Up portland february 2015

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Kip Thomas

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February 2016 The Eastern Prom See centre for more snow scenes Page 1 Up Portland 02.16 On The Web At: www.upportland.com

This Hobby Makes ‘Getting Stoned’ Have A Whole New, Exciting Meaning

By Paul Baresel For Up Portland Stop Stranger and Cast an Eye As you are now, so once was I As I am now, so must you Be Prepare for Death and Follow Me. A fine “how-do-you-do-sir?” from an epitaph on a gravestone. This epitaph, and many like it, are found all through New England’s cemeteries. Early New England gravestone epitaphs and funeral art are unique as folk art, history, religion and culture and the study and collecting of gravestone rubbings has also been my hobby for many years.

OK, what’s a rubbing? Think of it as taking a penny and placing a piece of paper over it. Slightly begin to lightly rub a pencil over the paper. The pencil will rub over the solid (raised) parts of the penny leaving the penny’s imprint on the paper. It’s the same idea for gravestone rubbings.

My interest in the hobby began many years ago while on active duty. I thought it was a joke to see a sign for “Gravestone Rubbing Classes” and I was the only one to show up for the class. The “instructor” and I began a friendship based on curiosity, history and beer. We began to travel the Portsmouth, New Hampshire area visiting cemeteries. There we became acquainted with death. Not a morbid sense of death, or with the notion of “wanna-be” Zombies or Vampires. Instead, we were taught life. No matter how we look at things, we will all die. This is the cycle of life and death which was understood by our early forefathers, mothers and children more bluntly than by most today.

Today, we seem to look at death to be nonexistence. Current video games, music and movies portray as it as if it will never happen to “us” but to somebody else. Today, it appears death is glorified, whereas it was feared in the past as a reality. Think how long the reader would have lived in the 1600s, 1700s 1800s and early 1900s in this country. I think we live too long. Medicine, food, climate and a host of other ingredients have increased our longevity.

Not so for many people until the last 100 years. What I discovered in my understanding of funeral art was the reality of death and an understanding or comfort of death through the ages.

Where to begin the journey? It all began for me as a something to investigate. Curiosity was my attraction to that class — curiousity which developed into a hobby of researching funeral art symbolism. Symbolism is a gray area and what’s art to one soul is not is understood by another. “As beauty is in the beholder’s eyes”, so much is for symbolism. There is not right or wrong and no scientific formula for it. Generally, if people see a rose, everyone has agreed on the description of a rose. What variety the rose is also is agreed upon by a consensus of those who identify it. Thus it is the interpretation of life after death that seized my curiosity and my search for as many examples of different carvings and epitaphs as I could locate.

There are many books written about funerals and customs and I suggest you read one to research this topic and explore before reaching your own conclusions. For example, how did one inform a family member that Uncle Joe or Aunt Mary had just

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expired in the days before television, newspapers, telephone or Facebook?

One used to write a letter and highlight the edging of the envelope in black to inform those seeing the envelope that the letter has urgent news that a loved one is dead.

The purpose of this article is to create an interest in history and examples of funeral art and epitaphs. Hopefully by now I am making progress with you, the readers.

Next, let’s look at funeral symbolism. In many ways it’s much the same as describing a rose to someone who has never seen one. For example: a skull. Not just any old skull, but one with wings attached to each side of the head. A flying skull! What will they think of next? What did this symbol mean in the 1600s? It meant the reality of death. Many people lived to a ripe old age... that was IF they survived diseases like small pox and measles. IF they did not die in childbirth or find themselves born with complications and only exist as a newborn baby for one day.

What was the average age of a person in the 1600s when they died? There was no aspirin or penicillin then. “ Take two aspirin and call me in the morning!” No way!

Doctors, religious clerics and shaman men and women used what was around them to help the sick — tempered with prayers for healing or a safe journey to heaven.

The Skull with wings can be interpreted as the swiftness of death or the soul leaving the body and rising into heaven. The skull may incorporate crossed bones with it — much like a pirate flag — showing that the earthly remains of the body are left behind as the soul flies heavenward.

Now this is a good time to understand that most of the funeral art symbolism was based on the notion of Christian values. There are many different styles of skulls.

The ones seen in early cemeteries in eastern Massachusetts are different from the ones in coastal Connecticut. The skull carved in eastern Massachusetts would be almost human like. The skull carved in coastal Connecticut much more a spirit in design. No grinning teeth, no nose, no staring eyes, just an Ovid with two, small circles for the eyes and a line for the mouth. It is important to understand that each area had its own gravestone carver. The carver would use art as their interpretation of life after death.

Why were there so many symbols on an early New England gravestone? The answer is that many people could not read. The symbols supported the religious teaching of the time. The individuals who had money or who were “upstanding citizens” of the community usually had very large, ornate symbols carved into the stone plus a distinctive epitaph both in English and Latin. Why Latin? Well it keeps the mystery of life and death alive for those who could not read it. Maybe the real story of that person’s character was in Latin?

Some stone carvings must have created controversy. One can find a stone that was carved again to insert a word or funeral art symbolism. The change would have been readily noticed as the face of the gravestone would have a section carefully removed. This may have happened due to the local church or community not agreeing with the carver’s interpretation. As for spell check, it was simple. Cross the word out or write above it. And think: there were no safety glasses or Dremel tools to carve designs with in those times, either.

I entered this hobby when the towns and cities allowed individuals to do rubbings many years ago. A lot of that has changed due to the issue of the uninformed using a permanent marker to do the rubbing. Or folks who would rub outside the paper and on the gravestone itself, causing permanent damage. Some individuals would use wire brushes to remove the lichen growing on stones and permanently dam-

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age them. Others would try to use Plaster of Paris and aluminum foil to create a duplicate of the carving. Slowly, I watched the freedom of doing gravestone rubbings disappear. Perhaps the biggest threat to early New England gravestones is acid rain, but for awhile it was the uninformed trying to copy what was on the stones, so most cemeteries shut their gates and ended an era of stone rubbing as a hobby.

Over the ages, the relationship of man to death has changed with each generation, but one idea which has not changed is the notion of what a gravestone or tombstone is. The gravestone was not just listing the time of birth and death of the individual — it was perceived as a doorway for the soul to leave the body and enter into heaven.

Over time the skull with wings would change. People’s relationship with death began to move from the stark realities to a more gentle persuasion. Slowly, the skull was replaced with an angelic cherub or a close portrait of the individual.

In my travels and research, I came across several stones by one stonecutter in the Plymouth, Mass., area featuring a crude profile of an individual with another small profile of that individual for their mouth. It was believed that the soul of the individual left the body through the mouth in a last breath. Remember, symbolism and the rose! Carvings are a cutter’s interpretation of life after death and may be perceived as a transitional stone of skulls to cherubs.

Cherubs, urns and willow trees in a singular carving or as a group carving may be interpreted as symbols of life after death . Why the willow tree? All of nature felt the Death of Jesus and the willow “wept.” The urn was not a stark symbolism of death compared to a skull. Cherubs replaced the skull.

The symbols of life after death can be seen on gravestone borders, too. Sometimes vines, flowers, women’s breasts, cherubs or a star were woven together to represent life after death.

The civil war may have had some influence on people’s perception of death as well, especially after experiencing the war. Slowly, gravestones of slate were replaced by limestone. The white colour of the stone represented purity. Slowly, too, funeral art was becoming less frequently used as more people could read for themselves. People did not have to turn to symbols to learn the story.

Today, sadly, gravestones do not amount to much. Just a birth and death date. Gone are the grand stories an epitaph could tell along with the ornate carving depicting life victorious over death. Take a walk through the Portland and surrounding towns’ graveyards and experience the mystery of life in stone.

Located in Kittery, Maine: I was drowned, alas! in the deep, deep Seases The Blessed Lord does as He Pleases My Kittery Friends did soon appear And laid my Body right down Here.

Spelling counts in the year you were born and the “F” as in Friends, may look like a “S” on early-day stones. I know! I know! You can’t wait to ask for more. Well if I have sparked your interest, The Maine Old Cemetery Association is presenting the Spirits Alive Winter Lecture Series to be held at The Wishcamper Centre at the University of Southern Maine on 30 January, 27 February and 26 March at 1.30 p.m. each date. Visit the website www.moca-me.org to find out more and see up close and personal gravestones and funeral art for yourself.

