Post 771 - June 17, 2025

After Michael and I decided to take this car trip up north, we realized that we would be gone for the June 24^th primary elections in New York. We also realized that we’d be gone for the June 14^th protest marches on Flag Day.

So, before we left, it was the work of but a minute to pick up a mail-in ballot from the voting office on Varrick Street. We filled them out and mailed them back a couple of days ago, before we crossed the border into Canada from a post office in Maine. That problem solved. Check.

50501, the organization that has been helping to organize these days of resistance across the country, had an online map showing where all the many thousands of resistance events were going to be happening. An event in Machias, Maine, was exactly the right distance away from where we were starting out from our friends’ house on Saturday. According to the app, we would get there just as the excitement was starting.

Michael and I have each spent a couple of days here and there in Maine, but neither of us had visited for very long. My ex performed at the Ogunquit Playhouse in either Lend Me a Tenor or Noises Off, or both, decades ago. I was there for at least one of those. Patti also did a concert in Orono, Maine, sometime in the now, rather distant past. I remember driving around while we were there and seeing the macabre wrought iron gates to Stephen King’s house.

Traveling up through Acadia was a remarkable, eye-opening experience. Interstate 95 runs right up through the center of the state, but we weren’t interested in going that way. Life doesn’t happen on the Interstate, as William Least Heat Moon once said. Route 1 is almost the only road that meanders up through the myriad of tiny towns along the coast. Most of those places seem as if they’re from a time long gone. Some have succumbed to the lure of Dollar Stores, but most seem to still have stores that look as if they’ve been in business for centuries.

As we drove into Machias, we were on the lookout for the demonstration. Suddenly, there it was. A throng of people was holding signs and making noise all along Main Street. Main Street had, of course, long been incorporated into Route 1. We quickly parked and jumped out to join the crowd.

Maine is a purple state. Susan Collins, the GOP Senator, can sometimes be relied on to counter draconian Republican measures that go too far, but she also waffles too much on other common-sense legislation. Along the way, I’d seen equal numbers of Harris / Walz signs, even after all this time, as I did signs in support of the President.

There are a lot of fishermen (fisherpeople?) in Maine. The sea is still a massively important source of employment for people along the Acadian coast. Those who aren’t out in boats seem to be farming. Potatoes and Blueberries are grown everywhere. One of my favorite picture books as a kid was Blueberries for Sal, which was published soon after World War II. Robert McCloskey, who wrote and illustrated the book, spent summers with his family on a small island in Penobscot Bay, and set the story nearby.

Maine doesn’t get the tourism that, say, Cape Cod gets because the perception from those of us lower down the seaboard is that it is just too far away. We’ve been missing out.

As I walked down the line of people lining Route 1, I got stopped by a, “Hey, handsome.” That’s how I met Heidi, the Anarchic Lesbian. That’s her description of herself, not mine. Pierced and tattooed, and seemingly much the same age as Michael and I, she was in a t-shirt that read, “Introverted but Down to Discuss Socialism.” After having spent an hour or so with her, I would argue that she’s anything but anarchic. From what I learned about Heidi, she craves order. She’s spent her whole life fighting for everything she has. She’s ready for that to stop.

Somebody in the crowd offered me a small flag to hold. It was given to me with the proviso that I return it afterward so that it could be used during the town’s July 4^th celebrations or for their next protest. There seemed to be no question in anyone’s mind that there would, indeed, be another protest.

Heidi and I instantly became old friends and talked about everything. In between some harrowing stories of her growing up down south, we waved our flags and cheered at the cars that drove by. Some cars honked back at us in solidarity. Some ignored us. A few drivers gave us the finger.

Heidi was a magnet. The longer we stood there, the more people wandering by stopped and started chatting with us. Everyone had something to say. Heidi has a job as a receptionist at a local clinic, but that is just to make money. Her passion is art. She is a painter. She is well informed and crystal clear about what this Administration is doing. She follows the news and, like all of us, is doing her best to separate the truth from the propaganda. Above all, Heidi is angry.

