TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: On the Occasion of Your Fund Raiser in Maine

March 31, 2012

Dear President Obama,

In the 2008 election, I supported you with the kind of enthusiasm I hadn’t felt since the first vote I cast for president in 1960 for John F. Kennedy.  By the time you came to Maine prior to mid-term elections in 2010, I was spending a great deal of my new retirement time in rallies, marches, letters, and other grunt  work for peace, for the Democratic  Party, and especially for a national single-payer, universal health-care plan.  When it looked like that wasn’t going to happen with the Affordable Health Care Bill, I shifted my activist attention to the public option. 

I received an invitation to attend your appearance in Portland that year.  I didn’t ask for it, wasn’t expecting it, and didn’t greet the prospect with much passion.  It’s a long drive to Portland, but to support the Democratic Party and you, I accepted.  It was a miserable experience.  We got in a line of hundreds and waited, and waited, and waited while others streamed in ahead of us without any wait.  There were some grumblings in the line about the color-coded tickets that allowed this to happen, but for the most part we waited patiently and courteously.  When we did start to move, the line soon stopped leaving most of us unable to get in.  The only explanation we ever got for what happened there was that the president arrived, and the doors had to be locked as soon as he entered the building.  No one ever explained before or after about the color coding of tickets or that many of us were invited without any possibility of getting in.  No one ever apologized.  No one ever confirmed or denied the suspicion that many, if not most, of the people streaming in ahead of the ones who waited were major campaign contributors.

Since that happened, the public option was abandoned; we are still at war; I, a retired teacher, along with all other retired public employees in Maine have seen devastating cuts in human services and our pensions permanently eroded by a COLA freeze while the richest 1% are given ever-increasing tax breaks; the Supreme Court decision that corporations are people and money is speech continues to do its dirty work with our electoral process, and you reap political benefits of that decision.

I hope you can understand why I believe that the people who have any significant access or influence to our leadership, whether Republican or Democratic, are the 1% with greed for profit as their only interest.  I hope you can understand why I am protesting your current appearance in Maine where you openly court the 1% and where the Democratic Party that I have been loyal to all of my adult life openly enables and celebrates that courtship.  While I will likely vote for you in November—I certainly won’t vote Republican—I hope you can understand why I will be turning my major attention away from the current political system that has become so morally bankrupt and so dependent on Corporate greed and toward the Occupy movement that is the only hope I can see on the horizon.  I write this not because I expect you to listen to one lone voice, but because I hope you will understand that there are millions of us—and our numbers are growing—who are looking and working for justice and sustainable alternatives for all the people.

Sincerely,

Alice Bolstridge

Zachary Lowry

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RICH SPONSORS, AND THE 99%

Today, not without some trepidation, I am sounding off with very little of the research I usually do when putting on my self-styled cultural-critic hat.  As an English major, I don’t have official credentials for this hat; and I haven’t, until this last week, paid much attention to Rush Limbaugh.  It took his insults of Sandra Fluke’s testimony to get me fired up enough about his behavior to visit the web site of WEGP Radio which features his broadcasts in our area.

Every day except Sunday for three hours--18 hours a week, 936 hours a year--Rush Limbaugh broadcasts on our local Fox radio station.  A college credit course is only 15 hours a semester.  You can get official credentials, all the way to the 7-year Ph.D., for many fewer hours than Limbaugh broadcasts in one year.  Even if you study the recommended 3 hours for every 1 hour of class time, you still put in only about 2/3 the amount of time for a Ph. D. that Limbaugh is on WEGP in one year.  That is a lot of influence on the public.   I have a healthy and defensive respect for that kind of influence. 

I do pay daily attention to my Facebook account, to PBS, and to local TV news, and I do know from that something about Glenn Beck who is scheduled for 15 hours a week on WEGP.  I don’t remember ever hearing about Howie Carr and Dave Ramsey who take up 37 hours a week between them.  Though I am an authentic local, I’m really ignorant about this side of local life, so I have plenty of research to do to find out more about these broadcasters and what kind of influence this one radio station has on our small rural communities here.

