Giving Voice #200

Dan Crewe:

There's a multitude of things that we are focused on, but they all have the same core. It is trying to make a difference and at an early enough age that it does make a difference. Difference. There's creativity in all of us. It's just how do we express it? How do we encourage it? How does our business world encourage it? How does our educational world encourage creativity?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 200, Giving Voice, airing for the first time on Sunday, July 12, 2015. Today is a big day on Love Maine Radio. We have officially reached our 200th episode. We began our journey as the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast in 2011, and we have interviewed hundreds of visionary Mainers since that time. We found ourselves continually blessed by what our guests have been willing to share and hope you have enjoyed our conversations as much as we have. Today we feature philanthropist and music mastermind Dan Crew and a selection of other past memorable guests as we celebrate the joy of Giving Voice. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

For the past three years, Maine Magazine has put together a list of of 50 Mainers who are really visionaries for our state. And dan crew is one of these 50 Mainers. Of course, he probably belonged on the first list, but I'm fortunate because he's on this year's list and I get to speak with him this year. And this happens to be our 200th show, which is a very big deal for us. So thanks so much for coming in, Dan.

Dan Crewe:

Oh, I'm very happy to.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And let me give a little background about you for those who I'm sure almost everybody who's listening has heard of Dan Crew or read the magazine, but I'll give your background because it's important. You've done a lot. This is Dan Crew. He's a supporter of the arts in Maine. He is currently the president of the Bob Crew Foundation. Named for his late brother, the foundation is intended to help aspiring musicians and artists find fulfilling careers and to support the LGBT community. The Bob Crew foundation recently gave $3 million to the Maine College of Art to create the Bob Crew Program for Music and Art. Dan Crew is currently overseeing the creation and construction of the program. And this is just what you've been doing recently?

Dan Crewe:

Filled in my spare time.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Just in your spare time. And your house was actually featured in Maine Home and Design not so long ago?

Dan Crewe:

That's correct.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You put a lot of effort into that house. But tell me about why Maine? Why did you decide to come here? Why was it important?

Dan Crewe:

Well, back in 1990, I had completed the sale of a music publishing company with my brother. That gave me tremendous flexibility to pretty much do what I wanted to do. The following summer, we wound up summering up on North Haven. And by the second month or month and a half after I was up there, I came back from my bike ride and I announced to my wife, I said, I'm not going back. Now, I have to understand it was sort of an internal epiphany, but I had not thought, what does that actually mean? So it wasn't that we were going to live on Northaven or what have you, but I wasn't going back to what we had. And that precipitated a lot of action. So by September, we moved into a house up on the Western Prom, and my kids never left. Went from the island right to school in Portland, and the rest evolved from that. And part and parcel of that is I also had to let Bob Ludwig, who was very close friend of mine and someone whom I had been advising for many years, let him know that we were not going to be building a studio in New York City, which had been what we had been talking about for some time. And he was. His reaction was. I thought he was having a heart attack, but his reaction was, oh, my God, do you think we could do it in Maine? Because he had this. He and Gail, his wife, had this personal hope that one day they could move to Maine because his father and mother already lived here. They had retired up here. So in the process, along, it took me about six months to do a business plan. I came up with the idea that it would work. It may not be as big as it would be in New York City, but I really knew it could succeed. And as it turned out, after we did it, it turned out to be bigger than even New York it was huge and is to this day a huge success.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you're talking about the Gateway Studios.

Dan Crewe:

Yes, that's right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We did have the opportunity to interview Bob and actually his wife Gail was in the studio with us. And it seems like they were able to. You were all collectively able to bring some pretty big names to Maine.

Dan Crewe:

And they still do. I mean it is probably one of the best mastering studios in the world. And at the time, early on, because in 91, when we opened, actually in 90, officially opened in 93, but we actually opened November of 92 with our first couple of artists. But by the second or third year of our operation, we exceeded our 10 year goal. So it was a raving success.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Where are you originally from?

Dan Crewe:

I lived in New York, but had moved to Connecticut. I was at that moment living in western Connecticut with my wife and my two daughters, young girls. And Bob was in New York City. So it was quite a transition for both, for both of us really.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why music? What was it about music that kind of got you into the music publishing business and has kept you interested all this time?

