Cabin-Building & Brotherly Love #207

Paul Ureneck:

have an answer to something, you know, wait a little while, just relax. They talked about that. It'll come to you. Just relax and wait a little while. And lo and behold, you know.

Lou Ureneck:

Exactly. It's the best part of life, really, you know, in the end when you're young, at least for me when I was young, it was, you know, there was a lot of ambition and, you know, I sort of, in a way, saving myself. But as I get older, you know, that's really where the joy and the satisfaction is in the relationships.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio show number 207, cabin building and Brotherly Love, airing for the first time on Sunday, August 30, 2015. Lou and Paul Urenik have been part of the Maine community for several decades in very different ways. Paul has worked in construction management, helping orchestrate projects such as the Portland Museum of Art, Winslow Homer House restoration and Thompson's Point redevelopment. Lou is a writer and Boston University professor who worked as the deputy managing editor at the Portland Press Herald for many years. In 2001, Lou wrote about his experiences with Paul in his book Two Brothers a Dream and Five Acres in Maine. Thank you for joining us. It isn't often that I have the opportunity to interview a set of brothers, a set of sisters, a set of siblings of any sort on the radio show. And today I have that privilege. Today I have with me Lou and Paul Urenik. Lou is a former Nieman Fellow and editor in residence at Harvard University. He is a professor of journalism at Boston University. Now he was deputy managing editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and editor of the Portland Press Herald. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Boston Globe, and Field and Stream. A former Fulbright Fellow, Uranik is the author of Backcast, which won the National Outdoor Book Award for Literary Merit, and Two Brothers a Dream and Five Acres in Maine. His latest book is The Great Fire One American's mission to rescue victims of the 20th century's first genocide. Lou's brother Paul moved to Maine in the 1970s when he was asked to help build a post and beam home on land that Lou bought in New Gloucester. The home took three years worth of Sunday work to build. After that, Paul got involved in construction and eventually moved into a construction management position at the Bolas Company, where he has been part of many notable projects, such as Pineland Redevelopment, the Winslow Homer Home restoration for the Portland Museum of Art, Allagash Brew Evolving Development and Expansion, Backyard Farms Research and Development center in Madison, and the current Thompson's Point redevelopment. Thank you so much for coming in.

Paul Ureneck:

Thank you for having us.

Lou Ureneck:

Great to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

These were smaller versions of much more work that you both have done. I could have actually spent the entire show just talking about the stuff that you each have done for the Portland area and the world at large, I guess, let's just say so. We're very privileged to have you here today.

Paul Ureneck:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I really enjoyed reading the book Cabin, and in no small part, it was because of the brother aspect of all of this. Now, Lou, you were going through some significant transitions in your life when you decided to build this cabin, and it was an interesting and sometimes difficult book to read from that standpoint. Talk to me a little bit about what was happening in your life.

Lou Ureneck:

I undertook the cabin project really as a kind of healing project, as you say, transitions. I had lost a job. I had some years earlier gone through a divorce and was still reverberating in my life. And our mother had died some years earlier, so there was a lot of tumult and turmoil in my life. And so I was looking for something that I could take on that would engage the better part of me, something positive to do. And I had always loved the outdoors. It's, you know, positive part of what brought me to Maine many years ago. And it's been an important part of my life. So I played with several different ideas about traveling to somewhere or doing something else. And I decided the thing I really wanted to do was build a cabin. And it was a fantasy in a way, really. And I'm not really capable of building a cabin by myself. So fortunately, I have a brother who is. So I had this idea, this dream, and I loved that part of Maine, western Maine. So I bought the Land. Paul and I went up together and looked at it, and Paul concluded that it was a good place to put a cabin. And so I got a good deal on it and we started building later that year. So it would have been 2008. So that's how it began.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And it's interesting to me, Paul, because you didn't start the book in the story. You didn't start as having been going through transition yourself, necessarily, but by the end of the book, you were going through your own set of transitions.

Paul Ureneck:

Correct? Correct.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So this seemed like kind of an important thing for you both to be doing at this period of time.

Paul Ureneck:

Yeah, you know, I guess. I guess life is really just a series of transitions when you look at it. And, you know, the cabin was a project where the two of us could be together, could work together, we could bring other family members involved, mainly my children, who all lived locally, and they all love working with their hands, etc. So, you know, what do you do when you have transition in your life? You know, I think you revert back to family and to those things that are anchors in your life and you bring them together and those are your rudder.

