Incident at Smith

Free speech under attack.

 



An incident happened last week at Northampton's Smith College that attracted little media attention but perhaps should have. Ryan Sorba, author of an unreleased but already controversial book titled The Born Gay Hoax attempted to give a speech presumably based on his belief that homosexuality is not determined primarily by genetics.

Speaking for myself, I definitely have the sense of having been gay my whole life. If it is a "lifestyle choice" then it was one I made too early in life to be conscious of doing it. But what exactly Sorba's theory is was not possible to ascertain because angry mobs of chanting protesters made it impossible for him to speak.

I didn't attend the event. The person who alerted me to it, as well as to a site with some photos and videos of the incident, was local writer and photographer Ben Duffy, whom some of you may remember as an occasional contributor to this website. He sent me the following email: 

Ben Duffy

Tom , I thought that you might want to take a look at these pictures and videos. They are astounding.

I've noticed from your blog that you seem to harbor a hatred toward the so-called "religious Right", due to the fact that they think that your sexual behavior is immoral. Well, I do too.

In any case, you're still free to do it. Here's the BIG LIE of the homosexual lobby--that they just want to secure the freedom of two consenting adults to do what they want to do behind closed doors. In fact, that is NOT the case. What they want is for everyone to approve of it, nay--to CELEBRATE it.

The educational system is their vehicle. They'll get right down there in the elementary school if they need to.

I remembered once how you mention the supposedly "anti-gay" Mike Huckabee, and how you remembered a time when Republicans just wanted to stay out of your bedroom. Well guess what--we still do. Even Mike Huckabee approves of Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court case that found a RIGHT to Sodomy in the Constitution. Mike Huckabee is in no way suggesting that cops should be running around, breaking down doors and arresting homosexuals in their acts of indecency. He just wants the right to SAY that it is indecent.

And that's the freedom that is in jeopardy in the United States today. Frankly, the "gay rights movement"-- aka the homosexual lobby, aka the sodomy gestapo--is the greatest threat to our freedoms today. They will silence anyone who gets in their way. If this video doesn't convince you, just Google Tyler Chase Harper. Or look into the San Diego and Providence firefighters who have been forced to march in Gay Pride Parades. OR look at the Christian activists who were arrested at the Philadelphia gay pride parade for engaging in peaceful protest. Or the way that the homosexual lobby shut down Catholic Charities of Boston because they refused to put children in the unhealthy environment of homosexual parents.

If I were a bumper sticker person, I'd have one made that says "homosexuals stole my right to vote". I don't buy this bullshit that we can't vote on gay marriage because it is a "civil right". Voting is a civil right, gay "marriage" is a judicial fabrication. What happened here on June 15, 2007 was tyrannical. That was the day that the government stopped working for us and we started working for the government. Honestly, I have never seen such a dishonest circumvention of democracy in my life.

Homosexuals are not the victims. Homosexuals are the aggressors. Their rights are not in jeopardy, but the rest of ours are.

BEN

Sheesh, it's a good thing I don't require my friends to agree with me on every issue! Actually I don't argue with people who try to tell me my queerness is immoral. I just say:

Fuck you, it's my body and I'll do what I want!

Anyway, if the past is any guide, Sorba's book is just a lot of word games designed to make hatred and ignorance seem respectable. But that's beside the point. Any attack on any public speaker, regardless of what they are saying, is an attack on the free speech rights of every member of the community. If anyone is shouted down into silence, then anyone who has anything to say is at risk of censorship. Always it is the speech we find most offensive that we must fight most vigorously to defend. That those values are not respected on today's college campuses, where the leaders of our future are being trained, is more than sad. It's frightening.

To its credit, the president of Smith College released a public statement expressing regret over the incident, which is more than UMass did over the Mike Adams affair in which the speaker was practically chased off the stage. But we obviously still have a ways to go to restore open thought and freedom of speech to our institutions of higher learning.

To see a detailed account, complete with amazing videos, of the unfortunate events at Smith, CLICK HERE.

Meanwhile, the Valley Press Club held it's annual roast in Springfield the other night. I didn't go to that either, but Bill Dusty did and filed a report on his website. Here is a picture he took of attendees Mike Dobbs, who keeps a foot in both old and new media with his gig with The Reminder and his multiple blogs, with Jim Polito, the former TV40 dude who now has a new gig in the Worcester area. 

