Dear Editor:

Eric Russell's story about the Baron of Boothbay in the Maine Sunday Telegram(6/5/2016) is a fair presentation of Paul Coulombe's vision for Boothbay. I recommend it to the Register's readers.

There are two minor inaccuracies: 1) the meeting in which he asked me what I had ever done for Boothbay occurred not in April of this year but about two years ago. He has, though, repeated the question/accusation in his recent Register "Commentary." He has lived fewer years in the area than I have. But he has accused my wife and me of being "New Yorkers from Away," a Trump-like slur. Consequently, we should be paid no attention to. That is his mode of discourse. When he cannot argue substance, he resorts to personal attack. What many Boothbay people most object to, in addition to his chest-thumping bullying, is his vision, which Russell's article captures: a Boothbay with mostly seasonal jobs in the service of rich people and a radically changed landscape. For example, the only substantive rationale for Boothbay contributing $1.3 million for a roundabout is that, as Coulombe has stated,  it is essential to his plan to create a shopping mall, which he euphemistically calls a "village";

2) Vietnam never came up in my conversation with Eric Russell, but I did serve as an anti-Vietnam War protestor in Washington and other places. I also served aspirational students, from freshmen to PhD's for forty years, and the general public as a writer of biographies of Twain, Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, among others. Teaching and writing are professions of service. Vodka less so. I recommend Adams to Paul Coulombe as a model of what he should try to be.

Fred Kaplan

Boothbay