The students are back!
Today the Spring Semester at UMass begins! This morning there were the predictable traffic jams in the predictable places.
The tables of the various student groups were all set up in the Campus Center concourse. Of course I helped myself to some of the free popcorn!
There was a big poster sale for images to cover the concrete block walls of the dorms. After all these years Grateful Dead posters remain big sellers. Bob Marley is also still iconic.
Students walk to class as the bell in the Old Chapel rings in the beginning of a new semester.
Sleepy ol' Amherst comes to life as a new season of fun has begun. Yahoo! I'm gonna get mine!
Everyone is running down to Springfield today to hear Hillary Clinton speak at Springfield College.
Um, I'll pass. However, Hillary's troops were out this morning in Northampton waving to traffic.
Yesterday the supporters of John Edwards were braving the frigid temps of downtown Hamp.
Columnist Charles Krauthammer had a devastating column this weekend denouncing Edwards as a total phony. To read it click here.
It's too bad that Yo Yo Ma, a resident of Winchester, Massachusetts, isn't running for president.
Yo-Yo Ma is considered the world's greatest living cello player, a professional musician since the age of 5 whose celebrity transcends the world of classical music. Born in Paris, Ma (of Chinese descent) was a child prodigy on the cello and began serious study in New York in the early 1960s. He graduated from Harvard University in 1976, already an internationally acclaimed cellist. He has won more than a dozen Grammy awards and is known especially for his interpretations of Bach and Beethoven, and for his ability to play many different styles of music, including tango and bluegrass.
Here's what Yo Yo had to say when asked recently about how best to improve the world.
YO YO FOR PRESIDENT!
A relative who mostly only sees me on my website commented on the phone to me the other day that he was surprised that I got my haircut. I told him I didn't and explained that in most pictures the shoulder length hair I've worn since I was in High School is tucked into my baseball cap. He doubted it, so here is proof positive provided by these pics shot last night by my roommate Bert.
Hat on:
Hat off:
A great version of an appropriate song:
Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It's gettin kinda long
I coulda said it was in my way
But I didn't and I wonder why
I just felt like letting my Freak Flag fly
Cause I feel like I owe it to someone
Must be because I had the flu' for Christmas
And I'm not feeling up to par
It increases my paranoia
Like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car
But I'm not giving in an inch to fear
Cause I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe it to someone
When I finally get myself together
I'm going to get down in that sunny southern weather
And I'll find a place inside to laugh
Separate the wheat from the chaff
Cuz I feel like I owe it to someone
2 comments:
Hey Tom,
I used to love that song, which reminds me, I've gotta get Deja Vu on a CD. These days I think its digitally remastered which is usually very good but nothing sounds like vinyl. Speaking of the Dead and their "family," when I recently saw NRPS at the Iron Horse I was talking to a couple of college kids standing in line for the bathroom. I asked them how they new about the New Riders. "Did your parents tell you about them?" Got some weird looks. Guess kids still don't like that. Still, I can tell you one thing, my kids sure learned about the Grateful Dead from me. Part of good parenting I think.
That is a great version of that song, and by the looks of them the musicians weren't even born when the song was written. The legacy lives on!
Post a Comment