Looking for America: Portland’s melting pot (a series)

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Many supporters of Maine’s governor and America’s president would have you believe that the changes are not a good thing, that they exemplify the shifting demographics that are making the country increasingly unrecognizable to them. Others would argue that Portland’s vitality – and its continuing attraction to young people – derives in no small part from its diversity.

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NIMBY is Not a Four-Letter Word (Part 2)

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Hey! You! Get off of my Coast (with apologies to the Rolling Stones)

In these days of intense partisanship and Congressional gridlock, here’s a plan for bringing the representatives of both parties together: propose drilling for oil and gas in their coastal waters.

Take the state of Maine, for example, which has a Republican senator (Susan Collins), an Independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats (Angus King), a Republican congressman (Bruce Poliquin), and a Democratic congresswoman (Chellie Pingree). All four expressed immediate opposition to the Department of the Interior’s announcement last week to open up over 90% of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas drilling – a modest expansion over the current limit of 6%.

Only Maine’s Republican governor, Paul LePage, who loves oil even more than he loathes environmentalists, refused to condemn the proposal on its face. “The governor believes in a balanced approach,” said a spokeswoman, using a phrase that long ago became a euphemism for “drill, baby drill.” But even LePage seems prepared to oppose some drilling sites to protect the environment, commercial fishing and tourism.

And it’s not only Maine. Almost every coastal state opposes drilling off its shores, which begs the obvious question: if this is such a great idea, why are those most directly affected by it so resistant? Is this just another example of NIMBYs who want to protect their neighborhoods? Of coastal elites who are pleased to fill their tanks and furnaces with oil, gas and coal from “flyover country,” happy to pollute the Gulf of Mexico but hands off the Gulf of Maine?

Maybe it’s all a cynical plot to stick it to the blue states. After all, the red state of Florida got an exemption almost before the ink was dry on Ryan Zinke’s press release.

But maybe these states are on to something. After all, the Interior Department didn’t just vastly expand the proposed areas of drilling, it simultaneously repealed the safety regulations put in after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, while Congress didn’t see fit to renew the oil tax that funds cleaning up the oil companies’ inevitable messes – all in the name of “the most far-reaching regulatory reform in history” we keep hearing is so good for America. Yet no one who has read Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land will soon forget the environmental damage the people in Lake Charles, Louisiana, endure every single day.

My local newspaper noted that Zinke’s call to achieve “American energy dominance” conflicts with our community’s current efforts to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels.

Maybe the NIMBYs in Maine are like the canaries in the coal mines who sense the danger of poisoning the places where we live.

 

Maine coast on a winter evening (photo by Daniel Blaine).  

Maine coast on a winter evening (photo by Daniel Blaine).
 

Looking for America: Beauty and the Bomb Cyclone (a series)

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I lugged what seemed like the 800th load of wood to feed the fireplace’s insatiable appetite, shoveled paths to the car, the compost, and the wood pile, endured two frozen pipes, two nights without heat, and two days when the thermometer never got above single digits . . . and that was just a warm-up (if that’s the word I’m looking for) to the “Bomb Cyclone,” which was heading up the coast of Maine with sub-zero temperatures trailing in its wake.

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Looking for America, Coping with Depression (a series)

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Like more than 16 million Americans, I suffer from depression. For many years I took medication to help cope with my mood swings. I also talked off and on for over two decades with a wonderfully helpful man whom I adamantly refused to call my therapist. But he retired, which is what happens when you (and your support group) grow older, which is, needless to say, depressing.

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Looking for America, from Tombstone to the Lincoln Memorial (a series)

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Most Americans know about the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, when 250,000 people marched for “Jobs and Freedom.” The march ended at the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the speech that would define his legacy, with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson standing behind him saying, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin, tell ‘em about the dream!” – and he did.

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Senator Murkowski’s Sad Bargain

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The price of Senator Lisa Murkowski’s vote to approve the tax bill and reverse herself on health care was to end 57 years – dating back to the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower – of protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Like her father who preceded her as Alaska’s senator, she has been fighting for years to open up ANWR to oil and gas drilling. It looks like she will finally get her wish.

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