Beyond Booze

The new A.A.

 



A funny thing has happened to Alcoholics Anonymous in recent years - it's not so much about alcohol anymore. Oh of course it still is, and always will be, but it's not only about alcohol anymore.

Far from it. Go to any A.A. meeting and listen to the people talk, and it has become a rarity to hear anyone claim that their only vice was liquor. I know, because I go to a lot of meetings. What has happened is the mind-expanding trippers of the '60's and the hard party people of the '70's and 80's - those that survived - are now making up the bulk of the membership of Alcoholics Anonymous, and they are there for difficulties that usually transcend the use of only one drug.

The earliest years of A.A. were all about booze because alcoholism pretty much described the extent of the drug problem in America during the 1930's and '40's when A.A. was first taking off. Yeah there was a music and art scene doing marijuana (hopheads they were called) and a small junkie scene thought to be beyond redemption, but basically if you were talking about substance abuse issues you were talking about problems with booze.

All that changed dramatically in the 1960's when the whole cornucopia of intoxicating drugs suddenly flooded the culture. At first there was a clear demarcation between the two drug cultures, the early hippies were teetotalers when it came to alcohol, considering it the drug of the establishment. That, however, didn't last very long and by the mid-1970's nearly all of the pretensions of mind-expansion and bohemianism associated with non-alcoholic drug use were gone. The new drugs had not replaced alcohol, as the hippies had hoped, instead they simply merged with it.

And why not? People who get drunk like to get high, so the only thing surprising was that it took so long for these other drugs to join alcohol in use by the party people. Here is a picture of Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Is that the face of a stoner or what? That heavy lidded grin would've been right at home at any Grateful Dead concert.

I suspect that if Bill Wilson was born a generation later, he would have named his group Drugs Anonymous, with alcohol included as just another one of the get-high substances people mess up their lives with. But it hardly matters, since his modern membership has pretty much done that informally anyway.

There remains one aspect of the drug culture that hasn't completely merged with A.A. and that is needle using junkies. There is a belief among some that the blood rituals of those who violate their veins to ingest drugs is unique among drug users and never fully understood except by those who have indulged in it. I suspect that's true, but even those who belong to the small sub-group Narcotics Anonymous usually have dual memberships in A.A. Throughout everything, at the end of the trip Alcoholics Anonymous remains the shore upon which many substance abusers, regardless of what they abuse, end up.

In Northampton recently I came upon this statement scrawled on a shack near an area strewn with liquor bottles. It's a message Bill Wilson would have approved of. 

This sign advertising a blood drive in Hamp today is chained to a street lamp. Chained? Would anyone really want to steal that sign?

Hamp Trail 2008

The first part.

Hey everybody, this is Bert. We're roommates at the home for recovering drug addicts.

The other night Bert and I were watching The Matrix on TV. When I saw it the first time years ago in the theater I was so stoned that all I could do was grok at the special effects. I couldn't follow the story. Seeing it now sober I realize it has some fascinating concepts in it about the nature of reality. 

Anyway, during the commercials we were discussing nature trails, and Bert asked me whether I take the nature trail to the bus stop every morning. "Trail? What trail?" I asked.

From such questions are adventures born.

This morning Bert showed me a great woodland shortcut downtown. It is a small part, the urban section, of a longer trail through wooded areas. Rest assured I will show you that section another day. But this morning we entered the trail through the parking lot of the former National Felt Company.

 



I found this blurb about the company online.

Founded in 1905 as National Felt Company,
National Nonwovens originated as a manufacturer
of wool felt for use in apparel and home furnishings.
A supplier of felt and other textile materials to the
U.S. Government since World War I, the company
has been at the forefront in the development of
fiber and fiber-processing technologies for a
multitude of military and commercial applications.

The current corporate incarnation is located in Easthampton, today the old Northampton factory is primarily used by Smith College for an array of academic activities.

Anyway, from the parking lot you enter the trail here.

There is what appears to be a nice skate park behind the factory, but you can't really see it now because it is buried in snow. I'll have to check it out in the spring. 

The trail is cleared only by virtue of people walking on it. I imagine it is quite messy at certain times of the year. 

