Every Thursday I cook pancakes for the people at the shelter in Northampton. I was taught in rehab that service to others was the best way to recover from addiction, because you can't focus on your own problems when you are focusing on the needs of others. It works. Sometimes I wake up with all these crazy thought loops circling in my head, but when I have to pay attention to what someone else wants then it breaks the cycle and frees my mind to be clear and calm.
The cold last night melted my neighbor's plant into a yellow pile.
But I had no time to rest on my neighbor's bench.
Instead I nodded to the pumpkin guarding my neighbor's bike.
It is always very early when I arrive at the shelter.
Outside the shelter I saw this strange message stuck to the curb.
When I left a few hours later I passed the nearby Woodstar Cafe, which has this pile of pumpkins out front.
A warning on a Herrel's Ice Cream delivery van.
While waiting for the bus into Amherst, I saw someone had put this pumpkin with a Grateful Dead lightning bolt carved in it atop the monument in Pulaski Park.
Cutting through UMass on my way to the Amherst Survival Center, it was so sunny and nice out that a professor brought his English class outside.
At the Amherst Survival Center, where I help serve lunch, a farmer dropped off a gigantic squash. Or is it an alien egg? In any case it took both Kelsey and Ben to hold it.
And that was my very fine morning.
City of Crime
Having a less nice day was John Lysak's grandmother, who had to abandon her car when it broke down in Springfield. This is what she returned to find.
Today's Video
Northampton singer/songwriter Stephen Kellogg and his band The Sixers made this awesome high energy video with the help of the UMass Marching Band. It was filmed entirely at UMass.
The church across the street from the Amherst Survival Center has the following banner up:
I have a lot to be grateful for this year. Last Thanksgiving I spent heavily sedated in front of a television in rehab. None of my family came to visit me because I told them not to. Why ruin their holiday too?
I'm a bit bummed out lately because a friend of mine who I was in rehab with died Thursday of a drug overdose. He had relapsed recently and went down to Holyoke with another friend of mine, who I also know from a drug rehab program. Once in Holyoke they bought some heroin. In rehab there isn't always a lot to do, so you spend a lot of time talking with the other patients whose lives have crash landed in the same joint. We tended to talk about what we had in common, which is to say we talked about drugs.
My buddy never mentioned heroin as part of his drug-a-log. Perhaps it was something new that he took up this last time out, which probably explains why he died. The old junkies almost never overdose, they're so attuned to it they can feel the junk as it enters their veins and they know exactly when to stop pushing the syringe. It's the newbies that OD because they don't know their tolerance yet or the proper rate of injection.
In rehab they used to take us sometimes to the Holyoke reservoir to walk around. It was considered a form of therapy. Me and my recently departed friend often walked together and he told me once of the hopes he had for what his life would be like when he got back out in the world. That is the way I will prefer to think of him, as he was that day in Holyoke, full of hope for the future. A future, it turns out, that was actually very short.
Because now my friend is dead. My other friend, the one that drove my friend down to Holyoke to buy the heroin, is crushed by guilt and is currently in a psychiatric detox in Pittsfield under a 24 hour suicide watch. I guess I know of two families who won't be having a very Happy Thanksgiving this year.
But I'm still standing, and still sober and still hoping for a better future that might yet unfold. My friend's death reminds me of how fragile it all is, how quickly one can lose everything on what seems like otherwise just another day, and I am grateful for the luck I've had and that God has given me more chances than I deserve. How did I miss this? I was surprised recently to find out that the father of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a man named Pat Patricks, was a longtime member of the weirdo jazz combo Sun-Ra, whose leader used to claim with a straight face that he was from Saturn. Wikipedia.org has this to say about Sun-Ra:
Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, legal name Le Sony'r Ra) was a jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy", musical compositions and performances.
"Of all the jazz musicians, Sun Ra was probably the most controversial," according to critic Scott Yanow, due to Sun Ra's eclectic music and unorthodox lifestyle. Claiming that he was of the "Angel Race" and not from Earth, but from Saturn, Sun Ra developed a complex persona of "cosmic" philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of afrofuturism as he preached awareness and peace above all.
He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra being the ancient Egyptian god of the sun), and used several other names throughout his career, including Le Sonra and Sonny Lee. Blount denied any connection with his birth name, saying "That's an imaginary person, never existed … Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym."