Lou Ureneck:

Yeah, absolutely. And it was a great, I don't know, salve, solace to me to be with Paul through this and his sons who would come out and lend a hand. One of the boys in particular, Kevin, turned out to be hugely important to the project. He worked with me on the frame of the cabin through the winter. Absolutely insane that we were building this thing through the winter, but that's the way it happened. And I was too eager to delay, despite Paul's advice. So we. We went ahead. We began the project in November. Can you believe that? And we were putting up the frame in the winter, in the teeth of a Maine winter, it's snowing, you know, each weekend I'd go back up there with Kevin and Paul, and we'd have another 6 or 12 inches of snow on the deck, and we'd have to shovel it off and broom off the beams and so forth and get to work. But actually, it turned out to be a lot of fun. You know, winter is a great time to be outdoors. Air is crisp and clear, the sky was blue. And, you know, we'd build a fire, we'd cook some lunch, you know, hot dogs or whatever. So even though it was a little nutty, it turned out to be a lot of fun. And it sure was a great joy, comfort to me to be with Paul and Kevin and his other son, Paulie, and occasionally Andrew A third son, a very capable young man, would come along. So, yeah, we were having on our own. We were sort of having our own work party.

Paul Ureneck:

I had teased Lou during that part of the project because concurrent with us building it, he was also writing a blog for the New York Times

Lou Ureneck:

on

Paul Ureneck:

the building of the cabin. And I had said to him, this is the first time a schedule of a construction project for me has been driven by the need for you to write something to get into your weekly blog. So that is what's kept us on schedule, his need to keep the blog updated for the Times.

Lou Ureneck:

That's right. We were dealing with the cabin and we were also dealing with my need to file two or three times to the New York Times. And so I described the ascent of the cabin for the New York Times over the course of the year. And that turned out to be fun, too. And we had pictures of all of us as part of that. But you're right, that was pretty funny. And so people all over the world. Actually, I had forgotten about that. People all over the world were experiencing this cabin going up. And it was not without disasters. I mean, we screwed things up. Things fell down. At one point, I hadn't sufficiently, I guess, braced the. The roof trusses and it's a very windy place, we're up on a hill and the roof trusses blew down. It was a complete disaster. I just wanted to walk away from the whole project when I saw that one spring day, spring of 2009, I guess. But Paul and Kevin, you guys, I was amazed you guys went, you know, it was like, hey, this is great. We can solve this problem. I was ready to shoot myself. And Paul and Kevin went to work and they untangled the rafters and pushed the walls back together. And we found a way to swing these very heavy trusses back up into the. Into position. So even that worked out, but we shared that with the world via the New York Times. You know, the catastrophe of the rafters.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I would think that this is something that's not that foreign to you, Paul. Having something happen that during construction that wasn't what you expected. And just having to deal with, well,

Paul Ureneck:

that's what, you know, construction is, as, you know, no matter. And I've been in, you know, I've been involved in very, very simple projects to very complex multimillion dollar projects. And I don't care what team of professionals you have, how much planning you do, there is something that's going to go wrong. I mean, that's, that's just the way construction Is, you know, you try to limit those things as much as possible. But. But, you know, in construction, they don't call them problems, they call them opportunities.

Lou Ureneck:

We had a lot of opportunities, that's for sure.

Paul Ureneck:

And so, you know, you figure it out. But it's. It's, you know, it's good to get out from behind a computer, get out of the office and those things. Things. And, you know, to use your hands and use your brains to, you know, solve something physically and hopefully physically with using your brain and not your back, you know, to, you know, correct the problem. So it's fun. And it's. And it's. And it's all. It's teamwork. It's a collaborative thing. And Lou was mentioning my son Kevin. He puts a tremendous amount of thought. You know, he'll look at a problem for five minutes and not say a word, and then he'll approach the solution to it. So, you know, there's. There's some good interaction that goes on between. Not everybody agrees. Not everybody agrees on the best way to solve a problem. But, you know, you work it out and say, okay, let's do this.

Lou Ureneck:

And, you know, Kevin has something that Paul has the same quality. I completely lack it. And that's this ability to understand space relationships. You know, some people can look at a box and kind of turn it in their mind and say, well, what would that look like if it were turned sideways and. Or unfold the box in their mind? And it turns out that that is a good quality to have if you're building something because you have to think, well, how would I fit that into that? And so forth. I don't have it. And so Kevin in particular, he was great. He saved us a lot of time and effort by thinking these things through, sort of turning box in his mind as, you know, as we build things. And you're right, there was, you know, there was disagreement along the way, and we worked it out. You know, when I started the cabin, I had a pretty firm idea how I wanted the interior space. And I was going to have a writing room, you know, which was a ridiculous idea. You know, another fantasy, as if I were going to go up there and sit in a room inside a cabin and write. But anyway, that this was part of the fantasy. And my nephew Paulie, Paul's son, said, uncle Louie, no way. This cabin has to be wide open. It has to be open space. It's a family space. We're all going to be together. Nobody gets behind the door to write a book, you know, and I said, no, Paulie, I'm not sure. I think I could use a place where I could. No, no. He insisted and he started citing cabins that we had been in in the past. There was a cabin in particular in Aroostook County. We used to take the boys to Roosta county for three or four days every fall around Thanksgiving for a deer hunting trip. Nobody ever shot a deer, I think. But in any event, we used to stay in this cabin. And Paul, you know, he was described. Paulie was describing that cabin. And so he made the argument and he was right. So there's no. The interior space of the cabin is fully open. It's communal family space. There are bunk beds against the back wall, and if you're sitting in the, the eating area, you can see the bunk beds. And if somebody's playing poker at the table, it's all wide open. So we work these things through as a group. As it went up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now I'm wondering what it must have been like, Paul, for you to have this brother who, his job is really making constructions out of words and ideas. And his way of dealing with problem is editing sentences and, you know, helping create storylines versus buildings. I mean, you both are very creative individuals, but your brains work in very different ways.

Paul Ureneck:

You're right.

Lou Ureneck:

You're right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what was that like for you?

Lou Ureneck:

I think I drove them crazy a few times. Yeah, that's.

Paul Ureneck:

It's funny you mentioned that. Yeah. Because, you know, a writer will write a draft of a story, he'll correct that draft and you know, write another draft and perhaps another draft and, you know, keeps working of it till you get to the final product. In construction, it doesn't work like that. You know, you don't cut a 2 by 4 once and if it doesn't fit, you grab another 2 by 4

Lou Ureneck:

and you cut it again. What do you mean you don't do that?

Paul Ureneck:

You know, you do this and you know, so our minds did work like that, did work differently because, you know, I'm, you know, the field that I work in. It's, you know, the, the construction of a project is the easy part. It's, it's the planning that you put into it so that you only do things once. Who was it? You know, was it Ross Perot or whatever he said, you know, measure twice, cut once, you know, so we do come from two different worlds where my world is basically put a lot of thought into it, only do it once. Lou's is, well, you know, it's a draft.

Lou Ureneck:

Let's try it. And See if it works. I can, I can think of one example where Paul, I think you were ready to leave the job. We had erected the frame and we had even sheathed, put the out exterior wood on the frame. So now it's, you know, beginning to look like a closed in box. And you know, the next step is sort of moving toward finish where you put the, you know, the nice finish on the outside, the pine wood and so forth. And so I was inside sitting down and I noticed that when I sat, I couldn't see fully out of the windows. And I thought, you know, it's important if I'm going to sit in this cabin, I want to be able to get a full view out of the window. I don't want to see the windowsill, I want to see the woods. So I said to Paul, you know what, I think we need to do the windows over again because they're too high. And he said, what? What do you mean they're too high? I said, well, when I look out the window, I see the windowsill, I don't see the trees. And he said, it's too late, you know, I mean, we've already framed it and we've sheathed it. And I said, yeah, I know, but I'd like the windows to be lower.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Couldn't you just get a higher chair?

Lou Ureneck:

Yeah, hadn't thought of that. You know, that's a good solution. But anyway, so there was a slight hiccup in the progress at that point. Ultimately we lowered the windows and we got through that. But I think that's a good example. You know, I was sort of, hey, let's build it and look at it and see if we like it. And if we don't like it, let's build it again, you know, so having

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

worked through this process and gotten the windows that you wanted out of it, what did that, what did that do for you? What did that bring to your life on a sort of a smaller and a bigger level?

Lou Ureneck:

Yeah, you know, for me, and this is sort of how I relate to the world, I guess. You know, the cabin. I hate to use this word because it sounds so fancy. I wish I could think of a better word, and I'm sure there is one. But it's a kind of aesthetic experience. You know, the pleasing design, the being in of it, things working the way they should work and spatially and design wise and so forth. So the fact that the window is lower and I can see out, which is what I wanted to do, makes being in the cabin a much More pleasurable experience for me. You know, there's no television in the cabin, there's no radio, there's no Internet. You know, this is an experience of being inside a well built cabin in a pleasant location. So the windows were part of that, believe it or not, getting the right slope of the roof and, you know, the right feel inside, all of that was part for me of the enjoyment of being in the cabin. So the windows were important. I just should have thought about them earlier.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

No, I hear what you're saying, and I think most of us who have been through construction projects have had those sort of moments where what do we give up and what do we hold onto, Right. Paul, when you were working through this process, you almost kind of threw up your hands and said, well, just forget it, that I'm leaving. How were you able to come to a good enough place that you were able to lower the windows and help your brother be happy?

