I write as a longtime past resident of Northampton and as a contributing writer and photographer for the Gazette. I loved both. Northampton meant to me what America was all about … history, grace and intellect. My mother, Cynthia, had been a graduate of Smith College. My father was the director of counseling and taught at Smith. So the college meant a lot to me. Decades later I wrote a novel that opened on the Smith campus called “Paradise Pond.”
So it was with considerable disappointment that I read that Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, has been blocking critical transition access to the incoming administration. Her refusal means that an end to the COVID-19 pandemic will be prolonged and tens of thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — more Americans will get die from the virus.
It is incomprehensible that any human being, let alone a Smith graduate, could deliberately inflict such pain and horror. Perhaps the college can rescind her degree or take some other public action to show its distress at such wanton cruelty.
Tony Seton
Carmel, California