Much Echo of Nothing

As the true son of a news junkie who brought home five daily newspapers to peruse every evening, I’m more prone to read entire articles–whether in print or posted online–than to take headlines and teasers as all I need.

Before I turned ten, I absorbed all the comics and sports pages I could pull from the pile. Before I turned twelve, as one classmate recalls, our grade school class was assigned to write a letter asking questions of one of the presidential candidates. Of 51 boys and girls, I alone chose Nixon.

Might be more surprising when I tell you it was a Catholic school in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But that’s precisely the reason: I knew far less of Nixon than of JFK. If I wasn’t already following JFK’s work in the senate, I had read his Profiles in Courage, assigned by the Catholic school I attended. So, of course, Nixon’s the one. To question.

This week’s headlines tell us that Stephen Miller, the sadist who concocted America’s current purposefully cruel and inhumane immigration policy–indiscriminate goon-squad raids, family separation, murders, kids in cages, sleeping on concrete floors–is now White House Chief of Staff.

Most folks I know were nauseated enough by that bit of news that they turned their attention back to the light at the end of America’s authoritarian tunnel to celebrate the nationwide repudiation of the Rubber Stamp Party.

Can’t blame them, but I scrolled down looking, as always, for something I did not already know. What I found would soon be the stuff of an opening monologue of Jimmy Kimmel on late-night TV, complete with a video of Santa Monica High School senior Miller with a head of dark hair, beard, and mustache, speaking into a microphone before some segment of the SMHS student body.

Before listening in, I had already heard an odd echo in what I read, but couldn’t put a finger on it.

Running for class president, he vows to say and do “things that no one else in their right mind would dare say and do.” Hard to argue with that. A year later, he introduced himself to the freshman orientation team at Duke University by saying, “I’m from Santa Monica, California, and I like guns.”

Throughout his four years at Duke, his nickname was “Guns.”

Sorry, that’s getting ahead of the unlikely echo I heard when Guns offered an example of something that only he alone would say. In a voice that made the microphone seem redundant, he declared that he was “sick and tired” of being told to pick up his trash.

Huh? Did this relic of Neanderthalism still exist in 2003? On the Southern California coast?

But more: He went further, reminding his audience that janitors get paid to bend over, and that they, students, should feel free to throw anything on the floors, free of the tyranny that would require them to hold or pocket a paper wrapper until they walk past a trash container, or a banana peel until outdoors and perhaps feed a palm tree or rosemary bush.

Where had I heard that before?

Make the janitors do their jobs! I’ve never had a janitorial job, except for the very end of nights that I’m a projectionist at a small arts cinema. I’m the only one there, so I’m also ticket-taker (Jack the Ripper!), concessionaire, and sometimes usher. When the late show is over and the audience leaves, I alone sweep the floors.

I’ve always been and still am grateful that our demographic–mostly senior, mostly women–is neat to the point of conscientious. Every now and then we show a film that draws a much younger crowd that isn’t nearly as mindful of what they set and, perhaps, forget on the floor. Plus, they triple the sales of popcorn.

So it was last night after two showings of the curiously popular–despite its three-hour length–You Can See Everything, I was looking at more wrappers, bags, and popcorn than I’ve seen in my 28 years here. And then it clicked.

Not long after my debut in the booth showing As Good as It Gets, possibly Woody Allen’s most forgettable film despite its promising title, Seinfeld ended its nine-year run on network TV. Never saw a single episode, as I limit my TV viewing to sports, news, and PBS documentaries, but anticipation of Seinfeld‘s end so dominated the news for at least a week in 1998, that I had to watch the finale.

Not once did I laugh, nor did I smile, nor was there a single scene or line that I could recall by the end of that week. Afterward, Jerry Seinfeld’s frequent boast that it was “a show about nothing” struck me as an understatement.

But I do recall what he said in a late night PBS interview after I got home from showing Shakespeare in Love. I must have been falling asleep, perchance to dream, as I don’t recall what prompted the comment, but Nothing Man declared that moviegoers not only had every right to throw trash on the floor, but that they should do it, that the price of the ticket bestowed that right upon them.

If I had put my reaction in writing at the time, someone might have forwarded it to the FBI, and I’d be answering questions about exactly what would happen “if I ever come within arm’s length of” Nothing Man. I was a wee 47 at the time, so the statute of limitations is long gone, but I’d still rather not admit to thinking, much less writing anything such as, “I’ll hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes even if you’re in a crosswalk, which you probably never are, you hemorrhoidal a——!”

Then again, I’d still stand by telling him, “You have the brains of a door knob!”

Today, I can’t help but connect the dots. Nothing’s interview was a mere five years before Guns’ anti-janitor rant. Nothing was wildly popular with Guns’ generation. Nothing may be obliviousness personified, while Guns is a high strung fret board of superiority, but those add up to to much of what you now see in the news.

Yes, I know that Guns’ treatment of immigrants is deliberately cruel, while all I sweep is carelessness.

