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Maine-based, female-owned businesses take the spotlight at Bath pop-up shop

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Maine-based, female-owned businesses take the spotlight at Bath pop-up shop


Online entrepreneurs, from left, Christine Peters, Kimberly Becker and Kathleen Kurjanowicz stand recently in the loft over Maine Street Design on Front Street in Bath. The business pop-up event celebrated the women who empower each other. Paul Bagnall / The Times Record

A recent business pop-up event, hosted in a loft on Front Street in Bath, celebrated three female entrepreneurs who empower each other and run their own online businesses in the Midcoast.

Kimberly Becker, Christine Peters and Kathleen Kurjanowicz used the space over Maine Street Design on Saturday, July 13, to host around 30-35 people who showed up to support the event featuring stationery, jewelry and clothing for purchase from the women’s businesses.

“[Pop-ups] are intimate, and you can really have conversations with people,” Peters said. “The collaboration with Kimberly and Kathleen is a new one for me, and it’s been great mixing our different ideas of business.”

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Christine Peters Jewelry

Christine Peters has been making jewelry for the past 28 years. She started her art career as a sculptor before transitioning into jewelry making a year after she moved to Maine in 1995. Her nature and botanical-based jewelry work for her business, Christine Peters Jewelry, is done out of her home studio in Edgecomb. Peters works with sterling silver and 18- to 22-karat gold.

Anne-Marie Carey, visiting from Ireland, checks out Christine Peters Jewelry on July 13 during the pop-up shop in the loft over Maine Street Design on Front Street in Bath. Paul Bagnall / The Times Record

Two lines of jewelry featuring floral and botanical pieces and contemporary gold pieces were displayed in the loft.

Peters has had a website since the late 1990s, with its roots being a portfolio website that has evolved into an online store. However, she finds that customers will be more likely to buy her jewelry after they visit her home studio (by appointment only) to see the products before buying online.

Some of the work Peters does is repurpose people’s inherited jewelry by taking stones out of pieces and turning them into custom pieces they can wear and still have a connection to their family history.

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Peters has two upcoming shows: the Montseag Makers Market from July 20-21 and the Garlic Festival from Aug. 17-18, both in Woolwich. Peters has co-hosted the Montseag Makers Market since 2020.

Peters met Becker during Crafts at the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York, in May. Becker got to know Kurjanowicz through a mutual friend, and the trio has met for coffee once a week to discuss how to better their businesses and being a one-woman show.

James Point Stationery

Kurjanowicz lives in downtown Bath and owns James Point Stationery, a primarily online store launched in November 2021 during the pandemic lockdown.

The Bath event was the first retail pop-up Kurjanowicz and Becker had ever done, although Becker had previously held fairs and craft shows.

“We just thought it was time to get together, join forces and do something fun for all of us,” Kurjanowicz said.

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Kurjanowicz designs all her planners like list makers, which is how she started James Point Stationary. The daily planners are a little more flexible without setting dates on the paper. Each of the 52 pages — in line with 52 weeks in a year — can be refilled with another set of pages after they are used by ordering more online.

Attendees look over Kathleen Kurjanowicz’s James Point Stationery products July 13 during a business pop-up in the loft over Maine Street Design on Front Street in Bath. Kurjanowicz, left, launched her business in November 2021. Paul Bagnall / The Times Record

The first planner Kurjanowicz designed was the MultiTasker, which she started after a fight with her husband about all the Post-it Notes she used to leave in the kitchen. There were also too many lists to keep track of for other tasks, like shopping lists, which was a lot for Kurjanowicz’s household, so she found a better way to keep all the multitask lists in one place.

Kurjanowicz said what separates her from other planners is the higher quality of paper bound in a fabric, binder-like case with a magnet under the fabric to post the planner to a hard surface like a refrigerator.

“Every single product here was designed based on something I wanted or needed at different points of my life and career,” Kurjanowicz said. “There is a little bit of everything for everyone.”

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Kurjanowicz plans to launch notebooks and journals later in the year, and her daughter, Eleanor James, is pushing for a children’s stationery line.

K.Becker Designs

Becker, owner of K.Becker Designs in Woolwich, said the idea for the pop-up came from all three entrepreneurs, who wanted to inform their friends and neighbors about their products. Becker’s capsule collection, which helps customers gather key pieces to make a wardrobe, was on sale for the business pop-up.