Paul Ureneck:

Well, you know, in my job in managing projects, small projects, large projects,

Lou Ureneck:

you

Paul Ureneck:

learn, as I said earlier, the construction is the easy part. What I consider the more important part of my project is managing people on larger projects. You know, I've got architects, I've got engineers, I've got attorneys, I've got city regulatory people, got a whole. And everybody kind of has their own vested interest. So, you know, you need to learn how to manage people. And in this project, you know, while it was truly a family project, etc. Etc. But really it was Lou's project, you know, it was his cabin, he wanted to build it. And you can't get hung up on those things. If you want things to move forward, you just have to let go and you have to look at the bigger picture. And you know, I go through this a lot.

Lou Ureneck:

You're being very philosophical. I'm impressed.

Paul Ureneck:

Well, you have to do it. You have to, you know, you just have to let go. And if you want things to move forward, you know, you can't argue about it, you just say, okay, you know, if that's what you want, you feel that strongly about it, let's just do it. Let's just get it done with and we'll move on and keep going.

Lou Ureneck:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think the hindsight that you're describing is very valuable. And I also wonder if, as you're going through and you're blogging about this for the New York Times and you're having on a day to day basis these conflicts and you're actually writing about the people that are in your family that are helping you out, that Must have been a very interesting situation to be in because you couldn't be philosophical

Paul Ureneck:

in the middle of that.

Lou Ureneck:

No, that's right. Yeah. And you know, the blog for the New York Times was practical. It was less about the relationships. I saved all of that really for the book. The book is. Is a book really about relationships. You could build a cabin, probably, if you carefully read the book. But it's not a cabin guide, you know, but the blog was. The blog definitely was. Step one, Step two, here's how we screwed up. Step three, we're going to go back and do two again and so forth. And I think one of the best entries in the blog was the final entry in which I tried to capture construction lessons. You know, what did I learn about building a cabin that you ought to know, if you're an amateur the way I am and, you know, not fully handy in the world of construction. And so I think I made a list of 10 or 12 things and it may have been the most useful. It's in the New York Times blog. People can. By the way, I'm astonished the Times has archived it. If someone were to Google New York Times, you rent a cabin, that whole thing would come up and you know, for example, one small lesson is start accumulating your materials long before you do the billing. We would get to a point, Paul would say, well, where are the windows? And I'd say, well, I haven't bought them yet. What do you mean we haven't bought them yet? You know, we're here to put the windows up. Or another important thing is, you know, get materials delivered to the site as you need them, you know, otherwise you're doing what we did, which is bringing material up a snowy driveway for, you know, a thousand feet, which is like, you know, next to impossible. But we did it. Another one that I remember was, you know, figure out how much help you have and then design the cabin to fit the. The amount of help. There's a one man cabin, there's a two man cabin, you know, in terms of construction, there's a three man cabin. And what you. The scale depends on how much help you can get. So those are all things to think about before you start. Of course I didn't, but I was able to make the list at the end anyway, at least I learned something.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What I was very much struck by in reading this book that you had written was, I guess the fact that working with your hands somehow enabled you to process some pretty significant grief, I believe, over a life that you were in the Process.

Lou Ureneck:

You're right about that. That's right. Got me out of my head. You know, ideas and feelings can just spin, spin, spin around. And for me, a good way to get traction, you know, to move forward and to be positive is to do something, to go into action. And so the cabin, it put me in action. And then, of course, any project, you know, building a boat, building a cabin, whatever, you're looking forward. What's the next step? When will I finish it? How will I use it after I finish it? So whether you planned it or not, you're looking ahead and not back, which is a more positive way to live your life. So, you know, if you find yourself getting depressed, you know, some of that can be, I'm stuck in the present or I'm stuck in the past. But a project projects you into the future.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, do you mind if I read a few sentences?

Lou Ureneck:

No, go right ahead. Thank you. Happy that you are.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In the 22 years that I was married and living In Maine from 1974 to 1996, I built a house, a career, and a professional reputation. I had moved from being the most junior reporter at the newspaper in Portland to its editor in chief. My life in those years had been a steady professional ascent. I was not famous, but I became a substantial person in my field. I worked hard, stayed late and went into the office on weekends. I was invited onto the boards of community organizations and asked to make speeches. I took my family on vacations to Florida, put my children through private schools and owned a sailboat. I bought my wife a piano and my daughter a horse. And I took my son fishing in Canada. I made an identity as a husband, father and editor. Eventually, it all came undone. And then you go on to describe your mother, actually, and the way that her life. That she had built a life herself. And it had all kind of come to its end. And it is very striking to me that not only had your life come undone and from that you're building a cabin, but then, Paul, the same kind of thing happened to you. Lou didn't talk that much about your personal life, but he was describing a life that you had built for yourself, which was all very much revolving around family and providing. And then somehow that had to be deconstructed as well. And I think that many of us in the middle of our lives go through these dramatic deconstructions and the need to rebuild. And I'm wondering if, I guess if physically constructing something enabled you to, I guess, spiritually and emotionally construct something as well.

