World Gay News

Peter Gay: Thoughtless smokers, voting rights and Highland Park – The Sun Chronicle

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I was at the North Attleboro end of North Avenue Friday morning on my way to a long day and night at North TV when I witnessed something that is at the top of my pet peeves.

Shortly before the light at the intersection of North and Commonwealth avenues and Robert Toner Boulevard turned green the woman in the car in front of me flicked a lit cigarette butt out the window and then drove off.

The paper can’t print what I muttered about the woman, but I did think “Why do people who smoke believe it’s their right to dispose of cigarette butts for someone else to pick up?”

It was one of many thoughts that have occurred inside this gray-haired head of mine over the past couple of weeks. Here are eight others:

— I actually found myself rooting for the Yankees in the American League Championship Series against the Houston Astros. The Astros have been the team to beat in baseball over the last half decade and have been caught cheating on at least one occasion.

It struck me late in game four of the ALCS why people across the country hate Bill Belichick and the Patriots as much as they do and it’s not because “they hate us because they ain’t us.” It’s because we were caught cheating … multiple times. Let’s go Phillies!

— I could not agree more with the proposed bylaw making its way through North Attleboro’s town government to ban additional self-storage units in town. The storage units not only use up valuable commercial space, they seldom need employees.

My hope is that Attleboro will put limitations on the new owners of the former Texas Instruments building on Forest Street when they come to the council to convert the vast building into storage units.

— The cost to convert the former clubhouse at Highland Country Club into a new home for the Attleboro Council on Aging should be considered before the property is sold.

Would renovating the building, including the installation of an elevator to the lower level grill room and Gilholm Patio, cost less than erecting a new facility? I don’t know, but I would like to before it is sold.

I agree with my neighbors who object to any part of the Highland property being sold for the construction of housing, but I disagree with those who object to selling the building to someone interested in making it a function facility. I’m fine with it, of course, only if it doesn’t make financial sense to turn it into the COA and senior center.

— While some people count down the days to Christmas, I am counting down the eight days to the midterm election.

The television ads for races and ballot questions in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island were bad enough. Now, the oversized campaign postcards are cramming our mailbox on a daily basis. I kid you not. We received literature for Questions 1, 2 and 3 on Wednesday. Please make it stop!

— The writer of a recent letter to the editor questioned why Democratic candidates encourage their supporters “to file mail-in ballots.” He reasons that “only Dems call for it” and is suspicious why that is. The answer is simple.

Some on the right prefer to make voters cast ballots on Election Day in hopes the weather or other forces like long lines at the polling places serving minorities will discourage them from having a say in how they are governed.

— People of both political parties who disagree with opinions I give on this page will often email me after reading one of my columns. The reader and I will often exchange emails explaining our reasons for feeling the way we do, find something to agree on, agree to disagree on other issues and leave having a better understanding of each other.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the people who are supposed to be serving us in Washington did the same? Then again, a recent NBC survey showed 80% of Democrats and Republicans believe the political opposition poses a threat that, if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.

The two parties have already done that.

— I can’t understand why someone wouldn’t list his or her email address at the end of their weekly column. Could it be they omit it in hopes readers will instead write letters to the editor about them? As P.T. Barnum once said, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

— It makes sense that the economy and inflation are the biggest factors when voters cast ballots a week from tomorrow.

I had this thought last week; the economy will eventually recover. Rights taken away from women, members of the LGBTQ+ community and others may takes decades, depending on the length of time the current Supreme Court justices serve, before they are restored.

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