RE to IM on FaceBook – more detailed info about what started the witch accusations and harasment

(ADDED NOTE: I’m a third generation LDS/Saint/Mormon; this answer went to a “new” fellow member who was asking what happened to inspire my previous post, this was my answer:)

I got 3 windows each with 50 tabs open, and speakers on my computer zoned out a while back, so I don’t get the “beep” from FB anymore and even though FB still says I’m online, but I already moved to a different site. It’s sort of hard to keep track of me online, I zip back and forth so much. I was on Zazzle, not FB, so I didn’t see the messages til just now. Sorry.

Nope, didn’t know about the AS group. I’m still sort of new to getting out of the house, it’s kind of hard to get used to doing. I pretty much only ever leave to go to the writer’s meetings (NaNoWriMo and Screnzy) and to buy cat food and grain.

The guy that was yelling at me is from the Sanford ward. (It was yesterday). He’s the same one that was accusing me of writing “deframitory” letters to tons of people in the Sanford Ward, though he’s yet to be able to prove that any of those letters actually exist. So I don’t know if there really are letters I supposedly wrote or if that’s just some rumor. He’s sort of weird. I’m used to him showing up every once in a while. Bishop LR got after him about it a while back, and he stopped, but Sanford just changed bishops, so, I don’t know, I guess he thinks he can try it again. Anyways my mom emails him, (I guess she emails every body, because I’ve had to change my email 34 times as a result of her emailing people who than email me in a rage over whatever it is she has said at that moment.) and that’s usually what sets him off.

My mom showed up at the yard today, with the same accusations – witchcraft, proof being my lack of shoes. I don’t where she comes up with this from, but I guess seeing how she’s saying the same stuff the next day, that she’s the one who got him saying it. (He’s got mental problems and tends to repeat whatever he hears some one else say, so I’m not too worried about him, because I know he’s just parroting some thing he heard some one else say. It’s the person he’s repeating that bothers me.) But yeah, seeing how my mom showed up with the exact same accusation, I guess she’s the one who said it to him to begin with. After he accused me of the letters in Sanford, my mom showed up a few hours later that same day accusing me of letters in Saco, so I’m not sure what to think there. I’d still like to see one of these letters, because last time letters like that showed up, well, the only time letters like that showed up, and I actually saw one, it turned out that it was written by one of my mom’s brothers, not me, like every one thought. It’s the only time a letter ever actually came forward though, so I don’t believe the poison pen letter accusations half the time, because it’s so rare that they can ever provide proof that the letters they accuse me of writing, are even real at all.

I guess, it’s always my mom that gets people all wound up, at least from what I’m finding out these past few months. I know from what Bishop K said that it was my mom complaining to him, because he was quoting stuff, word for word the way my mom says them – demon possession, spell casting, curses, me being a witch. I’m just so sick of it. It hurts when people call me a witch or say I’m demon possessed, but than I’ve got Autism so they think I don’t have any feelings to hurt. I just never can understand how folks can believe her. The whole believing that demons and witches are real, is just something I can’t get my mind around. It’s so illogical. I can not understand how my mom or her brothers or Bishop M or Bishop K can believe in those things.

Of course, I don’t understand how come every time a new Bishop or Stake Pres comes in, I have to be retried all over again. Double Jeopardy is illegal in the USA. The first time I got called in for “apostasy”, “witch craft”, “demon possession” and consideration for excommunication was when I was just 12 years old. That was Bishop Re and Stake Pres S. Bishop Re is the one who got released after having a mental breakdown. Stake Pres. S said there was no ground to excommunicate me than, because I was neither witch nor demon possessed nor apostate.

Than Bishop Ri called me in about 2 years later, said complaints of demon possession and witchcraft had been made again, but that he was no going to do anything about it, because he did not believe the complaint.

Bishop M replaced him, and at the same time Stake Pres E took over for S and it stated all over again. That time Bishop M brought in doctors from Pine Land Center, he claimed I was not only a demon possessed witch, but that I was schizophrenic as well. He tried several times to have me excommunicated between the ages of 14 through 17, each time he didn’t get any where with it.

Bishop B wanted to have all 264 of us (me and my relatives) excommunicated and is the one who told me “white trash like you and the rest of the Atwater clan don’t belong in this church”. That happened 13 years ago and was why I stopped going to the Cape Elizabeth Ward.

Cape E Ward broke off and became the Portland and Saco Wards instead, but by that time I had started going to the Sanford Ward.

That was when the vandalism started in. At first it was just rock throwing and stuff, but than the dead animals and photos of guns started showing up. In 2003 the drive by paint ball shootings started. They messed up my horse really bad, tore out half of her face and cut out both her eyes. It got so bad that the OOB police stationed a motorcycle cop to patrol Portland Ave. That’s when I stopped going to the Sanford Ward, because the police offices said they had evidence that it was people from church behind the vandalism. They had a list of suspects, all of them were from one of 5 different churches – 3 of the churches being the Saco, Portland, and Sanford LDS Wards. That’s when the reports and paparazzi got involved, one of the officers contacted the state police and one of them called ABC. We had reporters and photographers all over our land for about 3 months. That’s when my agoraphobia set it. Between the vandals killing my pets and the paint ballers and the reporters asking me questions and the police constantly warning us about who to avoid – I just freaked out big time. I couldn’t handle it.

Between 2001 and 2004 we had court dates on an almost weekly basis. I went to the early ones, but as the reporters and such got more involved, I stopped going to them. The later court dates from 2003 – 2005 I did not attend, except for one in summer of 2005, when I had a total meltdown in the court and the judge sent me to a psychiatrist. That’s when I found out I had Autism (Shizotypal Aspergers with OCD tendencies).

After the court stuff ended, my mom got something like $20K in the settlement, that’s when the vandalism went out of hand and our house got burned down.

Next thing we know, DHS is at the tent and telling us about an FBI investigation into OOB town manager, and that there were about 40 families on Portland Ave and Walnut Str that were involved, most every one of them had lost their homes, nearly all of them had been driven out of town, they couldn’t handle the stress. It was DHS that told us about Thomas and the other folks from the Saco Ward being investigated because some $3million had been embezzled out of town funds. That’s how I found out that the town manager and the town council were all members of the Saco Ward. OOB had to get rid of every one working in the town hall, and I had to deal with gov workers asking me questions left and right, only I didn’t know anything about all that stuff so finally they stopped coming over. I never did understand all that stuff with the DHS and the FBI and the town manager. No one ever gave us much information, they just wanted to know what we knew about it. In any case, finding that stuff out, freaked me out even more, because the guy they were investigating was a high priest in the Saco ward and the OOB town manager. They had records of how he’d been run out of 4 states already and he was constantly going from state to state to evade them. Finding that out, just scared the hell out of me and after that, I just stopped trusting every one.

I mean, you think you can trust a high priest right? You think you can trust your town manager right? But than the police and DHS tell us that these people we thought we could trust were the ones behind all the violence and death, and it just shatters your ability to trust any one after that. Now I don’t know who I can trust any more. But than, when all this was going on, normally I would have turned to the church for help, but I don’t any more because every time I do, the members and leaders start calling me a witch and telling me I’ve no right to be in church. I still don’t understand why people call me a witch.

I know several complaints happen because of the whole color thing. I see these glowing colors around people, which I thought every one saw. I didn’t realize until my late teens that other folks did not see them, or that it freaked people out when I talked about seeing them. But the whole me being a witch and casting spells and curses comes from that, because there were several times when I told people *that person* is about to die, and than within a few hours to a few days they did. People freaked out and said I made those people die, but what happened was, your color leaves and dissapers before your die, and if I see someone with no color, I know they’ll die soon. I was only 5 or 6 years old when I used to say those things, so the accusations of witchcraft and curses started early. That’s how the rumor got started at least. But that’s Autism, not witchcraft, so I don’t see how they can use that to call me a witch.

