Deval Surging

It's hard to believe, but all the political obituaries being written about Deval Patrick are looking increasingly premature. As can be seen in the latest Rasmussen poll:

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has gained ground over the past month and now earns 45% of the vote in his bid for reelection against Republican Charlie Baker and independent Tim Cahill. That’s a 10-point jump from a month ago and the Democratic incumbent’s best showing in surveys stretching back to June of last year.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds Baker with 31% support and Cahill earning just 14% in a three-way contest with Patrick. Ten percent (10%) remain undecided.

That Patrick is opening up a lead is quite a comeback for a Governor that was written off as doomed as little as three months ago. What happened? Here's my candidate by candidate analysis:

Deval Patrick - First Patrick has to face a primary challenge from crusading lefty Grace Ross for the Democrat nomination, but no one doubts that Patrick will be the eventual nominee. Yet it is very unusual to see an incumbent Governor run a grassroots campaign as aggressively as Patrick is. He's everywhere, appearing in community centers, neighborhood gatherings and even living rooms with seemingly no political gathering too small for him to make an appearance. Patrick is relying on press the flesh retail politics to remind the electorate of why they liked him in the first place and apparently, it's working - so far. Patrick's biggest liability remains his own record of failure, and his charming personality can't distract the voters from evaluating it forever.

Charles Baker - Now that the Republicans have nominated the man they perceive as the second coming of William Weld, they are discovering that his virtues also bring with them certain weaknesses. Baker's moderate positions, considered so ideal in attracting non-partisan voters, has the unintended side-effect of leaving his party activists uninspired. He desperately needs an issue to excite the base. His strengths have been his electability and the fact that he is not Deval Patrick, but is that going to be enough to carry Baker over the finish line?

Tim Cahill - The tons of money Republicans have been pouring into undermining Cahill's third party campaign in the past month has proven effective. Cahill, who once had 25% in the polls, has seen his support slashed by almost half. The brief surge Cahill got from making himself the primary critic of Massachusetts' failed universal healthcare law has been diluted by TV ads reminding voters of how silent he was back in the days when he was a Democrat. Cahill has to make a comeback fast or risk quickly fading into irrelevancy. He has at least one ace still up his sleeve - Cahill has got a lot of money he is holding in reserve for use when he thinks it will count most.

Jill Stein - Running as the ultra-liberal alternative, at this point Stein is being dismissed as a spoiler who might siphon off enough liberals to insure the defeat of Deval Patrick. Therefore the sizable lefty constituency that might otherwise rally behind her is ignoring Stein for as long as Patrick still has a chance. However if Patrick should falter again, frustrated lefties may give her candidacy a second look.

My friend Jack Bresnahan went to see Peter Wolf of J. Geils fame in Northampton the other night. He even got to pose for a picture with him.

 



A nurse on a fading mural in Chicopee that I photographed through a bus window.

Purple bloomers in a Northampton yard.

 



Orange outside another Hamp home.

 



My kind of people.

 

Maddowmania

Mad About Maddow

I notice that in downtown Northampton they are selling these pink shirts for those who love MSNBC host and former Valley radio jock Rachel Maddow.

Perhaps you could wear your Maddow shirt while reading this week's Valley Advocate.

Plus if you're a student at Northampton's Smith College, you can catch Maddow in person when she gives the commencement address at their graduation this year. She won't have to travel far to do so, since she still lives here in the Pioneer Valley with her girlfriend, at least on weekends.

Among those who yearn to spend time with Rachel is Amherst's most famous living writer, Augusten Burroughs (above). Or that's what we're told in his blog - that Augusten is being pressured by his boyfriend Dennis to use his literary prestige to ask her over to dinner:

Dennis doesn't watch TV except now he watches Rachel Maddow. He loves his Rachel. In nine years together, he has never had “a show,” if you know what I mean. Although there have been a few things we've watched regularly over the years, there has never been anything quite like this. Rachel Maddow is his Battlestar Galactica.

