National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.ORG (News of the United States).

The New York Times picked up the story this afternoon. Its own reporting stated. “The potential deal, which has not yet been finalized, has alarmed conservationists and former federal officials, who say that Yosemite, the crown jewel of the nation’s park system, should be off limits to development.

“The proposal, details of which were first reported by the news outlet NOTUS, calls for transferring a small parcel just inside the western boundaries of Yosemite to a Las Vegas-based company. That firm wants to build a road and develop two 40-acre parcels near the park, according to documents submitted to Congress this year and reviewed by The Times.

“In exchange, the company would purchase land of equivalent value, either near Yosemite or elsewhere in California, and hand it over to the Park Service, the documents show."

NOTUS reported:

“Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to a company that, through a web of limited-liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. Officials are proposing the Park Service give up the land or ‘interest’ in the land in the form of an easement, and in return receive land of equal value somewhere in California that has yet to be decided.

“The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves,” NOTUS reported. “Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests.

“The property’s current access road is more than 10 miles from an entrance to the park, and much further from Yosemite’s most iconic sights. Without a new road, visitors to the property — whether it be developed into a hotel, resort or private residence — would need to drive an hour and a half in a circuitous route to reach the popular Yosemite Valley.

“The planning process has created a tense environment inside the National Park Service for the people involved; Kingsbarn’s proposal is backed by the full weight of the Interior Department’s top political leadership, sources said.

“They want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks,” said one person familiar with the conversations.

“The political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual,” said another person familiar with the conversations and the park’s history,” NOTUS stated.

If the deal goes through, the Trump administration would be breaking with 150 years of American precedent at the birthplace of the national park system. The federal government has historically strived to expand the crown-jewel national parks, not give up land within them.

In a statement to NOTUS, a spokesperson for the National Park Service said “no final decisions have been made,” but that any land exchange or access proposals “would be subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations, and Departmental policies, including required environmental review and public notification processes.”

SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Aug. 24, 2026 — Common Good Soup Kitchen, the beating heart of the village, has acquired the right to purchase the building it shares with the Post Office and launched a capital campaign to raise the cash needed to buy it.

Executive Director Debra Estep said she has signed a purchase and sales agreement and that the goal is to raise $3 million to buy the building with a balloon payment due January 2028. The campaign has started. You may reach Estep on CGSK’s website.

The building is the former Southwest Harbor Motor Co. and has served generations of businesses since 1938 when it was a General Motors dealership.

The sellers, Ken and Chiaolin Korona, ran the Chow Maine Asian food business from the building before moving it to Trenton.

The purchase, Estep said, would assure the soup kitchen, famous for its popovers, has a permanent home. It was founded in 2009 by Bill Morrison and Larry Stettner and operated at Annabelle’s restaurant at Seawall until 2015, when the facility was razed. It has been in the current building since.

But the soup kitchen was on a yearly lease, Estep said.

In addition to the soup kitchen and the Post Office, it houses Bub’s Burrito’s on the ground floor and 10 offices on the second floor. The parking lot is included in the transaction, Estep said.

Morrison, a chef, initially made soup and delivered it directly to people who needed food. He met up with Stettner, who taught psychology at Wayne State University for three decades.

Rather than requiring people to identify themselves as needy and come to a conventional charity operation, they tried to make the food available without stigma. Stettner later described the concept as an “anti-soup kitchen.”

Common Good learned in April 2015 that the building housing Annabelle’s was going to be demolished; it came down in May. At almost exactly that time, Korona, co-owner of Chow Maine Asian Specialties, contacted Stettner. Chow was moving out of its commercial kitchen in the village center, and Korona offered the space to Common Good.

According to the Bangor Daily News, Common Good inherited a remarkably suitable setup - a commercial kitchen, courtyard, floors and other infrastructure.

The famous popover operation wasn’t actually the original concept. According to the Portland Press Herald, it started doing the popovers around 2011.

It developed into an ingenious seasonal financing model: summer visitors ate popovers, oatmeal, coffee, homemade jam and butter and paid whatever they wished. The proceeds subsidized free meals for year-round residents during the much harder winter months.

By 2016, volunteers were baking 400–600 popovers a day, sometimes 700 on weekends, and the summer operation was generating about $35,000 to support the winter soup kitchen, according to news articles.

The underlying problem was particularly acute on MDI because many residents depended on seasonal/service-industry employment and faced high living costs during the winter.

Over time, Common Good has spawned many brand extensions.

Under music director Doug VanGorder and master of ceremony Larry Wilson, its ukulele band has exploded in popularity.

The band performs on Sundays under a tent, drawing SRO crowds. It raises donations at weekly gigs at Beal’s Lobster Pound and Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound at the original location at Seawall.

The band also hires out for private events.

Another program is its twice monthly yard sale, run by volunteer Amy Trafton.

This season, it launched “Small Art/Big Heart” - tiny paintings by local artists sold to raise even more money for the cause.

Southwest Harbor is the only remaining town on the island which caters to a diverse population, anchored by public services such as the Common Good, the Harbor House community center, its five-star library and several churches.

Also within walking distance are Pemetic School, two banks, the town office building, several restaurants, insurance and real estate agencies, Carroll’s Drug Store, a coffee shop, hardware store and a drug-free community center.

Residents are not fearful of going downtown, as they are in Bar Harbor, where the food pantry is dominated by underpaid H2B visa workers and food-insecure college students.

And you don’t need a second mortgage to buy groceries as in Northeast Harbor where the Pine Tree Market sells a 12-ounce bag of Starbucks coffee for $25.

In dead winter, Common Good offers dinners every Friday and lunches every Wednesday. Businesses like Harbor Table, Next Level Sports Bar, Peter Trout Pub keep their lights on and assure the village stays a year-round community.

I have been a patron since the beginning at Annabelle’s. The experience has given me fond memories, like the propinquity I felt every time I got to hear local legend Ruth Grierson play her fiddle. Here she was accompanied by Deb Krysak in 2000 when she was 92.

SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Aug. 18, 2026 - When I experience a moving, transcendent oratory which touches the core of our humanness, my impulse is to share it.

Tuesday night at the Southwest Harbor Public Library, at a reception for donors and volunteers, I was witness to such an event.

The children’s librarian, Miss Mae, introduced the keynote speaker Carol Null, who has been teaching kindergarteners at Pemetic School for most of 23 years. (Pemetic is across Main Street from the library.)

Null took the mic and taught us that no matter our age, we still have much to learn about the magic of books and the desultory treasures of a small town library.

Here was her speech:

Good evening. Thank you for that warm introduction, Miss Mae.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been bringing children from Pemetic School over to collaborate with the Southwest Harbor Library.

And I have to say: the library has been one of the most seamless community partners I’ve ever worked with.

We don’t need a lot of words. We don’t have long meetings where we drown ourselves in details.

Usually, we start with a seed of an idea-and then we let it take us where we’re meant to go.

And where we’ve gone has included singing, dancing, feeding the birds, puppet shows, scavenger hunts, prizes, exploring the shelves for the perfect book cover - and, of course, stories.

Lots and lots of stories.

I also have to say that Miss Mae is the only person I know who can read two books in a row to a group of five-year-olds and keep every single one of them listening.

She uses voices. She uses expressions. She chooses books that are sometimes familiar and sometimes completely new to us.

And somehow, her magical book selection manages to support both my teaching and the academic goals of my students without any of us feeling like we’re doing “academic goals.”

It just feels like a really good time at the library. And I think that is part of the magic.

Because we have a shared purpose.

We care deeply about nurturing and nudging children toward happy memories around libraries. We want them to know that the library is reliable. Consistent. Dependable.

And those are things we all crave in a place. So, we start there.

Most of my 23 years at Pemetic have been spent teaching kindergarten. l have become very comfortable showing up places with 12 five-year-olds.

And when I say “comfortable,” I mean I have developed a highly specialized skill set for pretending that everything is completely under control.

The library is one of those places where, remarkably, it usually is. We walk in.

The children muscle the door open and are greeted by a smile from whoever happens to be reading in the main room.

And then something happens. They don’t need me anymore.

They seem to notice they outnumber me greatly. They become confident.

They become independent. They know where they’re going.

They head to the children’s room to greet Miss Mae, and then they slowly scatter. One finds the stuffed animals.

Someone starts looking for a puppet. Someone is coloring.

Someone is telling me they are going to use the bathroom.

Someone else is already scanning the room for the first clue in a scavenger hunt. Ah - The monthly scavenger hunt.

It may look like a very simple activity.

But I know it does something much bigger. It whispers to them:

“It’s okay.”

“You’re allowed to be anywhere in here.” “Go look.”

“Figure it out.”

