Goings On

Registry of Historic Places, the Deertrees presents an eclectic mix of theater and music every summer. In Good Spirits June 28-29, Rick Charette children’s songs July 2, Shutting Up Peggy Lee July 31, Hamlet August 7-8, I Hate Hamlet August 14-16, Stones in his Pocket August 21-23, I Ought To Be in Pictures August 28-31. Sebago Long Lake Music Festival with chamber music performances every Tuesday July 15-August 12; ninth Annual Deertrees Theatre Festival August 7-September 2. 583-6747 or www.deertreestheatre.org Freeport Community Players, Freeport Performing Arts Center, 30 Holbrook Street, Freeport. A community-based volunteer organization providing entertainment to the Freeport community since 1989. Staged reading of Best Enemies followed by a discussion with the author and cast May 7, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum July 11-27, staged reading of Seeking Mischief September 3. 865-2220 or www.fcponline.org Gaslight Theater, City Hall, 1 Winthrop, Hallowell. Gaslight began as an outgrowth of a women’s theater class held at the Augusta YMCA in 1937. Still a thriving community theater, this summer’s season features Bye, Bye Birdie June 19-21 and 26-28, Wonder of the World August 21-23 and 28-30, Private Lives October 30- November 1, November 6-8. 626-3698 or www.gaslighttheater.org Good Theater at The St. Lawrence Art Center, 76 Congress Street, Portland. On Golden Pond September 18-October 12, Stones in His Pockets October 30-November 23, Broadway at Good Theater December 4-7. 885-5883 or www.goodtheater.com Hackmatack Playhouse, 538 Route 9, Berwick. A quaint summer theater situated on an old family farmstead dating back to the mid-1600s, the Hackmatack presents Tuckermans at 9 June 13, Two Old Friends June 14, Hackmatack Alumni Broadway Review June 20-21, Rumors June 25-July 5, Annie Get Your Gun July 9-19, The Pirates of Penzance July 23-August 2, All Shook Up August 6-23, Tribute to Gershwin August 29. 698-1807 or www.hackmatack.org Lakewood Theater, Skowhegan. America’s oldest simmer theater, now in its 108th season. Cash on Delivery May 22-31, At First Sight June 5-14, Marvin’s Room June 19-25, Gilligan’s Island: The Musical July 3-12, Twentieth Century July 17-26, Guys and Dolls July 31-August 6, Leading Ladies August 14-23, A Nice Family Gathering August 28-31, Bubba’s Revenge: The Honky Tonk Angels Final Chapter September 11-20. 474-7176 or www.lakewoodtheater.org Lyric Music Theater, 176 Sawyer Street, South Portland, now in its 55th season. Aida through May 11, Harvey June 5-14. 799-6509 or lyricmusictheater.org Maine State Music Theater, Bowdoin College, Brunswick. Presenting more than 300 musicals in the past 50 years, MSMT remains one of the few resident stock companies dedicated strictly to musical theater. Jesus Christ Superstar June 4-21, The Producers June 25-July 12, All Shook Up July 16-August 2, Les Miserables August 6-24. 725-8769 or www.msmt.org Ogunquit Playhouse, 10 Maine Street, Ogunquit. “America’s Foremost Summer Theater” opens with New York’s longest-running musical comedy Forbidden Broadway May 2325, Fiddler on the Roof starring Sally Struthers and Eddie Mekka May 28-June 21, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do featuring the songs of Neil Sedaka June 25-July 12, The Producers July 16-August 9, My Fair Lady August 13-September 6, Les Misérables September 10-October 12. 646-5511 or www.ogunquitplayhouse.org Opera House at Boothbay Harbor, 86 Townsend Avenue, Boothbay Harbor. This 450-seat multipurpose facility supports artistic life in the region by offering a venue for a diversity of events. Its history of summer theater continues with The Taffetas June 5-18. 633-5159 or www.boothbayoperahouse.com Portland Opera Repertory Theater, Merrill Auditorium, Portland. PORTopera Summer Main Stage performance is Romeo and Juliet July 24-26. 879-7678 or www.portopera.org Portland Players, 420 Cottage Road, South Portland. The oldest community theater in Maine and the second oldest known in New England.Pippin May 16-June 1, The Carol Burnett Show June 6-13 kicks off the capital fundraising event for the theater. 799-7337 or www.portlandplayers.org Portland Stage Company, 25 Forest Avenue, Portland. Maine’s largest fully professional, non-profit theater founded in 1974, its downtown location makes this theater the perfect stop on a “dinner and a show” evening. Doubt to May 25. 7740465 or www.portlandstage.com The Public Theatre, 31 Maple Street, Lewiston. Over the River through May 11. 783-3200: www.thepublictheatre.org St. Lawrence Arts Center, 76 Congress Street, Portland. The St. Lawrence Arts & Community Center operates the 110-seat Parish Hall Theater in half of the rehabilitated historic St. Lawrence Church. The Odyssey dance May 9-11, The Saturday Show every second Saturday, The humble Farmer June 14, The Femme Show July 12. 775-5568 or www.stlawrencearts.org Sanford Maine Stage Company, 1 Hill Top Lane, Springvale. Supporting youth and exposing them to the theater arts, involving high-school and college students in productions, and a strong children’s-theater program each summer. Annual murder mystery dinner theater is at the end of October, Olde Tyme Radio Show (Sherlock Holmes) in early November. 324-9691 or www.sanfordmainestage.org Schoolhouse Arts Center, Route 114, Sebago Lake Village. Rural community arts organizations dedicated to area art opportunities. Into the Woods July 10-27. 642-3743 or schoolhousearts.org Studio Theatre of Bath, 880 Washington Street, Bath. Resident theater company at the Winter Street Center in historic Winter Street Church (the chocolate Church), an example of 1860s Maine architecture. Once Upon a Mattress in May. 443-2418 or www.studiotheatreofbath.com Theater at Monmouth, 795 Main Street, Monmouth. The year-round repertory company of professional theater artists in its 39th year is housed in a magnificent Romanesque revival building including a 260-seat theater as well as the local library, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Season

