviews of the cast filmed while the movie was being made.
Sadly, one of the festival’s favorite filmmakers, Jonathan Demme, could not return. Demme, 73, died of esophageal cancer on April 26. Best known for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won a Best Directing Oscar, Demme directed some 62 films and television series in his four-decade career. MIFF honored him with its Mid-Life Achievement Award in 2002 and had invited him to return this year.
Bambi
Instead, MIFF is dedicating this year’s festival to him and will present three of his classics: Something Wild, his 1986 comedy thriller starring Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith; Stop Making Sense, his 1984 documentary about rock band The Talking Heads; and Cousin Bobby, his 1992 portrait of his cousin, Robert W. Castle, an actor and Episcopalian minister who preached in Harlem.
On Wednesday, MIFF will present its Centerpiece Film Bambi. While neither made nor explicitly set in Maine — the film does not specify the location of Bambi’s forest — Disney’s 75-year-old, animated classic does have some surprising Maine connections: Damariscotta photographer Maurice Day took many pictures of Mt. Katahdin and the North Woods to guide the animators; two live fawns were sent from Maine to California to serve as models; and the film’s songwriter, Frank Churchill, was born in Rumford.
Lauren Hutton and Richard Gere in American Gigolo
Finally, on Thursday, MIFF will present its Mid-Life Achievement Award to actress and model Lauren Hutton. Each year, MIFF presents a handmade, customized, papier maché moose trophy to an actor, director, screenwriter, film editor, or other movie professional, usually to one who is in the prime of his or her career. Past honorees include Robert Benton, Michael Murphy, Glenn Close, Keith Carradine, Malcolm McDowell, John Turturro, Ed Harris, Peter Fonda, Jonathan Demme, Sissy Spacek, and Terrence Malick.
Lauren Hutton
The award presentation will follow a 6:30 screening of American Gigolo (1980), in which Hutton plays a politician’s wife and sole ally to a high-priced and high-living male prostitute (Richard Gere) wrongly accused of murder. Three other Hutton films will be screened earlier in the festival: Welcome to L.A. (1978), in which she portrays the photographer girlfriend of an older millionaire; The Gambler (1975), where Hutton plays the girlfriend of a college professor who is addicted to gambling; and A Wedding (1978 ), where she is one of 48 guests at a wedding and reception gone comically and horribly awry.
Admission to most screenings costs $10; the Opening Night Ceremony (The Sounding) costs $12; and the Mid-Life Achievement Award Presentation (American Gigolo), Karl Struss Legacy Award (Prisoners), and Centerpiece Gala (Bambi) are $14 each. (Kids 13 and younger can get into Bambi for $8.) You can buy advance tickets online at www.miff.org, in person at Railroad Square Cinema, or by phone at (866) 811‑4111.
Whattaya mean, "tearin' down Pudge’s house," and who is Pudge anyway? Well, it’s a bit of story and may take a few hundred words or so, but worth telling I do believe. Here we go.
Pudge Farnham was an old, white-haired man when I was just old enough to remember, circa 1953. He lived right beside my parent’s house, not separated by more than 20 feet or so, right smack dab in the middle of Belgrade Lakes village. The house is gone now, but was located right across from the lime-colored house that we see today.
Pudge was an active fishing guide in the community during his heydays, but was on what one might call the latter end of that career. He still fished for his own food and did an occasional guiding job for a half-day or so, and he sold tidbits of fishing tackle out of what he called his "store," actually the front room of his rickety old two story house. I remember seeing him occasionally coming and going from the house, and also would see him fly fishing down at the dam, or spillway, as some call it.
During a period in the spring when the dam was open and fish were coming up into the spillway to spawn, many unskilled fishermen lined the point that we now call Peninsula Park. Most people fished with worms and caught a ton of small white perch. Pudge would stealthily work his way through the crowd to his favorite spot on the spillway granite wall, then toss a grey ghost streamer fly into the frothing water coming downstream from Great Pond. With small twists of his wrist and forearm he would work the streamer fly so it looked like a smelt coming upstream. Only the big fish would go after his bait and he pulled out some of the biggest hump-back white perch that I have ever seen, as well as an occasional salmon. The "worm dunkers" were in awe as Pudge quickly filled his bucket and worked his way out of the crowd and back up street to his house.
