What Happened....

[Fading Fast]

I get what you're saying, but I've also done business in enough different cultures around the world to know there is value in getting to know the customs and culture of those with whom you seek to do business. At the end of the day relationships mean everything, and showing some knowledge of the other party's culture will certainly help to ingratiate yourself and improve the chances of business success.

I agree and I've done business with people from many countries and with sincerity tried to learn about their culture and be respectful of it (whom you can address in a meeting with Korean financiers is a true art). My only point is that even with effort, when different cultures meet, both sides need to be open minded and understanding. The Star Trek thing always gets me as it assumed that the culture they are visiting has no ability to be open minded, to understand that things will happen that are unintentional and without malice.

 

[Fading Fast]

New England was founded by Calvinists. Life is *supposed* to be miserable.

Seriously, though, I'm convinced a lot of the way we look at summer people comes from the fact that we endure seven or eight months of cold, rain, sleet, ice, snow and general wretched darkness just to get to summer. We believe those summers have to be earned, and there's quite a bit of both subconscious and conscious resentment for the dillyboppers who come up here to take up space on our shores and use up all the parking spaces without having first had to suffer for it. Sure they spend money here, but they haven't suffered like we have and they don't understand or appreciate what a summer day means to us.

When I first read this, I said, I agree. Then, today, thinking about it more, I'm mixed. First caveat, if someone - the summer tourist or the year-rounder is intentionally rude, close-minded, etc. - then whatever, we know where that goes and I have no respect for him or her. But regarding a summer tourist, who (let's be generous) has worked hard, is a decent person and saved up to spend the summer in Maine, there is no reason to expect them to think about a parking space the way you do nor should they.

They probably think, hey, we're great for this community as our summer dollars give it an economic lift. Again, if they are arrogant or dismissive of the year-round residents, then they are jerks, but I don't think its fair to resent them for not having "earned" the Maine summer the way the year-round residents do as they probably feel they "earned" their time in Maine just as much as you do and that they are also helping Maine by spending money there.

If the tourists are jerks (I'm sure some are), then I'm with you, but if the tourists just have a different perspective and are, in general, respectful, then that's the price the community pays for being a tourist community. It seems unfair to judge them by a standard for "earning" a summer that isn't applicable to their life experience.

We talk a lot about not prejudging someone. How does anyone know anyone else's life experiences? One of those summer tourists who looks like life has only been good to him might have come from an abusive home, had childhood cancer, been molested, had a spouse steal all his money and then leave him for his best friend, had his business partner abscond with the company's assets and leave him holding the bag, his parents might both have Alzheimers and he cares for them all year except for this one summer when his sister will take it on so that he can have a break, just buried his son who died from drug addiction, and on and on and, despite some version of a tough life history, he righted the ship and is fortunate to be able to enjoy some free time in Maine during the summer. Sometime the most prosperous, healthy, well-adjusted and happy looking people have horrific background stories - not always, but sometimes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Thing is, we didn't choose to become a tourist community. Some towns -- the one down the road comes to mind -- have been tourist traps for the better part of a century, and the rest of us stay far away from them. This one only became one because it was forced into doing so in the 1990s and 2000s by gentrifiers and real-estate speculators descending on us like an occupation force. "Your industries are dying, your people are aging, your ways are outmoded! From here on, you will service us! Resistance is futile!"

It's easy and all too common for outsiders to come in and tell us how we ought to think about what's happend to our own communities -- which is, in itself, a component of that "occupation force" mentality that we find so distasteful -- but I don't think any of you are capable of truly understanding the mentality of a tourist town until you've actually seen it happen to your own town. Years ago there was a local alternative paper that published a poem that captured that feeling better than anything I've ever seen.

"Here come the conies (local term for tourists sauntering down the sidewalk sucking ice cream cones)
Two by two.
Staring, pointing, annoying you.

We'll take their money.
We'll bank their cash.
Smile and say 'thank you.'
Dream of kicking their ass."

