With any luck the LPNY effort can started again this week. Here's what the Greens candidate is doing:
OSSINING - Malachy McCourt - author, playwrite, radio host and now Green Party candidate for Governor - stood astride and atop of Main Street yesterday for several hours at the entry point to this community's annual fair. "Don't waste your vote - give it to me," he said, proffering a flyer with his picture in the center. "That's me, I'm Malachy, and I'm standing for Governor of the great state of New York."
Ossining is not a university town; rather, it has been known - and has tried to escape its reputation - as a prison town for more than a century and a half. And so there were some here who had never heard of this prolific author, others who had heard of his equally well-known brother Frank, and one who had even heard of a brother that Malachy himself has yet to meet.
"Tom? I don't know Tom," he replied to an interested inquiry. "So you're disavowing your brother Tom?" the man asked. After a short while the two reached agreement that the questioner was indeed asking about brother Frank and that, indeed, Malachy had not spent his life ignorant of poor brother Tom.
Of those many, however, who were familiar with the author/candidate, it was interesting to watch the recognition light up first their eyes, then their faces. "You're Malachy?" He'd reply, "Yes, 'tis I" and a huge, knowing grin would slowly capture them.
He was generous with his time - more generous than the mere politicans who were pumping hands, kissing babies and lying their way through the crowd all day to obtain signatures for their nominating petitions. In contrast to that species, he was warm, amusing, gentle, piercing and uplifting, and he brought those traits to a piece of geography that has sorely needed them for far too long a time, if only for a few hours.
You won many a vote in Ossining yesterday, Mr. McCourt. Please do come back soon.