She makes him laugh. This is why I thank Jesus each morning for Rachel Maddow. I can't even tell you. It's like having a kid, and knowing you can always stick him in front of the television, plug in his Xbox and hand him the controller. He'll be fine now.

So four weeks ago, Dennis -who won't even let me use my name when making a restaurant reservation because he thinks it's pretentious and loathsome- made a special trip downstairs to my office and said, “You need to invite Rachel Maddow over for dinner.” He suggested I contact her “people.”

I just looked up at him and blinked.

Yet relentless pleading from Dennis at least got Augusten to consider what he might say to Maddow in a email:

“Dear Rachel, I know this is kind of creepy and stalkerish but we both live in the same general area of Massachusetts and...” So it's the “I'm your neighbor not your stalker!” approach. I just can't figure out the segue from “We're your neighbors” to “come over for dinner with your girlfriend.” No matter how I phrase it, it comes out sounding odious. Like I want to know her because she's famous or I want to be on her show. In reality, the only place I want to be is in my basement.

Unfortunately Augusten has lost interest in his blog and never updates it anymore, so we never found out whether he sent Rachel Maddow an email or whether she accepted. But I suspect not, because if so Augusten would have somehow made it public.

Recently Maddow was in a controversy with Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown over a fundraising letter Sen. Brown sent out mentioning that Democrats were trying to get Maddow to run for the Senate against him in 2012. She claimed Scott was lying about her.

 



Actually "lie" was too strong a word. Democrat activists were unquestionably urging Maddow to run, and there was even a Facebook page someone put up to promote the notion. Some people suspected that Maddow's local radio chum Bill Dwight (below right) was behind it.

In any case it was all just a tempest in a teapot, but it did get Maddow a ton of free publicity, which no doubt expanded the base of people who are mad about Maddow - Republicans who are mad that the phony controversy got as much play as it did, and Democrats who loved Maddow all the more because she got away with it.

 

In today's democratic media anyone can commit an act of journalism. While any form of reporting, provided it is done honestly, is of value, some types of journalism are more valuable than others. Often citizens who carry out acts of journalism do not do so as effectively as they might because they don't know what minimal standards constitute a good article. But don't worry, you don't have to go to a journalism school to learn the basics, just watch this video from the School for Authentic Journalism and learn all you need to know in about six minutes.

 

A giant mouth appears to threaten Old Glory in front of Northampton's City Hall.



A peace van.

 



Jim Neill captured this shot Saturday of a rainbow over Northampton.

Me relaxing in an Amherst cemetery yesterday.

 



Lord Russ in the same Amherst cemetery in 1996.

 

Spfld Building Boondoggles

 

I went to Springfield yesterday. At the stopover in Holyoke I took this picture of Veteran's Park out the bus window.

Arriving in downtown Springfield, I walked past the old courthouse on Main Street, which the late Springfield Republican columnist Richard Garvey once called "the ugliest building in downtown Springfield."

I never thought it was all that ugly, but I do think it was tragic the historic bloc of buildings that were torn down in order to build it. Moreover, the building was badly constructed and had to be replaced recently with a new courthouse, even though the old one was just built in 1982! Perhaps the only virtue of the now closed courthouse was that it was a federal project and therefore the only way the local Democrat Machine could be forced to immortalize Ronald Reagan in stone.

The ugliness of the building may be beyond redemption, but I see that the plaza in front of the former courthouse is undergoing a desperately needed remodeling. 

That plaza was always very impractical, with weird brick formations that were uncomfortable to sit on even before the security guards started forbidding people from sitting there. Following the 9/11 attack, the Albano Administration ordered big cement barriers to be placed all around the front of it, which looked absolutely hideous. It was allegedly justified by the fear that government buildings were targets for terrorist attacks, but an attack on Springfield always seemed very improbable. But who knows? Perhaps it would go down like this:

Deep in a cave in the uncharted mountains of Pakistan, Osama bin Ladin and his followers are holding a meeting. "O Evil One!" a gnarly Arab cries, placing a pile of maps and plans before his master. "We have prepared these plots for your consideration regarding attacks on Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, plus a new attack on New York City!"

