Starting tomorrow, you will receive my column through Substack. Medium has decided not to allow readers to know when Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models are used to assist writers in the craft of writing. Since I am somewhat proud of my skill as a writer, I am moving my work to Substack. It may take some time to upload past work to that platform. Thanks for staying with me.

Changing with the times was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The last time I wrote about things other than politics was more than two months ago. Since early May, whenever I started to describe the deep satisfaction of a walk in the woods, or the scent of strawberries as I pass a small patch in a neighbor’s yard, something has come up — maybe several somethings — that call me to speak to the challenges of human relations.

Throughout that time I have woken each morning to stretch my troubled joints, and sat my 10 minutes of mind-quieting breath, and played games with nearby friends, and spoken long-distance with others. I have put fruit in the freezer and made a few soups and shared meals with loved ones. Twice, I traveled out of state. A fair amount of time was spent reading and streaming, and the couch kept me comfy on the hottest days.

Several times a week, I walked across fields or stepped carefully past roots and rocks on forest trails, inspected the progress of blackberry stands and searched for sources to the songs that came from the sky or trees or grasses that surrounded me. In short, I have continued to live and celebrate the pleasures of my existence.

I have always enjoyed the almost-wild places that are accessible to the unathletic. As a child, I spent hours in the woods behind my house, farmland that had gone to pine in the 1940s or ’50s after it was placed in escrow as part of the owner’s sentence for bootlegging. A third of our lot was overgrown and contained a multiflora rosebush that, by the time I was 10, had turned into a sweet-scented cave that, if I was careful of the thorns, served as a great hiding place for me, some songbirds and a few rabbits.

As a young adult, I frequented cities where the walking was on pavement and quiet places were hard to find. Those were deeply social times for me and most of my movement came through dance. Still, I drove or took public transport to the rural and wooded places that gave my heart peace. In middle age I came to Maine, to live on a paved rural road with a handful of near neighbors and hundreds of acres of woods, lakes, and fields all around. I was raising kids, supporting a business, and freelancing with words and admin skills. Not so much intentional wildness.

Walking became a frequent pleasure after we moved to Rockland in 2007. It was just so easy to step out the door, walk the two long blocks to Main Street, and access docks and wharves on the harborside. At some point we discovered a patch of woods, just up the hill from our house. We called it The Enchanted Forest, 10 acres that some unknown abutters had turned into a sweet little trail system with a few creative tableaux along the route: a circle of stumps embedded in the earth, a display of antique iron implements, a scattering of rustic benches. This almost-daily refuge, just a quarter-mile from home, kept me sane through late middle age and into my 60s.

For four years in this century’s teens I studied and lived on Mount Desert Island, where trails proliferate, the air blows fresh, and there is abundant opportunity for humanity to sense our place within creation.

Earlier this week, while tithing to the mosquitoes on the Kinney Woods Trail, I was reminded that Dave Getchell, Sr. did not live to see how well his efforts served us during the months of social isolation brought on by the covid pandemic that began two years after his death at age 89. For those unfamiliar with his name and legacy, Dave was a co-founder of the Maine Island Trail and the mastermind who knocked on landowners’ doors to create the woodland connection of the Georges Highland Path, without which the 90-mile system of trails and preserves that has become the gem known as the Georges River Land Trust might not exist. He and his wife Dorrie, who was 96 when she died in April, were the kind of outdoorsfolk who recognize the healing power of wildness and the need for us tame humans to experience nature unmediated by machines.

Their name and generosity live on in the hard work of GRLT and conservation groups everywhere, and at Getchell Family Park in their home town of Appleton, on the shores and waters of Sherman’s Mill Pond.

The news continues to hit the fan and I still check in, at least once a day, to see what is coming down the information highway. Family and friends add joy and tension to the mix, horns honk and engines roar outside my windows, gossip and resentment are heard throughout the land. Fires burn and bad decisions are made by those too reckless to safely wield the power they hold. It is easy to be mesmerized by the constancy of fear, to clench the chest and tighten the throat and forget that simplest of anxiety cures — to simply step away human endeavor and breathe gently and steadily into the coming day.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.

I hope your day goes well was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I gave up any allegiance I might have had to the Democrats back in the 1990s. I think it might have had something to do with the Party’s ill treatment of Jerry Brown, or maybe the brief hope offered by the Green Party. I knew manipulation when I saw it. Conventions where cheerleaders always precede platform debates that get pushed down the schedule to be shut down by a quorum call. I watched party loyalists support Bill Clinton as he stalled the wheels of government for more than a year while pundits and politicians licked their chops over the fresh meat of sexual scandal. Imagine what might have happened if, instead of asking “what the meaning of the word is is,” he had resigned in early ’98 and let us get on with the work of the people. Al Gore would have become president. Imagine that.

At that level of public service no personal stake should ever outrank the job itself.