Also, The Association of Gravestone Studies in Greenfield, Mass., is a great source to learn more and to order a book titled A Graveyard Preservation Primer.

I started my hobby over 40 years ago and collected over 300 rubbings throughout New England and I donated much of my collection of books and over a hundred rubbings to the association. Much to their credit, my rubbings are now in an environmentally controlled library at the University of Massachusetts. The rubbings perhaps being the only way to save the bygone carving from neglect and acid rain.

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Hackin’ The Net

By Ted Fleischaker / Publisher You probably know Gillette as a stadium down in Massachusetts and you are likely wondering if this is going to be a football computer column, but that could not be further from the truth, though you might want to touch down in a favourite chair and read it with an eye on the ball toward saving some cash later.

First a bit about King Camp Gillette. He’s the guy that the stadium in Beantown is named for, even though he died long before it was ever thought of, in 1932.

The firm he started (and after which that stadium is named) began in 1901. If you are like most folks, you’ve never heard of this self-made entrepreneur, but if you own a computer, then a business practice he pioneered is costing you.

Gillette, of course, started the razor company. It was a firm which virtually gave away the handles for safety razors. That’s right, Gillette Razors — still alive and well today as a unit of Cincinnati’s Procter & Gamble and the folks who have their name on that famous stadium, too.

Still confused at what this has to do with computers and saving cash?

Read on, friends...

See, while King Gillette virtually gave away his razors, he made tons of cash on that item you see at left: cheap, but easily-dulled blades — blades which only lasted a day or three under harsh shaving conditions and thus needed to be bought and bought and bought for that free handle he gave customers to be of any use.

The blades are way higher quality these days and Gillette is fighting a battle with another razor firm over patents, but what King Gillette figured out: giving away the handle then charging for the blades — is the same game computer users are playing right now when we get a cheap or even “free” printer. You know, the one many places will give you for a few bucks — or even “free” — when you buy that Mac or pc.

Why? Because like Gillette the big printer manufacturing firms (think HP, Canon and Epson for just three “biggies” though there are others) know that if you use their printer, you also will need their ink... and they are playing myriad games to make sure you use it — often at a cost that’s higher per ounce than French Champagne. Read that again, because it’s sadly true.

There are a variety of ploys and come-ons to get you (and I) to pay that inflated price for ink, too. One is filling those “free” and “starter” cartridges which may come with your free or cheapo printer at no charge with so little ink that you’ll only get 20 or 30 copies before you’ll have to hustle out to the office supply for more “genuine” (fill in name of brand here) ink.

Another game being played is selling the same cartridges the firms did five, 10 or 15 years ago, but with 50% or less of the amount of ink they used to contain.

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The Guardian, one of the most prestigious newspapers in the UK, a few years back did an ink expose and found HP cartridges with 50% or less of their “old” ink amounts and one Epson colour cartridge which went from 16 ml of ink in the 2002 to one the same size, but a different model number, which held just 3.5 ml of ink in 2008. The firms claim new techniques mean we need less ink for the same images. The consumer watchdogs beg to differ.

Need more proof King Gillette is alive and well? Well step up and buy an “XL cartridge”. What’s that? Well in too many cases one with more ink than in a “regular” one, but roughly the same size and shape to fit that printer. What’s funny is now many (but not all) of the XL cartridges contain (wait for it) the same amount of ink those regular ones originally did.

Then there’s this: Just about the time we consumers started wising up to the rising cost of ink, along came ink refill kits and companies like Cartridge World, where one manager a few months ago went over with me some of the other “games” being played — games we consumers generally can’t win.

First and foremost is the addition a few years back of “chips” embedded in cartridges. This might seem pretty benign, and in truth they are used to let the computer know the printer is out of ink. Still pretty innocuous, right? Yes, until the consumer discovers that once the chip detects the cartridge is empty, it cannot be refilled by him or a firm like Cartridge World because if it is, the chip will continue to send the “empty” message until it’s replaced by the manufacturer so the printer will refuse to work. The only way manufacturers would like you to find around this would be to go to the local office supply and buy a brand new “original” cartridge with a new embedded chip at whatever price they want to charge.

Fortunately, we were told, most refillers can now decode those chips and reprogramme or replace them so cartridges can be refilled cheaper, but it doesn’t happen overnight. “Generally, it takes us six to nine months to work out the codes, since every set of printers has new cartridges — each with new codes. We need to decipher those to make them work again,” we were told, with our interviewee, adding that he’d only recently received store brand refills of one popular cartridge he’s been getting a lot of calls for. “The printer came out last year, but it’s taken us this long to figure out the codes to make refills work,” he added.

There are other tricks we consumers are having foisted off on us as well. Probably worst (The Guardian research mentioned this and our source confirmed it for us as being the case in the U.S. as well) is the tri-colour cartridge. This, on the surface, seems a great idea. Instead of multiple cartridges to print each colour and black, a single one holds all of the different inks. The consumer appeal is obvious — not as much work to change, easy to obtain and replacing three with one — all seem like grand ideas. The problem though is that in that small cartridge there’s only space for a very limited amount of each colour ink and (here’s the kicker) once one colour is gone, the whole thing quits working. That means a replacement and the throwing away of a lot of perfectly good — and costly — ink which could have been used. Think King Gillette again.

Our source also said the tri-colour cartridges employ “another trick the manufacturers have because even if you only print black, some of the coloured inks are used to make it look right so even if you only use it for black and white documents, you will soon find yourself out of colour inks you never thought you were using.” Gotcha again!

There’s also the issue of how many “impressions” you can expect from a cartridge. While may makers of printers will give an “estimated life,” our refiller noted “if you read the fine print that’s for 1/3 coverage.” What that means is that roughly 33% of each page will be printed in what the makers term “average use.” If you print colour photos from the family’s weekend of boarding at Sugarloaf or recipes which have pictures or anything else which covers a good deal of the page with ink, the estimated number of pages your cartridge will print

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could be decreased by 50% or more. It’s one thing to print school reports, tax forms and stock tables, but something entirely different to do colour business cards or holiday letters, though few consumers know it and companies don’t much like us to ask, either.

Finally there are two other options to get around the high cost of ink, and not only does our source caution against them, but this writer does as well after having tried both.

One is refilling your own cartridges. Stores from discounters to office supply houses offer do-it-yourself kits which supposedly contain enough ink to fill anywhere from four to 20 cartridges, but the experience we have had with them has been disaster — from leaked ink to printer damage.

And the final option is, we have found, little better: ordering cheap cartridges on the internet. Unless you know the supplier (ie: reputable firm) and are sure they do it right, this can spell costly disaster. The time we tried it landed our HP laser printer in the repair shop plus it took months to get the leaked magenta toner powder out of our office carpet and clothing — not to mention whatever residual damage we did by breathing it meantime.

At least we were lucky — the website where we bought the defective toner made good and we ended up (after a months long battle and help from our credit card company) getting a refund, but it was hardly worth it given the cost of printer repairs and mess.

So what to do?

First, go into those “free” or cheap printer deals with your eyes open. Remember King Gillette. And remember what your mom or dad probably told you about an offer that looked too good to be true actually being so.

Second, if you print a lot, skip ink totally and invest in a laser printer. They are more costly to buy up-front, but will get a whole lot more prints per cartridge than ink jets do. Do the maths: your cost per page will be far, far less and yes their cartridges can be refilled.

Thirdly, do as so many e-mails nowadays advise — ONLY print things you need in hard copy. Otherwise, save to a PDF on your computer and archive the document that way. It’s fast and free. It’s also better for the environment and we Mainers like that as well.

And finally, if you already are stuck with an ink jet printer get one of the refilling firms to refill cartridges for you. Cost will be 25-50% less than buying new and their staffs are trained to do it right. We never knew it before, but over-filling a cartridge may sound like a good idea, whereas in truth not knowing what you are doing and putting in too much toner or ink will cause as much of an expensive mess as putting in too little. This is a case where the experts really are worth consulting but I do recommend you drive right on by the office supply and leave the overpriced “original manufacturers’” cartridges on the shelf. Besides, wouldn’t you rather have champagne? I bet, were he alive today, King Gillette would!

