A Tale of Two Cultures, Is Co-existence an Option?
Will the Boothbay Peninsula be the new Korea?
After the unexpected passing of my sister with whom I shared household expenses, I realized that I needed to quickly conjure up $1000.00 but to date have managed about half of that amount.
One day I was riding in the car, listening to the radio, when I heard the key word of the day announced on WCLZ. The key word was “money”. One must enter the daily keyword in the contest to win $1000.00, which WZKZ is giving away every day until mid-July. However, I forgot about it by the time I got home but that is how I learned about the WCLZ contest.
Slowly it creeped into my consciousness to pay more attention to this contest but I usually listen to my own music at home and to WCLZ when riding in the car. After a while I decided to turn on the radio at the designated hours, catch as catch can because I did not always remember and when I did, still did not catch the announcement of the key word.
Yesterday right before 5pm, the final keyword hour of the day, I decided to turn up the volume on my radio to make sure I was paying attention and this time I heard the key word, which was “joyful.
I submitted my entry and saw a message that said there was only one entry at that point for the whole day. I thought that can't be true! Upon reviewing the rules, I saw that the contest is pooled with other radio stations so that there might be one entry for WCLZ but any number of entries coming from the other stations. Since there have been 8 WCLZ winners in a month’s time, there might be four or so radio stations in the pool.
The second part of the contest is that if one is a preliminary winner one must respond to a voice mail announcing your win within 24 hours. The contest rules do not say when to expect the voice mail. If you don’t respond in 24 hours after receiving the voicemail, you forfeit your win.
Later that evening I was feeling really sad so I threw the I Ching and I got the hexagram "the joyous" which I thought was not very relevant to my state of mind, not thinking about the contest.
This morning I woke up and it dawned on me that joyful and joyous are variations on a theme and the relevancy of the hexagram was revealed. A good omen? That is the way of the I Ching. Often, I have thrown the coins and receive an answer with a meaning not apparent until the end of the day.
Meanwhile, the remote work culture is developing form. Despite the Elon Musks of the world there are many companies advertising remote work. I have to give AI credit for its ability to individualize the job applications it delivers. AI helped me to hone in on what I really want by guiding me to retouching and graphic design jobs rather than jobs to do with research and writing. I would like to maintain my research and writing focus right where it is, and I do need the balance of working visually and I am very good at all things related to printing, color, retouching and graphic design, so I am also looking for clients on my own. You can leave me a message in comments or send me an email with “Photo editing” as the subject if you are interested.
My one and only experience in working in the conventional corporate world was after I graduated from Pratt and got a job as a colorist in the textile industry. My boss would complain that I was producing the results too slowly, and it is true that everyone else produced their results more quickly than I but after they were finished the work ended up on my desk to make it look good, so that they never actually finished their work, I did. The stylist would bring in fabric swatches and say “match this color feeling”. The others would copy the colors exactly from one pattern to another and I would interpret the feeling of the color swatch suited to the unique pattern. I was sent down to the mill to do strike-offs. If I were more career oriented, I would have seen that I have a talent that corporate needed and pursued that career path but I didn’t like the culture and I didn’t like my boss (I actually was intentionally late for the plane to avoid having to spend the flight as her travelling companion), so I quit and got a job at Magoo’s an artist hangout on the border of Tribeca and Soho where uptown and downtown intermingled and the air was filled with romance and intrigue. Is that the foolishness of youth or its brilliance?
While not the smartest financial decision, my choice was aligned with the spirit of the contemporary Great Resignation movement that includes everything from remote workers to small entrepreneurs operating businesses from their homes. Many are saying no to more highly paid jobs with unpleasant work cultures to create a life on their own terms with a better work-life balance and to interact with the community in a more desirable way from their own perspective, not that of central managements.
The remote working culture is taking form!
Even more extraordinary, today an opportunity popped up that is seemingly perfect for my life direction. I say seemingly only because it often happens that things are not what they seem, as I am sure everyone has experienced, and so after the first rush of enthusiasm over a job application for an “Arts and Crafts Hustle Expert”, the cautionary thoughts set in. Firstly, I hate the term “hustle” but everyone is using it. It’s a generational term that I attribute to giving up the security of “working for the man”, to use a term from my own generation. In my day it was called freelancing, a term that obviously places the emphasis on freedom but does not connote a field as multi-faceted as “The side hustle”. It likely came to be called a side hustle because it starts with supplementing the dwindling income generated by a nine to five job, that over the years ceased to be enough to afford to own a home, thus accentuating the ownership-working class gap.
Still, the fact that it is a group think word sends a strong message. If It were up to me, I might reinvent the language. On the other hand, a popular word will be identifiable to more people, The company, FUD Inc is a startup company that calls itself “ The World’s First Social Hustling Community”. That sounds a lot cooler, since now it is “social”. If the platform is not to rapidly descend into “enshittification”, it needs to maintain the spirit of individualization and decentralization that fueled the birth of the “side hustle” movement. Enshittification is a term coined by Corey Doctorow for the process to which large platforms inevitably succumb. See Pluralistic: Tiktok's enshittification (21 Jan 2023)
About the job
We are a growing start-up company looking for an Arts and Crafts Side Hustle Expert to join our community. As an Arts and Crafts Side Hustle Expert, you will be responsible for a variety of tasks to help our community, including researching, sharing, and mentoring others to succeed with their side hustles, including how to make money from arts and crafts.
