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

Flag Daze on Plum Island

Just when I recover from laughing at those gullible enough to believe that Democrats are coming to take away their hamburgers, along come those led to believe that we lefties are threatening to take away their American flags.

Is there anything too lunatic for consumers of Fox News and other foam-at-the-mouth television and hate-radio shows to fall for?

This time, it’s a few of my neighbors, so I’ll try my hardest to tell this with a straight face:

When the folks in Newbury Town Hall issued a reminder to Plum Islanders to keep restricted areas clear for piping plovers, they no doubt thought it harmless.

As they noted, they were prompted by the 4th of July weekend coming up just a week later–the milestone 250th no less–and so they wanted to insure we kept the restriction in mind.

Most of us nodded in agreement. There’s neither effort nor expense in avoiding them just as we have done for at least as long as my 44 years here.

Some Islanders, however, subscribe to Fox News.

Newbury has a fair share. If you’ve driven onto Central St., you’ve likely seen, across from the post office, one of the crude, childish cartoon-signs that some MAGA-type displays to ridicule Democrats while unconsciously making an ass of himself.

Who knows who pounced on the inclusion of the word “flag” in the examples of things not to display in sand where plovers may nest? Straight to Fox News the town’s memo went, and before long Fox’s website, catering to a national audience, appeared with an alarming headline:

“Massachusetts homeowners stunned after town warns July 4 flags threaten endangered birds”

For maximum manipulation on social media, this is textbook. The headline is one of just two ingredients required for the desired effect. Since Massachusetts is long known as the bluest state, put the demonized name in it.

Not only does the name raise rightwing indignation, but you have now brought the controversy inland. Could happen anywhere.

And who are the people most likely to fall for a hint of perceived infringement on property rights? Residents? No. Citizens? No. Taxpayers? Often, but not this time. Homeowners? Bingo!

Moreover, while the town’s reminder mentioned “flags,” the headline turns it into “July 4 flags,” which implies that Old Glory itself is the target of the anti-American attack.

Second ingredient is the featured photo: Show an American flag on a pole in front of a cottage high upon a dune. Next to the flagpole is a wooden rendition of another flag with a 250th inscription suggesting that this homeowner is more than passively patriotic.

Also in the foreground is a mailbox. That would tell a thinking person that we are looking at the house from the street side, and therefore nowhere near any restricted area. So, too, would the unseen details of the accompanying article despite its paranoid, fear-mongering slant.

This is classic Fox News, their well-worn formula for deceit and incitement. Something on steroids out of nothing on tranquilizers, but Fox knows that most people will read only the headline, see the picture, glance at the caption, and assume the worst about those they have demonized without ever looking at the full article.

In the text, very few people are voicing any concern. One is a case of “he said, she said” with no evidence that he ever said what she said he said. As anyone who has dealt with these people knows, the mere, matter-of-fact mention of a fine or prison term for breaking a law is considered a threat. So, yeah, he most likely did say what she then twisted into something else.

That’s all it takes to fool the Fox viewer into thinking that “they are coming to take away your ______.”

If there’s a third ingredient to the scam, it’s the long-established belief that those of us who publicly oppose them are all rich elitists ready to hoard all those flags, burgers, Bibles, SUVs, S’mores, leaf-blowers, air conditioners, and guns we would deny others.

Guess they were onto me. I was already looking for a pair of American flags to fly from the roof of my Maserati.

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https://www.foxnews.com/media/massachusetts-homeowners-stunned-town-warns-july-4-flags-threaten-endangered-birds?

Keeping a City Vibrant

As did many other readers of The Townie, a local, online platform, I reveled in the upbeat catalog of Newburyport’s treasures and attractions offered last week by one John Stephen Kelley.*

Reminds me why I washed ashore here in 1982 after a Prodigal Son stint on the other side of the Mississippi. By birth a Lawrence boy, my paternal grandparents were born in Newburyport, and all of their grandparents settled here with an early wave of Irish immigrants. Prominent family names on the trunk of my genealogical tree include Creeden, Kelleher, and Page. Not sure which one lived in the gray house next to Leary’s liquor store, as I knew her only as “Aunt Alice” when my grandmother took me on visits.

During seven years out west, I picked up a taste for busking. In the late-70s, many American cities were re-vitalizing downtowns with historic preservation. I’d never make a living at it, but having done well as a flautist in Denver’s Larimer Square, all I wanted was to live in or near a small city, preferably historic with a pedestrian mall, a square, wide side-walks, benches. One or two days a week was all I needed.

