The Road Forks

These are my (probably) my last words to the googlegroup formed for Maine State House candidates. I loved campaigning and wanted another outcome. That said, the State House might be difficult territory in the foreseeable future for a Lefty McLenin like myself.

All:

From dog avoidance strategy to campaign advice and encouragement, to Terry's stark words and Matt's sweet farewell, this googlegroup has been a touchstone for a newbie candidate. Though I was one who, for personal mini-drama-esque reasons, failed to run the campaign I would have liked, I found the sense of support, camaraderie and high jinx here to be fine fodder.


In the last hours of our email group's existence, I stand and salute you all. I salute your engagement, belief in the common good, kindness, humor, focus, intelligence and sense of social justice. Thank you for including me in the effort to move Maine's people toward a higher standard of education, health and egalitarianism. That any one of your number might find my words and work of high enough quality to stand alongside yours still makes me swoon a little.


The realities of Tuesday's party shift have only just begun to sink in with me. As one of the uninitiated, I can only guess at the devastation some must be feeling. For instance, it hardly seems possibly that another AG could begin to do a comparable job, regardless of party affiliation.


The candidates' experience of wearing our hearts and minds on our sleeves for all to see, cannot be duplicated any other way and, win or lose, I would not have missed it for the world. 


Regardless of what political work I do next, whether writing and carping from the riverbanks, or wading again into the rapids, my understanding of those rapids has been exponentially increased by floating a small section and landing safely on a District #53 sandbar. Those of you still in your rafts and kayaks head to Class 5, rock-strewn State House halls with my admiration, gratitude and support. I trust you all have your helmets strapped on tightly.


If you need a paddle, let me know. I have long arms and am a good swimmer.


Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.


Lee Roberts


Former candidate for Dist. #53, Alna, Dresden, Pittston and Wiscasset.

Journalism, real live journalism

Though I often bemoan the quality of our local newspapers, the Lincoln County News and the Wiscasset Newspaper, both of whom I once worked for, today I was twice reminded that journalism is far from dead. The not-for-profit, pure public interest, news organization ProPublica is doing the work of the angels promoting investigative journalism and paying real money for investigative reporting.
As a responsible State House candidate, I decided to stanch the flow of misinformation I hear at some of the doors while campaigning and went looking for real figures about where Recovery Act money is being spent. I found it at ProPublica. Not only is it there, it is accessible, searchable and organized. Here is Maine's page. Have a look and take it on the road.
This was on top of NPR and ProPublica's efforts to expose links between sketchy doctors and the promotion of pharmaceuticals.

No Beginning No End

Spiral Galaxy M100 hubblesite.org

Beginning with a three-week stay in the local hospital, this summer, despite maddeningly perfect weather, has been horrible. Sparing the details for another day, suffice to say I have embraced the suck and up is the only direction that remains.

While being buffeted by the winds of ick, drama and heartache, a Tweet came over the Twitterbox a week and a half ago that buoyed me in a surprising weightless way. One of my science-centric Twitter pals put up a link to an article about a theory gaining traction in the astrophysics world--did you know I moonlight as an astrophysicist? No?--that describes the Universe as never having a beginning. This mathematical--I'm assuming it's mathematical, probably some other stuff, too--theory says the Universe has always been here.

Now, I don't know about you, but that little piece of information changes everything. Always is a long time, like forever, right? Considering that the Universe has always been here takes some pressure off. I suspect that I'm not going to articulate this the way I would like. Nevertheless, it seems the subatomic particles that make up everything were always here and by some logic will always be here.

Maybe love, forgiveness and beauty are immeasurable representations of the immeasurability of the universe. Maybe the Classical beginning-middle-and-end manner of seeing everything from careers to relationships to lives to screenplays is handy, but not essential to the cosmos. Maybe the fact that my refrigerator is full and it becomes increasingly challenging to see the back of it really doesn't matter in this scheme of things.

Anyway, if you want to read more about this theory--not such a new one it turns out--head to the Technology Review Blog over at MIT. Be sure to read the comments--those that you can understand--too.

