Wealthy People's Caucus, Meet The Green Party's Poor and Working People's Caucus
A personal tale about how the idea for a museum as a fiscal sponsor for American designer-maker studios, came about.
I opened up NewsBreak today in the Maine State stream and saw was this headline:
Former Maine residents say Ocala has more gas stations, car washes, fast food restaurants than they’ve ever seen.
The story goes on to call for even more of the same. This is actually a letter to the editor in Oscala-News (Florida) streaming in the Maine State category on NewsBreak, by ”Reader Submission”, - I wondered if it is a clever pen name.
I am inclined to think the letter is a joke, were it not for the fact that I have encountered people in local economic development resources who would take it perfectly seriously that local communities need more franchises and big box stores brought to us by Global Inc, as only Global Inc can do.
I once had a pseudo-meeting with a representative of an economic development organization. The meeting took place the day after I had been to a nearby area crowded with franchises of every sort with no architectural continuity, very large fast-this and discount-that signs in every direction. My physical and mental being wanted out as quickly as possible.
The next day, when I mentioned this experience to the woman from the economic development organization. She said, ”Well! they make a lot of money there!” as if to say who am I to criticize! When Watershed, the ceramics bed, and breakfast farm, came up in the conversation, she referred to it as “a sleepy little place”, one that had recently been awarded a three million dollar grant, but she probably didn’t know that.
The letter to the editor, mentioned in my last post, from Denise McBride, Boothbay Harbor resident who is an alternate on the Boothbay planning board. is a perfect example of the Party of the New’s talking points and how they formulate their reasoning:
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Evaluate proposals based on merits
Tue, 11/28/2017 - 12:30pm
As we see it, there is no one else willing or able to make the kind of investment that Mr. Coulombe wants to make. The board of selectmen and the planning board need to evaluate the zoning proposal based on the merits of the proposal rather than who is making that proposal. It is difficult for us to understand why the town would not want to change the zoning for that area of the east side to reflect what the area is actually being used for now, rather than hope that someday someone will want to add a maritime-related business there. Those of us who support positive change and appreciate the opportunities that Mr. Coulombe has offered need to speak up now and let him and the town know how we feel. Mike and Dimsie McBride Boothbay Harbor
The title of the letter is “Evaluate proposals based on merits”- a subject which is absent from the content of the letter. This is often the case when someone is framing an opposing side as basing their opposition on who is making the proposal. The Party of the New habitually uses this strategy to divert the attention away from a merit-based discussion.
The person about whom it is implied that everybody is “making it about” is Mr. Coulombe, positioning Mr. Coulombe as the de facto head of the Party of the New. And what is “the New”? Mr. Coulombe’s vision of transforming the peninsula into an upper-crust destination and community for the wealthy only.
Being that McBride is a Boothbay planning board alternant, she could at some time be making decisions on the Boothbay planning board that affect someone else’s life in a fundamental way. I wonder if she thinks that the artist who was denied permission, by the Boothbay planning board, to conduct a four-person class in his home, was also being judged on who he is and not on the merits of his proposal? Or the boatbuilder whose business was temporarily closed down by the town at great cost? Who are they, in the eyes of the proponents of “the new”? Persons who do not have wealth comparable to that of Mr. Colombe? Is wealth the measure of “the merits” according to the coalition continually advocating for “the new”?
A prime example of this methodology is seen in the way that the Boothbay roundabout was sold to the public.