Could say that Newburyport played for me as much as I for it. Surrounding bricks serve as well as Colorado’s Red Rocks as a sound-system. Guitarist John Tavano soon told me that when the wind was right, I could be heard on the Boardwalk. Not bad for someone who never used an amplifier. Yet more: sharp acoustics don’t just project sound, but allow the musician to go easier on the instrument which then allows for more clarity, both in precision and style.

For a wind-musician it also means the ability to play more than half an hour without being taken out of there in an ambulance.

Surprisingly, I had the city to myself for a few years before the harper showed up. We soon coordinated our schedules. He-turned-she graced downtown with music both original and Celtic from about 1988 until passing away two years ago. In the meantime, however, numerous street-performers–jugglers and magicians as well as musicians–have entertained in downtown Newburyport. As we said of Larimer Square in Denver, we are vibrant!

A few more quirky, independent, and locally engaging treasures I’ll add to Kelly’s recent celebration of the city:

Dyno Records all this year is celebrating its 50th anniversary just a couple doors down from The Grog now in its 55th year. Turn right and just up State is the Screening Room now in its 44th. Turn left and you’ll find the Tannery with Jabberwocky Bookshop in its 54th, Cafe Chococoa, and numerous arts studios. Along with performances and exhibits at the Firehouse, the Maritime Museum, the Museum of Old Newbury, Maudsley Park, and elsewhere, all have served as essential contributors to the city’s more than generous arts scene.

For full disclosure, I’ve been a projectionist at the Screening Room since 1998. For a busker, a day-job has to be a night-job. And for fuller disclosure for what’s next, I’ve been writing guest columns in the Daily News since 1983.

Essential to the life of any city is its newspaper, and the Daily News is to be credited for including As I See It on its opinion page. If we consider the feature by itself, it is much like The Townie except not limited to local topics. Out of necessity, an opinion page is obligated to point out things wrong or about to go wrong in the locality and make it open to honest debate. Both forums do this, and it is yet another blessing for Newburyport that there are two forums that make the debate open to any citizen wanting to join.

This brings me to the one and only unfortunate response to Kelley’s otherwise widely praised piece. From none other than the mayor who was intending to praise it, but who, in his characteristically clumsy way, revealed an intent to disparage his critics as well.

Soon after The Townie published it, Mayor Reardon’s post on Facebook read: “Finally, a piece worth reading in the Townie.” Within a couple of hours, someone must have told him he sounded like a long-lost son of Donald Trump, and he removed the word “finally,” but the screenshot and the insinuation aimed at all of us who have contributed to the forum remain.

That would include thoughtful analysis by folks with expertise in water quality, education, infrastructure, and development, including both present and former councilors debating both sides of controversies. Does Reardon not know that debate is the lifeblood of self-rule? Or does he think that “self” means himself, never to be questioned?

Count me with Kelley and all others who sing Newburyport’s praises. The city has been more than good to me.

But count me in opposition to anyone who thinks that smiling for photo-ops is all that’s needed to add to that beauty while tying tourniquets around those hoping to protect and enhance it.

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*https://www.townienbpt.com/general/2026/06/19/appreciate-everyday-life-in-newburyport

Only in Our Backyard

Thanks to my picture appearing on the local newspaper’s opinion page a few hundred times these past 43 years, I gain comments from complete strangers in public places.

Mostly quick compliments or criticisms, both welcome. It’s the only job I know where success is measured as much in opposition as in approval.

Mostly I enjoy it. Still hear the cracking voice of the fellow who cautiously approached me a dozen years ago in the produce section at Market Basket, before asking: “Was that you who wrote about Cleveland?”

My usual response is, “Depends on what you have in mind,” but this fellow was so shy, I had to play it straight:

“Yes. The Rock Hall, the Lakefront, the architecture, Great Lakes Brew Pub, live music in public parks, dates to catch the Red Sox and Celtics…”

“I’m from Cleveland,” he managed to say, “that’s the first time I ever read anything good about my home town.”*

Lately, I have nothing good to say about the Archival Center at the Newburyport Public Library, but I am being asked why it is back in the news. My guess: Two recent letters nicely summed up by their headlines:

“When stewardship fails” (May 13) by Walt Thompson and “Archival Center is a shell of what it used to be” (May 18) by Ghlee Woodworth.

Full disclosure: Both writers are my friends, and we three were among the petitioners to the Newburyport City Council to investigate City Hall’s role in the disastrous moves that erased the Archival Center’s volunteer program and railroaded the regionally acclaimed archivist out of her position.

To their letters, I’ll add my own, “McCauley threw open the windows” (May 13), a tribute to the former councillor upon hearing of his untimely passing. In it, I describe the moment when Jim McCauley took on the leading role of making the library investigation happen.

