Category: Uncategorized

Bigger The Maine Family, More Varied The Musical Tastes.

Maine Natural Music Outside, Inside Our Family Homes With Variety Of Tastes.

Grabbing a coffee this morning heading in from Drews Lake, Cameron’s Store owner Doug recalled the Cobras who played at the Cobra Club in Caribou Maine back in the early 1960’s.

The Leavitt Brothers from Oakfield were the heart and soul of the sound of the local musical band. He also recalled how gifted Richard Sullivan was with the guitar. How hearing a 45 rpm record of the Ventures he could by nightfall have the guitar rift down pat without any sheet music.

In my radio days, I remember helping set up for Walter Holmes and the Sunshine Boys (and one daughter too). Ralph Hall fiddled with the curled neck instrument. And lots of musical cronies crowded in to the studio for a mic check before the on air light lit.

My oldest brother Stephen played piano, sang lead in many bands over the years.

And was in the same 1964 Houlton High School graduating class as Richard and Doug. And it got me thinking of besides working in radio for nine years and that musical programming exposure, how each brother’s musical tastes contributed like my kids did with what filled their ipods to the mental jukebox inside my head.

Brother Stephen, ten years older introduced my to the Everly Brothers Phil and Don. To the grandfather of rock and roll Chuck Berry. To the killer, Jerry Lee Lewis along with Elvis, Little Eva, Sam Cooke, Chubby Checker, The Platters, Drifters and Fats Domino.

Next oldest brother Jonathan, class of 1967 was in to the Beach Boys, CCR, the Beatles.

And I can see him sitting in his backroom farm bedroom, bent over a guitar he was a novice at finding his way around on. But mastering chords, tempo and words of the Animal’s hit “House Of The Rising Sun”.

And then brother Brian, class of 1969 enters the front piano room where we all studied at the Maine farm.

Where during a good bonanza potato year, Mom and Dad bought a top of the line stereo at the time to sample Cream, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Rolling Stones, Kinks, Iron Butterfly, Traffic. Songs played also on the eight track in the new 1967 spring time yellow with black roof Mustang dropping me off to school.

My Dad played in a band, weilding the clarinet back when folks danced, did not park it on the couch. And zone out becoming detached in front of a television programming… even the commercials where no one talks. Or races for a 30 or 60 second snack. Mom filled the home with old fashioned piano gospel hymns, played the organ at church growing up. And “Up On The House Top Click Click” at Christmas on the ivories. My Aunt Ruth was a music teacher and drug me and my cousins to operettas, school concerts growing up too.

So now with XM, Sirius, ipods with four thousand song titles and the easy double click to find new bands to toe tap, hum along with, the sky is the limit on anyone’s musical repertoire.

Never one band for long but always new and different sought out, enjoyed, experienced to help ease on down the road of life. Electric Guest, This Head I Hold is kinda catchy.

Or Radio Head, Coldplay, maybe a little Suzanne Vega.

Music… feel, taste, hear, visually see it being presented so easily these days to help you through yours. Cherish the moments and remember Maine offers it’s own natural version, like its waterfront loon calls you can only experience outdoors in Vacationland.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

May 29, 2012
Can’t Be A Beacon If Your Light Doesn’t Shine.

Simple Towers, Transmitting From The Heart Means You Don’t Need Eiffel Tower Fancy Broadcasting.

The phone ringing at a high school small town Maine radio station job.

Spinning records on the Saturday Night Country Jamboree shift and requests for Donna Fargo’s “You Can’t Be A Beacon If Your Light Don’t Shine”.

Everyone, you and me included has a purpose in life to help others along the way. To help unlock mysteries and support each other. No one is an island, no one is truely alone.

Are you self contained, wrapped tightly needing no ones help or not able to reach out, not available to assist someone else?

Is your antenna out behind the dog house, parked in back of the studios standing skyward straight? Secured by guy wires, monitored daily to make sure the brightly fresh red and white drying paint, the FAA approved lighting operational to not hurt anyone happening to fly by? It is all about working harder on relationships in life… reaching out to others, not just taking care of you, me alone.

And knowing the higher the antenna, tower the less energy, effort needed to help more people. To always being mindful to not knowingly rub people the wrong way or cause any disharmony if you can help it. And to be a vessel so full of inner joy, peace, understanding that a bump, nudge is okay. A little spills out. No big deal if someone runs, piles, even tears in to you. Even if barbed, hurtful. Take time to find out why. And don’t take it personally. Or do take ownership if you are responsible because it always takes two for the good, bad, ugly.

