Southern Sojourn

Going down to Springfield!

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. 

Photo Backlog

Hurray! I finally got the cord back so that I can get the pictures out of my camera! Unfortunately they are now a little bit dated, such as the Springfield Control Board photos from a meeting that took place a full week ago! Oh well, I still have a few comments to make about that meeting. I was pleased to see in attendance at the Control Board meeting my mother's ECOS colleague Burt Freedman (left). On the right is the controversial dealmaker Heriberto Flores.

 



Like nearly all the Control Board meetings I've attended, this one was a real yawner, although it did have the significance of being the first one with the new members - Chris Gabrielli (the failed gubernatorial candidate) James O'S Morton (what does the "O'S" mean?) and Robert Nunnes (a former mayor). First there was a public speakout, in which the always frank Antonette Pepe let the new crew have a piece of her mind. In this picture one of the City Hall lamps makes it appear there's a halo over her head, which is what she actually deserves. 

Also welcoming the new Board was mayoral hopeful Dom Sarno (shown below center seated in the audience) which was a bit awkward since in the past he had called for the Board's dismissal and the firing of its executive Phil Puccia.

The latter call became moot when a few days later Puccia announced that he was leaving the Board to take a job in the private sector. That was a major development, as Puccia was considered crucial to preserving continuity from the old board to the new. The transition is likely to be a lot more difficult without Puccia, and it may now take longer for the new members to get up to speed.

Robert Nunnes is the big question on the Board as far as what role he will play. As a mayor, he brings a municipal perspective, which can be helpful. It can also be a negative, if he takes the position, as too many mayors do, that the solution to every problem is spending more money. At this point Nunnes is an unknown quantity who will have to prove himself in the trenches.

James O'S Morton is local, so he's somewhat better known, but largely as an administrator. Where he stands philosophically and ideologically is less clear. The former Control Board members were all stern believers in fiscal discipline and limited government, making them uniquely qualified to pursue an agenda of structural reform and fiscal responsibility. It simply is not certain yet whether any of the new members are as qualified as the men they've replaced.

The person with the most to gain or lose is Gabrielli, who was elected the board's chairman at the meeting. He has business experience, but is a full-blown liberal on almost all issues. Though he has unsuccessfully run for public office (in expensive, largely self-funded campaigns) and given heavily to left-wing think tanks (including his own) he has virtually no real-life experience in public governance. His personal wealth is of no use in his new role (unless he intends to deposit it in the city's coffers) and wonkish policy papers are of no real value here. For the first time in his political career Gabrielli has got to produce real-world outcomes in a setting where there are serious problems. He's operating in a realm where results, or the lack of them, are the only thing that matters. If he produces those results, the city could be his springboard to a political comeback. If he fails, Springfield could put him permanently in the political graveyard.

Puccia's sudden departure is likely to make life more difficult for the new members, at least initially as they try to get a handle on what the city's problems are and familiarize themselves with what the former members did to create the progress thus far. But the real test will be whether they can show the same strict discipline as their predecessors. It wasn't just, or even mainly corruption that drove Springfield into the ditch. It was also a big government philosophy that made hiring and spending money always the top priority. Whether this new crop of Democrat board members can successfully reject that wasteful philosophy like their predecessors did will be the ultimate test to come.

The next day I met in Northampton with Springfield City Council candidate John Lysak. I took this picture of him out back of the Haymarket Cafe, telling John that a photo of him at the Haymarket will guarantee that he gets the all important gay junkie hipster vote!

Seriously, Lysak has a strong platform of unusually specific proposals that make him an appealing candidate. You should try to attend his upcoming fundraiser on July 18th at 5:30 to be held at the Aquarius Lounge near Mass Mutual.

Here are some pictures I took at the concert in Northampton Sunday. I only took a few, so fortunately I had Jeff Ziff to supply me with the ones he took that I used in the previous post. Here's a photo I took of Jeff.



These are the blasphemous WCCC jocks I mentioned, but even those who were offended had to admit that is a pretty sexy looking nun. 

At one point early on I spotted Starship/Quicksilver legend David Freiberg wandering around taking pictures. No one but me seemed to recognise him. 