In a lot of towns that's the way it really is. It's not that we dislike them as individuals. It's that we dislike having had them, as a class, thrust upon us as the primary means of putting food on our tables when we used to be a strong, proud, self-sustaining community until we were gutted out like a mackerel in the 1980s. It's the fact that when we walk down our own Main Street, that our taxes support, aside from the theatre, a couple of bars, and one old-line cafe, there's nothing left there for us anymore. It's the fact that our side streets don't get maintained and our non-Main Street infrastructure goes to seed because all the money goes into "tourism promotion." It's the fact an entire block was torn down and an entire working-class neighborhood compromised to build a hulking five-story luxury hotel that no local will ever go into unless they have a mop in their hand. It's the fact that our young people are given no consideration other than being told "get out of here as soon as you can, there's nothing for you here." It's the fact that beneath the artificial picture-postcard veneer there's an entire segment of the population that's been effectively disenfranchised and told to get lost, in favor of the interests of a class of people who are just passing thru.

There's a lot of legitimate anger and frustration just under the surface in this town and other towns like it, and it's not about individuals. It's not who the summer people and the gentrifiers and the speculators are that we resent. It's what it all represents.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ Reading your post reminded me of the feelings of the employees at the 200+ year old bank I worked for that got bought out by a much younger bank in the late 1990s. I had only worked for the old bank for a few years, but most of the staff were lifers who deeply identified with being a bank employee.

The resentment to the new bank, its employees, its policies, its simple existence was palpable. The bank employees felt they hadn't asked for this, they hadn't wanted to be taken over, and were resentful of the new parent bank and its employees. They referred to it as an invading army. When our cafeteria was changed to the new bank's one, the bitterness was visceral - they had taken another cultural icon away.

My boss at the time (who had also only joined a few years back - and hired me) had the same perspective I did, which is this is how life works. If we had been strong enough to remain independent, then we wouldn't have been bought and wouldn't have had to deal with the "new" bank, but since for economic and market reasons pretty much out of our control (and certainly out of any one employee's control), the industry was merging and a new reality - like it or not - was forced on us.

He and I adjusted better to the change than the employees who had been there a long time (although, some of those older employees, "got" that, like it or not, there was a new reality and they, too, adjusted fine). The ones who didn't adjust eventually left, were let go or had little career advancement as their resentment was obvious. Those like me did fine not because we were necessarily better skilled, but we just accepted the facts as they were.

It ain't fun, the old culture was changed forever and the resentment never died until the new bank got - you guessed it - bought out five years later.

 

[Paisley]

It's the fact an entire block was torn down and an entire working-class neighborhood compromised to build a hulking five-story luxury hotel that no local will ever go into unless they have a mop in their hand.

If the block was bought and razed through eminent domain in the name of economic development, then I wholeheartedly share your resentment. I'm a supporter of the Institute for Justice. One of their missions is stopping eminent domain abuse.

But if the owners on the block freely sold their properties, well...they might have seen it as an opportunity for a new chapter in life or a way to retire. I don't know what it's like to see a community completely transformed, and in a way I dislike, but I did see Denver go from a fairly pleasant place to live to being trendy, crowded and overpriced, and I went from spending one hour to two hours a day in traffic for a job seven miles away. At the last CPA firm where I worked, the managing parter that most of us loved retired and was replaced by someone who totally fit in to a trendy, crowded, overpriced city, who hired a creepy, vile friend of his to manage the office without even telling the existing office manager what he was doing. I resented it every day. They worked me so hard I came home and fell on the bed every night. Finally, I packed up and left and it was the one of the best things I've ever done. The hour-long commute, the exhaustion, and the nasty old broad I worked for are gone, and life is freakin' awesome.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The building that had been there was, and had been for more than thirty years, a family-run neighborhood pet store. The developer bought the building, refused to renew the shop's lease, and forced them to move to a new location -- where, without the neighborhood clientele, they went out of business six months later. The city, in complicity with the developer, then condemned the building and that was all she wrote. The one with the most money got what he wanted. It was all perfectly legal and capitalistically correct, if that's one's idea of morality. It isn't mine.

Another neighborhood business, an employee-owned-cooperative coffee roasting company, was very nearly forced out as well when the developer complained that roastery's smokestack emitted fumes that would disturb his high-end guests. He then used his influence with the city to drag out an old "odor ordinance" from the 80s which had been used by the first wave of gentrifiers to drive a fish-processing plant out of business and forced the roasting company to either shut down or spend a substantial amount of money to install odor-suppressing equipment. The neighborhood rallied together and thru nickel-and-dime donations -- including a pizza party thrown by the former operators of a beloved Main Street joint which had just been driven out of business itself because its landlord could get more money by leasing to an "upscale" men's clothing store -- managed to raise the money to keep the place going for now. But it's only a matter of time before Mr. Gottbuxx finds another thing to complain about. He clearly doesn't want to have a bunch of bearded commies for neighbors.

