We haven't had any snow yet this year, but the weather was still pretty cold today for Mayor Higgins' charity race through downtown Northampton to raise money for a domestic violence shelter.
Hey, no fair letting goats compete - they have four legs!
A drummer boy on the sidelines.
No doubt there is violence to combat, domestic and otherwise. For example, look at this video of a domestic disturbance on the streets of Holyoke. Frankly, the commentary of the videographer is also disturbing.
The students at UMass have all fled the campus to head home for Thanksgiving. The normally mobbed and chaotic Student Union lobby is like a ghost town.
All that remain are workers like me and the campus pond ducks.
But where a crowd could be found was at the Amherst Community Thanksgiving put on by The Amherst Survival Center at the Lutheran Church.
I sat and ate with my young friends named Sage and Ursa. "I hate camera flashes!" said Sage.
Of course two Springfield boys will always spot each other in a crowd - Kevin Noonan is not presently on a political hunger strike.
State Representative Ellen Story was among the town dignitaries in attendance.
But the radical political activity was outside, where the Marijuana Liberation Front was engaging in a little activism in the parking lot.
Hey everybody, hope you have a great Thanksgiving!
Here's some people acting weird and dancing down by the Holyoke canals.
This great video has surfaced of the first minute or so of the St. Patrick's Holyoke Road Race:
When Jeff Ziff and I went to Conant Brook Dam earlier this month, we couldn't help but be intrigued by the gigantic Chinese characters someone had painted on a spillway.
Here's a close-up that Jeff took.
We wondered what the hell the message was that someone had gone to so such trouble to paint, but we had no way of finding out. Well, leave it to the internet to produce the answer. Leon Zheng wrote in to say: "These are eight separate words, and the meanings are: justice, bravery, humanity, courtesy, honesty, fame, loyalty and honor."
So now you know.
Jeff also took this picture of some signs at an exit in Palmer. Notice the gambling casino sign.
Hmmm, does Palmer know something we don't?
Here is the class of 1981 from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church in the Pine Point Section of Springfield.
Miss Markett, Lynn Rossmeisl, Dawn Roberts, Christine Gibbs, Becky Sullivan, Paula Garvey, Darlene Dusseault, Maggie Berthume, Gail Donermeyer, Ann Woodbury, Chrissy Brennan, Christina Torro, Marie Peck, Tom Stabilo, Brian Elliott, Jim McCoy, Roger Sagendorph, Tim Quirk, Tom Bretta, Tom Quapian, Shawn Corbitt, Robin Dunn, Michael Poole, Bill McMahon, Jimmy Kervick, Jim Cicerchia, John Danio, Bob Pastreck, Joe Santamaria, Malachi Gladden, Kevin Sullivan, Mike Dunn, Eddy Ebberston, Chris Dalecki, Anthony Tarrantino, Jim Stote, Mike Kervick, Brenda Girard McMahon, Jeff Prairie, Marissa Miles, Missy Cyr-Shockroo, Kathy McKenzie, Kim Keddy Kennedy, Lisa Messier, Kara L. Cruz, Michele Lariviere Gropp, Carol Angers, Liz Mulcahy, Moira Pasini
The Music Section
Longtime local Grateful Dead tunesters Lobsterz from Mars at The Lighthouse in Ludlow.
Northampton's School for the Dead has a new video out.
The latest poll in the Massachusetts Governor's race has some interesting results. While the primary is not until September and the decisive voting is in November, at this early stage it appears that the previously assumed doomed Deval Patrick is making a comeback. He definitely does not appear to be threatened in the Democrat primary by leftist activist Grace Ross:
Patrick - 59% Ross - 15% Undecided - 26%
On the Republican side, former Weld Administration official Charlie Baker has a commanding lead over fiscal conservative Christie Mihos; but with his total still below 50%, Baker can't be said to have the nomination in the bag just yet.
Baker - 47% Mihos - 17% Undecided - 36%
Christy Mihos in East Longmeadow recently. (W.Dusty photo)
However, if the current front runners, plus third party candidate Tim Cahill and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are polled in a four way match-up, these are the results:
No surprise that fringe candidate Stein appears out of it, but the apparent strength of Deval Patrick is surprising and leaves Republicans feeling desperate to try to find a way to get Cahill out of the race.
The blogger known as Rambling Van Dog took this amazing photo of Holyoke City Hall.
Three Pics
The Amherst Survival Center.
The Northampton version.
Out the back window of the Haymarket Cafe yesterday.
The Music Section
Jerry Garcia's pal David Bromberg in Northampton Wednesday night.
U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown was campaigning for Tuesday's showdown for Ted Kennedy's old seat in Holyoke this morning, as seen in these Kyle Burns photos.
Among the visiting dignitaries was the Westfield Knapiks, mayor and state senator. That's Longmeadow's Mary Rogeness in back wearing red.
