In yet another stunning example of cold dispassion, Everhart Museum of Natural History & Art officials in Scranton, Pennsylvania, refuse to respond to my questions about whether they possess Native American human remains. And, if they do, why have they failed to adhere to federal law that requires them to return the human remains to the appropriate tribe?

Museum officials have already shown gross disregard for propriety by trying to ignore their shoddy handling of other human remains. Everhart representatives once publicly flaunted the mummified corpse of a 2,000-year-old male teenager they claim is Peruvian. They billed the event as an entertaining way to celebrate college basketball “March Madness.”

Museum officials then compounded that grisly exhibit that dirties the museum’s reputation as a respectful repository of the past. They refuse to explain what happened to one and maybe two shrunken heads museum administrators displayed as human and featured for years to the ghoulish delight of children and other insensitive gawkers.

Museum officials even posted a bizarre slide show on Facebook that showed what appeared to be a tiny human head, shrunken and tanned by boiling, its mouth agape as long wavy dark hair swings in a grim display the museum previously presented to the public. Nine years after posting the photos and within days of my describing the body part in a column, somebody deleted the Everhart Facebook posting.

Now, following the shocking 2023 report in the Pulitzer Prize winning digital non-profit news outlet ProPublica titled “The Repatriation Project” that details “The Delayed Return of Native Remains,” the January 2025 updated ProPublica database says, “The Everhart Museum reported still having the remains of one Native American that it has not made available for return to tribes.”

“America’s institutions hold human remains and sacred items taken from the graves of tens of thousands of Native Americans,” says the ProPublica series introduction. “A federal law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), was meant to help return them, but decades after its 1990 passage, many tribes are still waiting.”

Under the auspices of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the National Park Service (NPS) enforces NAGPRA violations. In an email NPS Public Affairs spokeswoman Sarah Sparhawk said, “The museum (Everhart) reported these human remains to the NPS in 1995, as required by the Act. More information on a specific inventory would reside with the appropriate museum.”

In a June 4 email I asked Everhart CEO and Executive Director Timothy Lennon Holmes, Everhart Museum Curator James Lansing and Everhart Museum Board of Trustees Chair and attorney Caroline Munley, “Is staff at the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art in possession of Native American human remains? If so, when and how did the museum obtain those human remains? Has any museum representative tried to repatriate the human remains to the appropriate tribe?  If not, why not?”

Museum representatives Holmes, Lansing and Munley failed to respond.

If Everhart Museum officials do possess Native American human remains, from where were these body parts looted? Does the museum know the name of the grave robber who handed over the human remains? Was money exchanged or services bartered? Do records of the macabre transaction exist? Did somebody lose, throw away or steal the Native American human remains?

Did museum officials contact any Native American tribes who might want to claim the human remains? Will museum officials search for the Native American human remains the NPS asserts the Everhart Museum reported? Will museum officials try to reintern the remains in a dignified manner?

Will federal law enforcement officials join this pursuit of justice?

Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art officials serve the community as a non-profit organization always on the lookout for funding and tax deductible contributions. Everhart officials regularly welcome school children whose teachers depend on the museum to awaken their students’ curiosity and guide them morally and ethically. Museum officials also crave professional respect from colleagues.

Yet, based on their reluctance to tell the truth, their silence only provides heinous meaning to the word “whitewash” as they suffer a mortifying blow to their credibility.

Will we one day rectify these abuses to America’s sacred lessons of history?

Only time will tell.

Of all days in 2016 to showcase a “shrunken head,” Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art officials in Scranton, Pennsylvania, chose Halloween. Despite acknowledging “ethical considerations,” museum staff highlighted the dried body part like a grisly relic starring as a grotesque creature in a low budget horror movie.

Museum officials posted a bizarre slide show on Facebook that shows what appears to be a tiny human head, shrunken and tanned by boiling, its mouth agape as long wavy dark hair swings in a grim sideshow display the museum previously presented to the public.

The following Facebook narrative accompanies the museum’s tasteless production:

“Many Lackawanna County residents have fond memories of being frightened and fascinated by the Everhart’s shrunken head. This somewhat gruesome artifact was removed from view several years ago. Displaying human remains is inappropriate and presents ethical considerations for museums. The curatorial staff has been looking to authenticate this piece to determine if it was a true Tsantsa (religious artifact) or an object made to satisfy the tourist trade by the indigenous Shuar people of Peru and Ecuador.”

Fond memories?

Somewhat gruesome artifact?

The museum’s misguided narrative continues:

“Thanks to the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Everhart was able to take samples of hair and skin tissue for analysis by the Arcadia University Forensic Science Program. A few other museums are also participating in the study, and we hope to have more information after the tests are completed next year.

The photos attached here are of the harvesting of the hair and skin samples. We are excited to share this news with our community and promise updates as we receive them!”

Nine years later nobody officially connected with the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art is sharing news with the community about their ghastly pilfered prize. And the Mütter Museum has its own ongoing problems revolving around storing human body parts.

Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art CEO Timothy Lennon Holmes failed to respond to numerous shrunken head questions I sent him in a recent email. Museum curator James Lansing also failed to respond to an email. So did museum Board of Trustees Chair Caroline Munley Esq. and former chair Donald Frederickson Esq. who also serves as Lackawanna County Solicitor.

