Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Weird Blob Causing Big Mess in Maine
FOX NEWS ^ | January 25, 2008

Posted on 01/25/2008 8:35:23 PM PST by camerakid400

City officials in Lewiston, Maine, are confronting a problem straight out of a 1950s horror flick as a mysterious blob has taken over a major sewer line through the town, according to a report on WMTW.com

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: US: Maine; Unclassified
KEYWORDS: blob
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-78 last
To: ATOMIC_PUNK
Should be an interesting race.


61 posted on 01/26/2008 10:19:05 AM PST by ApplegateRanch (Islam: a Satanically Transmitted Disease, spread by unprotected intimate contact with the Koranus.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: SAJ

BALDACCI AND ALLEN SEEK FEDERAL ASSISTANCE TO ADDRESS INFLUX OF SOMALI IMMIGRANTS
June 6, 2002

Representatives Baldacci and Allen called for $100,000 in funding to enable Catholic Charities of Maine to provide needed services to Somali immigrants in Lewiston and other communities. Catholic Charities provides outreach and assistance to refugees and immigrants.

Maine has a hard time finding work and feeding their own. Yet Baldacci and Allen want an INFLUX of immigrants! What's up with this!
```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Somalis find a home in a former mill city in Maine

By Jerry Harkavy, Associated Press Writer  |  May 11, 2007

LEWISTON, Maine --A prank in which a middle-schooler tossed a piece of leftover Easter ham onto a table surrounded by Somalian Muslim youngsters has exposed -- yet again -- the cultural divide in this struggling former mill town.

The widely reported episode left some residents wondering whether the student committed a hate crime. Others complained that the whole thing was overblown.

It's all part of what one Somali activist calls "a strange marriage" between refugees fleeing a wartorn homeland on the Horn of Africa and a nearly all-white mill city of 36,000 trying to bounce back from decades of economic stagnation.

More than 3,000 of the refugees have settled in Lewiston over the past six years, giving it the highest concentration of Somalis anywhere in the country.

Along Lisbon Street, the main downtown thoroughfare, the latest newcomers to a city built by waves of hard-working immigrants have created a mosque, the Red Sea restaurant and a couple of halal grocery stores as they try to adapt to their strange new world.

Women in colorful head scarves or ankle length hijabs can be seen walking together on downtown streets, not far from the canals, once-bustling mills and twin towers of the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, the Catholic bastion built with mill hands' dollars.

Stores feature Somali food, clothing and phone cards that keep buyers in touch with family members in Somalia or refugee camps in Kenya. The most popular card offers eight minutes for $2.

But beneath the surface, simmering tensions were underscored by the school prank that made front-page headlines, recalling an incident last summer when a local man rolled a pig's head into the Somali mosque. Pork is considered unclean by Muslims.

Haaruan Sheekhey, a 27-year-old Somali who moved to Lewiston from Denver two years ago, said he's ready to try his luck elsewhere. His restaurant failed after it was hit by vandals who scratched a swastika on a window, and employers are reluctant to hire Somalis, he said.

"If somebody says 'I'm happy in Lewiston,' they're lying," he said. "We're having a hard time in this city. We're struggling. We're trying so hard to be part of this community, trying so hard to find a job, but nobody gives us a chance."

Others, however, say the Somalis are assimilating well and that a handful of racial incidents don't reflect the way the newcomers have been accepted by the public at large.

"Yes, there is some friction every once in a while, but that often gets blown out of proportion," said Pierrot Rugaba, program director for refugee and immigration services of Catholic Charities Maine. "Things have improved, but like everything else it takes time."

At the 94-unit Hillview public housing project, black and white kids play basketball together on the outdoor courts. In the activity rooms, Somali children, including girls in head scarves, take part in computer lessons or music and art classes, while students from nearby Bates College provide help with school work.

The project is now 70 percent Somali, but the manager said the change in racial makeup doesn't seem to have triggered friction and that residents pretty much get along.

