Portland is a really peaceful city, that’s true. But it turns out that of all the States in the U.S., Maine is the most peaceful. I don’t mean most yoga studios or spas per capita, though we have plenty of those. I mean peace as in the absence of violence.

For two years in a row, The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) has ranked Maine at the top of their United States Peace Index. And if Maine were a country unto itself (which it feels like sometimes) it would rank fifth on the IEP’s Global Peace Index. To see how striking this is, consider that the U.S. as a whole ranks 82nd out of 153 countries!

The IEP “is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress,” according to the full report on the rankings. “The second annual edition of the index, produced by Institute for Economics and Peace, provides a comprehensive analysis of peacefulness at the state and city levels, as well as an analysis of the costs associated with violence and the socio-economic measures associated with peace,” explains the report. “The USPI measures peacefulness according to five indicators: the number of homicides, number of violent crimes, the incarceration rate, number of police employees and the availability of small arms.”

Our neighbors Vermont and New Hampshire rank right behind us, and Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA was ranked the most peaceful of all major U.S. metro areas (Portland was not rated independent of Maine). And, as you can see on the map above, New England is the country’s most peaceful region.

Although Maine as a whole has some significant socio-economic challenges, we all feel the positive effect of the lack of violent crime, the social ease of not requiring large police forces and the commitment to self-improvement that comes along with low incarceration rates.

So when people wonder what they can do to make the world a better, more peaceful place, one of the answers is, be more like Maine!

Once again, Portland is hosting Blue Wrap Project Runway, perhaps the world’s only fashion show combining surgical supplies and designer gowns. Considering the correlation of doctors and designers in this town, it’s no wonder this fundraiser has taken hold here.

At this annual event, local designers use blue wrap to create elegant and/or silly dresses, hats, scarves, bags, parkas, all of it inspired by, and a dead ringer for, couturier fashions. And what is blue wrap? It’s the colored plastic material that every hospital in the world uses a ton of, primarily for sterilizing and wrapping surgical instruments.

Along comes Partners for World Health. Based in suburban Scarborough, Maine, this nonprofit takes useful medical supplies that U.S. hospitals have to discard because of government regulations, and they distribute them to organizations and people around the world. That means bandages, syringes, tape, gauze, catheter supplies, soap, alcohol swabs—and, yes, blue wrap. And it was Partners for World Health who came up with the idea of a benefit evening in which blue wrap is used to create designer clothing…all for a good cause. (Last year, the fashions also landed at the Portland Public Library for a public show. You can see photos of last year’s event here.)

The event kicks off at 6:00 pm on Thursday, April 26^th, at the University of Southern Maine’s Hannaford Hall, with proceeds benefitting Partners for World Health. So ask yourself:  how often can I attend an haute couture show where everything is made from blue wrap, and where the cost of my ticket helps to send medical supplies around the world? Odds are, the answer is “not very often.” There is a reception for supporters of Partners for World Health at 6pm followed by a video presentation and fashion show at 7:15pm. Tickets are $50 per person in advance, $60 at the door; Student Ticket $25 and $35 at the door. You can reserve tickets by calling 885-1011.

This is one of those occasions where Portland’s diverse creative talents collide in a shower of creative energy. Blue wrap + fashion show + you = An unforgettable evening.

Since its founding in 1991, Portland Trails has become one of the city’s most visible and productive nonprofit organizations. With a small staff, a shoestring budget from membership dues and community fundraisers, and lots of volunteer effort, the nonprofit has built a 50-mile network of trails and open space connections throughout Portland and its surrounding communities, connecting neighborhoods with prized parks and wildlands.

Portland Trails recently hired a new executive director, Kara Wooldrik, who happens to be a former colleague of mine from my days at Maine Audubon. Kara had previously been Maine Audubon’s Director of Education, an extremely busy job that entailed running dozens of day camps, wildlife-watching excursions, after-school programs, and nature walks, all in the service of connecting people with nature.

Now, at the helm of Portland Trails, Kara looks forward to connecting Portlanders with the wild places that exist in abundance right here in our city. I recently sat down with Kara to hear more about her new job and introduce her to LiveWork Portland readers.

Q: How would you describe Portland Trails to someone who’s never heard of it?

Kara: I think of Portland Trails as connecting people to recreation and their communities via trails and active transportation options. But Portland Trails is most known for the trails it builds and the greenspaces and connecting habitat it preserves as well. It’s acting as this link between humans and nature, and humans and each other. And it plays an active role in promoting a healthier Portland both on the individual level and on a community level.

Q: When we worked at Maine Audubon, I really admired your outreach to city schools in Portland and the Bangor area, and your advocacy for the idea that people don’t have to drive for two hours to experience Maine’s outdoors and wildlife — that we can and should have the same appreciation for the nature that exists right in our backyards.

Kara: It is amazing to go someplace like the Presumpscot River Preserve and see bald eagles and osprey regularly. It feels like you’re nowhere near the urban hub, yet it’s just a couple miles from downtown. Soon there will be a continuous trail connection from the downtown waterfront, around Back Cove and out to the Presumpscot River. It’s a few different trails we’re going to link up, I think it’ll be about a three mile trip to get out there.