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The Lion in Winter (continued from page 31) ly. “I’m playing in the Super Bowl!”

And the irony of it all is, the exact reasons Rosenberg was unsuited for Group 1 are his greatest strengths to Mainers who are starting to love ‘Rosie’ in this part of the world.

“My cell phone is on my business card,” he explains. “This phone is right in my hand. A woman called me at 10 p.m. two days ago. ‘I have a major noise in my car,’ she said. I said, ‘I’ll meet you at 8:30 tomorrow morning, and I’ll have your car back to you by the end of the day.’” Of course, King Lear kept his promise.

“People come in and say, ‘How much is this?’ You have to take that customer down and say, ‘It’s not about buying one car.’ I’ve got to live with this customer for four or five years. They’re buying far more than something to drive. They’re buying me. At Seacrest [Cadillac and Chevrolet], the owners were two doors away from the showroom. I remember looking at them and saying to myself, ‘You can’t even get to the showroom.’ The owners were never at Porter’s. I have the edge. Taking care of a dissatisfied customer is the best way to create a good customer. I visit my Maine dealerships every day. I am here.”

When you’re not in Boca.

“I have no choice. Judy, my wife, has scleroderma, an auto-immune disease. Only 400,000 people in the world have it. There is no cure. If it’s a bad case that can’t be fixed, it’s a death sentence. She lost use of both kidneys and was almost on dialysis, but now she has 33-percent use of each. It does a job on her feet and toes. It used to feel like someone was pulling her nails out. We bought a place down there [for the warmer climate, because it was easier on her symptoms] nine years ago; we’ve been visiting for 25. That and only that was why I sold to Group 1 when I was 63 years old.

“A major corporation like Group 1 has all the economies of scale. The only thing they forgot is the human factor. I would never get so big I couldn’t go to each department and say hello. Group 1 is now suffering because they can’t do that. You can’t say, ‘My name is on the door, but I’m not at the store.’”

WHAT’S $100 MILLION BETWEEN FRIENDS?

Okay, so you’ve just bought Clair Motors ‘for an undisclosed amount,’ other Maine auto dealers’ noses are out of joint, implying you are an invader who is bringing a callous,

high-pressure, ‘Massachusetts’ style of selling to Maine…tell us, just how rich are you?

“I’m in a diner and a guy asks, ‘Are you worth $100 million?’ Do you have any idea what $100 million is? No one’s worth $100 million. But, hey, I’ve always been a risk taker. That’s how I got where I am.”

He also knows how to react when the wolf is at the door, whatever the economy. “Early on I went out and got personal car loans” when money wasn’t coming in any other way. “My wife had 21 supposed car loans,” he confesses.

