The Brattleboro Selectboard Candidate #41

    "Evidence is God, and every individual is a King or Queen." At last Tuesday's Selectboard, I asked if I had heard correctly John Allen saying that plastic bags were "were all over the place." I pointed out that contradicted by statement to the board several months ago that I had looked for plastic bags gone wild in Brattleboro and had only found one in about a month of looking for them. I noted that I had been working on my panther book at the board meeting and may not have heard correctly. I asked, if correct, that John tell me where his "honey hole" was. John forthrightly said he remembered saying that, they were all over the place, and I should look at Fairview and the Price Chopper. I replied, "I'm there!" and I was as soon as the mercifully short meeting- about three hours- was over. I drove into Fairview Village and over to the Price Chopper. No bags. The next day, I stopped at a nearby gas station and explained what had gone at the selectboard meeting. The worker said they checked the grounds daily and there were no bags around. She didn't see bags.
I asked a resident at Fairview Village and she said there were no bags, and that management kept the place immaculate. I saw a woman parked at the back of the Price Chopper shopping strip, and she hadn't seen bags either. I went all the way up Fairview Street seeing no bags. I asked a man dressed in black formal clothing and a tall hat if he had seen any. He was directing traffic on a side street. He said in the morning there had been a bag caught in a bush several feet from us, but it had disappeared. I went back down Fairview still seeing no bags.
    I look for Bigfoot, panthers, moose, and bear out in the boonies so not being able to find bags that are "all over the place" in Brattleboro bothers me. I found myself wondering if John was also seeing women from Salem, Massachusetts, flying on their sticks too. Or was the postmodernism's disdain for evidence and reason. Or were Vermonters, being Vermonters, cleaning up the bags?
     To the writer of the letter to the Brattleboro Reformer asking if a certain person opposing the ban on plastic bags had his head in the sand or elsewhere about the dangers of bags, I was moved to go to the library - my budget doesn't permit TV or the Internet- and enter "problems animals have with plastic bags."
We have been so horrible to the animals in taking their land and now to see what plastic is doing to the few left! I now don't think we should afford people the luxury of deciding individually whether to use plastic bags. I'm down with banning them. For the animals.
     I believe next Monday is Indigenous People's Day. Let's not be shallow about this: We're all Ancient Africans and indigenous to Africa. To Rich Holsuch's Reformer letter saying we shouldn't celebrate or emulate what Columbus did to the natives in South America, I say this: From knowing their customs - slavery, torturing, raping, and seizing land and property of others, I think its safe to say they would have done the same as Columbus did to them if they could have been able to sail to Spain and overwhelm the Spaniards with their technological superiority. Everyone and everything can be made to look just horrible (!) until you start making realistic comparisons and not living in your head.
     "Hold the line for civilization, brothers and sisters. Hold the line!"
Peter "Nick" Nickerson