The trail passes through otherwise very heavily settled territory. There are buildings in plain view much of the way, although I imagine it is more private when there are leaves on the trees and bushes. Some of the dwellings seem quite upscale.

Others appear less so.

Behind where the new Smith parking garage is there is this ancient stone wall. Who built it and why?

At the end of the trail is the South Street overpass. The building straight ahead is the Peter Pan bus station. 

Under the overpass is a lot of junk, like this wrecked car and abandoned tires. Lots of graffiti too, like the phrase "Pirates Rock" written on an actual rock!

Someone put a lot of effort into this image of a guy smoking a joint. 

The trail leads into the parking lot where this apartment complex is. Today they are expensive digs, but back in my day it was a flophouse where a lot of drug dealers lived, sort of the one-stop shopping center for substance abuse. You can put as many yuppies into it as you want, but frankly it still looks like a flophouse to me.

 



These stairs lead up to the back of the Academy of Music.

And right by the Academy is the bus stop!

What a great short cut downtown, one I will now use every day! Soon I will follow the path in the other direction, away from the city, and show you what is to be seen that way.

In Amherst today I came across the International Symbol of Anarchy scrawled on the wall of the CVS. Fully copyrighted of course.

BRRRRR

Baby, it's cold outside!

New England's cruel cold still holds our Valley in its merciless grip. However the cold is very good for the gradually evolving ice skating rink underway in Kendrick Park in downtown Amherst. When I went past I saw they had a hose running. 

Lest anyone mess with the creative process, this sign stood nearby. Looks like "hose" was initially misspelled.

A trash can and bench await the first skaters.

 



The ice is starting to look pretty smooth. I predict this civic project will be a big success, possibly smoothing over some of the hard feelings leftover from the taxing and banning of the Boy Scouts from the park.

In Northampton this morning on my way to the bus stop I passed my neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Horse and saw that it was so cold that Mrs. Horse had a colorful coat on. 

Her husband preferred more conservative looking attire.

Downtown there was this giant poster of Martin Luther King. I'm surprised that the place next door The Pinocchio Pizza Express went out of business. Every time I went past it seemed crowded. 

This businessman has said to hell with the cold. 

Everything is on sale, but there was nothing in the window for me to buy, being an already recognized expert in the field. 

These are my sentiments exactly. 

However, I am slightly dismayed to note that the phrase "Life is Good" is a registered trademark.

Recently I was waxing nostalgic about my time as a resident at the UMass Sylvan dorms. Someone sent me this entry from the Urban Dictionary entry on UMass in general and Sylvan in particular. 

UMass Amherst - A Massachusetts public institution of higher learning located in the middle of nowhere aka Amherst, Massachusetts. The location leads to the insane amount of partying that occurs, since there is nothing better to do. For the academic year of 2005-2006, UMass Amherst (Also known as Zoomass or Zoomass-Slamherst) was rated by the Princeton Review as the #9 party school in the country. ABC also rated it the most violent campus in the nation, but this was based on skewed numbers and outdated facts. UMass is home to Sylvan Residence Area, rated as one of the most sexually active campus residences in the country. Despite this, and noted Sylvanites such as Frank Black of the Pixies, Sylvan tends to be the last choice for residence for all incoming and current students due to its distance from the parties and campus center.

I didn't experience Sylvan as being so sexually active, but maybe it was for straight people. Myself, I had to go over to Southwest when I wanted to get down with the boys.

Finally, on the bus this morning someone was transporting their painting. It's delightful sights like this which remind me to feel lucky that I live in a community where I am surrounded by artists.

Some of those artists are musicians. Here is another video I ripped off from Paolo Mastrangelo, this one showing singer/songwriter Witt Wisebram singing an anti-war tune at a house party on State Street in Northampton. I can't make out the words, and I might not agree with them if I could, but I like that he sings with passion.

Spfld/NoHo

A tale of two cities.

This morning the buses were running on a limited schedule due to the Martin Luther King holiday. God bless Dr. King, a true American dreamer, but frankly how did he get a national holiday ahead of other deserving luminaries? I mean what about Thomas Jefferson? Or Benjamin Franklin? Or Ken Kesey?