Osama bin Ladin angrily sweeps the papers off the desk and on to the floor. "You camel dung!" he exclaims. "I should have you all boiled in oil! Where are the plans to attack the courthouse in Springfield, Massachusetts?

Shortly after he was elected to succeed Albano, Mayor Charles V. Ryan quietly ordered that the unsightly barriers be removed.

Almost next door is yet another infamous boondoggle, although perhaps a more aesthetically pleasing one - Monarch Place.

Like all of the government's attempts to revitalize downtown Springfield, Monarch Place was a total flop, crashing into bankruptcy within only a few years of its completion and ultimately sold to its creditors for one dollar. Bus magnate Peter Picknelly bought the skyscraper for pennies on the dollar, which saved the building from having to be shut down, although the low price he paid did not prevent the taxpayers from taking a multi-million dollar bath in the public/private partnership deal. 

Plus, because the cheap price he paid freed him of the construction debts and entitled him to special tax breaks, Picknelly was able to offer cheaper rental prices than his unsubsidized downtown office space competitors. This caused many offices who rented in buildings surrounding Monarch Place to leave their former residences and move there. So while Monarch Place prospered, the rental properties surrounding it were emptied of tenants, until the downtown real estate market all but collapsed and the whole area was further ghettoized.

Compounding the tragedy, a beautiful and historic building had been torn down to erect the ill-fated Monarch Place - the Forbes and Wallace building.

To calm outcries from local historians, Monarch Place was built with a fountain memorial to the old building in the front courtyard, using a few ornaments from the original structure. 

If you want to get a feel of what the old Forbes and Wallace building was like, a virtual twin of it still exists in Northampton in the Thornes Market building. While Monarch Place was going bust, Hamp's Thornes building was turned into a thriving mall of boutique specialty shops that is still a success to this day. The Forbes and Wallace building could have been the anchor for an equally successful downtown revitalization in Springfield, had the idiot politicians and greedy investors not pursued the Monarch Place project.

 

If the crimes against Springfield by its political class were ever to be known in full, the citizens of Springfield would riot in the streets. 

An exploration of the musical outer limits in Easthampton. 

Amherst Scenes 2010

 

Mean looking parking meter in downtown Amherst.

My friend Damon lives in this house on Main Street.

The house has an apartment once occupied by Amherst College professor and poet Robert Frost and is officially registered as a historic home.

The woodwork on the staircase is just gorgeous.

Some of the doors in my friend's apartment are the original hand-carved blacksmith-latched variety that today are unavailable at any price.

Speaking of doors, the bathroom door in Raos coffee shop used to be colorfully painted.

As part of their recent renovation, Raos remodeled the bathrooms and painted over the door.

While the renovations as a whole have been highly praised, apparently there are those who are unhappy about the bathrooms. One person wrote on the wall that Raos was becoming like "Starfucks" while someone else expressed this sentiment:

Oh well, you can't please everyone. I wonder how the neighbors like this work of art appearing on the porch of a UMass partyhouse?

Words of wisdom from the Unitarians.

I better get back to Northampton for the psychedelic clothes sale!

Good short video of the Northampton Gay Parade:

 

Politicians We Could Use Today

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."

- Sen. Barry Goldwater

"I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can't be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort."

-Calvin Coolidge, former President and Mayor of Northampton.

Tony Ravosa R.I.P.

The Man Behind the Mirror

 


I'm saddened to hear today of the death of Springfield's controversial attorney, businessman and political rebel Tony Ravosa (above left with beloved downtown mailman Eddie Sheehan.) In poor health, Ravosa had faded from the scene in recent years, but back in his prime he was one of Springfield's best known and most colorful characters.