Be an aid, helpful, available when others around you need a friend.

Someone to lean on. Be quick to forgive because it is a two way street and you and I need plenty in return on lots of offenses. That bog us down. Throws us in to permanent park postion. Placing us dead in the water, in our tracks in the breakdown lane of one very short life if we don’t get skilled at giving, receiving forgivness. With an little seasoning of mercy on the side to round out the forgetting a trespass.

To have your signal reach further in to cars, homes, businesses, camps out in the hinterland. To places depending on the signal, message that is from your heart. Spreading the news, weather, entertainment and a form of companionship. But not for a series of advertisers in spot clusters inbetween song and information segments. Working as a servant instead for one higher power only. Exclusive sponsor of your life.

Like prayer, daily maintenance of your broadcast facilities, the tower, transmitter monitored without ceasing. To keep the signal beaming, shining, reaching out. Not to impress, not to annoy, but just offering whatever can be gleaned from anyone picking up the signal. Life’s balancing act to meet the needs of so many around you. To live up to the expectations of society, others, yourself means easy does it.

Do the best you can but make sure to spend lots of time on your knees.

Be willing to ask for help, to offer it just as readily with a kinder, gentler heart to know we need each other to improve. To polish our imperfections after one by one they are identified, inventoried and addressed daily with the help of others. True friends can hit you with the truth if you open your heart, ears, eyes and trust. If you are willing to tune in not out.

Pointed skyward and radiating the joy you and I are supposed to be filled with inside is what your beacon is supposed to be offering others. The assigned frequency from one three letter authortiy FCC like our purpose, talents, skill set and “shape” as defined by a different set of triple letters “GOD”. Grateful and spreading the good news to stay on the air at full power. Not for ratings, large numbers but just to help row the boat, pitch in, make a difference in small ways without lots of fanfare, attention to yourself.

Despite setbacks from lightning, thunderstorms in life when protecting the transmitter, tower means reduction to a lower power.

There are times when you have to crawl, get knocked down and have to learn how to walk, run all over again. But changed in a good way. Not understanding during the transition what is ahead but the weaker you get the stronger your faith becomes. And stays. As you give up the controls, lean back and trust because there is no other way to lead your life. To teach your kids, grandchildren that are modeling their behavior, thoughts around yours. Let go, surrender.

Study of the plate current amperage, voltage of the final stage in the transmitter from pre set tolerances provided by the manufacturer with three hour clipboard meter readings taken, monitored. Much like vigilante, round the clock care and attention that we all need to work on to protect, build and improve our character with guidance from our creator. And your beacon does not have to be Eiffel Tower broadcast fancy either.

You and I learn more from the man and woman on the street, your neighbor next door, brothers and sisters in faith about setbacks, successes.

Nothing against paid professionals taught to sheperd with a sheep skin but others around us. Testimonials about what Jane and Joe, Ken and Barbie did right, wrong. Lessons they dare to open up and share. So all can benefit from. To not keep making the same blind mistakes or hurting others you love in anyway.

These Me In Maine blog posts are a humble, meek and humility approach to life from one individual some kind of excited to live, raise a family in Vacationland. I don’t think I could examine my life, the inside of my heart and improve, change or add to what’s needed living in a hustle bustle urban area outside of Maine. If you are country mouse simple too or strive to be, watch the fire in your belly grow, increase by spending more time in Maine. Maine, small town proud, down to Earth. Come for a day, stay a lifetime. Find your space, your place in Maine, the way life should be. Start really living.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

May 28, 2012
Curling Up With A Good Book In Maine.

Maine Natural Settings, Ideal For Opening A Book To Enrich, Understand Your Life Clearly.

Growing up books were a big part of the Maine home my three older brothers and I lived in.

One wall of a den was nothing but one big book case filled with extensive collections of everything from philosophers to economic principles to spiritual writings. My Mom and Dad enjoyed, learned much from books. And shared what they learned around the supper table, on picnics, working the farm with each of us on different tasks growing up.

In the upstairs hall room more book cases with a variety of
encyclopedia sets, other resource materials to help the four boys in their education inside the Maine farm home.

We learned our most valuable lessons outside on the Maine farm. Laboring with parents who we saw through out the work day, all four seasons. Or from talks on the glass front sun porch or in a pair of rocking chairs in the farm house kitchen in front of a wood cook stove radiating heat. Each of the four bedrooms in the home had bookcases too. That each of us boys added to as we grew taller. To supplement the books our parents stocked each bookcase with depending on our interests, hobbies.

