Category Archives: Op-Eds

Op-Ed: Thoughts on ‘Suckers’ and ‘Losers’

Posted on by
6

“Suckers and Losers”?

I am outraged; and saddened. 

If you’ve paid any attention to the national news, you know that The Atlantic recently carried a report by editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who cited sources who stated that the president canceled his visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he believed the Marines who died in the battle of Belleau Wood during World War I were “suckers.” According to the report, Mr. Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” 

Mr. Trump lashed out at Goldberg, calling him a “slimeball,” adding that it was, “a fake story and a disgrace,” written by a magazine that probably was not going to be around much longer. He has made similar comments about the New York Times. Unbelievably, he went on to say (i.e., “Tweet”): “Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE. Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!!” Holy Cow … again, the specter of strong women?

Jeffrey Goldberg is a solid, well-respected journalist. The Atlantic began publication more than 150 years ago. The Atlantic’s founders include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

The following are my memories, but relevant to how I’ve reacted to this reprehensible White House issue. These memories are special to me, but certainly not unique amongst American families. 

My father’s life was interrupted by some action in “harm’s way” in World War II and the Battle of the Bulge. He was a member of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation”; my grandparents prayed, and he eventually came home. My Dad was neither a sucker nor a loser.  

I had a close friend growing up, who, when I left for University, made the decision to enlist in the Army. Killed in action, Gary John Shea’s name is engraved on Panel 61E Line 2 of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, DC. I have visited the Memorial and seen the engraving. His death was a tragedy. He was neither a sucker nor a loser.

Each of our military services has a creed, or oath, that provides a value structure by which our men and women live and serve. 

In Gary’s honor, I paraphrase the Soldier’s Creed: “I am an American Soldier. I serve the people of the United States. I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.” Does the White House know this? Deployment of the military at racial justice protests is not mentioned in the “Creed”, “even as photo op props.” 

I also served, but never in harm’s way. My active duty years were mostly at the Naval Hospital at NAS Pax River, MD. In my clinical capacity, I once had the terrible honor to examine the burned remains of a Naval aviator in order to officially confirm his identity. His A-4 Skyhawk had gone down. His death was a tragedy. He was neither a sucker nor a loser. 

The A-4 is the same aircraft flown by another Naval Aviator and an American hero, Senator John McCain. He was neither a sucker nor a loser.

My son and his wife are graduates of the Naval Academy.  Brendan served on fast attack nuclear submarines. He claims to have once seen the “bright lights” of Murmansk. Emily was involved in missile testing on surface vessels.

Having fulfilled his active duty service commitment, Brendan continues his relationship with the Navy, in his role at JHU’s Applied Physics Laboratory. He works closely with them to develop “strategies and systems that support our Sea Control Mission”.  

My son-in-law is a Royal Air Force squadron leader and recently completed a multi-year tour as RAF liaison officer to the USAF at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. “Ruggy” has the dubious distinction, as a citizen of the United Kingdom, to have flown his USAF F-15E Strike Eagle over Syria and Iraq with the 336th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. It is a tradition to have an American flag in the cockpit for later presentation to family. We cherish that flag.

Brendan, Emily, and Ruggy are intelligent and honorable leaders and warriors, who have served to defend the United States. They are neither suckers nor losers.

I despair at the utter callousness and disrespect exhibited by a Commander-in-Chief who sees fit to use descriptors like “suckers and losers” as a means of insulting those who served in our military. 

Editor Goldberg had received some criticism for not naming his sources, although the Associated Press has corroborated the report. 

However, the history of disparaging rhetoric that has emanated from Mr. Trump, alone gives credibility to The Atlantic report. I will not bother to cite all of his words and the times that this president has made degrading, and insulting remarks about the military and its leadership.

However, the names that come to my mind include Alexander Vindman, John McCain, Generals Mattis, McMaster, and, just recently, Kelly. His words and feelings are clear.  To the best of my knowledge, nobody in the Trump family has served, which amazes me. Consequently, he has absolutely no reference point on the role or concerns of family who support our men and women, who may serve in harm’s way. How did my daughter, Erin, feel when Ruggy was flying over Iraq and Syria? How did my wife handle Brendan’s undersea deployments during silent periods? 

I have to wonder: “Where are his close advisors?” 