What prompted my two friends to write about the formerly-renowned Archival Center? Not sure, but from what I’ve read and heard, the list of complaints from researchers and historians who thought they could access it as readily as in the past, has been growing.

Complaints are now finding their way to the NPL Board of Directors, which always includes new members who likely find that serving the mayor who appoints them and doing the right thing is a bit like joining the Trump Administration.

Problem is that the incomptent mayor managed to dodge all accountability for the destruction of the Archival Center despite the findings of the investigation that, in the words of one local historian, should have been “a career ending document” for him.

Instead, City Council President Rip Van Cameron stalled the investigation six months, long enough for Chief of Staff Andrew Levine to find a new job. Simultaneously, as if by pure coincidence, Director of Human Resources Donna Drelick was not renewed. Since the investigator’s report was as damning to both as it was to the mayor, coincidence allowed him to dodge responsibility. With two villains gone, all he had to do was what he does best, keep smiling for cameras.

This brings me to the question being put to me since my last column, “Crimes-R-Us and other musical acts”: For all of the ridicule I hurl at Republicans in Washington DC, why am I not at Newburyport’s weekly Saturday rallies on High Street?

I’m honestly torn. Among the many issues noted on their signs is the censorship of books. Where were the people holding those signs during the prolonged destruction of NPL? If they can see it in Florida and Tennessee, why the blind eye to State Street?

Did those now holding signs citing the 2019 Mueller Report pay any attention to the equally damning 2025 report on the Newburyport Public Library? Does the bumper sticker now read “Think Globally, Ignore Locally”?

Some hid behind pathetic excuses for complacency such as, “There’s a lot we don’t know.” (So why weren’t they asking?) Even subsequent first-hand reports of a toxic work environment in the Clerk’s Office, its members unanimously, urgently appealing to the City Council for intervention, did not stop many of Newburyport’s weekend sign-holders from endorsing the smiling mayor’s re-election.

And, oh, how they love those photo-ops with him in City Hall.

Apologies to most folks at the Saturday rallies, but there are at least a dozen among you I want to have nothing in common with. If, on any given Saturday, you happen to join the weekly rally in Ipswich instead, I’ll gladly answer any question or criticism of this.

Thanks to my picture, I’ll be easy to find. No matter if I have no idea who you are.

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*The Cleveland column, May 2014:

Pitching a Rock and Roll Trip

Want a get-away that rocks?

Consider the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. A towering glass pyramid with long corridors giving it the shape of an electric guitar, the building by itself is worth the trip.

For the other kind of rock, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is nearby with the dinosaur skeletons you may recall from Calvin & Hobbes.

Cleveland?

If you’re a sports fan, check your teams’ schedules for road games against the Indians, Cavaliers, and Browns. No disrespect intended, but tickets for all three are easy to get these days.

If it’s baseball, you’ll enjoy one of the first retro ballparks built in the 1990s. If football, you’ll be two doors down from the Rock Hall along the city’s gorgeous new Lakefront Park.

Door between opens to the Great Lakes Science Museum, itself an architectural treat, which anticipates the Rock Hall with an acoustic exhibit at the entry facing it:

Whisper into a wall on one side of the lobby and a friend 200 feet away leaning into the opposite wall will hear you. Kids test and re-test this as avidly they wear headphones next door.

Many Rock Hall exhibits have them for visitors to hear no end of recordings. Couldn’t help but notice: Boys all play air guitar; girls all sing air microphone.

One vast underground floor offers memorabilia from countless rockers—and from the hotbeds of Memphis, Liverpool, Seattle, and more. Most prominent are Black musicians from the South who started it all.

Most illuminating item is the hotel stationary with Jimi Hendrix’s draft of a song under the title, “Purple Haze, Jesus Saves.” A swirling script to kiss the sky.

Most sobering are shards of Otis Redding’s wrecked airplane, and most amusing is The Who’s garb on headless mannequins on a stage replete with instruments, amps, and mikes.

Most astonishing is the exclusion of Jethro Tull, but most satisfying is hearing them piped to the height of the pyramid while admiring the playful, life-size re-creation of Pink Floyd’s Wall.

Upper levels also include tributes to Chess and Sun Records, to Les Paul, and a studio for Sirius Radio with glass walls, DJ smiling at my thumbs up for “Aqualung.”

Films ranging from Video Killed the Radio Star to Help! play at small screening rooms.

A two-day bargain pass and a café with dozens of tables and spectacular views of Lake Erie and an always architecturally fascinating downtown help you take it all in.

Cleveland?