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Food For Thought...

Living downtown in this rightfully-proclaimed “foodiest city in America” sometimes I feel like I’m playing that old game of whack-a-mole. You know the one: something pops up, stays a bit or disappears before you can get to it. In the case of restaurants, thank goodness the record is way better than that, but I did see a couple of eateries I had on the “try” list on Congress Street have called it quits.

Though one is supposedly moving and will reopen, the other has papered-over windows and no indication they plan a rebirth anywhere.

Meanwhile, over on Fore Street the yellowing signs in the windows show no movement on the Portland branch of a lobster roll spot from out west that was due to open months ago next door to the always-wonderful Gelato Fiasco. Wonder what’s up over there?

This brings me to the little building at 18 Hampshire Street (just behind the newly-relocated Bangor Savings at the corner of Middle & Hampshire). The building, when we arrived here last Spring, was dark and neighbours were speaking in near-reverent terms about a shuttered club called Sangillo’s which the city had shut down for this or that supposed violation a few weeks prior to our arrival.

Just like so many empty restaurant buildings on the Peninsula, however, this one did not stay closed for long and, after a major re-do, reopened a few weeks before Thanksgiving as Tomaso’s Canteen. As we mentioned here last issue, the new owners did a total remodel, added a full kitchen and brought a lot of the old faves from their also-owned Samuel’s on Forest Avenue to the east end of downtown.

And thus far we have little but good to say about the place. Probably our only negative (to get it out of the way first) is we do wish they had made space in the very compact (a polite word for “cramped”) kitchen for a full dishwasher so they could scrap the paper “baskets” and plastic “siverware” they now use. The wonderful work of Chef Shawn Freeman (who arrived from Joe’s Boathouse to captain the kitchen crew) deserves real china and at least metal, if not silver, utensils.

OK, so our bitch is done. All the rest about Tomaso’s is great news. They have some awesome burgers (pick one, two — as shown — or three patties and prepare to get messy as they are juicy), the crab cakes are way, way better than passable, Italian sausages ($8) great and all of the menu items we have tried are more than worth a second glance and a second ordering.

Thus far nothing — from a wrap (a special) a friend had to the five-ounce per patty double burgers ($8) we so adore — has been less-than-worth the visit.

Even the sauce served on the crab cakes (another special) was divine and that’s from a guy who usually demands “sauce on the side” but forgot to tell the very friendly wait staff and ended up with it on my cakes — much to my pleasure.

We also (thanks Sean) shared a fried cheesecake dessert with blueberries (upper right photo) last visit, which was delish, but by the time I’d had the burger, fries, a drink, a bite of the wrap and more I was too full to fully appreciate. Next time I will take friends in the evening and just do dessert!

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The good news is Tomaso’s is just a few steps from our front door and right at the bottom of Munjoy Hill and not far from the middle of downtown. The bad news is the same because we love the food so much that the news from our scale has not been good. Of course that’s self-inflicted and thus not anyone over there’s fault.

So what all else do they have?

They have posted their changing menu online (https://tomasoscanteen.files. wordpress.com/2015/11/tomasos-food-menu-3-0.pdf), but their Facebook says it all pretty succinctly: “Friendly atmosphere, local craft beer on tap, house mixed drinks, beer + shot combos, house-made Italian sausage, elevated bar food, food & drinks ‘til 1 a.m.”

I will admit my visits have been during the earlier hours (they open at 11 a.m.), but the place is hopping even at 1 p.m. or at dinner time, so I can only imagine the late night crowd. Oh, and for those neighbours who have asked: yes they did return Sangillo’s juke box and yes it works the same way, so go in and request a fave or two and see how you fare. It can’t be better than the food and drink as they are top of the charts, but our music-lovin’ friends have been lining up and report the music choice is “as good as the old days.”

In fact, a lot is as good, but most is better as the new owners of the building have done a total clean-up from Sangillo’s days. And they are concentrating as

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much on what Sean cooks as they are what the bar staff serves. This is good news because while the space is still as cramped as it ever was (from neighbour reports) now there are a few tables, a decent counter and a nice bar area so yes you really can go in for a meal if you don’t want any of the craft beers or liquors.

But be warned: Bar staff are talkers and will make you feel at home if you order 10 drinks, five or none and just have food.

This is truly the neighbourhood’s “Cheers bar” and one we are glad to have down the block. Drop by and have a drink, some of the fab food or just visit with friends and play a few tunes. We guarantee you won’t want to leave when they give last call, and we promise that like this reviewer, you will be back — early and often.

Another spot I plan to go back to early & often is the Portland Patisserie & Grand Cafe at 46 Market Street.

The place is fairly new and the creation of Steve & Michelle Corry, the same folks who gained a lot of great (and deserved) culinary credence with 555 (Congress Street) and the currently-relocating Petite Jacqueline.

They have a very cool and relaxed atmosphere, great window seating to watch the folks go and come and the food is quite good. We do feel it could be 5-10% cheaper but, hey, we aren’t the folks running the food cost calculators here and we will be back without complaint. As the younger set says: we are “just sayin’” about the pricing.

So what did we have? The smoked Salmon Crepe and it was almost one of those “to die for” moments as the salmon was combined with capers and goat cheese in a warm, fresh crepe making this easily something I could have eaten a second or even third one of had it not been for that $10 pricetag.

Just sayin’ lol.

The Patisserie offers a wide variety of crepes so if you are not a smoked salmon fan or just want to try several or go different days and do something different each visit they have fillings from ham and cheese ($6) to mushroom and gruyere ($5.75) up to a crepe with lobster, mornay sauce and asparagus which their online menu shows with that most scary of all pricing: “market”.

There are also build-your-own crepes from a $6 base model, but if you are not a crepe fan do not despair...just keep looking on the very ample menu. They have soups, salads and sandwiches; the latter offered on baguette, focaccia or croissant and there is ice cream and an awesome mouth-watering case filled with cakes and other baked goodies one would rightfully expect to find in a French restaurant.

The service is counter-order and that’s fine as it gives customers another chance to glance over the cases of baked goods, as well as to maybe add something for the table like a cheese plate, which the menu says is “1, 2, or 3 cheeses with baguette & compote @ $4 per cheese.”

As I said, do bring your wallet, but to quote my long-time friend Keith Runyon when we did a French restaurant as high schoolers years ago in Cincinnati, “The Please continue on the Next Page

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More Food For Thought...

We said buffet and have had that on all three of our recent mid-day visits, but David’s does offer a full menu at lunch and dinner and we have been for the table-service dinner in the past and enjoyed that every bit as much as the lunch buffets.

The buffet is ever-changing as the staff tries to please both new and returning diners, but they do have a few constants we happen to enjoy. One is the daily choice of a couple different pizzas. The toppings and combinations are imaginative so do not look for every day to be cheese and pepperoni or you will come away disappointed and find this reviewer asking “Why can’t you be more adventurous?”

The kitchen staff and crew are always on an adventure, so look for the pizza on the buffet. A few examples of their specialty pizzas from the menu include a Shepard’s pie (Braising greens, cashew “ricotta”, French lentils, julienned vegetables, smashed purple potato) and a Conan the Barbarian (described as lots of pepperoni, sausage, hamburger, caramelized onion and cheese). Beginning to get it now?

They also are adventurous with what they put out for salad though we will admit a huge bias in favour of the pepperoni pizza salad which appears some days on the buffet. There’s no crust but almost anything else one would find on a pepperoni pizza is in the bowl. Delicious!

The buffet also has an entree or two — from sandwiches to hot plates — and they seem to like Monkey Bread for dessert though this reviewer has never really developed much taste for same.

It’s more than OK, however, ‘cause by the time I get to the dessert I’m usually so full of fantastic pizza, entree, salad and occasionally soup (again think adventurous so nothing you’d ever find in a Campbell’s can) that I tend not to take any.

pieces may be small, but what ya get is choice.” The very same applies at this newish spot downtown and it is very much worth the effort.

Hours for the Portland Patisserie are seven days from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. and yes, they do have a breakfast menu which has me intrigued to try the old British favourite: a Toad in the Hole but as a breakfast pastry. There are also fruit, granola and a host of healthy items on their breakfast menu, along with crepes and danish and quiche, so as the Brits would say you will be spoilt for choice.

