Sometimes you wonder what people are thinking. Although, I shouldn’t be surprised, after all I am talking about our representatives in Congress. The media has been telling us that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spent over $16,000 on flowers for her office.

In the spring a lot of people in Maine go to the Bangor or Portland flower show. Maybe we should combine our vacation with the flower show and go to Washington. We could stop in to the speaker’s office and enjoy a whiff of fresh flowers. I’ll almost bet it would take your breath away. I know it took my breath away when I found out about it.

When you think about it, does it really matter if the speaker is a Republican, Democrat or an independent? Should we care if he or she is a liberal, conservative or a libertarian? Oh, I know that we all have our agenda and we vote for people that we hope will do things the way we think they should be done, or hope their decisions are in the best interest of the country, but come on folks, $16,000 for flowers.

Shouldn’t we be holding our elected representatives to some kind of higher standard? Shouldn’t we expect them to think before they act? Good grief, what am I thinking? With wide stances in the airport men’s room, congressional pages being sexually sought after and federal indictments running amok through the halls of Congress, I guess $16,000 to brighten up one’s office is probably the norm. Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh; maybe I should just sit back and smell the flowers.

William A. Gormely

Hampden