Transcription of Lou Ureneck for the show Cabin-Building & Brotherly Love #207
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 207, Cabin Building and Brotherly Love, airing for the first time on Sunday, August 30th, 2015. Lou and Paul Ureneck have been part of the Maine community for several decades in very different ways. Paul has worked in construction management helping orchestrate projects such as the Portland Museum of Art, Winslow Homer house restoration and Thompson’s point redevelopment. Lou is a writer and Boston University professor who worked as the deputy managing editor at the Portland Press Herald for many years. In 2001, Lou wrote about his experiences with Paul in his book, Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine. Thank you for joining us.
It isn’t often that I have the opportunity to interview a set of brothers, a set of sisters, a set of siblings of any sort on the radio show and today I have that privilege. Today I have with me, Lou and Paul Ureneck. Lou is a former Nieman fellow and editor in residence at Harvard University. He is a professor of journalism at Boston University now. He is deputy managing editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and editor of the Portland Press Herald. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, the International Herald tribune, Boston Globe and Field & Stream.
A former Fulbright fellow, Ureneck is the author of Backcast which won the National Outdoor Book Award for literary merit and Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine. His latest book is The Great Fire: One American’s Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century’s First Genocide. Lou’s brother, Paul moved to Maine in 1970s when he was asked to helped build a post-and-beam home on a land that Lou bought in [inaudible 00:03:32]. The home took 3 years worth of Sunday work to build.
After that Paul got involved in construction and eventually moved into a construction management position at the Boulos Company where he has been part of many notable projects such as Pineland redevelopment, the Winslow Homer home restoration for the Portland Museum of Art, Allagash Brewery’s evolving development and expansion, Backyard Farms research and development center in Madison and the current Thompson’s Point redevelopment. Thank you so much for coming in.
Paul: Thank you for having us.
Lou: It’s great to be here. Thank you.
Lisa: These were smaller versions of much more work that you both have done. I could have actually spent the entire show just talking about the stuff that you each have done for the Portland area and the world at large, I guess, let’s just say. We’re very privileged to have you here today.
Paul: Thank you.
Lisa: I really enjoyed reading the book, Cabin and in those small part it was because of the brother aspect of all of this. Now, Lou, you were going through some significant transitions in your life when you decided to build this cabin. It was an interesting and sometimes difficult book to read from that standpoint. Talk to me a little bit about what was happening in your life.
Lou: I undertook the cabin project really as a kind of healing project, as you say, transitions. I had lost a job. I had some years earlier gone through a divorce and was still reverberating in my life. Our mother had died some years earlier so there was a lot of tumult and turmoil in my life. I was looking for something that I could take on that would engage the better part of me, something positive to do. I had always loved the outdoors. It’s part of what brought me to Maine many years ago and has been an important part of my life.
I played with several different ideas about traveling to somewhere, doing something else and I decided the thing I really wanted to do was build a cabin. It was a fantasy in a way really and I’m not really capable of building a cabin by myself. Fortunately, I have a brother who is. I had this idea, this dream and I loved that part of Maine, Western Maine so I bought the land. Paul and I went up together and looked at it and Paul concluded that it was a good place to put a cabin. I got a good deal and we started building later that year so it would have been 2008. That’s how it began.
Lisa: It’s interesting to me, Paul because you didn’t start the book. In the story, you didn’t start as having been going through transitions yourself necessarily but by the end of the book you were going through your own set of transitions.
Paul: Correct.
Lisa: It seemed like kind of an important thing for you both to be doing at this period of time.
Paul: I guess life is really just a series of transitions when you look at it. The cabin was a project where the 2 of us could be together, could work together. We could bring other family members involved, mainly my children who all lived locally and they all loved working with their hands, et cetera. What do you do when you have transition in your life? I think you revert back to family and those things that are anchors in your life and you bring them together and those are your rotor.
Lou: Yeah, absolutely. It was a great, I don’t know, have solace to me to be with Paul through this and his sons who would come out and lend a hand. One of the boys in particular, Kevin turned out to be hugely important to the project. He worked with me on the frame of the cabin through the winter. Absolutely insane that we were building this thing through the winter but that’s the way it happened and I was too eager to delay this by Paul’s advice so we went ahead. We began the project in November. Can you believe that?
