Posted on 02/28/2003 8:36:46 AM PST by KantianBurke
In last fall's Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign, the Republican candidate and eventual victor, Mitt Romney, endured all sorts of attacks for his wealth and upper-class status. Coming from a state Democratic party whose power is concentrated in the Kerry-Heinz fortune and the royal family of Kennedy, these assaults seemed a trifle disingenuous. (Some years ago, the Boston Globe actually ran an op-ed piece in which John Silber argued that Ted Kennedy had earned the right not to debate political rivals.)
I've never gone in for the class-warfare style of political argument, but in this, the winter of our discontent — where, for months now, the temperature has yet to exceed the inches of snow on the ground — my established ways of thinking are in shambles. Especially last week, even against my better judgment I could not help but engage in a little old-fashioned resentment toward the really rich. We have just experienced what is known in these parts of the country as winter break, a week-long "vacation" that comes in late February each year. I don't know the origin of the holiday and had never heard of such a thing until I moved to New England 13 years ago. Still, I am certain it was the invention of well-heeled Brahmins with the financial resources to rent ski chalets for the week — or at least to hire nannies to keep their young at bay. I feel about winter break much as Homer Simpson did on learning that Springfield's teacher were planning to go on strike: "That's not fair. The teachers are trying to pawn the kids off on their parents."
This year, winter break could not have come at a worse time — during the coldest winter in recent memory and just as a storm dumped 20-some-odd inches of snow on top of the 20-some-odd inches that were already on the ground. We have discovered a type of despair that escaped the notice of Kierkegaard and Freud: an existential crisis prompted by geographical despair. On those few days this winter when the temperature has threatened to break past freezing, neighbors emerged from their igloos to enjoy a fleeting reprieve from our undeserved sentence of death, and to puzzle over why people would live in a place where you could die if you go outside.
Walker Percy wisely noted that the hardest part of life is passing time with no diversion. For one of his characters, Lancelot, the worst time was between dinner and sleep. For us, during winter break, it was midafternoon. By then we had exhausted our creative ideas and parenting skills, which — at least for one of us — were in short supply to begin with. Our eight-year-old would by this time have emerged from her cocoon of books and blankets just long enough to rile up her younger siblings, whom she regards as her disobedient minions. Our six-year-old son, done reading, would begin to turn the entire house into a field of dreams, with the arms of the couch serving as football goal posts and random walls becoming Fenway's Green Monster. The three-year-old, whom we feared losing in a snow drift, would divide her time between destroying whatever order we'd introduced into any room and torturing our newly adopted cat. My wife had had it with my bad renditions of Jimmy Buffett — "This morning I shot six holes in my freezer, I think I've got cabin fever" — and my insistence that Nicholson deserved an Oscar for his performance in The Shining. "Sheer brilliance," I would rant, "He captured every nuance!" By 3 P.M., I was half in love with easeful death.
All this had and continues to have me thinking. Many of us who vote Republican in Massachusetts do so not because we've been very happy with the sort of candidates the state party typically puts forth, but because we harbor the radical, if forlorn, hope that Massachusetts will one day adopt a two-party system. Governor Romney needs bold ideas, beyond tax cuts and streamlining of the always bloated Massachusetts government machine. Now, finally, there is a real opportunity for Mitt to show he's a man of the people, to prove that he feels the pain of the ordinary Massachusetts citizen. Some things — such as reversing the curse of the Bambino — are beyond the powers of mere mortals. But this one is feasible and would bring, for some, nearly as much exhilaration as a Red Sox Series triumph.
Save us, Mitt. Abolish winter break
As for me, I sure am glad I had kids, and stayed home with them, and even homeschooled them; yet those early years were tough. I can empathize.
This year, winter break could not have come at a worse time — during the coldest winter in recent memory and just as a storm dumped 20-some-odd inches of snow on top of the 20-some-odd inches that were already on the ground.
I live in Massachusetts. As much as I loathe having to scramble for alternate child care arrangements during winter break so I don't lose a week's pay, this year we were just plain lucky that school was not in session when the blizzard came. Where I live, we got 28 inches in that particular snowstorm. What parent in his or her right mind would want the school buses on the road under those circumstances?
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