North and South

And All Around

I took the bus to downtown Springfield yesterday and saw this really cool car in the Peter Pan bus station parking lot. 

It belonged to none other than Peter Picknelly Jr. himself.

Sun-faded Marilyn Monroe wine in the window of the abandoned L'uva restaurant on Main Street.

Heading up to ol' Pine Point I stopped by the McDonald's on Boston Road. I was surprised to discover that it has been completely remodeled inside and out.

That is one of the oldest McDonald's in the Valley, and no attempt was made to preserve any of the historic decor when they redid it. A shame.

My Grandfather Clarence White used to live in a house that was located where this gas station is on the corner of Boston Road and Harvey Street. He also attended the Boston Road Elementary School, which was located where the Pine Point Library is now.

I came upon these kinds of signs all over the Point. 

Another sign that the ol' Point ain't what it used to be.

When I was about 12 years old I was so ambitious that I had the largest paper route in all Pine Point. One day I came to collect at the house shown below, at the downstairs apartment. When the door opened there were a bunch of college aged people laughing hysterically as a sweet smokey odor came wafting out. They seemed to think that it was the funniest thing in the world that I had knocked on the door. 

The incident puzzled me at the time, but when I was a couple of years older I realized that I had interrupted a pot party.

I'm saddened to hear of the death of Gene Korrell, the former owner of HOME TV.

He was a longtime teacher at Trade High School (now Putnam) but I knew him as my father's best friend from the military. They served together in Iceland.

The house next to what used to be my mother's is for sale, giving me the chance to go into the backyard and take a picture across the fence of my mother's yard. It really hasn't changed. 

I see that Yolly Nahorniak's car is still parked in her driveway. 

Sadly she won't be driving it since she passed away last month.

Time to return to the northlands. This is the downtown train. 

Back in Northampton people were demonstrating against Obamacare, complaining it isn't socialist enough.

 

The Academy of Music is currently undergoing restorations to preserve it's historic beauty.

There was some pretty intellectual graffiti chalked on Main Street.

Of course we actually have to live in the real world, but some sentiments are too beautiful to just dismiss. Perhaps Thoreau has the best reply in saying, "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them."


Here's a much longer quote a few gum wrappers and cigarette butts away.

All the ills of mankind,
all the tragic misfortunes
that fill the history books,
all the political blunders,
all the failures of the great leaders
have arisen merely from a lack of
skill at dancing.
-- Moliere

At first read it sounds like something a too clever dancing instructor might say. But when you think about it in the largest sense, all life is motion, and a dance of sorts, with everything depending upon how you move - every imaginable setting in life being a dance floor for the energy of life.

At the Amherst Survival Center today we had a hootnanny of sorts, with Damon on guitar. 

And John on drums.

Later I went to Mount Pollux in the southern part of Amherst. The sign said the road was closed, but the true citizen journalist laughs at such restrictions. 

It is a beautiful spot that makes you feel like you're dancing on top of the world - or at least the Valley.

No photo could ever capture the transcendent beauty of the vista.

Today's Video

Magic-Magic at the Sierra Grille in Northampton last week. (painting by J. Sendelbach)