The future governor and his father did not have much of a relationship, with his parents marriage being shattered by infidelity when Deval was only small. Again the Wikipedia.org:
Pat Patrick's children are Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Rhonda Sigh by his former wife Emily, and at least one child outside of his marriage. In 1959, an unknown woman called for Patrick, and his wife asked for a message. "The message was this: 'Tell him our baby needs shoes.'" News of this precipitated his marriage breakup that year. He refused to sign Deval's application to Milton Academy, arguing that Deval would lose his African-American identity. Deval, whose tuition was paid by scholarship, was accepted anyway. One of my neighbors has a peace sign on his tree.
Another of my neighbors has typical post-weekend recycling boxes.
One of the few (only?) advantages of all this cold weather is that the season's pumpkins have had an exceptionally long life, like these in Hamp.
This chapel by Northampton's Saint Mary's cemetery intends to have a manger display, if they ever get around to taking the plastic off Jesus.
Hampshire County hunters shouldn't have their deer checked by this guy. He's a real dummy.
This morning the UMass arbor crew was out tending emergency services to the massive and ancient old willow in Southwest. The tree was hit last night by a lightning bolt.
Believed to be one of the oldest residents of Amherst, predating the dorms, the tree was wounded on its right side.
Happily, its injuries do not appear to be life threatening.
I heard a weird story recently. I was told that many years ago at the Northampton Alcoholics Anonymous meeting affectionately known as The Looney Nooner, a mysterious woman began appearing. She was well-dressed, but never spoke to anyone beyond polite pleasantries. She always passed whenever it was her turn to testify.
Then one day she suddenly rose out of her seat and screamed, "Take it from me!" and then swooned to the ground. As they were reviving her, it was discovered that she was carrying a bottle of Irish whiskey, still in the brown paper bag and unopened. There was also a receipt, showing that she had purchased the bottle over a month before.
Apparently she had bought that bottle but been unable to bring herself to actually drink from it. At the same time, she couldn't bring herself to throw the bottle away. What exquisite torture! What magnificent willpower!
I liked him from the minute I met him four years ago. I was on the bus, and he came up and introduced himself. Like most strangers who approach me, he was a fan of this blog and he wondered if he could sit next to me and talk. I was only too happy to do so because he was really hot!
Vaguely European in look, he turned out to be European in fact, from the Czech Republic. It was his freshman year at UMass and he was in his first semester. He told me in his good but accented English that he was enjoying himself in the United States, but that he was having a hard time making friends. He said he was lonely. He also said he was gay.
Danger alarms went off all over my mind, but I knew that any attempt to restrain myself was futile. There was coffee at the Haymarket, followed by dinner and drinks at Packards and then finally I brought him to a gay bar. He had never seen such a liberated environment! He told me that where he came from to be openly gay was to be rejected by your family and risk getting beaten to death by the local toughs. I told him he would be safe in Northampton.
The night got later, as nights will do, and then before I knew it we were enroute back to Amherst and my downtown apartment. I'll leave you to imagine what happened, provided you have a very erotic imagination.
Then I rarely saw him again for the next four years. It was as if having introduced him to the Hamp gay scene he had taken to it like a fish to water. With his slightly exotic, Continental looks he never lacked for offers to buy him a drink, and whenever I ran into him he was always in the company of some handsome young man, always a different one. I didn't mind. I felt a little guilty for robbing the cradle that night we were together, and I didn't want to hurt him. He just needed a little push to pursue the lifestyle he was seeking, and after one night's tour of the gay scene with me he never had any problem again overcoming loneliness. Besides, I was old enough to be his father, although you'd be surprised how many young guys find that a turn on.
I ran into him last December around Christmas in downtown Amherst, and he informed me that he would be graduating this spring. Wow, I thought, how quickly four years had gone by! He was amazed to hear that I was sober and living in Hamp, he told me he always imagined me as the "Wizard of Amherst." I don't know exactly what he meant by that, and I didn't ask him because I wanted to take it as a compliment. When we parted after only a short chat, I assumed that it was unlikely that we would ever speak again.
I was wrong.
Last Friday I was sitting at a computer in the UMass Library reading my favorite blogs. As I did so, I felt a strange sense coming upon me that I was being watched. I know it's irrational to believe in such a sense, but I usually find it to be accurate and this was no exception. Sitting at a computer just a row over was my European friend staring at me as his eyes locked immediately upon mine. I got up and went over to greet him. We shook hands and soon we were sitting in the library lobby in the coffee shop aptly titled "Procrastination Station" because that is its primary use as a place for students to escape the assignments they are supposed to be working on elsewhere in the library. But of course I am not a student and as a new graduate neither was my friend, so it was not schoolwork that occupied our conversation.
