Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding …

Harry Morgan as the judge, Spencer Tracy as Dr...

Cover of "Inherit the Wind"
Cover of Inherit the Wind

Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding … and we are feeding it well.

From “Inherit the Wind” 1960, Directed by Stanley Kramer, based on actual transcripts of the 1925 Scopes’ “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, where the teaching of evolution had been banned. As far as I can tell, we are going back there again.

Is this where we want to go with our country? Is this what we fought and died for? God help us.

Related articles

Garry Armstrong: From another life.

Once upon a time, we had a different life. Garry Armstrong was a household name in New England and I was not, but I got a paycheck anyhow. We did cool stuff and went cool places and I watched Garry every night on the news.

So I wondered if anything of those who-knows-how-many pieces of video could be found on the Internet today. I was just curious to see what, if anything of Garry’s 40 years of work in television was still “out there.” You can find anything on the internet, right?

The answer turned out to be “yes, you can” and “not much,”  in that order. Not nothing, but nothing big. His résumé lives on LinkedIn. I hope I’ll be able to post his video resume later, but I need to put it into a format that my website recognizes.

I watched my husband on TV every night and it seemed perfectly ordinary. That’s what he did for a living and so did so many of our friends that I really didn’t think about it all that much.  I had a ritual. As soon as I got in from work, I turned on the news. A tape lived in the VCR, so when Garry came on, I was ready.  This was how he got to see how his stories really looked because he rarely saw the finished piece at work. He had barely enough time to finish cutting it.

He covered virtually every important event in the region for 31 years. I wish I had some of that to show you.  Meanwhile, I have a little list:

1999 JFK Junior Memorial Coverage: Provided a wide variety of stories, features, retrospectives on a life cut short.

1999 Busing Retrospective: In the wake of the end of busing in Boston, a history of busing, the tragedy, the triumph, with commentary from many original – now adult – participants.

1998 The Nanny Trial: Did the British au pair slay the child in her charge? Only the nanny knows. Heavily involved for the full length of this very intriguing trial.

1998 Boston Garden, The End: Final day of the Old Garden before the wrecking ball eliminated it forever. A few mementos, but surprisingly few tears.

1997 The Hunt for Holly Piranen: Was a primary play in the hunt for lost 10-year old girl in western part of state, including the final, sad discovery of her body. The killer has never been found.

1995 Charlestown Dock Fire: Major conflagration with network feeds and affiliate coverage.

1993-94 President Clinton on Martha’s Vineyard: Pushed the limits of professional creativity to make the story newsworthy.

1993 Rome: Progress of the former Boston mayor’s metamorphosis into U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. The real question: when will he return to run again?

1993 Boston Votes. Series of pre-election profiles of candidates and issues for the upcoming Boson Mayoral elections.

1991 Profiles, Alfred Eisenstadt and Lois Maillou Jones: Two Presidential Gold Medal in Art award winners, their lives and works.

1990 The Great Art Heist: Major art heist at Gardner Museum that remains unsolved through today.

1990 CBS’ mini-series “Common Ground” on the court-ordered desegregation in Boston in the mid 70s: Appeared on Boston Common, also variety of retrospective coverage.

1990 Full licensing of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant: Historical and breaking coverage of the event.

1990 South African Anglican Archbishop Tutu’s visit to USA and Mandela Release: One-on-one interviews, family, and local reaction pieces..

1989-90 Gangs/Violence/Drugs/Guns

1989 Charles Stuart Murder Case: Followed story to its semi-conclusion. Appeared on Boston Common (CBS Sunday morning news magazine), representing TV news reportage in Boston.

1989 Queen Elizabeth II visit: It was fun to cover royalty.

1988 Boston Public Housing Integration

1988 Mashpee Pow-wow: Rare chance to see annual ritual and talk with Native Americans about variety of issues.

1988 Comic Aid: Robin Williams and Billy Crystal roasted me after I publicly mispronounced “Chutzpah”.

1987-88 Street Gangs: Assignment – Infiltrate Asian, Jamaican, Black gangs.

1987 Papal visit: From atop trash barrel in rainy South Boston, was blessed and cautioned not to fall.

1983-86 NAACP Conventions: New Orléans, Boston, Baltimore. Saw changes of old guard leadership. Difference in racial attitudes across country. Produced series and long form specials.

1980 Claus Von Bulow Trials

1980 Presidential campaign, Reagan-Carter: Memorable interview with Reagan who swapped baseball stories and movie anecdotes.

1978 Profiles/Obits: Sonny McDonough, and John McCormack

1978 Profiles: Jimmy Cagney and Ruth Gordon

1978 The Great Blizzard: Live reports from moving vans, devastated shoreline areas, ghost town cities, etc. Glad I lived in Boston.

1976-77 Investigative series, Suffolk City Medical Examiner: Coverage revealed undermanned staff and erroneous reports. Changes followed!

1976-77 Investigative series, Boston’s Emergency Medical Services: Coverage led to upgrade of system, better equipment for EMTs.

1976 Bi-Centennial/Tall Ships: Sailed up the Atlantic coast aboard Danish ship “Christian Radich.”

1975-78 SEABROOK anti-nuclear power protests: Coverage of major protests at the Plant site (Clamshell alliance). Two Emmy awards.

