Trump plan on Canada lumber trade could help Maine sawmills

Last month a Trump transition memo obtained by CNN had Canadian media and politicians expressing concerns about the effect on their country's softwood lumber industry, the people who make spruce, fir, and pine dimension lumber of the sort you frame a house with. Trump, the memo suggested, would take an aggressive stance with our neighbor to the north on its softwood lumber imports.

This had me wondering what the effect of new trade restrictions would be for Maine's softwood lumber mills and harvesters. As I report in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, they would probably benefit, though the devil is in the details.

On Trump transition watch at the Press Herald, I last reported on how his proposal to slash NASA's earth science missions would damage Maine science.

American Nations media frenzy

As regular readers of this space know, American Nations went viral late last week, more than two years after its publication, with interest rapidly spreading into mainstream media.

Over the past week, I'm pleased to say that has developed into a nationwide media frenzy of sorts, capped off by yesterday's interview with Chuck Todd, host of MSNBC's The Daily Rundown. My thanks and appreciation to Todd and his crew for their interest and for so efficiently and accurately setting up the book's paradigm in their introduction.

By Friday afternoon, the book's overall sales rank at Amazon hit #50, an all-time high for one of my titles.

In addition to the interviews and features described or previewed last Sunday, here is a small sample of the attention the book and framework received in this unusual week:

Columnists at a number of big city dailies weighed in on whether I'd gotten their region right, at least based on what they understood from the Washington Post or Tufts Magazine articles. (Few, understandably, got to read the actual book before their weekly deadlines.)  

The Oregonian's David Sarasohn essentially endorsed it, but thinks his state's two cultures get along better than the same ones in, say, California. Up in Washington State, this blogger used the paradigm to analyze Boeing's "regional divide."

Kevin Horrigan at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch just doesn't understand what the map and model are really about, and criticized it for things the book explicitly doesn't say, but it was still nice to have the attention. (Alas.).  By contrast, Ralph De la Cruz at the Dallas Morning News thoughtTexans have been successfully "map pegged."

[Update, 11/17/23: The Omaha World-Herald's Erin Grace had this beautifully-executed piece on The Midlands, Nebraska, and the American Nations in this morning's paper, complete with a new color map.]

South Floridians are up in arms at not being included within the eleven nations I treat in the book. (Would it help if I told you Hawaii and Newfoundland aren't either?) The Miami New Times thought I was arguing that the area "shouldn't be considered part of the United States" (sigh), but at least acknowledged they hadn't read the book. (To my surprise, a lot of their commenters seemed to endorse the idea that Miami "isn't really America", suggesting this is an emotive issue thereabouts.)

I had an enjoyable conversation with Brian O'Neill at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about whether Allegeheny County belongs in the Midlands or not -- he's sticking with Appalachia though. The Santa Fe Reporter offered no judgment, but expressed relief that they weren't part of New France. Jack Craver at The Capital Times in Madison, wondered aloud if Wisconsin would still qualify as part of Yankeedom under the Scott Walker administration.

Much further afield, there was the Irish Times, whose U.S. correspondent, Simon Carswell, unpacked the model for his country's readers, saying it "helps navigate a greater understanding of what drives people in this vast, eclectic country."

The Wall Street Journal's Market Watch blog had their own piece, as did Andrew Sullivan's The Dish, and the Raleigh News &Observer.

Lots of other papers reprinted the Washington Post piece, which went out on the Post's news service late in the week, from the Tampa Bay Times to Tokyo's Japan Times.

I also had fun chatting with my Portland Press Herald colleague Greg Kesich about the book and the secret of going viral in our in-newsroom television studio Thursday. Earlier today I chatted with the host of CJAD's Viewpoints in Montreal, but alas, the segment isn't up online yet. The one I did with Lakeshore Public Radio in (the Yankee bit of) Indiana earlier in the week is though, as are the previously plugged NPR, BBC, KPCC, and KPFA pieces.

And, finally, the Free Lance-Star of Fredereicksburg, Va., Friday published my recent Washington Monthly piece on the regional divide in the recent Virginia governor's race as an OpEd. Thanks for your interest.

Now to get some sleep....

The forecast for passenger rail in Maine

Union Station, Portland, 1954, courtesy of the always interesting Portland Maine History 1786-Present Facebook Page

The last passenger trains pulled out of Maine in the 1960s. Portland's grand terminals were torn down to make way for parking lots and, in the case of Union Station, a particularly soulless strip mall. Tracks were ripped out or paved over. Highways were the way of the future.

But since 2001, passenger rail has been making a comeback. In 2001, the Amtrak Downeaster debuted Boston to Portland service and in the years since has greatly exceeded ridership expectations and regularly been rated as the top service in the national system. This past November the run was extended to Freeport and Brunswick in Maine's midcoast. There was talk of continuing service to Augusta and Lewiston, and maybe even Montreal. Seasonal connecting service to Rockland was to beefed up. Direct Portland to New York City trains were on the drawing boards.