In the meantime, I have some suspicions.  From glancing down a list of Limbaugh’s advertising sponsors, I suspect that very powerful high-profit corporate interests, national and international, have been sponsoring this type of broadcasting all across the nation for a long time; Limbaugh has been on WEGP for 15 years.  According to some study I heard about, people who get most of their “news” from Fox are more misinformed than people who don’t listen to any news, must have been a liberal study.  I suspect the relationship among these broadcasters, their sponsors, and their misinformed listeners links directly to the economic crash 99% of us are still reeling from.  I suspect that our economy, politics, cultural interests, and moral values here and across the nation are shaped by these forces that favor the interests of the super-rich 1% at the expense of the rest of us.

Finally, though this may be merely a cry of hope and faith, I suspect that the outpouring of support for women’s contraceptive access is only one spark that is igniting another flame in the fire of growing opposition to the control of moneyed interests in our lives.  

DO CORPORATIONS OCCUPY OUR GOVERNMENT

In 2011 there were 12,633 registered lobbyists in Washington who spent $3.30 billion to lobby congress.  The top spender is the US Chamber of Commerce at more than $805 million.  Among the top 7 spenders are 4 national associations representing health-care industries.  Together, they outspent the Chamber of Commerce by almost $70 million.  That money adds to the total costs of health care.  We now have so many people who can’t afford health insurance that our Maine governor and state legislature says we can no longer afford to provide services to all of them.

More than that, the Citizens United decision has inspired a campaign-spending frenzy by the top 1%.  President Obama has joined it.  His campaign is expected to reach $1 billion dollar.  Very expensive speech, definitely not free.  Senator Snow has raised more than $1 million from sources outside of Maine, more than 3 times as much as from inside.  Billions to the so-called “job creators,” but those funds won’t be creating sustainable jobs in local communities that could prevent the problems of poverty.  And that money won’t be paying down the national debt either.

The economic gap between the top 1% and the rest of us has been widening at an accelerating pace for at least 30 years.  We have to turn the tide, and tides do not turn easily.  It requires the kind of effort on many fronts at once that it took to beat back voting rights restrictions here in Maine.   It looks like it requires more effort than we can manage on a piece-meal basis, one issue at a time.  It requires a total transformation of cultural values about economic justice, like the transformations still in progress about race and gender equality.

Our whole culture, including the 99%, is occupied by the love of money.  We are trained to it. It’s the American dream, and it’s an addictive love.  To recover, we all need to give up the dream and abstain from compulsive allegiance to wealth.  It is neither morally right nor economically sustainable that the CEO of WalMart earns $16000 an hour while the typical WalMart associate earns only $10 and is advised to go to Maine Care for health insurance.  I urge you to join the Occupy Movement. Take to the streets with us. Go viral on social media.  Let’s claim our rights to free speech and infuse ourselves and our economic and political systems with the spirit of righteous justice for all.

See The Occupy Maine TV show
http://regtremblay.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/the-fundamental-issues-and-the-future-of-occupy-in-maine/

What is Occupy Wall Street About?

A Work in Progress

• ECONOMIC JUSTICE FOR 99%
• REMOVING MONEY INFLUENCE FROM POLITICS
• ENDING POVERTY; IT THREATENS PEACE AND NATIONAL-SECURITY 
• ENDING CORPORATE GREED
• ENDING CORPORATE PERSONHOOD
• ENDING CORPORATE WELFARE
• FAIR-SHARE TAXES
• USING A CREDIT UNION INSTEAD OF A BIG BANK
• REMEMBERING “THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL”
• BUILDING “THE PEACABLE KINGDOM”

Why is that so hard to understand?  Support Occupy Wall Street.

UPDATE 12-3-2011

After I posted the list above, We formed our own Occupy Aroostook.  As with other Occupy groups, our local  group is wrestling with the issue of stated goals for the Occupy movement.  Having arrived at a consensus opinion about the need for a trifold brochure to explain what we are about to community and media who keep asking, I drafted one and sent it around to our email list for comments and suggestions.  For purposes of discussion, the draft included the following list garnered from discussions at assembly .  Although there is no consensus about most of the items on the list, there are passionate loyalties among some for or against particular items.

GOALS

Get money out of politics.  Reform campaign funding.

Stop congressional insider trading.

Reduce deficit via fair-share taxes for the rich and stop wars.

Reform banking:  restore Glass-Steagall Act. 

