Jon Reisman

I have been a widower for 18 months, and it sucks. Grief, tears, sweet memories, and regrets ebb and flow. Forty-plus years after we moved into an unfinished home on Cathance Lake in Cooper, the house and grounds reverberate with memories, equally likely to make me smile or cry. The garden was always a shared passion — I’ve planted and managed it for the last two seasons, but it lacks the careful weeding and farmer’s wisdom and spirit that Ern provided.

Before she got sick, Ern acquired several milkweed seedlings from a farmer in Dedham, in the hopes of establishing them on our property and attracting lots of butterflies. I initially planted them on our driveway loop lawn near a twin white pine. Milkweed spreads by seed and rhizome, and after a few years and continuing through today, milkweed babies continue to come up.

When Covid and Ern’s diagnosis (aphasia and early onset Alzheimer’s) hit, I transplanted a couple of milkweeds outside our kitchen window, looking down towards the lake. I had hoped for a butterfly bonanza to cheer my ailing wife, but it’s 18 months too late.

I have been digging up baby milkweeds and giving them to Ern’s friends if they want them. Grief is hard, and it can suck your energy, joy, and purpose away. Laughter and pursuing a goal are the best therapies I have found, and they are far from sufficient. Nonetheless, purpose helps.

I’m trying to complete a paper, maybe my last semi-academic endeavor. The Maine Policy Review is doing a special issue on rural Maine. I’m writing about how Maine’s climate, energy, and equity policies have had an adverse, disparate impact on rural Maine and the 2nd Congressional District. It’s pretty straightforward:

With less wealth, income, and density, rural Maine and the 2nd CD are disproportionately hurt by higher energy prices. Higher energy and especially electricity prices are the direct consequence of Maine’s climate policies (net energy billing raises electric rates to subsidize solar and wind while averting no climate change whatsoever).

The climate policy 30% public lands goal concentrates the costs on the 2nd CD (no county in the 1st CD has over 10% public land — 3 in the 2nd [Washington, Piscataquis, and Somerset] are already approaching 30% and are heading towards 50%). Cooper’s Washington County tax bill increased quite a bit this year (as did everyone’s), and the assessment wasn’t helped by the fact that nearly 30% of Washington County is publicly owned and not taxed, with more almost certainly to come given the State’s public lands and climate policies. The Democrats in the legislature refused to address the issue (not surprising given that Maine’s climate policies are in no way bipartisan).

Maine’s Equity policy (which is to promote but not define equity) makes it difficult, if not impossible, for rural Maine and the 2nd CD to complain or identify inequities because we have no definition — and legislative Democrats made sure we wouldn’t get one any time soon either. I’m sure no one in Portland stays up late worrying about how they are screwing over the rural rubes.

As Independence Day approached, I snapped a pic of a couple of butterflies on Ern’s blooming milkweed. It slightly salves my grief to recall that butterflies are free.

Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Selectman and a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own, and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here or to him directly via email at [email protected].