Tag Archives: Maine

A 7-11 as a gathering place in a small town

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In American communities today, what businesses offer spaces for people to shop and interact with other people 24 hours a day? A profile of a 7-11 in Lewiston, Maine amid a shooting in the community offers one such example:

Photo by Jack Sparrow on Pexels.com

The night of the shooting, Dalia Karim locked the doors of her family’s 7-Eleven for the first time in 17 years. “We never close,” she told me. As owners of one of the few businesses in Lewiston, Maine, that remains open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Karims built a livelihood and a reputation by serving customers from all walks of life at all hours. Since 2007, save for a brief afternoon to complete floor repairs, Karim’s store has provided what she calls the “everyday purchases” of life: milk, cereal, soda, donuts, cigarettes, chips, beer. Nearly half of the purchases at her registers are made by EBT cards, she said, and many of her patrons lack the resources to drive to or shop at conventional grocery stores and arrive on foot. To them, the Karims’ 7-Eleven is often a singular source of sustenance…

It was the quietest Friday night Buck and April had ever worked. “The place was like a ghost town,” April said. Though the shooter still hadn’t been found, they both figured that by then, he’d either fled town or taken his own life. At one point, Buck saw police officers tackle a man on a motorcycle driving down Main Street—but it was the wrong guy…

Instead, her mourning took place behind the counter. One night, a woman came in and showed Dalia her wedding ring. “My fiancé is dead,” she said. Karim left the register to give her a hug. Another night, a man came into the store in search of a print copy of that day’s Lewiston Sun Journal. He wanted the paper to memorialize the loss of his brother. As he left, the back of his sweatshirt offered his brother’s name and the dates of his birth and recent death…

When the lunch rush came, Dalia attended to the register. The typical chitchat—about the Celtics, about the weather—came and went. Several customers wore blue Lewiston Strong T-shirts, but no one said anything in particular about the anniversary itself. Then a woman bought a copy of Uncle Henry’s sell-and-swap magazine. Beneath the magazine stood a small stack of print copies of that day’s Lewiston Sun Journal, devoted to stories about the anniversary of the shooting. One story was about a group of cornhole players who’d once played at Schemengees but had since found a new place to gather. Another story was about the resilient children who, despite the memory of the shooting, continued to bowl at Just-in-Time Recreation Center. A final story detailed the efforts of several organizations to come up with a design for a public memorial. When the lunch rush was over, Dalia took a moment to scan the front page of the paper. “I keep thinking: Maybe he will come back?” she said, straightening the papers. “But then I tell myself: It’s OK. It’s OK. He’s gone now.” She looked across the aisles. Soon, night would fall, and the crowds would arrive for the busiest night of the week. But for now, in the convenience store that had given her family a life in this city, and a future in this country, Dalia Karim had a few quiet hours to herself.

I assume there are sociological studies of such spaces. I would be interested to know:

  1. How do the stories, meanings, and relationships generated at 7-11 compare to the same generated in more “official” locations like City Hall or schools? Or to other social spaces/businesses in Lewiston?
  2. How does the 7-11 factor in the social networks of the community? Do people see it as a node important to them or not? Who in the town wouldn’t go to the 7-11?
  3. If the 7-11 were to disappear for some reason, what could take its place (if anything)?
  4. After COVID-19, how many 24 hour a day places are no longer and what does this mean for communities and people within them?

In a society where life seems polarized and atomized, could certain businesses offer room for relationships to form and people to get what they need when they want it? 7-11 and similar stores can offer particular goods for people at all hours and can provide opportunities to share small conversations and information about the town.