Stop corporate welfare, too-big-to-fail companies, government subsidies that support big profits.

Better education for a better world: publicly funded K through Ph.D., stop public funding of private for-profit schools, forgive student loans.

Single-payer, universal health care.

Protect workers’ rights, and support small-business prosperity.

I did get disagreement as expected, and I responded with the following message.

Thanks for input on the OA trifold draft.  This is an important part of the process.  I would like to have more.

I’m going to speak as myself here and not for Occupy Aroostook; I want to express some opinions that some of you will likely disagree with.  That’s OK; give me your argument for disagreeing. 

First, the brochure itself—do we need one?  As I read the consensus of those attending Assembly, yes we do.  I agree with that.  We need to explain ourselves to the larger community in some format(s) more than what we can communicate with signs at marches.  I think we are not in agreement about what such communication should contain.  So, I decided to draft a brochure to use as a basis for discussion.  I tried to put in it all the issues I have heard discussed about what we should stand for.  I hope and assume there will be revisions, deletions, replacements, expansions, etc. that will happen as we come to better understand the issues and grow our opinions about them.  I hope we never stop keeping an open mind to new evidence or knowledge that might require us to change our minds, even after we agree on a brochure, or whatever else we decide to do.

Second, the list of goals—do we need one?  I don’t think we have consensus about that in assembly, but the issue keeps coming up in the Occupy movement nationally and locally from marchers and non-marchers and from media.  Every time I have spoken to the media, they ask the question in one form or another.  My preferred list would be one umbrella term, like “social justice,” which, to me, captures a sense of all the issues we are concerned about.  Unfortunately, that term is too loaded, ie. socialism, to be practical and too abstract to be useful.  My next preference would be simply what we have been using “Economic  & Political Justice.”  But that, too, doesn’t satisfy the media, nor the public’s legitimate right (we are in their faces every week) to know more specifically what we are about.  I can think of no other mechanism to let them know in a brief format other than a list.  Do any of you out there have ideas for how to do this?  Perhaps we should call such a list “Some Issues of Concern,” since I don’t believe we are ready to declare specific goals that we can achieve consensus about.

Third, the content of the list.  For my ideal preferences, even the list suggested by one of you (economic justice, money out of politics, corporations are not people) is too long.  But for the purposes of communicating to the public what we are about, 3 items is too short, too limiting.  I would, at this point in my thinking, try to boycott any list that does not include concerns about education and health care.  These issues are too basic to the cause of economic justice to ignore in such a list.  I am open to a good argument against including them; I haven’t heard that argument yet.  

Fourth, the forgiveness of student loans that some object to.  I’ve been on the fence about that.  So I went looking for good arguments that would allow me to fall over to the side of forgiveness as part of a more-comprehensive solution to the whole problem of funding education, such as “universal education for life,” in multiple senses of for life.   I’m still doing research, but for now, here are a some arguments persuasive to me:  for an economic view:  http://www.forgivestudentloandebt.com/content/proposal; for a moral view:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/forgive-us-our-student-loan-debt/2011/11/28/gIQAFT564N_blog.html;  for comment on the moral view:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/29/blogger-manages-to-get-pr_n_1119214.html.  

Please feel free to join or continue in this conversation about a list of Occupy concerns:  occupyaroostook@gmail.com;

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Aroostook/312067425476344; http://occupyaroostook.wordpress.com/ or any Occupy facebook page or website.   Or draft your own list and submit it for discussion.   Be peaceful.  Be respectful.

Visit again for further updates.

It simply Isn't patriotic to disenfranchise citizens.

Published October 12, 2011, The Star Herald

 

Two major reasons are given for the new law in Maine that we must register to vote at least 3 business days prior to the election date:  to prevent voter fraud, and to alleviate a burden on town clerks.

In the Bangor Daily News, Eric Russell says that Charlie Smmers' investigation into voter fraud turned up only one case that would come close to fraud.  And America Goes to the Polls 2010 reports that Election Day Registration (EDR) actually reduces administrative costs and burdens.  Gathering signatures at the Maine Poato Blossom Festival Parade and elsewhere for the people's veto about the issue, we had a town manager and several town clerks sign, all of them voicing strong support for same-day registration.  [Since this was first published in The Star Herald, The Maine Municipal Association has endorsed the people's veto of the law.]