We were putting up the frame in the winter, in the teeth of Maine winter. It’s snowing. Each weekend, I’d go back up there with Kevin and Paul and we’d have another 6 or 12 inches of snow on the deck and we’d have to shovel it off and broom off the beams and so forth and get to work but actually it turned out to be a lot of fun. Winter is a great time to be outdoors. The air is crisp and clear. The sky was blue and we’d build a fire. We cooked some lunch, hotdogs or whatever. Even though it was a little nutty, it turned out to be a lot of fun and it sure was a great joy, comfort to me to be with Paul and Kevin and his other son, Paulie and occasionally, Andrew, a third son, a very capable young man would come along. We were having our own work party.
Paul: I had teased Lou during that part of the project because concurrent with us building it, he was also writing a blog for the New York Times on the building at the cabin and I had said to him this is the first time a schedule of a construction project for me has been driven by the need for you to write something, to get into your weekly blog.
Lou: Exactly.
Paul: That has what’s kept us on schedule, his need to keep the blog updated for the Times.
Lou: That’s right. We were dealing with the cabin and we were also dealing with my need to file 2 or 3 times to the New York Times. I described the ascent of the cabin for the New York Times over the course of the year and that turned out to be fun too. We had pictures of all of us as part of that but you’re right. That was pretty funny. People all over the world, actually. I had forgotten about that. people all over the world were experiencing this cabin going up and it was not without disasters. I mean, we screwed things up, things fell down.
At one point, I hadn’t sufficiently, I guess, braced the roof trusses and it’s a very windy place. We’re up on a hill and the roof trusses blow down. It was a complete disaster. I just wanted to walk away from the whole project when I saw that one spring day, spring of 2009, I guess but Paul and Kevin, you guys, I was amazed. It was like, “Hey, this is great. We can solve this problem.” I was ready to shoot myself and Paul and Kevin went to work and they untangled the rafters and pushed the walls back together. We found a way to swing these very heavy trusses back up into position. Even that worked out but we shared that with the world via the New York Times, the catastrophe of the rafters.
Lisa: I would think that this is something that’s not that foreign to you, Paul, having something happen during construction. That wasn’t what you expected and just having to deal with that.
Paul: That’s what construction is. I’ve been involved in very, very simple projects, the very complex, multi-million dollar projects and I don’t care what team of professionals you have, how much planning you do. There is something that’s going to go wrong. I mean, that’s just the way construction is. You try to limit those things as much as possible but in construction, they don’t call them problems, they call them opportunities.
Lou: We had a lot of opportunities. That’s for sure.
Paul: You figure it out. It’s good to get out from behind the computer, get out of the office and those things and to use your hands and use your brains to solve something physically and hopefully physically with using your brain and not your back to correct the problem. It’s fun. It’s teamwork. It’s a collaborative thing and Lou is mentioning my son, Kevin. He puts a tremendous amount of thought. He’ll look at a problem for 5 minutes and not say a word and then he’ll approach the solution to it. There’s some good interaction that goes on each way. Not everybody agrees on the best way to solve a problem but you work it out and say, “Okay. Let’s do this.”
Lou: Kevin has something and Paul has the same quality. I completely lack it and that’s this ability to understand space relationships. Some people can look at a box and turn it their mind and say, “What would that look like if it were turned sideways or unfold the box.” It turns out that that is a good quality to have if you’re building something because you have to think, “How would I fit that into that, so forth? I don’t have it?”
Kevin in particular, he was great. He saved us a lot of time and effort by thinking these things through turning the box in his mind as we built things. You’re right. There was disagreement along the way and we worked it out. When I started the cabin, I had a pretty firm idea of how I wanted the interior space and I was going to have a writing room which was a ridiculous idea and another fantasy. If I were going to go up there and sit in the room inside a cabin and write … but anyway this was part of the fantasy and my nephew, Paulie, Paul’s son said, “Uncle Louie, no way. This cabin has to be wide open. It has to be open space. It’s a family space. We’re all going to be together. Nobody gets behind the door to write a book,” and I said, “No, Paulie. I’m not sure. I think I could use a place where I could ….” “No, no,” he insisted and he started sighting cabins that we had been in the past.
