Woodstock Maine’s Disgrace

Like Kristof in the NYT News of the Week in Review this Sunday, I have to wonder, or rather rethink my views on the First Amendment. Let’s edit that. I have to rethink my views on a lot of things. My experiences from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and the first decade of the 21st Century have gotten so confusing that I don’t know what I really believe about a wide number of issues. Consider that a liberal rag, The New Republic, one which guided my ideology in my more formative years recognizes that Islam may be at odds with the Constitution. How about that, sports fans?

We were driving back and forth to camera camp  at Maine Media Workshops where Jay Maisel transformed my photographic personna. Passing through West Woodstock, the sineage on a boarded up county store, an image I avoid like the plague unless it contains a typo, made me trigger happy. What could cause this very public civic outburst in this town known best for being the one where the Bryant Pond Telephone Company placed the last hand cranked telephone call?

We tried to find out, but no one in the town seemed to know or be willing to talk. Sharon asked in the brand-named-chain gas station across the street. You would think that the woman behind the counter making minimum wage who can put the numbers into the computer to make change might know since her window on the world from which she stops drive-offs looks out on the condemned building. “I am not from around here,” she said. Like how far could you live from here to be employed? And how many towns with how many people sit between here and there? We were not in Kansas, were we, Dorothy? Up here, even in the western part of Maine, there must be a paper or a radio station or some TV outlet, don’t you think? The Constitution still applies up there, yes? So, if someone got evicted and the building was taken over, it should have been a public event, yes?

One guy I met taking the same pictures I was taking said that the woman who owned the place sold natural food products from local farms and dairies in addition to making breads, cookies and grain products. His vanity license plate read, “ABIDE,” as in the “dude abides.”

All we could do was marvel at the art and wonder about the process that drove this seemingly charming member of the community mad. In the conflicted worlds of Muslims and Jews, an Imam or head of a Beth Din would have made a decision. There would be no public outcry, no mimicry or finger pointing. Certainly, signs would not be permitted, nor would attacks on the city fathers who chair the local boards thought to be the signatures of democracy that keep New England pristine and unchanged.

Yes, we don’t want to control what god people worship or how they worship that god, but if we don’t talk about civic virtue in Constitutional terms, we end up with a religious state masquerading as a democratic one. Then again, one might think that a religious state would have some moral code that would put one’s contributions to the civic good on a par with the power of those anonymous owners rich enough to buy franchises and place them on inter and intra state routes. On the other hand, who runs the gas stations of the world?

Author: duckshots

Lapsed lawyer. Reader. Photographer. Jewish. Strongly attached to loving, caring, wife-Sharon. Working at remaining relevant. Hoping that my body and mind outlive my dreams. Maybe something I blog will make some sense.

5 thoughts on “Woodstock Maine’s Disgrace”

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