LILACS FOR NEWTOWN

Yesterday I watched the Richard Tucker Gala on WPBS-Watertown.  Now exactly 24 hours later I’m watching The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour.  How wonderful!  Perhaps I should move to Watertown?  The 2nd Combat Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division is

redeploying to Afghanistan. The 1st Combat Brigade is returning. Nevertheless, with all those absent soldiers, there must be lots of vacant housing.

When lilacs last in the schoolyard in Newtown bloomed and when they bloomed last at Fort Drum, it was spring 2012. We had a lilac bush at our cottage on Lake Ontario. You’d see the blooms in May but by July-August it was to my eye just another undistinguished plant; as a child I rarely saw the lilacs blooming. Home early from college one year I was surprised to see that that bush was a lilac.

I’ve often wondered about lilacs in Washington DC where Lincoln was shot in April 1864 and about whom Whitman wrote his great elegy: When lilacs last in dooryard bloomed. Spring and its flowers must appear early in Washington. 18 Britons and 10,000 Americans were killed by guns last year. 20 children were gunned down in Newtown Friday. But guns don’t kill people. The N.R.A. does.

Big storm coming. Congress may act.

[Kingston, Ontario]