Paul Ureneck:

I think it does you know, it's, you know, life can become complicated and when you have those periods in your life where you're, you know, your mind is going in a million different directions, etc. When, when you can direct it to something concrete, you know, it takes you out of that, you know, once again, you know, you need to cut a two by four and it needs to be, you know, six feet, five and a half inches. You know, you're focusing on something and as you build that, you know, your mind, it pulls you out of,

Lou Ureneck:

you

Paul Ureneck:

know, it pulls you out of kind of this malaise that you're in. So yeah, I think, yeah, I think getting involved in, in, in any type of hands on project when, when your life is kind of an uproar, kind of helps you come back and focus and you know, gives yourself a little bit more of an anchor, etc. You know, I'm, as I'm thinking about this, I'm, I'm thinking about even before, actually just before I came to Maine, you know, I had gotten out of college and you know, my life was going through a lot of changes and what am I going to do there? This, that and the other thing, I remember that and you know, Lou had sent me the book, you know, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Lou Ureneck:

Love that book.

Paul Ureneck:

And at the same time I had bought an old 1955 Chevy pickup truck and I was, you know, trying to figure out what I was to do. And my project at that time was to take the engine out of that truck, which I had never built, rebuilt an engine before. But I got a book and said, okay, you know, and rebuilt an engine to an old pickup truck and drove it to Maine. And it was sort of like a similar experience, you know, helps you focus on a project and put your hands to something and you know, it's a, it's a reality, you know, it's something physical you can get your arms around.

Lou Ureneck:

Yeah, I'm glad you remember you remembered that book. I just, that's such a great book. And you know, that book is, it really is sort of about all of this, you know, it's, it's about getting involved in the process of doing things to kind of save your life. And it's a beautiful book.

Paul Ureneck:

And if you don't have an answer to, and if you don't have an answer to something, you know, wait a little while, just relax. They talked about that. It'll come to you. Just relax and wait a little while. And lo and behold, you know.

Lou Ureneck:

Exactly. That's right.

Paul Ureneck:

A little light will go off a

Lou Ureneck:

couple, three days later and hey, and at the end of it, if you're still depressed or whatever, you've got an engine or you've got a cabin, right? You know, so you're still ahead of the game, right? You can drive your old pickup or you can go to your cabin, right? So you, you've gained that if nothing else.

Lou Ureneck:

love

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

At the end of all of this, you started working on the book that I have in my hands right now, The Great Fire One American's mission to rescue victims of the 20th century's first genocide. So it's interesting to me that you went from building a fire to talking about a genocide and building a cabin to talking about a genocide and a fire. And it's almost like you had to, I don't know, in story form. You had to see something completely burned to the ground. Horrible, horrible things happen.

Lou Ureneck:

Giving my subconscious more credit than it deserves, I think. Well, the first two books, the Back Cast was my first book, and Cabin are both memoirs. You know, they're personal books about members of my family, people that I'm very close to. First about my son and second, about Paul. The third book that you have in your hand there, the Great Fire, really, it's a different kind of a book. It's a historical narrative, and it's an important story. It's a story that I wanted to tell, and it challenged me as a writer and as a researcher in an entirely different set of ways. And so a little bit, it's like learning to build a different kind of structure. You know, if those first two books were. Call them shelter or cabins, you know, this one is more of a cathedral. You know, this is a more complicated writing project. The first two are more deeply felt, you know, personally. But this. This book is a big canvas with dozens of characters telling a very important and complicated story about an American who saved the lives of a quarter million people in the first genocide of modern times, the genocide that killed 3 million Christians in Turkey back in the 1920s. The teens and the twenties. So different kind of project. Lots of satisfaction from having, quote, built it, and I'm proud of it. So thank you for mentioning it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's been quite a few. It's a tome, so I must say, I spent quite a few weeks.

Lou Ureneck:

It's a big one, actually, reading it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And, you know, I learned a lot from it, actually. I didn't realize race was. I didn't know anything about this part of history.

Lou Ureneck:

You and the rest of America. Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So I think that this is. And for me to hear a story that's a real. That really happened is there's something about it that, I don't know, fills in a piece of patchwork in my brain somehow, and somehow it picks up a thread that will somehow get connected to something somewhere else.

