Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is Trump Town.

This struggling provincial city needs all the evolution it can get.

Low Cut Connie offered to help.

At first Luzerne County government bosses in this county seat people once called “The Valley with a Heart” cut a deal with the band to play a fun summer concert called Rockin’ the River. Then little power-hungry bosses bowed to bigger power-hungry bosses who crave more control, more censorship and more authority over people who call Wilkes-Barre home. Elected and appointed public servants suddenly cancelled the show for Friday night’s outdoor riverfront concert. 

Luzerne County Manager Romilda Crocamo said in a statement “our goal is to have a place where we can enjoy music, food, promote our community, have fun, be safe and free of politics and propaganda.”

You can’t take a deep breath in Luzerne County without almost choking on toxic local politics. As for propaganda, Crocamo’s mere use of the word unleashes her own bias. Propaganda means harmful disinformation that is often untrue. Crocamo refuses to even tell band members what exactly they have done to deserve her defamatory insinuation that sure sounds like a First Amendment violation to me.

Back in the 1990s Luzerne County prosecutors charged me and three co-workers at The Times Leader with felonies for doing journalism in Luzerne County. For our trouble, we later won a national journalism award for our service to the First Amendment and a free press.

Crocamo, who failed to respond to my written questions, is just the latest in a long line of lackluster Luzerne County lackeys. She said in a WILK News Radio interview Tuesday morning she wasn’t even familiar with the band. If not, how did she know they’d be inciting revolution through propaganda?

Alan K. Stout, Executive Director of the Luzerne County Convention & Visitors Bureau who willingly helped kill the music, refused to answer my specific written questions.

“I can’t really get into it on here, but there was much more to it and everything that he (Low Cut Connie singer Adam Weiner) said in that video was not true. Romilda is handling it and I’m fine with it,” Stout said in a Facebook Messenger response to my questions.

Stout called the heavy-handed decision to blacklist the band “just another day at the office” and refused to say what he claimed was inaccurate about the video Weiner posted on social media.

Weiner said in the heartfelt post he addresses diversity and inclusion in his performances and recently released a song, “Livin in the USA,” that “speaks to the terror, the unease, the fear that so many people in the United States are experiencing right now because of these ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids that are absolutely inhumane and anti-American.”

“I will not stop speaking about that,” Weiner said of the ICE raids. “For all these reasons, the organizers of this event feel that my show is too controversial. It’s going to alienate people and be too polarizing, so they cancelled the show.”

Is it coincidence that current Republican law-and-order Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce recently signed off on working with federal immigration ICE agents in a pact the first of its kind in any Pennsylvania county? Sanguedolce failed to respond to my written questions asking if he played any role in the decision to cancel the concert.

 It also didn’t help Weiner’s image among “authorities” that he stood on principle when he pulled out of a March Kennedy Center concert in Washington, D.C. to protest President Donald Trump’s takeover of the previously nonpartisan venue.

Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) mentality is written all over Luzerne County‘s narrow-minded decision to cancel the Low Cut Connie gig. Complicit in silent tacit approval are Rockin’ the River sponsors including Geisinger, Mericle Commercial Real Estate, Pennsylvania American Water, King’s College, Wilkes University and too many others.

I lived and worked in downtown Wilkes-Barre for 17 years during which I wrote newspaper columns for the Times Leader, often focusing on injustice. Decades ago I called Wilkes-Barre “pound-for-pound the most racist city in America.” In 2020 Avventura Press published my novel about Wilkes-Barre bigotry and how MAGA madmen in the city take credit for Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory. So grim and relevant does the story remain that Avventura Press this year published Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited which includes the original novel with a current nonfiction introduction, five up-to-date chapters and an epilogue I aptly call an “Apocalogue.”

Sound familiar?

Mind control is everything in Luzerne County. MAGA crusaders now rule. Republicans last year took over the lead in voter registrations for the first time in decades. But even when conservative Democrats dominated, Luzerne County festered as a nest of judicial criminality, sexism, ethnic hatred and racial bigotry. Luzerne County history remains riddled with political secrecy, cover-up and retribution.