Not everything ever said about Ravosa was said in praise, especially in the pages of the Springfield Newspapers, where he had a bitter, long running feud with the paper's head David Starr. The feud dated back to the late 1970's, when Starr ousted Ravosa as the main player in the politically powerful special interest group Springfield Central. The two traded exquisite insults, with Ravosa accusing Starr of backing outside interests over local entrepreneurs like himself and his politically ambitious son, former City Councilor Anthony Ravosa Junior. Starr in turn never missed a chance to make Ravosa look bad in the press. It wasn't always clear who was in the right in that feud, with both sides scoring major hits against each other at various times, but their fiery exchanges never failed to entertain.

Many of Ravosa's exploits over the years, such as his bold business ventures, his tireless crusades on behalf of drunken drivers, and the mysterious attempt on his life by a never captured gunman will all no doubt be retold in the coming days as our Valley appraises the legacy of Tony Ravosa. The 1980's assassination attempt was especially colorful, occurring at the peak of the popularity of the Dallas TV show when the national catchphrase was "Who shot JR?" In Springfield, however, the phrase became "Who shot TR?" Ravosa himself claimed, unconvincingly, that he had accidentally shot himself.

Myself, I mostly remember him from the 1990's, when he used to sit in his ground floor office (below) facing on Court Square.

He was usually joined with a shifting gang of cronies, who would sit, sometimes accompanied by a bottle of wine, and look out the office window while discussing the world, the nation, the city and the scene passing by on Court Square. The odd thing was that the windows of that office were covered with reflective adhesive, which turned the windows into a mirror to anyone trying to look in.

Therefore, no passerby could see Ravosa and his friends watching them as they went past. Yet, it was sometimes possible, when the sun was right, to see Ravosa's hulking, shadowy figure moving behind the reflection, and therefore those who frequented Court Square on a daily basis, such as the homeless population, did become aware that there was someone watching from behind the mirrored glass. Drug dealers knew enough not to do transactions in front of that office. Of course most of the dealers and the homeless had no idea who Ravosa was.

They called him simply, "The man behind the mirror."

Despite all the controversies however, it was never in doubt that Tony Ravosa loved Springfield dearly. While others of his stature fled to the suburbs, he was one of the few who stayed, living and working in the heart of downtown to the bitter end. We are unlikely to see the likes of Tony Ravosa in Springfield again, and I believe we are poorer for it.

Tom Wesley, one of the two Republicans fighting to take down Richie Neal, got national attention the other day on CNN.

The novel The Wizard of Oz is 71 years old.

Today, if Dorothy were to encounter men with no brains, no hearts, and no courage, she wouldn't be in Oz.
She'd be in government.

 
I didn't attend the gay pride parade in Northampton on Saturday, but Laura Tisley Garcia did and took these pictures:

Let me be politically incorrect and point out the obvious - these events tend to attract more women than men.

It's usually the girls that like to get political, the boys just wanna have fun. Actually the political issue dominating the signage had more to do with immigration than queerness.

Here is Northampton artist Dann Vazquez with the late novelist (and Smith College instructor) Kurt Vonnegut in Northampton in the year 2000.

Vazquez, inspired by my recent photos of the Puritan statue in Springfield, sent me this photo of himself posing with the statue around 1985. Notice that Morgan the Robot is posing also.

The picture is interesting for at least two additional details: The photo predates the restoration of the statue, which had become a sickly green from decades of outdoor exposure but is now returned to a properly brown bronze. Also note to the right the absence of the big black fence that now encloses the Quadrangle.

It's About Time

 

When I was in grammar school at The World Famous Thomas M. Balliet Elementary School I used to like this show called It's About Time. The Wikipedia explains:

It's About Time is an American fantasy-based comedy TV series that aired on CBS for one season of 26 episodes in 1966–1967. The series was created by Sherwood Schwartz, and used sets, props and incidental music from Schwartz's other television series in production at the time, Gilligan's Island.