What kind of human ghouls degrade sacred remains of a corpse possibly robbed from a grave or bartered in exchange for money in such an offhand and careless manner? Cruel white colonialists historically treated Indigenous people with vicious bigotry. By refusing to answer legitimate questions Everhart Museum officials continue to insult vibrant native humanity.

Like the Everhart’s 2,000-year-old Peruvian mummy whose human remains museum officials failed to repatriate to Peru and keep in storage to this day, was the Everhart shrunken head once part of a spirited teenage boy? A proud adult male warrior? A bright courageous woman? An innocent child?

Countless people in the Scranton area and elsewhere remember seeing shrunken heads featured at the Everhart Museum. A friend contacted me after I wrote about the mummy.

“I remember seeing that mummy several times, as well as the shrunken head,” my friend said.

Another friend now in his sixties remembers seeing two shrunken heads on display at the Everhart Museum when he and his brother gawked at the macabre exhibit as wide-eyed children.

“There’s two shrunken heads in the collection that were bartered from the Shuar tribe,” he said.

Did the museum scientifically authenticate the shrunken head or heads? And, if the head is human, did museum officials return the remains or otherwise respectfully turn them over to caring authorities in Peru or Ecuador where this person or persons once lived? As Everhart officials still warehouse the mummy, do these esteemed civic leaders continue to disrespect life with the same cavalier reckless abandon immature 1950s teenagers showed when they dangled rubber shrunken heads from the rear view mirrors of their cars?

This cringeworthy chapter of Scranton history isn’t just another crackpot episode of The Office that draws fawning fans to the parochial city that served as the setting for the silly NBC television comedy.

No, the scandalous secrets of Scranton’s Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art are savagely and shamefully real.

Ancient human remains gathering dust in a dark Scranton storage space is no way to treat the dead. But that’s how administrators at the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art are mishandling a more than 2,000-year-old Peruvian mummy.

This five-foot-tall teenage cadaver once existed as a live human, walking and talking with family members and others who loved him. Now his corpse rests rigid in a fetal position, locked away like a grim trophy few people remember.

In April 2019 then museum curator Francesca Saldan told Live Science magazine: “The mummy’s journey from Peru to Pennsylvania was both long and strange. In 1923, a Scranton dentist named Dr. G. E. Hill donated the mummy to the museum; Hill had received the mummy from his father, who brought it from Peru when he returned home after working on the railroads.”

“Other than that, we really have no documentation about how he acquired it or where in Peru it actually came from,” Saldan said. “The mummy had been kept in a large display case made of wood and glass since the 1950s,” she said.

When I spoke on April 29 with Everhart Museum CEO Timothy Lennon Holmes, he said he had never seen the mummy. But, he said, “It’s here.”

Holmes said he didn’t know where the human remains were stored.

Curator James Lansing said he, too, had not seen the mummy and did not know where the remains were stored.  Two weeks after I started asking questions, though, Holmes said he and Lansing had located the mummy and finally viewed the remains.

“I did view the Peruvian Mummy since we spoke initially and I can confirm that it is indeed safely, securely & respectfully stored here in our archives,” Holmes wrote in a May 12 email.

Peruvian law protects pre-Colombian mummies, considered part of the nation’s cultural patrimony that includes inherited heritage that makes up Peruvian history. Yet, one Peruvian history scholar recently told me that “if the mummy left Peru before 1970, there’s no real mechanism to enforce the law.” Still, no credible museum official would consider archival storage of human remains respectable.

Unlike yesteryear law now guides morality at principled museums and other institutions. In 2022 the late Pope Francis returned three Peruvian mummies the Vatican kept since 1925, two years after the Everhart took possession of their mummy. Current Pope Leo XIV holds dual citizenship in Peru and the United States and would likely question the degrading way Everhart officials treat sacred Peruvian human remains.

My search for the missing mummy started when I recently thought about seeing Native American human remains in a glass case during a trip to the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg when I was 10 years old. State museum officials are still working to repatriate hundreds of human remains to various tribal nations throughout the United States.

I later discovered an online story about the Everhart Museum’s Peruvian mummy and contacted curator James Lansing. I wanted to make sure my hometown museum had properly returned the mummy they had received under questionable circumstances. In the past, grave robbers, grifters and carnival barkers trafficked in Peruvian mummies, putting them on display at disrespectful exhibitions. Peruvian government officials have made it clear for years that they will do everything in their power to prevent illegal trafficking and continue repatriating Peruvian human remains back to Peru.

On April 30 Holmes wrote in an email, “As I mentioned, there was an attempt to repatriate the remains some time ago but the effort was unsuccessful. None of the folks who were directly involved with that effort work here now so we’re trying to find more details.”

Holmes said nobody in the Peruvian government wanted the mummy’s remains.

On May 5 Holmes wrote, “I still haven’t seen a copy of the letter from the Peruvian authorities, but from what I understand – it does exist. I’ll let you know when we track it down.”

Holmes didn’t say when museum officials tried to repatriate the mummy back to Peru. Holmes said Lansing would check with other museums to see how they repatriate human remains.

When I asked to view the mummy Holmes said no. When I asked again he again refused.

“I spoke with the Everhart Board last week and they confirmed that nobody is allowed into our archives to view it,” Holmes wrote in a subsequent email.

