So, ugh, Amherst Town Meeting starts tonight--the 250th.5
Only 14 articles compared to around 40 in the Spring so it should not take all that long. And the only article that will generate interest is #14, last on the list, thus no chance it comes up tonight.
Select Board Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe is doing an interview this morning with NPR affiliate Boston radio station WBUR (while holding "office hours" at The Black Sheep) and the reporter is coming to interview me at the Health Club this afternoon at 1:00 PM.
Princess Stephanie voted not to recommend the Gitmo relocation advisory article because she does not think little old Amherst Town Meeting (established thirty years before the US Constitution took effect) should have a foreign policy.
I, on the other hand, honestly believe our nation is a shining city on a hill, a beacon to all, fueled by the blood of patriots.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
Amherst should spare no expense defending itself from Hadley and Shutesbury.
ReplyDeleteOr South Hadley, they have a much bigger Golf Course.
ReplyDelete"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
ReplyDelete...and to explode?
Brilliant, Kermit.
What is it about "cleared" that you don't get? The Warrant article says it four times (in only 10 sentences).
ReplyDeleteActually the "Shining City" reference is not about America. It's about the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was uttered in 1630 by John Winthrop. No one had even dreamed of the United States at that point. There was a world before Reagan.
ReplyDeleteThe
Yeah, President Reagan mentioned that in his farewell speech to the nation:
ReplyDelete"I've thought a bit of the "shining city upon a hill." The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.
I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still."
They may be “cleared“ but they garnered suspicion whereas many, many did not. That fact is enough for me to vote no.
ReplyDeleteWell if you actually read your Town Meeting Warrant, the advisory article does not mention any names.
ReplyDeleteAs a recovering Catholic, I recognize the guilt issue that Larry is suffering from. I only hope he can resist it.
ReplyDeleteI expect that we will see members of the self-described "center" in town jumping through hoops to find excuses, procedural, jurisdictional, or otherwise, to vote "no" on this article.
ReplyDeleteSome folks are afraid of the detainees. Others know in their hearts what's right, and are afraid of the article. Others simply resent being called out by some of their neighbors on a matter of conscience.
When the so-called centrists drag out the "not our jurisdiction/not in our expertise" argument, I would ask: just where do you think the discussion of the human problem presented by this article is going to get discussed in this decade or the next? "We have better things to do"? I doubt it.
Rich Morse
You heard me, Kermit.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I heard you Anon.
ReplyDeleteAnd the people who knocked down those building heard from us.
Let's not live in fear forever.