Issue of March 20, 2003

With the country on the verge of war, the Current took to the streets of Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth and South Portland to find out what people were thinking.

In a speech to the nation Monday night, President Bush gave Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave that country or the United States would disarm him by force. Bush added that such action would be at a time of the U.S.’s choosing.

Edward Feigenbaum, 78, a retired construction manager and Cape resident said he is 100 percent behind the president.

“This is something that has to be done. It’s just too bad we had to go to war to do it,” he said.

However, Constance Puckett also of Cape said she agrees with Pope John Paul II and others who believe “this is not a just war.”

Puckett said the president has not made the case that a war is needed. “I feel the way to fight terrorism is through cooperation, and not by making the world angry with you,” she said.

Scarborough police have started posting information about registered sex offenders living in town, along with their photos, on the town’s web site – a move that comes as legislators in Augusta take a look at the entire sex offender registry program this session.

Police Chief Robert Moulton said the department decided to post the sex offender registry, a public document available to any citizen, in recent weeks while upgrading the department’s web site. Other communities, most prominently Portland, have posted their sex offender lists on the Internet for some time.

Scarborough police have forwarded the name of a high school student who allegedly was involved in producing a pornographic videotape with another student to the District Attorney’s Office, who will decide if charges should be filed in the case.

Detective Sgt. Rick Rouse said Monday that the rumored tape has not been located. He also said there have been no arrests of students or anyone else in the investigation, and no charges had been filed as of Monday.

Rouse said, however, that information about the investigation, including the name of the student alleged to have produced the tape, have been sent to the DA’s office to determine if a crime has been committed.

A close vote was expected at Wednesday’s Scarborough Town Council meeting on a plan by Regional Waste Systems to plug an almost $2.5 million hole in this year’s operating budget by forcing commercial haulers to take their trash to the facility.

For the past month the council has been struggling with the question of whether it would be viable to require all commercial trash haulers to have a contract to bring the business waste they collect to the RWS plant in Portland before getting a license to haul trash in town. The practice is known as flow control.

In the face of a standing room only crowd, mostly present to support a proposed $1.5 million kindergarten wing at the Pond Cove School in Cape Elizabeth, town councilors last week said they wouldn’t make a decision on the project until July.

Councilor Anne Swift-Kayatta made the proposal to hold off on a vote on the school project, arguing there was no compelling reason to make an immediate decision at the March 12 meeting. Swift-Kayatta argued that the council needs more time to make “a measured and well-informed decision.”

They didn’t do it for the fame, and they don’t support war, but two Cape kids are sending Girl Scout cookies to U.S. troops in the Middle East.

After watching the evening television news last week, 11-year-old twins Jonathan and Lexi Bass were moved to do something to support the troops they had seen interviewed in the Kuwaiti desert.

The soldiers didn’t have much to do, and were feeling both proud and worried about the prospect of serving their country in wartime. Lexi, a Girl Scout, had loads of boxes of Girl Scout cookies in the back hallway ready for delivery, and the pair decided to buy some more for the troops.

Jennifer Williams, a senior at Scarborough, has been selected to receive the 2003 Principal’ s Award, Principal Andrew Dolloff announced recently. The award, sponsored by the Maine Principals’ Association, is given in recognition of a high school senior’s academic achievement and citizenship.

Elizabeth Miller, a social studies teacher at South Portland’s Memorial Middle School, spent three weeks as an exchange teacher in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Miller was one of only 30 teachers chosen from around the country to participate in the teacher exchange between the U.S. and Russia and other former Soviet Union republics last fall. The exchange is sponsored by the American Councils of International Education and the Department of State.

Mary Helen Graffam of Scarborough has been named to the dean’ s list for the fall semester 2002. Graffam is a senior at Connecticut College, New London, Conn.

Michelle Mary Lappin of Scarborough has been named to the academic achievement list for the fall semester 2002.

Students at Scarborough’ s Blue Point School were supposed to hold their annual Winterfest during the month of February, but had to put off the fun until Friday, March 14, because of the brutally cold weather this winter.

Under blue and sunny skies last week the kids finally had a chance to show their stuff at various events, including snow tubing, “sled dog” races, snowball races and several slalom events.

-Cape Elizabeth’ s resident ghost, the “ Lady in White” of Crescent Beach, made a cameo appearance in a lecture at the Cape Elizabeth Historic Preservation Society’ s meeting earlier this month.

Bill Thomson of Kennebunk, a retired history professor from Salem Teachers College in Massachusetts, spoke on ghosts and coastal hauntings in New England. He first addressed what a ghost is, explaining that “ 98 percent of all ghost stories can be explained” by something rational, rather than supernatural.

He told of a Maine landlord who had a hard time keeping tenants in an apartment; all of them complained of an eerie singing sound coming from one particular wall. The tenants blamed a ghost. Eventually the landlord got tired of the problem and took a shotgun to the wall, Thomson said. He discovered an old saw hanging inside the wall, and rubbing against a partly exposed nail in such a way to make a singing or screeching noise.

It is the other 2 percent of ghost stories that interest Thomson, particularly vivid smells, unexplained noises and voices, moving furniture, appliances going on and off for no reason and apparitions.

He has a theory about visions people have of ghosts: Living people emit energy in “ waves,” which intensify at times of great stress. Many ghosts are of people who have died violently, and therefore would have put out a lot of these energy waves just before they died.

The cast of the Scarborough Middle School musical “ You Ain’t Nothin but a Werewolf” preparing for opening night in this photo from March 20, 2003. File photo