It is a great day

This lovely scene took place before the bad haircut as you BLOGGING bloggers may have noticed. Beth took this one. The light in there made picture taking an option not to be missed.
I just did miserably at my microbio test. The grade should go nicely with the lab I had last week. I really am beginning to feel like I am unable to remember anything. I used to blame it on a host of things. I think it is time for me to come up with a fresh new silly excuse. As usual all entries will be judged by merit and the winner will be featured in the next holidays round of satirical poems.

The good ones jess took

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Add ImageI have been having a great time with jess' camera but as you can see by sabine's picture she is still the master of the photo universe. we all had an awesome time wiht the baby racing and all when the nine of us get together it is quite a rare treat. We are fortuante to live near such wonderful friends.

Sew buttons on pink ice cream

was judy's most recent response to our constant banter of one-up-person's-ship. We were trying to out-adage eachother. She won as usual but I was not trying and becides she is wiser than I am. I hope her schmoo exacts revenge.
One nice thing about the elders is that they have suck excellent vintage adages. America as they veiwed it in their twenties was filled with hip jargon and every now and then one of them will revert and the deluge will ensue. It is as if they are speaking in toungues.
I want to give a shout out to the heat's this evening. I am thinking of yous. and yours. I also want to put up this here silly pictyure for good luck and measure.
I will call it powerful hugs. Hydroluck., I am to tired to write I get silly after eleven and can't spell

Thank you to my least favorite consumer

I would like to thank my least favorite consumer for the cold she gave me and my family. On the behalf of the families of the two people who died from the viral lung infection, thank you as well. It is so nice to work for someone who is so ungrateful then get something from them that I can share with my family. Jess has enjoyed her head cold though I promised her it would be even more fun when it hit her lungs. One other consumer is thoroghly enjoying her last days after her tablemate hawked all over her and gave her a lung infection as well.

Check out Eliots mike jordan impression!

You GIve me Bad Hair CUT! I give YOU Bad Haircut

For those of you wondering what the difference between a nine dollar haircut and a fourty dollar hair cut I would suggest you meet up with this gentleman at Longfellow square. I have never been so badly butchered in my life. He left my hair comically uneven on all sides. It was as if the barber stepped out and a homeless man set up shop in his stead. The funniest thing about it was I was fine with it. I think I was like a newfoundland who gets a summer shearing. I was just so happy to be able to see past my hair I forgot to check the cut out. It was rediculous. COnsider this your fair warning Portland, this charachter may be a locally owned business but there is a reason why he has no franchises.

Oh SH**. It is alive!

This just happened over the last few days. We are so in big trouble.

Lovely Lady Liberty Lumps

I thought this add was hillarious. It is an actual picture from an actual magazine about Alaske that I saw at the doctors. I took a picture of this picture just to show you the dangers of not supervising artists carefully enough. This has been minted already...I am thinking of getting one for our fiftieth wedding annerversary.

School and Philanthropy Apparently Not Something Government Encourages Me to Do

Jess is all heart. She knows there should be no strings attached to donations and that education is something that is a privilidge not a right. We frequently talk about this in the form of arguments about what is and is not an appropriate donation to goodwill. we also have had occation to breech the educational topic while filing taxes then later in the car back from filing for a FAFSA.

*Let me tell you gentle tax payers. Heed this well. It is a warning from me that what you are about to read may piss you off. It may discourage you as well.*

Let me first tell you what I am all about. I am a CRMA(gov't subsidized drug dealer), lifer in the non-profit sector, degree holding retunring to college student, who has withering faith in our non-profits and schools. I have been volenteering since I was three, and have been in school since I was five. For the last ten years I have tolerated shitty pay and hard working conditions for near minimum wage pay. All the while I have been a good sport still volenteering occasionally, and just keeping a stiff upper lip about being poor. I get satisfaction from my work and that is enough. right that is enough. well this is enough. I am no longer going to be withdrawn from this issue because it needs mending and the answers are out there. Philanthropy and education need to no longer be tax shelters and businesses respectively.
Last week I filed my taxes and found out that being generous to goodwill only fetches you a deduction if you are donating above the 5300 dollar amount. Philanthropy apparently is not encouraged for the lower class. I make below 20,000 and I have to donate more than a quarter of that to have the government recognize me as a philanthropist. I am not saying that I want a medal or any reward I just want to know that my government is not just allowing tax breaks for people who have endless amounts of disposable income. The reason I find the current system for having a standard deduction so objectionable is that giving is right and morally essential nomatter what faith you come from. The world cannot function on greed. Monetary incentives for giving are not working because the scale is not even. We should not allow tax sheltered non-profits to continue on while not allowing the poor to be acknoledged as well. A million dollars from a rich person may be worth the same to a poor person. It is the charitable spirit we should acknowledge not the numerical donation. Cold numbers mean little if donations become tax shelters.
The educational problem I am seeing is one I encountered while I was running for office but was unable to bring up before the end of the race. We are failing as a country to provide basic skills for people who want to succeed in life and be able to maintain a balanced interest in learning while holding a job. Our system has potential to be great but the government has bend to the wishes of the learning institutions and removed all incentitves for lifelong learning. If you were to follow the monetary incentives from high school through the life of the learner you would find a recipie for disaster. The FAFSA program encourages debt in young student populations giving out free money only in extreme cases and cases where the learner is going to promise the institution they will be in debt for a damn long time after graduation. This is so wrong it enrages me every time I think of the result. We are essentially not allowing people who are inspired to learn to do so without debt. Every hallmark of our college system points to this wrong yet for some reason it has not been righted. I believe that financial aid packages need to be reallocated to encourage thoughtful enrollment. Education is the key to success only if the education results in more education and contentment. My experiance tells me this. It took me three years to get excited about learning again after i greaduated from USM with a degree I should have never gone to school for. Not once during those years did an educator sit down with me and recommend I make sure that I was on the right path. High schools and colleges should be forced to work together to ensure students can graduate in four years with a degree that will earn them a good living and be in line with oppertunities if the student so desires.

