{"id":20584,"date":"2021-10-28T11:39:42","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T15:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=20584"},"modified":"2021-10-28T11:39:42","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T15:39:42","slug":"town-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/town-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Town Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"position: relative; padding-top: max(60%,326px); height: 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; border: none; width: 100%; height: 100%; left: 0; right: 0; top: 0; bottom: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23e6e6e6&amp;d=nov21_fin_web&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=106&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" sandbox=\"allow-top-navigation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation allow-downloads allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-modals allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">By Rufus Brown<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Jacob Ham pulled up to the Rockledge town hall in his Ford 150, its STOP THE STEAL tailgate sticker almost unreadable in the freezing rain. He normally didn\u2019t care about town meetings. Tonight was different.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The hall was jammed as Ned Whitlock, the First Selectman, called the meeting to order. \u201cThank you all for showing up. As you know, the Delta variant is rising, and not enough of us in this town are vaccinated. We need to act to protect our young children and the health-compromised among us. The town warrant would mandate masking and require proof of vaccination for everyone eligible when indoors in any public place. This may seem harsh, but do we really have a choice?\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">No choice? What did Ned know about this town?\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t from here. He\u2019d only moved here after retiring from one of Portland\u2019s well-heeled law firms. He wasn\u2019t here when the mill closed. He didn\u2019t see local stores on Main Street replaced by sleepy antique shops that some of us in town suspected were a front for drugs. He idolized rural life just because he\u2019d spent some childhood summers \u201cin the country,\u201d and called himself a \u201cgentleman farmer,\u201d whatever that meant.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cIt\u2019s so quaint\u2014I love it here,\u201d Ned had said when he brought his Volvo in for an oil change at Jacob\u2019s garage. \u201cI just bought the Townsend farm out by the lake. You know the place?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><em><span class=\"s1\">Read the full story in the digital magazine above.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-20613\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/LastWords-fb-1024x538.jpg\" alt=\"LastWords-fb\" width=\"1024\" height=\"538\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/LastWords-fb-1024x538.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/LastWords-fb-300x158.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/LastWords-fb-768x403.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/LastWords-fb-200x105.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/LastWords-fb-620x326.jpg 620w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/LastWords-fb.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fiction from Rufus Brown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20584"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20652,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20584\/revisions\/20652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}