I have worked in a job too far outside my home town to get to town offices during regular business hours, as do many Maine people in rural areas who often work more than one job.  And I have been in voting situations considered suspicious by Summers.  I have several times been a student where I voted in districts outside my home state.  In all those cases, I was registered to vote in Maine and in another state in the same year.  I also may have been guilty of failing to register my car within 30 days of those moves; that does not make me guilty also of voter fraud.  What could Summers have meant by questioning the patriotism of such voting?

Our laws should encourage voting by making it as easy as possible.  According to Michael Cooper in the New York Times, EDR is responsible for "enrolling some 60,000 new voters in 2008."  The current law disenfranchises many and discourages participation for no good reason that has been supported with persuasive evidence.   Where is the patriotism in denying 60,000 citizens their vote?  

Please vote yes on Question 1 to protect EDR, and tell your legislators to stop wasting time and money on laws that fix no problem when we have pressing problems that need work.   

(http://bangordailynews.com/2011/09/21/politics/secretary-of-state-finds-no-student-voter-fraud-but-maintains-system-is-vulnerable/)

(http://www.protectmainevotes.com/node/18)

(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/us/new-state-laws-are-limiting-access-for-voters.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hp)

The Governor’s Defense of the New Maine Health-Care Law

At his Town Hall in Presque Isle August 22, I asked the Governor to compare the costs and benefits of his new health-care plan with the single-payer bill proposed around the same time.  I was not satisfied with the responses, which referenced the Idaho bill as the model for his plan and the Canadian health care system as the comparison model.  In hopes of getting more specific responses, I wrote him a follow-up letter on August 30.  You can see my full letter and his full reply of September 14 below.  

In my letter I asked, “What cost/benefit analysis was done to compare the new health care law with the proposed single payer system?”  He replied in his letter, “Although the legislature passed [emphasis mine] the single payer bill many times, it did not provide funding that would have allowed a comparison to the existing system possible.”  Assuming the use of passed is a mistake, and he meant introduced, the assertion is still false.  The single-payer system proposed in LD 1397 does provide funding explained in the synopsis of the bill I sent him:  the bill “will eliminate for-profit health insurance and replace it with a standard premium payment, 9% of adjusted gross income, to be paid by every Maine resident to an independent trust fund.  Those making less than $300% of the federal poverty level, or $32,670, will pay a reduced rate” (www.mainelegislature.org/LawMakerWeb/summary.asp?ID=280041060).  

I also asked, “Considering that ‘total administrative costs consume 31% of U.S. health spending’ according to Physicians for a National Health Program (http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-faq#insurance-overhead)—costs that do not go for healthcare—how can any for-profit insurance that continues the current fragmented system be better for consumers or taxpayers?”    He replied, “Private companies have a nimbleness that bureaucracies cannot match, allowing them to innovate in response to market trends.”  I would like to know what evidence supports that, and even if it is true how does the nimbleness and innovation of insurance companies directly alleviate the burden of the 31% of costs that are not spent on healthcare in the private insurance system?

The governor referred to the website of the Maine Health Management Coalition, http://www.mehmc.org .  I spent a couple of hours at the website, and I could not find any information there that addresses the 31% of costs that don’t go to direct patient care:  advertising, lobbying, profits, high overhead costs in medical offices to deal with insurance forms, immorally high administrative salaries.  These costs would be sharply reduced in the proposed single payer system.  By comparison and depending on which source you consult, Medicare overhead is between 1 and 6% of total costs.  And Canada’s National Health Insurance Program had overhead costs in 1999 of 1.3% of its total expenditures (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa022033).   

I asked the governor, “How will the new law be better for Maine businesses and workers such as loggers who must compete with Canadians who can work for less because they have a national health care system?”  In his reply to this question, he ignored the issue of competition with Canada.  I asked “How will the new law provide for the 140,000 Mainers who are currently uninsured and for the equal number underinsured?” and “What is the source of charges made at the Town Hall Meeting about the Canadian Health Care System?”  He completely ignored these questions and did not respond to evidence (http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12523427) I sent that his charges about Canadian health care are false. 

