Observations, commentary, opinions, and musings from your correspondent on the Coast of Maine, where we live "life as it should be." (We used to be "Open for Business", too, but somebody stole the sign.)
Today is June 6, and I spent the whole day with a vague feeling that there was something important about that date. It was late this afternoon when I was reminded that it's the 69th anniversary of D-Day, the date Allied forces hit the beaches at Normandy in the offensive invasion that turned the tide in WW II. The casualties were horrific. More people were lost in a few hours there than have been killed or wounded in both Afghanistan and Iraq in a dozen years of warfare. How soon we forget.
Our history is replete with dates that marked events that seemed unforgettable when they occurred but have nonetheless slipped into obscurity with the passing generations. Perhaps the most notable of these is December 7, 1941, the day the Empire of Japan launched a sneak attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, ''...a date which will live in infamy" according to the famous speech by FDR. Within an hour of that speech Congress passed a declaration of war against Japan and officially brought the U.S. into World War II. Yet, how many Americans today recognize the significance of "Pearl Harbor Day"?
More recently, of course, there were the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and that was recent enough that our national obsession with commemorating the date has not begun to subside, and yet I am sure it will - or maybe I should say I hope it will. Our national memory of events lasts only as long as the citizens who were affected are around to keep the memory alive. When the war has been won life returns to normal and those who were not around to witness the horror forget the sacrifice of those who fought and died to preserve our freedom. Perhaps this is as it should be.
So I wonder, in another 50 years or so will the date September 11 be just another day when perhaps a few old-timers have a feeling that there is something significant about the date they should remember? I hope so, because that would mean that life has returned to normal and the terrorists did not succeed in altering our way of life and our freedoms. We can forget the significance of 12/7/1941 because we were victorious against the enemy who precipitated the events, and I hope we can forget 9/11/2001 for the same reason. Or it truly will be "a date which will live in infamy" and the terrorists will have won.
Or maybe it's already too late:
Surely Americans will never forget the date on which they began to lose all of their freedoms - is that date 9/11? Ask me in 50 years.
It's been a couple of years since I recorded my thoughts about what makes a person an authentic Mainah but with the arrival of summer, and along with it the "summer complaints" that Mainahs love to grouse about, it seems like a good time to enhance my definition to list a few disqualifying characteristics since some of the summer visitors will try to lay claim to the title on dubious grounds.
You cannot lay claim to the title Mainah, even if you were "born and raised in Maine", if any of the following descriptions apply to you:
1. You own a car with plates that don't say "VACATIONLAND".
2. You don't pay any state income tax because you claim "residence" in a state that doesn't have an income tax.
3. You voted in the last local/state election in a precinct not in Maine. Or you just didn't vote - either one disqualifies you because who's in charge matters and Mainahs care about these things. We don't all agree but we all care.
4. You read "Down East" magazine to stay up to date in Maine news but you don't read a Maine newspaper.
5. You order from LL Bean because you like to "shop local".
6. You don't own a snow blower, or even a snow shovel, because - well, why would you need one?
7. You think the primary reason to own a generator is to make sure the A/C doesn't go off.
8. You call the drive-in restaurant on the old Bath Road in Brunswick "Fat Boy's".
9. You come to "visit" in the summer but "go home" when the weather turns cold. "Home" is where the heart is but you can only have one - you're either a Mainah, or your not.
10. You stop in New Hampshire to stock up on cheap booze on your way to Maine for the summer. (OK, Mainahs do this too, but we do it year-round whenever we're coming home on I-95.)
11. You really hope the proposed tax reform bill doesn't pass because it would raise taxes paid by tourists and non-residents. (You get a "bye" on this one if you actually know what I'm talking about.)
12. You think Maine is a great place to visit but you wouldn't want to live here year-round.
So there you go - if any of the above applies to you, you are not a Mainah no matter where you were born and raised or how long you've been coming here. You may call yourself a "native son (or daughter)", a Mainer-at-heart or maybe a displaced Mainer, but to be a Mainah you have to take the good with the bad and participate to make Maine a better place. To do anything less makes you a tourist.
