Mark your calendars! The Fourth Annual Bold Coast Sea & Sky Festival will take place in Machias, July 19-20 at 94 Main Street and including Middle River Park. This event is presented by Pat’s Pizza in Machias and the Machias Rotary Club in order to provide family fun, educational and community spirit events that showcase our region. Come join us!

This festival will include an Easter Egg Hunt, Music, Kites, Drone Flying, Machias Valley Airport Fly-In, Huge Kid's area, Touch Tank, Laser Tag and much more!

The Friends of the Church on the Hill are thankful for those who have attended their events so far this summer. Future ones include Frog Mountain Puppeteers with The Legend of the Banana Kid. The Puppeteers will perform at the Church Hill Community Center in Addison on July 20 at 6 p.m. There will be ice cream available at 5:30 p.m. at the Community Center for those who arrive early.

by Ruth Leubecker

From broadband to blueberries, from sexual identity to property taxes, it was a wide range of subject matter that marked a lively finale to the 129th Maine Legislature.
“Both blueberry fills passed, and broadband passed,” said Rep. Bob Alley last week. The lobsterman from Beals gained no small amount of notoriety when he recently made the front page of the Press Herald. “I just said who’s going to pay for these migrants? Nobody has answered me, but you know who’s going to pay. You and me.”

by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

David Cale was watching the evening news from his home in Machiasport when the sight of a buoy caught his attention. It was a large lobster balloon, and it had landed in County Cork, Ireland.

“I just happened to catch it, and heard ‘Bucks Harbor’ and ‘Lobster Mobster,’” said Cale. “I had to call them out of curiosity, because I knew Craig wouldn't.”

Machias: A parade featuring local floats, six Shriner units driving miniature lobster boats, 4x4s, cars, and go-karts, the Annan Temple marching band, historical reenactors, WWII veteran and Grand Marshal Mac McKean, and Civil Air Patrol cadets. The parade begins at 6 p.m. at Machias Memorial High School and proceeds down Court Street to Free Street to Colonial Way and Main Street, ending at the Varney Agency past Dunkin’ Donuts on Route 1. Fireworks will be set off from Middle River Park at dusk, viewable from either side of the Machias dike or anywhere downtown.

by Wayne Smith

Roosevelt Campobello International Park is announcing a brand new program entitled “The Roosevelt Park Radio Hour”, part of a series of evening events which will take place in July, August, and September 2019.

by Nancy Beal

Music lovers in the Moosabec area will get a chance to hear some fiddle music when the Peabody Memorial Library presents Gus LaCasse in the second summer concert of its Music in the Library series July 14. LaCasse’s repertoire includes selections from the Cape Breton and Acadian fiddle traditions, and he will share the innovative spirit of that music in both standards of the genre and original material.

by Ruth Leubecker

Reversing the escalating trend of the opioid epidemic in Maine has been a primary official goal since Gov. Janet Mills took office.

“There is now great hope for recovery,” Gordon Smith, the state’s first director of opioid response, said last week. “Washington County has always had the highest fatality rate from overdose, but this is a very complex problem that takes a very comprehensive solution.”

by Nancy Beal

The three school boards that govern the two elementary schools and the joint high school in the Beals/Jonesport area held meetings following the school budget votes during the week of June 17.

Machias, Maine — The University of Maine at Machias has received a gift of $12,500 from an anonymous donor that will help fund continuing efforts to research, record and archive petroglyph sites on Machias Bay, head of campus Andy Egan has announced.

Machias Bay is home to one of the largest concentrations of petroglyphs on the Atlantic coast of North America, according to archeologists. The ancient images were pecked into tidal rocks by the Passamaquoddy people as many as 3,000 years ago and depict animals, humans and shamanic rituals.

by Ronie Strout

by Joseph Horn

In July, beauty abounds in farmers’ fields far and wide. In the vast rolling hills of Northern Maine, the potato blossoms extend from horizon to horizon in an array of white, pink, and purple beneath the expanse of our very own New England Big Sky Country.

