Commentaries and Announcements...

OK skiers: Pass or no pass?
Time's a wasting on season passes. The deals, such that they are, are coming to a close.

What to do?

It's time to decide on a season pass. What's it gonna be?

We've been spoiled now for what, three years at least. But no more. Our great and powerful benefactor, the American Skiing Company, is kaput. Gone. Over. Done with.

No more all-season skiing at six New England resorts for $349 or $369 or even $399.

Nope. The party's over. Just when the going was getting so good, too.

Gone are the days of six mountains for $399!

I don't know about you, but I was really getting to enjoy Attitash, especially the enormous amount of vertical you could get in in such a short amount of time on Bear Peak.

Well, let's take a look-see together on what's available for pass deals...

http://outdoors.mainetoday.com/trailhead/017021.html


Carey Kish photo


File Photo

Maybe you can't play now, but you can think about golf
Portland Golf Expo gives golfers a preview of spring.
by TOM CHARD
Staff Writer Portland Press Herald

There's still tons of snow on the ground and March has come in like a lion. News flash: Golf season is still a ways away.

But we can still think golf, right?

The 14th Portland Golf Expo at the Holiday Inn by The Bay in Portland will provide the opportunity next weekend.

Golfers can check out the latest equipment, test those drivers and irons on swing simulators, enter contests, and start to get rid of the winter rust by attending clinics being offered at the two-day event.

Attendees will also be able to purchase equipment through retailers.

The Golf Expo will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $8, which also brings a year's subscription to either Golf Digest or Golf For Women magazine.

Scott Mayer, the director of instruction at Nonesuch River in Scarborough, and Peter McFarland, director of events at Merrill Auditorium, purchased the Golf Expo from founder Blaine Davis of Yarmouth.

Mayer and McFarland want to build on the success Davis had with his previous Golf Expos.

"Blaine did a great job for a long time," said Mayer. "We'll offer state-of-the-art technology."

Their goal is to make the Golf Expo more widely recognized. They're off to a good start, as all the exhibition space has been sold out.

Purchasing the Golf Expo, Mayer said, was a way for him to stay active in his profession during the winter while promoting golf.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=173072&ac=PHspt

Snowy winter likely to result in fish kills
By G. RUSSELL DANNER
Portland Press Herald

With record snowfall this year in Maine, Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologists anticipate small lakes and ponds may experience winter or spring fish kills. This is a natural phenomenon.

Ice forms an impenetrable barrier between the water and the atmosphere, preventing exchange of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide over the winter. Typically oxygen levels decrease as fish respire, and decaying plants consume oxygen while producing carbon dioxide. A small amount of oxygen is generated if sunlight can penetrate the ice and stimulate photosynthesis by algae.

In years when there is increased snow cover on small lakes and ponds, such as this year, light cannot penetrate the snow and photosynthesis is halted. This creates the environmental conditions conducive for a winter fish kill. If oxygen levels decrease below about 5 mg/L fish begin to suffocate.

Bacteria on decaying plant matter can drive the oxygen level to zero, after which anaerobic bacteria begin to produce hydrogen sulfide. Depending upon when the oxygen level drops, the dead fish may suddenly appear under the melting ice, or they may decompose unseen on the lake bottoms. In either situation, anglers can expect some small lakes and ponds to have fewer fish in them this spring. Lakes and ponds that went anoxic (oxygen level is zero) will have a rotten egg smell.

The second interesting phenomenon that occurs in the spring and can cause a spring fish kills is nitrogen gas decompression illness, or gas bubble disease. Again, ice is responsible for this type of fish kill. Freezing lake water is typically 100 percent saturated with dissolved oxygen and nitrogen gas; however, water has no capacity to hold the gas once it forms ice crystals. This means that the instant the water becomes ice, the gas is released into the liquid water below.

The impermeable barrier that floating ice creates between the underlying water and the atmosphere prevents the normal equalization of nitrogen gas from the lake over the winter; consequently, the unfrozen lake water below the ice becomes increasingly saturated with nitrogen gas from ice formation to ice out. The water has a high capacity to hold the nitrogen gas as long as it stays cold. On sunny and very warm spring days, just as the ice is melting, nitrogen gas supersaturation creates a lethal situation for fish.

