All Maine Matters Returns After Long Hiatus!
Welcome to the first edition of the second run of All Maine Matters. We hope that we have lived up to the fine reputation that this publication had earned during its previous run. If not, please let us know where we have failed.
Over the past few years, some of the finest people we’ve become acquainted with have had two things in common: a love for the way Maine ought to be, and an association with All Maine Matters. We hope and pray that those who have contributed to this publication in the past will feel motivated to do so again in the future.
All Maine Matters consists of news and commentary by and for the people of Maine. While we won’t ignore the population centers of the state, we recognize that cities and larger towns are already well represented in the mainstream media, so our focus will be on rural Maine and those who too often don’t seem to matter to the rest of the state.
Originally, All Maine Matters came from the merger of the newsletter published by Unorganized Territories United and the old Fisheries Notes. The publishers had come to realize that the forces trying to depopulate the Unorganized Territories through rural cleansing were the same forces trying to shut down Maine’s fishing industry. They want to establish the Gulf of Maine as a “non-extractive marine reserve”. The newspaper was named because all of Maine does matter, even those of us above the Volvo line and it covered all the matters of importance to Maine that did not make it into so-called mainstream papers.
Those papers often picked up on themes from AMM after those stories appeared here. The mainstream media wondered how AMM would mysteriously appear statewide on the same day. Somehow it did, from Becky’s Diner in Portland to a convenience store in Madawaska; from Calais to Bethel and in Millinocket too.
What was predicted in the old AMM has come to pass. All of our paper industry lands have been sold. Many paper machines and some mills are gone. Our population in rural Maine is decreasing. The long term plans of the Wildlands Project are coming to pass faster than the econazis had dreamed.
In 1998 AMM researched the voting records of the very worst in our legislature. That dirty dozen earned the ‘Golden Boot Award’. Old beat up boots were spray painted with gold paint and personally awarded to those legislators at their campaign rallies. Nine of those legislators were defeated. The old AMM existed before the internet became widely popular. AMM existed to bring truthful news to the common citizen who did not have a computer. I am very pleased to see that it will be on line this time too.
We are seeing something today that was not noticed when AMM first started. Our young people still leave, but they are returning at the age of 50 or 55 when their youngest kids depart for college. Mainers who always wanted to live here come home. They bring their accumulated skills and the awareness that they don’t want Maine to become like Massachusetts or New Jersey. It’s an evolving story and one that will be told in the new AMM.
We will be needing your help in order to bring this publication to you each month, as it is one thing to make the statement that all Maine matters, but it’s quite another to determine just what matters to all of Maine. What do you want to see in this publication?
We would very much like to hear from you.
If you can contribute by writing an article about any subject of concern to you, there is a very good chance that it will be of interest to others as well. Please don’t be afraid that you can’t write well enough, as our readers want to hear from real people with genuine knowledge of the issues surrounding them, not from professional journalists who read too much. We have an urgent need for regular and occasional contributors of articles relating to the state’s fisheries, farming, forestry, or anything else that you can relate to.
If you can contribute an article for publication in future issues of All Maine Matters, terrific. Otherwise, we’d still like to hear from you. Tell us how we’re doing, and let us know how we could do a better job of addressing the issues that matter to you.
All Maine Matters is an advertiser-supported publication. Free to readers, we depend on our advertisers to pay our bills. With statewide distribution, we think we have a lot to offer your business. Please contact our sales representative to advertise in All Maine Matters.
We also need volunteers willing to help us distribute the publication throughout the state, as well as leads to stores, restaurants, and other businesses that might be willing to distribute All Maine Matters to their customers free of charge.
You can send us conventional mail at PO Box 788, Kingman, ME 04451, you can call us at 723-4456, or you can email us at me@allmainematters.com.