SHAPIRO: Random thoughts, sleepless nights

I have trouble falling asleep at night because as soon as I close my eyes, all kinds of random thoughts run through my mind and since these thoughts relate to Ashland, our state and our nation. I’ve decided to share them with you. Hopefully they won’t keep you awake at night too.
    
The Hickey family wants to develop the land across the street from our new high school and they would like our Planning Board to adjust the zoning of this land so that it will be uniform and adjusted to best serve our town’s needs. This is a very wise and welcomed offer from the Hickeys.

I think it’s important to make special note of the fact that because this land is directly across the street from the high school, anything built upon it will have a direct impact on our students. Therefore we don’t want anything there that will distract them or interfere with their ability to come and go.

We don’t want fast food restaurants or convenience stores. As a matter of fact there is no need for any stores in that vicinity or anything that will generate excess traffic. I believe that the best use of that land will be for residential homes with ample space between them.
    
Our School Committee has kept its promise to the town. It will indeed improve the communications between the committee and the town. Starting yesterday, members of the committee were and will continue to be available in designated public places to answer questions and hold informal discussions with parents or other concerned citizens. Their next Community Office Hours session will be held Saturday Aug. 25 from 9-10:15 a.m. at Rise Bakery on Union Street.

Massachusetts is about to change our way of insuring our automobiles, for better or for worse. I don’t know what to expect. I don’t really believe that open competition will result in lower insurance rates no more than deregulation of our airlines resulted in better air travel. I do know one thing that is not likely to change and that is the importance of selecting a good insurance agent. No matter what insurance carrier you choose, you need someone you trust to advise you and to help you if and when you have to file a claim. Don’t ever buy insurance simply because someone offers you the lowest rates. You will probably get the worst service along with the lowest rates. A good insurance agent will be able to advise you and help you later if your insurance carrier should fail to cover your claims.

The month of August is almost here along with many personal memories for me and other members of my generation. We dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 and dropped another one on Nagasaki three days later. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15. They signed their formal surrender on Sept. 2.

I was still in Europe at the time, so I never personally experienced that part of World War II and I have always felt the need to better understand what our troops went through in the Pacific Theater of Operations. I did get to see plenty of rusty landing-craft, some ships and motor vehicles that had been bulldozed into the sea around various Marshall Islands when I was engaged in nuclear bomb tests a few years later, but that didn’t satisfy my curiosity.

 Finally, I found a book that helped me better understand what our troops experienced. The book is "First Into Nagasaki" by George Weller, edited by his son Anthony Weller. The book is an assembly of newspaper reports that had been rejected by General MacArthur’s censors, thought to be lost, but later recovered by the younger Weller and published as a book.
    
Weller describes what he saw as the first American to go into Nagasaki after it was hit, and most important, he describes the American prisoners of war that were held and brutally mistreated by the Japanese military. This is a very difficult book to read, but I urge each and everyone to read it and if possible, please read it before Sept. 2, so that you will know the price that our troops paid for the victory that we will acknowledge on that day.
    
Maybe, I’ll be able to sleep tonight.