Than of course my encounter with whatever it is that Etiole is, is what started the accusations of me being demon possessed. I may not know what it is that Etiole is, but I do know what he is not, and he most certainly is not a demon. I assume you must know about Etiole, since it seems like every one does, but if not, I wrote all about him here: http://www.squidoo.com/amphibious-aliens so many folks kept asking me for more info about him, that I finally just wrote it down and now instead of reanswering everyone I just direct them to that link. It’s easier. And, again, though not many folks have ever seen Etiole, a few have, and they were not witches any more than I am, so I don’t see how my contact with him could make me a witch or demon possessed. Ben’s thoughts on the matter are that people who call Etiole a demon are silly, because (according to Ben) Etiole is an alien, some sort of Gray Hybrid or some such thing. (When Ben is not being a high priest, he spends his time being a ufologist.) I’m not sure what to think of Ben’s whole alien/alien abduction theory, but at least it makes more logical sense than the demon possession theory my mom’s always preaching. Personally, I’ve always thought of Etiole as a Faerie, which I say to mean a natural all be it rare, cryptiod creature, not some supernatural being or an extraterrestrial.

My mom’s constant accusations that first my Dodge and now my Volvo, are possessed by demons, baffles me. I have no explanation for her reasoning, other than I guess she is suggesting that Etiole somehow possesses them. I don’t know. I think the accusation that my cars have demons is the least logical and most confusing of any of the accusations to date.

A few years ago, in about 2005, I decided to look into this whole witch thing, to try to find out why folks kept saying I was a witch, but after talking to several wiccan-witches, they all told me the same thing – that there was no way in hell I was a witch because I was so much of a “super Christian Jesus freak”. Last spring some folks online said they thought I was more of an old fashioned Christian, the type like followed Jesus when he was still alive, and that today they are called ChristoPagans, which are neither witches nor what modern tradition calls Christian. I don’t know. I can’t figure any of it out. Christian call me a witch and witches call me a Jesus Freak, neither accept me as an equal. But still, after looking into the whole witch/wicca thing, I still can’t figure out why folks keep calling me a witch, and neither could any of the witches I talked to. They said the witch accusation was most likely based on my mode of dress. They thought it was most likely that folks look at my clothes and assume I’m a witch because of the things I wear.

But I don’t understand that either. You see, my grandmother was an Indian. She was a Kickapoo and lived much of her life in Hawaii. Because of her culture she wore muu-muu and kimono and long robes and stuff. She didn’t want her culture to die, like most native cultures had, but she couldn’t remember most of her native heritage, but her clothe connected her to her ancestors, it was the only part of her culture she had ever been taught (she was an orphan, in a time when Indians were still “red skin savages” so a lot of her culture history was lost.). As an adult she traveled around the world looking for information about her family history. That’s why she spent a lot of time in Hawiaii and Japan. I spent most of my childhood with her, because my mom was always in the hospital, and so, I grew up wearing muu-muus and kimono and robes and stuff, because that’s the way our native culture dressed. When she died in 1994, I inherited everything, including her collection of antique Hawaiian muu-muus and Japanese Kimono, which is what I have worn ever since I inherited them. The way I dress has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with my Native American culture, so I don’t understand why people look at the way I dress and call me a witch because of my cloths.

So, I mean, I can see where they are basing the witch accusations from (the Autism, Etiole, and my clothes), but I just can’t understand how they can actually believe such nonsense as to think I am a witch, because none of those things makes me a witch on their own, and even all three together can’t classify me as a witch either.

Bishop K did a lot of complaining about my cloths the day he called me to his office. I tried to explain about my grandmother, but my ability to speak coherently is not good. I’ve always had trouble making words come out of my mouth properly and that’s why I write things down instead. He kept saying I was a witch and putting spells on church members, and than he’d comment about my cloths.

The witch accusation upset me. I’ve gone through this every time a new bishop comes in. I don’t know who it is that runs to every bishop complaining about me and calling me a witch, but this has happened with 16 bishops and 3 stake presidents now. Every time I get told I’m a demon possessed witch casting spells and curses. Every time it’s eventually found out the accusations are false. Every time the monthly, sometimes weekly meetings with the bishop and stake pres drag on for 6 or 7 months. Double Jeopardy is illegal in the USA. You can’t retry some one for a crime they were already tried for and proven innocent. And yet, here we go again, with bishop number 16 and stake pres number 3. That’s double jeopardy 16 times! Why? I’ve already been dragged before 15 different counsels, each time with the same accusation of apostasy and witchcraft and excommunication threats. Sixteen times since I was 12 years old! Each time has 6 or 7 meetings. WHY? Why do I have to go through this every time a new bishop or a new stake pres comes into the ward?

Do you have any idea how stressful this is? And people keep asking me why I don’t come back to church? Why should I? What incentive is there for me to attend meetings at church, when I won’t get the chance to attend half of meetings because I’m too busy being called into the bishop’s office where I get accused of being a witch? Most of the meetings took place on Sunday, they’s take me right out of Primary or Young Woman’s classes. I missed more than half of my Sunday meetings because I had to sit in the bishop’s office every Sunday being told I was some evil apostate witch. How can they expect me to want to go to church when I’m not allowed to attend the meetings when I do come in?

I used to go to whatever ward Ben was attending, but I’ve been with him since I was 12, (he’s 30 years older than me) which in the Cape Elez Ward no one cared much about that, a few folks complained, but not many and no one did anything about it. In the Sanford Ward though, one of the members was a DHS social worker, and some how she found out about how old I was when I started going out with Ben, and even though I was 27 by the time she found out about it, she raised hell for him, she wanted him to be put in prison and tried to get me to press charges against him, she really went overboard about it and he got into a lot of trouble and he almost got excommunicated over it, and now he’s terrified to be seen in church with me.

I don’t know why she flipped out like that, because I was 27 years old at the time, yeah I was 12, but well, if she had ever read the church handbook, the church puts 12 years old as the legal marriage age, so, whatever. Anyways, Ben is just terrified out of his mind over the whole ordeal and that’s why he called off the wedding a few weeks before the wedding date. (He has huge phobia problems, and the DHS threats made them worse.) A lot of folks in the Sanford Ward threatened to never speak to him again if we got married, so now he hides the fact that we are together. We were supposed to get married in the temple, but they would not allow it. They took Ben’s temple recommend away and said I was not allowed to have on on grounds of “mental incompetency”. Some folks called me a “grave digger” and others called me a “gold digger” and others said I was with Ben because I wanted to be “a lovely young widow”. Uhm . . . at the time Ben had A LOT of money. His dad is one of the wealthiest men in Kennebunk Port. I did not know all of that at the time though, because I had never meet Ben’s dad and Ben had never once in those first 15 years ever mentioned his job or money. I had no idea he had all that money, not until folks in the Sanford Ward started saying those things to me. Their words hurt me more than anything else ever could. Of course, since than, Ben has lost all that money, and well, I proved them wrong because all these years later, I’m still with him.

But that’s why I stopped going to the Sanford Ward. The whole freak out over the 30 year age difference was a really big issue for people there, though I still don’t understand why. That happened 7 years ago and I had hoped that they had calmed down some about our huge age difference. I went back to Sanford once this last summer, and well, let’s just say I was most diffenatly not welcomed there. I was there all of 10 minutes before Ben had to rush me out of the building and we left. Ben didn’t dare go back to church for a few weeks after that, so I haven’t tried going back to Sanford since. It’s really upsetting that people can hate me like that, just because I’m 30 years younger than Ben. It’s the one thing of all of everything, that has bothered me more than anything else. I want so desperately to attend church with Ben again, but I’m not allowed to, people just go nuts when they see us together. That upsets me more than the witch accusations from the Cape Elizabeth and Saco Wards do.

So, I just don’t go to church at all any more, as you can see, for a lot of reasons. The witch and demon accusations I could ignore. I sort of grew up with them, and while they hurt my feelings and stress me out, I’ve sort of gotten used to them. I try to ignore them. It’s the accusations involving me and Ben and our age difference, that upsets me most of all. I find it very hard to ignore these, because they effect our relationship. They stress Ben and, he just does not deal with stress well at all. He freaks out and goes into hiding and doesn’t dare to contact anyone, not even me – uhm, yeah, he has all sorts of alien abduction fears and stuff, and rambles on ufo stuff all the time, and whenever any one freaks him out, he just goes super paranoid, and the whole deal with folks freaking out over our age difference sort of freaked him out worse than most other stuff does, and seeing him get all upset over it, made me even more upset than I already was over it. So all in all, that hurts my feelings and upsets me more than the witch accusations do. And, well, if they are not going to let me attend church with Ben anymore, and over such a stupid reason just because he’s 30 years older than me, than really, I’ve lost all desire to go to church at all now, because I have a hard time seeing how Jesus would think well of a church that breaks up families, the way folks there are trying to break up me and Ben. Me an Ben have been together for 22 years. We meet in church. Church was such a big thing for us. We attending every meeting – the morning meetings the evening meetings (the church stopped doing the double meetings in the mid 1980′s) and all the week day meetings. We used to come do the landscaping, and cleaning the building, and repairing the roof, and decorating for youth dances, etc. For years we spent an average of 12 to 15 hours a week in church. That was in Cape Elizabeth, before they consolidated the Cape Elizabeth and Portland Wards.

