Edgar Allen Beem’s “Good, old Maine” has left me confused. Was it a spoof or was it genuine longing for the future of Maine that “lies in the past”? The past, Edgar? How un-progressive.

I am a tad older than he, shares generational experiences, prefers Mozart to Country, Woodstock to NRA rallies, but our point of difference is that, unlike Edgar, I don’t plan to get “out of the way” and quietly allow “the generation to come to appreciate and even enjoy the austerity to come” (nothing like “good old Maine” Puritanical suffering) while I watch Rand Paul extremists and billionaire libertarians bankrupt cities, eliminate food stamps, slash Social Security and Medicare and otherwise channel the nation’s remaining wealth into the very nefarious (some would say demonic) finance sector that got our generation and the one to come into this despicably engineered austerity. You didn’t create it, Edgar, nor did I or our generation. Allow FDR to remind us: The “banksters” did it.

Will Edgar stop writing and fighting and get out of the way? Though suitable to others, standing in line, keeping his mouth shut and doing what he’s told doesn’t seem to fit his “profile.” The frightening problem is FDR is dead along with JFK, MLK, the New Deal and the Great Society, and the country needs to desperately find and restore them again.

And it will restore them again in due time – but not without guidance from Edgar’s generation, which is not dead, but still alive.

Michael T. Bucci
Damariscotta