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March 4, 2026

Centreville Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Centreville

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Adkins Arboretum Mystery Monday: Guess the Pic!

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured in photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is bullfrog, Lithobates catesbeiana, pictured below:
Bullfrogs are amphibians native to the eastern United States, and are the largest North American frog, weighing up to one pound and measuring up to 8 inches long.
Bullfrogs are brown to green in color, often with dark brown spots. The female bullfrog has a white chin while the male has a yellow chin.
Females lay thousands of eggs, as many as 20,000, during the Summer breeding season. Bullfrogs begin their lives as totally aquatic larvae, or tadpoles, with gills and a pronounced tail. Their legs soon develop, the tail and gills are absorbed, and the tadpole transforms into a terrestrial, air-breathing animal.
Named because their call resembles a cow mooing, bullfrogs can be heard from half a mile away. They are ambush predators and will eat almost any animal they can capture and swallow. During the Winter season, bullfrogs hibernate in mud and leaf litter at the bottom of ponds, lakes, or the slow-moving portions of streams and rivers.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

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Farsighted By Laura J. Oliver

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I was kind of vain about my eyesight for a long time. (I’m currently vain about my sense of balance. I can stand on one leg with my eyes closed.) I know, I know; I can’t believe it either. The vanity part, not the balance part.

I didn’t need glasses as a child and could see with 20/20 accuracy for decades. Then, one summer evening, I realized I was holding novels further away when I read and that the print looked fuzzy long before I was ready to fall asleep.

My optometrist said, “Yep, at around 40, the eyeball changes shape, and nearly everyone becomes a bit farsighted.” Farsighted means you can’t see things that are close up.

You’re probably thinking the eye of a sewing needle, the microscopic print on a prescription bottle, but I’m thinking mistakes, opportunities, and change.

Doctor, can you fix that, please?

“I see,” I responded, then laughed because I clearly didn’t see. And then it became a thing. I couldn’t stop saying it. No matter what he said, I’d automatically respond, “I see.”

When you are a writer, you hear in metaphor. It’s just how it is. You are watching the moment you are in as you are living it.

Doctor, can you fix that, please?

Because that predilection is epidemic now, with the advent of Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. It appears no one is asking, “How do I feel about what I’m experiencing,” but “what can I say about what I am experiencing?”

Eventually, I have eye surgery because although I think I see just fine, my new doctor assures me I could be seeing a lot better. He’s young, cute, and humorless—with big dark eyes and short black hair. And he’s right. I see better. As I leave my final post op appointment, my doctor tells me to fill a prescription for glasses to be used to finetune my depth perception. Instinctively I want to say my depth perception is fine, thanks. But it’s not. Rushing down the stairs I nearly miss the last step. And running with the dog at night, I misjudge the height of the curb obscured by unmown grass.

All my life I’ve assigned my feelings and motives to others which means so often what I have assumed about them was only a projection of my own fear and shortcomings. The age-old maxim is true: we don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.

Doctor, can you fix that, please?

Because Sally, my friend from the age of 10, is dying. Two years ago, I blew her off at a high school reunion. I hadn’t seen her in decades, but our lives had gone in very, very different directions and there were so many people I wanted to talk to more. She stood in the center of the room leaning on a cane with three feet on the bottom, and her expression was one of shock, almost vacuous or not entirely present. We spoke briefly. I complimented her hair, noting that she was wearing it in a style identical to when we met in elementary school—long and straight halfway down her back, only now it was white.

Somehow, it pleased her that I had noticed. Apparently, it was a purposeful bookending of time. But I was struggling to make conversation, so I moved away and talked to classmates who seemed more like me now, even though she’d flown (with a cane!) from Florida to Maryland for the event. Even though I’d met her the summer my parents divorced, and she filled an emptiness I could not name with laughter and overnights and days swimming and skiing on the river.

Her parents’ names were Adam and Eve and we thought that was so cool. They owned a grocery store, and she always had better things to eat at her house than I did at mine. Her mother put onions in her tuna fish, whereas my mother used pickles. Her father had a slot machine we could play with nickels out on their porch. We sewed matching dresses in 5th grade with her mother’s help. They were white sailcloth shifts covered in orange dots the circumference of a drinking glass. No mistaking that we matched. No mistaking that we were best friends.