What was unique about this roast was that for the first time it was made known through the inter-media grapevine (more efficient in its own way than the Associated Press) that local bloggers would not be unwelcome if they attended. That's a far cry from the days of old, when the roasts were very elite affairs where only true insiders attended and Dave Starr always had a table in front for skits such as local reformers Bob and Karen Powell being ridiculed as "trailer trash."

Augies Burns

A serious blow to the poor.

 



An apartment block in Northampton at 11 Bridge Street, universally known as "Augies" because of the landlord, August A. Woicekoski, burned last night, injuring four and leaving all the residents homeless. It had a reputation as a flophouse inhabited by lots of boozers, crackheads and junkies. Initially rumors swept Hamp that the fire was caused by the careless use of a crack pipe. However, later news accounts say it was a cigarette. Whatever. 

The important thing is that this represents a serious loss of affordable housing in Northampton. Like Amherst before it, downtown Northampton is becoming a place where only the rich and students in dorms can live. And (ahem) people in half-way houses.

Near the fire scene, I came upon this bizarre message taped to a mailbox. 

It is a drawing of a phone and on the screen this is what it says:

Text Message:

I wanted to do
this face to
face, but know
you know.
I don't want
you to work
here anymore.
If you want to
talk about it
we can but my
decision is final.

Apparently someone got fired in a rather impersonal manner. Apparently that person is getting their revenge by making the means of their firing very public. 

In Amherst this weekend there was a big Frisbee tournament. Sadly, the weather sucked.

Also in Amherst I came across this poster for the Worldwide Rally to Legalize Marijuana which was to be held in cities around the world this weekend. 

If any such rally occurred in Amherst itself, I didn't hear about it.

The trees are blooming nicely along what used to be the infamous UMass Frat Row. 

WASHINGTON—A recent glut of feature stories on the death of the American newspaper has temporarily made the outmoded form of media appealing enough to stave off its inevitable demise for an additional 21 days, sources reported Monday. "People really seem to identify with these moving, 'end-of-an-era'-type pieces," Washington Post editor-in-chief Leonard Downie, Jr. said. "It's nice to see that the printed word is still, at least for now, the most powerful medium for reporting on the death of the printed word." Downie added that the poignant farewell Op-Ed he recently penned was so well received that he will be able to hold onto his job for up to six more days.
-The Onion

Saturday Afternoon

My adventures.

 



As I continue my orgy of selfless service to humanity, today I was working at the Northampton Center for the Arts. Outside its location in the old Northampton High School it has these marbles made of marble balancing on a cement slab in apparent defiance of gravity.

Me and some of my brothers in recovery had to set up all these tables and chairs for some shindig the Arts Center is putting on tonight. The room it will be held in was once the school's auditorium. 

Moving all those tables and chairs was a little too much like work for my taste. If I'm gonna work that hard, I may as well get a real job and get paid!

Looking out the Arts Center window was this view of Smith College. 

It was Smith College in the late 1800's that paid my ancestor's boat fare to America from Ireland. They had to work for Smith doing menial jobs for several years in return until the boat fare was repaid. Once they did they hightailed it out of Hamp to Springfield where all the factory jobs were. None of my family members ever lived in Northampton again until I moved there while in college about a century later.

After we finished at the Arts Center, we went across the street to Dunkin' Donuts for coffee.

Then I had to go see my psychiatrist. She has a huge Van Gogh print in her waiting room.

At least I assume it's a print. I doubt the taxpayers are paying her enough to see people like me to afford the original! Van Gogh was a certifiable nutcase and therefore one of his paintings is a good choice to decorate a psychiatric waiting room.

After seeing my shrink I was just in time to catch the end of the Gay Pride parade. As you might expect, Northampton businesses had the welcome mat out.

 



A good time was had by all.

Leafleting in Action

Door to door.

 



One of the ways I atone for the sins of addiction is by doing public service. Usually I go help at the Amherst Survival Center, but today I did something different. I went and passed out flyers for my local neighborhood council announcing an upcoming meeting where citizens surrounding the county fairgrounds can discuss proposed revisions to the area. I did this by leaving at people's houses the following flyer. 

I don't know that much about the issues involved nor do I much care about them. I am, however, no stranger to the act of leafleting. Years ago, when this website was the print publication The Baystate Objectivist I was always going around with copies in my hand passing them out to everyone I met. People used to say what a good gig I had as the publisher of a popular zine, but in reality I often felt like a glorified paperboy.

