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🇺🇸 Due Process Forever & Happy Harvesting From Boothbay Harbor!
PWS
10-03-23
Category: Boothbay Harbor
🇺🇸🗽💪🏾COURTSIDE LABOR DAY SPECIALS: 1) Heather Cox Richardson on The History of Labor Day; 2) Robert Reich on Resisting Bullies!
From today’s Substack:
Historian
Professor, Boston College
September 3, 2023
SEP 4, 2023
Almost one hundred and forty-one years ago, on September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday with a parade. The parade almost didn’t happen: there was no band, and no one wanted to start marching without music. Once the Jewelers Union of Newark Two showed up with musicians, the rest of the marchers, eventually numbering between 10,000 and 20,000 men and women, fell in behind them to parade through lower Manhattan. At noon, when they reached the end of the route, the march broke up and the participants listened to speeches, drank beer, and had picnics. Other workers joined them.
Their goal was to emphasize the importance of workers in the industrializing economy and to warn politicians that they could not be ignored. Less than 20 years before, northern men had fought a war to defend a society based on free labor and had, they thought, put in place a government that would support the ability of all hardworking men to rise to prosperity.
By 1882, though, factories and the fortunes they created had swung the government toward men of capital, and workingmen worried they would lose their rights if they didn’t work together. A decade before, the Republican Party, which had formed to protect free labor, had thrown its weight behind Wall Street. By the 1880s, even the staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune complained about the links between business and government: “Behind every one of half of the portly and well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation,” it wrote. The Senate, Harper’s Weekly noted, was “a club of rich men.”
The workers marching in New York City carried banners saying: “Labor Built This Republic and Labor Shall Rule it,” “Labor Creates All Wealth,” “No Land Monopoly,” “No Money Monopoly,” “Labor Pays All Taxes,” “The Laborer Must Receive and Enjoy the Full Fruit of His Labor,” ‘Eight Hours for a Legal Day’s Work,” and “The True Remedy is Organization and the Ballot.”
The New York Times denied that workers were any special class in the United States, saying that “[e]very one who works with his brain, who applies accumulated capital to industry, who directs or facilitates the operations of industry and the exchange of its products, is just as truly a laboring man as he who toils with his hands…and each contributes to the creation of wealth and the payment of taxes and is entitled to a share in the fruits of labor in proportion to the value of his service in the production of net results.”
In other words, the growing inequality in the country was a function of the greater value of bosses than their workers, and the government could not possibly adjust that equation. The New York Daily Tribune scolded the workers for holding a political—even a “demagogical” —event. “It is one thing to organize a large force of…workingmen…when they are led to believe that the demonstration is purely non-partisan; but quite another thing to lead them into a political organization….”
Two years later, workers helped to elect Democrat Grover Cleveland to the White House. A number of Republicans crossed over to support the reformer, afraid that, as he said, “The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor…. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”
In 1888, Cleveland won the popular vote by about 100,000 votes, but his Republican opponent, Benjamin Harrison, won in the Electoral College. Harrison promised that his would be “A BUSINESS MAN’S ADMINISTRATION” and said that “before the close of the present Administration business men will be thoroughly well content with it….”
Businessmen mostly were, but the rest of the country wasn’t. In November 1892 a Democratic landslide put Cleveland back in office, along with the first Democratic Congress since before the Civil War. As soon as the results of the election became apparent, the Republicans declared that the economy would collapse. Harrison’s administration had been “beyond question the best business administration the country has ever seen,” one businessmen’s club insisted, so losing it could only be a calamity. “The Republicans will be passive spectators,” the Chicago Tribune noted. “It will not be their funeral.” People would be thrown out of work, but “[p]erhaps the working classes of the country need such a lesson….”
As investors rushed to take their money out of the U.S. stock market, the economy collapsed a few days before Cleveland took office in early March 1893. Trying to stabilize the economy by enacting the proposals capitalists wanted, Cleveland and the Democratic Congress had to abandon many of the pro-worker policies they had promised, and the Supreme Court struck down the rest (including the income tax).
They could, however, support Labor Day and its indication of workers’ political power. On June 28, 1894, Cleveland signed Congress’s bill making Labor Day a legal holiday.
In Chicago the chair of the House Labor Committee, Lawrence McGann (D-IL), told the crowd gathered for the first official observance: “Let us each Labor day, hold a congress and formulate propositions for the amelioration of the people. Send them to your Representatives with your earnest, intelligent indorsement [sic], and the laws will be changed.”
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Notes:
https://www.dol.gov/general/laborday/history-daze
New York Times, September 6, 1882, p. 8.
New York Times, September 6, 1882, p. 4.
New York Daily Tribune, September 7, 1882, p. 4.
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/files/2011/09/S-730.pdf
https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-first-Labor-Day/
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Former US Secretary of Labor
Professor of Public Policy
CAL Berkeley
Creative Commons License
My father and the SOBs
Ed Reich hated bullies.
SEP 4, 2023
Friends,
I thought today, Labor Day, might be a good one to introduce my father, Ed Reich, and tell you a little about him and the values he passed along to me. Labor Day makes me think of him, because on Labor Day, he kicked the bigots out of our house.
Ed called himself a liberal Republican in the days when such creatures still roamed the earth. He voted for Thomas Dewey in 1948 (canceling my mother’s vote for Harry Truman) and then for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 (canceling my mother’s votes for Adlai Stevenson), and he thought highly of New York’s Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller, and its Republican senator, Jacob Javits — neither of whom would last a nanosecond in today’s GOP.
But Ed Reich could not abide political bullies. He gave up on the Republican Party when Nixon became president. He would have detested Trump. (My father died in 2016, two weeks before his 102nd birthday, and nine months before Trump was elected.)
Ed thought anyone who had to bully someone else to feel good about himself was despicable. If they did their bullying through politics, they were doubly despicable. In his mind, political bullying had led to the Holocaust.
***
In 1947, Ed moved us from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to a small town some 60 miles north of New York City called South Salem, to be within driving distance of his two women’s clothing stores, in Norwalk, Connecticut, and Peekskill, New York.
On Labor Day, soon after we moved in, a delegation of older men came by our house. When they knocked on the door, my mother thought they were a welcoming committee and opened it with a big “hello!” But when she saw the expressions on their faces, she became alarmed.
She invited them into the living room and asked if they’d like coffee. They declined.
My father greeted them stiffly, suggesting they sit down. They did not.
