Hamp Buildings 2008

 

New England is the land of bricks, at least as far as our urban architecture is concerned. It gives our cities and towns an old and dignified look, but perhaps too much so. That's why I like how this brick building in downtown Northampton shows up its stodgy neighbors by being painted a bright baby blue!

Across the street is the yellow brick building known as The Masonic. 

It was here that Calvin Coolidge had his law office, as explained on this historical plaque outside the building. (click photo to enlarge)

Nearly across from The Masonic is Kathy's Diner, where the 1950's never ended.

 



In the window of Hamp's Collectables Gallery I was amazed to see a genuine Spiro Agnew wastebasket! For you youngsters, Spiro Agnew was Richard Nixon's Vice President.

This is a true 1960's artifact, my brother and I had one in our bedroom when I was in grammar school. Agnew is portrayed as playing tennis because he was notorious for hitting people with his wild shots. He is holding a hard hat because he fashioned himself as a working class conservative.

He was also a crook, who ultimately had to resign from office when he was caught accepting bribes. Historians still debate whether Nixon's Watergate scandal was just politics or whether it has been dwarfed into insignificance by the crimes of later presidents. But no one ever doubts that Agnew was a criminal.

If you enlarge the photo by clicking on it, you will notice stickers are stuck on the Agnew wastebasket. These were obtained in bubble gum packages, and spoofed commercial products. The one most visible is "Minute Lice" for Minute Rice. Such corny stickers were smeared all over the lunch boxes to be found in The World Famous Thomas M. Balliet Elementary School.

To me that trash can is a real piece of nostalgia that I would gladly buy. But I didn't torture myself by going in to ask the price, since in my current financial state I know I could never afford it.

UMass Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life Michael Gargano has left for Louisiana State University. This graffiti on the side of the Fines Arts Center yesterday implies that the students are dancing in celebration. 

I'm not sure that's true. While he drew the displeasure of campus radicals who found him too conservative, I'm pretty sure those radicals would have found anyone in that position unacceptable. What is the point of being rebellious if you have no one to be rebellious against? My impression is that most students thought he was okay, although this UMass Collegian poll suggests otherwise. 

He will be missed. 23%
It's probably for the better. 51%
Vice Chancellor for what now? 26%

What a surprise to find this video on YouTube that has me in it which I never knew even existed. It is from a performance last summer in Northampton of The Johnny Philko Band. That's me in the green baseball cap on the left. Valley music videographer Jeff Ziff also makes a cameo appearance. The guy who keeps throwing away beer cups is Pine Pointer and Commerce grad Gary Caputo. 

 

When in England at a fairly large conference, retired General Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.

He answered by saying, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."

It became very quiet in the room.

Northampton Trestle of Doom

Retreat before danger.

Most every day I walk across this bridge over the Mill River as it passes through Northampton. 

I suppose there has always been a bridge there, but the current version is quite new, as you can see. 

Look from one side of the bridge and you can see the river as it placidly flows down from Smith College.

From the other side however, the water is rougher and you can see an old railroad trestle in the distance.

I've long intended to cross the river on that trestle, and today the thought gave birth to the deed. Or so I intended.

I started in the parking lot of the old National Felt building, which is currently used as a facility of Smith College. There was this van parked there, only I can't imagine what kind of business it represents. 

There is a dirt road that runs behind the old factory.

Opposite the factory is this kinda spooky looking wetlands.

Just past the factory I turned down into this little ravine.

 



There was a No Trespassing sign, but as always to us citizen journalists such notices are but a dare.

However, I realized I had made a mistake and gone the wrong way, so to reach the trestle I would have to climb this hill.

Climbing to the top of that hill would be slippery for sure, but fortunately instead of my Classic Conz I was wearing the trusty clodhoppers my former roommate Bert had given me.

It's a shame about Bert. Last weekend he relapsed, and in this program you're not given a second chance. Get high just once and out the door you go! That may seem harsh, but there is a long waiting list of people who want to get into these programs, so if you won't meet the bare minimum requirement, which is to stay sober, then it's only right to give some other poor addict a chance.

I will admit that on a few occasions knowing that if I got stoned I'd have to sleep in a snowbank that night kept me from submitting to cravings to get high. By getting stoned and getting kicked out Bert violated the terms of his parole, so he ended up back in prison. That was a cold and clear reminder to the rest of us of what sort of disasters await us should we weaken.