The VP has not served in the military, although his father served in Korea, and his son with the Marines. Mike Pompeo is a graduate of West Point and has served as an Army officer.

Why won’t you guys ask this president to cease his reprehensible insults?

God save the United States of America!

Editor’s Note: This is the opinion of Thomas D. Gotowka, who is a resident of Old Lyme.

Op-Ed: A Gardener, “The Gardener’s Tale,” and Structural Racism in Our Towns

Posted on by
1

Editor’s Note: The author of this op-ed, Joseph CL Merola,  MD, MPH, is an active member of the Old Saybrook March for Justice.  He lives in Old Saybrook and is a semiretired Obstetrician and Gynecologist, having most recently practiced, taught and served as Chairman of the Department at the St. Luke’s University Health Network in Eastern PA and Western NJ. Dr. Merola also has been a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Clinical Professor at the Temple University School of Medicine. He has an abiding interest in the public’s health, particularly for women and children, and for distributive justice in health care.           

Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash.

At this time of year, I’m in my glory as an avid gardener in Coastal Connecticut.

So grateful to my Italian father and grandfather for sharing and showing, by example, a gardener’s passion  (and frankly requiring  me to participate by helping to sow, nurture, weed and pick!) Arising from that hands-on education comes a now more natural understanding of the elements of the growing environment for seeds and plants … temperature, soil quality, water, sun and organic principles. 

So here we are again, in early September, with an abundant harvest of herbs, greens, root vegetables, peppers and array of tomato varieties, sizes and colors. And we can still look ahead to corn, squashes and pumpkins for the fall.  How wonderful! But, giving credit where credit is due, these “fruits of one’s labor”, and their quality, begin and depend on the all-important environment.

So, let’s consider for a moment “The Gardener’s Tale,” an allegory, first appearing within an article in the American Journal of Public Health in 2000, authored by Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, PhD, MPH, the former President of the American Public Health Association and a Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. (An Abstract, and access to the full text is available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446334/ for further reference.) 

She develops a context for understanding racism on three levels. First is Personally Mediated Racism, i.e. intentional or unintentional prejudice and discrimination, including acts of omission and/or commission, structural boundaries, and societal condonation.

The second is Internalized Racism, wherein the members of the race in question accept notions of their own lesser intrinsic worth and ability.

The last is the so evident Institutionalized Racism, shown by sub-optimal material conditions (access to quality housing, education, employment, a clean environment and particularly health care). Also included in this category is similarly differential access to power, resources, information, and a “voice.”

As a demonstration, Jones presents the referenced allegory of a Gardener with two flower boxes, one with fresh, rich soil (and beautiful red flowers) and the other, unknowingly at first, with old, poor quality soil (and similarly poor quality pink flowers.) 

Personally Mediated Racism is reflected in the Gardener’s discard of the scraggly pink blossoms before going to seed, or removing pink scattered seeds that might be blowing into the more fertile soil. 

Internalized Racism here relates to the pink flowers telling the bees not to pollinate them with pink pollen, as they prefer red pollen, and thus red flowers.

The allegorical equivalent of Institutionalize Racism is most poignant … with the two flower boxes historically keeping the soils, seeds and flowers separate by color, the oversight of the gardener in not addressing the soil differences in the first place, and the belief that red flowers were intrinsically better!

This summer a light has dramatically been shone on our own “gardens”, in our own shoreline towns. The marches for social justice, arising from the Black Lives Matter movement, have grown in size and number. Privileged people, not directly impacted by racism, have materialized and raised their voices against racism. This has been a powerful maker! 

Towns across Connecticut, including New London, have adopted resolutions claiming that “racism is a public health crisis,” and used the opportunity for town hall conversations to bring about change. Why is all quiet in the Old Saybrook, Essex and Old Lyme Town Halls, despite their own residents’ protests and affirmation?    

Clearly, “the Gardener” here is our local government. They have the power to consider, act, and openly declare racism as a reality, a grave concern, and a public health crisis. They have the power to allocate more resources to mitigate this dilemma. Among other outcomes, these could take the shape of education, public culture, affordable housing and accessible healthcare. 

But, why are they so quiet? 

We need open recognition, and declaration: our various garden environments for growth must be optimized, and not different. Our racial soil quality, particularly new and fertile soil, is needed to permit pink flowers to flourish, as well as red. Then, flowers of all colors can be recognized equally, and have the same opportunity for contributing to a brighter and more meaningful life.  

