By EUGENE J. McCARTHY

By EUGENE J. McCARTHY

Rappahannock Newt Co itributing Writer

What is so rare as a day in June

Then if ever come perfect days When Heaven tries earth if it he in

tune.

So wrote the poet, and so I have accepted his word through many Junes, expecting that I would have to contend with minor physical discomforts, all products of nature in the process of reproduction and growth. In this spirit a bam swallow has taken to nesting in my garage, forcing me to cover my car, especially after her eggs have hatched and the fledglings have taken to eating solid food; a spin-off Queen Bee with her following, which comes from some place each June and attempts to settle a new hive in the walls of my attic; assorted minor allergies induced by pollen, various blights on tomatoes and roses, bugs that attack flowers, fruit and garden plants, and an occasional wood tick have emerged assigns of June.

But the glory of June over-rode all of these irritants, or so it seemed. Gradually an uneasiness began to creep into my enjoyment of the month, a sense that I was living in false security and was being distracted from threatening reality or potential dangers. It was not nature that was threatening, but ideas, institutions, movements. Almost every day I had been receiving warnings, progressively and cumulatively disturbing, through the mail.

I checked my file of a past June, the June following the Presidential election of 1980 and anticipating the Congressional elections of 1982. There was an appeal from the League of Women Voters telling me that I needed the help of the League to protect me against the folly of partisanship or even bi-partisanship.

Next I found an appeal from the Americans for Democratic Action asking me to support them in their stand against re-action, and to help them as they attempted to play the cards left over from the New Deal.

“People for the American Way,” organized by Norman Lear, a good man of television fame, asked for support in the effort to protect me from the threatening loss of freedom of thought, religion and speech, two of which freedoms I had already all but lost to television.

Americans for Common Sense advised that the Republic was in danger from the irrationality of the radical right and from members of the Senate, new ones, who were judged to have brought “visibly less creativity, vision and talent” to the service of the nation than was brought to it by former Senators. As a former Senator, I was inclined to agree even though puzzled as