BSO: On Olver

Ducks playing in the puddles by my house this morning.

Last week I went to the memorial service for former U.S. Congressman John Olver at the John W. Olver Design Building at UMass. Pictures of Olver were placed on the doors to the Olver building to tell people that they were at the right location.

Didn't you used to have to be dead for a number of years in order to have a building named after you? It's worse when it is built by a public institution like UMass, where what you have are living politicians spending the taxpayers money to build monuments to themselves.

But whatever, there was certainly a good turnout

However, some people were conspicuous in their absence. One of them was Olver's tag team partner in the Western Mass congressional district, Richard Neal. A statement was made explaining that the congressman was in Ireland at the time and therefore couldn't make it.

Although they sometimes worked together on issues relating to Western Mass, Neal and Olver were never close on a personal level. It may have been that the north valley Olver never felt quite comfortable with his south valley counterpart because of the infamous "Tofu Curtain" separating the two halves of the Pioneer Valley. The rough and tumble, cronyish and corrupt machine politics of the Springfield based Neal may have offended the sensibilities of the more strait-laced Olver.

Neal was not the only prominent no-show, although unlike Neal these other absentees sent along videos expressing their regrets.

Rising from the political graveyard to serve as Master of Ceremonies was former State Senator Stan Rosenberg. Once upon a time Rosenberg was considered the heir apparent to succeed Olver when he retired from congress, but that was not to be. Here is Rosenberg (left) welcoming the keynote speaker, Worcester based Congressman Jim McGovern.

As always at these sort of things, there were a lot of well-meaning but dull speeches. However McGovern's talk was actually quite good. Full of fun and interesting anecdotes about serving in Congress with Olver, he gave the sort of speech one might have expected Neal to have given. At times McGovern had the gathering shouting with laughter, myself included. This may have been the first time I have heard McGovern speak where I was laughing with him, rather than at him.

McGovern (center) also had them cracking up at the reception afterwards.

It was not an Irish reception - there was only bland health food with no meat or booze.

I have my own John Olver stories. When I first met him a couple of decades ago and told him I was a libertarian, he replied, "Oh, so you're a right-winger who likes drugs and sex?"

Another time I ran into Olver in the Amherst post office. When I asked if I could take his picture, he complained that standing as he was beneath a neon light, his bald head would reflect in a glaring and unflattering way. I jokingly suggested that he put his hand over his head to shield it from the light. "That's a logical solution," he replied, and then did it.

But my main memory of Olver is the time he came to the Amherst Survival Center. No one at the ASC looked forward to visits from politicos. For one thing, this was not your typical politically motivated audience. Most of the people who went to the ASC were addicted to something or mentally ill. Many were both. Practically the only normal people were the welfare mothers and their kids. I was there doing court-ordered community service as a kitchen worker as penance for some things I did when I was a crackhead and street person.

But the natural cultural gulf between the political elite and those at the very bottom of society was not the worst of it. What we hated was the phoniness of these visits. The esteemed public servant would always arrive with an entourage of media folk, who had been alerted in advance of their visit. The politician would then walk around talking almost exclusively to the staff, unable to hide their awkwardness to be among the actual, living poor - not as some political abstraction - but in real life.

At lunchtime they would always put on an apron and stand behind the counter, dishing out food to people with outstretched plates for about ten minutes or so, or as long as the media kept filming them. The politician would then depart right after the media did. After all, what was the point of hanging around once all the cameras were gone? It made us feel that we were being used as props for a future campaign commercial.

So nobody was too excited when we were told that Congressman Olver was coming to visit. We figured that, like all the others, he was only there for a photo-op. However, to our amazement, Olver arrived with only one person in tow. No media in sight. He hadn't alerted them. The congressman wasn't even wearing a suit and tie!

More surprisingly, Olver actually spoke to the soup kitchen guests, not just the paid staff, and he listened and responded to what people said with genuine interest. Spotting me in the kitchen he said, "Good to see you Tommy," to which I replied, "Good to be seen."

When lunchtime arrived, instead of just assuming he could put on an apron and step in as a server, Olver actually asked our permission to do so. That was a first for us. Here was someone from a world light years removed from the cultural realm of the Amherst Survival Center, who was actually treating our menagerie of druggies, jailbirds, crazies and welfare moms with something we didn't experience very much.

Respect.

I was not in tune with Olver's policy prescriptions, but I wish I saw more politicians today who had his empathy and integrity. Rest easy, Congressman, from your one libertarian fan.

What kinda vile shit is going down at Hampshire College?