Wendy Wolf, a Boothbay Harbor select person and head of the JECD said “It is a traffic problem, not a referendum on Coulombe”- Let’s not cloud the issue with the golf course”
Wolf is supporting the proposed roundabout in Boothbay and looks at the issue as a traffic problem, not a referendum on developer Paul Coulombe. “I don’t want to cloud the discussion with thoughts on the golf course,” she said. “We have a traffic problem at the Common. The problem is longstanding and only getting worse with the popularity of the botanical gardens.” Wendy Wolf seeks District 89 house seat
Does Wendy Wolf ever drive that section of the road, as I do every day? What traffic problem was it? A traffic problem defined only as “Not a referendum on Coulombe”, the private partner of the DOT, the private developer in charge of the design, pursuant to Maine DOT’s Business Partnership Initiative Municipal Guide
What were the merits of the roundabout project? In the view of the Party of the New, it was the four million dollar price tag. As a wealthy private developer, Mr. Coulombe could put Boothbay in the front of the line for receiving state infrastructure funding:
Project Selection/Eligibility MaineDOT will continuously accept project applications and eligible projects will be selected on a first come first serve basis. Additional project selection/eligibility factors
include the following:
(…skipping down to last - but not least- qualification on the list after safety, job creation, and other public benefit considerations, is this,,,,)
• Percentage of Local Match: The greater the percentage of non-MaineDOT funding, the greater the likelihood the project will be selected. Maine DOT’s Business Partnership Initiative Municipal Guide (emphasis mine)
Translation” Communities with private developers go to the front of the line.
Additionally, Boothbay used TFF funding to avoid having to contribute alleged economic benefits of planting a tree in the middle of the main throughway to the county through municipal taxation. I am not sure how much that matters as I don’t see a great deal of the economic benefits in the beautification project, I mean the infrastructure project. Are tourists are going to flock to Boothbay to drive around the roundabout?
Imagine if the conversation had been about the merits of the roundabout. Then it would need to be explained why a circular traffic pattern should be placed in the middle of a straight, unobstructed main passageway, with only one seldom used intersection, posing no traffic problem! I wonder how that conversation would have gone? As it was, an elaborate false narrative created the smokescreen needed to avoid explaining the merits of a project that has no functional merits, excepting the perspective of the country club. People actually started saying the four-way stop was very dangerous! Some drivers don’t stop! They speed right through, they said! Something has to be done about it.
So let’s recreate the four-way stop in the middle of the main throughway and instead of an orderly stop. governed by a commonly understood rule of law, the intersection will be all yields with every driver making up their own laws on the fly!
But what are the merits of that plan?
It will put an end to drivers going through the less-traveled four-way stop without stopping!
Considering that that four-way stop seldom had many cars passing through at once, and considering that most drivers followed the rules, if there were one errant driver speeding through the intersection at a dangerous speed, the other cars might notice this phenomenon when they stopped and do the survival thing- wait until that car is out of their pathway.
The other day I was driving toward the roundabout The traffic was backed up on the hillside, something that never occurred when the main throughway was a normal road.
Ms. McBride first introduces her letter of advisement about sticking to the merits by saying that “there is no one else willing or able to make the kind of investment that Mr. Coulombe wants to make”
This is followed by “The board of selectmen and the planning board need to evaluate the zoning proposal based on the merits of the proposal”- about which she says nothing, but quickly moves on to “ rather than who is making that proposal” whom she has already identified as “the person who can make the kind of investment that no one else can make”
The latter statement has no other measure of “merit” than money. Proposals made for any location do not come with identical price tags. The most expensive proposal is not necessarily the best. Parsing Ms. McBride’s statements, she is saying that the most important merit of a proposal that we should consider is its price tag and we should choose the proposal with the highest price tag, and if that means changing the historical ordinances of a community- So be it!
Then Ms. McBride goes on to equate “those of us who support positive change” with “those of us who support Mr. Coulombe”. Is that about the person or is that about the person?” Those who support positive change will soothe his wounded ego, for it was Mr. Coulombe who walked off in a huff because the town was not complying with his will or his schedule. If, as MsMcBride implies, Mr, Coulombe was really still in the contest that he walked away from, then he, like Ms. McBride, must have imagined that there was no other proposal that would be able to come up with the financing for a project on that site.
In July 2018, the Boothbay Harbor Waterfront Preservation Committee formed to buy Cap ’n Fish’s Motel, the location from which Mr. Coulombe walked away in a huff.
In January 2019, the committee signed a purchase and sale agreement and the rest is history.
The new location of Watershed is the same building as we once occupied after we lost our homestead in East Boothbay to a reverse mortgage.
When we still had our East Boothbay property, we applied to Fractured Atlas as a social enterprise to try to raise funds to save our homestead property where we operated a business in the home since 1958.
