A Cold Snap for the records

Howdy neighbor!

I don’t know about you, but I blame the groundhog for this last one. Not a day goes by after the sage woodchuck of Punxsutawney scurries out, sees his shadow, and declares in true groundhog-ese the grim forecast, “six more weeks of winter,” does a cold snap of record proportions then descend from Canada to fall on all New England. If any among our readers still harbored any private disbelief as to the verity of this oracular rodent’s power, I can only say to you, doubt no longer.

I for one knew it was coming and was much comforted by Phil’s prediction, for it agreed plainly with the only other source of climate data any true Yankee should trust; for the last several months it’s been right there to find, written plainly in the old Farmer’s Almanac, that in February we could expect “record-breaking cold temperatures of 40 degrees below in some places of the U.S.” Clearly, the good philomaths at the almanac’s tabulating desk have, by their obscure calculations, managed to tap into a similar vein of wisdom to that arising naturally in groundhogs. Truly these things are prodigious.

But in all truth, this cold snap was one for books; it is not since my old Academy days that I can recall so cold a spell in these parts, in those by-gone days of early February when 29 below zero came and lingered here for upwards of a week it seemed. We’ve not had it quite that bad this year, but with

In Ye Olden Times

by Michael Davis BHS Assistant Director

six more weeks of winter set to come, there’s still time. Such weather as we’ve been having breeds icicles, and in further evidence of the unassailable wisdom of the groundhog, I here demonstrate to our readers a specimen which recently formed in the growing season after Phil’s predication. Send this curio to your friends and family in far-flung sections of country, and tell them that here in Bridgton, they grow icicles longer than a man is tall!

In this last snap, I woke up on Friday morning and found it was about 19 degrees in the right direction, and that was just as warm as I’d see it for some time, since the mercury did nothing but fall all day. When work ended that evening, I checked to see what temperature it was and found, in a word, that it wasn’t — because it was zero, and this had fallen to a

COLD, Page 2B

What to do when panic hits?

What will we do when the panic hits? It’s coming, you know, sure as God made little green apples. MerriamWebster defines panic this way: “sudden, overpowering fright,” “sudden, unreasoning terror often accompanied by mass flight,” or “sudden, widespread fright concerning financial affairs.” All those definitions share characteristics in common. Panic happens suddenly; it overwhelms rational thinking, and it triggers our “fight or flight” emotional response. Because panic is based in fear, not reason, its effects on human society usually are negative, and they cannot easily be predicted. Ignore our pretensions about “rugged individualism.” We humans are herd animals, and panic causes herd animals to stampede. Newly-elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was addressing nationwide panic with his First Inaugural Address in 1933, when he said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.”

FDR was trying to keep our parent’s generation from stampeding, like panicky sheep, over a cliff and into the fascist nightmare that was devouring democratic nations around the world. Had he failed, the United States probably wouldn’t have survived the 1930s. America also encountered a fascist “America First” gang back then

Per Bag would have brought in, not about encouraging recycling in our local community.

Nancy Coshow Bridgton

Explain Please

To The Editor: Could someone please explain to me what the heck is going on with government in America. Rioting, property destruction, and even murder are being tol-

Independent Thought

by Rev. Robert Plaisted Guest Columnist

— same name, same ideology — white supremacist, protyranny, anti-democratic. They might have taken over our government, if it had faltered.

Even though our current national panic is not yet too severe, just give it some time. Another panic is coming that will make the Great Depression look mild. The preconditions already are in place. All we lack is a triggering event, something comparable to the collapse of our economy between 1929 and 1932. That was enough to demolish the swaggering, cocksure optimism of the Roaring Twenties and destroy the faith of most Americans in Republican leadership.

The late 1920s and the early 2020s look eerily similar.

erated and, in some cases, encouraged in many of our cities. Nationally, the politics of personal destruction continues unabated.

Comparing America to a theoretically perfect political/economic system is looking for fool’s gold. You get the real gold when America is compared to actual political/economic systems, like the former USSR, or Russia, or China, or Cuba, or Venezuela, or any other past or present authoritarian regime, there is no contest. Because this is so, the advocates for Marxism or any other form of dictatorship always concentrate on the lack of perfection in the American system. The American experiment, for all its faults, is so far superior to the theoretical promises of dictatorships (whether of the proletariat or not) or social planners as to not even be a contest. The American experiment actually raised the status of workers from serfdom to free citizens who owned property in all its forms (not just real estate).

The Progressive social scientists’ pursuit of perfec- tion is the death of growth for the individual or society. The American experiment’s recognition that men and women are by nature imperfect means that governments made up of men and/or women will likewise be imperfect. Also, the natural rights bequeathed by the Creator to mankind are inviolate and cannot be given or taken by government without the express consent of the people through an Amendment to the Constitution.

Today, Progressives are usurping the people’s rights by exceeding the Constitutional limits set on government. Progressives are doing a legislative and Judicial sleight of hand; always saying that it is only fair, just, and to help; the government needs to redistribute the efforts of the many to make everyone equal in outcome to everyone else. A dangerous theory that in every place it has been tried has produced wealth and privilege for the elite few and misery for everyone else.

Jock MacGregor Sebago

Don’t speak for all of us

To The Editor: Comprehension as a tool to facilitate communication is a prerequisite to its success. As the author of the letter Mr. St. Laurent responded to last week, it is quite amusing to see the disconnect between the points he thought I was making, his descriptive (and yes pejorative) terms of response, and ultimately as so often happens with his analysis his total misinterpretation and characterization of my intent.

Let’s start with a couple of simple points he mischaracterized. I did not attack Mr. Laven’s bona fides. That was Mr. StL.’s choice of terms, so perhaps he might want to look it up. What I said called into question his accuracy and objectivity as he has appeared often enough in The News espousing leftist opinions that made