The by-laws of the Cumberland County Board of Supervisors give the board and its individual members the responsibility of “preserving and ensuring a spirit of harmony and cooperation within the board and between individual board members.”

Fascinating.

For some reason, don't ask me why, I knowest not, that requirement calls to mind William Shakespeare's Hamlet, specifically, Act 1, Scene 4 where Hamlet observes, regarding something totally unrelated to the by-laws of the Cumberland County Board of Supervisors, “it is a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance.”

Ironically, the modern interpretation of the Bard of Avon's words is quite the opposite of what Shakespeare meant. The words assigned to Hamlet mean that sometimes it is best not to observe a custom, rather than adhere strictly to it. Today, we take those words to mean that a prescribed or desired custom is broken more times than it is observed.

Such as preserving and ensuring a spirit of harmony and cooperation. The by-laws with this requirement were adopted by these individual board members during their organizational meeting on January 10, 2012.

Disagreements will occur periodically on any governing body-and certainly Congress could not adhere to the “harmony and cooperation” clause of those Cumberland by-laws.

Philosophical and policy differences cannot be avoided. Nor, however, should they be welcomed.

Bears love honey but that doesn't make them sweet. Honey requires a cooperative partnership between flowers and bees. Without that the bears just get stung.

Sometimes pepper is needed to season the stew. Exceed what is reasonable, on the other hand, and the stew is unfit for human consumption.

That is why the by-laws of the Cumberland County Board of Supervisors call on its individual members to be embrace the necessity of “preserving and ensuring a spirit of harmony and cooperation within the board and between individual board members.”

-JKW-