Speaking of challenging times–bombshell–“David has left Group 1” in recent months and come back as a partner in the family business.

What does David say he’s learned?

“Can you teach your son anything?” Rosenberg laughs. “David’s smarter than me. We joke about it; sometimes we fight. We agree that you have to love your product. And he has taken the lesson of charity,” a longtime theme of Ira and Judy Rosenberg’s private lives (including extensive work with Sweetser, the Saco Library, and the American Cancer Society). “He is a very philanthropic individual. If you take from a community, you have to give back to a community. I’m very proud to live in this community; we live in Kennebunkport.”

So what don’t people know about Ira?

“I love to read spy stuff. Robert Ludlum, Patterson. And I’m a big collector of old radio programs: The Lone Ranger, Boston Blackie, Tarzan. I love Tarzan.”

But only Johnny Weismuller, right?

“Because he was the first.”

Yes, Tarzan always ‘showed up at the dealership.’ Flying through the jungle on a vine. There was no disconnect with Johnny Weismuller…

“These new Tarzans could be English professors. The people at Group 1 are a whole different group than the ones I sold to–we had a fabulous relationship. [Now,] they are not the nicest people. I feel guilty about all the dealerships that carry my name in Massachusetts, and I wish…”

Sure, but why do you work now?

“People ask me that sometimes twice, three times a day. ‘Ira, why are you working?’ A man asked me that the other day. He was 69 or 70; he’d given up his business. I told him, ‘You wouldn’t feel comfortable asking me that question if you didn’t know I was having fun.’” n

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Maine Dept. of Environmental Protection Return of the Native (continued from page 35) gered species ranges from the cryptic, like the Tomah mayfly and twilight moth, to the charismatic, like the piping plover and peregrine falcon, all are critical to our natural heritage and worthy of the protection afforded by the state’s Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Fund.”

Conservation efforts include purchasing large tracts of undeveloped land for eagles along shorelines–either on the coast or along inland rivers and lakes containing active or historic eagle nests.

“Two of the biggest eagle population areas are Cobscook Bay and the Kennebec Estuary [Merrymeeting Bay],” says William Brunn, director of land protection for the Nature Conservancy in Maine.

“In those two areas, we’ve done a lot of land protection, working with federal and state agencies. The bulk has been real-estate work. We work on land transactions paid with federal dollars that end up in state ownership. We’ve been facilitating land acquisition projects that have high-value habitat.”

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE BIRD KIND

Eagles are generally shy when it comes to getting ‘up-close and personal’ with the human species. As scavengers, they are constantly on the lookout for a meal below. Moulton will be out haying on his farm and notice eagles overhead, searching for prey below the waves.

“They fly over my head with the seagulls. When they fight with the seagulls, they win,” says Moulton.

They also fight with each other–for food, territory, or as part of a mating ritual. Motorists on the Maine Turnpike on the bridge crossing the Androscoggin River called biologist Charlie Todd in the spring of 2002 to alert him that two eagles were either fighting or courting–hardly different from your basic human romantic comedy.

“They’ll do spiraling flights and claw at each other’s feet–called a talon grapple (we call it playing Twister). If they break apart, it’s courtship; if they don’t, it’s a territorial conflict. These eagles never broke apart and went down into the trees. Calls were made, and a wildlife rehabilitator went out with a game warden. It took the two of them, along with an interested spectator who happened to be there, to pull the feuding eagles apart.”

Legendary Red Sox star Ted Williams

was said to have had vision so acute he was able able to read the spin on a curve ball as it was thrown at him, discerning individual threads on the ball. What would an eagle see on the same ball?

Todd hedges. “First of all, they’ve returned to Casco Bay, so they’re already taking in the Sea Dogs games. But if you need a yardstick, their visual acuity is greater than humans’ by a magnitude of three to four.”

Eagles crave privacy, especially near their nests (which are usually high in the treetops and not accessible to humans). People were tossing snacks to them in Durham so often that the town council passed an ordinance prohibiting the feeding of eagles.

“They’re scavengers and respond to carrion,” says Todd. “Once you lure them, that isn’t always a good idea. An ice fisherman who leaves a pickerel on the ice might lose it to an eagle that’s been patrolling the area.” The logical next step? Like the ‘suburban’ coyotes out west, eagles may one day be going through our garbage.