It's About Time was virtually two different series aired under the same title. The first version of the series saw two astronauts, Mac (Frank Aletter) and Hector (Jack Mullaney), accidentally break the speed of light, and get thrown back in time to prehistoric days. There, they have to adjust to living with a cave family led by Shad (Imogene Coca) and Gronk (Joe E. Ross). 

Approximately halfway through the season, the show's lower-than expected ratings resulted in the producers suddenly retooling the series by having the astronauts repair their space capsule and return to 1967 with the cave family in tow. The remainder of the season was spent with Shadd, Gronk and their family adjusting to life in the 1960s, reacting to the unfamiliar surroundings, setting up home in 20th-century New York City.

I suspect that if I saw an episode of the show today I might cringe at the corny humor, yet I did find myself recently contemplating whether time travel is an actual possibility. I often think about weird stuff like that as I traverse each day the woodland way into downtown Northampton. 

Of course Einstein famously said that if you exceeded the speed of light then time would appear to move backwards, an optical illusion created by the fact that you were catching up to "old" light that had already passed you. But it would be only an illusion, and a short-lived one too, since matter, particularly water-based biological matter like ourselves, would be quickly atomized into non-existence at such a speed.

So if Einstein's suggested means of time travel is completely impractical, is there some other way? It occurred to me that one way that time travel might be possible would be via computer simulation. Computers already are playing a major role in the way we learn about the past. By analyzing satellite pictures of the Earth, computers are able to recognize useful archaeological digging sites invisible from the ground and help to analyze the objects that are dug up there. In such ways we are learning much more about the past then we ever thought would be possible just a few decades ago.

But is it possible to use computers to learn about the past in more specific ways? Can we actually pick and choose historic subjects from the past, and be like those astronauts from the TV show who visit the Stone Age? Well, it seems to me that might be doable, if not now, then sometime in the future. That is because everything that exists is the result of a chains of cause and effect, each chain being both logical and dictated by the laws of physics. Therefore, if you knew all of the chains of cause and effect that created all the aspects of present day reality, it should be possible to reverse that chain by computer simulation and "see" what things were like in the past. You wouldn't actually go into the past, but you could see what it must have been like based on what had to occur in order to create the present.

Pretty cool eh? For example if you could run the chains of cause and effect behind everything now existing at that famous plaza in Dallas back to 1963 then you could see if Lee Harvey Oswald really was the lone killer of John F. Kennedy. Indeed, such a technique would enable us to double-check all historical events. Perhaps it could even be fine tuned to the point of being able to check the past of anyone's life, our own or of any ancestor.  

The catch is that this would require computer software of mind-boggling complexity, far beyond anything that is even remotely possible today. Besides, even before you could create such software you would need an incredibly indepth and wide ranging understanding of all of the chains of cause and effect involved, which is no small feat in itself. Yet it does not strike me as impossible that someday, as computer capabilities continue to evolve, that such an understanding of the interconnections of reality might make the past retraceable with great accuracy. If so, then this biblical quote on a lawn in Westfield may prove to be true:

 

I doubt this is something that will ever happen in my lifetime, but who knows? In the meantime, I may as well hangout at the Haymarket Cafe. Here is the giant mirror in the entranceway.

The front staircase. 

In Westfield yesterday I ran into the legendary activist Doug Ariel, formerly of ol' Pine Point. He once ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Springfield. Doug was also my late father's boyhood friend, and recently turned 81 years old.

I also ran into former Local Buzz writer Bill Peters at UMass. Since the Buzz went bust last year Bill has been living down South working on a freelance writing career. He's already made some sales and is working on a book!

A spin through downtown Greenfield with Tony Mateus. 

 

A Deadhead's dashboard lament in downtown Hamp.