And Other Assorted Stuff On Saturday the sun shining through the trees created a cathedral of light along the woodland way into downtown Northampton.
But after hurricane Irene passed through on Sunday, the woodland way was blocked in several places by fallen trees.
Personally, I do not think that Irene lived up to Hurricane Gloria back in the mid-1980's. I remember being out in my backyard during the period of time when the eye of the hurricane passed over Springfield, and the sky was as strange and beautiful as I've ever seen it, with odd colors and spectacular cloud formations. I also remember the radio was playing The Doors version of Gloria.
I saw no such wonders of nature displayed by Irene. However, maybe I was just in the wrong location, as Irene made much more of an impact in other parts of our Valley, as seen in this Craig Gagne photo taken in Deerfield near Richardson's Candy Shoppe.
Some critics have complained that the media overhyped Irene, but in any case, it's over.
Earlier in the week people were arriving at the Amherst Survival Center by all means of transportation.
The media was there too, like Hampshire Gazette reporter Nick Grabbe.
And veteran photographer Gordon Daniels of the Amherst Bulletin.
Soon U.S. Congressman John Olver arrived on the scene.
He was immediately given an apron and put to work.
I guess this is what you would literally call "serving your constituents."
I was surprised to see this big line stretching down the street to see Alice Cooper in Northampton.
I have always felt there is something kinda corny about Alice Cooper and his horror show schtick. Yet at the same time his music is rockin good fun and the special effects I'm told are impressive. Plus to people of a certain age he's a big nostalgia trip that still generates a substantial cash flow. This limousine bus parked at the Hotel Northampton was definitely Alice's.
Only in Northampton do signs end up like this. Who knows what they originally said?
When the final campaign filings from the Pioneer Valley 2010 political races came out on Monday, eyebrows were raised behind closed doors at the report filed by south Valley Congressman Richard Neal. I say behind closed doors, because the general public was never informed of the figures by the mainstream local media, which is typical regarding anything pertaining to "The Congressman" that might be interpreted as embarrassing.
But the mind-boggling sum spent by Richie Neal to win re-election last year was really the great uncovered story of our local elections in 2010. How much was Richie forced to spend this time around? According to his filing, he spent a staggering $2,235,180, which I believe qualifies as the most expensive race in Pioneer Valley history.
What also makes Richie's massive money bomb so unique is not just its size, but the target against which all that cash was directed - Neal's almost penniless and unknown opponent, political novice Tom Wesley. To attempt to unseat Neal, Wesley raised a paltry $123,203, which on the congressional level is practically the equivalent of challenging your opponent on the proceeds of a lemonade stand.
Even more awkward for Neal is how little he got for firing this cannon of cash against a housefly. Although Republicans of a certain stripe can occasionally win in the Pioneer Valley, Wesley was not of that type. He had a military background in a district of peaceniks, was anti-abortion among rabid feminists, and against gay marriage in one of the queerest parts of the state. Wesley was also running as a Republican Tea Partier in a year when Massachusetts (and California) were unique in resisting the GOP wave that swept the other 48 states.
And yet, even with all that against him, the final tally was startlingly close, with Wesley winning a very solid 43% of the vote. It is hard to believe that a sudden attraction to Wesley's right-wing views can account for that turnout, especially since there was no Republican surge in any other local races. Although Wesley did have an enthusiastic base, his high vote total can only be fully explained as a personal anti-Neal backlash. In other words, there were a surprisingly large number of voters out there who were prepared to hold their nose and vote for a candidate they philosophically disagreed with rather than cast their ballot for Richie Neal.
And no doubt they had their reasons. Years of unchallenged incumbency had made Neal appear as if he took the seat for granted, with many voters even asking "Richie who?" since the lack of the need for Neal to campaign for the seat for 16 years had left much of the public uncertain of who he was. No doubt Neal's inside polling showed him in trouble, thereby explaining his frantic spending spree, even against an unpopular opponent with no money. That is the only logical explanation for how you end up with the bizarre sight of a two million dollar race against a guy with pocket change.
Neal won by a margin slim enough to leave one wondering whether Neal would have lost the seat had the GOP had the sense to have nominated the much more electable libertarian Republican Dr. Jay Fleitman of Northampton, who had challenged Wesley in the primary. But that's just idle speculation at this point, in politics the winner takes all, whether victory comes by a sliver or a landslide, and under normal circumstances Neal would be able to sigh with post-election relief and enjoy another term.
Neal and Olver
But these are not normal circumstances. As a result of slow population growth in Massachusetts, we are losing one of our ten congressional seats. That means that if all ten incumbents want to run for re-election, one of them is going to have to be forced to run against a fellow incumbent. And if you know anything about the way things are done in Massachusetts politics, it ain't gonna be somebody in Boston who is going to have that problem. As usual they will shaft - I mean shift - that difficulty to us here in the Wild West, and make our two congressmen, Neal and John Olver of Amherst do an electoral duel to the death in a Democrat Party primary.