A LOOK AT THE FUTURE

“Maine is strategically very important–a cornerstone of recovery for the eagle. There is abundant habitat along the coast as well as inland rivers and lakes. They’re here with us now, on a daily basis. It’s exciting: There are more eagles in Deer Isle than in the entire state of Connecticut,” says Todd. No need for a tally on insurance salesmen.

Today, a conservative estimate credits Maine with just under 450 pairs of nesting eagles. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has set a goal of 600 nesting pairs by the year 2019. While much work has been done to clean up the environment, eagles are still vulnerable and have been exposed to contaminants such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), dioxins, furans (toxic by-products of combustion), mercury, and lead. As long as there’s a demand for property on the water, eagles will be in competition with those of us in search of a good real-estate investment.

“Eagles require a waterfront, and their nesting habitats are always going to be threatened because of development and recreational pressures,” says Todd. “That’s the make or break point as to whether eagles are here to stay or if we’re going to kill them off all over again.” n

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five. If you have a fixed-roof system, you’ll only get the highest power output from 10:00 to 2:30.”

“If they were roof panels, no one would have a problem with them,” says Eric Sampson, a homeowner on the far side of Grondin Pond. “I don’t think anyone has any problems with alternate energy sources, but those things are monstrosities. They really trash the beauty of the pond and the neighborhood.”

Sampson concedes that he didn’t participate in last summer’s hullabaloo at Town Hall. “We can’t actually see the panels from our house, and we feel pretty fortunate about that,” he says, laughing. “But I feel for my neighbors, especially the ones who live closer to that area.”

“I see them every day,” says Eddie Woodin, a bona fide environmentalist and a neighbor with a clear view of the panels.

Woodin takes the long view of his neighborhood; his lavish, Victorian-influenced home was one of the first units built on the Grondin Pond development 12 years ago.

“When I purchased this home, there wasn’t a blade of grass,” Woodin says. “I think I’ve made up for 10 families with my carbon offsets…you know, with all the greenery.”

Woodin’s assertion isn’t entirely hyperbole; a casual glance at his ornately landscaped 1.41-acre lot–its plethora of lush plantings and bird boxes–conveys a strong sense that he walks the walk.

“You know,” Woodin says, “I’d like to write a book that urban or suburban development doesn’t have to be a negative thing for nature and wildlife. I can present a very strong argument that my home, yard, and the neighborhood have really been a big plus for wildlife. It’s a nice place,” he says of the landscape, “but it was a sandpit.”

And Grondin Pond was–quite literally–a sandpit. Clicking on the “Environment” tab at grondinconstruction.com reveals that the area was a source of aggregate until R. J. Grondin & Sons re-purposed the land. “[We believe] in maintaining a healthy environment…We often go above and beyond what is necessary to help keep our part of the world a cleaner place…[Including reclamation of] old pits and quarries into sites for homes, fields, ponds, wetlands.” Toward this goal, the company filled a depleted gravel pit to form the 29-acre Grondin Pond.

When the water rose, Woodin stocked it

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A bird’s-eye view of the Gardner lakeside property shows photovoltaic panels on the left.

with fish. “We have rainbow trout and golden shiners,” Woodin says. “Oh my goodness, the ospreys come in; they’re feeding on the trout. The kingfishers are feeding, the great blue herons, the egrets. We’ve seen over 140 species of birds from my yard. It’s great, but it was nothing until the neighborhood arrived, did some planting, and made it different.”

Is it possible that Woodin and others are upset that this industrial-reclamation project has backslid toward industrialism in the face of Gardner’s panels?

“I took a very neutral position,” Woodin says. “I give Laurence credit for trying to do the environmentally correct thing, but I think he’s remiss for not having communicated his plans to the neighborhood. The town is remiss for not having something in place. And I think the neighborhood is probably remiss for overreacting to it.”

“When we saw the application, we thought it might be controversial,” says Ron Owens, town manager of Scarborough. “But at the same time, we’re bound to our regulations. This resulted in a perceived failure of the town to protect the other property owners’ interests. They would have preferred a subjective judgment by the town instead of the objective judgment made by Code Enforcement. The property owner had a right to install the panels under the town’s regulations.”