Political withdrawl symptoms

I just was pondering my experiances getting into the local political scene. Before I bore you all to death here you are. Some fun pictures.



Last year while I was running for school board I had the great priviladge to learn quickly a bunch of valuable lessons. Every now and then I make a good decision or say something helpful that reminds me of how much I gained from getting involved. Most importantly I learned how easy it is to get involved.

Before running for office I had looked at local politics as being out of reach. I even thought the chartiable boards I often was at the mercy of (through my work for not for profits) were completely exempt for a person like myself. It was very disempowering to see my city and world this way. The incentive to build community was not there. A few short years ago I felt very annoyed at only being able to vote and see action. Then that to seemed to erode when the highest courts in the country got to choose my president. This was the breeding ground for cynisism. Having had the experiance of running for an office, I have to say I feel much less cynical about our local government.
Lately the newspapers have been making it their business to really sensationalize the local school board scandles and it really has me in a bind. On one hand I feel like the newspapers should print whatever the heck they want but on the other hand I know they do not in other cases. The Portland Press Herald is famous for the story untold. They love to really make a mockery of their responsibility as an alleged newspaper here in Maine. The ladies and I have many a laugh at their expense. They report on Miklejohn as if they knew the whole story and leave out vast parts of it. They just print the most sensational bits. It makes the newspaper look foolish and biased to me and may residents but not everyone watches access where B. Miklejohn can be seen live fighting for better schools in Portland. It is really quite a silly business the way it all plays out.

Local Portland Scene Declared Lame By Man Who Hangs With The 90 Plus Set

I have been reading the bollard online magazine about the various liquer issues Portland is having along with the other various other newspapers(if the Press Herald can be called that). I have come to the conclusion Portland is and may have become lame or is already lame when it comes to boozing.
I have long been a purveyor of boozing. I have run the gamut. When I started boozing I was a kid drinking rock gut. I would unwisely drink way to much and get sick. When I grew tired of this I started experimenting with moderation. Eventually I started getting sick of rock gut spirits and started trying real drinks. I have gone to the vineyards, taken brewery tours, made beer and wine, tried a fair amount of scotch, and generally stopped being the village idoit when it comes to bar hopping. I have done all of this without becoming lame. Portland can to.
We have been as a city at the heart of the irrational reaction of society to excesses regarding booze. Just around the corner is Neil Dow's historic house where he historically invented a bad idea called prohibition. Criminalizing boozing did not work out so well but non-the-less it is in our history. We should always remember our history. I can't remember why but I get the feeling Portland has not been thinking in terms of history as of late.
We have had before us offered as a city by the Old Port task force some very bad ideas. These ideas have been desinged to aviod taxing Portlanders for drinking related shinnanegins in the Old Port and soon will be applied to the whole city. The spirit of all the ideas has been, if we make bad behaviors expensive we can afford to police those behaving badly. This will stop people from drinking excessivly then being idiots.
All of these ideas have come from a certain set in Portland. Some of them are young, some old, some powerful, some righteous. All of them have been managing to find in them some shitty ideas about how to control people. I have been in the bars for years in Portland. I have been to all the parties, even jumped out windows when I was in college when the police came. I have talked to our representitives and aside from Marshal and Donahue the majority of them are not involved with the Old Port enough to understand what is happening. I do not profess to know exactly what is happening but I know damn well the solution is not what is being suggested.
At the heart of the problem is not bar owners overserving but it is them who is being taxed. The number of seats in bars is not the problem either. There is not one problem though all the factions in carge of Portland's boozing scene say they have the facts and examples and solutions. One of the cheif sources for info on drinking in Portland(whose name I will not mention) is a new age prohibitionist. She gathers data thusly. She mines for data that supports her religious beliefe that drinking is wrong and any drinking is excessive. She is appointed by a foundation in Maine and it is completely against drinking of any kind. During Will Gorham's rule over boozing in Portland she got way to much attention and her opinions are off base as is her data.
With the new improved task force in Portland being headed up by Marshal I am hoping to see the dominant problem being scrutinized. The dominant problem as i see it has to do with concentrations and realtionships. The relationships I am talking about here are the ones between the police and people waiting for the cabs. The concentrations of course are of people getting out of the bars drunk. We need to change the nature of the relationshipt of cops with drunks and water down the concentration of drunks in cab stands and outside of bars.
The city already spends enough on policing. The fines for being a nucance should be increased to pay for the police presence. People who are wasted and causing trouble need to be caught and fined and this is the people who should pay for the old port policing. They are the ones to blame. We do not need to be paying our cops to do all these stings citywide that do nothing more than fine a few vendors. The stings should pay for themselves just like any additional policing that is highly specialized.