Neighbors and homeowners around the area have also been impinged on in the interest of the hotelier, with parking lots carved out of their neighborhoods thru various zoning machinations. To say nothing of their homes now being in permanent shade due to the height of the building, which hulks over their houses like a boulder next to a row of anthills.

There is a blue-collar neighborhood bar where sailors and lobstermen go to shoot pool and hoist a few just up the street behind this hotel -- the last surviving neighborhood bar in the city. Its days are numbered, and everybody knows it. The resentment continues to build.

 

[Fading Fast]

At the risk of stirring up a hornets nest, there is nothing capitalistic about a businessman (using that term loosely) leveraging (legally, in a grey area or illegally) government rules, laws, restrictions, "various zoning machinations," etc., to advance his business, push a competitor out, force a tenant out, etc.

To me that is simply corruption / collusion between powerful business and government interests. As an ardent capitalist, it actually makes me sick to see because it (unfairly) gives something that is called, but which isn't, capitalism a bad name. A capitalist doesn't manipulate the government to advance his business; he invests his money, pays market prices for the buildings, land, equipment, etc. he needs and offers a better product, service, etc. to the market where people, of their own free will, choose to spend their money. That is how a true capitalist succeeds or fails.

Everything you described above is shady or corrupt collusion between business and government officials which is why I am disgusted not only with those so-called businessmen but also with government officials who do that. The government is suppose to protect the people, fairly enforce the laws and balance the interests of all the community's residents.

I want to see those businessmen and those government officials locked up (and maybe even longer sentences for the government officials since they are suppose to be the "public servants" that protect the people) and for the marginal stuff that maybe isn't technically illegal, I'd love to see the community vote them or their bosses out of office so that the zoning restrictions, etc. can be changed.

I will stand arm and arm with anyone who wants to stop government corruption, stop government colluding with so-called businessmen to tilt the scales in favor of the deep pockets.

As Paisley noted and I implied earlier, if developers, without favor, are willing to pay market prices and owners, without coercion, are willing to sell and that sparks a change in a community, that's capitalism and that's life - everything evolves and changes over time. I'll defend that system, but not some corrupt, shady crony "capitalism" that is an immoral, illegal and crooked "partnership" between "businessmen" and "public servants."

 

[LizzieMaine]

The problem is when there are enough gentrifiers in town that the gentrification agenda takes over the city council and the zoning board. The current council, just as an example, brought in a new city manager with a dubious record and a questionable resume, whose specific charge was to get rid of the "dead wood" among city employees. This was code, and was understood by everyone here as code, for "get rid of the old-line people who don't agree with the direction the city was going." He did this, thru both legal and extralegal means, and when the city attorney objected, he was added to the enemies list too and was pushed out.

The most egregious firing was the city harbormaster -- a man who had held the job to strong support for nearly fifteen years, and was an outspoken advocate for the "working waterfront." The city manager first forced him to announce his retirment -- but when he continued to speak out, the city manager fired him with two weeks to go before the retirement and announced in the press that he was dismissed for "looking at porn on his computer", a claim for which no evidence or documentation was ever presented. Not only is the man out of a job, his good reputation in the community was destroyed.

The result was -- and I don't exaggerate -- an atmosphere of terrorization around the city, not just among municipal employees but among the public in general. The feeling is if you speak out, if you don't fall right in line with their agenda, they will get you. A working-class man whose garage/towing business had been marked for extermination by the gentrifiers ran for city council last fall, was elected by a large margin -- and the pro-gentrification councilors immediately put the squeeze on him until he resigned.

That's what we're left with. People are afraid of losing their jobs, their businesses, and their reputations if they speak out against the direction the town is going. The pressure really is that strong.

The city manager finally quit, at least, after the local paper -- which he had tried to muzzle by enforcing no-talk-to-media orders on all city employees -- got on his back and stayed there. But we have every reason the next one will be just as bad, because he or she, like the council itself, will just be a puppet of the pro-gentrification crowd. Money talks. The rest of us can go to hell.

But I won't go any further, because, as they say, politics is politics, is politics. But *this* is what gentrification does to communities. It's not just the Invisible Middle Finger Of The Market or pissed-off locals being mean to nice middle-class white people from away.