And I just heard by an indirect and circuitous route I can’t follow up on that she is in

Hospice. She never had children. Last I heard, she was not married. Fluid has collected around her heart—like unshed tears. Perhaps those are mine and I’m projecting again.

Because I want to tell her I’m sorry, and more than that, thank you.

We all suffer from attention blindness. Tell someone to watch a basketball game upon which they have bet a small fortune, in which the score is tied, 10 seconds from the buzzer, and they will simply not see a man in a gorilla suit walk past the bleachers.

Tell someone at a reunion that they may never see again a person with whom they shared years of joy, and they don’t see the opportunity in the moment to express genuine interest, affection, and gratitude. They completely miss the fact that loss is on the bench, ready to be called into the game.

Even though we are limited by both the atmosphere and the earth’s curvature to a sightline of only about three miles on the ground, when we look up, we can see the galaxy Andromeda, 2.5 million light years away. How is that possible? To see so far but to miss what’s right in front of me.

The eyes are second only to the brain in complexity. I would have thought the heart had that distinction. Who would have thought we can see halfway to heaven? I don’t know what to say about that, but I know what I feel.

If Sally is already there, I hope I get to see her again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Empathy and Grace Have Entered the Building by Maria Grant

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Yesterday, Kamala Harris gave two public speeches after receiving Joe Biden’s endorsement to be the Democratic nominee for President. At both speeches, Harris spoke, with heartfelt emotion, about her love and respect for Biden, about his love for his country, and his relentless efforts to do the right thing for the American people. I found myself feeling an emotion that I have not felt in a long time—Hope. 

When Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff arrived at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Delaware later in the day, Biden called in and thanked his diligent staff for all their efforts and encouraged them to give that same full court press attitude to Harris. He told Harris that, “You’ve always had my back and I will always have yours.” 

When Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff introduced his wife, Kamala, he talked about how kind the Bidens were when Biden announced that Harris would be his VP candidate. He said that Jill and Joe invited them to their home in Rehoboth, and then the Bidens called his children, Ella, and Cole, and welcomed them to the family. He said that it’s been like that ever since.

When Harris spoke to the campaign staff, she expressed her love and respect for Biden and talked about his faith, his love of family and his dedication and never-ending energy to make America a better place for all Americans.

Harris did not call her opponent “dumb as a rock.” She did not say he was “the world’s worst president in the history of this country.” She did not comment on his looks or make demeaning comments. There was no vitriol. No cruelness. No mean-spirited retorts. 

So, this rare emotion that I haven’t felt for a long time surfaced. I realize it is early days in the campaign, and I have my Pollyanna glasses on. But maybe, just maybe, it is possible to live in a country where there is inclusivity, climate awareness, respect for all points of view, grace, and kindness. 

As Hemingway said in the last line of The Sun Also Rises, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Maria Grant was principal-in-charge of the Federal human capital practice of an international consulting firm. While on the Eastern Shore, she focuses on writing, reading, piano, kayaking, biking, and nature.

 

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O.B.E. by Jamie Kirkpatrick

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A few days ago, I sat down to write this week’s Musing. I finished and filed my copy early Sunday morning. The piece was called Scylla and Charybdis in honor of the two immortal and dangerous monsters in Greek mythology who beset the narrow waters now known as the Straits of Messina. I remembered Homer’s account in The Odyssey when his hero Odysseus had to maneuver his galley between those two deadly forces—one a whirlpool, the other a dangerous reef often depicted as a six-headed monster—if he wanted to survive and bring his crew safely home.  I thought I knew how Odysseus must have felt.

In modern parlance, to be between Scylla and Charybdis means to be caught between two equally unpalatable alternatives. Sound familiar? It should. There we were, well into a Presidential campaign where on one hand, we had a visibly failing octogenarian, while on the other, we had a convicted felon, a man of dubious moral character who seemingly wants to do nothing more than fight. Yes, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump had vastly different visions for America, but somehow, this election was not so much about those visions as it was about optics, imagery, and ad-hominem arguments.