The Founding Fathers thought having a post office as a national institution was important enough to include a section in our Constitution specifically providing for its creation. Today's US Postal Service actually has roots that predate the Constitution, all the way back to 1775 when the Second Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General, so the Post Office has been an important part of the social and economic fabric of our nation since its infancy. I think the Post Office, by whatever name you call it, is still important and deserves our support to help it stay financially healthy (NOT profitable!) and fulfill its mission. But I've already told you all that in an earlier post ("The Post Office needs our help" 8-1-2012); I repeat it here just to establish my creds as a supporter so you won't think I bear any animosity toward Post Office (even though I am a little steamed at them right now).
Here's the thing: the Post Office, specifically the local post office in my home town, lost my passport! I really, truly didn't want to believe it was true so I waited longer than I should have to follow up on a letter the State Department sent saying the document had been issued and would come in a separate mailing. When I finally admitted that maybe my passport wasn't going to be delivered I called the State Department, where a very pleasant young woman quickly determined that it had in fact been mailed to me as the letter had promised. She was able to provide the mailing date and, more important, the USPS tracking number which would enable me to establish where in the postal service it might be. She wished me luck in finding it but she didn't sound very encouraging, and she told me about the form that the State Department has for just such situations. Apparently I am not the first applicant whose passport has gone astray.
The USPS on-line tracking system is actually pretty remarkable in its own right. Armed with the tracking number for a specific piece of mail anyone can follow that piece as it goes through all of the stages of process and delivery through the vast postal mechanism - right up until the point where it just disappears, that is.
Let me interrupt my tale here to interject a statistic provided by the USPS itself:
160 BILLION - that's 160,000,000,000 which is an incredible number (unless you are the government and are talking about money)! If the USPS were 99.99% reliable in delivery, and that would be an astounding level of reliability for ANY business, it would still lose 16 million pieces of mail a year! But none of those should be a passport.
The State Department doesn't just drop a passport into a mail box and hope for the best. Each document is given its very own tracking number which the post office accounts for and updates at every step in the delivery process. My passport's tracking number was 9205596900893484941076 and here's its history from the minute it entered the postal stream:
Current Track & Confirm e-mail information provided by the U.S. Postal Service.
Label Number: 9205 5969 0089 3484 9410 76
Shipment Activity Location Date & Time
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Delivery status not 03/01/13 10:34pm
updated
Out for Delivery FREEPORT ME 04032 03/01/13 8:34am
Sorting Complete FREEPORT ME 04032 03/01/13 8:24am
Arrival at Post Office FREEPORT ME 04032 03/01/13 7:18am
Depart USPS Sort SCARBOROUGH ME 04074 03/01/13
Facility
Processed through USPS SCARBOROUGH ME 04074 03/01/13 12:34am
Sort Facility
Depart USPS Sort LITTLE ROCK AR 72231 02/28/13
Facility
Processed at USPS LITTLE ROCK AR 72231 02/27/13 7:32pm
Origin Sort Facility
Accepted at USPS HOT SPRINGS NATIONAL PARK AR 71913 02/27/13 6:17pm
Origin Sort Facility
Do you see what happened there? The passport was mailed in Hot Springs, Arkansas (really?) on 2/27/2013, arrived in Maine only two days later and on the same day was sent on to my local P.O., where the trail ends - "Delivery status not updated". How is this even possible?!
I went to the post office to see what they could do to find my passport and the answer was, "not much". The mail clerk I spoke with made a perfunctory search in a few bins before she turned the matter over to the postmaster, who in turn asked my rural carrier, all to no avail. "Sorry, we don't know what happened to it and there's nothing we can do. You'll have to contact the passport office to have them send another one."
Okay, I'm a little steamed as previously announced, but there is something that I don't understand. If you have a tracking system and it reports "Delivery status not updated", why do you not immediately go to the last person who handled the item to see what's going on? When the postmaster called me to acknowledge that the passport was well and truly lost, she said. "It was human error, we just don't know what human"! It seems to me that a timely inquiry when the status was not updated would have helped her determine that. I'm not looking to place any blame here but what's the sense of having a tracking system if you don't follow up on what it reports to you? The local post office is not that big a place and I'll bet that if somebody had gone looking for my passport right after it went missing, they would have found it.
It's enough to make me wish the State Department had sent my passport via Federal Express. I guess I just have "the old post office blues", but I'm sure I'll get over them.
Say what you want about Maine Governor Paul LePage (and it seems everybody has a lot to say about him) but you have to give him this: the man knows how to get his way in a dispute with the legislature, even when the Democrats control both houses.
