Blowing Smoke

Toker Volunteers Unwelcome?



Yesterday Kai Price made me aware of this complaint filed with the Monson Police over the way a volunteer, helping with recovery from the deadly tornado that roared through our Valley earlier this month, was treated by local police officers:

On Jun 10, 2011, at 4:24 PM, "subversive01057" wrote:

I do not want to discourage anyone from helping with the tornado volunteer cleanup effort. The town has been devastated, and we can still use all the help we can get. And overall the police have done a tremendous job. However I wanted to report that I am about to file a compliant with my town of Monson, MA, as follows:

Sometime around 10pm on the evening of Tuesday, June 7th, Will of Amesbury, MA, was outside the Unitarian Universalist Parish of Monson, which had been affected by the tornado, dropping off some extra slate tile donated from elsewhere, with the fore-knowledge of UUPM minister.

Will had heard about the tornado in the news, saw the devastation on TV, and being a tradesman/electrician, he thought he could help and he packed up and moved to the Monson campground and worked as a registered volunteer around town for a week, including at the UUPM, where he made a real difference. At the time, three of his chainsaws had been well used by the First Church of Monson and were in the process of being repaired by him.

Given the rubble outside the church, the time of day and the looting that has occurred in town, this constituted suspicious behavior, and Will was stopped by the Monson Police Department, questioned, and his vehicle was searched. In my mind, this was all very reasonable (with the exception that Will's glove compartment may have been damaged during the frenzy of the search). The Monson PD does an excellent job of helping residents feel safe and secure in their homes and businesses.

Will explained his presence, presented the Rev. Jackson on his cell phone to the officer involved to corroborate his presence, and as no evidence of looting was found, Will was not arrested.

In the search of Will's vehicle, the officer found a small amount of marijuana. It seems that as a result, Will was ordered to leave the town limits of Monson immediately under police escort and threatened that should he ever return he would be subject to immediate arrest. When he explained that he was staying at the Monson campground and that the medication he was under made it seriously unsafe for him to drive, he was told that he would not be allowed to stay there and must leave Monson immediately.

The Monson PD should be very well aware that following overwhelming voter approval that in Massachusetts, simple possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is a civil infraction punishable only by a maximum $100 fine and forfeiture of the marijuana. The penalty for possession of marijuana does NOT include being run out of town. Will has had a challenging life and was deeply emotionally hurt by being (unofficially?!) trespassed from the Town of Monson and denied the opportunity to help further, especially after he had just donated a week of volunteer labor and had done nothing that would warrant this banishment.

The Monson PD has responded incredibly well to a challenge that few police could have ever imagined that they would be called upon to face. The widespread tragedy of this tornado, combined with the heat and the long hours, make the generally magnificent response of the Monson PD in the past week all the more heroic.

However sometimes mistakes are made--I've certainly made mistakes in my life, and I'm sure that nearly everyone else has too at some time or another. The way Will was treated is deeply appalling to me as a Monson resident and home-owner (and please note that I am not nor I have ever been a member of the UUPM), and I would like to think that it was just a misunderstanding. Surely this was not the instance of prejudice that it appears to be. And when mature adults make mistakes, what they are called upon to do is man-up (or woman-up), admit to the mistake, apologize for the mistake, and reasonably try to rectify the situation.

Today Kai Price released the following update:

Lesson learned: file the written complaint.

A half hour after I dropped off the form the police sergeant stopped by and explained that it was all a big misunderstanding, Will was not trespassed at all and is welcome to come back to volunteer without fear of police harassment, and the problem was that his associate/passenger did not have ID, gave sketchy answers to questioning, and they were both in an area where looting had been reported and it was late at night.

You may now return to your regular programming.

Despite the way Kai Price bends over backwards to praise the police, is this really a happy ending? Unanswered questions remain. Would the police have backed off if no complaint was filed? When they realized that there had been, in their words, "a big misunderstanding" why didn't they contact the person involved on their own and apologize instead of waiting for a formal complaint to be filed? Does the glove compartment damaged in the search need to be repaired, and if so, who will pay for it? The police justify what they did by claiming to have been searching for looters, but was everyone stopped in that search given a police escort out of town?

This incident is hardly the most earth shattering local controversy, but it does clearly illustrate the tendency that law enforcement still has to overreact in instances where marijuana is involved, despite the fact that the drug has been nearly legalized. To prevent further such overreactions in the future, the best and most effective way would be legalize marijuana entirely.

Meanwhile, fascinating videos from the June 2nd tornado continue to surface. Here's an amazing one showing the dangerous scene as severe winds strike a downtown Springfield parking lot. Notice how a car moves just in time to escape deadly debris that soon strikes that spot.



There was some dark clouds and thunder and lightning this past week, but thankfully nothing like the violent storms of the week before. Here's some of the electrical show the other day over Holyoke as captured by Greg Saulmon.



Mary Serreze caught these dark clouds hovering over Northampton City Hall.



My neighbor assembled these stones on his front steps in accordance with a feng shui pattern of good fortune.



Happy UMass summer school students.



Kurtis and Rob are traveling in style to the Amherst Survival Center.



The following feelgood video was filmed entirely in Amherst.

Amherst Thanksgiving

The students at UMass have all fled the campus to head home for Thanksgiving. The normally mobbed and chaotic Student Union lobby is like a ghost town.



