On Nov. 17, in an upstairs conference room of the Bangor Public Library, Jeff Shula of the Bangor Weekly jointly interviewed me and Terence Hughes, a rabid pro-lifer, on the issue of abortion. We spent about 30 seconds laying out the ground rules, and then dove head-first into an incredibly intense two-hour session on the issue at hand.

The next day I went to Bowdoin College to witness the Green Party's official emergence following Jonathan Carter's showing in the race for governor. I had hoped that Saturday's meeting, in a room full of supposedly like-minded people, would help to detoxify me from Friday's session.

Didn't happen. In fact, I found myself longing for the ease at which ground rules had been established with the pro-lifer, and the luxury of spending 99 percent of the time actually talking about the issues.

In a room packed with about 200 people, Green Resolution #1 was read. It asked the question of whether the group did indeed want to become an official party, and if so, what it would be called. After about 10 minutes, someone in the back of the room ''called the question.'' The term, which cuts off debate, comes straight out of parliamentary procedure and is familiar to anyone who has attended a town meeting in Maine.

''OK, all those in favor.'' All but a few hands were raised. Two were opposed.

The leader then started to read Resolution #2, when yours truly raised her hand and said, ''Wait a minute, we haven't voted on the first resolution, we just voted to call the question, to cut off debate.''

A woman at the front of the room took strong exception.

She said the Greens had never agreed to conduct the meeting according to parliamentary procedure, and that ''everyone in the room knew'' the vote was on the resolution, not on calling the question. Since clearly I didn't know and I was in the room, her statement was false on its face, but it brought me up short, and reminded me of a farm apprentice we had one year.

The fellow, a sharp kid of about 20, came to us from the very heart of New York City. When we stuck him on the tractor and asked him if he had ever driven stick-shift, he said, ''Um, do I use this key to start it?'' Turns out subways got him everywhere he ever needed to go and he had never driven a motor vehicle of any kind. We promptly got him off the tractor, put a hoe in his hand, and stood him in front of a quarter-acre strawberry plot. ''We're going to weed the strawberries,'' I said. ''Great,'' he said. ''Which are the strawberries?''

With some people, like our apprentice, and like Terence Hughes, who spends his spare time picketing clinics and writing scathing letters to the editor, you just have to go back a lot farther to get to common ground, before you can go forward.

Hughes and I did find common ground. We both agreed that individuals born alive were individuals. We agreed that, at the point of viability, the fetus had developed enough that it could exist as an individual if it had to. We agreed that a unique set of genes existed at the point of conception.

But Hughes clearly did not like my analogy to seeds, or when I said there was a big difference between potential and actual and that even the terminology ''unborn'' implies something that is not yet.

''When we grew seven acres of vegetables,'' I said, ''the potential of those seven acres could fit in about two five-gallon buckets.'' All those seeds contained the unique genetic makeup of each and every vegetable, but I couldn't make my living by selling the potential in those two buckets. The seeds had to grow and mature, the potential had to become actual.

All the fetus has to have is food and shelter and it will live to the point of viability, Hughes insisted.

I've got two kids, I said. Having been through that process twice, I'm here to tell you that pregnancy is not a passive activity. Further, if the fetus is indeed an individual before viability, then anyone should be able to provide that food and shelter. Since clearly the pregnant woman is the only one who can provide food and shelter to the fetus before the point of viability, the question then becomes, does the government have the right to compel a woman to provide food and shelter to something growing within her body?

That was the level of discussion in that debate. It was intense. It was exhausting, but not as exhausting as the Green meeting.

Bickering over how to take a vote. Resistance to the party having a public relations person or committee, because ''public relations has a bad connotation.'' Insistence that the Greens needed to get away from the reliance on majority rule and ''this vote thing.''

(There was also some guy who was repulsed at the suggestion that the Green headquarters be located in the state capital of Augusta, because he couldn't stand to think about the Greens trying to function in a place where so many awful politicians hung out. And another who actually stood up and insisted the headquarters be located in Portland, the state's most populous city, located in its southern tip, since everything important that happens in Maine happens in Portland – thereby confirming for all the Maine media rapidly taking notes the suspicion that Green organizers ascribed to the Two-Maine philosophy, which has bitterly divided urban and rural Maine for generations.)

Our farm apprentice those many years ago was prepared to accept the basic premise of organic farming. Hughes and I clearly knew that while we were on opposite sides of the fence, we still had ground rules. But the sense I got in that crowded room packed with Green wannabees that Saturday was that many people were fighting against the concept of political parties even as they were voting to establish one.

It was like the Greens were saying not, ''Which are the strawberries?'' but instead, ''Weeds have rights too.''

Maine's Green Party thinks it has been born. I think it has been conceived. The potential is there, but it is not yet actual. There is a whole lot of feeding and sheltering to do before this organism reaches the point of viability.

I cannot compel.

I sigh, and I wish it well.

– Maine Progressive