A while ago Mr. LePage apparently decided that his top fiscal priority was to immediately repay a debt of several hundred million dollars owed to Maine hospitals, and he proposed a bill to accomplish this in one fell-swoop with funding to be provided by new debt (bonds) to be repaid from the proceeds of a new liquor-distribution contract which has yet to be negotiated. Then, and here comes the good part, he announced that he would not sign any new bills coming out of the legislature until his bill was passed. Nothing whatsoever gets done until the governor gets his way. Most chief executives could not hope to pull off such a brazen stunt, especially with the legislature firmly in the hands of the other party, but Governor LePage has spent the first two years of his administration that he is fully capable of standing by his threat, so his top priority instantly became the legislature's number one issue, too.
Democrats protested mightily of course as they had their own list of priorities and repaying the hospital debt wasn't first on the list. The governor, predictably, stood firm in his resolve and used every opportunity to convey his message, nothing gets done until the hospitals get paid. This steadfast resolve ultimately allowed him to frame the issue totally on his terms and left the legislature with no alternative but to agree to the concept of repaying the debt, with only the means of funding the payment remaining at issue. I'm sure the governor was very pleased - with the result and with himself. His tactic, which was classic bullying behavior, had worked very nicely - I suspect even Mr. LePage might have been surprised at how easy it was to get his way.
Is there any way we can get President Obama to adopt this technique to get legislation through Congress? Can you imagine the howls from "conservatives" if he ever tried a similar tactic? Come to think of it, the strategy wouldn't work in Washington because Congress doesn't pass any bills anyway, and Republicans would love nothing more that to be able to point to the president and say it's all his fault that nothing gets done. So never mind.
I should close by reporting a happy ending, of sorts, to the saga. The governor was so pleased that Democrats came around to his way of thinking on paying the hospitals that he agreed to sign an "emergency" bill passed by the legislature today to permit bars to open early on St. Patrick's Day. See, he can be reasonable when he gets his way. With any luck at all we'll all be able to sing this song by 7:00am this Sunday (without the "emergency" legislation we would have to wait until 9:00am before we could start drinking - how sad is that?):
"Esquire" magazine's Rule No 1,002: People in mobility scooters always seem a little haughty.
I take the term "mobility scooters" to mean battery powered wheelchairs or the 3- or 4-wheeled scooters steered with handlebars, all of which are used by persons with physical disability to get around in their day-to-day activities. Let me tell you about a man who uses one.
I volunteer at the VA Medical Facility once a week and I spend a lot of time waiting in the lobby of the hospital there, observing the comings and goings of the veterans who are there for medical treatment. A not insignificant number of these men and women move about the building in those "mobility scooters" to which Esquire's "rule" refers. With some the need is readily apparent to the casual observer, others not so much because not all infirmities are visible to the naked eye - but one has to think that any one of them would much rather be able to walk than to have to ride in a motorized device.
I first saw the man who is the subject of this narrative several weeks ago and I have seen him a few times since. He moves about the hospital building in a motorized wheelchair which he controls with a "joy stick" that he operates with his left hand, because that is the only extremity he has - his right arm and both legs are missing! I was pretty impressed with his ability to move about easily and confidently despite missing three limbs and I was amazed, and glad, that his "mobility scooter" afforded him the independence that he exercised as he didn't seem to require an assistant or even a service animal to help him get around. But there's more, I learned.
The next time I saw him I happened to be outside in the hospital parking lot when he approached a van near me and stopped near the side door. He apparently used a remote control because the door opened and a lift came down so he could "drive" onto it, lift himself into the van, close the door behind him and move to the "driver's seat". I watched the van start, back out of the parking spot and proceed to move down the road; and because I was just leaving too, I followed him off the hospital grounds and down the highway for several miles and not once did he drive in a fashion that would in any way indicate the van was not being operated by an "able bodied" driver. I guess the van was like a "mobility scooter" on steroids, because it certainly provided him with the ability to move about independently to a degree that I would not have imagined possible.
As a footnote to the story, I recently saw him at the hospital accompanied by a woman whom I took to be his wife, but of course maybe she wasn't. In any event when they left the hospital and went to the van, her presence didn't change his routine one bit and he drove the van away with her in the passenger's seat - but I guess that's to be expected as she probably doesn't know how to operate the adaptive controls that allow him to drive. But it still made me chuckle.
