Readuponit: Travel and voracious reading

Maybe it’s because we carry notebooks and write things down. We are not sure what it is that makes the people in Lewiston so open and friendly, but it’s striking. Last night we realized that every person we’ve met during our time here over the past few days knows everyone else!   It’s a small community of like-minded souls.

We were diving into a mountain of lobster piled on top of crispy polenta and Karen Johnson, our waitress at Fishbones, said her sister was best friends with Gabriella Russell the woman we had just met who told us about her ambitious plan to renovate Bates Mill #5.

She also knows the man who is meeting us this morning to go paddling on the Androscoggin river.  She spoke highly of Eric Angren, who we met at his restaurant Fuel the other night, which many have said was the catalyst for the resurgent spirit of Lisbon Street.

They all knew Rachel Desgrosseilliers, the director of the Museum L-A, who has her own fast-moving goal of relocated and expanding the museum into a newly built section of an old mill right on the river. Yep, they were all going to Rachel’s speakeasy party with the prohibition-era costumes, dancing and secret password.

I asked Karen what has changed about Lewiston over the twenty years she’s lived here.  “Well, I used to never think of going down town. Now I love it, especially the big farmer’s market that happens in the parking lot over there every Saturday. I come and get my knives sharpened. There are hundreds of people who come.”

Our bicycle touring guide, Phil Savignano, who led us through the pretty country where he lives in Turner to the Nezinscot Farm, knew all of these same people who are busy making Lewiston a great destination.  After a 7 mile ride, we enjoyed their homemade bread, sampled some of their 16 different chevre and cow’s milk cheeses, and spoke with

Gloria Varney, who has raised four children here and runs a farm apothecary as well as raising llamas, goats, sheep on 500 acres of rolling hills.

Gloria told us the only sad news of our trip, about how high the price of grain threatens to put many of her neighbor farmers who can’t raise the price of milk to anywhere close to their costs out of business. “But farming is what we do, we will carry on” she told us.

With a date to go paddling on the Androscoggin River this morning, and some city bike trails to explore, we still have a lot of Lewiston left to enjoy. I am sure Jonathan Labonte, director of the local Land Trust, will know everyone we’ve met and complete this familiar circle.

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Jack and I arrived in Auburn yesterday and checked into the Hilton Garden Inn. Then we set out to explore this city, which combined with Auburn across the river has about 84,000 residents. The first thing we noticed were some of the biggest old mill buildings we’d ever seen.

These massive structures dwarfed the big mills in Easthampton and were even larger than some that have been rehabbed in Holyoke.   We walked past the Bates Mill that’s now the home of TD Bank’s call center and medical offices. There are also 48 apartments here that we learned were snapped up immediately.  People love living with 14 foot ceilings, copious amount of sunlight, and right in the heart of downtown.

We walked up to Lisbon Street and there we passed a series of halal meat stores and other shops serving the large community of Somalis who have moved here since 2000.  There was a sign for  videotapes of reciting the Koran, a blizzard of colored fabrics to use for head-coverings and men standing around chatting wearing the garb of their homeland.  We would learn much more about this wave that has brought nearly 3000 Africans to this town, when we had beers at Baxter Brewing Co and met Rachel the director of the local history museum.  It’s always been a town of immigrants, in the ’50s the French Canadians battled with the Irish. “If your ball went over to the other side of the street, you didn’t go ant get it back,” said one resident.

We had a busy day walking the streets, meeting people and then an elegant dinner at a French restaurant called Fuel. The name is from owner Eric Agren’s  original goal of making a restaurant that could be converted from inside to outside by opening a garage door .That didn’t work in Maine’s climate but his restaurant is cozy, popular and very good.  Eric, who has a 2nd restaurant is opening a tapas restaurant a few doors down. His Fuel was the start of an influx of higher end businesses, like a bike shop, that have made Lisbon Street grow both up and down.

He showed us some of what is making Lewiston such a popular place to live when he took us upstairs to an apartment he renovated. It’s a massive 5600 square feet, and with 18′ ceilings, a gym, and top of the line appliances. It would easily go for many millions somewhere else. Here there is so much room that anyone who wants to roll up their sleeves could have a gigantic apartment for a small sum.

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I don’t know about you, but my cable bill both annoys and worries me.  It seems like the better the TVs get, and even though they keep going down in price AND getting bigger, there are little strings attached and they make the bill creep up month after month.

Having to pay $10 more a month for a box capable of showing HDTV sucks…and so does this monthly charge for a landline.  I can’t do anything about the HD fee, and still need to two boxes, but I took a step the other day to cutting down this monster without chopping off my Comcast cord.  I bought an Obitalk, which after I figure it all out, will provide me with a landline with the same number I’ve used for decades, without the monthly $40 bill.

Yes, it sounds easy. But like so many things, it’s not easy at all.  First I dusted off the Google Voice number that I got a few years ago. I used to enjoy watching the phone messages get transcribed (badly!) in emails. For some reason my sister’s voice really stumped Google’s voice-transcribing computers. Then, for some reason, it stopped doing this, and I didn’t check in with it for a while.

But this Obitalk needs Google Voice to work.  One of the first things I found out was that the porting, or number switching, needs to involve a mobile number.  Drat!  But digging deeper and asking my friend John, I found a work-around. This involves buying a dirt-cheap AT&T Go Phone at Wal-Mart and moving my landline number there…then switching this number, or porting it, to Google Voice.

So far this has cost me $70 for the Obitalk, and I read that someone can buy a Go Phone for $10. Oh, and I have to load up $15 in minutes for this phone I’m not going to really use. But in the long run, I’ve saved enough on my cable bill to tack on the $10 more a month for a second HD box.  And the big plasma TV that we will hook up to the new box was free, a castoff from someone who wanted a bigger, badder model.

I hope this all works…if not, well don’t try to call my land-line because at this point it doesn’t ring.

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