Totally Rigged
Thank you, Editor Palpini, for the recent article about the “rigging” of the election (“Between the Lines: Are the Elections Rigged?”, Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2016). It is indecorous in the extreme for Republicans to stoke the public’s fear of this possibility when they are the party that has done everything in their power both legally — voter ID laws, gerrymandering, etc. — and illegally — voter suppression — to “rig” our elections.
The less affluent members of our society (I wouldn’t call it the 99 percent, perhaps 77 percent would be closer to the mark?) are the ones against whom our elections have been attempted to be “rigged.” Yet, even so, we will prevail. Imagine a world as it could be, if there had been a Gore presidency. We’ve got to make up for lost time! It’s not too late.
— Michael D. Joyce,
Wendell
Comments on “Beyond the Flu Shot: There’s more than one way to boost your immunity this cold and flu season”
Mark Lattanzi: I’m with science. Around here, you need all the protection you can get!
Jason Lords: Next to crooked Hillary, flu shots are the biggest scam of the century. People are ignorant to buy into it and Big Pharma is making a fortune.
Comments on “The Last Unicorn: The Platinum Pony Will Not Reopen”
Dave Witthaus: Great neighbors. I will miss them.
Cassie Gendron: I am so sorry to hear this, Kristen [Davis, the Platinum Pony’s owner], I know you poured your heart and soul into that place 🙁
Poetry Break
Just to Be Around Beauty is to Be Far from Everything Else
What isn’t waking up is already on its way to a sleep
peopled by raindrops and bird-cadenced ripples.
I like to come here, Look Park, when the day
has only a handful of chances left in it. I find
a seat on a red bench and breathe so deeply
I can feel my late parents throbbing in the green
smells the trees, grass and pond have all collated
just so the sky has something it feels it belongs to.
And I belong to it too: this concert of concentrated
chances and cadences to which not only the sky and I,
but everyone else, asleep or awake, hold holy front-row tickets.
Connolly Ryan is a senior lecturer at UMass Amherst Honors College. You can contact him at connollyryanpi@hotmail.com.