So "haughty"? No, I don't think so. Anyone who uses a "mobility scooter", be it a veteran or a civilian with a disability for whatever reason, would rather be able to walk and for a publication like "Esquire" to print a "rule" that they seem haughty is insensitive at best, and I think arrogant, too. Apparently the editors of the magazine don't know anyone who has a physical debility that limits their mobility - but even so why would they go out of their way to publish a "rule" that stigmatizes everyone who needs mechanical assistance to increase their mobility? They should rescind the "rule" and apologize to everyone for ever publishing it.
Here's what I don't get: If we are the peace-loving, benevolent people we say we are, why do we so readily go to war against anybody and anything that we find to be in any way dangerous, disagreeable or objectionable? Seriously, why is that?
On the international scene we have during my lifetime (which began shortly after WW II ended) been at war, in the sense of armed conflict, in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Bosnia, wherever we were during "Desert Storm" and "Desert Shield", Iraq, Afghanistan, African nations that I have never heard of other than we sent troops there, and I can't even begin to list the places in the mid-east that we have sent drones, special forces or both in our prosecution of the "war on terror". Most of these conflicts came after we defeated the godless commies in the Cold War. And of course our ongoing "war on drugs" has led to military action by troops, CIA operatives, mercenaries and "contractors" in Mexico and several South American nations. I'm sure this list is not exhaustive - but it certainly is exhausting to think about.
On the home front, we have actual paramilitary operations conducted by heavily armed police forces using military tools and tactics to wage war on drug lords, gangs, and the occasional fringe group of lunatics who are intent on making war against the federal government.
If one reads the national headlines for a while it becomes apparent that we as a nation are waging metaphorical war on poverty, illiteracy, illegal aliens and illegal downloading, disease in general and cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer's (among others) in particular. Depending on your point of view you may or may not agree that there is a war on women, religion, science, unions and, of course Christmas. Again, the list is not all-inclusive. (I forgot to mention the "class war" that the president may or may not be fomenting to advance his political goals.)
Here's what I think we could do as a first step to reduce the perception, and maybe even the reality, that we are a nation that will go to "war" at the drop of a hat - let's limit our use of the term "war" to apply only to those situations that fit the classic definition of the word, as supplied by Wikipedia: "War is an organized and often prolonged conflict that is carried out by states or other types of parties wishing to form or control states or other types of territories. It is characterised by extreme aggression, economic disintegration and irrationality, social disruption, and usually high mortality.[1][2] War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities, and therefore is defined as a form of political violence or intervention.[1][3] The set of techniques used by a group to carry out war is known as warfare. An absence of war is usually called peace."
Maybe, just maybe, if we stop using the term to apply to situations that don't fit the definition we can look for solutions that actually seek to get at the cause of the problem and thus develop solutions that will solve those problems. I mean really, you can't fight a war on "terror" or "drugs" or any other inanimate object because they don't lend themselves to being defeated by frontal assault. If we start viewing them as "problems to be solved" rather than "wars to be fought" perhaps we can reboot the process to seek creative, effective, peaceful solutions to the problems "that bother us so" (to paraphrase Jimmy Buffett).
How about we just declare victory in all of our wars, stand the troops down, and redirect the vast resources to finding solutions instead of fighting wars?
Wouldn't it be lovely if "peace" broke out everywhere we are fighting a "war"?
January 8, 2013 marks 78 years since the birth of Elvis Presley. I might not have remembered this fact if my radio friend, Bill Audette, the old time rebel of rock 'n' roll, had not done a special tribute to the King and his music this morning on WMPG radio with a special edition of The Night Train Show.
I grew up in the very early days of rock 'n' roll - Elvis singing 'Hound Dog' is pretty much my earliest recollection of hearing music that was different from the music my parents listened to - and I liked it! So I called Bill and asked him to play it, and of course he did, and oh so much more!
Bill played 2 1/2 hours of all Elvis hits, near-hits and long-forgotten tracks. I thought I knew pretty much every song Elvis ever recorded but Bill rooted out some I had never even heard of - and they were all great! Whether you are an ardent Elvis fan (who isn't?) or never heard of him (what planet have you been living on?) you have to listen to this tribute, because if you are already a fan it will remind you just how great the King was, and if you are not already an Elvis fan this will make you one. The show is in two parts and here they are: Tribute to Elvis - part 1 Tribute to Elvis - part 2
And just so you can see what all the hoopla was about, here's a video of Elvis doing 'Hound Dog' on the Milton Berle Show in 1956 (my, how the times have changed!)
