Tag Archives: Lisbon Falls

Moxie Math

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Moxie math and keeping the stories straight.

Moxie math and keeping the stories straight.

Moxie is a state of mind, or so I’ve been told numerous times. Apparently, it also has its own distinctly different system of computation. How else could this be the Moxie Festival’s 31st year, if 2008 was its 25th, or silver anniversary?

History is important to me and by extension, the history of Moxie is something I’ve paid particular attention to especially since 2008 when I wrote my first Moxie book, but really, since 2004, when I first signed on to provide PR and marketing support for the Moxie Committee that summer and the following year, too. Continue reading →

This Week in Moxie

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Moxie can

I drove through Lisbon Falls over the weekend. One week out from the town’s crowning celebration, the place looked like a ghost town. Save for a couple of banners strung up over Route 196, Lisbon Falls looked nothing like a place where 20,000+ people will flock to in order to celebrate a distinctly different New England soft drink called Moxie.

Moxie’s been on my mind the past few weeks as it often is during July, when Lisbon Falls again assumes its place as the epicenter of the Moxie universe for one weekend. Then, it will go back to being a community in obvious decline, much like it has for the past 30 years that Moxie’s been connected to the place. Continue reading →

A Lack of Vision

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Tumbling, tumbleweeds.

Tumbling, tumbleweeds.

Where there is no vision, the people perish…

People and places without a plan for the future—a vision—are doomed to failure. Equally worse in my opinion is a plan that takes you in the wrong direction.

I grew up in a community that at one time was a vibrant little place. Main Street had a number of places where you could shop, buy ice cream, pick up auto supplies; there was a barber shop (there were actually two, at one time), a hair salon, and several department stores. All of that’s just a memory that people rehash ad nauseum on Facebook these days. There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on, too. Rarely do they look behind the memories and wonder what happened to what was once Lisbon Falls. Continue reading →

Moxie Season

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The Moxie Boy wants you to drink Moxie!

The Moxie Boy wants you to drink Moxie!

Moxie is a distinctly different soft drink that was once more popular than Coca-Cola, or Pepsi. Now, it’s an iconic regional soft drink with a cult-like fan base and a festival in its honor.

For the uninitiated, the Moxie Festival occurs the second weekend in July, just like it has been now for the past 30 years. The place is Lisbon Falls, the town where I grew up and still live across the Androscoggin River from. Continue reading →

Music in My Car

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Mogwai, The Heartless Bastards, Kurt Vile, Jeff Buckley, Todd Rundgren.

Mogwai, The Heartless Bastards, Kurt Vile, Jeff Buckley, Todd Rundgren.

Music has always been a big part of the Jim Baumer Experience. Every blog I’ve ever maintained at least occasionally brushed up against music, especially music with a big beat, albeit, rock and roll.

The term rock and roll isn’t what it used to be. When the first electric guitars got plugged in and amplification changed modern music, rock was a rebel yell into the conservative abyss and a kick in the teeth to the status quo. Now? Not so much. Continue reading →

Time Marches On

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One year ago, to the weekend, I was feted as the “author in residence” at Kennebec Fruit Company in Lisbon Falls. Members of Moxie Nation know it simply as “The Moxie Store.” That book signing for Moxie: Maine In A Bottle, took place on May 5, 2012; it doesn’t seem like it was one year ago, but it was.

Yesterday, my sister and I pulled off a surprise 80th birthday party for our father, Herman the German. The location was another Lisbon Falls landmark, The Slovak Social Club, on Avery Street.

My sister and I with our parents, Helen and Herman.

My sister and I with our parents, Helen and Herman.

There’s a saying that “time waits for no man,” and it doesn’t play gender favorites, either. The seconds, minutes, and hours of life continue ticking away and then, the clock ticks no more. Continue reading →

Nostalgia Act

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Alfred Rosenberg photo-from You Know You're From Lisbon, ME if... Facebook page.

Alfred Rosenberg photo-from You Know You’re From Lisbon, ME if… Facebook page.

What is it about the past that we find so attractive? Our desire to return to what we consider “better days” has become big business for marketers and others who’ve found a way to mine this vein for all it’s worth.

An email exchange the other day about the town where I grew up, Lisbon Falls, and the interest that many seem to have relative to a particular page on Facebook about the town that existed when we were kids (but has long ago disappeared) finds me curious about nostalgia, and what lies behind it. Continue reading →

Finding rhythm; finding rest

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The lives most of us lead in these waning days of 2012 are crammed full of activity. Ask anyone how they are and inevitably, almost as if on cue, they’ll tell you just how busy they are.

Busyness and minimal room for reflection of any kind, especially self-reflection, just might be one of the scourges of our time during the 21st century epoch we find ourselves living in. Continue reading →

The case for community

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Robert Putnam coined the term “social capital” in a seminal essay written in 1995. He’d later expand those ideas about community into a full-length book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, in 2000.

Putnam’s book and his ideas have infused my own thinking about the world since reading the book in 2002. In 2005, I tackled writing a book of my own, one that drew liberally upon the concept of social capital, using baseball rather than bowling as the metaphor for the changes American communities have experienced over the last 50-60 years. Continue reading →