One of the most popular figures in our Pioneer Valley media scene is Dave Madsen, best known for his nearly two decades at WGGB-TV40 as reporter and anchor. His bio at the station's website includes this info about his long media career in our Valley:
Madsen in 1982
Dave Madsen is celebrating his 40th year in broadcasting and 19th anniversary with abc40. Dave came to abc40 in 1992 after spending twelve years with WWLP-TV. He began his career in 1970 with WMAS in Springfield. Later that year he began a nine-year association with WHMP Radio in Northampton.
Dave was born and raised in Southampton, attending schools there and in Easthampton. He attended the University of Massachusetts in Amherst where he majored in Communications studies. He now serves as an adjunct professor at the University, teaching a television news writing course in the Journalism department.
Dave and his wife Linda, a registered nurse, will celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary in September. They have two sons, Christopher and Greg.
I used to hang around TV40 a bit in the 1990's when I was one of the stable of fill-in hosts for the now defunct Dan Yorke Show. I occasionally chatted with Madsen, and in contrast to the stereotype of news anchors as vain egomaniacs, he always came across as a nice, down to earth guy. Here is the news team when I was around - Mike Ratte, Madsen, Eileen Curran and Tom Bevacqua in 1995.
Madsen has been at TV40 for so long that people have almost forgotten about the more than a decade he worked for arch-rival TV22, as seen in this 1980 photo of a billboard in Springfield. Note the adjoining billboard for the long lost, lamented Dreikorn's bread.
Here's a picture of the TV22 crew at a 1985 St. Patrick's Day parade in Holyoke. Note the youthful Sy Becker! What other local media stars of yore can you recognize?
The man above in the grey trenchcoat is the late local weatherman legend John Quill. Here is a picture of Quill's set in the pre-computer era when you actually had to try to explain the weather while drawing with an ink marker on maps. Yet despite the primitive technology, Quill was renowned for his mostly accurate forecasts.
This is Madsen with actor Ed Begley (St. Elsewhere). Begley's sister Allene Begley-Curto was a Springfield School Committee member about twenty years ago.
One of the great things about a gig with a TV station is that you never know when you might meet one of your heroes. Madsen with Yaz in 1988.
With Ted Kennedy in 1988.
With fellow Massachusetts resident James Taylor in 2008.
Returning to the present, here I am this morning in beautiful downtown Amherst boldly holding a product from Arizona.
Oh no! I hope I don't get arrested for violating the official town boycott of the allegedly racist hate state of Arizona, where they dare to try to enforce immigration laws!
The woodland way into downtown Northampton sure can be pretty this time of year.
This iceboy stands outside of Thornes in downtown Hamp.
The back exit of the Haymarket Cafe is covered in ice!
We all love UMass, but sometimes its politics can be, shall we say, a bit disappointing. In an article on the Students for Academic Freedom website by UMass Professor Daphne Patai, the chances of you being hired to be a faculty member at UMass are made less likely if you fail to answer correctly certain trick questions designed to force you to reveal your political orientation. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:
Daphne Patai is a professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the author and editor of eleven books, among them The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology (1984), Brazilian Women Speak: Contemporary Life Stories (1998), Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (1991, co-edited with Sherna Berger Gluck), Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers 1889-1939 (1993, co-edited with Angela Ingram), and Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism (1998). Her 1994 critique of women’s studies programs, written with Noretta Koertge, was reissued in a new and expanded edition in 2003 as Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies.
This is what Professor Patai has to say about the hiring practices of her place of employment:
At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where I teach, a document both sublime and ridiculous advises us how to go about determining if applicants have what it takes to work here. Along with the usual lists of questions that may or may not be asked, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity provides some crucial guidelines in a document titled Supplemental Search Instructions. I reproduce the final section of this document below:
IT'S ALL IN WHAT YOU ASK: SOME QUESTIONS SEARCH COMMITTEES MIGHT WANT TO USE
Search committees often have difficulty determining if a candidate is aware of and responsive to minority and women's issues and to issues involving the disabled and other groups requiring sensitive treatment. When prospective employees are asked, "Are you concerned about and supportive of these issues?", they will invariably give an affirmative reply. Unfortunately, that gives little indication of their level of concern or commitment. Asking some of the questions listed below may help you gain a better understanding of a candidate's position on these issues. Many of the questions suggested below do not have a "right" or a "wrong" answer. These questions should be asked by both men and women on the search committee because having only women or minority persons ask questions about these issues may give a candidate the impression that equity issues are not important to the institution as a whole.
Many candidates will not have prepared answers to these questions in advance. These questions will, therefore, be useful in drawing out the candidate's opinions rather than the "correct answer". Parentheses are used to indicate that one or more of the following words are missing: Minorities, Blacks, Hispanics, Native-American; Women; economically disadvantaged persons; disabled persons; veterans or disabled veterans; homosexuals, gays, lesbians; protected groups; affirmative action groups, etc.
How have you demonstrated your commitment to (____) issues in your current position?
Which of your achievements in the area of equity for (____) gives you the most satisfaction?
How would you demonstrate your concern for equity for (____) if you were hired?
In your opinion, what are the three major problems for (____) on your campus?
How are general issues in higher education related to (____) issues? What is the link?
Describe activities--include articles, interviews, and speeches--in which you have taken part that demonstrate a public commitment to equity.
In your current position, have you ever seen a (____ ) treated unfairly? How would/did you handle it?
In your current position, what is your relationship to the affirmative action officer? Have you ever sought his or her help in recruiting?
How many of the top people at your current or previous institution are (____ )? What did you do to encourage hiring more (____ )?
Which committee at your current institution would you consider the most powerful? How many (____) are on it? How many (____ ) have you appointed to it?
