🔒As the wood turns

I've been sewing since I was 8 years old, courtesy of a mother whose homemade Barbie gowns were the envy of the neighborhood. She showed me how to run our old Montgomery Ward sewing machine in third grade and I've lost track of how many dozens of outfits, curtains, quilts and baby clothes I've made since (culminating, perhaps, in the creation of outfits for my own daughter's American Girl dolls.)

My grandmother taught me how to cream sugar and butter around the same time, starting me on a life-long love of baking.

So by the time I got to high school, I had little interest in Home Economics and instead opted to take Shop class.

What a treat! I loved the smell of that classroom, of fresh-sewn wood and lubricating oil. I got to be adept enough with a band saw to create a jewelry box and worked on a rifle rack as a final project. So when Staff Writer Lori Valigra came into the office after visiting Maine Wood Concepts in New Vineyard, I naturally asked how it smelled. Heavenly, she said.

Aesthetics aside, though, what President Douglas Fletcher has been able to do with the 42-year-old company is remarkable, especially in light of what's happened to other wood-turning operations in Maine. Once an industry that supported more than 80 shops, wood-turning is now practiced by just a handful, but as Maine Wood Concepts shows, it is profitable and growing. Read how it is managing to thrive in Lori's cover story, “The art of the lathe.”

Also in western Maine, the focus of this issue, is growing momentum for the inaugural presentation of the Crossroads International Celtic Festival. Slated for September, this multi-venue festival is designed to celebrate Celtic heritage and draw cultural tourists. See how it's coming together in Senior Writer Jim McCarthy's story, “Economic harmony."

I spent a lot of time in western Maine when I was managing editor at the Sun Journal, and I also paid a lot of attention to what TD Bank was doing in Lewiston. The bank, the latest iteration of what was Peoples Savings Bank, employs more than 2,000 in L-A at its back office center in the Bates Mill complex and at its customer service center in the Auburn Mall. When TD bought Commerce Bank in 2007, there was a lot of uncertainty about whether it would maintain its Maine operations, or consolidate them in Cherry Hill, N.J., Commerce's base. Lori had a chance to talk with David Glidden, TD's regional president for northern New England and upstate New York, who reaffirmed TD's commitment to Maine. Check out what he has to say here.

And while we're talking geography, did you know a Blue Hill company is providing the software and monitoring services for an experiment on energy efficiency in — of all places — the Arctic Circle? Online Editor Darren Fishell talks to PowerWise's Ray Toothaker, who says new markets are opening in Canada and Europe for its monitoring tools.

And finally, we know there's a lot of confusion out there around the Affordable Care Act and what it means for businesses of all sizes. We are digging deep to find those answers, which we intend to present at a health care forum set for Aug. 22, 8 a.m.-11 a.m., at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland. We'll tap the expertise of health insurance brokers, benefits and HR professionals, lawyers and health care providers to help you make sense of it all. For more information or to register, go to mainebiz.biz/ACAforum.