There was a cabin in particular in Aroostook County. We used to take the boys to Southern Aroostook County for 3 or 4 days every fall around thanksgiving for a deer hunting trip. Nobody every shot a deer, I think but in any event we used to stay in this cabin and Paulie was describing that cabin. He made the argument and he was right. The interior space of the cabin is fully open. It’s communal family space. There are bunk beds against the back wall. If you’re sitting in the eating area, you can see the bunk beds and if somebody is playing poker at the table, it’s all wide open. We worked these things through as a group as it went up.
Lisa: Now, I’m wondering what it must have been like Paul for you to have this brother who his job is really making constructions out of words and ideas and his way of dealing with problem is editing sentences and helping create storylines versus buildings. I mean, you both are very creative individuals but your brains work in different ways.
Lou: You’re right.
Lisa: What was that like for you?
Lou: I think I drove him crazy a few times.
Paul: It’s funny. You mentioned that because a writer will write a draft of a story. He’ll correct that draft and write another draft and perhaps another draft and keep’s working of it until you get to the final product. In construction, it doesn’t work like that. You don’t cut a 2 by 4 once and if it doesn’t fit, you grab another 2 by 4 and you cut it again.
Lou: What do you mean you don’t do that?
Paul: You do this. Our minds did work like that. It did work differently because the field that I work in, it’s … The construction of a project is the easy part. It’s the planning that you put in to it so that you only do things once. It was Ross Perot or whoever. He said, “Measure twice, cut once.”
Lou: Yeah, right.
Paul: We do come from 2 different worlds where my world is basically put a lot of thought into it, only do it once. Lou’s world is a draft.
Lou: Let’s try it and see if it works. I can think of one example where Paul, I think you were ready to leave the job. We had erected the frame and we had sheaves. Put the exterior wood on the frame. Now, it’s beginning to look like a closed inbox and the next step is moving toward finish where you put the nice finish on the outside of the plywood and so forth. I was inside sitting down and I noticed that when I sat, I couldn’t see fully out of the windows. I thought it’s important. If I’m going to sit in this cabin, I want to be able to get a full view out of the window. I don’t want to see the window sill, I want to see the woods.
I said to Paulie, “You know what, I think we needed to do the windows over again because they’re too high.” He said, “What? What do you mean they’re too high?” I said, “When I look out the window, I see the window sill. I don’t see the trees.” He said, “It’s too late. I mean, we’ve already framed it and we’ve sheaved it.” I said, “Yeah, I know but I’d like the windows to be lower.”
Lisa: Couldn’t you just get a higher chair?
Lou: I hadn’t thought of that. That’s a good solution. There was a slight hiccup in the progress at that point. Ultimately we lowered the windows and we got through that but I think that’s a good example. It was, “Hey, let’s build it and look at it and see if we like it and if we don’t like it, let’s build it again.”
Lisa: Having worked through this process and gotten the windows that you wanted out of it, what did that do for you? What did that bring you to your life on a smaller and a bigger level?
Lou: For me, and this is how I relate to the world I guess, the cabin … I hate to use this word because it sounds so fancy. I wish I could think of a better word and I’m sure there is one but it’s a kind of aesthetic experience, the pleasing design, the being in of it, things working the way they should work and especially and design wise and so forth. The fact that the window is lower and I can see out which is what I wanted to do makes being in the cabin a much more pleasurable experience for me.
There’s no television in the cabin. There’s no radio. There’s no internet. This is an experience of being inside a well-built cabin in a pleasant location. The windows were part of that. Believe it or not, getting the right slope of the roof and the right feel inside, all of that was part for me of the enjoyment of being in the cabin. The windows were important. I just should have thought about them earlier.
Lisa: No. I hear what you’re saying. I think most of us has been through construction projects have had those moments where what do we give up and what do we hold on to.
Lou: Right.
Lisa: Paul, when you were working through this process, you almost threw up your hands and said, “Just forget it and I’m leaving.” How were you able to come to a good enough place that you were able to lower the windows and help your brother be happy?
