Aw, c’mon. With all the important, more important and most important things on our minds, how can we endorse a campaign to put an end to the chickadee license plate, too?

The new plate features the design of the 1901 Maine flag. Photo courtesy of Office of Secretary of State

It matters little to me if the bird is boreal or black-capped; it is darling. If you ever have heard their cheerful call for a mate, a greeting when venturing out to a feeder or danger when a hawk is near, you know how endearing it is. Our chickadee license plate evokes all that.

We have really pressing problems: lack of housing; unaffordable heat and electricity; escalating grocery bills; degraded farmlands and way-too-rapidly changing weather (call it climate) that threatens dairy herds, blueberry crops, even clams.

Leave our state flag alone and please don’t take away our chickadee license plate. After all, is it any different in production cost to press out a cute bird on a white pine bough than to make an emoji tree and cartoon star on a Band-Aid-colored background?

If Maine lawmakers need to make their mark, how about a new state song? Everyone loves a chickadee, but who can hum our state ditty? Does anyone even know it?

How about “Big Yellow Taxi” (“… they paved paradise and put up a parking lot”)?

Martha C. Frink
Bremen