And suddenly, those five-year-olds become authorities on the library. They know how the space works.

They know where things are.

They know that the library belongs to them And that is a big deal.

Because I remember being in middle school and learning that Judy Blume had written a book that was in a section outside the children’s room at my library.

I was dropped off at the Hingham Library and allowed to be there by myself. And I plotted.

I plotted the opportunity to get my hands on this book. It took me three visits.

The first visit was simply to gather the bravery to walk out of the children’s room and do a lap around the adult sections.

The next time, I found the card catalog and figured out where the book would be. I walked past the shelves and located the B authors.

And eventually, I mustered the courage-the absolute bravado-to pull “Forever” off the shelf. And I quickly flipped to the rumored page.

I didn’t have to.

It was already marked with a dog-eared fold. I read it.

And honestly? Not impressed. I put it back.

And I walked back to the children’s room.

Nobody scolded me.

Nobody told me I had gone to the wrong room. Nobody told me l didn’t belong there.

And what that translated to for me was:

Freedom.

Choice.

Self-regulation.

Problem solving.

Independence.

And even connecting with other people through literature. I didn’t have those words for it at the time.

I just knew that I had figured something out.

And I think about that when I watch my kindergarteners move through this library. Because what looks simple from the outside often isn’t simple at all.

A child choosing a book is practicing choice.

A child wandering through the shelves is practicing independence.

A child searching for a clue is practicing problem solving and observation skills. A child listening to a story is building language, imagination, attention, empathy.

A child recognizing a librarian and knowing, “She knows me,” is building community.

And a child who learns, year after year, that there is a place where they can walk through the door, be welcomed, explore, discover something, and leave with something that matters to them - that child is learning something about what a community can be.

Those are the ripples.

Our visit may last an hour.·

The puppet show may last ten minutes. The scavenger hunt may last twenty.

The book may take five minutes to read. But the feeling can last much, much longer.

And maybe someday one of my kindergarteners will be a middle schooler, standing at the edge of the children’s room, looking toward a section they haven’t explored yet.

Maybe they’ll wonder if they’re allowed to go there. And I hope they remember:

Yes.

Go look. Figure it out.

You belong here.

That, to me, is what the library gives children. Not just books.

Not just stories.

Not just a place to visit.

It gives them a place to practice being independent, curious, capable human beings. And if we’re lucky, they won’t even realize they’re learning all of that.

They’ll just think they’re having a really good time at the library. And I think that’s a pretty wonderful way to learn.

Thank you.

Recent development in downtown led to a proposal by the Planning Board to cap all new lodging in the village at 12 rooms. That proposal is on the agenda for the Town Council Tuesday night.

“Unfortunately, I guess I cannot prove a negative,” Coston stated in an email. “But I assure you there is no plan in the works to redevelop that property. Even if the moratorium ended and everything was somehow magically feasible to do some new development there, I wouldn’t have anything to submit. I wish I could prove a negative and put this to bed.”

The town has a moratorium on new lodging construction. The council faces decisions whether to extend that moratorium and to put the 12-room cap on the November ballot for voters to decide.

Coston acquired the properties which housed the Mexican restaurant Jalapeno’s and Cherrystones next door. They both now have new tenants.

Coston was reacting to an email I sent him from a reader who speculated that he could build hotels with more rooms than the Pathmaker and who used AI to render images of what those hotels would look like.

“In regards to Jalapeno’s (Salsa Verde) and Cherrystones (Pancake Factory), these buildings are entirely leased out to long-term tenants (including a couple of year-round businesses),” stated Coston.

“If my intention were to see that these properties, as your reader states, ‘may be developed soon when that [moratorium] ends to tear these buildings down,’ why would I lock them into long-term leases?”

Asked how long the leases were, he replied, “5+ years plus potential extension provisions. Anything under 5 years I would call short-term. Everyone in there either was already on a long-term lease or signed one when I bought it.

“And why would I have recently stated, as quoted in the Bar Harbor Story on June 23rd, ‘If it is perceived that more time is needed in regards to the moratorium in order to get this right, nobody is fighting the moratorium anymore.’

“Needless to say, I am not waiting for the moratorium to end in order to tear these buildings down, and the only redevelopment plans that exist for these properties are the ones conjured by your reader’s AI. For what it’s worth, I own more real estate than just lodging - I own office buildings, apartments, restaurant spaces, and retail spaces both in and outside of Bar Harbor.

“Those properties abut, but there are other abutting properties that result in this weirdly-shaped complex with interrupted street frontage and a couple of attached buildings that don’t belong to me.

“This would make redevelopment extremely difficult if not impossible, not just something I can choose to do on a whim if the moratorium were to end, as your reader suggests.”

Regarding his family’s ownership of 200 and 216 Main Street, Coston stated,

“I do not have any say in anything that takes place at 200/216 Main Street. Those parcels were bought by my grandfather probably 50 years ago, were put into a trust when he passed away in the 1990s, and are now managed by my aunt. My cousin runs a second-hand clothing and home decor shop there in a building my aunt had constructed 10 or 15 years ago. I have no control over anything that goes on there (I couldn’t even if I wanted to - it’s controlled by a trust in which I don’t have a vote). Your reader is mistaken in regards to his assertion regarding those properties.

“Albert Meadow is leased out to various tenants including a massage therapist, a law office, and year-round residential apartments,” Coston stated. “I have no designs on redevelopment of this property. I purchased it for use as apartments and office spaces.

“Our company's administrative office is located in that building alongside the various aforementioned commercial and residential tenants.

“If you’re willing to consider this from a non-biased, rational, plain-factual-business perspective, you will find there are numerous key differences between the Pathmaker lots and the Cherrystones lots that render them entirely non-comparable. I will list just a few:

“The Pathmaker lots cost a fraction of what the Cherrystones properties cost because the Pathmaker lots had zero existing businesses (or buildings at all, for the most part) on them. Does it make economic sense that I’d spend $7M on a bunch of buildings to turn right around and tear them down? Pathmaker’s lot cost under $1M. Economically, it’s apples to oranges.

“Because the Pathmaker lots had no existing businesses, the only purpose for buying the lots would’ve been to create one. That is not the case at Cherrystones, where there are existing businesses that produce income. Tearing down the income-generating assets that supported the purchase of a property that cost, what, 5x more even when scaled for size, is not an obvious or even sensible or feasible thing to do like building a business on a relatively inexpensive vacant lot is.

“The Cherrystones lots are a hodgepodge of various shapes and configurations with other buildings owned by other people attached directly along the property lines, whereas Pathmaker was basically a rectangle with nothing directly alongside to or attached across its property lines.”

(Actually, the Pathmaker’s back wall butted up against the Black Friar Inn, whose owner complained bitterly about how the hotel construction encroached upon his property and created disturbance for his guests.)

“The Pathmaker lots are on a slope whereas Cherrystones is flat. This makes using underground parking to support the room-to-acreage comparative calculus you’re attempting to perform irrelevant.

“Zoning regulations are completely different now than they were when Pathmaker was permitted and built,” Coston stated.

“There are no plans for any hotel at Cherrystones. Only I would know - and I am telling you, there are no such plans. Call Brian D. Shaw Inc., the only builder I deal with, and ask if they have worked on anything in regards to any type of plans for any lodging or other development on those properties.

“They will tell you, ‘no,’ because there are no such plans. The buildings are leased to restaurant operators long-term and that’s the end of the story. They’re income properties. I own several such investments. People just focus on the lodging.”

I asked Coston if that were the case, why didn’t he support the 12-room cap?

“Because the 12-room cap makes nearly every property I own non-conforming. No sane person in my position, in their right mind, could support that,” he stated.

“The economic handcuffs are numerous, but here’s the biggest problem, in a very simple nutshell: When (and it’s a when, not an if) Main Street Motel, a 1970s wooden box that meets zero modern regulatory or industry standards, needs to be redeveloped ... what am I to do about that?

“If there’s a 12-room limit, I’m stuck with a rotting wooden box. It has 44 rooms and I’m however many millions into it... I can’t replace the thing with 12 rooms. So, with a 12-room limit I’m basically pushed out the door - sell my holdings to private equity before all my old, non-conforming structures go down the tubes.

“I don’t think this sounds good for Bar Harbor. If people think I’m awful, wait until they’re dealing with billion-dollar global real estate executives.”

On Expedia, the Main Street Motel is asking $389 a night for a room. That penciled out to $17,116 a night assuming full occupancy.

Coston bought it in February 2022 for $4,511,000 from MDI Hospital.

Coston may be forgiven for sounding defensive.

Other lodging owners believe that the Pathmaker Hotel and a failed effort to build a three-story hotel next to the elementary school were the spark plugs which ignited a backlash against the entire lodging industry, leading to the current moratorium.