Life for humans on earth has changed dramatically since the 1990s, even more in this not-so-new century. But the list of priorities presented at those doomed platform debates has not changed. Long before June 9, when participants in Maine’s Democratic primary voted overwhelmingly for the Social Democrats’ laundry list, similar proposals were offered to the Party at convention after convention:

Corporate responsibility; progressive taxation; single-payer national health care; environmental protection; federal support for quality housing and education; reproductive rights; full civil rights regardless of race, religion, economic circumstances, sex, gender, health or disability; legalization of cannabis; an end to federal support for private school vouchers; ending the sale of arms as a tool of diplomacy; an end to citizens’ rights for corporations; full funding to Medicare and Medicaid; a path to citizenship for all who qualify; the right for workers to organize; a living federal minimum wage indexed to inflation; Social Security solvency ensured by an end to the payroll tax cap; peace as a priority.

Over and over, party leaders in Maine and across the country, have found ways to stifle voices they think too controversial, ideas that might muddle the heads of the electorate. Always manipulating us for our own good. Maybe it is time for the people to take the reins.

Maine Speaker of the House Ryan Fecteau (D-Biddeford) was invited by Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, June 9, to discuss the Party’s options after Graham Platner suspended his Senate bid. With obvious and ravenous glee, she pressed him to announce his own candidacy or endorse someone else. “This is the exact problem,” Fecteau said. “What voters do not want is party leaders like me trying to put my thumb on the scale in determining who the winner’s going to be.” As Welker nodded smugly, a living push poll, Fecteau reminded her, “Graham Platner is not the only person that believes what Graham Platner believes.”

Like 72% of Democratic Primary voters, I am sad, frustrated, confused, and fearful. Perhaps, in days or years to come, we will have time for analysis, but right now we need to ask the Maine Democratic Party to unplug from the DNC and listen to Mainers. We voted for a platform in June, more than for a single person. While the person is compromised, that platform must go forward. In this unprecedented moment, the job of party leaders is to find the best way to understand the will of voters in choosing a new candidate for this important seat.

Read the room, Democrats. Fear of Susan Collins should not allow a poor replacement. Whether you believe him or his accusers, Platner’s redemption is now in his own hands, and you who call yourselves leaders hold the keys to a peaceful cultural transition of great importance. To navigate this moment, you must believe your own propaganda.

I am not a statistician, but data available from the Secretary of State’s office indicates that almost 20-percent of absentee ballots received in the June 9 Democratic Primary were cast by unenrolled voters, so-called independents. Republican Party absentee ballots totaled less than half the number cast for Democrats, with about 18-percent of those submitted by unenrolled voters. More than twice as many absentee ballots were received for the Democrats primary than the Republicans. Similar data on in-person voting is still being received from municipalities, which have until Aug. 11 to send their breakdowns to the Secretary of State.

It is time to engage the grassroots, the phone bankers, door knockers, and canvassers, and invite into the process the unenrolled voters who helped make Maine’s senate race a topic of global conversation. Find a way to let the unaffiliated speak.

I went to the demonstration Saturday thinking I would best serve this juncture by being a witness to all the emotion I knew would be present, but driving over to Rockland, I heard Maine Democratic Party Chair Charles Dingman say our ultimate goal is to remove Susan Collins from office and help form a Democratic majority in Congress, and I’m sorry, but my ultimate political goal is full representation of all the people, in alignment with the values of the electorate; congressional turnover is a short term goal I support, in order to bring that enfranchisement about.

By the time I got to Chapman Park, I was pretty irate about the dismissal of these citizens. I was not a quiet witness. I was a pedantic, hectoring, annoyance — frustrated by party officials who, while acknowledging a flawed process, offered time pressure and the wisdom of “leadership” as rationale, failing to see that it is simply wrong to create a process that doesn’t include folks like me who offer our allegiance and effort to democracy, and not to those party leaders and elected officials who automatically have a seat at the table where processes are hammered out and delegates assigned.

I’m not saying I won’t vote for whoever they nominate; that, as always, is a decision I will make when I stand before my ballot, but the party has benefited by our votes without making room for us to inform their response to the result. And it’s really too bad. You’d have a stronger party if you let us in.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.

Humility in politics was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The weather has been lovely. Thomaston is sprucing up for all the people who will drive their soundtracks down Main Street, and maybe stay a while, in honor of the signing in Philadelphia 250 years ago, of a document penned by one of the many imperfect politicians of his time. Thomas Jefferson committed acts that were cruel and inhuman in the context of social and political realizations inspired by his own words. But his work on the 1333 words honored this week altered the human condition. For a time, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that followed 13 years later, reminded us that by agreeing on certain principles and codifying them into rough consensus, we can share the improvements and their consequences with others.

As Jimmy Buffet wrote we are, all of us, flawed individuals.

Expressing the will of the 13 British colonies in North America, Jefferson wrote, with the bias of his time, that all men are equal and share certain rights that cannot be taken from us. He said just governments exist by the “consent of the governed” and should be organized in such a way as to support our safety and happiness. And, because we have always sought paths of least resistance, Jefferson reminded us that humans “are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable (sic), than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” To shake our 18th century forbears from the complacency that held them under King George III’s thumb, he listed a series of “abuses and usurpations” that required us to separate from Britain and take on the task of governing ourselves.

