CAITLIN’S POOPY

All right, enough already! Caitlin Shetterly has really got to stop with this incessant drivel she calls a column each week in the Phoenix! I haven’t read "Bramhall Square" in a while, but this week ("Au Bain," Jan. 7) I decided to and was quickly reminded of why I don’t frequent this mess of words assembled together to fill up space in your paper.

I don’t think I have to ask the question, but I’m going to anyway: Who the HELL cares about the bathroom practices of her ex-boyfriends? I certainly don’t, and I cannot imagine I’m alone in this one. Wow.

She needs to read more current events, go and do some volunteer work — something to make her writing less self-absorbed, and more thoughtful and meaningful. I mean, really, contribute to society in some way that might actually inspire your readers. Knowing what your English ex-boyfriend liked to snack on "while taking a dump" is so not the way to do it. Seriously.

Caroline Willard

Portland

O CANADA!

Quite enjoyed your article on secession (see "Maine Could Secede from the US and Join Canada," Jan. 7, by Jennifer Lunden). You may or may not know that during the time when Quebec first proposed seceding from Canada, that Maine Times writer John Gould proffered that Maine should secede from the United States and with the Canadian maritime provinces form a new nation to be called "New Atlantis." He also suggested that as a first step we change our time zone to the same as Nova Scotia, which now, as then, makes a great deal of sense. Having served with Her Majesty’s Canadian forces I feel a strong tie to Canada and am an Honorary Member of the Royal Canadian Legion. Glad you like Portland, although at times I feel it is getting to be too much like Boston, yet do not want to give up the rich cultural aspects of residency here.

Robert Campbell

Portland

TALKING ABOUT TOMORROW

"The future doesn’t just happen. People create it through their action — or inaction." This gem of a quote from World Future Society President Timothy Mack (see "Seeing Things," Dec. 31, by Mike Miliard) ought to have been set in boldface and the piece devoted to its moral implications. Writer Philip Wylie put it this way: "Man must, to become moral, define good as that way of life . . . dedicated . . . to human posterity. Whatever people do that diminishes the prospect of people yet unborn is evil. It’s that simple."

"I look towards the future with dread," Miliard confides, adding that "the gleaming technotastic (sic) promise that seemed so possible as the century turned has vanished." Instead of following up on this, Millard’s style and focus wander. He cites troubling trends, "war and strife, economic stagnation and environmental despoliation," only to turn jokey where writers once identified root causes and proposed cures.

A local psychic’s thoughts on celebrities, astrological technique and symbolism, the Bush Administration, etc. are given twice the space as the World Future Society’s President, and the article’s only boldface quote to boot. In his 1992 book, The Age of Missing Information, Bill McKibben suggests that the sheer volume of shallow drivel, gossip, innuendo, and candied pap served up by the mass media drowns out more articulate, nuanced, and sensitive voices. In "Seeing Things," Miliard gives us both, while fashionably blurring distinctions between "high" and "low" culture. Such affected non-judgementalism ought to fool no one since any article is composed by choosing what to put in or leave out.

For alternative media to be truly an alternative to the "image over truth" falseness of the mainstream media, its moral outrage must be based on rigorous thought. To mimic countercultural edginess by being flashy but inconclusive trashes our ideals by reducing the counterculture to a style.

Tony Taylor

Buxton

GETTING OUT AND ABOUT

Shay Stewart-Bouley’s Observations (see "Homebound Ho-Hum," Dec. 10) are quite accurate. I’ve lived in Southern Maine for 40-some years and am just now beginning to explore large and small communities beyond York county. The cause is not an anti-social attitude. On the contrary, this attitude is the effect of slow-as-molasses economic and commercial development. Only in the last few years have hundreds of malls and plazas been constructed. I can recall when the "Centers for Shopping" consisted of downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and maybe Kennebunk (more likely Biddeford), for groceries. Now there are major stores in virtually every town in between. Wells had a general store or two (like something out of Petticoat Junction) and York had an A&P that would serve as an AT&T wireless kiosk today. Over decades, Sanford, Wells, York, and Kittery cultivated their current suburban glamour.

The average weekly shopping trip took three hours as recently as two decades ago. It’s a matter of taking advantage of the new trend toward convenience of which we had been deprived for so long. Once the thrill of X-tra Mart and Wal-mart is gone, I suspect many residents will get ’round to checking out the various points of interest that neighboring regions have to offer.

John Keyes

Old Orchard Beach

OKEY-DOKE

This should be, the final, ultimate, "put that puppy DOWN!," and let’s just kick this "GUN" question to the curb once and for all Statement:

It’s gonna be very hard — nearly impossible — to overthrow our government WITHOUT using guns!!! (I believe that two guys tried rubber bands and bottle rockets but they accomplished very little unless you want to include public humiliation as an achievement!)

So, Americans, can we begin to rewrite our country, by agreeing with my above statement?? Let the healing begin . . . together red and blue make a beautiful PURPLE!!

Roibeard o’hAirt

Portland