“What’s this about?” he asked. “What’s happened? Is there a problem?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Reich,” one of them spoke gravely, “we’ve come to inform you that South Salem is a Christian community.”
There was a long pause. I could see my father redden.
“So, we’re not welcome here?” His voice was tight.
“Legally, you have a right to be here, of course,” the speaker said. (New York state had just enacted a law prohibiting homeowners from including “restrictive covenants” in their deeds that barred sales to “Negroes or Hebrews.”) “But we don’t think you and your family will be happy here.”
“Thank you for coming by,” my father said flatly, opening the front door for them. Then he exploded: “Now get the hell out of my house!”
That was the day Ed Reich decided we’d stay put in South Salem forever. “I showed those sons of bitches,” he said some years later.
“Son of a bitch” was the worst epithet Ed could hurl at someone. It burst out of him like a volcanic eruption. For many years, I didn’t know it contained separate English words, including a term many would find offensive today. To my young ears it was one word — sonofaBITCH — that might have been Russian or Yiddish, but whatever language it was, it was huge and frightening.
WISCONSIN SENATOR JOE McCARTHY HAD A SPECIAL PLACE in Ed Reich’s pantheon of horrible people. McCarthy didn’t just bully those he claimed were members of the Communist Party. He attacked them with malice. McCarthy ridiculed the “pitiful squealing” of “those egg-sucking phony liberals” who “would hold sacrosanct those Communists and queers.”
Every time McCarthy’s image came across the six-inch screen of the Magnavox television in our living room, my father would shout “son-of-a-BITCH” so loudly it made me shudder.
McCarthyism was the byproduct of the Republican Party’s postwar effort to eradicate the New Deal by linking it to communism. The GOP had portrayed the midterm election of 1946 as a “battle between Republicanism and communism.” The Republican National Committee chairman claimed that the federal bureaucracy was filled with “pink puppets.”
Southern segregationist Democrats joined in the red baiting. Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, a Klansman who had filibustered to block anti-lynching legislation, described multiracial labor unions’ advocacy for civil rights as the work of “northern communists.” Representative John Elliott Rankin, a racist and antisemitic Mississippi Democrat who helped establish the House Un-American Activities Committee, called the CIO’s southern organizing campaign “a communist plot” and charged it would give more voting rights to Black people. “We’re asleep at the switch,” he warned. “They’re taking over this country; we’ve got to stop them if we want this country.”
The tactic was temporarily successful. In the 1946 midterms, Democrats lost control of both the Senate and the House. Wisconsin ended its era of progressive Republican La Follettes and sent Joe McCarthy to the Senate. California replaced New Dealer Jerry Voorhis with a young Republican lawyer who had already figured out how to use red baiting as a political tool. His name was Richard Nixon.
In December 1946, at the founding convention of the Progressive Citizens of America, FDR’s former vice president Henry Wallace called the red scare a tool used by the most powerful economic forces in America and warned America not to give in to it. “We shall … repel all the attacks of the plutocrats and monopolists who will brand us as Reds,” he said, adding:
“If it is traitorous to believe in peace — we are traitors. If it is communistic to believe in prosperity for all — we are communists. If it is unAmerican to believe in freedom from monopolistic dictation — we are unAmerican. We are more American than the neo-fascists who attack us. The more we are attacked the more likely we are to succeed, provided we are ready and willing to counterattack.”
But there was no counterattack. The red baiting escalated, encouraged by J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI.
President Truman succumbed to the mounting hysteria. On March 21, 1947, he signed Executive Order 9835, the “Loyalty Order.” It ushered in loyalty oaths and background checks and created the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations.
As the 1950 election approached, a Times headline announced that the “Left is Silent in Campaign.” Even the American Civil Liberties Union, whose roots lay in the Red Scare of the World War I era, was reluctant to take the lead in opposing the threat to civil liberties in the second Red Scare of the 1950s.
California Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas — dubbed the “Pink Lady” for her supposed communist sympathies — tried for the Senate in 1950. She survived a bitter primary battle only to be beaten in November by red-baiter Richard Nixon.
ON JUNE 9, 1954, I SAT AT MY FATHER’S SIDE ON OUR LIVING ROOM COUCH, watching the Army-McCarthy hearings. McCarthy had accused the U.S. Army of having poor security at a top-secret facility.
Joseph Welch, a private attorney, was representing the Army. McCarthy charged that one of Welch’s young staff attorneys was a communist. Such a charge was likely to end the young man’s career.
“Son-of-a-BITCH,” my father shouted. I hid my head.
As McCarthy continued his attack on Welch’s staff attorney, Welch broke in. “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”
I was only eight years old, but I was spellbound.
McCarthy didn’t stop. “Son-of-a-BITCH!” Ed Reich shouted even more loudly. The earth seemed to shake.
At this point, Welch demanded that McCarthy listen to him. “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator,” he said. “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
Almost overnight, McCarthy imploded. His national popularity evaporated. Three years later, censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy drank himself to death, a broken man at the age of 48.
***
During the Army-McCarthy hearings, McCarthy’s chief counsel was Roy Cohn. Cohn became one of America’s most notorious bullies.
Cohn had gained prominence as the Department of Justice attorney who successfully prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage, leading to their execution in 1953. (Evidence made public decades after the execution confirmed that Julius was a spy, but that Ethel, while aware of her husband’s activities, was not.)
In public, Cohn was homophobic. Privately, he was gay at a time when being gay was a crime. A character in Tony Kushner’s epic Angels in America describes him as “the polestar of human evil. The worst human being who ever lived … the most evil, twisted, vicious bastard ever to snort coke at Studio 54.” His bullying was particularly vicious, I think, because he was filled with self-loathing.
The Rosenberg trial brought the 24-year-old Cohn to the attention of J. Edgar Hoover, who convinced Joe McCarthy to hire Cohn as chief counsel for McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Cohn became known for his aggressive questioning of suspected communists.
My father thought Roy Cohn almost as despicable as Joe McCarthy. “Son-of-a BITCH!” my father shouted whenever Cohn’s name was in the news.
After McCarthy’s downfall, it was assumed that Cohn’s career was also over. Yet Cohn reinvented himself as a power broker in New York. Despite scandals and indictments, along with accusations of tax evasion, bribery, and theft, Cohn survived.
