Regarding Maine on the occasion of its 200th anniversary of statehood, in the Boston Globe

Maine turned 200 this year, but the Bicentennial celebrations were cancelled by the pandemic, with Gov. Mills spending the official birthday, March 15, advising Mainers to lockdown to prevent the spread of the then barely understood coronavirus.

I wrote a six-part series for the Maine Sunday Telegram on statehood's meaning that wrapped up just as Covid-19 spread into the state back in March, but I also wanted to present some key points to an external audience, one in Massachusetts in particular for reasons readers of The Lobster Coast will quickly ascertain. So in this week's Boston Sunday Globe Ideas section, I had this essay on Maine's experience as a colony of a colony, how it shaped our culture and people, and the ways in which the pandemic and other global developments may shake up the postcolonial trajectory my native state has long been on. Hope you enjoy.

This is my first byline in the Globe, but in September I spoke to Ideas staff writer David Sharfenberg about the battle for the national "soul" of the U.S., the topic of my most recent book, Union.

Update, 10/30/20: Bloomberg's Boston bureau has a radio show and podcast, Bloomberg Baystate Business, and hosts Tom Moroney and Joe Shortsleeve kindly had me on the show today to talk about the phenomena described in the Globe piece. My portion starts at 0:50:32.

Maine Climate Council: state meeting near-term targets, but transportation fix a challenge

Under Gov. Janet Mills, Maine has committed to a range of relatively tough climate goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent (vis a vis 1990 levels) by 2030; becoming carbon neutral by 2045; and reducing GHGs by 80 percent vs 1990, the world's baseline metric since the days of the original Kyoto conference. But how to accomplish that?

The Maine Climate Council, a statutory body with gubernatorial appointees, is tasked with figuring that out, and they had their second full meeting this past week. I reported on the proceedings in the Portland Press Herald.

The highlights: (1) the state calculates we're on target to meet our 2020 target of a 10 percent reduction in 1990-level GHGs, but keeping on course for the 2030 and 2050 targets will be a challenge; (2) a calculation of our carbon budget suggests that ongoing forest growth and the manufacture of durable forest products are offsetting 75 percent of our current emissions, which means our biggest-in-the-nation forest cover almost ensures that we'll be carbon neutral if and when we meet our GHG targets and; (3) reducing transportation GHGs -- 54 percent of the total and rising all the time -- is going to be the biggest challenge.

I last reported on the climate council on the occasion of their first meeting, and also wrote on what it will likely take to be carbon neutral here, and on Gov. Mills' original carbon neutrality announcement before the UN here.

Fun fact: the Gulf of Maine is the second fastest warming part of the entire world ocean, which has already had a whole range of effects discussed in this Press Herald series from 2015, which was a finalist for a Pulitzer, meaning you really ought to read it if you're interested in this topic!

Maine's governor wants the state carbon-neutral by 2045. What will that take?

At the United Nations, Governor Janet Mills pledged to make Maine carbon-neutral by 2045, tasking the new Maine Climate Council to come up with a plan to do so via an executive order.

So what does being "carbon neutral" mean, and what would Maine likely have to do to achieve such a status -- something no other state and only one foreign country has thus far achieved? I explored this in the current edition of the Maine Sunday Telegram, which published last Sunday.

In short: Bhutan, the only country that's already carbon-neutral, is 71% forested and has about 50 people per square mile. Maine is 90% forested and has just over 40 per square mile -- a carbon sink with not that many people and a huge structural advantage right out of the starting block. It's still going to require massive changes in how energy is produced and the types of vehicles and heating devices we use to consume it. Details in the story.

Speaking on Maine's identity, history, future in Blue Hill, Sept. 16

I'll be speaking on coastal Maine's cultural and economic background in Blue Hill, Maine next Sunday, September 16 at the Esther Wood Room of George Stevens Academy.

