Tunnelling

 

This morning at the Haymarket.

 

 

UMass is very proud of its hockey team. 

 

This ancient willow is much older than the UMass skyscrapers that have gone up around it. 

 

The old willow is a silent sentinel from a vanished era when all of what is now Southwest was fields and farmhouses. It took well over a hundred years for the tree to grow a trunk this wide! Southwest was built in 1964.

 

 

This is the tunnel that pedestrians pass under when entering and leaving Southwest.

 

 

Back in the psychedelic 60's, the tunnel walls were painted in colorful patterns, which could still be seen as little as a dozen years ago. You can sorta see it in this pic I took in 2008.

 

Since then it has been painted over in a bright white, supposedly to battle the alleged "rape culture" on campus by eliminating dark spaces. 

 

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The result is that a delightfully colorful part of campus has been replaced by a sterile blankness.However, some campus anti-abortion activist did manage to scrawl this on the whiteness. 

 

 

I wonder how long that will stay up.

 

Springfield Armory Museum 2021.

 

photo by M. Wiseman

 

Springfield's former Tapley School building 2021.

photo by M. Wiseman

The best Italian grinders in Springfield? 

photo by mike wiseman

Springfield's Hotel Charles in 1985. The Union Station parking garage now occupies the site.