The work of self-governance is difficult for an individual; the willingness to share good fortune and help others when times are hard does not come easy. So, as a call to action to those still on the couch in our own troubled times, here is a short digest of the abuses and usurpations of our current Executive Branch, in the quoted context of July 4, 1776.

Just a week before these words are to be published, Mr. Trump refused to sign a bill passed by a vote of 358–32 in both Houses of a contentious Congress, that would attempt to remedy a housing crisis that only the most insulated of Americans can ignore. In Jefferson’s words then referring to Mad King George, “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”

In opposition or ignorance of the people’s lack of support for the taking of land and fouling of shared resources to build data centers and military defense bases to protect them, Mr. Trump has called for laws to limit local governments’ ability to “… pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance …” that might protect communities and the environment from hasty development of infrastructure that, as far as I can tell, nobody really needs.

Daily, the Executive Branch begins projects, demolishes public property, signs orders, and attacks sovereign nations, “… for the sole purpose of fatiguing (legislative bodies) into compliance with his measures.” A law unto themselves, Mr. Trump and his Administration are “… obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners …” put in place by our elected Congress, replacing the rule of law with executive orders, and refusing to answer to Congress, thereby “obstruct(ing) the Administration of Justice.” It appears Mr. Trump has “… made Judges dependent on his Will alone.”

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass(sic) our people,” Jefferson wrote in 1776, describing the unnecessary presence, “ … in times of peace, (of) Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” In cities across the United States, two-and-a-half centuries later, Mr. Trump and his cabinet have, “ … affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power …” by placing “… armed troops among us,” protected “… from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.”

Continuing to justify the rebellion of the colonies, Jefferson lists the following abuses which may be familiar to us now: cutting off trade, imposing taxes by spending monies not allocated by representatives of those paying the freight, depriving legal residents of Trial by Jury and transporting the accused “beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” Like George III, Mr. Trump attempts to alter “fundamentally the Forms of our Governments,” overruling by his signature the laws of states and municipalities.

And yes, he has “excited domestic insurrections amongst us.”

Not all of the states-to-be in attendance were ready to agree to the finished declaration drafted on July 2, 1776 and printed on the night of July 4th. New York’s delegation, even then representing a melting pot of diverse human perspectives, needed to go home and get permission from that colony’s own convention and, on August 2, the Continental Congress got together to sign the official document.

It is worth noting that the Declaration highlights Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness as rights that all of us hold, and does not once mention any right to accumulate wealth at the expense of the rights of others. Jefferson and his co-conspirators did not declare a need to be the “hottest” of nations.

In a forest, succession means the disorderly pattern through which one type of plant or animal succeeds for a time, eventually giving space as circumstances change, to other varieties of often similar plants and animals that take their place. The changes that make an ecosystem less suitable for the one group are often those made by the very species that were so successful in the first place. As my dear friend Rachael said, species must, “… mutate or die.”

We are in a time of deep change that we ignore at our peril, The United States were brought together by an understanding that our survival, freedom, and joy depend on continual attention to the nuts and bolts of governance. The flawed delegates to the Continental Congress designed a system dependent on three separate branches, none of which was empowered to overrule the others. They were most cautious about Executive power because, unlike the other branches, it lay in a single pair of hands.

On the Fourth of July, I hope to celebrate my unalienable rights to breathe in the glory of wind and rain and calm, still days on earth, to be part of the existence of possibility, and to celebrate the beauty of all that is here for us to share.

For me, the musical artist, LaMuse, describes it very well:

“Oh what a day! Glorious! / The smell of rain has hitched a ride upon the wind / I’ve got good friends to the left of me and good friends to my right / Got the open sky above me and the earth beneath my feet / Got a feeling in my heart that’s singin’ all in life is sweet / Oh what a day!”

I’ll see you on Main Street.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.

Glorious! was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It is in the human experience to get a physical and mental rush when things around us are moving fast. I don’t know if behaviors and attitudes can be considered addictive, but many of us seek situations that build tension to levels of distraction.

When we operate in a state of urgency for too long we lose the distance that allows us to value calm. We confuse the slower pace of life with boredom. Fidgety times make our heads spin and stimulate our bodies to move with greater speed and less control. Close calls bring out the armies of adrenaline. We rush headlong into change, forgetting to breathe fully and slowly, to notice what’s going on outside of the mind, to review a plan before acting in response. When children panic, adults often offer soothing words, but who calms the adult?

We live in a state of constant emergency. Even without the drone wars, human overpopulation is stressing the systems required for our survival. Whoever caused it, the warming of our planet is making us sick and increasing demand on energy dependent systems that put more heat into the atmosphere. Since 2020 we have grown more dependent on digital communications at the expense of social connection, and the rush to substitute human effort with self-programming machines makes us vulnerable to dangers we cannot clearly recognize. Meanwhile, our idea of relaxation is dining out to a background of music so loud we can’t converse while staring at the fast moving images on a screen.

