It Ain't Me

I've always been a fan of the brown envelope sent by an anonymous but well informed person. Even when I can't make what they tell me public, the information will still have an influence on what I write about that subject in subtle ways that enrich my reporting. Of course, sometimes the anonymous source is a troublemaker spreading lies and gossip. But in general, I find envelopes thrown over the transom to be very reliable sources.

So I was happy as always to have such a mysterious brown envelope show up in my post office box in Amherst last week. What could it possibly be? An inside angle on the Asselins? A previously undisclosed Keough caper? A newly unearthed abomination from the Albano era?

I quickly tore the envelope open and devoured the two page letter inside! Then I went, "Huh?" It was an unsigned letter from a federal employee in Washington D.C. complaining that he/she was being harassed as a whistleblower. What did they think I could do for them? Then it occurred to me:

They had the wrong Tom Devine.

When I was kid growing up I knew of only two Tom Devine's in the world besides myself, one living and one dead. The dead one was Thomas Jefferson Devine, the Civil War figure and founder of the Texas branch of our clan, which predates the Massachusetts branch by about forty years. Here is a picture of me and my relatives in front of the offices of The Devine News in the City of Devine in Texas.



The Tom Devine that was alive when I was young was the Monsignor Thomas Devine of Elms College in Chicopee. I never met his holiness, and unfortunately The Monsignor is now deceased.

However today, thanks to the internet, I am now aware that the world is literally swarming with Tom Devines. There is the eminent scholar of Scottish and Irish history. There is the fabulous interior decorator in Los Angeles. There is the one that's the subject of an unsolved murder. They're everywhere, these Tom Devines, at least according to Google. 

 
So who was my dime-dropper looking for? Instead of me, they wanted the Tom Devine from The Government Accountability Project in Washington, which is an organization which specializes in issues involving whistleblowers. That was the "Tommy" they needed.

When I was a kid everyone called me Tommy, which I didn't like because I thought it sounded too kid-like and I wanted to sound older. Now that I am getting up in years and would appreciate a youthful "Tommy" I don't hear it much. Instead I hear more and more frequently the dreadfully formal, "Thomas."

I just can't win.

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The ladies at Smith College in Northampton have never been shy about chalking their opinions on the campus sidewalks.



Finally, I leave you with this cool poem.