He was leaving on Monday, back to Prague for a summer's rest before pursuing a graduate degree in Vienna. He was leaving to live a life in a world so absurdly different from mine that he may as well be moving to another planet. That was okay, I never expected anything different.
Then he suggested we get a hotel room. At first I thought he was joking, didn't he know that I was in drug recovery? "When you give up drugs and alcohol," he asked, "does that require you to give up sex as well?" I told him no, of course not, but that it was recommended not to have romantic relationships for about the first year, lest the emotional complications drive you to drink. He laughed and said he knew of such relationships. However he then asked how we could have an emotionally complicating relationship when he was leaving to go half way around the world in just a few days?
Of course I had to say yes, but I was even more convinced by what he added. He reminded me of that night on the town in Hamp. We had never mentioned it to one another on any of the brief meetings we'd had since that night. Now he wanted me to know how much it meant to him to have had a kind and fatherly friend to introduce him to gay life in America, and how much he appreciated how I didn't pursue him afterwards, but let him go his own way for four fun filled years of sexual adventures. "But I would have been your boyfriend if you'd asked me." he said. I suspect that was a lie, yet the fact that he would say that almost brought a tear to my eye.
We went out to that place on Route Nine, where prices are low and questions are not asked, and we spent the afternoon having fun. Neither of us drank alcohol. I did not take drugs but he did, although I made him take them in the bathroom. Still, a whiff of marijuana followed him back to the bed once and my willpower swayed sickeningly, but I did not yield. Another time I heard sniffing sounds from the bathroom, but I feared nothing good could come from inquiring about it.
As I write this, by now he must be on a plane back to his homeland. In this new world of interconnectivity, it will be easy for us to stay in contact. However I will let him make the decision first of whether to email me. Our relationship, consisting of only two sexual encounters in four years and a half dozen conversations, was never a romance. But whatever it was, it was perfect, unfolding and concluding just as it should have, and I've learned as I've gotten older that on the rare occasions in this life when things go absolutely perfect, to just let it be.
When my friend Hwei-Ling Greeney was defeated for re-election last April many wondered how active she would remain in the public affairs of Amherst. As it turns out the answer is very active! Her latest project is trying to protect the jobs of school lunch workers who are threatened by a privatization plan.
I don't know enough of the details to say whether the privatization makes sense, but it sounds like another one of those classic Amherst debates where both sides have good points. Amherst is in perpetual fiscal crisis, so anything to save money needs to be considered. On the other hand, does the human cost in suffering for the workers justify the savings? Whatever the outcome, in or out of office we can count on Hwei-Ling to still be a force in public affairs.
Joe is a student who volunteers at the Amherst Survival Center. Or I should say he used to be a student and he used to volunteer at the Center. Joe graduated last month and as of tomorrow he's leaving for Nova Scotia where he has both an apartment and a job awaiting him.
He'll probably never be seen in these parts again. That's the mixed blessing of working at the Survival Center, you meet so many cool people but then they disappear into the slipstream of the world.
In Amherst they drive funny cars, such as this flower powered mobile.
Even the kiddie cars get an eccentric paint job.
It must be tough to be a kid with a talentless Mom who thinks she's an artist.
When I was growing up the only Tom Devine I was aware of was Monsignor Thomas Devine of Elms College in Chicopee. Today with the internet those people with the dubious honor of sharing my moniker are continuously coming to my attention. Among them is Tom Devine of Great Britain. Both Tom Devine and his friend Josh Smith are sixteen, an age when young lads are inclined to experiment....
"True, the warriors on our side of this Real War seem few and flimsy, but we have a secret advantage: we don't fight our battle out of Hate. Anger, yes, if we have to, but anger is enough. Hate is the flag the other side battles beneath. It is the ancient flag of fire and blood and agony, and it waves over the graves of millions and millions. Our side's flag is a thin, airlight blue, drifting almost unseen against the sky. Our military march is a meadowlark's song among the dandelions.
Ken Kesey
Yesterday morning I attended the Memorial Day parade in downtown Amherst. Unlike most things that go on in Amherst, the parade was non-political, although political things were percolating just inches beneath the surface. For example, among the participants were the Boy Scouts, a subject of controversy in town in part because some people consider them a hate group for banning homosexuals.
