Past Pics

Scenes from yesteryear.

I was rummaging through my vaults the other day and came upon some old pictures. Here's a few I thought I would share from the archives.

This is the Futureliner, which Peter Pan buslines built for the 1939 World's Fair. What, they thought the people of the future wouldn't want to look out the window?

This is the Breckwood Plaza in Springfield around the year 2000.

 



When computerized voting was introduced in Springfield for the first time in 1999, a city worker had to demonstrate the new technology for the poll workers.

In 2004 Mayor Charlie Ryan poses with historian Greg Metzadakis at City Hall. 

Former Mayor Albano stands by as Veterans Affairs head Daniel Walsh speaks at City Hall in 1996.

Peace protesters stage a "die-in" in front of the federal courthouse in Springfield in 1998.

City Hall security confronts activist Karen Powell in January 2004.

Springfield City Councilor (now mayor) Dom Sarno in Springfield's South End in 2001.

 



The headquarters of the Springfield Newspapers as seen about a decade ago. 

During the great baseball stadium controversy of the late 1990's, McCarthy's Liquor Store which would have been destroyed by the stadium, mocked the proposal by building their own "McCarthy Stadium" out of cases and cans of Budweiser. 

Here is radio personality Fred King at the WHYN studios in 1999. 

This is me on the air at WHYN in the 90's.. 

Here's me and my late father in 2000 in the City of Devine, Texas.



Here I am in 2005 hamming it up at the International Headquarters of The Baystate Objectivist. 

Finally, a concise definition of what citizen journalism is.

When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism.

--Jay Rosen

 

I'm saddened to see in the paper this morning that longtime Springfield activist Carmencita Jones has died at age 82. She was a fan of this website and used to email me frequently. She was a tireless advocate of racial harmony and used to correct the dumb white people mistakes I'd sometimes make when I'd write about black folk. Once I said that I thought that former UMass Chancellor Randolph Bromery was too light skinned to be considered black. "Tommy dear," she wrote me, "you should know that we come in all shades!" Jones had a great love of her neighborhood of Mason Square, and was a fountainhead of information about its history. I'm tempted to call her a pillar of the black community, but the truth is she would be considered a pillar of any community - black, white or whatever. Our Valley is poorer for her absence.