I only wish I could have helped Bert in some way, but I have all I can do to keep myself on the straight and narrow. Recovery is often described as a selfish program, because you can't really do anything for anyone else until you've got your own act together. Still, it hurts sometimes to see others swirling down the drain and not to be able to do anything about it. One of the worst experiences of my life was years ago when I had to watch Jay Libardi self-destruct. It's tragic, but it simply is not possible to help people who will not help themselves.

When I got to the top of the hill, I saw the trestle before me.

However once I got up to it, I could see that it was fenced off on the other side. It's hard to see the chain link fence in this picture, but there would be no way to continue once I had crossed. 

That was okay, I figured I would just go out on the trestle and take some pictures and maybe a little video. However when I got to where I should start across I realized for the first time that the boards were coated in white ice.

I decided it was too dangerous to continue. If I ever slipped on the ice and fell into the river there would be no one to help me. Only a few minutes in that icy water and hypothermia would cause me to slip beneath the surface unconscious. When you are sleeping under water, you have a very short life expectancy.

So I turned around and went back, preferring to be safe than sorry.


Earlier this week in Northampton I stumbled upon this sticker advertising a website.

 



It turned out to be a website devoted to urban graffiti, such as below. 

It has some pretty cool stuff to see. Check it out here.

What would Jerry do? That was the question Deadheads were asking last week when the surviving members of The Grateful Dead performed a concert the night before the Super Tuesday primaries on behalf of Barack Obama. 

When Jerry Garcia was alive he despised poltics, stating "There is never anyone to vote for but the lesser of two evils, and the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil." He also said he didn't want anyone to feel alienated from the band's music because of politics. "People come to our music from every direction," he said. "We don't judge anybody's trip."

So while Garcia might not have approved, Obama himself was grateful for the band's support, as stated in this video. 

 



Here is Phil Lesh, of all people, giving a political speech.



Oh well, live long enough and you'll see everything.

Hamp Passageways

And bye to one of the good guys. 

 

This headline in The Springfield Republican says it all.

So let's drop the subject.

This morning I woke up to the sound of pouring rain. I looked out the window next to my bed and saw the world looking all gloomy and wet.

I felt bummed out, but then I got mad at myself and remembered how lucky I am to even be here and alive on this day, no matter what the weather. Self-pity is a luxury I can't afford. I know that if I just stay sober, trust in God and stick with my program then everything is going to be okay.

Northampton is filled with alleyways and secret shortcuts. Over the years I've pretty much learned them all.

I can get from one end of downtown to the other without ever stepping foot on Main Street. Another back alley traveler is this Hadley farmtruck delivering fresh milk to the downtown restaurants.

Here is a popular shortcut that runs behind Thornes. It even has a name, Kirkland Avenue, but despite this big sign no one calls it that. They simply say "That passageway behind Thornes."

Here is the same passageway from the other end. 

Inbetween the passageway is smeared end to end with grafitti. Here's a statement from an unhappy tenant. 

Wouldn't it be easier just to take him to housing court? This door has barely an inch left for new graffiti.

 



Perhaps a psychic, foreseeing my future arrival, left this message.

A lot of effort went into portraying this rock star and her guitarist cat.

 



It's a pretty cool passage as back alley shortcuts go, so check it out next time you're in Hamp.

 

I'm saddened to hear of the death of Leonard Collamore (below center) best known perhaps as the creator of the popular local quiz show As Schools Match Wits. 

I never had the wits to go on that show, but I did have Collamore as a professor at Springfield Technical Community College. It was an American history course, which he taught in a dull monotone, but his lectures were redeemed by the fact that he was so obviously in love with his subject matter. He was a patriot in the old-fashioned sense, who thought the role of teaching history was to inspire you to be a good citizen and to play a role in the American experiment in self-government. Unlike so many modern history teachers, who think it is their duty to crush a student's patriotism in the name of "critical thinking," Collamore believed your sense of American history should be grounded in idealism. Dull speaker or not, we desperately need more history teachers like Leonard Collamore today.

Collamore was also a political figure as well, being elected and re-elected many times to various positions in municipal and county government. Perhaps most memorably he served as Charlie Ryan's chief of staff during Charlie's first three terms in the 1960's. That was where I first met Collamore, in the mayor's office, where my second grade class, on a field trip to City Hall, were invited for a minute or two to meet the mayor. In his prestigious position as Chief of Staff, it was Collamore's duty to pass out lollipops to us as Ryan shook our hands.

The last time I saw Collamore in person was at one of Charlie's inaugurals. He remembered me as one of his STCC students and also was aware of this website. He said he liked it that I was a political activist, but as a devout Kennedy Democrat he added that I should be "less partisan."