Coston’s partner, St. Germain, was the sitting chair of the Planning Board when they used a loophole to apply for permits for a bed and breakfast which did not require approval by the board and only the approval by the code enforcement officer.

But they named the 46-room Pathmaker Hotel for what is.

In October 2024, Coston drew widespread criticism for a three-story hotel overlooking the elementary school.

“I think that small hotel would’ve been a great improvement to that property - it would’ve remedied the single worst curb cut in town, supported year-round jobs including salaried management positions, contributed meaningfully to the year-round economy, and replaced old and dated housing with new-and-improved free housing opportunities for year-round resident staff members,” Coston stated.

“I had also offered to the School Board to pay for development of a new sidewalk on abutting Town property that would have improved the safety and appearance of the area for all, and I offered to pay for fencing and additional plantings between my property and the school, not to mention simple building modifications such that balconies would be eliminated and no windows would face the school.

“But regardless of how I might feel about it, that ship has sailed, and your reader needn’t worry about it.”

Not everyone is sold that the town doesn’t need to put brakes on lodging development.

“My impression (& I suspect you hear much the same when you talk to residents) is that the majority actually want NO new hotels in Bar Harbor, but especially in our small, already congested downtown,” stated resident Cara Ryan, a former Warrant Committee member, in an email to the council.

“What we do want and truly need are businesses, services, and housing for our year-round community. At this point, hotels are at the absolute other end of this seesaw in terms of the basic needs of a living town, o u r town. The siren song of money and developers has to be resisted if we’re going to thrive.

“So please, do continue the revised lodging moratorium just a bit longer, figure a few last areas out, and let’s finally start seriously saying No to overdevelopment.

“With hotels & other forms of transient accommodation being created all around us (on island & off), there’s little we can do about visitors flooding Bar Harbor. But with smart zoning, we can protect our downtown from becoming one big hotel. We can keep its scale & charm, and we can level the playing field for businesses & mixed uses (including housing) to set up on Cottage and Main. But only if we say No to more hotels (or at least big hotels) in our Downtown Village.”

“If you’re willing to consider banning new lodging from DV 1 & 2, then it makes sense to hold off on the current amendment. If you believe zoning out new hotels from DV is somehow wrong, even when the majority would prefer it, at least give voters the chance to vote in the L 12 cap in November.

“With our new definitions, that’s still a sizable hotel. And with nothing to keep a developer from building 2 or 3 side by side, still skirting the cap, we’re sadly setting ourselves up to lose crucial chunks of what might have been a real downtown, one that benefits more than a few developers.

“I saw over the weekend that the hotel recently built on UMO’s campus is now being retrofitted to become student housing. You may also know Bangor has a program to convert hotels into desperately needed affordable housing. Doesn’t it just make sense to put the brakes on hotels in a town already bursting at the seams with them at the very moment our year-round working residents need homes? Let’s focus & solve this part of the equation now so we can move on to finally creating housing solutions.”

Warrant Committee member Carol Chappell is worried that the council will not move the proposed 12-room cap to the November ballot because some feel the cap is too low.

She urged followers of her newsletter to “Let the Town Council know your opinion Tuesday, Aug 18th, Town Council Meeting, 6:30, Municipal Building.”

On July 5, I published the article, “Is Bar Harbor council poised to scuttle 12-room cap on lodging in village?”

I wrote the first article on the Pathmaker Hotel in July 2021.

Coston is the owner of Stay Bar Harbor, which lists 12 properties.

MOUNT DESERT, Aug. 14, 2026 - Google “Tyler Austin Harper” and check out the tsunami of search results in the four days since the Atlantic published his essay, “Why I Quit the Tenure Track,” about his five years as a professor at Bates College.

(The Atlantic promises one free article to non-subscribers.)

Harper came from a working class black family and arrived in Lewiston in 2020 for a tenure-track job.

He used his experience at Bates to argue that elite academia’s pursuit of progressive institutional goals has sometimes become performative and ideologically constraining, while distracting universities from intellectual pluralism, class inequality and their treatment of less-secure academic workers.

The essay is entertaining and funny. Here is a slice:

“All of this social-justice rhetoric also felt wildly hypocritical. The same October day that the dean promised to abolish ‘retardants to progress’ —including classism—adjunct faculty and staff announced that they were starting a union drive, citing low pay and poor working conditions at the college.

“The union was intended to be ‘wall-to-wall,’ meaning that it would include not just non-tenure-track faculty but also people working in facilities, the dining hall, and other nonacademic roles on campus. The administration’s skulduggery started almost immediately … by November, Bates had hired the same consulting firm that was helping Amazon crush labor organizing on Staten Island.

“I began to develop a case of political vertigo. There I was, joining my colleagues in sifting through our curriculum like anti-racist truffle pigs; assigning an Afro Caribbean graphic novel, Marshallese ecopoetry and the like to diversify my syllabi; and organizing a ‘Decolonization and Liberation’–themed MLK Day celebration meant to honor a civil-rights leader who had been assassinated while supporting sanitation workers agitating for basic labor rights.

“Meanwhile, the college was paying ungodly sums to corporate mercenaries to ensure that it could continue exploiting its most vulnerable employees. But if administrators felt the least bit sheepish about their hypocrisy, they didn’t show it.”

In Harper’s telling, the problem is a combination of ideological conformity, administrative incentives, class blindness, and institutional hypocrisy.

His is a first-person polemic, not an investigation of Bates. Harper selects experiences that support his interpretation of the institution.

There are already academics arguing that some of the events he describes are ordinary features of junior-faculty life that he interprets too dramatically.

This Facebook page is filling up with plenty of folks weighing in on the merits of Harper’s essay.

Other recommendations: “James” by Percival Everett, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain and Richard Russo’s “Under the Falls”

A few weeks ago, I listened to two audiobooks simultaneously - Pulitzer Prize winner “James” and “Huck Finn.” I would switch back and forth at the end of each chapter to compare the stories and probe how Everett’s version of the slave named James began to diverge from Twain’s slave Jim, companion to the boy Huck Finn.

Once was not enough. I’ll probably try it again.

Richard Russo, who won the Pulitzer for “Empire Falls” was the main attraction at last year’s celebration of the 130th year of the Southwest Public Library.

It’s not difficult to imagine the author’s latest book, a short thriller, as based in a small Maine town like the fictitious Empire Falls.

“Under the Falls” is set in up-state New York, in the Adirondacks. This was the Times’s review.

(I would read everything that Russo writes, along with those of Amor Towles, Ann Patchett and our own Christina Baker Kline.)

Live music events

Opera Acadia launches its initial season with “La Traviata,” the most professionally performed opera in the world on Aug. 21 and 22 at the Collins Performing Arts Center at the University of Maine in Orono.

The opera was founded by soprano Sarah Joyce Cooper, artistic director, and Eric Mahl, music director/conductor.

The opera’s website stated:

“After the rousing success of last season’s performances of Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, Mahl and Cooper return to Downeast, Maine with a fully-staged, fresh interpretation of Verdi’s La Traviata.

“Featuring the Opera Acadia Orchestra & Chorus, this immersive, colorful, and heart-wrenching production directed by Marshall Hughes showcases the talents of Downeast favorites alongside internationally renowned singers, whose talents have graced stages across the US and Europe.”

The story:

“From tragedy, Violetta has risen to the pinnacle of late 1960’s high-society, demanding the attention and intrigue of the wealthiest and most highly-esteemed men and women of the elite. Yet, beneath a shiny and glamorous exterior, Violetta longs for love. Desperate to keep her devastating illness a secret, she is running out of time to find the happiness that has eluded her for so long. Drama of the highest order unfolds as she navigates love and sacrifice in one of the greatest operas ever written.”

(La Traviata became my favorite opera when I heard a singer from the Met get up from his chair at Consiglio’s restaurant in New Haven in 1975 and belt out the drinking song, the opera’s most famous aria.)

Headliner Christopher Johnson at Bar Harbor Music Festival Saturday

Chopin, Debussy, and the impressive Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss arranged for virtuoso piano by Schulz-Evler, will be performed by pianist Christopher Johnson Aug. 15 and 10:30 a.m. and again at 7:30 a.m. at St. Savior Episcopal Church on Mount Desert Street.

The program will include:

• Nocturne Op.9, No. 1 in B-flat Minor..... Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

• Nocturne Op. 62, No. 2 in E Major

• Piano Sonata Op. 31, No. 3 in E-flat Major.....Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

BAR HARBOR, Aug. 12, 2026 - It’s like the town just had successful cataract surgery.

Last week it introduced its new streaming platform on youtube after a year of frustrating battles with its ancient and unreliable streaming service, Town Hall Streams.

