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Finding A Common Tongue — How Immigrant Women's Organization In Her Presence Does the Good Work

Finding A Common Tongue — How Immigrant Women's Organization In Her Presence Does the Good Work

“The hardest was to find snow suits for the babies,” Penny Carson tells me as she gestures to the navy toddler suit lying next to the heaps of English Language Learner workbooks and vocabulary flashcards on the couch. Penny Carson, a retiree in her seventies, volunteers as an English teacher to newly arriving refugees and asylum seekers at local non-profit In Her Presence. “There will always be more need this winter you know, so I’ll keep it...

15-08-2017 Hits:574 Features Meg Webster

Politics and Other Mistakes

If you don’t start drinkin’, I’m gonna leave

The other day, I did something I wouldn’t normally do. I bought a bottle of booze in Maine. Please don’t think less of me. I had no choice. I usually purchase my liquor in New Hampshire, where it’s almost always cheaper. My order arrives here via an underground railroad operated by a nefarious associate, who gets paid off in cocktails. Such transactions are illegal, immoral and bad for my liver, but I don’t care. The savings are worth it. Unfortunately, my connection wasn’t due for several days, and I was out of bourbon. In desperation, I went to an agency liquor store and...

11-08-2017 Hits:294 Politics & Other Mistakes Al Diamon

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Columns

Resisting The Alt-Right: Solidarity with Counterprotesters i…

Resisting The Alt-Right: Solidarity with Counterprotesters in Charlottesville

About 400 people gathered in Monument Square Sunday for an anti-racism rally in light of the recent clashes between anti-fascists and the so-called "alt-right." The rally was organized online by civil rights groups March Forth and the Portland's Women March, and bookended by a spirited acoustic performance by musician and Bangor Daily News photographer Troy Bennett, who sang to the crowd: "Whose side are you on?" Speakers included organizer Naomi Mayer, Portland resident Kenneth Bailey, ... Read more

15-08-2017 Hits:214 Columns Francis Flisiuk

  • You'd Better Run

    Most Portland runners, walkers, and joggers are familiar with the soft crunch, crunch, crunch their athletic shoes make on the fine gravel of the Back Cove Trail as they take in some exercise, salty air, and the cityscape view we…

  • Responding to Charlottesville …

    By the time you read this, I’ll be in Alaska. Or maybe we’ll all be dead by then, reduced to ash thanks to a man who can’t bring himself to condemn Nazis, but can wage war via Twitter. At this…

  • Even Sex Columnists Get the Bl…

    In my adventures as a sex educator the last five years, I’ve worked with thousands of adults and teenagers across the country, designed curricula focused on healthy sexuality and relationships, trained more than 100 humans in the basics of sexuality…

News

When Words Can Kill: Should the ACLU Have Defended the 'Unit…

When Words Can Kill: Should the ACLU Have Defended the 'Unite the Right' Riot?

In the aftermath of Saturday's bloody "Unite the Right" demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia — which included hundreds of white supremacists and which the American Civil Liberties Union publicly defended — some progressives are wondering whether the organization can still be considered a valuable ally in the fight for social justice. Before the riot devolved into a violent conflict, the ACLU took to Twitter to state that the white supremacists who organized it had a right to mobilize. “The First... Read more

14-08-2017 Hits:310 News Francis Flisiuk

  • Fighting Climate Change: Could carbon emissions be…

    Last month the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded its first ever carbon emissions reading that was in excess of 410 parts per million, marking a milestone: the Earth hasn’t had this much carbon in the atmosphere in 66 million…

  • City Council 'Thinking Outside the Box' to Get Ren…

    Advocates pushing for rent stabilization in Portland were thrown a curveball Monday when was reported that the citizens initiative submitted by Fair Rent Portland containing over 2,500 signatures was not received in time for consideration on the November 7 ballot…

  • New Country, New Challenges: Greater Portland Immi…

    The Greater Portland area is changing in many ways. One of the more obvious is its demographics. Over the past five years, the city’s seen an influx of immigrants, coming primarily from places like Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, and the…

Arts

8 Days a Week: Disney Burlesque, Haitian Pop, and Showin' Up

8 Days a Week: Disney Burlesque, Haitian Pop, and Showin' Up

THURSDAY 17   FINGERS CROSSED FOR URSULA | In a reckless world, onight's burlesque show is something you can put some faith in. Produced by the smart, silly, multimedia-friendly Voulez-Vous Cabaret, who've become one of the foremost such troupes in the city, audiences by now know they're not getting an old-school, male-gazey show complete with hot cars, leopard prints, and pin-up girls. Tonight's act has broader designs. And, titled Bippity Boppity Boobs, it packs a little something... Read more

10-08-17 Hits:241 8 Days A Week Nick Schroeder

  • 8 Days A Week: Dead Whales, Resurrected Goddesses…

    THURSDAY 10   ATLANTIC INJUSTICE | The sixth screening in the Portland Public Library’s free Point of View Documentary Series commences this night, offering a break from an otherwise stressful and menial existence. Watch it, and step into the lives of others…

  • A Story of Fire and Gold — 'Dawson City' Shows the…

    Celluloid nitrate, the medium of the first motion pictures, is a direct descendent of a military explosive. Stored improperly, it spontaneously bursts into flame. Most of it has burned or been lost. But some reels in the Yukon have survived an…