In any case, as I went about alerting the citizens of Northampton of their civic duty, I brought my camera along in case I came upon anything of interest. This being Northampton, of course I did. 

I like this cow-covered mailbox.

Also cool is this Donne/Hemingway inspired door mat.

 



Postal workers are employees of the Federal government. This resident wants government workers to know what's on her mind. 

I sometime regard trees as observers of our lives, but this is ridiculous. 

Dig this eagle and mushroom. 

You can't get stoned on the mushroom because the mushroom is made of stone.

Seeing God

Albert Hoffman 1906 - 2008

 


GENEVA (AP) — Albert Hofmann, the father of the mind-altering drug LSD whose medical discovery inspired and arguably corrupted millions, has died. He was 102.

My surroundings had now transformed themselves in more terrifying ways. Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms. They were in continuous motion, animated, as if driven by an inner restlessness. The lady next door, whom I scarcely recognized, brought me milk - in the course of the evening I drank more than two liters. She was no longer Mrs. R., but rather a malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask.

Even worse than these demonic transformations of the outer world, were the alterations that I perceived in myself, in my inner being. Every exertion of my will, every attempt to put an end to the disintegration of the outer world and the dissolution of my ego, seemed to be wasted effort. A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and soul. I jumped up and screamed, trying to free myself from him, but then sank down again and lay helpless on the sofa. The substance, with which I had wanted to experiment, had vanquished me. It was the demon that scornfully triumphed over my will. I was seized by the dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken to another world, another place, another time. My body seemed to be without sensation, lifeless, strange. Was I dying? Was this the transition?

After a doctor arrived and examined him, finding no physical abnormalities besides extremely dilated pupils, Hofmann realized he wasn't in danger of losing his mind or dying and his experience suddenly took a turn for the better:

Now, little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux. It was particularly remarkable how every acoustic perception, such as the sound of a door handle or a passing automobile, became transformed into optical perceptions. Every sound generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and color.

Late in the evening my wife returned from Lucerne. Someone had informed her by telephone that I was suffering a mysterious breakdown. She had returned home at once, leaving the children behind with her parents. By now, I had recovered myself sufficiently to tell her what had happened.

Exhausted, I then slept, to awake next morning refreshed, with a clear head, though still somewhat tired physically. A sensation of well-being and renewed life flowed through me. Breakfast tasted delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure. When I later walked out into the garden, in which the sun shone now after a spring rain, everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly created. All my senses vibrated in a condition of highest sensitivity, which persisted for the entire day.

Thus went the world's first acid trip.

Ryan's 100 Days

A flashback.

 

R. Bruce Fitzgerald and Charlie Ryan

I recently wrote a review of the first 100 days of new Springfield Mayor Dom Sarno. That enticed me to go back and dig up this old piece I wrote for the occasion of the first 100 days of the administration of Charles V. Ryan, which occurred in April of 2004. Unfortunately, I was unable to retrieve any of the photographs from that post except the one of Ryan and Fitzgerald above.

The Ryanites had a party in the Mayor's office to officially celebrate the 100 Days and I was invited. Here is the report I filed, minus the photos, from that day.

THE HUNDRED DAYS

Back in the 1960's when I was a dot of a tot, my first grade class took a field trip to downtown Springfield. I've forgotten many of the details, in fact I remember little from my early grammar school years except that I was always the shortest kid in my class. How do I know that? Trust me, as the shortest kid in the class I was always helpfully informed of that fact by my classmates, just in case I didn't notice.

However I do recall a picnic snack in Court Square and a visit to the Campanile, which was open to tourists in those days. I do remember clearly that we went inside City Hall, where we were brought into the mayor's office to meet Hizzoner himself, a then young (but to us quite old) Charles V. Ryan. We were probably in there for all of five minutes, just long enough for Charlie to say something appropriately educational and patriotic, after which we were ushered out as an aide (Lenny Collamore?) passed out lollipops. Looking back at it that was pretty good politics, since we all went home and told our voting parents what a nice mayor we had.

The 60's of course are long gone. So are the 70's, the 80's and the 90's. Even the millennium itself has faded years into the past. I thought of these things as I stood in the mayor's office yesterday, celebrating Charlie Ryan's 100th day in office as once again the Mayor of Springfield. The fact that I was even standing in that office was remarkable; just six months earlier if I had come anywhere near the mayoral chambers they would've called security. I am considerably taller than I was when I last visited Charlie in that office, and since then Charlie's hair has gone completely white, but it was still a kind of poignant reunion across the decades. As the saying goes, what a long, strange trip it's been! It was an almost perfect moment as we spoke at Charlie's desk, the only imperfection being that no one offered me a lollipop.