Then suddenly everything changed. My Musing was, as they say in State Department lingo, O.B.E., Overtaken By Events. On Sunday afternoon, President Biden decided to drop out of the race.

I had come to believe that Mr. Biden was a good man with a strong team around him, but he was no longer a vital leader. He had become, rather, a man who had earned his rest. In my eyes, his Vice President and potential heir-apparent, Kamala Harris, had been a disappointing and almost invisible presence in the current administration; I once had high hopes for her, but her low profile made me question who she really was, and if she had what it takes to be President. Well, now we’ll see. There are a few other well qualified Democrats—Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, even California’s Gavin Newsom—who may challenge Ms. Harris for the nomination, but the last thing the Democratic Party needs is a messy divorce. Time will tell.

As for the Republican side of the equation, nothing much has changed. Mr. Trump is still a pugnacious Populist who remains a polarizing personality in American politics. He is also a candidate who raises real fears among our allies and threatens America’s standing in the world. His newly minted running mate, JD Vance, seems to have jumped on board a train he once thought was a wreck, but one that now looks like a free ride to a destination far beyond his wildest hillbilly dreams. And then there are still all those legal potholes still lining Mr. Trump’s road, albeit with the Supreme Court and Judge Aileen Cannon patching the asphalt.

Many of us straddling what was once the center are holding our collective breath. There is still the Scylla of the left and the Charybdis of the right. Now I don’t know about you, but that leaves me with precious little breathing room, let alone navigational choice. I suppose I could close my eyes and hope for the best, but that’s hardly a recipe for sailing or political success.

I rarely wade into political water, but today, in the wake of President Biden’s momentous decision, I deemed it was time to get my feet wet. In the Odyssey, Odysseus’ ship eventually founders in a terrible storm and everyone on board, save Odysseus, is lost. Hopefully, we’ll suffer a better fate, but without a doubt, it’s going to be rough sailing for next three-and-a half months, let alone the next four years. So lash yourself to the mast and hang on! Here we go…

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

His new novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon.

 

 

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Monday: Guess the Pic!

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Can you guess what is pictured in photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is buttonbush, Cephalanthus occidentalis, pictured below”
Buttonbush boats unique pincushion-like balls of white, fragrant flowers that appear in mid-to-late Summer. They draw the attention of pollinators and people alike.
The small flowers form distinctive, dense, spherical clusters with a fringe of pistils protruding beyond the white corollas. The flower heads mature into hard, reddish-brown, ball-like fruits consisting of tiny, multiple two-seeded nutlets that persist through the Winter.
The buttonbush shrub grows 6-12′ tall, although there are some more compact varieties. It is frequently found in rain gardens and along wet edges.
The commercial introduction of buttonbush in 1735 was primarily for beekeepers – its other common name is honey-bells – as a pollen and nectar source for honeybees. Butterflies and hummingbirds are also attracted to the nectar, while wood ducks use the plant’s structure for the protection of brooding nests.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Letter to the Editor: Will Rogers

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Correspondents for cable news seem to have found a favorite spot in the United States Capitol to file their reports. They stand so close to a statue of the great American humorist, Will Rogers, that he appears to be listening in on their commentaries.

If he were here today, he would be sorely tempted to add some pithy remarks of his own about the country’s political mish mash.

The bronze sculpture that captures Roger’s typical hands-in-his pockets “aw shucks” pose, was a gift of the State of Oklahoma.  He was born there in 1879 when it was still a territory on the western frontier.  He died on August 15,1935, along with the legendary flier, Wiley Post, when their plane crashed in Alaska. His widow, Betty, urged that Jo Davidson, an internationally recognized sculptor of the day, be commissioned to do the piece. Franklin Roosevelt participated in the 1939 unveiling ceremony by broadcasting to audiences across the country from his home at Hyde Park, NY.

Starting as a cowboy on a Texas ranch in 1898, Rogers later found his calling as an entertainer with a traveling Wild West show where he was known as “The Cherokee Kid,” busting broncos and winning cheers for his skills with a lasso. After a few years performing with the Ziegfield Follies he became a film icon, staring in both silent movies and “talkies.” In 1933 he was the highest paid actor in Hollywood.