My Monkey Bread fan partner Ivan (who never monkeys around with his food) proclaimed the dessert “as good and delicious as all the rest of the food” so I shall take his word for it and pass that along.

David’s tends to get full at mid-days as it’s been on Monument Square since 1997 and had plenty of time (and good eats) to catch on well with the office staff and downtown meeting types which sometimes make for a table wait.

The Portland Patisserie is a definite “go back to” for this reviewer and if you haven’t been yet a single word of advice from our house to yours: “Go!” For more info and menus visit www.portlandpatisserie.com Finally this month, we recently got back to David’s Restaurant on Monument Square for lunch, where we had some great service from a new staffer named Chris and some more wonderful and imaginative food from their kitchen staff led by chef / owner David Turin and served buffet style. Lunch for two came to $29.43 and for what we had and the warm (on several very chill days), welcoming atmosphere with David’s open-style kitchen and efficient service it was well worth it.

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They also have a huge bar menu and after work visits are popular, as are evening ones before an event at nearby Merrill Auditorium. Added up you might want to book a table from their website (www.davidsrestaurant.com) or call (207/773.4340) and see what might be available. They do have a cozy bar area, too, so walk-ins are welcome and there is a nice spot to while away the time until your name gets called.

LOVE Downtown. LIVE Downtown www.portlandmecondo.com

David’s offers that weekday lunch we love from 11.30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and they do dinner from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. weekends and until 9 the rest of the week. They do have a happy hour (with some menu items also available we are told though we have not been for it) from 3 till 6 p.m. weekdays.

Be sure to come hungry and with a sense of adventure (afterall this IS Portland) and be sure to save a few bucks for a tip, too, for what we have always found to be excellent service at David’s.

ANDREW ROY Associate Broker

c: 207.649.1166 o: 207.619.7571 andrew@portsidereg.com portsiderealestategroup.com

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The Standard Reviewer

By Bill Elliott / Up Portland’s Film & Theatre Reviewer

There was a time when seeing Robert De Niro’s name on a movie poster was guarantee enough that the film would be a high quality, first-class entertainment experience. Consider the credentials: Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), and Goodfellas (1990). And those are just Martin Scorcese films. He also appeared in The Godfather Part II (1974), The Deer Hunter (1978), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), and The Untouchables (1987). His resume amounts to a concise history of American cinema over the past four decades.

One of America’s foremost dramatic actors and a two-time Academy Award-winner, De Niro is also no slouch when it comes to comedy, his later career providing him successful roles in films like Analyse This (1999) with Billy Crystal, the Meet the Parents series (2000, 2004, and 2010) with Ben Stiller, and The Intern (2015), with Anne Hathaway.

So what was De Niro thinking in taking on the role of the lusty, foul-mouthed geriatric in Dirty Grandpa? Perhaps it was the opportunity to let loose a string of unrestrained, and occasionally offensive, expletive-laden one-liners and hump the tanned and toned body of Parks and Recreation alumna Aubrey Plaza?

When Dirty Grandpa opens, 72-year-old former black-ops expert Dick Kelly (De Niro) has just lost his wife to cancer. At the funeral he plays the role of grieving, grey-haired patriarch to a tee. At the post-funeral reception he makes a request of his grandson, Jason (Zach Ephron), a straight-laced and successful corporate lawyer: would he drive him down to his beach home in Boca Raton, Florida. It was what he and his late wife did this time every year and it was what she would have wanted.

It seems a simple enough request. The Kelly clan is based in Atlanta. It’s a straight shot south. An overnight trip at the most. Trouble is: Jason is getting married in a week and Meredith (Julianne Hough), his wife-to-be, expects him to help out with last minute wedding preparations. Jason is not happy about driving his grandfather, but acquiesces. After all, when Jason was a young boy, he and his grandfather were very close. Despite the inconvenience, Jason assures his fiancée that he will be back within 24 hours to help in planning the wedding.

Little does he know what he is in for. The first red flag comes (literally) when he stops to pick up his grandfather at his home the following morning. Jason catches Gramps in flagrante delicto watching porn and negotiating his own money shot into a handful of tissues.

Grossed out but true to his word, Jason sets off on the road trip with his grandfather. He is a little shocked at grandpa’s insult-one-insult-all, foul-mouthed language, but when the pair stops off for a game of golf along the way, at first sight of his grandson’s golfing outfit, Gramps remarks: “You look like the keynote speaker at a buttf*cking convention!” And that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the movie. De Niro’s grandpa is a Mount Vesuvius of filth. A cacophony of lewd, expletive-riddled, offensive language spews forth from his mouth like so much X-rated lava. This is bad taste turned into a form of lowest common denominator street poetry.

The next warning sign that things are going from bad to worse is when the pair runs into a group of college students at a roadside diner. Jason recognises one of

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them, Shadia (Zoey Deutch), a girl who was in his freshman photography class.

Grandpa latches onto her gal-pal Lenore (Aubrey Plaza), a potty-mouthed young temptress who is on a mission to complete a perfect sexual trifecta: serial copulation with a freshman, an alumnus, and a professor. Cue Gramps assuming the mantle of wizened professor and the hunt to satisfy his lust in on.

Sojourning in Daytona Beach during Spring Break, Jason’s drink is spiked and he finds himself smoking crack. The following morning he wakes up to find himself on a beach almost naked. Then he and Gramps enter a beach competition that allows both to off their pecs. Gramps masterminds the debauchery every move of the way.

Unwittingly, Dirty Grandpa is firmly focused on society’s refusal to accept growing older as a natural, organic, and irreversible journey. OK, you can understand De Niro’s geriatric grandfather wanting one last sexual fling before he shuffles off his mortal coil. But there is really nothing about his character that you can empathise or identify with. He just seems to have been carved out of a pile of comic stereotypes for the sake of generating a slew of stock dirty jokes and shock-effect verbal exhortations. Only at the very end of the film, when Gramps tries to apologise to his son (Dermot Mulroney), for being such a shitty father do we feel a glimmer of humanity in his character.

Even worse, Zach Ephron’s Jason is an even less likeable character. He is a selfcentred, arrogant prude who is intent on marrying the boss’s daughter to further his career. His emotional about-face, at the film’s end, to run off with his new found hippy college girlfriend and become a photographer seems less than a credible turn of events. While there are plenty of funny, laugh-out-loud moments in Dirty Grandpa (mostly of the jaw-dropping “did he really say that?” kind), there are just no really likable characters in the film. The only character who comes out of it with any human qualities, Shadia, is so underused as to be almost invisible.

Tina Fey’s and Amy Poehler’s “baby boomers in crisis” film, Sisters, on the other hand, is a much funnier and much more humane film than Dirty Grandpa. Like De Niro’s character, the two Ellis sisters, Maura (Poehler) and Kate (Fey) fear growing old and losing the vitality and excitement that comes with being young.

The sisters stage a last gasp all-night party in their childhood home (which their parents are planning to sell) that features levels of debauchery and destruction that ‘70s British rock bands would have been proud of. Yet, along the way, Sisters introduces us to fully fleshed-out characters that we can identify with, and moments of genuinely touching pathos. Fey’s and Poehler’s sisters are two underdogs who have lived in the shadows their entire lives, wanting nothing more than to be recognised as adults by their parents.

The difference between Dirty Grandpa and Sisters is that in the former, the two lead characters try to break free of lives defined by oppressive conformity by descending into anarchic, wilful irresponsibility and immaturity via reckless acts of instant gratification.

Fey’s and Poehler’s characters begin their film as immature and irresponsible adults who want to be valued and respected by their parents and their friends.

I am not for a moment suggesting older people refrain from having fun and enjoying life. What disturbs me about films like Dirty Grandpa is that they glorify reckless, anti-social, amoral behaviour and pretend that it is funny. It isn’t.

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Letting The Cat Out Of The Bag

By Stacy Begin / Owner, Two Fat Cats Bakery

Bread Dumplings & Wind Pudding Lately, I’ve been spending some time with old friends. It seems to have become a habit of mine – the Winter hits and I turn to the comfort of stalwart companions to pass the time.