Still, somewhere between cruelty and carelessness is an American attitude widespread enough to make hits of TV shows “about nothing.” For all of its 11 years. And to elect a “Reality” TV bully to the presidency. Twice.

Listen to the video of Guns’ high school rant in 2003 and you’ll hear as many cheers as boos from his young audience. Or go to your favorite cinema when there’s a popular film with a large audience, stay until the end credits roll, and look at the floor between the aisles on your way out.

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No pics of me sweeping, so here I am as concessionaire, eyeing popcorn with sad intent, calculating how much of it I will sweep when the show is over. Photo courtesy of Bob Watts.

When We Do Not Hold to Account

From Lake Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico to Mount Denali, America has returned to its senses, rejected authoritarian rule, repudiated the cruelty and pettiness of the Ballroom Administration, renounced the glaring corruption of the crypto-currency family, and renewed a government of, by, and for all who live in the USA.

Or, as happened in 2008 and in 2020, we have at least given Democrats the chance.

Already the debate has begun within the Democratic Party, cast as Progressive vs. Centrist. Do they stick with the current, cautious leadership, or do they turn to bold young members such as Rep. AOC and Sen. John Ossoff?

I can hear the corporate donors weighing in now: “Let’s keep leadership cleansed of any abrasive components, and have a nice, polite congress.”

That’s as oblivious to what the American electorate said on Nov. 3 as the losing party electing the histrionic Rep. Jim Jordan Minority Leader, and the reviled president appointing the sadistic Steven Miller as Chief of Staff.

Good luck being nice and polite with those Towers of Babel.

People saying that Democrats shouldn’t investigate cabinet secretaries and corporados and, instead, “just focus on” the economy are as impervious to learning anything as the red-cappers who believe the Golden Calf’’s contradictory claims about Iran’s nuclear capabilities and its hold on the Strait of Hormuz.

Are we supposed to believe, or even agree, that Hormuz was not open and free of charge before the start of the Iran War? Or not notice that it happened when news of the Epstein files was at a pique?

The word for what cautious Democrats are saying is “appeasement.” Biden tried it by making a corpse his Attorney General. Result? Bonespur regains the presidency.

Obama rode into the White House on a wave of revulsion for Wall Street on the rocks of a ruined economy. Not one financial institution or CEO paid any price. Indeed, he bailed them all out. Result? The rise of the Tea Party, and a Republican rout in the 2010 midterms.

As well as fat bonuses for those CEOs and other corporate higher ups from the bail-out money. (A precursor of the Todd Blanche-conceived proposal for a slush-fund from the US Treasury to support convicted Jan. 6 felons?)

Some historians say that Pres. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Pres. Richard Nixon set the stage for all this. If so, we could go back another century to Pres. Andrew Johnson’s refusal to hold any Confederates leaders to account. Result? The KKK’s reign of terror throughout the South and Jim Crow which reached into the North.

Or go further back to 12 years before the Civil War when Herman Melville noted how leaders of seemingly successful revolutions in Europe failed to hold their oppressors to account. His verdict? “Victory reverts to the vanquished.”

If Schumer and Jeffries are replaced, I’ll shed no tear, but many of the progressive representatives, including AOC, want to keep Jeffries in place. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Holland announced a challenge to Schumer just last night, but, so far, very few senators have given any voice to the possibility of change.

And then there’s Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, insisting that “Democrats must be bold” in his endorsement of Van Holland.

My hunch is that many Democratic officials want to retain Jeffries’ and Schumer’s procedural abilities, and with their numbers think they can determine the direction in which leadership goes. Surely, the progressives will keep reminding the centrists that, back in the primaries, it was progressives that kept beating centrists.

Schumer is a weird case: On the one hand, he found and recruited Scott Colom in Mississippi. On the other hand, he directed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee not to help fund the US senate bid of Angie Nixon–a life-long community organizer–in Florida.

She lost by just three points to Ashley Moody–appointed by Ron DeSantis to replace Marco Rubio–whose claim to fame is a vote to keep the Epstein files concealed.

There are encouraging signs. Rep. Jamie Raskin compared what awaits Democrats to putting out a fire: First you take care of the victims, then go after the arsonists.

Sen. Corey Booker may have been channeling Martin Luther King: We can reject “the tyranny of Or” and exercise “the liberty of And.”

Soon after Jan. 3, we’ll see if they mean it.

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https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2018/02/impeachment-andrew-johnson-timeline/

A Fashionable Forecast for Nov. 3

Most folks who take an interest in the affairs of their nation and the world–as opposed, say, to the affairs of their neighbors and celebrities–look for signs of what’s ahead.

This has always been true. Books of the Bible and plays of Shakespeare are filled with characters with various degrees of sanity who looked to the stars above or the weather below.

The Star of Bethlehem and the Ides of March gave the world the birth of Christ and the death of Caesar while Halley’s Comet by itself gave America both the birth and unexaggerated death of Mark Twain.