COHN PROVED HIMSELF USEFUL TO A YOUNG REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER NAMED DONALD TRUMP. Fred Trump had started his son’s career by bringing him into the family business of renting apartments in Brooklyn and Queens.
Cohn established Donald in Manhattan by introducing him to New York’s social and political elite. Donald was undertaking several large construction projects in Manhattan and needed both a fixer and mentor. Cohn filled both roles, and along the way bequeathed to Trump a penchant for ruthless bullying, profane braggadocio, and opportunistic bigotry.
Like Trump, Cohn was utterly without principle. Like Trump, his priority was personal power that could be leveraged for wealth, influence, and celebrity.
In 1973, the Justice Department accused Trump Management Inc., its 27-year-old president, Donald, and chairman, Fred, of violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in 39 of his properties — alleging that the company quoted different rental terms and conditions to prospective tenants based on their race and made false “no vacancy” statements to Black people seeking to rent.
Trump employees had secretly marked the applications of Black people with codes, such as “C” for “colored,” according to accounts filed in federal court. The employees allegedly directed Black people away from buildings with mostly white tenants, steering them toward properties that had many Black tenants.
Representing the Trumps, Roy Cohn filed a countersuit against the government for $100 million, asserting that the charges were “irresponsible and baseless.” Although the countersuit was unsuccessful, Trump settled the charges out of court in 1975, asserting he was satisfied that the agreement did not “compel the Trump organization to accept persons on welfare as tenants unless as qualified as any other tenant.”
Three years later, when the Trump Organization was again in court for violating terms of the 1975 settlement, Cohn called the charges “nothing more than a rehash of complaints by a couple of planted malcontents.” Donald Trump denied the charges.
Cohn was also involved in the construction of Trump Tower, helping secure concrete during a citywide Teamster strike via a union leader linked to a mob boss.
At about this time, Cohn introduced Trump to another of Cohn’s clients, Rupert Murdoch.
During Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, Cohn helped another young man named Roger Stone.
As Stone later recounted, Cohn gave him a suitcase filled with money that Stone dropped off at the office of a lawyer influential in Liberal Party circles. “I paid his law firm. Legal fees. I don’t know what he did for the money.” In fact, the money was used to get New York’s Liberal Party to nominate Illinois Congressman John Anderson — thereby splitting New York’s opposition to Reagan. It worked. Reagan carried the state with 46 percent of the vote. (Ed Reich voted for Jimmy Carter.)
In 1986, Cohn was disbarred by the New York State Bar for unethical conduct after attempting to defraud a dying client by forcing the client to sign a will amendment leaving Cohn his fortune. (Cohn died five weeks later from AIDS-related complications.)
In his first and best-known book, The Art of the Deal, Trump drew a distinction between integrity and loyalty. He preferred the latter.
For Trump, Roy Cohn exemplified loyalty. Trump compared Cohn to “all the hundreds of ‘respectable’ guys who make careers out of boasting about their uncompromising integrity but have absolutely no loyalty … What I liked most about Roy Cohn was that he would do just the opposite.”
Ed Reich would vehemently disagree.
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Happy Labor Day 2023 to all!😎
It’s a time to remember and appreciate all the workers, regardless of status, whose labors make America great!
Linekin Bay, ME
Labor Day 2023
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
09-04-23
🇺🇸⛵️LABOR DAY PICTORIAL FROM LINEKIN BAY, MAINE!
08-31-23
08-31-23
08-31-23
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“Fun facts” about the Windjammer American Eagle:
Let’s go sailing
A sailing vacation on the American Eagle is right for just about everyone—couples, friends, families with children, ages 12 and up, and independent travelers. There is an easy congeniality on board that makes for instant relaxation and great camaraderie.
Captain Tyler King has been sailing and working on boats since he was very small spending most summers sailing all around Massachusetts Bay and up beyond Penobscot Bay. He has been in the Windjamming fleet since 2013, working on quite a few of the vessels. The American Eagle sails Down East on four to six day cruises. Sometimes longer adventures of 9 to 14 days to the Canadian Maritimes or tall ship events
are planned. Spectacular scenery, wildlife, lighthouses, and wonderful meals, including an island lobster bake are part of every trip.
Each cruise is a unique adventure: exciting sailing at an affordable price. Most of our guests have sailed with us before or come on the recommendation of a friend.
Board after 6 p.m. on the trip date, settle\ in and sleep aboard that night before we sail the next morning. Pack casual, comfortable clothes, and two pair of rubber soled shoes (no high heels, flip flops, golf shoes, or dress whites, please). Rain gear, a warm sweater or jacket, a sun hat and sunscreen are musts. Bring your camera; you’ll take a lot of pictures.
You are encouraged to follow our course on the chart, take the wheel and sail the schooner. Or, kick back, bask in the sun, and read. As for the sailing—well, that’s just one reason our guests keep returning. But don’t take our word for it—try it for yourself!
A few facts to know before you sail
- The American Eagle accommodates 26 guests and is 92 feet on deck. She’s the only National Historic Landmark vessel to meet international safety standards.
- Single cabins are available upon request.
- All cabins have reading lights, fresh linens, hotand cold running water, 12-volt outlets, and places
to hang your clothes.
- Toilets and a separate fresh hot water shower areconveniently located below deck; you can walk through
from the galley to most cabins.
- We heat the compartments below for comfortearly and late in the season.
- There’s no smoking below deck. Electronics may beused only with headphones.
- There’s convenient air, van and bus servicedirectly to Rockland.
- We offer free parking right on our own wharf.We even have room to plug in your RV!
We take MasterCard, Visa and Discover. Contact us with any questions.
Captain Tyler R. King • Schooner American Eagle P.O. Box 482, Rockland, Maine 04841
1-800-648-4544 info@schooneramericaneagle.com
🇺🇸 Happy Labor Day & Due Process Forever!
PWS
09-01-23
📷 LINEKIN BAY SUNSET — By Susanna Schmidt
Photographer: Susanna Schmidt
Green Bay, WI
08-01-23
Photographer: Susanna Schmidt
Green Bay, WI
08-01-23
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Susanna is our 16-year-old granddaughter who lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with her family. She is currently “on loan” to us in Maine, pending the arrival of the rest of her family in a few days!
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
08-03-23
⚖️🗽🦸🏻♀️🎖 A TRUE AMERICAN HERO GETS HER DUE: FRANCES PERKINS WAS THE “MOTHER OF AMERICA’S SAFETY NET!” — By Professor Heather Cox Richardson — “She recognized that the ideas of community values and pooling resources to keep the economic playing field level and take care of everyone are at least as deeply seated in our political philosophy as the idea of every man for himself.”
