The manager, an import from the Midwest, thought western Maine should become an industrial zone which in his mind would save the region economically. The federal government wanted to use the region to bury low-level nuclear waste. I hadn't moved to Maine to live in an industrial area -- especially a nuclear waste dumping ground, and, having been here some 20 years, knew this manager's idea was totally out of the ballpark for this part of Maine with her mountains, lakes, and forests. Most of the area's residents fought against the proposal -- and won.
While driving my bus out of Bar Harbor about 6:45 a.m. Friday after dropping of the Jackson Lab employees, I saw a doe waiting to cross the road. I stopped. She looked both ways and then gingerly stepped onto the pavement -- pavement, not covered with ice and snow -- and crossed to a wooded uphill on the west side of the road.
Because one deer crossing a road often leads to others crossing behind the first one, I waited a few seconds. Sure enough, right behind the doe came a skipper -- a yearling I assumed from its size. I waited a bit more, and one by one three more young deer crossed, these three kind of playfully leaping as they went. Obviously, if they were Momma Deer's other kids, they hadn't paid attention to her rules about safety while crossing streets.
Kids, what are ya going to do?
The five ambled into the small wooded hill area, which covered the site of one of the old burnt mansions from the 1947 fire. Since I had been asked to test drive this bus for the morning trip and no vehicles were behind me, I thought a good test of how well the recent engine repairs had been made would be to idle it in the middle of the road for a minute or two. While I tested the bus repairs, the five wandered uphill through the woods.
And then I saw it, their hooves. These deer weren't jumping or ploughing through the snow. The snow was only ankle high, just covering their hooves.
That was my good news -- and highlight -- for the week. They had made it through another awful winter. For the next few months, life would get better and better for them.
Last week some my the Jackson Lab employees who ride the bus had expressed worry about being terminated, since the Lab plans to terminate some 55 workers with some benefits due to the economic crisis. Of course, they were worried. Most were buried in the drifts of their own economic winter, money they owed or needed for this or that. With no income in the immediate future, what would happen?
I looked back at my own life, having lost two or three jobs due to reasons beyond my control. Those experiences had been terrible, traumatizing, degrading, and fearful. But at the end of a certain period, once a couple of years, I found myself better off and working at something I felt better suited to do than I had in my earlier position.
I had been pressured to resign as editor of a weekly newspaper in western Maine. The manager, an import from the Midwest, thought western Maine should become an industrial zone which in his mind would save the region economically. The federal government wanted to use the region to bury low-level nuclear waste. I hadn't moved to Maine to live in an industrial area -- especially a nuclear waste dumping ground, and, having been here some 20 years, knew this manager's idea was totally out of the ballpark for this part of Maine with her mountains, lakes, and forests. Most of the area's residents fought against the proposal -- and won.
He and I disagreed on some other issues too, and the publisher thought I should leave. (Shortly after I left, the manager also left, unwillingly.) I told the publisher he could fire me, if he liked, which he didn't like because he would have had to pay higher unemployment taxes since I had done nothing wrong. I said I would resign when and if I decided to do so.
I did in a week or so, following the pattern from some good writers who had gone before me. It was really frightening, not knowing how I would make a living to support my family. On the way home from the office the morning I resigned, people stopped me on the street to congratulate me for lasting as long as I had at that paper with its questionable reputation and for finally "getting done."* That evening the phone rang, and I was offered a position at an outdoor magazine by a former manager of the newspaper I had just left.
I gratefully accepted that position but missed being a reporter. Before too long, I returned on a freelance basis to news writing and continuing this column, "Down the Road a Piece." I earned more than I had at the first paper and had a lot more fun doing it.
My career had some ups and downs since then, but I found it enjoyable and fulfilling, leading to retirement, which through some dubious connections brought me to my present "retirement job" driving tourists in Acadia National Park for the Island Explorer bus system and driving commuters in winter for its sister non-profit corporation, Downeast Transportation.
I look back and recall two other major -- to me -- crises from losing jobs, neither caused my own actions. One led to unemployment benefits for a time, which was not pleasant but kept us going until the next opportunity came along.**
I'm happy being retired, volunteering with the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, doing a few recreational activities with Dolores as we have a chance, and driving my Downeast Transportation bus -- as well as being a servant to our two kitties and enjoying the two deer, birds, and squirrels who spend a fair amount of time in our yard at Dee and Milt's Critter Diner.
I understand how those Jackson Lab passenger-employees, who were laid off last year must have felt. Been there, done that. Was awful when it happened, and the world as I knew it ended. Thank God. The next world has always been better. I wouldn't want to go back.
Nor, I mused, would those five deer, making their way slowly and kind of playfully up that hill through those woods in the shallow snow that marks the beginning of better days for them want to go back.