Dan Crewe:

Well, I always tell this little quote joke. People ask me all the time how to get into the music business. And I say, well, my experience is this, you go to the Naval Academy, you graduated from the Naval Academy, you become an officer in the service and you get out and go to work for Bell Laboratories. And then your brother comes and asks to have lunch with you one day and says, would you think about coming into the music business with me? Because things were. What had happened is the Four Seasons started to break wide open. My brother didn't know what to do and he came to me to help and I joined him. And that's now rest is all history. I've been in the music business since 1961 and you were able to work

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

for quite a long time, in fact, up until his death, with your brother in a very close capacity.

Dan Crewe:

My brother had a series of physical problems that developed. But in the last three years, four years, it became very serious and I had to bring him to Maine and put him into a nursing home. But up until then we had been in business and I had always been in the role of fireman might be the word. But we had built, in the 60s, he and I had built a hugely successful production and publishing company. We had series of number, I mean a lot of number one records, top 10 records. And part of which is the history that has been shown on Broadway with the show Jersey Boys, which is basically the story of one of our groups called the Four Seasons. The interesting part of that is when we were doing all of those records, when we were doing the Four Seasons and Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels and Leslie Gore and all of those artists that were ours that we produced and released records by, we had this attitude that this is just music for this week, and are we on the charts this week? And what role are we on the charts? How many sales have we had? No one would have thought that records and music that we were creating in 1961 through 1966 or 67 would find itself on Broadway in the 2000s. And be quite honestly, one of the biggest hits, financial hits, in the history of Broadway. It's still running on Broadway. It's in its ninth year on Broadway. It's in London, it's in Las Vegas. It's got a road company. It's been. It's had companies in Australia and Canada and South Africa. So quite honestly, it's beyond. You can't conceive of that. You can't look forward and say, oh, this is what's going to happen with our lives. It altered a lot of the things that we could do. And as a result of Jersey Boys, one of the great benefits is the Bob Crew foundation, because what do you do with all this success? So what we're basically, Bob and I decided is pay it forward. And so hence we formed the foundation. And of course, at the time, my brother was still reasonably well, but then he had this very tragic fall. When we were going to the next day, we were supposed to go and celebrate the fifth year of Jersey Boys in New York, and he fell down a flight of stairs and pretty much permanently damaged his brain. And so that set this whole cycle for the next three years or so for him, downward spiral. It was a very tragic episode for all of us, but sad because he can't enjoy what we're now able to do. It's tough.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've had a lot of tough things, actually.

Dan Crewe:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Your daughter Jessie died 19 years ago, and we had her mother, who is now Sydney, on the show. And he was telling us about how this impacted his music because he went through a gender reassignment surgery.

Dan Crewe:

Oh, yes,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you've had a lot of things.

Dan Crewe:

Jesse's death was the most significant event in both of our lives, and certainly it still profoundly affects everything I do and think about. There isn't a day that I don't think about Jesse and that so much of my motivation is about the concept that this is a concept that I have and that she hasn't been able to live her life out. And I'm living out her life for her, doing the kind of things that I really am convinced she would have done. She had this belief. She had righteous indignation. She was going to correct so many things. And she did. And she had a major impact on her classmates who talk about her and still talk about her. Yes, Jesse was phenomenal. She was a phenomenon. But I do mean this when I say that at one point, when I really didn't know I would be able to go on because of the grief, it was that realization that I had to make a difference, that I had, in her name, do something to make a difference. And that's what I've been doing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

For people who are listening to the show, I know that they've probably heard Sydney Bullen's interview, Jesse's mom. But we're talking about Jesse Bullen's crew, who died when she was 11. And I had met you and her mother at Maine Medical Center. I know that you do not remember this, but I was a resident, actually maybe even a medical student then. And I think that I told Sydney that there was something very fiery about your daughter. And it was really one of these very. You know, you describe someone who hadn't completely lived out her life, but it almost seems as though, I don't know, she was like a fire starter. She was an instigator. She was some. Somehow there was something that she came here to do. And it's not as if her life was cut short. Somehow she just kind of set fire to the grasses, and now this is happening.

