Maggie's Farm

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...

[The Wealthy Congressman] "Representative Patrick Kennedy has pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of prescription drugs last month in an early morning car crash near the Capitol.  

Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat who is a member of one of the nation's most famous political families, was sentenced on Tuesday in District of Columbia Superior Court to court- ordered drug treatment, a year of probation and a $350 fine. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to drop charges of reckless driving and failure to display a driving permit."     

[The Poor Window Washer]    " High-rise window washer Christopher Guay spent 20 hours in jail waiting for his wife to raise the $1,040 the state demanded to free him after he struck and killed a sea gull he says repeatedly dive-bombed at him as he was attempting to clean office windows. "

... it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...

[The Wealthy Congressman] "Kennedy denied that and insisted he had not consumed alcohol before the accident. He said he had gone home after work that evening and had taken the sleeping pill Ambien and an anti- nausea medication, Phenergan.

Medical experts called his explanation plausible. Ambien's prescribing information warns about the possibility of hallucinations and strange behavior."

 [The Window Washer]  "Guay said he was working 12 stories up atop 185 Devonshire St. about 8:30 a.m. Friday when he was set upon by three sea gulls protecting a rooftop nest. 

    “They’d sit up about 20 feet, then dive in,” he said. “They hit me twice in the head.”

    Guay said he moved to an attached roof at 161 Devonshire St., but the gulls followed. He eventually started swinging a broken broom handle, hoping to scare them off and give himself time to slip over the building’s edge and out of the birds’ sight.

    “I’d been doing it all day, fending them off,” he said. “It was working until I made my last drop . . . When I swung I wasn’t aiming. I didn’t mean to hit it. It flew right into the broom stick. I knew it was dead.” 

    Office workers witnessing the 3:30 p.m. strike called the MSPCA, which responded with one of the agency’s 11 police officers. 

    “I don’t blame them at all for calling,” Guay said. “If I saw someone on the roof swinging at a bird I’d do the exact same thing.”

    But he said he does have a problem with the by-the-book MSPCA cop.

    “He wasn’t buying my story at all,” Guay said. “He didn’t listen to a word I said. He said to me ‘So you like killing birds?’ Am I supposed to stand there and let the gull whack me in the head? I had to do something.” "

 ...it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...

[The Wealthy Congressman] "The police said his eyes appeared watery and his speech slurred. He was not given a sobriety test and was driven home by the police, leading to complaints of special treatment."

[The Poor Window Washer] " “The (Boston) cops in the transport told me, ‘This is ridiculous. We didn’t want to take you in, but the MSPCA cop made the call,’ ” Guay said of his brief chat with Boston officers while shackled in the back of a prisoner-transport truck.

... we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...

[The Wealthy Congressman] "Last week, back from a monthlong treatment program for drug dependency at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, he said he looked forward to resuming his duties, but would need a support group to deal with his bipolar disorder and tendency toward addiction."

[The Poor Window Washer] "The beleaguered window washer arrested for killing a gull that he said tormented him for hours atop a downtown high rise got his first bit of good news since the bird fell dead. He landed another job. "

   - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

[The Wealthy Congressman] "He was accompanied in court by Representative Jim Ramstad, a Republican from Minnesota whom Kennedy identified as his sponsor. Ramstad described himself as a recovering alcoholic of 25 years, having experienced his own "similar wake-up call" in July 1981."