"There are 500 people living here, and you're always going to have neighbor problems. But they're no different and no more frequent than before," Carla Harris said.

Many Somalis have found housing at Hillview and at an even larger project in another part of town. Many more are clustered in the downtown area, in aging three- and four-story tenements formerly occupied by French-Canadian immigrants who could walk to their jobs at the textile mills in the city's industrial heyday.

By most accounts, language problems and lack of job opportunities have proven to be the biggest hurdle to Lewiston's Somalis as they try to move up the economic ladder, leading many to shift their hopes and dreams to the next generation.

"Their children are the only assets they have. They left everything else in Somalia," said Said Mohamud, manager of the Mogadishu Store. Mohamud, 46, who taught chemistry at a university in the Somalian capital, has a daughter studying at Smith College who plans to go on to medical school and another child studying accounting at Barry University in Florida. His six other children also plan to go to college, he said.

No one seems to remember, if they ever knew, the name of the first Somali to arrive in this riverfront city, known to sports fans as the site of the 1965 heavyweight championship bout between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay.

But it was in the dead of winter -- February 2001 -- and it marked a turning point in the ethnic makeup of a largely Franco-American city that the Census showed was 97 percent white.

Six years later, Lewiston's Somalis now number an estimated 3,000 to 3,500, close to 10 percent of the overall population, with an additional 30 or so arriving each month. Because of the Somalis' large families, the percentage in the schools is even greater.

Lewiston's emergence as the city with the nation's largest percentage of Somalis happened by chance. Many had been placed in the Atlanta area, where it was assumed that a warm climate and a large black population would ease their adjustment to life in America.

But dismay at high crime levels and concern about a culture of drug use, alcohol and gang activity prompted the community to look elsewhere, Mohamud said.

The word went out that Maine was a safe place to raise a family.

Migrants had been resettled in Portland, 40 miles to the south, but a shortage of affordable apartments forced newcomers into shelters. Lewiston, where population losses created a vacancy rate of about 8 percent, had the housing Portland lacked.

"Lewiston is a small town, with no experiences of having immigrants from Africa, so it was a strange marriage," said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minn. Minneapolis has the highest number of Somalis, some 20,000, he said, but Lewiston has the highest concentration.

A city of Lewiston's size has advantages for the newcomers, he said.

"Unlike big cities, where they could be easily ignored, in a small town everybody's visible," Jamal said. "Everybody knows everybody. It's like being in a family."

But life in Maine has not come without problems, starting with a letter by then-Mayor Larry Raymond in 2002 asking the Somalis, then numbering about 1,000, to advise their countrymen not to come to Lewiston because city resources were "maxed out."

The letter drew national attention, prompting a white supremacist group to stage an anti-Somali rally in Lewiston. That event was dwarfed by the more than 4,000 who turned out at a pro-diversity rally in which Jamal and then-Gov. John Baldacci spoke.

Tensions ran high again last summer when the pig's head was tossed into the mosque during evening prayers at the Lewiston-Auburn Islamic Center.

Though the perpetrator said he did it as a joke, he was charged with desecrating a place of worship. He committed suicide after a recent standoff with police.

Then on April 11 came the ham incident at Lewiston Middle School. It made the front page of the local newspaper, and the state attorney general looked into whether the incident represented a hate crime. The student was suspended but no charges were filed.

Jimmy Simones, owner of a popular eatery near City Hall and grandson of Greek immigrants, said incidents like the pig's head and the ham steak should not overshadow the way the city has welcomed its latest arrivals from abroad.

Overall, he said, the Somalis were winning acceptance by the broader community.

"All newcomers run into these bumps in the road. This is nothing different," he said. alt

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2007/05/11/somalis_find_a_home_in_a_former_mill_city_in_maine/

62 posted on 01/26/2008 10:27:37 AM PST by SheLion (Fred????????? Why??????????)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: SheLion