How did/would you deal with faculty members or employees who say disparaging things about (____)?
What scholarship about (____) have you read lately?
Have any students ever complained to you about sexual harassment or discrimination in any work with professors or staff? If so, how did you respond?
Obviously it is impossible to answer those questions without revealing your political attitudes. As Professor Patai explains:
Not only are the "suggested questions" an embarrassment to public education (private too, but that's a somewhat different story), they also endorse subterfuge on the part of the interviewers: no direct questions but rather attempts to trap the candidates into revealing something about themselves (all the while pretending there are no right or wrong answers, as the paragraph introducing the questions explicitly states). Potential faculty are thus being pressured to adopt and embrace -- or merely pretend to do so -- the requisite "attitude" toward minorities, political activism, and social issues, and to provide evidence that they have acted on these supposed commitments. And, scarier still, these questions by implication are presented as legitimate requirements for employment, though they have nothing to do with either education or intellectual and scholarly accomplishments. And, even worse, the questions are designed to weed out the merely formal assenters from authentic true believers.
What can it possibly mean to ask candidates what they've done lately to demonstrate their "public commitment to equity?" Any chance that an acceptable answer would be the following: "In view of what happened in the USSR, China, Cuba, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world under communist rule, I believe that the best thing I can do to promote equity in our society is to help strengthen capitalism and democracy in every way I can and, toward that end, I actively promote Republican candidates"?
Another piece of micromanagement revealed by these questions is that they're obviously meant to induce the candidate to name names of identity groups, and to express specific allegiances and particular political positions, precisely because the questions are so carefully framed. Here's another sure-winner answer: "I'm increasingly concerned about what's happening to gifted children in our society and thus I'm working in my spare time to promote charter schools and advanced placement courses."
How long will it be before tenure and promotion decisions, which so far involve political considerations mostly unofficially and surreptitiously, will also openly embrace such procedures?
A good question, Professor Patai, and a brave one to ask about the place where you work.
I see that they have put up a stone in order to identify Amherst's Kendrick Park and its donors.
Oh wow, it's an Edgar Allan Poe action doll in the window of this Northampton shop!
I am intrigued bythis downtown Westfield safety billiard. Smiling as you go through the windshield?
Finally, here's a video of the band Haunt playing at The Elevens in Northampton last weekend.
A priest was being honored at his retirement dinner after 25 years in the parish. A leading local politician and member of the congregation was chosen to make the presentation and give a little speech at the dinner.
However, he was delayed, so the priest himself decided to say a few words of his own while they waited: "I got my first impression of the parish from the first confession I heard here. I thought I had been assigned to a terrible place. The very first person who entered my confessional told me he had stolen money from his parents, embezzled from his employer, had an affair with his best friend's wife, and taken illegal drugs. I was appalled.
But as the days went on I learned that my people were not all like that and I had, indeed, come to a fine parish full of good and loving people."
Just as the priest finished his talk, the politician arrived full of apologies at being late. He immediately began to make the presentation:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I'll never forget the first day our parish priest arrived," said the politician. "In fact, I had the honor of being the first person to go to him for confession."
Me and my Dad on his last birthday in August 2007.
My Dad's obituary did not appear in today's paper, but I'm assuming it will tomorrow. The wake will be on Tuesday and the funeral Wednesday morning, but I can't be more specific than that right now.
Although my father, who was 77, has been in decline for most of the year, his death struck us as somewhat unexpected. He had a major operation for lung cancer earlier in the week, but he appeared to be making an amazingly good recovery. Then suddenly he had a stroke and that was that. So I guess you could say his amazing recovery came to an abrupt end!
Thanks so much to everyone who has called or emailed me and my family, I really appreciate it. I know some of you have expressed concern that the stress of a major death in the family might cause me to relapse, but don't worry, that ain't gonna happen! I know nothing could make matters worse than for me to get high.
I will say that it is hard for me to wrap my head around the reality that both of my parents are now dead. Gee, does that make me an orphan? I guess in the natural order of things we are all orphans in the end. I think part of what makes losing a child so hard on people is that it's unnatural - the parents should go before the kids. For me that natural transition is complete. Indeed my parents entire generation is quickly disappearing.
After them, it will be my generation's turn. Now there's something that's hard to wrap your head around!
My relationship with my father in his last year alive was complicated by my discovery that I had an older, full-blooded brother whose existence had been kept a secret from me. Confronting my father about this deeply buried family secret was very difficult and caused tremendous stress for him and for my entire family. However, in the end it was well worth it as my lost brother is now fully integrated into our family. One disappointment however is that my lost brother never got to be in the physical presence of his father, although they did communicate by phone, so at least there is that comfort.
Anyway, I'll have more detailed information on what's going on tomorrow.
In the meantime, as predicted another terrible storm blew through our Valley last night. I laughed to see this snow covered bike in Amherst today. Did the bicyclist forget and leave it leaning against the tree, or was it abandoned in despair?
In Northampton this morning Channel 40 was broadcasting live from downtown.
Look at the big truck they have to lug around just to broadcast locally. Meanwhile, I can film something and put it on YouTube where everyone on the planet with a computer can see it by using only a camera that fits in my pocket. Is it any wonder that the lumbering dinosaurs of the media mainstream are dying?
I was certainly happy not to be meteorologist Eric Fisher this morning, broadcasting in an arctic blast! Notice the blue ribbon around the tree to the left of Fisher. Those are popping up on trees throughout the Valley as a sign of sympathy for the victims of the brutal triple murder in Springfield the other day.
When I'm tempted to feel sorry for how my Dad's death is casting a shadow over my Christmas this year, I remind myself of what that family is going through.