The White House response to all this urgency, aside from soliciting million dollar donations for a personal amusement park and claiming victory in Iran without any evidence, has been to continue the flood of executive orders. These include calls for realignment of childhood vaccine recommendations in keeping with “consensus vaccines” in so-called peer countries, and the removal restrictions on the use of motorized off-road vehicles on public lands (instituted by President Carter in 1972) because, according to this new order, the original criteria were unclear because they included “… ‘minimiz[ing] harassment of wildlife or significant disruption of wildlife habitats … minimizing ‘conflicts between off-road vehicle use and other existing or proposed recreational uses . . . taking into account noise and other factors,’ and ensuring that off-road vehicle use in given locations will not ‘adversely affect [the location’s] natural, aesthetic, or scenic values.’ These vague, subjective criteria often result in barriers to energy and timber production and utility maintenance, permit delays, and de facto bans on hiking and other forms of recreation that require accessing remote areas, all while doing little to benefit multiple use of Federal lands,” Trump’s order claims.

On May 29 the Administration issued a memorandum approving a basic salary of $400,000 for “… the rapid recruitment of the exceptionally skilled investment, engineering, financial, and legal professionals needed to expand the Nation’s capacity in critical minerals, advanced materials, and other essential components of our strategic supply chains,” and on June 1, Mr. Trump made the following nominations and appointments: Ambassadors to Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Kenya, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, Paraguay, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Trinidad and Tobago, and The Gambia; Ambassadors-at-Large for Global Health Security and Diplomacy and to Combat HIV/AIDS Globally; a Representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with the rank of Ambassador; and Inspector General, Department of State; and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

Domestically, he appointed Assistant Secretaries of Health and Human Services, and Legislative Affairs; Director of the Indian Health Service; United States Marshals for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and the Northern District of Florida; Chairman of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals; Commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission; three members of the United States International Trade Commission; and United States Attorneys for the Western District, the Southern District of Illinois, the Northern District of Oklahoma, and the Western District of Pennsylvania. He also withdrew a previous nomination for United States Marshal for the Northern District of West Virginia.

After making changes to tariff regimes relative to imports of products made with aluminum, steel, and copper used in agricultural equipment and certain HVAC systems on June 1, he woke up the next morning and issued and order prioritizing cyber defense in our National Security Systems.

June 3 brought us changes to the Civil Service Rules and Regulations and Customs Service enforcement. To wrap up a busy week with his felt-tipped pen, on June 5 Mr. Trump sent a memorandum to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense (which he calls War), Energy, and Homeland Security, as well as the Attorney General, and Directors of the Office of Management and Budget, National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Personnel Management, Assistants to the President for National Security, Science and Technology, and Policy and Homeland Security, as well as someone whose title is National Cyber Director.

This memo said that to, “… protect our warfighters during peacetime and on the battlefield, enable precise operations that minimize harm to civilians, and ensure the United States continues to maintain technical overmatch against our adversaries and strategic competitors,” we need to “… accelerate the use of AI across intelligence and warfighting domains in line with American values. This directive called on recipients to accelerate AI adoption and “… make the most advanced frontier models broadly available to national security professionals without delay, rescinding and replacing a Biden-era memo that sought to ensure security and diversity of chip supply chain, provide AI developers with timely cybersecurity and counterintelligence information, create the AI Safety Institute, and require mechanisms for risk management, evaluations, accountability, and transparency to monitor, assess, and mitigate AI risks related to invasions of privacy, bias and discrimination, the safety of individuals and groups, and other human rights abuses.

In August of 1974, White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig sat down with President Richard Nixon and convinced him that his insistence on staying in office was detrimental to the smooth running of the United States government.

Facing the intensity of Nixon’s response to the unfathomable responsibilities of his office, I imagine Haig offering soothing words. He was the grownup in the room, but knew he had the support of many members of Congress and the Cabinet. Where is that support today? Are there any adults in the House and Senate who can truly stand up to the man in the Oval Office. Give him his birthday party, if you must, but at the end of the pony ride, someone needs to escort Mr. Trump to a quiet room and tell him it is time to go home, not to our White House but to whatever overdressed domicile he possesses.

The United States needs to take a breath. There is important work to be done.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.

Urgency was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Whatever people say or do around me, whether responding out loud or holding silent, there is in my mind either agreement or counter argument. This past week, when a friend’s text pointed a shortcoming out to me, my initial response was to be angry at the correction, to go online and find a truth to back me up. But it was late and I was tired. After a few feeble attempts at righteous indignation, I realized the criticism I had received was totally understandable and backspaced my comments away before retiring the phone for the night. Right or wrong, I had acted on what I’d been taught and my friend’s experience was different. Our brief conflict was driven by our assumptions of a shared reality.

I woke the next morning questioning what possible value my thoughts can have when faced with the conflicting understandings that, 1) my experience must be true, or 2) no experience can offer absolute accuracy, or even 3) that all experience reflects reality, even when those perceived truths do not agree.

A post online suggests artificial intelligence can potentially provide a more comprehensive picture of history because it draws on all the information available. That would be great if large language models could truly access every moment that has come before and process that data in a way that speaks the same language as everyone who writes or reads history. Instead, the digital sauveus du jour can only draw on the information provided and conduct searches generated by the perspective of the human or machine that sets it all in action.