Anyway, when I got to the bus stop I discovered that I had about a half hour to kill so I wandered across the street to Broadside Bookstore to kill some time poking around for a while. In their front window, I saw these stickers displayed for sale:

You might think they were promoting two different locations, but of course NoHo and Hamp are, at least in the material world, the same place. In the realm of the mind however, they are two very different localities.

Hamp is the old Northampton, the one that existed before the 1980's revitalization. It is middle-class and familly oriented, and by Valley standards it is moderate to conservative in its politics. It feels resentful towards downtown and ignored by City Hall and is suspicious of anyone who has lived in Hamp for less than a quarter century. Frankly, they don't fully trust anyone who wasn't born here. You will never hear them refer to Northampton as NoHo.

NoHo is the term that was created by advertisers and public relations people to promote the downtown economic development projects of the 1980's. It was designed to market Northampton to New Yorkers as if it were a sort of New England version of a New York City burrough. A place where sophisticated people from NYC in search of a rural experience could come without straying too far - physically or psychologically - from their Big Apple sensibilities. Bostonians looking for cheap housing were also encouraged to come, as well as the last remnants of the upper class fleeing Springfield and Holyoke.

I lived in Northampton in its pre-NoHo days. I'm not kidding when I say that we used to joke that they might as well roll up the sidewalks at five o'clock. More so even than Amherst, Northampton at that time was the hippie haven of Western Mass. The place was crawling with longhairs, and I was one of them. Housing was absurdly cheap, you could actually raise your rent by panhandling the last week of the month. Most houses were communal, which furthur slashed rental expenses. Personally I was above panhandling, proudly earning my living through good ol' American capitalism - I sold marijuana in Pulaski Park.

Northampton successfully pulled off it's Hamp to NoHo transformation due to two major factors. First of all it had a creative business community with a vision for what might transform the bohemian aspects of this hippie heaven into something marketable, while at the same time without making any major changes in Northampton's appearance. For example, this picture was also in the window of Broadside Books this morning. It shows a scene from a century ago near the site of the current Haymarket Cafe. 

There are even a couple of characters hanging around outside, showing some things never change! The creators of NoHo also had local bankers with an eagerness to co-operate with providing start up capital. They were a little too eager to bend the rules in some cases, as subsequent grand juries alleged, but by then the transformation was complete.

More importantly, Northampton had escaped the disastrous "urban renewal" projects that destroyed other once beautiful Valley downtowns. Springfield for example used to have the region's most beautiful downtown, but greedhead politicians and their friends, anxious to cash-in on the contracts new government construction projects created, completely trashed Springfield's urban center. Northampton, on the other hand, kept all of it's old New England charm intact, a charm that in the consumer backlash against shopping mall culture made their downtown very popular.

Therefore Springfield, having squandered millions supposedly revitalizing its downtown by replacing historic structures with cheap modern buildings constructed by shoddy politically connected builders, found its downtown almost completely dead. Meanwhile Northampton, which had torn down almost nothing, had crowds flocking to their downtown every night.

In other words, where government spending dominated the urban renewal process, as in Springfield and Holyoke, total failure was the result. Where the private sector dominated, like in Northampton, the result was success beyond anyone's imagining. Sadly, there's a lesson there that Springfield has still failed to learn.

Oh no! In downtown Amherst yesterday I came upon this crime scene where two newspaper boxes were tipped over. It is rare to see such vandalism when the students are not in town.

Damn it's cold! It can be confining and depressing in New England this time of year with the temperatures in the deep-freeze day after day. In Amherst College's library they have this screen that each day shows a different poem by one of Amherst's poetic superstars, Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost. This one I thought was particularly appropriate for this season. 

DUST OF SNOW
a poem by Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued

In other words, the poet feels that the snow falling from the tree that was knocked down by the bird startled him out of his depressed mood. In a similar way let us face these cold days with surprising good cheer.

Finally, here's a video I found that has Paolo Mastrangelo interviewing Northampton Mayor M. Clare Higgins on her views of citizen journalism:

Pols and Protestors

A few old items.