The talk -- entitled "Four Centuries of Coastal Maine Lives and Livelihoods" is sponsored by Colloquy Downeast in collaboration with six local partners, including the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries the Ellsworth American, Brooklin Keeping Society, the Wilson Museum, and the Sedgwick-Brooklin Historical Society. These are themes I explore in the second of my books, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier.

It kicks off at 3pm. Tickets are $5 at the door and include a light reception following the talk. There's a write-up in the American this week.

My next public talk thereafter is on the other side of the world: on American Nations at the 2018 Asahi World Forum in Tokyo September 25. Free book and a sake for anyone who makes both of these events in person.

Cruise tourism impacts in Maine, a series

Over the past four months I've been at work on a series on the impact of cruise ship tourism in Maine, where most ports of call have a smaller year-around population than the compliment of the larger ships themselves. The results have been appearing in the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram this week, with the final part in today's paper.

The bottom line for Maine communities: taking an ad hoc, reactive approach to cruise tourism has considerable dangers, but if you plan, prepare, and negotiate properly, you can get the outcomes your citizens want, rather than the ones that will just happen to them.

The full series -- Pier Pressure -- consists of five articles over three days, and they're all here for your convenience:

Day 1: "Some in Maine fear cruise ship tourism has gone overboard" (featuring Bar Harbor and the global, business, and historical contexts Mainers should know about.)

Day 1 sidebar: "No discharge fight comes to Acadia region" (Maine has the weakest marine discharge protections in New England, but there's a good explanation for why.)

Day 2: "Long touted economic benefits of cruise tourism far overstated" (How assumptions have been way off for passenger spending and net economic benefits in Portland, Maine.)

Day 2 sidebar: "Lone Portland passenger study made assumptions, overestimated economic impact" (A flawed 2009 study led city officials and residents to unrealistic expectations.)

Day 3: "Cruise ships trigger identity crises for a small city in Maine" (on Rockland and solutions generally for Maine ports.)

Photos by the ever-awesome Greg Rec.

Bar Harbor voters decide today if they want to buy an abandoned ferry terminal so as to ensure it becomes a multi-use facility, not a cruise ship mega-pier. [Update, 6/13/18: They approved the purchase by a more than five-to-one margin.]

In an unrelated note, my thanks to peers and colleagues in the Maine media for kindly recommending me to Pine Tree Watch's list of Maine's Most Trusted Journalists. The others so honored are my Press Herald colleagues (and, remarkably, immediate newsroom desk-neighbors) Mike Lowe, Eric Russell, and Bill Nemitz; Lewiston Sun-Journal managing editor Judy Meyer; Maine Public's Steve Mistler, Don Carrigan of WCSH-6/WLBZ-2, and the Bangor Daily News's Erin Rhoda, Chris Cousins, and Jake Bleiberg. All of us well know this is not an exhaustive list, as Maine is blessed with a great and varied press corps.

Gov. LePage scuttled Wiscasset traffic compromise, attorney says

Maine Governor Paul LePage personally intervened to kill a compromise between the state transportation department and the town of Wiscasset over a controversial traffic project there, an attorney for the town told residents this week.

I have the details in today's Portland Press Herald, which is also available online here.

For fuller background on the project, this story lays it all out, including the governor's chain of aggressive correspondence with constituents about the traffic problems in the midcoast town and how the Maine DOT lost the confidence of town residents after reneging on promises made about the project, including the use of federal funds and the historic preservation reviews that come with them.

Deeper EPA cuts threaten Maine's economy, environment

Late last month it became public that President Trump has proposed even deeper cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency than those initially reporter. In this past Sunday's Maine Sunday Telegram, I have a story on how three more proposed cuts and eliminations will play out in Maine, where they would end federal funding for beach water quality monitoring and the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership and cut back on funds to clean up Superfund sites like the Callahan Mine in Brockville.