The claim of “Birthplace of Rock & Roll” owes to DJ Alan Freed before he became famous in NYC. In 1951 a station with a dwindling audience asked him to turn his classical show over to the emerging “race music.”

Already a fan, Freed, who was Jewish, was game to desegregate radio in pre-MLK America. For his show’s name, he picked a recurring lyric. When one exec worried over the euphemism (“…all night long”), Freed was matter-of-factly persuasive:

“Anyone who would object to that won’t know it.”

Publicly, he claimed it suggested “the rolling, surging beat of the music.” Either way “rock and roll” went from compound verb to proper (while still improper) noun, “The Moondog Rock ‘n’ Roll Hour.” Soon it named the whole genre.

His “Moondog Coronation Ball” in 1952 is Cleveland’s claim to the first rock and roll concert. All of which begins the history available at the Rock Hall. No matter that Freed was forced to drop the name “Moondog” in New York City when sued by a popular street-musician known by that name.

Legalities aside, what is music tourism without a brewpub? Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing Company—with German cuisine that never disappoints—is opposite a downtown park that’s often the weekend site of an outdoor market with live music.

Which always rocks in Cleveland.

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To prove that I have attended Newburyport’s rallies in the past, here I am interviewing Tito of N-port’s Theater In The Open. Photo by Richard Lodge.

Again in Newburyport. Where’s Waldo? About four or five protesters from the left with the shades and beret. Photo by Walt Thompson.

This happens to be the Newburyport *Daily News*‘ opinion page on Martin Luther King Day, 2025. The pic was taken by the late and very much missed Tom Epstein, better known as King Richard at the Renaissance Faire of that name, circa 2006, making me the only opinion page columnist in history to have his thumbnail pic taken by a king.

Baby, You Can’t Drive Any Car

Far more than anything else, Americans bemoan bad drivers.

Granted, phone menus have been gaining ground in these AI “assisted” (i.e. debased) times. Still, those who call customer service or technical support are way outnumbered by motorists.

After all, those calls often work quite well, and we give glowing reviews on the surveys that follow, as annoying as they can be. Meanwhile, heated complaints against bad drivers come from people who are themselves bad drivers.

Such as a friend who griped on and on about the blaring horn of a car behind her when a red light changed to green: “I was pouring coffee from my thermos into my cup, and the thermos cap was on the cupholder.”

“So the light was green for a few seconds?”

When she didn’t answer, I told her I’d have also hit the horn, as I do for drivers who, stopped for a light, are looking down. Whatever the distraction, it makes you oblivious to where you actually are.

“Well, people need to be patient!”

“And drivers need to understand that their first obligation is to other drivers, and not serving themselves breakfast when waiting for a light to change.”

I’m now reminded of this after publicly criticizing the placement of the new sign on the road to Plum Island, the memorial for the late and lamented Pink House.

Please note the words, “placement of.” The sign itself is worthy of the former scenic treasure and the breathtaking landscape on which it sits. Both elegant and forceful.

And quite legible from a distance, as it was clearly intended–except that, rather than facing traffic as most signs do, it is parallel and very close to the road. Drivers do not see it. On social media, one wag called it, “the rubberneck installation technique.”

Leaders of the years-long effort to save the Pink House, however, found my complaint “sad.” I had “turned a positive into a negative.” There I was talking about a specific object (the sign) and a specific act (its placement), and they turn it into the vague simplicity of “positive” (both) and “negative” (anything critical about either) that could apply to anything. This is Orwell’s Newspeak: Debased language leads to debased thought.

Truth is, I was always a supporter of the Pink House. From 2016 to 2018, I devoted three columns in this paper to the cause. The decal was on the back of my old Nissan. Would they rather I put their sticker on the car’s side?

Relevant to rules-of-the-road, one reaction to my critique was unwittingly revealing: “Anyone can slow down to look at anything on any road and do it safely.”

The triple use of “any” will make any libertarian smile, but the one describing “road” should be a red flag to the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

Anyone out there want to be behind a driver liable to apply the brakes at any time? On a two-lane, 40-mph road often crowded on warm days?

Doesn’t have to be for a sudden stop. What if curiosity gets the better of the driver who turns more and more to not just see, but read the sign while keeping the car in motion? Anyone want to be in an on-coming car? Or pedaling a bicycle?

Such is the risk unless someone comes to their senses and turns the sign sideways or at an angle. Could be on a single stand. Raising it eight feet would allow it to face traffic while hanging safely over the bike lane.

Meanwhile, there’s something else here worth consideration: What if driver’s exams included written responses to questions about obligations a driver has to other drivers?

