Aroostook Skies: Independence Days

    In April, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King addressed a local gathering of civil rights activists and sympathetic supporters from around the world. He rightfully and proudly assessed the progress of his people — a people unshackled from America’s institutionalized segregation. Profound national acknowledgement bolstered African-American self-determination strengthened by legislative enforcement of newly earned rights. Dr. King then noted the slow but vital organizational steps begun to create, city-by-city, an economic framework for African-American empowerment to fortify communities long bed by forces of racial injustice, governmental neglect, political expediency, and corporate self-interest.
    Dr. King’s call to conscience guided not just his community but the entire nation to what he called a “massive assertion of our dignity and worth.” During these days of celebrating our nation’s freedom, we, too, in Aroostook County, some 40 years after Martin Luther King’s landmark speech, must as never before, address his challenging question: “where do we go from here?” We must today examine ourselves as never before within the tides of American social and historical experience to arrive at a plan deeply abiding within the moral conscience which will affirm our freedom, our “firm sense of self-esteem.” In other words, every man, woman and child in Aroostook County, regardless of our background, professions, social status, strengths, or disabilities is someone, a person born in God’s image and reborn into hopefully some spiritual awareness and connection in a loving daily conversation with our Creator who knows our deepest longings for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
    Friends, let our recognition and acknowledgement of this transcendent freedom liberate our minds to the task at hand. Let’s learn to live together as never before to “organize our strength of self worth” into a creative and loving tool to construct economic and political power here, now.
    Only a naive dreamer, a foolish optimist, or resident of Portland, would deny the recent economic realities facing northern Maine and Aroostook County in particular. The inevitability of an unrelenting winter season looms ahead, with all the demands placed upon our limited resources and time, individually and collectively. Cruel increases in fuel and food costs leave even the most blessed and fortunate among us concerned, uneasy, and simply frightened. How will I, my family, my community face and prevail over the cold facts? How will I gird my heart and mind, spirit, soul and body to the demands of County life 2008/2009?
    May I suggest now that we join hands and hearts together and bear the burden of this moment in history faithfully. Keep looking up. The stars, constellations and planets in their predictable heavenly courses reinforce our faithfulness down below. Stick with love and fight off the waves of rejection, bitterness, self-absorption, and fear nagging at each’s conscience. Let’s join our hearts today with our American heritage that small as our personal story may appear — that in reality we are a vital link in the chain of the unfolding American story and experience stretching back from Valley Forge to Gettysburg, to Pearl Harbor, to Tranquility Base. That by your efforts, by my efforts, we are shaping and molding a “new morning” for ourselves and our loved ones in the County and beyond, far beyond. Let us reaffirm America within our lives that in spite of the challenge, we, too, join with resounding faith and optimism Martin Luther King’s words that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends inexorably towards” one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
    Happy Birthday, America!
    Editor’s note: Mr. B invites everyone to continue the summer celebration by attending Open House at the Francis Malcolm Science Center in honor or Easton Field Days, Friday, July 11th from 2-4 p.m. Free admission.)