The collection included clothing like a light jacket for spring and fall, a simple dress, and travel pants. There was something to choose from every season, and some customers purchased Becker’s clothing online to be shipped later.

“My whole goal with my line is to support women and make women feel better with what they are wearing on their bodies,” Becker said, referring to the unrealistic body sizes women are subjected to in fashion, with the average size in reality being 18.

In another show of female solidarity, Becker donates 5% of her profits to install bathroom units in Uganda’s rural Kyotera District schoolyards to give young women privacy during menstruation. Oftentimes, young women in Uganda without this necessity drop of out school once they begin menstruating.

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In-person events like the pop-up help entrepreneurs like Becker, Peters and Kurjanowicz attract new customers after they see what they have to offer and feel them out, which could translate into an online sale down the line.

“This is what we wanted because so many times you tell people about what you do, but until they are actually able to touch it and try it on, it’s hard for them to really know and commit,” Becker said.

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This Classic New England-Style Cottage in Maine Has 200 Feet of Atlantic Ocean Frontage

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This Classic New England-Style Cottage in Maine Has 200 Feet of Atlantic Ocean Frontage


A waterfront home with open ocean views on the coast of Maine came to market Tuesday asking $4 million. 

Built in 1978, the three-bedroom cottage is at the southern point of Cape Elizabeth, less than 10 miles from downtown Portland. The 1.1-acre property on Sunny Bank Road features 200 feet of south-facing water frontage on the wide open Atlantic. 

It is bordered by a rocky sea wall that’s about 28 feet high, according to listing agent Sam Michaud Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty

“The views are like a Monet painting,” he said via email. “The water sparkles and the waves are endless.”

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MORE: Laid-Back Costa Rica Is Getting a $7 Million Mega-Penthouse

The 3,364-square-foot home was built in classic New England style, with shingle siding, a single sloped roofline and large windows—complemented by white-washed walls, exposed-beam ceilings and wide-plank flooring on the interiors. 

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The main common area features cathedral ceilings with a step-down between the living and dining room, and a partial wall divides the dining room from the kitchen. There is also a wood-paneled family room off the kitchen, a gym and a covered porch. 

The sellers purchased the property in 2010 for $1.562 million, according to property records accessed through PropertyShark. They could not immediately be reached for comment. 

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“I have received quite a few inquiries since hitting the market two days ago,” Michaud said. “Buyers understand that this is a golden opportunity to own over an acre with 200 feet of bold oceanfront in Cape Elizabeth.”

MORE: Iranian Strikes on Dubai Put the City’s Roaring Real Estate Market to the Test

There are currently just seven three-bedroom homes available for sale in Cape Elizabeth and fewer than five waterfront properties, according to Sotheby’s and Zillow data. It is also the most expensive listing in the town, with another waterfront property on a tiny lot just south of Portland coming in a close second, according to Zillow. 

Michaud sold the former Cape Elizabeth home of Bette Davis this past summer for $13.4 million, the priciest sale on the cape in at least a decade—and even those views can’t compare. They’re “just magical,” he said. 



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NECEC conservation plan will not protect Maine’s mature forests | Opinion

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NECEC conservation plan will not protect Maine’s mature forests | Opinion


Robert Bryan is a licensed forester from Harpswell and author or co-author of numerous publications on managing forests for wildlife. Paul Larrivee is a licensed forester from New Gloucester who manages both private and public lands, and a former Maine Forest Service forester.

In November 2025, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved a conservation plan and forest management plan as mitigation for impacts from the NECEC transmission corridor that runs from the Quebec border 53 miles to central Maine.

As professional foresters, we were astonished by the lack of scientific credibility in the definition of “mature forest habitat” that was approved by DEP, and the business-as-usual commercial forestry proposed for over 80% of the conservation area.

The DEP’s approval requires NECEC to establish and protect 50,000 acres to be managed for mature-forest wildlife species and wildlife travel corridors along riparian areas and between mature forest habitats. The conservation plan will establish an area adjacent to the new transmission corridor to be protected under a conservation easement held by the state. Under this plan, 50% of the area will be managed as mature forest habitat.

