Yesterday …

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(As reported in the Bangor Daily News)

10 years ago – July 8, 1994

The Penobscot Indian Nation has been awarded a $49,000 grant from the National Park Service to produce a film about the tribal people and the Penobscot River.

Filming of the documentary movie, “Penobscot: The People and Their River,” will begin next week at the Penobscot reservation at Indian Island, near Old Town, according to Lt. Gov. Reuben “Butch” Phillips.

The film is expected to be completed by April 1995, said Phillips. He said he expected there would be a special viewing of the film sometime next winter.

The 30-minute film will feature interviews with tribal members who use the river and its resources in traditional ways, said the lieutenant governor. It also will explore the physical and spiritual interconnection between the Penobscots and their ancestral river, he said.

“It’s a documentary about our history and will be used for archival purposes,” Phillips said. He added that those tribal members interviewed will discuss their use of the river for the harvesting of fiddleheads, fishing, hunting and the gathering of ash for baskets.

25 years ago – July 8, 1979

ORONO – How handy it would be for doctors, when they find an unexpected reaction to a medication or are treating a disease for the first time, to have at their fingertips a way to get information about these problems.

That day is getting closer with the help of computers in libraries.

For the last year and a half, the medical library at Eastern Maine Medical Center has had a computer hookup with the National Library of Medicine, where information for about 1 million or more articles appearing in several thousands journals had been indexed and programmed.

Searches for information that used to take hours or days can now be reduced to “between five and 10 minutes” with the computer, according to Priscilla Platt, a librarian at the EMMC medical library.

Before computers, a request for information by a doctor or a nurse required the librarians to pore through indexes or biomedical journals or nursing periodicals.

“It takes a long time, and you are never sure you have gotten everything,” Platt said. Using a computer is “really more thorough,” she said.

But it is the speed in which a search can be done that is important for many people making requests at the medical library.

“We have people that come in here that need an answer and need it fast,” Platt said. “Emergency problems we were totally unable to handle,” she said.

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OLD TOWN – Until his 60th year, Alton Bosse made half his income from gardening, and the other half from carpentry. Then he fell off a barn and found himself confined to a wheel chair, paralyzed from the waist down.

After six months in the hospital, Bosse returned to his home and said to himself, “I’m not going to sit here and do nothing.”

So Bosse figured out a way to continue his first love, gardening.

If he couldn’t get to the ground, Bosse decided to bring the ground up to his level. He, his son and his brother who lived next door took some of the boards from the barn and built up the biggest set of flower boxes anybody in the neighborhood had ever seen.

The boxes are about one meter high, seven meters long and just wide enough so that Bosse can reach the middle from his wheel chair to tend his tomatoes, radishes, beets, Swiss chard and other vegetables. The garden is now in its third year and holding up well.

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OLD TOWN – If it weren’t so far from the center of the city, it would be a perfect place for a museum.

As it is, it receives about 700 visitors a year. Some people don’t even know where it is.

But the Old Town Historical Museum is alive and thriving, located off Gilman Falls Avenue on North Fourth Street Extension. It is the building alongside the Penobscot, which once housed the city’s water works. Founded in 1976 as a bicentennial project, the museum continued to grow, and that is part of the problem.

“As we receive more donations, we’ll start filling the building, and when we run out of space we may have to move,” said Elizabeth Buck, the curator. An energetic and enthusiastic woman, Mrs. Buck receives only a handful of visitors each day, most of them from Old Town.

A city council committee is looking for alternative locations for the museum, hoping to bring the city’s heirlooms and memorabilia closer to the people. A mild furor erupted a few weeks ago, however, when it was suggested that the museum be established at the old grist mill on Water Street.

Many residents like their museum where it is because of the river, the picnic table and the view.

50 years ago – July 8, 1954

BANGOR – Attorney Milton Beverage missed his first Lions meeting in a year and as a result now has a “porker” as his guest.

The newly appointed attendance committee headed by Albert Smaha declared that the names of all those members not present at the meeting would be put into a hat, and the member whose name was drawn would have to keep the pig for a week as a house guest.

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ORONO – The Rev. E. Charles Dartnell of Brewer will be the speaker at a meeting of the University of Maine Alumni Teachers Association.

This is the second summer session dinner that the association has sponsored. Many alumni teachers at the session are expected to attend.

Mr. Dartnell, a graduate of the university in the class of 1945, is pastor of the First Methodist Church in Brewer. He was honored by hundreds of his friends at a Recognition Day at the Brewer auditorium Jan. 14. Mr. Dartnell is one of Maine’s leading speakers, entertainers and citizens.

100 years ago – July 8, 1904

SOUTH ORRINGTON – Haying has begun in this vicinity in good earnest, with a prospect of a good crop. All other crops are looking well, and the farmers wear smiling faces.

A bandstand is being built on the shore road by H.A. Ryder.

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HAMPDEN – Several of the younger people of the town went to Mt. Chase last Saturday. Although it rained, they had a nice time.

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BREWER – The regular monthly meeting of the Brewer City Council was held in the city chambers, Mayor Leon F. Higgins, presiding, with all members of the board present except Aldermen Ray and Oakes.

Alderman Dougherty reported in behalf of the committee on streets, highways, etc., that they had investigated the premises where a petition had called for suitable gates near the railroad crossing at Wilson Street for the safety of the public, and recommended that steps be taken so that the railroad company would provide gates and maintain them.

Compiled by Ardeana Hamlin