All that was all then. Today we wear our own signs, at near eye-level, making them not just easy to see but impossible to miss–even though few of us ever comment on the hats, shirts, sweaters, jackets, and sometimes seats-of-pants worn by strangers.

Lacking any such inhibition, I am quick to engage when I see the name of a place I’ve been.

If possible, I start by naming a restaurant: Dressel’s in St. Louis, Estaban’s in Minneapolis, Luigi’s in Akron. Or by description: “The Bavarian place” in Hagerstown, “the Italian place where Joe Montana hangs out” in Santa Rosa, “the brew pub serving Bozone Ale” in Bozeman, Montana.

Idle chatter? Maybe, but it’s a most useful tool of trade for a Renaissance faire performer whose job is to make folks smile and laugh. What better way to make anyone feel welcome than to show favor to what they show of themselves?

Admittedly, I have an easier time doing this because I am in period garb playing period dance tunes on a period flute. “Put on a costume,” offers one artistic director, “and you can get away with anything.”

There is one self-imposed limit that my employers most likely approve without my asking: I make no comments on political names or messages that appear on patrons’ clothing.

Before 2015, through all of the W Bush and Obama years, I might have asked or joked about something else they wore or carried, but it made no difference which side they were on in 1999 or in 2014 once they crossed the border into 1510.

But then, speaking of Biblical signs, the Golden Calf descended the Tower of Babel and has never since stopped spreading fear itself.

My reaction was instinctual. Luckily, I have very good long-distance and peripheral vision, so I can spot a red cap 25 feet away and know if it’s a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap or a MAGA dunce cap. At that distance, it is very easy to avoid eye-contact and say nothing when they come near without them noticing the dodge.

With a wind instrument, it’s quite easy to give a slight bow if I hear a “Hello” without having to smile at a sign of hate. All while playing “Greensleeves.”

As for patrons showing endorsements for candidates who favor public support for health care, education, a clean environment, consumer protection, labor unions, and occupational safety, there’s a stretch of five notes I can play with one hand while the other goes thumbs up.

Last year this was more of a challenge when each day a few people entered in clothes honoring the recently assassinated hatemonger Charlie Kirk added to, say, ten or so in MAGA and Trump apparel. That, however, only makes this year more of a pleasant surprise.

In a year that we have record-breaking attendance over seven weekends, I haven’t seen more than a single right-wing article of clothing. This has also been true in downtown Salem where I play weekdays to attract attention to a witch-trial reenactment. As early as mid-September downtown is teeming with tourists from all over the country. Last year, the dunce caps and Kirk shirts were plenty. This year, a single hat with a barely noticeable “47” on it.

The one shirt I spotted at the faire may well be open to interpretation. One the front, it had an image of the White House with the word “Mission.” Below it was “Status, Complete.” On the back, “Mission” over an outline of Canada. Below: “Status, Complete.”

Can’t argue with the front while the personification of greed still resides there, but Canada? Does this guy think it’s now the 51st state or that it’s under our military occupation?

Is he so lost in the cult of personality–a hallmark of fascism–that he accepts it as true as soon as dear leader says it? Or is he simply eager to let the rest of us know that he does not or cannot think for himself and is proud of it?

Be he as he may, call him an exception that emphasizes the rule. The lack of any other Trump or MAGA attire at an event that draws a few thousand people each of 15 days, and in a city that draws an estimated million through these two months, bodes well for the USA.

And I, through it all, make no comment.

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Keeping my eye out for signs. Photo by Paul Shaughnessy, 2015.

A Tale of Two Watering Holes

In DC, a reflecting pool no longer reflects. In Newburyport, a frog pond will soon evict frogs.

Yes, comparisons to Donald Trump will be taboo soon after he is gone. Now, however, his desecrations of our government, from its documents to its architecture, are fair game for comparisons to other places and those who hold office there.

After all, a comparison is not an equation, but a tool for understanding and analysis. Listen to any speech by Martin Luther King, and hear them unfold one after another.

Anyway, no one would ever mistake the Frog Pond for the Reflecting Pool, and I’m not about to talk about water or aquatic life or photosynthesis or shades of sky blue or algae green. My damp comparison is about a soaking budget–or is it someone soaking a budget?

Millions were wasted on lining the Reflecting Pool, just as $3.4 million will drown in the Frog Pond.

No Americans have ever called for a crayon-colored Reflecting Pool in the nation’s capital. Instead, at present, we call for a halt to inflation and the needless war and tariffs that have caused it.

So, too, no Newburyporters have ever called for an amusement-parked Frog Pond. Instead, for years now, calls have been for sidewalk and road repair.

Moreover, just as national services for the elderly are cut, City Hall has “not renewed” the Council on Aging’s Outreach Specialist at the Senior Center.

Daily News readers will recall letters in June telling of petitions to retain Ann Freeman in that position after Mayor Sean Reardon omitted it from the city budget.