The questions in my mind, and the frame of reference through which I form and view the answers, all begin with who I was before that mind held the language to describe whatever truth I witnessed, In fact, those non-verbal moments have a lot to do with how words and ideas work in me. The action my friend called me on began with those early lessons and all those that have followed; the response came from my friend’s own unique exposure to a life somewhat different from my own.

Such understandings and differences, and the conflicts sparked by those deductions, can carry us farther and farther from anything resembling coexistence. It’s like the Buffalo Springfield song — “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.” I am an old person who speaks her mind quite often and while it feels good to get things off my chest and is validating to have people tell me they’ve read what I have written, it is far to easy for that approval to devolve into a rectitude that leaves little space for the variations that make us all human.

There is a thought machine in my head that constantly evaluates, compares, and considers whether I (or anyone else) am sincere in speech and action or just winging it for the sake of a response. If I notice myself feeling bored or annoyed while life continues around me, I distract myself further by condemning my carelessness with the small and precious moments of human existence. Even now, I judge myself for judging myself.

Cycles of doubt and certainty are natural to the human mind. Those who are always sure either have a few loose screws or are kidding themselves, and no cognitive test made can verify which is the case. The trouble comes when we judge ourselves.

With so much certainty online and in person, it’s easy to feel manipulated in the 21st century. We are driven to know how things will go, what’s right and what’s wrong, before we set out on any journey. Intimidated by doubt, we fake conviction. Misgiving can be debilitating but it invites us to question assumptions. I can spend my life looking for ways to prove others wrong and end up with fewer friends and an even more warped view of that slippery experience we call reality. There is no solid ground and so, for today at least, I will choose ambiguity and the comfort of knowing I am not alone.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.

Judgement was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On May 13, the Knox County Democratic Committee hosted a forum at the First Universalist Church in Rockland. Those invited were in contested primaries for that party’s nomination to represent Legislative Districts 41 (Camden and Rockport) and 43 (Cushing, part of Owls Head , South Thomaston, St. George, and Thomaston), and candidates for Knox County Sheriff and the Maine Sixth Prosecutorial District (Knox, Lincoln, Sagadahoc, and Waldo counties). One of the two candidates for D.A., Barbara Cray, was unable to attend the presentation.

I am not going to give you a transcription of the event, or of debates among gubernatorial and senate candidates that are available online (those make excellent soundtrack while washing dishes). Here are some impressions these events have made on my political thinking.

Some candidates running for public office are well versed in the issues facing the general population; some are focused on one or two issues, and some bring little to the table other than ideas. There are those with some experience in elected office, those with experience in un-elected political engagement, and those with no prior connection to the complex system that is government on all levels. Some can articulate positions and proposals and others want to be of service without any clear path in mind, other than to campaign.

There are candidates with good websites and those with little online presence, charismatic folks who can hold an audience and bring tears to the electorate’s eyes, and those who stumble over their own words, leaving their great thoughts in the dry dust of poor rhetoric.

Government is made of ideas, molded by prior law into new policy. Done well, legislation represents the will of the majority to effect systems that serve us all. It is good to dream.

At the Knox County forum I saw and heard, not just candidates and ideas, but the way each related to the others and to their audience of prospective constituents; who listens and who just talks, whose words express well-considered objectives and whose only convey the concept of a plan. I saw how those with similar concerns articulate different approaches to needed change. I heard voices of varied experience apply what they have learned to the role they seek.

Before the forum began, the KCDC held a short business meeting at the end of which State Representative Ann Matlac, who has served in the house since 2018 and sits on House Committees on Government Oversight, Appropriations and Financial Affairs, Taxation, and State and Local Government, provided a rapid-fire run-through of the recently ended legislative session. It was an excellent demonstration of what an elected representative’s job entails, and gave me a frame in which to view those about to speak.

In this context, recognizing the radical shift in responsibilities, from federal to state and local governments, and in light of more than 60 years as an observer of politics, I offer some questions to consider before you mark your ballot.

Does the candidate understand the changing roles of elected officers; have the will to stand up to systems that no longer serve the people they represent, the patience to read every bill thoroughly before acting, and the perseverance to hold themselves and their colleagues accountable to their constituencies? Do they know how to navigate the complexity of compromise and play well with others? Will they hold to the values articulated in their campaign and fully participate in the processes that make them responsive and available?

Here’s how these considerations might work in the very real primary heading our way in less that three weeks. Governor Janet Mills’ suspension of her campaign to become the Democrat who will challenge Senator Susan Collins in November left two candidates in that primary race: David Costello and Graham Platner. The former announced his candidacy a year ago and in July he met with me for an hour to discuss his goals and experience. While he does not have a Wikipedia page, his current website does a good job of laying out his background and positions.

Graham Platner’s campaign began in late August. I was in the crowd in Portland, on Labor Day, to hear him, Bernie Sanders and gubernatorial hopeful Troy Jackson outline their progressive agenda. Platner’s website offers a pretty thorough overview of his positions and policy ideas; you would be very good at ignoring politics if you don’t know several facts and a lot of rumor about Platner.

