Spring has sprung along Main Street.
I wonder if the person who drives this car is into politics?
S. Priesly Blake, at the age of 105, posing under a photo of his original Pine Point restaurant on Boston Road.
The toilet paper section at the Stop&Shop on Boston Road in Springfield yesterday. Photo by M. Vennell.
Stop&Shop has been great during this pandemic except for the fact that they almost never have TP or paper towels, Someone told me the reason is that they are a Boston based company and are saving the scarce stuff for the Bostonians. Then again, maybe that's just a rumor started by Big Y.
Hey, where is everybody?
The Minuteman has no one to guard except the ducks!
The announcement by UMass that students will not be returning to campus until next September means the economies of Amherst and Northampton are going to take a big hit. Neither community can sustain their central business districts without the students. Many local businesses have a hard time just making it through the summer when the students leave each year, so how could they possibly survive from now until September when the students finally return?
Northampton at least has a little cushion in that they still have the New York tourists (although their numbers may decrease in the current situation) but Amherst is just another Sunderland if it doesn't have the college students.
The upper Valley has already felt an economic blow this year due to the shrinking student body at troubled Hampshire College. Now with all the students at all the Five Colleges gone because of the virus scare, the fiscal crash of our local downtowns is inevitable. While it may not matter much to places like Holyoke and Springfield, whose downtown economies were destroyed by the Democrats long ago, but to the much more vibrant central business districts in the north Valley, it is a complete economic disaster unless this whole virus shit blows over soon.
Meanwhile, FATmen Peter Newland and Mark Pappas made some beautiful musical moments together last week. Listen to "Nothing Left to Burn" at 14:25.
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