News, Fake or Real
Yesterday, Clif and I went to the University of Maine at Augusta (UMA) for a panel discussion hosted by its Senior College and the College of Arts & Sciences. The topic, as indicated in this post’s title, was News, Fake or Real. The panel consisted of Bill Nemitz, a noted Maine journalist and columnist; Mal Leary, a senior political correspondent for Maine Public Radio; and Jessica Lowell, a journalist at the Kennebec Journal.
Fake news is an issue very dear to my heart. Indeed, the notion that facts do matter is a central theme in my YA fantasy novel Maya and the Book of Everything.
It is my guess that as soon as humans acquired language, despotic leaders have told lies to maintain power and stroke their egos. However, in the United States, the current administration has brought lying to a new high—or low, depending on your point of view. On Meet the Press, Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s advisors, even came up with a term—“alternative facts”—that many of us had never heard before. When Chuck Todd, the host of Meet the Press, insisted that alternative facts were falsehoods, Conway did not even have the grace to look ashamed and instead barrelled on with her talking points.
At yesterday’s forum, Marilyn Canavan, the moderator, ended her introduction by asking, how are we to distinguish between news and opinion? How will we know if news is fake?
Jessica Lowell suggested that readers need to think critically to separate news from opinion. And fact from fiction. She noted how easy it was to share things on Facebook without knowing where the news was coming from and even admitted to having done this herself. (So have I.) Now, Lowell is more careful, and she stressed how important it was to stop and pause before sharing anything, to check the source.
Mal Leary spoke of how fake news often has a sliver of truth. As an example, he used a recent story about chocolate becoming extinct. The bombastic headline was designed to draw people in, providing the site with lots of clicks, which in turn gives data and potential customers to advertisers. As it turned out, the article explained how climate change might affect chocolate production at some time in the future. But right now, there is no reason to hoard Hershey Chocolate Bars. Leary warned the audience to beware of websites that have weird endings such as .co. For example, Newsweek.com.co is not the same as Newsweek.com. Leary also warned us to beware of websites with no “About” section and of single-source stories.
Bill Nemitz told an amusing but sobering tale of how his publicity photo was stolen by “T.S. Hunter”—most certainly not the author’s real name—whose website was putting out information to disparage a victim of a police shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma. T.S. Hunter had even constructed a snappy bio that described how he was a poet, the owner of a health food store, had two goldendoodles, and was in love with a muse with a guitar. (I must admit that as a writer, I was impressed by these specific details.) Nemitz pursued the matter, and eventually the blog was taken off the Internet.
Nemitz then defined fake news. First, it was news that was 100% false, such as many of the stories found in supermarket tabloids. Second, there was a gray area, which included news with a slant or a bias but had a grain of truth. Third, fake news could be pure propaganda. Fourth, it could be pieces that misuse data or scientific evidence. Fifth, it could come about because of sloppy or imprecise writing. Sixth, and perhaps most important, fake news is not news with which you disagree.
A Q & A followed the panel discussion, and many good points were raised and discussed. This forum started at 2:00 p.m. and ended at 4:00 p.m. Such a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon and such a relevant topic. Many thanks, UMA.
To end this piece, I am posting some pictures of UMA’s small but lovely campus in winter. And readers, not one of these pictures is fake.
Five for Friday: Cushnoc Brewing Co.—A New, Hip Place in Augusta
According to Wikipedia, Augusta, Maine, with its population of about 19,000, is “the third-least populous state capital in the United States.” ( Vermont’s and South Dakota’s capitals are smaller.) Augusta is also an old city, established in 1629 by English settlers from the Plymouth Colony. Augusta was originally called Cushnoc, from its native American name that means “head of tide.”
However, while Augusta might be small and old, it isn’t quaint. With its major roads blighted by strip development and its empty shell of a main street, Augusta is a charmless city that gives you the feeling the sky is gray, even when the sun is shining.
Augusta wasn’t always like this. My memory goes back far enough to remember when the main street was a bustling place filled with shops and other businesses. Vintage postcards indicate that those major roads, with their current scourge of strip development, were once charming tree-lined streets with lovely homes.
As to be expected, Augusta mostly has chain restaurants, ranging from McDonald’s to Ruby Tuesday. Clif and I don’t eat out very often, but when we do, we mostly go to Hallowell, a little city just outside of Augusta. Hallowell has a snappy collection of restaurants—none of them chains.
However, a new place has come to Augusta’s downtown—Cushnoc Brewing Co., and as its name suggests, it is indeed a brewery. Cushnoc Brewing also specializes in pizzas baked in a wood-fired oven, and they serve other food including nachos and salads.
On Monday, Clif and I decided to check out Cushnoc Brewing Co. As soon as we went in, we looked around in wonder. Could this place—one that could be considered hip, even—really be in Augusta, Maine, the land of strip development and chain restaurants?
It seems that it could. But as the saying goes, handsome is as handsome does. Here were the most important questions: How was the food, and how was the beer? We ordered a pizza to share, and Clif ordered a beer, All Souls IPA. Clif told me it was light and had a citrus flavor and went down real easy.