The lake needs a little time to slowly release the supersaturated nitrogen gas once the ice has melted. This occurs gradually as the wind blows across the surface of the open water. If the water temperature increases suddenly, as it does in shallow bays on warm sunny days, the supersaturated gas becomes unstable and forms cavitations, tiny bubbles of nitrogen gas, analogous to the carbon dioxide bubbles you see on the inside of a wall of a soda glass.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=183364&ac=Outdoors

Turkey hunting for the birds
By BOB HUMPHREY
Portland Press Herald

I consider myself extremely fortunate for having been able to introduce a lot of novices to the sport of turkey hunting. I usually can tell who will make the best turkey hunters because they're continually barraging me with questions.

"What makes a turkey gobble? Which tree will they roost in? Which calls work best? What do they do on rainy days?" It's human nature. We're forever looking for answers. We want those answers to be neat and logical. We want to be able to predict the turkey's behavior.

Unfortunately, more often than not we can't. I can sense the frustration when I try to explain this to fledgling hunters. I also suspect some of them are more than a little skeptical and think I'm either holding back information or not really that smart. The true reason however, is something physicists call nonlinear dynamics.

It can best be explained by picturing one of those arcade games where you drop a steel ball down a chute, then it falls onto an array of pegs that looks something like a bed of nails stood up on end. As the ball drops down through the array, it hits pegs and bounces. Which pegs it hits, how far and in which direction it bounces depend on a number of variables such as velocity and angle of intersection.

The object is to predict in which slot the ball will end up at the bottom. Some of the greatest mathematical minds in history have tried to determine the result with some level of predictability, and failed. That, in a nutshell, is turkey hunting.

PECULIAR BEHAVIOR

You're trying to outwit a bird with a brain that would fit very neatly into that nutshell. In order to do so, you must predict how they will react as they fall through the arcade game of life. Magazine articles, even entire books, are written about it. So-called experts expound upon it at sportsman's shows and on the outdoor TV channels. "Turkey behavior," they might say, "is ruled by barometric pressure..., or wind direction..., or Coriolis effect." Sometimes I think we overanalyze, and the truth is simpler.

Imagine a group of turkeys traveling along, going about their normal daily routine -- assuming they even have one. You've done your scouting, and know (think you know) where they will travel. You set up there and begin calling. The turkeys start your way. You think it's because you've solved the riddle of nonlinear dynamics and predictability, or because of your calling. In truth, they were going that way anyway.

A crow calls, catching the attention of the lead hen. She reacts by turning her head to the left. Almost as soon as she does it she forgets why. But as long as her head is facing that way, she turns her body too, and steps in that direction. Lo and behold, the other turkeys follow, and your sure thing walks off in the wrong direction.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=183405&ac=Outdoors

Build a statewide birding trail and the birders will come
By DEIRDRE FLEMING
Portland Press Herald

Birding season has taken over southern Maine and is poised to spread up the coast as migratory birds return.

Birding festivals at inland locations, on the other hand, are not as popular.

One man is hoping to change that.

Maine Birding Trail's founder Bob Duchesne of Hudson has been at work on this statewide resource for four years.

By next spring, he will have a book on the trail published by Down East Books and a 30-page brochure produced by the Maine Department of Conservation with the help of a grant.

On his own, Duchesne is promoting the trail to inns near public lands and offering his guiding services for free, asking only that the innkeepers reimburse him for his travel expenses.

"It's an experiment, to lead these tours in areas, to give these areas an economic boost," Duchesne said. "It's a little slower around Moosehead Lake. I've guided several small groups of two to five a couple of times. (But), this summer, I'm taking 10 into Baxter in a van."

Since last fall, Duchesne has been working with the departments of Conservation and Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the Maine Office of Tourism and Maine Audubon to determine where the Maine Birding Trail will be located.

He has visited similar birding trails in Florida, Alabama and New Jersey.

Duchesne said Maine's trail will identify locations around the state that are ripe with birds and easily accessed. It will direct birders to public lands to see birds not found in many other states.

And it will cover at least 80 sites throughout Maine, most well known by birders, such as Biddeford Pool, Portland's Evergreen Cemetery and Westkeag Marsh in Thomaston.