I don’t have to log onto Facebook to enjoy their company, or meet up for drinks, or even pick up the telephone. No, I just mosey over to my bookcase and peruse fraying spines and spiral bound tomes. They have names like Hometown Cooking in New England, All Maine Seafood Cookbook, Parish of the Holy Spirit Cookbook, Merrymeeting Merry Eating, The Quilters Book of Pies and The Best Amish Recipes of Lancaster County. They are my collection of community cookbooks and they get me by. Hello, old friend.

To open a community cookbook is to take a deep dive into the history of baking and cooking. Recipes aren’t just recipes. They are a window into understanding the context and circumstances of the times, their origins springing from scarcity, ingenuity and practicality. Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Hometown Cooking in New England and The Parish of the Holy Spirit Cookbook.

Just read through a couple recipes from 1930 and you immediately understand the palate of that era. Dates, raisins, cornmeal or buckwheat, deep flavours of molasses and allspice. You can almost smell the scent of cinnamon rising off the printed page of the book. Flavours and ingredients that we eschew nowadays or

use infrequently were household staples not so long ago and combined in baking magic to create some of our most beloved – and in some cases, lost – recipes.

Their names spark curiosity and imagination: Joe Froggers, Indian Pudding, Angel Biscuits, Stonefence Applesauce Cake, Cottage Sauce, Southern Grapenut Pie and, of course, whoopie pies, whoopie pies, whoopie pies. All sound delicious with catchy names that beg a good story behind them.

And, then there are the head scratchers. Intriguing, but not in a way that makes you pull out the measuring cups and pre-heat the oven. Intriguing in a way that makes you stop, re-read the recipe, and say: “Really?? That can’t be right.” Oh, but it is. Take for example, Boiled Custard & Wind Pudding. “What could this be?”, she said with excited anticipation only to realise the recipe calls for pouring a boiled vanilla custard over Jello beaten with egg whites. As inventive as it is, I am not dying to try it.

Or even better is Bread Dumplings. I’m oddly drawn to this recipe, but I confess I’ve not worked up the courage to try it. It involves frying bread cubes and then adding it to a slushy mix of milk, egg and flour. From there things get weird. I hate to spoil the ending for you, so here, I give you the recipe for Bread Dumplings (as written by Mrs. Irene Bourque). If you try it, I’d love to know how it turns out. And, please, in the meantime, find yourself a great community cookbook and while away the winter. After all, what are friends for?!

Bread Dumplings 3/4 cup milk 1 egg 1/4 tsp salt 2 cups flour 3-4 slices of bread, cut into squares 2 tsp baking powder Brown bread in frying pan with a little fat (Stacy’s note: I presume butter would do here). Mix other ingredients & add to bread. Roll into a loaf & drop into boiling water. Turn heat to medium so it will boil slowly and boil 25-30 minutes.

Let boil until toothpick can go through. Cut into slices & serve.

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Capturing the magic of Winter downtown is a chilly, but fun task ...and we still have February to go!

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Eric’s Optimal Corner Eric Hilton / Optimal Self Community Health and Wellness Center (EDITOR’S NOTE—This month’s column is by Sandra Garfinkel, integrative therapist, yoga teacher, massage therapist, energy practitioner and co-founder of Optimal Self Community Health and Wellness Center. Sandra believes that personal transformation toward conscious living will change the world. She provides Awakened Instinct yoga classes and Integrative Bodywork sessions at Optimal Self. For more info please contact Sandra at: AwakenedInstinct@gmail.com)

Don’t call it “cold and flu season” I’d like to share another way of looking at the “common cold” — Natural ways to boost your immunity as the seasons change.

I’ve been hearing a various range of sniffling, coughing, sinus-y cold symptoms out there recently. When I feel any sort of cold symptoms I look at them as a sign that my body needs to cleanse something. So I start to help it out. I begin to pay close attention to what I put into my body and how I take care of myself. I use certain tools to boost my immunity. I use these tools to address the symptoms I’m experiencing from every angle, and I call them that — symptoms that tell me I need to cleanse and nourish myself.

Here are some of the things I do when I feel that my body needs to cleanse: 1.) Watch my language. Don’t say “I’m getting sick”, “I’m feeling a cold coming on”or “I have a cold”, etc. I can bring a cold to me or bring my health back. It all depends on what I focus on. If I am stressed and continue to say “Oh no! I’m getting a cold, this sucks. I can’t believe I’m getting sick!” then I am egging on the situation and creating more and more energy around this idea of being sick and how much it sucks.

Instead, I consciously choose to speak about the situation as “cleansing” to others and myself. I speak of symptoms as just that, symptoms that can go away as I Boost my immunity. And I use this as an opportunity to take care of myself. “I am” helps to create my perception of myself and my reality, so I am very careful of what I say after “I am ______”.

2.) Next, I check my emotional state and find a way to come back to balance. Am I stressed because I’m not feeling well? Or about something else? That stress only adds to the issue. Most times it is actually the stress itself that causes the sickness to come, so it must be addressed, as our emotions have a huge effect on our physical health.

Addressing the stress: Try meditation, prayer, physical movement, being in nature and journaling. These are all some ways of moving emotional energy.

3.) Super Clean diet. This means cutting out trigger foods that typically produce more mucus in your body. Foods such as sugar, gluten, anything processed and foods that take longer to digest like animal products, especially dairy. The simpler the better. You want your system to flow as easily and cleanly as possible, so steer toward making healthier choices as much as possible.

4.) This is my personal “Immune Boosting Concoction”, taken as a shot or sipped as a tea: � 1-2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar (unfiltered)

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� good dash of cayenne pepper � juice of ½ lemon.

This can be taken as a shot, or mixed with a cup of hot water to make a tea to sip (which actually tastes very good after the first initial shock of it!).

Vinegar has been used for centuries as a medicine to heal, protect and bring strength. Apple Cider Vinegar is loaded with vitamins, minerals and amino acids, and its various enzymes help with digestion1. It can be used to boost immunity when you’re not feeling well and also as an immune boosting supplement taken on a regular basis.

5.) Neti pot at any sign of sinus upset. Don’t be afraid of the neti pot! This is an important practice that can really make a big difference in how long it takes to flush something out of your system. It looks like a little teapot, and is filled with warm salt water used to flush out the nose and sinuses (I use only non-iodized sea salt).

When I feel my immunity has been compromised and I’m noticing symptoms, I use a neti pot twice a day: morning and night. The neti pot will help to clean the mucus out of your sinuses, and it’s best to use sooner than later, before mucus has had a chance to drip down into your throat and cause coughing and irritation. Search “how to use a neti pot” on Youtube. It’s worth it. My tips for positioning in two steps: 1.) First, lean forward over the sink with neti pot in nostril. 2.) Then, tilt your head to the side. Youtube can show you the rest ;) 6.) Restorative yoga/physical exercise. Pain is simply some form of stuck energy. A slow-moving mindful yoga class can help to open up pathways of energy in the body and bring more balance. This, combined with cardiovascular and strength training, will help to keep the body lubed up and circulation flowing and flushing. Any and all of these are beneficial.

7.) More sleep. Do not underestimate the value of good sleep! I’ve recently had some experiences with a few all-nighters at work that left me emotionally, physically and energetically drained, mostly due to lack of sleep. There was really nothing wrong with me other than my body needed more time to rest, but that simple fact wrecked me and depressed me. More sleep to restore is crucial.

8.) Thieves essential oil. This pure essential oil blend contains many oils that were used to protect against the bubonic plague (rosemary, lemon, eucalyptus, clove, cinnamon)2. These oils work together to protect, boost and clean. I use it internally on a regular basis but it can also be diffused to clean the air and breathe into your sinuses. The Thieves blend comes from Young Living Essential Oils, and you can contact me here for more info about it: awakenedinstinct@gmail.com 9.) Fluids, fluids, fluids to flush. Most of us could probably be drinking more water (especially in the Winter, when the heat of the sun is not affecting us as strongly).

It’s a time to reach for fluids even if your body is not asking for them. Warm herbal teas, green juice, and #4’s Immune Boosting Concoction count as good hydration options. It’s also a good practice to start your day with one or two large glasses of water before anything else is consumed. This will help your body flush anything it has been processing, healing or cleaning from the night before.

