I took Peter’s advice and bought clear packing tape to patch the major cuts and bruises of my sign, then went back out to demonstrate this past weekend. Peter, as he often does, took a short break from his retail duties to join me.

Peter has been one of the best things about my weekly manifestation. Like others who have known war up close, it is always with him. He has known profound loss and his empathy and understanding, his spirituality, is so very hard earned. His impatience with bluster and rhetoric and hyper-inflated patriotism is also profound. It doesn’t take much of it to get him going.

Our Saturday visits are one part politics and one part sports. We both share a lifetime’s love of sports and our shared devotion to the New York Giants and New York Knicks enables us to bridge the great divide. For some odd reason I will never understand, Peter is a Yankee fan. Having grown up in the Bronx and having had to fight to defend my devotion to Jackie Robinson, the Duke, and the Brooklyn Dodgers, I know all too well the Evil Empire when I see it. And so it made perfect sense to transfer my allegiance to the Red Sox.

We often talk about the 1960s. Peter went to that war; I fought to end it. I spent a moment in Madison, Wisconsin; Peter spent years there. I still have vivid memories of People’s Park and the Food Co-op.

Peter knows food and grows food. Somewhere along the way I gave up. I’m pretty sure I still have a copy of the Tassajara Bread Book but godknowswhere it’s hiding. And my abandoned juicer gives me a dirty look every time I pass it on the way to the toaster oven.

Peter and I miss the energy and optimism of those days, our many hopes and dreams. The conscious decision, often fervent desire to find an alternative to money and the material. Often delusional but always determined to find other ways: peace not war, cooperation not conflict.

We were both so very sad and weary this past weekend; so very discouraged. Newtown, Boston, and the inability to pass a pathetic background check bill. More slaughter; more stupidity. Yet more evidence we are governed by those convinced their constituents no longer matter.

After months of avoiding the TV news I surrendered, hoping to learn more about Boston. But I was quickly disgusted. It has taken us so little time to lose so much. There was once journalism, an imperfect art always, but an honorable profession. Men and women practiced it, apprenticed to learn it, working their way up from the wire room, or their high school papers. Until we created college courses to study it, and journalism schools to graduate from. But it is always about the questions to ask, the questions to answer. To discover what is really happening: who is involved; how and why. A less than perfect pursuit of truth.

Now we have Wolf Blitzer front and center, puffed up, using ten words when he could use one, himself the continuing story. We have highly-paid expert experts peddling unending speculation about what they might have done when they were at Homeland Security or the FBI or the CIA, or better yet what they might do if they had another chance at it and always what someone else ought to do.

So much of it was profoundly embarrassing. The wrong suspects. The wrong information. It sometimes felt like a never-ending attempt to make things worse.

Seemingly lost in all this was the horrifying loss of first responders in West, Texas. Who sacrificed themselves confronting a massive fire and explosion in a fertilizer storage plant in a residential neighborhood. Lethal toxic chemicals stored beside a nursing home and school. Uninspected. And sadly we will spend less than one-thousandth of the energy asking how and why this could have happened than we will trying to discover the truth of Boston. Why did brave firefighters and police die in West, Texas? And couldn’t this all have been avoided?

Maybe we would be more vigilant if the owners of the factory had vacationed in Chechyna, or had an uncle in Dagestan? I have no interest in minimizing the very real threats of international terrorism. I only want to suggest there are many forms of terror. The people of West, Texas were innocent victims as worthy of our compassion and concern. The brothers in Boston suffered one form of madness; whoever was responsible for the explosion in West was mad in another way. Was it greed, incompetence, or just plain laziness? Will we find out? Will we care?

My friend Peter mourns the loss of innocent life. It saddens him in the deepest ways. As the poet Wordsworth wrote: “The world is too much with us.”

Will loves Simon and Garfunkel and Simon without Garfunkel and Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. So when Will opens Fuel at seven, he tells Pandora to sing the 1960s. Which means early mornings at Fuel are all about flashbacks for some of us. Bob B and I hear a song and immediately recall a moment, or an event we lived through. “Happy Together” by The Turtles sends me back in a heartbeat to City College. I can see E walking past the Administration Building. And I loved E.