I’m a little ashamed to admit that I ordered a root beer, but beer isn’t my thing. In honor of the beer lovers in my family, I’ll leave it at that, and I’ll return to my root beer later.
The pizza—half mushroom and half pepperoni—was one of the best I have ever had. The sauce was slightly sweet, and later I would discover that the secret was balsamic vinegar. The crust was cooked to perfection, and I ate more than I should have.
After Clif and I were done eating, we went to look at the pizza oven, and I was allowed to take pictures of it. The oven has a name—Stacy—in honor of this building’s previous store, a tempting gift shop where I have bought many things.
Now let us return to my root beer, which had something to set it apart from most soft drinks served in restaurants. (Yes, I know. This is picture number six. Let us consider it a bonus picture.)
Perhaps it isn’t obvious from the photo, but the straw is paper, not plastic, and I consider this to be one baby step in the right direction. In truth, I’m perfectly happy to sip directly from the cup itself, and the next time I go, I’ll tell the server I don’t need a straw. Why waste paper? Nevertheless, Cushnoc Brewing Co. is the only area restaurant I have been to that provides paper straws rather than plastic.
Will this hip place revive Augusta? Only time will tell, but it’s my guess it will give the restaurants in trendy Hallowell a run for their money.
Al Fresco
In Transition
Yesterday, Clif and I went to the Winthrop Center Friends Church to see In Transition 2.0, a movie about Transition, a movement celebrating community and the environment. It also re-imagines a different economy, based on supporting local stores, farmers, and artisans. Transition began in the United Kingdom, and some of you have perhaps heard of Rob Hopkins, one of the founders of Transition. (Transition Network.org provides a more detailed account of the movement and its various aspects.)
Released in 2012, In Transition 2.0 follows the usual rah-rah trajectory common to upbeat documentaries about the environment and social change. The gist of the movement is explained, and then big and small examples of action from around the world are featured—community gardens (relatively easy); a group that focuses on personal action (again, relatively easy); local currency (a little harder but manageable); and starting a small power company that is based on renewable energy (very hard).
I’m aware that the above paragraph makes me sound like a cynic when it comes to movements such as Transition, but nothing could be further from the truth. As a Mainer, I am very much aware of the problems addressed by Transition, especially climate change and the decline of small communities. I’ve already written about the weird winter we’ve been having and how this seems to be the new normal. Climate change is here, no two ways about it.
However, I haven’t written about how Winthrop, the small town where we live, has gone from having a vibrant downtown with clothing stores, a craft store, a five and dime store, and a little grocery store to having a few sandwich shops, some thrift shops, and not much else. It’s been sad to witness this decline. There are many reasons for this, including the closing of major businesses and poor leadership. I could go into great detail about this, but I’ll stop here.
Therefore, my sympathies are with Transition, but having once been a part of a failed Green Committee, I am also aware of how difficult it is for people to come together to make a change. And, to be fair to In Transition 2.0, the movie does acknowledge that groups do fail and even highlights one that has.
After the movie, the handful of us that came discussed what we had seen. Maggie Edmondson, the Friends pastor, did a fine job of leading the discussion. However, because most everyone came from a different community, there was really no possibility of starting anything in Winthrop.
And yet. The movie and the discussion made me think more about what I can do to live a greener life, about how I should use less of everything, throw away less, buy more local food, and drive less. (This is very difficult in central Maine as there is not much in the way of public transportation). In fact, I grapple with these issues on a daily basis, and seeing this film has made me resolve to do better, do more.
The title of the movie, In Transition, aptly catches what we are experiencing regularly in this country and, I think, around the world. Fires and mud on the West Coast. Dreadful hurricanes in the South. Twelve inches of snow and frozen alligators in North Carolina. Flash floods in Maine in January.
We are, indeed, in transition. Now it’s up to us to decide what to do about it.
Five for Friday: Frozen River, Thawed River
Let me come right to the point. This has been one of the weirdest winters that I can remember, and as I turned sixty in September, I can remember quite a few of them. At the end of December and creeping into January, the temperature dipped to twenty below zero, and barely budged above zero all day. Mainers are used to cold spells in the winter, but never for that long, usually only for a few days rather than for two weeks.
Then, in mid-January, the temperature spiked to nearly fifty degrees, and we had lashing rain, the kind we usually see in summer or fall but never in the winter.
As the saying goes, it’s an ill wind that blows no good, and the rain and warm weather did remove all the snow and ice from our roof. We were grateful for this as too much ice on a roof inevitable leads to leaks.
However, on the bad side of the ledger, the rain and the spike in temperature caused rivers to thaw and flood. In central Maine, where I live, the closest river is the Kennebec, and it’s about ten miles from us, flowing through the nearby cities of Augusta and Hallowell and the small town of Farmingdale. The Kennebec is a storied river that played a role in the Revolutionary War and was a major waterway before the advent of automobiles.