Op-Ed: An Open Letter to all the States on the Mandatory 14-Day Quarantine List

Posted on by
3

Anyone traveling to Connecticut from the states in red must quarantine for 14 days after arrival.

UPDATED 08/10: New Comment — Hi! This is Connecticut. You know, the little northeastern state with great pizza, high quality of life, and New England charm? Doesn’t ring a bell? We’ve got small cities and a beautiful shoreline and grouchy people and … still no, huh?

Okay, fine. We’re the one between Boston and New York with the traffic jams. Know who we are now? Good.

We’re having a hard time understanding why you let things get this bad. There’s a lot about the rest of the country that doesn’t always make sense to us, like the distinct lack of split-top hot dog buns west of the Hudson, but usually we just chalk it up to regional differences and get on with our lives.

But this is different.

The coronavirus is still raging out of control in most states, five full months after it first started showing up in the United States. In other parts of the world, things are actually going back to normal. In Taiwan they’re having baseball—with fans in attendance! And we here in the Northeast were actually on the same track.

We were beating this thing! We were hit early and we were hit hard, just like our neighbors in New York, but we had smart, capable people in government and brave, hard-working healthcare personnel, and by May we were seeing a dramatic drop in cases and deaths.That downward trend continued until mid-June, when things kind of stalled out.

Now our numbers are going back up. It’s slow, but it’s steady, and we’re bracing for it to get worse before it gets better. Given how bad things got for us in April, and how hard our people worked and how much we sacrificed, this is absolutely gut-wrenching.

Was it all for nothing?

Do you realize that by bearing the brunt of the first wave, the people of the Northeast bought you precious time to prepare? We had only days to decide what to do as the virus spread, undetected, through our population. Everything happened here in two panicky, rushed weeks in March, and then we shut it all down and coped as best we could.

You had so much more time. You could have prevented the virus from ever becoming as bad as it was here.

But what did you do with all that time? Did you ready mask mandates, did you make sure to close bars and beaches, did you get what equipment you could for your hospitals and educate your people?

No. Too many of you decided that it was more important to protect the economy than the people. Too many of you fell for the anti-science, culture-war nonsense coming out of the mouth of the president. And look what’s come of that—the economy is still in ruins, and there are 150,000 Americans dead.

That’s why we’ve had to make our list. If anyone travels from one of those states to Connecticut, they’re required to quarantine themselves for 14 days.

But it’s not like we can put up guard posts on I-95 and I-84. We can’t wall ourselves off from the rest of the country. So the virus is coming back in, and descending on a population who thought, rightly, that they had done their job to defeat it already.

We’re not going to jump up and down and yell about how this is all your fault, even though we’d be justified in doing so. We will share what we’ve learned, and hope you can turn things around before they get even worse.

Masks and shutdowns work. Educating the people works. The leaders of states suffering from the virus now must not be so afraid of the political consequences of doing the right thing, of leading, that they simply allow people to die. Mandate masks. Shut down the economy. Close the bars. Forget about school. Test, report, and trace. You have to.

But here’s the most important and painful lesson we learned: you are on your own. The federal government did not care if we got PPE and ventilators. The people at the very top in Washington were content to let us die because of politics. They don’t care, and help is not on the way.

Which means it’s up to you, and only you, to stop this thing. We believe in you. You have a friend in us, and we’re rooting for you all the way.

Just please, for goodness’ sake, cancel your travel plans.

Editor’s Note: (i)This column was originally published Aug. 4, on CTNewsJunkie.com. It is republished with their permission.

(ii) Susan Bigelow is an award-winning columnist and the founder of CTLocalPolitics. She lives in Enfield with her wife and their cats. Follow her on Twitter @whateversusan.

It’s Juneteenth — But What Does That Mean? (from ‘The Boston Globe’)

Posted on by
Reply

LYME / OLD LYME — To be honest, we have never mentioned Juneteenth before on LymeLine.com but, in a sign of the times, we feel we can’t let this day pass us by this year without comment.

Quiet, overwhelmingly white Lyme and Old Lyme have already displayed a remarkable awareness of the changing world in which we are living with rallies for racial justice in each town on the most recent two weekends.

Something is happening — even in our peaceful, rural backwaters — that is touching the community conscience and sparking action.