This summer with ENS settling in and new routines, reading more books on a variety of subjects has been an eye opener. In the books from the farm, pictures, handwritten notes, underlined passages show me I am on the path of the reader before me, my parents.

Even though both have passed on, I continue to learn more from the two that raised me, my three older brothers.

Dad was an economic agriculture major from the University of Maine at Orono. Completing his college degree after flying World War Two missions in the tail end of a B-24 bomber plane. Mom earning a college degree in business from Becker College which was invaluable with the enterprises both entered in to as a team.

I just completed Stephen King’s Full Dark, No Stars, a three long story work from the Bangor Maine author. And from the farm the shuttle of books has me munching on C.S. Lewis’s “The Four Loves.” Here is an excerpt from this 1960’s literary work.

“Affection produces happiness if – and only if – there is common sense and give and take and “decency”.

In other words, only if something more, and other, than Affection is added. The mere feeling is not enough. You need “common sense”, that is, reason. You need “give and take”; that is, you need justice, continually stimulating mere Affection when it fades and restraining it when it forgets or would defy the art of love. You need “decency.” There is not disguising the fact that this means goodness; patience, self denial, humility, and the continual intervention of a far higher sort of love than Affection, in itself, can ever be. That is the whole point. If we try to live by Affection, alone, Affection will “go bad on us”.

And on C.S. Lewis expounds further… “Friendship is – in a sense not at all derogatory to it – the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two are friends they have in some degree drawn apart from the herd.

Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship.

The species, biologically considered, has no need of it. The pack or herd – the community – may even dislike and distrust it. Its leaders very often do. Headmasters and Headmistresses and Heads of religious communities, colonels and ships’ captains, can feel uneasy when close and strong friendships arise between little knots of their subjects”.

Learning from a good set of parents that prepared the four boys for life, taking the time to share what they had learned. And placing books in our hands, at our disposal in the Maine home to continue that family education even after they died. Thanks Mom and Dad. Happy Memorial Day. Maine, a great state to be a kid, be raised in and taught to take nothing for granted. To appreciate everything, everyone around us that we need to get along with to learn from, illuminate the path of our life.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com.

May 27, 2012
Natural Space… You Can Hear Yourself Think In Maine.

Maine, Sit A Spell, You Can Catch Up, Spend Some Time With You.

Wouldn’t you agree most people are well intentioned, want to get along in life relationships?

But tolerance to others not like you. Concessions, pulling back and surrender is a life long exercise to grow, expand and broaden your outlook on what happens around you. And how you react to it. Some folks feel threatened when others don’t look at situations, issues, other people or religions the same way.

If you are secure in who you are, what you believe, accepting other viewpoints is not so difficult.

It’s healthy. Means you don’t stagnant or become a stick in the mud. Stuck in a rut that can rob from you if you don’t open your eyes, ears, heart and mind to consider another way of looking at the world around you. And the people surrounding you in life’s fish bowl. It removes the need for a lot of the defensive barriers that limit our relationships too.

And changing your mind comes easier. Is okay as others challenge what earlier you might have clung to dearly as gospel. And the need to automatically challenge them, not let it go. The ability to stay flexible and consider have you ever looked at it this way, a new way instead. Can open doors wide, create clear pathways to other limitations we inflict on ourselves that make us scared, stationary. Taste, feel, embrace life, don’t waste it.

And as much as you and I are fifity fifty, evie stevie our Moms and Dads in the DNA department, we don’t have to only stock our cupboards with just what we were taught through conditioning growing up.

There is plenty of extra room to add our own outlook on life and to modified or totally change the belief system we adopt to guide us through our short time passage on Earth. To add greater meaning, depth and avoid being a clone. Or just treading water with only surface living when life can be so much richer.

You and I are different. Not deficient, just approaching life from some of the same angles, a few that are not radical but not the same either.

Agreeing to disagree.

Because finding someone that is a carbon copy would be boring and needle in the haystack futile. It’s okay to criticize and tear down the old ways of thinking and beliefs we may have carried around in life up until today. And it is critical to find unity in relationships, marriage for them to survive, prosper and go to deeper more meaningful levels.

So the best is yet to come situations do show up right on schedule. Often the change of one viewpoint leads to revamping others we used to hold near and dear. Why not? See what you were missing courageously. Lose the insecurities that sap your inner peace but maybe that you just did not recognize. Or one by one take the time to examine. Maine gives you the outdoor space to hear yourself think. To consider other ways to lead your life or determine that you are on the right track in this, this and that department.