It also acquired new hearing aids, as the new platform renders audio clearly - a huge improvement over the muffled and sometimes incoherent noises from Town Hall Streams.

Many residents had given up on attending municipal meetings in person. Paid parking alone was a huge deterrent on top of trying to find a spot near the municipal building.

During the pandemic, governments suspended traditional in-person quorum rules to maintain operations safely during lockdowns. Municipalities quickly deployed video platforms like Zoom and live streaming to keep local governments functioning.

“Hybrid” meetings - combination of in-person and remote participation - became a facile alternative.

“Remote public comment is a keystone of any transparent, accessible democracy because the service allows community members who are disabled, older, caregivers, students, hourly paid and working-class to make their voices heard in local government,” stated the Sierra Club.

“Without remote public comment, members of the public are required to take time out of their day to attend public meetings that often occur during working hours, preventing the voices of vulnerable community members from being heard.”

Southwest Harbor, under the management of Town Clerk Jennifer LaHaye and a new policy enacted by the select board, has by far the most transparent municipal meeting regime on the island.

Every one of its boards and committees are live streamed, including its newly formed land use review committee. And every video is uploaded the next day, along with an AI text of the meeting.

The regional school system on MDI, also known as AOS 91, has the most restrictive access to public information.

None of its school committee meetings have remote access, only its regional school board.

As a result, none of its school committee meetings have live video to archive.

Most school committee members don’t return calls, from my experience.

So is it surprising that its school organization plan is again facing an embarrassing rejection in November? More on that in a subsequent post.

Maine law does not strictly require municipal bodies to live-stream their regular public meetings, though they must allow physical public access and follow specific rules if they choose to hold remote or hybrid sessions.

Under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) and Title 1, §403-B, traditional public proceedings require an in-person physical location accessible to the public. Traditional open-air town meetings cannot be conducted solely via remote methods.

If a municipal board or council decides to permit remote participation for its members or allow public remote access during a hybrid meeting, Title 1, §403-B mandates that the body first adopt a written remote participation policy after a public hearing. Not every town has done that.

If a meeting is conducted using remote video or telephone technology, the mechanism used must allow the public to simultaneously hear (and see, if video is used) the proceedings, and the public must be given a reasonable opportunity to participate. However, if technology fails during an otherwise properly convened in-person quorum, it does not automatically invalidate the physical meeting. [1, 2]

Individual citizens have the statutory right under Title 1, §404 to film, tape, record, or live-broadcast public municipal proceedings, provided it does not actively interfere with the orderly conduct of the meeting.

Perhaps the most blatant violation of this public trust is the Mount Desert Warrant Committee, which under chair Phil Lichtenstein, is run more like a private club than a public entity.

Lichtenstein told me he didn’t want electronic archiving of the meetings to interfere with members’ ability to “speak freely.”

What’s the benefit of speaking freely if it’s hidden from the public?

Major points of contention:

• The new regional school district would bail out Bar Harbor’s monstrous debt - $130 million for its new school - which would be absorbed by all member towns.

• SWH would get only two votes, as opposed to three for each of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert, whose tax valuation is heavily weighted in their favor.

• All towns would be able to vote on all candidates, so Bar Harbor residents may vote on candidates in SWH even though they must be SWH residents.

• Subsidy of Coast Guard families whose children get only $13,000 each from the federal government while the cost of educating each students is $36,000, the tap picked up by local taxpayers.

• Lack of a clear vision for a middle school and what each town has to absorb or to contribute.

• Unequal educational services - Zboray said that algebra is not taught in Tremont and that consolidation would fix that. (Shocking to me that one town would be so marginalized.)

Vice chair Natasha Johnson was the most vocal skeptic of the consolidation plan.

She picked apart Zboray’s assertion that the new district would take over ownership of all the school buildings, pointing out that the various school properties on the island have different ownership structures and responsibilities.

“So I had emailed you on July 1 and said that you had been quoted in the Bar Harbor story, as well as some other places, specifically talking about acquiring the buildings, and had only been talking about taking the title to the buildings for each of the respective schools that we're talking about,” Johnson said.

“My question to you is in regards to that, because if you then start expanding that to the parcels that they could potentially be on or surrounding and being used, it's vastly different within each town.

“I went on and started looking at all the different tax maps and assessment information for all of the different towns, so each town has a varying number of parcels that the schools use in each one of those municipalities, whether it's their school field or a pool or a parking lot or something to that effect.

“So I'm seeing some disparities in regards to how that would work financially, or not financially, but as far as an assessed valuation, so to speak, of what the town would be relinquishing to the RSU (regional school unit).

“Because if you take title to all those parcels, it's very different than if you take title to the buildings themselves and not the surrounding parcels.

“So in the town of Southwest Harbor, you may or may not know, in 2001 and prior, we have had a lease with Harbor House, for example.

“So you might assume that the primary playground is on school property. It's actually not. It's on a separate parcel, so that's why I'm asking about parcel versus building, and what have you looked at that at all, so that each municipality understands the acreage, the evaluation that goes along with it, and what you're actually asking us financially to give to the RSU, and is that comparable among the different towns?”

That was an example of the detailed questions for which Zboray was unprepared to address.

More of that is expected to come the next three months before a vote on Nov. 3.

Even in Bar Harbor, there was not a unanimous support for consolidation.

The school committee’s vote there on Aug. 3 was split in favor of recommending the school reorganization plan while that same night, the Mount Desert Select board and its town officials sought more clarity about its role in the process, according to Bar Harbor Story.

School Board Vice Chair Misha Mytar and new board member Alana Beard voted against the recommendation in Bar Harbor.

If voters approve the plan in November, the new school district would manage all the public schools for Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Tremont and Trenton.

The select board meeting Tuesday night may be viewed here.

SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Aug. 10, 2026 - Despite being told in writing by the interim code enforcement officer that he doesn’t have a legal building permit, the owner of 72 Clark Point Road has continued to work on the project, neighbors say.

That is the latest in one of the bitterest zoning fights in town history involving a New York real estate lawyer who used a 14-year-old variance to build a two-story, three-bedroom guest house two inches away from a neighbor’s property.

Interim code officer Angela Chamberlain recently denied his application for a certificate of occupancy for the guest house which is near completion.

That was the first official act by the town staff since the Appeals Board ruled last September that the house exceeded a 2012 variance and constituted a "new use," requiring Planning Board review.

Now the town, an abutting neighbor with standing in the case and the interim code officer all seem to agree - that a 2012 variance was for a setback of 13 feet and not 15 feet as it is now constructed.

Furthermore, the neighbor, Dan and Ann Selmi of 66 Clark Point Road, pointed out that that the variance was for an unoccupied greenhouse and not a three-bedroom house. The Selmis and the town are defendants in a lawsuit brought by the current owner, Justin Podjasek, to overturn the ruling by the appeals board. His case rests largely on the permit he was given by Larson, citing the 2012 variance.

(Selmi is an expert at land use law and professor at Loyola Law School in California. He co-wrote the casebook “Land Use Regulation: Cases and Materials,” now in its fifth edition. He is co-editor of the most comprehensive treatise on California environmental and land use law, according to this profile.)

Selmi has the support of virtually the entire neighborhood.

He successfully intervened in the case when he argued that former code officer John Larson had failed to notify four abutters of his issuance of a permit on Dec. 18, 2024. Another neighbor previously was denied standing because he and his wife did not appeal within the required time frame.

Podjasek argued that after he received the permit in December, construction began “through February, March, and April 2025, with the framing, walls, and roof all constructed representing approximately 35% of the total estimated renovation project cost,” his lawsuit stated.

“Specifically, by April 15, 2025, Podjasek had incurred in excess of $258,880 in costs.”

Attorney for the town responded stating:

“The variance was duly memorialized with a recorded certificate of variance that read: ‘The Board of Appeals grants a 13’ variance on the southeasterly side of [the Property].’”

The town’s attorney, Grady Burns, further stated that while the code officer has the authority “generally” to issue building permits for single-family residences, “the replacement of a nonconforming structure or the change of use of a nonconforming structure require Planning Board review before a building permit may issue.”

Neighbors were incensed that Podjasek continued to build his house despite the appeals board ruling that he could not use a variance granted for a greenhouse more than a decade ago and that if he wanted to build his guest house he would have apply for a new permit through the Planning Board.

Larson admitted he never inspected the site before issuing the permit. He declined to order a work stoppage after his permit decision was overturned by the appeals board, relying of an opinion from the law firm of Preti Flaherty not to halt the construction during litigation.

Under new Town Manager Karen Reddersen, the town set a record for legal spending in FY26 - $114,000. (I will report on that separately.)

