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Notes from a Town Short on Managers and Long on Opinions

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My Dear Columbia, This week, there was a blue tsunami, which is a rather dramatic thing to happen in November, when the most excitement we usually expect is a late leaf blower. Across the nation, Democrats won victories, and Mr. Trump insisted he was not on the ballot, but voters felt his presence. By my reckoning, the election was a repudiation of the man and his policies, and the country said so. Lancaster County, however, stayed red. Constancy is a kind of character, and I will not pretend it is nothing. But holding fast is not the same as being ready, and the future has a habit of arriving whether a county has voted for it or not. Now to the news that truly belongs to us. In Pennsylvania's 41st House District, Democrat Brad Chambers has defeated incumbent Republican Brett Miller in a race so close that it made the rest of the election look like a leisurely stroll. On Election Night, Mr. Miller held a 41-vote lead, 14,225 to 14,184. Forty-one. Then, on Friday, the provisional ba...
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A Most Discreet Letter Concerning Borough Business: Who is Really Blowing the Smoke?

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My Dear Columbia , This Author must, for the safety of all concerned, speak this week in the manner of a lady wearing three shawls in a draft: layered, and rather hard to see through. Nonetheless, I trust the right persons will take my meaning, and the wrong ones will be too busy admiring their own reflections to notice. Yes, dear Reader, it concerns borough business. Do try to contain your astonishment. The bridge over the Susquehanna, I am told, is deteriorating. So, it would appear, is our local government, and t here is, as ever, more to the story. A river does not run only where the eye can see, and so I address myself to the Reporters of our fair town. Dig deeper, my dears, and take care which tree you bark up, which fan club you join, and especially which rabbit hole you leap into, for some things are not what they appear, and the rabbits are frightfully well-connected.  Follow the money. Ask who benefits. Stay upon the scent and refuse the red herring, however prettily it h...
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Cardigans, Calliopes, and Candidates: Notes from a Chilly October

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My Dear Columbia , First, the chill. It arrived off the Susquehanna like an uninvited uncle, and the whole borough has been fishing cardigans out of cedar chests and denying that anyone saw them shivering in October.  The leaves have taken the hint. They lie in russet and saffron drifts along Locust, Chestnut, and every street between, newly fallen, as leaves are wont to do. They gather in the gutters like gossips at the Market House, and no one is in any hurry to sweep them up. Do take a moment to appreciate them before the leaf collection truck does. Now, the great occasion. By long custom, the Lions Club and the Sunsnappers hold our Mardi Gras "Halloween" Parade on the fourth Thursday of October, and this year that was the 22nd. For those unacquainted with the arrangement, it stepped off at seven o'clock from the fire department at 10th and Manor, and wound toward Locust before ending. And the finale has always been the steam calliope. This correspondent considers it t...
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Chief Arndt Blew the Whistle on Years of Secrecy

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My Dear Columbia , It is a mid-October evening here along the Susquehanna. The river moves along as though nothing in the borough were the least bit troubled. And yet, dear reader, your humble correspondent must report that the peace of our little town has been disturbed. A woman has told the truth in a public room. Chief Holly Arndt, newly installed and mere months into her post, rose at a council meeting and laid out the shortcomings she has found within our police department. One does not simply tidy a department, you understand. One first opens a cupboard and is struck by what tumbles out. Now, your correspondent is a great believer in the word "allegations," and will use it as often as the law and good manners require. But one need only count the years. Mr. Jack Brommer and Mayor Leo Lutz have held the reins of this department for well over a decade. The Mayor once called himself the "top cop," a title of considerable swagger, and swagger, my dears, often comes...
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The Season of Falling: A Letter Written Under the Weather

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My Dear Columbia, It is raining. Not the polite sort of rain, but a rather more committed sort.  I write to you from the parlor, a little under the weather, as the saying goes. Rufus is purring contentedly on the windowsill.  My physician (by which I mean my own preference) has prescribed hot oatmeal and a cup of chamomile tea. I may even be forced to add a pinch of whiskey, strictly for medicinal purposes, of course. One does not enjoy the stuff. One merely endures it, heroically, for the good of the constitution. Beyond the window, the leaves are letting go, helped along by the endless drops, which tug at each one insistently. And through the gray I hear voices: those hardy souls who are either brave enough or foolish enough to be walking in such weather. Bravery and folly, dear reader, sometimes share the same umbrella. October is a fickle month, one that cannot settle on a mood. Yesterday, it was bright and beautiful and temperate, all golden light and good manners. Today ...
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The Sound of Much Ado about Nothing — and Nothing Worthwhile

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My Dear Columbia, It is the fourth of October, and I write to you from the window of my bedchamber, where I have been awake since half past two, not by choice but by decibel. On a typical evening: Pickup trucks, each one a thundering confession of some private insecurity, rattle the china in the cabinet. Then there are the Harleys, belching and loudly passing gas. Then the shabby little cars, backfiring and sounding like their mufflers are hanging on by duct tape and prayer. And at three o'clock in the morning, when the taverns have closed and all decent noise has gone to bed, the indecent kind comes out to play. Somebody is yelling on the corner about a person named Kylie. A door slams, a dog answers, a second dog answers the first, and the whole neighborhood becomes a choir that never rehearsed and never will. But I confess that none of these troubles me half so much as the noise of the season, for it is election time, and the politicians are out strutting in the streets, each on...
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Rain, Rhetoric, and Reason — A Week in Columbia

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My Dear Columbia , I write to you today having weathered, quite literally, a week that offered rain, rhetoric, and civic drama that only a small borough can produce with such enthusiasm. Do sit down. Pour something warm into your cup. This will take a moment. On the matter of progress, and whether we are progressing anywhere good: One must ask, dear reader, where all this technology is escorting us, arm in arm, whispering sweet nothings all the while. Drones overhead, phones in every pocket. And now, data centers, those humming cathedrals to the cloud, which is not, as it turns out, a fluffy thing in the sky but rather a very loud building down the road that wants your water and your peace and quiet (and peace of mind) in exchange for services you did not know you needed. "Progress" marches on, though it rarely asks permission, yet somehow no one seems to have any more time than before. The future arrives whether or not the parking is sufficient to accommodate it. But here we...
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