As the 1950s moved along, we kids saw less and less of Pudge wandering the village street. One spring or early summer, I’m guessing about 1958, I saw my Dad going into Pudge’s front door with a couple of men, one of whom I knew was Harold Tukey, our neighbor and local game warden. The men returned onto the porch and were talking quietly and soon we kids, now early teenagers, got the word that Pudge had died in his bed. In those days it was not really uncommon for old folks to die at home alone and not have it known until the neighbors realized they hadn’t seen them out for a few days. Another of our old guides had passed and the lot was waning each year.
Over the next year or so, my parents bought the vacant house and land from Pudge’s daughter. Their intent was to tear the old house down and make room for a large flower garden that my mother had always wanted to put in. As fall and winter came on and the tourists had long since headed back home, my dad and older brother started to tear down the big house. In those days it was one board at a time, and seemed like an endless job. We youngsters found it fun to rip and tear a few boards off each day after school, and soon some of the unemployed village men and women came wandering across the lawn with their hammer or pinch bar. We started a small bonfire each day and tossed in what we tore off.
The project took on a village appeal and by the time the snow began to fly, only a cellar hole remained. We burned the bottom floor in place and it fell into the hand-dug cellar. In the spring, Paul Hammond came with many truckloads of fill, and the spot became a lawn. Half way through the next summer, mother had a nice round flower garden in the middle of the lot, which I think at least partially exists today.
I, for one, will remember Pudge Farnham as one of the best fishermen in town. There are pictures of him, his house and other guides hanging in the LRC building, as well as the Belgrade Historical records.
Day campers at the Center for All Seasons in Belgrade search for aquatic invertebrates.
by Pete Kallin
This was another busy week, which seems to be setting up as a trend this summer. The Maine Lakes Society (MLS), on whose board I serve, received grants last year from the Onion Foundation and the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund that have allowed us to bring our 30 ft. floating classroom, the Melinda Ann, to a number of lakes across the state and partner with Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s (IFW) "Hooked on Fishing" program. "Hooked on Fishing" is a youth education program that teaches kids to fish in order to promote family togetherness through fishing within the State of Maine.
This week, we worked with almost 30 kids at the Belgrade Center for All Season’s Camp Loon and Camp Golden Pond to teach them a bit about aquatic food webs, help them capture aquatic invertebrates and then teach them a bit about fishing. Jason Seiders, the head of IFW’s Sidney Regional Headquarters, whose son is a Camp Loon camper, brought a number of dead and live fish of various species. He gave a presentation on various adaptations of fishes and let the kids touch and feel the fish. He talked about the various native species in the Belgrade Lakes, as well as some of invasives, such as northern pike and mud puppies. Nothing excites kids like live critters! Every kid was intensely engaged.
Jason Seiders shows kids what fish look and feel like.
We broke the kids up into groups and some searched for aquatic invertebrates while others explored the depths with Maine Lakes' Remotely Operated Vehicle, which has a 200 ft. cable and an underwater camera. The kids got to look at the invertebrates (crayfish, mayfly, and dragon fly larvae, etc.) they captured on the MLS Ken-a-vison microscope. Other groups came out on the boats and did a bit of fishing. Except for snack and lunch breaks, it was nonstop organized chaos but the kids had a ball, as did the instructors and counselors. The weather was perfect and we caught quite a few fish. Several kids were fishing for the first time and caught their first fish ever. Hopefully not their last!
This area offers some great outdoor recreation, whether you like to hike, bike, birdwatch, fish, sail, or paddle a canoe or kayak. Pick up a map of the local trails at Day’s Store or from the BRCA at the Maine Lakes Resource Center. And make sure you take a kid along on your next outdoor adventure and help create some memories.
When I first began reading "The Story of Thomas Nickerson," "blubber boilers" caught my mind’s eye. Maine author Kathryn Swegart, pen name K. F. Griffin, presented in May at our Belgrade Public Library with her husband Robert showing slides.
Herman Melville read Owen Chase’s version of the Essex tragedy which became the classic Moby Dick. Our Rome historian researched the fourteen-year-old Thomas Nickerson’s version of the Essex sinking and survivors. Nickerson recalled his experience as a young man on board the famous whaler. It was finally discovered a hundred years after it had been written. This discovery caught the author’s eye in a newspaper article.
Now we have a middle school history of the great sea tale. Many of us have plowed through the huge Moby Dick epic classic novel. Most of us know Gregory Peck in the Moby Dick movie. Recent versions of In The Heart of the Sea show the same classic tale with references to Nathaniel Philbrick’s in-depth history. Griffin highly recommended reading Philbrick. I agree.