Critics say the cuts will hurt Maine's economy, and they are also getting a cold, unanimous reception from Maine's Congressional delegation, which consists of two Republicans, a Democrat, and an independent.

I've also written recently about the president's proposed budget cuts generally, his broader cuts to the EPA, the elimination of EPA programs protecting kids from lead paint, his cuts to NOAA and, the Wells Reserve and suggested dismantling of NASA Earth Sciences would effect Maine.

In Maine, critics fear Trump's EPA cuts will damage environment, economy

In today's Maine Sunday Telegram, I write about how critics of President Trump's proposed cuts to the US Environmental Agency fear they will cause significant damage to Maine's environment and economy.

The story includes pushback some or all of the cuts from US Senators Angus King (I) and Susan Collins (R) as well as US Rep. Chellie Pingree, (D-ME1). Maine's other US House member, Bruce Poliquin, did not directly comment on the proposed cuts.

The new story reveals that the NOAA cuts also , which would see their federal funding completely eliminated.

In related stories, I've previously reported on how Trump's "2-for-1" regulatory reform order is expected to paralyze big picture fisheries management, and how an early plan to eliminate NASA satellite monitoring of Earth would upend Maine-based research into the changing climate, and how cuts to NOAA will imperil Maine's popular Wells Reserve at Laudhom Farm, the Great Bay reserve across the border in southern New Hampshire, and 27 other National Estuarine Research Reserves and likely end the popular and successful University of Maine Sea Grant program while alarming Maine's marine community.

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.

As Trump Age dawns, a dispatch from the city Sanders built

At Politico Magazine, the subjects for the What Works series are picked months in advance, so it's by coincidence that, days after Donald Trump's upset victory in the U.S. presidential election, the series visit Bernie Sanders' hometown. I did field research for this story a couple weeks before election day; now it reads like a dispatch from an alternate universe, where a town with few meaningful fissures is creating a sustainable economy under the guidance of their municipal government, itself run for much of the past four decades by social democrats.

In any case, the new story is on Burlington, Vermont's 37-year drive to build a sustainable city, protected from international fossil fuel markets and the whims of distant corporate boards. The result: the first city able to power itself entirely from renewable energy -- it owns its own grid and generating capacity and could theoretically cut itself off from the outside world without interrupting power -- and one that is now working to become net zero in transportation and thermal energy use as well. It also grows a lot of its own food.

This is my ninth full-length "What Works" piece this year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood"; how Philadelphia repurposed a 1200 acre former naval base;  how Milwaukee breathed life back into a legacy industrial district, creating the manufacturing park of the future; how Roanoke, Virginia went from a train city to a brain city; and how Winston-Salem, North Carolina pivoted from tobacco manufacturing to high-tech innovation. In addition -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

Where's next? Hint: They filmed Breaking Bad there.

How Tech Helped Winston-Salem Shake Tobacco

My latest installment for POLITICO Magazine's "What Works" series is on how the manufacturing city of Winson-Salem, North Carolina reinvented itself as an arts-and-science hub as cigarette manufacturing diminished and local companies were gobbled up by conglomerates. It's a remarkable story of collaboration between a traditional patriarchy, research scientists, city officials and punk rockers.

This is my eighth full-length "What Works" piece this year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood"; how Philadelphia repurposed a 1200 acre former naval base;  how Milwaukee breathed life back into a legacy industrial district, creating the manufacturing park of the future, and how Roanoke, Virginia went from a train city to a brain city. In addition -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

What city is next? Here's a hint: Bernie Sanders.

How Milwaukee shook off the rust

A lot of cities have worked to repurpose their manufacturing districts. Milwaukee has doubled-down on the largest of theirs, creating a model for what the 21st century industrial park might look like. Mixing recreational, environmental, and manufacturing uses, the Menomonee Valley has filled with tenants from near and far. It's the topic of my latest installment in Politico's "What Works" series, which posted Thursday night.