I will say this, though, lest anyone think I hate everybody who wasn't born and raised here. There was a wave of people who moved here in the 1970s who some here would sneer at as "hippies." They were bearded young people who dressed badly, listened to horrific music, often did unspeakable things in the back of their rusty vans, wore Castro caps instead of fedoras, and refused to support certain things that were going on in late-sixites/early-seventies America. They were the "back to the landers," who gave up on the vapidity of postwar suburbia to move up here and live in the woods.

Some of them couldn't hack it, and went back where they came from, got rid of the beards and the granny dresses and became stockbrokers. But the ones who didn't sell out stayed here for the long haul. They did not try to take over the towns they moved to, but they did contribute to those towns in constructive ways as farmers, carpenters, woodsmen and woodswomen, and other such things. They didn't drive up rents and they didn't speculate in real estate -- but they did stick around and eventually, they were accepted into our communities as though they were actually born among us. They did it the right way -- they assimilated into our way of doing things, and into our definition of "community." And, like the people who started the coffee roastery, now they're often the ones getting the shaft from the gentrifiers. When that happens, as in that particular case, we old-timers fight side by side with them in full class solidarity, and every once in a while, because of that solidarity, we win.

 

[Paisley]

What this sounds like is eminent domain abuse and crony capitalism. For the record, I'm not in favor of either one, to the extent that a few days ago I designated the Institute for Justice as the beneficiary of my 401(k). IJ is a nonprofit, public interest law firm that takes eminent domain abuse cases, among other things. It sounds like somebody should call them.

As far as I know, the City of Indianapolis isn't using such abuses to revitalize the city--in fact, it's quite difficult to even take over a house that's been abandoned for years. Even with some changes to state law, the city has had a tough time tearing down those that are beyond repair. Sadly, that law was one of the things that left parts of the city with entire neighborhoods filled with abandoned houses--including some beautiful, historic buildings that have gone to ruin. Squatters and criminals took over some of them. I can't see that there's much to be taken away from those areas. Just to give you an idea of one of the areas in transition, here's a Google street view of East 10th Street back in 2007, with 2015 in the window.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Somebody should've called them when the pet store was still a viable thing. It's gone now, she's dead, and the hotel is a fact, so the boat, as they say, has sailed.

I've always considered "crony capitalism" to be a tautology, because there really hasn't ever been, nor will there ever be, any other kind. As Ned Beatty so eloquently put it forty years ago, speaking Paddy Chayefsky's words, in "Network:"

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

 

[MikeKardec]

This is fascinating to me, because we're like that here. We very rarely refer to each other by name in conversation -- and there's often an actual sense of discomfort about using someone's name that way, as though it's an imposition on their identity. When someone engages us in conversation and repeatedly uses our name, the reaction it usually provokes is one of suspicion, like we're about to be conned into buying something we don't want.

I don't remember ever using my friends' names in conversation when we were kids, and I don't remember ever doing so after we grew up. At my current job, we mostly refer to each other by random oddball nicknames, which usually make no sense and have no particular context, and very very seldom by our actual names.

Random thoughts:

It's a kind of a pulp convention to have a character who is being aggressive use the other character's name a lot. Sort of like the aggressive character is "accusing" the other person of being called that. It's hard to describe but I've seen it a lot.

Of course a con man might use (even subconsciously) the other person's name as a kind of reverse of the advice to hostages: "Use your name so they'll think of you as a person." It does feel like a person is trying to push familiarity.

If I recall, the Navajo overcompensation to not using names is to introduce yourself by rattling off all your familial connections ... or maybe mostly your mother's, I can't remember. The culture is somewhat matrilineal.

Navajos (if someone here is Dine please speak up and correct me or elaborate) are quite minimalist, thus the lip twitch. We used to mimic Navajo hilarity by holding back a smile and glancing at the other person. Their sense of humor is very subtle and often based on punning. I have heard that this is because there are a limited number of basic or course sounds in Athabaskan (the language group that Navajos, Apaches and Kiowas speak) and so the distinction between words is VERY subtle, thus leading to complex, multilevel and extremely sophisticated punning.

It's very common for Australians, a group who would have a hard time in Maine because they tend to NOT be reticent ... compared to most Americans they have a gift of quick (and reasonably legitimate) familiarity ... to give one another extremely odd nicknames that are particular to that circle of friends. I guess a single individual could have a dozen nicknames. I knew four for one guy I worked with and even knew which group the different names applied to.