We were initially told by our personal contact at Fractured Atlas, that we would qualify as a social enterprise because Andersen Design had been teaching the skills of making ceramics on the job since 1952. Our contact at Fractured Atlas was highly confident that we would be approved, but the New York Board, with whom we had no direct contact, rejected our application for our long-established purpose citing the use of the word “production” on the application, which the board deemed to mean “One is only in it for the money”. This must have been contested because it took twice as long as normal to arrive at a decision but those who were against us eventually won out.
During this time Fractured Atlas was starting a venture capitalist for-profit subsidiary of its own, a subsidiary that eventually failed.
Today, we’re announcing the creation of a new entity to advance Fractured Atlas’s mission of democratizing access to the arts and advancing human creativity: Exponential Creativity Ventures, a new investment enterprise that will make early stage investments in start-ups that are innovating at the intersection of technology and human creative capacity. year 2017
Fractured Atlas told us that we could apply instead as a school or a museum, but as school, we would be forbidden to teach others how to produce our line of over two hundred classic slip-cast designs, but they would allow us to teach others how to make our original and proprietary signature body and glazes.
We opted for the museum but were not ready to switch our main purpose from being makers to running a museum after seven decades as practicing ceramic innovators. We knew how to do the latter very well but were complete novices at our new purpose assigned and approved by the wealthy board of Fractured Atlas, overlords of wealth redistribution to the arts.
I approached the JECD group in Boothbay, a publicly funded public-private economic development council, for support in getting the fiscally sponsored museum established. Fiscal sponsorship meant that we would be able to apply for non-profit funding but would not be property tax-exempt, so this should be attractive to the municipal government as a project with viable funding means that will also pay property taxes- but I forgot! This is Boothbay! My home town.
My proposal envisioned the museum in the local context where there already exists a Botanical Gardens, Bigelow Labs, and the Country Club, but Wendy Wolf, Chair of the JECD Group told me that the organization could not do anything to help individual businesses, seemly unaware that the non-profit museum concept is a separate entity from Andersen Design, a private entity. She advised me to “Go get help from my own peer group”, a message that clearly says it’s about who a person is and not about the merits of the proposal, which she did not engage despite the fact that the 79 thousand dollar plan she contracted from Camoin Associates, recommends museums on the Boothbay Peninsula, and also history and emphasizing what is unique about a place.
If Ms. Wolf knew anything about our industry, she would know that not only is Andersen Design unique in our product but also in that we started a business, treating production as an art form, in the USA. There are very few companies in our category, especially considering the globalization history that has taken place since the 1950s.
Since at the time Wendy Wolf and the JECD Group were heavily involved with promoting both the Botanical Gardens and anything developer Paul Coulombe proposed, it was obvious that she was defining the peers of the JECD Group- as the wealthy people’s caucus.
In contradistinction to the wealthy person’s caucus, The Maine Green Independent Party is forming a Poor and Working People’s Caucus. I will be attending the first meeting on Friday. I was not thinking about this when I started composing this post, in fact, I was not thinking of telling the story herein, but it was orbiting around the atmosphere of my mind and it wove its way into this narrative. Posts have a way of taking on a will of their own!
After we lost our property, for a short time we occupied the space that became Watershed’s new quarters. During that time I met with the manager of Watershed who told us that Watershed does not teach ceramic arts- they just provide real estate, ceramic facilities, and dining. This surprised me because my general impression was that Watershed is a school, an impression that I believe is shared by many others. Watershed features guest speakers and preserves interest in ceramics but they do not teach the making of ceramics.
Since 1952, Andersen Design has taught the skills of making ceramics on the job, developing our own bodies and glazes. A few of our employees went on to study ceramics at places like the Alfred University. Our originally designed bodies and glazes make up the signature look of our brand and are the trade secrets that Fractured Atlas, if we had chosen the school option, would permit us to teach others as it would forbid us to teach people how to produce our product, for which there is still a demand, and there are many hobbyists who buy molds so they can cast forms and decorate them. We do not believe that hobby art is the right purpose for our inventory of hundreds of classic slip cast designs. These designs are a valuable economic development asset that can help other studios to develop an income. They were always intended as non-fungible reproductions, long before today’s word association.
