Misery Acquaints a Man with Strange Bedfellows

As we were packing up from our podcast last Friday we started talking about the petition drive to subject the Columbia Town Center redevelopment enabling legislation to referendum.

“Have you seen any petition gatherers out and about?” I asked the boys.

No one had.

“Not even at the grocery stores?”

Dave Bittner said he had heard that the grocery stores weren’t allowing the petition proponents on their property.

Really?

Let me make it clear that I do understand that this is nothing more than hearsay. I do not know for a fact whether it is true or not. What I do know is that I haven’t been approached nor have I seen anyone out gathering signatures in my own Ho Co travels. I certainly haven’t seen anyone working the grocery store turf like I did for a previous ill fated petition drive.

If it’s true it would seem to suggest that the Bard of Avon was right in that “misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” The grocery stores, or more specifically the union grocers, perhaps might feel that they don’t have a dog in this fight. The right of citizens to petition for referendum was never really their issue anyway.