Stella Karmine Originals
Jul 12, 2012
The Uneducated Author: A Little Poetry
The Uneducated Author: A Little Poetry: Internet Social By Mehgan Francis Strange. Some stay together, and some fall apart. I'm looking around seeing pieces of hea...
Mar 7, 2012
Nov 28, 2011
Maine Gets Cold Shoulder from Federal Cuts as Winter Nears
Craig Dilger for The New York Times
Randy Spack, a contractor for a community program,
installing free energy-saving windows at a home in Glenburn, ME |
Ms. Hodges and her two teenage daughters qualified for federal heating assistance last year, but their luck might have run out. President Obama has proposed sharply cutting the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and Maine is at this point expecting less than half of the $55.6 million that it received last winter, even as more people are applying.
The average state benefit last year was about $800 for the season; now it may be closer to $300. Eligibility requirements have tightened too, and with oil prices climbing — the average in Maine was $3.66 a gallon last week, up from $2.87 a year ago — many here are anticipating days or weeks of forgoing heat.
“We’ll survive,” said Ms. Hodges, who is 49 and works as an accountant and a sorter at a recycling center. “We can put a blanket up to separate off the living room and just sleep in there. But those who don’t have jobs, who are disabled or whatever, I don’t know how they’re going to make it.”
Maine is more dependent on oil heat than any other state, and Gov. Paul R. LePage, a Republican, recently called for cutting heating oil consumption in half by 2014, partly by bringing more gas lines into the state.
For now, a patchwork of local fund-raising projects is seeking to replace some of the lost federal money. One of those projects is led by the author Stephen King, whose red Victorian home on a hill here, with a wrought-iron fence adorned with spiders and bats, is something of a local talisman.
Mr. King owns a Bangor radio station, WZON AM 620 and 103.1 FM The Pulse, where one of the hosts lived in and broadcast from a chilly hut last week to raise awareness about the loss of federal money and, hopefully, to raise $70,000 for heating oil assistance. Mr. King, a native Mainer who lived in a trailer as a young man, has said he and his wife, Tabitha, will match up to that amount.
“Everybody is just hurting, and everybody is scared,” Mr. King said in an interview last week. “If we took everything we had and tossed it into the pot, it still wouldn’t make much of a difference.”
Still, he said, “There was no question of not helping when we saw how much the cut was.”
Under Mr. Obama’s proposed budget, the overall heating aid program would get about $2.6 billion, down from $4.7 billion in 2010-11. The House and the Senate are considering smaller but still significant cuts, with the final amount yet to be determined.
Pat LaMarche, the radio host who spent the week outdoors wrapped in blankets, said that at current prices, $140,000 would buy about 38,000 gallons of heating oil. The station has raised about $20,000 so far.
“But if it can make us re-examine our priorities for a minute,” Ms. LaMarche said, “then maybe it will make a bigger impact than 38,000 gallons.”
At Penquis, a nonprofit agency in Bangor where people can apply for federal heating aid, more than 9,000 households have done so since August, said Melanie Hurlburt, a division manager there. The agency is booked solid into January for appointments to apply for heating assistance, she said, but this year’s average benefit of $332 will buy only 100 gallons of fuel. The Maine Energy Marketers Association, which represents the state’s heating oil dealers, estimates that an average household uses about 850 gallons a year.
“Clients are calling me back when they get the benefit and saying, ‘What am I going to do?’ ” Ms. Hurlburt said. “I hear a lot of reports about what temperature they plan to keep their homes at, and I’m amazed — you know, 50 degrees. You’re barely above keeping your pipes from freezing.” In Bangor, the average low in January is seven degrees. Rebecca Brunton, a recently divorced mother of three, applied for heating aid at Ms. Hurlburt’s office the other day in hopes of avoiding the situation she found herself in last winter: so behind on her oil bill that she stopped getting deliveries. She ended up lugging a five-gallon can to the gas station every day and buying $20 worth of kerosene at a time.
