Dear Editor;

Once again, our community pulls together in a time of need.

The "Music For Meg" benefit concert on May 4 was a smashing success. Over $10,000 was raised to help a deserving young lady with substantial medical costs.

The Boothbay Playhouse was filled to the rafters with amazing musical talent featuring The Girl Band, The Holy Mackerels, The Shags, Thunder Bay, Prizm and many more.

We'd like to give recognition to each individual musician for their time and talent; Karen Cook, Sally Carroll, Jody King, Mark Stover, Paul Johnson, Arthur Webster, Paul DeLessio, Ron Arsenault, Doug Gimbel, Glenn "Ginc" Burnham, Scott Rittall, Brian Rittershaus, Brian Howe, John "Tonto" Taranto, Steve Matichak, Richard Dall, Fay Christy, Jerie Phinney, Chris Coppock, Lori Brewer, Nate Campbell, Bill Barrett and Dean Berry. Thank you all.

A highlight of the evening was our live auction, run by everyone's favorite auctioneer, Doug Gimbel. The auction raised a substantial amount of money with donations from many local businesses, including Rusty Court's donation of a cruise for 10 people on the Casey Anne and John and Sarah Abbe's donation of two seasonal parking spaces.

We'd also like to thank the following people for their donations of auction items: Hungry's, Gimbels of Maine, Creative Edge, Grover's Hardware, Andy Hawke, Boothbay Chiropractic, Video Loft, McSeagull's, Boothbay Harbor House of Pizza, Pier One Pizza, Doug Gimbel, Arthur Webster, First National Bank of Damariscotta, A Silver Lining, Carousel Restaurant, Bristol Lobster Sales, Lawnmeer Inn, Sherman's Bookstore, Brenda and Richard Wood, Cathy Latter and Lobsterman's Wharf. Hopefully we have not left anyone out because we truly appreciate everyone's generosity.

A special heartfelt thanks to the following people without whose help the evening would never have been such a success: Betty Maddocks and Bayard Clark for planting the seed; Betty and Sewall Maddocks for the donation of the Playhouse and much more; Glenn Burnham for helping everyone with everything; Bette Burnham for parking cars and donating food; Allyssa Allen and Patti Gottlieb for helping to sell tickets; Ray Christy for the great job of selling raffle tickets; F.L. Rice for donating the tipsy-taxi service; Pam St. Jean for donating the decorations; Craig Andrews and Sherry Schlander for donating ice, food and printing the tickets (Great job, Sherry!); Lori Brewer for doing everything we asked her to do; Matt Brewer for his great job at the door and other things; and Lisa Viens and her sister, Linda, for the generous amount of food and for doing most of the clean up, which is always dreaded.

Our biggest and most grateful thanks go to: Doug Gimbel for all of his great ideas, his abilities as an auctioneer and emcee, for ticket sales and for his enthusiasm and encouragement; to Chris Coppock and Arthur Webster for their excellent job making the bands sound their best by doing the difficult task of setting up and running the sound system; to Dean Berry for providing the sound system; to Bill Barrett for his perfectly tuned stage management; to Bridget Spofford, owner of No Anchovies, for providing the bar and, especially, for donating 100 percent of her proceeds and tips; to Jeanne Tonon and Gary Arsenault, who did a great job tending bar; and to Laurie Simmons and Cathy Latter for running errands.

We'd like to thank everyone for their generous cash donations and most of all, we'd like to thank Meg Viens for letting us help.

P.S. Any additional donations may be made to the Megan Viens Fund, c/o St. Columba's Episcopal Church, P.O. Box 297, Boothbay, ME 04537. Telephone number is 633-6313.

