Tag: Politics

Maine voters face two hot issues 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

The Pine Tree State has a tradition, so I’m told, of placing complex issues on the statewide ballot because many of the elected state representatives and senators are afraid of negative reactions in a controversy.

Normally, public officials are expected to thoroughly investigate the issues and come to a reasoned decision. That’s why we elect them. Instead, shifting this responsibility to a general public that is rarely fully informed can be like rolling the dice.

This year, there are two issues of special note along those lines.

One is the so-call Right to Repair Act, which would prohibit manufacturers from keeping replacement parts and technology from independent repairmen. I’m still bummed by HP’s ink replacements policy – your machine shuts down if you try to use over-the-counter cartridges. Apple computer users have their own experiences. I know the list of big businesses’ proprietary efforts is growing.

The other issue is Pine Tree Power, which would have the state take over Maine’s two largest electrical utilities. Mainers have some of the highest electrical bills in the country accompanied by some of the longest and most frequent outages. Folks are still worked up over being cut off for weeks years ago after some storms before Central Maine Power got the lines working again. Despite the already high rates, CMP and Versant, the utility in our part of the state, both received permission this past summer to hike the bills another 20 percent. The utilities have lined up 15 times as much money for advertising than the grassroots effort has, no surprise there, and the campaign has a lot of emotional scare. What should be obvious is that somebody’s expecting to be repaid handsomely by staying in power (sorry for the pun). They’re not doing the customers any favors there, either.

So, when you’re checking the news reports tomorrow night or the following day, check the Maine results. They could be enlightening. Or, should we venture, shocking.

Our fair little city has its tribulations, too

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Heaven forbid I give anyone a false impression of the place I’m now residing. With all of its isolation from much of the rest of the nation, Eastport can be way too small for many people, though for a few others that adds to the appeal, even in the depths of a very long winter, which for some of us has a charm all its own.

For a sense of our life, find and then stream the Northern Exposure television series, and throw in a demographic that skewers heavily toward retirees and too many summer people, many of whom we’d love to have year-round. We’re not even as faraway as Cicely’s Alaska, either.

One of the unanticipated dramas is at the local government level. While Eastport is organized as a city, our ruling council has had more than its share of friction going, well, far back, as reflected in the ongoing turnover of our city managers and police chiefs. Last I heard, the assessor/building code inspector was also open.

Pay scale is only part of the problem.

Council meetings are often reported, in print and by word of mouth, as contentious, so much so that one member was forced off the council altogether after obscenity-laced outbursts, another fine councilor resigned in utter exhaustion, and one resident once again started recall petitions after being cut off in public discussion.

There are good reasons a popular bumper sticker does say “Don’t New York My Eastport.” However you want to interpret it. I hope it doesn’t include poetry in our monthly open mic sessions.

Not only is there a tension between the born-and-raised here locals and those of us who are from away (PFAs), or those who pinch pennies and those who see investing in the future, the tension can be seen between paying the bills now versus long-term vision.

~*~

One bit of contention that came up since my moving here has been the painting of a downtown crosswalk by a volunteer group. Their color scheme was a rainbow, emblematic of their identity. I thought it was great, in part because drivers wouldn’t be able to overlook it. Safety first, right?

But then the blowback came, and the council backtracked.

I can understand the opposition, which saw the colors as a partisan statement, something I would resent if someone were in turn to paint a crosswalk in some kind of Trump support. Perhaps, more neutrally, a sexual abstinence outside of marriage stance? These were, in other words, gut-level issues that led to a slippery slope or the proverbial can of worms.

Not that there are easy solutions.

~*~

I’m not about to run for city council or the school board – we need younger blood than I’d offer, and someone more focused on detail than I’d muster these days.

But I’ll certainly back others who are willing to embrace the challenges openly.

What’s wrong with being elite?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As an editor on newspapers where, in an attempt for excellence everyone was giving of themselves totally (many unpaid hours of overtime, etc.), I was always appalled by the charge of “elitism,” which comes to mean “give me mediocrity – not the truth, but pleasantry” – from the same people who would not accept such standards in their professional football quarterback or automobile.

In many religions, however, the “world” of common subservience and society or what some today are more accurately seeing as “empire” is ultimately a mortal trap. In spiritual practice, then, only total effort is acceptable in seeking a holy transformation of this life. If only we can rise to even a portion of it.

As an ancient New England hymn reminded, “Broad is the way that leads to death / and many trod thereupon / but Wisdom shows a narrow way / with here and there a traveler.”

I see that lyric, by the way, as the root of Robert Frost’s road less traveled.

