Helping those in need
Working two days each week planting, watering, weeding and picking, the volunteers and staff of Northeast Occupational Exchange of Bangor have harvested to date about 40 pounds of radishes, 215 pounds of green and yellow beans, and about 10 pounds of carrots. All the food will be donated to those in need in the community and to help the First United Methodist Church with the meals it provides Thursday evenings. At Northeast Occupational Exchange, we also help people learn to prepare nutritious meals and show them how to live on low budget. Anyone interested can find us in the garden at First United Methodist Church 9 a.m. to noon Mondays and Thursdays.
Sharon Nason
Case Manager
Northeast Occupational Exchange of Bangor
Glenburn
Clean elections loop
The Maine clean elections initiative on this November’s ballot is a progressive assault on freedom and the First Amendment. The initiative would abridge speech and impose the a regulatory state on campaigns and elections. The lead advocate, Andrew Bossie, says to support the campaign for the clean elections initiative, advocates have accepted $600,000 in out-of-state funds.
No opposition to the initiative has emerged.
The more powerful our government, the more incentive private interests have to try to influence policy, hence corruption and crony capitalism. Every round of campaign finance reform has created loopholes and crises. McCain-Feingold gave us Citizens United. Now we can get a progressive feedback loop, where campaign finance reform grows government that grows corruption and cronyism that grows the need for more campaign finance reform. It’s a progressive jobs program.
Freedom is the answer, not the problem.
Jon Reisman
Cooper
Trump of the ages
As a down-home Mainer, born and raised in this wonderful place we call Maine, I believe in giving praise where praise is due, and Donald Trump has done what few in American human history have been able to do: He has identified that percentage of the American population that truly, unreservedly is deserving of recognition as the idiot fringe.
But who would have thought that about 23 percent of this nation would have overlooked the fact of his phony hairdo as telltale evidence that something was missing between his ears. And then, when he opens his mouth, the dumbest, vulgarest inanities come so effortlessly flowing forth. It is little wonder that so many have been so mesmerized.
Trump is a pied piper, an ass of the ages, and I hope that when this current saga has played out, he gets the recognition he truly deserves for defining the dimension of our population that so hopelessly struggles daily with the slings and arrows of reality.
Phil Tobin
Ellsworth
Why get a tattoo?
An Aug. 10 BDN article had three photos, one quite large, that showed three different women with apparently beautiful young healthy skin getting semicolon tattoos. The tattoo artist’s arm is covered with tattoos, and I hope his skin is healthy like the three women getting their semicolons.
Perhaps the upside of this “news,” or ad, about semicolon tattoos for those who share depression is that the semicolons are minimal damage to their lovely skin. Business for Saylorink Tattoo must be booming, now that the BDN has shown its clients and explained their depression.
So often we see parents full of tattoos and their darling children so far tattoo free and beautiful. Old, wrinkled skin may benefit; but once we get the wrinkles, we are just so happy to be living and breathing. It depressed me to view the space in the BDN devoted to this tattoo “news.”
All three women pictured looked lovely without the semicolons inflicted on their bodies.
Martha F. Barkley
Belgrade Lakes