Island Time #270

Tim Glidden:

When we closed that project, Judy Marsh came in with a shoebox full of checks and bills and pennies and quarter $20,000 that people had just given to help us make that million dollar project happen.

Roger Berle:

I loved the buildings and I still love the buildings. And that's why I got into a construction business for 35 years and now I'm doing the same work for fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 270, Island Time, airing for the first time on Sunday, November 20, 2016. How do we keep Maine's and islands accessible and productive as our state grows in popularity? Today we speak with two individuals who offer unique perspectives on this Tim Glidden, President of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and Cliff island conservationist Roger Burley. Thank you for joining us.

Tim Glidden:

Easy.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My next guest is Tim Glidden, who serves as the president of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, a statewide land conservation organization that has helped to conserve over 144,000 acres of Maine's most special places, including more than 300 coastal islands. Prior to joining the organization, Tim led the Land for Maine's Future program from 2001 to 2011. Thanks for coming in today.

Tim Glidden:

My pleasure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What I love about what you do is that we all get to experience this. We all get to be part of the coastal heritage that we have. I know that when we go out on our boat from Little John island, we're very close to the Goslings, for example, and everybody up and down the coast has that same proximity. That must be pretty special for you.

Tim Glidden:

It is very Special. I'm really glad you framed it that way because it's such a huge part of our purpose and my own sort of personal goal to make Maine available to people. And the special elements of the coast are just a wonderful, wonderful place for people to go to, to renew themselves, to discover new things about themselves, to raise their kids. And it's a wonderful place to be. And the Goslings, since you mentioned it, were a wonderful recent success story for us. So that was a place that had been used by folks in that community, those communities, for probably, well, for generations, really multiple generations. And the owners had let that happen just, you know, out of the generosity of their hearts. But when they couldn't afford to own the land anymore, they came to us and said, you know, we're going to need to sell this, but we'd really like it to stay available. And so we took that on and opened it up, and the community outpouring of support was just amazing people. My favorite story there is we worked with a local marina, Paul's Marina, up in Brunswick. And when we closed that project, Judy Marsh came in with a shoebox full of checks and bills and pennies and quarters, $20,000 that people had just given to help us make that million dollar project happen. And, you know, since the last couple of summers when we've owned it, we just keep hearing from people about how appreciative they are. You know, we own these lands. We own these lands, but we really hold them in trust. They're lands that are really for Maine and for all the people of Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You were born in Texas, so that's kind of far away. Not as much water. There is a coastal element to Texas.

Tim Glidden:

And I was born about as far from the coast of Texas as you could get. I was in North Texas. I was there for all of six months before my family, my mom and dad moved up to New England outside of Boston, which is where I grew up. But my dad's family was from Maine, from Newcastle. And I, we always had that connection to Maine, so that's really been kind of bred deep in me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And from what I understand, you also went to Colby.

Tim Glidden:

Yes, I was at Colby at a time of great change, 70 to 74. And it was that they were just starting up their environmental sciences program for degrees. And I got a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental studies there. And that kind of was the first sort of academic or formal training that channeled, I think, what was in my heart and connections from, you know, my connections to the natural world. And so that launched Me on a career which has been mostly in Maine ever since, a little bit outside. But I've been bouncing around in Maine, different kind of environmental challenges and issues ever since. I sometimes look back on that and go, oh my God, that was 40 something years ago now. So it's been fun. All of that has been fun. I've taken new challenges as they came and have always felt that there was a new opportunity around the corner, something exciting to look forward to.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you were going through school just after the time of the Clean Air act, the Clean Water act, if I

Tim Glidden:

have this correctly, from a timing standpoint, pretty much simultaneously. There was early legislation in the late 60s. I think the Clean Water act itself might have been 1972. So I was still in school.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay.

