Last Calls and Low Blows

We are very disappointed with the review Carl Currie wrote in your recent paper [Last Calls, “Sebago Boring Company,” March 2012]. It was very subjective and not representative of who we really are.

It seems like he has a personal vendetta because we would not get him drunk. We do not condone excessive drinking and are very proud of our alcohol policies. I am not sure what Carl’s point was in the review except that he didn’t get drunk after four drinks in three hours.

It seems like we hit the mark in all areas when he mentioned that our food was “plentiful and perfectly cooked” and that our beers give “beer-lovers plenty of reason to return” and any group “would find something to their liking.”

Reviews should be about what an establishment should be, not what they are not. Shame on you for promoting this kind of negative attack on a local business who really engages with our community, employees and customers.

— Kai Adams, Falmouth

The writer is a co-owner of Sebago Brewing Company.

Postcard from Occupied Florida

Eric Blumrich’s op-ed about Occupy Maine really hit home, for me [“Things Fell Apart: The Occupy Maine Camp in Retrospect,” March 2012].

I was heavily involved with Occupy Orlando, down here in Florida. My girlfriend was just as involved, as well. We were in the core group of original organizers, and within weeks of the “official occupation date,” the place was falling apart at the seams. It was very painful to witness and even more painful to be so severely (aggressively) disliked for being as disgusted as we were and, finally, for leaving.

“We can’t talk about killing rich people in our marching chants,” I said, and was met with cocky, apathetic spite. The angriest and most internally victimized of people tended to have the loudest voices and got the support of the most people, and they rapidly overtook the most active of the systems (demonstrations and city hall meetings). Luckily, enough dedicated (and emotionally destroyed) individuals from the original group of organizers have lingered to help guide political involvement. But I am now a little embarrassed to mention my involvement because of the angry, violent, ignorantly hateful people who are now the face of Orlando’s “branch.”

There was a time when my girlfriend and I were sought after for our lucid, peaceful, levelheaded perspectives on matters at Occupation. She was a Peacekeeper (security) and I was loosely termed an “Organizer.” Eventually, however, we and others like us were little more than fearful sissies to these self-limiting extremists. But the op-ed says it perfectly: the movement is NOT limited to its camps and is not defined by them.

Thank you for sharing this experience in The Bollard. It’s comforting and maybe a little therapeutic to see someone else describe something that I felt so personally. I’ll be sharing this article a good deal. I have met some of my very best friends in all of this. If nothing else, Occupation brought so many of us together. We will be the folks who work well together to make our new world, Brother. Peace.

— Michael Francis L. (Frank, at Occupy Orlando), Orlando, Fla.