Rockland and Carrageenan

While we were at the Blues Festival, I learned a little bit about the plant across the street from our hotel. No, not a plant with flowers, but an industrial plant, on some very pricy waterfront real estate.

Rockland is a working town, more hardy than hip, though there is a hip element permeating the main street and yearly events; increasingly, word is getting out. Just the festival itself is already a 17 year old event.

Art galleries, book stores (is it the winters? there are more bookstores in Maine than I've ever seen anywhere...drive down any road and out of nowhere will be a big old barn or a little tiny shack with a Used Books! sign on it), eateries, brew pubs - oh, there are enough microbreweries going on in Maine that I almost wish I liked beer - cool gift shops, wonderfully preserved architechture, antique shops by the handful with some good stuff in them! Point being...Rockland is hipping up.

Which has nothing, or maybe it does, to with the plant. The seaweed processing plant. The plant that turns seaweed from around the world into carrageenan. Yes, carrageenan. If you read your food labels, and I surely hope you do, you've seen it before and if you don't know what it is, you've probably figured it can't be good for you. Guess what? It's natural! It's seaweed! It's...well, let someone who knows tell you.

"Carrageenan is a natural thickening agent used in a startling variety of food products including toothpaste and ice cream. Its unique medicinal properties could become a weapon in the battle against AIDS."

This quote comes from an article I won't even try to paraphrase, but it is about the history of the plant, how it affects the economy and of course, what always catches my interest is that it is the last of its kind in the US. So if things like that interest you, check out the article from the blog The Working Waterfront.

Warning: personal rant ahead  

That is the mystery - why it is in Rockland, and why its staying, when so many businesses with the same complexities have been *outsourced* - I hate that word, how about sold out by Americans screwing Americans so Americans can pay a few bucks less for a product...while being unemployed by the very company they are buying the product from...oh, is that harder to say than *outsourcing*?

Rant over...for now

I really liked this guy's hat...Laurie told me he's someone important musically, but I only know he didn't mind letting me take a shot of him in his hat with a smile on. Thanks, dude!