Historian
Professor, Boston College
U.S. Secretary of Labor (1933-45)
PHOTO: Public realm
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August 13, 2022
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Since it seems clear we will be deciding whether we want to preserve the Social Security Act by our choice of leaders in the next few elections, I thought it not unreasonable to reprint this piece from last year about why people in the 1930s thought the measure was imperative. There is more news about the classified material at Mar-a-Lago, but nothing that can’t wait another day so I can catch this anniversary.
By the time most of you will read this, it will be August 14, and on this day in 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. While FDR’s New Deal had put in place new measures to regulate business and banking and had provided temporary work relief to combat the Depression, this law permanently changed the nature of the American government.
The Social Security Act is known for its payments to older Americans, but it did far more than that. It established unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services. It was a sweeping reworking of the relationship between the government and its citizens, using the power of taxation to pool funds to provide a basic social safety net.
The driving force behind the law was FDR’s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins. She was the first woman to hold a position in the U.S. Cabinet and still holds the record for having the longest tenure in that job: she lasted from 1933 to 1945.
She brought to the position a vision of government very different from that of the Republicans who had run it in the 1920s. While men like President Herbert Hoover had harped on the idea of a “rugged individualism” in which men worked their way up, providing for their families on their own, Perkins recognized that people in communities had always supported each other. The vision of a hardworking man supporting his wife and children was more myth than reality: her own husband suffered from bipolar disorder, making her the family’s primary support.
As a child, Perkins spent summers with her grandmother, with whom she was very close, in the small town of Newcastle, Maine, where the old-fashioned, close-knit community supported those in need. In college, at Mount Holyoke, she majored in chemistry and physics, but after a professor required students to tour a factory to observe working conditions, Perkins became committed to improving the lives of those trapped in industrial jobs. After college, Perkins became a social worker and, in 1910, earned a masters degree in economics and sociology from Columbia University. She became the head of the New York office of the National Consumers League, urging consumers to use their buying power to demand better conditions and wages for the workers who made the products they were buying.
The next year, in 1911, she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in which 146 workers, mostly women and girls, died. They were trapped in the building when the fire broke out because the factory owner had ordered the doors to the stairwells and exits locked to make sure no one slipped outside for a break. Unable to escape the smoke and fire in the factory, the workers—some of them on fire—leaped from the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the building, dying on the pavement.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire turned Perkins away from voluntary organizations to improve workers’ lives and toward using the government to adjust the harsh conditions of industrialization. She began to work with the Democratic politicians at Tammany Hall, who presided over communities in the city that mirrored rural towns and who exercised a form of social welfare for their voters, making sure they had jobs, food, and shelter and that wives and children had a support network if a husband and father died. In that system, the voices of women like Perkins were valuable, for their work in the immigrant wards of the city meant that they were the ones who knew what working families needed to survive.
The overwhelming unemployment, hunger, and suffering caused by the Great Depression made Perkins realize that state governments alone could not adjust the conditions of the modern world to create a safe, supportive community for ordinary people. She came to believe, as she said: “The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.”
Through her Tammany connections, Perkins met FDR, and when he asked her to be his Secretary of Labor, she told him that she wanted the federal government to provide unemployment insurance, health insurance, and old-age insurance. She later recalled: “I remember he looked so startled, and he said, ‘Well, do you think it can be done?’”
Creating federal unemployment insurance became her primary concern. Congressmen had little interest in passing such legislation. They said they worried that unemployment insurance and federal aid to dependent families would undermine a man’s willingness to work. But Perkins recognized that those displaced by the Depression had added new pressure to the idea of old-age insurance.
In Long Beach, California, Dr. Francis Townsend had looked out of his window one day to see elderly women rooting through garbage cans for food. Appalled, he came up with a plan to help the elderly and stimulate the economy at the same time. Townsend proposed that the government provide every retired person over 60 years old with $200 a month, on the condition that they spend it within 30 days, a condition designed to stimulate the economy.
Townsend’s plan was wildly popular. More than that, though, it sparked people across the country to start coming up with their own plans for protecting the elderly and the nation’s social fabric, and together, they began to change the public conversation about social welfare policies.
They spurred Congress to action. Perkins recalled that Townsend “startled the Congress of the United States because the aged have votes. The wandering boys didn’t have any votes; the evicted women and their children had very few votes. If the unemployed didn’t stay long enough in any one place, they didn’t have a vote. But the aged people lived in one place and they had votes, so every Congressman had heard from the Townsend Plan people.”
FDR put together a committee to come up with a plan to create a basic social safety net, but committee members could not make up their minds how to move forward. Perkins continued to hammer on the idea they must come up with a final plan, and finally locked the members of the committee in a room. As she recalled: “Well, we locked the door and we had a lot of talk. I laid out a couple of bottles of something or other to cheer their lagging spirits. Anyhow, we stayed in session until about 2 a.m. We then voted finally, having taken our solemn oath that this was the end; we were never going to review it again.”
By the time the bill came to a vote in Congress, it was hugely popular. The vote was 371 to 33 in the House and 77 to 6 in the Senate.
When asked to describe the origins of the Social Security Act, Perkins mused that its roots came from the very beginnings of the nation. When Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America in 1835, she noted, he thought Americans were uniquely “so generous, so kind, so charitably disposed.” “Well, I don’t know anything about the times in which De Tocqueville visited America,” she said, but “I do know that at the time I came into the field of social work, these feelings were real.”
With the Social Security Act, Perkins helped to write into our laws a longstanding political impulse in America that stood in dramatic contrast to the 1920s philosophy of rugged individualism. She recognized that the ideas of community values and pooling resources to keep the economic playing field level and take care of everyone are at least as deeply seated in our political philosophy as the idea of every man for himself.
When she recalled the origins of the Social Security Act, Perkins recalled: “Of course, the Act had to be amended, and has been amended, and amended, and amended, and amended, until it has now grown into a large and important project, for which, by the way, I think the people of the United States are deeply thankful. One thing I know: Social Security is so firmly embedded in the American psychology today that no politician, no political party, no political group could possibly destroy this Act and still maintain our democratic system. It is safe. It is safe forever, and for the everlasting benefit of the people of the United States.”