10.) Remember that one healthy move will typically inspire another. And another.

And another… Using any of these in conjunction with each other, or especially all at once, has been known to stop a possible cold in its tracks and bring back a shiny healthy glow without even any remnants of what could have been. This has happened to me many times. It may also relieve and shorten the duration of cold symptoms by helping to stabilise the system. At the very least you will be nourishing yourself ... and that is always something we need to make a priority of in our lives.

1. http://www.realfarmacy.com/top-23-uses-apple-cider-vinegar-backed-science/ 2. http://www.secretofthieves.com/four-thieves-vinegar.cfm

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The Buck Stops Here

By Luke Reinhard / Advisor — Ameriprise Financial

ment with the hope that one day it will pay off to hold it. If you’re unsure about if you should cut your losses and move on, consult a financial professional who can give you an objective opinion.

Request a portfolio review. If you suspect your personal preferences and emotions are interfering with your investment decisions, defer to the experts. Ask a financial professional to conduct an objective review of your portfolio, with an eye to performance and your financial goals. Together you can look for opportunities to grow your earnings through disciplined investing strategies.

Letting Go of Emotional Investing Patterns When the Fed raised short-term interest rates in December, did you feel obligated to buy, sell or change your investing strategy solely on that knowledge? Or with recent growth changes in China?

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The urge to make an investment decision is often influenced by media reports and the sentimental value you apply to those investments. This frame of thinking can lead you to make investment decisions based on your emotions, and in the long-term, emotional investing may prevent your portfolio from reaching its true potential.

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Focus on the long-term. Check yourself for news-driven fear or euphoria before you call your financial professional. Remind yourself of what your long-term financial goals are, and ask yourself if making a change would help you reach them. If you still feel you need to make a change, ask your professional for their perspective.

Root out unfitting investments. Do you still have your first stock certificate from mom and dad? Shares inherited from a favourite aunt? Stock from an early employer? There are all kinds of ways to acquire stocks over the years, and over time, some investments may not “fit” with your overall investment goals. It can be hard to detach from stocks with an emotional connection, but like unruly branches in your backyard, portfolios need pruning on a regular basis to perform at their best. Portfolios and individual stocks should be evaluated periodically to determine whether they are still appropriate holdings given your time horizon, risk tolerance and overall portfolio. Keep in mind that sometimes no changes are warranted, but it’s a good habit to regularly review.

Strive for a balanced portfolio. Portfolios often need to be rebalanced over time, as your individual circumstances and the individual holdings’ situation changes.

Take an objective look at your holdings and ensure you are comfortable with the level of risk. If company stock options are available to you, make sure you’re aware of how that may impact your overall investment strategy. While it’s good to have confidence in the firm you work for, having too much stock in one company may expose you to more risk than you intend.

  

Be consistent. Counteract impulse buying and selling with a consistent approach to investing. Automated investing makes it easy to implement a disciplined approach, such as investing a set amount at regular intervals. This systematic investing can be a way to help minimise the effects of market volatility in a portfolio; however you will still need to review over time to make sure the strategy fits with your overall goals.

Embrace diversity. You’ll be in a better position to hang on to a sentimental favourite if the rest of your portfolio is diversified across a range of industries and assets. Diversity may provide balance in the event one or more sectors are down, but do keep in mind that diversity alone cannot protect against an investment loss.

Sell when the time is right. If you identify a loser that’s not likely to turn around, it may be advantageous to sell it now. Many investors continue to hold an invest-

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Processed Media

By Randy Dankievitch — TV Critic / TVOvermind (EDITOR’S NOTE—Welcome to our newest Up Portland column by Randy Dankievitch. Randy is a television critic hailing from central New York, who started writing about TV after moving to Portland in 2010. Currently, he writes about TV for TVOvermind and PopOptiq – and now Up Portland, where he’ll be writing about TV, video games, film, comics and anything noteworthy in the world of pop culture in our newest column, Processed Media.)

3 Shows You Missed in 2015 2015 marked the beginning of the era of “Peak TV” (a phrase coined by FX’s John Landgraf), a year that saw over 420 different series air on networks, cable, and streaming services over the past 12 months. Naturally, a few gems fell through the cracks, buried under heaps of network advertising, social media campaigns, and countless amounts of referential .gifs – as we head into what looks like another packed year of debuts and returning series, here are three shows that flew way under the radar in 2015.

Fortitude (airs on Pivot – returns in 2016) — The first original series to air on the environmentally conscious Pivot network, Fortitude came in like a rocket last Spring, boasting a cast of Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, Richard Dormer, and Sofie Gråbøl – a selection of actors most high-budget network television shows could only dream of featuring. Set in the fictional, frozen remote village in Artic Norway, Fortitude accomplishes a number of impressive feats in the span of ten episodes, a slow burn that reaches a fever pitch as its story shifts back and forth from murder mystery and existential drama, utilising the very apt metaphor of Earth’s melting ice caps as an entryway into a thematically rich, occasionally horrifying series full of amazing performances and some seriously gorgeous cinematography, capturing the beauty and mystery of Iceland (where much of it was filmed), and transforming it into this wonderfully layered, thoroughly unsettling drama.

Other Space (aired on Yahoo Screen! - fate unknown) — From the mind of Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, Bridesmaids), came 2015’s most underrated, under watched comedy, Other Space. Think of it like a mix between Community and Star Trek: a team of young space flight team gets sucked into another dimension during their first mission, and find themselves stranded in the middle of a universe nobody’s ever seen before. Simple concept, but where the magic of Other Space lies is in its personality, and how it shines through the show’s well-developed collection of characters across its brief eight-episode arc: as one might expect, it’s less a show about exploring space, and more a series about eight young individuals struggling to evolve. Plus it features Joel Hodgson and Trace Beaulieu from MST3K and the hilarious, severely underrated Milana Vayntrub – and although it was watched by an extremely small audience on the now-canceled Yahoo! Screen network, can still be found on their site, where it should be enjoyed, revered and effectively mourned by all of humanity. Like Feig’s previous shows, Other Space was pretty doomed to be a one-and-done from the start; but boy, does it find some magic the four hours it lasts.

UnREAL (airs on Lifetime – returns summer 2016) — unREAL might’ve been the single biggest surprise of 2015; a dark comedic satire of The Bachelor, aired on the network currently famous for making horrible “true stories” of silly 90’s Hollywood gossip tales? Yeah, unREAL was a slight surprise when it arrived in

June last year – even knowing it starred Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer wasn’t enough to abate much of the hesitant buzz surrounding unREAL, which was co-created and written by a former production member of The Bachelor.

Not only does unREAL provide an in-depth look at the behind the scenes of a love-based reality television show (acting as a much more effective Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip in that regard), but it delivers a impressive, scathing take down of the industry, offering one of the more distinct, driven voices we’ve seen in recent years from a non-”premium” (aka HBO, Showtime) cable network.

UnREAL holds no punches, both in how it views its flawed characters, or how it observes and comments on every single person and idea involved in a season’s worth of reality nonsense; at times, unREAL is just frightening in how it depicts the life of reality stars and the people engineering their short-lived fame, delivering its satire with a sharp tongue, and a feminist edge that always highlights (but never dominates) the points it makes about the ideas of “fame” and “love”, and how the two inevitably clash on a show trying to engineer huge ratings out of horny 20-somethings.

UnREAL is a fascinating watch in two regards; in how it captures the ugly realities of television production, and how it weaves those ideas into thoroughly engaging stories about the fictional characters it creates within that critique.

One of the year’s most fascinating shows, and certainly one primed to explode when it returns in 2016.

The Gossip Column

By Britain & Sydney / The Up Portland Office Gossip Cats We pussies love this time of year as it’s when the owners leave on our electric blanket on the bed all day (they think it’s theirs and they did pay for it at Reny’s but we will beg to differ) and we get to cuddle up and just sleep. Call it a long Winter’s nap if you will. Anyway, we did crawl out for a few bits & bobs, including this photo of a poor car parked down on Commercial Street between our snowstorms one day. The owner came back later to find he (or she) had received by the best of our count five tickets. There was no boot on the car when we walked by, but it did have two flat tyres, so we’d say the tickets were the least of the owners’ worries when they did get back. Note to the parking department: wouldn’t one or two tickets have achieved the same message?... Speaking of messages, we were (still) down on Commercial Street near Casco Bay Lines recently when we walked by a lady SCREAMING into her cell phone. What was the message? “Where ARE you? If the water is on your right, you are going the wrong way. The water needs to be on your LEFT!!!” We “left” before we found out if they ever did meet up! ...And finally, what IS it about meeting for coffee that makes it so hard to remember where and when to be? We have had two no-shows in the past month at Coffee By Design on India Street. Of course one might just have been because the person we were supposed to meet kept calling it “Indiana Street” in texts, so maybe he’s waiting for us in Indianapolis!