Judging from many tributes to Freeman for her rapport with and effectiveness at meeting the needs of seniors, she was worth far more than her salary.

Forget the $3.4 million. Her salary would be less than the preposterous, big-square-peg-in-small-round-hole provision for recreational boating.

Just as in the White House, however, City Hall is run by an executive who will not take no for an answer while he ignores public needs and wants and craves attention.

Like Narcissus, he looks lovingly into his wet vanity project.

The “non-renewal”–a euphemism that fools only fools–has been a useful tool for Reardon to advance his plan. Since it was first introduced, he has “not renewed” at least one member of a civic board with scientific expertise who objected to City Hall’s skipping of environmental and liability studies in its rush to create photo-op boating on the Frog Pond.

In a pre-Trump and pre-Reardon world, objections and cautions based on expertise would count for more than a mindless “yes.”

Mindlessness doesn’t end there. In a document obtained by local gadfly Walt Thompson on a Freedom of Information request, one of the companies bidding for the project asks a straightforward question about contractual risk:

If, after dewatering, the sediment proves too liquid to support installation of the geogrid and liner, would that constitute an ‘unforeseen condition’ requiring renegotiation of the contract?

Here’s the city’s response:

This question is highly speculative and is contradictory to the findings of the various investigations. Based on this, the City declines to answer this question at this time.

Thompson, laughing at the word “dewatering,” called the exchange worthy of 1984. He’s not wrong, but I’d say Catch-22 is closer to the mark.

As for City Council’s hand in this, here’s a summary of what two councilors told me:

The City Council cannot make additions to the Mayor’s budget… What we CAN do is propose cuts to other departments in order to free up funds that would hopefully be used to fund the Outreach Specialist position… In the end, we succeeded in passing $240K+ cuts and encouraged the Mayor to fund the Outreach Specialist position. He chose not to do so.

Regarding DC’s pool, it’s just over a month before we decide what Congress will reflect. As for the Frog Pond, we’re stuck with a question for the foreseeable future:

How many more Ann Freemans will it cost us to float Mayor Reardon’s toy boats?

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Yes, the Frog Pond also reflects, as it does the Superior Courthouse where a very young John Quincy Adams, fresh out of Harvard, got his start as an apprentice lawyer.

No Coffeeshop for Old Men

I’ve been a coffee addict since college, and a frequent caffeiner of coffeeshops since my first stay in Seattle a few years before they started appearing here on the Atlantic coast.

Here in Newburyport, with a preference for the independents and the fresh pastry they always offer, I sit and sip in Cafe Chococoa so often–and at times for so long–that they should charge me rent instead of having me pay per cup.

Downtown has other coffeeshops, of course, one of which is so conveniently within steps of the laundromat, that I can’t resist taking whatever book I’m reading at the time and going there for the dry cycle.

Last Monday, I went in for a cup of coffee while there were three young women behind the counter. One was sorting out and counting money while another was packing pastry into boxes. The third woman was alternately engaged in talk with one or both of them while also taking the order of two customers who walked in ahead of me.

Those two customers had many questions about options for their orders, which the woman waiting on them answered–while also continuing to talk with her co-workers. Meanwhile, I stood there, knowing exactly what I wanted–a hot coffee, black, which would have taken less than a minute to serve–waiting for one of the other two to take my order. Never happened. After at least five minutes, I turned without saying a word, went out the door, and walked around the corner to Abraham’s Bagels.

Thinking that management might want to know about this, I sent a message via the shop’s website to “Whom It Concerns” describing what had happened. Because I have lately noticed things like this in retail settings, I wondered if my complaint was generational. And so I added this to my message:

Decades ago, I was hired as a delicatessen clerk, my very first job. Among the most vivid memories I have of that first day is the very first instruction: Never leave a customer waiting for any reason other than waiting on another customer. Any other task was to be put aside.

I’m not writing to complain about your staff, but to let you know how it reflects on your business…

Seemed impossibly silly, but I just could not shake a nagging feeing that what I had been taught sixty years ago is today as much an anachronism in the retail setting as counting back change.

Outside the retail setting, the list goes on: Blaming yourself for not watching your step when you trip over something rather than immediately asking, “Who can I sue?” (sic) Or looking both ways and making eye-contact with drivers before crossing a street rather than expecting everyone to halt as soon as you start to cross paying attention to nothing other than your cellphone.

I tried to reassure myself that any answer would surely concede that one of the baristas should have at least acknowledged my presence with a cheery, “Be right with you.” Oddly, the response says almost everything but that:

I understand the principle you were taught decades ago, but unfortunately, the idea of never leaving a customer waiting is not always practical in a small café with a small team and limited space.

There are many essential tasks that need to happen throughout the day: restocking food and cups, cleaning, rebrewing coffee, and preparing for the next rush. If we only did these things when there were no customers in the café, many of them simply would never get done. We would quickly run out of things, and the overall experience for everyone would suffer. Sometimes, a customer will need to wait a little while so that we can keep the café running properly.