Paul: In my job, in managing projects as small projects, large projects, you learn, as I said earlier, the construction is the easy part. What I consider the more important part of my project is managing people. On larger projects, I’ve got architects, I’ve got engineers. I’ve got attorneys, I’ve got city regulatory people. Everybody has their own vested interest so you need to learn how to manage people and in this project, while it was truly a family project, et cetera, et cetera but really it was Lou’s project. It was his cabin. He wanted to build it and you can’t get hung up on those things. If you want things to move forward, you just have to let go and you have to look at the bigger picture. I go through this a lot.
Lou: You’re being very philosophical and abreast.
Paul: You have to do it. You just have to let go and if you want things to move forward, you can’t argue about it. You’re just like, “Okay. If that’s what you want and you feel that strongly about it, let’s just do it. Let’s just get it done with and we’ll move on and keep going.
Lou: Right.
Lisa: I think the hindsight that you’re describing is very valuable and I also wonder as you’re going through and you’re blogging about this for the New York Times and you’re having on a day-to-day basis these conflicts and you’re actually writing about the people that are in your family that are helping you out.
Lou: Right, yes.
Lisa: That must have been a very interesting situation to be in because you couldn’t be philosophical in the middle.
Lou: No, that’s right. The blog for the New York Times was practical. It was less about the relationships. I saved all of that really for the book. The book is a book really about relationships. You can build a cabin probably if you carefully read the book but it’s not a cabin guide but the blog was. The blog definitely was step 1, step 2, here’s how we screwed up step 3. We’re going to go back and do 2 again and so forth. I think one of the best entries in the blog was the final entry in which I tried to capture construction lessons.
What did I learn about building a cabin that you ought to know? If you’re an amateur the way I am and not fully handy in the world of construction. I think I made a list of 10 or 12 things and it may have been the most useful. It’s in the New York Times blog. I’m astonished the Times has archived it. If someone were to Google New York Times, you’re in a cabin, that whole thing would come up. For example, 1 small lesson is start accumulating your materials long before you do it with the billing. We would get to a point, Paul would say, “Where are the windows?” and I’d say, “I haven’t bought them yet.” What do you mean we haven’t bought them yet?” We’re here to put the windows up.”
Another important thing is get materials delivered to the site as you need them otherwise you’re doing what we did which is bringing material up a snowy driveway for a thousand feet which is next to impossible but we did it. Another one that I remember was figure out how much help you have and then design the cabin to fit the amount of help. There’s a 1-man cabin, there’s a 2-man cabin. In terms of construction, there’s a 3-man cabin and the scale depends on how much help you can get. Those are all things to think about before you start. Of course I didn’t but I was able to make the list that they had anyway. At least I learned something.
Lisa: What I was very much struck by in reading this book that you had written was I guess the fact that working with your hands somehow enabled you to process some pretty significant grief I believe over a life that you were in the process of leaving.
Lou: You’re right about that. That’s right. It got me out of my head, ideas and feelings can just spin, spin, spin around and for me a good way to get traction to move forward and to be positive is to do something, to go into action. The cabin, it put me in action and then of course any project building a boat, building a cabin, whatever, you’re looking forward. What’s the next step? When will I finish it? How will I use it after I finished it? Whether you planned it or not, you’re looking ahead and not back which is a more positive way to live your life. If you find yourself getting depressed, some of that can be I’m stuck in the present or I’m stuck in the past but a project projects you in to the future.
Lisa: Do you mind if I read a few sentences of Cabin?
Lou: No. Go ahead. Thank you. I’m happy that you are.
Lisa: “In the 22 years that I was married and living in Maine from 1974 to 1996, I built a house, a career and a professional reputation. I had moved from being the most junior reporter at the newspaper in Portland to its editor-in-chief. My life in those years had been a steady professional ascent. I was not famous but I became a substantial person in my field. I work hard, stayed late and went in to the office on weekends. I was invited on to the board of community organizations and asked to make speeches. I took my family on vacations to Florida, put my children to private schools and owned a sailboat. I bought my wife a piano and my daughter a horse and I took my son fishing in Canada. I made an identity as a husband, father and editor. Eventually, it all came undone.” Then you go to describe your mother actually in the way that her life, that she had built a life herself and it all come to its end.
Lou: Right.