Tim Glidden:

And all of that was taking shape at a time, as I said, of great change. But there was also a sense of optimism. We can really make things better. It was a wonderful time to be coming into the beginnings of a career, and it was a wonderful time to be in the beginnings of a career in Maine because following Senator Muskie, Governor Muskie's work on the Clean Water act, he really got his teeth into that issue while he was governor here in Maine. Looking at the Androscoggin and thinking about what had to happen, and there's some. Just strikes me as we're talking, I'm now working on the banks of the Androscoggin river in Topsham. And where Governor Muskie would have seen blankets of stinking foam go by his window, I now see eagles, osprey, I see sturgeon, 4 and 5 foot sturgeon jumping out of the water in the spring. It's just, you know, the vibrancy, the fecundity. I mean, you know, just the, the life that is in that river now just speaks to what is possible if we put our minds to it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So we know that back when you started, clean air and clean water were fundamental to the environmental movement. And we've moved into a better place with that. But we still have issues and now we're dealing with issues like climate change. And this is something that your organization is very much interested in.

Tim Glidden:

We are. Maine Coast Heritage Trust has always been focused on the land itself. 1970, ironically, was the year that MCHT started. So there I was starting at Colby and Mancoast Heritage Trust was starting in Maine. At just the same time, we are looking at how society sort of shapes the land and how the land or landscapes shape society. And it's our belief that there can be a very healthy Relationship between those ingredients. And so we look to conserve land, we look to take care of it. We call it stewardship. And we also look to make sure that people can have a ready connection to that land, experience it directly themselves. And if they do that sort of restorative quality that a natural experience or experience in nature has for people, it will lead them to understand how they can shape their own lives in ways that have a lighter impact on the planet. We're doing a whole bunch of more technical things, trying to restore salt marshes or protect lands around salt marshes so that its sea level rises. Those marshes will have a place to go, and the Gulf of Maine will still have those nurseries that the salt marshes are, so that we'll still have productive fisheries and all of those kind of things. But at its core, our work is about the relationship between people and land and trying to maintain a healthy relationship there. We talk about trying to conserve the character of the Maine coast, which is that sort of blend between the granite outcroppings and the villages that are nestled into those harbors and how those interact and how people live on that land and make their living from the sea. All of that goes into that special character. And if we can conserve the key pieces of land that support that character, then the second part of our efforts, our mission of supporting the well being of those communities can be accomplished.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You actually have land all up and down the coast. So if we were to drive from you're as far down as one could to as far up as one could, it would take us hours and hours or even if we boated. Really.

Tim Glidden:

I'm very familiar with that trip.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes, I'm sure you are. How do you see, well, what are the differences between, say, the communities and the lands of Kittery and the lands and the communities of Lubeck? And what are the similarities and what types of things have you had to, I guess, wrap your collective brain around as an organization?

Tim Glidden:

That's a great question. Well, let me start maybe with the similarities. The similarities that we find are that despite a very wide range of economic conditions, obviously a lot more people in the south or in the west than in the East. Everybody in those coastal communities really, really cares about their relationship to the ocean, number one. And they also really care about the quality of their communities. That main is blessed with a very strong community spirit. You really see it everywhere, from our biggest cities to the smallest towns. People care about where they live. They tend to care a lot about their neighbors, their concern for them, even as they have their own quite Strong sense of independence and don't tell me how to do something. They are looking for ways to make sure their kids lives in the future are as good as what they have, if not better. That similar community spirit and commitment to the quality of their communities is a strength that we try to build on. Many people, regardless of their walk in life, really care about the natural lands around them and appreciate them. Some appreciate them because it's how they make their livelihoods. And they know that those lands or the waters have to be treated well in order for that livelihood to continue. And it can also be in the form of tourism or it can just be in the form of this is a wonderful place to live and raise kids and I make my living off of some Internet based thing. I mean, it's the whole gamut. I would say that in terms of differences, that the growth in southern Maine over the past 50 years has given folks there a much keener sense of what is at risk. And so they see that they can lose access to the water, they can lose that viewscape pollution, can close clam flats. And so they're probably more prepared in southern and western Maine to take steps to avoid those problems, whether it be creating a local land trust or adopting a zoning ordinance, than folks perhaps in Washington County. But it's not because they care less one place or care more in the other. It's just that they're responding to these pressures. We are now seeing different kinds of pressures the further east we go. Many of the eastern Maine communities now have very high levels of second home ownership in town, where it's absentee ownership. And the town, although the buildings are there, there's a lot less people there year round. And so the folks who do live there year round who really care about their communities are looking for ways to strengthen the fabric of that community. And what we are doing now, which is a little new for us in a 40 year context, we've been doing it for maybe five or ten years pretty thoroughly, is we'll go to communities like that and try to listen, you know, what's going on in your town, what kind of challenges do you face? And then after we sort of develop some rapport, we can say, well, is there something that a land conservation organization can do that would help you on those problems? And just as an example, in the town of Millbridge, which is pretty far down east in Washington county, we're now working with a wonderful local group, kind of a combination of public nutrition or public health and food security group called the Women's Health Resource Library. And they have done a wonderful job of raising awareness in that town about the need for better eating and better nutrition. But they didn't have the resources to really start a community garden. And so we have partnered with them, bought a piece of land right in downtown Milbridge, and they're going to be putting in community gardens and maybe some exercise, walking tracks and perhaps some other elements. We're still shaping this, but it really has shifted how people see land conservation because that connection between nutrition and land conservation, which seems obvious in hindsight, but wasn't looking forward, has become a real, just a transformative force in that town. And it really, it's going back to what I said earlier. It's really tapping that, that quality that many Maine communities have of looking to better themselves, looking to strengthen their communities. And so in this case, we were lucky to be able to come in and be a, you know, a supportive partner in that effort.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of the policy issues that you have found some success with or maybe some struggles with when it comes to protecting the land?

Tim Glidden:

We may be somewhat fortunate there. The policy issues in Maine around land conservation have been shaped really decades ago in terms of there's basic support for local nonprofits to make a difference in their own communities. Land trusts we've helped to conserve, I mean, to create, I should say many of the land trusts in Maine support local folks coming together to do that. There's now 84, 85 land trusts in Maine, and we continue to support them. They, as nonprofits, have tax exemptions. So there's a policy issue there that Maine has consistently supported local charities to do that kind of good work. And there was actually a Maine Supreme Court case a couple of years ago that affirmed that that land held in conservation for the benefit of all was in fact, tax exempt. Many land trusts in Maine, recognizing that even though it is legal that towns are challenged by that will make payments in lieu of taxes. So there's, you know, I would say that in some senses, the policy environment in Maine is pretty good for land conservation. We have been challenged over the last few years by the administration's efforts to restrain conservation efforts, or land conservation in particular. But when people, when the public focused on that issue, they overwhelmingly said, no, no, no, no, we, you know, we voted for that land for Maine's future program. We want those funds to be released. And the legislature has agreed. And, you know, that program is slowly moving along. I mean, I think it's still going to be a challenge for a few more years, but I don't have any doubt that the electorate in Maine and the people of Maine, there's just a deep abiding support for land conservation and for the environment more broadly. The broader issue, and you alluded to it earlier, that is beyond a policy issue that really transcends Maine, it transcends the US It's a global issue, is climate change. And, and all conservation organizations and many beyond the environmental movement are working really, really hard on that one. What we are doing with that is every time we look at a piece of land that we think might be a good piece of conservation land, we think about, well, what might it look like 100, 200 years from now? Will it still have those conservation qualities that would be be important. And more specifically, one of the things we're doing right now is we've analyzed wetlands up and down the coast, salt marshes to see, as I think I mentioned a few minutes ago, when sea level rises, not if it's happening. When sea level rises, will those marshes have a place to migrate to so that they can reestablish themselves and they can fulfill their ecological function of nurseries for small fish, for lobsters, for all sorts of the base of the food web that then supports everything that happens out in the bays, along the coast and in the Gulf of Maine itself. So I would say the big overarching policy challenge has got to be seen as climate change.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So I'm thinking about what that must be like. Like to be working forward 100 years. I guess there's modeling that you can use to understand where the buffer zones are currently and what needs to be conserved so that in 100 years, this is all still the way that it needs to be.