—
Notes:
https://www.ssa.gov/history/35actinx.html
https://www.ssa.gov/history/perkins5.html
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Perkins was an original “good government person,” unfortunately, an increasingly rare breed. She recognized that a strong, reliable government safety net promotes personal independence and achieving full individual potential.
Damariscotta, ME
PHOTO: Francis Perkins Center
Perkins had strong Maine ties to her ancestral homestead in Newcastle, ME. It’s near our summer home in Boothbay Harbor, ME. A few years ago, Cathy and I had a chance to tour the homestead, now owned and maintained by the Frances Perkins Center in Damariscotta, ME.
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
08-14-22
😎👍🏼🖼🌅THE VIEW FROM MAINE: Boothbay Harbor Welcomes Foreign Workers!
From the Boothbay Register:
https://www.boothbayregister.com/article/welcoming-workers-away/162480
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF BOOTHBAY HARBOR
Welcoming workers from away
Alice Mutch
Sat, 07/02/2022 – 8:45am
Where else on the peninsula would you see in a church five young foreigners laughing and speaking in Turkish with a 96-year-old parishioner, exchanging contacts and making plans to visit again?
With love, the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor welcomed over 186 workers from away who traveled from other countries and around the USA to work in our community on June 27. This long tradition continues to “welcome strangers” and give them community support information to make their stay safer and more enjoyable.
Thirty-seven (37) of those 186 were able to get to the church to enjoy a “lunch and learn.” The remaining received gift bags from the church which were hand delivered to 149 workers by the Mission Committee.
At the “lunch meet” this shy and reticent group of 37 soon turned into an upbeat and hopeful number of workers who got to know each other and make plans to socialize together. We, the Mission Committee, learned a lot, too, about each of their homes of origin, their aspirations and fears.
There were workers from Russia, Serbia, Romania, India, Moldova, Albania, Croatia, Turkey and Montenegro as well as Texas, Maine, Washington, D.C., Silver Spring, Maryland and Kansas.
With a delicious takeaway lunch on site, they heard from our pastor, police department; Rotary and our town’s resources. They appreciated learning how to feel safe here and how to utilize our local services. Included in this event were Rotary bikes for loan with a $100 deposit.
For those who could not attend, we distributed gifts to the participating businesses’ 145 workers with gifts of information and fun food. Nearly every business that hires these folks participated and voiced their appreciation of the event.
The workers were interested in fun together in their free time and agreed to share their contact information with each other. They asked for us to arrange for a second event in September so that they might learn from each others’ experiences. One medical student asked to participate in a local community project and will be a guest at our upcoming Mission Committee meeting.
We offer a special thanks to all of the businesses which chose to participate and especially to Hannaford which donated a great deal of food.
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Workers from abroad have been an essential part of the summer economy here in Boothbay Harbor for the decades we have been coming here. They enrich everyone’s experience while learning and experiencing some “real Americana!”
And, there can be little doubt why the Boothbay Region is an international,drawing card!
Home Port, Bradenton FL
Anchored in Linekin Bay
Captains Rick & Julie Peterson
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
97-15-22
🇺🇸👍🏼🏆NEWS FROM MAINE: US OLYMPIC TEAM’S SNEAKERS MADE IN MAINE BY IMMIGRANT CRAFTSPERSONS WITH ALL-AMERICAN PRODUCTS!
Polo Ralph Lauren, Team USA’s sponsor, commissioned Rancourt & Co. in Lewiston to make the team’s sneaker for the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony.
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The folks saving this Maine industry and making America proud are mostly asylees from Africa. Something to remember and reflect upon the next time you hear GOP “magamorons” and White Nationalist racist nativists claim that legal asylum seekers are a “problem,” rather than a key part of the solution! Indeed, the “problem” appears to be with the GOP White Nationalist restrictionists and nativists!
I’ve personally seen how immigrants of all kinds from all places have rejuvenated Maine with their hard work, culture, adaptability, and energy. Whether it’s the checkout person at the local grocery store, the folks who run the best carry-out in town with the brilliant daughter, or the helpful associate at L.L. Bean, immigrants are a key part of what makes Maine a great place to visit or live.
Go USA! Go Immigrants!
🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
07-29-21
MAINE’S BRIGHT FUTURE IN A GLOBAL SOCIETY DEPENDS ON ROBUST IMMIGRATION & WELCOMING ATTITUDES! — Professor Joseph W. McDonnell Writes In The Portland Press Gazette
Maine Voices: New U.S. intelligence report suggests how Maine can address global trends
We’re in a good position to improve the lives of people without college degrees, to welcome foreigners to a democratic society and to diversify our workforce.
. . . .
The Global Trends report provides analysis but not policy solutions. Maine could assist by demonstrating that democracy can work here by taking steps to bridge the ideological divide and reduce political polarization. Maine can become a welcoming state for immigrants by easing their entry into the workforce to replace our retiring baby boomers.
Maine can also develop public-private partnerships to teach workforce skills that raise incomes and improve the quality of life for those without a college degree. Finally, Maine can exercise soft power by welcoming foreigners as tourists and recruiting students from China to our high schools and universities, offering an opportunity to experience a democratic society with both its flaws and freedoms, and to forge friendships between the two contested countries.
Joseph W. McDonnell is a professor of public policy and management at the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine
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You can read Professor McDonnell’s article (along with a couple of comments that show exactly why our hope for the future has to be in immigrants — not that the commenters probably weren’t immigrants of some sort at some point in our history).
B/T/W Congresswoman Omar (D-MN) is a naturalized U.S. citizen — an example of someone who not only immigrated, survived racial and religious bigotry and bullying in school, graduated from college, established a successful career as an educator and civic advocate, and further had the courage and commitment (which most native-born Americans, including me, do not) to successfully seek elective office and work through the system to make America a better place for all, regardless of whether or not one agrees with all of her views.
The vast majority of immigrants of any status “learn the language” (many better than some native-born U.S. citizens) and become at least bi-lingual if not tri-lingual, a skill set that few native-born Americans achieve.
Of course, in an intentionally diverse society, important Government documents should be printed in languages that individuals are most comfortable with. You might have become proficient in French in college, but if involved in a legal dispute in France, most of us would need and expect an English translation to be sure we understood and, in turn, were understood.
I knew enough German to study in Germany during college. I was comfortable going down to the local watering spot and ordering “bauernbrat mit kraut und bier.” But, if I had been involved in a legal proceeding, I wouldn’t have dared to proceed in German.
