The Northcountry Chronicle

Trying to Avoid Giving Up

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by W.D. Ehrhart I have to confess that I have been struggling mightily for the past few months to resist giving in to utter despair. There’s no future in that. But increasingly I find myself thinking that there’s really no future worth bothering about. I just can’t shake the feeling that things in this country are not going to get any better. Remember when we thought no president could possibly get any worse, be any more evil, than Richard Milhous Nixon, whom I took to calling King Richard the Milhous? And then we got empty-headed George W. Bush, who dragged us into not one but …

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Farewell, Beanie

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by W.D. Ehrhart Last Friday was a very sad day for me, my wife Anne, and my daughter Leela. We had to euthanize our cat Beanie, who had been with us for nearly 22 years. That’s almost half of Anne’s and my 45 years of marriage. And as anyone who’s ever loved a pet knows, Beanie was a member of our family. She wasn’t like a family member; she was a family member. Our daughter Leela and her then-boyfriend found Beanie in the boyfriend’s yard one cold November night when Beanie was maybe five weeks old and weighed barely a pound. Beanie had gotten separated …

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Sexual Peccadilloes of Public People

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by W.D. Ehrhart So much for ex-Marine oysterman and working-class hero Graham Platner’s bid to unseat the sleazy weaselly Susan Collins in the U.S. Senate. Another American male undone by his inability to keep his pants up. It just amazes me—indeed, leaves me breathless and flabbergasted—how often men seem to be incapable of resisting the desire to engage in sequel activity at inappropriate times and with inappropriate partners. Don’t misunderstand me. Ever since I hit puberty about 64 years ago, I’ve enjoyed sex as much as the next man. Indeed, prior to my marriage at the age of 32, I was more active than I …

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What Rawand Dreams Of

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by W.D. Ehrhart Readers who have followed my writing in the New Hampshire Gazette will perhaps recall that I have written multiple times in the past few years about my unusual friendship with a young Palestinian woman named Rawand Gawad Abu Ghanem, to whom I was first introduced by way of the scholar Lorrie Goldensohn and the playwright Naomi Wallace.  Because Rawand can only text and I can only e-mail, all of our communication has been through Naomi. I’ve never met Rawand, nor even spoken to her, and probably never will get the chance to do either.  But she and her family—a husband and two …

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Some People Are More Equal Than Others*

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by W.D. Ehrhart If you will indulge me, I would like to begin with a poem I wrote in celebration of the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Rather uncreatively, its title is “Independence Day”: – It is indeed inarguably self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights including life, liberty, and happiness, or at least the pursuit thereof. – All men, excepting of course Negroes, savages, the poor, the uneducated, indentured servants, and women; all women, regardless of race, ethnicity, social standing, economic status, or education. – After all, it doesn’t say that all people are …

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Pink Flamingos

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I have this thing for pink flamingos; had one on my lawn for twenty-eight years in Philadelphia.  When it finally died of old age—so weathered that it simply fell apart—my dear friend Dale sent two more from Waukesha, Wisconsin. – But a dozen years ago, we downsized to a condo, and of course the courtyard was common ground, so I couldn’t put my pink flamingos on the lawn. I’ve really missed them.  Silly, I suppose, but I’ve missed my pink flamingos. – Meanwhile, on my most recent birthday, my daughter said she had a present, but we had to have some time to spend together.  …

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