After reading Swanville resident Peter Petersen’s Sept. 5 diatribe (“Letter to the editor: COVID vaccine is useless, and Nemitz should know it”), targeting columnist Bill Nemitz and the common sense of vaccinating oneself against COVID-19, I feel compelled to respond.
First of all, I find Israeli COVID statistics suspect. Neither do I trust 2nd District right-wing rants on the uselessness of vaccinations.
I do, however, take offense to being chastised by someone from northern Maine who finds it necessary to slight the state’s population and business center by referring to it as “northern Massachusetts,”as if that were a bad thing.
Mr. Petersen should consider that Maine grew from the south up. Portland, settled in 1632, led that growth, and today the Portland metro area’s population of around 538,000 makes up almost half of Maine’s population. In addition, around 50 percent of Maine’s GDP is generated by the metro area that includes its largest city.
Perhaps Swanville (settled in 1774) and northern Maine residents, such as Mr. Petersen, should begin to think of southern Maine as the original and real Maine, and themselves as southern Canadians.
James Morgan
Portland
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