Also, although undoubtedly some students and foreign workers are exploited by the American system, overall they make huge contributions to both education and our workforce. As an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law, my classes are continually enriched by the presence of foreign students and scholars, many of whom are willing to share their own immigration stories and to enlighten us on the culture and legal system they experienced.
Also, if we have learned anything during the pandemic, it is how very dependent we are on our immigrant and ethnic communities, regardless of “status,” for essential workers. The “exploitation” is an “American home grown problem,” not one caused by immigrants! As a society, we need to stop “shooting the messenger!”
Where we spend much of our summers, Boothbay Harbor in the “Mid-Coast Region of Maine,” the tourism, hospitality, recreational, and resort industries that power this town are highly dependent on talented foreign workers. Their upbeat attitudes, eagerness to learn and contribute, and fascinating multiculturalism is one of the primary factors that comes bursting out in town and throughout this area, making this one of the best summer tourist locations in America. (Obviously, it’s “world famous,” since these folks seek to come here from literally around the world.)
I remember commenting several summers ago about the amazing refugee assistance and appreciation programs generated by the local religious community here in Boothbay Harbor, as well as the impressive social justice awareness and activism of some of the talented local artists who performed at a fundraiser for refugees and asylum seekers. http://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/07/15/the-new-due-process-army-is-alive-and-well-in-boothbay-harbor-singer-songwriter-john-schindler-friends-inspire-uplift-with-benefit-concert-for-maines-immigrant-legal-advocacy-pr/
Our “next-door neighbors,” here on beautiful Linekin Bay, Larry and Janey Anderson, were long time year around residents of Maine before retiring to “warmer climes” near their family (and us) in Northern Virginia. They were very involved with the African refugee community in Southern Maine, calling me several times for advice on how to get legal help on asylum cases. I well remember on occasions hearing the rhythm of a “drum circle” in which Larry participated with his refugee friends coming from the Anderson cabin.
It actually made me feel good about the lives I had been able to save and the positive progressive legal changes, precedents, and attitudes that I was able to help, at least in some modest way, forge over a 40+ year career in immigration and human rights, most of it with the U.S. Government.
Of course, I was fortunate enough to have retired in 2016, before the institutionalized White Nationalist, racist, misogynistic, xenophobia of the Trump regime arrived. Unfortunately, they undid some of the hard work that many of us had done to improve the system, further due process, and insure fairness and humane treatment for foreign nationals under U.S. laws.
However, the lives we were able to save (yesterday’s post about my Arlington Immigration Court/Round Table colleague Judge Joan Churchill and our joint NDPA colleague Deb Sanders is an example) have remained saved! “A life saved, is a life saved,” as I always say! https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/05/12/ndpa-all-star-debi-sanders-round-table-judge-ret-joan-churchill-featured-in-story-of-inspiring-immigrant-sumera-haque-her-family-from-george-bushs-recent-book-out-of-many-one/
The folks we welcomed under the law, their families, and their descendants continue to make America great despite all the destructive actions and false, misleading hate rhetoric promoted by Tump and his party.
Now, it’s up to the “new generation” of the NDPA to seize the baton and lead the fight to assist migrants of all types in creating a new and better day for Maine, America, and the world! I actually just had inspiring conversations this week with “two of the best out there” in the private/NGO sectors who are competing for positions at EOIR to help return due process, efficiency, practicality, and humanity to a disgracefully dysfunctional and unfair system. These are the folks who are “inspiring a new day for America.” They have already got Professor McDonnell’s message and are working to make it a reality!
🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
05-13-21
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD: “Maine Voices: Refugees know what it means to live with uncertainty”
Photo by Paul Wickham Schmidt
As we all cope with the COVID crisis, we can learn a lesson in resiliency.
BY EKHLAS AHMED SPECIAL TO THE PRESS HERALD
In 2005, on my first day of school in America, I got off at the wrong bus stop. Days before, my family and I moved to Portland, having fled genocide in our native Darfur, Sudan. I was 11 years old, had never ridden a public bus before and couldn’t speak English. I walked around lost for eight hours until the Portland police finally found me. I’m now 26, and I think the most courageous thing I’ve ever done is to get back on that bus the next day.
I’ve thought about this story a lot during the pandemic. Like everyone, I feel the uncertainty and pain of this moment. But when I remember the struggles I’ve overcome as a refugee and newcomer to America, I am reminded of how resilient human beings are. You certainly don’t have to be a refugee in order to know perseverance, but take it from someone who has been displaced, lost and in fear of her life: we can get through this. Here’s how.
First, find your purpose by serving others. Given the trauma that refugees have experienced, you wouldn’t expect us to be so resilient. But we forge ahead by reaching out. It’s no surprise that healthcare is the second most common field for refugees in the U.S., according to New American Economy. A fifth of refugee healthcare workers are personal care aides, 14 percent are registered nurses and 8 percent are doctors. Refugees fill these rolls, because we want to give back to the country that welcomed us. But we also do it because selflessness eases our suffering. I became an ESOL teacher five years ago because I knew I would be in a unique position to help young newcomers. I’ve walked in their shoes and understand how to build a safe learning environment for them to thrive.
Second, find hope in community. In refugee circles, even those of us who aren’t strictly “essential” are lifting our neighbors up through mutual-aid organizing. This is a type of local support that refugee communities use to fill in the gaps after our resettlement assistance ends. In normal times, networks of neighbors might organize ride shares and translation assistance for newcomers. Now we’ve added services to meet changing demands. Before coronavirus hit Portland, there was no existing infrastructure to get groceries to the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. To meet that need, myself and other volunteers are doing the shopping for them. I’m also hosting virtual information meetings to keep the refugee community up-to-date on the latest coronavirus guidelines and teaching people how to use services like Zoom so they can participate and keep up with friends and family.
Lastly, don’t keep your fear bottled up. Refugees know how important it is to have an outlet to express our feelings. This is true for so many of us who have experienced trauma, but especially the women who suffered sexual violence during war. That’s why my mom is a care provider at Spurwink, a Portland organization that helps individuals affected by mental health challenges and developmental disabilities. And it’s why I started hosting bi-monthly conference calls for anyone who wants to share their pandemic experiences. Given widespread job loss, food insecurity and the inability to pay the rent, it’s no wonder that experts are warning about the profound impact coronavirus will also have on our mental health. Talking to your friends and neighbors or simply lending an ear is crucial to breaking through the isolation. It reminds us that we are not alone.