Running and Dancing

Update: For now this blog will double as campaign central. The newest news is we have a bank account and can deposit seed money donations made out to "Lee Roberts for Maine State House" c/o The First, P.O. Box 431, Wiscasset, ME 04578. Many thanks in advance.

This weekend we collected our first signatures toward my campaign to gain the District 53 seat in the State House of Representatives. Pretty darned fun. People even wrote $5 checks to the Maine Clean Election Fund in my name. Anyone in District 53, Wiscasset, Alna, Dresden and Pittston, can make a $5 clean election donation online by clicking here. We have to collect 60 from district members before April.

Initially, I had been volunteered to convene the Alna caucus, a smallish job mostly making sure our town has representation in the Democratic Party. Almost simultaneously, House Speaker Hannah Pingree sent an e-mail asking if I would consider running for my local House seat, currently held by my Alna neighbor, Republican Les Fossel, a biggish job with an intellectually and aerobically challenging preamble called a campaign that I must win. I am guessing I came to her attention through my work with Change that Works and the commercial CTW made with me asking Senator Snowe for real health care reform.

Tuesday, while visiting the State House and observing the House in action, from Pingree's consummate leadership to an old friend's unabashed support, I made the final decision to run.

Speaker Pingree, whom I first met when she was about eight as I wrote a story about her mother Chellie's North Haven yarn business, cuts a brainy and efficient figure. If she represents modern Maine politics, despite all appearances to the contrary, things are looking up for us. Pingree welcomed me and checked in more than once during a busy day of work and pomp. She has the ineffable skill of a consummate hostess that gave me the sense that my comfort was a primary part of her day's agenda, and went on to demonstrate an executive's ability to run meetings and the whole freaking House agenda with vigor, focus and humor. You haven't lived 'til you've seen, and heard, her wield a gavel.

Phippsburg native, singer and former waitress at the elegant Elliot House--now defunct--in Bath, Leila Percy put her long arms around me and gave me wonderful advice about how to keep straight the zillions of welcoming Democrats. Handing me a pen and a register of the legislature, replete with pictures and committee assignments, she said, "Whenever you meet a member, write down where and when next to their picture."

Since my brief career with Leila at the Eliott House, I have worked in other restaurants, marine science, hospitality, retail clothing and international airlines, and all that before reporting for the Courier-Gazette, then teaching at Lincoln Academy in Newcastle for 11 years. Later I worked as MPBN's Station Operations Manager and a subeditor at the Lincoln County News. For the last two academic years I have worked at Thomaston's Georges Valley High School as an English teacher or ed tech. The virtual hiring freeze at Maine's high schools has taken its toll on experienced teachers like me looking for work. Lately, my state of underemployment is enabling me to finish my long dormant master's degree in American and New England Studies at the University of Southern Maine.

For those who want my whole CV, I'll attach a copy in the near future. Suffice to say I've had a broad and varied work life with wonderful jobs and co-workers throughout the Midcoast and beyond. I look forward to using my experience in the interest of the people of Wiscasset, Alna, Dresden and Pittston.

So much for the running. Well, almost. I also run on local roads and the occasional treadmill. Whether I will have time to train for and finish the Maine Sport Triathlon as I did last year remains to be seen. A successful State House campaign will certainly require the best of my dance skills, modern and social, literal and figurative.

Cross-posted at Dirigo Blue.

Health Care Reform Fantods

Remember when Holden Caulfield got the fantods? Or did he accuse others of having them? Anyway, I'm pretty sure I had a case yesterday morning when Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake sent me an e-mail urging me to phone Congress asking that they scuttle the Senate Health Care bill.

I admire Jane Hamsher. Writer, film producer, breast cancer survivor and burr under the status quo's saddle, she has ridden health care hard. Her blog Firedoglake is reliably smart and irreverent and often hilarious. She makes me want to do her bidding. This morning I couldn't, ergo the fantods.