Larson died in December 2025. He was replaced in the spring by Chamberlain, who is on loan from the Town of Tremont.

Larson’s sloppy handling of the permitting of the project left a large wake.

Most of the neighbors were seasonal residents and did not know about the guest house until construction started.

Bill and Kay MacIntosh, who own the house at 76 Clark Point Road, were the first to challenge the permitting of the project but were denied “standing” because they did not appeal within a 30-day period as required by town code.

Dan and Ann Selmi at 66 Clark Point Road filed a separate appeal in which they said four abutting neighbors, including them, never received proper notification.

Larson could not produce evidence of the notifications, and the the appeal board gave the Selmis standing which led to multiple meetings attended by 30 to 40 neighbors in protest of the guest house last year.

The town wants the court to remand the case to the Planning Board so the applications for permits may start anew. Selmi wants the court to declare the entire project to be illegal and to affirm the findings by the appeals board.

A hearing has been scheduled for Sept. 2 to vet all arguments.

I interviewed Larson last fall to ask why he declined to order a work stoppage, and he replied, “Because my attorney told me not to.”

I asked him what could be the ultimate consequence of a ruling against the owner, and he replied, “the building may have to come down. That’s the risk they are dealing with.”

“I can’t describe how sickening that is,” stated one commenter. “I love humanity, but it’s people I can’t stand. I love going out to Bar Island in the dead of winter without the slightest idea that other people have been there.”

Another wrote, “For anyone considering a comment that ‘this is cool — it’s just people expressing themselves’ - ‘Rock cairns are used to mark trails in Acadia. Doing this to ‘express yourself’ is unsafe for people, damages the environment by encouraging erosion, is against the law in the park (which includes Bar Island) and is just plain ugly and self-centered.

“Don’t break the law and harm the environment. If you need to ‘express yourself,’ how about trying writing poetry or drawing (on a sketch pad, not on rocks in Acadia)? Leave nature alone. It’s not all about you.”

For its part the National Park Service offers conflicting and unclear advice under its “leave no trace” policy, celebrating cairns at the same time warning visitors against constructing them.

The low tide “bar” to Bar island is the source of the town’s modern name which was changed from Eden.

A bigger problem than the cairns is how fast the tide can trap unwary visitors.

In January, a 25-year-old Maryland man drowned off Bar Island in the deadliest example of people getting stuck on Bar Island.

The tidal island is within easy walking distance of downtown Bar Harbor but is only accessible by land for about three hours a day, for an hour and a half before and after low tide. During that time, a half-mile-long sandy, gravel land bridge connects the island to the town.

“So how does it work? Do officers go out there and take them all down and just spread them around,” asked one person on Facebook? “Do they try to find the people who vandalized? Or do they just do nothing? Is it time for cameras over there?”

Another wrote, “Yeah, I know some folks love to do this... It feels like desecration of the wild to me... Trail markers, yeah... but this is self-aggrandizing.”

Brechlin wrote, “This is why we can’t have nice things.” He did not elaborate.

Park management assistant John Kelly wrote,” I’m on it.”

But why did it take a Facebook post for the park service to respond? Is Bar Island not regularly inspected by rangers? Those cairns did not appear overnight.

On a slow day in the local bureau, we would venture out on Main Street and interview folks walking by on various particular issues.

It was not serious journalism. They were page fillers, an embarrassing holdover from the 1930s when radio stations created light entertainment by sticking a mic in front of anyone willing to opine.

So now it’s come that MOS is a major part of the tool box for journalists as they flail about trying to read the tea leaves in this morally untethered season of our discontent. Consider this bit of trifle from the Washington Post:

“Will Maine uproot Susan Collins? I went to a potato festival to find out”

Susan Collins loves it when journalists come to see her in her milieu amid adoring fans who praise her for being a “County girl.”

“Queuing for the Potato Blossom Festival parade in Fort Fairfield, the senator reminisced about growing up one town over, in Caribou, where she used to get pulled out of school to help harvest potatoes,” the Post columnist Carine Hajjar wrote.

That’s a carefully honed Collins bio-bit. WashPo didn’t report that she came from privilege as her family owned and ran a 182-year-old lumber and hardware business in Caribou while she was growing up.

Fort Fairfield is as deep into Trump Country as one can get - Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris there 58.6 to 40.1 percent in 2024.

(One day after Hajjar’s column, Adam O’Neal, the top editor of the Post’s opinion section and Hajjar’s boss, resigned, a little more than a year after Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner, hired him to reorient the section toward a more libertarian bent.

“Mr. O’Neal’s announcement delivered another shock to a news organization that underwent drastic changes in the past few years. In 2023 and 2025, it offered buyouts that shrank the news staff by more than 200 journalists. And in February, The Post laid off in excess of 300 journalists, hollowing out its sports, local and international teams,” the New York Times stated.)

This morning, the Post wrote an identical article to one published in the Portland Press six days ago on how Democrat Troy Jackson’s hometown Allagash was not a hotbed of Jackson support.

Why was that even a story in a town which Donald Trump won 59.7 to 39 percent against Kamala Harris?

Allagash has about 200 people. Why give such weight to fewer folks than a high school basketball game in these parts?

And was it a coincidence that two papers wrote the same story, or were they fed by the same source?

Recently on Reddit, the platform where Graham Platner’s early comments helped lead to his downfall, it was posted that Susan Collins got the Press Herald to change a headline for one which was friendlier to the senator and that the change was admitted to by the political editor.

I emailed the editor, Kirby Wilson, to ask if the headline was changed at the request of Susan Collins’s office. He did not reply. The phone number listed for him did not take messages.

That claim has now been reposted on Facebook, Instagram, X and Substack without any attempt to dispute it by the Press Herald.

If one were to do a “talker” in Maine about the race for the Senate, the battleground towns would be a more compelling read.

These five had victory margins under 2 percent in 2024:

1. Ellsworth

• Margin: ~0.1% (R+0)

Vote Split: 48.8% Trump vs. 48.7% Harris

2. Sanford

• Margin: ~1.1% (R+1)

Vote Split: 49.6% Trump vs. 48.5% Harris

3. Brewer

• Margin: ~1.2% (R+1)

• Vote Split: 49.5% Trump vs. 48.3% Harris

4. Gray

• Margin: ~0.7% (D+1)

• Vote Split: 49.2% Harris vs. 48.5% Trump

5. Hampden

• Margin: ~1.3% (D+1)

• Vote Split: 49.6% Harris vs. 48.3% Trump

But better the Washington Post stayed away from Maine and reported on Susan Collins from her true hometown, Washington, D.C., where she has been living the last 30 years.

Here are some story ideas:

• Your headline on Troy Jackson, “Maine’s Democratic Senate candidate touts his rural appeal. His hometown has mixed feelings,” could easily have a parallel, “Maine’s Republican Senate candidate touts her bipartisanship. Her home state has mixed feelings.”

• How the press protected Susan Collins’s affair with a lobbyist while he was still married and after his wife’s cancer. As reported by Collins Watch: “Susan Collins was close enough with Tom Daffron nine years before they married that she took him as her date to a black tie White House gala -- at a time when he was a registered lobbyist and still married to his former wife.” (Daffron’s father was a top editor for the New York Times and also worked for the Washington Post.)

• Will Susan Collins suffer a backlash in Maine for her support of Todd Blanche and his $1.8 billion “weaponization” fund to reward Jan. 6 rioters?

• Will Susan Collins suffer a backlash in Maine for her support of $33 billion supplemental funding for the Iran war?

• Will Susan Collins suffer a backlash for remaining silent while Trump cut food stamps, funding for Medicare, housing and raising tariffs against Canada, Maine’s biggest trading partner?

• Will billionaires Elon Musk’s pledge of $100 million to support Republican candidates hurt or help Susan Collins?

• Does Susan Collins support Donald Trump’s proposed “insider trading” subscriptions service where he would leak to paying customers decisions by the president before they are announced?

The Washington Post, the Press Herald and other news outlets should attach an editor’s note to every story influenced by someone outside the newsroom - like an owner or a candidate with ties to existing owners.

POSTSCRIPT:

Here was Part 1 of my series on coverage of the Senate race.

The Quietside Journal is a news blog modeled after pamphleteers like Thomas Paine, the original blogger. My voice is strident and the QSJ has a decided point of view.

In addition, vice president Randy Sprague stated, in an email,

“Myself and most, if not all of the board members, will be resigning. The current board wants to help with a transition to a new board. It is vitally important that people step up to create a new board. Please reach out so that you can be nominated.”

Sprague played a crucial role the last two weeks to convince the other four members, including the VIS president, Perry Moore, to withdraw the listing.