Dan Crewe:

Well, you've hit it on the right, on the head, Jesse. Oftentimes I've thought about it, she really didn't have to live any longer. She did her job. I know that sounds weird, but she had such a completeness of personality and thought and objective that she was. She was startling in her behavior and people. She affected people all the time. Yes. And you know something? She's a hard act to follow. I'm serious when I say that, Jessie. Yeah, she was something else. But no, I don't remember. But of course, we were living in a constant state of fog back when she was ill. And I will say this, never during that period of time, until the very last days, when she suddenly had this tragic episode of an opportunistic disease. Because she didn't die from cancer. She died from meningitis, which even the doctors agree that she probably got in the hospital. And she got. We were planning for a transplant, and we were Getting ready to move. In those days, we didn't do what she autogonous transplant. So we were going to Nebraska. We were getting ready. We were actually getting ready to move. And I got in a car and all that kind of stuff. And then one night, she got very, very sick. And the next day, we rushed her to the hospital, and in roughly 24 hours, she was gone. It was as if she got hit by a truck because there was no pre thought that we would lose her. And from my perspective as our father, which anybody who has gone through this would identify with, is that my role is to protect my children. It took a while for me to be able to deal with the fact that I couldn't have saved her, but it tore me apart. But I will say, using her as a guide star, she has changed lives. She's made a difference. Everything from what we have been able to do for the Maine Children's Cancer Program through The Jesse Bullens CRU foundation, we've raised between 5 and $600,000 for their program. You know, we've. She's got a building named for her at Breakwater school. I gave 21 acres to nature preserve, which is owned by Breakwater School for the kids for nature Studies. So there's a lot of stuff that she's engendered. We're just passing her message along, as far as I see it. And of course, Sid, who created a beautiful album, which was pretty much inspired 100% by Jesse's life and death, has had a very profound effect on other people who have gone through this kind of tragic loss.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The foundation that you've created, the Bob Crew foundation, which you are working on in collaboration with your other daughter.

Dan Crewe:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Who has two children now of her own and another one on the way.

Dan Crewe:

Well, she's getting. This one is the punishment child. This one's a boy. She's had. She has two girls, which are. You know, I keep telling her this is just rehearsal. Yes. She's due in September.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you've had a chance to work closely with her on this foundation that is in memory of her uncle, your brother. And your causes are aspiring musicians and artists, but also the LGBT community.

Dan Crewe:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So a lot of what you're working on is drawn from these passions that you've developed over the course of a lifetime and over experience that you've had not only with art and music, but also with people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

Dan Crewe:

Well, my brother was gay, my ex wife is transgender, and I'm gay. So yet my life has been hard to describe because it's not fit the normal, what you would call example. So it was perfectly natural to add LGBT to the mix. You have to also know that my brother started in art school. He went to Parsons, and he transitioned from art to music, is an acclaimed producer and songwriter. He's in the Songwriter hall of Fame. And yet he went back in his last roughly 15 years of his life, 20 years of his life, he went back to art and had quite a recognized art career beyond his music career. So the point is, and both he and I had this experience, we come from an era when public schools had a part of their education. Art and music was as important as arithmetic, which is not the same today. Now we call that enrichment, which is often financed and produced by others, outsiders raising money, et cetera, for this extra part of our, hopefully, our educational process. But we felt, my brother and I felt that we wanted to do whatever we could, whenever we could, to pay it forward in that area. And so that although we don't concentrate exclusively at the sort of middle school or elementary school level, because we do do scholarships at college level, it is primarily establishing programs and. Or scholarships for people who would not have the opportunity unless we made it happen. So we underwrite an enrichment program at Breakwater School, but it's not for Breakwater School specifically. It's for the Greater Portland Area School children who can enroll in the enrichment program after school, which we sponsor and pay for. Or in the case of Maine College of Art, we sponsor scholarships for those applicants. We sponsor USM School of Music. We sponsor the Mitchell Institute, again, defining it. These are going to be scholarships for people in art, music, or LGBT, or a combination of the three. And of course, we support things like the Peabody House here in Portland and other HIV AIDS programs and. Or equal rights. We support a program against bullying in school. And an awful lot of bullying has to do with gender, you know, the appearances of kids. So there's a multitude of things that we are focused on, but they all have the same core, you know, is trying to make a difference, and at an early enough age that it does make a difference.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me how you yourself got from the man who graduated from the Naval Academy to the man who. And I mean personally, because it sounds the way you've described it, is, well, this person brought me over here, and this person brought me over here. But you must have had some core of love of music, art, yourself.

