Downeast Table of Plenty, Sunday, May 21st – Everyone Welcome
Please join us, May 21st, for this Sunday’s Downeast Table of Plenty. If you would like to host a meal, you can go to the calendar website Sign Up and schedule your Sunday or contact Wendy Harrington.
Cherryfield, ME — Sunday afternoons, 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. at our Downeast Table of Plenty, everyone is welcome to share satisfying, home-cooked meals.
People age two to ninety, from every segment of the community attend. Music, conversation, and laughter preside. Hunger and loneliness are nowhere in sight.
The Table of Plenty takes place in the EdGE building on our Downeast Campus every Sunday, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. Meals are provided by volunteers.
If you would like to host a meal, you can go to the calendar website Sign Up and schedule your Sunday or contact Wendy Harrington.
Scholarship Recipient Catherine McDonald: ‘Take A Leap and Go!’
Bar Harbor, ME — Mission Scholarship Manager Terri W. Rodick keeps in close touch with the students she’s come to know through our Scholarship Program. Recently, Terri invited student scholarship recipients to share with Mission friends, their success stories and photos.
Here’s Catherine McDonald’s story.
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Thursday, March 16, 2017 12:59 PM
Hi Terri!
I recently returned from a fantastic semester abroad in England where I studied history alongside UK students at the University of Birmingham. While I was abroad I was able to submerge myself in the fascinating British culture by living with current undergrad students at UoB. My time there was wonderful. In addition to exploring metropolitan Birmingham I was able to visit places such as London and Liverpool in England, as well as going to Wales and Scotland.
To conclude my time abroad I went on a month trip through Europe that took me through Amsterdam, Italy, and France. This trip inspired me to continue travelling and growing as a person, and I would urge anyone who has any interest at all to take a leap and go!
Best,
Catherine
Boston Bruins 2014-15 Team Autographed Jersey Auction to Benefit EdGE Families
Our special thanks to the Boston Bruins Foundation for presenting the Mission this unique team jersey. Our goal is to help get this Bruins collectible to another team fan, and to use 100-percent of the proceeds to help our EdGE families.
High bidder in this Maine Seacoast Mission eBay auction…
- Owns this Boston Bruins 2014-2015 Team Autographed Jersey, and also
- Helps Downeast Maine children enrolled in our EdGE (Ed Greaves Education) Program challenge themselves, engage with their communities and the outdoors, and explore college and career options.
Auction ends Tuesday, March 7th.
Go directly to our eBay Boston Bruins Team Autographed Jersey page.
EdGE is designed to help students make informed choices about their futures and develop the resources and skills to be successful—and happy—in life. More than 700 students take part in EdGE activities each year. To remove any barriers to participation, transportation is provided at no cost to the student. Summer camps have a nominal fee, but all other programs are free, and no one is excluded for lack of funds.
Auction ends Tuesday, March 7th.
Go directly to our eBay Boston Bruins Team Autographed Jersey page.
For more information about the EdGE program, email Maria Wight or call 207.546.4466.
Snow? Food Pantry is Open and Ready to Serve
Cherryfield, ME — Downeast Campus Director Wendy Harrington sends this photo and news item: On Tuesday February 14, the front door to the Downeast Campus Center is piled high with snow but the path to the Food Pantry door is shoveled and ready to serve customers. We want to make sure people can get to the pantry on the days between the recent snow storms.
The Magic of New Beginnings: One Mother’s Story About the Mission’s Housing Rehab Program
Story by Nancy Saunders
Photos by Scott Shaw
The Maine Seacoast Mission’s housing rehabilitation program based at our Downeast Campus addresses fixes up or rebuilds twenty houses a year. Repairs and renovations range from painting to insulated mobile home skirting to new roofs. Every year we completely rebuild two mobile homes or houses for local families. The families contribute sweat equity to the rebuilding projects and often have one or more children active in the EdGE program.
Downeast Campus Director of Service Programs Wendy Harrington sent this profile, written by Nancy Saunders, of a mother and daughter who reached out to the Mission’s Housing Rehab Program — and the result. The before-and-after photos are from Housing Repair Program Coordinator Scott Shaw.
“And suddenly you know that it’s time to trust in the magic of new beginnings.” This inspiring quotation, framed and hanging in the hallway of Tara Small’s newly rehabbed mobile home, expresses the sense of marvel she and her daughter feel as they settle into their warm, safe, structurally sound, and attractive home.
The significance to Tara and her daughter of the transformation of their home can be appreciated more fully by stepping back in time less than one year. Their home had leaks in the roof, mold, decaying floor boards, dilapidated siding, little insulation, and an interior dating back to 1968. Tara says her normally outgoing daughter felt unable to invite friends to their home because of its condition.
Tara herself, after coping with a severe, chronic illness requiring multiple surgeries and hospitalizations from the time she was fifteen years old, as well as a difficult divorce, had all but given up. She became very depressed, tearful, unable to sleep at night nor function during the day. She says “I felt like a turtle, unable to leave my shell.”
