Category Archives: Community

The Gift of Affirmation

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There are people who validate—and there are people who criticize. From my vantage point, I’m of the opinion that there are more of the latter than the former—but there are certainly a significant number that live in that first category—they make building people up rather than tearing them down a priority.

I’m trying to spend more time with the validation crowd than with the critical set. I also know firsthand that being validated can carry you forward for days and weeks, while being criticized (whether valid or even offered in a constructive manner) makes you want to run and hide. It totally sucks and drains whatever energy you had at that moment.

I know plenty about laboring in obscurity while following my passion and rarely, if ever, receiving compliments or recognition. It’s what I’ve been doing for most of the past twenty years as a writer.

During that period, I think I can number on both hands the people that I’d consider real fans or people who’ve taken the time to routinely acknowledge a blog post I’ve written, or mention one of the numerous articles I’ve had published, or tell me they’ve read one of my books. One of these is someone who I don’t know very well. She’s also a wonderful writer and we see each other maybe two times a year. But a month ago she was in a town in Maine and walking by a book shop. She happened to see my Moxie book. She took the time to send me an email when she got back to Portland and let me know that and reminded me that she knew I was still out here. Continue reading →

Roots and Community

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I’ve been fascinated by the concept of community for a long time.

Communitarianism, sometimes called “community,” is a concept I’ve been captivated with and have read widely about for the past 25 years. I even got to play in the “laboratory” and forge elements of this concept in various places around the state of Maine. I think the germ for me was first planted by Wendell Berry’s writing on the subject.

When I was directly engaged in community-building and nonprofit work during the first decade of this century, Berry’s foundational values: place (it matters), community, good work, and simple pleasures resonated with the side of me that tended towards seeing what was ideal, if not always practical. The best part of the time I spent engaged in what I found to be “good work” however, was that it taught me that people working together could produce positive results that benefited many and rippled outward long after I was no longer around doing that work.

My son embodied these values. He saw the good in people. Mark also had the capacity and the drive to move beyond mere words and playing around the fringes of social justice. He actually took action.

Friday, as youth around the world came together in a global chain of voices and actions around protesting climate change, I was reminded of the ultimate sacrifice that Mark made for what he believed in. His death profoundly altered my life and the life of his mom in ways that we’ll never be able to step away from. Loss is forever. Continue reading →

Changing Shifts

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I’m going to miss swimming at the Bath Y. For more than three years, I’ve driven north on Route 1 to Bath to swim. Swimming has been one of a few things that kept me centered during the most difficult period of my life, both emotionally, and a year ago, when my SI joint flared-up.

For the past year, I’ve tried to swim three mornings a week. I’m usually there Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I tend to arrive after 6:00 (the pool opens at 5:00 a.m.), which allows me to get up at 4:45, have a cup of coffee, watch the weather with Mary, and then throw my bag in the backseat and make the 12-minute drive from where we’ve been living in Brunswick.

My arrival usually corresponds with a “shift change” of sorts. The group that arrives when the facility opens is usually wrapping up and the locker room most mornings is full of talk and camaraderie. Having played team sports throughout high school as well as coaching, the energy in a locker room is a special kind of thing.

Auto workers leaving the General Motors Powertrain plant in Warren, Michigan (2008)

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The Kindness of Strangers

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I met Richard one morning early in 2016 at the Bath Y. He was a regular and I’d see him per my routine early swims, usually Tuesdays and Fridays (or sometimes Thursday, if I couldn’t swim on Friday).

The Y is similar to other places where I’ve worked out in the past (like Auburn’s Planet Fitness)—the early AM workout crowd tend to be creatures of habit and generally, a little older. We’re there to get our reps/laps/miles done and then, it’s off to whatever the day throws at us. Across the context of two strangers’ paths crossing, a bond sometimes develops. You see the same person week after week. Unless you’re a misanthrope, you’ll have a conversation or two. Before long, seeing that person becomes part of the routine.

Richard’s 14 years older than me. That means he fought in Vietnam, is nearing retirement, and has accumulated a bit more life experience translating into wisdom. He’s solidly middle-class, probably a tad more conservative than I am, but I know he didn’t vote for Trump, either based the accumulation of our AM conversations.

There was something inherently likable about him. He was a no BS type of guy, and I have always had an affinity for males of that stripe. As the months passed, I found out he was working part-time at The Home Depot in Topsham. He’s “retired,” but like many seniors, retirement now means holding a job to supplement retirement savings—Americans are living longer and longer and staying topside costs slightly more than chump-change. Continue reading →

Saturday and Moxie

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In a land built on “the pitch,” not the baseball kind, but the one that marketing is known for, having your elevator speech ready to go is essential. Given that this is Moxie weekend in Lisbon Falls, the epicenter of Moxie’s universe, feel free to use some of these tips to frame your parade-viewing and other conversations while taking in the town’s sights and sounds. Before long, people will start coming to you as their resident “Moxie expert.”

Be on the lookout for the Moxie Horsemobile.

What is Moxie?
Moxie is an iconic soft drink. Invented by Augustin Thompson, a Maine native, who was living in Lowell, Mass. at the time, Moxie is the oldest, commercially-bottled soft drink in the U.S., being marketed and sold since 1884.