The Cape Elizabeth Ward does not exist any more, it got folded into the Portland Ward in about 1995-ish, the same time the Cornish Ward broke off of it. Most of the folks I knew ended up in the Cornish Ward. Than Saco Broke off of Portland a few years later. I don’t know any body in the Portland and Saco Wards today, it’s all new folks now. And that’s what really gets me – I mean, how do people there even know who I am? I asked Johnny that, and he said it’s because me mom is constantly talking about me. According to Johnny, my mom is “obsessed with you” he said. He added “you should hear her at Wayne’s house, she talks about you all day long”. I asked Ben, if he knew anything about that, because, I rarely ever see my mom – like months and months and months go by, between seeing her. Ben told me that she emails him almost daily, and than he forwarded her emails to me – I was stunned! Every one of them was her talking about me and how “evil” I was. She used the words “evil” and “nasty” over and over again to describe me and spent a lot of time talking about my Twighlight Manor books. I found that fact interesting, considering she has yet to read one of my TM books and half the stuff she said I had written in them was not true. Oh well.

I’ve since found out that she has been emailing copies of these same emails to several of my uncles and, some one named “Corbet”, Johnny said that that is some woman from church. Don’t know, never heard of her, so I don’t know why my mom would be saying all that stuff to her. (I found out, because when Ben forwarded the emails to me, all the email addresses my mom had sent the email too was in the box). I don’t know. I just don’t understand it.

I just realized how long this got. Uhm. Yeah, I guess I’ve been writing for the last 2 hours. Whoops. Sorry about that. I guess I should go before I end up writing a whole book here. =P

Well, that’s weird. I just noticed that FB pulled up the link to my Squidoo lens. Didn’t know it did that. Well, there’s a picture of Etiole there. LOL! I spend most of my time on Squidoo and Zazzle and Zanga so I so rarely use IMs, emails, or messages, I’m not too sure how they work I’m afraid. I guess it pulled up the link, like on the status box, because I typed it a ways back. Whatever.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

PLEASE . . . . somebody, anybody. . . . PLEASE HELP ME!

They just now, just called again. Again demanding that I come into the the bishop’s office at the church tonight, again demanding that I meet with the Stake President. And again it has triggered a mass panic attack. It’s happening again. JUST LIKE BEFORE. I can’t stop shaking. My chest hurts and my lungs hurt. My hands are shaking so bad I can barely type this. It’s like before. Only, I’m shaking a lot worse, it’s so bad my glasses keep falling off. I can’t stop shaking. I can’t breath.

It’s like before, like a panic attack, only really, really, really bad. Why won’t they leave me alone. I need them to leave me alone. Please make them leave me alone. I don’t know if I can live through many more of these stroke like attacks. I have one every time they call. Please make them stop calling me. Tell them to leave me a lone. Please help me. I can’t stop shaking. My whole body is skaking all over I don’t know what to do.

Please call the church at 607-9517 or 207-666-3481 and tell them to leave me alone (I find the 666 in their # ironic) Ask for Robert Taylor. He is the counselor in charge of handling phone calls to the Stake Presadent of the Augusta Maine Stake.

You can read more about this 31 year on going harassment at the following links:

Excommunication for publishing my 2008 NaNoWriMo Book – Update

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HELP! Any doctors out there? Medical advice?

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Health UPDATE – Stroke caused by panic attack triggered by LDS Church excommunication threats :(

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Still Planning on Doing NaNoWriMo this year in spite of recent health issues

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Eleven Days Til NaNoWriMo and Stroke Update

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For Those interested- here is the Final (edited and spell checked) Draft of For Fear of Little Men, my 2008 NaNoWriMo book

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My Aliens vs Your Demons – Yep – If I’m Crazy, What Are You???????

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The Poison Pen Letters Return – AGAIN

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Excommunication – 2008 NaNoWriMo book banned – Update – My Inbox if overloading – a mass reply going here

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REPOST: For Fear of Little Men: First Draft of my autobiography book to be published in 2010+/-

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Note – I have not been to the LDS/Mormon church in 13 years, and yet, they continue to harass me on an almost daily basis.

In 2004 I started writing “Faith Not Religion”, my infamous 900 page rant on why I left the Mormon church. It was during the two years where I just sat there doing nothing but writing that book that I finally realized for the first time in my life that I WASN’T evil, like so many bishop kept telling me! I wasn’t demon possessed, like so many bishop kept telling me . What I was, was a victim of 27 years of mental and emotional abuse at the hands of a bunch of crazy tyrants. While writing “Faith Not Religion” I learned quite a bit about myself. Among them I learned:

I’m tired of being told I’m a witch.
I’m tired of being told I’m evil.
I’m tired of being told I do the things I do because I’m possessed by a demon.
I’m tired of being told I’m going to hell.
I’m tired of being told I’m inferior because I’m a lowly female.
I’m tired of being told not to talk because that’s reserved for men.
I’m just plain tired of BEING TOLD.
Every one talks to me, no one ever talks with me.
I want freedom from BEING TOLD.
I wish, that there was someone who would actually treat me like I was a person. Like I was important. Like I mattered.
I’m tired of being harassed by these people.
I’m tired of it.
Putting up with the abuse all those years was killing me.
Them killing my pets was an evil act.
Them paintballing my car was an evil act.
Them throwing rocks at and blinding my horse, was an evil act.
Them burning my drawings in the woodstove was and evil act.
Them burning my manuscripts in the wood stove was an evil act.
Them saying I was evil was an evil act.
They were the ones who were evil, not me.
Not being allowed to get a job because I was a female, was an evil thing for them to do to me.
Them smashing my Liberace` records was an evil act.
Them stealing parts off of my car and leaving it in ruins was an evil act.
Them setting fire to my home and leaving me homeless was an evil act.

Please put an end to this before they cause my death. I don’t think I can live through another stroke. PLEASE HELP ME!. Please call the church at 607-9517 or 207-666-3481 and tell them to leave me alone (I find the 666 in their # ironic) Ask for Robert Taylor. He is the counselor in charge of handling phone calls to the Stake Presadent of the Augusta Maine Stake. Please. call him. PLEASE! Why won’t they leave me alone. I need them to leave me alone. Please make them leave me alone. I don’t know if I can live through many more of these stroke like attacks. I have one every time they call. Please make them stop calling me. Tell them to leave me a lone. Please help me. I can’t stop shaking. My whole body is shaking all over I don’t know what to do. Please some one help me.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

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NaNoWriMo RE: Canada vs. America

Canada vs. America

[quote=Clockwork Smith]One of my main characters is a 14 year old Canadian (probably lived around the Toronto area) who just moved to America. I am trying to think of things that he might miss. I am drawing up a blank. Tell me about the differences between Canada and America if you would be so kind. Or just tell me about Canada.

The novel is set in the present day. What might his favorite sports team be? If you could tell me about different big cities in Canada, I would really appreciate it. I don’t know if I even want him to be from Toronto or not. Would a fourteen year old be allowed to rde the subway by himself? Etc.

Answering any of these questions will help me greatly. Thank you.

[/quote]

I’m going to agree with every one who’s saying it depends on where in America they move to. I’m also pretty shocked at nearly every answer on this thread, because I’ve lived in America my whole life and I’ve never heard of half the things these people are answering you with. Funny thing is, I know everything the Canadians are answering you with. Could it be that Maine is more like Canada than it is like the rest of America?

I’m wondering why everyone keeps saying Canadians would miss Tim Horton’s – they are close to being on as many corners in America as Starbucks is – pretty much every street in every town has at least one of each – and I hate both of them btw.

[quote=Moondragon]noticed some differences in speech:

They say Natives; we say Native Americans (Well, I guess Native Canadian is a bit of a mouthful!)
[/quote]

Well I guess that just depends on where in America you are than, because in Maine, we say Natives too.

