Windham High School wins regional One Act competition - By Michelle Libby

The Windham High School One Act ensemble cast took home first place at the regional One Act competition held at WHS on Saturday. The cast of approximately 30 stormed the stage when Windham was announced as the winner surpassing ten other schools with their performance of “The Spirit of Life – A play in one act.” The play was based on the book Hassidic Tales of the Holocaust by Yaffa Eliach and adapted to stage by David Eliet. 
 

The play about the Holocaust was described as “horrifically amazing” by some students and brought others to tears. 

Senior Brenna Ryder helped to choose the play after she and her father went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. 

“The tower of life struck me more than anything thing else there,” Ryder said, who has been a part of the One Acts for eight years. “I always felt I wanted to do this.” 

The woman who created the tower of life also wrote the book the play was based on, Ryder said.

The subject was a difficult one for some of the students as they learned about what the Jewish people went through and how it felt to be persecuted through the series of vignettes. 

“We wanted to win because we wanted to bring this message to other schools. The overall message was intolerance of any kind is not okay. One group is not better than another and never letting something like that happen ever again,” said Ryder. 

The One Act competition has many rules and regulations. There can be no musicals. There can be no more than five gallons of water on the stage. There is a five minute set up time. Take too long and the team is disqualified. The play cannot be over 40 minutes or…disqualified. There is finally a five minute strike period (clear the stage) or…disqualified. 

As soon as last year’s One Act competition was over, Ryder and her father, Matthew Ryder, the director of the One Act plays, began looking at what to perform for this year. Once they chose “The Spirit of Life” Brenna chose the music to accompany the actors. “I wanted authentic Jewish music and traditional Jewish folk songs,” she said. Rehearsals began in December. 

Having home court advantage was good for the WHS team. “There’s an advantage when you’re using your own lighting and things you’ve been practicing with,” Ryder said. “I wouldn’t have designed the stage I did if it were at Bonny Eagle or another school with a smaller stage.”

Three of Windham’s actors, Kyah Morrissette, Will Wheaton and Johanna Stanley were recognized for the All-conference cast and Brenna Ryder was given a special commendation award for instrumental and vocal conducting. 

“We scored the most points overall of any school at our regional site and received a perfect score for lighting design thanks to our amazing lighting designer Jennifer Bernier,” said Matthew Ryder. “We also had a near-perfect score for costume design thanks to our costumer Kyah Morrissette!” 

The judges did nit-pick a bit, Brenna said. “They said, ‘you have a diamond here, we just want to help you improve.’ We only want to improve now that we are going onto states,” she added. States will be at Camden Hills Regional High School in Camden on March 21 and 22. 

The cast will spend the next couple of weeks fine tuning the performance and hopefully will have another public performance and another school one, possibly, said Brenna. 

One of the other goals for the cast is to raise enough money to go to the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C.

The cast and crew have started a Go Fund page to raise money for that. The link is www.gofundme.com/5UQXVG.

Catch of the Day!

On Saturday, fishermen under the age of 12, including this curious tot, turned out to try their hands at catching fish as a part of the Kid’s Derby portion of the Sebago Lake Ice Fishing Derby sponsored by Sebago Lakes Rotary. The event was held at Range Pond State Park in Poland from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. To make it easier, the holes were pre-drilled and traps and bait were provided. Many fish were caught. Photos by Dawn Dyer.

Answering the question: Why is the Sebago Lake water table so low? - By Elizabeth Richards

The flow and depth of Sebago Lake is controlled by the Eel Weir Dam, which sits at the outlet of the lake and the head of the Presumpscot River. Sappi Fine Paper, which owns the dam, holds a license from the Federal Energy Regulation Commission to manage the dam in accordance with a Lake Level Management Plan that originated in 1997, was tweaked in 2000, and had major changes proposed in 2011 which have not yet been acted on. That proposal is currently under appeal.
 

Brad Goulet, hydro manager for Sappi Fine Paper, said that the current plan calls for lowering the lake early in the fall before the weather turns to freezing, with a goal of having the wave action scour the sandy shoreline and try to push it back up onto the beach. In the summer, he said, people want the lake to be full for recreational purposes. The boating and wave action can be counter to establishing a shoreline, and can in fact cause shoreline erosion as well as having a negative impact on water quality, he said.

Goulet said he doesn’t know what will happen with the current proposal, but that the changes were proposed by Sappi in large part to try and establish a plan that would allow for a more consistent outflow from the lake into the Presumpscot. “The main reason we proposed a change to the plan wasn’t so much for lake level as much as trying to establish a plan that didn’t require us to operate the river in what amounted to flood or drought conditions,” he said. 

There’s a big disconnect among people whose primary interests are in recreational or aesthetic aspects of Sebago Lake not realizing the impacts on the river, said Goulet. If the lake were kept full too long, the river would dry up and the lake water quality would deteriorate. The natural flushing of the lake is good for both the lake water quality, and the river, he said. 

In addition to the federal license mandates, said Goulet, the Eel Weir Dam also has a State issued water quality certificate under the Clean Water Act, which impacts what they are able to do.

There are many perspectives to consider when looking at lake level management, and it’s difficult to find a plan that will satisfy everyone. For example, said Goulet, the state park has the best shore frontage when the lake is around 2 feet below full, and at that same level, there are people who are upset, saying that the lake is empty. 