At Wednesday night’s second community meeting called to express concerns about the sale, Sprague told the gathering of 37 persons that a new board may reverse everything that the current board has promulgated, including the new bylaws and the plan to sell or lease a 1.1-acre parcel for future commercial development.

That got pushback from some who said the current board should first remove the listing on its own as a sign of good faith.

Sprague then went to work to convince Moore to remove the listing, even though the board president appeared to have veto power under new bylaws adopted by the board in 2023.

“Randy is a real hero,” said Shaiah Emigh-Doyle, an organizer of the meetings whose 23-year-old brother, who died in 2014, is buried in the cemetery

“Randy was in the hot seat getting beaten up when it really should have been Perry Moore answering to us.” she said.

At Sprague’s request, she has agreed to recruit members for a new board and serve as a liaison with the residents opposed to selling off part of the cemetery overlooking graves of their loved ones.

Sprague was contrite but also firm in an email he sent to her in which he defended Perry Moore.

“It really needs to be stated that Perry has been doing all of these tasks by himself. Other board members have been virtually no help to Perry.

“He has spent untold hours keeping the VIS alive,” Sprague wrote. “Regrettably one man can only do so much. It has been hard for him to get the board to even meet regularly.”

Sprague urged Emigh-Doyle to seek a board seat but cautioned, “You will find doing things by committee is a layer of complexity that make it even harder to get things done.

Meanwhile, “Perry has been keeping his finger in the dyke,” Sprague stated.

“The bylaws were rewritten that put a lot of power in the hands of the board Chair. It was not done to become king. It allowed the chair to get things done. He has tried to find ways to generate more income, for all the desperate needs of the properties. It was proposed to the board that the sale of a piece of property that could not be used for internment, could put a lot of money in the bank, for much needed improvements to cemetery and other VIS properties. The Board gave him the nod to move forward to do this.”

Sprague stated, “In hind sight this was a major misstep.

“Had we known of the public outcry this caused it would never have been done.

“The board has come to recognize this and has taken action to take the parcel off the market. Perry had the power of veto, over the board but did not use it.

“Volunteerism has dwindled in this community, as well as everywhere else in our country. As Lori mentioned that even years before Covid, when her and I served on the board we could not get members, volunteers, or Board members.”

(Lori Corbani served a decade as president of the VIS. She voiced opposition to the land sale at both the July 22 and July 29 community meetings.)

“Her children were called upon to help with pancake breakfasts and the like,” Sprague stated. “At one time while serving on the board I had to call on my wife to be hall cleaner and my daughter to be VIS treasurer.”

Sprague said the proposed land sale was a wakeup call for the dwindling VIS community.

“I had mentioned at the first community meeting, while it did create angst, the proposed sale of property, brought people out of the woodwork.

“I truly hope all of these people who have attended will step up, not just to be a name on a list of members. I have worked to explain to people at the community meetings this is your chance to make changes.

“Most recently at a meeting I was called a liar and could not be trusted. While the board as a whole has created distrust, such a personal attack, was unwarranted.

“At the first meeting, I was asked point blank to resign from the Board immediately. This kind of treatment is untenable, and yet I have stayed in the hot seat, to help get things worked out, and help move the VIS and the community to brighter future.”

He said he is particularly energized by the prospect of young people joining the cause.

Emigh-Doyle, who is 32, said she would like to join the new board and be named the cemetery steward. Her partner in organizing the community meetings, Andrew Gervais, is 38 and another potential board member.

Without a new board, Sprague said, “There is a procedure for the board to dissolve the VIS. This would be a tragic loss, but if there is no board there is no VIS.”

Emigh-Doyle did not agree with Sprague’s effusive praise of Perry Moore, but she said, “I totally hand it to Randy because he was the one who went flying around, telling all the board members, sent an email to Perry saying, you know, take it (listing) off when it really should have been Perry Moore answering to us.”

She gave credit to Kayla Gagnon, moderator of the meetings who spoke privately with Sprague at a break Wednesday night and emphasized the importance of removing the listing.

“The trust was broken because the listing went up. If you can just focus on that problem and take the listing off, that’s going to help repair the trust,” Emigh-Doyle said.

POSTSCRIPT:

The West Eden VIS owns a playground and ball field across Rt. 3 from the Town Hill Market, the meeting house which also houses the town’s fire department, an aging church on Crooked Road and the cemetery, all of which require maintenance and updating. Estimates have ranged from $100,000 to $250,000.

I wrote two previous articles on this issue. Here they are:

Families of buried relatives want Town Hill VIS to respect the dead and cease development ideas

Barrage of unanswered questions as Town Hill grapples with cemetery, village society takeover

• Randy Sprague is a member of the Bar Harbor Town Council. No other members of the council attended the Town Hill meetings.

• Shaiah Emigh-Doyle is a part-time software engineering instructor at College of the Atlantic, according to her Linked-In page.

• Andrew Gervais is a master carpenter who holds a degree from College of the Atlantic.

• Kayla Gagnon is Restorative Youth and Community Coordinator for Downeast Restorative Justice and a graduate of College of the Atlantic.

They give me hope that the administration and faculty at COA are more than a shill for the tourism industry, the utmost antithesis to human ecology.

MOUNT DESERT, July 29, 2026 - Remember the Hillary Clinton email scandal - how the New York Times went full throttle which helped destroy her candidacy?

It didn’t matter that the infractions eventually turned out to be inconsequential. They were kept alive during critical news cycles.

We are now a society without adequate rules of civic engagement.

One man accused of sexual assault which he denied was forced to withdraw from running for the United States Senate.

Another man - a United States Supreme Court justice - was accused of the same crime which he denied now sits in judgement over the rest of us.

The president of the United States recently paid $5.6 million in a civil judgement after a federal jury found for the accuser who charged him with rape in a 2023 trial. He is now appealing an additional $83.3 million for defamatory statements he made about E. Jean Carroll while in office.

The political playbook has changed, needless to say.

No one understands that better than Susan Collins, who has amassed war chest going into November.

That will enable her staff to feed the media every tidbit they can dig up about Democrat Troy Jackson.

Like the Clinton imbroglio, a small infraction may be magnified to become a major talking point, each bearing its own weight and kept alive until the next one.

“The whole race is going to come down to how Collins and the Republicans are going to be trying their best to come up with issue after issue, tidbit of this and tidbit of that to keep the base distracted,” said Steve Collins, columnist for the Portland Press Herald.

“It's going to be a question of is he (Jackson) going to have the money and wherewithal to stick to a message that can win. I know they see it, but it's hard to do it when you're getting hammered every day about some stupid thing,” Collins said.

“And Susan Collins has been masterful with that. I do think Mainers, as a whole, don't understand just what a good politician she is. I don't know why they don't get it. I mean, she's been there 30 years. She's dismissed every opponent with no trouble.

She continues to shape her image as a “County girl” having grown up in rural Aroostook County, as did Jackson.

Except that her family was one of the wealthiest having owned and run the S.W. Collins Co. lumber and hardware store for 182 years in Caribou.

Born of privilege, she started working as a legislative assistant to U.S. Representative and later U.S. Senator William Cohen from 1975 to 1987.

Troy Jackson was born to a 16-year-old girl in Fort Kent, near the Canadian border.

“He was just like your your average fuck-about through high school and it’s kind of amazing to think that that guy is now running for U.S. Senate,” Steve Collins said.

“But ultimately I think that the thing that Troy has is that the more this election is about Trump, the more chance he has of winning it,” Collins added.

But since Graham Platner withdrew, the press has been fixated with Jackson, ignoring Collins’s role as chair of the powerful Senate appropriations committee.

The drip, drip, drip of the slow deconstruction of Troy Jackson has started.

Consider this headline on the home page of the super PAC which pledged $42 million for Susan Collins. “The Real Troy Jackson? Anger issues with women. Verbal abuse. It’s not Graham Platner, it’s Troy Jackson.”

Where did that campaign line originate?

On July 20, four reporters of the Washington Post wrote an article about Troy Jackson’s temper, “Democrat set to replace Platner in Maine led state Senate with a temper,” as if they were reporting on Watergate.

The article received 2,804 mostly negative comments, prompting the Post to publish an extraordinary statement which was close to an apology.

“The comments reflect a strong criticism of The Washington Post's coverage of Maine State Senator Troy Jackson, who is running for the U.S. Senate. Many commenters perceive the article as a biased hit piece against Jackson, highlighting his temper and past confrontations, while ignoring similar behaviors from Republican figures, including President Trump.

“There is a sentiment that the media holds Democrats to higher standards than Republicans, and some commenters express support for Jackson's passion and advocacy for Maine's issues, contrasting it with dissatisfaction toward Susan Collins' political actions.”

But the damage was done.