When do you turn on directionals? What factors do you consider at the moment a light turns yellow? What do you do to slow down on a road where drivers do not expect it? Or to pull over?

Such a test could be educational in itself, as the act of writing leads the applicant to think through sequences and conditions–such as the distance of a car following you. That would produce better drivers.

Moreover, if it didn’t prevent some from thinking that anything goes, it would at least discourage them from advocating such things in public forums. And if they went ahead and wrote it on a test, the license would be denied.

Nothing to lose here–nothing except bad drivers.

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The Pink House Memorial sign as seen from the passenger seat of a car going 40 mph going toward and within two car-lengths of it.
Photo by Angela Anderson.

Witness to the Spirit of ’76

Last Friday I awoke to the fully unexpected news that a friend, Jim McCauley, just 62, had died.

A former Newburyport city councillor, his passing was top of the front page for the next issue of the Daily News, filled with tributes from other city officials, including his political opponents. Among those is the mayor who narrowly survived McCauley’s attempt to unseat him last fall.

Over a year earlier, as readers of the Daily News or of Mouth of the River may recall, I announced my own write-in candidacy for the city’s highest office. Write-in because I’m not a resident of the Port but of a sandbar belonging to a neighboring town.

Yes, it was an April Fools’ prank. Who else promises to make his parole officer his chief of staff? But it was also an effort to coax a viable challenger into what was starting to look like an uncontested race. Soon after that, I met McCauley for the first time at a mutual friend’s and started pestering him to run. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know him, only that I had seen and heard him in action in City Council meetings, including the first when I didn’t even know his name.

This weekend, I described that first impression as my own tribute. It appeared in today’s issue of the Daily News:

McCauley threw open the windows

If I could pick a single moment when I felt witness to “the Spirit of ‘76” in action, it was two years ago at a council meeting in Newburyport City Hall.

The subject was whether the council should investigate an on-going library controversy, and the council president cautioned that it was not “within the council’s purview” and emphasized the need to “stay in our lane.”

The mood of the room was somewhere between in agreement and a willingness to go along this path of least resistance. The room itself felt sleepy, the air barely enough to breathe.

Then came the voice. Not loud, but firm. Not angry, but well-measured. “I take exception to the idea of lanes,” then-councillor Jim McCauley began. He then made a case that could have been distilled from any of America’s founding documents:

All councilors represent people who live in Newburyport. The library is of, by, and for the people of Newburyport. We are not just able, but obliged to consider this.

That’s paraphrase only because the sensation of windows being thrown open was too much to keep taking notes. In seconds the room’s vibe went from the suffocation of policy and procedure to the inspiration of truth spoken to power–in the very halls of power.

Two years later, I re-live that moment now that Jim McCauley has passed away. Because he was an inspirational force in a time when inspiration is not often welcome, if even recognized, it’s easy to say he will be missed.

Much better would it be to say that he’ll serve as a model for others who we elect to public office.

Several months passed after I first met McCauley and urged him to run for mayor before he announced his candidacy. That took me off the hook, and I was able to turn my withdrawal from the race (as if I was actually in it) into an endorsement of him. We still didn’t know each other well, although that gradually changed as we both showed up at a Friday afternoon salon at a not-so-undisclosed location on State Street.

Subjects of conversation and debate included everything, but Newburyport issues topped the list, and MCauley knew them all in detail. He usually offered possibilities for solving or avoiding problems, and he didn’t hesitate to admit when something just would not be solved or avoided due to the, let’s say, inclinations and limitations of personnel involved. His refrain for that was: “Sometimes you just gotta laugh.”

Last saw him at my own birthday party upstairs at The Grog two months ago. We laughed a lot. About a lot of things.

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At the head of the table, chatting it up with Walt Thompson as his wife, Liz, assist in the distribution of the “Whale Cake.” Carol Thompson, Walt’s wife, is in the foreground. Photo by Sharon Spieldenner.

Jim McCauley. Photo: Kevin Sullivan, Newburyport Daily News

A Sign That’s Outta Sight

Here’s the first reaction to a social media post of the new sign on the Plum Island Turnpike, or “Causeway” if you prefer honest and accurate words:

What a joke…guess that’s where all your $ for donations went to saving that decrepit pink trash heap, congratulations, you got this dumb sign.

By my own measure, I suppose the narrow-minded assessment is at least partially correct: The sign is “dumb” because it doesn’t speak, not even if you go to the horrible, unconstitutional trouble of pressing one for English. And “decrepit” is a given when talking about a century old structure abandoned half a century ago.

Where the commenter veers over the bike lane, down the slope, and into the marsh, however, is by calling it a “trash heap.”