“Where are the human remains stored?” I asked Holmes in a later email. “Under what conditions are they stored? What action do you plan to take, if any, to better care for these sacred human remains and try to repatriate them to caring people in Peru?  Are the Peruvian human remains you say are in the possession of museum staff insured? If so, by whom? If not, why not?”

On April 12 Holmes turned down my request to view the human remains.

“The Peruvian Mummy is in our possession and has been since 1923.  It is not the policy of the museum to allow members of the general public to view any of our stored collection.”

I wasn’t asking as a member of the general public but as a longtime member of the press. In the past, though, members of the general public have viewed the Peruvian mummy when the museum put the remains on display, pairing them with the National Collegiate Athletic Association college basketball tournament played in March.

In 2019, then museum Executive Director Aurore Giguet issued a press release announcing that “the Everhart Museum will be bringing its Peruvian mummy out of storage” to “Experience March Madness at the Everhart Museum—with a Mummy!”

The press release said, “Starting March 9, and for a short time only, the Everhart Museum will be bringing its Peruvian mummy out of storage as part of the exhibition Preserved: Traditions of the Andes… very little is known about the mummy although it has been identified as belonging to the Paracas culture one of the oldest cultures of South America dating back to 800 – 100 B.C. The mummy was last on view in the 1990s.”

On May 11 I sent Giguet an email at her current job at an Oregon college asking when she last saw the mummy. I told her about my communication with Holmes and followed up with a telephone message to her office. Giguet failed to respond to my questions.

The Everhart Museum also shared access to the mummy in 2019 when Geisinger Community Medical Center officials in Scranton studied the remains. A Geisinger press release that included photographs of the mummy said they were using modern technology to “bring life” to the mummy. Holmes failed to respond to my request for photographs the museum’s March Madness press release said were available to the press.

Everhart Museum Board of Trustees Chair-Elect Alex Molfetas said he also never saw the Peruvian mummy but heard stories about the mummy or a “shrunken head or something.” Although Holmes wrote in an email he spoke to board members who rejected my request to view the mummy’s remains, Molfetas said he could “not recall” Holmes asking him about my request.

Realtor and Everhart Board of Trustees First Vice Chair Joyce Lomma said she saw the mummy years ago but doesn’t “remember what it looks like.” Having served as a trustee for many years Lomma said she recently stepped away from duties at the museum because of health issues although she remains a trustee. She said she “can’t answer” any questions about whether the museum should possess a Peruvian mummy and suggested I call Scranton attorney Caroline Munley.

I had already forwarded my email thread with Holmes to attorney Munley whose name appears on the museum website as the Board of Trustees Chair. Munley failed to respond. I also left a telephone message with a staffer at Munley’s law office. Munley again failed to respond to my questions, including whether she or members of her law firm represent the museum in any way.

I also sent an email to former Everhart Board Chair and Lackawanna County Solicitor Donald Frederickson Jr.

“Have you seen the human remains?” I wrote. “My understanding is that possession of a Peruvian mummy without Peruvian government authorization and proper documentation is illegal. The Everhart Museum apparently has no such documentation. Do you believe possession of this Peruvian mummy is against state, federal or international law?”

Frederickson failed to respond to my email.

Even if past Everhart administrators tried and failed to repatriate the Peruvian mummy and Peruvian authorities refused to accept the human remains, nobody with authority or conscience followed up by doing what was right. Nobody tried to locate a suitable burial ground and arrange a simple ceremony to reverentially re-inter the remains. Nobody said a prayer or offered a blessing the way Pope Francis did in Rome when he solemnly repatriated the Vatican mummies.

Nobody.

Because, in Scranton, experiencing March Madness with a mummy at the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art meant more than respecting the timeless legacy of the dead.

In the photo the empty lot behind me blurs in the Atlantic City distance, making faded letters advertising salt water taffy impossible to read on the peeling side of the building.

Yet memories of my youth glisten amid the gravel and dirt of that barren piece of property where Eddie’s Shamrock Bar, the first bar off the boardwalk on Kentucky Avenue, once overflowed with customers where I briefly tended bar the summer I turned 21.

And I do mean briefly.

My Scranton Irish American family helped me get the job because the native-born Irish bar owners had a Scranton connection. I lived above the bar in a long neglected yet spacious room, sleeping for free in one of many dingy rented bedrooms on the second floor that came to resemble an oddball flophouse in an historic building that offered who knows what endless comforts during Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties.

Because I needed to save money to study, box and connect with relatives on my grandfather’s native Irish soil, I vowed not to drink too much during that summer of ’72 except for the occasional foray into the city for a few beers.

So I took a long walk to the city public library, signed up for a card and took out a hardback copy of Big Sur, Jack Kerouac’s pseudo-novel about the rugged California coast. I had packed my own paperback copy of the Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy and each week bought a thick Village Voice to read front to back while sitting on a wooden bench on the boardwalk across from one of the open-front auction houses that did steady tourist business on hot nights.

Veteran Shamrock bartender Jimmy Jeffers from Minooka (the once powerful Irish neighborhood in Scranton where my Irish coal miner grandfather sired many members of the Corbett tribe) showed me how to properly pull a beer. But I kept holding the tap half open and got frustrated with the foam when he corrected me.

Something I did know how to do occurred one night when I threw two of the owner’s son’s buddies out of the bar after catching them pouring their own whiskey from a pint bottle the one guy tried to hide beneath the bar.