Dan Crewe:

Well, let me tell you, my brother, it became very apparent he's older than I, four years older than I. So Every school we went to, I was always trailing him, Right? And yes, he was always involved in school art and music. So was I, I'm sure. I know we did have very different brains. And so I had this other side. I had this other sort of bifurcated part of my brain is I'm very logical, even though I'm very artistic. One thing I realized is that my brother was an exceptional person creatively. And for some reason, that pushed me on the other side of the brain. And I went down that path now, as it turned out, because I was creative, but I was also very logical and very pragmatic and had that capacity. My brother, I call it this way. He had to have a harness on him, otherwise he would have been a total disaster. God love him. But it's true. You know, there's only. But the harness can't be too tight because you can't stifle creativity. But creative people are nuts. I mean, trust me, they are nuts. And because I've been working with them my entire life, I've been managing, I've been organizing, I've been saving careers. I've been doing it all. They're all crazy people. Now, some of them are actually quite lovable. But no, they are nuts. My brother was one of the nuts, and God love him, but we worked incredibly well together. We had a balance that was phenomenal, unfortunately. And here's the core of the problem. The core of the problem was it's a family tradition, you know, to become addictive. So he crashed and burned, and it split our careers. I went my way and he went his, and unfortunately, I had to come back to save him, but that's a whole different story. But a lot of the issues around creative people is how do you maintain that balance between creativity and insanity? And part of the insanity can be exacerbated by drugs and alcohol. And in my brother's case. That was his. That was the case.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's so interesting as you're describing this, because in my family, we have a tendency to become doctors and lawyers and military people. And two of my most creative siblings, because there are a ton of us, they actually end up going to the Air Force Academy.

Dan Crewe:

Oh, really?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Both of them were very, very artistic, and yet they chose that path. And I'm wondering, as you're talking, if there wasn't something in that bifurcated brain that you're describing about yourself that they also recognized, you know, this sort of, how do I harness this creative energy and how do I. How do I make that? I don't know, how do I make that work for my life? Because I don't. It seems to me that in this world, we often emphasize the linear. We emphasize the linear, the path that moves you forward in a very direct way. And so if you have a creative mind, that path doesn't necessarily exist.

Dan Crewe:

It's very hard to find a path if you're very, very creative, because all you're doing is expressing yourself constantly, and it doesn't necessarily give you a real path. And there are exceptions to that. I mean, certainly there are people who can very clearly focus and work their creativity in that focus. But, yes, I do think it's a difficult role. And oftentimes, and certainly there are so many stories of how did this create a person get from here to there? And there's usually somebody behind the scenes that you don't really know that well or know that much about, that sort of does this role that manipulates the harness and. And sometimes it's done because that person who is able to do that sees this creative potential and can help bring it to where it's more effective. In my case, I don't know if I recognize. I just knew that I wasn't going to go the same path. I was watching my brother, and at the time, I was making choices about what I was going to. To do and go to college or what have you. I saw my brother sort of scrambling out there in the universe, and it wasn't very appealing to me. But I had always had this fascination with the sea. Number one. We come from a long line of fishermen from Newfoundland. And so there was this, I think, organic part of our stories. And also I. I did have this strong penchant for order. Figuring it out, figuring it out. From a young age, I wanted to solve the problem. Speaking about the Air Force Academy, just as a quick aside, I graduated in 1957. Yes, we're talking about 1957, not 1857. I graduated in 1957 from the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy had not graduated as first class. I think their first class was 58 or 59. I was one of the last classes from the Naval Academy and West Point that used to provide 25% of the regular officer corps to the Air Force. I went to the Air Force. I graduated from the Naval Academy. I'd been to the Naval Reserve. That's how I got my commission, my appointment to the Academy. Then I graduated from the Naval Academy. Then I went into the United States Air Force. I resigned when I was a captain in the Air Force and then eventually resigned from the air Force Reserve eight or 10 years later. I don't know. I don't know the path. It's funny. I'm a believer in serendipity, but you have to take action in the serendipitousness environment. So a lot of people don't realize something's happening. But I've had a lot of those kind of things happen, whether it was Neil diamond who I represented, or. I mean, I've had a lot of experience in that. Aha. This is the moment.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of the things that we talk about often is this idea that creativity doesn't just have to be as a musician or as an artist. Creativity actually can be the ability to creatively work with people, the ability to creatively manage, the ability to creatively organize a business.

