Burke: State of things leave me too beat up to be upbeat

By Tom Burke / Herald columnist

A friend asked if I could write something upbeat this week. Something to lift the spirits, lighten the mood, and stop, for at least today, dwelling on the issues that so trouble us.

I’d love to. I’d like to reminisce about storybook summers spent as a kid in a lakeside cabin in New Hampshire in the late 1950s. Or wax eloquent about a family sail when my wife and I ventured offshore for a trip to Block Island, R.I., with two kiddies strapped into car seats bolted to the settee of our 26-foot Westerly Centaur’s cabin. Or the sheer pleasure of hosting our grandkids at Twin Lake Village Resort in New London, N.H., where we summered with our kids and their grandparents, and where my kids wanted their kids to have as good a time as they did.

There are so many great memories — seemingly from a different age — of all us neighborhood grammar-school kids playing endless games of canasta on our back porch (my mom would make big pitchers of lemonade to beat the New York heat), playing stickball in the street, and even delivering my 64 daily Newsday newspapers from a big sack attached to the handlebars of my Schwinn.

But, alas, I can’t.

Instead of writing about the old wooden rowboat Pop used to rent at Hawkins Pond, that leaked so badly only my brother could fish when I rowed, because my dad had to bail. Or the time we helped Mr. Atwood pull porcupine quills out of the nose of one of his dairy cows, when we stayed at his working farm in Bridgewater Corners, Vt., where he and his wife took in boarders, circa 1952; and Mrs. Atwood was the absolute, total worst cook in New England. But it was still fun.

I cannot help but join those who feel that a biblical rending of one’s garments doesn’t even begin to express my distress and frustration at the seeming disinterest of so many over current events or the threat to democracy MAGA authoritarians pose:

• One million covid dead and the country barely blinks.

• The slaughter of civilians in Ukraine by Russian war criminals gets semi-sidelined by two goofy “celebrities” suing each other. (And most emphatically, I did not follow that story.)

• Inflation displaced by monkey-pox, then going back above the fold.

• Republican voter suppression and coup plotting being openly organized in anticipation of the 2022 mid-terms and the 2024 presidential, supplanted by Elon Musk’s latest antics.

And the list goes on and on and on.

It‘s such a temptation to, metaphorically, pull the blankets over my head and simply ignore what’s happening.

I could, for instance, attack the boxes of 1950s and 60s pictures in my garage from those halcyon days of blissful ignorance, where all that mattered was the size of the pickerel we caught in Hawkins Pond or if dinner at Twin Lake Village was gonna cost my kids money (my dad used to “fine” anyone at the table two bits if they dropped silverware on the floor).

There’s sailing pictures, hiking pictures, and pictures of all three of our kids taken at what seems to be 30-second intervals from the first ultrasound through proms, graduation from Parris Island (my oldest), graduation from University of Maryland at Towson (my middle guy) and my daughter’s master’s ceremony in Cambridge, Mass.

I could spend hours, days, weeks organizing them, making scrapbooks, scanning them into the computer, creating Shutterflys, and just remembering; all the while ignoring the latest colossally, transcendently, ignorant ravings of Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Her latest : “You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life. They want to know when you are eating, they want to know if you are eating a cheeseburger which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish.” Err, peach tree dish? Do you mean Petrie dish? Or is a peach tree dish something used by the Gazpacho Police?).

Then there’s the big box of my Mom’s pictures, mostly a 1940s time capsule that comes complete with Glen Miller, Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman playing in the background.

I’m making more time for that sort of stuff now. But no matter how much I immerse myself in the past, the present and future looms terrifyingly over my days. And I’ve marked my calendar for tomorrow, June 9, about 5 p.m., when the House’s Jan. 6 committee begins its report to the nation.

Anyone who isn’t tuning in; anyone who isn’t listening with an open mind; anyone who thinks this is some kind of Democratic, communist, socialist, Marxist, baby-killing, Squad-led, far-left, Antifa-driven, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Un-select Jan. 6 committee witch-hunt plot, deserves the government envisioned by those fascists who schemed to overthrow the election and our democracy, and the Republicans who’ve done nothing to stop the slaughter of innocents, the destruction wrought by climate change, or anything but bitch about $5-plus-a-gallon gas and the money picked from consumers’ pockets as big oil reaps records profits.

Tune in folks. Tuesday, 5 p.m. It’s only your democracy at stake.

And Slava Ukraini.

Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.