What Teddy Bears and the Name Platner Have in Common
Updated: May 10
This morning, I handed her another teddy bear graham cracker. It dances a wobbly performance in her sweet little fingers—then it’s popped into her mouth, crunched up by her back teeth, she’s just discovered.
Later, I was listening to an interview with Jon Stewart and Graham Plattner, who is running for the Maine State Senate. Somewhere between the two, the graham cracker and the interview, my brain made one of those connections that don’t really matter, except that it does.
What do teddy bears and the name Platner have in common?
Graham, of course.
It made me smile, that kind of small thought you don’t expect to stay. I kept listening. What landed for me wasn’t where he went to school— or didn’t.
He mentioned George Washington University almost in passing. That he didn’t finish.
That wasn’t the point.
“I read a lot of history books.”
That was the point,
I’ve never been someone who loved history class. But I recognize that kind of smart when I hear it. The kind that isn’t handed to you. The kind you build—quietly, over time.
While a college student in D.C., he met politicians and discovered they are not so different than him.
He’s a fisherman from Downeast Maine, where I live.
But before all that, he was a Marine with multiple deployments into heavy combat.
He talked about finding community in the military—and losing it when he first came home.
And how lonely that was.
What he found, just like me, was the kind of happiness that comes from a small-town community that knows one another, the kind that has benefit dinners at the drop of a hat when a family or neighbor is in need.
He talked about how, in the military, he felt like he was fighting for something. And then, over time, that feeling shifted. He didn’t know who he was fighting for anymore.
What he came home with to Down East, Maine wasn’t just experience—but a kind of anger.
The kind of emotional place a person could stay.
But he didn’t.
What he found instead was strength in a sense of place, of belonging, and working alongside others, making life a little better in his small town of a thousand people. Just like I have witnessed in my Down East, Maine community.
I like him.
And I felt something I haven’t felt in a while—a real sense of hope.
Something I can share with my adult children, who are so discouraged about our government. Something I can feel for this little one’s future, enjoying her dancing teddy bear graham crackers,
If you'd like to hear the full interview, click here.
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