Dan Crewe:

Creative business people are the ones that think of these things that people, first of all don't think of, and then they have the ability to take action that's creative. You know, whether you're an architect or whether you're somebody who can envision Apple. So there's creativity in all of us. It's just, how do we express it and how do we encourage it? How does our business world encourage it? How does our educational world encourage creativity? There's recently. There's a lot of studies that are showing that you'd be better off going to art school if you want a career in business, because businesses are starting to recognize that those original thinkers are very valuable to creativity and business.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I mean, my observation of you, if you'll allow me, is even from the first time I met you, there was an openness. So this idea that you're describing, this serendipitous nature of life, that really is only helped by someone who is open to serendipity. And I believe if you have a creative mind, you can be more open to things that might come along and present themselves as important.

Dan Crewe:

Yeah, it's the absence of fear. You can't be frightened about things. But what's the downside? What's the downside? What's the big deal? That's how I look at it. What's the big deal? So you take chances. Build gateway Mastering. What the hell?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, the other thing that I also am struck by is talking to you is just this idea that we don't all have to become whatever it is that we are set out to be when we're 20 years old. We don't have to be in the Navy for the rest of our lives. We can have that Be great for the time that it is. We can then join the Air Force. We can then do, you know, Gateway Mastering or Bell Laboratories or that we can be different people along different points in our lives. And that's great, actually. That's encouraged.

Dan Crewe:

It's exciting. It's exciting. You know, the whole idea is just do it. You know, wake up, you got an idea. You believe in certain things. You believe in yourself. Trust yourself and take action. There really are very few consequences.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Dan, how can people find out about the Bob Crew Foundation?

Dan Crewe:

Great. Well, there is a Bob Crew foundation website. We are going to rework the website right now. It's been static for. We did it. We needed to get something together. And we did get together about three, three, four years ago. Right now we're going to revise it. But you can go into the website and there's. If you are eligible and you'll see the ways in which that is presented. You can make an application for grant applications through that. But we only give to 513. We don't give to individuals. So I alert people, please, you won't be considered as an individual. We don't do that. But if you are part of an organization, then that is a 513. Absolutely. Look at the website and you'll see what we do support. We don't usually support operations or bricks and mortar, but if you realize that our passion mostly is letting individuals get a step up. So scholarships and those kind of grants are what we. We prefer. The exception has been the Mecca program, which is a combination. It's a combination because there had to. I wanted to have one place that would be the legacy for my brother Bob. And we're taking that and we're building that out at Mecca, which is going to be both a program and it also is going to house a gallery which has his art, which is quite amazing. And I say that, believe me, advisedly, but it is amazing art. And of course a lot of the memorabilia from his years of success in the music business, gold records, etc. And it's being built out right now as we speak. It'll probably be done in about six weeks. We're having the big gala event will be in October, October 3rd, which will be a combination of a memorial that we're going to have for him. We're going to present that at the Masonic hall over here. And then everybody will go over to Mecca and where we'll have this inaugural moment for the gallery and for the program.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We've been speaking with Dan Crew, who is a supporter of the arts in Maine and president of the Bob Crew foundation, named for his late brother. I can't really think of a more perfect person for our 200th episode, and it's certainly a well deserved honor that you are one of this year's 50 Mainers through Maine Magazine. I really appreciate all the work that you've done over the course of your life and with your family and all the support that you continue to give to artists, musicians, people in the LGBT community. It's quite wonderful. Thanks so much for coming in.

Dan Crewe:

You're very kind. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In this segment, we feature an excerpt from our conversation with Gene McGinnis, founder of the Main center for Creativity.

[Unidentified voice]:

I really wanted a public discussion of Art of creativity there. When I first started talking about this, even with the newspaper, they didn't know which reporter to send to me and I said, well, send the business reporter. They said, no, we can't send the business reporter. Okay, send the arts reporter. Well, it's not really just arti. It's an interesting project because it truly is the combination of business and art, but it's working as one, so it's something else it doesn't fit in either of those boxes. And public art is that vehicle that allows us, not allows us just, you know, almost, you know, from inside, we have to express what we think about what's happening in the public art arena, and that's a good thing. And the big things that I learned personally through that process was to sit and listen, hear what people are saying, hear where the fears are, hear where the excitement is, hear where the frustrations are, because all of that is part of what we're dealing with in our community. It wasn't easy, and I didn't know I wasn't knowledgeable about how it would affect me and what I would have to do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how did it affect you?

[Unidentified voice]:

I think it gave me a bigger connection to all the levels of frustration in the community and a bigger connection to all the beauty and high thinking in the community as well. And so it's sort of, again, opposite ends coming together and saying, wow, we're all connected to these big, amazing thoughts, you know, and we're also connected to these very dark thoughts. And together, when we express them and put them out there, then we move forward as a community. So it's really fascinating stuff what art brings up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you think that's a metaphor for the individual where most of us have dark thoughts? Not that I'm admitting anything, but, you know, that many. Let's just say most of us have dark thoughts, but most of us have thoughts. Do you think that that mirrors.

