Day - 14 Biggest Walk Day So Far

A few from the 'Leftist Marching Band' greeted us as we arrived in York Beach

Pat Scanlon (right) greets walkers at they arrive at his York Beach home for the night

Students from the New School in Kennebunk walked with us today

We walked 14 miles today from Kennebunk to York Beach.  Thirty people joined the walk giving us our largest turnout since we began on October 9 in Ellsworth. Eight of the students from the New School walked as did seven folks from a senior intentional community near Kennebunk.  It was an impressive line of walkers during the high point of the day.

Early on this morning it began to drizzle a bit but the sun finally broke through the cloudy sky.  The rain held off until we got to York Beach - just as we started to eat supper outside at Pat Scanlon's house the rains came back for about an hour.  Luckily the Smedley Buter Brigade out of Boston has set up the three canopies where we huddled and ate the pizza, chili, and salads provided for us.

About 10 members of the Smedley's were here to greet us as we arrived at Pat's house.  Many of them will join with us tomorrow as we walk into Portsmouth.  There will be a rally at 5:00 pm at Prescott Park after we arrive in Portsmouth and at 6:00 pm there will be a supper and program at St. John's Episcopal Church (100 Chapel St).

As we pulled into York Beach we were photographed by the York Weekly and then a reporter from the paper interviewed several of the walkers.  Our good string of coverage by local weekly papers continues (except for the Bath area where those weeklies don't like to report on protests at the BIW shipyard - although we did get front page coverage in the local daily paper there).  But circulation numbers show that most small weekly papers often have larger distribution than the daily papers due to the fact that many people are canceling their subscriptions to the dailies and relying on the free weekly papers for their news as a way to save money during these hard economic times.

The Leftist Marching Band that greeted us today in York Beach has a slogan that I just adore - "Our music is better than it sounds".  Gotta love these folks.