One is the quiet, wonky type; the other a charismatic ball of fire. Neither has much direct experience in legislative politics. While they both hold frequent “town hall” events, Costello’s have generally been online gatherings while Platner has spent a lot of time on the road. When Mills dropped out, the press and most of the Party conferred the mantle of presumptive nominee on Platner, who then decided not to debate Costello. The electorate loses the opportunity to see how these two behave when neither campaign is in charge of the conversation; the candidates miss an opportunity to learn from each other’s responses.

The gubernatorial debates available online provide a chance to see and hear more than stump speeches; my mind was changed by the way the candidates acted when faced with the other, very human, people and ideas on the stage. My ranked-choice ballot will allow me to support them in the order in which I believe they will serve our needs.

As I often say in election conversations, I like to wait to vote until the last reasonable opportunity. I could give you a list today of how I might rank the candidates, but a lot can happen between now and June 9; even more will happen before November. Once we get past the easy assumptions, and in the face of a media-driven propensity for gossip and conflict, what is a conscientious voter to do?

No party owns your vote; no candidate is perfect. Goals are mutable; values are not. Before you vote, take a long, slow breath and consider the impact of changing one-third of the United States Senate and hiring a whole new House of Representatives. Take another breath and think about replacing an entire state legislature. And then, recognizing the hundreds of millions of votes that may be cast over the next five months, and in the privacy of your own ballot, make your choices.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.

Before you vote was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is it wrong of me to want to write about spring, so soon after the shooting at the Washington Hilton? As the world’s warped web speculates on the motives of the likely shooter and the would-be king, I sit under the shade of the lobster cooker on Middle Pier in Rockland. There is a breeze from the south, buds opening on branches, birds of varied voices calling. Compressors hum, hammers strike, car engines turn over. At the end of this week, some will honor a general strike and others will find more pressing opportunities to get and spend. If I were the predicting kind, I would guess the “day of action” will be followed by weeks of chest thumping and finger pointing on all sides.

I spent much of the last weekend in April shifting my camping gear from the 4x6 shed in a friend’s yard where I keep seasonal tools and such. My friend’s young son watched me pull stuff out of the car and spread the bags and coolers and cot and mattress around my vehicle. “You’ll never get all that back in there,” he said, waking my competitive edge and spurring me to reorganize both spaces.

By the time I was done, the car was mostly packed, leaving just enough space for the clothes I have yet to sort out. In the shed, garden supplies were all on one side, snow shoes were stored inside the stack of winter tires, and there was plenty of space left for the camping gear to go back in when I return from Western Massachusetts the first Tuesday in May.

It is time for my annual pilgrimage to celebrate the turning of the seasons. As always, our Maypole dance will happen on Sunday; I will spend the weekend sleeping in a tent on a hill among dozens of friends. We will cook together on a central fire and bake pizzas in a brick beehive, pass beverages, songs, and stories from one to the other, watch the children that are the inevitable result of fertility rites run and dance and learn the need for care in stretching dough and safety around open flame.

It is spring, and regardless of human expectation, the weather will be perfect. It may rain; the forecast keeps changing. Blossoms and buds will continue to open; if the sun comes out we might watch it happen in real time. We will be there whether clear or cloudy, waking up to frost or shower or sparkling dew. “Weather,” Dagney says, “reminds me that I live on a planet.” These couple of days are my time to leave the house, the roof and walls, and just live here, on earth which to me is heaven.

I tried to watch the 60 Minutes interview so I could talk about what happened in the Hilton ballroom, and I read the Manifesto of an impotence so many of us feel, but if you want to know more than you already do about those things, and about whatever else has happened since, you can add to your own screen time; mine is overbooked.

A few days ago, needing to stretch my legs in the middle of lunch with friends, I walked around the Flagship Cinema building and saw a new view of the easternmost corner of Thomaston. New strip malls, new solar fields, more place for cars and commerce. We are creatures who do not know what we’re doing and we do it anyway. We try and tweak some more. Against any evidence that our building and making have made life any kinder or sweeter, we keep on with our planning and paving and leave little of value behind.

Meanwhile, the inconvenient rain brings forth trout lilies and new shoots, and softens the ground for another sort of growth.

On the first of May, as I make my way to the encampment, I will stop in Freeport or Fitchburg and stand, with other humans, to honor compassion and make visible my refusal to be guided by commerce and competition. In the aftermath of yet more high-profile violence, I will bear witness to the everyday assault that money and power inflict on the weak and the poor. I will be there, not as much in opposition to the greed and selfishness that seems to be running the world right now, but in recognition and gratitude for the community of beings that sustain beauty and life and spontaneous acts of weather. Human or otherwise, acknowledged or not, we depend on one another far more than we need those who wear expensive suits and carry ever-more-costly guns.

Prediction, no matter how much we invest in the tools of data aggregation, will never match the unexpected beauty of spring. It is time to get outside, to leave restaurants and ballrooms and exercise palaces and entertainments, and smell the pollen, even if it makes you sneeze. Listen to the sounds of continuous creation, feel the touch of atmosphere as it moves across your skin. Set aside the human structures that bring about conflict and maybe pick up some trash. For as long as you can, be alive to the world. Humanity and our stray mistakes will be there waiting when you go back inside, informed by what you learned as you stood under the sky.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.

