Performing Arts Center Looks to Expand Marketing

AJ:

Part of the problem is that [Jamie] Grant is the center’s only official staff
member. It’s his job to market the center, but it’s also his job to make sure
events run smoothly. For many of the 97 events he mentioned, Grant said, he had
to open the center and essentially run the building during the event. Grant
acknowledged that he needs to spend more time selling the center than running
events in it. “Every minute that I’m in the theater doing a show is another
minute that I’m not out of the theater getting someone else to do a show,” he
said. Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, a concert tour industry magazine
based in Fresno, Calif., agreed that a venue like the center needs someone to
announce its presence to potential performers.

- John C.L. Morgan

WPAC to Host Earth Day Showing of 'Earth'

The Westbrook Performing Arts Center (WPAC) will be hosting a screening of Earth (see above) this Friday, April 22 to commemorate Earth Day.

The screening begins at 6:30p, and a discussion on what can be done to make Westbrook a more environmentally-conscious city will follow. Admission is free, though donations are welcome.

- John C.L. Morgan

Westbrook Printing Press Driving Force for Maine Poetry

PPH:

Alice Persons tied a pretty purple bow around the book of poetry and dropped it
in the mail. She assumed the chapbook would end up among a stack of others that
Garrison Keillor receives and never reads. Lo and behold, not only did Keillor
pay attention to the book, he read one of the poems as part of his syndicated
radio and online program, "The Writers Almanac." Ever since, Keillor has
returned again and again to the poems published by Persons and her tiny
Westbrook-based Moon Pie Press. In recent years, he's read 24 poems published by
Moon Pie on his radio show, and included four Moon Pie poems in his third
published anthology, "Good Poems, American Places," which came out last week.

- John C.L. Morgan

On "Re:turn"

PPH:

[Artist Aaron] Stephan's project required nine months of hard labor. He grew a
tree in the atrium of the Westbrook Middle School. It's a gorgeous, leafless,
canopied representation of a tree from an old-growth forest. Stephan used lumber
reclaimed from the bowels of Moosehead Lake to make his tree, which measures
about 25 feet high and 16 feet wide, branch to branch.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Creator of Middle School's Public Art Among Maine's 'Most Exciting Artists' (July 26, 2010)

Artisans' Condos to be Done by Early February

AJ:

Downtown Westbrook’s retail community could soon receive an artistic shot in the
arm with the completion of the artisans’ condominiums on Main Street. Located
across the street from China Villa and Guidi’s Diner, the condos at 917 Main St.
could be complete and ready for tenants later this month or in early February,
according to John Gallagher, the executive director of Westbrook Housing, the
organization in charge of the project.

- John C.L. Morgan

Toronto Paper Sings Praises for 'Hardscrabble Sisters'

Globe and Mail:

Many of Jensen's strengths are evident in Gone, the stunning opener to The
Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, a novel in stories. Thanks to [author
Beverly Jensen's] background in theatre, the dialogue--raw, witty--sings
rather than reads.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Another Sparkling Review for 'Hardscrabble Sisters' (August 2, 2010)

Rudy Vallee Headlines New Benefit CD

MPBN on the compilation of Maine musicians, past and present.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Rudy Vallee's "Maine Stein Song" (May 21, 2010)

On Mill-ieu 2

- John C.L. Morgan

Westbrook Veteran Pens 'Intriguing' Memoir

PPH:

Now 86, the Westbrook resident and Maine native
[Dick Goodie] continues his decades-long writing career. His 1984 essay
collection, "The Maine Quality of Running," was well received. So was his 1997
World War II novel, "A Bracelet for Lily." Goodie's most recent book, published
this year, may be best of the three. "Raindrops on a Nail Keg" is a summing-up
collection of essays that touch on three areas that define the author's life:
boyhood on a Maine farm run by his grandmother, life in a World War II infantry
battalion, and the pleasure of running and racing as an over-50 sport fanatic.

- John C.L. Morgan

Housing for Artists Breaks Ground Downtown

AJ:

At the start of the new year, artists will have
three new affordable spaces in which to live and sell their work in downtown
Westbrook. Construction began Monday on a three-unit live/work residential
community for artists. The building at 917 Main St., is the latest project of
Westbrook Housing. It will have three condominium units for artists, which will
consist of upstairs living spaces and downstairs retail spaces for the artists
to sell their work.