Goulet said it is improbable that they can continue to raise the level because in order to do so, you have to shortchange water going into the Presumpscot River. Sebago Lake accounts for 80 percent of the water flow in the river, and that has to support fish, waste treatment facilities from municipalities, kayaking, boating and fishing on the river as well.

The dam has been at the minimum flow of water, 17,500 cfm, for a month and a half, said Goulet, trying to get the lake level to come up. In the winter, it is difficult to get the water level up because the lake is frozen over, he added. They are also considerations around melting snow, and the potential for flooding. One of the proposed changes to the plan was to have a little more room for fluctuation in natural conditions. “When you’re trying to fill the lake in the spring, you really don’t know how much water is going to come at you from the snow pack. If you get a warm stretch and a bunch of rain, the opening in the river is only so big to get it out,” said Goulet.

The changes proposed do not call for differences in the top or bottom levels of the lake. Sappi would still try to fill the lake to capacity and lower the level in the same time frames, said Goulet. “It’s what happens in between that we looked for some latitude in, to try and level out what happens in the river,” he said.  

Goulet said he is happy to talk to anyone with questions. He also maintains a Tumblr blog where anyone who is interested can check in regularly, or subscribe to get email updates when something changes. Each week, he uses this blog to communicate what is happening in lake levels, and to inform the public on what Sappi is doing at the dam. The blog can be found at tumblr.com by searching for the words “Presumpscot River.”

Mr. Morton's class lives vicariously through Marco and Mr. Day - By Michelle Libby

 

Marco, the moose, is much like a “Flat Stanley”, but this moose belongs to the students in Donna Morton’s fourth grade class. This year Marco has been touring the world with the father of one of the students in the class. Kevin Day is a pilot for UPS and travels internationally for work. He agreed to bring Marco along. 

“Marco has been to 30 different international cities,” Day said. When Morton told him the class was discussing the polar region and the Iditarod, Day was excited as he had been to the race for the last four years and was planning to go again this year. He suggested that the class make good luck cards to one male musher and one female musher that he could hand deliver. 

“What I like is sometimes school and geography can be boring, but if you make it personal and you bring a stuffed animal it makes it more personal,” he said. 

This year the students will be following Newton Marshall of the Jamaican Bobsled Team and Anna and Kristy Berington, identical twins. Day had a friend take video of him giving the racers the good luck card.

Day compared the Iditarod to tailgating at a football game. “They’re out on Long Lake with their snow machines and grills. It’s a carnival atmosphere,” he said. 

There were 70 teams registered and only 65 started the “officially” 1,049 mile race. (It’s actually a little longer.)

 

“(The class) gets very excited to see me. They have so many questions,” Day said. “Mrs. Morton is over the top with excitment.”

Windham company wins QVC Sprout contest - By Michelle Libby

Entrepreneur Shelly Afthim is not afraid of the word “no”. Perhaps that is why she has gone from cooking for her friends to selling her three varieties of meatballs to a national audience through QVC Sprouts program.

“I’m just not afraid of the word ‘no’. I have nothing to lose. If you want it you’ll find a way to make it happen,” she said. 

For two weeks, Afthim competed through a public vote to beat out two other companies for the honor of being the “best up-and-coming products from inventors and entrepreneurs,” according to a QVC Sprouts press release. Gourmet Passionista won with 2,500 votes, Afthim said. 

My friends and family in the community are generally happy for me. They’ve been behind me from the start. There were my taste testers and helped pick my logo,” she said. 

The biggest perk for her business is the relationship she now has with QVC. “QVC does $8.6 billion in business and has $1.6 million homes it reaches in the US. If you’re gonna do it, aim high,” she said. 

“I can’t even believe it’s my story. It’s a great story, but when it’s yours it doesn’t seem like it was that bad, but it was bad,” she said. Afthim spent time in the hospital with heart issues and chronic illness caused by Lyme disease and has spent a lot of time recovering from that. 

She also gives credit to her husband Phil for taking that initial leap contacting QVC. “He’s been there through sickness, physical, emotional strain and financial strain,” she said. She wouldn’t have done this without him, she added. 

Another first for Afthim and her one-woman company is that Gourmet Passionista was the first gourmet food company to compete in and be selected for the Sprouts Program. The other products that week were a bag designed for girls that had swappable panels on the outside and a tooth timer used to time how long a child is brushing his or her teeth. 

“It was a win. No one can take that away from me,” Afthim said.  No matter what happens, Afthim knows she started and finished her quest to be successful. “There are two ways of looking at it. You can see the bad or the good. It’s a teaching moment for (my children),” she said. The children are 13 and 11. 

Now, Afthim is licensed to sell the meatballs out of her home in Windham and has started testing the next flavor, a bacon cheddar southern-barbeque sauce meatball. “I’m growing the business on a small scale,” she said. 

Her long term goal is to bring manufacturing from Bangor to Windham. She’d like to hire five to 10 employees, “which will give me more control and provide jobs for the community,” she said. 

The Sprouts Program is very nurturing, Afthim said. She hopes that sales will be strong enough so that they can be sold on-air soon. 

The Meatball Lady as she is more often known as is looking to develop local markets to sell the products as well including restaurants and caterers.  

For more information about Afthim visit www.gourmetpassionista.com. To learn about QVC Sprouts, visit www.QVCSprouts.com.