The Northcountry Chronicle

“If a Tree Falls in the Forest”

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by W.D. Ehrhart Here is a poem from Palestinian poet Mosab abu Toha’s newest book, Forest of Noise (Knopf, 2024): Ramadan 2025 Around that dinner table, missing are the chairs where my mother, my father, and my little sister used to sit with us on Fridays, and where my siblings and their kids used to drink tea at sunset when they visited. No one is here anymore. Not even sunset. In the kitchen, the table is missing. In the house, the kitchen is missing. In the house, the house is missing. Only rubble stays, waiting for a sunrise. Forest of Noise is Mosab’s second collection …

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The Uselessness of Words

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for the innocent in Gaza,the Occupied Territories,and throughout the world How does one respond to such destructionwith a poem? Can poetry outweigha 2,000-pound Mark-84 bomb,save the life of a single wounded child,put an end to the hatred and madnessand inhumanity of those who dothe butchery? Might just as well bepissing up a rope as thinking poetrycan matter where it really countsthere among the dead and dying,armless, legless, homeless, starving,families shattered, orphaned children,misery without hope of ever ending. And here I sit in safety half a worldaway. My tax dollars buying bombsmy government supplies to those whodo the killing. How can one be silentin the face …

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Trump is bringing patriotism back into vogue for the rest of us

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by Jean Stimmell Winter is losing its grip. Even the chunks of snow that slid off my north-facing roof are almost gone. The daffodils have pushed up through matted oak leaves, and the ice went out early on Jenness Pond. It’s a time of renewal not only for Mother Nature but also for our democracy. Since his inauguration in January, President Trump has given it his best shot to destroy our country. But he will fail! As the opposition, we were flabbergasted by the audacity of Trump’s attacks on our Constitution and institutions starting on day one. We were initially struck dumb, but once it …

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What Anti-Semitism Is Not

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by W.D. Ehrhart No thoughtful person could possibly ever justify or condone what Hamas did in southern Israel on October 7th, 2023. But the level of destruction, misery, death, and inhumanity inflicted upon Gaza and the people of Palestine in the 18 months since then just plain beggars the imagination. According to the French ambassador to the United Nations, 80 percent of the civilian infrastructure in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed. Every hospital in Gaza has been damaged, and not one is fully functional. Half of them are closed. Famine is widespread, and the entire civilian population has been displaced multiple times. Humanitarian assistance …

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The Limits of Sympathy

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by W. D. Ehrhart I recently received an e-mail from a Japanese friend of mine who wrote, “I have no idea what Trump is trying to do. He is making the world to be his enemy.” An Indian friend opined that #45/47 equals Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in bigotry, intolerance, and mean-spiritedness. When an English friend asked me what Trump is trying to do, I had no answer for him. And when a friend from France observed that the United States seems to have gone off the rails, I could only agree with him. How can one even begin to catalogue the outrages …

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King Arthur May Have Been Right, After All

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by W.D. Ehrhart In a famous scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” King Arthur explains to a peasant named Dennis that he became king after the Lady in the Lake gave him Excalibur. Dennis replies, “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.” I’ve thought a lot about that scene over the years since I first saw it in 1975. Since then, this nation has been governed by a president who was elected by the voters of a single congressional district in Michigan, a president who used to peddle Chesterfield cigarettes as great Christmas gifts and …

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