“We’re friends of Johnny Moran,” he said.

“Out,” I said,

My other gift was pouring shots.

“Go down to the other end of the bar,” I’d say to a customer. “The bar’s slanted where you’re sitting. If you move I can fill the shot glass all the way to the brim. You’ll get a full belt instead of the bar soaking up the runoff.”

I also drew attention to the bar when word got out I was giving away drinks to anybody with a real Irish accent. Irish-born bar owner and tightwad Mary Moran wore long black dresses, ruled with an iron swizzle stick and could have been 50 but looked much older. She knew I was up to no good but couldn’t prove the bold impertinence I called public relations. “The Shamrock” was an Irish bar, for Christ’s sake.

Mary lost any faith in me that remained after her older brother Pat asked if I could take him for a drive the way my father Shamus and he used to tool around town after World War II. Pat was a gentle alcoholic bruiser his sister imprisoned in his room because of his drinking. A poor soul who could once lift beer kegs over his head with ease, he now could barely navigate. Good at heart, Pat counseled me not to drink out of glasses when I got to Dublin for fear of catching a disease.

“Only bottles,” said Pat as we sat across from each other at a big round table covered with a stained white cloth in the cavernous sunroom with a 20-foot ceiling, a tiny greasy kitchen and floor-to-ceiling open windows that caught the salt air when bartenders and their friends came upstairs to play poker.

So out Pat and I went cruising on a fine summer day. When we got back, Pat asked if we could take a short walk on the boardwalk. Of course, I said. When hawk-eyed Mary spotted us heading up the boardwalk ramp she went ballistic.

“What are you doing?” she screamed “What is the matter with you?”

Yeah, well at least I’m not opening poor Pat’s mail, I thought.

But the icing on the soda bread came a few nights later when the Irish owner of another Irish bar threw me out of his establishment at 4 in the morning for singing “The Wild Colonial Boy” onstage with the band. He came running down the steps from his apartment howling that I woke him by stomping my foot on the stage.

“I was keeping rhythm,” I said.

“Out! Out!” he screamed.

You’d have thought I was pouring my own whiskey.

After a leisurely sunrise boardwalk stroll back to the Shamrock I discovered much to my dismay that Mary had removed the key from where it always hung on a hidden hook. People staying upstairs had to know the key was there in order to get in after Mary locked the door before she went to bed. Drunk or sober, though, I always considered myself good in a pinch.

In the parking lot next door I found a beautiful wooden extension ladder on the ground. Raising the ladder to its full height I leaned it against the Shamrock’s outside wall, scampering up to the second-floor window. With two windows wide open, their thin frayed curtains blowing in the wind, I took my pick and crawled inside.

Asleep in minutes in my musty room I awakened with a start when I heard loud police radio voices that signaled trouble. Stumbling groggily to the same window into which I had earlier climbed, I spotted Mary on the sidewalk in her long black dress she wore like life was one nonstop Irish wake. Strictly business from the old country, she had no time for a wild colonial boy like me. Serious cops spoke serious words to Mary as they pointed to the ladder I had forgotten to remove from the side of the building.

Then they pointed to me.

I waved and headed down to confess.

Some people just don’t have a sense of humor.

By that afternoon with “Dirty Eddie’s” in my rearview mirror I headed back to Pennsylvania singing “The Wild Colonial Boy” at the top of my lungs while driving my 1966 VW bus with the green hubcaps and matching shamrocks my father had painted on the back one night without my permission.

Another uncharted chapter in my unfolding life had closed.

Next stop?

The National Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, where in a few months I would face off in the center of the ring with the terrifying red-haired Irish cop and wild west farm boy Christy O’Brien to fight for the county and city novice heavyweight boxing championship.

Don’t go away.

The punches are about to fly.

Saturday afternoon about 2 p.m. five or six Harleys lean heavy on sidestands outside Zembie’s on Second Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Two rugged-looking guys dressed in faded blue denim and scuffed well-worn boots stand beside the downtown bar with their backs to the wall.

The man with the braided beard wears Norse fire god “Surt’s” sacred yellow, black and red seated image emblazoned on an outlaw motorcycle club patch stitched high on the front of his sleeveless “cut” vest.

Neither man pays us any attention as we climb the steps and open the door to the bar. My wife Stephanie and I are spending an easy afternoon with our Pittsburgh friend Michelle whom we haven’t seen in about 35 years. Stephanie and I once drank as regulars in this same bar (then called the G-Man) where we met 44 years ago when she bought me beer and took me home like a sick, stray German Shepherd. Back then Turtle the cook served us free weed in a coleslaw container whenever we ordered take-out food. Yeah, the G-Man was our kind of place.

A lot of life has changed since then. We’re older now, closely watching our health.  So Stephanie and Michelle back out of the bar as soon as the thick cigarette smoke hits them like a toxic cloud. We decide to split, go back to the Hilton and drink healthy-for-the-heart red wine to prepare for dinner tonight.

I stop walking as we pass the two bikers. A brief April shower has created soft springtime memories for me, a good time to plant another small seed that might blossom and help keep my old friend Sonny Drake’s powerful legacy alive. Breathing life into the spirits of the holy dead always matters.