Wonderful. (no /sarc tag needed, I assume)

This Baldacci must've really been a piece of work. Sheesh.

63 posted on 01/26/2008 11:14:06 AM PST by SAJ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 60 | View Replies]

To: Grizzled Bear

LOL!


64 posted on 01/26/2008 11:53:47 AM PST by Eaker (If illegal immigrants were so great for an economy; Mexico would be building a wall to keep them in)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: Wilhelm Tell
"Most Christians through the ages believed that the Beast of Revelation was Nero."

Please cite a single source claiming Nero as the anti-christ prior to the 19th Century. Certainly Tertullian didn't think so and he was the first of the early church fathers to write commentary on the book of Revelation.

65 posted on 01/26/2008 12:04:18 PM PST by joebuck
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: rabscuttle385
29 posted on 01/26/2008 12:04:30 AM CST by rabscuttle385 (Admin Moderator for President.)

Suck up.

66 posted on 01/26/2008 1:23:56 PM PST by xJones
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: Grizzled Bear
Obviously you are not aware of the fine art of thread hijacking. 'It' happens when bored people decide to have a good time and the thread subject is wide open to various interpretations. I love these threads, and you should too.;)
67 posted on 01/26/2008 2:01:42 PM PST by xJones
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: maine-iac7

I was up in Booth Bay about 10 years ago. The local paper had a blurb about Damariscotta’s sewage problem was traced to some young girl that was flushing her underwear down the toilet.


68 posted on 01/26/2008 2:11:31 PM PST by Calvin Locke
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: ElkGroveDan
I heard one of screenwriters for The Blob on the radio a couple of years ago. I think she was pushing 90, and was the oldest teacher in NH at the time, as a professor at Keene.

She was in four Charlie Chan films.

A actress with detective experience that knows how to handle unknown blobs...

69 posted on 01/26/2008 2:15:17 PM PST by Calvin Locke
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Calvin Locke

70 posted on 01/26/2008 2:53:10 PM PST by maine-iac7 (",,,but you can't fool all of the people all the time" LINCOLN)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 68 | View Replies]

To: xJones
Suck up.

And who would you have run for President? Both Hunter and Thompson are out, and the other candidates aren't exactly savory, so to speak.

71 posted on 01/26/2008 4:52:18 PM PST by rabscuttle385 (Admin Moderator for President.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 66 | View Replies]

To: eldoradude

This is what you get if you soak Helen Thomas in cold water for three days.


72 posted on 01/26/2008 4:58:07 PM PST by mathurine
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: thingumbob

There is a pizza spot that has been there for about 40 years just down the street.


73 posted on 01/26/2008 6:59:01 PM PST by Chickensoup (If it is not permitted, it is prohibited. Only the government can permit....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 55 | View Replies]

To: rabscuttle385

My Eyes! My EYES!!!!!!!!!!!!! Argh!!!!!!!!!


74 posted on 01/26/2008 9:12:21 PM PST by kimmie7 (this year i will turn ffff....ffo........foooort.........i can't say it. i'll just be 20. twice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: rabscuttle385
And who would you have run for President?

Read the thread, at this point I'm backing Cthulhu.

75 posted on 01/27/2008 10:05:12 AM PST by xJones
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 71 | View Replies]

To: xJones
Read the thread, at this point I'm backing Cthulhu.

LOL

76 posted on 01/27/2008 10:26:32 AM PST by rabscuttle385 (Admin Moderator for President.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: Chickensoup
Most likely it's them if their the only eatery up stream from the muck.

My family has been in the Real estate business on and off for four generations. My father was a builder and owned properties that we rented...you'd be surprised how many restaurants do this kind of stuff.

77 posted on 01/27/2008 10:52:02 AM PST by thingumbob (Dead terrorists don't make more terrorists!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 73 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7

“And, unlike Dan Rather, he actually was a Marine.”

I didn’t know that but you are right, 1947 to 1950, thanks.


78 posted on 01/28/2008 7:52:32 AM PST by ansel12
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 54 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-78 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson