A wooden bear outside the R & R Sport Shop in Belchertown.
Peter hanging a picture in the Haymarket Cafe in Northampton....
....while a customer looks on.
Filmed in a Northampton club way back in 1991. Is that you dancing in the audience?
Just a hot and lazy Sunday at dusk and I'm shuffling down Main Street towards the Haymarket Cafe. Nobody's playing any music outside, although musical instruments sit by a bench.
The musicians and fans ignore the instruments and the bench and just sit on the sidewalk.
Sadie the Wonder Dog loves to lounge with the Haymarket humans.
Nothing much happening on the street, so I guess I'll go inside.
Not much happening in here either, with nobody downstairs but a waitress and a computer geek.
Guess I'll just take a seat over here in the corner by the Christ and monk statue.
Jesus is missing an arm.
The monk looks up at Christ with adoration.
But if you look closely, their eyes do not meet. Christ is looking right past him.
There is probably some sorta profound allegory of life to be drawn from that, if you think about it long enough and if you look at it right.
But I think I'll just finish my coffee and head home.
Tony Mateus captured this embarrassing mistake in Sturbridge this weekend.
Just goes to show ya you can lead, but that don't mean anybody's gonna follow.
Sadly, the Springfield public school system has long had a lousy reputation even by the standards of urban districts. Yet it has improved some in recent years, and for that much of the credit must be given to Springfield School Committee member Antonette Pepe. Unfortunately, in return for her efforts she has rarely received more than insults and threats, most recently receiving warnings that she might be impeached. She has also been accused of always running to the media with her complaints. However, as these following excerpts from a copy of a letter by Pepe to the Davis Foundation, which I obtained through a third party, reveals that much of what Pepe has done was not reported in the media, and probably should have been.
Gentlemen:
Due to a conversation I had with York Mayo, I believe you may not be aware of my work on the School Committee. I do not go to the press unless I have exhausted all other avenues. Therefore, I offer the following information, because I had the sense that he and others may have a mistaken view of my motivation and manner of trying to rectify problems in the district...
The following provides some highlights of my accomplishments on the School Committee:
1. My first year, I was selected by the Vice Chair as Chairperson of Vocational Education Committee and served on 6 other committees. When I immediately visited Putnam, I found that although thousands of dollars had been spent on equipment for the students in their respective shops none were wired for use ( plasma cutters, printing equipment etc.). Mayor Ryan hired an electrician to wire the equipment after I told him of the problem. ( I did not go to press.)
2. At this time, the School Committee was not meeting with the Putnam Advisory Board as stipulated by law. After my repeated requests to Dr. Burke, it was finally accomplished. I was commended by Attorney Hurst for my persistence since the Committee was not aware of the accomplishments and the help the students received from the Advisory Board Members. ( I did not go to press.)
3. An administrator was not allowing the students at Putnam to use the required computers they needed for shop. The computers were stored in a closet for a couple of years. I made sure the students were allowed to use the required computers. ( I did not go to press....
7. Walsh School had an annex (portables) as part of their school. The annex was detrimental to the health of the students and faculty. To repair or try to rid the building of black mold was expensive. After explaining to Mayor Ryan the costly problems, he agreed to have the building raised. (I did not go to press.)
8. We had a Twilight Program that was costing the system $1 million. It was an enormous failure. Students were truant and/or absent constantly. The regular classrooms during the day were extremely overcrowded. I was instrumental in abolishing that program. By doing this, teachers were assigned back to the regular school day which lowered the number of students in the classrooms.
9. After we selected Dr. Ingram, our past committee and superintendent tried to give the teachers a $3.5 million raise with money we did not have. I argued the point that it would put Dr. Ingram $7 million in debt when he arrived since the $3.5 million was money we owed and he would no be able to make payroll. Dr. Burke's comment to me was, "If you think I am going to make it easy for Ingram, you are mistaken." TJ Plante was present at the meeting. He can attest to that statement.
10. I notified the representative of the Control Board to inform him of what occurred and that Dr. Burke was going to transfer the IB Vice Principal at Commerce High School to Zanetti Montessori when he had no prior experience in that field, and it would have been detrimental to the students in the IB prpgram. The representative of the CB stopped the raise as well as the transfer immediately and gave a cease and desist order to Burke. ( I did not go to press.)