I respectfully tell the two men I grew up with Sonny and ask if they knew him when he served as the Pagan’s Motorcycle Club’s Appalachian Chapter president and also wore “Surt” on the front and back of his cut-off vest.  Before Sonny died in 2023 he sent me a photo of himself clad in that cut and sitting astride his classic black and orange custom half ’47 Knucklehead, half ’48 Panhead bike. Wearing black shades Sonny stares fearlessly toward the open gates of paradise and the honor and glory awaiting him in Valhalla.

One of the two men immediately recognizes Sonny’s name and reputation as a club chieftain beloved by “Pagan’s” nationwide. When I say I’m in touch with some of Sonny’s club brothers (after Sonny’s military funeral where 75 “Pagan’s” roared in a tight pack into Indiantown Gap National Cemetery to salute their departed Marine Corps veteran) both men nod politely, all of us picking up on the same somber vibe.

Learning hard lessons of the past helps make us stronger in the present.

Feeling common ground I offer a little more information, this time to lighten the mood the way Sonny and I used to kid each other to conquer tough times as rough- and-ready high school kids roaming the Cove in rural Perry County.

“I also listen to the best rocking rolling band in the world,” I say to the two guys.

You can’t blame them for not knowing where I’m going with this. At 6 feet 223 pounds, wearing a cracked black leather jacket with my long gray hair hanging below my shoulders dipping into a scraggly gray devil goatee, I’m grinning my big capped-tooth grin like an escaped mental patient about to run amok.

“Willy Blaze and the Bad News Crew!” I howl like a music-soothed savage beast.

“Yes, yes,” laughs the man with the black and blue neck tattoos. His road partner flashes a smile as wide as a shiny new Buck knife blade. Like Sonny these two brothers know well their brother Willy Blaze, his righteous banging band and their killer white hot music. Each day nationwide Willy Blaze and the Bad News Crew grow bigger and badder. “Bad News” is good news, especially for the one-percenters in the club who know the pounding beat of the inside track.

Before we part company I get serious again and ask, “So how are you guys doing?”

“We’re good,” says one.  

“Thanks for asking,” says the other.

Despite being strangers, we stand together as allies on a gray drizzling day. And I walk away remembering Sonny Drake’s laugh the last time I saw him at our 50^th high school reunion when we sat together and reminisced about teenage mountain men adventures we shared knocking around in our wild, wild youth. We embraced on the street that night before going home to ponder what we knew then and what I know now.

Brotherhood is a bond.

True kinship lives forever.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro might act high, but did he ever personally bang the bong?

Shapiro is one of America’s most prominent aspiring candidates craving White House power even more than Snoop Dog wants another hit off the water pipe. Television host Bill Maher, one of America’s biggest publicly self-proclaimed potheads, recently interviewed Shapiro but didn’t ask Shapiro about weed.

Did Shapiro ever get high?

The governor’s senior deputy press secretary Rosie Lapowsky doesn’t want to talk about it.

Lapowsky steadfastly refuses to answer my simple cannabis questions about her boss, a take-me-higher-profile public servant who’s pushing legalization of a billion-dollar recreational weed industry in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. No matter how many times I’ve asked (and I’ve been asking for more than a month) Lapowsky goes mum when I inquire whether the governor ever got toasted, roasted and stretched out in a pasture of freshly mown herb.

Former President Bill Clinton said he didn’t inhale. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for whom Shapiro campaigned in 2024 to win the election said she did. When Harris rejected Shapiro as a potential vice presidential running mate he kicked into high gear and ramped up his unofficial campaign as a high roller politician hallucinating about higher office.

I first requested in a February 13^th telephone conversation that Lapowsky ask Shapiro when he last got high. She indicated she would ask the busy governor my question and seemed agreeable to setting up a brief interview for me with her boss.

Simple question: Did he or didn’t he?

How can Shapiro wrangle for full-blown recreational legalization without knowing the happy daze feeling he’s trying to deal on the marijuana market? Is endorsing cannabis more difficult if he never himself got ripped? But maybe Shapiro hasn’t ever blasted off with his best buds. An increasing number of health care professionals argue cannabis use disorder is rising and even adds to a higher risk of death for users. Still, if Shapiro is embarrassed about his stale white bread straight persona, maybe some silly stoned state senator will turn him on.

Just level with the people, bro.

In a February 20th email titled “GUBERNATORIAL WEED” I asked Lapowsky, “Has Gov. Josh Shapiro ever used cannabis in any form in a so-called recreational setting? If so, when?  If not, why not?  If so, did he roll his own joint?  Did he buy from a dealer? Maybe an ounce or a pound? Was he sitting cross-legged at a pot party smoking a joint listening to the Grateful Dead?”

In that same email I also asked Lapowsky about Col. Christopher Paris whom Shapiro appointed to command the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP), the oldest state police organization in the nation.

“I’m interested in whether Paris, another coal cracker like us, has ever used cannabis in a recreational setting,” I wrote, mentioning the coal region because Lapowsky told me she grew up in Archbald in Lackawanna County.

“Readers and taxpayers need to know if Pennsylvania’s most powerful policymakers ever got or get high themselves as they decide legalization,” I wrote in my email.

On February 21 I emailed PSP Communications Office Director Lt. Adam Reed.

“I’m writing a series of columns about the possible legalization of recreational cannabis in Pennsylvania,” I said in the email. “When was the last time Commissioner Christopher Paris used recreational cannabis? Under what circumstances? If Paris never used cannabis why not?”

