So has Old Man Winter. After a premature start with a mammoth storm around Halloween the winter has been pretty much snowless except for the hilltowns, leaving even the usually super scenic woodland way into Northampton looking dreary and drab.
Until last night. Now this is more like it!
Hard to believe that right around this bend is downtown Northampton!
The ancient First Church juxtaposed with Saturn.
Rudolph on Amber Lane.
By the time I got to work the weather was just exactly perfect.
Unfortunately, it was soon followed by a bitter arctic blast. Happily all was snug and cozy in the Haymarket Cafe last night.
This week the first presidential primary of Campaign 2012 was held next door in New Hampshire. Lots of political junkies in our Valley scoot over there every presidential season and this year was no exception, as shown in this photo of local GOP rising stars Joe Flebotte, Alexander Sherman and Josh Carpenter arriving at former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's victory party.
Who says Romney doesn't inspire a devoted electorate?
Meanwhile over at Ron Paul headquarters, adding a little Western Mass madness to the scene was Valley libertarian leader Terry Franklin and friends engaging in some satirical surrealism with prankster candidate Vermin Supreme, who wears a boot on his head because people are always saying they want to give politicians "the boot" but there's never one handy: Aleksandra Valiunas of Amherst in white suit on far left at 1:10; Terry Franklin in red jacket and black hat, taking photo at 1:40; Barbara McGovern (UMass grad) hair in foreground at 2:14.
I'm sorry to hear that Alan Howard has died. I knew him best back in his radio days at WNNZ-640, where he had a series of radio shows in the early 1990's, the best known perhaps being the version he co-hosted with fellow flaming liberal Barbara Heisler. I was a guest on his show sometimes, and even had a program of my own, The Tommy Devine Show, for one summer. So I got to know Alan mostly through the radio station.
Today WNNZ is an affiliate of National Public Radio, but in the early 1990's it was owned by the Hahn's, a powerful Republican family in Westfield. Cele Hahn was Westfield's State Representative for a time. The joke was that they let Alan do pretty much whatever he liked on the air because the Hahn's wanted to be able, in case the FCC gave them any crap about a lack of balance in their overwhelmingly right-wing programming, to point to Alan and say, "Hey, we not only have a liberal radio host, but he's black too!" Or come to think of it, maybe that wasn't just a joke.
This was in the golden age of Valley talk radio, when we were all battling the injustices and corruption of the Valley political machines, in particular the crooks in Springfield. We were definitely all on the political fringe in those days, with the mainstream media either ignoring the crooks or even cheering them on. In the end we outsiders were all vindicated by a hail of Federal indictments against nearly all of the people we fought against, although it remains an open question whether the Feds actually succeeded in cleaning up Springfield or the crooks just got smarter.
Anyway, besides our ties to WNNZ Alan and I shared another interest - we were both stoners. In fact sometimes we actually smoked pot behind the radio station before going on the air. Perhaps the fact that we got stoned to go on the radio at least partially explains why both of our shows were eventually cancelled.
After the radio era Alan and I worked together briefly as political reporters for The Springfield Gazette, an underground newspaper that put out about ten issues before sinking beneath a sea of debt. Once there were no longer any media ties between us I seldom saw Alan in person. In fact, I think the last time I saw him in the flesh was at The Democratic National Convention in 2004, when he came up to say hello to myself (who was there as an outlaw journalist) and Mitch Ogulewicz (who was attending as a personal guest of John Kerry) at a reception for the Massachusetts delegation put on by Rep. Barney Frank. I have a picture of Alan at that event somewhere, and if I come across it I'll post it here.
Although I didn't see much of Alan after WNNZ and the newspaper bankruptcy, I continued to hear news about him from mutual friends from time to time, and it wasn't always happy news. He did a short jail term as a result of some personal scandal that the local press, which had ignored his career up to that point, gave prominent coverage to. I don't recall the details of the scandal, but I remember that he insisted to me that he was innocent and I believed him. My final contacts with him came when I accepted his request a few years ago to become my Facebook friend, which he apparently did primarily in order to send me snide but good natured putdowns of my political views. Although Alan never pursued all that healthy a lifestyle, I was still taken by surprise when I heard that he died last week on the day before New Year's Eve at only 52.
