The Northampton Urban Outfitters is located in an old bank building, as seen in this classic Greg Saulmon photo.
Here's what it looks like inside:
On the wall is this plaque leftover from the bank days, honoring a teller who was killed in World War One in 1918.
In front of it is this rack of ladies clothes.
At first I was inclined to say something to the management about the lack of respect that shows, but then I was struck by the idea that the dead soldier probably would have liked the notion of pretty young Urban Outfitter shoppers pausing all day before his plaque. That's better remembrance than a lot of vets get.
There was another one of those censorship controversies at UMass last week when Professor Andrew Bernstein tried to lecture on the virtues of capitalism and was repeatedly interrupted by screaming leftists. Here one of them is escorted from the hall by campus security.
Newt who? This Northampton van owner is supporting (and has been supporting) Vermin Supreme!
A cow on the roof of an Amherst shed.
Legendary Amherst Bulletin columnist Phyllis Lehrer (right) stopped by the Amherst Survival Center recently with her friend Gale Kuhn.
So did Channel 22's Shannon Halligan and her cameraperson.
The Northampton Chapter.
The Hot Chocolate charity run through downtown Northampton was this morning. Here is sixty-five seconds of it - see anybody you know?
Food for Thought Books in Amherst has had a constant problem recently with someone who keeps coming by when they are closed and covering up with tape the posters in their window showing two guys kissing.
Finally they put up the following message under the poster:
To the sad prude that keeps putting duct tape over the images of love and affection on this sign:
Every time you do this you just make us decide to keep them up longer. If you keep it up, we'll be sure to get 100 of them and display them in every inch of window space we have. That's a promise.
Hugs and kisses,
Food for Thought Collective
The details of the 2010 census were released yesterday for Massachusetts and the Boston Globe put up charts and graphs explaining it all. The problem is their maps were of a state I don't quite recognize. Notice that the display is called, "Every person counted." Oh really?
WHERE THE FUCK IS WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS???
At last a beautiful dash of purple life breaking through the brown death.
Graffiti on the UMass Fine Arts building.
This creature was part of a student movie being filmed at the UMass library.
Yesterday a jazz band was playing in the lobby of the UMass Student Union.
Our entire Valley was saddened last week by the death of Walter "Tux" Sullivan. At least no one could say he died young, passing on at the age of 99. He was a recognized expert on baseball, both local and nationally, and wrote several books on the sport.
Yet while everyone was praising the baseball legend this week, there was no media account which I saw that mentioned the one political episode in Tux's life. Therefore as so often happens in local politics, the duty falls upon me to recall what so many would prefer to forget.
In the 1990's Springfield's corrupt Albano Administration had no shortage of schemes to bilk the taxpayers on behalf of a privileged cartel of insiders, but one of the most notorious was an attempt to erect a baseball stadium in downtown Springfield. Although the whole thing was financially unfeasible, it was supported by political lowlifes because it would have provided lots of patronage jobs, shady contracts and slush fund opportunities to those with political pull. Among those who saw through the ruse was Tux Sullivan, whose staunch opposition to the baseball stadium was a major embarrassment to the Albano gang.
It was in that context that I had my only encounter with Tux Sullivan. In 1999 in a desperate attempt to stop the baseball boondoggle, activists Bob and Karen Powell held a fundraiser in order to hire a lawyer, former and future mayor Charles V. Ryan, to challenge the Albano gang and the sketchy financing schemes behind the stadium. I attended the affair with former City Councilor Mitch Ogulewicz, and by chance we were seated at the same table with Tux and some of his friends.
I recall him as being very likable, and full of entertaining stories that made him the center of attention. Indeed a Springfield Newspaper photographer wanted to get a big close-up of Tux for their morning edition. In fact the newspaper photographer had been taking photos of the gathering all night. The newspaper's presence at the event surprised us, as the paper had been stridently editorializing in favor of the stadium, and generally tried to play down or ignore any anti-stadium activity. So as Tux struck a beaming pose for the camera, with everyone turning to look at the sport celebrity getting his portrait taken by the press, as the flash exploded I noticed something that startled me more than the bright flash did:
The camera didn't seem to be pointed at Tux - but instead was turned a little to the side. The camera was actually pointed at me and Mitch.