I wrote another email to Reed on March 1. Following up March 3 with a phone call, I left a message with a staffer because Reed was out of the office for the day. Lt. Reed never responded to my requests for information about whether Pennsylvania’s top cop ever broke the law or got high on legalized weed in another state.

Did he or didn’t he? Smoking state secrets are the mark of a sick police state, not a healthy and transparent democracy.

This isn’t the first time I’ve asked pompous public servants about reefer madness. When I wrote regularly award-winning news columns in the late 1990s for the Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre I asked conservative U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum about his pothead past. We had both foraged as students through the wacky weed jungle at Penn State.

Santorum dismissed my question by saying he already publicly discussed his past marijuana use. I explained to the senator at a press conference packed with police officials that I knew he had acknowledged past illegal drug use but wanted details. Did Santorum buy a U-Haul load? Did feeling fine on cloud nine feel better than living life as a dull, right-wing family values Republican? Did he want to trip the light fantastic again?

Not pleased with my blow-your-mind journalism, Puff the magic senator either personally or through a staffer contacted my editor who falsely accused me of misquoting Santorum. When I played her the tape of the public exchange my accuracy burned hot as the freshly lit tip of a glowing joint in a dormitory drug den.

On February 25 I emailed Lapowsky again.

“Have you asked Gov. Josh Shapiro my questions about his past and/or present recreational drug use? Has anyone in the governor’s office instructed you not to respond to my questions?”

No response.

On February 26 I again emailed Lapowsky.

“The story’s getting weird, Rosie. And, like Hunter Thompson said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Am I being blackballed by the governor? Yours in the spirit of government weed and the First Amendment.”

No response.

Impressed by Shapiro’s vigor as a wannabe ganjapreneur pushing recreational cannabis growth and sizzle as an economic engine to light up Pennsylvania progress, roachholders and stakeholders alike need to know if the governor ever got frizzled.

Powerful lobbyists and cannabis executives are already grazing in the grass.

Spotlight PA reported in March that “the cannabis industry is spending money in Pennsylvania. Corporate executives for cannabis companies donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers’ campaign funds in 2024. Benjamin Kovler, CEO and founder of Chicago-based cannabis retailer and cultivator Green Thumb Industries, contributed $45,000 to Pennsylvania’s highest-ranking lawmakers last year. The bulk of his contributions, $25,000, went to Shapiro.”

You’d think some hip mainstream newsperson would have already asked Shapiro about his history of personal recreational drug use. Too bad we live in a world of increasingly nonaggressive clerical news reported by timid stenographers.

Maybe the reporters are high.

On March 18 I sent another email to Lapowsky who again failed to respond. To test my blackball theory and set an outlaw journalism trap in the process, I asked to be included on the Governor’s Office emailing list that notifies journalists who cover state government of upcoming press conferences and appearances by the governor.

“Hi Stephen,” she quickly wrote back. “Happy to do so! I’ll get you added today.”

Far out. I wasn’t blackballed. But Lapowsky’s giddy response also verified that cannabis is, indeed, the forbidden fruit hanging in Shapiro’s political Garden of Eden by which he might be tempted but shies away.

On March 29 I rolled one last email.

“I’m close to publishing my story about whether Gov. Josh Shapiro ever used legal or illegal recreational cannabis,” I wrote to Lapowski. “You have still not acknowledged whether you asked Shapiro my question so I don’t know if Shapiro even knows I’m asking. Did you or anyone in the governor’s press office ask the governor if he ever got high for fun? If you or anyone in the governor’s press office did ask Shapiro if he ever got high, what was his answer? Shapiro is still pushing hard for recreational pot legalization. He’s still campaigning, maybe even to run for president. He still owes the people an answer. So do you.”

Lapowsky, a young lawyer who told me in our phone conversation she listened to me while growing up when I hosted for a decade a Northeastern Pennsylvania news radio show on WILK (where I interviewed then Pennsylvania Attorney General Shapiro), again ignored my questions.

Shapiro’s fear and loathsome secrecy makes him look like a dope. Is Shapiro a smoker, a joker, a midnight toker or just another space cowboy? Snooty elitist government cover-ups about drugs and other issues germane to our quality of life can easily destroy Shapiro’s political future. Deceit has fried better heads than his.

Let’s be blunt.

Weed gets us buzzed.

Truth sets us free.

As tough as he was, my dad Shamus carried around an inspirational poem in his wallet until the day he died.

Poems can be tough, too.

My dad’s namesake James J. Corbett, boxing’s first heavyweight champion under Marquis of Queensbury rules, wrote the poem called “One More Round.”

 “Fight one more round.

When your feet are so tired that you have to shuffle back to the center of the ring,  fight one more round.

When your arms as so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to come on guard, fight one more round.

When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you are so tired that you wish your opponent would crack you on the jaw and put you to sleep, fight one more round—remembering that the man who always fights one more round is never whipped.”

When World War II ended in 1945 Shamus brought home two pair of 16 oz. boxing gloves, one of which is pictured above, that he used to train for the Armed Forces Heavyweight Championship he won as an Army soldier in Bermuda.

At 6-foot-1, 172 pounds, Shamus could box and he could hit.