When I ask what’s wrong with being elite, I’m not talking about social status or wealth but something more elusive – something much more humble and loving.

Looking for sportswriters and editors who crossed over to the news side

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Through much of my career, I never quite appreciated the sports staff. The sports desk was over there in its own corner or maybe even a separate room or suite. Unlike the cops beat or business or education or even the courts coverage that filled the “real” news.

But it did produce some of the best political writers and editors in the business.

Their perspective, facing two teams, essentially – especially baseball, with its daily games in season, and delivering on tight deadlines – provided a character-based focus in contrast to those of us who were more policy driven.

Its baseball angle for some fine writers first came to my attention in John Updike’s prose and later David Halberstam, though they didn’t have newspaper experience.

The drama of contests, strategies, determination, hard work, fairness, and a vision is central in their work, along with the reality that so much of the field is about losers who persist and sometimes come out on top or have lasting influence, especially within the realm of a hometown team. Not a bad paradigm.

These former sportswriters and editors were around me throughout my career, though I never kept a list and now wish I had. On the national scene in my time, though, I can point to Charles P. Pierce, Mike Lupica, Ward Just, and Mike McAlery as prime examples of those who broadened their game.

Curiously, I haven’t seen that crossover occurring much from a football foundation. Perhaps that game’s more like a weekly television series or shouting match than the realities of a daily grind.

I’ll let up for now before I’m playing out of my league. But I do want to hear more from others – players and fans alike.

As for Underground Railroad connections?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

While Quakers were active in the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves, the practice wasn’t universally embraced within the Society of Friends. In fact, much of the illegal action across the North was undertaken by evangelical Protestants who even created the altar call at revivals to enlist fellow workers.

Yes, it’s one more story in the American experience that needs to be better known, in all of its gritty reality.

As I describe in Quaking Dover, the Cartland family farm in Lee is believed to have been a stop on one of those lines to freedom. While documentation of such participation is rare, escaped slaved turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass was a frequent visitor to the farm, and like also its small Quaker meetinghouse and school.

The bigger question would be how did the fugitives get that far and where did the route head from there? Not everyone along the way was sympathetic, after all. Newburyport, Massachusetts, for one, was downright hostile and thus an unlikely place to jump ship. As for Portsmouth or Dover?

Establishing reliable yet invisible connections every ten or 20 miles would have been quite an accomplishment. What prompted households to risk everything to the moral cause? They were, after all, a threat to a vast economic system and its wealth.

It’s one more another interesting twist to develop in future research through New Hampshire.

Reconsidering a nest for alternative social progressive witness

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of the sides my Quaking Dover presentation for Cape Cod Friends awakened in me was a nagging awareness that some of the elements that encouraged social progressive action could also be used to sustain reactionary conservative activism from the other sides as well.

This could be seen especially in the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturn of the Roe decision, the result of a long-term resistance movement, where reactionary forces could claim  a victory.

Quite simply, both side have deep roots, perhaps unlike the middle.

My big question now is what makes one morally superior to the other.

The answers, I suspect, can be quite humbling. As well as a point of common engagement.

One of the many ways the dynamic of American society has changed in my own lifetime

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As Dover First Parish pastor David Slater wrote in 1983: “Christianity is becoming more and more counter-cultural. In the 1950s public values were largely Christian values (even Protestant Christian values). Today we are more religiously pluralistic, but even more importantly, more secular. We can no longer assume that the values of the church will be shared by the larger society.”

How prophetic, considering where American society is today.

And how ironic, considering that his congregation embodied the common culture the Quakers in my book were countering.

As a reminder from the dominant side

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The ruling Puritans in New England had reasons for opposing the Quakers, something I need to remember in the midst of my Quaking Dover arguments, They don’t get much sympathy in their objections, at least from my audiences.

As Dover First Parish historian Donald R. Bryant put it, “The Quakers did not conform with the orderly practices of the Puritan churches. They would not join in fellowship, and met among themselves, propagating their own beliefs. Many of them did not do this quietly, but in a manner that was disturbing to regular church members. They were apt to interrupt a meeting or a preacher, or to even interfere with the proceedings of a court. They insulted church order and disturbed the peace. Their conduct was described as ‘indecent and provoking.’”

Some of these points still sting as I look at today’s political and social polarization.

If you missed my latest Zoom presentation

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

You can catch up with my insights on “Quaker Meeting as a nest for social justness” via YouTube, thanks to West Falmouth Friends on Cape Cod.

The event, the latest of the special presentations based on my book, Quaking Dover and the New Hampshire city’s 400th anniversary, was recorded and is now available.

Many thanks to all involved.

To see what transpired during the hour, click here.