In response to my many questions relating to Mainer behavior (a trip up the coast ten years ago allowed me many odd encounters) a good friend on mine who grew up in Maine summed it up with: "Well you know, the state is a cul de sac." I never understood that yet it also seemed to explain everything on a level somewhere beyond conscious comprehension.

 

[MikeKardec]

^^^ Reading your post reminded me of the feelings of the employees at the 200+ year old bank I worked for that got bought out by a much younger bank in the late 1990s. I had only worked for the old bank for a few years, but most of the staff were lifers who deeply identified with being a bank employee.

The resentment to the new bank, its employees, its policies, its simple existence was palpable. The bank employees felt they hadn't asked for this, they hadn't wanted to be taken over, and were resentful of the new parent bank and its employees. They referred to it as an invading army.

 

[Fading Fast]

The problem is when there are enough gentrifiers in town that the gentrification agenda takes over the city council and the zoning board. The current council, just as an example, brought in a new city manager with a dubious record and a questionable resume, whose specific charge was to get rid of the "dead wood" among city employees. This was code, and was understood by everyone here as code, for "get rid of the old-line people who don't agree with the direction the city was going." He did this, thru both legal and extralegal means, and when the city attorney objected, he was added to the enemies list too and was pushed out.

The most egregious firing was the city harbormaster -- a man who had held the job to strong support for nearly fifteen years, and was an outspoken advocate for the "working waterfront." The city manager first forced him to announce his retirment -- but when he continued to speak out, the city manager fired him with two weeks to go before the retirement and announced in the press that he was dismissed for "looking at porn on his computer", a claim for which no evidence or documentation was ever presented. Not only is the man out of a job, his good reputation in the community was destroyed.

The result was -- and I don't exaggerate -- an atmosphere of terrorization around the city, not just among municipal employees but among the public in general. The feeling is if you speak out, if you don't fall right in line with their agenda, they will get you. A working-class man whose garage/towing business had been marked for extermination by the gentrifiers ran for city council last fall, was elected by a large margin -- and the pro-gentrification councilors immediately put the squeeze on him until he resigned.

That's what we're left with. People are afraid of losing their jobs, their businesses, and their reputations if they speak out against the direction the town is going. The pressure really is that strong.

The city manager finally quit, at least, after the local paper -- which he had tried to muzzle by enforcing no-talk-to-media orders on all city employees -- got on his back and stayed there. But we have every reason the next one will be just as bad, because he or she, like the council itself, will just be a puppet of the pro-gentrification crowd. Money talks. The rest of us can go to hell.

But I won't go any further, because, as they say, politics is politics, is politics. But *this* is what gentrification does to communities. It's not just the Invisible Middle Finger Of The Market or pissed-off locals being mean to nice middle-class white people from away.

I will say this, though, lest anyone think I hate everybody who wasn't born and raised here. There was a wave of people who moved here in the 1970s who some here would sneer at as "hippies." They were bearded young people who dressed badly, listened to horrific music, often did unspeakable things in the back of their rusty vans, wore Castro caps instead of fedoras, and refused to support certain things that were going on in late-sixites/early-seventies America. They were the "back to the landers," who gave up on the vapidity of postwar suburbia to move up here and live in the woods.

Some of them couldn't hack it, and went back where they came from, got rid of the beards and the granny dresses and became stockbrokers. But the ones who didn't sell out stayed here for the long haul. They did not try to take over the towns they moved to, but they did contribute to those towns in constructive ways as farmers, carpenters, woodsmen and woodswomen, and other such things. They didn't drive up rents and they didn't speculate in real estate -- but they did stick around and eventually, they were accepted into our communities as though they were actually born among us. They did it the right way -- they assimilated into our way of doing things, and into our definition of "community." And, like the people who started the coffee roastery, now they're often the ones getting the shaft from the gentrifiers. When that happens, as in that particular case, we old-timers fight side by side with them in full class solidarity, and every once in a while, because of that solidarity, we win.

Taking your first statement: "The problem is when there are enough gentrifiers in town that the gentrification agenda takes over the city council and the zoning board." in combination with all the abusive practices you showed that the city used to advance its agenda recalled for me what many smarter than I have said: democracy is mob rule by another name.