Lisa: It is very striking to me that not only had your life come undone and from that you’re building a cabin but then, Paul, the same kind of thing happened to you. It wouldn’t talk that much about your personal life but he was describing a life that you had built for yourself which was all very much revolving around family and providing.
Lou: Correct.
Lisa: Then somehow that had to be deconstructed as well.
Lou: Right.
Lisa: I think that many of us in the middle of our lives go through these dramatic deconstructions and the need to rebuild. I’m wondering, I guess if physically constructing something enabled you to, I guess spiritually and emotionally construct something as well.
Paul: I think it does. Life can become complicated and when you have those periods in your life where your mind is going in a million different directions et cetera, when you can direct it to something concrete. It takes you out of that. Once again, you need to cut a 2 by 4 and it needs to be 6 feet, 5 1/2 inches. You’re focusing on something and as you build that, your mind, it pulls you out of this place that you’re in. I think getting involved in any type of hands on project when your life is in uproar helps you come back and focus and gives yourself a little bit more of an anchor, et cetera. As I’m thinking about this, I’m thinking about even before. Actually, just before I came to Maine, I had gotten out of college and my life was going through a lot of changes and what am I going to do there, this, that and the other thing.
Lou: Sure. I remember that.
Paul: Lou had sent me the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Lou: I love that book.
Paul: At the same time, I had bought an old 1955 Chevy pickup truck and I was trying to figure out what I was to do with my project at that time was to take the engine out of that truck which I had never rebuilt an engine before but I got a book and said okay and rebuilt an engine to an old pickup truck and drove it to Maine. It was a similar experience. It helps you focus on a project and put your hands to something and it’s a reality. It’s something physical you can get your arms around.
Lou: Yeah. I’m glad you remembered that book. That’s such a great book. It really is about all of this. It’s about getting involved in the process of doing things to save your life. It’s a beautiful book and it’s a great memory.
Paul: If you don’t have an answer to something, wait a little while. Just relax. They talked about that. It’ll come to you. Just relax and wait a little while and lo and behold.
Lou: Exactly. That’s right.
Paul: A little late it’ll go off a couple 3 days later and bingo.
Lou: At the end of it, if you’re still depressed or whatever, you’ve got an engine.
Paul: Or you’ve got a cabin, right? You’re still ahead of the game. You can drive your old pickup and you can go to your cabin.
Lou: Right. You’ve gained that if nothing else.
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Lisa: At the end of all this, you started working on the book that I have in my hands right now, The Great Fire: One American’s Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century’s First Genocide. It’s interesting to me that you went from building a cabin to talking about a genocide and a fire. It’s almost like you had to, I don’t know, in story form you had to see something completely burned to the ground and horrible, horrible things happened.
Lou: Yeah. You’re giving my subconscious more credit than it serves I think. The first 2 books, Backcast was my first book and Cabin are both memoirs. They’re personal books about members of my family, people that I’m very close to. The first about my son and second about Paul. The third book that you have in your hand there, The Great Fire relates to different kind of a book. It’s a historical narrative. It’s an important story. It’s a story that I wanted to tell and it challenged me as a writer and as a researcher in an entirely different set of ways.
A little bit, it’s like learning to build a different kind of structure. Of those first 2 books were let’s call them shelter or cabins, this one is more of a cathedral. This is a more complicated writing project. The first 2 are more deeply felt personally but this book is a big canvas with dozens of characters telling a very important and complicated story about an American who saved the lives of a quarter million in the first genocide of modern times. The genocide that killed 3 million Christians in Turkey back in the 1920s, the ‘10s and the ‘20s. Different kind of project, lots of satisfaction from having “built” it and I’m proud of it so thank you for mentioning it.
Lisa: It’s at home so I must say I spent quite a few weeks …
Lou: Yeah, it’s a big one.
Lisa: … actually reading it and I learned a lot from it, actually. I didn’t know anything about this part of history.
Lou: You and the rest of America. Right.
Lisa: For me, to hear a story that really happened. There’s something about it that I don’t know fills in a piece of patchwork in my brain somehow and somehow it picks up a thread that will somehow get it connected to something somewhere else.
