This week’s edition!
Concert on the Quad
Fiddler-violinist Jeremy Kittel
Trained in jazz, winner of a Scottish-style fiddle championship, celebrated as a composer, and a veteran of collaborations with the likes of Yo Yo Ma, My Morning Jacket, and Chris Thile, fiddler-violinist Jeremy Kittel and band will open the 2017-18 Olin Concert Series at Bates College with a performance on the Historic Quad at College Street and Campus Avenue in Lewiston. Free and open to the public, the event will take place on Saturday, September 9 at 9 p.m. For more information, call 786-6135 or email olinarts@bates.edu.
SeniorsPlus receives grant to continue New Mainers nutrition program
From left, Hassan Olhaye, Fiston Mubalama, and Nsikidi Alberto enjoy lunch together at a dining site developed with funding from the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation.
SeniorsPlus has received a $10,000 grant from the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation to continue to develop a dining site and cooking classes, with interpretation and written translation, for older adult refugees in downtown Lewiston. The program, which was launched this year, focuses on cooking and sourcing nutritious foods, including local farm foods, as well as creating a hub for social interaction. SeniorsPlus will continue to develop the program in partnership with St. Mary’s Nutrition Center and Health Androscoggin.
Local bicyclist rides from Fort Kent to Kittery
Don Robitaille (Photo by Rachel Morin)
Don Robitaille hears the call of the open road, the lure behind each bend and he just has to hop on his bike to explore. Don celebrated his 86th birthday on August 25 and decided to mark the occasion with a bike ride from Fort Kent to Kittery travelling Route 1 all the way.
Enough is Enough: A neighborhood on the rise; Lewiston needs skilled workers
By Robert E. Macdonald
Mayor of Lewiston
Over the past five-plus years, Lewiston has seen a moderate growth in business and housing. Lisbon, Lincoln and Main Streets are again becoming the heart and soul of our city.
A variety of restaurants and eateries downtown are creating a cosmopolitan atmosphere in the area. We have large, small and Mom-and-Pop type businesses springing up throughout the downtown, providing much-needed services and local employment for our residents. Blight has been replaced by new business facades, Argo Marketing, a building soon to rise like a phoenix filling in a 15-plus year hole on Lisbon Street and the recreation of Bates Mill No. 5.
We have also built a scenic Riverwalk. We have nature trails throughout the city. Simard Payne Park has been turned into a place where joggers and those on a lunch break can be found. It is a place to take leisure walks or sit and clear your head. It provides a venue for the Balloon Festival, concerts and other area events.
St. Dom’s opens school year with special Mass, awards ceremony
The Bishop asked the students to be honest and speak the truth in their relationships with each other.
Hundreds of students, teachers, parents, and community members gathered inside the gymnasium of Saint Dominic Academy’s Auburn campus on Thursday, August 24, as Bishop Robert P. Deeley celebrated a special afternoon Mass to offer his blessings upon the Saint Dominic Academy family at the start of a new school year. Among the concelebrants were Fr. Timothy Nadeau, Pastor of Prince of Peace Parish in Lewiston, and Fr. Seamus Griesbach, Academy Chaplain and Director of Vocations for the diocese. Students from the academy’s Lewiston campus were bussed to Auburn for the Mass.
Former President George H.W. Bush named first recipient of Spy Museum honor
Former President George H.W. Bush (seated left) holds up the International Spy Museum’s first award. He is joined in the photo by (clockwise) Lynda Webster, International Spy Museum President and COO Tamara Christian, the Honorable William H. Webster, ISM Founding Executive Director Peter Earnest, ISM VP of Development and Membership Rebecca Diamond, and former First Lady Barbara Bush. (Photo by Evan F. Sisley)
The International Spy Museum recently presented the first ever William H. Webster Distinguished Service Award to former President George H.W. Bush, 41st president of the United States and former Director of Central Intelligence, for his extraordinary leadership and contributions to the Intelligence Community.
Chosen by a committee of highly regarded former intelligence leaders, honorees demonstrate extraordinary contributions to the Intelligence Community at the national or international level. They embody the values of Judge William H. Webster, the only person to serve as both Director of Central Intelligence and Director of the FBI, including honor, integrity, probity, and fidelity to the law.
Local Veteran’s Outreach Specialist named Amvets Commander of the Year
Veteran’s Outreach Specialist Jerry Dewitt of Tri-County Mental Health Services was honored at the National Amvets Convention in August with the Department Commander of the Year award. Dewitt, Commander of the AMVETS Department of Maine, was part of a group who transported silhouettes from “The Silhouette Project” for viewing at the conference and was otherwise attending on normal business as he does each year. The announcement of his name as the winner of the national award at the annual Commanders Banquet was a surprise to Dewitt, who was in the audience.
Poliquin launches district-wide Veteran Advisory Panel
Congressman Bruce Poliquin introduces members of the new panel in Bangor.
Congressman Bruce Poliquin, a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, recently launched a Veteran Advisory Panel consisting of Maine veterans who will assist him in hearing from and conveying the interests of veterans across Maine’s 2nd District to Congress.
Poliquin’s Veteran Advisory Panel is a new body that will serve as a grass-roots, bottom-up tool to hear and better understand issues affecting Veterans in local communities across Maine’s expansive and rural 2nd Congressional District. The panel will consist of chairpersons representing each county in Maine’s 2nd District. Each county chairperson will assemble their own county panel of two to five members who will engage with local resources networks within their own communities.
Governor’s Address: There’s no excuse for violence from any side
The violent behavior in Charlottesville was more than despicable—it was deadly, causing the deaths of three people and injuries to many more.
Dear Maine Taxpayer,
I condemn anyone who believes in the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacy or racism. It has no place in our country.
I have spoken out forcefully against the KKK for seven years as your Governor. In the 1920s, the KKK had as many as 40,000 members in Maine. They came after Franco-Americans because they hated Catholics. They hated my family.
The KKK’s first parade to take place in broad daylight was in Milo, Maine in 1923. They didn’t even try to hide their hate.
As a Franco-American, I know the lasting and devastating effects this kind of hatred and discrimination can have on people. I denounce it in the strongest possible terms.
However, I also condemn the leftists who use hatred and violence against people they accuse of spreading hatred and violence. Both sides are wrong.
Op-Ed: Opposition to L-A merger seems to come from fear
By Maura Murphy
Lewiston
“Never!” “Over my dead body!” “Noooo!”
These are some of the milder expressions of opposition to the Lewiston-Auburn merger that I have heard lately. Such airtight, negative sentiments cannot go beyond themselves; they just repeat and reinforce themselves in closed loops, strengthening and hardening with each repetition. The root of much opposition to the merger seems to be fear: fear of change, fear of risk, fear of the new and unfamiliar, fear of a loss of identity, fear of some vague unfairness, fear of higher taxes, etc.
Fear, like any emotion, cannot be argued against; whether well-founded or not, it exists, powerful and pivotal. It should not, however, be the only basis for making decisions, especially momentous ones such as the possibility of formally joining two small cities into the single community they have always been. It is all but impossible to imagine a person in our community who doesn’t have family, friends, healthcare, shopping and cultural destinations on both sides of the river.
There are also too many families with members, ranging from multiple generations to now, who were forced to seek employment, education and other opportunities elsewhere, even if they would have preferred to stay. Many of our best and brightest leave L-A—and they rarely come back.