[Unidentified voice]:

It just seems like the human condition, and the more we can grab onto our positive thoughts and actually create what we imagine in those big spaces, I think the more exciting our lives are, the more exciting our community is. I mean, some people said, who are you to do this? You know? And I said, I don't know. I'm just me. You know, I'm just Jean. I had the picture. I talked to people, and really, who are you not to create your big vision as well? And I find it wonderful that because the center for Creativity exists, people share with me their big ideas. And I can't always do much about it, but I can tell them my journey and what I did. I can give suggestions, hope, ways that they might go about it that they might not have thought about before. So I think people in the community sharing their big visionary ideas is an important part of our creative growth and our economic growth. And the more we can unleash the creativity in the community and. And the more we can help put people together to create these beautiful things that people are thinking about, the more Wonderful our lives become individually and as a full community as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Jean, as we're recording this, you're getting ready to go to Paris. Are you doing this as a means of stimulating your own creativity?

[Unidentified voice]:

I'm sure it will, but interesting story on this. It's a bucket list item for my husband. Not too long ago, this past fall, he fell very ill. And he's a very healthy, athletic man. Handsome too, I may add.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I hope he listens to this because I can hear the love just coming from you.

[Unidentified voice]:

Well, and we both had a scare that he couldn't go to work for three weeks, and that had never ever happened to him before. And he said, you know, I'm looking at my bucket list, and I have a master's in art history, and I haven't been to Paris. And I said, you're right, honey, we're going. I don't know how. I don't know really why I think this is realistic, but we just pieced it together in odd ways. And one of my first deep trainings around creative economy was attending the third International Conference on Creative Economy in Belfast, Northern Ireland. And interestingly, my family is from Ireland. So it was just kind of a, you know, life brings you these things, and if you're open to them, you respond. And I went to this conference and really studied what others had been doing. And that was one of the reasons I thought about, well, I'd have to create the 501C3 because the European governments were the government's directors of culture, arts and sports. As an example would be some of their titles. So I think it's great that we now have a sports commission here in Maine so that we're really looking at how do we put all these ideas about how we live our lives into a place that shows people that we want to attract them here. Because a lot of what we want to do here in Maine is bring more people here. We have the room, we have the beauty to share. And it seems important to let people know that we're nurturing creativity. I think it's a lot about trying to create a balance of space and intense thinking. Space and intense thinking or deep thinking? I don't know if it's intense, but the fact that I was on a bike ride sort of points out that I was breaking away from the work I of trying to solve the problem. And instead I was really just letting the universe sort of come in. And I think it's pretty fascinating myself. I mean, believe me, this doesn't happen all the time. But I felt it was very fascinating that I was in such a state of not just revelry, but gratitude. I was feeling very thankful for this very specific moment I was in. A moment I was riding my bike with my husband. The sky was blue. You know, the ocean looked gorgeous. The temperature was perfect. It was one of those main September days. And it's fascinating to me that when you stay in that moment and really feel it the way it is, then things can loosen and unwind and reconnect in different ways. And one of the dilemmas I was trying to solve in this creative work was how do we build infrastructure around our creative people? And how do we create the infrastructure that's new and different? Because our business systems are all changing. The traditional systems aren't working. The new systems are coming up, and the tanks really just struck me suddenly as infrastructure. Oh, my goodness, those are infrastructure. Now. Previous to that moment, I could not have seen them as infrastructure, but I really understood, oh, this is what infrastructure is. This is how we drive around. This is how we fly in planes. This is how our paper mills go. This is sort of the quiet stuff that's underneath what we're doing. And, you know, we probably have passed those tanks thousands of times, and we don't really think about how it holds together a lifestyle that we live. And whether you agree with it or not is sort of exactly the juice, you know, that's where the juice is. So my personal process seems to mimic, you know, that whole idea of you sort of, you're sorting through a problem, you release it for a while, go and sing, dance, paint, and then, boom, something new gets connected. And people sometimes ask me when they talk to me, are you. What kind of an artist are you? And I say, I don't know. I don't know what this is called, but I know I'm creating something. And I think creation is really where the excitement is.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In this segment, we feature an excerpt from our conversation with Rodney Eason from Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

