Kevin O'Keefe
Local superheroes
WEST BRATTLEBORO-As I walk into the Brooks Memorial Library director's office, the first thing I notice is a framed silhouette of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. There's the charismatic leader playing a sweet tune and watching all the kids from town dance behind her.
Starr LaTronica - who if you haven't noticed has the name of a superhero - is classically self-effacing. She describes her leadership style as "getting out of the way and letting my incredible staff do their jobs."...
Good deed accomplished
The traffic roared passed us: trucks, 18-wheelers, motorcycles. This snapper’s chances of crossing without aid? Zero.
I passed her as she staggered out of the culvert by the side of Route 30. She seemed in distress, so I turned around on my bike and dismounted. I wasn't sure if this snapper's eyes were open until I saw them tear, then take me in - wondering,
Quenching an unknown thirst
There are different kinds of thirst. There's the thirst that California experienced during wildfires this past year, where lives and even whole towns were obliterated. There's the thirst an entire culture can experience when people lose access to art, as in a pandemic. Then there's the thirst that one...
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Things I celebrated this spring
We bought our home after half a lifetime of passing through on our way to other Vermont destinations. We've lived here for almost 17 years. We thought we knew this place - our neighborhood, the people, the town - but the last month has exposed to us how little we actually knew about our neighbors, our place in the Green Mountains, even ourselves. One of my first attempts at COVID-19 humor was to ask a neighbor who stopped in our...
Lies erode Trump’s presidential authority
On April 13, Donald Trump falsely asserted that “[w]hen somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,” regarding when to reopen the economy during the COVID-19 crisis. In a democracy, authority is given from the people, not demanded from the leader. Authorities must be truthful and honest in order to have “authority” over others. In the past three years, Mr. Trump has lied more than 17,000 times. The drip, drip, drip of his lies has eroded...
Apocalypse … soon?
In mid-July of 1969, our twice-weekly house maid, Betty, told my mom that she would be going home to North Carolina for a few weeks. She said she would go to her “mama's grave - 'cause when those men land on the moon, that was going to be the end of the world.” “Betty and the moon landing” was a story members of my family told with some cosmopolitan amusement for some time when speaking about our childhood. In 1984,
Data about gun safety speaks for itself
Kudos to The Commons for hosting an important and lively conversation in print about gun safety. And to Gerard Cloutier for writing about this issue. Mr. Cloutier cites a lack of facts and data in his response to my previous Viewpoint [“We are free, we are told,” Aug. 7], so I'll let these speak for themselves and let your readers decide: • 39,773 gun deaths in 2017. • 346 mass shootings in 2017. (A mass shooting is defined as four...
We are free, we are told
Two back-to-back mass shootings in the United States within 24 hours. One of them was clearly terror from the white nationalist fringe of Donald Trump's Republican base - if not actually sanctioned, then at the very least, partially motivated by the hatred spewed from the top of the party. In two other countries (Australia and New Zealand) following similar incidents, those democracies enacted a ban on assault rifles. In New Zealand, they did so within six days. Imagine that: six...