6/24/98.. Annual ritual.

It went from chill fog to steaming sauna in an instant, at 9:16 this morning. The sky thinned into puffy traces of alto cumulus, which dissolved in the broiled blue. I had foolishly put on black jeans and T along with my boots. By ten I was into undress whites and sneaks. By eleven I'd dug out shorts and was barefoot, bare chested. It didn't help.

Hot pitch in the sawdust stuck to my soles, and the scent of cut pine clung to everything. I kept on cutting. The last feathers on the bird. By one PM the humidity was thick enough to precip, and a light rain doused everything, without cooling the air. A difficult birth for a solar image. Then it cleared off, with a hint of breeze.

I finished the primal assembly on the shop deck around 5 o'clock, and admired it, teetering atop my stepladder. It's almost too big for the space it's headed at, and is going to be a bitch to hang. But the first eaglet to come out of Seven Eagles is fledged. Now my head is full of possibilities for other installations. What about the new building at Brunswick Coal? What about...?

Peggy came home from a day with her colleagues at the Maine Humanities Council, giving away your tax dollars, and rustled up a feed of potato pancakes and garden greens. Then we galloped off in different directions. She went to Carlo's for drawing. I changed clothes once again, and walked up to the new firehouse, for town meeting.

The contractor officially turned the new station over to the town this week, and we performed our annual civic rites in the spiffy new quarters, by way of celebration. Sans fire trucks.

All the uniformed specialists were in attendance. Sherrif's Deps. Volunteer Fire Department. A Boy Scout or two. Only the Little league was absent. They had another game to play.There was a big turn out despite the swelter, and with the garage doors open at either end of the station, a vagrant breeze kept it to a low broil.

The acoustics were deplorable, as you'd expect in an empty garage, but that hardly matters at town meeting. We all know our roles, and the performance doesn't depend on hearing the dialogue.

Bob the Banker was moderator again. A mild-mannered gent with big glasses. When I did a toy portrait of him, years ago, his wife told me what he likes to do best is listen to opera and read books. I put him in his favorite chair, with a tome in his lap, tapping his foot and beating time with his glasses. Conducting town meeting in a drafty barn is less musical, but equally operatic.

There was only one item of note on this year's warrant, but that didn't stop us from acting out on petty issues, before and after. Once again the town was asked to swallow state (and federal) initiated ordinances which enhance the power of government without promising any real benefits. Nobody discusses these boilerplates beforehand, except for the small committed cadre of meeting goers. The rest of us abdicate our responsibility, letting the committants put such stuff on the warrant, because we're sposed to. State sez. Being folks who are comfortable with the bureaucratic style of government by committee, the local pols give us more bureaucratic ordinances, procedures, drek. They are fatuously well-informed. We rubber stamp their representative authority. Isn't that called republicanism? Never mind the details.

I get irritable in these charades, and, having forgotten to bring my sketchbook, which might keep me distracted, I mouthed off, again. It's a waste of air. Why clarify the powers of an overly intrusive bureaucracy, he asks? The good citizens of Bowdoinham are hardly likely to vote in favor of creative anarchy, and I'm not subtle enough to muddy the waters and stir up a creative confusion. I always promise myself I'll bite my tongue the next time. But I can't resist asking questions from the individualist fringe.

Frizzle the firechief is the star performer at these events. Given to weighty pauses, and egalitarian sentiments, he manages to piss off the well-intentioned ordinanceers, and get chuckles from the gallery. But he's losing ground as we become more comfortably middle class, and want to IMPROVE the town.

On the other side from Frizzle is Fat Dan the Republican Man, who is making a career in government. He's shrewd and articulate, and invariably cozy with the economic powers. If his feel for populist demagogy was more acute he'd be a real and present danger.

If you sense that the traditional political lines are fuzzy in smalltown politics, you're right. Radical individualists can't bear fatuous Republicanisms any more than creeping Democratisms. The conservative hacks tend to be in favor of more government. It appeals to their oligarchical instincts. They make common cause with the rad Greens, who are convinced that government regulation is going to protectp the local environment, despite all evidence to the contrary. Which leaves the Demo faithful without a pitch. So they go along with the complacent majority. Nobody questions the whole process, while everyone complains that we're "going to be just like Topsham," that Gomorrah to the south. Suburban development will bulldoze right through here, when the money piles up high enough, and all we've done is grease the skids with orderly procedures and a compliant attitude. BAH.

The one warrant item worth the entry fee was whether or not to purchase the old fertilizer mill just down the hill from us. The town voted two years back to buy that section of the mill property that we were using for the town landing and sand/salt pile, and made a deal with the SeaBees to "improve" the landing. You've heard my grumble about that before. All I'll add here is that part of the "engineered" riprap stabilizing, designed to last a hundred years, slumped away in the big rain, as some of us predicted. Would you trust the Army Corps with your river? Or the Navy?

Now some folks want to purchase the rest of the waterfront property owned by Central Chemical, including the sprawling mill buildings, as an investment in.. in what?.. gentrification, I think.

Heaven forbid an industrial user might make an offer for the rail siding, riverbank, commercial location. It would spoil the town, I guess, to have a new business move in. Not that the village protectors want to keep the saggy old abandoned mill just as it is, for romantic scenery. I might happily vote for that. There are some houses in town that might be more attractive if they were abandoned, too. No. It will have to be spruced up or torn down. IMPROVED, like the landing. An opportunity not to be missed. To keep tax dollars out, and have another WALL*MART parkinglot established.

Oh, I voted for it. Peggy had tasked me with supporting the project, although I'm sure we'll end up with a nice tidy eyesore, designed by committee. And pay through the nose for it. There are no end of good things a town can do to itself in a rising economy. Makes you yearn for a market collapse.

Nobody suggested the emperor has no clothes. I'd already made enough noise, and didn't want to raise the hackles of the Waterfront Committee by pointing out what we'd gotten for our latest improvements there. I've got future battles with them. Do you think I'm learning?

This civic ritual is wonderfully self-gratifying. It's nice to see so many familiar, friendly faces, all DOING GOOD. The entire web of neighborly connections is there in front of you (except for the outsiders I tend to hang with.. they have given up on town meeting as too sweet and orderly.. lacking the old confrontational charm). So why do I get nervous? Is it because there is nothing quite so dangerous as good intentions?

I left after we voted to buy the mill. The air is a little cooler now, and the bats are swooping over Seven Eagles, chasing mosquitos, I hope. Peggy brought home some fabulous nudes. She's started playing with ink and wash, ink and pastel. A whole new level of mastery.

Next time I'll take my sketchbook, or go to Carlo's.