I would also like to clarify that seeing several people behind the counter does not necessarily mean that several employees are actively working. Our baristas are welcome to come in and enjoy coffee whenever they like, even when they are not working. One of the things they appreciate about working at _____ is this relaxed environment. They often voluntarily offer to help the person on shift with small tasks, which I appreciate and encourage. I could also have been one of the people you saw that day. When I am at the café, it is usually to take care of a specific task rather than to work a regular shift.

We also currently have several baristas in training, and simply being present behind the counter does not necessarily mean someone is yet able to take orders or perform every task independently.

Finally, while I appreciate that you knew exactly what you wanted, we cannot control how many questions the customers ahead of you may have. We want everyone to feel welcome asking questions and taking the time they need to make their choices, even if that occasionally means someone else has to wait a little longer.

If you are in a hurry and would prefer not to wait in line, you are also always welcome to place an order online ahead of time for pickup.

Thank you again for taking the time to share your feedback.

Warmly,

“Warmly” is such a nice touch. Surely the writer did not intend to insult me, but how else could I take that after an oddly AI-generated-sounding blizzard of excuses for making a customer standing patiently in their shop feel that he is not worth their attention? And the suggestion to “order online”? Now that is no coffeeshop for old men!

Silly as it seemed, my hunch was right, it is the business, not the employees, that will neglect a customer for the sake of its own policy & procedure. Toto, we are not in the 20th Century anymore.

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Now this is my cup of coffee. Here I am looking at a place where I would be welcome, Edward Hopper’s *Nighthawks*, in a place where I was and would still be welcome, Chicago’s Museum of Art, back in 2008. Photo by Michael Boer: https://www.flickr.com/photos/onewe/

Can I Get an Eyewitness?

In the aftermath of the ICE raid of a nail salon here in Newburyport, something unfolded on social media as revealing of what America has become as the raid itself.

According to terrorized employees and customers, masked agents entered the shop, guns drawn. The scene, all said, was one of terror still felt after the shop owner was taken away.

All of this was in the Newburyport Police report and a statement based on it issued by the mayor. All of that was on the Daily News’ website and all over social media within hours of the event.

For all it’s faults, social media offers an chance to draw attention to inner details often lost in a sensational event.

For instance, the Chinese national arrested by ICE was not their primary target. If he was, then any law enforcement agents would have entered the shop without guns drawn.

ICE’s prime targets are never people sought and arrested or killed. It’s those who witness the drawn guns, and if ICE has the least pretext, the gunfire. Immediately following that, it’s the people who will hear of it, the neighborhood, the town or city, and with a murder or two, the state, perhaps every state.

Deportation is ICE’s secondary purpose. Foremost is the terrorization of populations that do not conform to MAGA’s agenda.

ICE’s indirection is much like that of the censorship of American history in schools. The real purpose is not to protect (white) children from being uncomfortable, but to prevent them from knowing what their ancestors have done–and, White God forbid, possibly identifying with white folks who aided the Underground Railroad or joined the Abolitionist cause.

Any discomfort is felt by the parents wanting to bury their family past. Unable to admit that, they cite their kids, using them as shields.

But that shows how a guns-drawn ICE raid is part of a much bigger picture we keep seeing in bits and pieces, including those who cheer ICE on and enthusiastically support America’s transition into an authoritarian regime because they perceive that it favors them over those under direct attack.

To borrow an old adage, Trumpism is in the details.

One social media post complained that, lacking any video, there was no evidence of ICE entering with guns drawn. I couldn’t help myself: “What part of the word ‘eyewitness’ do you not understand?”

No matter what I or others said, a few folks insisted that only a video could establish proof. Said one, “I can say I’m an eyewitness and make up anything.”

Trying with phenomenal effort to sound matter-of-fact, I pointed out that, one, you had to be present to be an eyewitness, and, two, the several who were there all told the same story. To which someone teased, “No video, no guns.”

The exchange went on for awhile with other commenters on both sides of an argument that would have dumbfounded every Republican and Democrat alike before 2016: Whether or not eyewitness accounts can serve as evidence.

To say no is willful ignorance on steroids. If applied to history, America would have a lot to correct. How do we know John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln? Was Lincoln assassinated?

And how many court cases would be overturned? Is there a video of Dred Scott in a free state? No? Well, then, every American court must overturn every decision made before the invention of the camera.

Of course, the Supreme Court we have now would be happy to overturn “Right vs. Wrong.”

This recent exchange fits a pattern that the Trump Administration has culled from a book written following World War II to show the details of how authoritarianism begins, grows, and takes hold.

“Don’t believe your own eyes and ears,” is a tenet of George Orwell’s 1984, a book intended as a warning but now serving as a blueprint. Trump himself said exactly that, to a gathering of veterans no less, early in his first term.