The history of the local Democrat Party machine, when it is written, will be a story of scandal, incompetence and shame. But the best historians will at least pause to note that Leonard Collamore was one of the good guys.

Buzz Off

Good luck well disguised.

The regional free paper Local Buzz, which bills itself as The Pioneer Valley's Online Journal of Culture, Commerce and Humor made a major announcement this week. They are literally living up to their slogan by killing the print version of their project and existing now purely online. Here is the key talent behind Local Buzz, jokingly posing with musical instruments. 

Local Buzzers Greg Saulmon, Josh Thayer and Bill Peters

While this may seem like a logical extension of its mission, the statement by editor Greg Saulmon sounds wistful in parts, even to the point of suggesting something bad has happened.

If you were reading these words in print, you'd be reading the last physical issue of Local Buzz that will hit the streets. We are in the process of converting to an online-only publication. It's a challenging process, but it's ultimately one that will offer many opportunities for us to explore new ways of storytelling, and to build on the idea of "collaborative journalism" that we presented as one of the resolutions in our 01.08 issue.

I'd said from the beginning that I ultimately saw Local Buzz becoming a Web site that also published a newspaper, rather than following the obligatory newspaper-with-static-Web-presence model. I'll admit that I didn't expect that evolution to happen quite so suddenly. But, as my great-great-grandmother once told me, "When life gives you lemons, squeeze them into the eyes of your enemies." The time to innovate is now, and we're going to give it our best shot.

Okay, but I don't see any lemons! It gets worse:

Some words of gratitude are in order: to the advertisers who've supported us and allowed us to present these stories; to our contributors, who've given us far more amazing writing, photography and ideas than I could've hoped for, and who believed in what we were trying to do; and, most of all, to our readers. I hope you've enjoyed this little window into the region we call home, and I hope you'll continue to follow our online exploration of what it means to live in the Pioneer Valley.

That reads like an obituary! Let's clear the air here with a quote from blogger Jeff Jarvis:

"Print is where words go to die."

If the internet is the future of all media, the sooner one embraces that future the brighter that future will be for anyone who makes their living writing. Yet it is writers who often seem the most reluctant to make the transition. It's as if they feel that being online, as opposed to being in print, is somehow a step down. This despite the fact that the internet, with its global reach, far surpasses the distributive power of any publication. I hate to say it, but I think some of the hesitation is pure ego.

The old dying media system was extremely elitist. In order to communicate to a mass audience in the pre-internet days you had to have access to expensive technology. You had to have a printing press, or a broadcasting tower, and all the technical know-how, licenses and unionized employees that implied. That meant 99% of the public could not print an article or go on television or on the radio, making those who did have such access enormously powerful, namely the reporters and writers who worked for the people who owned the printing presses and broadcast towers.

They could decide what people read. They could decide what people saw. They could decide what people heard. What's news? What they said was news. What matters? They'll let you know. The relationship in the old media was of a small elite talking down to a mass audience that lacked any means of communicating in the same mass way. Therefore there was a real status to being a media person, since you had a voice nobody else had, no one of course except your other friends in the media priesthood, a membership you had to purchase with a pricey college degree.

But that's all over.

I have a friend who used to be a local music critic. His job epitomized the special status of the media priesthood. When he went to musical events everyone kissed his ass. The management of the club where the band was playing wanted to make sure he had a good seat, because a positive review in the paper would bring in more customers. The manager might even send a few rounds of free drinks over to my friend's table. The band itself couldn't wait to talk to my friend, since a good review in the paper would help their career. They would ask him to come backstage and meet all the members of the band and of course there would be partying people hanging around as well who all too willing to include him..

My friend got all this special treatment because of all the customers (and my friend the critic never paid) he was the only one among the people in the room whose opinion mattered. If everyone in the audience loved the show, but the critic did not, then the whole Valley would hear that the show was bad. That was power, a power so pervasive he didn't really consciously recognize he had it until it slipped away.

When the internet came along my friend was no longer the only one in the room with a voice. The fans, the fanatical fans who know all the details of the band's history and were far more expert on the group than my friend could ever be, were writing reviews of the local shows that far surpassed what he could do in an eight paragraph review in the newspaper. The paper printed one picture from the show, not taken by the critic of course, as union rules required that a separate person, a staff photographer, do that. The fans took their own pictures and put dozens up on their blogs. The fans in the blogosphere could collectively cover a show in far greater depth than what any newspaper critic could do. Audiences didn't need critics anymore, the audience itself were the voices that mattered.