When we were 16 years old, Sonny Drake and I spent hours pounding each other in the back yard with these gloves, dancing around the coal ash pile in which I used to hide whiskey I stole from where my father stored his liquor bottles beneath the kitchen sink. Throwing jabs, hooks and straight, short right hands, through busted lips and bruised eyes, Sonny and I learned to go one more round.

Sonny’s gone now.

And I’m aging at 73 like a chewed up mouthpiece.

Despite being cracked, worn and 80 years old, these gloves symbolize perseverance.

Always did.

Always will.

Pat rushed into the Scranton Irish bar screaming, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, did you hear the news?”

Mike swallowed the last of his Guinness, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and ordered another pint.

“I heard enough Lackawanna County political news on my walk here to make my head blow up like a car bomb,” Mike said. “My neighbors are already accusing each other of being informers.”

Pat tried to catch his breath as the Notre Dame wall clock struck noon when the leprechaun’s fighting Irish fists moved to the 12.

“Democratic Party bosses are like wild dogs at each other’s throats about who’s gonna get anointed as the new Lackawanna County commissioner,” said Pat. “You see the lead candidate on the news?”

“Who could miss Max Conway, County Commissioner Chairman Billy Gaughan’s hand-picked puppet?” said Mike. “Conway held up his little baby at the press conference like he was showing off a piglet at the farm show. Using that poor child for personal political advantage.”

Mike put on the somber face he wore for special occasions like this, although few occasions like this came to mind.

“This is one for the books,” Mike said.

“A cook book,” Pat said. “Remember when former Scranton Mayor Bill Courtright cooked the books and did six years in the federal penitentiary?”

“Courtright got out a few months ago,” said Mike. “I spotted him going into that halfway house just the other day.”

“Halfway to what?”

“Half past a monkey’s ass,” said Mike. “City and county Democrats are up a tree on this one.”

Pat imitated a chimp scratching under his arms and hopping around the corner of the bar like he was Cheetah in a 1930s Tarzan movie.

“I hear our ex-boxer State Senator Marty Flynn is losing his mind over the party infighting going public,” Mike said.

“What’s left of his mind,” Pat said. “Good thing somebody stole his .357 when he left the loaded gun in his unlocked car.”

“None of this woulda happened if Matt McGloin had stayed put as commissioner and the other Irish guys didn’t have to scrape the bottom of the beer barrel to find a replacement,” Mike said. “Now, McGloin’s just another quitter running off to Boston to play football.”

“He’s not playing football,” Pat said. “Boston College hired him as an offensive analyst.”

“McGloin’s analysis was offensive as it gets when he raised our taxes,” Mike said.

“How about that cutesy Democratic County Chairman Chris Patrick?” Pat said, raising his forefinger and thumb to signal the bartender for a shot. When the bartender pointed to the bottle of Paddy whiskey Pat nodded his approval.

“Another hooligan carpetbagger who wants control,” Mike said. “He’s not even from Scranton.”

“Living up in the valley like he’s better than us,” Pat said.

“And don’t forget the county judges,” said Mike. “That rat pack gets to make the actual final appointment.”

“I trust them finaglers as much as they trust each other,” Pat said.

“I read in the paper the county judges don’t even have a plan,” Pat said. “They better not let that couple of black-robed Republicans in their midst vote on a Democrat or they’ll try to sink the ship.”

“Yeah,” said Mike. “Maybe even vote for a woman or an Indian.”

Pat slapped the bar sending a beer puddle burst against Mike’s Friendly Sons of St. Patrick T-shirt as he screamed, “Mother of God there’s no Indian women running, are there?”

“Politics around here used to be better,” Mike said. “Then they elected that snooty hippie girl from Oregon or California or wherever she’s from as the mayor of Scranton”

“That gal’s got the gall to run for re-election, too,” said Pat.

Mike cocked an eyebrow.

“Think she’ll win?”

“Joe Biden won’t save her now,” said Pat. “Doesn’t matter anyhow.”

Simple mystery befuddled Mike.

“Why’s that, Pat?”

Pat bought the next round, shots included, and proposed a toast to their local Irish guy world’s latest political predicament.

“Every Lackawanna County politician is a loser nowadays,” Pat said raising his shot glass. “No matter who’s in charge.”

Good newspaper columnists fix their mistakes.

Mistakes hurt vulnerable people, including children. When a newspaper columnist promises a reader to correct a mistake in the next day’s paper, the columnist corrects the mistake in the next day’s paper.

Scranton Times-Tribune columnist Chris Kelly made a mistake in his Feb. 2 column. Kelly’s words hurt people, including children. After I challenged his inaccuracy and provided him with detailed facts to the contrary Kelly promised to fix his error the next day.

Instead, Kelly broke his promise.

When I declined to help him clean up his mess the way any good journalist would want to do, Kelly made matters worse.

My communication with Kelly began when I read Kelly’s column and he wrote, “Undocumented immigrants are, by definition, illegal immigrants. Calling them ‘undocumented’ creates a distinction without a difference.”

Chris Kelly Opinion: Bully in chief backs down

Undocumented immigrants are not “illegal” immigrants. Even the Poynter Institute’s journalism fact-checker site agrees that “Living in the U.S. without documentation is a civil violation, not a crime.”

In an “issue brief” titled “Criminalizing Undocumented Immigrants,” the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project asks, “Is the fact of being present in the United States in violation of the immigration laws a crime?”