So work is involved in accepting new ways to look at situations. Some decide they are too busy, now is not a good time. Spending time in Maine will change all that. Maine people decide it is easier to keep it black and white simple living. And not to automatically hold, cling to all the truth’s maybe their parents instilled. But why not together hammer out and explore joint solutions to find common ground for the peace everyone desperately seeks in relationships? And without guilt that you don’t hold all the same viewpoints or approaches to life your parents did in an earlier generation.

Maine, Hear Others, Yourself Think Easier.

You can still keep loving someone but not agree with them on every point on every issue.

Diversity and yes, our own individual idiosyncrasies are the color that make it more than black, white, shades of gray bland, predictable, ho hum. Discover who you are together with folks you trust, enjoy, respect around you that Maine is full of. Down to Earth, what you see if what you get. Who they are without the games, spin, insecurity. Lose the uneasy insecure, vulnerable feeling in Maine.

Maine, less people, no pushing shoving hurry scurry. A place to relax, hear yourself think because it’s four season gorgeous. Less populated. Not wall to wall people to deal with or avoid. Find your space, your place in Maine.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

May 26, 2012
Maine Loons | What Those Shrill Haunting Cries Mean.

Maine Loons, What Do The Songs, Cries, Shrill Sounds All Mean?

The ME Loon.

The song, cries, sad sound of one or several Maine loons hit you deeply when you are parked on the Maine water.

More so than birds singing, chirping on a morning walk or while on your knees in the garden.

How come?

What’s up with that?

Is it because you are often on a Maine vacation when you spend time with loons in the background of fun times?

Or up close paddling by in a kayak or canoe? Or as they float by fishing?

Part of it is the echo across the water and that most Maine lakes are pristine, under developed if at all. So the ring of trees along the lake put you in the speaker. Up close and personal surround sound from all sides intense. And those same trees protect the Maine lake, river, pond from soil erosion.

If the frontage was crew cutted, had not Maine shoreland zoning law protections then development would cause silt, dirt to filter in to the water. Which hurts fish, loons, everything that depends on the waterfront to survive. Listen to this loon sound clip and see what it does inside you. Powerful huh? How come? Sadness that all can relate to at some low point in our lives? Or just a minor chord arrangment that is it’s own form of blues music? Or maybe because you are away from the work distraction, you can really listen, hear, feel the emotion of the loon sound. Because it is all there is, the loon has the solo. Gets your attention and keeps it as your heart gets grabbed.

But back to what are the loons communicating, trying to tell us, or saying to other loons as you listen in on nature’s party line.

Maybe it takes immersion around a Maine loon habitat to begin to figure it all out. Not just a long weekend, week’s vacation in Maine on the waterfront. Like Lt. John Dunbar in Dancing With Wolves to really learn the local lingo, customs, traditions, values of another culture.

Perhaps the many loon sounds and what they mean is not as important as how their sound affects you because of where you are in your life. Or what you are thinking about on your vacation away from work. So that it all boils down to a different reaction to a Maine loon sound, no matter which one of the many because of where your head and heart are at the particular time you experience it.

Or quite possibly you think of yourself as the loon.

Out on the lake at night, alone, no mate. Maybe the mate died, did not make it back from where it wintered. Or was hit by a boat. Eaten by a predator.

Or the lone cry of the loon you hear is just trying to get the attention of a mate because nesting season is coming, time is short. And he or she is brand new to dating. And is programmed for survival, propagation of the loon population. To not be alone. Or when all the loons on the lake, pond, river where you are being entertained open up all at once, it’s like the finale of 4th of July fireworks.

Will have to get back to you on what each of the three Maine loon individual sounds mean, represent. Considerably more time and study or an interview with a few loons from the vantage point needed to break the mystery, crack the call code. Maybe it is not the sad mournful sound we hear to another loon at all.

Some of the Maine loon calls could really mean “party at my cove, bring your cribbage board and some avocado dip”. Or “how are the wife, hubby and kids, was winter enjoyable and where did you go again?”. Just loon banter we totally react to wrongly like a lot of communication, texts, tone and misread conversation attitudes because of our own up or down mood at the time received in life.

All I do know is the more time you spend with Maine loons in the background, they have an affect on the waterfront experience.

They help make it. Round it out because it is not just the four season Maine scenery we enjoy with our eyes. It’s a full, all five sense powerful hit you hard, that makes it over the top special. Maine, get here to sample ME as often as you can through out your life to get the most out of it. Make never fade lasting memories in Vacationland.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

May 25, 2012
Maine Lake Loons Steal The Waterfront Show.