The next morning a small article appeared in the back of the paper about the fundraiser that implied that nothing of importance had transpired. The article mostly focused on the possibility that the minor involvement in the fundraiser by then City Councilor Bill Foley was somehow improper. There were no photographs accompanying the story. Later it was reported by an anonymous caller to the Dan Yorke Show that a plain brown envelope had been delivered to City Hall that morning with photographs inside revealing who had attended the fundraiser. That City Hall would be interested in who attended was not a surprise, since that would've been standard political machine practice in order to identify those who were to be subject to future retaliation. The rumors were neither confirmed nor disproved that the photographs in question were the ones taken by the newspaper that night but never used for journalistic purposes.
In the end the stadium scam came to nothing, as Attorney Ryan successfully convinced Judge Constance Sweeney that the whole enterprise was a crooked farce. In fact Judge Sweeney accused the Albano Administration in open court of having committed felonies in order to receive funding for the stadium under false pretenses. None the less, then District Attorney Bill Bennett refused to convene a grand jury in order to investigate the judge's charges.
I've always given Tux Sullivan a lot of credit for the risks he took in so publicly opposing the corrupt stadium scam. Had he supported it the Albano Administration would have made him the biggest name in Springfield. Instead he was relegated to the level of a "non-person", as were so many others who opposed the local machine. Tux Sullivan was remembered this week for his encyclopedic knowledge of baseball, but it was his courageous character and unbending integrity that was his real legacy.
There was a big labor rally at UMass this week.
I was not surprised to see Kevin Noonan and his dog on their way to it.
Northampton Mayor M. Clare Higgins at the Haymarket the other morning.
Some interesting graffiti scrawled on the UMass Fine Arts Center.
Space child.
The hard working janitors of Northampton never get enough respect.
It is raining like mad today, as you can see from this picture I took this morning as the bus was crossing the Calvin Coolidge Bridge over the mighty Connecticut.
But yesterday morning there was a dusting of snow by my back steps.
Fortunately my trusty Conz allowed me to safely traverse the icy woodland way into downtown Northampton.
Snowprints by the Northampton Courthouse.
It's been so cold lately that the campus pond at UMass appears to be frozen solid.
But looks can be deceiving.
Rebels in the window of Broadside Books.
Getting loud and sweaty in a small space in Amherst.
Beauregard, 29, and Schiavina, 28, were shot Nov. 12, 1985, during a traffic stop on Stebbins Street, off State Street in the city’s Old Hill neighborhood. Schiavina died that night, and Beauregard died three days later.
The shooter, Eduardo Ortiz, killed himself 17 hours after the shooting in a Plainfield Street hide-out as police moved in.
Frankly, I have never heard any insider tell me that they believed that Ortiz (known as "Crazy Eddie" on the street) committed suicide with his own gun. Instead it is always suggested that the police made an executive decision to spare the taxpayers a lengthy and expensive trial, especially since they felt that justice could never be served in a state such as Massachusetts which does not have the death penalty.
But people tell me the damnedest things, so who knows? Anyway it was a nice ceremony, featuring sirens going off all over the city at the exact moment when 25 years earlier the shots rang out. I was surprised not to see more Springfield politicians in attendance. Congressman Richard Neal, who was Mayor at the time of the tragedy, was conspicuous in his absence. Oh that's right, I forgot, the campaign is over. I personally spotted only four elected officials in attendance: Mayor Dominic Sarno, new D.A. to-be Mark Mastroianni, City Councilor James Ferrara and School Committee member Chris Collins.
At the end, some very nice keepsake brochures were passed out to the crowd:
Inside were reproductions of the badges of the fallen:
Speaking of memorials, at UMass on Veteran's Day this honor guard stood at attention outside Memorial Hall.
Elsewhere on campus there was this wall to memorialize the fall of the Berlin Wall 21 years ago.
Students were invited to take hammers and tear down the hated symbol of leftist oppression.
Plastered all over campus the same day were these posters calling for a big pro-marijuana rally.
Of course I had to check it out. When I arrived a group of protesters had already formed.
These guys were literally trying to drum up a crowd. At its peak there were about 75 people present at the rally.
The usual suspects were on hand, such as pot politician Dan Melick (far left) and libertarian leader Terry Franklin (far right) shown here conversing with a student marijuana activist.