Both Neal and Olver (like the other eight incumbents) have publicly announced that they are seeking re-election in 2012; but how seriously can we take their intentions? There is no doubt that Neal is sincere, he is poised to possibly become chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in the unlikely chance that the Democrats retake the House. Neal is also just in his early 60's and considered still young by congressional standards.
Olver however, is a another story. For one thing, doubt is raised by the fact that Olver is required to say he is running in 2012 even if he has no intention of doing so, just to preserve any chance of saving the two Western Mass seats from consolidation. The ten incumbents are just dying to be relieved of the pressure of removing a seat by having someone retire, since then they could just wipe out that person's seat and leave all nine remaining incumbents safe and sound. So if Olver did not say he was running, it would become an inescapable certainty that we would lose the second seat, with no possibility of escaping Boston combining Neal's and Olver's districts.
Despite such political posing, everyone is all but certain that Neal and Olver's districts will be combined, as it just isn't possible to imagine the scenario where Boston would kill off one of their own to accommodate Western Mass. So would Olver really compete in such a brutal political death match with Neal? He is well into his seventies and frankly did not impress people with his sometimes doddering, spacy performance in last year's debates against his GOP challenger Bill Gunn. Many suspect that if push comes to shove, Olver will defer to Neal by retiring should it turn out that only one of them can fill the seat.
But of course the Pioneer Valley political universe does not consist only of Richard Neal and John Olver. Some powerful Democrat could come forward, and the whispering is growing louder that the someone who may step in to challenge Neal if Olver steps down may be Amherst State Senator Stan Rosenberg. After all, Rosenberg is widely considered to be Olver's hand-picked heir, and previous speculation about Olver's retirement has regarded Rosenberg's candidacy to be a foregone conclusion. Why would that certainty be changed should the seat have Richie Neal competing for it?
My personal opinion is that if it is a Neal versus Olver Democrat primary, Neal will win because of his relative youth and the lopsided margin the Democrat machine in Springfield can deliver to Neal to overcome all the small towns that comprise Olver's base. However, a Neal versus Rosenberg race, now that's a whole other story. It's too early yet, but meanwhile let us watch with keen interest as events unfold.
The rising sun hits the woodland way into downtown Northampton.
Transforming it into a golden road of unlimited devotion.
Singing along to animal posters in Northampton last week.
The New York Times has released their official appraisal of where the re-election races of Pioneer Valley Congressmen Richard Neal and John Olver stand as of October 15. While Republicans in much of the country are enjoying unprecedented high poll numbers, the Times reports that according to their appraisal, coming into the home stretch both Neal and Olver are poised for landslide re-election victories.
Saying that "based on polling, expert forecasts, fundraising, past election returns and other indicators" in the closely watched 2nd Congressional District, where the entrenched Neal is being challenged by businessman Tom Wesley, the Times says that Neal is leading with 71% of the vote with Wesley trailing 44 points behind with only 27%. On the basis of those numbers, the Times declares that they are 100% certain that Neal will be re-elected.
The Times regards the Olver effort, where he faces local Tea Party favorite Bill Gunn, to be more competitive, but just barely. Dismissing leftist third party candidate Michael Engel as entirely irrelevant, the Times declares that Olver is leading with 66% of the vote to Gunn's nearly 32%. This leads them to conclude that there is a 99.9% chance that Olver will be re-elected, not quite the 100% certainty the Times has about Neal, but still very discouraging to those hoping for change.
Challengers Tom Wesley and Bill Gunn.
But is it really so hopeless? I think the Times is mistaken in totally dismissing the role of Engel's leftist third party challenge in the Olver race. If Engel pulls a significant number of disillusioned Obama liberals away from Olver, Gunn's chances may prove better than forecast. And the experts have been underestimating Tom Wesley from day one, when everyone said that Wesley's GOP primary challenger, Dr. Jay Fleitman would win the GOP nomination easily.
In any case it will be the voters of the First and Second District who will make the final determination on November 2nd of who will represent them in Congress - not the New York Times.
To read the full NYT Neal-Wesley appraisal click here. To read the full NYT Olver-Gunn appraisal click here.
Luke Arrivel was playing at the Haymarket in Northampton this past weekend.
A Deadhead in the UMass library.
I saw this red-tailed hawk in a tree outside Bartlett Hall at UMass this afternoon.
If you listen to the experts, it appears to be pretty much a foregone conclusion that the State of Massachusetts is going to lose one of its ten congressional seats when the census requires new districts to be drawn for the election of 2012. The Boston Globe explains:
Massachusetts almost certainly will lose one of its 10 congressional districts after next year’s census, the result of a long-term population shift that is giving Southern and Western states more political power in Washington at the expense of the Northeast, say specialists who have been poring over data in advance of the 2010 count.