- Jill Reynolds and Linda Sibley Clark

"Rebuilding Together"

Dear Editor:

Thank you so much to all the Rotarians and other community volunteers who painted the exterior of Evered Trask's home on Lobster Cove Road and the interior of Stanley Thompson's home off the Adams Pond Road on Saturday, April 27. The volunteers included: Robin Reed, Neil Ames, I.J. Pinkham, Kevin Burnham, Rick Elder, Foster Stroup, Jeff Brown, Craig Tukey, Andy Hamblett, Steve Lorrain, Doug Harley, Jim Begley, Mike Thompson, and Bob Walter, all Rotarians; and also Josh Zehm (who headed up the Evered Trask project and did the power wash prep work two weeks earlier), Helen Farnham, Abby Williams from the Interact Club, Laura Adams, Joyce Armendaris, and Albert Greenleaf (who hooked up two new light fixtures for the kitchen and hall ceilings and one smoke detector). Poole Brothers generously donated painting supplies.

We had lots of fun, along with the work, which was spiced up with the wonderful lunch served by the catering volunteers, Sarah Giles, Stephanie Hawke, and Kathy Heaton. The desserts were prepared by Jennifer Ziegra.

Inspired by Paul and Chan Tagliabue, who serve on the National Board of Rebuilding Together, and by Joyce Armendaris, who worked on former work projects of Christmas in April (now Rebuilding Together) we hope to become formally affiliated with this national organization and to make this fun and worthwhile community activity an annual event.

Chip Griffin

Boothbay Harbor

- Chip Griffin

An Open Letter To CMP

Dear Editor:

Profuse thanks are hereby extended to the Central Maine Power crew and its supervisors who were involved in the aftermath of the osprey electrocution on Sawyer's Island during the week of May 1.

The crew, consisting of Ryan Malloy (Environmental Services), Carl Urquhart and Kevin Reed, not only removed the nest from the site of the electrocution but also erected a new platform on a nearby tree after clearing and topping it. The nest was placed on the platform and is already being used by a new set of birds.

The following day, upon request, they installed another platform on the adjoining property after clearing and topping another tree. Subsequently, they arranged the clearing of all cut branches and trimmings.

The effort of the crew was above and beyond what one could expect and certainly reflects positively on our local CMP.

York and Maren Fischer

Boothbay

- York and Maren Fischer

Letter Carriers' Food Drive

Dear Editor:

Saturday, May 11 will mark the tenth annual food drive sponsored by the National Association of Letter Carriers. We are asking customers in Boothbay Harbor, East Boothbay, and Southport to place their donation of non-perishable food items by their mailboxes this Saturday. The carriers will pick up the food when they deliver your mail.

If you get your mail in a post office box, you may bring your food donation to the Boothbay Harbor Post Office on Friday or Saturday.

All food collected will go to the Boothbay Region Food Pantry.

Barbara Swiderski, Postmaster

Boothbay Harbor

- Barbara Swiderski

Lights! Camera! Hey, You! Get Over Here!

Dear Editor:

How many times have you been involved in a situation - ridiculous or sublime, at work or at home - when you or a co-worker or a family member threw up his hands and asked, "Wouldn't this make a great TV show?" Maybe it's never happened quite like that, but you know the feeling I'm trying to express, the feeling that some aspect of your life is funny, moving or universally appealing enough to interest your fellow community members and the world at large.

Here's the scenarios. You're involved in a community project, with limited funds but admirable goals, and as another meeting rolls around and the same four volunteers straggle in, you ask yourself, "Isn't there some way we could generate more interest in the community, so we could raise more money and fund more and more worthwhile projects and get people interested in what we're doing?" I've been involved in enough community volunteer efforts over the years to have had that thought running through my head on numerous occasions. There's nothing more frustrating, in my opinion, than not being able to reach enough people about issues that I feel are important.

Now, those two situations may seem to represent two entirely different lines of thought, but those two lines of thought converge on the same point, believe it or not. The point at which they converge is a little, closet-sized room attached to the Boothbay Region High School library. The sign in the door window identifies it as the "studio" of Boothbay Region Access Channel 5, and inside are housed the means for community members to realize their visions of reaching the widest possible audience for their creative, informational or humanitarian ideas.

