Two weeks ago, environmental activist, author and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, came to the Portland US District courthouse to join a midday demonstration “marking the two-year anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling that gave corporations unprecedented power to fund political campaigns,” according to a story in the Portland Phoenix. “City councilor Dave Marshall recently submitted a resolution that calls on Maine’s congressional delegation to support a constitutional amendment abolishing the so-called ‘corporate personhood’ codified by the ruling. ‘We simply can’t win the battle against carbon if politics remains polluted by corporate money,’ McKibben says.” Dave Marshall’s resolution was indeed passed that Thursday night. The city council of Portland voted 6-2 to call on the state’s congressional delegation to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing “corporate personhood.” [Here's a good roundup of the issue from CommonDreams.org]

McKibben went on to give a lecture that Friday evening at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center hosted by the University of New England entitled, “Local and Global: Notes from the Frontlines of the Climate Fight.” [Here's the video of the talk.] That talk is being broadcast today on MPBN’s Speaking in Maine public affairs program.

Now Portland likes corporations just fine, but we like living and working to be in balance. We like our people to be people and our corporations to be corporations.

In fact, a lot of the companies that are attracted to Maine, and to the Portland area in particular, are trying to create solutions to the kinds of problems McKibben addresses in his most recent book, Eaarth, Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.  ReVision Energy, Ocean Approved Kelp, Ocean Renewable Power, all presented at this year’s Juice 3.0 conference and are all based in Portland. Other Portland green businesses listed on the Maine Businesses for Sustainability include Blue Reserve Water, PDT Architects, Wright-Ryan Construction, and Coffee by Design. A great resource for local services with green practices is the new green business directory from The Sunrise Guide.

McKibben’s talk was Skyped live around the State to Belfast, Bangor, Houlton, and the Portland Public Library. Bill said he has been to all of these places, but this “is a very low carbon way to get around Maine!” He apologized, in advance for being, “a professional bummer-outer of people,” but then went on to tell what we can all do to make things better. He praised Maine’s initiatives in the local food movement and Portland’s permaculture efforts during the 10.10.10 day of action, but he also said we need to do more.

In particular, McKibben thinks that the injection of money into politics is crippling our government’s ability to make any substantive changes in our energy future. ”I gave a little talk at the Portland courthouse today,” he said, “because there was a demonstration to mark the second anniversary of the Citizens United thing that sort of opened up fully the money spigots for corporate America to interfere in our political life. And this is just cheating. If the Patriots make the Super Bowl, and Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, is caught giving money to the referees beforehand, it’s a national scandal. Everybody would be outraged, but if Exxon does it, then it’s OK. That’s crazy and we’ve got to stop it, right now.”

McKibben speaks from the deep Yankee tradition (see my discussion with Colin Woodard in relation to this). In fact, in 2010 he wrote a series of articles for Yankee Magazine subtitled How New England Can Save the World. And he was clearly speaking to a receptive audience that night in Westbrook, “The thing that keeps us from fixing things is our cynicism. This is how it’s always going to be. We need to be aggressively naive about this. I think we need to say, ‘This is not right, it’s not fair, it makes no sense. We don’t know how it got started, but it’s time to stop it.’ And we won’t stop it perfectly and all at once, but hopefully we can at least throw a scare into them. So we’re going to have people all over the country and they’re going to be following around their congressman with big signs pointing out how much money they’ve taken. And we’re going to be making up suit coats for them that look like those uniforms that nascar drivers wear, with decals, logos, for each of their companies. It’s shameful what’s going on and there needs to be some shaming done.”

Bill is not a naturally outgoing person and he has taken the mantle of activist leader somewhat reluctantly. In many ways, like many creatives, he would rather sit in his room and write. But there’s clearly something about the momentum of social engagement, and 350.orgs surprising victories, that keeps him going. Returning at the end of his talk to the theme of local foods he concluded, ”The secret is to have more fun than other people have, and part of that involves eating delicious, good things close to home, and frankly i think we’ve reached the point that i’m going to stop so I can eat some of them!”

