In April 2019, your wife and I submit Littleton Apothecary, LLC’s written business proposal to the town, and in May, your wife and present this proposal to the Select Board in an open public meeting. About a week later, your wife and I host the mandatory community outreach meeting in the cafeteria of the middle school.

In mid-June 2019, Your wife removes my name from the LLC filing at the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Corporate Division and from the written proposal to the town.

In early November 2019, Your wife is named as a defendant in a lawsuit where I’m the plaintiff.

Then came Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year, and in March 2020, everything slipped into isolation and global chaos.

On March 15th, the first COVID-related lockdown went into effect: for 3-weeks, for all public and private schools.

Four days later, in the pandemic’s early panic and confusion, you “pull nominating papers” to run for Select Board on the very last day allowed to “pull papers.” Four days after that, you return your nominating papers with 61 signatures on the very last day allowed and, thereby, ensure your name will be on the June ballot.

Five weeks later and after many months of threatening to sue the town (oftentimes with you, Matthew, seated by your wife’s side at Select Board meetings), your wife, as the sole owner/operator of Littleton Apothecary, LLC, is awarded an HCA (for a 5-year term; the other cannabis shop got a 10-year term) by the Select Board.

Despite your wife’s regular reminders (between July 2019 and the signing of the HCA ten months later) about how tragic it would be to lose the opportunity to “do some real good” with the promised $3,000,000.00 endowed trust, The Littleton Project, is not mentioned anywhere in the HCA.

Six weeks after your wife gets permission to operate a multi-million dollar business in Littleton, on June 20, 2020, you are elected to the Select Board. Cindy Napoli receives 43% of the vote with 1,076; Gino Frattallone gets 28% with 687, and you, Matthew, get 29% with 724—a delta of 37 votes.

Due to COVID, all public meetings are held by Zoom. It was clear (to at least two of your then-fellow board members, who felt it necessary to make the point to me) that your wife was regularly overheard coaching you through votes and, at one point, was seen on camera, holding notes, telling you what to do.

It seemed that having a puppet on the board (you) wasn’t enough for your wife. She wanted to sit at the Big Kids’ table, too.

In May 2021, your wife loses the election for a seat on the Select Board. Chuck is handily re-elected with 73% of the vote.

Late October/Early November 2021, your wife (with you by her side) agrees with a handshake (you also shook the buyer’s hand) to sell the Apothecary for $800,000.00 to Tom Porell and his business partner. She reneges the next day claiming she got “a better deal” where she’d found a financial backer who would underwrite 100% of the costs to launch the Apothecary.

Fast forward to fifteen months later, to February 2023. Tom Porell speculates that your wife did not get any fantasy “better deal” but, instead, was paid not to open the Apothecary since there was no other way to explain why your wife wouldn’t open a business where she would be pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

In early April 2023, I read POVERTY, BY AMERICA, by Matthew Desmond. This is critically important in this timeline. For me, it was a cataclysmic, “life-changing” moment.

Desmond argues that poverty is the modern-day equivalent of slavery and that Americans can—and should—work toward abolishing it. Desmond’s thesis begins to shift my thinking, and I wonder if it would be possible to end poverty in Littleton, where the rate, I learned in early June 2023, is 6.3%.

Poverty is nothing but needless suffering, and there’s a political way to change it.

All that’s required is the political will.

TTYS,

Jkb