Whether talking to old friends or new, a majority of them will soon complain about a daily news overload. Even those claiming ignorance about many issues know in their bones that things aren’t normal.
All of them are hoping that the answer’s in the 2018 midterm elections.
Because Northampton and Williamsburg have been our home for over 60 years, we subscribe to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Local papers are a mixed blessing because it’s there, in black and white, that we confront the best and worst of the human condition. Our Pioneer Valley press contains the world, but in a more manageable size.
Getting to the paper at the end of my driveway is no longer a winter challenge. Ice-walker boots are put away in favor of slippers. Today’s paper in hand, I resist peeking at headlines until back inside. Thus enriched, I feel a tinge of sadness for those who must cull their morning news from TV or ubiquitous cell phones.
Hint: Things will never look up if you don’t.
The worst of May’s local outrages were vandals desecrating St. Brigid’s Catholic Church in Amherst. My first reaction is that damaging a church, synagogue or mosque is a hate crime at the bottom of the scale.
My further judgment is that whatever devilish satisfaction the perpetrators enjoyed will be short-lived. Regrets for stupidity are never far behind our actions. A rumor repeated, a child struck or a love lost live on in remorse.
For the guilty to hear that Father John Smegal, St. Brigid’s forgiving pastor, is praying for them should still one’s soul, “What have I done?”
Smashing an image of the Virgin Mary during her month of May is doubly shocking. At Saint Michael’s School in Northampton, we children sang songs of Mary each May in a rite of spring. Crowning a Mary statue with flowers was a special moment in meaningful words:
“O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.”
Mary’s destroyer surely has a mother. I hope he appreciated her gifts of life and love on Mother’s Day. That innocent plaster statue was there to remind the Roman Catholic faithful of Christ’s mother, and her primary role in the Christian story. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., is dedicated to Mary. In 1846, the Virgin Mary was named patroness of the United States of America.
As an aside, I have to wonder if St. Brigid’s cowardly attacker appreciated whom he was tangling with. Our mother got my full attention just saying “James Francis!” I don’t see how this diabolic dunce, on meeting his maker, can evade a ton of time-out in Dante’s “Purgatorio.”
The irreplaceable Stan Rosenberg’s Hampshire, Franklin and Worcester District Senate seat is open. Because she filed papers in time, Chelsea Kline’s name stands alone on the Democratic ballot in the Sept. 4 primary.
Nonetheless, Steven Connor is taking his resume of service to American veterans into a Senate write-in sticker campaign. Another strong Senate candidate is Ryan O’Donnell, Northampton’s City Council president. They must organize their unique sticker campaigns in a Boston Marathon-like search for votes in key constituencies. For starters, they’ll need loads of volunteers, money, relatives, friends and the help of every Amherst, Northampton and district voter they identify.
A late entry is lawyer David J. Murphy from Newton. Unless Murphy’s found a new way to spell Northampton, I look forward to Kline, Connors and Ryan’s stump speeches quoting Tip O’Neill’s wisdom, “All politics is local.” And its corollary: “Ask for their vote.”
Sixty-five years ago my dad ran in a four-candidate Democratic primary for mayor of Northampton. Attorneys Ed Dunphy and David Keefe, Bob Nolan and “Smiling Jim” Cahillane battled for the Irish vote in a Democratic donnybrook that ended in a recount.
It’s local history because Jim’s 21-vote primary win, plus ousting the incumbent, made him the city’s tercentennial mayor and one of two Irish-born mayors in America.
Lt. Col. Oliver North (Ret.) is the new president of the National Rifle Association. North is infamous for selling arms to Iran in order to finance rebels against a leftist government in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Convicted on three charges, he was fortunate to escape jail time.
President Ronald Reagan then, like Attorney General Jeff Sessions today, could not recall much about who did what when.
In his initial NRA rant, disgraced Ollie called the Parkland high school student survivors “Civil terrorists.”
Felonious Ollie North is the ideal apologist to head the NRA for weapon makers. The man’s not a stealth appointment. Everyone knows what he is.
Jim Cahillane, of Williamsburg, writes a monthly column. He can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.