Neighbors

Dorothy Lauriet wears a button that tells it all: “This is no ordinary person you are dealing with.”

The 80-year-old (“almost 81!”) would qualify as Southwest Harbor’s gadfly, if she still went to meetings as she used to.

Today, she dismisses all the town politics with one wave of her hand.

“I used to go to all the meetings, but every damn public building has florescent lights, and I don’t like that,” she said.

“Plus, I get so damn frustrated with the lack of vision of the selectmen.

“I have appeared many times before them with suggestions, but they always answer: ‘We’ve never done things like that before.’

“So I have given up.”

Lauriet fancies herself a forward-thinking resident. But the way she lives is just the opposite: no television, microwave, no clothes dryer, no answering machine, and no computer.

A widow for 25 years, she is happy to live alone by the water. She and her husband, who was with the Coast Guard, moved to Southwest Harbor in 1947.

Recently, one of her four children told her that she was the longest-residing resident on the whole of Clark Point Road.

But join the Clark Point Ladies group, as she was once asked? Never.

“The way I live drives some people nuts,” she said. “But I am reading like never before.”

This is a woman who has time for books, and for others who love reading as much.

Three years ago, she and two others started a reading group. They meet at her house.

The others are Lorraine Saunders, the town’s former librarian, and Susan Plimpton.

 “I have had calls from people who want to join our group,” Lauriet said. “My stock remark is: I only have three chairs.”

 Lauriet is sharp, but engaging. She keeps an ear out for what others are talking about, but stops short of going to any more meetings.

Even so, she isn’t short of opinions.

She says she is supportive of those with responsible ideas. For the first few years after the Association of Concerned Taxpayers started five years ago, she edited the association’s newsletter.

But even that came to bother her.

“Finally I got fed up with that group, too, because they didn’t have any vision, either.

“I’m not adverse to them, and I will still speak to them. But I don’t go to their meetings.

“I hate meetings. I can’t be bothered wasting time any more.

Anything she does have a fondness for, we wondered?

“I love to drink champagne,” she said.

“But it’s got to be French champagne.”