Could counter that assholessment with “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but why be superficial? Like most cliches and canned adages, it misses a much deeper meaning. And like most slurs, the comment reveals nothing about the intended subject, but everything about the person making it.

The Pink House, for many of its 100 years, certainly for its last few decades, was cherished by countless artists and photographers. As a resident of Plum Island since 1982, I’ve seen the license plates on vehicles pulled over by painters behind easels recreating the two-story house on canvas, or by photographers taking shots at various angles. They came from all over the US and Canada.

The old boathouse on Bearskin Neck in Rockport may be Massachusetts’ “Motif Number One,” but the Pink House here on the Newbury marsh was as close to a runner up as any. Too late now, but I wonder if the Honda Motor Company, had it been asked when it filmed the TV commercial, might have coughed up funds to save the Pink House–racing one way in the background while a Civic raced the other in the foreground–from demolition.

A comparison to Rockport is what makes the “trash heap” slur so unwittingly revealing of the man who made it. Would he also dismiss Rockport’s boathouse as “trash”? It is by definition “decrepit,” useless except for photos and paintings…

He does come closer to truth when he calls it a “joke.” Unfortunately, he applies it to the sign that is more than attractive, both elegant and forceful at the same time. Had he applied it to the placement of the sign, I’d have no choice but to agree with him.

In case you don’t know, or in case you’ve driven to Plum Island these past few days and wonder why you haven’t seen it, the sign has been placed parallel and very close to the road. Turned out that I myself had already driven past three or four times each way without ever seeing it. After seeing the picture, I went looking, and barely spotted it while driving by. I was as dumbfounded by the placement of the sign as I was awed by its picture.

Once home, I immediately zapped a message to a woman at the forefront of the effort to save the Pink House from demolition:

Very nice memorial, but why in the name of basic logic is it parallel to the road rather than facing traffic? Does someone want to limit the views to the few pedestrians & joggers on that long road? Even cyclists, keeping their eyes on a narrow bike lane, are likely to be going too fast to notice.

When she informed me that it “had to be placed on Town of Newbury land so that it would not be removed by FWS” (National Fish & Wildlife Service), I asked if the town’s strip was so narrow, the sign could not be turned sideways, or put higher up on a single stand.

She then referred me to the Town of Newbury whose call it was to accept and display the gift. On the Plum Island side of the bridge is a much larger “Welcome to…” sign, turned sideways so that people can actually see it. But I know not where the boundaries are between the town and the FWS, not any more than I apparently know of boundaries between bureaucratic decisions and common sense.

Knowing well the untiring effort over several years of so many people dedicated to the cause of saving the Pink House, I can understand the tendency to say that this is all quite nice and feel good about it, but something is wrong here. I’m not saying that it’s nefarious, but there has been, to use the kindest term I can think of, a serious lapse in judgement.

On a road with a 40 mph speed limit, whether we call it “turnpike” or “causeway,” if a sign does not face traffic, it may as well not be there. That’s why our troll is not entirely wrong when he calls it “a joke.”

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Old Gaol, Old Golds, & Old Gail

Ever since I was a young boy, I played language like pinball. From Lawrence down to Salem, I bet I played it all.

For me, a silver ball such as “Gaol” lights every bumper and racks up the score. Why, I might flip so furiously at its possibilities that I’ll tilt the machine.

The Old English spelling remained in use until 1960 when finally overtaken by the phonetically friendly, though visually anemic “jail.”

At age nine, I never noticed. A decade later, when I was thrown into one, all the signs said, “Charles Street Jail.”

Too bad. “Jail” made me think only of bail.

With “gaol,” I’d have tripped on the psychedelic hint of “ghoul” and haunted my captors, or I’d have prolonged the sound of “goal” and declared victory over them.

Then there’s one Gail way back in the black mining hills of Dakota, called herself Nancy, though everyone knew her as Lil. Cherished memories that may yet tilt whatever is left of my septuagenarian machine.

Newburyport’s “Old Gaol” even recalls the Old Golds we smoked when we were left recumbent, close to paralyzed, and staring at the ceiling after the bells and buzzers fell silent and the bumpers dimmed.

Washing ashore in 1982, I was heartened that the Port’s numerous historical treasures include the Old Gaol.

That’s why, on Tuesday, March 10, at 7:00 pm, I’ll attend yet another Zoning Board of Appeals meeting in the Senior Center to decide its fate.

Or will they?

Since 2019, the Old Gaol has been pinballed into a bureaucratic Limbo that began when owner Charles Griffin gained variances to divide the lot for the sake of separate sales.

