A new kind of reading
To the editor:
Writing has always interested me. Ever since I was five years old, strong opinions and emotions in books have made me want to do something.
A book about a mermaid: go swimming! Harry Potter: make-up my own fantasy world! But not until pretty recently did I actually care about reading and learning about real events. It all started when my best friends and I started a newspaper which made me want to read more about real events. I started reading newspapers like The Courier Gazette, and The Working Waterfront.
I started out by just reading “Saltwater Cure” by Courtney Naliboff, she being my neighbor and teacher. I liked to see her thoughts about our island community out in the world. It made North Haven seem less like an isolated paradise.
Once, when I was flipping to “Saltwater Cure,” I got caught on a different story, “Music sounds the alarm” by Alice Cornwell. It was about the Halcyon string quartet performing “Rise Up,” a multi-media presentation about climate change in Midcoast Maine.
The article started like this: “The seven North Haven students in combined grades 4, 5, and 6 carried in cushions and arranged them on the floor…” I was one of those fifth graders carrying in a cushion, expecting a boring presentation. I was also one of those fifth graders who walked out understanding that we have to take action to protect our home.
Elsie Mann
North Haven
Politician says, does
To the editor:
In the June issue of The Working Waterfront letter-writer Bruce Fagley takes you to task for “publicizing misinformation” with regard to former President Trump’s stand on legal immigration. Blaming “the left-biased media everywhere” for portraying Trump as being anti-immigration when “the actual truth is that Trump and most conservatives are actually pro-immigration” and only against illegal immigration.
The inconvenient truth is that “Trump entered the White House with the goal of reducing legal immigration by 63%,” according to the conservative think tank Cato Institute (founded in 1977 by Charles Koch), and by July 2020 was on track to reduce legal immigration by 49% by the time his four-year term was up. That’s on the record stated policy and easy to find actual results of that policy.
Mr. Fagley continues that “you can find many times on record with Trump saying he supports legal immigration.” Perhaps he did say that, but the record proves otherwise, and Mr. Fagley ought to take notice.
Mr. Fagley would do well to understand the difference between what a politician says and what he does, and get his own facts straight before criticizing what he read in The Working Waterfront. I am glad to hear that he “and most conservatives”—if not Mr. Trump—are in favor of legal immigration. It’s time to make that clear to recently immigrated Americans.
Richard Mersereau
Brunswick
The Working Waterfront welcomes letters to the editor. Please send them to editor Tom Groening at tgroening@islandinstitute.org with LTE in the subject line. Letters should be about 300 words and address issues that the newspaper covers. We also print longer opinion pieces, but please clear them first with the editor.