A bit later, Pandora offers Bob Dylan crooning “Lay Lady Lay” and I’m confronted with memories of M and my boatload of regret. I loved M. At some point, Anthony tells Bob B that he missed the 1960s entirely. Reminding us that if he had his way, Will would be offering us non-stop Frank Sinatra.

Will, of course, is trying to find background music that will keep the Fuel crew engaged during the morning rush while not offending the diverse bunch of his customers with the questionable lyrics of more contemporary tunes.

When Will hears “What a wonderful night for a moondance,” he’s not propelled back to Woodstock as the sixties dissolved into seventies, as the last remaining dreams of peace and love circled the drain. When the slogan, “Bring The War Home,” became an apt description of what was to happen, and students died at Jackson and Kent State.

And Van the Man, still drinking too much, told a small group of friends in Woodstock how he was repeatedly screwed by those who ran the music biz. Having seen the real Van, having survived the real moondance, our real frailties and faults front and center, our dreadful mistakes and lofty hopes and dreams, well I count myself so very lucky to have survived as Van has survived, lucky enough to have seen him transcend stage-fright, and perform in several different places over these many decades, his music making the journey so very rich and textured.

And I can’t go to any of these places Will’s music sends me without thinking of dear departed Artie, one of the kindest souls I have ever encountered, whose music I can’t hear without crying. Artie, who I met on the lawn at City College, and who years later caretaking, offered me Bob D’s Upper Byrdcliffe’s living room when I lost everything I had to fire on Ohayo Mountain.

So it is that it’s nearly impossible to have my morning’s iced latte without travelling back in time.

Beyond the exhausting mythology, there is much to be missed about the 1960s. I’ve been thinking most about lost hope, the great cynicism, and the lack of audacity that marks these days. So much isn’t done because so many have already decided it just won’t work. It’s almost as if a critical mass of Americans have downloaded the Don’t Bother app from the ever ubiquitous iTunes Store.

A generation of Americans fought more than a decade to force the politicians and generals to end the blood-soaked nightmare of Vietnam: some fled so as not to serve; some brave soldiers disobeyed orders. And we will never know the names of all those many thousands of servicemen and women who risked the brig to march against the war they were forced to fight.

Today, we know the vast majority of Americans yearn for an end to our never-ending war in Afghanistan: repelled by the knowledge that our money supports drug-dealing despots; and sickened that the Afghan police and military we train turn their guns on our soldiers. Our President, our politicians, our generals offer spurious surges rather than say they’re sorry. And yet our streets are empty of any sustained protest. Still, military recruiters are welcome in our high schools to spin a dismal mission into a story of glory, neglecting to mention the growing number of soldier suicides, the years of PTSD our warriers will struggle with, the silence they’ll return to.

And to bring this story home, we in The Best Small Town in America wait passively to see our town torn apart in the name of Downtown Redevelopment. Maybe I’m delusional but I’m told by many that they wish this wasn’t happening. They’re afraid of what’s to come but know it is coming. Just like they know they have been lied to: that the free money that made this project a gift from the governmental heavens has turned into almost a million dollars gone from our coffers into the hands of the planners.

I wish this idea was mine but it came from Alan Kalish. Let’s tell the State we won’t take the rest of their money – the four million – if only they’ll give us back the million we spent. Give it to Pittsfield. And with our million, we’ll fix our town one tree, one street at a time. Just Say No, Thanks.

My “Support The Troops / It’s Time To Come Home” sign has seen better days. I’ve taped and re-taped it; stapled and re-stapled it.

This Saturday a big wind blew it and me several feet, bending us both. But I really don’t want to make a new sign. To acknowledge I’ll be standing out in front of Town Hall long enough to justify the effort it will take to make a new sign.

Google says tin and aluminum are the appropriate gifts for a tenth anniversary. So ten years later, should we send the Iraqi people our tin foil and aluminum cookware? It’s got to be better than shock and awe. The destruction of their middle class, the disintegration of their families, schools, hospitals, neighborhoods.

We live far enough away so that our embarrassing failure is mostly an abstraction. Yes, Colin Powell lied to us at the United Nations. Yes, Cheney and Rumsfeld and Bush lied. Yes, the press failed to find the truth.

