To the editor:
Thank you for choosing Canada Post to deliver Working Waterfront for the past several years. We will miss doing business with you. Hopefully some of our people will subscribe to your paper.
Shirley McGuire, Postmaster
North Head
Grand Manan, New Brunswick,Canada
Seamen’s Memorial Day
To the editor:
In 1985 the Maine State Legislature (LD 162) declared the second Sunday in June to be Seamen’s Memorial Day. This day was intended to memorialize those working seamen who fell victim of tragedy during the current year as well as those of our historical past. We all remember the news headlines when the Russian tanker that failed to stop struck the F/V STARBOUND. Rockland was home port for this vessel and crew and three of the crew lost their lives. In addition to this, there was a lobsterman who also lost his life.
For our celebration this year we are expecting an estimated 300 people to attend, based on last year’s 150 in attendance. Personally I talked with people all the way from York to Searsmont, Maine. Many businesses and friends helped us with financing last year and we are again appealing for help this year. Our estimated cost is approximately $4,000 … remember we are a nonprofit corporation and fully tax deductible….
Don Clifford
Friends of the Seafaring Community
Rockland
Expanding Jackson Lab
To the editor:
Just got around to reading Sandra Dinsmore’s April issue article on the Jackson Lab and the fuss it’s facing because of a 7 percent (4.2 acre) possible expansion on its 60-acre spread. It defies logic, and makes you wonder what’s going on.
Blind philanthropist Pat Jackson gives Boothbay Harbor’s Bigelow Lab 25 to 30 acres, so that the Lab can escape from the genteel decrepitude of the old federal fisheries buildings into a secluded patch of woods with structures up to their needs, over on Southport Island. The Town of Southport has a meeting and votes it down, presumably because the good burghers would prefer to have a half-dozen McMansions, usually without children of school age if possible, for the taxes.
Around tax time at South Bristol’s Harborside Grill, there are gripes that the Darling Marine Center doesn’t always want to pony up a payment in lieu of taxes. But the DMC is an arm of UMaine Orono, which has a $90 million shortfall this year and the next. The real fact is that South Bristol has one of the largest per capital lists of tax exempt property – and with that, one of the lowest tax rates in the State of Maine.
“Do we want to look at sprawling housing developments while we hike … or drive around the island?” “[Jackson Lab’s] gifts in lieu of taxes … do not equal what 60 acres of prime MDI real estate would bring ….” Wait a minute, friends – if the lab tucks housing into the forest land it already owns, is that sprawl? And nobody seems to mind the strips of motels and the College of the Atlantic isn’t a nuisance.
So the lab is at the foot of Dorr Mountain? How apt. George Dorr made the original gift, added gifts to the park, and secured a bunch of gifts to the park. By serendipity (don’t look for a silver lining; just wait for it to turn up) and hard work plus generosity, Mr. Dorr rescued MBL from Harpswell, where it was haplessly crowded out by a Navy tank farm, and established the Jackson Lab. Both labs are international attractions.
The same serendipity (or foresight) replaced a fading sardine industry with a dependable payroll of perhaps $40 million. If current advances in DNA and biogenetics lead to a cure for cancer, the Jackson Lab will become a world-class shrine. And deservedly.
In this hobgoblin and insecure world where the USA will be embroiled in Afghanistan for the next 50 years and the spin doctors are making angels out of Sharon and Arafat, perhaps God can take time from Her busy schedule to bless Ralph Stanley, who has built durable and beautiful vessels, has been around long enough to have a clear eye, and although not a betting man, knows a sure thing when he sees it:
“It doesn’t look like an eyesore to me, it looks like security for a lot of people.” By which he includes the millions who can benefit from the Jackson Lab’s work.
Ed Myers
Damariscotta