1975 Red Sox Pennant/World Series: Euphoria then despair. The town went crazy.

1976 The Great Chelsea Fire: On scene from beginning to end.

1974-76 Court-ordered desegregation, busing: Covering the story across the city and encountering frustration and rage from both sides. Despite numerous confrontations, contacts and friendships have been maintained over the years.

1974 John Wayne vs. Anti-war protesters: A personal favorite for this movie buff, did one-on-one interview with the Duke (the original) as he combated anti-Vietnam protesters while promoting new film.

1974 Minorities at West Point: One of first on-location series as “The Long Gray Line” comes into the 20th century and responds to civil rights advocates.

1974 Armstrong Unlimited series. First in region to do fantasy series, including sky diving, piloted commercial and private planes, rode as Suffolk Downs jockey, worked out with Red Sox.

1972-73 Walpole prison riots: Including interviews with Albert DiSalvo, the Boston Strangler.

1972-73 Delta plane crash, Logan Airport: Among first on the scene.

  1. Presidential campaign coverage.

You’d think that 31 years on the air would leave a lot of video hanging around in the ether, but most of Garry’s career took place before the Internet became so all-encompassing and accessible. The world hadn’t quite figured it out. Navigating it was complicated, browsers and websites not so sophisticated or user-friendly. There was no Facebook, no Google.

Nonetheless, I found on story from a noon news broadcast. Garry’s report shows up about at about 1 minute and 30 second into the news, so you can go there directly and skip the intros or watch from the top of the show:

That was a “live shot.” Now, I guess it’s an historic shot. Time passes. Nice to have a history to remember.

Related articles

Summer is ending and the corn is ripe

Summer Sun

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic spider-clad
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy’s inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.

School starts next week, but this week, the weather is perfect. It’s still summertime as long as corn still grows in the fields nearby. Kids are taking their final swim in the pool before dad closes it up.

One … two … three … jump into the water as August draws to a close and school looms on next week’s horizon …

Bed in Summer

by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

Corn grows in the fields in late summer.
Related articles

The Meetinghouse

The old Quaker Meetinghouse, built 1771. Uxbridge, Massachusetts.

They hold one service every year at the old meetinghouse. It’s the oldest meetinghouse in the country and most of the year it’s closed, although I’m pretty sure you can rent it for weddings, though I’m not sure how.

The meetinghouse is open on Thanksgiving morning and there is a Quaker service. The church is only slightly heated, just enough to make it possible to sit there for an hour and a half and unless the day is unusually warm, you need to wear your overcoat even during the service. It’s cold and the pews are hard, but it’s the perfect place to give thanks.

Besides the autumn poets sing,

A few prosaic days

A little this side of the snow

And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,

A few ascetic eves, –

Gone Mr. Bryant’s golden-rod,

And Mr. Thomson’s sheaves.

Emily Dickinson

Related articles

Farm in the Valley

The cat on the lawn lives here. They grow corn. And hay. Plus some veggies. It’s a lovely place.

There used to be many more working farms around here, but the farming families have grown old. Their children don’t want to work that hard. Who can blame them? Farming anywhere is a difficult life, but in New England?

I love this region and this valley, but it’s hard to figure why anyone would choose to farm here. We have terrible soil, if you can call it soil. It’s all roots and rocks.

The “New England Stone Fence” … those scenic stacked rock walls you can find just about everywhere were not built for some special mystical reason. It was just something to do with all the rocks farmers had to take out of the fields so they could actually plow the ground.

A stone fence along a country road.

What thrives here? Apples. Dairy cattle. Horses. Short growing season crops like tomatoes and cucumbers and a particular kind of corn, called locally “butter and sugar” because it’s yellow and white, and sweet as sugar. This is the time of year when you can find it in the local grocery stores. It will be gone in another week or two.

Most of our local farms are organic … sometimes too organic for my taste. I like my milk homogenized and my eggs unfertilized. It may not be politically correct, but I can’t help it. I’m me, un-PC and all.

The farm is lovely and the farmer is a friendly guy, but he’s getting old. When he’s gone, the fields will become sub-divisions, if property values rise even a little bit. Otherwise, as is happening all over the valley, the fields will go back to woods and stream.

Cat on the lawn.

This is one of the few places in the country where wild life is returning. Animals that have been gone from this region for as long as a century are coming back. Fishers (also known as fisher cats, though they are weasels and closely related to mink, not cats of any kind), coyotes, bobcats and now, bears too. Deer are everywhere and moose can’t be far behind. Racoon and skunk, out-of-control chipmunks … we’ve got it all.

Stone fences are great homes for snakes and rodents, but when they meet, the snake usually wins.

The eagles are back, too. We have a nesting pair of American Eagles in our woods.

We had rabbits and squirrels, but the bobcats ate them. Almost all of them. That’s okay. They will be back, but then, so will the bobcats. The circle of life is in our yard.

The Old Bench

An old bench by the road. No one comes there to sit anymore. The bench just waits. You never know. Maybe someone even older than the bench will come along and need to rest. The bench will gladly provide a shady spot.

Blackstone Canal – View From a Bridge

View of the canal from the bridge in Uxbridge.

A couple of hundred years of polluting the river nearly killed it. How fortunate for us that nature is resilient.

Today, The Blackstone Canal is beginning to recover, but it’s slow. In the early autumn it is as smooth as glass and reflects like a mirror. A bright day in mid September.

Mammoth Mill in Waterford, Rhode Island in North Smithfield pictured at the turn of the 20th century by Mrs. Nelson Wright
Related articles