But resilience comes easy for the mistake-makers. No weapons of mass destruction. No link to Osama Bin Laden. Oops. The only Americans who experience the consequences of our great deception are those we sent to fight and die, their friends and families who’ll live with the loss, the nightmares of those who can’t forget Fallujah, who will imagine an IED waiting on every road they travel. Those who will carry the Iraq War with them the way my older friends can never forget Vietnam. What we could have fixed here at home with the money wasted. The jobs created.

Speaking of Vietnam, the other day at Fuel, my dear Republican friend Anthony put down the Berkshire Beagle and turned to me. “Nixon committed treason,” he matter of factly announced. Now if you’ve spent the last few years talking each morning with Anthony, you’d know this was a positively mind-blowing moment. There should have been trumpets. Confetti from the ceiling. Thousands of “What did you say?”

All I managed was a double-take and a “huh?”

“Nixon committed treason.” Anthony told me that tape recordings made by President Lyndon Johnson reveal that while LBJ tried to negotiate peace with the Vietnamese, Nixon worked to sabotage those negotiations.

By 1968, the Vietnam War was wildly unpopular. Facing a war-weary nation, Johnson reluctantly acknowledged it would be difficult to win re-election. And so a scramble for the Democratic nomination ensued with Robert Kennedy, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and Eugene McCarthy vying for the chance to take on Richard Nixon.

Members of Johnson’s staff had finally convinced him to negotiate an end to the war. And Johnson told the North and South Vietnamese he would end the bombing of the North in exchange for peace.

But Richard Nixon so desperately wanted the Presidency. And he was a shrewd enough politician to appreciate that peace, and an end to our national nightmare, would also guarantee victory to the Democrats and an end to his dream for power.

Through the wealthy and influential widow Anna Chennault, his Republican campaign advisor, Nixon secretly worked to undermine the President and our national interest. As the BBC puts it: “Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668

Johnson was furious. According to the BBC, “the president called Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader in the Senate to get a message to Nixon. The president knew what was going on, Nixon should back off and the subterfuge amounted to treason.”

But Johnson had gained this information by an illegal wiretap. The FBI had bugged the South Vietnamese Ambassador. And so Johnson decided not to press the matter. And just before the peace agreement was to be finalized, and before the election, Nixon got his wish and the South Vietnamese walked out of the talks.

Nixon won the election by less than 1% of the popular vote. Like Bush and Cheney, he had successfully lied to the American people. He had no plan or desire to end the war. Instead, he took the war to Laos and Cambodia. And because of him, 22,000 more Americans and countless Southeast Asians died. In 1973, we ended the war we could have ended in 1968.

I haven’t been watching the TV news. So I only know what Anthony has told me and the BBC article I found online just to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated our conversation. This morning Anthony told me he hasn’t seen anything about it on TV.

No national conversation about the fact our President committed treason. No outcry that Nixon’s lies and lust for power cost us 22,000 American lives. It’s probably too much to ask for a plaque at the Nixon Presidential Library.

Something tells me I better fix my sign.

Last week began for me with the news my former love had hung herself. The obituary reported she died at home. True, but hardly the real story.

When it comes to mental illness, we don’t often tell the real story.

Three people in my life have killed themselves.

We didn’t talk about mental illness, although there were deep strains of depression in both the Italian and Hungarian sides of my family. One cousin was never diagnosed. She just lived at home and hardly ever left the house. Her brother killed himself in his late twenties.

A college friend, a bright, talented poet, newly married, killed himself. I obviously didn’t know him well enough because I was shocked his pain so overwhelmed his love of language, his love for his wife.

But I wasn’t shocked on Monday because Pat had tried to end her life before. I chose numbness. I didn’t want to re-experience the initial joy and pleasure of our life together, then the unrelenting descent into pain. To acknowledge again my inability to stay afloat when her torment was taking her down; and taking me with it.

It was hard to sit amongst the large crowd who came to memorialize her. Who wanted to find the light in all this, a successful life to be celebrated. To heal. To talk about our compassionate community.

The problem is mine. But I’m uncomfortable when the chief memorializer doesn’t know the deceased. He did his best to acknowledge Pat’s despair. But it’s difficult to weave a convincing tale of hope, of continuity, of continuing on when you don’t know the whole story.

Crissey Farm was packed. For me, just another odd note. Because, of course, Crissey Farm isn’t a farm, but a large hall used for banquets, weddings. I was last there when townspeople weren’t listened to as they once again shared their misgivings about Downtown Redevelopment.