A couple of months ago, I had an idea for an art project: I could use the Google Search API to filter through the 27,400 Image Search results for watercolor paintings of Maine’s Monhegan Island, sort them by their dominant hues, and rearrange them in an grid to create a pointillist approximation of a Monhegan Island scene.

There were two strikes against this idea ever seeing the light of day: first, I’ve never considered myself an artist, and second, I was only a novice at the programming languages I would need to pull the necessary data from Google’s servers and put the mosaic together.

But then I read about the third reprise of SPACE Gallery‘s Free for All show, an unjuried “democratic curatorial experiment” that solicits work from “artists of all stripes.” If I could whip something together in 2 weeks, SPACE would hang it.

So I started coding, and my wife made a beautiful dovetailed cherry box to frame the program’s LCD screen (that’s a screenshot of the finished product below at right: squint and you might see something that looks like Monhegan’s lighthouse). Meanwhile, hundreds of other Portlanders were working on their own projects. At the opening last week, the galleries were nearly as packed as the walls.

Kindly set aside for a moment the question of whether what I made has any artistic value. Even if it’s crap, it was crap that served two valuable purposes: it forced me to stop procrastinating and teach myself functional PHP and Javascript, creative skills that will make me a more productive and valuable participant in Portland’s workforce. And seeing my project finished on a crowded wall of artworks—the products of tens of thousands of hours’ worth of collective effort—also made me feel like a more engaged citizen in a community of creators.

Around the time SPACE staff were putting the finishing touches on that show, the Warhol Foundation announced their award of a $150,000 grant that will, among other things, help entice visiting artists to spend more time in Portland, and increase their engagement with the community and with Portland’s rich history.

In July, for instance, Amze Emmons will set up a zine library and host publishing workshops at the tentatively-named RUM RIOT PRESS (named for the violent outcomes of Portland’s cutting-edge prohibitionist pilot project in 1851). Look forward to discussions and contemporary reenactments of how DIY printing culture played a strident and powerful role in our city’s — and nation’s — early history.

Later in the summer, SPACE will welcome Allison Pebworth’s “Beautiful Possibility” tour, which will set up the SPACE Annex in the style of a nineteenth century Chautauqua to host discussions of the varied historical narratives we use to make sense of our nation, and to talk about what it means to be an American.

Most galleries don’t do this kind of stuff: they’re in the business of selling art. Why spend hundreds of hours of staff labor to showcase amateur artworks from people like me, or pay for room and board for visiting artists who participate in the growing trend of art as social practice, when it’s apparently so easy to sell thousands of paintings of the same rocky coastline?

But SPACE doesn’t merely showcase great art and performances. It also engages the city and its citizens to be more creative and thoughtful in our own lives, whether or not we consider ourselves artists. In countless instances, SPACE has prompted us to learn new creative skills, to start new projects, to forge new relationships with each other. Taken individually, those instances can seem trivial: it may or may not matter much if a dental assistant becomes a typography enthusiast, or if a tenth-grader teaches herself three chords on the bass.

But taken cumulatively, across the entire city, these effects multiply, become tremendous. SPACE itself begins to look like a sprawling social artwork whose medium is the entire city: an institution devoted to making us a more creative Portland.

Image: Free for All opening night, photo by Christian MilNeil.

PS – Check out the Free for All show during this month’s First Friday artwalk, or anytime this month: the art comes down on March 3 (SPACE is located at 538 Congress Street). Also, while the Warhol Foundation’s grant helps a lot, SPACE still needs its members’ support to finance its everyday operations. Follow this link to join or renew online.