What Charlie was telling me is not happy news. It turns out that the figures discussed thus far of what the city needs to raise to avoid receivership, about 14 million, are now inaccurate. Ryan says that further examination of the city's financial situation reveals that he needs at least twenty million to avoid a state takeover of municipal government. I asked him if there is some way to finesse the difference. "No," Charlie replies, "a few million dollar gap you can find some way to patch over. But twenty million?" He shakes his head.

Ryan is presiding over a city that has been deeply betrayed by nearly all of its major institutions. The city was allowed to get buried in debt while its financial officers looked the other way. The city government is mired in corruption investigations and scandals. Even the Catholic Church, once the backbone of the Springfield community, has been disgraced. Crime is up, the city continues to suffer a terrible drain of citizens moving out (the latest to exit: Mitch Ogulewicz to Connecticut) and the percentage of residents in poverty continues to rise.

Is this any way for a 76 year old man to spend his golden years?

Far from being discouraged, Ryan seems to be energized by the challenges. He refers to Springfield as "my lady" and although she may have stumbled, in his eyes she hasn't fallen. Indeed the single most prominent characteristic of the Ryanites as they celebrate their 100 day anniversary is their optimism. When I ask Charlie how he would describe the 100 days personally he says "It's been fun," and that is a word I hear the Ryanites use a lot. Asking an aide how she likes working for Charlie she replies, "He's a fun boss to work for." It is obvious as he interacts with the city workers at the celebration that his employees revere him with an aura of integrity and respect that is almost palpable. If anyone is pessimistic about Springfield's future, they can't be found in Charlie Ryan's City Hall as his positive attitude rubs off on everybody.

It is that change in tone that is perhaps the fledgling Ryan Administration's greatest accomplishment. Fired or forced into early retirement are the lazy and dishonest department heads and employees that once fed on the taxpayers like vampires. Gone are the arrogant Albanoites who once strutted through the corridors in search of power, privilege and profit. Three decades of a political culture of self-serving corruption cannot be corrected in just 100 days, and there is still housecleaning to be done, but for the first time in many years City Hall is once again "the people's place" where all may feel welcome.

Turning away from the unpleasant subject of the financial crisis, Charlie chuckles over some posts he read the night before on Masslive.com's Springfield Forum. Like virtually all of Springfield's political establishment he is a regular reader, but doesn't tell me whether he ever posts on the forum, leaving it to Masslive readers to wonder whether one of the posters is secretly their mayor. As he turns to talk with other well wishers, I use the opportunity to solve an old mystery.

Back in the administration of Robert Markel there was a rampant rumor that then Springfield Newspapers publisher David Starr used to regularly enter the mayor's office by a door that allowed him to bypass the normal entrance requiring him to announce his arrival to the mayoral aides. This was allegedly done by Starr to prevent the City Hall gossip mill from reporting just how often Starr was meeting in private consultation with the mayor, thereby feeding into charges that it was Starr who was actually running the city. When Markel appeared on The Dan Yorke Show one day, Yorke pressed him to reveal whether such a hidden entrance existed and whether Starr had access to it. Markel refused either to confirm or deny it, infuriating Yorke with his evasiveness and leaving the question never answered.

So wandering around the mayor's office I saw that indeed there was a door, open for the 100 day party, that gave no indication on it of where it led to, so that no one walking past it could know that it was an unmarked entrance to the mayor's office. In other words, Starr could easily have come and gone, just as the rumors suggested, through this door without anyone on the mayor's staff knowing anything about it. So Yorke was right after all.

As the festivities were winding down, it was soon time to leave and let the mayor and his staff return to the herculean task of saving Springfield. I would call it an impossible task, but this is a bunch that doesn't accept the word impossible. Promising to return at a future date I bid the Mayor adieu - departing via Starr's secret passageway:

The final photo in my post showed me departing by Starr's hidden exit, but I no longer have the photographs. Unfortunately, we no longer have Ryan's dynamic leadership either. Indeed, reading this account of Ryan's first hundred days sure makes Sarno's seem dull by comparison.