I loved living at 103 Cochran Road and saw the potential for Andersen Design at that location but was not able to find the community support.
Before we found Cochran Road, independently, we found ourselves looking for housing in a system that advised us to “admit” we have a business but to play it very low key- kind of like: ”We have a business but it’s a real loser that can’t make any money”. This is because, as I eventually realized, the public resource that promotes itself as helping people to find rentals primarily deals in affordable housing governed by IRS Safe Harbor Rules. We went to an interview at once such place, where we were told that if we made the equivalency of income of working a minimum wage job for twenty hours a week, it would push us above the income level and we would be required to move. Management looking to fill such spaces do not encourage anyone who might minimally increase their income. Even if we were to portray our business as a real loser, as implied by the support organizations, just to “admit” one has a business is disqualifying.
All of these experiences led me to realize that we should form a museum so that we can define the non-profit purpose in such a way that the museum can be the fiscal sponsor that will support designer-makers and companies like ours, allowing the small entrepreneur access to nonprofit funding like every other sector of the economy.
Museums have always been institutions of education and economic development. I am very interested in the museum concept but more importantly, Andersen Design would like to be one of the studios that can apply for fiscal sponsorship by the museum. Andersen Design should be a glaze and body research center with a gallery and small production facility where we can train others to make our line in their own studios. The Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen will be formulated to allow it, but when there is a conflict of interest between a function of the museum and that of the maker, I will always choose the role of maker and creator. That is what I love, no matter how the board of Fractured Atlas, ensconced in its ivory towers, portrays my motivations. What do they know? Nothing about the work process!
If Watershed can be funded three million dollars, then why not an Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen? Andersen Design has a long history, having been established in 1952 when the enterprise taught women who used to work in the fish packing district, the skills of making ceramics. I have legal help to work out the 501(3)(C). The biggest challenge is to gather together a board of at least three people.
After studying Maine economic development statutes and the wealth redistribution system in general, for over a dozen years, I took what I had learned and applied it to a non-profit 501 (3)(C) concept in such a way that it will support small entrepreneurs and economic opportunity at the roots of the system. The lawyer at Boston’s Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts who helped me to find a Maine lawyer approved it as a viable 501 (3)(C) concept Read about it here! Join the team! The museum can go nowhere without a team!
Published on Medium’s Age of Awareness, Wednesday July 14 4pm
Published on Tremr Wednesday, July 14 4:20 pm
On another note
I like to write first thing in the morning. It is the clearest time of mind of the day. Yesterday without much thought I woke up and decided it was time to publish Did I Fall Down The Rabbit Hole Into A Dystopian World Or Is This Really Real?
In the afternoon, my more cautious and critical self was around and thought it was a radical thing to do, especially looking at it stream in the context of the more conventional local media articles.
When I woke up this morning and saw the Ocala Letter To the Editor, I thought, Good, I am not alone. That is such an odd thing to post. Someone else has joined the conversation. I hope they continue.
The data for Did I Fall Down The Rabbit Hole Into A Dystopian World Or Is This Really Real? displays a one-to-one relationship between impressions and views. I found it in the Boothbay stream and so I wondered, how it could be that there would be a one-to-one relationship between impressions and views in a public stream. I sent an email to support and received an unsatisfactory answer. I decided support probably doesn’t know. I think there must be another set of data that I am not seeing for the public streaming. A one-to-one has to be specifically targeted.
There are four stories out of fifteen with one-to-one streaming data.
The other three are
NewsBreak - Breaking Up The Hegemony of Locally-Controlled Local News!
Maine's Deeply Rooted Cultural and Economic Divide Played Out in the Birth of The University of Maine
Thoughts About the Text of Maine's Latest Bill to Create a State Electricity Monopoly
The administrator of a Newsbreak group on Facebook said he never has stats with a one-to-one relationship. That’s all I know, for now so the mystery continues.