This past Saturday, one of the President’s rabid supporters assassinated a top Democratic Representative from the Minnesota House named Melissa Hortman. This guy also murdered her husband. Disguised as a law enforcement officer, the assassin shot the two to death. Before that, he also shot Minnesota Senator John Hoffman and his wife in their home. Both Hoffmans remain hospitalized in critical condition.

Senator Mike Lee, a Republican piece of garbage from Utah, blamed the assassination on Marxists on the left. It was a predictably despicable response from the GOP, but I think we have had enough.

The President’s big show of military strength in Washington on the same day we were out on Route 1 was a bust. Few showed up to witness the sad spectacle of the most incompetent President we have ever had trying to prove how powerful he was on his birthday. Instead, millions, and I mean millions of Americans skipped his party and took to the streets not only in thousands of towns and cities across the United States but also in many places around the globe to make their feelings known. Millions of people marched against him.

Together, the No Kings marches against the man currently sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office are now ranked as the largest single protest in history. Saturday was a good day for Democracy.

We rarely get the opportunity to vote someone into office whom we unequivocally love. Sometimes the choices we are offered mean that we must choose the person in the pack we hate the least. It’s hardly inspirational.

The current Mayor of New York is a disaster. Many are at the point with him now that they would choose just about anyone else to replace him. There’s a whole cadre of people running for office. I can’t remember there ever having been this many people vying for the ticket. None of them, sadly, are perfect. People either violently object to one, or else they are hopelessly underwhelmed by another. At best, some of my friends say, “Yeah, I think that one’s good, but…”

This primary process is designed for us to have the chance to discuss all the candidates and assess their various strengths and weaknesses. This one seems too far left. That one doesn’t seem strong enough to lead. That one we know we can’t stand, but maybe they’d do a good job despite it all. The more discussion that happens, the easier it ultimately is to reach a consensus. The question is, I suppose, how do you get everybody to be interested enough to join in on the conversation?

I don’t think that anyone on this ballot will get 50% of the vote right off the bat. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong and one of them will. If my friends are a microcosm of the city, choosing our mayor is going to take a minute. When the options do narrow down, I fear it’s going to get interesting.

Heidi, the anarchic lesbian, has lived in Maine for thirty years. Several of the people who joined us at the march said that they’d never been to New York City before. That always surprises me, but I guess that there are plenty of New Yorkers who have never been up to Maine. We certainly never thought about coming up this far before.

We don’t realize how similar people in disparate, far-flung corners of our country are. After a few minutes out on Route 1, I felt as if I’d known Heidi for years. I recognized everyone standing with us. We all want the same thing. People want to work. Some people need to work. People want the freedom to create, be it their art or even just their lives. Would it really be that awful if we just let everyone do that?

As satisfying as it was to see the President hung out to dry at his sad parade in Washington, there are going to be repercussions. Not showing up to his big, stupid party means that there will be a price to pay. The horrifying thing is that it could mean that, along with Israel, we will go to war with Iran. This guy will do anything, even attack another country, to deflect attention away from his failures. He’s failing so much lately that he’s beginning to run out of diversionary moves.

There’s nothing better, in my opinion, than meeting people like Heidi. She seems to be living her best life in the state of Maine and making what she can of the hand she’s been dealt. You can choose to remain positive, and she has done just that. We had a great time out on Route 1 fighting together for our Democracy.

Yes, we’ve had enough of what we’re being handed by this Administration. We’ve all had more than enough. Instead of caving in to despair, though, let’s keep on pushing back until we can put people into office who will take better care of us. We deserve nothing less.

I keep saying this, but there are more of us who want to be able to lead decent lives and wish the same for our neighbors than there are people who want to marginalize anyone they perceive as different. Way more. I now know a whole bunch of folks in Maine who’ve got our backs. I think they’re ready for anything.

We’ve got this.