But Duchesne is already marketing the trail in inland locations as well. Through his tour guiding business, he hopes to tap into new birding eco-tourism possibilities in areas such as Moosehead Lake, Rangeley and Millinocket.

"He's well known within the Maine birding community. He's doing it independently, as a way to get more birders to come to Maine. There are already more than two dozen states with birding trails of various kinds," said Mike McCabe, director of the Down East Spring Birding Festival in Cobscook Bay.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=183397&ac=Outdoors

Mom's love for sports lives in sons who excelled
By STEVE SOLLOWAY
Portland Press Herald

Mom was so proud and so excited that her son and his Little League teammates had won the Portland city championship that she jumped a 4-foot fence to join the celebration on the field. And soon realized she was the only parent there.

June Soule's presence on the field was noted in the next day's newspaper.

She so loved football that every Sunday, after church and dinner, she set up her ironing board near her family's new black-and-white television to watch the New York Giants of Y.A. Tittle and Frank Gifford beat another opponent. Her sons didn't think this weekly fall ritual was unusual.

Didn't everyone's mother do this?

No. June Soule was different, in ways her family will always remember and especially on this Mother's Day. She died Monday at age 90, leaving a legacy that can be defined in the accomplishments of her four sons -- Phil, Paul, Mort, and Jim -- and the examples they set for her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

"She gave us a passion for sports," Paul Soule said. "I believe there was something in the genes she passed on to us, too."

Her sons and her husband, William, a former school superintendent in several communities, including Portland, were inducted into the Bowdoin College Hall of Honor in 2004. Soule men are in the Maine Sports Hall of Fame. Mort Soule was selected to the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Dallas Cowboys gave Paul Soule a $1,000 bonus to sign with them in 1966 and play in their defensive secondary.

Ten years later, the Cowboys invited Jim Soule to preseason camp as a free agent running back.

Phil, who died two years ago after a fall in the White Mountains, was a star offensive lineman at the University of Maine but spent much of his life coaching at Bowdoin. He was a national whitewater canoe racer.

Mort Soule struck out just once during a full season for the Bowdoin baseball team in 1968 -- a school record. At 63, he still plays.

All four competed in track and field. Mort remembers hearing his mother's voice cut through the din at the indoor meets at the Portland Expo: "Run, Mort, run."

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=186960&ac=PHnws


Soule family photo

Vachon more than simply the wins
By TRAVIS LAZARCZYK
Kennebec Journal

If all you know about Paul Vachon is what you see during Cony High School girls basketball games, you don't know anything. You see the human firecracker prowling near the end of the Rams bench, always on the verge of going off.
You don't see the man Dave Hopkins sees.

"His approach with kids is very simple," said Hopkins, who served as an assistant coach to Vachon for 20 years. "You are not giving up. He really coaches from the heart. What you see is what you get with Paul.

"On and off the court, he's always telling the kids and (assistant) coaches, 'We can't give up. You can't find that comfort zone.' "

Vachon recently was named athletic director at Cony, and he stepped down as the girls basketball coach after 23 seasons, 433 wins and just 37 losses. Eleven Eastern Maine Class A crowns. Seven state championships, the most recent coming in 2007.

If those numbers are all you have to formulate an opinion of Paul Vachon, you are missing the big picture. You're reading the Vachon Cliffs Notes, when you should be reading the entire novel.

Hopkins and Vachon go back decades. They both grew up on Augusta's Mt. Vernon Avenue. Hopkins, now 41, remembers Vachon, 13 years his senior, as a playground counselor.

Vachon is the Godfather of Hopkins' 9-year old daughter, Cari.

"That's the most special thing I can think of from the last 20 years," Hopkins said.

Paul Vachon the coach will go down as one of the most important figures in Maine high school basketball history. Paul Vachon the man is more important, in that he was able to use his contacts and influence to help people. "It never stops. I can tell you that will continue," Hopkins said. "That's not the coach, that's the person."

A kid showed up to Vachon's basketball camp without sneakers, Paul got a pair of sneakers. A kid needed help finding some scholarship money, Vachon found some scholarship money. Gift certificates, free tuition to his camp.