In this craven cultural landscape littered with “Bikers for Trump,” rattlesnake hunts and abandoned coal mine shafts, local yokel MAGA political powerbrokers pulled the plug on Low Cut Connie for one reason and one reason only.

MAGA hates anything they deem “woke.” Liberals, Blacks, feminists, LGBTQ people, undocumented Mexicans and other people of color who dare consider Wilkes-Barre a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) safe house are not welcome.

Trump is the almighty MAGA God.

Low Cut Connie is Satan.

All hail Trump!

Ask for a match to burn Low Cut Connie at the stake and MAGA will fire up a flamethrower.

Public outrage would erupt if a Jew hater painted a swastika on a Scranton, Pennsylvania, synagogue door. Public backlash would come fast and harsh if word spread that a Jew hater threw a rock through a window at the Scranton Jewish Community Center.

Media would rush to cover the story. Local, state and national elected officials would hold press conferences and issue statements the way they did after the October 7 Hamas attacks when public servants swore they stood with Israel.

Yet silence ensues after a thwarted June 26 physical attack on an Orthodox Jewish rabbi disrupted a peaceful human rights rally on Courthouse Square in Scranton.

Is the reason for this shameful silence because the rabbi and his five Jewish colleagues had come to Scranton at the invitation of rally organizers to publicly protest American-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza? Is this shameful silence because these bold Jews stand firm with countless innocent Palestinian children, women and men of all ages Israel continues to slaughter in almost two years’ worth of bombs, bullets and starvation?

Is our community’s shameful silence because these Jews are not the right kind of Jews?

Devoted to unswerving opposition to a Jewish state but not a Jewish homeland, these Jews take to heart the sacred Torah scroll that teaches love of justice. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder the six men dressed in traditional Orthodox Hassidic clothes held signs declaring their support for Palestinian freedom. Dedicated to opposing American-funded Israeli carnage of innocents in Gaza and the secular nationalism called Zionism, the men represented Neturei Karta International, a Jewish religious community based in Monsey, New York, that considers Israel a rogue cancer state that needs to be peacefully dismantled.

I watched closely as the rally came to a close and a visibly agitated man stood face-to-face with Rabbi Dovid Feldman, well known nationwide as a staunch anti-Zionist Jew whose followers compare the Israeli mass murder of Palestinian civilians to the Nazi extermination of Jews. Feldman had calmly stood his ground as the agitated lone wolf earlier interrupted speakers and insulted other protestors as he created tension during the rally, focusing and obsessing over insulting the Jewish men in black. When the man finally physically closed in on Feldman and his nonviolent colleagues this wild agitator ramped up his ire. Event marshals smoothly took up positions between him and the pro-Palestinian Jewish protestors.

Closer and closer the antagonist moved until he quickly pressed forward and a marshal stepped in to intercept him. That motion set off a pushing and pulling match as others closed quarters on the assailant, trying to bodily keep him under control as he squirmed, pulled hair and bit two people, drawing blood and lashing out in wild desperation.

A Lackawanna County deputy sheriff I alerted to the unfolding violence responded and cuffed the attacker with help from protest marshals and others. City police and an ambulance eventually arrived to take statements and treat victims.

A victim told me after the melee that the man had mentioned a gun. Others said he spoke of “lighting up” people. Protesters expressed fear for Jews if police released the man without filing criminal charges. One victim wondered if the defendant owned firearms or had a history of violence which a past newspaper story reported he does.

Protest organizers issued a press release about the violent incident. Several concerned activists also appeared at the Scranton City Council meeting to alert city officials of the violence that resulted in county deputy Craig Blasi filing criminal charges against the out of control instigator. Lackawanna County Sheriff Mark McAndrew responded quickly to an email providing me with a copy of the criminal complaint and affidavit of probable cause.

Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll did not respond to two emails I sent him asking for details about his officers’ role in this shocking antisemitic attack. Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti also did not respond to my emailed questions about this incident. Neither did well-known Scranton Temple Hesed Rabbi David Swartz answer my two emails about the antisemitic cruelty displayed in the city he serves.

Do Scranton community leaders only take antisemitism seriously when Jewish victims support the brutal Israeli apartheid and occupation of Palestine and the West Bank? Do public officials here only call out antisemitism when Jewish victims agree with Israel’s eradication of Palestinians? Do otherwise good citizens ignore antisemitism unless the victims are their kind of Jew?

Fearless activists who speak truth to power will continue to fight Israel’s final solution for Palestinians. People of conscience like the Jewish men in black will continue to help create peace by opposing Israeli military savagery. In the name of decency truly brave leaders will protect some of the world’s weakest and most vulnerable civilians, defenseless people struggling for a homeland against Third-Reich-style persecution.

Israel’s indefensible war crimes must not go unpunished.

Shalom in Hebrew means peace and well-being. If the definition of the word is ever to be taken seriously, civic leaders who vow opposition to antisemitism must choose consistency over hypocrisy. Either you’re against antisemitism or you’re not.

Shalom must never be mistaken for Sieg Heil.

Already moving on the polished Susquenita High School lobby floor, as soon as the band kicked into the “Wipe Out” drum solo, Jesse shifted from first to second gear with a smooth clockwise rotation that made him look like a Perry County tornado.

We watched in awe, clapping and egging him on although he needed no prodding. Whirling, smiling, building rhythm the way he did as a pulling senior guard looking for somebody to crush on the football field, when sweat broke on Jesse’s forehead out came the white handkerchief as he dabbed drops, wiped bright red cheeks and kicked into third gear with both feet mashing two-step dance steps better than Charlie Downs ever mashed potatoes at the Ranch House restaurant and nobody could mash potatoes better than Charlie Downs. I know this historical fact because Charlie Downs once boasted of his potato prowess while I was paying my bill and buying a cellophane-wrapped $2 trucker music record album to listen to on the plastic record player I kept on top of my underwear drawer in my bedroom.

Jesse’s dancing matched his heart, pulsing pure as the snow-covered back road I walked to school on cold winter mornings. With his soaked dress shirt sticking to his chest he moved like a freight train riding magic rails from Marysville to Duncannon along the glistening steel track that parallels Route 11&15 in front of the one-story red brick house my family rented back in the 60s.

Jesse sometimes gave me a ride home from summer football practice when I was in the 10^th grade, dropping me off behind my house near the corner of Schoolhouse Road and Sawmill Road by the trailer park where Sonny Drake lived and I dumped coal ash in a pile by where Sonny and I pounded each other with my dad’s 16 oz. World War II boxing gloves beside the little creek that ran blue-green with shiny ribbons of raw sewage.

Jesse helped me adjust to some of the bad times we all experienced. A few years older, red-haired Jesse carried himself like a Viking sentinel headed home after a successful hunt in the mountains. Our mothers were friends, nurse’s aides working at the Kinkora Knights of Pythias nursing home where they made little money but cared for people who needed attention and love. One cranky old man wouldn’t let anybody but my mom trim his toenails. A shy old woman beamed when Jesse’s mom fixed her hair. And, at the end of the shift, these two dear friends knew they had done their best with what they had.

We all did.

That was the secret then and still is now.

Do the best with what you’ve got.

Some weekends Jesse would pick me up and we’d drive to drink beer with our buddies in the woods (near Montebello, I think) finishing off a quarter keg in the frigid night before heading home late to the sometimes hard lessons we learned like when we found out Mike Wright died in Vietnam.

Jesse drove that sleek white three-speed-on-the-column machine he loved and handled like a stock car champion. One rainy Sunday afternoon he taught me how to work a clutch and let me practice with his car in the bowling alley parking lot. Then we finished off the beer left over from Saturday night when we cruised big city Second and Front streets in Harrisburg, drinking cans of Bud, staring at the city that breathed hot neon all around us before heading back to our rural darkness where we belonged.