This is my sixth full-length "What Works" piece this year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood"; and how Philadelphia repurposed a 1200 acre former naval base. In addition, last month -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

[Update, 9/8/16: I did this interview with Wisconsin Public Radio about the piece.]

A reporting collaboration with The Guardian

My story in today's Portland Press Herald explored a proposal by the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center revive the economy of Maine's poorest county by exempting it from state income and sales taxes.

The story was part of a collaboration with the Guardian, the London-based international news organization, which had acquired internal documents from the State Policy Network, a conservative organization for which Maine Heritage and dozens of other state-level think tanks serve as franchises. The Guardian today wrote about the national strategy the documents revealed -- a follow-up to their stories yesterday and Monday on the closely-affiliated American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC) which SPN, Maine Heritage, and several Maine legislators are members of. The Texas Observer also filed this story on an SPN-related initiative in that state.

The Guardian version of my story can be found here, and even includes some of my photography - something I haven't done as much of since dialing back my foreign correspondent work a few years back.

The collaboration was an enjoyable experience -- the intersection of a local and national story -- which I hope we will find occasion to repeat.

On the shutdown, the Tea Party, and American regionalism

On the eve of the end of the world, I offer this analysis on the regional origins of the U.S. House's "shutdown caucus" and what it means for the future of the Tea Party on the national stage, all over at Washington Monthly.

The comments are informed by my most recent book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, which describes the locations, historical origins and fundamental characteristics of our rival regions and their effect on our history, institutions, and politics over the past four centuries. A full map of the cultures today is available here at World Wide Woodard.

For additional context, there's been a small outpouring of writing on the effect of regionalism and the old Confederacy on the (hopefully soon to be ended) federal shutdown and the (at this writing) looming threat of default. John Judis at the New Republic offered this, and was countered by Seth Ackerman at Jacobin. Gary Wills had this to say at the New York Review of Books, and Michael Lind joined the fray as well (distinguishing, I'm happy to see, between Appalachia and the Deep South.)

And now, let us hope the federal Congress is able to overcome its regional schisms before midnight.

Things to Watch and Read, Aug. 26 edition

As summer draws to a close, a few items of interest:

Dan Quayle's creepy son wins primary: If events in Arizona have you concerned about the future of the Republic, here's some more to chew on. Dan Quayle's son, Ben, beat eight rivals to become the Republican nominee for one of Greater Phoenix's congressional seats. Of course he raised lots of money through his dad's connections, but he used it to create this creepy television ad, which apparently worked for him. When people vote for someone because they promise to be an angry bully, it's time to worry about the health of the body politic.

In Maine, official accountability crashes: The Portland Phoenix has an important piece on how the Pine Tree State's e-mail archiving system frustrates journalists and watchdog groups' efforts to keep an eye on public officials.

Shame of Maine: There's been a lot of national media attention paid to Maine's very own egg magnate, Austin "Jack" DeCoster, on account of the massive national salmonella outbreak traced to his Iowa operations. This has triggered a flurry of reports about DeCoster's disturbing pattern of gross labor, environmental, and food safety lapses in Iowa, Maryland, and, of course, here in Maine, where he was fined $2 million back in 1997 for abusing workers. Somehow, DeCoster keeps getting away with it, paying fines and making false promises to have "changed." Robert Reich suggests some businessmen are just plain "bad eggs," and suggests their state-level misdeeds should be more easily traceable across the nation.

Has European "Socialism" helped in a crisis?

The last of my stories from my recent trip to Europe just posted over at Global Post. This explores whether the European model -- a social democratic system with universal health care, a more rigid labor market, and higher taxes -- proved more resilient in coping with the shock of the Great Recession than the American "free market" alternative.

The answer, as one might expect, is nuanced. The piece, filed from Austria with input from across western Europe, can be read by subscribers to the Post's Passport service. If you don't get Passport but care about foreign news, consider trying it. Where else are you going to find a prominent Czech economist describing the situation by use of metaphors from Lord of the Rings?