Join the Fud community to monetize your free time and let it become your next favorite side hustle. Our community encompasses content creators, freelancers, independent workers, gig workers, resellers & thrifters, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small business owners
Presently the platform is gathering together the conventions of the side hustle culture. It includes everything from pet-sitting to ecommerce entrepreneurs, so if you are an independent freelancer or small business entrepreneur, it may be of interest to you.
The company is in the process of putting together a management team and that is where the Arts and Crafts Hustle Expert fits in. The company is aiming to cover all the areas of freelance income. This is consistent with my idea of a workers in residence zoning, because freelancers are most often workers in residence and such zoning will encourage a like-minded community of can-doers. The company also includes small businesses which are not freelancers or side hustlers.
My perspective is a little different but that is because my starting point is Andersen’s Design’s productivity assets, which are uncommon assets calling for uncommon solutions. I attempted to put my total concept into a nutshell in Andersen Design profile. I cover areas that are not currently present on FUD but including the areas that I focus on would make FUD better and stronger in my opinion. The ideas that I have been developing and would like to manifest in the real world can merge well with this startup company, and I hope they will agree as I also contacted them about their partnership program, feeling that the assets that Andersen Design has go beyond the normal parameters of the job description. FUD has the team which I lack and if I should be accepted for the job, it would allow me to work in a team environment and that would be win-win.
This is innovation originating and emergent from the working classes who are typically not part of the conversation coming from above, just as my testimony per the replacement school charter for the Boothbay school district was not part of the legislative work session except to be vaguely mentioned by asking the sponsor of the bill if the boards involved the public in the charter replacement process, and here I was a representative of that very public and I was not allowed to represent my testimony in my own words or bear witness at the work session because I was representative of the mere public!
It is long established in Maine that the power elite purports to act in the interest of the public, but the people for whom the acts allegedly serve are not invited to the table to be part of the discussion. This was true back in 1976 when Governor Longley formed a board to reinvent our government, justified because the economy was made up of many small businesses and small businesses traditionally have a harder time finding capital than large businesses, but not a single small business was invited to the table, the presumption being that large businesses know what is best for small businesses. The idea that a small business is a given size by choice, because that is the best size for a particular business is just inconceivable to the large business mindset. And yet it all comes back to that in the contemporary concept of the ”psychological ownership” spell that corporate culture hopes to cast over its workforce for whom actual ownership has receded beyond the realm of workers and into the hands of investors. Since the investors seldom have input in the work process the psychology of ownership targeted by the spell masters is that of small business ownership.
And so state-designated “innovators” make ten-year plans for Maine and local boards write ordinances and amend charters “to align with state law” all the while incognizant about what is occurring among the working classes. The power elite do not engage the working classes in discussions of working-class concerns. The elite behave as if in their world view. working people are little more that instruments of the state and corporations as they plan their workforce boarding houses and overcrowded housing concentration zones and pat themselves on the back for coming up with a solution for “workforce housing.”
But what would happen if the state oligarchy plan did not prevail?
One must ponder what the financing cabal is not telling us, and consider that it is uttered between the lines in the carefully chosen words like the redundantly repeated slogan that the replacement school charter will be “aligned with state law” as if in a home rule state, we are required to be compliant with the state over matters local and municipal in character, and yet they do not discuss what is in state law. Perhaps they consider the content of state law to be on a “need to know basis”. or that the public isn’t intelligent enough, or informed enough, or knowledgeable enough to participate in their high-level planning for our communities.
But how would they know since they do not engage the public?
But Large Plans are Hard to Hide!
Considering all that is transpiring like clockwork on the Boothbay Peninsula, it is impossible to ignore “the state law” that recently chartered the Maine Space Corporation, arguably yet another violation of Article IV Part Third Section 14 of the Maine Constitution, and this time the Legislature didn’t even bother to include the phrase, “it is an essential government function” as they have done in the past when they violate Section 14. Perhaps the Maine Legislature figures they have gotten away with violating the Maine Constitution for so long on that score, that “moving forward”, no need to justify it. Considering the Maine Space Corporation, enacted in April of 2022, might explain why the new 100-million-dollar school plan looks more like a corporate headquarters than a school-and why rumor has it that “they’(cabal) are going to put in their own people to run it, because it is a corporate headquarters that uses our public education dollars to finance its workforce training and cultural indoctrination of our young into the industrial armies of the public-private corporate state of Maine.