Long-term economic and demographic shifts in favor of warmer climates with less expensive housing are to blame for the state’s slower growth, and thus the loss of a congressional district, according to estimates. Massachusetts’ population grew by just 2.3 percent from 2000 to 2008, compared with 8 percent nationally, a disparity that is expected to continue next year and beyond.
“We did five different scenarios projecting the population forward, and in each of those five scenarios, Massachusetts would lose a seat,’’ said Kimball Brace of Election Data Services, a political consulting firm in Washington.
According to these maps from the Swing State Project, this is the congressional districts as they exist now. Notice how in the last redistricting they had to stretch Olver and Neal's districts more than half-way across the state in order to preserve both their seats.
The pressure will be overwhelming once one seat is eliminated to simply solidify Western Massachusetts into a single district. This is how the Swing State Project imagines the likeliest outcome to look like, with their explanation:
The redistricting process in Massachusetts is expected to be run by the Democrats in 2011-2012, and even if Gov. Deval Patrick manages to lose to a Republican in 2010, it won't make much difference for the sake of district maps; all ten congressional incumbents are left-of-center Democrats.
Seeing that population growth was weakest in western Massachusetts, and that Rep. John Olver (D-Amherst) will be 76 at the 2012 election, it seemed logical to combine western Mass's two districts and force Olver against his then-63-year-old colleague, Richard Neal of Springfield. Most think Olver would retire if pitted against Neal.
Not everyone is unhappy about the potential changes. Howie Carr of the Boston Herald thinks it is good that we are losing members of congress, considering who the members of congress are:
Howie Carr (right) with former redistricter Tom Finneran.
The good news is, Massachusetts is probably going to lose one of its 10 congressmen in the upcoming national redistricting.
The bad news is, we’re not going to lose two.
The reason for this political RIF is that the Bay State’s population is not growing - what a surprise. I mean, what’s not to like about this wonderful commonwealth, at least if you’re a pinky-ring union thug, a trust-funded moonbat, a hack out on a fake disability pension or a freeloading illegal alien with an anchor baby?
Alas for our solons, almost everyone in Massachusetts not on the dole is fleeing. That’s a problem - for the political class, anyway.
The problem with our current crop of limousine liberals is that they’ve pretty much aged themselves out of the active criminal class. The ever-worthless John Olver turns 73 next month, Barney Frank (D-Fannie Mae) is 69. Bill Delahunt (D-Venezuela and Club Hedonism) is 68. Fast Eddie Markey, the “dean” of the delegation, is slowing down at 63, and even Richie Neal has reached 60.
Most likely nominee for the stew pot: Olver, from Amherst. He’s the most ancient and the least relevant. The problem is that 1st District of his. The Golden West he represents is so sparsely populated that in the last redistricting, to make the numbers work, the map-drawers had to run him all the way east to the outskirts of Lowell.
Whichever district is eliminated, the remaining nine solons will each have to pick up about 75,000 people. The 1st District is just too far west to allow the inside-128 solons to recruit more voters to replace the ones who are voting with their feet by the thousands.
I agree that if it comes down to an Olver vs. Neal battle that Olver would probably retire. But what if he didn't? What a battle of the titans that would be, with Neal representing the corrupt but more conservative southern branch of the local Democrat party, while the less corrupt but flaming liberal northern Valley Democrats would rally behind Olver.
What if neither Olver nor Neal ran for the Western Mass seat? So many Democrats would flock to compete for the extremely rare open seat that it would be easier to speculate who wouldn't run. Most Western Mass Democrat office holders, past and present, with any credibility would be considered potential contenders.
The field is much thinner when one considers credible Republicans. Perhaps former Governor Jane Swift (above) who ran against Olver early in her career would take advantage of the redistricting to run for the seat again. Another former GOP congressional aspirant is the popular Clerk Magistrate of Hampden Superior Court, former Senator Brian Lees, who once ran against Neal's predecessor Eddie Boland. Maybe an open seat would tempt Lees to try again for a seat in Congress. Of course if Neal's 2010 challenger Dr. Jay Fleitman does well (or beats Neal and becomes the incumbent) then all bets are off.
But whatever goes down, it promises to be political entertainment at its finest.
Some Pics
Out the window at Sam's.
Tree pruning at Pulaski Park.
Spiderboy and Rhythom at the Amherst Survival Center.
Flower power at UMass.
Today's Video
Last Saturday a stage was set up on the original site of the Woodstock festival and a number of survivors from the show 40 years earlier performed. Just an exercise in nostalgia of course, but this beautiful version of 'Wooden Ships' by Jefferson Starship made it all worthwhile.