This supporter wants to make sure everyone knows that he is not paid to be there, like many of those onstage at rallies for Martha Coakley.
A new definition of blue and red.
A worker proudly in defiance of her union's demands.
The red, white and blue Brown bus arrives.
The next senator from Massachusetts?
Tom Wesley, one of the candidate's running to defeat Congressman Richard Neal.
Earlier there was a Brown rally in West Springfield along Riverdale Road.
Neal's other challenger Dr. Jay Fleitman and his wife.
This sign in Sam's in downtown Northampton says it all.
Veteran's Park in downtown Holyoke.
My neighbor's bike.
At UMass the campus pond has frozen to the point that the ducks are confined to this small area.
However they don't seem to mind the cold water or the cramped quarters.
A great Greg Saulmon shot of the site of the former Hotel Charles in Springfield. The historic structure burned in the 1980's in a never solved case of arson suspected to have had political overtones.
Alas, it's a safe bet that the truth behind that fire will never be known.
Wake Up Young People
Young people need to figure out that the big government policies of both parties in recent years are particularly disastrous for them. Big governments kill job opportunities, kill new industries, kill innovation, kill dynamism, and kill growth. The young need to stand up and defend themselves against the fiscal insanity in Washington, else they will be crushed by a tidal wave of taxes never seen by any generation in American history.
-Chris Edwards, Cato Institute.
Senate Race Update
Here's a funny picture from the campaign trail - a Brown sign waver wearing a Michael Jackson glove!
Meanwhile the evidence keeps pouring in that the Democrats are letting this race slip through their fingers, but the Public Policy Polling Group reports that Democrats still have a chance: At this point a plurality of those planning to turn out oppose the health care bill. The massive enthusiasm gap we saw in Virginia is playing itself out in Massachusetts as well. Republican voters are fired up and they're going to turn out. Martha Coakley needs to have a coherent message up on the air over the last ten days that her election is critical to health care passing and Ted Kennedy's legacy- right now Democrats in the state are not feeling a sense of urgency.
This has become a losable race for Democrats- but it could also be easily winnable if Coakley gets her act together for the last week of the campaign. Complacency is the Democrats' biggest enemy at this point and something that needs to be overcome to avoid a potential disaster.
Fire Show
A special concert was held a few nights ago to raise money for those who lost stuff in the string of arsons in Northampton. As you can see from these photos by S.L. Pomeroy, the event was a sellout.
I'm currently reading Amherst writer Augusten Burrough's hatchet job memoir of his late father, UMass philosophy professor John Robison, A Wolf at the Table. I once knew someone who was a graduate student under Robison, and he told me he couldn't recognize the person Burroughs described in the book. He said he experienced Robison as a good teacher and a nice guy.
Whatever. What is interesting is that at one point in his book, Augusten describes how he got his first apartment on Appleton Street in downtown Holyoke. He does not describe the city in flattering terms:
Once, Holyoke, Massachusetts, was a thriving industrial city on the banks of the Connecticut River. Settled originally in the early seventeenth century by Englishmen, Holyoke's very bones are British. Stand beside one of the old brick paper factories - its tapered, elegant smokestack reaching high into the sky - and squint, and you'd swear you were looking back in time at a factory along the River Thames. In the residential areas, wide boulevards are lined with old-growth oak and elm trees and mansions are set back from the street - Greek revival, Victorian, Tudor. These were the homes of the paper factory owners and managers. Glorious, stately structures decidedly European in their design and construction....
Holyoke could have become another Boston, or even a New York City, but instead, it stopped following the bread crumbs and lost its way. After the war, when the American economy moved away from manufacturing, Holyoke failed to reinvent itself. It just sat there and wondered where everybody went. And then it began to smell bad and its wounds became infected and it stopped bathing.
The city plunged into failure. It became the grimmest, poorest city in Massachusetts. A splotch of cancer in the center of the state. An entire brick factory, weeds sprouting from between the mortar, could be bought for tens of thousands of dollars. You could buy yourself a Craftsman home right near the river for under ten grand. But then, you'd have to live in it.
Stormwatch
I voted this morning in the senatorial primary at this quaint New England structure that serves as my polling place.
I was the 53rd voter, but I was told that in normal elections about 200 voters usually cast their ballots by the time I showed up.
In the antique shop across the street from Pops in downtown Northampton is this 1973 psychedelic Watergate poster for sale for 35 bucks.
There was snow on the pumpkins this morning, with more due tomorrow.
That means I may have to shovel at this Habitat for Humanity house in Hamp where I volunteer.
These are students who work on the house from Williston Academy in Easthampton.
Hopefully after I shovel no one will fall down like in this cartoon painted on a downtown bank.
Today's Music Video
Action speaks louder than words And I'm a man of great experience I know you've got another man But I can love you better than him