The theoretical beauty of our "Republic" form of government is that the rights of the minority are protected from the dictates of the 51%. Unfortunately, it doesn't always play out that way. I am as against businesses leveraging the power of the gov't to advance its agenda as one can be, but I am also against gov't having that much power to leverage. It's a toxic mix that always comes together to squash those not connected and powerful.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, the former City Manager did keep one promise. When he came in, he promised to run the city "like a business," and to promote a "pro-business" agenda. Sure enough, he gave us The Business. At least, though, unlike his previous job, he did, as far as we know, keep his hand out of the till.

The council-city manager form of government is basically the worst of both worlds. The city manager is not an elective office -- he's a hired administrator brought in by the city council. Theoretically he's supposed to carry out the policy of the council, but all too often he gets the sense that he's a Trained Professional, and he knows what it's all about, and the council needs to just stand out of the way and let him do his job. Or, as in our latest case, he's just a tinpot dictator with delusions of godhood. But either way he is not directly accountable to the people -- only to the council, which as we saw, often has an agenda of its own.

This kind of thing very seldom happens in the "town meeting" form of government, used by most communities in Maine, where the entire voting population of the town is the legislative body. Organized political parties are prohibited under this system. Selectmen are chosen to carry out the policy decided by voters at the town meeting, and in bigger towns the selectmen hire a town manager to handle the paperwork. But the real power in such cases lies directly with the people. Having lived under both arrangements, I much, much prefer the "town meeting" style. Every voter has a voice -- which can be either secret ballot or show of hands, depending on the will of the voters -- every issue is discussed and debated face to face on the floor of the meeting -- which can last all day -- and the result is usually a workable consensus and full transparency. Plus, after the meeting, there's always something to eat.

 

[ChiTownScion]

This kind of thing very seldom happens in the "town meeting" form of government, used by most communities in Maine, where the entire voting population of the town is the legislative body. Organized political parties are prohibited under this system. Selectmen are chosen to carry out the policy decided by voters at the town meeting, and in bigger towns the selectmen hire a town manager to handle the paperwork. But the real power in such cases lies directly with the people. Having lived under both arrangements, I much, much prefer the "town meeting" style. Every voter has a voice -- which can be either secret ballot or show of hands, depending on the will of the voters -- every issue is discussed and debated face to face on the floor of the meeting -- which can last all day -- and the result is usually a workable consensus and full transparency. Plus, after the meeting, there's always something to eat.

One of our dearest friends enrolled in the University of Vermont's Morgan Horse breeding and management program, and she said that she had the fondest memories of attending New England town meetings. She was impressed by the passion and sense of participatory citizenship that she witnessed: she had read about it in school and had a vague Norman Rockwell- esque notion of it... but when she saw it in person she was duly impressed.

 

[Fading Fast]

One of our dearest friends enrolled in the University of Vermont's Morgan Horse breeding and management program, and she said that she had the fondest memories of attending New England town meetings. She was impressed by the passion and sense of participatory citizenship that she witnessed: she had read about it in school and had a vague Norman Rockwell- esque notion of it... but when she saw it in person she was duly impressed.

From Wikipedia: Freedom of Speech is the first of the Four Freedoms paintings by Norman Rockwell...Freedom of Speech depicts a scene of a local town meeting in which Jim Edgerton, the lone dissenter to the town councilors' announced plans to build a new school, was accorded the floor as a matter of protocol.[7]



Edit add: this is my attempt at pulling a 2jakes and posting a topical photo.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's really like that. People will discuss and debate every single line item of the municipal budget, down to the penny, and items will often be adjusted or amended. The most respected person in town usually the one who acts as Moderator of the town meeting -- and they don't move on to the next item until every possible shading of the item in question has been thrashed out.

Town meeting warrants are issued a few weeks before the meeting and are posted in all public places and in the press, as well as in the Town Report, a small booklet in which the names of all residents who are delinquent in their taxes are published for all to see. They still begin with the traditional 18th Century language: "To JOSEPH H. BLOW, Constable, Anytown Maine, in the COUNTY OF KNOX in the United States of America. GREETINGS. In the name of the STATE OF MAINE you are hereby required to NOTIFY and WARN all Persons qualified by Law to vote in municipal affairs to ASSEMBLE at the Anytown Grammar School at Eleven O'Clock in the Forenoon on Saturday, the TWELFTH DAY OF MARCH in the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand and Sixteen to consider and decide Articles raised in the following WARRANT:"

As a kid I was always impressed about the WARN part. Made it sound like you damn well better show up OR ELSE.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In response to my many questions relating to Mainer behavior (a trip up the coast ten years ago allowed me many odd encounters) a good friend on mine who grew up in Maine summed it up with: "Well you know, the state is a cul de sac." I never understood that yet it also seemed to explain everything on a level somewhere beyond conscious comprehension.