“The people in City Hall aren’t doing their job,” says Joe Schmader, a homeowner at the southern end of Grondin Pond. “The town didn’t do enough due diligence to really understand the scope of the project. They didn’t understand how they were going to be installed. One of the men at the town said he was originally under the impression they

were going to be roof panels.” “I wish the town had done their homework,” says Eric Sampson. “They should’ve thought a little bit more about how the panels would impact the neighborhood.” “I read the covenants,” Gardner says, “and I was clearly within my rights. They permitted ‘structures housing utility services.’” Gardner points to his array. “That’s a structure housing a utility service just as much as an electric utility box or propane tanks. I mean, if you want to put in a wood stove, do you want to go to your neighbors to ask permission?”

Dawna Hauk, another resident from the southern end of the pond, feels that communication between neighbors is important. “I’m a big supporter of green energy, but I wouldn’t do anything like that without talking to my neighbors first.”

“To say what?” asks Gardner. “I had no legal obligation to contact them. So, in other words, it’s none of their business. Do they call me when they want to put up a basketball hoop? I don’t expect them to.”

While it’s true Americans aren’t constitutionally obliged to seek blessings from our neighbors, is it possible New Englanders are bound by social contract? Are we culturally beholden to an opaque series of neighborly codes? If so, did Laurence Gardner–a relative newcomer to Grondin Pond–innocently miss the cues?

Gardner takes a deep breath, and his mood shifts to sincere puzzlement. “It never crossed our minds. You know, we did what we had to do. We went to the town. We got the building permit. It’s an accessory use; it’s no different from a shed in terms of the law. It’s not as if the panels make any noise, or produce any vibration, or smoke or anything. What’s so offensive about them? If you don’t like looking at them, don’t look at them. Look somewhere else. They take up about one degree of your field of vision.

“I have a three-week rule,” Gardner continues. “After three weeks, I don’t see it any longer. And I think that’s true of a lot of folks. The classic example is my wife painted a room at our old place and it was, you know,

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rough. And I knew to just wait three weeks to see what happened. And after three weeks, I didn’t care anymore. If the neighbors had waited three weeks before they hit the roof, the whole issue probably would’ve gone away.”

Eric Sampson sees Gardner’s point, but only partially. “I think they look better than they did initially, but I’m still not convinced that a residential area is the appropriate setting for those. I applaud his effort to decrease his carbon footprint, but I think there may be more appropriate ways to do it.”

“Solar panels aren’t the most attractive things in the world,” says Susan Taylor, an organic farmer from Lyman, “but it’s appalling that people would even consider complaining about them when we so desperately need to do something about our energy use.”

Susan and Dean Taylor own a fourpole solar tracking system very similar to Gardner’s. A few years ago, they used the same system to operate their organic farm in a semi-residential area of Kennebunkport.

“The panels were visible from the road, but we never encountered any complaints from neighbors, or anything like that,” Susan Taylor says.

“Outside our house there’s a telephone pole with wires and a transformer,” says Dean Taylor. “I think solar panels are better looking than wires and poles–and nearly every house has those.”

Current Kennebunkport resident and solar proponent Chuck Leahy takes a different view. When Solar Market presented Leahy with a choice between a higher-efficiency tracking system and a less-efficient yet less-obtrusive design, Leahy decided against the tracking panels.

“We declined because our neighbors across the road would’ve had to look at the damned array all the time,” says Leahy. “The movable panels are like some radar set from a World War II movie.”

Leahy ponders the situation in Scarborough and others like it. “Frankly, the problem with siting these things is that people don’t know their neighbors, or they don’t make an effort to go around and talk to them. My wife and I are both lawyers. We’ve spent our lives negotiating deals and communicating, and I think the only way to make it work in a neighborhood of nice homes is to sit down with folks and say, ‘This is what we’re planning.’” Leahy pauses and laughs. “But of course a lot of people just can’t stand change.

Can’t stand it. I don’t know what the hell you do with people like that.”

“We’re looking at how to deal with it,” Town Manager Ron Owens says when asked about managing future disputes. “For the most part, we probably would allow tracking systems. The question is, how can we develop some kind of standard that would attempt to screen them a little bit more? Can we create a dimensional standard and a buffer to limit their physical presence? We’ve checked with a lot of other communities–Cape Cod communities, for example–and there really aren’t any good regulations on solar panels. In fact, some states preclude municipalities from even having regulations. So we haven’t found a whole lot of help around the country in terms of how to address this issue. There’s a real interest in encouraging alternative power sources, but you have to find a constructive way to deal with the visual impact. We’re by no means ready to say we have an answer to this. We’re still looking into it.”