I have a neighbor who works downtown and rides his bike to work. He emailed me the other day just to tell be what an amazing city we have, to be able to ride to work along the ocean on the the Eastern Prom Trail. To be able to experience that on a daily basis as part of your routine is pretty lucky.

Q: Do you have a favorite trail or open space?

Kara: I don’t really. I feel like they serve different purposes for me. I like running from my house through the Fore River Sanctuary and through Evergreen Cemetery, and I like taking my dog to the Presumpscot River Preserve. So whether for jogging or walking or dog walking or transportation, there are different trails for different purposes.

It’s just nice to have different greenspaces with different feels, whether the Stroudwater Trail on a snowy day or Back Cove with a friend on lunch break.

Q: Anything new in the works, or new initiatives you’d like to introduce as the organization’s new leader?

Kara: I’m eager to increase the number of people, Portlanders and out-of-towners, connected with our greenspaces. To help people be more active and healthy, for one thing, but also so people can connect with their neighborhood nature, and understand the plants and animals that live in their community.

I’m also really interested in the active transportation piece. I’m really interested in increasing the livabilty and walkability of Portland by just shifting how we get around.

Q: You have a lot of experience as an educator, especially in nature-based learning and environmental education. How do you think that might be useful here in your new job?

Kara: I think there are a lot of opportunities to connect people with Portland Trails and our properties through recreation and education, whether through programs or passive interpretation. I’d particularly like to increase Portland Trails membership, and connect more people with the mission and the organization — beyond just enjoying our trails and properties.

There are less than 800 members of Portland Trails, and yet on a nice day there are thousands of people out using the Back Cove Trail alone. Those people aren’t necessarily aware that PT is a nonprofit organization, but we need their support. We need to educate people about who we are and what we do.

The City did a recreation survey, and if I’m remembering it correctly, it said that about 75% of respondents ranked trails as the most important recreational amenity for the city to focus on. We should easily be able to convert more people into members and supporters of Portland Trails.

Q: And if someone did want to get more involved with Portland Trails, what would you suggest?

Kara: I would encourage them to volunteer, either on trail building or repair, or on an invasive species control project, and get them out there in a place they know and appreciate so they get to know the place better and meet some of the people involved in maintaining it. By volunteering in that way they’re enacting the Portland Trails mission.

And for people who are unable to do that physical work, there are multiple events like the Happy Trails auction [coming up on April 27th] and the 10K race, Trail to Ale, where we need a lot of volunteers. And they’re really fun events and the volunteering is a blast.

For me, when I first moved here ten years ago, the trails and the greenspaces were what made Portland so unique and such a great place to live. That network is continuing to expand into the neighborhoods all over the region — no matter where you live, there’s a trail within walking distance.

Portland Trails members and volunteers are the ones who made that happen. And if we get more people involved, we can have an even bigger impact.

To learn more about Portland Trails, visit trails.org. There, you can also find out more about volunteer opportunities, or buy a membership online.

Photo: Kara Wooldrik in Acadia National Park. Courtesy photo.

In the fracus of First Friday it’s easy to lose sight of what artists in Portland, and creatives in Maine in general, have in common. We talk about authenticity, respect for materials, an awareness of time and the craft of making as attributes of the Maine brand that Portland’s creative economy embodies. Starting this Friday night, at the Coleman Burke Gallery in Brunswick, (and running through May 19) is an opportunity to see a version of that shared sensibility enacted in the work of five accomplished Portland artists.

 A Thickening Rhythm is a show curated by artist Julie Poitras Santos that brings together work that embraces “slowness.” Of the five artists in the show, Lauren Fensterstock, Carrie Scanga, Ling-Wen Tsai, Deborah Wing-Sproul and Julie Poitras Santos herself, all teach at Maine College of Art (MECA) except Scanga, who teaches at Bowdoin College. The pieces range from Fensterstock’s Colorless Field, a black-on-black expanse of tall “grass,” to Scanga’s Ballast, a lightweight stack of intaglio printed “bricks,” to Tsai’s silent Water & Wind video and Sitting Quietly installation of noise-canceling headphones, to Wing-Sproul’s Intimate Distance, a 24-minute video that explores what it means to be seen, to Poitras Santos’ raven mirror/unravel, a performance for actors wearing feathered wings to the constant sound of rolling dice.

Coleman Burke also has a gallery in Chelsea, in New York and a storefront in Portland. The Brunswick space is in the converted Fort Andross Mill building. The Mill is a bustling hive of creative economy activity similar to the State Theatre building or the old Railroad Terminal buildings in Portland, but with the addition of restaurants, a huge indoor flea market and a Saturday morning farmers market.

Fans of “Slow Food,” will enjoy the pleasures of slow art as well. And the drive from Portland to Brunswick, where Bowdoin is located, is easy and not particularly slow, and good eats are just down the hallway from the gallery at the Frontier Café.

Happy is the city with great architecture. In Portland, that happy list includes the brick edifices along Commercial Street, the varied homes of the West End, the Wishcamper and Abromson buildings at USM, the Observatory, the Victorian houses perched in Deering Highlands, the Art Museum – an embarrassment of riches.