B. The Maine New Space Innovation Hub, which must be an industry meeting place, a hub for new business incubation and acceleration, facilities for satellite and launch vehicle manufacturing and integration and ground control for satellite launch operations. The shared space must contain specialized equipment to facilitate business research and development, academic and scientific inquiry and a kindergarten to grade 12 learning center and must be designed to attract both in-state and out-of-state interests; and [PL 2021, c. 631, §1 (NEW). (Emphasis mine) source §13203. Maine Space Corporation; powers; board of directors; obligations
The corporation will incorporate the public educational system within itself, like a subsidiary corporation. This is scary stuff, no wonder the leaders who support this agenda never talk about what is in state law, with which our replacement school charter will be aligned. This is what is in state law! Home Rule gives us the right to reject it but our leaders are gaslighting us by talking as if it is necessary to “be compliant with state law”
No that is not the way it works. Home Rule means that if we don’t like what is in state law, we do not have to abide by it. We can write our own terms in our local charter. The municipality gets to actively participate in the conversation.
It is not clear what is happening with the charter as it is listed like this on Maine Bill Search:
Referred to Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs on Apr 25, 2023.
Latest Committee Action: Voted, May 22, 2023, OTP-AM
Latest Committee Report: Not Reported Out source
OTP-AM means ought to pass with amendments but there is no information as to what those amendments are. Two were recommended in the testimonies. One was discussed in the legislative work session. The amendment that was discussed is Section 6, that proposes a10-yearr budget validation, NOT in alignment with state law that calls for three years. This recommendation is in The testimony of Bruce MaDonald, a school board member and so included amongst those with whom our Legislature will engage.
I testified as a inhabitant of the municipality, and not as a member of a board, and perhaps it is due to my lacking in status as a board member that my call to strike out the words that say our charter will “align with state law’ was never brought up in the work session, nor were the words “home rule” ever mentioned.
The words that say our charter will be aligned with state law can be interpreted as relinquishing our home rule rights and accepting state governance of our schools. The catch 22 is the state law says that when there is a conflict between the local charter and state law, the local charter has priority.
My recommendation was not discussed during the work session. One person testified that he had heard the spoken testimony but did not seem cognizant of my longer testimony that discusses what is in state law or my third testimony that includes what I think should be in our local school charter. The impression was that most were unfamiliar with my testimony so if there was a vote immediately after the work session, the voters would not have had a chance to become familiar with my testimony since it was inadequately represented during the work session.
”Not Reported Out” is non explanatory, so for now it is wait and see for something more definitive.
More on the Maine Space Corporation:
2. Additional powers. The corporation may:
E. Charge and collect fees, charges and rents for the use of the complex's properties and other services and use the proceeds of those fees, charges and rents for the purposes provided in this chapter, subject to and in accordance with any agreement with bondholders that may be made as provided in this chapter;
Does that mean the corporation cannot charge royalties for services rendered such as The University of Maine does for its patent program- or is it all grandfathered in because the Maine Space Program is statutorily “aligned” with the University of Maine? i
§1921. Maine Patent Program
2. Applicant's costs and duties. An applicant accepted by the program shall pay the costs of the patent search and opinion and for patent prosecution if the final product is manufactured or licensed out of state. An applicant shall pay to the program a reasonable percentage of the royalties for any successful innovation patented through the program.
Another catch 22! A “reasonable percentage” of the royalties is no percentage of royalties which belong to authors, not service providers.
A reason to hope that I am wrong about the Maine Space Corporation being the plan for the Peninsula via our public educational system is that in definitions it is stated that:
7. Primary impact communities. "Primary impact communities" means Aroostook County, Cumberland County and Washington County.
[PL 2021, c. 631, §1 (NEW).]
But that was written in 2021 before the funding of the architects to design a new school for the peninsula, and “primary impact area” does not mean that there are not “secondary impact areas”. The board of directors is to include representatives from these two “municipal corporations serving as instruments of the state” (a legally oxymoronic definition but a classic example of the innovative talents of the Maine Legislature)
(5) The executive director of the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority or the executive director's designee; and
(6) The executive director of the Loring Development Authority of Maine or the executive director's designee source
Since then the private fundraising cabal may have been involved with negotiations with the state. Mothing influences the Maine Legislature more than money.
Since then, the private fundraising cabal may have been involved with negotiations with the state. Nothing influences the Maine Legislature more than money.
I can’t help but wonder if there is not a plan in the works to eliminate the public referendum on the new school, perhaps by enacting a state law, just as was done in HP1489, which took away our municipal rights to regulate housing density and to say anything about community character, permitting the overcrowded, corporate owned, concentrated workforce housing zones.
What’s next? If no one challenges the constitutionality of what the public-private government is doing then they get away with it and that is a license to keep on doing as they please with no regard for the Maine Constitution.
Can two cultures co-exist? Will we be like Korea divided into a free culture and a totalitarian culture? Or must one reign over the other?
For now, we do not know what will be the final result of all that is transpiring with large transformational plans for this Peninsula.
All the more reason to act on a workers in residence zone. If the land can be found for a corporate owned overcrowded housing zone, and acres have been found in Edgecomb for an alternate school location, then we can find the land for a workers in residence zone and let freedom ring!
But if there is a choice to be made between becoming a corporate subsidiary of the corporate state and a unique alternative culture to all of that, consider our geography and consider our water supplies, rated as endangered by further development since the 1980s . Should we be developing aggressively as the cabal is trying to do, or should we evolve more moderately?