Public enemy number one. The baby suffocator

Must be The Spring Stars

I have staved off a virtual rant for long enough. It is now time for me
to take out my rant list and submit them to you my non-captive audience.
1. Life as a father is good, I am a good father and do the right things.
With this in mind picture the following: It was a lovely day,
chilly but not full Maine weather. Just hovering around freezing. I just ate the nicest cheese and bread before doodling Eliot an myself out to the bus stop. Monument Square was full of the colorful people it is known for. Many of them were waiting for buses in the bus shelter. I asked a couple of them to stop smoking and made my way to a bench. An odd smelling lady(one of the smokers in a
non-smoking bus stop tries to put her hands into my jacket to make sure
he can breathe. Thankfully I am to quick for her. Her dirty yellow
paws glance off as I smile politely telling her Eliot is very tired.
The next carnival folk enters with a dog and cigarette which
he extinguishes after only a short exchange of glances at him then the
non-smoking sign. It is clear from his parlance he is looking for a
chat(not a bus). He sees Eliot and dashes over. Full of helpful advice
about warmth and children he tells me how important it is to cover the
boys ears. I deflect him and his approaching hands with thanks for his
caring and tell him Eliot is quite warm. The dog man persists, "I think
you better cover up the boys ears."
"No thank you though he is fine."
"He is cold you should be worried for his health."
"No thank you." He was one suggestion of getting his ass kicked in a big
bad way by a man who looked pregnant and tired. I am very
tired. I am f-ing tired of people trying to touch my son without permission, and telling me how to take care of my boy.

2.I think I will have to be extremely rude to every person who tells me I
am suffocating my baby. Slings may be new to the US. Fathers carrying their sons zipped into their jackets may be new to see. It is completely irrational and rude to
tell a man carrying his son in a jacket he is suffocating his son.
Why do people persist in saying this? I choose to believe they ask me
if Eliot can breathe because they want to be verbally abused. One of the desk ladies at the Nuns used crap store on congress was told, "He is six months old and healthy and happy. Of course he is suffocating. He is suffocating in the attention I give him and our family's love for him. Why would a loving father as I obviously am
endanger his child?"
I am taking suggestions for snappy responses. Mine tend to be way to not snappy.
You will get a prize for giving me that perfect thing to say to the
next obnoxious person who knows I am suffocating my baby.

3. Public servants harassing me because they think I am the uni bomber. I have been stopped by the police, questioned by bus drivers, and asked to wake up the boy by security personnel.
Our culture is cultivating an anti father set of values. How is it that
a police officer can justify being rude when he is asking me to step
over to his car? How dare he ask me what my name is in thatdick headed
cop tone that tells me I have no rights. How dare he not say I am sorry
for questioning you wrongly. I would not have minded if he had said,
"Oh my I did not know you have a baby under the jacket. What is his
name?" Instead he made up a story about somebody of my description
being in the neighborhood and up to no good. Public servants are in the
stone age. A bus driver told me I could not bring my dog on the bus.
Fathers can be fathers well. It really wears us out though, the sleep
deprivation plus the questions, plus the looks, plus the complete lack
of cooperation of the systems that are supposed to keep us safe and
supported show.

Parenthood Suiting Me

I jsut have to brag for a bit more about my wonderful boy. We had such a lovely week. It was filled with lots of school related bs but the fact that I got to spend the first five hours of everyday with Eliot on my belly made it all right. Last weekend I went running for the first time. it was great to get out but my legs hurt quite a bit. I did about three miles and it was perfect. I could feel all the bad junk from working at a place with forced hot air coming out. Hopefully this snow will not stop me from going again.
toady was the last day in Augusta for the parents. It is the welcomed close of a chapter. They will be coming through tomarrow for a visit before work. It will be strange to have them so far away but it is going to be amazing for them and even more so for us. I love the Cape and imagine we'll go frequently this summer.
The spring art urge has been coming on strong. All I have been able to think about this year is getting some business drummed up so I can make more time for painting in my schedual. I mentioned before I was doing dog portraits. Unfrotunately I have been undercharging and need to rectify that or stop doing commissions. It has been really hard to finish the last three pieces. I have yet to start the passed puppy portrait. I failed at it twice already and am getting sick of the piles of puppy drawings around the house.