[Unidentified voice]:

Just the terrain of Maine and the sort of unspoiled, Waldenesque nature of Maine draws a lot of people, especially from. From the east coast, because it's that last piece of sort of unpreserved wilderness that one might imagine. And yet it's with. You can hop on 95 and get here. And so a lot. It does draw a lot of people to come and see the coastline. And, of course, people want to see lobsters. And now they can see a botanical garden, which is when I heard that there was a botanical garden. In Maine, I thought, well, you can grow blueberries and spruce trees, so what else can you do? And after digging in further, there surely is a whole lot you can grow. And being in the gardens in the summer just shows us how many people come to our state. And hopefully more people will decide that it is a great place to live and it is a great place to retire or even move your family here like we did.

Dan Crewe:

We love it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I have spent time at the Botanical Gardens. Actually, I think it was several years ago. There was an event that we went to and. And I was impressed not just by the plants, but also by the layout, by the sculptures, by the buildings. I mean, it really has this very beautiful flow to it. When you're walking around. You've been working on a 20 year plan for the Botanical Gardens. Tell me what you've done so far and what you hope to be doing.

[Unidentified voice]:

Sure. So with the gardens themselves, what you have seen thus far is, are the efforts of really about a 10 year effort. So the gardens have only been open for eight years. So we are one of the youngest botanical gardens in the United States. And I think that's what people are drawn to when they come to our gardens, is that they're extremely different than most other public gardens. A lot of other public gardens in the United States are either sort of replications of a fruit French garden or an Italianate garden, which were more scaled for a king or an emperor or a ruler. And our gardens have none of that. It's more of a people's garden. And it's a place to meander, especially in the Garden of the five Senses, the Lerner family Garden of the Five Senses. It's a place where people can explore. We actually have an area where there's a reflexology labyrinth where we ask folks to please take your shoes off and walk on the stones and feel this. So it's a much different experience than I've ever encountered in a public garden. And I think as we go forward, one of the biggest things that we've sort of talked about as a collective group, as an institutional body, is that as we go forward in this master plan is that we don't screw up. Because Maine and the Maine coastline, especially in that Booth Bay Harbor Peninsula, is gorgeous on its own.

Dan Crewe:

Right?

[Unidentified voice]:

And so that itself can stand alone. But then when we sort of insert this botanical garden, it needs to be beautiful, it needs to be awe inspiring. There was something that we talked about when I was at Longwood Gardens that someone said, as any garden goes forward, what you would love to see is like open doors in the parking lot where people get there and they forget to take their keys out and they forget to close their doors just because they're so awestruck. And I'm hoping that I'll see that at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in the future, that there will be all these open doors in the parking lots and everybody will leave their keys just because they're so excited to come in and see what we're doing there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Booth Bay is an interesting place because it has this rich heritage of seagoing people and boats and going out to Monhegan. But it also has the Bigelow Labs. My son was up there two summers ago. I wrote an article about them for Maine Magazine. And they actually have an affiliation with the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. I believe that you have summer interns that hang out with their summer interns and make that connection. And I think these types of connections are happening all over the place in. In Booth Bay.

[Unidentified voice]:

That's right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why is that? Why is there this interesting energy, the synergy of different sorts of people being brought together in Booth Bay?

[Unidentified voice]:

It's. I mean, I think you're hitting on a great point. And the locals, folks who have grown up in Booth Bay, and I've sort of been told that means you. You either came over on a ship or you have native roots there. And if you didn't, then they tend to call everybody people from away. And it's funny to hear that. And then just sort of going around the entire peninsula, we see that we go from a population from Route 1 south to about in January, we probably have about 6,000 residents. And then in August, we go up to about 60 to 70,000 residents. So we need to stay close during the winter. And with nonprofits and other cultural attractions, it's really this. All boats float with the rising tide. So the more that we share information, the more that we sort of promote the next generation, and the more that we sort of. That we talk between ourselves. Why make enemies in such a small area, in such a small state, when we can all work together, sort of promote what we're all trying to strive for?

Dan Crewe:

And that's.

[Unidentified voice]:

I see it as happiness. We're all searching for happiness in life, and it just depends on what people are looking for. And I love the analogy that plants, horticultural and gardening in itself could be called the slowest of the performing arts, and that from seed to germination to the plant and the flowering, everything takes on a different season.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In this segment, we feature an excerpt from our conversation with Adam Burke of tedx, Dirigo and Treehouse.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How were you able to hone your own idea of authentic living? You know, what was the process that you went through? Because it does. Again, you have this zigzag path, but I know you also have an education background, so were there steps you took in your own life?