Pat had an innate sense of design. We ate dinner on china, lit by candlelight. I’m not sure Pat would have chosen this place to say goodbye.

While some talked about community, some of us were there to acknowledge our community failed. Perhaps success is impossible when it comes to mental illness but I firmly believe we’re nowhere near doing our best to achieve it.

It’s hard to face the darkness within, and it’s hard to see the darkness in those we love. To admit our life doesn’t resemble the life we wished for. Love everlasting. Work that not only provides meaning but the house, the car, and a long life of Key Lime Pie. The TV life. Where Sean the “Bachelor” has transformed rejection by Emily “The Bachelorette” to find himself in love with a handfu of women. In the blink of an televised eye.

Mental illness, a cancer of sorts, can turn kindness to coldness; patience to paranoia. My friend was gracious one moment; violent the next. Set back from the road, her antique shop was a small world of wonder. She could find the beautiful hiding beneath junk; a lovely landscape obscured by layers of dust and dirt.

Charming, she engaged so many so quickly. Yes, she was odd at times, and often quirky, but she transformed strangers into friends. What she didn’t often reveal was the great pain and the extraordinary anger. That was reserved for those she knew best.

Some of us at the Memorial were on the receiving end of that pain. We share a feeling of failure. That as much as we cared for Pat, loved her, we failed in the end to help her get the help she needed.

I tried and tried. And failed and failed. Then I reached the limits of my love. Maybe if I loved her more, was more patient, more skilled, more insistent, less insistent … The fact is I couldn’t get her to therapy; I couldn’t get her to try anti-depressants. I couldn’t get her to acknowledge she was ill.

We know when we’ve got cancer. And yet it seems so much more threatening to acknowledge we’re depressed.

I was lucky. When within four years my father died, my colleague was murdered, and my two best friends died of cancer, when I was swamped by death and despair, I found help.

We underfund mental health. We hire recent graduates from Social Work school and pay them next to nothing to minister to impossibly large numbers of our friends, neighbors, children, work-mates who are at their wit’s end.

We watch as the undiagnosed and untreated take their guns to schools, to work, to transform personal anguish into irrevocable public mayhem. To kill those they know and those they don’t. To kill themselves. Then we spend more energy defending the right to bear arms than the need to take care of our own.

I’m sorry but I can’t see the light in that. It’s still dark for me.

Dear Mickey,

Totally agree about Old Mill. I’ve had some wonderful meals and parties there – we used to fit all of CHP in the small dining room at Christmas and it was so lovely. We weren’t old ones then tho’ God knows we are getting there now! I even tried brains there one night and they were beyond compare. All of it is low key and that isn’t a style some folks find attractive now, but I hope the Berkshires doesn’t lose it.

Was also interested in the tree issues. My dad was a landscape architect and he was always trying to find ways to use tree plantings to slow down traffic – he designed many public parks in the south and his hero was Frederick Law Olmstead. I suspect that Great Barrington is having to solve too many problems with these trees and thus the higglety-pigglety nature of choices. As everyone who has ever had the misfortune to work on construction of anything knows, the costs keep going up and up and up. No solutions from this quarter but I wish you all good luck with it. My observation has always been that Chip E. knows the ins and outs of finance better than most of us and his advice is worth giving a listen to. Now I live in Maine where there isn’t enough money to put in a tea cup most of the time but we are always working for the tourists’ dollar. Love to you all in Great Barrington.

Linda Small

(Editor’s Note: Linda changed the lives of so many of us in South County when she helped to create the Children’s Health Program, providing affordable healthcare for young people in our communities.)

I’ve been meaning to tell you how much I like The Old Mill in Egremont ever since I read that cruel review in the Berkshire Beagle last summer. Reviewers are odd ducks. I’ve occasionally been one and always have to remind myself of the extraordinary ripple effect of reviews. There is something inherently unfair about sitting, watching, judging what you’re seeing, hearing, eating in just a series of moments, influenced, of course, by your moods, your biases, most of which you’re not terribly conscious of and haven’t shared with your readers.