It’s an extension of constant slurs against the press–and historians and scientists–but, as Orwell along with Hannah Arendt reasoned, it is not to convince us of anything, but to make us doubt everything.

Where’s the video?

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Murder by Another Name

Americans from here to Honolulu heard of ICE’s recent murder of an innocent man in Biddeford, Maine, an immigrant well on the path to citizenship who worked, supported a family, and paid taxes, the virtues of citizenship that we hold highest.

As always, ICE quickly accused him of trying to run them down with his car. As always, videos showed that to be a lie.

Then, ICE hid behind the excuse of “mistaken identity,” which reeks of denial of their foremost concern which, from the start, has been to fill quotas. Accuracy be damned. Just keep repeating the words murderers, rapists, criminals, and drug dealers, and enough of the American public will think that your target can’t be big enough.

And with so many of them on the loose, there’s bound to be some “honest” mistakes. Or should “mistakes” be the word put in quotes?

Just 60 miles north of us, Biddeford was the scene of protests and vigils that Newburyporters have joined. So, too, has an ICE detention center in nearby Scarborough, Maine. As anyone from here to Honolulu might guess, the murder–by an agent with a history of domestic abuse and threats of violence–was a hot topic of conversation, newspaper opinion pages, barroom and coffeeshop conversation in this Massachusetts seaport city two state borders away.

Meanwhile, a very different story regarding the Dept. of Homeland Security broke in Gloucester, Mass., out on the tip of Cape Ann, well north of Boston, but south of us by just half the driving distance of Biddeford, and half that as the gull glides.

Doubtful that anyone other than those who monitor DHS has heard of it, as I find over and again that people right here in Newburyport are both surprised and shocked when I tell them. If not for two friends from Rockport, the town adjacent Gloucester, telling me, I’d have missed it.

Father Benjamin Okwy Madu, a native Nigerian, arrived in the American melting pot in his 20s, newly ordained by the Catholic Church and eventually assigned to two churches in Gloucester and a third in Rockport. He was known simply as “Father Ben.”

Not just by his congregations, but by residents of assisted living and rehab centers which he frequented, and by patients in Salem Hospital where he served as chaplain. By all accounts he was tireless, always present, encouraging, and cheerful or consoling as the occasion warranted.

In a word, he was beloved by Catholics in a city heavy with a population of Portuguese descent. For years, all was well with the Catholic congregations of Rockport and Gloucester.

Until a few months ago when Father Ben received notice from the DHS that, after thirty years in this self-proclaimed “greatest country in the world,” his visa would not be renewed.

Of course, he appealed. So did Massachusetts’ governor, lieutenant governor, two US senators, the US Rep from the Sixth District, and the state legislators who represent Cape Ann, all of whom were flooded with letters, emails, and phone calls on Father Ben’s behalf. In addition to the unanimous testimony to his value to his community, petitions from the pols no doubt mentioned the persecution–murders and kidnappings–of Catholic priests in Nigeria.

DHS did not bend. Instead, it set a deadline: July 3. On July 2, Father Ben was found dead in a church rectory. He was 54.

Suicide? All the elements are there, including an impassioned letter of farewell and gratitude to his parishioners. Stress? Ditto. But there’s no need to choose. In this case, either one is murder by another name.

Yes, it made local news through the weekend in which “the land of the free and the home of the brave” celebrated 250 years of “liberty,” but the story, as they say in newsrooms, “had no legs”–possibly because we were at the time so busy waving flags and celebrating what a just, generous, and glorious nation we are.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/public-safety-and-emergencies/general/massachusetts-devastated-after-priest-dies-as-he-s-forced-to-leave-us-over-visa-issue/ar-AA28goT1

A Credit that Fools Only Fools

Celebrating Newburyport as a place where old folk thrive, a new film has wowed Screening Room audiences.

A Force for Good welcomes us to hear a dozen local seniors sketch their arrival–or childhood–here, and what they’ve since done related to civic life. Emphasis is on the city and all that is here to engage retired people with time to give, skills to share, company and conversation to offer.

Newburyport has a lot. In the museums, the schools, the Firehouse, Anna Jacques and elsewhere are opportunities to volunteer. Elderly volunteers in the library’s once-vibrant, now-stagnant Archival Center seem to have found places to remain active after they were “terminated” for no honest reason.

City Hall’s blunders aside, much of what the city offers happens at the Senior Center: arts, crafts, games, talks, workshops, assistance with tax forms and other paperwork, and more. A nice building with a few large rooms open to all kinds of civic events for people of all ages, all of it easily accessible.

Every now and then, a van will pull up to the door, and off go a gaggle of geezers on a field trip. (Hold your heat! I am one, so I can use that word.)

So it’s both predictable and natural that the Senior Center helped make A Force for Good possible, and the center is well-credited when the thank-yous roll.

