The lights looked really nice in Northampton last night.
Today was the community Thanksgiving dinner put on by the Amherst Survival Center at the Lutheran Church.
The yard of the partyhouse next door to the church looked like things might have been rockin' last night.
Cool decal on a car in the church parking lot.
There was plenty of free food for all.
Here's the turkey - I mean being served behind me!
I'm likely to overdose on turkey during the next two days, since I'm going to three separate dinners! Well, that's a problem of plenty, and when I catch myself bitchin' about the problems that come from having too much, I remind myself of the times when I had too little.
Have a Hip Holiday!!
I think hip people leave small ghosts behind, haunting winter ballparks and locked bars, that phantoms of oldtime stoners move between the shadows; but no phantom follows where a square has gone.
Hey, hope you all had a nice holiday! The day before Thanksgiving the Amherst Survival Center put on a free holiday meal for the entire community at the Lutheran Church just down the road from UMass.
Lots of folks from the community volunteer for that event, leaving regular volunteers like myself the freedom to do what we never get the chance to do - just show up, sit down and eat. My friend Damon Reeves entertained everyone on piano while we ate.
Mary Carey of the Hampshire Gazette/Amherst Bulletin was there in her professional role of reporter. She took my photo....
And I took hers:
So now it's on to the next big holiday! Sure enough, by the library I ran into long time campus activist Ed Cutting, who was enroute to begin setting up the UMass Christmas tree.
Recently I've been going through some old photographs and I thought I'd show you a few. This is my family on Thanksgiving on Hood Street in ol' Pine Point in 1948. My father is the person on the far right.
This is Wally's Fruits and Vegetables on Boston Road in Pine Point in 1954. Dig the five cent Cokes and Dreikorn's Bread sign!
My Uncle Wally was the proprietor, until he sold the business to a local vendor named Angelo, who developed it into one of Springfield's most popular fruit and vegetables stores. Today Angelo's is out of business and the building is vacant.
Here are my sisters outside the World Famous Thomas M. Balliet Elementary School in 1968.
This is me at age 13 with my grandmother at the former Riverside Park (now Six Flags). I remember the day, dig that haircut and Star Trek shirt!
Like most observers, I was not surprised by the conviction of Jason Strickland in the child abuse trial regarding Holly Poutre, the poor child who was abused into a permanently brain damaged state. The evidence against him seemed overwhelming, although most of the abuse appears to have been carried out by his late wife.
I was sickened by some of the details of the case and the sheer evil of of the acts. For example Holly loved to dance, so they hit her on the knees with a hammer. The terrible cruelty of that fills me with hatred. I can forgive a lot in the way of human failings, but child abuse of any kind I have zero tolerance for. That is the lowest of the low, and I hope Jason Strickland gets the harshest possible sentence.
I am not a death penalty supporter, but I can't help but wish that Jason Strickland could somehow meet the same fate as his wife, who was shot in the head by her own mother (who then shot and killed herself) thereby thankfully imposing on her monster of a daughter the just punishment the courts could not.
Bill Dusty made this interesting video about Monday's panhandling rally in downtown Northampton.
