Does no one care that a gambling casino in Sanford will change catastrophically and forever the life style and uniqueness of Maine life as it has always been? Oh yes, rest assured, dear neighbors: from Kittery to Bangor will no longer be the Maine you have grown up with and have inarticulately loved since you first achieved awareness, but a foreign and unpleasant place, an increasingly ugly space to be traveled through quickly and all in the name of money, the love of which is the root of all evil.

I sorrow for the Berwicks: those crown jewels of Old New England, eventually and inexorably to be made “ordinary” or worse

The western foothills of York and Oxford County: remote, serene, haunted, breathtaking, with that strong sense of the fitness of old things and of permanence, soon to be the base of real estate and technology bonanzas that will allow only the wealthy from “away” to live there.

Those who immigrate will never know, nor can they ever understand, the unbelievably rich heritage that has been the quintessence of my family’s existence here for some 300 glorious years.

And this very eulogy itself is limited to 250 pathetic words; it is all I am permitted to expend in mourning for my culture and a truly unique life, so soon to be gone.

Truly, after some four centuries, the Maine American Indian will have had his devastating revenge. Exaggeration? As we watch Maine die, remember these words of prophecy. I weep.

George Stilphen, Otisfield