I’ve written two books about Moxie. There are a host of stories, some true, and some somewhat apocryphal.

For instance, back in 1982, the late Frank Anicetti, owner of Kennebec Fruit Co. (aka, the Moxie Store) sent out 13 post cards for a book signing he was hosting for Frank Potter. Potter, who at that time had written some of the quintessential books about Moxie, including The Moxie Mystique, managed to draw a a crowd that Anicetti claims (in an interview I did with him in 2008) was close to 500 people. While the actual number’s never been confirmed, it was a sizable turnout. The next year, Lisbon’s summer festival, Frontier Days, became the Moxie Festival and we’ve been at it in Lisbon Falls now for 35 years.

Where does Moxie get its distincty-different taste?
Moxie’s distinctive taste comes from Gentian Root, a medicinal herb.

Prior to the Food and Drug Act, which limited claims made about products, Moxie, then marketed as a “nerve food” was said to cure anything from blindness and paralysis, to the “loss of manhood,” making it America’s first Viagra.

Back to the marketing of Moxie, the brand’s chief spokesman during the 1950s was Red Sox star and Hall of Famer, Ted Williams, a huge fan of the soft drink. Maybe It was Moxie that helped Williams hit .406 in 1941, making him the last MLB hitter to bat over .400. That was 76 years ago!

I believe that Moxie’s staying power is first and foremost the result of one Frank Archer, a marketing genius. There are a host of items that collector’s treasure, developed by Archer, to market Moxie. Things like thermometers, a Moxie board game, the various signs featuring the “Moxie Boy,” and others.

While some of Moxie’s 20th century ambassadors like Archer, Williams, Potter, and Anicetti have passed from the stage, Moxie continues to confound critics. The brand, now back in New England where it belongs, has taken to social media and the digital landscape in marketing its magic to a whole new generation. You’ll see plenty of the younger set in Lisbon Falls today, interspersed with those of us who have known about Moxie’s magic for decades.

Enjoy the festival and parade!!

Pedaling to work

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The last time I biked to work, Bush 41 was in the White House. Hillary’s husband, who would come next, was still an obscure governor of a Southern backwater. It was the early 1990s and I was working for a large power company in Brunswick.

From my home in Durham, the ride took just over an hour. Luckily, my employer had a locker room with two showers. I developed a routine of bringing clothes to change into the day before and kept a few other supplies in a locker to dress for work.

Six weeks ago, I accepted a position with a local credit union. They have a branch in Topsham, 12 miles from my house. On my first day, during the tour, I noticed a downstairs locker room and shower. I said to the branch manager, “I’m going to have to bike into work some day.”

Today is finally “bike to work day.” I’m kind of excited. I’ve had to wait ‘til now for a number of reasons, including afternoon and early evening commitments that prevented me from being able to meander back home following work.

I had to do some thinking about it and some pre-planning. A week ago Saturday, I even pre-rode the route, which is a different one than the one I normally take in the car. It’s slightly longer (just over 16 miles). The bike route takes me through Brunswick, a bicycle-friendly community with a designated bike route. In essence, a bike-friendly designation provides a welcoming environment for people on bikes. This is accomplished through providing safe accommodations for bicycling and by encouraging people to bike for transportation and recreation. It allows cyclists an environment that’s safe, comfortable, and convenient for all ages and abilities. Bike-friendly, or not, biking in traffic during rush-to-work time requires vigilance and some experience riding in traffic.

Keeping to the bike route.

Keeping to the bike route.

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Political Spectacle

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My inclination this morning was to talk about something other than last night’s Republican debate and the second rate nature of the candidates who showed up. It’s so easy these days, during the latter days of empire and covering its politics—whether you’re a famed journalist, or an obscure blogger—to simply talk about you-know-who, the presidential candidate in the room who garners all the attention, even when he decides to take his ball with him and not show up. I decided to go with the latter. I’m not proud about it, either.

After working last night at a part-time job I picked up in December, I got home after 9:00 and flicked on the television. Like millions of other Americans, I was intrigued to know how the debate was going without the star of this year’s presidential horse race. Also, I wanted to see how things were going wherever Mr. Trump took his ball, and went off to play with it.

On what was originally intended to be the evening’s big political event when it originally was scheduled by Fox News, Donald Trump again turned this year’s election protocol and rules upside-down. His fans loved it, as they always do, irrespective of what Mr. Trump says and does.

"Please vote for me!!"

“Please vote for me!!” (Doug Mills photo/New York Times)

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Local Food is Radical

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On a daily basis, we are bombarded by a myriad of messages, all carefully crafted and coordinated by our corporate overlords. In case you haven’t been paying attention, we don’t live in a democracy, a democratic republic, or whatever else we were brainwashed into believing our American government was supposed to be during our 12 years of indoctrination in public schools. And then, of course, we’re convinced to add another four, six, or eight years on top of that, just for the privilege of tacking a few letters after our names for the purpose of “prestige.” And at what cost does this so-called honor come?

It’s too easy to succumb to this onslaught and get caught up in all the finger-pointing and ideological blame-gaming—it’s so much easier to control and subjugate a people divided. But this isn’t intended to be a screed, a diatribe, or even a jeremiad. No, I’m here to talk about simplicity in its most basic form—local food. Continue reading →