Let the government default on its debts, leave Ukraine utterly exposed to Putin’s butchery, grant pardons to “beautiful” insurrectionists, cry foul should he again fail to get elected . . . these were reportedly some of the jaw-dropping things Donald Trump said, apparently to the delight of his New Hampshire audience, during a CNN interview last week, though we’re told that given the source these remarks were nothing really new, more of the same old. Why recount what was said in the interview on page one then, rather than bury it inside?
To think that some fellow citizens continue to seriously consider such a sleaze and bloviator is appalling, that they would let such a would-be tyrant seize the reins of our democratic republic again is mortifying.
And that’s all I have to say about that, the weather today being too beguiling to let contumely, however justified, ruin it. First, I’d like to recommend to you Rich Mothes’s show of paintings at Clinton Academy. I knew him back when, when he was coaching East Hampton High School’s boys tennis team — a very good one, by the way — and working as a teaching pro at East Hampton Indoor. He left tennis to pursue a career in art, and, judging from the show that runs through the month, he has done so admirably.
One painting got my attention in particular, and I bought it. It’s of a train trestle under a big gray sky — out in the middle of nowhere, it seems, and yet the graffiti painted on the trestle forever ties the painting to this place. “Virgil Is Still the Frog Boy,” it says.
I asked Rich if he knew who the Frog Boy was, and he said he did. We both knew, as a matter of fact. But details of how the iconic assertion came to be escape me, if, indeed, I ever knew them. Nor do I, on second thought, really want to know. “Virgil Is Still the Frog Boy” does it for me, says Bonac to me. There’s something eternally assertive, defiant really, in the words, an ode to our sovereign selves, however odd, living forever in the memory of our town.