I seem to recall he was especially put off by the ambience and the age of the diners. But I was surprised that his experience so contradicted mine. The Old Mill is the place I go whenever I have enough money to treat myself, or where others take me for a treat. I can honestly say that over the decades I have loved and appreciated every meal I’ve had there. When you don’t have a lot of money and you don’t eat out a lot, it’s especially important that when you do, you have a wonderful meal. And Terry and Ginny and his staff go out of their way to make dining not only exceedingly comfortable but very special. And if much of the clientele is older it’s because they, too, came to know and appreciate a wonderful thing. And so they naturally want more.

I should have written to The Beagle when the review appeared, but I spaced out. In any event, if you’re not a vegetarian, try the lamb chops and then have the profiteroles. If you don’t eat meat I’d have two orders of the profiteroles.

Anyway, moving toward the bad, the other day I was standing on the corner in front of Town Hall with my “It’s Time To Come Home” sign. There was a fine but chilling drizzle falling. An elderly couple pulled up in their car to tell me my sign should actually say: “It’s Past Time To Come Home.” I know the sign is falling apart but I can’t bear to think I might still be out there long enough to justify making the investment in a new sign.

Minutes later someone came to talk trees with me and Congressman Shein. Mostly because I’ve spoken out about The Best Small Town in America’s odd decision to tear itself up and remake its downtown.

He’s a local guy who knows about planning and trees. And while he doesn’t want to criticize his neighbors, he is seriously upset about what we’re about to do with our trees.

I, too, am incredibly fond of, and appreciate everything Tom Ingersoll does for the community: as a tree man, a baseball player, and for the music series he helps organize at Dewey Hall in Sheffield. I knew and liked his dad. Tom and others have been working hard on the tree issue. So remembering what I said about reviewers, know I write this merely to raise questions.

And because I was specifically asked by this gentleman to consider his concerns about the decision to go with a large variety of trees of different species, different looks, different sizes – many of which won’t provide significant shade. He emphasized how important it is that trees complement the townspace. The most striking boulevards feature a single species of similarly sized trees because they help unify the landscape. Engineers, he told us, are predisposed against taller trees, and he’s concerned smaller trees might worsen our problem with drivers who just don’t see pedestrians as they step out into the street. And while there was a legitmate concern years ago about the vulnerability of a single species to disease, there are now many disease-resistant species, including larger elms and pears, that would work well for Great Barrington.

Now let’s leave the trees and talk money. Somehow $367,000 has turned into a million. Luckily, my fiscally conservative Fuel-buddy Anthony is away eating Italian food. Otherwise we’d be hearing him complain each morning about government waste. But since he’s far away I can readily admit he might have a point. Remember when we were told it would only cost us $367,000 to plan our downtown revitalization? Somehow that’s blossomed to a million bucks.

We were promised a cheap new downtown courtesy of the Commonwealth. Turns out we’ve been shifting highway money we could be spending on other parts of town to make up for the increasing costs of planning. Who has taken responsibility for this major miscalculation? Considering how much it’s costing, wouldn’t it have made more sense to do and pay for this project over many years? Without losing summer seasons?

The sound arguments Chip Elitzer offered for a gradual redevelopment were dismissed with the promise of free money and a great opportunity that other towns might grab. So now what’s good and what’s bad and what’s …?

Rather than act, the Great Barrington Selectboard decided to discuss guns and gun violence. We Americans like to discuss/argue about everything.  But some arguments defy resolution. Like the argument about abortion and women’s rights. Or the argument about the right to bear arms versus the need to control gun violence.

We’ve had similar seemingly insolvable arguments in the past. The argument over slavery torn the nation apart. At a certain point you have to stop arguing and take action. Slavery was a crime against humanity. It always was and even today few Americans appreciate the enormity of the African holocaust.

It seems to me that the argument about guns is just another way we have to avoid confronting yet another crime against humanity. For there is no arguing that shooting someone to get one’s way is a crime. When reason fails, humans resort to violence. For all our iPods and iPads and our extraordinary ability to plop a rover on Mars, we seem unable to keep from killing each other. Year after year, death after death, war after war.

It’s time to acknowledge how frail and stupid we are. It’s time to take the necessary steps to save ourselves from our friends, sons, brothers, fathers, strangers who for whatever reason decide to wage their personal wars. Those who go to war against their wives or girlfriends or bosses or co-workers; those who are so pissed off they kill little children.

To those of you who love your guns, I say fine, keep your guns. I just want to limit your ability to buy and use military-style multiple rounds of ammunition.