On the very week the film aired at the Screening Room, a letter from the Senior Center’s Ann Freeman appeared in the Daily News. Like the film’s end-credits, it, too, was a litany of thank-yous to countless people, both individuals and groups, with and for whom she had worked until her position was, to use a euphemism that fools only fools, “not renewed.”

By title and assignment, Freeman was the “Council on Aging Outreach Specialist,” and her job description might be summed up by saying that she offered assistance and encouragement to everyone who went to her, and they were plenty, all of them aged and aging.

By all accounts she was energetic, upbeat, and committed to do all she could for men and women who are often frustrated by the time they seek help and expect nothing more than more frustration. All bear witness to how often she put people at ease and helped them solve problems.

So why the farewell?

Just weeks before A Force for Change played at the Screening Room, Mayor Sean Reardon cut her position from the city’s budget. One might assume that this is a cost savings measure, a cover-all reason impossible to argue with.

Impossible until you add the context of the rest of the budget, specifically the $3.5 million to be poured into the Frog Pond. While some attention to the pond is necessary and expensive, preparation for recreational boating is only one of those two things, and it sure ain’t necessary.

Please try to picture “recreational” boats on a body of water so small. On the Plum Island marsh, recreational boats are what we see cruising the channel. On the Frog Pond? They’d be like golf-carts on a miniature course.

Like the DC reflecting pool fiasco, this is a vanity project. More to the point, if that one line item is any more than 1/60th of the $3.5m package, then it by itself tops the annual salary of an Outreach Specialist.

Ah, no matter. Few people ever look at a city budget. Fewer yet bother with line items. And even less will hear the testimony of ten seniors at one City Hall meeting fervently asking to keep Ann Freeman where she does so much impossibly good work.

But many see films, and when it’s local with familiar faces on the big screen, most stay for the end credits. Judging by the smiles of viewers as they left the hall, few if any noticed that a film rooted in Newburyport’s Senior Center extended thanks to the very man who “not renewed” the center’s beloved staff member.

Yet another photo-op with a huge font in place of Mayor Reardon’s ever-blissful smile.

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Nothing but Cheap Camouflage

Still laughing at the absurd claim that the Town of Newbury wants to ban American flags? Beware the Pacific Legal Foundation!

The anti-environment, anti-consumer protection, anti-occupational safety national powerhouse was already here in 2015. That’s when the same handful of self-styled patriots cried for public help after an angry Atlantic damaged their waterfront homes.

They hoped to rebuild on the same sites compromised by erosion, only to meet resistance from geologists, ecologists, oceanographers, and state officials. For comic relief, I offered a Daily News column headlined, “Welcome to Dumb Island!” (Nov. 5, 2015)

My neighbors laughed for weeks, quoting phrases when we crossed island or mainland paths. Clearly, the name was for those looking for the state to not just offset their loss, but to make it possible for them to take the same risk.

Get a load of the opening line of PLF’s rebuttal:

“Gentle readers of The Daily News surely agree that it was at least impolite for a writer in this space to label all of his neighbors on Plum Island ‘dumb’.” (Nov. 30)

I guess “gentle readers” would be impolite to point out the gross distortion of the word “all.”

Such an exaggeration may appear right out of the playbook of Fox “News,” but PLF was formed at least a decade before Fox by California Reaganites who seemed to think of themselves as an ACLU for corporations.

At first they focussed on the newly-formed Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety & Health Administration, if not striking down regulations, at least buying time for pollution and hazardous workplaces until their clients found less detectable scams.

Eventually, they defended Big Tobacco against restrictions in advertising and Surgeon General’s warnings. Their tactics gained as much press as their suits. From my “Dumb” column:

Following their well-financed smear campaign against a leader of California’s main anti-smoking organization…, even the most public environmentalists are reluctant to take them on.

Some hapless college prof, as I recall, whose disgrace had nothing to do with either lung cancer or legal chicanery. As a college instructor myself, I had been warned.

Nowhere did these white collar thugs answer my implication that character assassination is PLF’s MO. Instead, they turned it on me, a street-musician (true, and hardly a secret) who “accosted” people for money downtown.

At best, this is an assumption possibly shared by folks who rarely go downtown. At length, it is false. Apart from signs on an open case or hat, street-musicians never verbally ask for donations, much less accost anyone. Any exceptions to this (called “passive hat” in the trade) do not last long.

PLF may be conflating us with acrobats, jugglers, and magicians who perform half-hour shows, and then ask for donations from a gathered and applauding crowd (“active hat”).

On the street, “hat” is an unwritten rule, but it does appear (active, passive, or no) on contracts issued by Renaissance faires

So disappointing! If only they unearthed my detention by the Secret Service in 1976, they could have painted me as a would-be assassin with an armed backpack stalking Jimmy Carter during the Oregon primary.

Leave out that it was a 15-minute interview, and imply that the backpack contained two pistols and a Communist Manifesto cleverly disguised as two wooden flutes and a Rand McNally Road Atlas.

