Free at UMass 2008

Free food, free music, free laughs, free Tibet.

I've often said that if you pay for lunch at UMass it's because you're too lazy to search out the free food that is always being given away daily by some group or cause. Of course you have to be a fan of hamburgs, hot dogs and pizza (lots and lots of pizza) but that's no problem for someone like me who loves junk food cuisine. Today's invitation to a free lunch arrived by means of a cement wall.

I was suspicious about whether the Chancellor would have anything to do with the event, and I realized I was right when I arrived and saw that it was really a protest rally by the union that represents the graduate students who teach on campus.

The University President was present, at least in effigy.

This protester wanted to give the impression that she was willing to let it all hang out.

Later the bare-assed babe danced with a rat. 

I don't know why the graduate students have been without a contract for fourteen months. Perhaps the students are making unreasonable demands. Perhaps the administration is being stubborn. Most likely it is a combination of the two. In any case, I consider any event where free food is served to be worth attending. 

That was not the only protest on campus today. Over by the Student Union a group of students supporting China confronted a group demanding freedom for Chinese occupied Tibet.

 



Confronting might be too strong a word. The Chinese students were incredibly polite, and passed out leaflets with statements on them like, "The Free Tibet Movement is not a passion for freedom, but a distaste for peace and hope."

Gee, whatever happened to the classic old slogans like, "Up against the wall, motherfucker!"


It's been a long, cold winter but it's finally over.

Elsewhere on campus, a shark was prowling the campus center to alert people to the upcoming student Comedy Jam.

The public is invited and at my favorite price - FREE! So stop by for a few laughs. 

Every week UMass puts on a recent movie for free so that the students will have something to do besides sitting around the dorms drinking and getting high. However, from what I've seen it doesn't work because the students all show up for the film stoned anyway! Oh well, at least they saw a good one in the latest Johnny Depp film Sweeney Todd.

It's a musical, and I usually dislike films where the characters suddenly burst into song. However this one I enjoyed despite some flaws. The movie is absurdly violent, and the subplot about human meat pies is silly, but the overall story of vengeful justice is pretty good. I recommend it.


A little girl asked her mother, 'How did the human race
appear?' The mother answered, 'God made Adam and Eve and they had children and so was all mankind made.'

Two days later the girl asked her father the same question.

The father answered, 'Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.' The confused girl returned to her mother and said, 'Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?'

The mother answered, 'Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his.'

He Bombed in Springfield

Revelations from the early Neal era.

While continuing to rummage through my vaults, I stumbled upon this gem of a lost document. It's a Valley Advocate article by veteran reporter Stephanie Kraft that was published in September of 1992. This is not the complete two part article, it includes only those parts I considered still relevant to current issues. None of this has never appeared online as part of the Valley Advocate's archives or anywhere else, despite its obvious value as an essential documentation of some of the forces that led to Springfield's tragic decline.

 

He Bombed in Springfield

Springfield taxpayer's are still paying
for Richie Neal's mismanagement.

by Stephanie Kraft
for The Valley Advocate
September 3rd issue 1992




Why is Technical High School, a prime piece of city owned real estate, still an unused, boarded up shell?

A fine 81 year old brick structure in an ideal location on quiet Elliot Street near the Library, the Quadrangle and St. Michael's Cathedral, Technical High was shut down along with Classical High because it was thought that building the new Central High School made them unnecessary. Technical High was slated to be converted to market-rate housing - a good idea, if only it had worked out.

When Mayor Richard Neal named a preferred developer from among eight companies contending for the $9 million project, it was Springfield Schoolhouse Development Association of Boston, one of whose principals was Sen. John Brennan of Malden. Like Neal, Brennan is a moderately conservative politician with strong Irish interests. Brennan was also chairperson of the Special Senate Committee on Redistricting - a good man for an ambitious politician to know. As recently as September 1990, Brennan's name turned up on Neal's campaign finance report as a contributor of $250.

Schoolhouse Development put down a very small deposit - $5,000 - on the building it was expected to pay $500,000 for. No work began. Yet Neal extended the purchase-sale agreement for three disastrous years, during which the city could not look for another developer. Legally, the city was still the owner, but no one had insurance on the empty school and no one saw to its maintenance.

Vandals stripped valuable copper piping and other trim, which caused water damage and made the building less valuable than it was when plans for housing were first broached. The police and fire departments warned the City Council that the building would be ruined if it were not secured. The Technical High story became such a symbol of the city's laxity in maintaining surplus properties waiting for sale or development that even Springfield Union reporter Carol Malley called it "a model of city government at its worst."

Finally - after Neal went to Washington as Congressman in 1989 - Mayor Mary Hurley ordered the Springfield Redevelopment Authority to secure the building.

Ironically, by 1989, the School Department was paying $798,000 a year to rent portable classrooms. (One of the most sensible suggestions made in the aftermath of the Schoolhouse Development fiasco came from School Superintendent Peter Negroni, who asked that Technical be used for some school support operations, thus freeing up classroom space in buildings owned by the School Department. But nothing was ever acted on.)

Today, Technical High School - a beautiful, historic building on one of the city's most charming streets - is still empty, damaged inside, wasting away in a time when the need for housing and for school space are both acute.

Then there is the larger, more appalling story of the Hollywood project, a $14 million South End development effort that had mixed results, involved highly questionable actions by the Springfield Redevelopment Authority and is still costing the city money. Neal announced this development with great excitement, and appointed all the members of the committee that shepared it through to its unsatisfactory completion.

The Hollywood project was touted as the salvation of the South End neighborhood comprising Dwight Street Extension, Maple, Oswego and Richelieu Streets. Run down housing, drug-related fights and other crime had disrupted the lives of hundreds of tenants in apartment blocks there. Plans included the acquisition of 31 properties, some demolition and millions of dollars worth of rehab to produce 174 units of subsidized and 64 of market-rate housing. Funding would come from a combination of public and private sources.

Most of the project was completed and it did improve the quality of the housing stock in the neighborhood, though some poor workmanship - cracked walls painted over but not plastered, porch railings not built so as to be safe for children - was reported by tenants from the beginning. But the development wasn't up to the quality promised by the city and developers Lester Fontaine and Paul L. Oldenberg - in particular promises about security - and today conditions in that part of town are hardly better than when the plan first went on the drawing boards.

Just weeks ago, one landlord told the Advocate he was furious at the way crime problems from the redeveloped apartment blocks - especially the vacant buildings never rehabbed for market-rate housing - spill over onto his property.

The failure to complete the market rate phase was the damning feature of the Hollywood venture. The SRA bought back the four undeveloped parcels that had been slated for rehab into market-rate housing for more than it sold them for in the first place. The vacant buildings still blight the neighborhood and there are still lively suspicions that someone wasn't serious about getting the market rate component of the project built in the first place.

"A lot of people who are residents in the south End believe there was never any intention to build Phase Three," says City Councilor and outspoken SRA critic Tony Ravosa Jr. who is challenging Neal this November for the Congressional seat.

"I don't think you can blame the economy for the reasons Phase III never moved forward. You have to take a look at the whole package and how much the buildings were sold for and how much they were bought back for. It was a cute deal and I'm not sure we'll ever get the real answers. This is one of the great debacles of the Neal administration," says Ravosa Jr.

Hers'a an example fo the funny arithmetic that went into the Hollywood project:

On July 31, 1984, Paul L. Oldenberg sold Lester Premo, a real estate agent who also was the city's tax title officer and a member of Hollywood Associates II, four properties in the Hollywood area for $432,000.

The very same day, Premo sold those properties plus two others on Bayonne and Saratoga Street to Springfield Renovation Associates (an arm of the Springfield Redevelopment Authority) for 833,610.10. The two extra properties he threw in had cost him a totla of $180,000, according to the Registry of Deeds. So Premo apparently pocketed $221,619.10 at the city's expense.

On August 15, 1984, then-Mayor Neal named Lester Fontaine and Oldenberg as principals in Hollywood Associates II Limitied Partnership, developers for the Hollywood project.

Weeks later, Hollywood Associates II bought the four properties for $495,899.

(Interestingly, though the HUD forms used for such sales leave space for deposits paid by "redevelopers" in this case the form shows the city didn't charge Fontaine and Oldenberg a deposit on this purchase of half a million dollars worth of property.)

Hollywood Associates II failed to redevelop the four properties and on May 31, 1988 sold them back to the Springfield Redevelopment Authority for $749,325.78 - over 50 percent more than they had paid for them in the first place.

In another transaction much publicized but still not completely understood, Springfield Restoration Association paid Premo $1,684,100 for another 11 properties he had bought only a day and a half earlier for $1,207,500. Dominic Sarno, who was head of the Springfield redevelopment Authority and of Springfield Renovation Association, later said publicy that Premo received the generous payment because he had incurred carrying and maintenance costs.

Sarno later admitted under questioning from the City Council that he did not know how much those alleged expenses had amounted to, or whether Premo had made a profit.

Why did all this money change hands - with the city taking a loss every time - for a development that was mediocre at best and never finished?

Neal blamed "the economy" for the developers failure to build the martket-rate phase, as well as the fact that crime problems had reasserted themselves by the time the subsidized housing was finished.

That excuse isn't good enough. If Richie Neal had forced the developers to build the market-rate housing first, laying the cornerstone of quality for the project, the area would have stood a better chance of improving and the public money would have been better invested.

As for the financial highjinks of the Springfield Redevelopment Authority (SRA) Neal put no curbs on those. On the contrary in 1987 - after the Hollywood Project hijinks - he made Sarno head of the city's Community Development Department as well as the SRA.

When Bob Markel became mayor, he ended the era that had Sarno as the head of the SRA and the head of the Community Development department, a situation with untold conflict of interest opportunities, because Community Development takes in federal funds and then disburses them to the SRA.

Hollywood Associates principal Leon Fontaine referred all our questions to Sarno, who did not return our calls. Meanwhile, the city has to keep plodding along with payments on the debt for the publicly funded part of the project. A total of nearly $4 million is still owed for a $3 million bond issue and a $3 million federal loan that went to finance Hollywood.

State analysts noted that while the city went from a $6.6 million deficit to a surplus of $9 million under Neal's predecessor Ted Dimauro, the Neal years ended with the city some $10 million in the hole - and the big cuts in state aid had not yet set in.

Neal's administration was rapped by the the Local Services Division of the state Department of Revenue in 1989 for what DOR analysts called "a general and longstanding weakness in sound fiscal management. Particularly in the area of expenditures in excess of appropriation and payrolls, there are gaps in the control of expenditures that allow overspending to occur without warning," was the stern verdict from DOR.

Former City Councilor Mitch Ogulewicz recalls many examples of "overspending without warning" situations he said were difficult for the Council to question because Neal became angry and defensive:

MOCA - "When MOCA (Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs) ran up a deficit in excess of $400,000 because events and programs were contracted for without the programs being self sufficient, I remember him coming to a Council meeting very angry," says Ogulewicz. "He cloaked himself in red, white and blue and felt you were unpatriotic if you complained about the deficit."

Springfield Central - Late in 1986, according to Ogulewicz, the mayor first directed Springfield Central to do some ornamental work downtown, and later went to the Council insisting on an appropriation. "At our first meeting in 1987, what we call our organizational meeting, when we elected the president and don't usually do financial business, he came in under a suspension of rules for an appropriation of $100,000 for Springfield Central," Ogulewicz recalls. "Two of us objected, Vin DiMonico and I. We wanted to ask questions about where this $100,000 appropriation was going. The mayor had no right to direct Springfield Central to spend moneys without the City Council having appropriated the money first."

Neal's administration made funding for Springfield Central a high priority, which strengthened his ties to Springfield Newspaper's publisher David Starr, a leader of Springfield Central. Another link between Neal and Springfield Central is David Kenney, who was an aide to Ed Boland, Springfield's Congressman before Neal. Kenney now works in Neal's Springfield office and doubles as clerk of Springfield Central Business District Inc. one of Springfield Central's three corporations.

The Police Department - The DOR noted that in the city's 1989 budget, the Police Department's payroll was "underfunded" by a whopping $l.2 million because the Neal administration had gone on a hiring spree the year before. Says Ogulewicz, "One of the problems leading to the police department payroll underfunding in 1990 was that 50-odd employees on that payroll did not have authorized and funded positions. But the mayor ordered it."

The result? Subsequent layoffs of police, which were demoralizing for the city and a waste of money. Laments Ogulewicz, "We spent thousands of dollars training police officers who now have jobs in Chicopee, Tampa, any place you can name."

This is the DOR's analysis of the fiscal malaise that built up during the Neal years, and struck in force during Mary Hurley's early days as mayor: "Had the city not appropriated virtually every dollar of increased revenue each year, but rather smoothed out the growth rate in the budgets, holding to a more sustainable rate of growth, the need for major cutbacks would have been greatly moderated and in many areas avoided."

Here is a translation in street English from a source who asked not to be identified, "He spent money on glitz, green triangles, fireworks. It was "Take care of everybody. Never say no. If somebody calls up saying, 'My daughter needs a job for the summer' give her a job." It gives you a hold on the caller (the summer job patronage mess was also cleaned up by Markel, with a lottery). In the summer the parks had to close early because he had hired twice as many lifeguards as they needed and five or six times as many recreation leaders. He didn't care what happened after him."

"In 1989 Richie Neal went to Washington and laughed all the way to the House bank, while the taxpayers of the City of Springfield were left holding the bag," says Ravosa, who continues his research into the city's debt service. "Within a matter of months after he left, the city was forced for the first time in its history to enter into a deficit reduction plan with the state Department of Revenue, to pick up the tab for the Neal legacy."

 



So you can see from the preceding excerpts from an old Advocate article how the path was paved for the Control Board to be put in place long before they actually arrived in Springfield in 2004.

But enough politics. I like the saying on this sign outside an Amherst Church. 

Pleasant Street Stroll 2008

Sights of interest.

I'm starting a new round of therapy at this address on Pleasant Street in Northampton. Notice the stone post in the foreground. That's an old tying post for a horse, however not many of those (the horses or the posts) are to be seen on Pleasant Street these days. 

I don't know what to expect from this new psychiatrist. I guess I just want to learn how to live sober like the Earthlings do. I've wasted a lot of time with my obsessions with drugs and sex, but God has given me the chance to do something different with the rest of my life.

In the meantime, what could be more pleasant than to take a stroll down Pleasant Street? Here is the theater that bears its name. It was in danger of closing recently, but has managed to survive for the time being. 

In front there is an advertisement for the new Rolling Stones movie. It is by Martin Scorsese, who is famous for the fantastic quality of his films. This movie has the potential to turn on a whole new generation to the Stones, since many of today's young people have an incomplete understanding of what makes the Stones so special. 

This is the Northampton satellite office of the Springfield Republican.

Mo Turner of the Valley Advocate turned me on to this restaurant Sylvester's. Its menu is a combination of health food and all American dining, giving you the best of both. 

The prices are very reasonable too. The only downside is that finding parking nearby can be a bitch.

Here is the legendary Pearl Street nightclub. I saw a great Hot Tuna show there in the 1980's where Paul Kantner made a guest appearance. 

This is The Elevens, a Valley music scene mecca for years under a variety of owners and names. For young Valley rock n' rollers with dreams of the Big Time, this is where they take their first steps towards stardom. 

With live music seven nights a week, the constantly changing line-ups are reported on chalkboards in the window.

Nearby is the amazing Gleason's, the premier place for Valley outdoorsmen for years.

How many years? Well, I used to get my boyscout camping gear there, and that was a long time ago.

On this Pleasant Street wall is scrawled this wise advice.

 



Elsewhere in Northampton, remember last month when I told you how I went to Andiamo's on a gift certificate my sister gave me?

Well, I guess I cashed it in just in time because when I went past yesterday the joint was closed and shuttered. 

I'm a little surprised, because they always seemed to have at least a few customers. However, it was a Greek restaurant and a friend of mine who considers himself an expert on Greek cuisine told me that their menu was way too limited.

Finally, here's a typically weird Amherst bumper sticker. 

Touch of Spring

Nice day.

As the sun set on Northampton today at dusk, for the first time this year it felt more like the onset of a night in early spring rather than late winter.

Earlier today I went to downtown Amherst. Someone should tell these residents that Christmas is a long time gone.

This place is serving as the headquarters for the Ed O'Reilly for Senate campaign. He is a Democrat challenging fellow Democrat incumbent John Kerry. He feels that Kerry is not liberal enough. What, the nomination of the Socialist Party was already taken?

While O'Reilly can't win, the fact that Kerry has to fight him off will weaken him in November. Meanwhile, one of the two Republicans fighting for the privilege of retiring John Kerry will be appearing in Springfield in a few days. For details click here.

Possibly the most popular place to eat in downtown, at least among students, is Amherst's Antonio's Pizza.

It is also the site of a Masslive webcam that broadcasts to the world everyone who walks by.

If you should walk by Antonio's and take note of what time it is, when you get to a computer you can go to the webcam and download the image recorded when you were there. For example, here is me this afternoon just standing there in my bright red Conz sneakers.

Could only stay for a couple minutes though before I had to keep on truckin'.

A little flower bloomed in front of my house today.



Hallelujah, spring has sprung!

My friend Becky sent me this photo she took of a red-tailed hawk that appeared at her house in Northampton.

The Internet Revolution 2008

The media evolution accelerates.

The other day I felt a twinge of sadness to see a former Local Buzz box sitting lonely and abandoned on Main Street in Northampton.

This Buzz box in Amherst appears to have been taken over by another publication. 

Now Local Buzz is found exclusively online, where they are doing a great job. Their specialty appears to be the stories other miss, or at least the angle they missed, and often with humorous results. For example, when the Amherst Committee for Excellence sent out a recent letter demanding higher academic standards in the public schools, Local Buzz pointed out that they appeared to have less than excellent standards for their own writing.

As I said before, Local Buzz is lucky to have been banished to cyberspace. It's a bit like being banished to Beverly Hills, that's where you should want to be anyway. The importance of focusing on cyberspace over all other media platforms was reinforced by this news item released last week:

According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 — the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

Internet ad revenue in 2007 grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006.

So advertising on cyberspace is soaring at the same time it is plummeting in print media. You don't have to have a crystal ball to conclude that if the trend of ten percent losses per year continue, then print media has a life expectancy of less than a decade. I doubt print will fade quite that quick but either today's print publications establish themselves as companies making the bulk of their money online or they'll be in real danger of going out of business.

That's why every print publication that wants to survive long term needs to make their webpage their number one priority. The only primary purpose their printed version now serves is to finance their transition to the net. But that revenue is falling fast, so speed is of the essence.

What's interesting is that the traditional media didn't see and react to their impending demise sooner. The internet dates back to the 1960's when the government first developed the basic concept for military purposes. The idea was that there would need to be a way to communicate after all the telephone poles and radio towers had been knocked down in a nuclear war. If computers could interconnect, forming a world wide net, then communication would still be theoretically possible even after they dropped the Big One.

As it turned out, the nukes were never dropped, but the internet the military helped create found its uses. The first onboard, not surprisingly, were the scientists, who found that it was easier and faster to communicate with their colleagues around the world by mailing them electronically via the internet than by the post office. E-mail made it possible to unite the scientific community as never before.

Next onboard were the extremists - the Nazi's, the Maoists, the Flat Earthers and other kooks who couldn't get their message out any other way. It become apparent that this medium, which was global and therefore not restricted by the laws of any government, could be a platform for ideas that could find no expression elsewhere.

One of the most desired and restricted commodities is sex, and the unregulated internet became fertile ground for something that had previously been widely taboo - pornography. In fact you could actually sell it online. Some people hate to admit it, but the first successful business model online was the distribution and selling of pornography.

Despite all the scientific knowledge, extremist politics and hot porn to be found online, the audience for it all remained very small. The problem was you had to be a real geek to access any of it. The hardware was expensive, but the real barrier was that carrying out the simplest commands required the typing of lengthy codes. The average person was never going to get that geeky in order to come online.

Enter Bill Gates and his Windows. Some critics complain that he stole the software from companies he drove out of business, but the truth is that however he got it, Gates revolutionized the internet by replacing the lengthy command codes with simple icons you could click on. That meant that even a child could go online and do sophisticated research or create new content. Windows meant that cyberspace was no longer a restricted zone where only the technologically sophisticated could go. Cyberspace was for everybody.

The late 1990's and early 2000's were essentially a period in which the colonization of cyberspace by regular people occurred. For the first time there was a real audience out there of millions of normal consumers and average citizens that you reach online. It was discovered that you could make good money online, selling everything from books to refrigerators. You could also raise money for political campaigns easier than ever before and could reach the electorate with low-cost candidate webpages and ads.

But the real revolutionary possibilities lie in mass media. For one, the internet was not just another new addition to the media marketplace - instead it was the ultimate media. You could watch it, like TV. You could read it, like a newspaper or magazine. You could hear it like a radio. The internet is all known forms of media rolled into one. How could something so obviously superior to any other media outlet not succeed?

Yet the economic model online is much the same. Newspapers, TV and radio stations all make their money the same way. They offer material they feel will attract an audience, and then sell access to that audience to advertisers. It is the same in cyberspace. He who gets the most hits can charge the highest price and make the most money, exactly as it is today in traditional media.

So why was traditional media caught so flat-footed by the migration to cyberspace? Part of it is that the media profession was let down by the people who should have been on top of these changes. A certain Luddite mentality prevailed that was partly the result of journalism schools who were staffed by technological illiterates. They wasted their student's money by training them for a newsroom that no longer exists. 

The editors and managers in traditional media also failed to react in time because they were blinded by the traditions and status of their positions. The internet has made everyone a potential news reporter, radio jock or video star. Old media just didn't know how to react to this democratization of mass media access that had previously been reserved for a credentialed elite. "Who are these amateurs?" they cried, not recognizing the people who used to be called their audience.

Fortunately, there is little for any current traditional media writer to fear about these changes. Anyone who can gather useful information and present it to an audience in a clear and concise way will always be in demand. In fact, there are more opportunities for writers online then there ever was in traditional media. For the most talented, cyberspace offers a chance to be free of corporate control and be liberated from the restrictions of working for a boss. If you've got the talent, go out and make your own audience and then cash in on ads. No good writer needs to work for a company anymore if they don't want to.

But before that can happen, the old media has to admit to itself that its day of print dominance is almost done, and that cyberspace offers them their best hope for survival. So far they seem determined to try to milk their old technology of printing presses and broadcasting towers to the bitter end, and for them the end may indeed be bitter.


Wow, I can't believe that my friend Hwei-Ling Greeney was defeated for re-election yesterday in the Amherst town election! It must have been that picture on her website of her posing with a zombie-like John Kerry that did her in!

The other candidate I supported, Stephanie O'Keefe, won but now everyone tells me I made a mistake because she's a flaming liberal. Perhaps I should have consulted Boss Kelley first. Here is O'Keefe looking like Big Brother in this Mary Carey photo.

Oh well, I supported O'Keefe because she was a pioneering blogger. Therefore if she is a flaming liberal, then hopefully she will be a transparent, blogging flaming liberal. It's a bad omen however, that her blog appears to be dead.

Lost Local History

Crimes against time.

Greetings and salutations upon the Feast of Fools.

Here's something that really pisses me off. I was over by the Academy of Music in Northampton when I noticed this commemorative stone and decided to check it out. It turns out that beneath the stone is a time capsule planted on the bicentennial in 1976 and due to be opened in 2076. I'll be sure to mark my calendar. The stone also commemorates something else, but I can't tell what it is because someone has swiped the other plaque! 

Who took it? Most likely a crack addict or some kind of junkie looking to sell the plaque for scrap metal. I don't know who to have more contempt for, the druggie that stole it or the dealer who bought it and who must have known full well what it was. This kind of crime is sadly common. In Springfield, a compelling rumor persists that a lot of the copper from the old Tech High was stolen by a politically connected person. In Amherst, someone stole half of the two plaques commemorating the old Elm Grove that had to be cut down to make the Fine Arts Center and Herter Hall at UMass.

It's so hard to come up with the money and the will to preserve the past. On the rare occasions when we do, it is an unforgivable outrage to have the displays vandalized. However, sometimes things that vanish reappear. For example, last month I wondered what became of the bus shelter that used to be in front of the Amherst Post Office. 

I never did find out what caused it to go away, but I noticed the other day that it's back. 

I will be happy to make use of it on my frequent trips to downtown Amherst.

Meanwhile, on this street in Northampton, I noticed an odd form of vandalism done to a street sign. Someone had drawn a hoola hoop on the image located on a safety sign.

I saw another such image over on West Street.



What on Earth? Suddenly it occurred to me what it was. The images are part of a campaign by the fans of the psychedelic jazz-rock fusion band The String Cheese Incident. One of their promotional icons is the hula hoop. 

Captain Skypilot Ken Babbs the Intrepid Traveler (below left) was second in command to Ken Kesey in the Merry Pranksters and is a fan of the band.

 



Here is Captain Babbs with the String Cheese Incident.

Yesterday I got a package in the mail from Captain Ken. Photo by Shane.

In the package was two discs and this note.

 



I will watch these discs and then report to you what was on them.

Meanwhile, let's listen to The String Cheese Incident in concert.