That's right, friends and neighbors, whether you knew it or not, we have at our disposal, every one of us, the tools that allow us to take advantage of the most influential communications medium ever devised, for good or ill - television. We have the cameras and computers that allow us to videotape and edit projects of any length, and we have the broadcast equipment and bandwidth to put those projects on the air in every home with cable service in the Boothbay Region.

I know most people don't think of Channel 5 that way. Believe me, as soon as people find out that I've done volunteer work for the station, I hear what they do think. "Why do they show the same basketball game every day for two weeks?" "Why do they show the same concert every day for two weeks?" "We were giving a program on such-and-such, and nobody from Channel 5 came to film it. Do you only show sports, is that why you didn't come?" "Why isn't there more stuff about the general public, since it's supposed to be Public Access TV?"

On and on, and they are almost always well-reasoned and genuine questions and concerns. People want to know why the station airs what it airs, how programming decisions are made and why there's not more varied programming. And here are the answers they get from me, and I don't claim to be an expert, just someone with a little insight into how the station works and what it needs to do a better job.

To answer the first question, the station airs what it airs because that's what we have. There is no standing policy at Channel 5 to cover mostly sports, though we seem to and we do it very well. A Public Access channel lives and breathes by virtue of the interests of its volunteers. Channel 5 doesn't have very many volunteers (we'll get to that later), and of the few it has, most of them are wildly interested in local sports. There's nothing wrong with that, and as I said, compared to other Public Access stations I've seen around the state, we do a better job of it than most. But, if 75 percent of our production volunteers are involved in videotaping sports, it stands to reason that 75 percent of our programming would be sports or sports-related.

And, at this point, I feel it incumbent upon me to let the viewing public know that whatever makes it onto the airwaves on Channel 5, only gets there due to the fact that Laura Arsenault, an unpaid volunteer, puts in two to three hours a day compiling tapes, loading the VCRs and punching in the numbers that make it all possible.

Programming decisions are, then, made simply on the basis of what we have to show. There is no effort made to promote or censor any type of programming, or further any sort of institutional agenda. We simply air what we have, and being very short of volunteers interested in producing a more varied schedule, what you see is what you get.

Which, of course, answers the last question. Channel 5 would love to air a more creative and exciting blend of locally-produced programs. They can be of any nature or any length and, barring the outright lewd or scandalous, about any subject, tame or controversial. In style, they can be documentary, event-oriented, public interest or advocacy, topical, historical, dramatic, musical, local or far-reaching, and even funny. Especially funny. God knows we could all use a little more humor these days.

And all it takes is you calling someone on the Channel 5 board, or showing up for a meeting the first Friday of every month at the BRHS library at 8 a.m., or walking up to a volunteer you see taping any event in town and asking how you can become involved.

That involvement can be as a producer, someone who has the idea for a program and takes care of the planning and logistics. You may want to put together a small band of merry media men and produce something really big. In the case of small town Public Access TV, the sky really is the limit, but programs can't get off the ground if volunteers don't first walk into the station and ask to get training on the equipment. You bring us the vision, we'll set you up with a pair of wings. Then, it's up to you.

Think about it. In a world in which television becomes increasingly crowded with more and more meaningless programming, you could be involved in producing something heartfelt, exciting, maybe even profound, with your friends and neighbors standing in the spotlight. That's a big thing to be able to offer your community for the relatively little effort it entails. So, if the ideas in your head seem better than what you're watching on TV, here's your chance to show the world (this little piece of it, anyway) what you've got.

If you would like more information about how you can help us present a more well-rounded vision of what our wonderful and interesting community is all about, call Jim Rollins, chairman of the BRAC 5 Board, at 633-3481, or Rick Prose at 633-5646, and we'll take it from there.

Rick Prose

Boothbay Harbor

- Rick Prose