Then there's Kelsie Bryer, Cony Class of 2000. A girl with a sweet 3-point shot but bitter home life, Vachon was instrumental in helping Bryer get through her difficult high school years. As a sophomore at Cony, Bryer was living on her own. Vachon helped her find a decent place.

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/sports/stories/5071401.html

HUNTING — Tough turkey season can be blamed on bad breeding
By BOB HUMPHREY
Portland Press Herald

We've just passed the halfway point, a good time to take stock of the season so far, and reorganize for the home stretch. It seems like this one hasn't been easy. I've talked with a lot of turkey hunters this spring and many have reported they're having a tough time calling in birds. I've been in the woods every day since youth day and I would concur. And I have a few theories why.

While their breeding behavior is controlled more by daylight than weather or temperature, the latter two do have an effect, particularly in a state like Maine and in a year like this. Spring was late in coming this year and turkeys got a late start on their breeding season.

The birds flock up in the winter, concentrating around reliable food sources like dairy farms and bird feeders. As the snow melts they spread out across the landscape, breaking into smaller groups and starting the mating season. This year, mating season began before snowmelt, when many flocks were still concentrated into smaller areas. The stress and confusion of so many birds and the abundant deep snow likely delayed nesting.

Biologists schedule the spring hunting season to occur after most of the hens have mated. This year's late spring kept birds in larger flocks later than usual. Most of the toms still had large harems of hens when the season began and as any hunter knows, a henned-up tom is difficult if not impossible to call. He's already got what he wants. Why should he leave it to come your way?

To make matters worse, we're still suffering the effects of five consecutive bad springs. Cold, wet weather is never good for turkeys, but it's particularly detrimental during the nesting and hatching seasons. Under harsh conditions hens may abandon or lose their nests. Then, during their first few weeks of life, the newly hatched poults are particularly susceptible to exposure. If they get cold and wet, many die. And that's exactly what happened from 2002 to 2006. As a result, we're hunting predominantly older and warier birds, which are harder to call even when hens are scarce.

Furthermore, fewer toms overall means more hunters are crowded into smaller areas. Too much hunting pressure can quickly turn tough birds into un-killable ones. And, concentrating too many hunters into too few areas increases the rate of interference, reducing each individual hunter's odds for success.

On top of all that, there are a ton of jakes around this year -- largely the result of finally having a decent spring hatch last year. When one-on-one, jakes (1-year-old males) are typically subordinate to toms (adult longbeards 2 or older). When in a group however, gang mentality takes over. On numerous occasions this spring I watched gangs of five to seven jakes bully and harass single longbeards. Several times, I even saw them chase away toms that were coming to the call. That's bad news for this year but bodes well for the future.

I would never fault anyone for shooting a jake, particularly a youth or first-time hunter. However, if the veteran hunters can lay off the jakes this year, next year could really be something special. There will be a glut of my favorite kind of turkeys, 2-year-old males. They sport long beards and full spurs, and act like turkeys should, often coming eagerly to the call. In short, they make you feel like a turkey hunter. But that's next year. For now, we've still got two more weeks of hunting tough toms, and it likely won't get any easier.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=187547&ac=Outdoors

Solloway: Never give up on Winkin
By Steve Solloway
Portland Press Herald Staff Writer

BANGOR — David Winkin leaned over to speak into his father's ear. Do you want to stand for the national anthem?

"Absolutely," said John Winkin.

So he did, some six months after the stroke that changed his 89-year-old life. With his son on one side and Mike Coutts, his longtime assistant coach on the other, Winkin got to his feet, leaving his wheelchair. His clear blue eyes fixed on the flag flying in center field.

In so many ways, John Winkin was home.

His appearance at the Larry Mahaney Senior Baseball All-Star Game at Husson College on Friday night was a surprise. He has thrown himself into his rehab, pushing physical therapists to push him. The use of his right arm and leg has not returned. His speech has.

Still, no one was sure Winkin would have the stamina to travel from a rehab facility in Waterville. The crowd at the ballpark that bears his name was in the dozens, not the hundreds.

None of that mattered to Winkin, of course. He was at a baseball game and he was alive.

"What choice did I have?" he said, referring to his fight. "I had two. I could live or I could die.

