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Late this afternoon, walking across the Bangor Home Depot parking lot towards the store entrance, I looked up at an American flag, extended, snapping, and twisting in a stiff breeze. The red and white stars and stripes, the blue background—they were all bright, aglow from the sun setting in back of Old Glory. “Hang in there,” I said to the flag, hoping it— and every blessed thing it stands for— would not be gone in my lifetime.
What? Gone in my lifetime? Where did that idea come from? I don’t know exactly. But I have a hunch.
I’m writing this column after five months as communications director for the Stand for Marriage Maine campaign. One week to go before Election Day. I’m in that time of campaigning where the days blur, where writing every thing-to-do down on paper keeps confusion and frustration at bay, but not always. I’ve been on lots of campaigns where the opposition said my candidate was wrong or out-of-touch. This is the first time the opposition is quick to label my every defense of traditional marriage as the act of a bigot, a hater, a Nazi, a liar. One newspaper editor called me “the new spokesman for bigotry in Maine.”
The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.
In less than one year, President Obama and a majority of the U.S. Congress have put the U.S. of A. into more debt than the combined debt of America’s first 200 years. The same jokers want to drive us—you, me, our children, our children’s children as far as the eye can see—into more debt with stupid failed ideas trailing millions of wrecked lives and human misery. Why? Members of Congress pass into law bills with missing pages to fill in after the bill becomes law. Congress reads and understands bills before passing them into law?
Forget about it.
I’m tired of men in suits with every hair in place, women wearing pricey outfits in made-for-TV primary colors, passing laws that are just . . . wearing . . . America . . . down. I’m tired of government-sponsored radio and television ads telling us what lightbulbs to use; how to sneeze; how to save energy; our risk of colon, skin, prostate, and breast cancer; what cars to drive; how not to get fat; and what to do if we are fat.
I want America to wake up in 2010. I want us to snap out of it. To stop surrendering our freedoms and liberties to busybodies and nitpickers. That’s one good thing about 2009. America is waking up. Maybe if you let too many freedoms slip through your fingers your hands get cold and your eyes open. It’s hard to sleep with cold hands.
2009 was the first year of my life that I felt America speeding into oblivion. My wish for 2010 is to look again on Old Glory and think, “Welcome back. I’m awful glad you decided to stay.”
Scott K Fish has been active in Maine politics since 1989 working with Republican legislators, staying involved in newspapers, radio, and TV. In 1998, he founded the political website asmaine goes.com.
I have to fess up—I was not born in Maine. My mother’s family was from the Ellsworth area but my parents raised me in New Hampshire. At every family reunion, birthday, and holiday party, my family told me stories of moose and mountains, lobsters as big as your entire forearm, and forests that went on forever and ever. As a kid I was enthralled.
“Why’d we move away then?” I asked. “Why’d we move to New Hampshire?”
This is where the sighing started. My mother was incredibly gifted at sighing. She made it into a work of art. There was the exasperated do-your-homework sigh. There was the please-Carrie-stop-asking-me-questions sigh. And there was the money sigh. The Maine-inspired sighs were the money sighs.
“No jobs,” my mother would say. She’d give that sigh. “No good jobs.”
So the family moved away. So did other former Mainers. These are the people who founded towns in Maine when Maine was a part of Massachusetts. These people fought in wars and created businesses and served in churches and helped their neighbors when winter ran a little too wicked. And then, after generations of this, these people just couldn’t do it anymore. These people moved to New Hampshire. These people became “from away.”
“Will we ever go back?” I’d ask her.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Because of the jobs?”
She’d give me the money sigh. “Yup. Because of the jobs.”
When I grew up in New Hampshire the state was impressively and adamantly conservative. If you said you supported a candidate who wasn’t a Republican the other kids at school called you a “Dirty Democrat.” Believe me, I know. My parents always believed that Maine was so much better than New Hampshire because they believed that in Maine people felt safe to be who they were—to be a liberal or moderate or conservative and to engage in discourse with people down at the counter at Sylvia’s in Ellsworth or at Chase’s in Bangor.
“People wouldn’t always agree, but they’d still be neighbors. And neighbors meant friends,” they would explain.
Sure, my family idealized the “good ol’ days” in Maine, but they also gave me hope that someday there would be a place where it didn’t matter whether you said “debts” or “trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer, or even if you said the Lord’s Prayer at all. They gave me hope that there would be a place where “liberal” and “conservative” weren’t dirty words, where people wouldn’t be judged by race, gender, sexuality, religion, or political preference.
That’s what I’m looking forward to in 2010. I know that the Maine my parents dreamed about—the Maine that my mother sighed over—can exist. There can be a Maine where good jobs aren’t just wild dreams and hungry sighs. There can be a Maine where difference is respected and valued. This year we’ll see how close we can get to that Maine. I’m looking forward to it.
Carrie Jones is an award-winning novelist from Ellsworth. She’s also a police dispatcher. Find her at carriejonesbooks.com.