Tim Glidden:

There are models and anything that's involved in predicting the future, whether or not it's the weather next week or, you know, the climate 100 or more years from now, has to be taken with a little bit of a grain of salt. I think there are a number of things that are very, very clear. Sea level is rising. Temperatures are going up in Maine. We are now looking at a situation where in the next hundred years, Maine is going to be one of the most appealing and attractive places to live on the East Coast. There was some analysis released a little earlier this year that indicated that the major cities along the Eastern seaboard, many of them would be seeing more than 100 days per year with temperatures over 95 or 100 degrees, and Maine would not be seeing anything close to that. So when you look ahead like that, you sort of go, okay, there's going to be a lot of people who want to live in Maine, and in a lot of ways that could be a really good thing. Maine's population has been very flat, so new opportunities, new skills coming in, new resources could be really good for Maine. But are we ready to handle that? So we see, and I would say this is probably true of most people in the land conservation world. We see ourselves as protecting opportunities and protecting options for the future. So if we conserve lands that are productive lands, farmlands or lands that give access to, to the coast so people can always get to the water either for fun or to make their livelihoods, we're protecting the opportunities for folks to have the same quality of life or maybe even better in the future as they have today. So if and when a lot of new folks do move into Maine, the coast is always going to be a really appealing place to live. We will have protected and conserved the places that really shape the character of that coast, while at the same time leaving places for folks to move in and build their homes and make their livings and, you know, and have a full and complete life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It does seem like an interesting challenge because I think about, well, I think about just Popham beach and the shifting sand and the way that the character of that coastline has evolved even since I've lived in Maine and since I went to school. And then I think about Yarmouth, which is needed to dredge the Royal river and how we used to be able to go under the Cousins Island Bridge and now there's a very small channel and we don't even really recommend that you do that. So these shifting sands are not even 100 years. You know, the shifting coastline and the rising tides, it's happening right now. How do you work with the fact that what is currently coastline may not be exactly in the same place?

Tim Glidden:

That's, I mean, you put your finger right on it. That really is what goes to the need to protect options. We can't with any degree of confidence, you know, predict precisely where, how a river is going to cut its channel to get to the sea 100 years from now. You can't even really predict it in some cases 10 years from now. So you have to be thinking about, well, maybe we need two or three different options for that. If we are building new bridges, or in the case that we're a little bit more familiar with, thinking about just how water might moves under roads. You don't want to be building for today's storms, the volume of water going through today. You need to be building for the Possibility and increasingly the likelihood that the amount of water moving through our streams and rivers could be much, much higher as precipitation goes up. So we're now, in many cases, sizing the culverts, the pipes that carry the water under the roads, much, much higher, and designing them in ways which allow the fish to move back and forth underneath them. This is stuff that we never really used to think about. So it's kind of like contingency planning. You're having to think about, well, what if? And then if the likelihood of that, what if seems sufficiently high, then maybe you may need to build in a little redundancy or a few other options into this planning. Popham is a tough one. You know, Popham beach, when I first came to Maine, was a gorgeous, wide expanse of beautiful sand, even at high tide. And if you go there now, at low tide, there's lots of beach, but at high tide, there's not a lot of Beach. Now, 10 years from now, 50 years from now, it could be very different. That system is constantly changing and moving. But as sea level rises, it's very clear that those beaches, if they are pinned in by something else, those beaches will be gone. So where else might we go? How else will we get to the water? What other properties would we want to protect? That's the kind of thing that Maine coast heritage is looking at all the time, thinking about where that might. Where those alternatives will be.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been working on this for a little while now, and you still have a. You still have a youth and vitality to you. So I suspect you're going to be out doing this for a while.

Tim Glidden:

I'm kind to say that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I mean, you seem. You seem energized by the job that you have, and not everybody has that good fortune that they. They love what they're doing. Is there any one thing that you would like to try to see happen before you finally hang it up in a few decades?