In the window of Northampton's India Palace I spotted this old restaurant review from the Springfield newspaper's April 11, 1991 edition. Note that it preserves a typo in the phrase "DNING OUT."

 

 

It also preserves the paper's former name Union-News. Once upon a time, in the golden age of newspapers, there were two editions of what is now known as The Republican. One of the papers was called The Springfield Union, which came out every morning, and the other was called the Springfield Daily News, which came out every afternoon and for which I was once a paperboy. In 1987, with the newspaper industry in decline even then, they were forced to cut back to one edition. Rather than decide between killing the evening or morning editions, they combined both the Union and the Daily News and christened the resulting product The Union-News.

It was a well-meaning attempt to respect the paper's history, but the new name proved clumsy and confusing. Many people called it "The Union Newspaper." When they finally decided to return to the original name the paper had in the 1800's - The Republican - no one objected or claimed to miss The Union-News.

Even this old name made new has caused some confusion. Most people refer to it as The Springfield Republican, but although it is published in downtown Springfield, technically the paper claims no allegiance to any particular city or town in its title. Many people also assume that the name suggests some relationship to the Republican Party, but in fact the name predates the forming of that political organization. The name refers only to the generic patriotic term, as in "to the republic for which it stands." In the era leading up to the Civil War, when the paper was founded, there was almost a fetish made of the term republican because of its relation to the concept of a united nation. That is why Abe Lincoln and friends later chose the term for the name of their new political party.

To the extent the modern paper has a political affiliation, it is owned by the Newhouse Corporation, one of the most prominent media backers of the Democrat Party. The paper almost never endorses Republican candidates, although a rare exception was made to endorse Kerry Healey over Deval Patrick for governor. Rumors at the time suggested that the exception was made because the paper's President David Starr had a relationship with the string of prior Republican governors that he did not have with the upstart Deval. Whatever the reason, the endorsement re-enforced among the paper's critics the false impression that they are a Republican Party newspaper.

It seems that when it comes to their name, the poor Springfield Newspapers Company just can't win for trying. 

In Amherst I stumbled upon this old tree stump. How huge this tree must have been to leave a stump so large!



Trees are the true elders of our communities, and although they cannot speak they are living witnesses to our lives.

The Next Thing

Beyond the Meat World

Last week I got the following email from Valley Free Radio star Mary Serreze:

 

hey there mr. tommy devine

mike kirby and i are hosting an informal bloggers' summit this monday, april 28, 7pm, at the packard's library. probably mostly relevant for those who cover local news and politics......but i thought i'd let you know in case you wanted to make an appearance. (cuz you do cover news and politics, tho not exclusively...and you are somewhat famous)

we wanted to 1. provide a chance for people to meet each other, laugh, have a beer, trade war stories and 2. explore possibilities for collaborating/specializing/promotion/research etc--

maybe there are ways in which northampton bloggers can collaborate, and maybe not (independent cusses that we are....) but no harm done by putting a bunch of interesting people in a room together. so far i have confirmation from kirby, shanahan, roessler, saulmon, cohen, lafleur. so if you feel like stopping by please do.

mary serreze
http://communityradiohour.blogspot.com
www.northamptonmedia.com

Usually I respond to such invitations with that old Groucho Marx line about not wanting to belong to any group that would have me as a member. However, I found myself responding in the affirmative primarily out of curiosity. I didn't recognize all the names mentioned of the bloggers attending, but I knew that they were primarily Northampton or North Valley writers. In any case I thought it couldn't hurt to meet some of the Northampton bloggers. At the very least I might be able to get a photo of the North Valley bloggers to match the historic South Valley blogger photo captured by Victor Davila earlier this year in Springfield.

The meeting was held in what is called "Packard's Library" located within the famous Northampton bar Packard's. I've been going to Packard's for decades, playing pool, getting drunk and picking up sex partners, but I was totally unaware of any part of the building that could be called a library. Yet there is such a room hidden away off in the back. Here's a picture. 

Of course it isn't really a library, it is a drinking room with some shelves with books on them that look like someone got then at a tag sale. But it does make for a dignified setting and a calming decor.

Unfortunately I couldn't get there for the start of the proceedings as we have meetings at the drug half-way house where I live until after seven. Because I arrived about an hour late, I never did get properly introduced to everyone nor put every face with a name. But here are a couple pictures I took of some of the participants. Match them with their blogs if you can!

The first thing I realized when I finally got there was that those assembled were smarter than me, at least about Northampton politics. They were discussing the questions asked by those truly in the know: Is Mayor Clare Higgins too pro-business? Will the new landfill cause ecological damage? Who are the leading contenders for mayor? I really couldn't participate in these discussions without appearing uninformed. When it got to be my turn to speak I had to pretty much beg off by saying I'm primarily an Amherst and Springfield dude and that my Northampton coverage consists mostly of pictures I take as I poke around town. I didn't use the word "shallow" to describe my coverage but maybe I should have.

Actually, there was a time in the 1990's, around when Tony Long ran for mayor of Hamp, that I could have held my own in a discussion of Northampton politics. Later I wondered, "When did my blog begin drifting away from politics?" Of course there is and always will be political posts on my blog. But why has a bunch of other stuff emerged as equal to politics in the subject matter I write about?

I think it began when I read an interesting factoid somewhere claiming that more than a third of American children under fifteen have a blog. Doubtless that percentage is constantly increasing. Thinking about that fact made me wish that I could have had a blog at 15 and to wonder what it would be like to have such a chronicle of one's life across several decades. More interestingly, what would it be like to have an audience over your whole lifetime who followed you via your blog? What would be the nature of that relationship?

The children who are starting blogs today will eventually find out the answer to those questions. Living your life on a cyberstage certainly raises a lot of existential questions. For example, what is the meaning of privacy in such an existence where nearly everything you do is pretty much public? Will the children of today who have blogs have the same notions of privacy that we take for granted? Orwell imagined a world where everything was observed by the government. What he didn't foresee, however, is a culture where the observers are the general public and a relationship develops between the observers and those being observed. Surely Orwell could not have foreseen that the person being observed would be presenting themselves for observation voluntarily.

Everyone has people they know in person, people who they can see in their field of vision, who they can touch, smell and hear. But as the blogosphere blossoms, our world is becoming filled with people who we don't ever see or touch or smell. Yet, through the blogosphere we feel we get to know them, what they are like, what they do and what they think. We get to see their friends and their families, what they wear, the places they live and the things they think about.

Yet those doing the observing are mostly unknown to those being observed. They are just statistics telling them how many hits they got that day. But behind each hit is a flesh and blood person. A fan of sorts who thinks they know who it is they observe.

In any given week thousands of people read my website and find out all kinds of things about me. That knowledge about me accumulates over time and deepens in intimacy. Less than a hundred people see me in the flesh per week, and many of them know less about me than the readers of my blog. So when you say "Tom Devine" who do you mean?

The Tom Devine dozens see in the flesh, or the Tom Devine known by thousands who have never met me? It's a strange new world indeed.

And it intrigues me. Increasingly I keep expanding the realms of my life that I am willing to make public. I'm trying to break down as many walls as I can between the flesh me, in the "meat world" as the cybergeeks say, and merge that with the version of me in the blogosphere where I exist only as zeroes and ones.

This is a new frontier, the first inklings of what our lives are going to be like and what our children's lives are going to be like. Each of us will have two personas, a private one where we interact with one another physically in real time and space, and another persona that is computer generated by thousands of individual choices we make online throughout our lifetime about what to reveal, how to reveal it and through what medium (words or images or both) and that will be taking place before an audience, the majority of which will be strangers to us.

I see my blog as a prototype of this new form. This is the frontier of cyberlife. 

I ache to move beyond my own time. I ache to leave the Meat World behind.

After the meeting I went out for coffee at the Haymarket with Local Buzzlings Bill Peters and Greg Saulmon.

They are hip to New Media to a degree I don't see in anyone else in local media. They are currently working way too hard for too little money for people who don't recognize the significance of what they are doing. But that will change.

The other day I noticed this neat skeleton of a geodesic dome being used as an exercise structure at the Bridge Street School in Northampton. 

Today was Founder's Day at the University of Massachusetts.

 



Happy 145th Birthday UMass!

There's a new trend in v-blogging called "flash vids" that attempt to capture something of significance in a very short time frame. It addiction to being short, it has to show something worth seeing. Here are some short but cool videos from last winter that I missed somehow. In the first one Northampton resident Sean Kinlan set up a camera in his backyard last winter and made the following fascinating video condensing five hours of a snowstorm into eight seconds. Dig how the trees droop.

 

This is a moody 22 second glimpse of Amherst College. 

 

When life sends you lemons and you can't make lemonade - squirt lemon juice into the eyes of your enemies.