Tara applied to the Maine Seacoast Mission’s Housing Rehab Program. This program’s efforts are based on the Housing First philosophy, which asserts that people can improve their lives (i.e, seek employment or education, and become more engaged in the community) only after they have a home that is safe, warm and dry. The Mission’s Housing Rehab Program applicants must be able to demonstrate both financial and housing need, be involved in their community, and agree to contribute 200 hours of “sweat equity”.
Tara was selected this Spring, and work began in the Summer by the many volunteers who come to the Mission for a week at a time, and donate their time and skill to the extensive rehab process. Tara and her daughter became very attached to these groups over the summer. One of them even knitted prayer shawls to match the colors of the new rooms.
And what colors they are! Tara’s daughter’s bedroom is painted “passionfruit pink with cupcake brown trim.” She placed her bed at an angle, and using PVC pipe, arranged the curtains to create a canopy. One of the groups made a grow stick for her wall. She provided her own decorative stickers and put her porcelain dolls on her dresser.
Tara’s room is purple, which is the awareness color of her medical condition, and it reminds her to be positive and hopeful. She has pictures of butterflies on the walls — delicate symbols of transformation, and a framed quotation which reads: “a dream is a wish the heart makes”.
Their living room is green and its theme is hunting and fishing, which both Tara and her daughter enjoy. The kitchen is blue and will feature light houses and lobster boats. The new cabinets, stove, and hanging pots and pans invite cooking and social gatherings.
The “transformation hallway” features pictures of the volunteer groups, as well as Scott and Wendy. “We will never forget any of them”, says Tara. “It is from the bottom of my heart that I say ‘thank you'”.
Carl Little Lecture Continues Mission’s Robert S. Neuman Ship to Paradise Exhibition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 8, 2016
For More Information:
Contact Anna Silver, 207-288-5097 or asilver@seacoastmission.org
Carl Little Lecture Continues Mission’s Robert S. Neuman Ship to Paradise Exhibition
BAR HARBOR — The Maine Seacoast Mission, as part of its Robert S. Neuman Ship to Paradise exhibition through September 9th, 2016, is hosting a lecture at the Colket Center, by Carl Little on Wednesday, August 24th, 5:30-7:30 p.m. The Mission’s Neuman exhibition focuses on the artist’s surrealist illustrations for an edition of Sebastian Brandt’s The Shyp of Fooles, a 15th century allegory on the foibles and folly of man. Robert S. Neuman’s Ship to Paradise Series is the artist’s personal exploration of this same theme.
Carl Little has written about Neuman’s work for shows at College of the Atlantic, Wheaton College in Norton, Massachuetts, and the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York. He is the author of more than 25 art books, most recently, Jeffery Becton: The Farthest House and Wendy Turner—Island Light. His book Eric Hopkins: Above and Beyond won the first John N. Cole Award from Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance in 2012. He edited his brother David Little’s first book, Art of Katahdin, and co-authored with him Art of Acadia, 2016.
Robert S. Neuman began spending his summers in Maine in the early 1960’s, when he was a professor at Harvard University. Originally “summering” in Ogunquit, Allan Stone, the collector and friend, offered Neuman a home in Northeast Harbor in trade for paintings. Neuman enjoyed hiking the trails of Acadia, sailing and was inspired by the natural beauty of Mount Desert Island.
The Artist’s Ship to Paradise works can be found in both private and corporate collections, including the Boston Athenaeum, Boston, MA, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, New York Public Library, New York, NY, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, The Art Complex, Duxbury, MA, and the National Art Gallery, Australia.
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Open House Aboard Sunbeam V, Jonesport, August 9th,10th
For more information call Maine Seacoast Mission at 288-5097 or email Douglas Cornman, Director of Island Outreach. Also, here is a link to a PDF version of our Sunbeam V Open House poster.
Maine Seacoast Mission Offering Rusticator Mansion Centennial Tours
BAR HARBOR – In celebration of Acadia National Park’s centennial, the Maine Seacoast Mission will offer tours of its “rusticator” mansion in downtown Bar Harbor during July and August. Tours will also feature historical items from the Mission’s 111 years of serving the islands and coastal communities of downeast Maine.
The 35-room mansion, once known as “La Rochelle,” was built in 1902 for George Bowdoin, a partner of J.P. Morgan, and his small family and 21 servants. Located at 127 West Street and overlooking Frenchman’s Bay, the house was the first brick summer cottage to be built in Bar Harbor. The specially cut granite and marble used in the construction was imported from Italy.
The house, along with an endowment for its upkeep, was donated to the Maine Seacoast Mission in 1972 by Tristram and Ruth Colket, who purchased the mansion in the 1940s. The building now serves as the Mission’s administrative headquarters and is known as the “Colket Center” in honor of its donors.
Tours will be given at 1:00 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays from July 5 through August 30. Volunteer docents will guide visitors through the three floors of the building, including the servant quarters on the third floor and the impressive double stairway that leads from the entrance hall to the second floor. There is no charge for the tours, though donations will be appreciated.
For more information, call 207-288-5097 or email info@seacoastmission.org. The Maine Seacoast Mission has brought healthcare, educational programs, pastoral support, crisis services, and scholarships to the people of eastern Maine’s islands and coastal towns since 1905.