In today's Portland Press Herald cover story, I take a look at the near- and long-term prospects for extending passenger trains in Maine. Ironically, because of some missing infrastructure -- consisting entirely of elements torn up in the late 20th century -- the Downeaster's core service isn't operating as quickly and frequently as it really needs to, particularly on the Portland-Brunswick leg. Until it does, most connecting and continuing services will have to wait, while seasonal service to Rockland is actually expected to scale back.

Maine: Quebec and East-West Highway; prominent campaign donors

I have two short stories in today's Portland Press Herald.

In the first, we check in with officials in Quebec to see what they are thinking in regards to the proposed East-West Highway and the "missing link" from the Quebec border to the nearest existing highway at Sherbrooke. Short answer: it's not really on their radar screen. (For more on East-West highway issue, consider this feature in the Maine Sunday Telegram last week.)

The second is an early take on donations to Maine's US Senate and House hopefuls, as shown in early returns for the latest reporting deadline yesterday. My piece highlights a few prominent Mainers and who they're giving to. My colleague John Richardson has a round-up of the money totals thus far. More details to come.

Maine's East-West Highway: savior or albatross?

My story in today's Maine Sunday Telegram explores the proposed East-West Highway plan, a $2 billion private toll road connecting Calais/St.Stephen, NB with Coburn Gore and south-Central Quebec. At this writing, it's the most read story on the newspaper's website today.

As you'll see, whether the plan appears to be a good idea or not has a lot to do with your mind set and frame of reference.

There's also a companion story from my colleague Tux Turkel on why the highway's promoter, Cianbro head Peter Vigue, travels with bodyguards.

For fellow policy wonks, I'll be adding a few documents to this post when I have an extra few minutes this weekend.

[Update, 6/5/12: An update on the Quebec angle to this story.]

Academe: does the pursuit of global "excellence" in faculty hiring have a downside?

I've been a correspondent of The Chronicle of Higher Education for twenty-two years now, covering research and university affairs from locations around the world. My latest story -- from Canada -- explores if there's a downside to the current trend in the globalized hiring of faculty, at least in regards to social sciences and humanities fields, where "local knowledge" can be critical to a university's mission.

Canada offers an interesting case study. It's a small country (30 million) that was once so concerned about having its faculty become dominated by Americans that it spawned a powerful "hire local" campaign, the Canadianization movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But that movement has run its course, scholars argue, and there are some grounds for concern that important, Canada-specific scholarship may become impoverished as a result.

The story is behind the Chronicle's pay wall, so if you're not a subscriber, you might be prompted to pay up to read it.

As always, you can find all of my journalism articles posted at my website.

Canada: Despite Wikileaked cable, Canadian TV Producers say they don't hate America

Reading the U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, I've generally had the same reaction voiced by many commentators: they show U.S. diplomats to be capable, professional, well-informed and sometimes even witty.

So on a recent reporting trip to Canada, I followed up on one of them: a 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa warning that the television dramas and sitcoms aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were engaged in "anti-American melodrama" and "insidious negative popular stereotyping" of Washington officials. This, the diplomats warned, either reflected or perhaps cultivated anti-American feeling in the Canadian public, with potentially serious long-term consequences.

Heady stuff. But, as my story over at The Christian Science Monitor reveals, largely off-base. (Headline: "Canadian TV producers: We don't really hate America.")

A few items that didn't make it into the story. In initial reports on this cable, many journalists mistakenly attributed it to then-Ambassador David Wilkins, whose name appeared at the end of the cable. Wilkins subsequently denied it, and experts pointed out that the name at the end of each State Department cable doesn't denote authorship, but rather the highest level official on station at the time the cable was sent. The real authors, Wilkins told CBC's As It Happens, were staff with "too much time on their hands."

Also, in the course of reporting the story, I got a chance to watch some of the shows in question, and to interview their creators. For American viewers: Little Mosque on the Prairie evokes Northern Exposure in both tone and its "fish out of water" premise. Intelligence - now available instantly at Netflix -- is a complex crime-and-espionage drama that's been compared to The Wire, with the refreshing twist of being set in Vancouver, and written with a Canadian audience in mind.

In Montreal

Back briefly in my role as a foreign correspondent, I'm currently on assignment in Montreal for The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Christian Science Monitor. Expect brilliant stories shortly.

True to stereotype, people are watching live curling competitions in the hotel lobby (Ontario vs Saskatchewan), and a good ten broadsheet pages of The Gazette are dedicated to hockey each day. Now if they could just fix all those badly-built bridges and overpasses.