My brother was diagnosed with cancer in Maine and received his early treatment here.  When it came time to retire, he and his wife, a Canadian citizen, decided to move to Canada where they could get much better quality health care at much less out-of-pocket expense.  Instead of worrying about threats to his assets by high premiums, deductions, and co-pays and possible long-term care, he could focus his final years on quality of life—time with his 4 generational family, gardening, fishing, practicing his craft of making beautiful jewelry.

The governor’s defense does not justify the passage of a new health care law which will surely perpetuate the current problems, and likely exacerbate them (http://bangordailynews.com/2011/09/12/opinion/republican-health-care-law-already-causing-price-spikes-fear/).  We take for granted that we need to provide publicly funded schools, fire and police protection, national defense, disaster relief.  Why shouldn’t health care be likewise publicly funded?  I haven’t found good reasons why not that consider the health and well-being of all our citizens and of the entire economy.  Having health insurance decoupled from employment as the Single Payer bill proposes would be a great incentive for Maine businesses to hire new employees and for new businesses to come to Maine, goals the Governor says he favors. 
_________________________________________________________________________________

August 29, 2011

Governor LePage

Office of the Governor
#1 State House Station
Augusta, ME 04333-0001

Dear Governor LePage,

Thank you for visiting with us in Presque Isle August 22.  Such meetings give us the opportunity to think about the issues in more depth than we otherwise might.  As a result of that meeting, my list of concerns about the new health-care law has grown.  Perhaps, a letter is a better forum than a meeting for expressing my concerns and for getting the kind of specific responses I would like.  Please respond to the following:

·         What cost/benefit analysis was done to compare the new health care law with the proposed single payer system?  I’m enclosing a synopsis of that single-payer bill.

·         Considering that “total administrative costs consume 31% of U.S. health spending” (http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-faq#insurance-overhead)--dollars that do not go for healthcare—how can any for-profit insurance that continues the current fragmented system be better for consumers or taxpayers?    See enclosed quote from Physicians for a National Health Program.

·         How will the new law provide for the 140 thousand Mainers who are currently uninsured and for the equal number underinsured?

·         What is your source of information about the Canadian health-care system as compared to ours?  Please see enclosed information addressing your comments about Canadian health care at the August 22 town hall.  

·         How will the new law be better for Maine businesses and workers such as loggers competing with Canadians who have a public single-payer system?   

·         I looked on the Maine.gov web site for the fact sheet on myths and facts about the health-care law, mentioned at the August 22 meeting and couldn’t find it.  I think I have seen it before, but could you send me a copy or tell me where to find one, so I can check my memory?   And, please, tell me also where you get your facts from.

Thank you for attention to these concerns.  I look forward to hearing from you

Sincerely,

Alice Bolstridge

cc.  H. Sawin Millett, Jr., Mary Mayhew

________________________________________________________________________

Synopsis of LD 1397 “An Act To Establish a Single-payor Health Care System

To Be Effective In 2017”

“Introduced by Rep. Charlie Priest, District 63 (D-Bruswick), 55 co-sponsors

125th Maine State Legislature

“The bill, LD 1397, creates the Maine Health Care Plan to provide uniform access for all Maine residents to comprehensive, high quality and affordable health care. The Plan is to be financed by the Maine Health Care Trust Fund. The Maine Health Care Agency, an independent executive agency, is established to administer the Plan and the Trust Fund under the direction of the Maine Health Care Council.

“The Plan has eleven stated goals, the first three of which -- 1. access to health care for every Maine resident, 2. eliminate income-based disparity and 3. reduce the rate of growth in the cost of health care services -- will bring about fundamental changes over the current costly, unsustainable insurance-based, fragmented system. The Plan will accomplish its goals first, by decoupling health care from employment. By making health care an individual human right, this bill will relieve employers of any financial obligation for their employees’ health care. Secondly, it will eliminate for-profit health insurance and replace it with a standard premium payment, 9% of adjusted gross income, to be paid by every Maine resident to an independent trust fund. Those making less than 300% of the federal poverty level, or $32,670, will pay a reduced rate. Thirdly, the plan will incorporate technologies to create a highly efficient and accountable system, integrating patient records and payments with provider processes.

“The result will be a barrier-free health care system; patients requiring health care services need only present their personal health ID card to the health care professional of their choice to receive treatment. Providers, in turn, will receive agreed upon payments for services rendered in a timely manner, automatically.