Thank heaven for Twitter. Within half an hour a handful more smart people posted charts and links that calmed the roiling sea in my head. One of the few Twitter friends I have whom I've met in real life, Bumblebums, called Hamsher "a gadfly" and reminded me that less shrill voices are out there.

Some of those include Jon Cohn, senior editor at the National Review, and Dan Roam of BackoftheNapkin.com fame. May the gods and goddesses of political discourse bless Chris Bowers, too. His consistently thoughtful voice over at OpenLeft.com is like kryptonite to politically engendered anxiety.

All of these writers kept me from fretting. They made my work for SEIU and Change That Works seem right minded and good, not the naive waste of time my lesser angels had begun to hiss in my ear.

So, we traded health care reform for health insurance reform. So, it's only a modicum of reform. Click on Jon Cohn's piece and look carefully at his chart. He makes it clear that this reform is significantly better than the scalpel in the eye we have been experiencing for decades.

Update, 0940 23.Dec.09: Apparently other lefty liberals are feeling the same about Hamsher.

Lousy, Lazy Journalism: Mine

In fact, what I'm about to commit here can hardly be called journalism at all. I cannot tell this story properly because I do not have the witness's permission to use his name and I have not taken the time to do the necessary investigative reporting to make the story interesting or informative. Nevertheless, the story wants telling. Maine's forests depend on it.

Here is what I know.

A lifelong Maine logger has become so dejected and demoralized by the recent degradation of woodcutting practices in the state that he is moving to upstate New York to work in a more sustainable industry. This logger, about 50, had been living north of Orono for nearly 30 years. I met him this fall, a few weeks after he had sold his home and just before he and his wife set out for New York.

This Grizzly Adams of a man loomed over us. Even Stan, who at six foot three inches is a bit of a loomer himself, had to lift his chin a hair to meet the man's gaze. The logger's long blond curls hung in tendrils past his clean plaid flannel shirt collars. He told us his story in poignant tones. Though he did not appear to be a man accustomed to sharing emotion with strangers, more than once his voice caught and his hands opened as if invoking cosmic help for the sad state of Maine's north woods.

He told us that even before the state's fiscal situation deteriorated to its current abyss, standards and practices in Maine's woods had begun to drift. He said a huge investment company called GMO had recently purchased land formerly owned by paper companies and that since that exchange logging in Maine had changed dramatically.

The logger spoke of GMO in almost mystical terms. He alluded to the company's size and power without really explaining what kind of company it was. Only when I got home to Google did I see that it is a multi-national investment firm with investment interests running the gamut from forestry to algorithmic trading. The head of acquisitions for the forestry division is Bob Saul.

"We never left land looking like they do now," said the logger, as he described the new wood harvesting order. "They're just chewing it up." He said no one is watching anymore. Or if there is supervision it is of the least ethical kind. "GMO has power over them somehow," he surmised.

The sorrow and anxiety in this hard working man's face was clear. The prospects of moving his household at a time when most men begin to plan their retirement showed.

If anyone knows anything about GMO or Bob Saul, I'd appreciate the help. Because of laziness, disorganization and general distraction, I've given up illuminating this story beyond a man's heartbreak at having to leave the sweet home in the woods he had made. The story, if there is any truth to this sweet man's tale, deserves much more attention.

Military Effectively Bans Abortion for Female Soldiers

Unable to get an abortion during a tour of duty in Iraq a soldier is left with no option but to do it herself—a humiliating but not uncommon story. Women in the military are forced to obtain a leave to get the care they need; but if they’re honest about why, they put their military career in jeopardy. If they’re not, they put their career in jeopardy.

One woman's response devastated her career. The article's by Kathryn Joyce, who exposed the power of the Christian Right's influence on families in "Quiverful: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement."

I found this story thanks to reporter @sarahposner.

Facebook Moves Beyond the Pale

The expression "beyond the pale" has to do with boundaries, as in out of bounds, off the reservation, beyond our control, over the edge, et al. One of the reasons Facebook seemed fun and interesting initially is that it had boundaries. Users could relatively easily control what they saw and what others saw of their cyber-lives.