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Beyond The Forecast

By Jack Sillin / Weatherman & Meterology Student

Hello everyone! I’m writing this the 22nd of January and we've had a modest turnaround this past week in terms of Winter weather with the Portland Jetport seeing 13.2” of snow over the course of three storms (Tuesday thundersnow, Saturday ice to snow, Monday a Norlun you-can't-predict-me trough). Still, this Winter so far has been far from rough and our first promising storm threat blasted south dropping feet of snow across the Mid Atlantic before thundering out to sea leaving us mainly high and dry. All in all, it looks like only a modestly wintry pattern will remain in place as El-Nino continues to dominate the pattern (see my last column for details).

Enough with looking forward, let's take a look at some of the interesting weather over the past month here in Portland starting with the Cold Air Damming (CAD) event of 29th December. Cold Air Damming is a phenomenon observed often in Maine and it has everything to do with the mountains that lie to the NW. We've already talked about how the mountains can clear out storms more quickly than usual, so now let's see how they can make those storms nastier.

Cold air is denser than warm air and thus tends to sink. That is one fundamental property of cold air. On 28th December, a cold high sunk south barely beating a warm front marching north ahead of a low moving through the Great Lakes.

We had a lot of cold, dense air. As the low moved to our west, winds wanted to become south-easterly (winds blow counterclockwise around low pressure).

However, as the atmosphere isn't two-dimensional, those warm SE winds ran into some issues. The warm air (SE winds off the warm water) began to push on the eastern edge of the cold air. The cold air began to displace west but ran into the mountains. Remember, cold air is dense air and it was in no mood to climb the mountains so it stayed put. The warm air still had to carry out it's duty to get to the low out west so it climbed up and over the cold air, contributing to snowfall and also keeping the surface nice and chilly.

However, our mountains are only so tall. Once you get above 3,000 or so feet, there isn't quite enough mountain to have an appreciable effect on the weather in Portland. Warm air was able to flood in from the south aloft with no mountains to stop it. Because mountains are only so tall, CAD is usually a shallow phenomenon extending only a few thousand feet up. Above that, the atmosphere is at the mercy of larger scale phenomenon such as the low pressure out west. As as result, we

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saw a solid sleet storm across much of the area which contributed to lower totals and slicker roads along with heavier, harder to shovel snow. A general 4-8” was reported across the area which was in line with forecasts in the preceding days.

Following this storm, we returned to the El-Nino fairly warm and calm pattern.

This changed the week of the 11th thru 18th as we finally got cold air. After the crazy warm December, the ocean waters were warm. Warm water and cold air are a volatile combination and we certainly saw what it could do. We didn't have any massive region-wide snow events but that week saw a general 8-16” spread out over three events. They were generally dominated by mesoscale (small scale) phenomenon rather than sprawling storms.

The first event arrived with the motto “short and sweet” on a Tuesday evening.

A few hours of light snow ended in a vicious band packing 6” per hour snowfall rates, 40 m.p.h. winds, and thundersnow. This was the result of rapidly developing low pressure in the Gulf of Maine. As the low developed, another classic weather phenomenon developed known as the warm conveyer belt. A warm conveyer belt is when warm air moves rapidly and powerfully around a centre of low pressure depositing it on the NW side of the low. What happens when warm air smashes into cold air? You got it, lots of snow. In this case, the low bombed out at a rate of 12mb in 12 hours (that is the same rate needed for bombogenesis).

Upper level features also supported a powerful warm conveyer belt (technical: negatively tilted H5 trough, H3 divergence, crazy H5 vortmax, topics for another day) and one unsurprisingly developed on Tuesday evening (the 12th). This resulted in a powerful band of snow forming over New Hampshire before moving NE into Maine. As the conveyer belt developed, the band intensified reaching peak intensity over Cumberland County between 10 and 11 p.m. 6” of snow fell in one hour just north of Sebego Lake, thunder ripped through the sky above Casco Bay, winds gusted over 40, temps dropped 10+ degrees and blizzard conditions were reported lasting for around an hour before tapering off. When all was said and done, a solid 4-8” was reported with some 8-12” amounts inland. That worked out very well with my forecast leading up to the event (you can go back and find every one of my forecasts on the blog if you wish to double check me yourself).

What causes thundersnow you ask? The short answer is elevated instability. The surface was nice and warm just prior to the thundersnow. In fact, we were near 40 at the Jetport at 10 p.m. However, temps cooled drastically as you rose in height through the atmosphere even a little bit. How fast the atmosphere cools per unit of height is known as the lapse rate, The faster the air cools, the more unstable the atmosphere is. To get a visual on this, imagine a bunch of balloons in two rows. The top row of balloons are filled with sand making them heavy. They are dense and want to sink. They represent the cold air which is also dense and wanting to sink. The bottom row of balloons is filled with helium. The helium isn't dense at all and wants to rise. The helium filled balloons represent warm air which is less dense than cold air and also wants to rise. What will happen?

Eventually the sand balloons will fall to the ground creating holes for the helium balloons to rise up out of. Because some of the atmosphere is taken up by cold air sinking, the area that all the warm air can rise through is limited. Because of this. when a hole does form, all the warm air rushes through it at the same time causing very local but very intense upward motion. So intense in fact, it can generate thunderstorms.

Keep in mind, this process doesn't have much to say about the actual temperatures of the cold air and the warm air. So long as there is a large difference between the two over a short vertical distance, this process will work. This process produces showers and thunderstorms all year round. It is really hard though to get the air really cold just above the ground at the same time as the air at the surface is below freezing. You need a large difference for this process to work and it is hard to get that for thundersnow because there is a cap on how warm the warm air can be (it can't be above freezing or else it wouldn't be thundersnow.

The second event was a developing coastal storm that raced NE through the Gulf of Maine. It was a fairly typical nor'easter with low pressure developing off the

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Carolina coast and racing NE. It had little upper level support and because of that, precip was created by the surface low but wasn't drawn NW by upper level low pressure.

This resulted in heavy snow along the coast but little snow inland. Some freezing rain and sleet did occur in southern areas in the morning but dynamic cooling quickly led to temps cooling aloft allowing heavy snow to fall along the coast. The cutting off of the lows at the mid/upper levels prohibited moisture to be funneled NW and thus little snow fell in the mountains. The forecast verified at the coast but busted hard inland due to the lack of upper level features to funnel moisture NW.

We are more than just copies…

The final snow event of our mini-blitz arrived Monday 18 January as low pressure blasted well SE of the area. Low pressure developed over the Great lakes and a powerful upper level trough added some energy to the mix. Winds were also spreading out aloft causing air in the lower levels of the atmosphere to rise. When air spreads out aloft, it creates a void of low pressure. Air from below then rises to fill the gap. This creates large scale rising motion and light snow. Everyone saw a coating-2” or so because of that, which was well forecast. The fun part was a narrow band of moderate snow that developed in Casco Bay extending NW to around Windham. This band was a mini Norlun trough.

and and

A Norlun trough is an area of low pressure extending to the NW of a low offshore. Warm moist air is funneled along the north side of the trough and cold dry air smashes into it from the south side of the trough (Norluns usually occur

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and

in deep arctic air masses when there is cold available to the south and west). What happens when cold air runs into warm air? Yeah we've seen that happen before. As a result, a very narrow but respectable snow band formed and hung out for much of the day over and just north of Portland that Monday, bringing accumulations of 2-5” in the Portland area.

Overall, a pretty interesting month in weather for Portland!

Glancing ahead, the last week of January & first week of February looks warmer followed by more seasonable temps later into February. Keep in mind though, average temps are in the 20's in Portland this time of year. Even well above normal temps would still allow for snow from time to time so Winter is not over yet!