“No,” says the ACLU. “The act of being present in the United States in violation of the immigration laws is not, standing alone, a crime. While federal immigration law does criminalize some actions that may be related to undocumented presence in the United States, undocumented presence alone is not a violation of federal criminal law.”

A large number of undocumented people in the United States, including those who overstay their visa, actually enter the country with authorization and remain when their authorization expires. The ACLU brief goes on to explain legal rights all undocumented people possess in the United States.

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/FINAL_criminalizing_undocumented_immigrants_issue_brief_PUBLIC_VERSION.pdf

Kelly can call people anything he likes. As long as he abides by the law he is free to disparage and diminish the hopes of men, women and children who deserve better. Some conservative media commentators do just that. Fancying himself a liberal you would expect Kelly to carry himself above the right-wing crowd.

Most reliable journalists agree Kelly’s characterization is incorrect. Portraying decent people as illegal demonizes them. By spreading confusing information, Kelly slurred immigrants who pursue the American Dream by living and working in the shadows of official U.S. government approval. 

I sent Kelly a Facebook message letting him know why he needed to correct his mistake. I included the link to the ACLU brief. Kelly seemed to agree with me and said he would correct his statement.

“Tomorrow,” he wrote back.

The more I thought about Kelly’s words the more I saw the need for Scranton’s sole mainstream media commentator to offer a clearer explanation to his readers and to the community.

“You really need a whole new column,” I wrote Kelly. “You drew some terribly harmful conclusions.  With friends like you undocumented people don’t need enemies. A paragraph correction won’t cut it.”

I also sent Kelly a 2019 column I wrote about immigration and posted on one of my websites. Between 2002 and 2006 I lived and worked as a daily newspaper columnist in Central Coastal California agricultural country where many Mexican farmworkers are undocumented. I stood with documented and undocumented immigrants then and I stand with documented and undocumented immigrants now.

I’ll Always Stand With Them

 “Thanks again. Be well,” Kelly responded.

The next morning I sent Kelly another Facebook message: “Did you make the correction? What did you or your editor say?”

Kelly responded, “I think you’re right about needing a new column. Working on sourcing it now. Do you have any contacts I should reach out to? Again, thanks for the feedback.”

I ignored Kelly’s request for my assistance. Kelly has been working at the Times-Tribune for decades. If he doesn’t have multicultural contacts by now, I urge him to connect with people who shape the future of the city and nation he serves. Talk with a few of the young men from Mexico he can easily find working in all kinds of weather on house roofs throughout the city. Walk through South Side where it’s easy to find people who can introduce you to new immigrants. Persist until Latinos might consider trusting you. At the very least, call the ACLU.

No newspaper correction or new Kelly column appeared the following day. Instead Kelly wrote about cleaning up a local cemetery. I sent Kelly another message.

“When is your correction column running?” I wrote.

Kelly responded with raw defensiveness.

“So the ‘Great Champion of the Undocumented’ has no sources who could actually help me get it right?” Kelly wrote. “I tried to be cordial out of my genuine respect for your long and consequential career, but you won’t have that. Maybe you really do care about undocumented people, but it’s clear your goal here is to break my balls. Don’t bother. I learned a long time ago that ‘my ego is not my amigo.’ It’s clear you’re still ruled by yours. Unless you have something of value to pass along, stop wasting your time and my attention.

And be well. (I mean that.)”

Consider this column “something of value.”

Five generations on my father’s side of the family in Scranton started with an immigrant. James Patrick Corbett journeyed from his tiny Cornamona village on the Irish West Coast to work for 45 years as an underground coal miner in Scranton. He and my grandmother Mame raised 10 children in their tiny house on Cedar Avenue. Toxic coal dust-induced Black Lung disease killed Pa at 81. In 1966, when I was 15, I rode with him in the ambulance to Mercy Hospital in Scranton where he died just a few blocks from where I now live.

Immigration that helped build Scranton hard coal country and the nation still matters to the Irish. Undocumented Irish make up tens of thousands of hardworking people under attack by America’s cruel culture of ignorance. Undocumented Indians, too, and I’m not talking about Navajos or Apaches. Countless immigrants from countless foreign countries move to Scranton for countless reasons. Not all these men, women and children are documented. But they all deserve a chance. The U.S. Constitution supposedly protects them.

Kelly makes it easier for anti-immigration zealots to vilify defenseless people terrified by right-wing threats of mass deportation. It’s hard to trust a newspaper columnist who maligns the brave human quest for freedom. The public trust we serve as journalists depends on clarity for credibility.

After looking and failing to find a correction in the Times-Tribune or in Kelly’s Sunday Feb. 9 column, I gave the man described on his Facebook page as an “award-winning columnist, editor and writing coach” another chance to keep his word.

“Are you writing and publishing a correction?” I asked in yet another Facebook message.

Kelly again failed to respond.

No correction has yet to appear.

A few days later I spoke on the phone to a California friend of more than 20 years as he and his wife braved rush hour traffic, rain and mud slides on their drive home from Los Angeles. His English is about as good as my Spanish. We laughed and I sang him a piece of a song popular in his native Sinaloa, Mexico. I told him how proud I was of his passing his American citizenship test earlier that day.

The land of the free needs all the good citizens we can get.

Good journalists, too.

All those years ago

Bring us to this sacred space

Walking together