Matter out of place was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of my kids recently posted the following question on faceboss:

“What would someone have to do, in your eyes, to make amends for coming around after making the wrong political choice? Please don’t come at each other in the comments, I am actually very curious about people’s opinions on this as I watch the current state of the world and hope for a better one.” The post listed some examples, “… recovering neo-nazi, raised White Nationalist but recently learned better, etc,” reminding me of the response, earlier in the week, when another friend posted in support of Graham Platner and was called out for enabling someone who, half a lifetime ago, had injected a monstrous symbol into his still-young skin.

I was weaned on holocaust history. I grew up among people, at that time much younger than I am now, who could tell me first-hand stories of death camps and torture and escape. Images of centuries of mistreatment and persecution were tattooed into our own memories, graven images of generational fear and hatred. I understood, at 21, why my grandparents had written off my cousin for marrying outside of our tribe but removed from the experience that informed their decision, I also understood that love is, and should be, stronger than dogma, that even if my cousin was making a mistake, even if our grandparents’ reasons proved true, the act of disowning her would only increase the harm.

The comments prompted by Joy’s post offered mandates and instruction. There were demands for reparation and restorative justice, calls for those who had done harm to serve on committees or do outreach work, suggestions that former abusers should now act in the interest of the community of the abused.

“Show me with every action you take from now going forward,” one wrote, with another saying, “I may, or may not, allow you back in my life. That depends a lot on the relationship we had, and the trauma you caused. But I’m watching.”

The lessons we are given as children are often taught by those who lived through trauma. Those stories are important, not only because they keep us cautious and attentive, but because cultures built by stories of persecution, all to often, react with such vigilance that, whether intended or not, they recreate the very conditions on which bigotry relies. Separation, isolation — an intentional quarantining of those they do not trust that turns into institutional decisions, borders, razor wire, and bombs.

I thought about things I have done, actions I have come to find unforgivable. I cannot undo the abortion committed by my 23-year-old self or the parental decisions that harmed the children I did have. No one can release me from those responsibilities or direct me to ways to move in the world guaranteed to alleviate the damage.

“We all change,” a former Young Republican wrote in the online conversation. “Embrace people that are looking to do better.”

Woven in and out were comments suggesting their authors might know exactly what was going on in the minds of those who do harm, which saddened me deeply because those very assumptions are damaging to the sort of understanding needed to heal our broken society.

I look back at the history that created me and understand the fear that led to the imperfect State of Israel. While I cannot condone the actions of the current State, such understanding does allow me space to work toward an honest appraisal of institutions that continue cycles of oppression and retribution. Similarly, I recognize the grief resulting from the inevitable outcome of late-stage capitalism’s fierce grip on an increasingly uncivil society, and acknowledge the roots of political movements that resist limits to the power of money and greed as they seek to control our lives.

At the center of massive forces, there are millions upon millions of individuals, pushed along by fear and loss, confused by the rapidity of social change, isolated in their small communities and unable to exercise personal power. If we cannot slow the assault of change enough to see through the smoke and mirrors, what can we do but build emotional walls, shutting out those we once loved and pretending that makes us safe and whole?

While some say too much harm has been done to let folks back into their lives without reparations, another suggested humility. “When people decide to close their mouth and open their ears, when they resist chiming in like a seven-year-old in the back seat, when they start thinking again instead of indulging their immediate feelings, that’s when I think they’ve started to make amends.”

Some in the conversation walked away from family because of the way they vote. Others asked how much personal growth is needed to prove a person’s value and if it might be enough to make the effort to change their mind. “Openly saying it wasn’t the right thing is kind of a big deal,” one wrote.

“Being gullible is not something someone needs to make amends for,” said another. “Forgiveness,” one wrote, “is not an obligation.” One friend writes, “I would like to know, instead, what would work best to welcome those people,” and another responds, “When do you let them be human again?”

I think neither forgiveness, nor confession are necessary. If we are all human, perhaps we can learn to live and work together, to build connection and understanding, without prerequisites.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.

When they come around was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are fewer than a dozen in the standby line, the hopeful line, waitlisted for tickets to today’s taping and watching the scene at W. 53rd and Broadway. Near me, a guy is counting the milling swarm in the three-abreast line parallel to us, folks with confirmed tickets. He says the theater holds 400 people and is pretty sure there are more than that ahead of us. Long before I left home I had turned the slim chance to see one of Stephen Colbert’s last Late Shows into a reason to visit my mother’s city. When the ticketed folks begin to move inside an audience wrangler announces what most of us knew when we woke up this morning.

I had covered about half of the distance to Manhattan by car on the last day in March, leaving 47° Thomaston at noon. Somewhere in New Hampshire, the dashboard read in the 50s. At 2:30, as I crossed the Connecticut River into Vermont, it was 20° warmer. By the time I was at the land with my nest made up in the back of the car and a tarp arranged over the side door, it was almost 9 p.m. and raining. There was a little lightning, a sky aglow in hidden moonlight, and peepers and wood frogs singing of their readiness to mate.