  • Ogunquit's 'Ragtime' Revives the Musical Ideal

    The defining characteristic of ragtime music is its “syncopation” — a style in which the melody falls in between the beats instead of on them. Syncopated rhythms, which originated with African-American musicians, give the sense that the melody is slightly ahead of or…

Food & Drink

Flesh, Pulp, and Blood Orange Beers

Flesh, Pulp, and Blood Orange Beers

The torrid heat of August is upon us, and it's given me a royal thirst. After a month of drinking lagers, my palate, brain and liver are crying out for  variety, so I'm launching into an exploration of fruited beers. This week, we'll explore beers brewed with the Citrus × sinensis, also known as the “blood orange.” This hybrid orange has a vivid, reddish flesh, rich in antioxidant chemicals known... Read more

11-08-2017 Hits:69 Drink Seth Levy

  • Chaval Redefines Neighborhood …

    Anyone who has lived in Portland since the turn of the century knows that the restaurant community has seen an immense amount of growth over the course of the past 17 years. Look around, and the signposts are everywhere. Some…

  • A Life in the Food Scene — Pho…

    Cookbook writer, restaurant critic, food writer, photo journalist, painter, world traveler, and lover of all things Maine, Diane Hudson is not cagey about her thoughts and opinions. She's also a woman with more wisdom in her pinky finger than I possess…

  • Maine Lager Redux — Local Beer…

      I'm a bad beer writer, loyal reader. Last week, I promised “No more lager.” I intended to keep my promise too! I thought I had enough lager for the summer and craved new flavors. That was before I chanced into…

Music

Missed Connection — Leverett Release Final Album 'Wires …

Missed Connection — Leverett Release Final Album 'Wires & Tubes'

For a band on the precipice of breaking up, the amount of trust and respect the four musicians of Portland rock band Leverett demonstrate is palpable. Evolved years ago from a solo project by bandleader Jesse Gertz, the cohort’s first official full-length as a foursome, Wires & Tubes, is both a ravenously complex modern record and a lesson in how to share and delegate responsibilities. A chirpy opener shows the group in full gallop, strutting their... Read more

15-08-2017 Hits:152 Album Reviews Nick Schroeder

  • Capture the Sun Traverse the Fantasy on 'Terra Ign…

    All music is a kind of storytelling. But it’s 2017, and you’d be forgiven for being tired of hearing stories. Lately, words can feel totally meaningless and status updates rule the land. For many reasons, the basic act of telling a…

  • Love is Longevity — Big Blood Pumps Out New Album …

    There’s little more tiresome than those who complain that music ain’t what it used to be. Times change and people change — let alone vast, corporate-controlled industries — but the reasons to come together for making art and documenting a…

  • Never Gonna Be Enough — An Interview with Sara Qui…

    Days before I spoke with Sara Quin, one half of the iconic Canadian folk-pop duo Tegan and Sara, the twins announced a fall 2017 tour celebrating the 10th anniversary of their standout album The Con. (Fans: See Chad Clark of…

Outdoors & Sports

You'd Better Run

You'd Better Run

Most Portland runners, walkers, and joggers are familiar with the soft crunch, crunch, crunch their athletic shoes make on the fine gravel of the Back Cove Trail as they take in some exercise, salty air, and the cityscape view we all love. Some of those athletes, in previous years, have competed in one of Portland’s best 10Ks, the Trail to Ale, which courses around the Back Cove, in part. A... Read more

15-08-2017 Hits:145 Sports Gabe Gregoire

  • A Birding Beginning?

    One of our readers, Leska F., moved to the West End in 2014, into a Victorian that had seen better days and had a family of brown finches living in the eaves, a few feet away from where she sat…

  • Get On Board: Tall Ships Train…

    A sailboat is like a human body in motion. Think of a runner's lungs, musculature, skeleton, and other organs functioning together in tandem, in one body, to move forward. Like a part of the body performing a specific function for the…

  • What Joanie Really Loves

    The list isn’t long of Maine athletes who have achieved world-class status. Our darling, since she set the women’s world record in 1983 in the Boston Marathon, has been Joan Benoit Samuelson. Back in those days, as Joan Benoit, she…

Kids & Pets

Can You Make it to the Olympics

Can You Make it to the Olympics

Have the words “Don’t you want to grow up big and strong?” ever left your lips? Were you caught in a moment of shock sitting at your own dinner table immediately after, not believing your own parents had the magical ability to speak through you like that? The whole spiel, diet and exercise, has been ingrained in Americans’ heads for generations. It isn’t going away. Whether the old cliche inspires... Read more

14-08-2017 Hits:110 Kids Gabe Gregoire

  • If You're Gonna Have One Anywa…

    If a couple of friends of yours got together and started dating, loved it, eventually shacked up and kept going until everybody just expected to see one where the other one was, and they were still together after five years…

  • The Acro-Cats March into Town

    Remember the Guinness Book of World Records? One guy ate a bicycle, piece by piece, made small enough to swallow with a hacksaw and some elbow grease, to get in the Book. Another lady had fingernails so long that they…

  • Adoption — The Most Rewarding …

    Well, you can't say that all corporate network executives are heartless savages, because we imagine that what’s going on across the nation on Saturday, August 19 had to cross some CEO's desk and meet with a signature. It’s the 2017 “Clear…