Rogers lectured across America capturing the hearts and tickling the funny bones of his audiences with his humorous, sometimes irreverent, comments about public figures and political parties.  Here are some of his observations:

“The short memories of American voters are what keep our politicians in office.”

“In this country people don’t vote for, they vote against.”

“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

“We shouldn’t elect a President. We should elect a Magician.”

“It takes nerve to be a Democrat, but it takes money to be a Republican.”

“The whole trouble with Republicans is their fear of an increase in the income tax, especially on high incomes.”

“Both parties have their good and bad times at different times. Good when they are out, bad when they are in.”

Hundreds of people—legislative staff, elected officials, visitors, TV correspondents—pass by Will Rogers every day.

If he could speak, he might offer them another bit of homespun advice: “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.”

By the time he died Will Rogers was known to all Americans, and to many abroad, for his unsurpassed wit, engaging personality and dedication to the ideals of the nation.

Ross Jones

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What if This is True? By Laura J. Oliver

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This is about pet peeves, of which my pet is not one. But squirrels are.

I don’t like being surprised by a load of wet laundry that’s been sitting in the washing machine for three days when I open it to start mine.

I don’t like the cable pull apparatus in the gym.

Ditto resistance bands.

Or when I say to my trainer, “You don’t actually have any clients who can touch the floor with this free weight from a squat, do you?” and he says with a sigh, “I guess you don’t know Lisa.”

And now I’m laughing too hard to stand up.

I know Lisa.

I don’t like having someone fake-look at the very cool thing I’m pointing out on a walk.

Dogs that smell like perfume.

Dressing rooms that smell like perfume.

Drivers who stop for really old pedestrians limping through in crosswalks. (Hahaha. Kidding! I see you’re paying attention.)

Salespeople at the mall forced by their employers to stand just at the entrance to their store waving samples of face cream as you try to speed by unnoticed on the other side of a kiosk. They call out things I can’t hear. Things that sound like, “Ma’am! Your face!” I feel for them, though. I once had an editor who made me cold call potential magazine subscribers. It was excruciating.

Generally speaking, don’t love the mall.

Or the volume of the previews at the movie theater there. We are not deaf. Until we leave.

And I kind of miss the days when you sat up normally to watch a movie and could hold hands and whisper to each other. Now it’s like everyone in the theater is lying down together, and it’s weirdly too intimate in some ways and not intimate enough in another.

People who remember things differently than I do and are totally wrong. And then right.

Fifteen-mile-an-hour speed limits. Really?

Kitchen cabinets that are hung at a height perfect for people over 6 feet tall, not for anyone woman-sized trying to reach the (useless) third shelf.

But there are a lot of things I do like.

I do like it when my neighbor, who is a surgeon, stops me as I’m walking past his car at sundown because he performed emergency surgery all last night, after working all the previous day, and after an hour’s sleep in the on-call room,  he has rolled straight into yet another full day of saving lives, and he’s just now getting home at 7:30 pm, but he’s still full of wonder that he was able to give a woman just like me, who had become abruptly and inexplicably paralyzed, the ability to walk again. Participating in a miracle is news you want to share. Even if the first opportunity to express your gratitude and incredulity is pressing it into a neighbor’s palm passing by on a hot sidewalk. I feel privileged it was me, that our paths crossed just as he was getting out of his car so I could be a witness to a marvel that started the day he applied to med school and just culminated last night in a Maryland operating room.

I like knowing that miracles are speeding toward you, right this second, that may take years to arrive—like light, like gravity waves.

Live in a state of anticipation. Assume help is on the way. (Compare this choice to its alternative.)

I like the fact that a woman walking up Lafayette Avenue this morning paused to tell me that a perfect stranger down in the park just went out of his way to be kind to her 12-year-old son. She’s wearing a wide-brimmed sunhat and yellow capris, and even across the street I can see she is beaming. I don’t know what the guy did, but she has tears in her eyes. “The world is so violent,” she says, “we are in such turmoil. I’m holding on to this kindness.”

