Thank you Avian Haven

Thank goodness for Avian Haven. On my way to Staple’s in Cook’s Corner the other day, I noticed a lone young gull dragging a wing. I left the car and with my umbrella followed in the driving rain. The gull attempted to groom the wing and alternately pull it up and let it drop, as I convinced myself that I was not involving Avian Haven on a false alarm. Making matters worse, other gulls strafed it.

Avian Haven took my information and sent a local volunteer within half an hour. Between the two of us, we were able to corner it against a building where the volunteer was able to throw a calming dark sheet over it, gather it up, and whisk it off to safety and medical attention.

As I waited for help, I considered how lucky we are here in Maine that these people care enough to drop what they are doing and immediately come to my/this bird’s aid, relieving the likes of me, one who can’t seem to leave an injured animal stranded and hurt. “Do unto others… ” does not simply apply to humans, to some of us, but to all sentient beings.

Thank you Avian Haven.

Now to find the perpetrator of this bird’s misery and possible eventual euthanasia. Apparently it had been shot with a BB gun… Do you know who might have done this?

Sandy Maggied,
Georgetown

When supression is not suppression

In a column published in several newspapers by Pennsylviania attorney Christine Flowers, “Offense and controversy are necessary in a free society,” (The Times Record, Aug. 4), Flowers confuses private comment with government suppression when she complains about a “warning” from Twitter to think before you speak with actually preventing her speech and compounds the error by assuming it came from some unspecified left wing sort. I made a similar mistake recently when Facebook actually put a friend of mine in “timeout” meaning he could not publish anything for awhile because he spoke ill of a right wing group. I thought the right wing crazies had taken over.

Ms. Flowers then takes the questionable assumption that her “warning” came from left social media sycophants of “tycoons” and puffs it into “worrying” that some poor folks will self suppress their comments because of the “Stalins” of social media. I would venture that the “Trumps” of social media are even more threatening with their own brand of cancel culture (just ask any Republican official who had the temerity to call the election for Biden, and woke up to new and hostile candidates for their position or screaming threats on social media or demotion from their status as a party leader).

The notion that finger wagging by the #MeToo movement equates with terrorism but the January 6th insurrection does not is but one example of Ms. Flowers confused thinking. Another is the ludicrous claim that the left is somehow using the insurrection to suppress speech, something Flowers seems to have made up. Oh well, that’s her right.

Let’s be clear: it is the rich, powerful and, most importantly, private social media corporations that suppress speech of all sorts and all political persuasions, not the “left” or the “right” or the government. And, in the case of Ms. Flowers, no speech was actually suppressed.

Ken MacIver,
Georgetown