One recent evening around 5 p.m., I was walking down Preble Street to my parking garage on Cumberland Avenue to head home for the holiday weekend.

It’s a walk I have done thousands of times since moving our offices to Monument Square in 1999. As I approached the corner of Preble and Cumberland, I stepped on a small patch of glare ice which I later determined was caused by some melting snow from the canopy overhead. I slipped and fell, hitting first my leg and then my head. It was not serious and I got up quickly but it was hard enough to deserve taking a few minutes to get re-oriented before gathering up my bags and continuing my walk to the garage.

Additional Photos

An icy area near Monument Square was the location of one incident of strangers looking out for someone in a moment of need. Jack Milton/Staff Photographer

What is significant about this event is that when I fell, at least two cars quickly stopped nearby, apparently having seen me fall, and a young woman from one of the cars (who turned out to be a nurse) quickly came to see if I was injured and to offer assistance. We talked briefly, she asked some questions about how I felt, I thanked her for her concern and we parted company, each to resume our previous activities. I didn’t get her name, nor did I make any contact with the others who had stopped.

Thinking about it on the way home, I felt I had not thanked her enough. In today’s world, there are many examples of people ignoring others, harassing others and, generally, abandoning any sense of responsibility and civility between each other. It’s easy to be cynical about our society as a result. And I will admit to feeling that way at times.

However, this was a significant exception. Those folks did not need to stop and she did not need to get out of her car to check on me. I appreciate it very much, both because it’s nice to know that someone saw me fall and was concerned enough to stop and because it is evidence that people still do have a concern for other people, a quality that we sometimes forget.

I hope the folks that stopped, especially the young nurse, read this. To them, I say thank you very, very much!

H. Alan Mooney, P.E., President

Criterium Engineers

Portland

This letter is one and a half years late. In August 2009, I came back on the ferry from Long Island with my brother and was rushing to the airport, when I left my purse on the grass next to where we parked.

An honest, kind gentleman found my purse and turned it in to the Portland Police Department. When I discovered that I left it, my brother headed back to the site and I called the police department on a whim. I was shocked to find out it was there.

My brother got my purse and we barely caught our plane. After returning to California, I called the police department and was told they knew the name of the man but that shift didn’t have his name. I called the following day and they still couldn’t give me his name so I could properly thank him.

They said they’d lost his number. I’ve meant to write The Portland Press Herald in hopes you’d publish a thank-you to him but somehow the time has flown.

We’re here again in Maine for the holidays and I’m hoping that you’ll publish this and he’ll see it.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for turning my purse over to the police and leaving everything in it. I hope good things have happened to you that restore your faith in man like they have for me.

Pamela Moore

San Mateo, Calif.

Alfred Nobel was not an enemy of humanity

In reference to the letter from the gentleman who has a problem with Alfred Nobel: Alfred Nobel did not invent nitroglycerin.

He was a chemical and industrial engineer who worked tirelessly to make nitroglycerin more stable (in the form of dynamite) in order for it to be safely used for the purposes of blasting through rock during construction of bridges, roads, mines, etc.

The Nobel Prize was named after Nobel because it was in fact his last wish that his fortune be used to promote and reward positive accomplishments for the benefit of all mankind in areas of medicine, literature, physics, chemistry and peace throughout the world.

To compare Nobel to Stalin and Hitler is to exhibit such ignorance that it boggles the mind. That a person, with such ill-informed opinions as those expressed by Tony Hammond in the Sunday Telegram, would feel the need to publish his delusions, having not the most rudimentary familiarity with historical facts, is appalling. That this person may be out there driving and voting, with such an astounding intellectual handicap, is frightening.

The fact that this newspaper would publish such rot, without even an editor’s note, is inexcusable.

Estella Esposito

South Portland

Commercial fishermen don’t pay highway taxes 

With regard to the editorial titled “Fuel-tax relief needed for Maine fishermen” (Dec. 29), I would like to correct your statement that commercial fishermen pay road tax on their fuel.

All Maine commercial fishermen can purchase dyed diesel fuel without paying the so-called “gas tax,” or can get the gas tax portion of gasoline or undyed diesel refunded from the state.

However, all Maine commercial fishermen have historically had to pay the 5 percent sales tax on fuel.

For the past three years, groundfishermen have been exempt from the sales tax, while the rest of the fishing fleet has continued to pay this tax, which is not “designated for roads,” but goes into the general fund.

Elliott Thomas

Yarmouth

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