Jon Reisman

I left Eastern Maine a week after the election to visit my sisters in the Sierra foothills. The three-thousand-mile journey started with a meditative just-under-two-hour drive to my elder son Asher’s abode in Brewer and a next-day flight from Bangor to Sacramento via Newark. My younger son Avram, happily, romantically, and politically engaged and employed in the swamp, traveled separately and joined me in Sacramento. My boys think their 68-year-old widowed father has lost a step or two and should not travel alone, and they are probably right. 

We rented a discounted electric Chevy Bolt EV. The car was nice enough, if a little disconcertingly quiet to my baby boomer/geezer internal combustion engine-accustomed ears. Charging time, logistics, and expense (energy is more expensive and less reliable in California than in Maine because the climate alarmists are more firmly in control and have been for a longer time) led to a fair amount of charging anxiety and aggravation. To top it off, we had some cold weather and ice in the Sierra foothills, and running the heat on battery power significantly reduced the range. That will work just great on a Maine winter day.

We drove east/northeast from the flat Sacramento delta into the Sierra foothills to my sisters’ in Nevada City. Placer and Nevada Counties are historic gold country. The autumn deciduous/hardwood colors rivaled and even surpassed the fine fall palate we enjoyed in Washington County, magnified by the elevation variations and views in the Sierra foothills. Just as white pines are kings of the Maine forest, redwoods still reign in much of the Sierra. Nevada City is really high desert as far as precipitation goes, and my brother-in-law Dave, a retired engineer, has put in a number of lawn/garden irrigation systems. The relative aridity of the West compared to wetlands-filled Maine is one of those underlying parameters/baseline assumptions that is easy to forget but perilous to ignore.

Eastern California is politically red/purple as compared to coastal western California, at least if Congressional votes are considered. I wondered whether the right-of-center voters in eastern/rural/small-town California feel just as outvoted and overwhelmed by their more prosperous liberal coastal San Francisco/Los Angeles neighbors as some of us in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District feel about our betters in Portland and the Kamala-supporting 1st Congressional District. It is actually worse in California because they do not apportion Electoral College votes by Congressional District like Maine and Nebraska but rather do the “winner-take-all” disenfranchise-the-minority approach. In addition, California preceded Maine in joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Had it been in effect, all their electoral votes would have gone to Trump, disenfranchising every left-of-center voter in the Golden State. All kinds of good things come out of California: electric vehicle mandates, one-party rule, climate alarmism, expensive and unreliable electricity, eco- and DEI-fascism, and more. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive.

My return trip to Maine entailed stops at Dulles (Baltimore/Washington) and Newark, with an 11 p.m. landing in Bangor. Asher picked me up and put me up for another night. In my absence, he had testified to the UMS Board of Trustees on Gaza, peace, and disinvestment/sanctions. I complimented him for his engaged citizenship and leadership — he is working for what he believes in. While I may disagree with his conclusions and assumptions about Israel and Palestine, his principled advocacy makes his father proud. I also remembered my Rx for a closely divided nation: Keep talking and listen harder.

Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Selectman and a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own, and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here or to him directly via email at [email protected].