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The St. Peter’s Italian Bazaar planning committee kicked off a week of festivities on Friday by delivering the Italian national flag to Portland City Hall.  The flag was flown atop City Hall over the weekend, for the first time ever, to mark the 96th annual Italian Bazaar. Willie Audet, 2022 Bazaar chairman, delivered the flag to city official John...

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A new pizza place in Ellsworth that opened just over two weeks ago has been so busy, they’re going through nearly 400 pounds of pizza dough a day. Zeppa’s New York Pizza on Water Street is the latest family owned small business to open in Ellsworth. Hugh and Lisa Palcic bought the building in January and completely renovated it. Their daughter, Ril...

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It's become an annual appeal to the great beyond, and so far Helen Marrese has prevailed. "Every time we hit a new birthday, she'll say, "Maybe one more year," Marrese's granddaughter Emilykate St. Jean, 52, said Sunday as Marrese celebrated her 105th birthday. "She woke up today and said, 'Next year I'll be 106.'" Marrese still lives in her own ho...

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A special Mass in honor of their patron saint, a procession, and an outdoor festival will draw parishioners and community members to Windham on July 15-16 for the second annual St. Anthony of Padua Festival. The festival, which will be held on the grounds of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church on 919 Roosevelt Trail, was initially held last summer to...

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As a celebration of the contributions the Italian people have made to this area, the dedication of a Sons of Italy monument will take place on Thursday. Club member Jim Rinaldo said the event will take place at 11 a.m. at the site, next to the Muskie Memorial near the Rumford Information Center on Bridge Street. “The Italian community should be pro...

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 Laurel Cristopher is business owner, baker, dishwasher, and as it turns out, she’s a good carpenter to boot. Christopher is from Winthrop; she was scouting places where a small specialty bakery would fit in. That’s when she found an old firehouse at 350 Main Street  in Thomaston, right next to the Prison Showroom.  “I was originally looking for a...

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The world has lost a true Portland icon. Famed Portland master baker, artist, author, and teacher Stephen Lanzalotta has passed away after a long battle with cancer. Slab Sicilian Street Food announced the news on social media over the weekend. Stephen had been the head baker/chef and partner at Slab since its opening eight years ago. The news cert...

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Evangelista Donatelli,  known to many friends and customers as Vange or Vangie, liked to sit in a white plastic lawn chair on the sidewalk facing Congress Street and wave and talk to people passing by his longtime Munjoy Hill tailor shop. Donatelli, who opened Donatelli’s Custom Tailor Shop in 1972, died on May 16. He was 84. He was a master tailor...

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The Peace Gallery, in Damariscotta, will host a reading and conversation with Elisa M. Speranza, author of the new novel The Italian Prisoner, Sunday, May 29, 2022, from 2 - 4 p.m. Ron Capps, author and director of the Veterans Writing Project, will interview Speranza about the book and the little known history at the heart of her novel. A work of...

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Between lunch and dinner hours on a Saturday, Dolce Amici, in Norway, was fairly quiet. A group of probably-70-somethings stopped in for gelato, hunkering down near the refrigerated display case, snow whirling past the front windows. A middle-aged woman sidled up to the bar for a cocktail and chatted with the staff while she waited for her takeout...

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