River Mother

The Connecticut River is the mother of our Valley.

The Calvin Coolidge Bridge over the mighty Connecticut.

I recently stumbled upon this account of an old lawsuit involving Springfield entrepreneur and political figure Atty. Tony Ravosa:

Since the early 1960s, Ravosa, an attorney, has purchased real estate in the Springfield area, including residential and commercial properties and many of the historic and other buildings surrounding the Springfield courthouses. As of the time of trial, Zais had had over thirty years, experience in real estate and had held a real estate broker's license for approximately twenty years.

During the period from 1980 to 1985, Ravosa planned to develop Court Square in Springfield by accumulating all of the nationally registered historic buildings there, including the locus, and tying them into the Springfield civic center, of which he was chairman of the board from 1978 to 1983. At that time, the locus was owned by Sophie Freedman, a party to an ongoing dispute with Ravosa. Ravosa had made numerous unsuccessful attempts to purchase the locus from Mrs. Freedman through the use of various individuals as straws, and Mrs. Freedman had indicated on several occasions that she would not sell the locus to him.

In late 1984 or early 1985, Ravosa met Zais, whom he knew to be a licensed real estate broker, at the Bar Association, a downtown Springfield restaurant, which Ravosa owned. Zais told Ravosa that he was a broker and stated, "I will get you the building. Don't worry about it, I'll get you the building."

Read more here.

My friend M. de Seminet who lives in Seattle sent me this picture she took of people cheering as the first gay couple and their kids leave City Hall after getting their marriage license.

Regardless of what one thinks of gay marriage this much is true: Any two people in love are superior to any third person looking at them with hatred.

Mad Magazine has chosen as their dumbest person of the year the very deserving Lance Armstrong, who blew a legendary career by cheating and then bragging about it. Other very worthy recipients were Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Read more here.

Worst new Christmas toy?

ANGUS!!!