We stumbled on this powerful opinion piece by Adrian Walker titled, What we celebrate this Juneteenth, published yesterday (June 18) in The Boston Globe, which digs deeper into this ongoing phenomenon and explains the history of Juneteenth far better than we are able.

Walker says,  “And this Juneteenth finds Americans in the streets, joined again in a battle for that elusive idea of freedom. Fighting, once again, for true equity in the land where all of us were created equal. As much as anything, Juneteenth is an observance of promises still waiting to be delivered.”

He concludes, “If we are lucky and brave and bold, this insane year of pandemic, uprising, and upheaval might be another beginning. Americans stand on the shoulders of idealists, but grounded in the realities of the oppressed. Juneteenth, from its beginning, has been a monument to that tension.

For once, that drama is front and center.“

Read Walker’s full column at this link.

Op-Ed: Old Lyme EDC Completes Fact-Finding Stage of ‘Smart Growth’ Development Plan, Seeks Additional Public Input to Move Forward

Posted on by
1

Editor’s Note: The authors, Justin Fuller and Howard Margules, are the Co-Chairs of the Old Lyme Economic Development Commission.

The Old Lyme Economic Development Commission (EDC) launched three initiatives as its first step in crafting a “smart growth” economic development strategy for Old Lyme focused on maintaining the small-town character and charm of our unique town.

We realized the success of the plan depended upon providing opportunities for the public’s voice to be heard. Therefore, we designed the project with this in mind.

The three studies are now complete, and we are pleased to share the results with you.

We believe the findings in these reports will provide essential insights for not only the mission of the EDC but also will provide valuable information for the town’s other boards, commissions, and stakeholders.

The EDC has two main goals: first, attracting new businesses that fit the character of Old Lyme, and second, supporting existing businesses. These studies provided information essential in meeting these goals.

We were delighted by the community’s high level of participation, and we sincerely thank those who participated in completing the survey and to the SWOT attendees who gave up a portion of their free time to share their ideas with the commission.

We are committed to turning these findings into recommendations aimed at enhancing our town’s future.

Our efforts were greatly assisted by Advance CT (formerly known as the Connecticut Economic Resource Center, CERC) in crafting these three reports. They provide a comprehensive sound foundation to build upon, but will require adjustments for the impact of COVID-19.

We recognize the business and economic landscape will be altered, which will require adjustments to our future plans. We believe we are in a better position to confront the “new normal” that will result from the impact of the virus by having the results from these projects as a baseline to work with.

We invited all residents and all businesses to complete an Economic Development Survey, which provided the entire community an opportunity to weigh in on a variety of issues that will help shape the future of Old Lyme.

The response was overwhelming and the results of the Survey are contained in the report at this link.  Seven hundred and thirty surveys were completed (we anticipated 150 responses), the largest percentage response of any of the approximate 80 municipalities Advance CT has surveyed.

We conducted two economic Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) workshops designed to obtain feedback from a broad cross-section of town stakeholders, including a variety of businesses, residents, town leaders, nonprofit organizations, and clergy. The SWOT workshops gave additional opportunities for these stakeholders to dive deeper into critical issues.

The Old Lyme Economic Development Study provided valuable data and expert analysis of current economic conditions and recommendations for the future economic development of Old Lyme. It generated professional analysis and recommendations that will aid us in examining business opportunities that are both realistic and are a good fit for Old Lyme.

in carrying out our two EDC goals of both providing support to existing businesses, and attracting new business, while being mindful of maintaining the charm and character of our beautiful town.

Looking to the future, we will be discussing a game plan at our next meeting and the initiatives we have described here, which have already been implemented, will play a vital role as we move forward. In a nutshell, the EDC is now transitioning from gathering information to generating recommendations for a “smart growth” economic development strategy,

Our goal will be to come up with a specific recommendations for economic development keeping in mind our two EDC  goals of supporting existing business and attracting new businesses while being mindful of maintaining the charm and character of our beautiful town.

We will recommend that we include a vision statement that includes defining  both “the character” of Old Lyme and our sense of community.

We encourage you to review the results of all three reports. We welcome your questions, comments, and suggestions. Please feel free to email us at edc@oldlyme-ct.gov. We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks again for your participation and interest in the future of the Old Lyme, a town we all treasure.