And it t wasn’t only right-wing social media which lit it up.

Many Maine newspapers picked up the story, as well as national news outlets like The Hill.

Some tidbits gain traction and others disappear in the ether quickly.

The Bangor Daily News on July 22 reported that Jackson owed $4,600 in income taxes. That article did not get much traction.

This morning, the Press Herald devoted resources to fact-check a frivolous claim by a Republican state legislator that Jackson was ineligible to run for the US Senate.

The same press organizations have done virtually nothing to look at Collins through the same lens.

To wit:

Trump just declared another tariff war against our friend up north, Canada.

Canada is Maine’s closest and most important trading partner.

We share a 611-mile long border with Quebec and New Brunswick.

Last year alone, we traded more than $6 billion worth of goods and materials between our countries, nearly $5 billion of which came from Canada into Maine.

So what has Susan Collins said about this threat to the Maine economy, especially up north in Caribou where she grew up?

Nothing that I can tell.

More specifically, nothing the Maine press has reported.

Yesterday the Press Herald wrote an article on the impact of Trump’s new 50 percent tariffs on Canadian products.

Susan Collins was not asked for her opinion on the proposed tariff.

The Press Herald on July 21 did report on her remarks supporting $33 billion in supplemental funding for the Iran War.

But the fight over the Pentagon’s proposed 50 percent increase in its budget to $1.5 trillion will be a mega smackdown with some Republicans already publicly opposing it.

Susan Collins as chair of the Senate appropriations committee will have a front seat.

She also has a record of 30 years to excavate.

Like her role in the Payroll Protection Program. The bulk of the loan money handed out through the government’s $818 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) didn’t go to workers—it helped owners and shareholders. That’s the finding of a study published by top economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The Maine press rarely asks its senior senator to talk in depth about this monumentally unpopular war, the killing of an immigrant by an ICE agent in Biddeford or the reduced support for housing, food stamps and Medicare.

Even when it attacks Trump, the Bangor Daily News rarely associates the criticism with Susan Collins, like today’s editorial on the new “Red Scare” in which she was not asked for her opinion of Trump.

The fact that the BDN is firmly in the tank for Susan Collins is not a new phenomenon. As I’ve written, the Warren family, who owns the Bangor Daily News, is close friends with Collins and they have long donated to her campaigns. The BDN is an old school Republican newspaper.

But what I didn’t realize until recently was the critical role the state’s second largest daily played in helping to elect Collins in the first place.

Recently, writer and organic farmer Jean Hay Bright drew my attention to her book “A Tale of Dirty Tricks So Bizarre: Susan Collins v. the Public Record,” which covered how Susan Collins defeated former Governor and Congressman Joe Brennan in 1996 thanks to a coordinated smear campaign by Collins and former Bangor Daily News columnist John Day.

The blurb on the book on Amazon.com stated:

“When a public record’s researcher requested a copy of a financial disclosure form from when she worked in Massachusetts, Collins went ballistic, accusing her Democratic opponent, former Maine governor Joe Brennan, of violating her privacy in an attempt to dig up dirt on her. (He hadn’t, the DSCC had hired the researcher.)

“The Bangor Daily News, then Maine’s largest daily paper, compounded her ridiculous charges with a series of articles that landed that paper in court facing a libel suit (which the newspaper lost), brought by the researcher they had trashed – but that case was not closed before Collins won the 1996 election.

“Then Sen. Collins, hoping to repeat history, tried it again, starting with a breathless accusation that her 2008 challenger hired someone to videotape her at a public parade. (Gasp! Shocking!) But this time the Maine media came down hard on her.

“Read this insider’s look at the inexcusable way Collins manipulated the public’s right to know in 1996. And then, in an extended addendum in this 2007 second printing, read Collins’ silly new charges, and the Maine and DC media’s reaction to them. (Hint: Maine’s Bangor Daily News does not come out well on this one either).
Spoiler alert -- Collins won that 2008 race, and was reelected again in 2014.”

As part of a settlement in 1999, BDN agreed to publish this op-ed by the plaintiff.

Press Herald columnist Collins said, “Susan Collins is going to have a very hard time being able to defend what she's done in terms of Trump, even though we know what she thinks of him because she told us years ago.

“But she supported him, and I'm sure they're going to talk about anything except Trump.

“But Jackson's going to stick with it. I mean, I don't see him doing much but talking about Susan Collins sucking up to Trump and the billionaires, and that's a pretty effective message in there.

“People here know he has a temper, and he's kind of famous for nothing.

“But I do think that things are different.

“Every year, there's at least a few more people who are going to be: it's time for something new.

“It sure feels like this is a time in America and in Maine that it's a time for something new. It's probably how Trump got elected, but people just didn't want the same old, same old. So we took a crazy person. But Troy's not crazy. He's just the guy he's always been.”

Steve Collins added a caveat: “But if they find something damaging about Troy that somehow escaped Maine’s attention, which is certainly possible …”

Citizens here built a school, church, meeting hall and cemetery. (Part of the meeting hall now houses the Town Hill Fire Department.)

The automobile then redrew the contours of Maine towns and many became “pass-throughs” like Trenton and Town Hill.

Declining volunteerism didn’t help. And the dwindling membership of the West Eden VIS - west of Eden, Bar Harbor’s former name - took its toll.

Now there is a new king of the hill, armed with a new set of rules for the VIS, a new board to do his bidding and new ideas such the sale of a section of the VIS-owned cemetery for commercial development.

At a “community meeting” last Wednesday night attended by more than 40 persons, residents expressed confusion, anger and betrayal by a plan to build as many as eight homes on land overlooking the graves of friends and relatives in the Mountain View Cemetery, which is VIS owned.

Crooked Road resident Robert Haskell wrote a letter that was read to the crowd about his best friend Christian Emigh-Doyle, who died in 2014 at age 23 and was buried in the cemetery:

“I am so grateful to be so close to where he is buried, and to have a space in the cemetery I can walk to, to remember him in peace and privacy. I can only imagine a fraction of what Christian’s family and so many other families must be feeling right now.

“For the final resting place to be cut up and sold without consultation and without showing any respect for the families is aberrant. To disregard the deepest emotional experience that we go through as people, and to instead view this action as a simple real estate transaction, is a mistake.”

Without much resident input, the original society was dissolved in 2023 and replaced by a corporation with power vested only in a small board and mostly in its president.

The reaction was swift and intense once word got around.

Board vice president Randy Sprague, a member of the Bar Harbor Town Council, told the gathering last week that four of the five members of the new VIS board now favor putting the proposed sale “on the back burner.”

Two other board members who attended, James Perkins and Matthew Gerald, did not disagree with that account.

That would leave Perry Moore, president of the VIS and a local developer, as the only person publicly advocating the development.

Sprague handed out 20 copies of a letter under Moore’s name which rebutted contents of a petition signed by 17 residents asking the board to withdraw the sale.

His letter to the group was defiant and pugilistic in tone. He said his critics were “ignorant” and did not possess the facts.

There were multiple inconsistencies between his letter and what Randy Sprague and others represented.

And the real estate listing had an outright error, stating the address as “State Highway 3, Northeast Harbor, ME, Town Hill.” Northeast Harbor is in the Town of Mount Desert. Town Hill is a village in the Town of Bar Harbor. It has since been corrected.

Realtor Katrina Carter was invited to the community meeting but declined. Perry Moore did not attend. His letter contained his views, he wrote.

That left a void as he appeared to be the only person with information the roomful of residents wanted.

Moore wrote, “This letter was not prepared with input from my board. I did not want to waste more of their time.”

That contradicted what Randy Sprague told me and others that he had a hand in shortening the letter.

Except for our exchanges at the meeting, Sprague did not respond to my request for an electronic copy of Moore’s letter so that I may post it. I also sought answers to these questions:

• Who authorized the change in bylaws in 2023 to hand control of the VIS to a handful of self-perpetuating board members instead of the members, as outlined in its 1898 charter?

• With four members now favoring slow walking the “sale,” how do residents ensure the sale will never happen?

• Have other revenue-generating ideas been fully explored before five persons decided to hive off storied VIS assets?

• The current board apparently is not accepting members. Why is that?

• Is there space in the cemetery to sell burial lots other than the 1.1-acre strip which is within the 200-feet setback required by the state for graves near a well?

Moore belittled the suggestion from community members that fund-raising would solve some of the VIS’s fiscal woes.

“It has been suggested that we should ‘just do fundraising.’ Those suggesting this lack an understanding of the scale of funds required. Small events like kayak raffles or pancake breakfasts will not meet our needs, which are nearer to $250,000 given the condition of the church, 77 years of short-term fixes on the schoolhouse/fire station, and 200 years of tight-fisted cemetery maintenance. Major donors are more likely to contribute if the VIS demonstrates initiative by turning a non-performing asset into $200,000 of working capital first.”