The Boston/New York face-off in the Super Bowl got me thinking about Portland in relation to those two urban centers of gravity. Many creative professionals here maintain ongoing ties with one or both, and culturally they are quite distinct. Although I’ve lived here for seven years—and although I’m not a sports fan—I find myself rooting for the Giants. Ex-New Yorkers can even think that their urbanity has had a pervasive effect on Portland, but in truth, Portland has probably changed them more than they have changed Portland. To get to the bottom of this struggle for identity—this battle for the soul of Portland—I consulted Colin Woodard, author of American Nations. And like many New Yorkers before me, I tried to change his New England mind and he ended up changing mine.

Q:What is the theory behind American Nations and which Nation is the City of Portland part of?

A: American Nations argues that there has never been one America, but rather several Americas. The original colonial clusters were founded by people with distinct ethnographic and religious characteristics, ideals, values, and political and societal goals. Throughout the colonial period they saw each other as competitors and sometimes as enemies, fighting on opposite sides of the English Civil War and the American Revolution. They colonized mutually exclusive portions of the middle region of our continent, laying down the cultural DNA that subsequent immigrants have confronted as the “dominant culture” around them.

Maine, including Portland, is part of Yankeedom, the Greater New England cultural space established by the early Puritans.

Q: The Super Bowl on Sunday pits the New England Patriots (representatives of Yankeedom) against the New York Giants. What “Nation” do the Giants represent?

A: New Netherland, the Dutch-founded area around New York City, to include northern New Jersey, western Long Island, Westchester and Fairfield counties. Established by the Dutch at a time when the Netherlands was the most sophisticated society in the Western world, New Netherland has displayed its salient characteristics throughout its history: a global commercial trading culture— multiethnic, multireligious, and materialistic—with a profound tolerance for diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry and conscience.

Q: Portland has become multiethnic, multireligious and tolerant of diversity (not sure about materialistic) due to the influx of Africans, Asians—and New Yorkers. Plus we have great bagels, a tattoo parlor from Brooklyn, and lots of first-rate writers and other creatives that have moved here from New York. As an ex-New Yorker myself, I have to ask, what does it take to overthrow the “dominant culture” of a city?

A: All that could be said of Boston, Arlington, Charleston or, indeed, London. Don’t confuse the trappings of contemporary urbanity with “New Netherlandishness.” Portland’s food, art, and culture scenes  owe their existence to transplants from many places, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire and other parts of Maine. That’s not to say New Yorkers haven’t enriched our city, but one can overestimate their contribution.

The dominant culture in Portland has been Yankee ever since the Casco Bay area was first colonized in the 1650s, the decade after the English Civil War. While New Netherlanders have much to be proud of, there are important virtues of this Yankee culture. There’s an emphasis on community — rather than individual — good, and a strong social taboo regarding flashy displays of wealth, privilege, and power that is almost entirely alien to Gotham. There is, indeed, an emphasis on cultural conformity — at some level, Yankee culture expects outsiders to melt into the pot, as it were — but its also a culture programmed by the Puritans to improve itself through civic institutions and engagement.

Many affluent, big city professionals have who’ve come and helped invigorate our city have builtupon foundations laid decades and, in some respects, centuries ago. It would be a mistake to assume that Yankees – and indeed, Mainers — haven’t played a central role in the creation of contemporary Portland. (I point your readers to one of my previous works, The Lobster Coast, for more on this.) In short, you wouldn’t want to overthrow the dominant culture of Greater Portland. It’s what makes the city work in the first place.

Q: So you think that urbanites from New York and all the other metros are attracted to Portland in good measure because of the qualities of Yankeedom—emphasis on community, lack of materialism, value on civic engagement—that are expressed in here? And all that New Netherlandish stuff are just superficial trappings that have—in fact—embedded themselves in many metros without changing the essential character of those places?

A: Urbanites are drawn to Portland for many of the reasons pointed out in your website. Every “nation” has cities with different characteristics and attributes (compare and contrast Paris and Marseilles, for instance), but the dominant culture does have a powerful background effect. So, yes, there are Yankee cultural features at the foundation of what people celebrate about Portland.  New Netherlanders — and Left Coasters, Midlanders, Irish, French, Greeks, Serbs and Somalis — have enriched our city, but the dominant culture remains. That, indeed, is why we call it “dominant.”