Happy to give them another chance, I see that their initial online statement is headed by a photo that, just as on the Fox “News” site, shows a flag attached to a house, and therefore nowhere near the area restricted for the sake of plovers’ nests.

Perhaps the photo was slapped onto the site to cover any mention of what happened here in 2009. As local observer Jack Rybicki reports:

(T)hese property owners were the beneficiary of federal funds to replace sand that had washed out to sea in order to save 28 homes…

For that favor, they all signed documents obligating them to adhere to the town’s “beach management plan relative to the protection of endangered species.”

But here they are 17 years later, whining as if they never signed anything, using American flags as nothing but cheap camouflage for their own laughable absurdity.

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Other outlets of right-wing paranoia couldn’t resist this rich helping of red meat. Here’s *The Epoch Times*, a publication best known for impersonating the Bible with such claims as vaccines causing sterility. For their readers, that might be wishful thinking.
This shot could be anywhere on the beach, most likely not near the contested area, but if he has his hand over his heart, he must be sincere, right?
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/plum-island-residents-warned-against-flying-american-flags-ahead-of-july-4-post-6055629

This is Fox’s photo which appears on its site and ran with the story picked up by countless news outlets coast-to-coast. Here on Plum Island, and anywhere nearby, we all see immediately that this pic is from the street-side of the house, with the ocean and beach behind it. Therefore, no way it is part of the contested area. But Fox knows that all of its subscribers beyond, say, 50 miles, have no way of knowing that. This is from the site of a South Dakota radio station:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/plum-island-residents-warned-against-flying-american-flags-ahead-of-july-4-post-6055629

Privileged Communications

A senior citizen adverse to crowds, I avoid day-trips into Boston. I choose not to join the traffic in the streets or crowds in the subways.

But I could not resist a reading of a play-in-progress titled Privileged Communications, and I’ve longed to see The Embrace since it was unveiled on the Common in 2022.

https://thebostonsun.com/2023/01/19/the-embrace-memorial-unveiled-on-the-common-ahead-of-mlk-day/#google_vignette

Drove to Wonderland in Revere, last stop of the Blue Line, parked my Nissan in the lot, and looked up at a sign that said “PayByPhone.” I have no cellphone, another stress-preventing measure of the life I choose to live.

But the website was easy to remember, so I figured I’d tend to it online the next day.

Unable to find an email address or a phone number, I tapped into a “chat” with a bot cleverly named “Parker” that began by noting that I am “in North America.” It referred me to a phone number on the Wonderland sign. Unwilling to drive back, I asked the bot for it, only to then read:

PayByPhone does not offer a service to pay for parking retroactively or provide phone numbers for past parking sessions. Payments need to be made in real time to avoid any issues.

I thanked the bot for its mindless AI response, adding that it would serve as a document to prove I made a prompt effort to pay the fee.

But I now wonder: If we are so diligent in seeing that no one suffers discrimination due to their race, sex, faith, or gender preference, why does a de facto discrimination against those of us who choose to live free of ring-tones, algorithms, robots, trolls, memes, tracking devices, and AI go unnoticed?

If we can build ramps for those in wheelchairs, how can we not provide a simple phone number to those more inclined to make and take calls on a landline at home rather than on a mobile device under the summer sun in an unshaded parking lot?

At the commuter rail stop here in Newburyport, I found PayByPhone’s number on parking lot signs. An automated voice, which I could not get past, did not ask for my car’s registration. Instead, it asked me to “set up an account.”

Ah, yes, why not spend a good 15 minutes to type in name, address, DOB, SSN, and whatever else they need before asking you to create, confirm, and then use a password?

Why not? Because I don’t want an account. I just want to settle a one-time fee.

Bracing myself for word from the MBTA, I resolved that I would pay the fee for the seven hours my car sat at Wonderland, but not a cent for any fine. And I prepared to tell them that in a letter addressed to the Massachusetts Barbary Tribute Authority.

Would “Parker” have known the difference? Would it know American history? Would it relocate me into North Africa?

For two weeks I was ready to battle hi-tech “policy and procedure” with simple arithmetic and common sense. So eager was I to make the case that, after two weeks, I considered going back on-line and taunting the bot.

But my attention turned elsewhere, and seven weeks passed before a bill arrived in the box at the end of my driveway. So much for hi-tech.

And so much for any fine. An $8.00 balance is about what I would have paid. I saw mention of a $1.00 surcharge, but didn’t challenge it. So much for my Jeffersonian resolve.

Still, what does this do to others who, like me and many other seniors, choose to “live simply”? Do they worry for a week or two? Do they scrap their plans and drive off?

Many toll roads and bridges have signs telling us that, if we lack E-ZPass, we will be sent a bill. So easy they put it in upper case, EZ. And yet, for the parking lots, we are supposed to “set up an account.”

As for me, I went to see “Privileged Communications.” Little did I know I’d have to endure them.

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