And I live in Old Orchard Beach – we get 2 million tourists every summer. Most of the one’s from Canada talk no different than the locals. Here in Maine, we have a really hard time understand what folks from the lower 47 are saying, esp if they are from New York or Utah, and we often ask them to repeat themselves several times before we finally figure out what they are talking about. New Yorkers and Utah folk are the absolute worst, it’s like even though they are speaking English, it’s so far from being the English I know, that it’s like they are speaking a completely different language.

For instance in Maine we say Soda, in Utah they say Pop.

We say Roof, they Raouuuuuf (like it was 3 syllables not 1)

We say Brook, they say Crick

We say Cougar, they say Mountain Lions.

We say Sleeping Bag, they say Sleeping Sack.

We say Sex, they say Shag

We shake hands and say “Good morning how are you doing?” they say “Yo Dude, wassup?” and slap you on the back.

You try to shake hands with a Non-Mainer/Non-Canadian and they jump back and look at you like they have never seen a handshake before, but around here that’s how every body greats every body – and I’m told it’s a “very French Canadian/Quebec thing to do”.

Another thing Non-Mainer/Non-Canadian folks complain about us Maine folk doing and say it is a “very French Canadian/Quebec thing to do” is the way we eat. In Maine, a meal could take an hour or two or three – we prefer to actually sit down and enjoy our food. (Which I suppose is why you can go 10 or 12 towns before you see a McDonald’s) We tend to eat at home or eat at restaurants, rather than at fast food joints. The Non-Mainer/Non-Canadian tourists though? They get all upset and act like it’s the end of the world if you haven’t scarfed down your food like some sort of rabid animal. They are always in a rush to eat in 5 minutes or less and than rush off to the next thing. . . and than they leave half their food on their plates! I say once again – HOW RUDE!

We say Hood, they say “That Thingamabop there on the front of the car, you know I mean, that thing, right there, that” and they start RUDELY snapping their fingers inches from your noise with one hand while pointing to the hood of their car with the other hand.

And WHAT is it with the really RUDE and ill mannered way that New Yorkers NEVER SHUT UP and keep snapping their fingers in your face when they talk to you? (Utah folks wag their index finger and they DO sometimes hit you in the noise because they get so damn RUDELY close to you when they talk)

Our chowder is white and has fish and corn in it, their chowder is red and has tomatoes and pasta in it . (Chowder by the way MEANS “White Stew”, so technically any soup that is NOT white is NOT chowder)

Us Native Mainers (a Native Mainer being a person whose family has been in Main for a minimum of 5 generations and -yes- leaving Maine for a few years to go to a NonMaine college will get you branded as a Non-Mainer) are constantly amazed by the Out-of-Staters that move in here because they love Maine, but than bitch and moan a few months later because it’s too much like Canada. Well, did they ever look at a map?

My over all impression of the lower 47 is that they are fast talking rude busy bodies. The tourists who come here are often quick to say they love coming to Maine because it’s like going to a different country without the need for a passport or because it’s “Like going to Canada with out going through customs”.

[quote=MichelleZB]What I notice when I go to the States is that people don’t know the little verbal dance of politeness most Canadians do. Buying gum from an American corner store, I’ll look the clerk in the eye as he gives me my change and say, “Thank you so much,” or just “Thanks!” And they usually have no idea what to say back. I usually get a look of shock and an “Uh-huh, ” or a “Yup!” Both of those responses sound weird to my Canadian ears.

I don’t think it’s because Americans aren’t polite. I think they just don’t have the catchphrases we do. And Canadians aren’t particularly polite. I just say “Thanks” because I’m used to it. I don’t even hear the “You’re very welcome” or “No problem” they say in response. It sounds too normal to register.[/quote]

I completely agree. I worked in retail for 17 years and the Non-Mainers/Non-Canadian tourists that I meet have no manners or etiquette skills whatsoever! Every time I meet someone who acts rude at the register, I’ll ask “So how are liking Maine so far?” and they’ll get stunned and shocked that I could tell they were a tourist! LOL! They are completely clueless!

You are right, I don’t think they are intentionally being rude, I don’t think they are even aware that they are among the rudest folks I’ve ever encountered. They completely have no idea that they are acting rude in any way at all! The fact that they are so completely clueless as to how rude they are, always amazes me!

From what I can see though, from the Non-Mainers/Non-Canadian tourists I’ve meet and dealt with over the years, I think the problem is that they are always in a hurry. They have to rush in the store and rush back out in 5 seconds flat otherwise the whole world will blow up – I mean, that’s how I see it. I mean look at the way they eat! Scarf the food down in under 10 minutes and than they are out of there. No time to sit and relax. No time to enjoy their food. No time to just look out the window and think about life. No time to . . heck, they don’t even have time to look at their watch and see what time it is! OMG!

I look at these folks and I wonder, what’s the rush? Where’s the fire? Why are they running around like half crazed mad men all the time? Sometimes I ask them why they are in such a hurry, and it’s never a for a good reason, either. It’s not, my wife’s in labor and I have to get to the hospital so no time to eat. No. It’s the game is on and I gotta get to the bar and watch it with the boys. I’m like really? That’s important? How?

So my conclusion is, that it’s not that they are rude because they lack manners, they are rude because they (supposedly) lack the time to be considerate.

But hey, time is what you make of it, so if you lack time, maybe what you really lack is management of your life.

[quote=Laura Rainbow Dragon]
Guns are a biggie. Canadians don’t carry them. We don’t feel that we should or that our neighbours should or that common citizens should have a right to. This is not true of all Canadians, of course. There are some who wish to carry guns, and there are some people (police officers, hunters, etc.) who are legally licensed to possess a gun (and there are some criminals who carry one illegally) but this is a minority opinion in Canada. If your character is a city boy, there’s a good chance he’s never seen a gun in real life — and seeing one in a friend’s house/car could freak him right out. (Plus, if you move him into a community in which possession of guns by the citizenry is commonplace, this could freak his parents out. They might forbid him to go into the homes of kids whose parents kept guns in the house, for instance.)
[/quote]

That’s another thing – EVERY ONE in Maine walks around with a shot gun or rifle, usually every where they go. Men. Women, Children. If they don’t have it on them, they’ve got it sitting on the seat of their car. Non-Mainer tourists get all freaked out about it when they see folks walk into a store carrying a rifle. It’s kind of weird, cause they act like the guy is going to shoot up the store or something when all he was doing was stopping in the buy a case of drinks for his hunting buddies – hell, the store owner usually has a rifle sitting under the counter. I never understood why the Non-Mainer tourists freak out like that when they see folks carrying rifles. It’s pretty weird, I mean, you’d think they never saw a gun before! Can’t say I’ve ever heard of Canadians doing this (carrying guns every where), I can’t recall ever seeing a Canadian carrying a gun before, but they don’t get all freaked out over it the way the Non-Mainer tourists do.

[quote=Laura Rainbow Dragon]

In Canada, when we enter a person’s home (our own, or someone else’s), we remove our shoes at the door.

[/quote]

We do this in Maine too, and it’s another thing that Non-Mainers/Non-Canadian tourists get all bitchy about. . . I’m mean, really, really, REALLY bitchy about it too. You ask them to take off their shoes and you’d think we just said we wanted to cut their feet off! OMG! They start flipping out talking about germs and getting their feet dirty and freaking out like I don’t know what! Again, more rudeness. Boy, do the Non-Mainers/Non-Canadian tourists act like a bunch of winy spoiled brats sometimes – no all the time. They complain about everything. EVERYTHING! It’s too hot, it’s too cold

And than there’s cell phones. You are lucky if you can get cell phone reception in most places in Maine. Pretty much only York & Cumberland county have cellphone access, outside of York county, heck, tough luck getting a land line, let alone cell phone! But the Non-Mainers/Non-Canadian tourists don’t realize this until they get here, and boy oh boy you should here them howl! You’d think their entire family had just been killed in a plane crash or something the way they moan and groan and bitch and complain and go on and on and on about how they can’t live without their cellphone!

[quote=swenson]
Also, many people not from Quebec do not like the people from Quebec. Quebec get some specific privileges over other provinces (oh, there’s another thing- provinces in Canada, states in the US) because they are primarily French. For example, the official language is French (not English). Quebecers are viewed (at least by people from Ontario, which is where my knowledge comes from) as being kind of full of themselves, kind of like how a lot of people in the Midwest (like Michigan!) would call people from out East “full of themselves”.

