The other day I listened a Buddhist meditation that guides one to focus on an area of one’s life where one feels pain. I focused on leadership and organizations like Fractured Atlas, Wikipedia and nonprofits and local and state government that dismiss my family business and its assets that are my responsibility to leave in good hands to be used for a purpose consistent with Andersen Design’s historical founding.
Non profit organizations and government agencies frame small free enterprises as selfishly motivated, while their own institutional organizations are proclaimed to serve the pubic good. Foundations distribute wealth sourced in for-profit mega businesses while non-profits participate in the free market to supplement funding from grants and donations. In the economic landscape there is but one player to whom all the evils of capitalism are assigned and that is the small independent entrepreneur who exists outside of and without the support of the centralized economy.
Now I am wondering was I tuning into the immediate future or was I creating it when I made that meditative choice?
I focused on the pain when I breathed in and on releasing those feelings when I breathed out and then I resumed my day by checking my email to find that I have been rejected from another organization for being a free enterprise. Previously I signed up for more information on the organization website‘s form which consisted of an empty space to express one’s vision and so I did.
The organization I contacted is starting an artists community. I saw similarities with my vision for a priority zone for businesses in which the owner works in the business and permitting and encouraging businesses in a home. My idea expands artists-in-residence zoning. Artists are small business owners. Andersen Design was always an artist-in-residence. The founders, my parents, did not have the intent to scale up to become a mega business. It was about engagement in a work process, which is the basis of businesses in which the owner is self-employed. The business provided the financial basis to pursue the art.
I saw a potentially common cause with the community artists group but perhaps different language would have made my idea more acceptable, such as “a cottage industry priority zone” instead of using the word “business”. I am fine with traditional language but one has to also consider the other. The person with whom I was engaging said they would have to consider whether they would allow businesses, a suggestion that had been raised before. Small businesses would be inquiring since large corporations are not going to be asking to be part of a small emerging artist community. I switched my language to “free enterprise”
While your business model seems very well thought out and your work is beautiful, it also seems very central to your vision of community….and we’re really focused on co-developing an equitable housing model so we just aren’t even in a place to discuss how a free enterprise business to the extent you’re talking about could/would fit into this
I thought isn’t the work significant to the housing model? The work one can pursue is dependent of the type of working space that one has.
I responded
The extent to which I am talking about it is to the extent that it is a model that includes the working classes and is not merely for the independently wealthy or artists who are supported by grants and donations.
Andersen Design was established in 1952. The proliferation of nonprofits began in the sixties and the centrally managed economy was established in the seventies.
Andersen Design individualized mass production and so small individually owned working spaces are better suited to making the Andersen Design product than large mass scale production facilities. Many think large scale industries have all the advantages over small scale industries but in innovating ceramic surfaces and body, one needs only a small scale production space where ones materials are protected from interference an ones intellectual property is one’s own. A network of small production studio could simultaneously be a network producing innovative ceramic bodies and surfaces development.
A popular workers movement that includes the remote workers movement and the gig economy rejects corporate culture. The movement has not yet included business in a home but its a given that if large corporate headquarters are closing, working space has to be located elsewhere as in the home. The idea that work and living spaces and communities are separate is a product of corporate culture and mass production. Local discussions on housing are limited to housing that separates work and living. Businesses in a home are an environment that can be attractive to many remote workers so housing discussions should include housing that includes working spaces.
I was told by the artist community that ownership of the land would be shared by the community.
Land communally owned by inhabitants is more desirable than land owned by a non-profit developer corporation as is the case in the massive housing project being developed by the Boothbay Regional Development Corporation.
My Dad incorporated as an S Corporation and explained to me that he did so, so that the business could continue after he died. As a natural systemic thinker, my Dad considered the arc of history and the long term social economic cultural contribution of his own life.
Local leadership were not going to allow my Dad to be so grandiose so they stepped in to stop him where ever they could, eventually prohibiting my parents from expanding Andersen Design’s production and gallery on their own land. East Boothbay could support ship building and a general store and many other galleries but there was no place for a ceramic production and gallery in local leadership’s thinking. My Dad said it was the only way the old boy’s club had to control him. When the Town leaders stopped Andersen Design from expanding locally, Andersen Design expanded in Portland but no one in the family wanted to be in Portland in the long term.
As I am hearing it the group hasn’t got a firm plan in place. Nor have I. I have a vision and am looking for people to connect with. The group hasn’t decided yet what type of legal entity it will be.
The ”priority zones” mandated in LD 2004 HP 1489 can be approached innovatively on the model of Towns instead of housing developments, This makes practical sense because LD 2003 also mandates that the priority zones must be close to resources.
In the Town model the resources are available within the Priority Zone. Since most locations near existing resources are already occupied, the Town Model makes the most sense, especially in an area without public transportation .
I would like a community that is similar to the old fashioned concept of a Town, which includes businesses rather than segregated places where people live cut off from everything else. The Maine in which I was raised was a place where each structure was unique. That would be a feature of a small business community since every small business space is unique. The zone would also have housing for people who do not own businesses. Each lot would be constructed according to the individual needs
The large development mentality advances the grid concept of nearly identical communities segregated by class lines defined by income caps that keep the economic sectors in their places and create obstacles to increasing one’s income. If the land were communally owned but available for purchase to individual members then the individual members could develop it as they see fit in the manner of a Town. That is heterogenous development as opposed to the hierarchical development being advanced by the state.