Q: Point taken. So who do you think will win the Super Bowl?

The Patriots. (Where’s that other team from? Unlike the Mets and Knickerbockers, their team colors aren’t the orange blue and white of the old Dutch Republic.)

Were there bakeries in Portland before Standard Baking opened its doors in 1995? Of course there were, but it feels like Standard has, well, set the standard for a constantly expanding class of artisan bakers throughout town. (Creative Portland’s Andy Graham remembers the bread when he arrived in the 70s was, in fact, being pretty dismal.)

Today, Portland is renowned far and wide for its baked goods. Just ask Bon Appetit, or Road Food authors Jane and Michael Stern, or FoodieMommy. But don’t spend too much time reading about our amazing bakeries. Instead, come here and enjoy what we enjoy, including…

Big Sky Bread, milling wheat and turning out delectable loaf after loaf in Woodford’s Corner for close to twenty years.

Borealis Breads, with cheese ficelles to die for, and a strong commitment to Maine grain farmers.

Katie Made Bakery, where the cheesecakes and pies overflow with love.

158 Pickett Street (aka One Fifty Ate), at the SMCC campus in South Portland, with legendary sourdough bagels worth crossing the bridge for.

Micucci’s Grocery, where baker Stephen Lazalotta has set up shop in the back, producing luna breads that are snatched up the minute they appear on the racks.

Scratch Baking Co., in South Portland’s Willard Square, where each day of the week brings different specialty breads.

Two Fat Cats Bakery, where the pies cry out to you, yearning to come home with you and meet your family.

Rosemont Market, three branches and counting, great baguettes, whole wheat scala and the closest thing to a New York bagel.

And that’s not even mentioning Mr. Bagel, or The European, or Good East Boutique, or Bakery on the Hill, or East End Cupcakes, or, or –

‘Nuff said. Time to eat.

Big Sky Bread

Two Fat Cats

Early last month I went to see local bands AWAAS, If and It, Glass Fingers, and the Sunset Hearts play at 131 Washington Avenue, an abandoned print shop at the base of Munjoy Hill. It’s not the kind of place that you’ll see on Chamber of Commerce brochures, but it’s cheap, and the venue’s neighbors — the windowless Sahara Club, a state parole office, and an overgrown hillside empty lot — don’t complain if the music’s too loud.

In other words, it’s an ideal place for creative people to cut loose. The venue’s founding tenants are setting out to “provide an affordable and accessible creative space in Portland,” with rents for the smaller studios starting at $100 a month (see the Craigslist listing here). To meet that goal, they’ve been hosting a bunch of fundraiser shows in the unfinished space, and they also managed a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise $5,000 for renovation materials. That campaign, now closed, actually raised $5,772 — potentially enough to replace the outdoor porta-john with some real first-world indoor plumbing.

Thanks to 95 Kickstarter backers, a lot of DIY sweat-equity, and even more to the numerous local bands who sacrificed their shares of door revenues at the venue’s first shows, 131 Washington is ready to cultivate a new generation of Portland artists and musicians.

Image: screenshot from the 131 Washington Kickstarter video.

“What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?”

— Italo Calvino, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler

In the center of downtown Portland lies Monument Square, a memorial to the city’s Civil War veterans and a prominent public space where the city’s Arts District, business district, and the Old Port converge.

And occupying pride of place in the city’s most prominent square is the newly-renovated main branch of the Portland Public Library.

I’ve always believed that a city’s civic strength, egalitarianism, and confidence as a community are reflected in the quality of its libraries. Naturally, we have a great library here in Portland: the building’s geographic prominence reflects its importance as a cultural and educational resource for the entire southern Maine region.

