If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

Never let it be said that I leave column topics with never a backward glance. I am looking at some from this almost-past year, right now.

A year ago I reminisced about having sold Santagrams, a Western Union special service, years ago. Did you receive a Santagram or several? I asked readers. Several told me they had. One reported having been persuaded, by that highly specific message, datelined North Pole, to brush his teeth “for real” (he had been faking) and do his homework.

Obviously Santa nagged more effectively than Mommy, in that instance. Who knew Santa’s Western Union stooge was collaborating with Mommy?

My next column was a tribute to attorney Chester B. Smith, who had died unexpectedly on January 2. I still miss my dear friend, who had helped so many people and causes with quiet passion and enormous skill.

Later in January I wrote about Gary A. Hardes, who had left the community and the school board, after many years of being a vital member first of the community and then of both. I hope he still has the Professional Gadfly button I made for him. I like to think he would have spoken up when the board unthinkingly (I hope) let a scheduling conflict be created, preventing me from covering about half of the school board meetings.

Next I talked about how school board vacancies are filled, and about the Voter ID Act. Board vacancies are filled by school boards, ordinarily, and ours did this time around. A court struck down the Voter ID measure—and rightly so.

My last column in this space in January dealt with woodchucks, of course. Probably I’ll write another of my never-heeded pleas to KILL ALL THE WOODCHUCKS. Those are among my Cassandra efforts. You remember, she was cursed to make dire but true prophecies (such as That horse will doom Troy!) which no one would take seriously.

In another column I pointed out that the public was allowed to hear the candidates for school board appointment speak, but excluded when the borough council heard from would-be tax collectors. You know me, when it comes to the Sunshine Law, Open Meetings and Right to Know. Those are all about the rights of the public, of the readers, you guys. It isn’t all about my right as a reporter to not get thrown out of meetings, sometimes illegally, sometimes on a whim. It’s about your right to have reporters attend, or to do so yourself, as you choose. Reporters serve you as surely as the elected government does.

Next I excoriated Walker Cancer Research Institute for misleading fundraising, and encouraged fellow targets of those efforts to contribute to worthier efforts to combat this group of diseases.

I revisited a 1990 issue of this publication, noting the struggles of the then owner of the Grand Theater building to keep it useful in spite of local regulations. Coming back to 2014, I mentioned that Olean Medical Group had been ticketed for parking briefly in a handicap slot, while lugging in its equipment to set up its new medical offices. Oy.

Should government officials be sober, or at least display no signs that they are not, at meetings when they are making official decisions and pronouncements? I looked for answers to that one, and concluded that certainly they should, but there isn’t a lot we can do to make sure they are. At least, not on the spot.

I did another couple of columns about Open Meetings. That’s another thing about the Cassandra curse. Cassandra is not heeded, but she can’t stop. It’s as if she has this hammer, this bell, this song, and she has to hammer/ring/sing out danger, and a warning. She hammers and rings and sings for justice, and for freedom, and for our rights and ideals.

In late March I columnized about mergers—assembly district mergers, school mergers. The assembly district was redrawn. The school district stuff isn’t exactly off the table. There will be moves at some level to at least create ways to share some administrative functions among school districts, not just through membership in the IU.

I harked back to a hideous injustice to a school child and his family, years ago, and sympathized with Bellefonte, where a local historical group wanted to preserve an old theater and use it for a regional arts center, but the local Industrial Development Authority got it torn down to make room for “workforce housing apartments.”

The PlanCon project that didn’t fly, and the endless yearning for times past were other topics of opining. Now, as in the 1990s, there is a longing by those who probably think welfare is much abused by individuals, and sneer at reliefers, to embark on spending programs that are part welfare and part tax-and-spend. PlanCon uses tax money presumably derived mainly from wealthier communities and spends or pledges it to induce have-not communities to borrow heavily for massive school construction or renovation or expansion projects.

That’s committing tax dollars far into the future, and, theoretically, constructing for the needs of the next 20 years. Meanwhile, judging from the Facebook page “Port Allegany, Remember When…” we keep yearning for those golden days of yore, when our community was so much better in so many ways. (Also worse, in just as many, but we seldom mention that.)

Snowden had his leaks, but we have our leeks, which reminded me of leek excursions and adventures from my childhood.

Another column remembered the late, great borough manager and fine human being, Larry Griffith.

I duly noted that the McKean County Commissioners were in favor of mental health, or at least awareness of it, inasmuch as they had proclaimed May Mental Health Awareness Month.

I looked back at the history of Pittsburgh Corning Corporation in this community, from its beginnings in Chick Miller’s cow pasture to the selection of James R. Kane as chairman and CEO. 2014 found the company getting a recovery plan approved by the bankruptcy court. Will having the Serenity Glass Park devoted to their onetime flagship product help sales? One hopes it will. And that they will underwrite the costs.

Peace.