“And sharing it,” I said with a smile. She nodded, pressed her hands to her heart, and moved on.

I do like learning stuff. (So, did you know that 96 percent of all the mammals on the planet are us? The remaining 4 % of mammals are where you have your lions and tigers and bears.)

Someone I admire is explaining quantum entanglement to me. He is talking about acceleration. He says, “blah, blah, blah,” followed by “zzzzz—zzzzz–zzzzz.”  I’m nodding as I sip a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, but I think I’ve already cracked the nut on the entanglement mystery.

(Yikes, he’s still talking, so I’ll tell you.)

There never were two particles on opposite sides of the universe.

There was only one.

There is no two of anything, not even a you and me.

In the fullness of time, there is only here, only now, only us.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) by Al Sikes

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It is hard to overstate how much today’s cultural milieu and Donald J. Trump have changed American politics.

The image of those who seek the top office has always been important. Without parsing ancient polls, I am sure Dwight Eisenhower’s image as WWII’s top General helped him when he ran for the Presidency in 1952. Both political parties competed to entice him to be their nominee.

John F. Kennedy, who followed Eisenhower, was a poster man for the top office. Handsome, energetic, young father, beautiful wife—well you recall the profile. And I can’t leave out the Republican Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan.

Today one Party seems to understand image while the other struggles with it. Importantly, we live in an era of performance art like none other.

We are pummeled with images from awakening to bedtime. The best marketers understand its importance and pay millions to attach dynamic images to their products and services. Indeed sports at the amateur level have been transformed by what is called NIL—name, image and likeness. What we used to call student athletes are now in part image athletes who in the top conferences get paid a lot of money. But, of course, in sports how you play the game either enhances or degrades your NIL value. A bad game hurts as does a bad debate; you can explain them, but you cannot cancel the image.

The Republicans have just nominated a person who has overcome stories about infidelity, unethical business practices and felony convictions in a New York City court because of his carefully shaped image. You will recall NBC telecast “The Apprentice” featuring Donald Trump for 14 seasons; he was characterized as the person who knew business talent. When he decided a contestant hadn’t measured up, he would say “You’re Fired!” Trump also named all of his hotels and other businesses after himself, as in “Trump Towers.” He exuded energy and success. He preened as an anti-politician. Apparently the majority of people overlook his extreme boastfulness as they generally have a bad impression of politicians.

In the meantime, Joe Biden’s image has been sliding for the last few years. First elected to the US Senate as a handsome, energetic, man-of-the- people, in recent times he has increasingly looked and sounded like age has become an essential feature and not a helpful one. He also faces the daunting task of playing defense as the images of our withdrawal from Afghanistan bite.

When people size up his sidekick, Vice-President Kamala Harris, they often see an officeholder who has struggled to express herself as the lights shone on her became progressively more intense. The intensity was amplified because President Biden put Harris in charge of the Southern border.

Trump, understanding the importance of contrast, chose his sidekick out of central casting. JD Vance is young, ruggedly handsome with the modern male inclination to have a beard. He is married to an attractive Indian-American, served in Iraq as a Marine and vaulted himself into national prominence some time ago with an autobiographical assessment of hollowed out American rural and urban landscapes. In short, his beginning in life included a dysfunctional family, widespread drug use and where he lived, rapidly declining job opportunities. While privileged politicians talk about joblessness and homelessness, Vance can spin his own stories, not somebody else’s.

The contrast is deafening. As I write, there is a revolt in the Democrat party as Biden tries to hang on and Democrat leaders and voters are mostly pushing in the other direction. Biden should be in the take-a-bow moment working on his autobiography and library. But, back to the cultural moment.

The ambitious need to understand: you can be brilliant, an exceptional student at an Ivy League institution, but if you don’t have the “It” then your electoral politics are unlikely to pay off. “It” is an image of success with more to come. On the upswing not the downswing.

I hope Democrats will nominate a ticket that can gain attention for its dynamism and skillful advocacy of its platform. America suffers when image politics undermines logic or practical wisdom. We need a contest of policy ideas and plans this fall, not a face-off determined by the best package of “name, likeness, and image.”

