Winter in Maine brings Town Meetings,  the once dominant form of local government that distinguishes New England from the rest of the nation.  When I moved from Chesapeake Bay to Penobscot Bay on Christmas Eve 1980 it was a gift to myself. A friend who moved with me and I relished the prospect of our first town meeting after renting a house on the river in St. George.

We sat on hard chairs in a steamy, crowded town hall that March for long hours, galvanized by the spectacle of direct participatory government of, by, and for the people, for we'd come from D.C. and a state capitol and both had worked as researchers in government, politics, journalism, and Fortune 500 companies — all of them run from the top down, by and for elites.  We were tired of that charade.

It was thrilling to hear ordinary folks in worn flannel shirts and muddy boots speak clearly and forcefully about every kind of issue from swearing in public to the sale of Dragon Cement to the Martin-Marietta Corporation,which intended to burn toxic waste in the kiln, polluting good clean Maine air and god knows what else.  

The greenhorn city girls from away instantly got involved in a fierce effort to ward off Martin-Marietta's evil scheme.  A few months later activists that included a majority of St. George peninsula residents won that fight.  Martin-Marietta, denied an EPA permit, gave up and sold the cement plant to the Penobscot Tribe. You know the rest.

This wonderful chapter from my now 36 years of calling Maine home keeps compelling me to suggest, ask for and now shout that Rockland Needs a Town Meeting!  Not as a governing instrument, but as a meeting of citizens to talk about anything and everything under the sun that's happened and can or might happen here to make their lives better or worse in both the short and long term. 

My Big Shining Wish for Rockland in 2017 is a Town Meeting, with all invited, at the Rec Center in the auditorium where we after all,  come together to vote for or against our elected officials.

Are you paying attention, Rockland City Councilors?

Judith Lawson lives in Rockland