The anticipation of the holidays last month gave us hope for a kinder and gentler season, only to be overshadowed by a new COVID variant that sent everyone back into their own personal “lockdown.” No visitors, doors locked, shades drawn. Now we are entering our third winter of discontent. Gatherings have all been cancelled. Social interactions are limited mostly to those in your own home. It can be hard to see where we go from here.But there are some brighter spots in this wintry darkness we should look to. The town this week gave out 6,000 at-home COVID tests kits. This is good news. While the state had to cancel its original distribution plans to municipalities because the supplies did not arrive on time, this distribution went off without a hitch. Yes, traffic was backed up in downtown Greenwich as one of the places to get the test was the Senior Center on Greenwich Avenue, but that was to be expected. First Selectmen Fred Camillo and his team organized a smooth operation and deserve two thumbs up for the job they did.With more than 400 students out of the Greenwich public schools because of COVID, having at-home tests make the most sense to be able to test quickly and easily. It is not just the students, but faculty and staff have been affected creating challenges. However, Governor Lamont has made the right decision to keep the schools open.While we are at it, we also want to congratulate Fred Camillo on his vision to open up the view of Greenwich Harbor. Currently it is blocked by town maintenance building adjacent to Roger Sherman Baldwin Park. The plan is to remove them, leaving the Arch Street Teen Center and the Police Marine Division building. This will greatly improve the area.While this week has brought ice and snow, we do not feel it should be a harbinger of a “winter of discontent.” The reference is actually a quote from Shakespeare’s play Richard 111.“Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this sun of York;And all the clouds, that lour’d upon our house,In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings,Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.”The modern reference was made by Larry Lamb, the editor of The Sun in Great Britain in an editorial on May 3, 1979, He wrote that the Winter of Discontent was the period from November 1978 to February 1979 was characterized by widespread strikes by private, and later public sector trade unions demanding pay rises greater than the limits Prime Minister James Callaghan and his Labour Party government had been imposing to control inflation. Some of these industrial disputes caused great public inconvenience, exacerbated by the coldest winter for 16 years, in which severe storms isolated many remote areas of the country. We do not believe this winter will be quite so fraught with despair.Normally the passing of one year to the next is a time of renewal and self-improvement resolutions. We get to start a new year reinvigorated and with lofty goals of what we want to accomplish. There is no reason why that cannot be the case for this January as well.Here at the Sentinel, we have our goals for 2022. We want to continue to produce the best community newspaper possible. We want to report the news, not sensationalize it. We want to continue to celebrate all that is good in our community. And we want to continue to listen to you, our readers and advertisers, about ways that we can improve the paper. A winter of discontent? We see a winter of opportunity, growth, and community.