Tim Glidden:

Wow. Big question. Well, there's no one thing that I would want to see happen. I would want to. I would want to have done everything that I can to be sure that the same opportunities that I had to have that restorative relationship with the natural world, that those opportunities are available to as many people, especially as many younger people as possible in Maine, because I think that experience is quite an important ingredient in what makes Maine a special place and what makes Maine's culture a special place. You look across the whole spectrum of human activity in Maine. Work, art, food, play, all those things. So many of them are grounded in some aspect of the natural world. And I just want to make sure that those unique, special attributes of Maine, that there's enough of those still here so that future generations are inspired in the same way that I've been and that, you know, I have. I've been blessed and I hope to pass that blessing forward.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We will put information about the Maine Coast Heritage Trust on the Love Maine Radio Show Notes page. We've been speaking with Tim Glidden, who serves as the president of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and who also led the Land for Maine's Future program from 2000 to 2011. Thank you for all the work that you're doing and you've inspired me to want to go spend more time on the coast. It doesn't take much to inspire me to do that, but you've done it, so I appreciate it.

Tim Glidden:

Well, thanks very much Lisa. It's been a real pleasure to be with you and I appreciate the invitation and I hope everybody takes advantage of the Maine Coast.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and very close to the island where I now live, Little John Island, I've been a long fan of islands. Although my island is connected by a bridge and a causeway, the individual that I have here with me today is also a big fan of islands and his island is not connected by any bridge or any causeway. This is Roger Burley, who is a longtime resident of Cliff Island. He has been heavily involved in conservation and community nonprofits over the past few decades, including the Maine Islands Coalition and the Maine Conservation Voters. He also managed a construction business on Cliff island until 2005 and he also happens to be a graduate of my alma mater, Bowdoin College. Thanks so much for coming in.

Roger Berle:

Oh, very, very pleased to be here, Lisa. Thank you for inviting me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Absolutely. So the reason that we became interested in you is we were actually boating near your island, and I believe we saw a boat that belongs to you which was moored off of the island that you live on. And then we started to learn more about your boat. We started to learn more about you. And you have a very interesting story. You have a long, long history with Cliff Island.

Roger Berle:

I do. It started when I was six months old, like my dad before me. January, baby. We came here when each of us were six months old. And I can still hear. I don't know when you first start remembering things, but about five years old, I can still remember the belle buoy of Hope island and the seagulls that I first heard when we'd arrived on the the 1st of August for our month on Cliff Island. And it sticks in my mind today, and it's really affected me and infected me. And so as my life in Massachusetts for 11 months of the year revolved around school and family and that community, I always felt that my paradise was Cliff Island. And and so I never have gone a year without being on Cliff island for at least a month. And so I went to Bowdoin, probably because of that attraction and everything in me, all the molecules in me led in this direction. And so after getting a graduate degree in Boston, I decided to spend one last summer on Cliff island before I went to work in some horrible corporation. And lo and behold, I'm still here. So that was about 48 years ago. And I have no regrets whatsoever about that. And I have smaller regrets, but boy, the big one, it's all good. And this is a wonderful place to live. And I've lived through good economic times and really down economic times and all kinds of statewide and citywide and island wide controversies. And it's all been a wonderful challenge to be. To make something of whatever was going on.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you know what drew your family to Cliff Island?

Roger Berle:

I do. I easily do. My. My paternal grandparents were Norwegian and my grandfather was an immigrant. In the 1890s, he and my grandmother moved here. He was a highly educated engineer in Norway. And Norway was a desperately poor country at that time, having agriculture and really not much industry beyond fishing. And this is long before oil was discovered in the North Sea. And so he and his eight brothers all emigrated to other countries and he immigrated to the US and went to work in New York City, eventually became involved with the structural engineering of all the largest buildings in the world, including the Woolworth Building and the Chrysler Building and numerous others. And after a while he was temporarily stationed in Washington D.C. to work on the Supreme Court building. And while he was down there, the summertime came. And as an asthmatic, he was miserable. And so he asked around, doesn't anyone know any place I can go that's more like Norway? And one of the people he talked to happened to summer on Cliff island. And he also turned out to be a business partner shortly on in his life. And so in 19, that was 1904 or so, and in 1905 we spent our first few weeks on Cliff island, my father being just a baby. And so that hit the right note for him and my grandmother. And so we still own that property that we bought in 1929 and been considered ourselves Cliff Islanders ever since. But we were summer people until about 1968 or 69, when I started living on Cliff island and a very different life than I ever expected to live. And you can only really do one thing at a time in the main and small m. And so I say I have no regrets about being here and I'll do whatever I can for the state of Maine, for my island, for the environment. That is where I really learned that, much more so than growing up in a somewhat well to do suburb of Boston, that in a tiny place like an island, a rock surrounded by water, whatever anyone does is far more measurable than anywhere else. And so when someone does something good or something bad, something doesn't get done, something should be done. It's a whole lot easier to get one's head around it and see what one should really do about it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When I was doing a story about the Sunbeam, we went up to Ilaho and we were talking to some of the people, people who lived there year round. And the joke was that your neighbors always knew when you went out to the outhouse. And sometimes that was a problem. But then the other side of it is they always knew when you didn't come back. So that was a good thing.

Roger Berle:

That's a great story. I've heard that one before.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, I'm sure it's very common.

Roger Berle:

Not a common specific one, but the same idea.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it is something that's maybe unique in this day and age that people know their neighbors so well and the interconnection is so tight. I mean, there is an ecology that happens also on the mainland, but I think I'm just always struck by, you go to an island, whatever trash you bring out, you have to bring Back again with you.

Roger Berle:

Indeed. Or you get trashed. And one way I put the same concept is that we all get our mail from the same little tiny post office, and it's best to go in and get it, no matter who's there, because it could bring to the surface something good or something bad that can be addressed or start to be addressed at that moment. So, again, there's no way that everyone's going to love who you are. And in this political environment, I should say that hopefully not everyone's going to dislike or hate you. But you're part of a community, a diverse community. It's a very diverse community. The fishermen were someone that my dad always gravitated to. And I used to love it when they would come over. I knew we were summer people, and I knew that the fishermen lived a different kind of life. And I was fascinated when they'd come by and knock down some rum together and talk about what was going on out in the water and on the island. And it was romantic to me, and I integrated that somehow. And I never thought I wanted to come here and be a fisherman. My father really did. A very educated man and accomplished in many ways. He was in place, the first faculty at mit, and yet he. The message I got from him because he died when I was 17. And at that point in time, of course, father and son aren't exactly in sync, but I always thought that he wanted to move to Maine and become either a tugboat captain or a fisherman, and it never happened. He died. And I don't know how sincere that was or if was just his romance, but somehow I took it more seriously. And so I've done lobstering, I've fished, I've worked with my hands. And one thing we did more on Cliff island than we did in Massachusetts was to build things together. He was an engineer. I was uneducated in that area. I stopped taking math as soon as I could. But I loved to build things, and I still love to build things. And that's why I got into a construction business that I had for 35 years. And now I'm doing the same work for fun. I'm building things for my son and my daughter and my grandson. And I learned all that on Cliff Island, a lot of it from him and a lot of it from working with the Cliff Islanders, One of whom I feel I am since really am.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You told me that when you finished your graduate degree, your mba, that your mother was kind of asking, so when are you gonna get. When are you gonna get a Quote, real job. And one of the jobs that you took on was becoming a stern man for a lobster boat on Cliff Island.

Roger Berle:

Correct. And it was a little bit of a harsh reality for me, but I really found myself bending to it. But I never had the inclination to become a full time fisherman. I again, was really drawn to the community and to learning what needed to be done from what I heard from other people and from what I discerned myself. And so building things both physically and in a community sense, organizationally, it just all seemed to fit. And a little later on, maybe eight or 10 years, when I was married and my former wife felt constricted on the island and with our two little kids. And so she convinced me to move our family off the island full time. We'd lived there for a long time as a family, full time. We bought a house in Cumberland and I proceeded to continue to go out to Cliff island five, six days a week. Always spent two or three nights out there. And I remember her saying that her mother asked her. My mother in law asked her, well, aren't you worried about him being out there alone without you so many nights and stuff? And she said, yes, actually I am. I think you'll probably start a whole bunch more nonprofits and that's not a good thing. So that was a telling story and it's probably been borne out, but I'm. My mother was an ardent conservationist in her quiet way. My father, in his off time from work, was a community activist, very involved in the selectman manager form of government in our town in Massachusetts, and was also a fundraiser. And when I was 12, 10, I said, well, those are, those are for sure things that I will never do in my life because it just doesn't look like any kind of fun. And guess what? I am one of the very few people that I've ever met who actually loves to raise money to do fundraising. And I've done it for multiple organizations still doing it, and will probably be doing it until I'm either told not to do it anymore or can't do it anymore effectively. But the only organizations I will raise money for or enterprises are those that I'm totally passionate about. And when I finish asking someone for $1,000 or a million dollars and it's over and they say yes or no or maybe some part of that, they'd say, but I got to tell you, you're passionate, incredible, and it's really going to affect what I decide to give to your request. And I never thought about myself as a passionate person whatsoever. But I'll take the testimony of others and I will say this, that it's changed me to a great extent in that I was very introverted growing up. And when I became an involved, not in my Cliff island life, but eventually when I became involved with Wayne Fleet School and I was asked to chair a eight and a half million dollar campaign and I fell right to it, that I found myself becoming an extrovert. And I had gained confidence in my ability to get out in the world and do something that really not many other people want to do. And I succeeded at it to a great extent and it changed me and I'm grateful for that. And I don't know, that might have happened eventually no matter where I went and what I did, but it happened here and I'm grateful for that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you actually went through kind of a tough time at one point with your actual building company. Didn't you have, didn't you have your establishment burned to the ground?

Roger Berle:

Yes, it did. In 1995, it burned to the ground. It was human error, but it doesn't matter. Once it's burnt, it's gone. And so I had been in my business at that time for 25, six years. And it was a moment that caused me to reassess what I really wanted to do. And I had been already considering what was next in my life and running a company of 15 to 20 people and being responsible for them year round. It was weighing on me, I must say, and it was a setback, but it probably had as many pluses to negatives the event. I'm still planning to rebuild that building 20 years later, 21 years later, much smaller, because I had the dream facility that any person who loved tools and equipment and having an infrastructure within which to be effective would have loved to have had. And the building was about 80% complete. And I'm paying less taxes because I don't have that building. But I wish I had it still and I don't. So that's life and you got to move on. And so I went through a really tough time. And it really was the beginning of winding down my business, but not my activity in the community. All my customers were friends, all my employees were friends and fellow community members. And So I spent 10 years trying to create a soft landing for my customers and for my employees and for myself. And so I was morphing into putting the same sort of energy that I built up on Cliff island energized myself with to work on the mainland. And that's when I became involved at Wayne Fleet and that led to other organizations that asked me to be part of their work. And one of my frustrations, and this is somewhat self serving, is that I hate or early on hated to be at a poorly run meeting or a badly run meeting. And I really went to my first meetings ever as a participant on Cliff Island. And if someone, there was an agenda and someone came in and started rambling off and the meeting just took off in another direction and was just not going anywhere, I found my frustration building up a lot. And so when I had a chance to run my first meetings and probably the 1970s, I was still wet behind the ears to a great extent, extremely great extent. I took what I had learned from schooling and watching my father, I guess, and my mother said meetings need to be run better. And so somehow I've been asked to run to chair or be president of every organization I've been on. And I feel I've run really, really good meetings. I've been told that a lot and I'm sure I frustrated a whole lot of people in that, but I'm still doing that. And so again, I'm sorry I'm rambling away, but just cutting to the chase and seeing what needs to be done is where I keep, keep wanting to go. And so I hope that gets closer to what you were asking.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it is interesting because what you're describing, being in meetings with people of different ways of processing information, you know, different educational backgrounds, different economic backgrounds, and all of this building that you describe is it requires a coming together and a consensus.