"If I get taken, I want people to know I still tried like hell."

He said he was invited to Friday night's game. It was only his second trip outside his room in the rehab facility. "I didn't know if I could be released (by his doctors). I'm glad they did."

Someone needed to present the Dr. John Winkin Award, otherwise known as Mr. Baseball, to the best high school senior in Maine. This year it went to Kyle Stilphen of Gardiner, an old-school ballplayer. A Winkin ballplayer.

Before the state championship game last weekend, Stilphen was spied taking batting practice at the high school field. His brother pitched, his girlfriend and father shagged flies. Mom was nearby. It was a scene from another time.

"I saw him when he was a sophomore," said Winkin. "The kid can play."

High praise from the man who coached former major-league players Billy Swift and Mike Bordick, and so many others who made the University of Maine one of the top teams in the Northeast year after year. And Stilphen knew it.

"It was an honor to see him here," said Stilphen. "I had no idea."

"I'm feeling pretty good," said Winkin to old friends. "I'm just about getting my mouth back."

He saw Tom Vanidestine, a Maine player from 25 years ago approach. "Tommy!" cried Winkin, and Vanidestine rushed to hug his old coach.

"I was nervous," said Vanidestine. "I didn't know if he would remember me or not. I didn't really know anything. But look at him. He's still full of it."

Winkin was a Navy officer in the Pacific when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He played cards with Vince Lombardi when both coached at high schools in New Jersey nearly 60 years ago. He talked hitting with Ted Williams. After UMaine he moved crosstown to coach baseball at Husson. He was believed to be the oldest college coach in the country when he went out for one of his daily power walks near the Husson campus last December.

"I was really pushing it. Then, pow. I couldn't believe it."

He worked so hard for so long to keep his body in top shape. He must have felt betrayed.

"No," said Winkin. "All that work saved my life."

http://news.mainetoday.com/updates/029596.html

NBA takes time out
Players moved by Seeds of Peace campers
By STEVE SOLLOWAY
Portland Press Herald

OTISFIELD — She lives with fear, she told her small audience. Every day, every night. She spoke of children, much younger than her 17 years, who have so little hope.

She cried out her dream that her own children would know what it would be like to play and laugh without looking over their shoulders at death.

In a reversal of roles, Derek Rose and D.J. Augustin, twins Brook and Robin Lopez and others in their group locked their eyes on the young, sorrowful face of an Arab woman who would only give her name as Mirina. She had their attention and their emotions.

The future of the NBA had come to Seeds of Peace International Camp on Monday. Most of the morning and afternoon was filled with laughter and the bounce of basketballs. Six years ago, sports agent Arn Tellem brought some of the players he represents to this place. Many were recent draftees. He wanted them to see outside their world of rich bonuses and unimaginable opportunities and understand the lives of boys and girls not much younger than themselves who live in harm's way.

Now they come every summer, the trip coinciding with a stop in New York City for an NBA photo-shoot for the rookies. Some, like B.J. Armstrong, who was a Chicago Bulls teammate with Michael Jordan on championship teams of the 1990s, come back year after year. Brian Scalabrine of the Celtics is a repeat visitor.

Jordan Farmar of the Los Angeles Lakers made his second trip this summer. "I have a white mother and a black father ,and I was raised a Christian. My stepfather is Israeli and a Jew. I know what it's like to be different."

Meaning, he knows the hatred of ignorance. He will visit Israel in the next week or two, hoping to make a small difference. He will return to Seeds of Peace for as long as he's welcome.

After lunch, seven Seeds of Peace campers, back for their second summer, spoke to the NBA players and Sue Wicks, a former WNBA star with the New York Liberty. Twenty years ago, she was an All-American at Rutgers. She played for 15 seasons overseas, including four in Israel.

Monday, she shared in the laughter and asked a lot of questions. She hugged Roi Bareket, a 17-year-old from a town between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He spoke optimistically about his country's future, so long as people will talk to each other.

Wicks reached out to Mirina. "I'm not here, thinking I can accomplish something in one day," Wicks said. "We're here to show we support what they're doing. They're communicating with each other.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=201940&ac=PHnws






Photos By Derek Davis/Staff Photographer