How many innocent bystanders and how many innocent children have to die just because an angry man has the ability to fire and keep firing? Not one bullet but a hail of bullets.

Do I really have to point out that this is not a fair fight. With these semi-automatic and automatic weapons, there is no defense for the innocent. Time after time, people are saved only because the gun malfunctions. And we are told the thirty dead could easily have been fifty.

People can argue about declining gun violence in this year or that year or in this state or that state but there is one statistic that overwhelms all others. It reveals the profoundly sad reality of gun violence, the fact that we never stop waging wars big and small.

Here’s the reality of American gun violence: more Americans have died since 1960 as a result of gun violence – suicide, murders, accidental shootings – than all the Americans who died in all the wars we have fought since the founding of our nation.

Here are our wars and our casualties:

(There 362 other Americans who died in various small conflicts since 1980 in places like Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Haiti.)

As for the deaths by gunfire, the figures come from several sources including the Center for Disease Control and the FBI.  You can read more about these statistics at Politfact: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jan/18/mark-shields/pbs-commentator-mark-shields-says-more-killed-guns/

Now remember we are talking about death here. If you include both those who were killed and those who were wounded, whether by their own hand or at the hands of another, these figures are much higher.

For example, in 2011 a total of 104,854 people were killed or wounded by gunfire.

Let me be clear. I believe in self-defense, in the right of individuals, in the right of nations to defend themselves. I’m glad we’re not a British colony. But I find the notion of a ragtag army of unorganized, semi-automatic gunowners defending all the rest of us from government tyranny to be a tad unrealistic. And a bit ironic considering the NRA has bought and paid for a significant number of Congresspeople.  In 2011-12, they contributed $1.3 million to candidates and spent $2.2 miilion lobbying Congress. They can pretend otherwise but the NRA has enormous power in the halls of government. They are part of the problem, not the solution. I’d put my money on a massive campaign of civil disobediance before I depend on the NRA to protect my freedom.

There are many, many of us who love to shoot, who love to hunt. Honest, decent people who are as horrified as can be at the senseless murder of children.  They cherish and never abuse the right to bear arms. But we are in the midst of an epidemic. It’s time to make difficult choices.

It’s time to act against gun violence.

When last we spoke I was selling old CDs, used books, and desperately organizing a bake sale to raise the five hundred bucks to buy the second half of the still Not For Public Consumption PR Proposal For Great Barrington’s Downtown Revitalization.

But while I was debating whether to go with oatmeal raisin or chocolate-chocolate chip, I got smacked by the great cold and/or flu of 2013. No cookies. No money. No clandestine meeting with my secret source by the bandstand.

Instead I slipped into a week’s worth of sneezing, coughing, sore throat, chills and more coughing.

It was hard to tell night from day, daydreams from nightmares. There was road construction everywhere. It seemed like it took me ten minutes to get from my bedroom to the bathroom. I had to show the road crew supervisor my driver’s license and Great Barrington Census Form. He kept asking me why I didn’t have pets and in my not-quite-sure-where-I-was state I almost convinced myself I had an invisible cat.

I’m pretty sure the phone rang a few times. Is it possible I spoke with Barry Stevens of Great Barrington’s Ad Hoc Committee For Crack-Free Sidewalks and Spiffy New Streets? Do I even know Barry Stevens? Barry said something about taking over as communications coordinator for Crack-Free Sidewalks while Carla Douglas was off studying innovative parking plans and the Australian Open in Melbourne. Anyway, it was, Barry suggested, a perfect time for a new beginning for us all. Critics and supporters all working together for a snazzier, bestier Barrington. New streets, new sidewalks, new signals, and a brand new attitude. All Barry wanted to know was who had slipped me the copy of the Smidley, Crump and Crump Proposal. I started to cough and couldn’t stop and Barry eventually hung up.

Could I have hallucinated a call from Ms. Abigail Starkfield-Crump herself? The architect of Lennoxx’s Award-Winning public relations and communications plan: “Lennoxx: We’re More Than We Were; We’re More Than You Expect; And We’re More Than You Imagine.”