For that rare form of zoning relief, he agreed to place a preservation restriction on the Old Gaol buildings. The ZBA reasoned that the public would benefit from the preservation of a rare architectural treasure.

Eager to get what he wanted, Griffin has not been so eager to give what he promised. Seven years later, there is still no restriction on the Old Gaol buildings and landscape.

In Massachusetts, such applications must go first to the city, then to the state Historical Commission, and finally to the City Council.

Alas, that document was never sent. Instead, Griffin submitted revised versions in 2021 and again last year, both of which MHC rejected.

But why waste words? If language is a pinball machine we can tilt, politics is a whirl that tilts us.

That’s good news for Griffin. His long-time ally on city commissions is Kim Turner, who is now Mayor Sean Reardon’s Special Projects Manager.

Rather than enforcing its own laws, City Hall awarded him a “Certificate of Appreciation” for his interior improvements of the exact same property that, nevertheless, remains the site of his non-compliance.

Perhaps if the beleaguered folks in the City Clerk’s office had ignored laws rather than enforcing them last year, the mayor might have treated them with a modicum of respect.

Anyway, as if by invitation, Griffin is back at the same ZBA asking for a whole new variance to use the Old Gaol as, if not an Airbnb, then maybe a Bed and Breakfast or hotel.

Six weeks after Reardon’s inauguration last year, Griffin filed a new application on February 18, and a public hearing was set for March 25.

Board members discussed the matter, only to continue it to April 8, then to May 27, then to June 10, July 8, August 12, October 28, and finally to January 13 of this year.

Did I say “finally”? My bad. On January 13, it was continued.

On that unfateful evening, some 20 members of the public attended in hopes of protecting the architectural treasure, some planning to comment during the time that all civic meetings include.

When the first began speaking, the chairman apologetically interrupted to remind her of the continuance.

She could comment only on the motion, but all else had to wait for when the Zoning Board would finally, if ever, vote on Griffin’s appeal.

“Alright. But just one question.”

“Yes?”

“How many continuances does he get?”

A burst of laughter from the audience lit my bumpers and sounded my bells: If the ZBA were a pinball machine, its name would be “Continue to Continue!”

Stall until it falls your way. It’s a bureaucratic flipper that always gets a replay. I’ve never seen it fail.

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Redesigned as living and office space: Photo by Newburyport *Daily News*.

From the street: https://ppreservationist.com/the-old-gaol-in-newburyport/

There are three structures on the site: https://ppreservationist.com/the-old-gaol-in-newburyport/

Battle of the Bads

With comparisons to the Gestapo and an MO that recalls America’s infamous Fugitive Slave Act of the 1850s, the US Enforcement Immigration and Customs (ICE) is the cruelest feature of an administration in which cruelty is a top requirement for every job.

Apart from the military, ICE is the deadliest federal agency–although this week’s termination of the ability to restrict carbon emissions by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will in time prove more lethal than two dead in Minnesota.

Here in the northeast corner of Massachusetts, we’ve seen very little of ICE, despite no end of lower-case ice, but this month we have been rocked by two ICE-related news items.

First, word circulated that Todd Lyons, the Acting Director of ICE, lives in West Newbury, a sleepy, leafy little town with no more of a center than a small grocery store and a pizza joint, barely eight miles from the coast where I now write.

Second, just days ago we learned that New Hampshire Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed an agreement with ICE to permit the conversion of a warehouse in Merrimack N.H. into an ICE detention center with the capacity for 500 beds.

Residents of Merrimack and neighboring towns and cities knew that something was cooking and have been gathering by the hundreds at the site to hold vigils. They were shocked to learn that Ayotte had signed the agreement weeks earlier but never announced it. That’s very much in character for her. She campaigns without using the word “Republican,” omitting it from her signs and pamphlets, pretending that it’s not there, and disassociating herself from Trump as much as possible–just as most all New England Republicans do.

If that’s not duplicity enough, Ayotte is already dissing the plan despite the fact that she just signed off on it. According to the Associated Press:

Tensions boiled to the surface after interim ICE Director Todd Lyons testified Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security ‘has worked with Gov. Ayotte’ and provided her with an economic impact summary.

Always playing it both ways, Ayotte seized the chance to create an impression of opposing the move, claiming that Lyon’s claim was “simply not true” and that there was no summary sent until he had already testified. She also claimed that the document boasted of revenues to be gained by state sales and income taxes. New Hampshire has neither tax. Said Ayotte, as quoted by the AP:

Director Lyons’ comments today are another example of the troubling pattern of issues with this process… Officials from the Department of Homeland Security continue to provide zero details of their plans for Merrimack, never mind providing any reports or surveys.