However, the real encounter with stardom I had took place the morning after the show. I was in Northampton at Broadside Bookshop, when who should I see checking out the music section but Sam Andrews of Big Brother and the Holding Company, the former back-up band for Janis Joplin! Here he is with Janis in a photo from 1968. 

 

This is a picture Jeff Ziff took of Sam Andrews performing Sunday, some 39 years later. He got a hair cut.

I had no problem recognizing him, in fact he had the same shirt on that he had worn at the concert. I walked right up to him and inquired, "Excuse me, but aren't you a famous rock star?"

He laughed and said, "Well I guess so, or at least I used to be!" He couldn't have been nicer, and even asked some questions about myself. When I told him I was an internet blogger, he said, "You're probably more famous than I am!" When we got a bookstore customer to take our picture, Andrews pretended that he was the fan getting goo-goo eyes for me! 

The woman who took the picture was unaware of who Andrews was. When I told her he had played with Janis Joplin she pretended to swoon in fandom. By this time a small crowd of book patrons had formed, and everyone was laughing.

Farewell Good Servants

Sup? I'm sorry for not posting yesterday, but I was in Springfield all day, starting in the morning with the last meeting of the "old" Financial Control Board and ending with the evening kick-off rally for Karen Powell's City Council campaign. The day kept getting more and more out of hand, as my days will, until this morning I woke up on Bill Dusty's couch in Springfield's South end.

The things I do to keep you informed.

Anyway, today we'll go over the Control Board meeting, and tomorrow I'll tell you about the Powell pow-wow. This was a special meeting of the Control Board, because it was the last one with the members appointed by former Governor Mitt Romney.

The meeting started with a public speak out, which was dominated by people from Sumner Avenue School who were angry that their principal was transferred. 

It was a good presentation, but with an air of futility to it. The speakers seemed unaware that the members of the Board they were appealing to were essentially fired at the end of that meeting, to be replaced by the political appointees of Deval Patrick, and therefore unable to do anything for Sumner Avenue even if they wanted to.

Teacher's Union leader Timothy Collins, who has fought bitterly with the Board over the past two years, struck a conciliatory tone as the board members depart. 

Despite their past battles, Collins showed he had class by giving the board a respectful farewell. He did manage to deliver a few thinly veiled zingers however, referring to how he had at one point been called "rapacious" (a fifty cent word meaning greed-crazed) and reminded them that the fiscal crisis had led to a loss of teachers and administrators. Others in city government also addressed the board to thank them for their years of service, such as park department head Pat Sullivan. 

Did you know that Pat Sullivan is the nephew of telephone answering machine editorialist Eamon T. O'Sullivan?

During the break between the end of the speak out and the beginning of the actual meeting, TV reporter Sy Becker chatted with the Sumner School protesters as School Superintendent Joseph Burke arrived. 

Had the protesters stayed for the whole meeting, instead of departing right after the speak out, they would have heard Burke defend the transfer of the principal as necessary to the pursuit of educational excellence throughout the system.

With one foot out the door, there wasn't a hell of a lot for the board to do at its last meeting, but they did present a promising overview of the city's new budget. As they went over each aspect of it, it was made repeatedly apparent the tremendous strides the city has taken under the wise guidance of Mayor Ryan and the Control Board. Again, it only underlined how unfortunate it was to replace the dynamic talents of the board members, who apparently were replaced for no reason except hard, cold politics.

On the other hand, as activist Sheila McElwaine was impressing upon me, this is the beginning of a new era in Springfield's recovery, and while the old board did an outstanding job of fixing the basic underlying structure of Springfield government there is a new era beginning that requires new talent. In any case, it is premature to be critical of the new board, and they should be greeted with encouragement and support during the first phase of their tenure.

Everyone was delighted to see in the audience none other than original board member Tom Trimarco (right) who came by to see his former colleagues finish their gig.

The city indeed owes a great debt to the departing Control Board members, who did very difficult work on the public's behalf with sometimes little more than criticism and insults as their reward. They have indeed set a very high standard for the new board members to try to match.

In Westfield recently I saw this sign in a sportsman shop window. 

Like all red-blooded Americans, I have a fascination with weapons of all kinds.

I leave you with this saying I saw chalked on a blackboard in the Amherst Starbucks.