In a recent move, the powers that be at FB have made two grave errors in judgment. What it will mean remains to be seen, but the changes have to be viewed as wrong and wrong by anyone who values boundaries of any kind. (Yes, for to some of my friends this seems an odd stance for me to take. Let's just say Facebook raised my boundary consciousness.)

First, they have decided to index all content for search engines in order to drive page view traffic. All content they have access to, that is. And they are working hard to make sure that is a great deal of content.

Second, in a supposed move to make privacy better, default settings have been changed so that unless one is careful, everything in a profile, album, listing or page is available to everyone in the world.

This does not even take into account the recent third party astroturfing, where health insurers' trade groups offered gaming cash, for games like Mafia Wars and FarmVille, in exchange for a few clicks. These clicks eventually led to the gamers unwittingly lending their names to anti-health care reform letters. This is not a way to warm the cockles of my heart.

I am deleting my long inactive account tonight.

Dana Perino is No Ainsley Hayes

In late November former Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino made headlines with career moves, then a World's Worst Person nomination. First former Clinton administration PR guy Mark Penn hired her for his DC firm Burson-Marsteller where she joins the likes of Bush pal Karen Hughes and Clinton speechwriter Josh Gottheimer.

Within the week the Obama administration nominated Perino for the federal Broadcasting Board of Governors. According to the Hill the board:

...governs all government sponsored, non-military international broadcasting outlets, such as Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and Alhurra. The BBG is a nine member, bipartisan panel.

Next thing we know, Perino, as part of a regular gig on Fox News describes the recent Fort Hood nightmare as a domestic terrorist attack and appears to forget Sept. 11, 2001 when she claims there were no such attacks during President George W. Bush's watch. This goof garnered her a World's Worst Person award from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

Fresh off a wonderful West Wing jag with S, I cannot help but be struck by the stark difference between Perino and the fictional blonde Republican whom WW's President Bartlett hires as White House counsel because, as his Chief of Staff Leo McGarry says, "he likes smart people who disagree with him." Early in season two, Ainsley Hayes catches a vaguely smug smartypants Sam Seaborn flatfooted on a live television show and proceeds to demonstrate intelligence and charming nerdiness enough to fit in with the rest of the WW crew.

Here in real life, Dana Perino forgot who was president when the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001, so I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have known whether Gilbert and Sullivan's "He is an Englishman" was in Pinafore or Penzance. Both Hayes and Seaborn knew it was Pinafore.

Maine's Charter Schools

So, I'm on holiday in Florida, headed to the beach any minute, and my @AugustaInsider Twitter feed points out some editorials and recent columns about how our esteemed governor's refusal to allow charter schools in the state has kept us from receiving federal Race to the Top dollars and will keep other monies and advantages from Maine schools. This makes no sense to me, since we have the oldest charter schools in the country. We call them New England Academies.

When the legislaure began the charter school dust-up several months ago, I e-mailed some reporter friends and asked them to write a story and help me, and I'm sure other, to understand why Maine's handful of "private schools in the public interest" don't count as charter schools. Though I never saw a story, I figured there had to be an answer.

Now that I understand the consequences of the lack of charter school designation, I want that answer.

Seems to me that the "New England Academy" model represents precisely what charter schools are when they are run as they are supposed to be run. They typically have no unions and the best academic results in their areas. (Please note, these two facts are not necessarily consequent.)

Though I cannot find the reference in the Byzantine Maine.gov Department of Education website, I know that Maine law supports the private school systems that existed before the public system was instituted and allows them to maintain private boards, more autonomy in acceptance and expulsion policies, and administrative freedom unlike any public school in the country. Also, in towns without schools students may attend nearby schools, regardless of public, private or quasi-private status at the town's expense as long as the school is not religiously affiliated.

More on this later. If anyone has a clue before I get home to do more research, please help me out.