When my friend lost his job in a round of cutbacks designed to keep his paper afloat a little while longer, he said to me bitterly, "The internet has ruined everything!" Well, I guess if you're still paying off the loans on that journalism degree, only to see some local blogger who now has a readership bigger than your dying newspaper, that can seem pretty discouraging.

 However, if you put aside the ego disappointment and just embrace the new medium, the internet offers a writer far more freedom and economic opportunities than the old media did. If you are good, then you can attract an audience online. If you can attract an audience then you can sell that audience to advertisers. You can work without an editor and you get to keep the money from the ads for yourself. From a writer's perspective, what's there not to love about that?

On the other hand, it's change and change is scary. You could be lazy at newspapers. Somebody usually told you what story to cover, relieving you of the responsibility of finding a topic. Somebody else took the pictures. Somebody else took care of the profit side of things. For a long time journalism didn't change very much. You first learned how to function in a newsroom culture by working for your college paper, and the lessons you learned would serve you well in every newsroom you ever worked in for the rest of your life. Now the newsroom is dying, the modern media worker works from their home computer, gathers their stories on their own, takes their own pictures and video and sells their own ads - or has the Great God Google sell ads for them. We are all publishers. We are all photographers. We all broadcast on YouTube. We all sell ads. We are all media now.

So buck up Local Buzz people! Being kicked into cyberspace is like being told your family fortune, formerly invested in the Titanic, has now been invested in the Space Shuttle. In the race into cyberspace you're ahead of the New York Times, which eventually will have no choice but to follow you there. Take advantage of being ahead of the curve. Don't waste energy yearning for an elitist media that is dying, and deserves to die. 

 

Some people said they thought I was being a little too snarky when I pointed out the absence of many black-skinned attendees at the Obama for President rally in Amherst yesterday. After all, everyone knows that aside from the students, the population of Amherst consists primarily of rich white people. To make amends here is a picture of downtown Amherst's African restaurant Bakus which as you can see is prominently displaying an Obama sign in its window. 

This afternoon there were ten or so people using the new ice skating rink at Amherst's Kendrick Park. Pretty much every time I go by there are at least few people on it, so I guess you would have to characterize the project as a success. 

Finally, Amherst singer/songwriter Will Adams has a new video out, with images from the mighty Connecticut River. 

Deval in Amherst 2008

Obamadroids rally.

 



Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick came to Amherst this morning to hold a rally for presidential candidate Barack Obama ahead of this Tuesday's primary. Most of the Valley's political establishment is backing Hillary Clinton, and held a large rally for her a few days ago in Springfield, so this Amherst rally was meant to be a kind of counter-rally by the anti-Clinton forces.

There was a pretty good crowd considering what a cold, dreary morning it was today, but I would have expected it to have been even larger. Conspicuous in their absence: Black people. 

Part of the problem is that the rally was thrown together with just 36 hours notice and there were contradictory reports in the media as to when the rally would be. The Hampshire Gazette reported the rally would begin at ten, but the Springfield Republican said 9:30. Deval was late, so in the end it didn't start at either time.

WWLP-TV22 was there interviewing the audience.

Organizers took advantage of the event to recruit volunteers for future campaigning if Obama should win the nomination. 

There were lots of homemade signs, such as this rather cute one. 

State Representative Ellen Story (left) was there greeting her constituents.

Town Hall types were also on hand, such as Gerald Weiss and Town Manager Larry Shaffer.



Interestingly, I overheard the person on the left tell the Town Manager, "Larry Kelly should hold a Romney rally and see if anyone shows up." They all laughed.

About quarter past Governor Patrick suddenly appeared.

Despite keeping the crowd waiting in the cold, Patrick received a warm welcome. There is no denying the guy has a lot of charisma. As to whether he's lived up to people's expectations of what his governorship would be, well that's another matter.

The first time I ever met Deval Patrick was in Amherst, at a meeting he held at the Jones Library just days after he announced his candidacy for governor. He was a virtual unknown at the time, but I alerted the readers of this blog that he was a person to watch - and we watched him march right into office! Today was the first time I've seen Deval in person since. 

I've seen Barack Obama in person. In 2004 Mitch Ogulewicz and I were attending the Democrat National Convention in Boston when suddenly Obama came running past us and down the street towards the convention hall, apparently late for something. Today of course it would be impossible for him to just jog down the street like that.

I hope Obama gets the nomination. I think it would be easier for John McCain to beat him than Hillary.
 

 
Tomorrow is the big game, which made me think of this Amherst restaurant The Souper Bowl. I hear that they have the best New England Clam Chowder in town.

They also play up the football angle to the max.

GO NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS!!!