Those teenage days are long gone, of course.

So is Jesse who left us in 2021..

Among the stars in the photograph that’s Jesse dancing with his granddaughter Sophia who he drove to ballet classes for years.

Our beautiful memories remain, sometimes even picking up steam as we grow older and remember that great gentle dancing man moving, breathing, sweating and riding the music forever and ever, amen.

No doubt about it, Jesse Boyer sure could dance.

Dressed in casual summer wear, Pennsylvania State Rep. Kyle Donahue slid through the crowd with the ease of a smug political hack on his way to an afternoon clambake. Carrying one of his children on his shoulder as his wife walked with another little one, the self-absorbed state lawmaker was making a public appearance more to improve his image than for constituent service.

Democrat Donahue represents the 113^th District where I live in Scranton’s Hill Section. He was attending the June 14 “No Kings” anti-Trump rally on Scranton’s Courthouse Square. Later in the day he addressed the crowd through a bullhorn, vowing to help lead the fight to save democracy.

 “We are here to remind people today that we are not subjects, we are citizens,” Donahue said according to the Scranton daily newspaper.

“Across history, people have said enough to crowns, to empires. To systems that put power in the hands of the few, and demand silence from the rest,” Donahue said according to a local television report.

A few weeks ago I asked Donahue in an email if he would help me repatriate the human remains of a 2,000-year-old “mummy” Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art in Scranton claims is Peruvian. Museum officials should have returned these human remains to Peru decades ago.

Everhart representatives now refuse to disclose more details about the mummy, discuss the one or two shrunken heads they also publicly displayed in the past as well as explain the human remains of a Native American that Everhart “experts” claimed decades ago on a form federal law required them to file.

Hoarding human remains tarnishes the Everhart Museum’s reputation. Covering up and trying to ignore ethical and moral responsibility humiliates countless decent people this cultural institution serves, people upon whom the museum depends to survive. I expected city native, resident and state lawmaker Donahue to help me do something about it.

As a former president of Scranton City Council, former director of the Scranton School Board, board member of the Scranton-Lackawanna Human Development Agency and board member of Scranton Tomorrow you’d think Donahue would want to help.

But my state representative never responded to my email even though a staffer in his office told me on the phone he received the email and would make sure Donahue saw the three columns I wrote about the Everhart Museum’s three separate sets of human remains.

After exchanging polite small talk with Donahue at the protest rally I asked if he planned to get back to me on the mummified human remains. He said he would reply to my inquiry.

“When?” I asked.

Donahue floundered, murmuring he’d respond when he better understands what’s going on with the issues I raised. I gave him a look you give bugs at a picnic. Donahue should know all he needs to know had he read and understood the shocking columns I sent him via his PA House of Representatives website.

I told Donahue a high-ranking Peruvian Embassy official in Washington D.C. with whom I spoke has expressed interest in helping repatriate the mummified human remains. I said a federal law enforcement investigation into the Native American human remains could also take place. I told Donahue looted human remains matter.

Any smart sensitive public servant would have expressed some level of awe at the disgraceful Everhart Museum news. Instead, Donahue gave me the spiritless look of a soft stuffed animal before sailing into a whiney monologue about how busy he is with the budget and other dull duties his Democratic Party masters tell him to perform. Donohue truly seemed impressed with himself as he described the hack labor he gets paid far too much money to undertake supposedly on behalf of good citizens like me. Obviously uncomfortable, Donahue skulked off into the crowd.

Donahue would have no doubt expressed immediate interest and deep compassion if the mummy’s remains were the body parts of a long dead Irish coal miner discovered after years trapped underground. Outrage over old Irish bones discovered in a Scranton Irish neighborhood cave-in where the miner’s ancestors still live and vote would likely send a lace curtain phony like Donahue springing into action.