If coronavirus has taught me anything, it’s that we all have far more in common than we think. As states begin to slowly reopen in the coming weeks and months, we will need each other more than ever. Refugees are used to approaching challenges day by day, because tomorrow has never been promised to us. We are proof that all Mainers—and all Americans—can persist through this crisis and adapt to our new normal. We may feel lost, but tomorrow is another day. Have courage.
Ekhlas Ahmed is a refugee, activist and educator from Darfur, Sudan.
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A message from the real America, and those who actually make it great!
The current regime has basically (without legislation) ended our compliance with domestic laws and international treaties that save refugee lives while humanizing and enriching our nation. It’s a national disgrace! Vote ‘em out, vote ‘em out!
This November, vote like your life and your humanity depend on it! Because they do!
PWS
05-29-30
MAINE AND OTHER STATES ARE HURTING BECAUSE OF POPULATION LOSS — The Answer — More Legal Immigration Across The Board — Is Staring Us Right In The Face — But, Trump’s White Nationalist Nativist Agenda Stands In The Way Of Rational Solutions!
Looking West from the Whales Tails Restaurant & Seafarer Pub
From the Washington Post:
A rational immigration system is the answer to U.S. worker shortages
Add to list
August 25
OCCUPATIONAL AND physical therapists. Religious workers. Plant operators. Railway personnel. Construction workers. Maintenance and repair workers. Firefighters. Social workers. Nurses. Funeral workers. Truckers. That’s only a brief sampling of the jobs in the United States for which there are severe shortages of available employees, and way more openings than applicants.
A recent article in The Post detailed the heartbreaking effects of a drastic deficit in just one employment category — home health aides — in just one state, Maine, which has the nation’s second-highest percentage of people over age 65 . They and their relatives who cannot afford private home health aides (who charge roughly $50 an hour) are suffering. Nursing homes, similarly, are closing for want of workers. Even attempts to lure employees by raising wages have hit a brick wall; there simply aren’t enough job applicants in the state nor, apparently, enough people willing to move there.
Maine’s problems in that regard will soon be a national epidemic. Within a decade or so, at least a fifth of the population in roughly 28 states will be 65 or older. The effects of aging baby boomers will be compounded by a national fertility rate that has fallen to its lowest level in nearly five decades. That means younger people will not be available to replenish the ranks of older workers as they retire.
A rational immigration system, one that meets the labor market’s demands for workers in an array of skill categories and income levels, is the obvious antidote to chronic and predictable labor deficits. Unfortunately, the Trump administration, heedless of the pleas of employers, has implemented and proposed measures whose effect will deepen existing and future shortages. And it has done so even as the unemployment rate, now 3.7 percent, continues to bump along at near-historic lows.
A policy announced by the administration this month would impede large numbers of low-income legal immigrants from remaining in the United States, or coming in the first place, if they are judged likely to use public benefits to which they are entitled, including noncash ones such as housing subsidies and health care. The impact would be a dramatic reduction in newcomers, and in existing immigrants eligible to become legal permanent residents, or green-card holders, the final step before full citizenship. By targeting low-income and low-skilled migrants, the rule would perpetuate severe worker shortages in a variety of sectors.
Earlier this year, the administration unveiled a blueprint for legal immigration that, in a reversal, maintained overall levels of immigrants. That recognized that slashing immigration is a recipe for economic decline. However, the Trump plan, by favoring educated, skilled English speakers with strong earnings prospects over relatives of current residents, ignored the reality that retail, landscaping, food processing and dozens of other industries rely on relatively low-skilled labor — and are desperate for workers.
The critical role ICE plays in Trump’s immigration push
President Trump has found a crucial tool to carry out his sweeping immigration polices: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (John Parks, Luis Velarde/The Washington Post)
President Trump has leveraged nativist policies to his political advantage. He has been indifferent to their corrosive long-term economic impact. Far from making America great again, the president’s policies are likely to transform the United States into a second Japan, where an aging population and barriers to immigration have sapped the dynamism and prospects of what was once one of the world’s most dynamic economies.
Here’s a link to Jeff Stein’s August 14 article on the crisis in Maine:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/this-will-be-catastrophic-maine-families-face-elder-boom-worker-shortage-in-preview-of-nations-future/2019/08/14/7cecafc6-bec1-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html
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One reason our current immigration system is failing is that it has ignored market forces both in the U.S. and in sending countries.
That’s particular true with what we consider “manual labor” (which usually takes skills that most Americans either lack or have no interest in developing).
Working with market forces, rather than futilely trying to override or reverse them, would be a win-win-win. It would benefit the migrants, our country, and would greatly reduce the amount of time and money we waste on cruel, controversial, legally questionable, and ultimately ineffective “civil enforcement” of unrealistic and unworkable restrictive immigration laws.
Even now, what if we welcomed qualified asylum seekers, screened and processed them rapidly for legal status, and worked with NGOs and states like Maine to place them in localities where their skills could be put to immediate use or they could be trained to make critical contributions to our society’s needs while improving their own situations?
Indeed, Maine already has an outstanding record of welcoming refugees and asylum seekers. Notwithstanding initial climate and cultural differences, an amazing number of forced migrants from Africa have resettled in Maine and contributed to their communities and the state’s well-being, as well as adapted to the “Maine way of life.” It’s a process of give and take integration that enriches both the immigrants and the communities in which they settle.
PWS
08-29-19
THE NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY IS ALIVE AND WELL IN BOOTHBAY HARBOR — Singer/Songwriter John Schindler & Friends Inspire & Uplift With Benefit Concert For Maine’s Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (“ILAP”) At Congregational Church Of Boothbay Harbor!
THE NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY IS ALIVE AND WELL IN BOOTHBAY HARBOR — Singer/Songwriter John Schindler & Friends Inspire & Uplift With Benefit Concert For Maine’s Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (“ILAP”) At Congregational Church Of Boothbay Harbor!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt, Exclusive for immigrationcourtside.com
Boothbay Harbor, ME, July 14, 2019. In the face of continuing U.S. Government cruelty, disregard of asylum laws, and dehumanization which has drawn national and international condemnation, an estimated 150 enthusiastic supporters of due process, the humanity of asylum seekers, and the true spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ heard, saw, and participated in “the real America” at the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor Sunday night.