I'll be back with another educational weather summary next month. Meanwhile, get my forecasts through the UpPortland website www.upportland.com -Jack

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The Essay Our Occasional Personal Observation Column Are Four Years of College Required to be Successful?

by Peter Michalakes for Up Portland College.

When parents of teenagers in our country hear the word “college”, it evokes several different emotions. The most obvious one, of course, is excitement. In spite of the accelerating cost of higher education, and the increasingly common societal expectation that families are supposed to help out with that cost in some way, parents typically still feel pretty happy that their child is capitalising on one of the greatest gifts our society has to offer: education.

And excitement is, undoubtedly, the right attitude to maintain towards learning.

As a society, and as a generation, we are extraordinarily lucky to have access to the wealth of information that we do today. However, in our current educational system, this access to information sometimes comes at a very, very high pricetag.

The average cost of a private, four-year university nationally is now over $32,000 per year. This is a lot of money, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are plenty of families in the United States who are questioning the value of post-secondary education. Last year, Anthony Carnevale, a professor at Georgetown in the Centre of Education and the Workforce, stated in Newsweek that millennial college graduates compose nearly 40% of those currently unemployed in the United States. So, this begs the question: why bother with a four-year college — or postsecondary education at all — if you might just end up in debt and without a job?

As a nation, what can we do to support this next generation of workers?

scholarships, and work-study programmes certainly soften debt to an extent, it is an increasing trend that only a lucky few can escape a four-year education with no debt. Here in Maine, there was an average debt of $30,908 per college graduate from 2004 to 2014.

The choice between a four-year college, community college and vocational school is a mix of balancing act and personal career goals. With a bachelor’s degree, a student is investing in future earnings; in vocational school, they are investing in a present timeframe. It is prudent that we create a societal attitude that encourages alternative educational routes at both federal and cultural levels.

Without vocational workers such as plumbers and electricians, modern society would be significantly less functional. Additionally, there is nothing wrong with spending two years at an affordable community college and then transferring to a larger university to cut the cost of a bachelor’s degree. What isn’t acceptable, though, is ridiculing those students who choose an unconventional path for economic reasons or otherwise. There is no universal definition of “success”, and the best society is one with a diverse palette of talents among its populations.

So, Up Portland, to summarise: Sometimes the road less travelled is just the right one for your young adult. We live in an unpredictable economy and a perpetually changing world, so we must trust in this next generation to make the right decision for themselves and their future contributions. In the words of Henry Ford: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

Work together we must.

This article is an opinion written by Peter Michalakes, a local high school senior.

If you have any comments, questions or inquiries about what is written here, send a letter to the editor or contact Peter directly at pmichalakes16@waynflete.org You are also welcome to write a response for publication or your own article on a topic you believe in strongly. E-mail ted@upportland.com for more details.

Article statistics originate from CollegeData, the National Center for Educational Statistics, The Institute for College Access & Success, and the Institute of Education Sciences. Credit also belongs to Newsweek LLC and the The Simple Dollar.

Up Portland Is A Proud Member of the

A prime example of a partial solution is what Germany has done to diversify educational paths leading into the workforce and eliminate student debt.

In Germany, if a student decides that a four-year education isn’t for them, then they can embark on a vocational track for a skilled occupation. They are trained at the junior college level for one-to-three years as an apprentice, typically with little-to-no gap between the end of their education and the beginning of their official job placement. Through this vocational track, fewer youths are left unemployed, and next-to-none have incurred student debt. There is an increasing number of views globally that this path can equal, and even surmount, a traditional four year college education in terms of net earnings: Maybe, overall, we can pay less and earn more. Maybe, this kind of system could work in the United States.

This suggestion certainly isn’t to dismerit the value of the traditional collegiate route. The National Centre for Educational Statistics has illustrated time and time again that a four-year bachelor’s degree equates to significantly larger sums of income per year than a high school graduate with no degree. What’s more, post-secondary education of any kind has, in an overwhelming majority of cases, become the new entry-level education requirement for today’s positions.

Certainly, for academics, and those un-interested in splitting time at a community college, a bachelor’s degree is the best path to take. That said, the price tag still looms: $32,000 per year. While Federal Student Aid, privately awarded

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March Edition Deadline

Friday 19th February Papers On Street: Tuesday 23rd February

Up Portland is published the last week of every month at 22 Hancock Street, Suite 403, Portland, Maine 04101. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy and fairness, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors. Liability is limited to the cost of said ad. Ads not cancelled by published deadlines will be billed at agreed-upon price. Ads may be edited or rejected for content at the discretion of the publisher. All items appearing in Up Portland, as well as the name, logos and design are copyright 2016 by BBS, A division of High Speed Delivery Fork Ltd. & Ted Fleischaker and may not be reproduced in any form without prior written approval.

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Sauntering With Mat

By Mat Robedee / Up Portland Commentator

With the Winter season upon us, many are finding themselves bunkering down at home, loading up on Vitamin D and trying their best to fight off the Winter blues until the warm weather rolls in once again.

For some, peace of mind and warmth of soul is found by cozying up by the fireplace with a good book. To others, it’s sharing laughs over drinks at one of the many bars in town. While others prefer the whole “Netflix and chill” kind of night. Others, like me, however, need to get outdoors at times and experience the season, its raw beauty and all it has to offer. Luckily for us, such beauty is only a short drive away.

Roughly 20 miles north of Portland and just five miles from downtown Freeport’s attractions like L.L. Bean, Harraseeket Inn and not far from I-295 is Wolfe’s Neck Farm.

Just a short and gorgeous 30-minute drive from Portland, Wolfe’s Neck is an oceanfront destination not to be missed. The farm itself is an educational non-profit open year round and dedicated to promoting sustainable agriculture, food systems education and outdoor recreation. It is also home to the stunning Recompence Shore Campground and gains major attraction during the Spring, Summer and Fall seasons.

The farm itself is massive — 626 acres with fields, forests, marshes and coastline to explore. There is even a barn onsite to visit, where the public is allowed to pet and learn about the animals. So, for all you goat lovers out there like myself, trust me, you will not be disappointed.

Wolfe’s Neck Farm is still in operation yet has been able to retain a long-standing, remote, countryside feel. After driving through Freeport and making your way down the winding roads to the farm, one passes by historic homes tucked between tall pines and rock walls. Upon entering Wolfe’s Neck, you can begin to see just how large the farmland truly is.

The rolling open hills allow for dramatic coastal views littered with rocky isles.

Marshes line the coast and dense forests pocket the inlands. The ecosystems here are not only diverse but lush and provide endless opportunities to explore.

The benefit of visiting in Winter is that one can beat the crowds, while still being able to enjoy the scenic vistas and brisk ocean breezes. I have explored this area in every season but it is in the Winter, in the silence, that the true simplistic wonder of this land can be felt.

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A quote from Paul Theroux comes to mind, “Maine is a joy in the Summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the Winter.”

Wolfe’s Neck contains miles of nature trails which are open to the public year round and offer incredible cross country skiing and snowshoeing adventures.

The trails bring you through many varied ecosystems and terrains; from forests to fields, marshes to coastline. In addition to this, just a five-minute drive down the road from the farm, is Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park. This state park is open year round from 9 a.m. until sunset and requires a small fee but trust me, it is worth every penny.

The park, similar to the farm, contains varied ecosystems, including white pine and hemlock forests, a salt marsh estuary, rocky shorelines and a fabulous view of the farm from another vantage point. The greatest attraction to the park though, are its famous residents — the ospreys.

Just a stone’s throw off from the shore of the park rests Googins Island, a small bit of land where ospreys have made nests and provide one of the most picturesque scenes around. So bring a camera, dress warm and go explore the park during the off season in solitude for real authentic Maine experience.

With a rich history, close proximity to Portland, vast acreage, all season activities and neighbouring State Park; Wolfe’s Neck Farm is a destination worth putting on some boots for. Pick a snowy day and enjoy a trek in the woods.

Directions? Set your GPS and visit Wolfe’s Neck Farm at 184 Burnett Rd, Freeport, 04032 and Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park at 426 Wolf's Neck Rd, Freeport, 04032.

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