To the editor:
We recognize the function of the newspaper blog page. Folks who for years read the paper and were limited to a silent, inward boil at its “liberul” drivel, can now have their say, spit, turn on their heel, and walk off.
You might have noticed that there is a lot of name calling on this blog. Edit out the name calling and the spelling errors, and have you really got much of anything of substance left?
Can you tell me where Maine people got the language they use nowadays to express themselves? If you are a student of this blog have you not concluded that we seem to be stuck with a watered-down milksop of a language that has replaced the blistering and invigorating discourse we heard as children? People used to paint bright, colorful pictures with words.
Have you noticed that the insults on this page lack spark and fire? Will you agree that calling someone a “fool” day after day lacks imagination? Does not “So don’t you, nya, nya, nya” evince a limp impotency?
Our Maine language was not always so. There is nothing like a frosty morning in a Mars Hill potato field to enrich the vocabulary of a child who is eager to learn. Emery Dordy would drive up on Mr. Gallupe’s shiny new 1947 Farmall, hauling the digging machine. I think it did two rows. Old Dave, who smoked a pipe, was the digger man. Old Dave would kick at the two inches of solid soil that stood between him and 300 barrels of Green Mountains and what Old Dave said was an education not to be found in the halls of Harvard.
“You white-livered son of a horse” was how he started and his creativity increased geometrically with every pipefill until the frost weakened. And to this day I still don’t know if it was Old Dave’s language or the sun that did it.
Anyway, if you’re like me, you probably bemoan the fact that the creativity of an old-time digger man and his like on a frosty morning seems to be a thing of the past and that we’re going to have to live with “Nya, nya, nya. So don’t you.”
But people have had their say, and that is good. If they weren’t able to complain on this page about the problems in their community, some of them might actually find time to get out of their chairs and do something.
Robert Skoglund
The Humble Farmer
St. George
