New cougars. Amazing foliage. Ricky Craven on ice.
So much to look forward to in 2014 and it’s a mere three days away.
We poked around for the silly, the cool, the championship-caliber events that await Maine in the new year and offer 10 of them here.
Mark your new calendar — some are can’t miss.
It started in Rockland in 1947 as a way to move a robust soft shell lobster catch. The eye-catching tagline: “All you can eat for $1.”
Prices have gone up a bit and that one-day festival is now five. Last year, it drew 85,000 people and served up just under 20,000 pounds of lobster, according to festival president Chuck Kruger.
That’s nearly 20,000 pounds with butter, a roll and coleslaw.
“We’re (pro-)butter,” Kruger said. “We weigh in on the butter. In fact, butter weighs in on us.”
Coming up on its 67th year this July 30-Aug. 3, the American Bus Association named the Maine Lobster Festival one of the “Top 100 Events in North America” for 2014.
For spectators, there’s a whole lot to take in.
Wednesday crowns the Maine Sea Goddess, judged by knowledge of the seafood industry and coastal history. Thursday, Friday and Saturday night bring entertainment headliners. (Clint Black and David Cassidy have performed in the past.) Friday is the Maine seafood cooking contest. Saturday is the parade and Sunday is the Great International Lobster Crate Race.
“(The crates) are floating but they’ll sink under the weight of most people, so you have to be very fleet of foot,” said Kruger. “It’s quite a spectacle. We have thousands of people watching. Of course, one of the spectacles that people enjoy is people who think they can do it but can’t, and go splashing into the cold harbor.'”
2. Lewiston hosts hockey championships
In March, the four best NCAA Division III teams in the country will travel to the Androscoggin Bank Colisee for three games of great ice hockey.
“I’m really excited because No. 1, it’s not very often you get the chance to host a prestigious event like this,” said Jim Cain, president of Firland Management and owner of the Colisee. “And we, like anyone else, are happy to do some things that bring some excitement to the community and bring a lot of people in that will make this thing a lot of fun and should be an economic success for everybody.”
The Colisee and Bowdoin College are co-hosting the event, which has frequently been held in Lake Placid, N.Y. Cain said the chance to bid on hosting opened up last year.
There will be two games on March 21 and the championship game on March 22. Tickets go on sale Jan. 2, $16.25 for adults, $13.25 for seniors and students, and he expects them to sell out quick.
3. One beautiful fall
Peter Geiger at the Farmers’ Almanac is calling for a cool, comfortable fall with awesome foliage.
There is, unfortunately, just one catch: You’ve got to survive the rest of the year first.
“Springtime is going to be wet and the summer is going to be oppressively humid, wet and thundery,” said Geiger in Lewiston. “This winter we’re saying bitterly cold.”
Winter, too, is going to last a little longer than usual, according to the Almanac’s mysterious meteorological formula. Geiger said it has called for snowstorms into April, a bright spot for winter outdoor enthusiasts.
4. More Bates Mill no. 5 reveals
Grow L+A, the volunteer group that championed saving historic Bates Mill no. 5, is working on a second feasibility study, this time around a food hub.
Vice President Peter Flanders said they’re looking to identify needs that could include per diem kitchen or incubator space.
The first feasibility study was around a grocery store.
“It was an outstanding result saying there was an absolute need,” Flanders said.
There is an interested grocery store in the wings that has asked to remain unnamed for now, but he will tease, “it’s not a grocery store that’s already in our community.”
It could be revealed in the new year.
Grow L+A President Gabrielle Russell said the city and developer Tom Platz are still negotiating details around ownership of the mill. While that’s going on, the group will continue its mission, she said: pursuing meaningful change, healthy living and wellness.
5. New Maine reads
Sit back, relax and crack a spine: Novels are due next year from Mainers Stephen King, Tess Gerritsen and the Sun Journal’s Mark LaFlamme.
King will release “Mr. Mercedes” in June. It’s teased on his website as the story of a madman who drives into a crowd of innocent people, gets away with it, then plans something even worse, and the retired officer who tries to stop him.
Gerritsen will have a new book in her “Rizzoli & Isles” detective series out in December, “Die Again.” (Two fans won the chance to name characters in the book in a fundraiser that the author called her War on Alhzeimer’s campaign.)
Honorable, near-2014 Maine mentions: Terry Goodkind’s latest fantasy novel, “The Third Kingdom,” came out this past August. Richard Russo’s next book is slated for late 2015, but that could change, according to his publisher.
Finally, intrepid crime reporter LaFlamme’s seventh, as-yet-untitled novel is due out mid-year. It’s set in Homefield, Maine, about a good man with a picture-perfect wife who discovers the Mrs. may be a serial killer.
It was inspired by his own grisly discovery.
“One night I came home to find a dozen (newborn baby doll) heads bobbing in a pot of water on the stove,” said LaFlamme. “I’m sure it was all very innocent — she was simply softening the heads so that she could weave life-like hair into them — but how much do we really know about the people we sleep with night after night? I love my wife and all, but I take great pains to avoid her craft room these days. What I don’t know can’t hurt me, right?”
6. U.S. National Toboggan Championships
It’s like professional-grade sledding with costumes, beer tasting and a mechanical bull.