The great white whale that rammed a whaling vessel has only been recorded once. This middle school version has much to offer in its glossary of whaling terms, map of the Pacific showing pivotal places of the history, cover art of "flukes up" and what I love best: Hannah West-Ireland rendition (2015) of Maximus the whale ready to ram the ship.
Saint Brendan the Navigator is quoted, "Fear not brothers, for our God will be unto us a helper, a mariner, and a pilot: take on the oars and helm, keep the sails set, and may God do unto us, his servants and his little vessel, as he wills." The freshwater spring miracle in the saltwater at Henderson Island is one example of the guardian repeatedly felt by the crew during the many trials of survival. When all seemed lost, the guardian sailor’s guidance was felt and followed by the survivors.
The great ships that sailed the world during the whale oil trade, many anchored at Nantucket. Thomas Nickerson signed on the crew at age fourteen and survived the ramming and sinking of his ship from November 20, 1820 until February 18, 1821. Only five survived the distance of 2,500 miles. Three crew members remained on Henderson Island and rescuers came for them later.
This maritime history of survival has an after story which almost seems impossible. All five survivors, including the young Nickerson, continued to make a living on board ships. They returned to the sea … can you believe their bravery?
Besides all the knowledge gained about harpooning whales, the exciting Nantucket sleigh ride, cutting up the huge carcasses, and boiling the blubber for oil, I found this passage intriguing: "I know how to fix it," I said. "I will swim under the boat and hold a hatchet to the loose board. When nails hit the hatchet, they will clench the board together."
"For the first time, I was talking to Owen Chase, man to man. Mr. Chase bent down to study the space between the boards. To my amazement, he listened … "
Young Nickerson was successful in this repair … only in this young account of repairing a whale ship can we find this history. Thanks to K.F. Griffin for bringing the Moby Dick classic closer to home for readers, both young and not so young. All ages can learn from this history.
I also recommend [Sena Jeter] Naslund’s novel Ahab’s Wife, because she tells the story of the years and years Nantucket wives spent waiting while their husbands were at sea. Were they dead or alive? Wondering and worrying, her novel enlightens the rest of the story, while our local Rome author tells whaling from a teenage point of view.
All these titles are available at our Belgrade Public Library.
The caterpillar of the browntail moth has two distinctive reddish orange dots on its back.
by Dale Finseth
I’m letting my conservation characters take a break this week. It is that time of the season when we want to help people out hiking or even in their back yards to identify invasive forest pests.
Maine’s Soil & Water Conservation Districts are working with the Maine Forest Service to help people identify invasive forest pests, i.e. bugs that could do serious damage to our woodlands. While some of those bugs have not yet appeared in Maine, we need to be vigilant and identify them should they appear.
Some are already here. The hemlock woolly adelgid is not that uncommon. We have been working to identify its location, possible spread and efforts to control damage. Evidence of its existence is are "woolly" collections on the underside of hemlock branches along the stems where needles occur.
The browntail moth is already here. It is slowly spreading. Efforts to, not only identify its spread, but manage and minimize damage are in process. This moths' caterpillar has two distinct red/orange dots on its back. Its "tents" are also distinctive. They appear at the end of branches rather than closer to the trunk in crotches of the branches.
The browntail moth caterpillar has tiny (0.15 mm) poisonous hairs (setae) that cause dermatitis (skin rash) similar to poison ivy on sensitive individuals. Direct contact with the caterpillar or indirect contact with airborne hairs may cause the reaction. Most people affected by the hairs develop a localized rash lasting a few hours or several days but on some sensitive individuals the rash can be severe and can last for weeks.
While emerald ash borers are little more than half as wide as a penny, these shiny green insects can decimate a forest or woodlot.
Some of these bugs have not yet been reported in Maine. The emerald ash borer can devastate woodlots of ash trees. Once established, clear cutting and destroying the wood is often the best option. The small shiny green insects bore into the ash trees and destroy the tree from the inside. Sick ash trees should become suspect. The insects are tiny, and the actual holes in the tree’s bark are also very small. The damage to the ash tree is the best way to begin identification.
What can a person do? Try and learn how to identify some of these nasty forest pests. The Maine Forest Service of the Maine Dept. of Ag., Conservation and Forestry has an excellent website for all invasives including these forest pests.
If you think you have identified one of these critters, do not be afraid to call the Maine Forest Service at 287‑3891. They would rather help you learn it is not an invasive than have you fail to report the real deal. Take a picture or collect the bug in a bag or bottle and keep it in the freezer. Help out in this effort to protect Maine from these invasives.
Remember, protecting the woods is one way to protect water quality. Do your part!