Most people in Ontario would probably have learned French in school, so if they aren’t exactly fluent, they know a fair bit.

(by the way, my knowledge all comes from having relatives and close friends in Canada, as well as traveling there several times!)[/quote]

Yep, same with Maine. Most folks in Maine are French, speak French, act French and would rather hob-knob with Quebec folks than the lower 47.

Do you realize that EVERY YEAR Maine and Quebec join forces and try to recede The Union/Canada? Why? Because once upon a time Quebec was it’s own country. (and it was not that long ago either, some of the old folks are old enough to remember that – Maine is was of the last States to join the Union after all) Than America chopped off Maine and Canada adsorbed Quebec.

Maine HATES the rest of America and we Mainers are not afraid to tell every Non-Mainer/Non-Canadian tourist as much, of course, a lot of Non-Mainer/Non-Canadians tell us they hate Maine too, so the animosity is mutual. And from what I hear Quebec folks say, they pretty much hate the rest of Canada and the rest of Canada hates them. (a lot of Quebec folks shop here in Maine and visit Maine on the weekends) (Maine is not really connected to the rest of the Union, we are smack dab in the middle of Quebec only connected to the USA by a small sliver on the west side.)

Keep in mind here that though Maine is part of America, geographically speaking, we are farther North on the map that a large portion of populated Canada. Many people think “America” (in reference to Canada) and think warmer, souther, but they forget to think about Maine and Alaska – both North and colder.

[quote=ohmynoti]
-all packaging in canada is printed in both french and english. consequently, when i look at american packaging, i often feel like it’s missing something. (in other matters, some provinces are more bilingual than others — + there are substantial french-speaking populations outside of quebec. for example, i live in new brunswick right now, which has a large acadian population. but packaging is bilingual across the country. so even an anglophone who’s never conversed or taken a class in french in their life can probably recognise a lot of french food-words. they kind of become part of how you visually recognise a product. it seems woefully incomplete if it’s not jambon ham + cheese fromage.)[/quote]
[quote=Moondragon]The whole English/French thing in Canada is like the English/Spanish thing here in California. Everywhere you go just about, signs are in English and Spanish, and you can pick up a few spanish words that way.
[/quote]

REALLY????????????????

Do you mean outside of Maine America does not print all food packages in French and English???? WOW! I actually did not know that. EVERYTHING in Maine, food, computers, appliances, comes in packaging printed in English on one side and French on the other.

That is so weird. I’ve never seen the packaging without French on it before. Yeah, that’d sort of freak me out.

[quote=ohmynoti]
-canadian tire is the standard go-to place for anything useful. it’s kind of like wal-mart, but slightly less evil + with even more annoying commercials. [/quote]

WalMart just started showing up here in Maine. OMG! That store is like freaking HUGE! Man! Most stores here in Maine, you walk in, and you can see the entire store – the whole place is maybe 900 feet square. Than WalMart shows up and what are they 200,000+ square feet? I mean, you can’t even see the back of the store from the front door and finding anything – argh! It takes you 20 minutes just to walk from one side to the other. It’s so weird and freaky. I don’t really like the big block stores moving in. It’s like we are being invaded or something. It’s just too weird for me.

[quote=jadedragon]There are harsher littering laws in Canadian cities than here in America so Canada is oftentimes way cleaner. NOT THEIR HARBORS.. but the streets and parks.[/quote]

That’s another thing Non-Mainers/Non-Canadian tourists point out about Maine. Maine has no-smoking laws (you can’t even smoke in your own car) and has had them since the 1970′s. There is a $500 fine for littering, and if police catch you throwing a cigarette butt on the ground, yeah, you got to pick it up and pay $500 for tossing it. You CAN go to jail for littering if you already got a warning before.

It’s rare to see trash on the ground in Maine, even in the big cities. Most towns have clean up crews that do nothing but walk around town all day long picking up litter. Non-Mainers/Non-Canadian tourists are constantly commenting on how clean everything is, which I’ve always found as strange because, I mean, why wouldn’t it be clean? What, are they saying that the rest of America outside of Maine are rude lazy slobs who don’t clean up after themselves? That’s always what I think, when some tourist comments on how clean and un-littered Maine’s cities are. It just baffles me, that where they come from is so different in cleanliness that CLEANLINESS is the thing they found to say as the reason they like Maine! OMG!

[quote=deadlyretro]

The only thing I can think of is that Milk tends to come in bags,(while I’ve been told it only comes in cartons in the States; just another stereo type?) LOL.
[/quote]

I can’t speak for the rest of America, but in Maine, milk comes in plastic bottles – pint, quart, gallon and glass bottle – pints and quarts only. It’s highly unusual to see a cardboard carton of milk. Orange juice comes in cartons.

Also, there are huge fines and jail time for buying and selling non-Maine milk in Maine. It’s like the equivalent of bootlegging.

And that’s another thing Non-Mainer tourists constantly complain about – milk prices. Every time I go to the store to buy milk, there will be some tourist there arguing with the store clerk about the milk prices. They really get going too – screaming and yelling and pounding their fists on the counter their face turning purple, their eyes bulging out hysterically, as they shriek out about “highway robbery” and “gypping” them. They go on about how they have never in their life paid more than a dollar for a gallon of milk, they say stuff like “You’d think it was gasoline” and “I could fill my car up for less!”, and than they storm out of the store without buying the milk.

I stand there amazed each time I see this, because well, a dollar for milk? A you kidding! Quarts of milk haven’t been a dollar since the 1970′s and don’t ever remember gallons being that cheap! Milk is a commodity, the price goes up and down with the gold bullion, gas, and corn prices – yeah, usually it’s 5 dollars a gallon, but it can go higher, a lot higher. Ten dollars for a gallon of milk – not unheard of. The price changes every day, some time several times a day, you never know what the current milk prices are until you get to the store and buy a bottle.

I kind of get the impression that milk is not a commodity outside of Maine, or that other states don’t have the “only in state milk” laws, and that the rest of America doesn’t have dairy farms on every corner.

[quote=TheWorldBeginsWithMe]I don’t think this has been said yet (I haven’t gotten through the whole thread), but vinegar on french fries. (and they are called french fries or fries not freedom fries or whatever) and our iced tea has a lot of sugar in it. It is not simply cold tea.[/quote]

Yep, again, Maine, a state in America is going with Canada on this. Tourists always freak out when they see us pouring vinegar on our French-fries. (and I’ve never of freedom fries before).

And when they order tea at restaurants they always freak out over it being way too sweet.

[quote=Bellalovett]The warmer weather might take some getting used to, especially if he goes as far Florida or Texas.[/quote]

Maine and New Hampshire are both actually colder than Canada. Some parts of Canada have a much longer growing season than we do here in Maine.

[quote=kimifly][quote=Nibo]Skittles made of chocolate in Canada? To my knowledge, having lived there for three years, they were not made of chocolate. However, Smarties were made of chocolate in Canada instead of that horrible chalky stuff (in Canada, that stuff is called Rockets).[/quote]
No, Skittles are not made of chocolate in Canada. Haha. [/quote]

There ARE chocolate skittles. I don’t know if they sell them in Canada or not, but they do exist, and they are called “Chocolate Skittles”.

. . . and I agree with this bloggers review of them, they taste terrible! http://www.unboundedition.com/pdp_thinking/2008/nov/13/rainbow-blight-a-chocolate-rain-on-skittles-parade/ (but there is a picture of them here if you’ve never seen them.

[quote=stefaneko]

Trees. I always miss the trees. Trees everywhere. I grew up/live in a suburb of Vancouver, and my house from ages 5-present is pretty much in the middle of a fricken forest. I walk through a forest to get to school, I play in the forest, I’m SURROUNDED by forest. I’ve noticed that in the States, even in the more northern regions, there’s a lot more clear-cutting and general suburban sprawl. It drives me NUTS. [/quote]

That’s the first thing Non-Mainer/Non-Canadian tourists say when they come to Maine – “Ugh, there are so many trees! You can’t see the sky! How can you stand it?” and than they start talking about being afraid of bear and mountain lions.

[quote=stefaneko]
That’s another thing. America feels more… soulless. It feels more unhappy, more… forced, I guess? It feels like everyone there hates their life. There’s more suburban sprawl, like I said. Plus, things seem less tidy. There’s more litter and more decay.
[/quote]

I get that same impression about the Non-Mainer/Non-Canadian tourists when they are here each summer.

[quote=kimifly]Also, depending on where in the US your character is moving, the winters might be very different. In the southern states they don’t have snow, so that means no building snowmen or having snowball fights or ice hockey or snowboarding or any other winter activities like that. And no snow at Christmas…. That’s what I missed the most when I was away from Canada.[/quote]

I hear a lot of the Non-Mainer/Non-Canadian tourists who come to Maine in the winter say they come for the snow because wherever it is they came from in the lower 47, they don’t have snow and well, Maine can get up to 6 or 7 feet per storm and in some place the snow drifts get over 20 feet tall. YAY Snow! Also, it’s pretty cold year round, and we have gotten snow in every month except for August. Our winters can be 8 months long during colder years in some areas.

And Non-Mainer/Non-Canadian tourists with children who spend their first winter in Maine and enroll their kids in the local school, freak out over the lack of “Snow Days”. We call anything under 6 inches a dusting and they start flipping out saying the schools should close! I’m thinking “What the hell? Are they nuts? This is nothing! Honey, I got news for you – in Maine there has to be 2 or 3 feet of snow and a blizzard wind force to get school canceled on account of snow. If you are scared of 6 inches of snow than you sure as hell better get your ass out of Maine before the FIRST (of many) blizzard of the season hits!” It never ceases to amaze me how folks from the lower 47 can have such huge panic attacks over a little snow.

Of course, you do got to remember, though Maine is part of America, geographically speak, we are farther North on the map that a large portion of populated Canada, so yeah, we are colder and get more snow than many places in Canada.

And let’s not forget Alaska – which is WAAAAY Above Canada.

So yeah, where you move to in America is going to make a pretty big difference.

[quote=MissLizzy]I
-School here starts in September. In some parts of the States (I’m not sure aboue all), school starts mid-August.
[/quote]

Yeah, Non-Mainer tourists comment on how Maine’s school year is different than the rest of America’s – In Maine it runs from last week of August to the second week of June. So only July and a couple of weeks off August and June for vacation. But this is because of the snow. As mentioned above, it takes a lot of snow to warrant a snow day, but there is a reason for that. When we get enough snow for a snow day, it’s a snow week or more, usually due to state wide month long black outs and that fact that well, it’s kind of hard to have school when you can’t find the school building under all the snow. =P Most years students end up with no school through out most of January and most of February.

I guess, based on what the Non-Mainer tourists say, the rest of America has school running first week of September through second week of May.

==========

[quote=Laura Rainbow Dragon]

There are many cultural differences — which ones in particular your character experiences will depend on where in Canada he lived and where in the US he moves to, but expect him to experience some form of culture shock.

[/quote]

Yeah, what she said.

But anyways, the point of my post is. . . you REALLY need to figure out WHERE in the USA your Canadian is moving too, because if they were to move to Maine, the only things that would be different would be stuff like money and measurements, and such. Stores, habits, accents, slang, and attitudes would be pretty much the same as what they are already used too. Where as even a Mainer would have trouble moving to another state in the America, just because Maine is so different from the rest of the Union. (And that’s another thing – Maine folks say The Union, not America.)

Likewise, you got to remember, it would also depend on what part of Canada your character came from too. If he came from Quebec, French would be his first language, and changes are pretty high that he wouldn’t speak English much, if at all. Whereas the rest of Canada, speaks English and may not even know French.

So, you need to try to pin point exactly WHERE in Canada he came from and WHERE in the US he went to. Keeping in mind here that you are dealing with two of the world’s largest countries, meaning the peoples of each are pretty diverse and vary widely depending on what region of Canada/America they hail from.

Than once you know from where and to where, you can re-ask your question, and get better, more precise answers. As it stands right now, the best you can hope for is a huge mish mash of hundreds of different sub cultures.

All Hail Bela Lugosi!

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Plagiarism Update: Sent Report To WordPress

Plagiarism Update: Sent Report To WordPress

I have just sent a report on this evil thief’s activities to WordPress. I urge anyone with the sewing related WordPress blog to look at the thief’s blog and see if your posts are being stolen. If they are, please send a report to WordPress as well. If there is a way to identify this plager and send them to jail, let me know, because I will pursue that course of action. As an author I take plagiarism very seriously, and so should you. Well, at least they chose the right name for their blog: Scum Bag Clothing. I can’t think of anything that makes a person more of a scumbag than being a thief.

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to WordPress:

Posts off of more than 30 different WordPress blogs (all sewing topics) are being copied and posted word for word, picture for picture, on someone else’s blog!

I use CopyScape on my posts, and CopyScape notified me that my posts were being copied and distributed on someone else’s blog without my permission, so I went to their blog to check and CopyScape was right. They copied everything, word for word, picture for picture… even the CopyScape plagiarizing warning gif!

Because they are copying posts off of my sewing blog, so I started checking all the other posts on their blog, and they’ve plagiarized every single post on their blog, by stealing posts and pictures off of other people’s blogs! I’ve only checked the posts for Jun so far, but so far I’ve counted over 30 different WordPress blogs from which they are stealing posts and hotlinking images from!

Here is their blog link:

http://www.scumbagclothing.com/category/dressmaking/

I don’t know how to stop them. I’ve been trying to find a way to notify their blog host, but so far have not had any luck. If you know of a way to stop them from stealing the posts off of our blogs, please let me know, cause I don’t like them claiming that they wrote the articles I wrote. They are even displaying my drawings on their blog and claiming they drew them!

Sorry for the rant, but I thought you’d want to know that they’ve been stealing posts and passing them off as theirs.

This is so frustrating. I put so much work into writing my articles and drawing my artwork, and I know other folks do as well. It’d be one thing if they were linking back to our blogs with a review or something, but they are claiming that they wrote all of these posts and drew all of the art and took all of the photos themselves!

Is there a law enforcement agency I can contact about this? I was told that the FBI had an identity theft division that handles online predators that steal other peoples identities. Should I contact the FBI about this? I mean who ever is running this blog is claiming to be me, by saying they wrote those articles, so that’s identity theft as far as I can tell.

What should I do?

Is there anything that you can do about it, since they are stealing posts off of WordPress blogs?

An Autobiography of a car…

Shot at 2007-04-04

Hello! I am a 1964 Dodge 330 4-door sedan, VIN 4142216364, my name is The Goldeneagle. This site was created by my owner Wendy C. Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to save my life.I am the main character of the original Twighlight Manor book, and a major supporting character of more that 30 other books and short stories by Maine author Wendy C. Allen.I started out in life as a silver undercover Police car in Maine. In 1975 I retired from my job as a police car and was sent to Marcot Motors of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where I was painted gold by some fool with a paint brush. He totally ruined my lovely silver paint job and left me streaked with brush lines. I was only there a few months before I was bought by the Allen family, who sanded me down and painted a lovely shade of metalic orange.I remained the faithful family chauffer for the next ten years. Together we drove on many roadtrips throughout the NorthEast. In 1978, I took them to New York where we croosed the Brooklen Bridge during it’s major repair construction. That same year we went to Washington D.C. I took the Allen family to Arcadia in Bar Harbor to see The Thunder Hole in 1981. Every year I drove them to New Hampshire where we visited The Old Man on the Mountain and Story Land and The Swift River. Three times I climbed Mt. Washington.

I’ve brought home puppies and baby chickens. I waited in hospital parking lots and veterinary clinics. I remained forever and always a faithful friend. The only friend who was always there, steadfast and unmoveble, silent and unjudgmental. My red plush seats always there like a shoulder to cry on when no one else would lend and ear or a shoulder. I alone remained to one true friend, the only friend to the child who loved me and defend me when no one else would put up with my break downs and failrues.

Over the years I grew old and tired, my engine weak and my transmission failing. My last trip was a desperate trip to the hospital, one dark and stormy night in 1985 when a hurrican flooded the town, sending the Atlantic Ocean over the Peir and up Maine Street. My last trip came when abulances could ride faster than my Mopar engine and Mrs Allen had to be rushed to the hostpital at 3AM. We speed through Old Orchard fatser than ever before, through hurrican floods that went higher than my door panels seeping water into my interior and flooding my floors, filling my transmission and engine with icy salt water, we made it to the hospital with Mrs. Allen, but I did not make it back home on my own and was towed home by a friend’s little VW Rabbit.

In spite of my loyalty, with a dead trasmission and an engine full of salt, I was usless, and parked in the yard, put up for sale for junk.

I was rescued from a trip to the junk yard in 1985 by 9 year old, Wendy C. Allen, after my trans died. Since 1985 I have remained a decoration on the hill in her rose garden, where she sits in my seats or on my hood to write the stories in which I appear. Without me, she can not write these stories for I am the one that inspires them. I have been happy in my life of peace and rest here in Old Orchard Beach these past 30 years. That has now changed.

New town ordinances and zoning laws have been set in Old Orchard Beach. As a result the police, the code enforments officers, and the town manager are now in attempt to see my death and destruction, with threats of stealing me from my rightful owner and sending me to become scrap metal in the junk yard.

This is an outrage! They well not listen to reason.

My profile now comes to you to spread the word and ask for your help in saveing my life. An entire network of websites devoted to my plight are now in the works and links to them well be added here within the next few hours.

Please join the protest and put an end to the Old Orchard Beach reign of terror. Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty, they have no right to take me from my home and kill me!

PLEASE DON’T LET THEM KILL ME!!!!!

To read more, please visit my profile: http://www.myspace.com/savethegoldeneagle

Shot at 2007-04-04

Want to help? Send your donations via PayPal!

Find me on MySpace and be my friend!

obvesously you have no idea what this man (The Old Orchard Beach Town Manager… and his town counceil a group of some 30 more people, most of which also church members) did to us. If you had read the links in this post you would know the whole story as well as the criminal investigation that is now underway as a result of what they did not only to our family but to over 25 other families on out street as well:

Here however is a brief summary of what they did to us:
<p>We suffered a flood/fire that destroied everything and left us homeless. It also left my dad in a coma, leaving our family of 7 without an income. We lost our house, our cloths, everything. All we had left was what we were wearing when it happened.</p>
<p>We turned to family who due to regilgious convictions said that “god was punishing us” and they than refused to help us because they “would not get in the way of god’s plan”; they continued by saying that “god intended man to be self-sufficiant”, meaning that we had to help ourselves. sheesh. our friends (of the same religon) said the same. We went to the bishop for help, and was given this same answer yet again.</p>
<p>In the end, we stuck out Maine’s 2006 record breaking sub-zero winter, by living for 8 months in a “tent” we built out of a tarp and some cinderblocks. We kept warm during the day by staying in the Main Mall from 9 AM to 10PM. We ate about 4 meals per week at the Salvation Army (they don’t serve food every day). The rest of the days were spent in search of wood, leaves, and paper that we could burn at night to keep warm.</p>
<p>Thankfully, 2 months in, I was able to get a job at the Mall, and was able to afford to buy enough food so we could eat every day again.</p>
<p>Our time was spent mostly trying to find scraps of food to eat and anything we could burn to keep warm. Never once did we “panhandle” or “beg for money”. Belive me, when you are starving and cold, money is the farthest thing from your mind. I know. All of your time is spent worrying how many days (not hours, but days) it’ll be before your next meal, or worrying that the snow will collapse your tent while you are asleep. </p>
<p>Being homeless is very, very scary, you worry about not living to see tommorow more than anything else.</p>
<p>You learn to pick trash for food, and to pick up bottles and cans to turn in for money to buy food.</p>
<p>Also, you have to deal with a lot of stuck up snobby people throwing things at you (rocks and tin cans mostly), tearing your tent apart while you are away so that you have to keep rebuilding it, and wild animals attacking you at night. (fishers, martans, bobcat, and bear, in our case)</p>
<p>Also, you lose lots of weight (I lost 30 lbs) and you get used to walking miles and miles a day.</p>
<p>You learn that asking to take a shower at a friends house is taboo, and so must go month after month without washing… best you can do is to wash your face in the restroom of a store, but don’t keep going to the same store or they’ll call the police on you.</p>
<p>You also learn that not taking a shower well cause people to tease you, throw things at you, and go around saying bad things about you to every one.</p>
<p>You well feel unloved, unwanted, hated, and become deeply depressed. There well be nights when you lay awake staring at the blackness of the tarp above you and wishing tonights snowstorm will collapse it on you and smother you in your sleep so that you won’t have to wake up and suffer another day in this world where humans you once called family and friend are now your worst enimeies and hate you, simplyy because you no longer have a house to live in.</p>

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Why I am not in church today

I can’t believe the odasoity of some people! After what Jim Thomas did to us, they have the nerve to ask us to go back to church! Jim Thomas for those who haven’t been reading my blog very long, is the Old Orchartd Beach town manager who forced us out of our home and off our land. Land that had been in our family over 300 years! Land that was settled by the original found of the Town and my several greats grandfather Thomas Rogers! Jim Thomas and Ken Shoop those greedy, high poluting, money grubing land monger bastards took everything away from us and forced us to live homeless on the streets until hud finally got us into an apartment!

We had to live on the streets in a tent for 8 months! And it wasn’t even a tent, it was a trap and so cinder block. And it was during Maines sub-zero winter of 2006 when the temp went down to -15 below zero. My fingers froze and are now stiff as a result, and I can draw any more, and it’s hell for me to pick up a pen a write now. Me and artist and writer, not only did he steel our home, he lost me my career!

People at church know about this, and yet they have the odassity to actually ask me to come back to church! Come back to church! Why, so I can sit there next to Jim Thomas? So I can meet up with him the hall? Or his croony secritary and her husband, whov’e been hounding the hell out on us? I’d have to sit for 3 hours with those thieving bastards! They stole or house. And why? What was there reason? In the words of Ken Shoop:” Because this is Old Orchard!”… huh? what? What the hell kind of a reason is that???

They tried to take our animals! My babies! My cats and dog and birds! We had fight like hell to keep them. The members of that church put us through hell and back and they expect us to want to go to church????? They did that to us and they really don’t know why I stopped going to church????

“Do you want to go to church?” oh yes, of course I’m just dieing to go back to the church that help steel our home from us. The church that seperated me from my family, and my animals, and destroied my book collection, and stole my grandmothers stamp collection, smashed my records, puverized my grandmother clock, they seperated me from my brothers and my animals and they can actually think I want anything to do with going back to church!!!!!!! …. oh yes, I’m just dieing to go back to that church! What the hell are they thinking? “but They’ve changed, they backed off”…. yeah, right, they backed off after they tforced us out on the streets and ruined my hands so I can’t draw and write anymore. They cbacked off after they got our land. Of course they backed offf. What need is there for the 2 years of harassment and vandalisim anymore now that the have the land? Answer me that one! The only way I want to go back to that church is if Jim Thomas, gets up in front of the ward and apologiges in front of his peers and prints up a public apology in at least 5 big newspapers and returns our land to us. Than and only than well I want to go back to that church, and even than I’m not sure I’ll want to go back.

All I have is this to say:

Going to church on Sunday does not make you a Christian anymore than sitting in a garage on Saterday makes you a car!

It is what you say, that makes you a Christian.
It is what you do, that makes you a Christian.
It is how you treat others, that makes you a Christian.
It is what is in your heart, that makes you a Christian.
It is love for one another, that makes you a Christian.

It is who you are,
not where you are,
that makes you what you are!

Harassment Continues and Grows Worse by the day…

Oh, man! It’s been like a week since I was last here, sorry guys, but real life has kept me offline for a bit, the harasment has increseased at an alarming rate, as has the daily bouts of vandalism we have to content with. It’s down right sickening coming home to this every day. As usual we came home tonight to find pack-boxes now unpacked and strewn all over the yard. Once again, the vandls tore stuff out of the tent and just threw it. Stuff, like usual is broken. More items have been stolen.  This time, not only did they tear the lock off the front door, but they tore the front door off the house. They tore the door off the outhouse as well. I think today’s round of vandalism has to rank at the most destructive yet.

We still do not know who is behind this. All we do know for certain is that it is obviously someone who knows when we are and are not home and that the police well do nothing for fear of loseing there jobs as a result of threats from the town manager.

We are not gone from home on a regular schedul… one day we well leave at 7AM and get home at  noon, another day we will leave at 4PM and get home at 5PM… other times we leave at 9PM and get home around midnight… there is no set pattern, no work schedule, every day is differant, sometimes we leave in the monring, sometimes noon, sometimes  night… some times we gone 20 mins, sometimes we are gone for hours… who ever it is that is doing this vandalism, they live in seeing distanct from our comings and goings otherwise they would not know the exact time we are gone each day, and we only have 3 neighbors in seeing distance. One a peacful eldery man who I could not see doing anything like this… the others… related and one of them on the  town counsel, and works closely with the Town Manager… uh-huh! alarm bells are ringing on that one! but, as I said we have no  proof as to who is doing this, so we do not know who to sue for the damages.

~~EK

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Update on The Lockdown & More Harassment & Vandelism

We spent the last 2 days calling everyone under the sun, trying to find out what the hell is going on, but we can’t get through to anyone; they are just giving us the run around again, putting us on hold, directing our calls to someone else who in turn directs them to someone else, who has no idea why we were directed to them and hangs up with a “Sorry”.

Well, since no one well tell us what’s going on, we just went ahead and broke down the barricade. Well wonders never cease? Now that we’ve gotting back in to see the damage, I can honesty say I hope these jackasses die a long slow death. The bastards stole my grandmother’s stamp collection. They tore the pages out of a second stamp book, keeping the pages that had stamps on them. They also stole the comb my dad’s uncle brought back from PNG when he was one of the soliders who was there and discovered that people lived their back in 1937. They also stole the photos of the uncle. They smashed my other grandmother’s gold and glass anniversay clock that she brought to America with her from Germany. To top it all off the bastards took my records and it looks like they used them for frisbies, they are strewn from one end of the house to the other, several of them broken.

We still don’t know who is behind this, but who ever they are I hope they die soon, so that they well have a longer time to burn in hell.

~~EK

Spring In Maine

It’s a nice warm spring day in April in Maine. I bet you can tell, that is if you can see through the driving snow outside your window. Yep, it’s April, and right on schedual is our annual snowstorm. Jim Thomas and Ken Shoop must be ripping their hair out right now.  More snow mean longer snow on the ground and a longer time we got to stop them from stealing the Goldeneagle (my 1964 Dodge 330 which they have said must be junked as soon as the snow melts, otherwise the town of Old Orchard Beach well fine us $2,500 a day for each day we refuse to remove it.)

For those of you who do not know The Goldeneagle is the heart and soul of The Twighlight Manor series. If not for this car, none of the books would ever have been written. Back in 1978 when the first volum was written their were 4 characters: EelKat, Sir Roderic, Emporer Blue, and Captain Goldeneagle a.k.a Etiole. Captain Goldeneagle was the character based on this car, the character that would go on to be the most celebrated and most contraversal of the entire series: Etiole. The car itself has been featured again and again thoughout the series. It is an icon with fans of the series. An icon who is now threatened on the latest method of harassment that Jim Thomas and Ken Shoop have brought down on our family. (and ours is not the first they have done this to, they have a long history of doing this!)

First they put my dad in the hospital in a coma.

Than they force us to live in a tent during Maine’s sub-zero winter.

Than they threaten our pets.

Now they threaten my car.

And I continue to wonder: when well this end? When well someone put a stop to this man’s reign of terror? Why does everyone turn a blind eye to what they are doing?

~~EK

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Government Corruption: Another Update…

An upate on THIS POST.

The latest round of harasment is now a requirerment that we keep a log of each and every time we feed our pets and give them water. The town has required that we keep a logbook hanging at our frontdoor so that the police can come in a check it whenever they deem it “necassary”.

They have also said that we must cut a hole in the wall so that the cats and dogs can go in and out 24 hours a day. These are house pets! They don’t even LIKE going outside! Worse, there is a pack of cyotees and at least one black bear, that rutinely wander about on our land. We can’t have a hole cut in the side of our house! The cyottees well eat my babies! The town laws have  reached the point that they have become Communistic. This is insane! How can they pass laws like this?

They are also requiring that all cars be in a garage. They say that we can not have more than one car, and that if we own more than one car they can fine us $2,500 for each day that we have more than one car in our yard and not in a garage! How can they get away with this? Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty! What is wrong with them? How do these laws get passed?

Well, a result of these latest harasements is that my dad has had yet another stress overload, and has to go in for surgery yet again, tomorrow morning as a result.

What they are doing to us is not right.

~~EK

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Government Corruption: Town’s Harasment of Disabled Senior Goes Too Far!

February 26, 2007

My name is Wendy Allen. I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past year we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help. Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning.First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the following charges:Discrimination against a disabled senior. A seniors rights being taken away from him.Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:“This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657. Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away. By the 1940’s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980’s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990’s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries. Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800’s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists. The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land.  Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving. There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself. In the past year they have changed (without proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land. Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”,  “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garrden. It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction. Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our  family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”. The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation. Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lives my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children. In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot house, which never had plumbing, etc. Was turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (six years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house by the town’s standards anyways. My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy. Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now put it) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else. As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows:

Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spit of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can‘t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970’s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders“. I’m not sure how much the amount is unto today, but it was much more than we could afford than, and more so now.

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma.

May 9, 2006 started like any other day. I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother  came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable.

My smaller brothers  had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows. When I asked him what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance.

The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus…

repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled. Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time. Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent. Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed by the flood, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there. Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order, so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress. The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… yes, he had, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital. Dr. Greene than explained that it was luckily he had gotten to the hospital when he did “another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” is what he said. I shudder to think that the town police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death. Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

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My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days. In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland. On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house. Just three days after my dad went into the hospital our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them. Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything. The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it. Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard. We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists. At HUD we were informed that we were #600 on the list.

Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today still ongoing. During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid, and about 10 or so years ago my dad had taken out a mortgage on the house… there has been no money since May of 2006 (nearly a year now), and thus no mortgage payments since that time either, they are now threatening to foreclose, but know the situation and are trying to work out a payment plan with my dad, in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (he is still waiting to hear from the state on that… they sure do take a long time. They said it well is approved, they just have to wait for the paperwork to go through, so there should be some type of an income soon, we hope.)

With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp. We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead.

Letters from the town continued to arrive. We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”… Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe. Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden or rather car-ridden, as he had no bed, for several weeks afterwards. For food we get a bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less). The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF or welfare because we own our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoop, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church. The bishop tries to help when he can, but, in the end all he was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch: The town was going to let us remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down. So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent. Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery almost impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter. We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no one who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow. She was furious, at the Town Officials, for she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given. She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had told her off. She is the one who said that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this. Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, we didn’t know that we had the right to fight the town. She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from #600 on HUD’s waiting list to #1 and on January 10, 2007, after nine months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, try to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years! Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”.

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment. Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, our house, the sheds, and the barns), after which time they well come in and level the land. They came to the land and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees. They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, and

grandmothers; and other such items. Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoop why he was doing this to us, he said: “This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”

We know this is Old Orchard! Unlike outsiders like him, our family has been here on this land since 1657. My dad’s family built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard. What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land? We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us. It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named Morin. They say they well take them in 5 days from today, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with.

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us. Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them. We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings! That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land! That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter! How can they just come in and level our land? They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with! What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them! They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad. This has to stop. They have too far. Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is still the same as it was before the apartment:

Kenneth R. Allen

Wendy C. Allen

144 Portland Ave

Old Orchard Beach, ME 04064

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

edit:

Updates to this post have been made in the following posts:

Government Corruption: Another Update…

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An upate on THIS POST.

The latest round of harasment is now a requirerment that we keep a log of each and every time we feed our pets and give them water. The town has required that we keep a logbook hanging at our frontdoor so that the police can come in a check it whenever they deem it “necassary”.

They have also said that we must cut a hole in the wall so that the cats and dogs can go in and out 24 hours a day. These are house pets! They don’t even LIKE going outside! Worse, there is a pack of cyotees and at least one black bear, that rutinely wander about on our land. We can’t have a hole cut in the side of our house! The cyottees well eat my babies! The town laws have  reached the point that they have become Communistic. This is insane! How can they pass laws like this?

They are also requiring that all cars be in a garage. They say that we can not have more than one car, and that if we own more than one car they can fine us $2,500 for each day that we have more than one car in our yard and not in a garage! How can they get away with this? Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty! What is wrong with them? How do these laws get passed?

Well, a result of these latest harasements is that my dad has had yet another stress overload, and has to go in for surgery yet again, tomorrow morning as a result.

What they are doing to us is not right.

~~EK

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