Continuations
Page 12B, The Bridgton News, February 13, 2014
Young geniuses, time to get to work
(Continued from Page B) ployed or underemployed in this country. A tragedy — for those who want a box to live in, and have had their genius dulled by years inside the box, and now can see no option. But current conditions are an opportunity for the outsidethe-boxers, particularly for you young ones, possessors of a more plastic genius. So what if so many of the dullest boxes have been shipped off to China and Mexico to be filled? You didn’t want to make a career out of doing something a robot could do better, anyhow, right? Genius is not measurable, because it is unfettered and
illimitable. It’s not IQ; that’s just the boxiest kind of genius. And yes, you do have genius for something. If it’s for filling boxes, fill away; if it’s for breaking down boxes, break them down. Your real job in life is to identify your work; you’ll know you’ve got it right when work is play, when you can’t get enough of it. Maybe you’ll need to go to college, maybe you won’t; college is just one more expensive box, anyway. There is more college debt in this country than credit card debt. Fine way to box your self in — and so young too! Look, the best educations are made out in the world; the best formal
educations are self-taught, at the free public library — educate yourself and you’ll never want to stop learning. If you find school boring it may be because you’re already tired of filling boxes eight hours a day for no reason you can see. But that’s education for you — preparing you for a lifetime of work, where you can fill boxes eight hours a day for no reason you can see! Wrong preparation, wrong job. Young people today are told to get a job — but there are fewer and fewer good ones. They are told to buy health insurance, because they’ll need it when they’re
older. They’re told to go to college and get qualified; then they find they are qualified for a paper hat and a fry-olator! The generations ahead of them hold most of the good jobs, and we fogeys aren’t dying off fast enough. What to do? Kids, the Land of Opportunity knocks. This country still has the largest number of small and medium-sized businesses in the world — 60% of them, I read somewhere. Look out your back door: mercantile shops, construction companies, Moir Mfg., Howell Labs, Down East. And that’s just the techie stuff. In rural Maine! Quality,
Model from Maine Coast
(Continued from Page B) er Lake Region area. While conservation action planning has been around for more than a decade, few groups are approaching it as a strategic collaboration and even fewer are studying the impacts of the collaboration on changes in community and the environment. The Partners started their CAP process in 2010 with a series of stakeholder meetings in which they invited people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to become involved. They defined their mission to promote the ecological and economic resilience of the Bay. From these initial meetings, they formed a steering committee and later adopted an executive commit-
tee with several sub-committees. In the first phase of their planning, they held focus groups and planning sessions in which they identified their primary social and ecological focal areas, including intertidal mudflats, ocean bottom habitat, eel grass, migratory fishes, and working waterfronts. For each of these focal areas, the group drew from local and expert knowledge sources to understand threats like sources of water pollution, unsustainable but legal fishing practices, invasive species, and more. In light of these threats, the group prioritized key conservation objectives. I have been most directly involved in efforts to open 610 acres of closed clamflats in the bay.
These are potentially productive clam flats that have been shut down due to pollution sources like failing septic systems, agricultural run-off, and regulated overboard discharges (which are small-scale wastewater treatment structures for individual landowners and a lower-cost option than full-septic replacement). The Partners are working with the Frenchman Bay Regional Shellfish Committee to find ways to open closed clamflats. We received a grant from the Maine Community Foundation to support this work and are in the process of scoping out the status of known pollution sources and the abundance of clams in the closed areas so we can prioritize our efforts. This is Located in
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one of many examples of how the CAP process is helping this group make measurable progress towards accomplishing their mission. CAP may use a conceptual modeling software called Miradi that is available for free online. This software has a steep learning curve and requires a lot of information at each stage, from focal area identification to threat assessment to goal setting in the creation of “results chains.” But in our experience, the opportunities in using it far outweigh these few challenges. The software can help groups strategically identify conservation priorities. It provides a focal point around which people can organize and grow their collaborations. The software also promotes learning, as people with different types of expertise can combine their knowledge about the ecology and community of a region. My research with this group has shown that through the CAP process they have improved their partnership networks, created shared identities with the Bay watershed, promoted ecological learning, and found ways to resolve conflict among natural resource user groups. All of these changes are helping the group achieve their resilience mission and promoting their ability to respond to future changes in climate and species composition. The Frenchman Bay Partners provide a model for how other groups might adopt this approach for strategic improvements to communities, economies, and ecologies. Bridie McGreavy is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the New England Sustainability Consortium. She received her Ph.D. in communication and sustainability science from the University of Maine in December 2013.
passion, a good idea, that’s the ticket. Genius will find a way. If your passion is culinary, look at Beth’s Cafe in Bridgton. Great place, quality, local, a few good jobs, a lot of happiness for a lot of people: we need a Beth’s Cafe in every town in America — but not run by the same Beth. There’s a revolution going on today, and it’s a revolution born partly of necessity. It’s a revolution of fewer things — and more happiness. It’s smaller, more local, and more people-oriented. (Turns out we aren’t numbers, after all!) The age of the big corporation is death to outsidethe-box thinking and outside-
the-box living. Small corporations and small companies are the answer; they’re a lot more human. Their customers aren’t just bank accounts to be fleeced. The big corporation’s inevitable result is a few people living in county-sized boxes, while millions live on the streets in cardboard boxes. Outside the safe gray corporate box is exactly where millions of Americans now find themselves. So, make the most of your opportunity, young geniuses. If you do, whatever box you end up making will suit you just fine. And the world will be a better place, too. Funny how that works.
Conservative hippie-radical
(Continued from Page B) all that, I know, but I have more faith in the American people. My pessimistic friends expect the fed to keep printing money, government to keep spending it, the debt to keep increasing, more people to go on welfare, fewer workers to pay taxes, and everything to go on like that until it collapses. That could happen, I admit, and it could happen sooner rather than later. A lot of Americans have become dependent on government programs of one kind or another — even a majority by some counts. There are way too many “low-information voters” out there and their numbers will increase enormously if amnesty for illegal immigrants passes. It can get discouraging, no doubt, but I guess I believe in the common sense of Americans more than most of my conservative friends. Most of us know at some level that it just can’t go on like this. According to Rasmussen, two out of three Americans believe we’ve become too dependent on government. That would have to include people, who are themselves dependent to one extent or another, but they know the government gravy train will go off the rails eventually. Not enough of them went to the polls in November 2012, but that can change in the next two election cycles. More and more Americans will be discovering this year what was in the Obamacare bill Democrats rammed through in 2009 and they won’t like it. I think it’s safe to say that most already don’t like it, but that number will reach critical mass sometime in 2014 as millions more lose their coverage and are forced onto the exchanges. Others who think they’ve already signed up will discover how much more Obamacare is costing them compared to what they had before its implementation. We’re in for some economic and foreign policy shocks, but I expect America to survive them and smarten up in the process. They’ll learn that, as Margaret Thatcher put it: “The facts of life are conservative.” Tom McLaughlin of Lovell is a retired middle school U.S. History teacher.