BSO

BSO

Sunday, March 27, 2011

A Visit to St. Mike's

Well folks, here's yet another one of my cheerful cemetery posts! I was in Pine Point over the weekend, where I now know more people under the ground than above it. Some of the underground ones I visited at Saint Michael's. However some of the more interesting tombstones in the place belong to people I never knew. For example by chance I stumbled upon the tragic grave of Conor Reynolds.

 
No doubt there are tragic stories behind many of these graves. This beautiful orb commemorates someone who died in the 1800's at only 26 years of age.

 
Here's something a little odd that someone placed on a grave - a lobster in a clear container! My mother was a big fan of Maine lobsters, but I'm not sure I'd put one on her grave. Oh well, there is no right or wrong to such things.

 
I remember reading once about some eccentric philosopher who used to walk around with a lobster on a leash. When asked why he was using a lobster to guide his way, he would reply, "Because it knows the deep." Here is a little video I made showing the grave of south Valley Congressman Edward P. Boland, and his less famous but well loved graveyard neighbor.  Soon I was back in Northampton, where there are no lobsters but where dragons lurk.

 
In recent weeks there have been protests and counter-protests in Northampton each weekend, where the participants are usually well behaved. But this week things got a little tense as you can see in this video.

  
Upside down "open" sign on a Northampton headshop.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Sad Prude

Food for Thought Books in Amherst has had a constant problem recently with someone who keeps coming by when they are closed and covering up with tape the posters in their window showing two guys kissing.



Finally they put up the following message under the poster:

To the sad prude that keeps putting duct tape over the images of love and affection on this sign:

Every time you do this you just make us decide to keep them up longer. If you keep it up, we'll be sure to get 100 of them and display them in every inch of window space we have. That's a promise.

Hugs and kisses,

Food for Thought Collective


The details of the 2010 census were released yesterday for Massachusetts and the Boston Globe put up charts and graphs explaining it all. The problem is their maps were of a state I don't quite recognize. Notice that the display is called, "Every person counted." Oh really?


WHERE THE FUCK IS WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS???


At last a beautiful dash of purple life breaking through the brown death.



Graffiti on the UMass Fine Arts building.



This creature was part of a student movie being filmed at the UMass library.



Yesterday a jazz band was playing in the lobby of the UMass Student Union.


Full moon over Ludlow by Tony Mateus.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Happy Saints

View out the window.



It's too early for any plant life to emerge outdoors in Massachusetts, but this houseplant in the Haymarket Cafe gave birth to a baby leaf.



The dead outdoors makes a good setting for a video about graveyards.



I wanted to take a photograph of this Northampton artist, but didn't realize that my camera was set to video.



I filmed this today downtown. Northampton is always weird and wonderful.



Cher Lovestrong made this video of a hard rockin' night last week in Hamp.


Hamp alien by Dann Vazquez

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Wetness

After all the snow we got this winter it is getting awfully soggy around here now that the tempertures are starting to creep above freezing. For example, State Street in Northampton was closed off earlier this week by flooding. 

 Glad to see this tacked up everywhere.

  

A pink-tied Senator Scott Brown was at the Holyoke Mall last weekend promoting his autobiography. Here he is with longtime Springfield activist Victor Davilla. 

  I never saw the argument for farm conservation made with such compelling conciseness. 

  Odd how someone turned this insult into a statement of Irish pride. 

Jerry Garcia would be so pissed to see how commercialized the Dead have become. 

Space Child strikes again, this time at the UMass library. 

The Plastic Crimewave in Northampton. 

 

View from the 25th floor of the UMass Library.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Tux Sullivan



Our entire Valley was saddened last week by the death of Walter "Tux" Sullivan. At least no one could say he died young, passing on at the age of 99. He was a recognized expert on baseball, both local and nationally, and wrote several books on the sport.

Yet while everyone was praising the baseball legend this week, there was no media account which I saw that mentioned the one political episode in Tux's life. Therefore as so often happens in local politics, the duty falls upon me to recall what so many would prefer to forget.

In the 1990's Springfield's corrupt Albano Administration had no shortage of schemes to bilk the taxpayers on behalf of a privileged cartel of insiders, but one of the most notorious was an attempt to erect a baseball stadium in downtown Springfield. Although the whole thing was financially unfeasible, it was supported by political lowlifes because it would have provided lots of patronage jobs, shady contracts and slush fund opportunities to those with political pull. Among those who saw through the ruse was Tux Sullivan, whose staunch opposition to the baseball stadium was a major embarrassment to the Albano gang.

It was in that context that I had my only encounter with Tux Sullivan. In 1999 in a desperate attempt to stop the baseball boondoggle, activists Bob and Karen Powell held a fundraiser in order to hire a lawyer, former and future mayor Charles V. Ryan, to challenge the Albano gang and the sketchy financing schemes behind the stadium. I attended the affair with former City Councilor Mitch Ogulewicz, and by chance we were seated at the same table with Tux and some of his friends.

I recall him as being very likable, and full of entertaining stories that made him the center of attention. Indeed a Springfield Newspaper photographer wanted to get a big close-up of Tux for their morning edition. In fact the newspaper photographer had been taking photos of the gathering all night. The newspaper's presence at the event surprised us, as the paper had been stridently editorializing in favor of the stadium, and generally tried to play down or ignore any anti-stadium activity. So as Tux struck a beaming pose for the camera, with everyone turning to look at the sport celebrity getting his portrait taken by the press, as the flash exploded I noticed something that startled me more than the bright flash did:

The camera didn't seem to be pointed at Tux - but instead was turned a little to the side. The camera was actually pointed at me and Mitch.

The next morning a small article appeared in the back of the paper about the fundraiser that implied that nothing of importance had transpired. The article mostly focused on the possibility that the minor involvement in the fundraiser by then City Councilor Bill Foley was somehow improper. There were no photographs accompanying the story. Later it was reported by an anonymous caller to the Dan Yorke Show that a plain brown envelope had been delivered to City Hall that morning with photographs inside revealing who had attended the fundraiser. That City Hall would be interested in who attended was not a surprise, since that would've been standard political machine practice in order to identify those who were to be subject to future retaliation. The rumors were neither confirmed nor disproved that the photographs in question were the ones taken by the newspaper that night but never used for journalistic purposes.

In the end the stadium scam came to nothing, as Attorney Ryan successfully convinced Judge Constance Sweeney that the whole enterprise was a crooked farce. In fact Judge Sweeney accused the Albano Administration in open court of having committed felonies in order to receive funding for the stadium under false pretenses. None the less, then District Attorney Bill Bennett refused to convene a grand jury in order to investigate the judge's charges.

I've always given Tux Sullivan a lot of credit for the risks he took in so publicly opposing the corrupt stadium scam. Had he supported it the Albano Administration would have made him the biggest name in Springfield. Instead he was relegated to the level of a "non-person", as were so many others who opposed the local machine. Tux Sullivan was remembered this week for his encyclopedic knowledge of baseball, but it was his courageous character and unbending integrity that was his real legacy.

There was a big labor rally at UMass this week.



I was not surprised to see Kevin Noonan and his dog on their way to it.



Northampton Mayor M. Clare Higgins at the Haymarket the other morning.



Some interesting graffiti scrawled on the UMass Fine Arts Center.



Space child.