It's official - FairPoint has filed for bankruptcy protection. Here's the spin they're trying to put on it. Bottom line: Worse service, higher rates.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FairPoint Reaches Agreement with Bank Lenders –

Initiates Voluntary Chapter 11 Proceeding

Chapter 11 Filing Will Not Impact the Company’s Operations or Customers

With one week left before Election Day on Tuesday, November 3 (HOW is it almost November?), activists on all sides are pulling out their last-minute strategies. And local media outlets are overflowing with opinions too. (You can see our election coverage in this week's issue.)

At 10 a.m. tomorrow, Governor John Baldacci will speak in Bangor in favor of gay marriage and against ballot question #1.

(with deep apologies to the winners, and only secondarily to Ini Kamoze)

The League of Young Voters held their annual Step Up to the Plate Awards party on Saturday, and we're proud to list the winners here for your enjoyment:

Activist/Community Organizer: Katy Jayne

Katy began working as a full-time organizer on the Marriage Campaign for the Maine Civil Liberties Union in September of 2008.

Representative Jim Schatz (D-Blue Hill) has gotten seven of the 10 members of legislative leadership to back his proposal to tightly restrict the usage of solitary confinement in Maine's prisons. We have been writing about abuse of Maine prisoners at the hands of Maine guards and corrections officials for four years; mentally ill inmates are particularly harmed by these practices.

I attended a wedding in New York last weekend. Without going into much detail / spilling too many secrets, I'll allow that it was a crazy time; many high school friends and acquaintences who hadn't seen each other in years were, um, reunited. Some were really excited to reconnect, if you catch my drift. When you haven't seen someone since high school and all of a sudden they can drink legally, flirt ably, and wear a tuxedo without looking like a clown, it's undeniably appealing.

Out and about snapping photos for our election issue (hitting the streets tomorrow) this morning, I encountered this man in Deering Oaks Park. I didn't have a notebook or anything with me, but here's a sketch of who he is: He lives in Portland, and those are his flags. He brought them to the park, along with the chair he's leaning on as he prays, after several of his Yes on One signs were stolen -- he's keeping vigil (since Thursday!) over the new crop that's shown here.

Wired has the story of a man we first heard tell of from local anarchist Paul McCarrier after the G-20 protests: a man who used Twitter to communicate and help protestors rally against an organization he believes is a threat to human rights.

No, this isn't those Twitter-fueled Iran protests, which the State Department famously asked Twitter to delay site maintenance to support.

The National Catholic Reporter carried a story yesterday about the split in the Catholic Church in Maine, with many practicing Catholics publicly breaking from Bishop Richard Malone, who has led the anti-same-sex-marriage fight. (The Church has put up a lot of money, but so has a group reportedly closely tied to the Mormon Church.)

The National Catholic Reporter has a story about Pamela Starbird Beliveau of Lewiston, a lector and Eucharistic minister in her Catholic parish, who wrote an op-ed piece in the Sun Journal supporting same-sex marriage - and who very quickly received a letter from her parish priest saying she would no longer be allowed to lead worship services, specifically because of her pro-equality stance.

For the listeners on KCNW in Canada who just heard Deirdre and me talk about retrosexuals and fretrosexuals, here are the links to our stories. (And for our local readers, we'll post the link to the audio stream just as soon as we can!)

Here's Deirdre's piece on retrosexuals.

And here's mine on fretrosexuals.

Thanks for listening!

I went to hear Rebecca Solnit speak at Bowdoin last night. She talked about a collective sensation of altruism, joy, and community that can come in the wake of natural (and sometimes manmade) disasters. She connected those experiences to the outpouring of public emotion that happened on and around Election Day last year, when Barack Obama was elected president, and the people who put him there -- who worked together to achieve victory not just for a man but for a movement --were moved not just by their electoral success but by their sense of civic engagement.

The Colorado Independent has the story: the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has instructed pastors nationwide to distribute anti-healthcare-reform literature in church and to preach against it from the pulpit.

I'm no Catholic, but with the Church's opposition to same-sex marriage (in an unholy alliance with Mormons and evangelical Protestants) and now the basic human right of healthcare for all, I'm not sure what being Catholic is anymore.

Another Schism, anyone?

Ran into not one, not two, but THREE No On One canvassers doing Get Out The Vote work on my walk from Congress Street to the East End Community School. This is what matters, on Election Day.

Steady stream of voters there, but no lines to speak of. Kevin Donoghue and Charles Bragdon are both shaking hands outside.

Secretary of State Matt Dunlap is estimating 50 percent turnout, which is unheard of on off-election years (Tweeters are warning other tech-savvy folks to stop tweeting about high turnout lest they discourage people from heading to the polls).

I'm very sorry. Personally, professionally, everything. This is terrible. But it has to be said. Jesse Connolly just gave what can only be described as a concession speech at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland. Sure, he said they'd keep fighting, and make sure every vote was counted. But nobody talks that way if they're winning.

According to the Bangor Daily News numbers as of 9:25 am, here is the breakdown by county, and a handy map (made with the help of Microsoft MapPoint) showing exactly how little of Maine voted for marriage equality (remember, Yes is to repeal equality and No is to protect it):

Well, it's over. I feel today -- and I heard several people echo this sentiment last night and this morning -- similar to how I felt on November 3, 2004, when John Kerry lost the presidential election. In addition to a sense of sadness and frustration, there's also sheer disbelief that so many people have a worldview that is so radically different from my own.

Deirdre's morning-after-the-election blog post had a line early on that really struck me: she mentions the "sheer disbelief that so many people have a worldview that is so radically different from my own."

I don't think Deirdre is ignorant, or stupid, or insular - quite the opposite of any of that. But her perspective is enlightening.