Heterogenous development is consistent with the intent of the Home Rule Amendment of the Maine Constitution.
Article VIII Part Second Municipal Home Rule.
Section 1. Power of municipalities to amend their charters. The inhabitants of any municipality shall have the power to alter and amend their charters on all matters, not prohibited by Constitution or general law, which are local and municipal in character. The Legislature shall prescribe the procedure by which the municipality may so act.
In the artist’s group plan, not only would the land be communally owned and the housing shared but the studio spaces would also be shared so that there would be no place in this community where the individual would have control over their own space, short of a bedroom (hopefully).
At this point I was ready to walk away but I realized that I was encountering the attitude of the broader social culture. It’s everywhere. One cannot escape it and its really hard to find anyone with whom to collaborate. I also realized that working with others is not easy. One will encounter differences, always, and have to work through them. This group is in a developing stage so the ideas are not set in stone.
So I didn’t walk away I said I would keep it in mind, and the conversation continued.
The next day I woke up and checked out the Boothbay Register and saw an article titled:
Southport UMC planning community housing project
A gift to Southport United Methodist Church may result in community housing for the island. In 2023, Marge and Eliot Winslow gifted over 20 acres to the church with an intent of providing community outreach, according to church board of directors member Smith Climo. The church debated among its members about possible outreach options. A consensus was reached to divide the property into eight to 10 tracts suitable for affordable housing.
……..In January and February, the church hosted three informational sessions seeking abutters’ and residents’ feedback. Climo said abutters were concerned that expanding the growth district would allow businesses in the proposed housing project. “We (asked) voters to skip accepting the bequest,” Climo said. “We want to let them know we heard them and take our time and do more research. It’s not our intention for businesses to become a part of the project and we just want to dot our I’s and cross our T’s before the town accepts the bequest.”
I wonder what kind of businesses those abutters are out to stop in such a location and And I wondered if the abutters run short term rentals, which is a business in a home. The reason the state needed to mandate priority zones for “workforce housing” is because the short term rental businesses in a home are driving out housing affordable to year round residences. According to Google AI there are 260 short term rentals available on Southport and 1000 year round inhabitants. A business in a home can make home ownership more accessible.
Since, once again the only businesses likely to be attracted to such a project are small businesses or self-employed people.
Favoring real estate businesses (STRS) while prohibiting productive, retail and service industries is to favor the ownership class over the working classes, which the state has been doing ever since it asserted central management over constitutional Home Rule in 1976. The centrally managed economy has extracted ownership from the working classes and segregated the ownership class and the working class in its community design, which pursuant to LD 2003 it hopes to implement state wide in every Maine municipality. STRs put that agenda on steroids.
A core motivator causing the workers movement to reject corporate culture is that corporate culture no longer offers a path to home ownership for the working classes. It doesn’t even offer stability and if Musk has his way AI will take over everything, which is just hype, as AI is not reliable, known to hallucinate and manifest nonsense.
Imagine priority zones that allow small businesses and permit businesses in a home but not mandating that every home owner has to also be a business owner. Imagine a modest size as in Southport and that the lots are sold off individually with affordable housing income qualifiers for entry but no income caps once one is part of the zone. Instead of being developed all at once by developers the lots are developed one at a time by the individual owners made to order for their purpose so that the community grows organically.
Imagine many small business priority zones and the character that each zone develops is decided by the people who inhabit it, not by a community board but as cluster industries that develop organically as one industry attracts another. In example a community where there are ceramic slip casters might attract a mold maker which might attract another sort of industry that needs a mold maker. A community might become known for its cuisine and farm products. Another might develop in a more diversified way with many different types of businesses. Each would have its own unique community character.
If our public education can be converted to industrial job training, then any industry can offer an equivalent education. The small free enterprise zones can offer industrial job training, as can a Museum without increasing local property taxes.
This would not be instead of the current income capped housing. The reason for income capped housing is to assure that there always exists affordable housing but local developers who were granted affordable housing funding are developing “cost-burdened housing” by HUD definitions- which does not protect the existence of affordable housing. To counter that I suggest economic-growth enabled affordable housing. 
A close examination of LD 2004 HP 1489 reveals that it is set up to be used for cost-burdened Housing, Not affordable housing,
It is a cultural norm to be thoughtless about the way small business people are treated. Don’t think twice about it. It is an attitude reinforced by organizations. They are all sorry but they do not allow individuals and small business people to be part of the dialogue.
By blocking individuals and small businesses from participating in these conversations the hegemony reinforces the kneejerk reaction that all small businesses are nuisances that must be curtailed, excepting short term rentals which must be allowed to expand free of regulations. Priority zones are needed to assure the existence of any kind of housing or business other than short-term rentals.
Today the focus of education is on teaching STEAM skills. and “making spaces”, spoken about in sales pitches for spending public money on new schools but the mock ups of the making spaces are never shown and the object of the making is left to the imagination.