All that remain are the campus pond ducks.



But where a crowd could be found was at the Amherst Community Thanksgiving put on by The Amherst Survival Center at the Lutheran Church.



I sat and ate with my young friends named Sage and Ursa. "I hate camera flashes!" said Sage.



Of course two Springfield boys will always spot each other in a crowd - Kevin Noonan is not presently on a political hunger strike.



State Representative Ellen Story was among the town dignitaries in attendance.



But the radical political activity was outside, where the Marijuana Liberation Front was engaging in a little activism in the parking lot.



Hey everybody, hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

Here's some people acting weird and dancing down by the Holyoke canals.


Time Traveler by A. Mateus

Happy Birthday Amherst

Two Hundred and Fifty Years Young

Today is the 250th birthday of my beloved Amherst, Massachusetts. When I arrived at the Amherst Starbucks this morning, looking out the window I felt sure the parade would be cancelled by heavy rains.



But despite Amherst's reputation in some quarters as a heathen haven, God stopped the rain in time for the festivities to get underway on time. Among the spectators was local libertarian leader Terry Franklin.



Springfield was represented by this Cat in the Hatter.



Politicians onhand included State Rep. Ellen Story and Congressman John Olver.



Of course Emily Dickinson had to be represented, and she was by school children marching with placards bearing Miss Emily's poems.



Northampton sent their most distinguished emissaries - The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.



Amherst blogmaster Larry Kelley was covering the scene.



He was taking a picture of me.



Amherst used to be a section of the town of Hadley, which sent this float to honor their rebellious offspring.



250 years ago you might very well have seen a family looking just like this walking down the street.



Of course Motown Bernie was there.



A local bear perched atop the Cowls Lumber truck.



Good advice for the next 250 years.



Among those participating in the parade was the Amherst Survival Center. I marched with them.



Here's a video I made of the parade from the inside looking out.



Platonic Solids Journey to Infinity



Buckminster Fuller was heavily into this stuff. From the Kyoto Observer:



Diagram via Robert Lawlor. The five Platonic Solids fit into one another, starting with the Father, the Icosahedron, followed by the universe's Mother, the Dodecahedron. Touching the Mother are the Cube and Double Tetrahedron. Inside the Double Tetrahedron is the Octahedron. The inner Octahedron, from our perspective, also seems like a hexagram and inside that another Icosahedron can be drawn, thus starting the process again...infinitely.

Sorry to disappoint you, Carl Sagan (and other flatland materialists), but there is a geometric order underlying the cosmos. And these shapes fitting into one another suggest the Creator's fingerprints.

Start with the 6 points around the circle, thus forming a hexagram. You have the 6 directions, east, west, north and south, up and down, with you in the middle, the seventh point--a summary of the days of the week and the seven note octave. 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 = 720, the basis of the 5 Platonic Solids, starting with the 720 degrees of the tetrahedron. The Sun appears to precess (go back on its path around the 12 houses of the zodiac) 1 degree every 72 years. The 22 alefbet correctly written are done with 72 strokes.

Doing this diagram won't necessarily transform you into an angel and gain you access to the summit of Mt Olympus but it is a wonderful meditation showing you that in spite of the crises facing us, the world is inherently perfect.

Scene From a Nightmare



Today's Video



The UMass Minuteman Marching Band (above) was among those participating in today's Amherst 250th birthday parade. Here they are in 2001 doing White Rabbit.

Lost Seat?

Another One Bites the Dust



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.

Go ride the music.

Chicago Rally

Right in Obama's Backyard

These pictures from a recent rally in Chicago say it all!



The key to understanding Obama's predicament is to realize that while he ran convincingly as a repudiation of Bush, he is in fact doubling down on his predecessor's big-government policies and perpetual crisis-mongering. From the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists to gays in the military to bailing out industries large and small, Obama has been little more than the keeper of the Bush flame.

Indeed, it took the two of them to create the disaster that is the 2009 budget, racking up a deficit that has already crossed the historic $1 trillion mark. Beyond pushing the 'emergency' $787 billion stimulus package (even while acknowledging that the vast majority of funds would be released in 2010 and beyond), Obama signed a $410 billion omnibus spending bill and a $106 billion supplemental spending bill to cover 'emergency' expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan (and, improbably, a 'cash for clunkers' program).

Despite pledges to achieve a 'net spending cut' by targeting earmarks and wasteful spending, Obama rubber-stamped more than 9,000 earmarks and asked government agencies to trim a paltry $100 million in spending this year, 0.003 percent of the federal budget. In the same way that Bush claimed to be cutting government even while increasing real spending by more than 70 percent, Obama seems to believe that saying one thing, while doing another, somehow makes it so.

- Washington Post





It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.

Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system."

Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system.

Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgments and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.

Leave aside how much power the state would have to exercise over us to run the medical system. Suffice it say that if government attempts to control our total medical spending, sooner or later, it will have to control us.

- John Stossel




Saving the Past

This is the Amherst Survival Center as it looked 125 years ago in 1884. It was the North Amherst School in those days.



Here is a postcard showing how it looked in 1910.



The years have taken their toll, but fortunately work is now underway to restore and preserve the building.



Some work is being done to reinforce the foundation, the stones at the base of which haven't seen the light of day since the 1800's.



Assume the Position

The back of a truck parked at UMass.