11. I made Dr. Ingram aware of the truant officer that was very rarely in the building at Forest Park School as well as the police officer who was not getting the job done. (Although this was in the press I did not provide the information to the press....
14. I would not give up on the amount of students that were and still are truant. When Dr. Ingram arrived, I gave him the facts. He instituted a plan to help correct the problem. I spoke to church groups, parents and different organizations that we needed to support the Superintendent in this endeavor because we cannot educate any student who is absent consistently. Dr. Ingram did not meet with any opposition from the parents as others have in the past....
I walk through our schools on a regular basis to visit with the students. I attend most of the school functions to support our students and staff. I have attended every high school graduation as well as the GED graduations.
Being a team member is not the same as going along to get along. A team works together, is open to all the facts, shares information and ideas, and collaborates. My main focus and goal is to support our students at any cost to me.
Antonette
Outside the Haymarket in Northampton this weekend I ran into multi-media artist Kelsey Flynn (right) and her wife Jaime with their cute little pet dog.
Pete playing banjo.
A woman playing a saw.
A tuba player.
Libertarian activist Terry Franklin is back in Amherst after attending last week's annual Rainbow gathering. As you can see, a good time was had by all.
A wall on Worthington Street in Springfield.
A stretch of sidewalk on Worthington. As a small child I remember walking downtown with my grandmother and in those days all the downtown streets had brick sidewalks.
Springfield Technical Community College.
Politicos in Agawam this weekend - State Senate candidate Tom McCarthy, Congressional candidate Jay Fleitman and State Treasurer candidate Karyn Polito.
My late father's car being overrun by weeds in Belchertown.
The public beach in Wales at sunset.
Outside a Wales biker bar.
No burnouts.
There was fine music to accompany the fine dining at the Amherst Survival Center today as the Buckley Ensemble from Amherst College performed the work of Mozart and Brahms, despite the cramped quarters that forced them to play in the hallway!
Along the wall of the Haymarket Cafe in Northampton.
Benchsitters outside the Haymarket.
Guitar and drums. 
Horn man.
Luke.
A flower in the Haymarket window.
Candid scenes such as this from the UMass dorms may not be exactly what the UMass promotional department might produce, but they may still bring in a lot of new applicants!
Some recent Electric Hot Tuna.
When I was in grammar school at The World Famous Thomas M. Balliet Elementary School I used to like this show called It's About Time. The Wikipedia explains:
It's About Time is an American fantasy-based comedy TV series that aired on CBS for one season of 26 episodes in 1966–1967. The series was created by Sherwood Schwartz, and used sets, props and incidental music from Schwartz's other television series in production at the time, Gilligan's Island.
It's About Time was virtually two different series aired under the same title. The first version of the series saw two astronauts, Mac (Frank Aletter) and Hector (Jack Mullaney), accidentally break the speed of light, and get thrown back in time to prehistoric days. There, they have to adjust to living with a cave family led by Shad (Imogene Coca) and Gronk (Joe E. Ross).
Approximately halfway through the season, the show's lower-than expected ratings resulted in the producers suddenly retooling the series by having the astronauts repair their space capsule and return to 1967 with the cave family in tow. The remainder of the season was spent with Shadd, Gronk and their family adjusting to life in the 1960s, reacting to the unfamiliar surroundings, setting up home in 20th-century New York City.
I suspect that if I saw an episode of the show today I might cringe at the corny humor, yet I did find myself recently contemplating whether time travel is an actual possibility. I often think about weird stuff like that as I traverse each day the woodland way into downtown Northampton.
Of course Einstein famously said that if you exceeded the speed of light then time would appear to move backwards, an optical illusion created by the fact that you were catching up to "old" light that had already passed you. But it would be only an illusion, and a short-lived one too, since matter, particularly water-based biological matter like ourselves, would be quickly atomized into non-existence at such a speed.