Maine Lake Loons, Protect Them, Enjoy Their Music On The Waterfront.

You must be in ME, less folks, more wildlife, loons.

The entertainment when you are lucky enough to visit or live full time in Vacationland is the Maine wildlife. Like Maine lake loons. Bigger than they look from across a pond or lake. Paddling closer with a kayak or canoe helps you realize how beautiful, large they really are.

There are three kinds of Maine loons.

The Common Loon that nest in Maine ponds and lake. Spend winters in open bays. They are built kind of funny. With long feet very far back to make them super swimmers, able to maneuver quickly when “fishing”. But with their long bodies, you won’t be seeing them in any land marathons. Not the greatest at walking due to their design.

The Pacific Loon hang out along the Maine coast fall and winter. Have black back, darker coloring around their eyes and a straight bill. Start their families in northwestern Alaska and Canada. Shorter necked and looking a lot like the last kind of Maine loons.

The Red-throated. You’ll see them make appearances in the fall along the rugged, rocky Maine coast line. More compact, slender than the Common Loon. The distinctive red throat patch, gray head with shorter neck round out the trio of loons you’ll enjoy in Maine.

The loons breed on Maine lakes, rivers, ponds. On Drews Lake, there are four islands that loons seem to enjoy nesting at. Plus the fishing grounds at the far western end of the lake, in the township of Oakfield Maine is a safe, less traffic boating area where they can live in peace. Friends Jimmy and Louann Ritchie are lucky to witness the actual mating, nesting of loons from their protected cove on Drews Lake.

Maine Loon And Eagle Compete For Fish Lunch Video.

Due to not being so hot, skilled at walking around on land, Maine loons like to nest at the water’s edge with steep drop offs.

So they can easily slide in to the water when it is time to go looking for a meal of fish. Or to teach their young how to swim. Floating vegetation mats and locations on the waterfront protected from strong winds or wave action are also prime neighborhoods for Maine loons.

The cleaner the Maine lake, the better the visibility for loons to fish as they peer underwater. Now you see them, now you don’t for long periods happens as the Maine loon dives for its fresh as possible lunch. The menu for Maine loons include saltwater, freshwater fishes. But also frogs, newts, snails, insects, insect larvae, crayfish, crabs, shrimp, amphipods, and even lobsters.

Wendell Harvey told me this morning that on Little Pleasant Lake in northern Maine while on a fishing trip he was entertained by “circus” loons.

Ones trained by sporting camp owner Matt Libby of Ashland Maine to do figure eights around, under the fishing boat for a snack.

Maine’s adult loon population is growing but the number of loon chicks has flat lined. And no one is really sure why. But everyone agrees the bird that shows up on every Maine conservation license plate has one unique, loud, shrill set of cries, mating calls.

There is nothing like being in bed, at night on a Maine lake or pond and hearing the ruckus of suddenly very verbal loons.

Or sitting by a camp fire with loved ones after a day out on the water and under the moonlight, a velvet night sky backdrop of stars and listening to the haunting, enchanting sounds as Maine loons offer the nightly entertainment. Whether just one solo or a bunch tuning up for the orchestra all at once, Maine loons always steal the show.

Surveys last year show Maine has more loons than any other Northeast state. Over Maine’s 5000 loons checked in compared to New Hampshire’s 650, Vermont’s 210.

Waterbodies in Maine fifty acres or bigger are the norm for loons. And anything smaller is like an airport when a jumbo jet is circling but lacking the runway length to land. As you paddle a kayak on Drews Lake, a 1000 acre Maine waterbody you quickly figure out watching loons take off that they struggle to achieve lift off, to get airborne.

How can we all help the Maine loons?

Be good stewards of the Maine waterfront. Let them have their space and stay clear in boats observing the no-wake law within 200 feet of shore. Use lead-free tackle, good alternatives are made of steel, tin and bismuth.

Dispose of fishing line so it doesn’t tangle up a loon’s feet or bill. Use phosphourus-free fertilizer, plant shrubs as a buffer along the shoreline to reduce run-off. Fish like Maine loons hate lawns, silt that choke them, hurt the visibility to see food. Or avoid being the lunch when prey approaches.

Keep your distance if you see a loon on a nest, watching with binoculars. Keep garbage out of reach of loon egg predators like skunks and raccoons. Be protective of our Maine loons.

Maine, come for the loons, lobsters, moose, blueberry pie, baked potatoes and lighthouses. And so much more.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

May 24, 2012