When asked about the future of solar power, Gardner is passionate. “I hope there will be more. There’s going to be a tipping point. Utility companies can’t build coal-fired power plants anymore. Nobody wants them. They can’t site them because there’s so much opposition to them. We’ve realized they’re much more harmful than the benefits we get from them. So this is the perfect time for government to give solar the nudge. Public policy, it seems to me, should be in favor of public health. And public health requires clean air. It’s a very simple equation. If you factor in the public health costs of dirty air and add it to the price of coal-fired generation, the cost of electricity would be staggering. Nobody wants to do the computation to find out what the true cost to society is. But slowly that’s changing. I’m a firm optimist in that area.”

Asked about neighborhood relations, Gardner is again optimistic. “All that stuff is water under the bridge. It’s a shame it happened, but life goes on. We’ve gotten over it. What are we going to do? We’re not going anywhere. I didn’t put up the panels so we could move,” he laughs.

Eddie Woodin agrees with that assessment. “I think things have calmed down in the neighborhood.” Woodin pauses, then chuckles. “I just hope Laurence plants some cedar trees facing my yard. ‘Larry, I’ll pay for them! C’mon. Work with us a little bit here.’” n

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The 20-Mile Club (continued from page 41) follows the local culinary scene.

When they moved to Portland about five years ago, “we started getting involved with the local farming community,” says Alison, 36, a marketing and communications manager for Creative Working Systems in Portland. “We’d always lived in cities where the food had been anonymous. Here we realized what a great mix of farmers [plus fishermen, cheese makers, bakers, and more] live in Portland, or pretty nearby. The more we knew about them, the more we wanted to know.”

Eating only local food “seemed like an interesting challenge,” as well as an ethical and environmentally responsible way to live, says Peter, 36, a computer systems analyst for the radiology division of Maine Medical Center. He and Alison liked putting their money straight into the farmers’ hands, “instead of supporting some big corporate conglomerates” which so often use pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers and transship their produce all over the planet, guzzling gas.

The LePages joined the Community Supported Agriculture program at Broadturn Farm in Scarborough (where members pay in advance for a share in the season’s harvest), hung out at Portland’s farmers’ markets, and began visiting nearby farms as well. They picked some of their own fruit, dug potatoes, helped to butcher a pig, and even milked a cow in exchange for a supply of raw milk.

Because they knew each farm’s practices, they didn’t worry about food safety. Because they’d seen most of the animals they ate when they were alive, “we knew they were well-treated,” Alison says. She chronicles their adventures on her blog, www.localfoodie.livejournal.com, and is pleased by all the response this generates.

The satisfaction of knowing the stories behind the food and deepening their relationships with many food suppliers soon far outweighed the convenience of just grabbing an anonymous head of lettuce at a supermarket. “Some people say grace before a meal. We sit down and acknowledge where our food comes from,” Alison says. “We connect with so many people–almost all our friends–through food.”

Eating this way does entail challenges. They spent about a month locating sources of food and figuring out how to ensure a

reliable supply of what they’d need. (“Now we don’t think about buying bacon anymore. We think about buying half a pig,” Alison explains.) They had to accept some substitutions (maple syrup and honey for sugar; butter for oil; homemade yogurt or crème fraiche for mayonnaise) and learned to live without some things they enjoyed in the past (especially coffee and chocolate.) Alison gave up baking anything that needed yeast.

They also discovered some creative replacements for “convenience food.” They made “Maine Nachos” with thinly sliced roasted potatoes in place of tortilla chips. They drank hot maple milk instead of hot chocolate. They made their own ice cream so they could sweeten it with blueberries and maple syrup. They snacked on Silvery Moon Creamery’s cheese curds from Smiling Hill Farm and Grandy Oats sea-salted pumpkin seeds.

When winter set in, they had to find innovative ways to keep greens and fresh produce in their lives. So they grew lettuce in their living room, raised several kinds of sprouts in large mason jars in their kitchen, and explored novel techniques for preserving foods–by fermenting them, for instance. “My kitchen has become a little science lab,” Alison quips.

Eating this way takes a lot of work and advance planning, because so many items must be made from scratch. “You have to enjoy spending time in the kitchen,” says Alison, who knows it’s fortunate that she loves to cook.