“And here is the url for the actual 19-page bill.

 http://www.mainelegislature.org/LawMakerWeb/summary.asp?ID=280041060”  

Also visit www.maineallcare.org about the authors of the bill.

_________________________________________________________________________

from Physicians for a National Health Program

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-faq#insurance-overhead:

How much do private insurance companies spend on overhead and profit?

“Private insurance overhead and profit, on average, fluctuates between 12% and 14% nationally. This figure is
somewhat lower than the 16-20% at many of the big insurers because it includes self-insured plans of many big employers that have overhead of about 6-7%. On the other hand, overhead in the individual market is often substantially higher than 20%, and in some cases above 30%.

“The estimate that total administrative costs consume 31% of U.S. health spending is from research by Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler and published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003. The figure would undoubtedly be higher today. Insurance overhead accounts for a minority of the overhead. Much more occurs in physicians’ offices, hospitals, and nursing homes - driven by our current fragmented payment system. The fact that insurance overhead per se accounts for a minority of the bureaucratic waste in the system explains why implementing a public option plan would not achieve most of the potential bureaucratic savings that can be realized through single payer. Even with a public option, hospitals, physicians and nursing homes would still have to maintain virtually all of their internal billing and cost tracking apparatus in order to fight with private insurers.”

---

FROM A FACEBOOK CONVERSATION THREAD FOLLOWING GOVERNOR LEPAGE’S COMMENTS ON CANADIAN HEALTH CARE AT TOWN HALL MEETING IN PRESQUE ISLE.

Ruthie McAllister.  I want to know where people get their info on the Canadian healthcare system?!?!?  He is not the first to say bad things.  Makes you wonder who is feeding this kind of info to our public servants?  Having lived there and having family and friends still there I have never known anyone who has had to wait or been denied.  I am sure that, like here when it comes to elective surgery, there may be a wait but nothing unusual.  They don’t wait either until they are so sick to go see the doctor.  And as far as inferior quality of medicine, that’s a crock of you know what.  Just like here there are great Drs. as well good and not so good, same with hospitals, but that as nothing to do with having a universal healthcare system.  I don't know of anyone who was denied any treatment or procedure over there because the government refused to pay.Having both lived there and have family and friends still there I have never known anyone who has had to wait or been denied..I am sure that like here when it comes to elective surgery..there may be a wait but nothing unusual.They don't wait either till they are so sick..to go see the doctor of info to our public servants?Having both lived there and have family and friends still there I have never known anyone who has had to wait or been denied..I am sure that like here when it comes to elective surgery..there may be a wait but nothing unusual.They don't wait either till they are so sick..to go see the doctor

Shelly Mountain.  Rationing occurs here [in Maine]. You are at the mercy of insurance executives who decide whether they will pay for procedures and rationing happens based on your ability to afford health care and/or insurance. People have died here because insurance companies have refused to pay for treatment.

Roberta Morris Bolstridge.  I never heard tell of rationing here (New Brunswick) and I worked in the system for 12 yrs and lived with it for 25 yrs. If your doctor orders something it is done. Period, end of discussion. No yoho in an insurance office decides. And what's this about having to move to get health care? What idiot thought that one up? And to put my views in perspective, I lived in ME for 16 yrs and worked in a hospital there as well.

Also see http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12523429?source=pkg,

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12523427
________________________________________________________________________

POETRY AWARD

Alice Bolstridge, Winner, Maine Writers and Publishers 2011 Literary Award for Shorter Works, Poetry, for the following poems:

"Traveling from the Northeast," published UpCountry, July 2015

"At the Cincnnati Art Museum," forthcoming as "Rodin's Fugitive Love" in the chapbook, Chance & Choice to be published by Finishing Line Press.

"Some Place in Tennesee," 

"In New Orleans," forthcoming as "New Orleans Art in July" in the chapbook, Chance & Choice to be published by Finishing Line Press.

"At the Missouri Psychiatric Facility for Federal Prisoners," forthcoming as "My Son, the Artist" in the chapbook, Chance & Choice to be published by Finishing Line Press.

"Through the Heart of the Awl."

"Back home in Maine fields."

©  2011, Alice Bolstridge