Lou Ureneck:

Sure. Oh, yeah. This was a seminal period in American history. It's when oil became an important part of our foreign policy. It is a big period of transition in terms of the kind of country America was and our response, the official American response to the genocide and the burning at Smyrna. The fire at Smyrna is not something we can be proud of, but we can definitely be proud of the private Americans and especially one naval officer who acted with great courage and. And a moral force. So it's an important piece of American history that I think that more people should know about. I think of it as one of the great stories of an American hero that hardly anybody knows about.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I also was struck by the fact that there are so many different sides. To war.

Lou Ureneck:

Yeah.

Paul Ureneck:

Oh, absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

To conflict. And there's so many different human aspects of things that maybe we become immune

Lou Ureneck:

to, because the Horror of it is just incredible. And this was particularly horrible, you know, because the victims were civilians, by and large. You know, these were defenseless and they were often women. Rape was a weapon of war, you know, on the part of the Turkish army. So it was a particularly horrendous. People were burned alive and, you know, very, very bad things happened. And that's all dark and gloomy. The ray of light here is that somebody came forward and made a huge difference. And he did it out of a sense of religious service, of wanting to help people, and so all the right reasons, and he saved many, many lives.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I must say it was good that it was summer when I was reading this, because I would pick my head up from the book and the sun would be shining. Because you're right, it was a tough.

Lou Ureneck:

Some parts are pretty tough.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It was pretty hard. But you're right, this is the hope aspect of it, I think, also came through. And it does. It makes you aware that one person can really have an impact. And as I'm looking, Paul, at the work that you've done around Maine, Lou said before we go on the air, he said two things. He said, basically, you have helped build modern Maine. And he also said for me to tell everybody that he's better looking than you. So I've done both of those things.

Lou Ureneck:

You don't have to rule on that. You know, I still.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

People have some of.

Paul Ureneck:

This is a radio interview.

Lou Ureneck:

I'm afraid that you might rule in the other direction, so you can be silent on that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm gonna say nothing. People can look at the picture. We'll put it up on the website. You can make that decision. But I do think it's interesting you've done work with Pineland Redevelopment, Winslow Homer, the home rest restoration for the Portland Museum of Art, Allagash Brewery, Backyard Farms, Thompson's Point. I mean, you're actually building sort of the new story of Maine, which is amazing, having lived here myself for such a long time. What you're doing is. There's something. There's some thread that you've picked up yourself that you've helped.

Paul Ureneck:

Yeah, I've been very fortunate with that. And really kind of all of the current goings on. Interesting going on. Interesting goings on around greater Portland or Maine in general. I've been lucky enough to get involved with them. You know, I think. Why? You know, I've been doing this work now for, you know, 30. Close to. Close to 30 years this. This year. So I have, you know, somewhat of a name in the industry. But also, I'm, you know, the company that I work for, the Bolas Company. It is the predominant commercial real estate company in Maine. And so the other folks, the other part of the company is constantly feeding me. Feeding me work, or those are the fellows that are behind the deals, you know, before they become public, that are out there that are working these things. So because of that larger team that I'm involved with, I'm lucky enough to be brought into these things early on. But it is. It's, you know, it's. It's been a lot of fun and, you know, everything from, you know, building cheese plants and dairy barns up to Pineland or, you know, going, you know, basically renovating 19 buildings up there until the, you know, the beautiful campus that it is today to, as I said, Allagash Brewery and all of their, you know, expansions that continue to grow. The Thompson's Point project. I'm right in the thick of that. There's a lot of very cool things that are going on down there. Yeah, I could go on and on back.

Lou Ureneck:

Can I interrupt? He's being modest. You know, Paul is a professional problem solver. You know, he calls himself a construction manager, but he's really a problem solver. And he's not telling you, but he has told me stories in the past. I won't mention particular names and projects, but there are many important projects that have occurred in Maine in the last 10, 20 years that would not have happened. Maybe they cost too much or they seemed impractical or whatever. But Paul was able to solve problems so that the construction costs came down or the environmental problems were solved or whatever it happens to be. So, you know, there's somebody who can build a building, and there's somebody who can both build a building and solve the problem. And so, you know, I think that you're really, in a way, you're sort of problem solver in chief, you know, on the job, you know, so a lot of those things have happened. It's fun.

Paul Ureneck:

It's fun. You can work with a very diverse group of people, as I said earlier. So it's really a lot of fun to do. Projects are always changing. Clients are changing. People are changing. You know, so it's, you know, every year I'm involved in, you know, a dozen new things, and so it's fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, we talked at the beginning about the fact that you're. Each of you has gone through some significant personal transitions, as we all do in our lives.