Some of the things you’ll find there:

• The excellently curated Lewis Gallery — this month’s program includes a photography show sponsored by the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.
• Lunch-hour readings from local authors and evening film screenings in the Rines Auditorium.
• The Portland Room, home to the library’s special collections, including rare books, an archive of Maine’s newspapers and magazines, old maps, photographs, and other ephemera. The Portland Room also hosts an impressive collection from the famous Anthoensen Press and Thomas B. Mosher Press, which together established our city as an important center for printing and publishing in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• An excellent children’s library, with daily programs and readings for young children, and the new Teen Library, which lends video games, hosts study sessions and game nights, and sports a generous collection of graphic novels and YA literature.
• And last but not least, a sun-filled reading room in the front of the building facing Congress Street and Monument Square — a great place to meet people, take advantage of the free wi-fi, read the local papers, or just watch the city pass by.

The Portland Public Library is currently soliciting donations for its annual fund, which purchases new materials above and beyond what would be possible with taxpayer contributions. Visit their secure webpages to give.

Photo courtesy of the Portland Public Library

How many times do we actually ask you to do anything on this blog? Our tone is usually more of an invitation to enjoy the pleasures of Portland or a suggestion of someone you might be interested in meeting. We’re not really about action items—but here’s one!

At this month’s Portland Greendrinks event, on the second Tuesday (January 10) at The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (561 Congress Street) Sean Sullivan from Bowdoin College will be filming for a video about career opportunities in Maine. He will be asking people their name, what they do in Portland and why they love living and working in Portland (and Maine). The footage will be used first for a video “to entice Bowdoin, Bates and Colby students to attend the Maine Based Employers Career Fair (prevent the brain drain!), which Bowdoin is putting on to feature opportunities available in Maine.” But since this also fits in rather neatly with the mission of Creative Portland, we will probably find uses for the footage of Portland-loving people too.

For extra incentives (and to highlight sustainable transportation in Portland), Sean has procured 3 free bike tune ups from Allspeed Cycles (that will be distributed at random to participants) and a discount code (for all participants) that waives the membership fee and gives $10 worth of free time from UCarShare ($35 value).

And for all you architects and interior designers out there, the event is co-sponsored by SMRT, the 125 year old Portland based architectural project management company.

So please, help Maine, help Portland and come to Greendrinks with a face and a soundbite to let the world know why you love Portland!

Much of what makes Portland such a cool city derives from the first half of our name. We are a port, perched on the Atlantic Ocean. Because of that, we are utterly unlike, say, Waltham or Austin or Chapel Hill. With ports come piers and wharves. Facing the waterfront from Portland’s Commercial Street, you can count ten wharves from left to right, each with its own character. So as we prepare to ring in the New Year, lets sing out the praises of these fingers into the sea:

1. Maine State Pier is the most heavily used, since it houses the Casco Bay Lines, whose ferries link Portland to islands across Casco Bay. Come here to watch boats pulling in and out, as seagulls wheel overhead.
2. Next door is Maine Wharf, a true working pier. It’s home to businesses such as Morrison’s Maine Course (wholesalers of seafood specialties), Chase Leavitt (maritime services since 1854), the water taxi (to get a private lift across the bay) and the sea tow (to get your boat back to port when you run out of gas).
3. Custom House Wharf houses Sea Bags, where old sails are recycled into beautiful tote bags, and The Porthole, which many claim has the best breakfast in town. But it’s most known for Harbor Fish Market, perhaps the finest of its kind on the East Coast. “Iconic” + “Maine” = “Harbor Fish Market.”
4. To its right is Portland Pier, a curious mix of J’s Oyster House, small law firms, some condos – and New Meadows Lobster, at the far end.
5. Beside that is Long Wharf. Hardly a wharf, this is more of a huge parking lot, with an adjacent marina and DiMillo’s Restaurant, a converted car-ferry-turned-high-end-eatery.
6. Chandler’s Wharf is exclusively upscale condominiums. You probably don’t come here unless you live here.
7. Widgery Wharf is the real thing, unchanged for decades, chockablock with lobster boats, lobster traps, lobster processors, and a smell to remind you how authentic a town Portland really is.
8. Adjacent is Union Wharf, perhaps the most diverse along the waterfront. You’ll find the Maine Life Raft & Inflatable Service Company, an architecture firm, lobster businesses, the Nine Stones Spa, and the Maine Responder, a large vessel dedicated to cleaning up oil spills if/when they occur (she spent five months in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010).
9. Like the other piers, Merrill’s Wharf has lobster boats tied up along its perimeter. But it also has a warehouse recently gutted and refurbished to house one of the state’s largest and most venerable law firms, Pierce Atwood.
10. Portland Fish Pier (aka Merchants Wharf), the last in the line, is a mega-pier that is home to, among others, the Harbor Master, the Portland Fish Exchange (where daily auctions set the price for seafood locally),  social investment non-profit Coastal Enterprises, and the offices of U.S. Congresswoman Chellie Pingree.