So if Einstein's suggested means of time travel is completely impractical, is there some other way? It occurred to me that one way that time travel might be possible would be via computer simulation. Computers already are playing a major role in the way we learn about the past. By analyzing satellite pictures of the Earth, computers are able to recognize useful archaeological digging sites invisible from the ground and help to analyze the objects that are dug up there. In such ways we are learning much more about the past then we ever thought would be possible just a few decades ago.
But is it possible to use computers to learn about the past in more specific ways? Can we actually pick and choose historic subjects from the past, and be like those astronauts from the TV show who visit the Stone Age? Well, it seems to me that might be doable, if not now, then sometime in the future. That is because everything that exists is the result of a chains of cause and effect, each chain being both logical and dictated by the laws of physics. Therefore, if you knew all of the chains of cause and effect that created all the aspects of present day reality, it should be possible to reverse that chain by computer simulation and "see" what things were like in the past. You wouldn't actually go into the past, but you could see what it must have been like based on what had to occur in order to create the present.
Pretty cool eh? For example if you could run the chains of cause and effect behind everything now existing at that famous plaza in Dallas back to 1963 then you could see if Lee Harvey Oswald really was the lone killer of John F. Kennedy. Indeed, such a technique would enable us to double-check all historical events. Perhaps it could even be fine tuned to the point of being able to check the past of anyone's life, our own or of any ancestor.
The catch is that this would require computer software of mind-boggling complexity, far beyond anything that is even remotely possible today. Besides, even before you could create such software you would need an incredibly indepth and wide ranging understanding of all of the chains of cause and effect involved, which is no small feat in itself. Yet it does not strike me as impossible that someday, as computer capabilities continue to evolve, that such an understanding of the interconnections of reality might make the past retraceable with great accuracy. If so, then this biblical quote on a lawn in Westfield may prove to be true:
I doubt this is something that will ever happen in my lifetime, but who knows? In the meantime, I may as well hangout at the Haymarket Cafe. Here is the giant mirror in the entranceway.
The front staircase.
In Westfield yesterday I ran into the legendary activist Doug Ariel, formerly of ol' Pine Point. He once ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Springfield. Doug was also my late father's boyhood friend, and recently turned 81 years old.
I also ran into former Local Buzz writer Bill Peters at UMass. Since the Buzz went bust last year Bill has been living down South working on a freelance writing career. He's already made some sales and is working on a book!
A spin through downtown Greenfield with Tony Mateus.
A Deadhead's dashboard lament in downtown Hamp.
On Election Day
This is the polling place where I went to vote this morning before work.
Einstein theorized that gravity distorted reality but he was wrong - politics does.
When I went downtown to catch the bus to UMass I saw this battered sign sitting in the trash, where it belongs.
Good thing I left extra early because voting made me miss the bus. Oh well, I guess I'll just schlep around downtown and do a little window shopping until the next bus comes.
Bumper stickers are big sellers around these parts. Nearly everyone has got one or two on their car, laptop or bike.
Hey, need a green wig?
This sextoy store is not shy about announcing its presence.
I guess this was inevitable - official Grateful Dead psychedelic sneakers.
Good thing Jerry Garcia was cremated instead of buried, because if he saw how commercialized the Dead have become since he died he'd be spinning in his grave - although no doubt twirling to a jammy beat.
I got sick of looking at things I couldn't buy, so I stopped in at the beloved Haymarket for a coffee to go to drink on the bus ride.
In all it was not a bad start to the day.
Latest Polls from Real Clear Politics
Obama: Approve - 51.1% Disapprove - 43.9%
Congress: Approve - 24.8% Disapprove 66.4%
Direction of Country: Right Direction - 38.8% Wrong Direction - 55.5%
Good Media Advice
When you have a severe recession and you have something transformational as we now see unfolding with the Web, you have to do two things. One, you have to address the immediate circumstances, which means belt tightening. But at the same time, you have to invest for the future. And thankfully, 12 years ago, when we went online as did everyone else, we did not make the mistake that many print publishers made, and that was to think you take the printed page, throw it online, and there you have your electronic publishing. When Thomas Edison invented movies, some people thought you’d film a stage play and that was a feature film. No. It’s an entirely different medium.
- Steve Forbes of Forbes Magazine.
Today's Video
I've misplaced something.