“I’m going to put plastic on the windows this year,” said Ms. Brunton, 40, a waitress who is studying to become a special education teacher. “If I don’t get the help, it’ll be hard. It’ll be cold. But I do have family I can rely on. It’s all the people out there with zero income that I worry about.”
Robert Ketch, 72, who filled out an application for heating aid shortly before Ms. Brunton did, said he lived on a monthly Social Security check of about $900. Mr. Ketch said that if turned down for assistance, he would survive the winter by doing what many a Mainer before him has.
“Tough through it,” he said.
A version of this article appeared in print on November 28, 2011, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Federal Cuts Give Maine a Chill as Winter Approaches. This version credited to Abby Goodnough.
Oct 27, 2011
"FIGHT RIGHT OR GO HOME!" by Russell Simmons via GlobalGrind
Russell Simmons (@UncleRUSH) writes some encouraging words to the Occupy Oakland movement, urges protestors to remain non-violent:
Read more: http://globalgrind.com/news/occupy-oakland-wall-street-police-pd-riot-scott-olsen-photos-pictures-russell-simmons#ixzz1bxLvSfoj
I’m hearing reports from the field about throwing bottles and cans in
Oakland. I understand the frustration – I over-stand it! But real
change – the change that got blacks the right the vote, that freed South
Africa, that ended Vietnam – they were all NON-VIOLENT. For a reason.
They had MORAL POWER. This is the power that Christ harnessed.
I saw today a young black man, the newly designated Acting Police
Chief of Oakland, and he was SCARED. We need to bring these people on
our side, not fight them. If they are ordered to fight us, we will not
fight back. We will call for the removal of those leaders who are
forcing them fight their own brothers and sisters.
Throwing cans and bottles can may make you feel OK, but it’s not real
change. It’s a distraction. We don’t NEED bottles. What we have that
they didn't have during the 60's, we have a new way to organize. We are
connected via mobile phone, facebook, twitter, and platforms like
GlobalGrind.com. We got the people! America is with us. 88% of America
AGREES that corporate power has too much influence on poltiics and
Washington. They AGREE with getting our government away from the grips
of corporate control.
They will provoke you. They will vilify you. They will shoot our
heroes in the head with rubber bullets. They will burn our eyes with
chemicals. But, real courage is staying true to the principals of
non-violent complete radical change for the 99%. Every bottle we throw
is a bullet in the heart of our own movement. FIGHT RIGHT OR GO HOME!Read more: http://globalgrind.com/news/occupy-oakland-wall-street-police-pd-riot-scott-olsen-photos-pictures-russell-simmons#ixzz1bxLvSfoj
Oct 24, 2011
Michele Bachmann, Husband Marcus Defend Characterizing Being Gay As 'Personal Enslavement'
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and her husband, Marcus Bachmann, sought to clarify their position on gays and lesbians in a new interview with People Magazine.
Michele Bachmann said in 2004 that being "involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle" amounts to "personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement." She added that she was not "bashing" anyone.
Her husband has compared gays to "barbarians" who need to be "disciplined." He runs a Christian counseling center that has offered therapy to try to change sexual orientation, according to an undercover investigation by Truth Wins Out, a gay rights organization.
In the Oct. 31 issue of People, the couple defended themselves against accusations of harboring an anti-gay bias. "There's never been a bias," Marcus Bachmann said. "I'm no better than anyone else," Michele added.
People also talked to Michele Bachmann's gay stepsister, Helen LaFave, who Bachmann said she loved. LaFave said, "Yes, we are family and love each other, but she seems to have a disconnect. Her statements and actions related to gay rights are very hurtful, whether she understands that or not." Their once-close relationship reportedly strained over Bachmann's anti-gay activism.
Though Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll in August, she is polling in single digits nationally and in Iowa. Her New Hampshire staff reportedly quit en masse on Friday, but her campaign denied the report.
Bachmann also told People that she wanted her three daughters to learn how to shoot. "I think it's symbolically important," she said. "Women need that ability to protect themselves."
[Read the original article]
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