by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

With a total population hovering around 400 individuals, the North Atlantic right whale is one of the most endangered species on the planet. Six right whales have been found dead in the past month alone and tensions are rising as government officials strategize to reduce mankind's impact on the species. However, Maine lobstermen say the federal government’s pending regulations to save the whales are an exercise in futility for Mainers, because the whales are not dying in Maine waters.

by Nancy Beal

by Wayne Smith

Father Tony Mullaney, of Harrington, is 89 years old. He recently celebrated his 63rd year of being in the priesthood. The celebration took place at St. Michael’s Church in Cherryfield. Coffee, snacks, and of course were a cake available for refreshments. The church members came together and this is what they had to say about Fr. Tony after church.

by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

A bill carried over until the second year of the 129th legislature could offer towns a way to profit from the sale and cultivation of marijuana in their towns. LD 335, “An Act To Require the State To Distribute 12 Percent of Adult Use Marijuana Retail Sales and Excise Tax Revenue to Generating Municipalities” passed the House by a vote of 88 to 54 before adjournment on June 20.

The bill was originally written to return 25 percent to generating municipalities, but was amended down to 12 percent by the appropriations committee.

 Andrew Egan, vice president for academic affairs and head of campus at the University of Maine at Machias (UMM), has announced his intention to step down, effective Aug. 15.

Egan joined UMM, a regional campus of the University of Maine, on Aug. 13, 2018. 

Daniel Qualls, associate professor of education, will serve as interim vice president for academic affairs and head of campus. Qualls joined the UMM community in 2008 and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee.

by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

by Nancy Beal

Officials of the Municipal Review Committee (MRC) traveled to Addison July 19 for a special meeting with the directors of the Pleasant River Solid Waste Disposal District (PRSWDD), following a demand for such a meeting in a letter penned by MRC Vice President Tony Smith June 28 (see MVNO, July 17, 2019). The face-off resulted from a months-long developing disagreement on process following the announcement and subsequent town votes by Jonesport and Columbia Falls to withdraw from the six-town waste disposal district.

by Nancy Beal

The Arnold Memorial Medical Center, which now owns the shuttered Sunrise Care Facility (formerly Resthaven Nursing Home) in Jonesport, held a public gathering last week to begin steps to explore the possibilities of its rebirth and redirection. Down East Community Hospital, the former owner, donated the building to the medical society following its closure last August, and tossed in $20,000 toward its rebirth. The AMMS already operates the town’s medical clinic on the road to the schools.

by Nancy Beal

Folk guitarists Bob Simons and Renee Goodwin have been friends since the 1960s. In 2006, they merged their singing and instrumental talents and, for the past decade, as a duo they call Simons and Goodwin, they have entertained audience in coffeehouses, pubs, private parties and concerts indoor and out. On Friday, August 2, they will bring their songs back to Jonesport’s Peabody Memorial Library where they have already delivered several popular concerts in earlier years of the library’s Music in the Library summer concert series.

by V. Paul Reynolds

Recently Maine’s new fish and wildlife commissioner, Judy Camuso, was a studio guest on Maine Calling, an interactive radio program on the National Public Radio  station in Portland. She performed well as she outlined the goals and challenges of the Department in the months ahead.

by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

A public Facebook post made by University of Maine at Machias (UMM) employee Vincent Reed on Tuesday, July 23 alleged that UMM is considering approving housing for refugee families on campus, without soliciting community input. The post was shared nearly 200 times within 15 hours. 

"Do not let this be forced on Washington county.. This. if it does happen will happen quickly," wrote Reed.

by Jayna Smith

A chili cooking contest is planned for Saturday, August 10, in downtown Eastport. This won’t be just any chili contest, however; it is the CASI (Chili Appreciation Society International) Maine State Chili Championship.

Competitive chili cook Jenny Windsor and her husband Jack, fairly new residents of Alexander, attended a small chili cookoff in Calais last fall. It was that event that inspired Jenny to organize this competition that raises funds for local charities.

Oral rabies vaccine (ORV) baits will be distributed in northeastern Maine beginning on or about Aug 3 - 7 as part of ongoing, cooperative rabies control efforts aimed at reducing the incidence of raccoon rabies. The distribution of ORV baits has occurred annually since 2003.

by Nancy Beal