In the future, whenever I remember Alan, I will prefer to recall the times when I was his radio guest, around about 1993, and there were no Hahn's about, and we would smoke pot behind the station before the show. There was a charming little brook back there, and it was babbling (like us radio hosts) with us smoking and laughing and then going before the microphones to rail uninhibitedly against the evil deeds of the local politicians, blazed as much on idealism as we were on weed, righteously attacking the Establishment, sometimes harshly but never more than they deserved.
Those were the days, Alan. Rest easy.
To read the obituary (which curiously doesn't mention his radio career) click here.
Every year I get several cards wishing me a Very Jerry Christmas. I never tire of them.
Politicians are also always sending me Christmas cards. I can never be sure whether they do so because they like me, or because they hope I'll leave them alone! The highest ranking politician to send me a Christmas card was former President George W. Bush, who for reasons that were never quite clear (I never contacted him in any way) sent me a card all eight years he was in office. They were always religious and very elegant with a gold-embossed presidential seal on top.
Somehow the Obama's keep forgetting to add me to their list. The other day I got a Christmas greeting from Amherst State Senator Stan Rosenberg. It shows the Senator looking somewhat frail while undergoing recent cancer treatments, seated next to his partner Byron, whom I had never seen before. Frankly, he's hot.
It looks like it's going to be a snowless Christmas. New England doesn't look so nice without snow to cover all the dead plants. Even the woodland way into downtown Northampton, usually a majestic cathedral of snow this time of year, is looking drab.
Yet someone decorated this scrawny little pine tree, simply to amuse the passersby on the way. This is the season for good natured whimsy.
What a lucky guy I am. The sun is setting, its a rockin' holiday weekend and as soon as I post this I'm off to downtown Northampton!
Wreaths on the rails of the old First Church, portions of which date back to 1727.
Looking out of one of the top floors of the UMass Library you can see that only a few cars remain as the students all leave for their winter holiday.
Hurry back kids, lest we die of boredom! A cool thing to do in the UMass Library is explore the stairwells, which also serve as a gallery for student art, most of it dating back to the late 1980's. Here are a few samples:
Washington crossing the stairwell.
Stairway sunset.
Traversing the woodland way into downtown Northampton yesterday I came upon some city workers still hard at work clearing branches that fell during that terrible Halloween snowstorm.
That storm was a real holocaust for our friends the trees. Not only were many tree branches knocked down, but a lot of branches that didn't fall were none the less weakened to the point that the snowstorms over the rest of this winter will ultimately bring them crashing down. Thus there were really two storms, the original one that brought a whole lot of branches down in one day, and another, slow motion aftermath as the branches weakened in the storm continue to fall for months to come.
When I got downtown I took a short cut by the old courthouse onto Main Street.
There I was surprised to see in this shop window dinnerware for Republicans!
I haven't read a Stephen King book in years, having grown bored by his increasingly formulaic plots and lack of fresh ideas. His new book looks intriguing though.
Staircase in the Haymarket Cafe.
People waiting in the cold to get into the Green Bean this morning, the hip Hamp Sunday morning hotspot for talking about all the Saturday night action.
A psychedelic corner in Raos.
Pioneer Valley artist Seth Glier has been nominated for a Grammy Award!
The Northampton Urban Outfitters is located in an old bank building, as seen in this classic Greg Saulmon photo.
Here's what it looks like inside. Pretty impressive!
On the wall is this plaque leftover from the bank days, honoring a teller who was killed in World War One in 1918.
In front of it is this rack of ladies clothes.
At first I was inclined to say something to the management about the lack of respect that shows, but then I was struck by the idea that the dead soldier probably would have liked the notion of pretty young Urban Outfitter shoppers pausing all day before his plaque. That's better remembrance than a lot of vets get.
There was another one of those censorship controversies at UMass last week when Professor Andrew Bernstein tried to lecture on the virtues of capitalism and was repeatedly interrupted by screaming leftists. Here one of them is escorted from the hall by campus security.
Newt who? This Northampton van owner is supporting (and has been supporting) Vermin Supreme!
A cardboard cow on the roof of an Amherst shed.
Legendary Amherst Bulletin columnist Phyllis Lehrer (right) stopped by the Amherst Survival Center recently with her friend Gale Kuhn.
So did Channel 22's Shannon Halligan and her cameraperson.
The Northampton Chapter.
The Hot Chocolate charity run through downtown Northampton was this morning.