Lou: Sure. Oh, yeah. This was a seminal period in American history. It’s when the oil became an important part of our foreign policy. It was a big period of transition in terms of the kind of country America was and our response, the official American response to the genocide and the burning at Smyrna Fire, Smyrna is not something that we can be proud of but we can definitely be proud of the private Americans and especially 1 naval officer who acted with great courage and a moral force. It’s an important piece of American history that I think more people should know about. I think of it as one of the great stories of an American hero that hardly nobody knows about.
Lisa: I also was struck by the fact that there are so many different sides to war and to conflict and there’s so many different human aspects of things that may become immune to it because …
Lou: The horror of it is just incredible and this was particularly horrible because the victims were civilians by and large. These were defense list and they were often women. Rape was a weapon of war on the part of the Turkish army so it was a particularly horrendous. People were burned alive and very, very bad things happened and that’s all dark and gloomy. The ray of light here is that somebody came forward and made a huge difference. He did it out of a sense of religious service, of wanting to help people and so all the right reasons and he saved many, many lives.
Lisa: I must say, it was good that it was summer when I was reading this because I would pick my head up for the book and the sun would be shining. You’re right. It was tough.
Lou: Some parts are pretty tough.
Lisa: It was pretty hard but you’re right. This is the hope aspect of it, I think also came through and it does. It makes you aware that 1 person can really have an impact and as I’m looking, Paul at the work that you’ve done around Maine, Lou said before we gone on the air said 2 things. He said basically you have helped build modern Maine and he also said for me to tell everybody that he’s better looking than you. I’ve done both of those things.
Lou: You don’t have to rule on that.
Lisa: I still hope people are happy.
Paul: Seeing this is a radio interview.
Lisa: That’s right.
Lou: I’m afraid that you might rule in the other direction so you can be silent on that one.
Lisa: I’m going to say nothing. People can look at the picture. We’ll put it up on the website. You can make that decision but I do think it’s interesting that you’ve done work with Pineland redevelopment, Winslow Homer, the home restoration for the Portland Museum of Art, Allagash Brewery, Backyard Farms, Thompson’s Point. I mean, you’re actually building the new story of Maine which is amazing having lived here myself for such a long time. What you’re doing there’s some thread that you’ve picked up yourself that you’ve helped be a part of.
Paul: I’ve been very fortunate with that and really all of the current interesting going on around greater Portland or Maine in general. I’ve been lucky enough to get involved with them. I think why. I’ve been doing this work now for close to 30 years this year. I have somewhat of a name in the industry but also the company that I work for, the Boulos Company, it is the predominant commercial real estate company in Maine. The other part of the company is constantly feeding me work or those are the fellows that are behind the deals before they become public that are out there that are working these things so because of that larger team that I’m involved with, I’m lucky enough to be brought in to these things early on but it is.
It’s been a lot of fun. Everything from building cheese plants and dairy barns up to Pineland, basically renovating 19 buildings up there on to the beautiful campus that it is today to, as I said, Allagash Brewery and all of their expansions that continue to grow. The Thompson’s Point project. I’m right in the thick of that. There’s a lot of very cool things that are going on down there. I can’t go on and on back.
Lou: Can I interrupt? He’s being modest. Paul is a professional problem solver. He calls himself a construction manager but he’s really a problem solver and he’s not telling you but he has told me stories in the past. I won’t mention particular names and projects but there are many important projects that have occurred in Maine in the last 10, 20 years that would not have happened. Maybe they cost too much or they seemed impractical or whatever but Paul was able to solve problems so that the construction cost came down or the environmental problems were solved or whatever it happens to be. There’s somebody who can build a building and there’s somebody who could both build the building and solve the problem. Really in a way you’re problem solver in chief on the job. A lot of those things have happened.
Paul: It’s fun. I work with a very diverse group of people as I said earlier. It’s really a lot of fun to do. Projects are always changing. Clients are changing. People are changing. Every year I’m involved in a dozen new things so it’s fun.
Lisa: Now, we talked at the beginning about the fact that each of you has gone through some significant personal transitions as we all do in our lives.
Lou: It’s part of being alive, right?
Lisa: It is part of being alive.
Lou: You can’t avoid things happen.
Lisa: How are you feeling about things now?