A world unto themselves, Portland’s piers and wharves, sometimes unnoticed and uninvestigated, are your gateway to this unique city by the bay. Make a New Year’s resolution to visit them all.

Photo of Merrills Wharf by John Spritz

Like many of my generation, I spent a year after my college graduation in the other Portland, where I’d also been a student. The bike lanes and parks were nice, but working the same mind-numbing lifeguarding job I’d labored in all through my college years was a drag. I’d naively thought that my degree in math and economics would be practical, but whenever a promising job opening appeared, I found myself competing against hundreds of other highly qualified, under-employed people just like me.

There’s a problem I have with the phrase “quality of life” as it’s most commonly used. Where’s the “quality” of a life in a place where you need to spend half of your income on rent for a lousy apartment, where there’s no time to spend on your own creative pursuits, and where PhD’s are fighting over barista jobs at Starbucks?

Portland, Maine, does have a fair share of the conventional “quality of life” amenities, and they’re showcased extensively here on this blog (oceanside parks, good coffee, public art, etcetera).

These are great things to have, no doubt about it. But we also have two things in spades that you won’t find in Manhattan, Austin, or San Francisco: opportunity and egalitarianism.

These qualities mean that Portland is still a place where a newcomer can arrive, meet people, and set up a successful new business on a shoestring. It hardly matters whether that newcomer is from Santa Monica or from the horn of Africa. Our city is affordable, connected, and wholeheartedly supportive of small enterprise (this website is but one example, closest at hand).

Still, our sense of economic opportunity and egalitarianism will be harder to maintain as the city grows and becomes more successful.

As LiveWork Portland’s newest blogger, I’m looking forward to crowing more about the city’s more affordable, more authentic quality of life. I hope that this can, in some small part, help attract to Portland more people who share our egalitarian, hardworking values — and by doing so, help to strengthen those civic virtues for our entire city’s future.

Stuyvesant Town photo (above right) by Flickr user EssG.

As Christmas descends on Maine, it is amusing to meditate on how our mania for making shapes the season. Portland writer Caitlin Shetterly, whose book Made for You and Me documented a failed Californian relocation effort as the recession hit in 2008, has a tonic tale for everyone suffering for post DIY Christmas trauma. Her story, The Christmas Cookies from Hell (and 6 Reasons They Might Be Worth It) on Oprah.com, tells the tale of a unique family recipe for Penobscot Bay Ginger Cookies that maddeningly never quite turns out right—until the last batch. And that glimpse of perfection keeps her and her husband Dan coming back year after year to attain the elusive alchemy of butter and flour, molasses and ginger. The holidays are a time for lofty ideals rarely attained—peace on earth, good will towards man—but also a reminder of our will to make things right, to sculpt the fleeting flux, to be ourselves in what we do. Apparently the cookies taste pretty good too!