DOWN EAST NOTES

Visits to Maine's state parks and historic sites was up nearly 7 percent last year, despite the summer bad weather.

Southwest Maine was the heaviest hit with rain last weekend - 4 to 6 inches. Portland got 5 inches, breaking a 1887 record of 1.75 inches. We heard reports of 7 inches in Brunswick.

Portland Press Herald - Three giant wind turbines rise from the interior of the island, visible from miles away, above pines, above homes, above Vinalhaven's granite bones. And on Tuesday, the $14.5 million Fox Islands Wind project officially goes on line with a ribbon-cutting event, marking the completion of Maine's first island wind project. It's also the largest community-owned wind project on East Coast. . . The island has long generated its own power. Tidal waters flow under the Tidewater Motel, through the remains of a mill system that once used hydropower to run a granite cutting operation and a blacksmith's bellows with a network of belts. At one time, a coal-fueled power plant operated near where the ferry landing sits today. But now the island is an outpost for renewable energy. . .

Maine Politics' selection for best 2009 campaign slogan: Oliver Outerbridge, the Portland pizza shop owner who ran for Water District Board of Trustees on an anti-fluoridation platform: "Today's mighty oak is yesterday's nut that held its ground. Elect the nut." Outerbridge lost by an almost two-to-one margin. . . Maine Politics also figures that with former House speaker John Richardson entering the governor's race, he becomes the 2,354th candidate for that post.