But will major donors contribute to an entity with the outsized influence of a single person?

At the meeting, Sprague said that the VIS needed $100,000 - not $200,000 - to upgrade its current infrastructure needs.

Neither Sprague nor Moore returned my request for clarification. I tried to reach Moore through his Linked-in page.

Several former VIS board members said that fund-raising was the bedrock of the VIS maintenance and expansion throughout its history.

“How do you think the playground got built? Fundraising” said Lori Corbani, who was VIS president for 10 years.

“How do you think the original church and the fire department piece got built?” she said. “When I was president, we were going to do a roof, and then somebody volunteered and put a new roof on for us and fixed the cupola.”

Other questions for Perry Moore:

Is the lot for sale or not?

There is a “for sale” sign on Rt. 102 from Carter’s Real Estate in Northeast Harbor and this listing for 1.1 acres on its website.

“This offering is a 99 year lease. At the present time the parcel does not meet the dimensional requirements for a legally conforming ‘lot’ as defined in the land use ordinance,” the listing stated.

“If during the term of the lease, the applicable laws are amended, and the leased premises would comply with the dimensional standards for a separate conforming lot Tenant may elect to purchase the Leased Premises at a purchase price to be agreed upon. The purchase price for the Leased Premises will be based upon the costs incurred by Landlord in transferring fee ownership of the Leased Premises, including the costs of deed preparation and real estate transfer taxes, it being intended that Landlord will bear no costs in relation to such transfer.”

In other words, the current plan is contingent on an amendment of the town’s land use ordinance which must be approved by a majority vote in a town-wide referendum.

(Perry Moore’s company prepared the 153-page application for the rebuild of the Park Entrance motel owned by Ocean Properties. The application relied on the amended definition of the size of a guest room for lodging which citizens revoked in 2026 after discovering the new definition would allow a room with multiple bedrooms to be defined as a single “guest room.”)

Given all the encumbrances, why is there a “for sale” sign in front of the property? “For lease” is more accurate and legal.

In 2023, a fundamental change was made to move the VIS from a membership-controlled organization to one controlled primarily by its directors. The highlights:

• Members lose their direct power to elect the Board and officers.
  The Board effectively becomes self-perpetuating because current directors approve future directors.

• Members lose approval authority over deeds and contracts.
  The existing bylaws explicitly require membership approval. The revision moves that authority to the Board and designated officers.

• The Board alone can amend the bylaws.
  This would allow future governance changes without a membership vote.

• Membership becomes substantially more restrictive.
  A new resident would have to wait three years to join. A business owner would have to operate for five years.

• Required membership meetings largely disappear.
  The existing monthly and annual meeting system is not carried into the revised document.

• The dissolution provisions change significantly.
  The Town of Bar Harbor and Mountain View Cemetery Committee would no longer be guaranteed the property and funds described in the existing bylaws.

• Longstanding Fire Company and Ladies Aid rights are removed.
  Their places in building governance and their stated use rights are absent from the revision.

Like Carter’s Real Estate’s sloppy listing, there are other fleas in this plan.

The new bylaws give the president broad authority to negotiate contracts without needing a separate vote each time by the board. But can he authorize the sale without approval by the board?

Article 6 of the new bylaws has this sentence which appeared to be incomplete :

“The President is always authorized to execute, in the name of the Corporation, contracts and other documents either generally or specifically by the Board to be executed by the Corporation, and to negotiate any and all material business transactions of the Corporation.”

I asked three top AI platforms - ChatGPT, Claude and Google Gemini - whether the sentence is open to interpretation, and they all agreed it is.

Claude responded: “That sentence is genuinely poorly drafted — it reads like a clause got garbled or a word dropped during editing.”

• One may conclude, “President can bind the VIS to contracts unilaterally, subject only to after-the-fact Board oversight and removal power.”

• Or, “President is the designated hand that signs, but the Board must have authorized the contract (generally, via policy, or specifically, via resolution) before the President signs.”

Gemini stated, “In legal drafting, negotiating a deal is distinct from executing (legally binding) a deal.

“Lumping both together under “is always authorized to execute... and to negotiate any and all material business transactions” creates ambiguity over whether the President can single-handedly close major deals without Board review.”

ChatGPT stated:

“The phrase ‘either generally or specifically by the Board’ could mean the president may sign only contracts that the Board has authorized.”

That muddies the question of whether Moore can sell the parcel even though the majority of the board is against it.

West Eden VIS is still listed as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, said former president Lori Corbani.

It apparently has not filed an annual 990 report since 2009. So how did the new VIS reconcile that lack of financial information with the IRS before changing itself to a corporation?

Let’s hope Perry Moore will attend the second of three community meetings Wednesday July 29. Too many questions await his explanation.

POSTSCRIPT: Is it a sign of the housing crisis that a developer wants to sell 12 building lots next to the abandoned landfill in Southwest Harbor which already has polluted nearby wells and another wants to carve up a century-old cemetery in Town Hill for the same purpose?

Relevant documents:

• Old bylaws

• Revised bylaws

• May 13 board meeting minutes

The drive to the Southwest Harbor regional EMR transfer station which has has a dedicated area for Mount Desert residents is only 2 minutes longer.

Many residents mistakenly believe that they have to pay to throw trash there, Public Works Director Brian Henkel said. It is free for taxpayers just like all town bins.

Southwest Harbor is already the commercial center for the villages west of Somes Sound - Pretty Marsh, Somesville, Hall Quarry. Losing access to the Sargeant Drive facility is not a big deal for these residents.

If the town can expand its garbage repository at the marina in Northeast Harbor and develop a new site in the eastern part of town, whether at Otter Creek or Seal Harbor, that would broaden distribution significantly. The town garage tucked in the northwestern part of town was never intended as a permanent trash disposal site.

But by far the best solution would be for residents on private roads to construct communal portals for garbage cans which the town is happy to service along town roads, Henkel said. Given that the demographic behind most private roads is well endowed, it’s just a matter of divvying up the cost to construct such an enclosure. See below.

Henkel said he is mulling ideas for gating off the Sargeant Drive garage to permit entry only for residents to comply with guidelines from the town’s insurance provider.

That would still leave potential liability concerns - accidents, injuries, cars running into a town building or vehicle, or any number of other random things that might occur in the middle of the night.

Closing Sargeant Drive would also discourage many out-of-town residents and businesses from using their trash bins.

This morning I saw a landscape company dumping yard detritus in a bin at Sargeant Drive which is not allowed.

The Mount Desert town garage is a 9-minute drive from Town Hill Market. The Bar Harbor town transfer station near the Kebo club is a 17-minute drive.

Here is the video of the select board meeting last night where trash was the major topic:

MOUNT DESERT, Maine - July 20, 2026 - How we rid our waste may be the ultimate determinant of how we are measured as a society.

So I, and others, took it personally when suddenly the rules changed in the only zip code on the island which can afford residential garbage pickup twice a week.

Some us have been carting our waste to the bins at the town garage on Sargeant Drive for decades for a variety of reasons - town trucks do not venture down private roads, our shared trash containers fill up fast ever since short-term vacationers proliferated and we just like the tactile experience of throwing stuff away.

Less than a week after the Islander reported that the town is closing its garage to waste collection this fall, three members of the select board tonight took turns to share the loud, negative reaction they heard from citizens, as I did.

It was a rare departure from form - its meetings usually running according to the precision of a Rolex - to hear member Martha Dudman raise an unpleasantness, followed by members David MacDonald and Rodney King, that they have heard similar rumblings that the removal of the garbage bins was a bad idea.

Events have conspired to make the simple task of ridding garbage a major issue.

• Over the last five years, this town, like others, have experienced a growth of short term rentals. Companies like AirBNB want their tenants to throw away their garbage no matter how long they stay. (I am awaiting the town’s report on the growth of the volume of trash over the last five years.)

• The town garage is open to all unlike the transfer station in Southwest Harbor which has a gate and set hours. It’s much more convenient for out-of-town residents in Town Hill to dump their garbage here than to drive to Bar Harbor’s transfer station behind the Kebo Golf Course.

• The town’s liability insurer, Maine Municipal Association, is uncomfortable with an open facility. It stated in a letter, “The town allows 24/7 unmonitored access to the site for the public to enter at any time. This is a significant liability exposure and should mitigate having the site only open during set hours while staff are on site.”

The town garage was never intended to be a transfer station. But it has become just that for many.

Town Manager Alex Kimball said he is reviewing all considerations.

This is a town with resources.

Eyes are watching with garbage bags in tow.