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

 

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The Road to Megiddo

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A few years ago—three to be exact—I mused in this space about Chiaroscuro, the artistic technique that makes strong use of the contrast between light and dark. It’s a visibly arresting technique that impacts not just a particular object in a scene, but the entire composition of a canvas, often giving a painting or a photograph focus a sense of volume—three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface.  Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio were all masters of the chiaroscuro technique; so, too, were Reubens, Velásquez, Vermeer, and many others. Their use of harsh, dramatic light served to isolate the subjects of their paintings and heighten the emotional tension of their themes. Want to see what I mean? Just Google Caravaggio’s “The Deposition of Christ” or Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” to visually experience the full impact of the chiaroscuro technique.

But if you really think about it, chiaroscuro is all around us, all the time; it’s an inherent part of our lives. Chiaroscuro is not simply an artist’s use of the contrast between light and dark; it represents the eternal jostling of good and evil, reason and belief, joy and grief, even life and death. It depicts all the opposing forces, the yins and yangs, that combine to create the whole cloth of our individual universes. Even a carefree snapshot of family members gathered around a cell phone gives evidence of the twin towers of light and darkness that rule our lives.

Without a good dose of chiaroscuro, the surfaces of our lives would be sadly flat. Without darkness, we can’t experience light. Without cold, we can’t appreciate heat. While we may sometimes rue the duality of life, without it, we would be nothing more than stick figures on scratch paper. We need shade and depth to be human.

A few days ago, all these thoughts came rushing back as I watched the events unfolding in western Pennsylvania. Although we may not know it yet, it seems to me that we’re on the road to Megiddo, a city in northern Israel built on a tell, a high hill created by many generations of people and civilizations all living on the same spot. Its Biblical name was Armageddon and according to the Book of Revelation, it will mark the place of the end of days when the forces of light and dark, good and evil, will collide in one final cataclysmic confrontation.

When I set out to write this Musing, I had my mind’s eye fixed on the benign family photograph that accompanies this piece. My intention was to title the piece “Screen Time” and to muse about how we’re all addicted to our various electronic devices. But this morning, I looked at this same photograph and saw only its inherent chiaroscuro, a road sign pointing the way to Megiddo. I know it’s impossible to rewind time, but yesterday is gone and I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. The future is built on sand, and the tide, predictable as it may be, can change the shape of the shoreline in a heartbeat.

Or a grazed ear.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

His new novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Letter to Editor: Choosing Our Next President is More than Just the Candidate

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Someone recently suggested in the Spy that we don’t know who we are electing, really. We know the candidates’ names, but they are only the figureheads. Maybe there is a mysterious cabal pulling strings behind the scenes? 

I understand that line of reasoning. I believe we will be electing more than just a president. Coming along with each candidate is a vice president and many advisors. In one case we have a candidate who has overseen myriad positive developments for the past 3.5 years. On the other hand we have a candidate who has spent the past 3.5 years gaming our legal system and still been convicted of felonies.

Along with one candidate will come the likes of Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Marjorie Taylor Green and Stephen Miller. With the other candidate will come the likes of Kamala Harris, Jamie Raskin, Gretchen Whitmer and Hakeem Jeffries.

Recently, Joe Biden made a very good speech opening the NATO conference, and later held a successful news conference where he clearly articulated his knowledge of domestic and foreign affairs. During that same time Donald Trump made a speech at his Florida golf club where among other things he mocked Jill Biden, jeered that Joe Biden had undergone many botched face lifts and has really bad hair and looks revolting in a bathing suit, and called Chris Christie a fat pig. And yesterday he met with Victor Orban, strongman of Hungary and political ally of Putin.

I believe that there are enough Republicans and Independents who do not want a juvenile like Trump (and his criminal cronies) to be President so he can suck the Country dry for his own benefit. And who at least suspect that if he is elected he will not only go after women, minorities, LGBTQ folks and immigrants…no one will be safe from his twisted way of looking at people and the world.

We will elect not only a President but also the people who are drawn to him. I prefer Joe Biden’s orbit of thoughtful, intelligent, decent, and inclusive politicians and advisors.

Darrell Parsons
Easton

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