[Unidentified voice]:

So it's been decades long process, at the very least. That started when I was 18 and I moved from New Jersey to Boston, and I was going to Boston University and studying psychology, which was one of my first loves. And at the same time, just bumping into myself and cognitive dissonance between who I wanted to be, between truths that I was discovering around the world. I started learning about Buddhism and started practicing meditation and just had particular experiences that really awakened me to some things that I think are well described by Eastern philosophy. And so that severely disrupted my worldview and things that I thought were important. And so that really started me down that path. And then it was again about how what I was able to do as I put life together, what experiences were offered to me, and again, just staying true to certain principles within my own life, always trying to be humble and to serve the greater good, are just two simple things that I live by. And those just unfolded. And my graduate degree in education was a synthesizing moment. As I studied education as a broad field. My love of learning had persisted despite my formal schooling. So I was really interested in what else was available and studied things from Waldorf to Montessori to Reggio Emilia to free schooling to what was happening in various charter schools around the country. And through that, I wrote a thesis that was called Holistic Connections between Ecology and Character, which really brought together two strains of thought that inform who I am as a person. And one is ecology. And that's part of my background as a wilderness guide and naturalist, and also character development, which is rooted heavily in Eastern philosophy. And seeing that these two things were essentially part of and an extension of each other. And so within that framework is how I now can walk out into the world and feel like a whole person instead of someone that's fragmented by that zigzag path. That didn't always make sense to me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It actually kind of harkens back a little bit to Thoreau, except that he kind of went out into the wilderness and really never came back. You've kind of gone out into the wilderness and come back and are really attempting to live this authentic life that you've described.

[Unidentified voice]:

Yes, I'm trying very hard.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I imagine that this can't have all been easy. I mean, you're talking about generating hope and living authentically, and you're working with the digital technology, but also sort of back to the earth. I mean, what are some of the challenges that you've encountered personally and within the umbrella under the umbrella of TEDx?

[Unidentified voice]:

Yeah, challenges have been busyness and managing myself, my commitments, being realistic about what I can change for myself, first and foremost, and then secondly, what I might be able to change outside of myself. Maintaining balance is the fundamental challenge. So I'm constantly working on that, making sure I have time to play, making sure I have time to be with my family. I'm just as comfortable being out poking through the woods, looking through mushrooms as I am being pretty prolific on social media. So what I'm finding through the TEDx event and the global community as a whole is that technology is integral to keeping and fostering that community in between events. But that opportunity to come together, be in person, put the phones down and look at each other in the eyes and say, what are you passionate about? And tell me about that and connect on that level as vital, and that's the real glue. The rest is kind of a reaching out for one another where we can start to get a sense, but the magic happens once we come together and we can be with one another in that space.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You did something, I think that just ended very recently where you did this whole farm to school project. And it's kind of similar where you're kind of reaching deep and digging into the soil and connecting to something very tangible. But I also understand that you involved technology and connections and it wasn't just one school. Can you just describe that for people who are listening?

[Unidentified voice]:

Yes, sure. For two years, I worked on a federal grant project that was targeting obesity prevention. And we were working with 12 schools across two districts in southern Maine. And our strategy was to increase access to healthy food and physical activity. And my passion was the farm to school element of that. So I did a lot of work connecting cafeterias to local farmers to working through distributors, as well as retraining cafeteria staff and bringing in the folks that were the reality behind the reality for Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution in West Virginia. And they did a boot camp for all the food service folks in two districts. It was a pretty magical time. And it was cool to see people get empowered around that. We can be creative and we can do this. It doesn't have to be what we've been doing, which again is the spark of TEDx is that, oh, we can do it differently so that we created this distributed network of people across those schools as well as elsewhere in the state. So people commonly empowered each other to keep going and then created feedback loops with the students. So that really encouraged people to also keep putting better food on the plates.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been listening to Love Maine radio show number 200, giving voice. Our guests have included Dan Crew, Gene McGinnis, Rodney Eason and Adam Burke. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on itunes. 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 have enabled us to bring Love Maine Radio to you for each of the past 200 shows. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Giving Voice show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of so many of your days. May you have a bountiful life.

[Unidentified voice]:

Sam.