Oh this storm was lovely, but it really messed up my game.
I have two wonderful rants that dovetail nicely with each other. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to actually write them up.
Alas, they will keep until next week.
We all got some sad news in the last few days. Cynthia “Cynnie” McNaughten died last week, just a few weeks short of her 90th birthday, and she will be missed very much.
Cynnie was one of the few people who could really engage about the obscure and the ridiculous and all other manner of the nuances of English grammar.
She would take out her red pen and mark up the errors, and go over each line, unabashedly.
It took a couple of years, but she finally figured out that my goofs are largely typos, and although some are truly cringeworthy, she tried to joke about them with me instead of…well, doing what she usually did.
When I first started the paper 13 years ago, it wasn’t long before I learned that “Overtown” was New Bedford. As I recall from the reader who first told me about it, it was on the buses a few decades ago. So, I started using “Happenings in Overtown.” Made sense to me. It was Cynnie at, quite possibly, our first encounter, who told me it was not IN Overtown, it was just “Overtown.”
She was good, she really was. I mean, who would even KNOW that?
She was a researcher who loved history and loved to talk about it, and remembered, it seemed, every single fact she ever uncovered.
She wasn’t shy about making her opinion known, and she was, simply put, a lot of fun to talk to.
She would scoot up to the West Island Improvement Association breakfasts by herself, never shy about being alone, and never alone for long.
She had a no-nonsense attitude that got her into trouble sometimes, too.
We also lost Arthur Moniz recently. Arthur was a Fairhaven resident who was very well known for his paintings depicting local scenes. I did not know Arthur, but I certainly knew his work.
Both of these Fairhaven residents left their mark in our little corner of the world. Cynnie’s was more behind the scenes, with her research being used by others.
But both made valuable contributions and will be missed by more than their family and friends.
We have lots of good storm coverage in this week’s issue. This was a bona fide blizzard in many communities around us, although Fairhaven and Acushnet didn’t quite make it to that level. But, man, it sure felt that way.
Be sure to notice who our advertisers are as you thumb through looking for all those good snowstorm pictures, and tell them you saw their ads in the Neighb News. See ya,
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Click here to download the entire 3/15/18 issue: 03-15-18 Snowstorm
