Primary Wrap-up

Springfield's Tragic Loss


Pepe and friends last night by Don Treeger.

It's a sad day in Springfield as the best chance the city had for meaningful reform slipped away with the defeat of Antonette Pepe for Mayor in yesterday's primary. That leaves the contest in November between incumbent Dom Sarno and Albano era stooge Jose Tosado. Sarno whomped Tosado by a landslide margin, leaving it highly unlikely that Sarno will be beaten in November unless he really messes up big time in the coming weeks. While Sarno has been a competent mayor, he is not the person who will shake things up the way they need to be shaken up to give the city some forward momentum. That person was Antonette Pepe, and her elimination in the primary is a tragic loss for the entire region.

Meanwhile, the at-large City Council results did little to dispel Springfield's reputation as having the dumbest electorate in the Valley. The pitiful results were as follows:

Thomas Ashe: 6,885 - That a flunkie for convicted felon Frankie Keough (Keough once described Ashe as his political heir) could finish in first place is so pathetic one is tempted to simply give up in despair on Springfield.

Tim Rooke: 5,955 - Rooke is the only councilor who consistently appears to take the public good into consideration. His second place finish partially redeems the shameful Ashe results.

Kateri Walsh: 5,642 - Everybody likes Kateri, including me, but she is an old guard councilor not noted for any reform tendencies.

Bud Williams: 5,117 - He did nothing when he was on the Council before, why do voters want to send him back?

Jimmy Ferrera: 5,087 - It's been a mystery why Ferrara was ever elected in the first place and that he gets re-elected is simply baffling. May he finally be shown the door.

Justin Hurst: 4,245 - Another wanna-be from one of Springfield's establishment families. Beyond the family connections, he hasn't given anyone a reason to vote for him.

Amaad Rivera: 3,179 - This crusading leftist really wishes he was a congressman. Voters should give him the free time to challenge Richie Neal in the Democrat primary of 2012.

Miguel Soto: 2,398 - An ethnic candidate crippled by the low Hispanic turnout.

Charles Rucks: 2,327 - Probably the best challenger on the field, but somehow he never gets the attention he deserves. Hopefully the voters will wake up by November.

Joseph Fountain: 2,111 - The comeback attempt by this eccentric figure from the Albano era continues, but just barely.

Bruce Adams: 2,036 - He got eliminated because he didn't get it - even in Springfield you're supposed to be accused of stealing after the election, not before.

John Stevens: 1,557 and David Ciampi: 1,374 - Of course two Republicans occupied the bottom spots - after all, the Democrats have done such a wonderful job for Springfield.

Write-ins: 149 - I'd love to know whose names were being written on the ballots. How much you wanna bet most of the names being written in were far superior to any of the actual candidates?

A display of football memorabilia at the UMass library shows this image from the cover of a 1961 game program. It portrays a typical college student attending a game with two bratty kids in tow. Those were the days when everybody got married right out of high school and most of the students had at least two kids by graduation. Today college students who are raising children are a rarity.



The annual marijuana legalization rally in Boston, one of the largest in the country, was held last weekend and among the speakers was Amherst's Terry Franklin. Here's his two minute speech.

Local Polls

The Mayoral Races



WGGB-TV runs a poll every day on a subject related to the news. They are unscientific polls because the people who participate are self selected. However they are not completely unenlightening, since people participate who may never otherwise be contacted by a pollster and there is also software in place to prevent people from voting more than once from the same computer. Lately they have been running polls on local mayoral races, with some interesting results. For example, here's the totals for their poll on the Springfield mayoral race between incumbent Dom Sarno and challenger Bud Williams.



Sarno - 59%
Williams - 20%
Other - 31%

Not exactly encouraging news for City Councilor Williams. What is interesting is that a third of the voters appear to wish that they had a third alternative, suggesting that many people would prefer someone to vote for other than the two actually running.

A similar poll was held this week for the hotly contested mayoral race in Northampton. However the results suggest that a landslide defeat is in store for incumbent M. Clare Higgins.



Higgins - 27%
Bardsley - 59%
Other - 14%

Although the Channel 40 polls do provide good fuel for speculation, ultimately the only poll that matters is on Election Day. Personally, I never forgave Channel 40 for cancelling the Admiral and Swabby Show.




Obama Still Falling

Meanwhile the national polls have nothing but more bad news for President Barack Obama, with a dramatic drop in his approval ratings according to the prestigious Gallup Poll:



PRINCETON, NJ -- In Gallup Daily tracking that spans Barack Obama's third quarter in office (July 20 through Oct. 19), the president averaged a 53% job approval rating. That is down sharply from his prior quarterly averages, which were both above 60%.

In fact, the 9-point drop in the most recent quarter is the largest Gallup has ever measured for an elected president between the second and third quarters of his term, dating back to 1953.

More generally, Obama's 9-point slide between quarters ranks as one of the steepest for a president at any point in his first year in office. The highest is Truman's 19-point drop between his third and fourth quarters, followed by a 15-point drop for Gerald Ford between his first and second quarters. The largest for an elected president in his first year is Bill Clinton's 11-point slide between his first and second quarters.