Czech Republic: How Zlin kept its groove

During my recent trip to Central Europe, I was able to revisit Zlin, the "model city" created in the early 20th century by the self-made Czechoslovak shoe tycoon, Tomas Bata. The provincial town in Czech Moravia is something of a pilgrimage site for enthusiasts of prewar industrial design, as Bata built nearly the entire place from scratch via a central, standardized plan. Along the way he created the world's largest shoe company, and exported the model just about everywhere else.

As you can read in my story now up over at The Christian Science Monitor, his legacy lived on in the Zlin region even during the Communist Era and many credit his (self-aggrandizing) social engineering with the city's relative prosperity and entrepreneurial spirit. (New to me was the tale of a Bata-inspired collective farm that managed to conduct a surprisingly capitalistic operation in the midst of the dour Brezhnev-era Warsaw Pact.) And his brother's famous office-in-an-elevator is still there, restored along with the Bata skyscraper to its 1930s glory.

Photo (c) 2010 Colin Woodard. All rights reserved.

Things to watch and read

Some recommended reading and viewing this week:

My friends Jason Maloney and Kira Kay -- aka The Bureau for International Reporting -- were in Haiti when the earthquake struck, and one of the pieces they were working on aired recently on PBS' NOW and can now be seen online. It's a powerful piece on giving birth in a very poor place, and how little attention maternal health gets on the international "development agenda." Needless to say, one fears for how things will play out in Haiti post-quake.

Harper's has been a little too predictable for my taste of late, but the current issue has a chilling investigative piece exposing an apparent cover-up of the slaying of prisoners at the U.S. detention facility on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A disturbing expose on how the Pentagon and Central Intelligence cover their tracks....poorly.

Here in Maine, the Lewiston Sun Journal published a tough, thoroughly researched piece revealing how our hospitals have been lavishly compensating their CEOs, even as they cry poor. Oh, and Lewiston-based Central Maine Health Care turns out to have an offshore subsidiary in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes and transparency. This is the sort of no-b.s. watchdog journalism our daily newspapers should be doing week in and week out, but sadly don't. Kudos to reporter Lindsay Tice and her editors.

In a similar vein -- although it took much less digging -- the Bangor Daily News yesterday published this no-nonsense article on how Fraser paper paid its executives massive bonuses as the company went down the tubes. Aren't these things supposed to be tied to the company's performance? Odd how it looks more like looting.

If Richard Connor over at the Portland Press Herald is wondering how to make his papers relevant again, perhaps he should read these pieces.

Austria's banking worries

I was in Austria recently in connection with a series of stories on how the Great Recession is playing out in East-Central Europe. There many countries had only just emerged from their post-Communist recession when they got whacked hard by an uber-Capitalist one.

One of the casualties has been Austria, whose banks loaned heavily to the region during the go-go years, so much in fact that many experts say the country is vulnerable to a Greek-style meltdown. Read my piece on this topic in the Christian Science Monitor to find out more.

One thing to be aware of: reporters generally don't write the headlines and subheads that go with their story, and the ones the Monitor wrote for this piece don't accurately reflect the article. A better headline would have been "Austria fears wave of bad banks loans tied to Eastern Europe" and the subhead should have focused on the Hypo bank failure (in December) rather than the Austrian state's massive bank rescue (more than a year ago.)

Memo to journalists: always ask to see headlines and captions beforehand.

Has Eastern Europe's crisis peaked?

My old stomping ground in (what we children of the Cold War called) Eastern Europe has been hard hit by the Great Recession. So has the region's crisis peaked? That's the topic of my first piece from my recent trip to the region, which posted at Global Post today.

The story is for the Post's Passport section, which means they'd like you to subscribe, but it's well worth the bother. Remember all those newspapers that cut their foreign bureaus? A lot of their veteran writers file copy for Global Post these days.

More from Europe coming up....