I know exactly what your friend was talking about, and it's absolutely right -- we really do sort of view the place as the end of the road. Keep in mind only border one other state -- New Hampshire, where the people are only marginally less cranky than we are. Most of our border abuts Canada, not the United States, so there's also a certain sense of emotional disconnect with the rest of the country -- chest-beating yee-haw flag-waving is frowned upon, people don't brag about military service, and more than a few of us will grumble that the wrong side won the War of 1812.

The most important thing to understand about Mainers is that Maine is *not* a "nice" place to live in the way that a Midwesterner or a Southerner might define "nice." It looks that way in the summer, or on the snowy winter postcards, but when you've lived your whole life here you realize that the actual physical environment of the place is basically hostile to human life. The winters are long, dark, cold, and usually unrelentingly brutal. The summers are short and alternate between cold and wet and stiflingly hot and humid. The wildlife is not especially friendly -- deer and moose will run in front of your cars with no warning, bears will tear up your garbage cans, fishers will come out of the woods at night and kill your pets or attack your children, mosquitoes and blackflies will torture you all night while you try to sleep. The salt air along the coast will cover any compromised metal surface with rust practically overnight, and the salt on the roads will destroy your car, no matter how expensive it is, in just a few years' time. If the potholes and frost heaves don't wreck your suspension first. The rocks are hard, the soil is worthless, your lawn and garden will be nothing but weeds if you don't spend every waking hour pulling them, and anything that does manage to grow, the bugs will get. The shore is covered with broken glass, rusty metal and sharp rocks, and the seawater is raw and cold no matter how hot the weather gets. And you grow up wise to the fact that the "tang o' the sea" the restaurants advertise to the tourists is really just the smell of decaying dead marine life.

This kind of place produces a certain type of people. Those who are physically or emotionally flaccid will not survive here. The rest of us wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

 

[MikeKardec]

I know exactly what your friend was talking about, and it's absolutely right -- we really do sort of view the place as the end of the road. Keep in mind only border one other state -- New Hampshire, where the people are only marginally less cranky than we are. Most of our border abuts Canada, not the United States, so there's also a certain sense of emotional disconnect with the rest of the country -- chest-beating yee-haw flag-waving is frowned upon, people don't brag about military service, and more than a few of us will grumble that the wrong side won the War of 1812.

The most important thing to understand about Mainers is that Maine is *not* a "nice" place to live in the way that a Midwesterner or a Southerner might define "nice." It looks that way in the summer, or on the snowy winter postcards, but when you've lived your whole life here you realize that the actual physical environment of the place is basically hostile to human life.

This kind of place produces a certain type of people. Those who are physically or emotionally flaccid will not survive here. The rest of us wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

On the trip I mentioned I stopped at a roadside store to buy a soda and when I brought me purchase up to the clerk I said: "How are you doing?" She said: "It's cold."

It was a beautiful early Fall day, probably 50 degrees. She must have thought I was asking about her entire life.

I've never forgiven Ray Gideon and Bruce Evans for taking Steven King's "The Body" out of Maine and into granola saturated Oregon, turning it into "Stand by Me." It was a change that permeated the entire story, making it an amusing adventure that happened comfortably in a glowing, rosy, past. The original novella was fierce and hard, those kids had nothing except that they'd had the balls to walk for days to "discover" the missing, lost, and dead boy.

He does that stuff pretty well and I imagine it's all about where he comes from. In "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" he has a nice (though unhappy) pre teen girl lost in the woods. By the time she survives two weeks she's ready to take on a bear with a broken transistor radio as he only weapon. Absolutely badass.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I used to work with a guy who was involved with the incident that may have inspired "The Body." As he told it to me, he and several friends were swimming in an abandoned quarry, and one of them was killed when he dived in and hit an outcropping of rock. His body then sank to the bottom of the quarry and the water was so clear they could see it and do nothing about it. They spent almost the whole night debating what they ought to do.

This all happened one town over from the town where Stephen King would later teach high school, and he had to have heard about it -- it became a local legend.