The signs people made were both clever and funny.
Others were a little more extreme.
At one point an authoritative looking person in a suit and tie came out and complained about the obscenities on some of the signs, but did not try to confiscate them. Indeed, his displeasure only made people with "fuck" signs wave them more enthusiastically.
At least there was nothing as tasteless as this dumpster outside a UMass frathouse.
Let me leave you with a chalk portrait of the Sun I came upon on the woodland way into downtown Northampton.
Green Party candidate for Governor Dr. Jill Stein brought her longshot campaign for Massachusetts Governor to the University of Massachusetts this afternoon. There was a decent turnout.
Stein gave an informative, if somewhat wonkish speech, but it is her lack of political polish that is part of her appeal. She accused her opponents of being sell-outs to special interests, but was harshest towards incumbent Deval Patrick, whom she accused of "corporate misdeeds" when he worked in the private sector. The truth is Stein really is a breath of intellectual fresh air in an otherwise dull field. The shame is that on most issues she is virtually a socialist. However she is very libertarian on the legalization of marijuana, and it was her lines in support of legal weed that drew the loudest applause from the mostly student audience.
Among those in attendance was Amherst/Granby State Rep. candidate Dan Melick (left). He has caused a stir in his campaign by calling for the legalization of all drugs.
Not surprisingly the pro-pot angle brought out longtime legalization advocate Terry Franklin.
Following the speech counter-culture comedian Norman Bie did his latest incarnation of his longstanding routine "Deviations From the Norm."
Meanwhile in Tom Wesley's race to replace Richie Neal in Congress he received a major boost this week from an appearance in Palmer with his former GOP primary rival Dr. Jay Fleitman. Now the Republicans are formally united coming into the home stretch.
Meanwhile this highly unflattering video of Congressman Neal has been making the rounds.
A McCarthy for Senate sign in front of the Gateway Hardware in the Pine Point section of Springfield.
That's no surprise, since Gateway is owned by the candidate himself Tom McCarthy, shown here hard at work in his store the other day.
A big tempest in a teapot arose this week in Springfield over the illegal placing of a Democrat Party campaign sign on the pillars of City Hall.
Although the sign was quickly taken down after complaints came pouring in, it was never determined who exactly had delivered the banner to City Hall or ordered it put up. Although some argued that the controversy helped to publicize the event, others suggested that the Democrats had damaged their cause by appearing arrogant, as if City Hall was the personal property of the Democrat Party. Others expressed anger that city workers were being used to promote Democrat Party events. This partisan favoritism reminded me of a similar controversy that occurred years ago.
In Springfield during the Albano era, the candidates who were loyal to the city's corrupt Democrat Party political machine were allowed to use the inside of City Hall to hold campaign announcements and press conferences. Obviously this gave the machine-backed candidates an advantage in how they appeared on TV and in photographs, as they were able to impress voters by making it appear as if they were already operating out of City Hall. However, when critics of the local machine tried to use the same City Hall settings for their campaign affairs, they were told it was not allowed!
Enter into the picture Brenda Branchini (above) a local hairdresser who decided in 1997 to run for office and wanted to use City Hall for her formal campaign announcement. Branchini was a colorful character, whose now defunct Court Square hair shop was notorious for offering, for an extra fee, the option of having your hair cut by females in very skimpy lingerie. Sadly, that sexy side of her business overshadowed the other aspects of her candidacy, in which she had numerous commonsense libertarian views. In many ways she ran exactly the kind of issues based campaign one always hoped to see in Springfield during those days of political stagnation and corruption but seldom did.
As a public figure Brenda Branchini came across as bold, sassy, unbossed and unbought. In protest of her exclusion from City Hall she led a motley parade down Main Street that included homeless people, dogs and cats, sex workers and radicals of all stripes who went dancing along with flutes, whistles and horns while waving signs demanding to be allowed to hold a rally inside City Hall just like those candidates blessed by the political establishment. Branchini and her supporters were turned away by City Hall security, but the protest parade managed to attract media attention. Once it became public that City Hall was being used to stage campaign rallies for privileged insiders that were forbidden to other candidates, the policy was finally changed to close City Hall to all partisan political activity.
Or so it seemed until this week. Hey Brenda, maybe it's time to come out of political retirement and lead another parade!
