SOFTBALL PFEIFLE

Everyone I speak with who is involved in local fashion is disappointed with last week’s profile of Jay Allen’s T-shirts (see "T-Shirts, the Next Generation," Sept 2, by Sam Pfeifle). While I can appreciate your loyalty to Allen and his endeavors, I would expect to find such complacent, pacifying, and unchallenging logorrhea in an alumni bulletin or family newsletter (e.g. "Here’s what Billy’s been up to lately!") and not in an alt-weekly. You owe it to the hardworking and innovative Portland artists and artisans to dig deeper than a lollygagging fluff piece like this. Maybe it’s the best you can do, but I’d like to think your editorial staff is a little more thoughtful than that.

David Meiklejohn, Brooklyn, NY

FESTIVAL GOOD IDEA

Seems to me that it’s belaboring the obvious to dwell on the denial of public access to Congress Street during the Festival of Cultural Diversity (see "CCE Schedules Meeting to Clear Air," Sept 2, by Sara Donnelly). The event planners were clearly mistaken and the same scenario cannot and presumably will not be repeated.

What does need to be looked at, I think, is the general approach to celebrating cultural diversity. In recent years, the area has experienced a significant influx of people representing a rich variety of cultures from all over the world, and anything that will further the understanding between those people and their new neighbors cannot be anything but good. It is also true, though, that there is and has been a great interest on the part of native-born people in celebrating their own cultural heritage. Diversity is the key word here.

The festival should be first and foremost a celebration of all cultures represented in the area. A sharing of conversation, food, music, songs, dancing, poetry, and stories. Neighbors opening up to one another. Try a Somalian dance. Taste Irish stew for the first time. Find a great Mongolian wool hat made by someone up on Brackett Street.

So the Festival should be by and about local people. Not people from far away and high priced. And there shouldn’t be a general admittance fee. A festival should be open to everyone.

With much lower overhead the event might actually be more profitable. The Center for Cultural Diversity could charge participants for spaces and receive a percentage from those participants who offer food or items for sale. The Center might also do such as put together a home-spun publication featuring submissions by people from diverse cultures and offer it for sale throughout the festival. There might also be admittance fees for certain venues. The festival would have the buzz of an international bazaar, with special and alluring attractions off to the side here and there. This Festival of Cultural Diversity is a good one. Let’s keep at it.

Cliff Gallant, Portland

MAINE, GO GREEN

The Greens may be under attack, but in this case it’s hard see the forest for the Democrats (see "Greens Under Attack?," Sept 2, by Lance Tapley). Because the real Green issues aren’t present and all the old Democratic chestnuts — welfare, schools, healthcare, and other social problems such as immigration, English as a second language, teenagers having kids, homelessness, drugs, alcohol, affordable housing — are being fought over.

Well, let the Democrats have them. Drop the old chestnuts and let them sprout new Green ideas — helping disadvantaged youth, and everyone else. Because of the war in Iraq and the disappearance of New Orleans and the appearance of wicked prices for oil and gas, it seems the answer is alternative energy. Why not, with Maine’s great open spaces, attract manufacturing plants for solar panels (if they can heat at this latitude then they’ll really warm up the central states). And why not coastal wind farms? And what about 100-percent electric cars, a little town with all alternative vehicles, attracting tourists and people who love the unique. Why not harness the tides of Lubec? We might drain the brains of MIT, but Maine will renew and give back.

As impossible as it is to wrest one penny of gasoline tax out of Baldacci, venture capital is still there; like spring under Maine’s winter, it’s ready to flourish. Bill Gates set up shop in Oregon, why can’t Maine have similar progress? We won’t have to worry about base closings or ship contracts.

Lucia Connelly, Falmouth