by Chris Chase
Coastal Journal staff

BATH — For the seventh year running, “So You Think You Know Bath” brought a night of fun and friendly competition to the city of Bath in the name of charity. 

The event, which is hosted by Main Street Bath, serves to provide funding to the organization in the coming year, allowing them to host a number of events in the city. The main event is an extensive trivia contest, featuring Bath exclusive questions, between local charitable organizations.

With three preliminary rounds of 20 questions each and a final round between the winners of the prelims, volunteers had to come up with 80 unique questions about the city. They ranged from determining the modern residents of buildings featured in old photographs, to determining the order streets would appear in heading in a certain direction along roads. 

Law enforcement agents suit up to investigate a meth lab found on Dummer Street in Bathby Chris Chase
Coastal Journal staff

BATH — The discovery of a Meth lab in Bath marks the second found in the midcoast this year, and the fourth found in the state in 2013. 

According to Roy McKinney, director of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency (MDEA), last year marked the highest number of meth labs found in the state, with 13 total found. The majority of those were located in Aroostoock County, with none found in the midcoast. 

According to McKinney, typically the labs found in the state have been small in size and are created to serve the creator’s habits, with whatever is left over being sold to locals. 

From left to right: Ashwood Waldorf School students Ginny Laurita, Rowan Kandra, Isadora Osgood, Emma Trapani, Ella Siman, and Jonas Eichenlaub rehearse “Guys and Dolls Jr.,” which they will perform at the Rockland Opera House beginning Friday, March 22.by L. Jaye Bell
Coastal Journal contributor

ROCKPORT — The light streams into the room as the music notes begin, at first faintly, then growing stronger, flowing with ease into a peppy crescendo. The conductor’s baton flits like a staccato hummingbird as the moment arrives and mouths open, voices find their notes and sing and the familiar tune springs to life. This is how, for the last few weeks, the eighth grade at Ashwood Waldorf school has begun the day. They are rehearsing for the performance of their lives, a culmination of eight years of learning and growing together. 

After watching this group perform since kindergarten, this year, Ashwood’s parents and teachers decided to add community value to the lesson. Decision making is more a collaborative process, with less bureaucratic red tape. 

“The kids work so hard on this every year,” said Laura Perdom, the school’s Marketing Coordinator. “What better way to enrich the value of the experience than to allow the greater community to see it onstage?” 

Value based skills are inherent to the curriculum at all Waldorf schools; it’s a vital part of the format developed by Rudolf Steiner. The largest independent educational system in the world, over 2,000 schools, preschools and kindergartens are based on Steiner’s educational philosophy. The idea is to allow the education to support the student, not the other way around. 

by Chris Chase
Coastal Journal staff

WISCASSET — The Two Bridges Regional Jail (TBRJ) is still waiting for payment from the state, to the tune of a sum totaling over a million dollars.

The money, which was a part of a funding model the state itself adopted, is for third and fourth quarter operations of the facility, which houses a disproportionate number of inmates from other counties. In a meeting of the Lincoln and Sagadahoc Multicounty Jail Authority on March 13, the board elected to formally request the state pay the money they owe TBRJ. 

“It’s a complicated nightmare at the moment,” said Mark Westrum, correctional administrator for TBRJ and the chair of the Maine board of corrections. 

Currently, no jail in the state has received a third-quarter payment, a fact which is straining the budgets, and the patience, of officials.