I’ve been in newspapers for 22 years or so and found the DownEast.com trivia question of interest.
What was the name of Maine’s first newspaper?
Answer:
The Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertiser began in 1785 and was used to promote separation from Massachusetts.
If you’re going to visit Maine, but only the very southern tip, you might take note of the following information. It comes from today’s trivia question on DownEast.com.
Where in the world would you find a cable car from Dunedin, New Zealand?
Answer:
At the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport. Founded in 1939, the museum has more than 250 vehicles and is the largest museum of mass transit and electric street trolleys in the world.
This looks like fun, actually, and I wouldn’t mind making this a part of my next visit to Maine. Here is a link to the museum’s website: http://www.trolleymuseum.org/
Tales of buried treasure have sparked the imagination of young and old for centuries. The high-seas adventure of boarding a ship or fending off marauders, the clink of clashing cutlasses and the boom of canons, it all stirs excitement in most of us.
Maine’s coast is a tough, rough, rugged fortress of surf-honed granite. It has been a favorite place frequented by pirates, smugglers, bootleggers, and drug mules.
So here is today’s trivia question from DownEast.com about buried treasure.
Trivia
On what island is Captain Kidd’s treasure reportedly buried?
Answer:
Jewell Island in Casco Bay is most commonly mentioned as the pirate’s hiding place, but before he was hanged he gave his wife a piece of paper with the numbers 44-10-66-18, which have been interpreted as the latitude and longitude of Deer Isle. Richmond Island and Squirrel Island have also been mentioned.
Posted in Maine history, Maine trivia
Tagged bootleggers, canons, Capt. Kidd, Casco Bay, cutlasses, Deer Isle, DownEast.com, drug mules, island, Jewell Island, Maine coast, pirates, Richmond Island, ships, smugglers, Squirrel Island, trivia
I found today’s DownEast.com triva question interesting on several levels. William Strunk and E.B. White’s “The Elements of Style” is an essential part of any writer’s toolbox. I have worn out more than a copy or two in my 23 years as a journalist.
And to learn that one of the authors lived – and now is buried – in a coastal Maine community is yet another indication of Maine’s impact on the world of American literature.
What Brooklin author is known for his tale about a spider who had a way with words?
Answer:
E.B. “Andy” White, author of “Charlotte’s Web.” He also wrote “The Trumpet of the Swan,” and “Stuart Little” and co-authored “The Elements of Style” with William Strunk.
Brooklin, by the way, is on a point west of Mount Desert Island and once was part of Sedgwick.
Casablanca is a wonderful, classic movie. I love it. One of the best parts, of course, is when Rick prods Sam into playing a song that meant something to Rick’s past, “As Times Goes By.”
When, according to DownEast.com’s trivia question today, a Mainer recorded it 15 years before Casablanca. Here’s the question and answer.
What crooner popularized the song “As Times Goes By”?
Answer:
Westbrook native Rudy Vallee (1901-1986) recorded “As Time Goes By” fifteen years before it was featured in the film Casablanca. Vallee sang in English, Spanish, French, and Italian, using a megaphone and the backup of a big band.
Posted in Maine trivia
Tagged "As Time Goes By", big band, Casablanca, DownEast.com, Humphrey Bogart, Rick's Place, Rudy Vallee, Westbrook
[I meant to link to this blog entry yesterday. – KM]
Posted in Food and Drink, Law and Order, Outdoors, Politics and government
Tagged DownEast.com, Geroge Smith
[There is a old Maine tourism slogan that goes something like: “The way life should be.” Mr. Grant mimicks that sentiment. — KM]
The collapse of mighty institutions all around us — big corporations, the State of California, and now perhaps the Grand Old Party — might be even more alarming were we not watching from the relative tranquility of a place where things are basically okay.
Now I don’t claim that Maine is perfect. It probably doesn’t qualify as the Last Good Place — though I must say it looked very much like that to me twenty-one years ago, which is why I’ve stayed. But it is a good place, a decent and civilized place, where the complex wheels of social interaction — neighborhoods, town committees, schools and churches, local papers, community suppers and concerts, PTA bake sales, worthy fundraisers, gatherings of like-minded friends — seem to be oiled and grinding away without undue friction.
We have our social ills. Many of our schools are under-funded, some severely so. There are drugs in the hallways. There are (I assume) meth labs in the woods, and caches of firearms, and angry people who think the Anti-Christ is sitting in the White House. Our police blotters are enlivened with crimes of amazing stupidity. Old people struggle to keep their homes warm in winter. Girls get pregnant in their mid-teens. Last week some boys dropped a block of ice off a highway overpass, almost killing an innocent driver.
Click on the link to the rest of today’s entry by Richard Grant in his “Coffee With That” blog on DownEast.com.
