Doug Pugh

My grandson, Benjamin, has been selected to play the lead in his drama club’s production of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.” It was voted a best new play in 2013.

Ben is 16. He lives in England with his father, my son, his mother, and his siblings. I don’t see him as often as I’d like, and I may not be there to watch his performance, but I’ve read the script.

Ben has a demanding role.

He plays the part of an autistic boy, Christopher. Christopher follows a course that may seem ill-advised at times, but those paths forward are clear to him, and any threatened deviations can cause him stress and resistance.

Christopher sticks to his guns.

So when a neighbor lady’s dog, Wellington, is killed with a pitchfork, Christopher expresses more than regret. He proclaims the dog’s death an act of evil that must be addressed and resolves to do something about it.

But Christopher is told to mind his own business, to let others find the person who committed the terrible deed, to not go around asking a lot of awkward questions, making a nuisance of himself, and generating unwelcome attention.

Christopher suffers limitations poorly; doesn’t always do what he is told.

The play follows Christopher’s search for truth and justice and the issues he encounters along the way.

Though he was told that Wellington was only a dog, Christopher was not diswayed ” I think dogs are important, and when someone gets murdered, you have to find out who did it so they can be punished.”

Recently, I received a letter from our Congressman, Jack Bergman. I had written him about my concerns regarding the shooting deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffery Pretti by ICE agents in Minnesota. In his response to me, Congressman Bergman assured me that thorough “internal” investigations were being conducted.

Christopher would not be pleased with the limitations inherent in any “internal” investigation of Wellington’s death if that investigation excluded an objective “external” investigation such as is occurring in Minnesota in response to the deaths of Good and Pretti.

Limiting the investigation of homicides to an internal inquiry by an agency whose agents caused them, is like letting a fox in a henhouse, then appointing he or she as head of henhouse security.

Local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies in Minnesota and their prosecutors are being denied access to the evidence surrounding these killings; evidence needed to conduct a thorough, independent investigation that if merited, would support referral to a jury to determine if two human beings had been shot down like dogs.

My grandmother’s home was at the corner of Merchant and Spratt Streets. I would stay with her when my parents were out of town on business. She would send me over to Kowalski’s grocery to purchase Archway cookies.

When they were young and still living at home, my father and his siblings were sent for Archway cookies.

My grandmother was an undocumented immigrant. She had been born in Canada.

My grandfather was also undocumented. He had been placed in an orphanage, “The Little Wanderers Home” in London, England at the age of four after his parents died. At the age of seven, he was sent to a farm in Canada. He walked into the world alone, at 17.

He met my grandmother in Canada. They married, and he began following a crew of iron workers, work that years later brought them to Alpena to build the old 9th Street bridge and the railroad trestle at the cement plant; the bridge, long replaced, the trestle, now torn down.

After those projects were complete, the family stayed in Alpena. My grandfather secured a job operating the steam shovel at the cement plant.

My father had been born in this country, as was I.

In January of 2025, President Trump signed an administrative order eliminating birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants. Lower-level federal courts have stayed that order, finding it violates the 14th Amendment to our Constitution. Those stays have been affirmed by higher courts. An appeal to the Supreme Court is now pending.

Were it not for that constitutional provision of birthright citizenship, my father would not have been a citizen, as he was born here of undocumented immigrants. Since I would have been born to a non-citizen, would my citizenship be denied?

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case in April. A decision is expected in June or July.

If my grandmother were yet alive, knowing what her undocumented status now entails, and if my father and I were with her at her home on Merchant Street, I doubt she would send either of us for Archway cookies.