A Most Discreet Letter Concerning Borough Business: Who is Really Blowing the Smoke?


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 there 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 has been dressed for supper. Mind, too, that reality may be only one person's perception. The wronged may prove to be the wrongdoers, and the accused may be as guilty as sin in a church hat — or perfectly innocent. It is the work of honest folk to discover which, and not to guess at it over tea.

Now, as to the noise. Some are pointing fingers, and I confess I always wish to know where those fingers were last. Smoke, we are told, means fire, but it may equally mean a smokescreen, and the sensible question is not "what is burning?" but "who is blowing?" He who shouts loudest is seldom the most accurate; he is merely the most audible, which in a small town is often mistaken for the same thing. 

Consider the old saying of the mountain and the molehill, and how very much labor goes into the construction of the former. As for that substance which the vulgar call "bullshit," it is not worth the paper upon which it is deposited, and I beg your pardon for the off-color parlance.

Let it also be whispered that some so-called injustices are of the sufferer's own manufacture, stitched at home by lamplight and worn in public as a martyr's cloak.

Rumors may prevail, as rumors do, being cheaper than candles and twice as warming. But a rumor is not a verdict. One cannot simply choose a side, plant one's flag, and call it principle without first hearing the whole of the tale. That is not loyalty, dear Columbia; that is merely a very long way of being wrong. 

I trust my message has gotten through, in between these lines.

In closing, I leave you with Mr. H.G. Wells, who understood us all: "Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are."

Until next time, keep your eyes open, your gossip honest, and your umbrellas near the bridge.

Yours in discretion and affectionate suspicion,
Your Author,
Cassandra 


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