They've just made it through a tough winter. Better days are ahead. For all of us, I think, as I see bright sunshine out the study winter.
We're moving forward. Wouldn't want to go back.
* In Maine, people don't usually resign, get fired, or quit. They "get done." I don't know who came up with that expression, but I like it. It may have begun because throughout Maine's history, folk have done several jobs in turn to survive, beginning with the coastal settlers who fished, shipped, cut wood, and farmed during the different seasons. When someone was through with one type of work, he or she "got done."
** For a more complete and better written story of this type, read the book of Job in the Bible.
Milt. Gross
Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at
"Think of the story of Jesus walking on the water, found in Matthew 14:22-33 and Mark 6:45-52," Strobel writes, quoting a scholar he was interviewing. "Most English translations hide the Greek by quoting Jesus as saying, 'Fear not, it is I.' Actually, the Greek literally says, 'Fear not, I am.' Those last two words are identical to what Jesus said in John 8:58, when he took upon himself the divine name 'I AM,' which is the way God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3:14. So Jesus is revealing himself as the one who has the same divine power over nature as Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament."
A man way up in Danforth, actually who was known in those long-ago days when you could describe him such as the town drunk, said to me while we were in the general store, "I touched a moose and nobody believes me." He explained that he had canoed down the river, landed on a small island, and seen a moose standing still, just standing there. The man had walked up to the moose and touched its nose. It still stood there.I knew that in those days there was a nerve disease circulating through moose herds, which rendered them fairly helpless. They would just stand still, even if you didn't touch their noses.
Before leaving the dock, the Elizabeth Ann's captain, held up a lifejacket for us to see and even strapped it around himself. He explained that should we tip over -- maybe diesel-powered vessels don't tip over like our canoe doesn't because we're careful and cowardly about being in Maine's cold, cold water -- those life jackets would save our lives. I wondered why you just wouldn't hold onto the vessel as we would our canoe in the event it ever tipped over. Probably some Coast Guard rule.
The approximately 150 miles of trails are as varied and scenic as ever, and the Island Explorer buses allow circle hikes. Up one trail and down another. Not yet succumbing to GPS except to find corridor-boundary markers and recording their GPS settings along the Appalachian Trail (150 miles north of Acadia) as a Maine Appalachian Trail Club volunteer, I recommend a map that shows Acadia National Park's trails. The long southern part of Cadillac mountain, which the 3.5-mile South Ridge Trail follows from Route 3 to the summit.
So I poked though our little library and came up with the perfect book about green, Adventures in Contentment, by David Grayson. A fellow employee gave me this book back in the year 2,000. I remember the year only because we were working on the U.S. census together, that is, until I realized how ridiculous it was to be starting the census in rural, woodsy, lakeside Maine in mud season.
Copyright 2013 is held by the nominated authors on this article page.
The Download book does not contain a section on Seder Olam
Definition: King's Calendar Chronological Research
The Premise: Between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE (but continuing down to at least 104 BCE), Sectarian redactors transcribed the legitimate 'solar year' chronological records of Israel and Judah, into an artificial form, with listed years as each comprised of 12 months of 4 weeks of 7 days, or 336 days per year, thus creating a 13th artificial year where 12 solar years existed.
When the Synchronous Chronological Data provided in the Books of Kings and Chronicles for the Divided Kingdom Period are measured in years of 336 days, the synchronisms actually align. [Refer to Appendix 5. to see how it synchronises the Divided Kingdom Period]
About the KingsCalendar Publisher
R.P.BenDedek is the owner and Editor of KingsCalendar.com which was originally set up to publicize his research results into the Chronology of Ancient Israel. Those results were published under the title: 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran'.
Whilst there have been many attempts to solve the chronological riddle of the Bible's synchronisms of reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah and their synchronism with other Ancient Near Eastern Nations, no other research is based on a simple mathematical formula which could, if it is incorrect, be disproved easily. To date, no one has been able to dismiss the mathematical results of this research.
Free to air Academic articles set forth Apologetics for and results of his discovery of an "artificial chronological scheme" running through the Bible, Josephus, the Damascus Documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Seder Olam Rabbah.
During the current economic downturn, this book has been drastically reduced in price but will eventually rise as the economy improves.
Check the Chapter Precis Page to see details of each chapter and to gain access to the Four Free to Air Chapters
R.P. BenDedek writes social commentaries and photographic 'Stories from China' both at KingsCalendar, and as a contributing columnist at Magic City Morning Star News in Maine USA.
(He has been teaching Conversational English in China since 2003 and currently (2013) is teaching in Suzhou City Jiangsu Province.)
