I haven’t run for office since high school and all I remember of that experience was winning. It wasn’t too hard then to say yes.

I ran as a write-in candidate for the Rumford’s Charter Commission.

To my great relief, I lost! And let me say right here that had I known Harrison Burns was also a write-in candidate, I’d have withdrawn and he’d be on the commission.

My first impression was that Harrison and I were last in a tight race.

But, no. Linda French – a winner in more ways than one – told me that there were altogether some 120 write-in candidates, and all but French, Lovejoy and Boivin, trailed me and Harrison. Regardless of our place in the polling, all of us write-in candidates should try to be present at the public hearings the commission will hold over the next year.

Reviewing the town’s charter and by-laws is necessary but challenging.

For one thing, commissioners will have to read all that stuff and think and talk objectively about what’s best for the greater good. What’s best for the greater good is not always immediately obvious nor is it what’s best for me – or you.

Rid arguments of acid

Because of my poor vision, my husband has been reading aloud to me a lot. One extraordinary book he’s been reading to me includes a little history of Jane Adams of Chicago’s Hull House fame. Antagonism, she insisted to her friend John Dewey, is worse than useless in an argument or debate. Hostility, unfriendliness in a discussion “never arose from real, objective differences, but from a person mixing in his own personal reactions…or from the feeling that one must show his own colors.”

Blush. I confess I was sure showing my colors in the original version of this week’s Valley Voices. It was loaded with antagonistic language – “medieval mind-sets” is just one example – my angry response to a whole lot of hostility raging round matters governmental in Rumford last week.

Remembering Jane Adams’ powerful words from the 1890s rescued me from myself. Raging over outrage is not constructive, and it’s not healthy as Miss Adams knew “…in all her senses and muscles.”

Linda Farr Macgregor and her husband, Jim, live in Rumford. She is a freelance writer and the author of “Rumford Stories.”