The Future Predicted



Cool Local Advertisements

A corny but cute ad for Northampton's Turn It Up.



Here's a better one, featuring a Rod Stewart album I used to own as well as someone I was in detox with.



Hamp Hike

I got to the bus stop today just as the bus to Amherst was pulling away! Oh well, all that did was give me a half hour to take a little walk down the street. Camera in hand, I headed towards Smith College.



There I saw this clever definition of Smith.



As well as these sidewalk guilt monsters.



Heading into the heart of town, I checked out the newly painted mural on Kirkland Avenue, othewise universally known as "the ally behind Thornes."



Turtle-like beings now climb the fire escape.



A psychedelic owl looks down upon all.



Less professional scrawlings adorn the opposite wall, the better to go with the sewer motif.



This is the kind of sign you only see in New England.



A parking meter expresses a preference.



Finally the next bus arrives, and I snap this pic out the window as we cross the mighty Connecticut.



Today's Video

Another lost masterpiece resurfaces:

Paul Kantner : Guitar, vocals,
Grace Slick : Piano, vocals
Jack Casady : Bass
Jerry Garcia : Lead Guitar
Bill Kreutzmann: Drums
David Crosby : Guitar,vocals
Graham Nash : Vocals

No light shines on the mind protected
No light shines on the fangs neglected.

The Wee Sound

Odd Moment in Hungry Hill

I was an embryo in Maine. That was where my father was stationed when I was conceived, at a base in Presque Isle Maine.



However I was actually born at home, in my parents bedroom in Robinson's Gardens, one of the toughest public housing projects in Springfield Massachusetts. I was delivered by my father, having emerged from the womb so quickly that there was no time to get to the hospital. Maybe if I'd been aware of some of the coming attractions I wouldn't have been in such a rush to make the scene. Then again, I've always been glad to be here.



When I was small, and before my parents moved us back to Pine Point, which was the neighborhood where they had grown up, we lived for some years in a grey house my Uncle Steve owned on Littleton Street in the so-called Hungry Hill neighborhood. That was the name given it because of all the poverty stricken Irish who lived there - the hill where everyone was hungry! I remember that the house on Littleton Street had a big stained glass window in the upstairs hallway that sprayed color in the living room when the sun shone through it. I also remember it had a big multi-car garage in back where my Uncle used to keep the vehicles he was always collecting, or selling or something. Behind the garage there was a lot of rhubarb plants, and some of my earliest memories involve playing back there. I remember once the girl next door pulled down her pants for me behind that garage, because I asked her to.

One day I was standing on the front porch with my sister. It was summer and the dust from where the lawn should have been was swirling lazily in a light breeze. We had dust instead of a lawn because between our friends and our cousins and the neighborhood kids the whole of the ground surrounding the outside of our house was pounded into dust by everyone's sneakers.



But on this day it was only me and my sister. We were on the porch. It was dusk, and the sun was just setting behind the Walsh's house. It was very still. That was when we first heard it, a sound that was soft and seemed far off, and yet was still very distinct. It was a human voice, sort of moaning in a slow, flowing way that had an otherworldly character to it. It was just a sound, not a word or a phrase, and it was impossible to say what emotion lay behind it.

Such a wee and almost imperceptibly low vibration, but a human made noise none the less, calming and mysterious. It was something from another place. Somewhere beyond. We listened in silence for the several seconds it could be heard, until it slowly faded away. I have remembered that moment and that haunting cry for all the rest of my life - an odd and inscrutable snatch of sonic poetry which I have never heard repeated.



Yet somehow I believe that I will hear it again on the day when I die.

Another Failure

Anyone with any sense of economics could have predicted that the government's so-called "cash for clunkers" would do nothing to help the economy, since the increase in demand it created for autos was completely artificial and due solely to the use of borrowed government money. Now that the program has ended the final results are in, and as expected the final verdict is that the program was a complete flop. The Washington Post explains:



The government's wildly popular "Cash for Clunkers" program drove consumer spending to its highest level in eight years in August. But after it ended, so did the growth in auto sales.

General Motors' sales plunged 36 percent in September compared with August. Ford plummeted 37 percent. Chrysler dove 33 percent.

Cash for Clunkers "was a one-time boost of sales followed by a crater," said Ben Herzon, an economist at Macroeconomic Advisers. The firm forecast that the program was likely to have no effect as a stimulant for national economic output.

Matthews in Spfld

Popular talkshow host Chris Matthews was in Springfield the other night to give a speech. Here's a picture of him with State Representative Angelo Puppolo (center) and Springfield Mayor Dom Sarno.



At the National Democrat Convention in Boston in 2004 I spotted Matthews smoking a cigar and talking on the phone while trying to hide his identity under a too small baseball cap.



Obviously the disguise did not work, as not just me but several others recognized him.

Today's Video

Improbable sounds in downtown Northampton.