In the spring, in March and early April, the Kennebec occasionally floods the many cities and towns that grew up along the river. Not unusual at all, and it’s something the river towns and cities are prepared for. However, because of the sudden, extreme thaw this January, the Kennebec did something that no one expected would happen in deep winter. The river flooded, and it flooded fast, within a span of minutes. As Jason Pafundi from the Kennebec Journal wrote, “Sometime early Sunday morning [January 14], ice accumulated near Farmingdale and created a dam in the river. In the course of a few minutes the water rose about 8 feet in downtown Hallowell and Augusta.”
Businesses were flooded, and residents who parked in lots by the river lost their cars. On Tuesday (January 16) Clif and I had errands to do in Augusta, and we decided to drive into Hallowell to see what the Kennebec looked like. The flooded cars had all been removed, but there were ice chunks aplenty, something we don’t normally see this time of year.
This is a rather long preamble for my Five for Friday. For readers who live in a warmer climate, none of the pictures would make any sense without an introduction.
As this post indicates, there should be no doubt that climate change is real, and it is here. The flooding river in January is but one change this aging Mainer has seen in her lifetime.
Here is a sign at a turnout between Hallowell and Farmingdale. The Kennebec River is the waterway that starts on the right about halfway down the sign and heads directly to the ocean at the bottom. To get a better view, click on the picture.
This is an upriver view of the river heading toward Augusta, the state’s capital city. If you look closely, you can see the white dome of the state house complex. It’s center left along the skyline.
A smelt shack, carried by the ice from the edge of the river to the middle. Unlike those who ice fish on lakes, people who ice fish on the Kennebec set up their shacks on the edge of the river, where the ice is thickest and therefore usually safe.
A close up of ice chunks.
More ice chunks. With their Arctic look, I find them fascinating.
Back to a Winter Wonderland
Yesterday, we got about four inches of snow, enough to cover the hard, dirty mess left behind by the lashing rain we had last weekend. The rain and the warm weather have played havoc with the rivers in Maine, and tomorrow’s post will feature the Kennebec River, which runs about ten miles from where we live.
But for now, I want to bask in the beauty of a new snowfall, where everything looks so dazzling and clean. I also want to add that for Mainers, four inches of snow is just the merest dusting. School is not canceled, state work goes on as usual, and last night in Winthrop, nine hardy readers ventured to the library’s book group to discuss The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian. Yes, the roads were a little greasy, as we Mainers put it, but we all took our time getting to the library and then driving home again. We had a lively discussion, as always, and it was well worth the trip.
Here are some pictures of our snowy backyard and road.
Winter, winter!
Frozen Feathers and Stars
Liam Update
Yesterday, readers expressed concern about Liam’s swollen nose, which probably happened when he ran into a fallen branch in the backyard. Today, he is looking much, much better. Here’s a shot of his handsome face, and the nose is hardly swollen at all.
However, on his nose, there are a few specks of snow, and they are there because Liam likes to do this:
Liam has always been a dog who has loved the snow, and blindness has not diminished his enthusiasm for crunching on snow when it is crusty or sticking his head in the snow when it is fluffy.
After all, he is Liam, Dog of the North.
(This picture was taken several years ago, and long-time readers will recognize it. An oldie but goodie, just like our dog buddy. )
Liam is Thirteen
Today is Liam’s birthday, and as the title of this post indicates, he is thirteen years old. I still remember what a little Tasmanian devil Liam was when he was a puppy, and Liam remained energetic in his senior years until he went blind.
Poor dog buddy! His blindness has really slowed him down, and the other day, he banged his beautiful long nose on something—we don’t know what—and now his nose is horribly swollen on one side. Fortunately, his appetite is still good, and his bruised nose hasn’t interfered with his eating.
During a recent storm, some large branches had fallen in our backyard next to the bird feeders. They made excellent perches for the birds, and so we left them there. Liam had his paths for doing his business, and none of the branches were in his paths. However, the rains that came on Saturday did two things—it reduced the amount of snow we had, and it made the remaining snow so hard that Liam can now leave the paths and wander at will in the backyard.
Clif and I wondered, did Liam run into one of those branches and hurt his nose? We have no way of knowing, but we decided not to take any chances. Yesterday, we cleared out all those branches—some of them were quite large—and threw them over the fence into the woods. The birds no longer have perches directly by the feeders, but as we have so many trees in our backyard, it really doesn’t matter. There are plenty of other branches for the birds, and they are still coming in great numbers to the bird feeders and suet.
Swollen nose aside, Liam is holding his own. We have adjusted the way we do things. His blindness has affected his whole system, and Liam is now on a special diet that includes vitamins. No more walks off the leash, and his walks are much shorter. We don’t like to leave him for more than five hours even though he has never messed in the house while we were gone. No overnight guests who are not family as Liam sometimes barks in the middle of the night to go outside.
However, as we recently told our friends Beth and John, we love our dog buddy so much that we never resent the extra care involved as Liam has aged and gone blind. For the most part, unless he bumps into something, Liam is comfortable, and his appetite is good.
In honor of Liam’s birthday, here is a picture, complete with a Tolkien quotation, of Liam when he could still see. The photo, used as a card, was taken on the trails behind the town’s high school, one of Liam’s favorite places before he went blind.
So happy birthday to one of the best and sweetest dogs in Winthrop.
Notes From the Hinterland 