cmyer@newsandsentinel.com
“‘Liberty! Liberty!’ Pho! Let Mr. Webster, for decency’s sake shut his lips for once and forever on this word. The word ‘Liberty’ in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word ‘love’ in the mouth of a courtesan.”
That was Ralph Waldo Emerson, reacting to Sen. Daniel Webster, Whig-Mass., after he spoke before the U.S. Senate, asserting slave holders were entitled to the protection of their property and urging strengthened fugitive slave laws. He was supporting fellow Sen. Henry Clay, Whig-Ky., in his Compromise of 1850. You know, the one that held off civil war for a while, but resulted in the continuation of slavery.
cmyer@newsandsentinel.com
I don’t know where to start. And the man I used to call when I was stuck is not at the other end on the phone, now.
I don’t have the right words. But he did. For 46 years he poured words onto the page for readers as a reporter, an editor, a columnist … there were times in his career when he had to do it all for the smaller newsrooms where he worked. And he did.
My dad had me roped into the newspaper business as early as I can remember. Some of it’s a jumbled blur. Pulling pages off the big machine that spit out wire photos and handing it to someone to be marked up with a grease pencil; pulling film off the drying line in the back … just standing there listening to the clack, clack, clack of typewriters and old phones ringing. The smell of pipe smoke, ink, dark room chemicals and paper in a tiny office in Sistersville. Men like my dad and Adam Kelly rolling around on their office chairs asking big questions and doing important things.
It is difficult to know what to hope for, what to resolve to do, in this new year. The one we leave behind isn’t really done taking its toll on us. Nor is it
cmyer@newsandsentinel.com
Fair warning if you are the kind of person for whom it would be easy to plant a “Frozen” earworm. I’ve had one since I read Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Bondy Shay Gibson’s letter to her school community Tuesday.
I remember a couple of months ago hearing young people slowly come to the realization that if schools had found a way to make learning remote, there might never even after COVID-19 be another snow day. No need for it. If it is unsafe for kids to travel to school, the vast majority of them now have everything they need to go to “school” at home.
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