Lou Ureneck:

Part of being alive, right?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It is part of being alive.

Lou Ureneck:

Now you can't avoid. Things happen.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How are you feeling about things now?

Lou Ureneck:

I'm feeling great. My professional life is going well. You know, the books and, you know, all of that. And I have a terrific job teaching students at Boston University. I'm in a great relationship and you know, my, you know, my home life is excellent. I have a wonderful wife, Irene, so things are good. You know, I don't want to tempt fate.

Paul Ureneck:

Right.

Lou Ureneck:

You know, just, there's some wood here I can knock on.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm knocking on wood for you.

Lou Ureneck:

Yes. Thank you. You know, life goes up and down and right now it's good. Thank God. And you know, so I, I appreciate all the people in my life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How about you, Paul?

Paul Ureneck:

Yeah, I'm. I'm sort of in a similar position too. You know, I was four or five years ago, I went through a divorce and luckily it wasn't all that, it wasn't that bad. But anyway, went through it and stuff. But, you know, I am now living with a lady in Cumberland, Becky. Give Becky a little bit of a plug, who's a wonderful lady. And she has two children. One just graduated college, one is now a sophomore in College. I have five children. They range in age from 27 to 35, thank God. They all have jobs and they're all self supporting. I have four grandchildren. I have a fifth grandchild on the way in September. And so, you know, I love my grandchildren. I, you know, you know, my oldest grandchild, Matic, he's nine years old, so that's wonderful because he's old enough now that, you know, I want to take him out fishing or if we want to do things, he's of that age that you can really do something with a great age. So things are good. Things are good.

Lou Ureneck:

And let me add, because it's important part of my life, I have two children, Adam and Elizabeth, and I'm both very proud of them. They have charted their own life courses, very different, but they're both smart, creative, caring kids. Well, they're not kids anymore. They're in their 30s. They'll always be kids to me, so they are a treasure in my life. I wish they would come up to the cabin more often, but definitely, in fact, we'll be seeing them soon. We're renting a cottage here at Casco Bay for the week in August and everybody will get together and the kids will be there, all of the kids will be there. And so this is, you know, this is a great celebration.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So in addition to writing books and building buildings and reconstructing your personal lives. You've also built families that you continue to enjoy. And it sounds like it's the best

Lou Ureneck:

part of life really, you know, in the end when you're young, at least for me when I was young, it was, you know, there was a lot of ambition and you know, I sort of, in a way, saving myself. But as I get older, you know, it's really where the joy and the satisfaction is in the relationships.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Luke, how can people find out about the books that you have written?

Lou Ureneck:

Sure. Well, they're all on Amazon. U R E N E C K They're all there. And the latest book, the Great Fire, has its own website, smyrnafire.coms m y r n a fire.com and so if you're interested in history, this is a book for you. If you're interested in reading a great story with loss of suspense, it's also a terrific book. So smartafire.com is the place to find out more pictures and explanations and the

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

whole deal and what's going to happen next for each of you since you've done all these amazing things. Are there future cabins? Are there future buildings? Are there just enjoying the grandkids. What do you have? You seem like you guys have so much energy.

Paul Ureneck:

Well, that's actually a good question. And you know, as we talked before about life as a series of passages, I will be actually 62 this week. So I'm, you know, getting a little closer to, you know, thinking about retirement. By, by retirement, I don't mean not where, I mean slowing down. I don't mean just giving it up. So, so those are the thoughts that are going through my mind now, like say over the next three or four years, you know, how do I, how do I start restructuring my life so I'm not as crazy busy as I am now and I can, you know, what I want to do, say over the next 10, 15 years of my life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What does that look like? What do you, what do you feel picks you up in the morning every day? What do you feel passionate about?

Paul Ureneck:

Well, I, I love to tinker with things, you know, so as I, as, you know, as I look forward, you know, I could, I could very. I do see myself staying in Maine. And though, however, though, you know, getting out of Maine for maybe a month or two during the coldest part of the winters and you know, who knows,

Lou Ureneck:

maybe you need another old pickup truck to put, to take apart back together.

Paul Ureneck:

I don't know whether it's restore an old vehicle going to the Greek Islands or going to Key west or whatever it is. But I do see myself getting out of here for a couple months during the dead of winter.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And.

Paul Ureneck:

But, you know, I'm very confident that I could keep myself busy, you know, tinkering with things. And something else that I kind of gotten into this past summer is, is some gardening that I'm enjoying it because my tomato plants are huge. There's a lot of tomato plants on them. My lettuce was very successful.

Lou Ureneck:

I want some of those tomatoes.