More than 6,000 people turn out annually, according to spokeswoman Heather Steeves. Registration opened earlier this month. Capped at 425 teams, it always sells out, and this 24th annual U.S. National Toboggan Championships in Camden Feb. 7-9 should be no different.
Steeves describes the 400-foot wooden toboggan chute as “sort of like a really old-looking water park slide. It goes straight down. You hold your arms in really tight or you’ll be missing some skin — I speak from experience.”
There are several ways to win, among them: Be the fastest team (in either the two-, three- or four-person categories). Be the oldest team. Have the best-crafted toboggan. Or have the best costumes.
Near the action-packed hill, there will be a mechanical bull for the fourth year and a beer and wine tent. Friday there’s a brewer competition called the Down the Chute Beer and Wine Challenge; buy a $20 commemorative glass and bring it around to taste everyone’s offerings.
7. Ice fishing with Ricky Craven
Bundle up and throw on the Tide car colors: The seventh annual Moosehead Lake Togue Ice Fishing Derby hosted by Ricky Craven is three weeks away.
Tim Obrey, regional fisheries biologist and event organizer along with the Natural Resource Education Center, said it started as a way to thin the lake trout, or togue, numbers in Moosehead. That worked, and provided a nice local fundraiser to boot, so they’ve kept it up each year.
The derby runs from Jan. 24 to Jan. 26. Prizes are handed out for the three largest fish.
There’s also a planned showing that Saturday night of “Hardwater,” filmed over three winters in Maine and billed as “the world’s first feature-length ice fishing documentary.”
“(Craven) does like to ice fish quite a bit and he’s got a camp right here on Moosehead,” said Obrey.
The best time to meet the retired NASCAR driver is Sunday at 4 p.m. during weigh-in.
8. New additions at the Maine Wildlife Park
There will be a new lynx exhibit at the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray when it opens for the season next spring.
Park superintendent Curt Johnson hopes that shortly after that there will be new, young lynx to go in it.
In the last two years, the park has lost both mountain lions, one lynx and, just this month, a fisher, to old age. He has feelers out for a pair of mountain lions, a pair of lynx and a fisher for next season.
“I’ve been looking for mountain lions all of this year,” said Johnson.
The park finished a new mountain lion exhibit in 2012 and went the 2013 season lion-less. He’s hoping the next two already know each other; the previous two, different ages, didn’t like each other so they had to rotate the space.
“It is nice to see a younger generation of animals coming in that will hopefully be here for many years, kind of stagger the age classes a little bit,” Johnson said. “We have some great leads for this winter and we’re hoping to have them by the time we open.”
9. Lewiston-Auburn charter commission vote
Want to be a founding father? Or mother?
This could be your year.
This summer each city will elect three people to a to-be-named charter commission to shape what a combined Lewiston-Auburn could look like. We’re talking potential new name, pay scales, the whole kit and caboodle.
Chip Morrison, president of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce, spearheaded the petition drive to create the commission.
“A bunch of people are going around (now) looking for folks, ‘OK, would you do this?'” said Morrison. “It would be an enormous commitment of time. This will be weekly meetings and lots of homework for more than a year, probably, that’s my guess. This has never been done in Maine since Dover-Foxcroft in 1922 and government was a lot simpler then than it is now.”
Lewiston City Clerk Kathy Montejo said staff recommendations, which have to be adopted or revised next month by the incoming city council, include holding the election for commissioners on June 10, the same day as the statewide primary.
Nomination papers would be available in early February, 100 signatures would be due to the city by mid-April, and there’s no limit on the number of people who can run. The top vote-getters win.
Lewiston’s voters pick Lewiston’s three members, Auburn’s voters pick Auburn’s three.
A vote on whether to adopt the commission’s recommendations and actually form a merged city is a year or two off.
10. A dark horse candidate, change, growth — one medium’s predictions
After listening to her spirit guides, Lisbon psychic medium Eddita Felt said she sees a lot of change and transition in the new year.
“This last year, it seemed like a lot of people were experiencing change suddenly,” Felt said. “It feels as if the change that’s happening this year is going to be more predictable.”
One exception: Abrupt happenings on the world stage in April and May. “Things will be changing so fast, if you’re away from the news for a day, you’re going to think, ‘Oh, my.'”
After putting personal aspirations aside to make way for the practical the last few years, people will start to go for it in the new year, she said.
“I feel like 2014 is going to be when a lot of people are going to go after their dreams,” Felt said.
She sees good news for the Maine economy and optimism for the Legislature to fire things up, perhaps related to technological innovation.
It may be a good season for the Boston Red Sox, but not so much for the New England Patriots.
“I’m hearing the Red Sox are golden this year,” Felt said.
In Maine’s gubernatorial race, things could get interesting.
“I feel like there’s a dark horse in this, there’s someone who has not yet thrown their hat into the ring,” she said. “It feels like the dark horse is going to give the front-runner a run for their money and it comes right down to the wire.”
This dark horse candidate is male, a maverick, someone with experience in high finance and maybe a lawyer.
He may also have the initial M.
Hmm. Any guesses?
kskelton@sunjournal.com
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