Boasting about his Irish heritage on his official government website, as a member of the St. Patrick’s Parade Association of Lackawanna County and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackawanna County, Donahue at least shows some concern for ethnic ancestry.

His own.

So it’s easy for him to ignore the ancient human remains of a dead Peruvian teenage boy, an indigenous person of color about whom few of Donahue’s tribe cares. Mummified South American human remains pale in comparison to the kiss-me-I’m-Irish power of Scranton white privilege Donahue carries into his re-election bid.

Everhart Museum officials gravely smear Scranton’s reputation.

Rep. Kyle Donahue discredits his city, his Irish roots and himself.

Trial by fire brought Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to the forefront of America’s antisemitism frenzy. Asleep following a Passover event he hosted at the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg in April, police security awakened Shapiro and his family after an attacker set fire to their state home.

Police say alleged arsonist Cody Balmer confessed he hated Shapiro and lashed out angered by Shapiro’s public support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza. As a result, Shapiro now reigns as the darling of liberal Democrats because they claim he was targeted as a Jew.

Indeed Shapiro is Jewish. But no evidence shows the defendant attacked because Shapiro is Jewish. The New York Times in a recent editorial and the Washington Post in a recent news story recklessly connected violent religious prejudice to a crime that lacked any evidence of religious bigotry. No proof in the defendant’s statements to police or physical evidence elsewhere shows that antisemitism drove the accused firebomber’s actions.

If strong disagreement with public policy focused on Israeli war crimes is antisemitic, I guess I’m antisemitic too.

Forget about the day I stood in solidarity on the Orthodox synagogue steps across from my apartment in Wilkes-Barre while elderly Jewish volunteers washed painted swastikas off the huge wooden front doors. Forget when I visited rabbis to side with Jewish teenagers from New York City who sought refuge in my town and faced drunken Wilkes University thugs firing off Nazi salutes while partying on a rooftop across the street from the Jewish students’ classrooms.

Forget the day my little Hassidic neighbor Rachel cried on her mother’s lap as 4-year-olds often do and I gave her a tiny stuffed toy raccoon to help stop her tears, forging a heartfelt friendship that resulted in the beautiful child calling out my name every subsequent time I saw her. Forget answering the knocks on the door at night and walking across the street with Rachel’s sisters who asked me to turn on their family’s stove when their strict religious commitment prohibited them from doing so.

Ignore my wearing a yarmulke at a co-worker’s Orthodox wedding near Boston to which my wife and I traveled or donning another yarmulke for another Jewish co-worker’s daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

Disregard the third yarmulke I wore as I sat alone for a service at the Hassidic synagogue near my home because my neighbor invited me to attend. Overlook the excitement and laughter on another soft night when I stood in that same neighbor’s kitchen and casually mentioned to several women that my mother’s mother’s side of the family has Jews in the lineage.

I always considered myself Pennsylvania Dutch German and Irish. But maybe Shapiro has another long lost non-practicing Jewish cousin, a radical left wing Zen atheist living in Scranton who cares not at all about the governor’s personal faith.

Like alleged governor’s mansion arsonist Balmer, I, too, despise Shapiro, not because he’s a Jew but because of his unswerving support of Israeli genocide. Balmer reportedly is mentally ill and in dire need of help not condemnation. I’m of clear sound mind and will defend myself and others who fight for Palestinian freedom and human rights despite Shapiro’s supporters’ devious defamation.

Anti-Israelism is not Jew hatred.

I reject any and all twisted attempts of biased “scholars” who redefine religious hatred to meet their own fanatical political goals. Claiming self-defense, Israeli government killers carry out their final solution. With full support from the United States government this Fourth Reich bombs, starves, assassinates and otherwise ethnically cleanses Gaza of Palestinians where innocent men, women and children of all ages struggle to simply survive.

Genuine antisemitism crushes hopes, dreams and humanity.

Make-believe hatred only increases the pain.

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.