Paul Ureneck:

So. So I'm having a lot of fun with that. So between, I think just, you know, fishing, hunting, I have a Harley that, that I get on a lot. And I just, you know, will take off for a day or two little day trips. And so I love to ride in the summer, and actually I even love to ride more in the fall. So I don't think there will be any shortage of recreational activities to consume my time.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Lou, one of the things that you are doing now is teaching. It's been a significant part of your life over the last few years. So I'm imagining at this point you are actively involved in the lives of young people and giving them advice for not only writing, but living in general. What advice would you give them to create successful lives? And Paul, I can ask you the same question, because I'm sure you do your own manner of teaching.

Lou Ureneck:

Well, you know, a lot of things have happened in my life that were fully beyond anything that I thought was possible. You know, I've been very fortunate. I've had books published. I've been invited to be a part of Harvard University. These are things that, for a kid growing up, the way I grew up seemed absolutely impossible. They were beyond aspiration. So good things happen if you decide what it is you want and you just sort of steadily, constantly, continually work your way toward it, you know, build your life around your aspirations, and astonishingly, at least in the case of my life, they come true. And now I've had a lot of help along the way. There are people who've been giving me good advice and directed me and given me a lift up and so forth. So I haven't done it on my own, that's for sure. But decide what it is you like and you love and what you want to do and just keep doing it, keep throwing yourself at it in whatever way you can find. It may not be the perfect job initially, but if it's close to what you want to do, you're learning something, something, and then you meet somebody and that leads you to something else. And you're always sort of getting closer and closer, and pretty soon it happens and you can't quite believe it. I mean, I still can't quite believe these good things have happened to me. And so I hope the. The luck doesn't run out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You always want to keep knocking on wood. I can tell.

Lou Ureneck:

Exactly. That's right. I'm very suspicious. Life, you know, I've. Life has also taught me that it's fragile, that, you know, sometimes relationships don't last and sometimes people you love go away. And so there is a fragility to life that is always in my consciousness and I never forget that. But I'm also aware that a lot of good things can happen.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How about you, Paul? What advice would you give to people who are creating their lives?

Paul Ureneck:

I think when I reflect back on my life, I had my five children in a span of six years, so it created a lot of responsibility in my life at a very young age. I would encourage, you know, younger folk to hold off on starting a family till they're earlier, at least to their early 30s. And I would also encourage younger folks to take some risk. And it's hard to take risk when you develop responsibilities too early in your life because, you know, you're worrying about how you're going to pay the mortgage, you know, how you're going to put food on the table, how you're going to do all these things. So it's very easily to fall into a routine in life. But I think if you can delay starting a family and take that risk, which I think is a lot of the younger folks that I work with now think that's a part of this generation is they're not afraid to take risks. They're not afraid to fail at something and just move on. That's what I would suggest is take some risk, delay starting a family, and as Lou said, pursue that which you really love. Give it a whirl. See what happens. If you fail, you fail. Pick it up and move ahead.

Lou Ureneck:

Right? Live your life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I've really enjoyed spending time with the two of you, and this has been fun.

Lou Ureneck:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, it's great to see the brother bond so strong. Having. I have five brothers and I four sisters. There's a lot of us, and I can't say that I love too many more people in the world than my brothers and sisters. So to have the two of you in front of me, I know it's is really quite a privilege because, well,

Lou Ureneck:

we're gonna flip a coin on the way out of here to see who's better looking.

Paul Ureneck:

Hedge eye, Wintail?

Lou Ureneck:

Shoeless.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, maybe you could each be good looking in your own way.

Lou Ureneck:

You're a diplomat.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. Well, again, remember nine brothers and sisters. That's right.

Lou Ureneck:

Gotta work that out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Lou, tell me again what your websites are.

Lou Ureneck:

Smyrnafire.com is the principal one. And much more information about what happened at Smyrna. The final episode of the modern world's first genocide. Lots of pictures, documents and so forth. And Amazon.com is a place to buy any of the books and of course, the Longfellow books. You know, local bookstores are important in the community, so if you can get the Longfellow books, that's great.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And people who are interested in the work that Paul has been doing, you can go to the Winslow Homer Home restoration, Backyard Farms, Thompson's Point. You go to the BOLAS website to see what other projects are available there. It's really been a pleasure and thank you so much for sharing so much of yourselves in the book that you wrote, Lou. And also in the conversation that we had today. We've been speaking with Paul and Lou Yarenik, two main individuals who have been writing books, building cabins, building developments, enjoying building families. It's really been. It's really been a privilege to have you here today.

Lou Ureneck:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been listening to Love Maine radio show number 207, cabin building and brotherly Love. Our guests have included Lou and Paul Urenik. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our cabin Building and brotherly love show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sam. It's.

Paul Ureneck:

Sa.