But with all the added effort have come unexpected benefits. They no longer buy much that comes in boxes or with fancy packaging. “We’ve really reduced our waste,” Peter says. Because they don’t buy fast food or processed products, they’ve actually cut their grocery bills somewhat.

And although they expected that it would be harder to live this way, they’ve found that mealtimes generally have become less stressful. Their local buying “simplified things,” says Alison. “We don’t have to choose from thousands of items in the supermarket. We have a limited palette of wonderful ingredients to work with, and lots of personal connections to them.”

“I’ve felt more energy from the way we eat now,” she continues. “We’re more connected to the seasons, and I think we feel more grounded.” n

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Diving for Dinner (continued from page 49) support “models of sustainable living,” they buy or glean food from local farms in season and grow some produce on a plot in a community garden. They also barter or swap for staples whenever they can. Conrad stresses that their dumpster diving is as much a protest against capitalism, globalization, and the inequities of the economy as it is a practical way to cut grocery bills.

“I know consumerism is an addiction we all have, whether we pay or not,” he explains. “We’re taking advantage of a flaw in a capitalist economy that says it’s better to throw out food than to give it away. I wish it didn’t happen like this, especially when so many poor people don’t have enough to eat. But at least my friends and I are living in a way that isn’t based on injustice and greed. We’re living off waste rather than generating it.”

When I ask to accompany Conrad on a diving expedition, he eventually declines. Perhaps he is afraid I might inadvertently reveal the location of coveted dumpsters he dubs “the cream of the crop.” But he introduces me to Ethan Miller, 30, whom he describes as the best dumpsterer he knows, “a world class diver, a total ride.”

The secret of his success, says Miller, sipping dived tea at his home in Greene, is efficiency. “I know tons of people who are way more intrepid divers, but I’m really systematic about it.” He has created a loose schedule for visiting dumpsters on a route he perfected from Worcester, Massachusetts, through Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Greene. The Massachusetts and New Hampshire stops are important “because too many groceries in Maine have trash compactors.” He targets small supermarkets, bakeries, healthfood stores, alternative grocery stores, and beverage distributors–noting when each store closes, when its employees leave, and other significant aspects of each neighborhood. Starting about 10 p.m., he waits until no one is around “and then I jump in, set up shop, and really operate!”

Carefully opening each garbage bag, he reads expiration dates, ingredient labels and, if he has time, eliminates products “with corn syrup and hydrogenated oils,” which some of his friends consider unhealthy. When he’s finished examining the contents, he’s careful to re-tie the bags and leave the dumpsters looking orderly and neat. Even

garbage deserves respect.

Miller adds that he has never been arrested for diving, although he has received the odd “public service lecture about sanitation and private property from puffed-up police.

“This run is an all-night thing and unbelievably productive,” he continues. If he’s alone, he can fill up every inch of space in his little red Subaru. “Usually, there’s so much that I can’t even take it all.” He shares the bounty with the 10 or so members of the collective with whom he lives (they call themselves ‘JED,’ for Social Justice, Ecology, and Democracy), and with other friends. JED’s home is a partially painted, rambling, jerry-built wooden house on 500 mountainy acres they hope one day to incorporate as a land trust. They grow some of their own food and Miller tends an orchard, in addition to serving as a health outreach worker for Maine migrants.

In the roughly eight years since they’ve been diving, Miller and his friends have landed some terrific finds–such as an entire case of frozen triple-chocolate mousse cake just past its expiration date, a 10-pound solid chocolate bar that was broken in half, a case of wine marred only by dampened labels caused when one bottle broke, and a bin “with almost 30 watermelons, perfectly good except that they were blemished or a little cracked open.”

Even with the excitement of finds like these, though, “I always try to hold onto the feeling of being appalled that this kind of waste exists when 30 million people in the U.S. don’t have the food they need,” Miller says. “It’s ‘score!’ mixed with utter horror. I mean, we don’t want to dumpster dive as if we were shopping at The Gap.”

Still, every dollar they save by sifting through dumpsters frees what money they do have for causes they care about, such as “supporting networks that fight racism, class oppression, gender discrimination, poverty, and injustice,” Miller says.

Neither Miller nor Conrad could say how many people get all or part of their food from dumpsters these days, although they suspect that their numbers are growing, especially among young people looking for alternatives to the traditional economy. But at least half a dozen internet sites offer diving advice. Meetup.com posts announcements of trash tours, and Freegankitchen. com provides lessons for cooking with dumpstered ingredients. n