- John C.L. Morgan

Daily Paintings

Westbrook artist Caren-Marie Michel is attempting to complete fifty-two paintings throughout the month of August. You can follow Michel's progress here.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Westbrook's Portrait Laureate (January 18, 2008)

Another Sparkling Review for 'Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay'

PPH:

"The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay" is a novel of national scope and importance
but is also a Maine treasure. Any thoughts to expanding or creating a new
"Mirror of Maine: One Hundred Books that Reveal the History of the State of
Maine and the Life of its People" (Orono: UMO-Baxter Society 2000) ought to take
this volume into serious consideration.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: More Praise for Beverly Jensen's Book (July 12, 2010)

More Praise for Beverly Jensen's Book

The Kingdom Journal:

I sat down with the manuscript and began to read. What struck me first is that I
felt that I knew these characters. I knew them the way I knew my neighbors of
decades, and even my own family. Beverly Jensen’s hard-bitten country folk
seemed real to me in a way that I had only very rarely experienced before.
Reading her manuscript was reminiscent of the day I discovered Flannery
O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find and read it in a sitting. I
finished Beverly’s book about ten o’clock that evening. The Red Sox were playing
the Yankees on television, and I am a card-carrying member of Red Sox Nation.
But I had entirely forgotten about the baseball game. Instead, I had read a
literary masterwork.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Westbrook Native's Book Has Been Published (June 30, 2010)

Did You Know?

Did you know Westbrook native Rudy Vallee was among the five guests to appear in the first installment of Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show?

Taking place on October 1, 1962, that first show also featured Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford, Tony Bennett, and Mel Brooks. A reflection on the inaugural show can be seen here.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Rudy Vallee: Modest Inspirer of Goose Flesh or National Menace?

Westbrook Native's Book Has Been Published

The Viking Press has published the late Westbrook native Beverly Jensen's novel, The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Stephen King Praises Beverly Jensen's Forthcoming Book (February 18, 2010)
Related: Beverly Jensen's Web Site is Up, Book to be Published June 28 (January 21, 2010)
Related: Wet Wool, Warm Whiskey, and a Cold Church (January 2, 2010)

Rudy Vallee's "Maine Stein Song"

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: A Look at Efforts to Secure a Rudy Vallee Commemorative Stamp (June 1, 2009)

(Naked) Shakespeare at Riverbank

PPH:

Get thee hence to Westbrook's Riverbank Park, where
methinks you'll find redemption at the Westbrook Shakespeare Festival. This
weekend and next, the Naked Shakespeare company, presented by Acorn Productions,
will hold outdoor performances of "As You Like It" and "Romeo and Juliet" in the
park. But soft! There is more, my liege.

For those of you who are wondering if this means the recent rash of topless marches and public nudity in Maine has now spread to the Paper City, the theater company's name is figurative.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Acorn News Flash (October 20, 2009)

SPACE Gallery to Screen Al Hawkes Documentary

Longtime Westbrook resident Al Hawkes is the subject of a documentary film that will be screened by Portland's SPACE Gallery on Friday, May 14.

The film, which is entitled The Eventful Life of Al Hawkes, focuses on Hawkes's role in the cultivation of a country music scene in New England in the 1940s and 1950s, including his founding of the record label Event Records in 1956.

The fee for the 7:30p screening and a post-screening Q&A with Hawkes is $8. FMI, see here.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: On Al Hawkes (April 9, 2010)

Stephen King Praises Beverly Jensen's Forthcoming Book

Via Jay Silverman, Jensen's widower:

Every now and then--maybe two or three times in a decade--a book comes along
that's so good you want to buttonhole strangers on the street, show it to them,
and say: "Read this! It will fill you up and make you glad you're alive!" The
late Beverly Jensen's The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay is exactly that
kind of book. It roars from hilarity to horror to heartbreak, sometimes in the
space of ten or twenty pages, then back again to hilarity. It's profane, loving,
hardnosed, and completely beautiful.

In other Beverly Jensen news, her short story "Wake" (the short story that appeared in the edition of The Best American Short Stories that King edited) has been translated into Uzbek.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Beverly Jensen's Web Site is Up, Book to Be Published June 28 (January 21, 2010)

Westbook to Host L.L. Bean's Imagemakers

Quad/Graphics:

As part of the unique partnership established by this agreement, L.L.Bean will
build Studio 1912, a state-of-the-art, 16,000-square-foot all digital
photography studio in Westbrook, a Portland, Maine suburb, about 20 miles from
L.L.Bean’s Freeport corporate headquarters. The Studio 1912 name reflects the
year that L.L.Bean started in business. Quad/Graphics Photography Services will
manage studio operations in cooperation with L.L.Bean’s Photography Operations
and Creative Department.

- John Morgan