Posted in Economy, Energy, Environment, Maine, Outdoors, Politics and government
Tagged blogging, blogs, DownEast.com, election, George's Outdoor News, Geroge Smith, nature, primary
OK, I have a special reason to like today’s DownEast.com trivia question. Two of them, actually.
When I was a kid there was a Disney TV movie, “Fire on Kelly Mountain” (1973), in which Larry Wilcox played a young guy who works in a forest fire lookout tower, becomes bored, and ends up fighting a lightning strike.
And because I ended up being a wildland firefighter for three summers while attending college in Chico, California.
Where was the country’s first forest fire lookout tower built?
Answer:
In 1905, on Squaw Mountain, since renamed Big Moose Mountain.
Big Moose Mountain is in Piscataquis County, Maine, by the way. It’s near Moosehead Lake.
I haven’t been sharing DownEast.com’s trivia questions lately because the feature apparently went green and was recycling a bunch of questions I had already shared. It didn’t make sense to share them again.
But when I first read today’s question, I immediately thought: “Well, it’s the shortest name. … Oh, wait, there’s Texas and Idaho” and probably another that I can’t think of just yet.
Anyway, a Mainer might say that one syllable is all we need.
What is unique about the state’s name?
Answer
Maine is the only state with a single-syllable name.
I posted part one of Eva Murray’s blog on becoming an island teacher. Here is link to the second part. The signoff note at the end read: “Eva Murray submitted this to Down East before her deadline, in case the power went out overnight. It did.”
Posted in Environment, Maine, Outdoors
Tagged blog, Down East magazine, DownEast.com, Eva Murray, island teacher, one-room schoolhouse
I went to the University of Southern Maine with a guy named Dean Lachance. That has nothing to do with the DownEast.com trivia question today, except that he came from South Paris. Or, at least he came from one of the towns with Paris in the name.
Either way, it did not help me in answering the trivia question. Here it is:
Who is South Paris famous for?
Answer:
The western Maine town was the birthplace and early residence of the Honorable Hannibal Hamlin, governor of Maine, United States senator, and vice president under Abraham Lincoln.
When I was a kid – I don’t remember how old exactly – my family and my Uncle Wally’s family loaded up canoes on various mode of land vehicle and we drove to north central Maine and camped near the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, of which the Allagash is the central component. The next day, we put in canoes and we paddled out way north – the Allagash flows northward – for nearly a week of paddling along the waterway.
DownEast.com today had a trivia question about the length of the waterway and I was surprised at the answer. It seemed a little short, from what I remember of that trip. But then again, I was a youngster sitting in the back of a canoe. It was a pretty sweet adventure.
As I recall, we had to pick up the pace a bit about midway. A Maine game warden caught up with us to tell us that a relative of my father had died. He wanted to make the funeral services so we paddled double-time after we got the word.
Here’s the question and answer.
How long is the Allagash Wilderness Waterway?
Answer:
Ninety-two miles in northern Piscataquis and western Aroostook counties.
Trust me, it seemed much longer than 92 miles.
Below I’ve linked to an interesting DownEast.com blog by George Smith of Mount Vernon on the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and its funding.
Currently, fees from fishermen and hunters alone fund the department that takes on a very broad set of responsibilities. The agency also provides services to Mainers who do not fish or hunt.
A coalition including the Nature Conservancy, Maine Audubon, and the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine is suggesting that the Maine Constitution be amended “by dedicating 1/8th percent of the sales tax receipts to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.”
Frankly, I’m unclear if that means an increase in the sales tax or merely a realignment of how the sales tax revenue is spent. I’m guessing it probably means an increase. But it might be worth it given the broad responsibilities the agency takes on and the fact that some Mainers receiving a benefit are not paying for DIF&W services.
By the way, according to DownEast.com, Smith is “a columnist, TV show host, executive director of the state’s largest sportsmen’s organization, political and public policy consultant, hunter, angler, and avid birder and most proud of his three children and grandson.” He also works for one of the three groups offering the idea to change the constitution, Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine.
Here’s a link to George’s Outdoor News blog.
Posted in Economy, Maine, Outdoors, Politics and government
Tagged DIF&W, DownEast Magazine, DownEast.com, George's Outdoor News, Geroge Smith, Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, League of Conservation Voters, Maine Audubon, Maine Constitution, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Nature Conservancy, Sportsman’s Alliance
(I have had a beard off and on since I was 17. No need to rush to the desk drawer for a calculator. That’s 30 years. The mustache has been around the entire time, even though I have shorn the beard from time to time only for it to return in various shapes and colors over the years. Here’s a link to a DownEast.com blog on Maine men and their beards. – KM)
Posted in Maine
Tagged "beard love", Andrew Sullivan, bear, beard, bearded, DownEast.com, John Locke, Richard Grant, shave, shorn
Letters From Away 