Happy, too, is the city, with great architects. In Portland, we have long supported significant architects, going back to the 19^th Century, with Francis Fassett and John Calvin Stephens and Frederick Law Olmsted (what, you didn’t know? After New York’s Central Park, Olmsted designed Deering Oaks).

Today, the hundreds of members of the Portland Society of Architects (PSA) encourage “…innovation and vision in design and planning” throughout the city. The PSA offers a wealth of programs, from the “Unbuilt Design Awards” to “10 Minute Architect” (a free clinic for anyone thinking about whether they need an architect) to last year’s Symposium on Sea Level Rise and the biannual “Drink’n Crit.”

What is “Drink’n Crit”?  Twice a year, the PSA recreates the student experience of an architectural studio. Only this time around, the students are local professionals who, with some trepidation, present their current projects to the public, as well as a critical review by fellow architects. Unlike an actual charette in architecture school, this event does not involve pulling an all-nighter!

The most recent Drink’n Crit was on March 12^th, at the SPACE Gallery on Congress Street. As guests milled about, talked, and had a beer, four architectural teams were taping drawings and photos of their projects on the walls. The team of jurors was introduced and then, one by one, each team presented its project and listened to the critiques.

The crowd may have been most energized by the team working with the City of Portland to re-imagine the several blocks of Spring Street that bisect much of downtown, past the Holiday Inn and the Civic Center.  Should Spring Street be two lanes wide, instead of four? Become a “bicycle boulevard”? Foster new garden spaces and stairways leading off to other streets?

The suggestions flew fast and furious, and the give-and-take was emblematic of the best of Portland. Some of us worked for the city, some of us worked in the city, some of us lived in the city – but all of us cared deeply about the city, wanting it always to be a better place.

If you, too, want to weigh in on Portland’s built landscape, Greater Portland Landmarks and Maine Historical Society are co-hosting a series of panel discussions about specific streets and spaces demanding our attention (including Spring Street, and our bridges, and our waterfront). Step up to the microphone and state your opinion!

Commercial Street and Wishcamper Center, University of Sourthern Maine, photos by Corey Templeton

Ballet dancers and machine automation? A reference, perhaps, to the famous Dada film Ballet Mécanique? Nope, just the next networking mashup that is 2 Degrees Portland.

Calling all artists, professionals, entrepreneurs, and locals of all kinds invested in Portland’s creative economy. The place to be this coming Thursday, February 16, is Kepware, 400 Congress Street in Portland. That night, from 5:30-7:30 pm, the Maine Technology Institute (MTI) is sponsoring the first 2 Degrees Portland event of 2012. And dancers from the Portland Ballet will be there previewing excerpts from their upcoming production of Giselle.

If you’re not familiar with MTI, you should be. Since 1999 they’ve been promoting and supporting Maine’s technology sectors with grants and assistance. From start-ups to established innovators, companies throughout Maine—many right here in Portland—have grown and flourished because of MTI. (One of those local companies, by the way, is Kepware itself, a leader in automation software, helping sophisticated machines talk to one another.)

And just what is “2 Degrees Portland”? It’s a year-old program that connects people already living here with those who want to live here, or are newly arrived. As Creative Portland’s Jen Hutchins notes, “One reason people love this community is because it’s two degrees of separation, not six.”

On the 16^th, Portland newcomers will have the opportunity to connect with the creative community, and those who are established here can network with each other.  So, if you’re an engineer or a designer or a chef or an actor or a programmer or a photographer or a scientist or a…  you get the point.  The way to cross-pollinate is 2 Degrees Portland, and the place to do it is at Kepware on February16.

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.

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!

For many Portlanders, our Farmers’ Market is just about the best thing in town. Twice a week from April to November, more than 30 farmers descend on Portland, and we get the benefit of fresh, local produce and meats from across Maine.

Come December, the whole operation just moves indoors, to the Maine Irish Heritage Center (the former St. Dominic’s Church). Starting this past weekend, the Portland Winter Farmers’ Market is open every Saturday morning, with farmers hailing from Sumner, Dresden, Etna, Greenwood, Unity, Bethel, up and down the Pinetree State.

This week, your correspondent saw an array of celeriac, Manchego cheese, duck eggs, fingerling potatoes, rabbit pot pie, bunches of winterberries, Anadama bread, cider, sunchokes, bagels, honey, feta marinade, and a colorful bounty of carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, garlic and more. Over on the stage, a fiddler and guitar duo serenaded the crowd with old-timey music. Kids ran around, parents mulled purchases, old friends reconnected, and pretty soon bags were stuffed with the makings of many delectable dinners to come.

Make your way to the big brick church at State and Gray streets any Saturday morning over the next few months, and join the foodie fray.

Photos by John Spritz. Top: Fishbowl Farm

Common Wealth Farm purveys free range duck and chicken eggs…and bagels.

A farmer’s market inside a former church basement? Well, why not?

Soaps, cheeses, and jams from Nezinscot Farm.

The Pickle Jar Defenders playing away.