Roger Berle:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That is not easy whether you're on Cliff island doing it as an individual within the Cliff island community, or whether you're doing it in a larger way with some of these other organizations. And I just want to mention that you've been on, in addition to the Maine Islands Coalition and the Maine Conservation Voters, you've also been part of Sustainable Cliff island, the Cliff Island Corporation for Athletics, Conservation and Education, Friends of Fort Gorgeous, Oceanside Conservation Trust of Casco Bay, Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative, Portland Trails, and also the Portland Land Bank Commission. So you know what you're talking about when you say, you know, I've been out there, I've been raising money, I've been helping build things. You've had a lot of varied experience.

Roger Berle:

I have. And it was all from just basically deciding from within myself what needs to be done and the fact that enough other people, in each of those instances, each of those organizations were willing to go forward with me to one extent or another, those were their choices, those were their basic motives and inclinations. And so I do believe it goes back to the building metaphor that I was talking about. And an ability, I guess I gained to get motion to get her done. That's a main saying, get her done. If something needs to happen, go get it done. Get her done. And one of the things I learned early on just came back to me this moment was that the word they, which I began to hear, or I'm sure I heard it all my life, but young life. But on Cliff island there were people who would say, well, they ought to do this or they ought to do that. And I said, wait a minute, who's they? And quickly I went to there is no they, it's we and there's no one else but we. And so I guess I became rather adamant about that and I would get rather verbal about that at times. But then I decided that instead of badgering someone else about having such a passive and victim sort of complex that I would just try to do something rather than arguing with them. Let's just do it and get her done. And so I think that's gone through my experience with all those organizations. And I think the. I can't say there have been many difficulties in going through the course of life that I have in my organizational life. Raising money perhaps is the easiest part. Building consensus. As you mentioned a moment ago, I'm not an arm twister at all. I have certainly put pressure on many people in different ways to accomplish what I felt was the consensus need. But the asking of the money was the easy part. And the holding people together to move a consensus forward, get an agreement that wasn't going to splinter the organization. And I think perhaps, and again, this may sound self serving, but that I did get seen as someone who could bring the money in, if you will. And many times, most times in a very small way, say, well wait a minute, this guy's showing us that there are, that this can get done and, and that the money is not so much of an obstacle as we thought. So it removes roadblocks in people's minds that if I'm seen as a can do person, some people call me a rainmaker. I think that's a crazy description. But if it comes from people who are afraid of trying to raise money or feeling like it's hopeless if we can't get the money and I'm out there, I mean, I failed a great amount of time and asking for money. But if people say yes immediately when you ask them for $500 or $5,000 or $50,000, then you know one thing, you didn't ask them for enough. And so I'm a Republican, at least in name. And you mentioned Maine Conservation Voters. I happen to be president of that organization and it is what it sounds like. We work with voters and legislators to educate them on conservation and environmental needs for the state of Maine. And, and so I think I'm president of this organization because they asked me to be because I'm a Republican. And in my discussions with naysayers about Republicans in the state of Maine, I remind them that 40 some years ago, all the good environmental and conservation laws in Maine were passed by Republicans, not Democrats. And so one of the contentious discussions that we have at our board meetings and other gatherings is that we're not a Democrat organization, we're a main organization, we're an environmental organization. And let's get the party tags removed from this.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it's been a pleasure to have this conversation with you.

Roger Berle:

Well, thank you, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's been interesting to hear about the experiences that you've had over the past few decades anyway, trying to make things change on Cliff island or help be a part of important things on Cliff island and also around the state of Maine. I hope people will take the time to learn more about the Maine Conservation Voters. We've been speaking with Roger Burley, who is a longtime resident of Cliff island, who has been heavily involved in conservation of and community nonprofits over the past few decades and who also managed a construction business on Cliff island until 2005. Thanks so much for coming in.

Roger Berle:

You're welcome. It's a delight to be here with you and to talk about these things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to Love Maine radio show number 270 island time. Our guests have included Tin Glitt and Roger Burley. 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 Island Time show thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sam.