Even with my dreadful head cold I could tell Abigail Starkfield-Crump wasn’t particularly happy with me. “Mr. Friedman, I wasn’t particularly happy reading excerpts from my confidential memo in The Berkshire Record. You may not be aware of it, but public relations is a very delicate art. Our job, my job, is find new and creative ways to shape and explain what’s happening and to help people see the best in what might prove to be a difficult situation. And, of course, you say one thing to your clients and quite another thing to the general public. So yes I told the business leaders of Great Barrington that it’s never easy turning what will be dreadful into something special. But I was exaggerating.”

I don’t think I said a word. What I really wanted was one of those fruit lozenges with Vitamin C and Echinacea because my throat was killing me but because the drop had melted a bit, it was particularly hard getting the paper wrapper off.

I think Abigail was getting even more annoyed at me. “Mr. Friedman, is that your cat making all that noise in the background?” At which point I started to sneeze and couldn’t stop. Eventually Abigail hung up.

Somewhere during day five or six the sound of the jackhammers merged with the sound of the chainsaws. Now being sick is never any fun and I hope you all manage to avoid this year’s version of the great cold and/or flu of 2013. But it’s particularly tricky when you’re alone. In my experience it always helps to have someone to talk to, to check with, to replenish the tissues or make the chamomile tea.

This time around it was only me. If you were there, I could have asked you about the cat. Maybe you would have been kind enough to answer the phone. To take messages. Especially the one about the coal chutes.

I’m not sure whether it was a man or a woman. “Mickey, is that you? You sound like a stuffed cat. I came like I said I would. I was hiding behind a tree. There were three members from the Ad Hoc Committee and several selectmen trying to find me. I brought the second half of the Crump Proposal. I could certainly use that five hundred bucks but you were smart not to come.

“Everybody’s incredibly nervous and on edge. Turns out even though we spent $800,000 of town money planning this whole thing, someone forgot about the coal chutes. From the old days when coal companies would deliver coal to heat these buildings. Seems like some of those chutes aren’t on the master plan. Another postponement. It would be like digging in the dark. Smidley wants another 50 grand.”

I started to cough and he or she hung up.

Political fortitude appears to be in short supply among the members of the Great Barrington Board of Selectmen. Shortly after the horrific killing of 20 Newtown, Connecticut elementary school children – mostly first graders – and six adults at the hands of a disturbed young man with access to a military style semi-automatic rifle, Barrington selectmen expressed understandable sympathy for the parents of the victims and recalled that precisely 20 years ago Great Barrington was itself the site of gun-driven violence.

The selectmen then took the commendable next step, as a community that has also endured the shocking deaths of innocents due to the availability of instruments of murder. They stood up for principle and drafted a resolution, stating, in effect, their sense that a civilized society should not tolerate nor accept unregulated access to weapons of mass murder. They cited their outrage at the numerous “senseless tragedies” and continuing “slaughter of our youth.” In the resolution the board called on Congress to enact a ban on military-style assault weapons and large capacity ammunition clips.

Within a month, however, that sense of moral high ground and common decency seems to have melted away.

Facing a bellicose cadre of gun rights advocates – the board’s resolution, of course, was aimed neither at sportsmen nor hunters, nor did the board have any authority to impose a ban on assault weapons — selectmen backed down, intimidated by those who cannot stomach the mere mention of measures to reduce the pandemic of gun violence – or even admit that there is a problem we all face because of gun violence. Not one selectman could summon the gumption to defend or even state the reasons why the board had considered the resolution in the first place. In this instance, the Second Amendment trumped the First Amendment.

Given the environment for discussion of this issue – and the threat from one gun proponent that the board would face “resistance” should it adopt a resolution on assault weapons – it is hard to imagine what purpose a vaguely framed “dialogue” with gun proponents, as proposed by Selectmen Deborah Phillips and Alana Chernila, would serve. Who would be at the table and with what goal?

Since the Board of Selectmen appears willing to bow to the demands of the gun advocates, who, then, is going to speak up for the rights of the elderly woman who appeared before the board after the Newtown massacre and said that because of the proliferation of military-style weapons – the arming of American society — she felt vulnerable?

News commentators like me, Maureen Dowd, and David Brooks, and old-fashioned reporter-types like the Woodsteins – who met their source in a dark parking garage, then blew the whistle on Nixon’s plumbers – well, people tell us things. Slip important documents under the door or throw them over the transom.

