No Chicken on Any Plot

Camden can rest easier tonight - noisy, foolish, strutting domestic fowl have been banned from town. Nor will unbridled commerce in eggs and drumsticks sully your streets. Unless one has at least 2.5 acres, non-pet animals cannot be kept in Camden. (Of course, one has trouble imagining the kind of person who at the same time can afford 2.5 acres in Camden and is interested in chickens.)

Tourists are also noisy, foolish and strutting, but Camden presumably will allow their unbridled commerce. Ah, it's a fine line we walk in Vacationland.

Into Every Life....

Might as well be on the Maine coast in a storm these past two days, with the wind and the rain and the temperature unmoving at 41 degrees. There are few redeeming features to March in Massachusetts. The warmish days are a tease. We expect snow/sleet/freezing rain any minute. There is unconscionable cruelty to crocuses, snapped shut and shivering their little pistils.

Global warming has made March the cruelest month.

Mr. Eliot would still feel at home in Maine in April, however. Think all of the above, plus mud.

At least we won't have Rick Wagoner to blame for climate change anymore. GM's champion of the pick-up/SUV/Escalade/Hummer family of gas-guzzling monstrosities was forced by the government to resign as CEO (but not from the company - apparently his golden parachute is too expensive!). So he's only half-gone, still leaning, barely, held up by his friends, still burning through the billions.

Houses and Trees

A new bill is being discussed in Augusta that would require developers of large subdivisions or commercial properties to consider climate change in their plans. If a project cuts down trees or builds inefficiently, fees would be assessed. Not bad, huh? Pay a little more for building suburbia or Walmarts, get a lot more in kindness to the earth and our descendants. Such is already the law in Massachusetts and California.

Predictably, the construction industry is against it, blathering about bad economic times, losing jobs, etc. In a stunning display of unlogic, a builder in Westbrook (name omitted to protect the ignorant) told the Press Herald today that there is no lack of forests in Maine and trees don't need protection. I hope he was misquoted.

Too bad we can't put a complete moratorium on suburbs and big boxes. Too bad we have to niggle and time them. Too bad we can't just re-purpose all the buildings made empty by the greed of the builders and the bankers and the flippers. Too bad we can't have a development footprint for each town: only under the most pressing of circumstances can you build where nothing has been built before. Too bad we can't let the poor trees be.

Places we sit

A friend once suggested that she'd love to see a book that describes - in words and pictures - favorite outdoor places to relax. Maine would be particularly fertile ground to mine, the way people use the banks of a river, coffee shops, almost anywhere around a harbor, the semi-famous practice of garage-sitting, beaches, backyard decks, front porches, mountain ledges, lawn chairs on driveways. (That these three women sitting on a bench on the Santa Monica pier actually look more rightcoast-ish than leftcoast-ish just reinforces the idea.) Baby boomers want to be outside, are losing a bit of energy, don't have money to travel far, try to recapture community, enjoy beverages and snacks, will have lots of leisure time - sound promising?