Merrimack is barely 25 miles north of Lowell, Mass., about a dozen south of Manchester NH, and maybe 45 straight west from the coast. Before long, I’m sure to attend a vigil there, perhaps in a rendezvous with my musician friends in Peterborough NH, another 45 miles to the west.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been invited to join vigils outside of Todd Lyons’ residence in West Newbury. This has become the subject of debate among locals who attend the weekend rallies along main drags in Newburyport, Ipswich, and other towns nearby. Some feel that a protest shouldn’t be brought to anyone’s door, no matter how culpable they may be. What of the family, of neighbors?

Others ask what of the families of innocent people murdered by an agency under his direction? What of neighborhoods that have been living in terror for weeks and counting due to his decisions? Why should an administrator of and apologist for murder and terror have a safe space? Should their families be spared from candles in the night lit to shed light on their crimes?

I’m honestly torn. On the one hand, I cannot bring myself to protest at anyone’s residence. What if I offend some group with a column in the local paper? Plenty of opportunity for them to confront me in the press or in a public meeting. Outside my window? What good does that do?

On the other hand, I do not fault those who do hold signs outside Lyons’ home. Not only do I appreciate their rationale for doing it, but I respect their effort to act. As misdirected as I think it is, to stand outside that home, or the home of any member of Trump’s Reign of Hate–with signs, with chants, with flags, with the willingness to see wrong and try to right it–is preferable to doing nothing.

There’s one place I would go, however. Why, I’d be the first to buy a ticket, paying full price to sit up front. If the flap between Lyons and Ayotte should flare out of control, they might arrange a cage fight. I’d bring a sign:

A pox on both you louses!

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Let’s Get Horny

Well after dark, I drive down High St., squinting at the line of on-coming headlights, and, quite suddenly, there she is.

A pedestrian casually strolling across, perhaps 20 feet in front of me, looking straight ahead, as if I’m not there, as if all those headlights coming the other way are there only to light up her way.

I pump my brakes rather than slamming them and taking the driver behind me by surprise. But she is already stepping across the center line, so I would likely miss her anyway.

No idea what, if anything, the next driver coming the other way does to avoid her, as I keep my eyes on my side of the road. But I do know this: Had my car or any car hit her, Newburyport would be in yet another uproar over “careless drivers” and the need for “lower speed limits.”

No matter that she crosses where there is no crosswalk. In Newburyport, pedestrians–and bicyclists–are always blameless, and the motorist is always guilty, evil, and immediately condemnable to hell.

Last month, in nearby Ipswich, a woman was hospitalized when her horse was spooked by a bicycle on a nature trail. The horse had to be put down, and police, last I heard, were seeking the cyclist.

If that happened in Newburyport, some people would demand that they find the owner of the nearest parked car to blame and hold liable.

Over the top? Maybe. But the basic story is something I’ve heard described by friends in other cities and states. Across the country, the reality we face in 2025 may be far closer to my exaggeration than it is to what all of us over the age of, say, 40 once took for granted.

Don’t know when it ended, but once upon an attention span, pedestrians followed two “Rules of the Road”:

Make eye-contact with the driver before crossing in front of a moving vehicle;
Wear light, bright clothing after dark.

Both are matters of common sense to a Truman baby–and I’ll venture to say to Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter babies such as my daughter. The points are so obvious that they should not need making.

The woman who appeared not far before my driver’s side headlight wore black slacks and a dark gray coat and hat. She may have looked my way before I saw her and decided she would reach the center of the road before I reached her.

All I can say for sure is that she never made eye-contact. Crossing the center line, which was as far as I saw, she never broke her unhurried stride.

We hear about reckless drivers all the time. Cars that go too fast, run red lights, tailgate, cut us off, never yield, blast their horns unnecessarily. As one who drove delivery vans for 25 years, I saw more of that than most.

This was as true in the Eisenhower years as it is now. I still laugh at the memory of my uncle in Akron telling my father, “Ohio drivers may kill you accidentally, but we’ll never be rude to you.”

That, of course, countered the notorious reputation that we hear to this day of Boston drivers who “consider directional signals a sign of weakness.”

Today’s epidemic of reckless pedestrians was unheard of. Was it the “You can have it all” 1980s that started to erode the idea that we must pay attention to the world around us?

Was it the advent of the cellphone that conditioned so many to think that they live in bubbles? Or just act as though they do without having to think at all?

I’ll leave that for others to answer, and I’ll leave the problem for others to solve. All I can think of is that it might help to start scaring the intestinal content out of these oblivious fools.

Horns, after all, are a safety device when used as intended.

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