Lou: I’m feeling great. My professional life is going well. The books and all of that and I have a terrific job teaching students at Boston University. I’m in a great relationship. My home life is excellent. I have a wonderful wife, Irene. Things are good. I don’t want to tempt fate, right? Is there some wood here, I can knock on?
Lisa: I’m knocking on wood for you, yes.
Lou: Thank you. Life goes up and down and right now it’s good, thank God. I appreciate all the people in my life.
Lisa: How about you, Paul?
Paul: Yeah. I’m in a similar position too. 4, 5 years ago, I went through a divorce and luckily it wasn’t that bad but anyway I went through it and stuff but I am now living with a lady in Cumberland, Becky. Becky a little bit of plug who’s a wonderful lady and she has 2 children. 1 just graduated college. 1 is now a sophomore in college. I have 5 children. They range in age from 27 to 35. Thanks God, they all have jobs and they’re all self-supporting. I have 4 grandchildren. I have a fifth grandchild on the way in September and so I love my grandchildren. My oldest grandchild, Maddik. He’s 9 years old so that’s wonderful because he’s old enough now. I want to take him out fishing or we want to do things. He’s of that age that you can really do something.
Lou: He’s a great age, absolutely.
Paul: Things are good.
Lou: Let me add because it’s important part of my life. I have 2 children. Adam and Elizabeth and I’m both very proud of them. They have charted their own life courses very different but they’re both smart, creative, caring kids. They’re not kids anymore. They’re in their 30s. They’ll always be kids to me. They are a treasure in my life. I wish they would come up to the cabin more often but definitely. In fact, we’ll be seeing them soon. We’re running a cottage here at Casco Bay for the week in August and everybody will get together and the kids will be there. All of the kids will be there. This is a great celebration.
Lisa: In addition to writing books and building buildings and reconstructing your personal lives, you’ve also built families that you continue to enjoy and it sounds like …
Lou: It’s the best part of life, really. In the end, when you’re young at least for me when I was young, there was a lot of ambition and I, in a way saving myself but as I get older it’s really where the joy and the satisfaction is in the relationships.
Lisa: Lou, how can people find out about the books that you have written?
Lou: Sure. They’re all on Amazon, Ureneck. They’re all there. In the latest book, The Great Fire, has its own website. smyrnafire.com. If you’re interested in history, this is a book for you. If you’re interested in reading a great story with lots of suspense, it’s also a terrific book so smyrnafire.com is the place to find out more pictures and explanations on the whole deal.
Lisa: What’s going to happen next for each of you since you’ve done all these amazing things, are there future cabins? Are there future buildings? Just enjoying the grandkids? What do you have? You seem like you guys have so much energy.
Paul: That’s actually a good question. As we talked before about life is a series of passages. I will be actually 62 this week so I’m getting a little closer to thinking about retirement. By retirement, I don’t mean not work. I mean slowing down. I don’t mean just giving it up. Those are the thoughts that are going through my mind now like say over the next 3 or 4 years. How do I start restructuring my life so I’m not as crazy busy as I am now, what I want to do say over the next 10, 15 years of my life.
Lisa: What does that look like? What gets you up in the morning every day? What do you feel passionate about?
Paul: I love to tinker with things. As I look forward, I do see myself staying in Maine. However though, getting out of Maine for maybe a month or 2 during the coldest part of the winters and who knows.
Lou: Maybe you need another old pickup truck to take apart and put back together, right? Restoring an old vehicle.
Paul: I don’t know whether it’s going to the Greek Islands or going to Key West or whatever it is but I do see myself getting out of here for a couple months during the dead of winter. I’m very confident that I could keep myself busy, tinkering with things and something else that I gotten into this past summer is some gardening that I’m enjoying it because my tomato plants are huge. There’s a lot of tomato plants on them. My lettuce was very successful.
Lou: I want some of those tomatoes by the way.
Paul: I’m having a lot of fun with that. Between I think just fishing, hunting, I have a Harley that I get on a lot and I just will take off for a day or 2, little day trips. I love to ride in the summer and actually, I even love to ride more in the fall. I don’t think there will be any shortage of recreational activities to consume time.