Maine towns dissolve local governments amid budget issues

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Many Americans want more local control but what if the local government can’t pay the bills? A number of towns in Maine have dissolved their local governments:

At a time of rising municipal costs, local governments around the country are looking for ways to rein in tax bills, pursuing privatization, the consolidation of services, mergers and even bankruptcy…

But in northern Maine, as operating costs have increased, the economy has stagnated and the population has aged and dwindled, a handful of struggling towns have pursued the unusual process of eliminating local government entirely…

Under state law, dismantling a local government takes 12 complex steps, often over at least two years, including legislative approval and a series of local votes. When a town deorganizes, state agencies and the county administer its services, like snow removal, policing and firefighting. Children are assigned to appropriate schools, often in a nearby district. Town-owned buildings and land are sold or held in trust by the state or the county. And every local government job is eliminated…

Other states have unorganized or unincorporated areas, but in Maine about half of the land is Unorganized Territory. The area predates the state itself — it was laid out when Maine was still part of Massachusetts and new settlers were expected to flock there. But the harsh climes of Maine’s wild lands, as they used to be known, never filled out with enough people to self-govern.

This last paragraph may be key: because of particular settlement patterns in Maine (which may be largely due to ecological factors), it is difficult to maintain municipal government. Wouldn’t this be a perfect situation for townships or county governments? For example, the township structure in Illinois is used as an illustration of an unnecessary layer of government in a state that has the most governmental bodies in the country. But, a local government serving a broader geography could be a helpful middle ground that allows residents to feel like they can have input while dispersing the costs over a broader area.

If the local government is officially dissolved, what marks the community? An understanding among local residents? Are there even any municipal boundaries or are these decisions then left to other bodies (like the Postal Service)?

More broadly, it would be interesting to see how many communities have “disappeared” in the United States in recent decades. I have found a few of these in my research on suburbs but it tended to happen prior to the 1970s through annexations and mergers.

If you want peace, you should head to Maine

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The Institute for Economics and Peace has released its rankings of the most peaceful states in the United States and Maine tops the list. Here is some more information on this ranking:

The index, which defines peace as “the absence of violence,” looks at a set of five indicators, including homicide rates, violent crimes, percentage of the population in jail, number of police officers and availability of small arms (per 100,000 people) to rank the states. The data are drawn from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On that basis, the institute finds that peace in the USA improved by 8% from 1995 to 2009.

It notes a significant correlation between a state’s level of peace and its economic opportunity, education and health but finds peacefulness is politically neutral — neither Republican nor Democratic states have an advantage.

Maine was ranked first overall because it topped the list of states on three of the five USPI indicators: number of violent crimes, number of police officers and incarceration rate.

There is some interesting regional variation with the northeast generally being more peaceful and the south being less peaceful. I’m sure there are a number of commentators and sociologists who could comment on the these findings about the South.

But, like many such rankings (see a recent example here), I’m sure people would ask whether these measures actually get at the presence or absence of violence. The percentage of the population in jail could be related to violence but there are plenty of other ways to end up in jail. The number of police officers could be related to violence but it could also be linked to funding and perceptions about crime. In terms of the availability of small arms, does this necessarily lead to violence?

Using these measures seems linked to how this organization views peace. According to the full report (page 8 of the PDF), “The methodological framework was based on envisaging a society that is perfectly at peace; a society where there is no violence, no police and no one in jail.” Here is the explanation about using the measure of small arms (page 8 of the PDF): “Additionally, this logic also applies to small arms: “the USPI does not make judgments about appropriate levels of small arms in society but rather considers their prevalence a reflection of the need for self-defense and a potential to generate violence.”

I don’t study in this area so it is interesting to read about how some of these things can ever be measured. Regarding getting a measure of small arms availability (page 10 of the PDF):

Although the U.S. has excellent data for many statistics, there is no reliable data on small arms availability, small arms ownership, or small arms sales within the U.S. or within the states of the U.S. An accurate measure of gun prevalence cannot be calculated from administrative records alone. For this reason many studies on gun prevalence use a quantitative proxy. The proxy used in the USPI is: fi rearm suicides as a percentage of total suicides (FS/S). As this indicator varied significantly from year to year for some states, a five year moving average was used in order to smooth out the variance. For example, the fi gure used for Alabama for 2008 was an average of FS/S for 2003-2007. More detail on why this proxy was chosen is supplied in Appendix B to this report.

The availability of small arms also had the lowest weighting in the rankings.