There was also a large display by the private group that has put on the Fourth of July parade in Amherst in year's past.
They are mad because the town is taking over the parade this year. Among those onboard was blogger Larry Kelley, shown here busy gathering material for his latest post.
I also ran into travel writer and right-wing activist Ben Duffy, who was attending with his girlfriend Ai-Ya Huang.
I asked Duffy for his appraisal of the current political scene, thinking that he would be glad that there are many local Republicans running this year. However he complained that most Massachusetts Republicans are too liberal for him to get excited about.
After the parade I found this sign stashed by a church. Apparently someone had brought it but then lost their nerve to march with it.
There was also a patriotic ceremony across from the High School with all the town dignitaries attending.
I like that they read a poem by one of my favorite poets, Walt Whitman. Later on in the afternoon I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous picnic at Amherst's Mill River Park.
Everyone was on my case about my smoking pot recently, even though I told them it had done no harm. However, they kept insisting it was too dangerous to risk that a slip might occur into more dangerous drugs, and that I was too new to sobriety to be taking any chances. I finally had to agree that they were right, and so promised to stick to a straight no-drugs policy. Sheesh, those AA members are always fussin' and worryin' about you like they were your best friends or somethin' - which they are.
I'd show you some pictures of the picnic, but then I would be violating the sacred anonymity of the members. I can tell you that we played volleyball and some of the wilder spikes ended up in the river. It was a miracle how we always got the ball back!
The only guest at the picnic I can show you a picture of is Buster. He has never taken a drink or a drug in his entire two years of life and therefore has no need to be anonymous.
Finally, here is a video about a group of singing students calling themselves The University of Massachusetts Dynamics.
I went to Springfield today, visiting the city of my birth for only the second time this year. I've been so tied down to a strict drug rehab schedule that I simply haven't been able to put together enough free hours in a row to make it worth visiting the city! Today I took the bus there, with the usual holdover at Veteran's Park in Holyoke. There I unexpectedly ran into Amber, a friend of mine from rehab.
The patients in rehab were divided into three groups. The largest consisted of street folk from the so called urban culture. Drugs are as much a part of their lives as sunshine or air. The second group were people that can't be described as being in any category, they're so blown out on drugs they've lost any real sense of their own identity and have just turned weird. The third group was people like Amber and me, Grateful Dead sort of stoners. We were the smallest group but we stuck together, flower children among burnouts and gangstas, and Amber was a great help to me at times, listening to me and consoling me when I was confused and unhappy and going through withdrawal. She ended up getting thrown out of rehab for fighting with a nurse. I never knew what became of her, and it was great to see her today looking healthy and happy. I took her picture....
Then she took mine:
As you might imagine, being in Springfield for only the second time this year I had a lot of errands to attend to. However, I did take the time to stop in for a few minutes at the Springfield Control Board meeting this morning. City Hall is always a trip!
I climbed the antique spiral staircase to the mahogany chambers where the Control Board meetings are held.
There Board Chairman Chris Gabrielli was presiding over a dull economic development discussion.
The two local officials on the board are Mayor Dom Sarno and City Councilor Bud Williams.
Later I was by the new federal courthouse, which is almost completed. Notice the two ancient trees in front. The whole building was designed to accommodate those trees, believed to be among the oldest in the city.
At the beginning of construction in 2003 I took this picture of local historian Greg Metzadakis posing by one of the old trees on the otherwise cleared lot.
Here is the exact same tree as it appeared this morning.
One thing I haven't been able to do since my Dad died in December is to go and visit his grave in Saint Michael's cemetery in ol' Pine Point. Saint Rose is the name of the cemetery lane he is buried on.
I was surprised to realize that he was just recently buried!
I had forgotten that here in New England, where the ground in winter is ice-hard, they often wait until spring to bury those, like my Dad, who died in the dead of winter. I also saw that the year of death has not been put next to my father's name. He had his birth year and name put on the stone about ten years ago, leaving the year of his departure to be filled in.
I had to leave the cemetery earlier than I wanted to because a terrible thunderstorm came up. It rained the whole bus ride back, but when I got to UMass the rain stopped and the sun came shining through, creating a beautiful rainbow.
A rainbow reminds us of God's promise that after something bad must come something good.