Lisa: Lou, one of the things that you are doing now is teaching. It’s been a significant part of your life over the last few years.
Lou: Right.
Lisa: I’m imagining at this point you are actively involved in the lives of young people and giving them advice for not only writing but living in general. What advice would you give them to create successful lives? Paul, I can ask you the same question because I’m sure you have your own manner of teaching.
Lou: A lot of things have happened in my life that were fully beyond anything that I thought was possible. I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve had books published. I’ve been invited to be a part of Harvard University. These are things that for a kid growing up the way I grew up seemed absolutely impossible. They were beyond aspiration. Good things happen if you decide what it is you want and you just steadily constantly continually work your way toward it. Build your life around your aspirations and astonishingly at least in the case of my life, they come true. I’ve had a lot of help along the way or people who have been giving me good advice and directed me and given me a lift up and so forth.
I haven’t done it on my own. That’s for sure. What it is you like and you love and what you want to do and just keep doing it. Keep throwing yourself at it and whatever way you can find. It may not be the perfect job initially but if it’s close to what you want to do, you’re learning something. Then you meet somebody and that leads you to something else. You’re always getting closer and closer and pretty soon it happens and you can’t quite believe it. I mean, I still can’t quite believe these good things have happened to me. I hope the luck doesn’t run out.
Lisa: You’ve always wanted to keep knocking on wood. I can tell.
Lou: Exactly.
Lisa: Every time you say something.
Lou: Very suspicious. Life is also taught me that it’s fragile that sometimes relationships don’t last and sometimes people you love go away and so there is a fragility to life that is always in my consciousness and I never forget that but I’m also aware that a lot of good things can happen.
Lisa: How about you, Paul, what advice would you give to people who are creating their lives?
Paul: I think when I reflect back on my life, I had my 5 children in a span of 6 years. It created a lot of responsibility in my life at a very young age. I would encourage younger folk to hold off on starting a family at least to their early 30s. I would also encourage younger folks to take some risk and it’s hard to take risks when you develop responsibilities too early in your life because you’re worrying about how you’re going to pay the mortgage, how you’re going to put food on the table, how you’re going to do all these things.
It’s very easily to fall into a routine in life but I think if you can delay starting a family and take that risk, which I think is a lot of the younger folks that I work with now, I think that’s a part of this generation is they’re not afraid to take risks. They’re not afraid to fail at something and just move on. That’s what I would suggest is take some risk, delay starting a family and as Lou said, pursue that which you really love. Give it a whirl. See what happens. If you fail, you fail. Pick it up and move ahead.
Lou: Right. Live your life.
Lisa: I really enjoyed spending time with the 2 of you.
Lou: This has been fun. Thank you.
Lisa: That’s great to see the brother bond so strong. I have 5 brothers and 4 sisters. There’s a lot of us and I can’t say that I love too many more people in the world in my brothers and sisters. I have the 2 of you in front of me I know is really quite a privilege.
Lou: We’re going to flip a coin on the way out of here to see who’s better looking.
Paul: Heads I win, tails you lose.
Lou: Maybe you could each be good looking in your own way.
Paul: You are a diplomat.
Lisa: Yes. That’s really good. Remember 9 brothers and sisters.
Paul: That’s right.
Lou: You got to work that out.
Lisa: Lou, tell me again what your websites are?
Lou: Smyrnafire.com is the principal one and much more information about what happened at Smyrna, the final episode of the modern world’s first genocide. Lots of pictures, documents and so forth and amazon.com is a place to buy any of the books. Of course the Longfellow Books in local bookstores are important in the community so if you can get the Longfellow Books, that’s great.
Lisa: People who are interested in the work that Paul has been doing, you can go to the Winslow Homer home restoration, Backyard Farms, Thompson’s Point. You can go to the Bolous website to see what other projects are available there.
Paul: Exactly, right.
Lisa: It’s really been a pleasure and thank you so much for sharing so much of yourselves in the book that you wrote, Lou and also in the conversation that we had today. We’ve been speaking with Paul and Lou Ureneck. 2 Maine individuals who have been writing books, building cabins, building developments, enjoying building families. It’s really been a privilege to have you here today.
Lou: Thank you.
Paul: Thank you.