We don’t have a parking garage and I don’t have a transom but I got mine when I returned from the bathroom at Fuel and found it tucked under my almond croissant.

I don’t know who slipped it to me. But like the Woodsteins I feel a certain responsibility to share it with you:

“Not For Public Consumption – An Innovative PR Approach To Downtown Revitalization. A Smidley, Crump and Crump Proposal for Great Barrington’s Ad Hoc Committee For Crack-Free Sidewalks and Spiffy New Streets.”

Quite frankly I didn’t even know about the GBAHCCFS&SNS or that they had commissioned a Smidley, Crump and Crump Proposal. Clearly, the GBAHCCFS&SNS has clout.

You might not remember the ground-breaking, award-winning work Smidley did for Lenox. But by simply and boldly adding an extra “n” and an additional “x” to Lenox, they increased tourism by 1.4372%. And it’s striking how much better the new Lennoxx is doing than the old Lenox. People seem so much happier. There’s a lot more humming and more women are knitting sweaters. Of course, there are some folks who thought Smidley’s $60,000 fee was a wee-bit excessive but you can’t really argue with success.

Abigail Starkfield-Crump offers a short introduction: “The task is simple: How Do We Have Fun While We Tear Up The Old, Tear Down The Trees, and Fill In The Cracks. Or, put another way, It May Not Be Easy Making The Best Small Town in America Even Bestier But We Sure As Heck Are Going To Enjoy It.

“Now,” Ms. Starkfield-Crump continues, “it’s never easy turning what will be dreadful into something special. So let’s start with words. We’ve got several ground-breaking branding ideas for you to choose from. There’s ‘Turning Misery to Merriment.’ Or ‘Destruction to Delight.’ Or our favorite, ‘Traffic = Transformation.’

“Of course, it’s easy to talk transformation but with the help of the business community, we’re actually going to transform. Every moment, every inch of the excruciatingly long trip from Castle to Cottage Street offers an opportunity to grow, to learn, to stretch, to think, to sing, to hum. To transform. Yes, to transform.

“We at Smidley, Crump and Crump have been lucky enough to have been working over the last few months with Marty and Mindy Bright-Sky, leaders of the GB holistic healing community. Marty is best-known for his Lake Mansfield fire-walking workshops and his weeklong intensives for middle-aged male entrepreneurs with bad backs, ‘Be The Bobcat.’ Mindy, of course, is well-respected in the self-help movement for her pioneering seminar and nutritional supplements, ‘Six Minutes To Spiritual Rejuvenation.’ The Bright-Skies have recently been featured on Oprah promoting their new memoir: ‘How To Make The Most of A Miserable Marriage.’

According to Ms. Starkfield-Crump: “We’re suggesting ever-present opportunities to transform – a continuing program of education and entertainment on both sides on the street during each and every construction hour. Our positive message proclaims: ‘Live, Learn, Learn to Live from Castle Street to Cottage Street and Back Again.’

“We’ve learned at other road construction sites that a typical driver will begin to lose his sense of humor about seven minutes into the traffic jam experience. Accordingly, for northbound traffic we’ll be deploying our first wave of massage therapists along Searles Castle on the East, and for southbound traffic on the sidewalk by Kimball’s Fuel Oil office.

“We like to think of the three-minute massage as early intervention. It’s hard to be pissed when someone’s just rubbed your neck. We’ve put out a call to massage therapists as far north as Stockbridge and as far south as Sheffield so that we can have massage stations on every block. We’re asking the massage community to consider a sliding scale so that no one is turned away just because they didn’t diversify when they had a chance.

“The mimes and clowns come next, building on the goodwill we’ve just established. They’ll be assorted baked goods, and for those whose growing annoyance won’t be satisfied with sugar, we’ll have a series of small hibachis, and an array of toaster ovens offering English Muffin pizza. For those with a finer palate, we’ll be serving Brie On A Stick.

“Several foreign language specialists have created a Traffic Special we at Smidley like to call “Hello. Goodbye. And Where’s The Bathroom?” They’ll pop into the back seat, teach and test in under two minutes. So far we’ve got Italian, Spanish, and Armenian covered.”

Unfortunately, the rest of the document was missing. At the bottom was a handwritten note: “Want more? Bring five hundred bucks in twenties to the bandstand Tuesday night at ten. No cops.”