On Wednesday my Vermont child and I celebrated a bare bones Seder in xer cabin and I went back to the land to sleep without the tarp’s protection for my nocturnal awakenings.

I abandon my chilly bed just before dawn on Thursday, driving to Greenfied, Massachusetts where I am the only passenger to board the Valley Flyer. I pick up the Vermonter in Springfield, combining public transportation with hoofing it for the next 30 hours. I wear my daypack and tow a small, plastic, leopard-spot patterned, four-wheeled suitcase to the West Side YMCA, very basic, clean accommodation in a 90-year-old building. It will be fine for one night (that will feel like two) for this almost 73-year-old woman who slept the two nights previous in her 2011 Toyota Rav4. I repack some necessities into the pockets of my waterproof yellow slicker — a cowpoke’s duster someone contributed to the transfer station swap shop just for me to take to the city that never sleeps for an afternoon of fog and the next morning’s rain.

Mom used to say her footsteps were all over that city. Once I left Pennsylvania Station, my pocket memory counted nineteen-thousand steps until bedtime and another 7,500 the following morning. In total, my hiking boots crossed 8½ miles of asphalt, cement, and stone. It wasn’t the whole city, just midtown and the Upper West Side, with a slice of Central Park thrown in.

Before heading back downtown to wait in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater, I wandered the neighborhood north of the Y to see what I might find at Zabar’s. It has been hard to find Passover food in Maine this year, a scarcity that was also evident at the well-known deli. Heading south again, I stumbled on a restaurant advertising a special menu for the holiday, and made plans to eat there after the show. I was ready for the audience wrangler’s dismissal when it came. After a quick look at what was playing nearby I decided to relax and take in the live performance that is New York City instead. I made my way back uptown for a Caesar salad and some very tasty pot roast, had a few spontaneous conversations, and walked back through the park to the hotel.

Friday morning I got up around six and walked 8th Avenue to the Carnegie Diner. It was expensive and mediocre and the coffee was weak. I went back uptown, stopping at Columbus Circle to watch the horse drawn carriages parade from their stables to positions inside the park. I sat under new-leafed trees and budding ornamentals, resting my legs for the walk to Penn Station.

Pushing and pulling my little four-wheeled suitcase down the sidewalk, I roll along 7th Avenue, stopping for good coffee at a place called Char-CUTE-erie, caffeinating my way to Times Square and a world of 50-foot tall flat screens that surround and enclose the space with rapid fire images. I sit in the plaza, hearing a mix of cellphone conversations and constant traffic, and notice someone perched on a on a short wall with a tripod and two cameras, just sitting there in Zen-like waiting, holding a camera and looking south for about 20 minutes. Suddenly he focuses himself and aims his camera, sitting still as can be, and I notice the lens is not directed at the crowd, that whatever is coming isn’t a celebrity or a big vehicle. He is waiting for a change in the seven-story electronic billboard that resets every 3–6 minutes, day and night. When he sees what he is waiting for, he collects a handful of images, packs up, and leaves the square to the Spiderman and Minnie Mouse lookalikes, the selfie sticks and gawkers like me.

In Penn Station, I talked to a girl from the capitol of chaos, and bought a salad for the train, I waited in line for the packed Vermonter — Spring Break filling the 400 seats, the same capacity as The Ed Sullivan Theater. When I got to Greenfield my car was where I had left it, unharmed and waiting. I drove back to Vermont in time for another Passover Seder that couldn’t be beat, this with 16 at the table, much laughter and story-telling and even a little singing. Sufficiency extended through varieties of lived experience and many hands helped clean up after dessert and the last dry bites of Afikomen. I bedded down in the guest room, warm and dry and stretched out on memory foam.

Saturday, Joe and the kids and I hung out at the land, before joining members of my eldest’s community in saying goodbye to the dark half of the year with more food, more songs, more laughter. That night I slept once more among the frogs, in the car on the rain-washed land. On Easter morning I headed east again and down the coast toward Thomaston. A stranger paid a toll for me in New Hampshire.

I am fortunate to come home to a clean and cozy apartment, to be greeted by a cat so sweet that friends are willing to feed and spend time with her in my absence. I unpack the few provisions picked up at the Portland Food Coop and Coffee By Design. I set the sixpacks of pea seedlings, bought at a nursery in Vermont, on a windowsill, and begin work on what you are reading. After notes have been turned from handwritten scrawl, transcribed voice recordings, and brief emails into a single text document, I put the bone broth and matzo balls, left from the 1st Seder with my eldest 95 hours ago, on the stove to warm, make a Caesar without cheese, open a box of matzo that was Zabar’s nod to the holiday, and take a break for supper, contented with my shelter and the food I get to eat.

A phone call with my stepmom helps bring me back to myself. I rise from the couch and return to the keyboard, to pare down the words and tie this quick vacation into a package for you. Sweet dreams, my friends. For all the sorrows and chaos, there is still love and kindness.

Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter from Away has appeared online and in print since 1992. Back issues of this column can be found at shlomitauciello.medium.com.

Spring break was originally published in Letter From Away on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.