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Under the forest management plan, a typical even-aged stand will qualify as “mature forest habitat” once 50 feet tall, which is only about 50 years old. These stands will lack large trees that provide wildlife denning and nesting sites, multiple vegetation layers that mature-forest birds use for nesting and feeding habitats and large decaying trees and downed logs that provide habitat for insects, fungi and small mammals, which in turn benefit larger predators.

Another major concern is that contrary to the earlier DEP order, the final approval allows standard sustainable forestry operations on the 84% of the forest located outside the stream buffers and special habitats. These stands may be harvested as soon as they achieve the “mature forest habitat” definition, as long as 50% of the conserved land is maintained as “mature.”

After the mature forest goal is reached, clearcutting or other heavy harvesting could occur on thousands of acres every 10 years. Because the landowner — Weyerhaeuser — owns several hundred thousand acres in the vicinity, any reductions in harvesting within the conservation area can simply be offset by cutting more heavily nearby. As a result, the net
mature-forest benefit of the conservation area will be close to zero.

Third, because some mature stands will be cut before the 50% mature forest goal is reached, it will take 40 years — longer than necessary — to reach the goal.

In the near future the Board of Environmental Protection (BEP) will consider an appeal from environmental organizations of the plan approval. To ensure that ecologically mature forest develops in a manner that meets the intent of the DEP/BEP orders, several things need to change.

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First and most important, to ensure that characteristics of mature forest habitat have time to develop it is critical that the definition include clear requirements for the minimum number of large-diameter (hence more mature) trees, adjusted by forest type. At least half the stocking of an area of mature forest habitat should be in trees at least 10 inches in diameter, and at least 20% of stands beyond the riparian buffers should have half the stocking in trees greater than or equal to 16 inches in diameter.

Current research as well as guidelines for defining ecologically mature forests, such as those in Maine Audubon’s Forestry for Maine Birds, should be followed.

Second, limits should be placed on the size and distribution of clearcut or “shelterwood” harvest patches so that even-aged harvests are similar in size to those created by typical natural forest disturbance patterns. These changes will help ensure that the mature-forest block and connectivity requirements of the orders are met.

Third, because the forest impacts have already occurred, no cutting should be allowed in the few stands that meet or exceed the DEP-approved definition — which needs to be revised as described above — until the 50% or greater mature-forest goal is reached.

If allowed to stand, the definitions and management described in the forest management plan would set a terrible precedent for conserving mature forests in Maine. The BEP should uphold the appeal and establish standards for truly mature forest habitat.

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Rage Room in Portland, Maine, Developing ‘Scream Room’ Addition

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Rage Room in Portland, Maine, Developing ‘Scream Room’ Addition


For a lot of people throughout Maine, there’s some built up frustration that they’ve just been keeping inside.

That frustration can come in a lot of different forms. From finances to relationships to the world around you.

So it makes plenty of sense that a rage room opened in Portland, Maine, where people can let some of that frustration out.

It’s called Mayhem and people have been piling in to smash, crush and do dastardly things to inanimate objects that had no idea what was coming.

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But Mayhem has realized not everyone is down with swinging a sledgehammer. So they’ve decided to cook up something new.

Mayhem Creating ‘Scream Room’ at Their Space in Portland, Maine

Perhaps the thought of swinging a baseball bat and destroying a glass vase brings you joy. The thought of how sore your body will be after that moment makes you less excited.

Mayhem Portland has heard you loud and clear and is developing a new way to get the rage out. By just screaming.

Mayhem is working on opening their very first scream room. It’s exactly what you think it is, a safe place to spend some time just screaming all of the frustration out.

There isn’t an official opening date set yet but it’s coming soon along with pricing.

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Mayhem in Portland, Maine, Will Still Offer Rage Rooms and Paint Splatter

While a scream room is on the way, you can still experience a good time at Mayhem with one of their rage rooms or a paint splatter room.

Both can be experienced in either 20-minute or 30-minute sessions.

All the details including some age and attire requirements can be found here.

TripAdvisor’s Top 10 Things to do in Portland, Maine

Looking for fun things to do in Portland, ME? Here is what the reviewers on TripAdvisor say are the 10 best attractions.

This list was updated in March of 2026

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Gallery Credit: Chris Sedenka

Top 15 of The Most Powerful People in Maine

Ever wonder who the most powerful players are in Maine? I’ve got a list!

Gallery Credit: Getty Images





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