Well howdy-do, honeybunch. The year keeps flying by, and we at the papyrus office can’t believe how fast things are heading. Before yew know it, our traditional Thanksgiving isshew will be coming out, and it will feature the many faces of our Thanksgiving warriors as it has for decades in several papyri. I remember when the venerable Colby Dreissens of fond memory began that tradition, and it has been used every since. Think about it! More than four different publications have come and three have gone, and they used the same holiday cover since Richard Milhouse Nixon was sitting in the oval office.
Maybe it’s the holiday season barreling toward us, but Cobina has been thinking a lot about the past over the last lit’le while, and thinking about all the people we have known and connected with since the same Dreissens started these missive betwixt us – again, more than a half-century ago. Tempus fugit, and the older yew git, the faster it goes.
Here in the Asylum by the Sea the election is over and most o’ the same people are in the same positions – state-wise – that they were before the election. The thing that was notable about this go-round was the fack that despite the history of terrible, awful, not-so-good election cycles we’ve seen, there was little in the way of the vitriol that yew have witnessed elsewhere.
Years ago, sign stealing and vandalism were all the rage. Of course, many of thems that did it are either no longer with us or ancient of days and can only contemplate what they used to do. Meanwhile, the younger generation, at least here, doesn’t seem as plugged into the local scene the way their forebears were. Oh, they are interested in things political, but more on a national level, it seems. Unlike Tip O’Neill’s famous aphorism that “All politics is local,” people today are more wrapped up in the national.
Tennyrate, the election mischief was almost nonexistent as compared to elsewhere. It seems in blue-collar cities, things are a bit more understanding betwixt opposing sides – at least that is what it seems like.
Cobina got in her gassamobuggy at around 6:30 in the ayem and cast her own ballot with a few others that didn’t seem to mind being out and about so early. For m’self the fack that we changed the clocks had me up and about at exactly the same time—tho’ an hour earlier. That meant getting up and out as the darkness became the lightness.
There weren’t too many surprises this go-round excep’ one. I hafta say when word came that Ray Collins III was unsuccessful in his big to get the 117th, she was a bit surprised. That district is usually perty red, but maybe the turnout was down or something. I am sure there will be some parsing out of the numbers as thing progress. But don’t think Ray III is done. He ain’t. He’s smart and he’s driven. We will see him on the political scene again.
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Cobina brought to yore attention an acronym that she hoid back in the summer, and judging from whot she is seeing in the post-election trauma that people seem to wanna plaster all over the place, the acronym is most apt: AWFUL: Affluent, White, Female, Urban, Liberals. These gals are all over the internet spewing their opinions as if they came down from the Mount on a stone tablet, and using some of the most vile language these aged ears have ever heard. Whatever happened to manners?
Foist off, effen something should be probed, investigated, or “studied,” it is the effect that the Covid-19 shutdown had on mental health, and continues to have. These gals are totally off their rockers, and don’t mind showin’ it to the world. One could blame a lotta the hyperbole that the networks and the losing party used in this campaign. There are enuff low-information people who only read headlines who will believe what they scan. And, the recent spate of violence of one side toward t’other would indicate there are enuff people who ingested the propaganda and made it their own.
The long and short of it is that we have a subculture of cuckoos walking around – not all female, but it seems those are the bulk of the internet crowd – that jest are living in an alternate universe, and don’t understand how things work. Case in point, Columbia University offered psychological held and days off after the election – so did other schools – helping the youngsters cope with the worldview their profs filled their heads with.
This is what happens when everyone gets a participation trophy and everyone is a winner. When true adversity strikes, the youngins aren’t able to process or handle it. And it ain’t their fault. It’s those that projected their own shortcomings onto the masses.
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More close to home, Sammy Bluejay came in with the new that the MARB, or Municipal Accountability Review Board, is perty much ready to pick up stakes and get outta our lives. That means after seven years of oversight and diktat, the city might actually be allowed to handle its own affairs.
Sammy thought this curious at this time, and maybe he has a pernt. It is no secret that the relationship betwixt the former Rossi administration and the MARB was “testy.” The former mayor was skewered by the panel more times than yew can count, and the meeting were exercises in taking her to the woodshed for an “attitude adjustment.”
Whilst they waited a year – and there are some newer people on the MARB than were there seven years ago, it seems like this exit is more because they like who’s sittin’ on the thoid floor. Just his take on it. Waiting a year, or almost a year , is a politic way of doing things, but the whole demeanor of the relationship seems a bit more cozy than it was heretofore.
That’s Sammy being Sammy, but that’s his take on the matter. When they pull up stakes nobody is gonna throw them a going away party, but we can hope that there won’t be a next time for this. Twice in 33 years is enuff for anyone. They only stayed for three years the last time, and more than doubled it this.
Somehow or t’other methinks they wanna put this berg in their rearview mirror about as much as the city wants to see them make a hasty exit.
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With Thanksgiving jest two weeks away, Nelly Nuthatch was talking about the Community Thanksgiving Dinner. Of course, this current iteration of the dinner is less than a decade old, being handled by Bill Ewry and his able volunteers. Here Cobina goes waxing nostalgic again. The foist one was way back in the 1980s when people started thinking more about the homeless and those that are shut-in or homebound.
That was a volunteer thing, too, and one of the great events that make our little corner of the universe sooooo special. With he current crop of individuals the same care for the needy and others is given, and is not restricted to that. Over the years people who just wanted to be with others became part of the dinner, always hosted at the Congregational Church’s Fellowship Hall.
It’s been a longstanding tradition, and one that brings the business community into the fold as well. Many businesses either help with the planning, foodstuffs, or cooking, whilst the volunteers do the heavy lifting of getting the dinners out.
This is one thing the whole city can be thankful for in this holiday season as it gears up. We were doing things like this before they really became fashionable. We really do try to help our neighbors.
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Jest a little aside before Cobina goes into the next topic. T’other day a longtime reader was looking for a copy of the lst isshew. And jest like clockwork he said, “I hafta go out and get a City News.” It’s amazing! The West Haven Voice is more than two – almost three – decades old, and at least 50 years removed from the former publication. In fack, it was Bob Joyce who started the West Haven City News where in we started doing our colyume and then he sold it in the last 1970s to the Milford Citizen, who changed it to the West Haven News. The reason the “City” was put in the title, was Joyce bought the Town Crier and wanted to differentiate between the municipality being a town and then becoming an actual city.
Tennyrate, the name jest stuck and here we are almost a half-century after Joyce sold the publication, and people are still calling it that. It’s amazing that a) they keep calling it that; and b) it’s a compliment to us cuz we try to do the same things that papyrus did way back then.
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Another two weeks and so far no word on the former Haven project area. No, we weren’t expecting anything to happen, but we’re keeping tabs on how long it’s gonna take those New York grandees to let us know what in blazes is going on. They think we’re from the provinces and treat us as setch.
Next issue we give out our annual Turkeys to the city’s version of the chattering class.
With that bit o’ chatter, I’ll close this time till next, mitt luff und kizzez,