One benefit we enjoy with our “old-school” print subscription to the Gazette is the messy habit of saving the good stuff and letting columns and letters and cartoons pile up beside my husband’s living-room chair. On Memorial Day, the old Jan. 24 Opinion Page turned up, featuring three articles still percolating and personally relevant.
First, above the fold, Michael Carolan’s story about the patriots in his colonial family history reminds me of my own supposed genealogical connection with 18th century rabble-rouser Samuel Adams. Carolan’s column also recalls a banner I photographed while exploring my Scottish roots last week. It was at a rally beside the Edinburgh parliament buildings, shouting “Reclaim Independence!” And here in Amherst, in some of my other saved Gazettes: “No Kings” rallies, one after another with front-page coverage. Some news never gets old.
Also in that January edition of the Gazette is the political cartoonist Kuper’s vision of Uncle Sam holding an American dollar. Both Sam and his dollar are depicted in a scrawny, diminished state — like the currency exchange in my head as I checked menus and price tags in Scotland.
The third piece I found in this January Gazette is a guest column by Rudy Perkins: “Trump’s new forever wars — Greenland,” a war not so new anymore and, so far, only a war of words, but still percolating and disturbing and, well, worth rereading until somebody unplugs the pot and takes my papers out to the recycle bin.
Jane McPhetres Johnson
Amherst