Each observer brings their own background to the imagery. My background is a lifetime immersed in home business that made and developed original glazes, ceramic bodies, and ceramic functional form and wild life designs, and taught those STEAM skills on the job. I know that every making space is unique and that is why there are no mockups as the plan is to negotiate funding using the statutory authority of §5654. Conditional gifts, crafted by the Maine Legislature as a run around of the Maine constitutional Home Rule requirement that industrial buildings be developed with bonds voted on in a public referendum. The language of the law in Maine clearly states that industrial training means actively running a manufacturing production in the educational system.
The University if Maine is starting construction on an 82 million dollar digital manufacturing center, for prefab manufacturing of almost everything, not including ceramics and other hand made items. The promo identifies various resources of funding but §10006. Endowment incentives permit donations to be matched by taxpayers. It is not disclosed if “incentives” were used to attract the funding.(read more here).
At this moment I am surrounded like a misty day in the early spring by a conflation of early-forming events. Each brings something to the picture that compliments the other. The artists housing group needs a location, Southport needs an idea. I have an idea but at first meeting it is not compatible with the artist community group or with the abutters of the Southport property. In addition I have productivity assets but no capital but I recently contacted a non-profit entrepreneurial organization and received a positive first response with a promise that I would hear back from them, but I am not counting chickens.
The Church is a network of churches. My vision vision is a network of ceramic studios and a Museum of American Designer Craftsmen that is a network of museums.
Museums are educational institutions. It would make sense for the peninsula to acknowledge its non-profit educational resources- or potential non-profit educational resources- and shift the cost of industrial job training from local property taxpayers to nonprofit land owners that do not pay property taxes. Bigelow Labs, in example, is offering job education about its industry to local high school students. That is a great asset for the educational culture on the Peninsula.
A few years ago I attempted to present an idea for The Museum of American Designer-Craftsmen to the Joint Economic Development Council of Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor and was dismissed without acknowledgement of my presentation with the comment “I am sorry but we can’t do anything to help individual businesses”, echoing the words of the Maine Community Foundation, even though the council had just spent 79000.00 on New York consultants to design a plan for the peninsula, a plan that recommended museums.
The local economic development council was not open to ideas from a resident of the local community so I could not present the case that a non-profit Museum of American Designer Craftsmen could provide industrial job training that would not be financed by local property tax payers. After that the outside investors tried to push an expensive new public school system on the community that would include “making spaces” and teach STEAM skills and the community leaders lined up to support that project. The Museum should have an opportunity to be considered as an option. If you look down the road as public schools are used for industrial job training eventually the cost burden on property tax payers will drive home ownership out of reach for ever larger proportions of the the economic strata and large corporations will be the dominant land owners. It is a better societal model that property tax-exempt institutions should provide industrial job training rather than home-owners to protect the continued existence of individual home owners. Homeowners should not be burdened with industrial job training costs but if the municipality accepts state money for education, they won’t have a choice.
In Medieval times the makers markets surrounded the churches. Today makers are banned from society in a Maine that is being homogenized into a ubiquitous grid by the centralized government of the corporate state of Maine whose industrial center is the University of Maine.
Imagine the community outreach opportunity on Southport as a Cottage Industry Priority Zone. It’s already has the right start with the plots being approximately two acres each.
But I wondered if it was legal under Maine’s new dystopian housing law LD 2004 HP 1489 to have such a plan, so I looked into it and I discovered that although LD 2004 HP 1489 prohibits municipalities from regulating housing density or referencing anything about character of locations, it instructs that said dystopian and unconstitutional mandates are to be placed in Sec. 3. 5 MRSA §4581-A, sub-§5 .
However those restriction are no where to be found in Sec. 3. 5 MRSA §4581-A, sub-§5. Suffice it to say that if the state wants to challenge any municipality for violating said prohibitive mandates, it invites a constitutional challenge. Perhaps that is why those prohibitions have not been placed in Sec. 3. 5 MRSA §4581-A, sub-§5, Sigh of relief!
LD 2004 HP 1489 and its authors have a strange habit of violated the law that they wrote.
The division of the land into plots that are roughly two acres each is consistent with a rural New England village. Would it be an asset if one of those lots had a local cafe and convenience store- a social gathering spot? Who is against that?
The local STR inhabitants might enjoy the area but find it too expensive to live in and would be thrilled to discover that the small cafe is located on a plot of land where other types of businesses are welcome and where living houses are affordable and built to order. There would be an income cap on becoming a part of the village but there would not be an income cap on growth. The inhabitants would be allowed to develop their income.
Another recent event in this conflation of events is that The Museum of Ceramics in Ohio has expressed an interest in presenting a show of my Dad’s work that he created when he was Dean of the Akron Art Institute in Ohio, which will reinforce brand recognition. That is targeting the spring on 2026.
I also have an opportunity to display our work in a new store that is opening on the Peninsula. If I had a working relationship with a ceramic studio that could produce some of the work it could be sold there as well as the possibility of reviving relationships with catalog and other large order accounts.
It is still just early spring. Even the buds have not made their appearances.