Judging by the lawn signs here in my little town of Freeport, Maine, population 8,784, black lives no longer matter, except to two families on Pine Street and a few more in the outlying areas. What the locals care about these days is being nice, which they telegraph with lawn signs that read, "Be Nice."
This is odd since, as I have written in this space before, the people who live here, both in Freeport and all over the state of Maine, are notoriously
not nice. Instead they are insulated, cold, taciturn, humorless, mean, introverted and possibly even a tad antisemitic.
Just like those "Black Lives Matter" signs really meant
"Please don't break into my house and hurt me, I love all black people," the "Be Nice" signs mean
"I wish I could figure out how to be nice but since I never learned as a child growing up here it's too late to start now, anyway I hope you are nice to me."Another sign you see frequently around here is "Watch Out for Moose." I have lived in Maine for 15 years and have travelled the state, and have never once seen a moose. My husband says they put those signs up for the tourists to make them feel like they have gone someplace foreign and interesting and Maine-ish. I have to agree.
In fact, the only sign that means what is says here in Maine is "STOP." My husband learned that the hard way and ended up in jail for a few hours because he didn't. Stop, that is.
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