Here are some photos I came across recently.

This is a great photo from 1999 of Springfield Mayor Mike Albano at a Columbus Day parade. I think it captures perfectly Albano's personal charisma, the deceptive charm that blinded so many to his dark side. 

At the same parade was then State Senator Linda Melconian. When Albano left office in 2003 in a wave of scandal and fiscal collapse, Melconian was his chosen heir. Happily the Albano era was brought to an abrupt end when Melconian was defeated by Atty. Charles V. Ryan.

Here are three photos I found recently from a University of Massachusetts anti-war rally which are dated on the back, "October 13, 2001." Yikes, that's just about a month after the twin towers attack. No wonder the turnout was so sparse, as support for a military response was high among most of the public.. 

Thankfully, the "peaceful response" option was not used. 

Even the guitarist's friends look bored by her music. 

Saturday

A touch of nostalgia.

I like the psychedelic designs on this Northampton hot tub store.

An equally trippy wind-fish flutters from a rooftop flagpole. 

I like hot tubs but they're expensive and hard to maintain. It's better to know a friend who has one.

On West Street in Hamp I came across this cross by the side of the road.

Roadside crosses usually mean there's been a fatal car accident at that location. Just a little something to make you think twice as you cruise past while going over the speed limit. These memorials present a problem to public road maintenance crews. You want to respect people's wish to honor their dead, but at the same time they tend to clutter up the roadside if you leave them up for too long. Generally the authorities will let them remain for a while, then one day discreetly remove them. Life belongs to the living, and like it or not the dead will have to fade away.

In Amherst I see that the town or someone is attempting to make a skating rink in downtown's Kendrick Park. If so, it looks a little choppy and in need of some more flooding. 

Seeing that rink reminded me of the temporary skating rink the Springfield Fire Department once made on the "playground" of The World Famous Thomas M. Balliet Elementary School. I put the word playground in quotes because we really didn't have a playground, just a rocky, hard-scrabble field whose only virtue was that because it was nothing, you could easily pretend it was anything - a baseball, football, or soccer field, a track or gymnastics area, or even the deck of the Starship Enterprise.

One day when I was about ten years old a fire truck came and hooking up to one of the hydrants on Breckwood Boulevard they began pouring water all over the field. This was done for several days in a row. By the end of the week we had a beautiful ice skating area that was as smooth as glass.

Of course we already had a skating area just down the street at Breckwood Pond, but that was dominated by the "big kids" who used it mostly for hockey. This was a rink of our own, and we elementary kids swarmed over the ice after school and often stayed on it until it was dark. When it snowed, we shoveled it clear. Once my parents even brought me and my siblings over to slide around after supper. I remember it was a very starry night.

The January thaw came and the ice rink melted. When it refroze, it was not as good. The next year the Fire Department did not return to remake the rink. They never did again. But it was a nice thing for them to do, if only that once, and it cost almost nothing and made a lot of little kids happy. Weird how I'm thinking about that rink and writing about the good deed those firemen did all these decades later.

That's the funny thing about good deeds, you never know how long they will be remembered.

Ice Storm

Watch your step.

Last night a small snowstorm crept through the Valley. Around dawn the temperature rose and turned the snow into rain. The result was pretty to the eye but treacherous to the foot, as I discovered as I walked to the bus stop in Northampton. 

The situation was no better when I arrived in downtown Amherst. 

Along the sidewalk I spotted this Valentine someone had lost which had been trampled in the snow and ice.

There's a metaphor of my love life in their somewhere, but I don't want to think about it.

I thought I might drop in on Miss Emily Dickinson to photograph how the icestorm had transformed her gravesite, but found that the gate had been blocked by the snow plows.

It was just as well that I did not do too much walking, as my classic Conz with their rubber soles were slip sliding all over the place.

However, I made it safely to UMass and have survived to blog again.

It's commonly said that the pressures of the presidency cause the occupants of the office to age prematurely. For example Bill Clinton entered the White House at the peak of a boyish middle-age and left needing heart by-pass surgery. A similar aging has occurred to President Bush. Here is the official photo of Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. 

This picture was taken last month.