Singer/songwriter/guitarist John Schindler and Friends entertained the crowd with an upbeat, beautiful, heartfelt, down home, optimistic, generous, and welcoming view of America presented through their own music and arrangements. Among Schindler’s “friends” were local artist, singer, multi-instrument musician, and composer Kat Logan and songstress, composer, and guitar player Lisa Redfern.
Logan delighted the audience her versatility by playing the guitar, piano, banjo, accordion, and singing a cappella. She and Redfern collaborated seamlessly on several numbers. Schindler closed the performance with a number of his own compositions eliciting love, family, and American values including his award-winning composition The Start of the Freedom Trail, honoring the courage, determination, and sometimes tragedies of American immigrants throughout history.
The event was sponsored by Reverend Sarah Foulger and the Mission Committee of the Congregational Church, which is also sponsoring a mission trip to the southern border in November. All proceeds from the concert will be donated to the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (“ILAP”), Maine’s largest provider of pro bono legal support and representation to asylum seekers and refugees.
In her introduction, Rev. Foulger cogently and movingly pointed out that represented asylum seekers succeed on their claims at a rate of five times those forced to proceed without lawyers. And, although asylum proceedings have been likened by prominent judges to the equivalent of “death penalty trials in traffic court,” our laws currently provide indigent asylum seekers with no right to appointed counsel. Thus, essential efforts like those of ILAP are saving the lives lives of the most vulnerable among us every day.
The deep understanding of the plight of refugees and asylum seekers in today’s intentionally toxic, racially charged, and dehumanizing atmosphere created by our Government was both impressive and inspiring. Lots of folks in this small town in Maine understand our legal and ethical obligations to refugees and asylum seekers, the overwhelming obstacles refugees must overcome, and their essential contributions to the past and future greatness of America.
It’s a unfathomable tragedy that those running our Government (into the ground) are advancing a White Nationalist restrictionist agenda that unfairly demonizes and intentionally dehumanizes those whom we should be welcoming and treating with respect and dignity under our laws.
Anyone interested in contributing to this extraordinary effort by the “Maine Branch of the New Due Process Army” may do so by mailing tax deductible contributions made out to the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor (designated for ILAP), P.O. Box 468, Boothbay Harbor, Maine 04538.
Due process forever, malicious incompetence never. Join the New Due Process Army today, and fight for our Constitution and the promise of social justice for everyone in America. The life you save, might turn out to be your own.
Boothbay Harbor, ME
Musical Artist
Boothbay Harbor, ME
Musical and Graphic Artist
Boothbay Harbor, ME
Musical Artist
Boothbay Harbor, ME
Congregational Church
Boothbay Harbor, ME
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PWS
07-15-19
SUNRISE @ LINEKIN BAY
THE EARLY AM RETURNS ARE IN FROM LINEKIN BAY!
PWS
07-03-18
MAINE MAY MONTAGE
I’M BACK AFTER A “BREAK!”
“BREAKING” NEWS FROM IMMIGRATIONCOURTSIDE.COM!
As some of you “followers” might have noticed, I haven’t posted anything new since Wednesday afternoon.
Unfortunately, Wednesday night I went out to walk Luna with her leash in one hand and a lantern in the other. I went off the bottom step of the deck, hit moist grass, slipped, and went down the embankment, breaking my ankle in the process. With Cathy’s help, I crawled back up to the cabin and got as far as our kitchen floor. There, our neighbors, the Andersons, and Cathy determined it was time for the ambulance (fortunately, overruling my first instinct to “wait until the urgent care center in town opens in the AM”).
Once they found our cabin (Larry Anderson flagged them down with a flashlight), the EMTs did a super job of stabilizing my ankle (which was pretty ugly and pointing in another direction) and carrying me up the steep path by chair to get me on a stretcher. Then, they took me over to Miles Memorial in Damariscotta, about 20 miles away. At that point, I was glad I wasn’t having a heart attack, because I’m not sure I would have made it in time.
At Miles Memorial, the amazing Dr. Zaidi (“Dr. Z”) (of course an immigrant, “making America great” in ways those of us in need can appreciate) the orthopedic surgeon and his wonderful team of talented nurses, emergency room physicians, anesthesiologists, physical therapists, and social workers took great care of fixing me up. They squeezed me into surgery on Thursday AM. A plate, ten screws, a long incision, and a temporary cast later, I was on the road to recovery. Miles was short of rooms, so they put me in the Maternity Ward, which was great.
Now, I’m back at our cabin in BBH on crutches and with a walker. Apparently, the full recovery is a pretty long road. I’ll be on crutches for awhile.
Going back to Dr. Z on Monday to get a permanent cast. He should “clear me for travel” at that time. Of course, my objective is to be in good enough shape for the Packers home opener v. the Seahawks at Lambeau on Sept. 10 for which we have tickets with our son Wick and our grandson Joe.
To Cathy’s annoyance, about the first thing I said to the EMTs is that I had to be able to make the Packers’ home opener on Sept. 10. They were sympathetic, although they were Patriots fans as was everyone at Miles. All good folks, nevertheless!
So, I’m sentenced to some time sitting on the front porch in BBH watching the boats come in, the paddle boarders, kayakers, and sailing resort across Linekin Bay. See above. If you have to be laid up, not a bad place. But, I won’t be back “on the water” in my kayak for a while (sadly).
I’ll have get back to courtside gradually. I just posted an article on the latest BIA precedent that I was working on at the time I “went down.” I have another posting I promised Nolan, but that might have to wait until tomorrow. Fortunately, our son Will, his wife Stephanie, and their dogs are arriving here tomorrow to enjoy Maine and give Cathy a hand while they are at it. (Cathy is still feeling some of the effects of her knee replacement in January, so lugging stuff up and down from the parking lot really isn’t in her skill set right now.)
All the neighbors have been really helpful. Ron, across from us, took care of monitoring our sewage system inspection today so that Cathy could pick me up at Miles!
This incident also reminded me that good health insurance is important for everyone (not the “el cheapo” plans that cover less that some pols are pushing as an alternative to Obamacare.) Even the “young and healthy” who claim they shouldn’t have to carry insurance could do what I did, need immediate high quality medical care, and run up thousands in medical bills literally “overnight.” Thank goodness for the FEHB, Kaiser Permanente, Medicare, and the medical pros at Boothbay Ambulance and Miles Memorial Hospital who helped me out in time of need!
All the best to everyone,
Paul