57 degrees at 3:15 pm. Sunny this afternoon, clear blue sky, beautiful day. Exxon on Sumner is $2.16 per gallon.
The Seuss statues are absolutely splendid high-hip sculptures. We have an immense bronze elephant with other critters frolicking around, a pile of turtles that look like a totem pole, a lifesize statue of Geisel at his drawing board and the Cat in the Hat standing behind him.
Springfield artist Verne Cole designed the mural for the boardroom of the Springfield unit of Shriner's Hospital for Crippled Children in 1978. In 1982 the Inventor's Club of America had a banquet at the Marriott Hotel in Springfield in honor of Alexander Marinaccio. Dave
Gavitt, Commissioner of The Big East Conference and Kathrine Switzer,
the first woman to compete in the Boston Marathon, spoke at UMass in
April 1983. In 1988 Arthur Curley agreed to publish my article "Problem Librarians" in Collection Building magazine. Nicholas L. Sneed of Springfield was awarded the MLK Memorial Scholarship at the Springfield Marriott in 2002.
Stephen Greenberg, the first openly gay American rabbi who came out in
1999 is speaking at Hillel in Amherst and Nielson Library in Northampton
over the weekend. Graduate students at UMass demonstrated yesterday.
Picked up the litter on the front tree belt and raked out the tiger lilies in the corner. Lucius drove by and waved. Called D'Amour Library at WNEC to speak with head librarian Barbara West but she and the reference librarian are at a meeting today. Spoke to another librarian who told me they have no rare book collection.
This is what I looked like about 1947 in the First Grade with Flora Bacon.
I stopped by Wachogue Cemetery on Allen Street. It is extremely well maintained and between two very low flat-topped bushes there is a little granite monument with a small bronze plaque on it reading, "Founded 1813 - Restored by Outer Belt Civic Improvement Association 1981." Lots of Chapins and Cooleys. One very old brownstone grave has recently caved in.
The Basketball Hall of Fame owes $150,000 in back taxes listed under Riverfront Development Corporation. Eamon has been calling around inquiring about speculation in the local media that Nike might open something at the Hall of Fame complex. He finally spoke to Margaret King of Nike who told him, "We know all about the Hall of Fame. We know all about Springfield. The Hall of Fame isn't even attracting flies. We have no interest."
47 degrees, heavily overcast but not raining.
Opening game the Yankees beat the Red Sox 9 to 2. Phooey.
I have about 1500 Springfield postcards as well as two of the very rare original Municipal Group medallions. I also have about 50,000 pieces of "street literature" from 1968 to the present, collected in Springfield, Northampton, Amherst and elsewhere. Most of it is stored in a warehouse in Holyoke. Sometime an archivist to give all this stuff to after I am gone must be identified.
I hope that people rush out and buy my new book because I can use the money now that I am no longer mooching off my late mother and would like to buy a new black leather motorcycle jacket. I would like a job, provided it pays generously for me to sit around reading books and writing memos.
Turned on Channel 40 and they are reporting that the Pope is dead. Glory be to God! The Wicked Wizard of the West is dead - but there will be another!
Monkey see monkey do: Now that Chief Scott has introduced street cameras in Holyoke, our Chief Meara wants to do the same. Old friend Karen Powell has a letter in the paper saying needle exchange is still a bad idea. I support it. David Ciampi has withdrawn his candidacy for mayor.
Went to the Quad where Ed Lonergan was sitting at the information desk in Rice Hall. Portrait of Rice still hasn't been rehung in the Hall. Frankie Keough had a deep blue Ford Explorer parked next to his house today on Vail. 7761 AD registration.
Eamon suspects that Mike Albano's house on Florentine Drive was fixed up with city money and connections. It was redone top to bottom including a new furnace. Also said that mayoral aide Anthony Ardolino was going out with one of Andy Scibelli's daughters and he was irate when he found her on a date with somebody else, went to his car and got a baseball bat and smashed the windshield of her car. Plus the time Ardolino was arrested for drunken driving he threatened the officer.
58 degrees.
Education maxim: What gets measured gets done.I love learning but hate politics.
The true cynical journalists are the newspaper publishers, editors and reporters who write happy talk drivel for a readership they hope will be too dumb to see what's really going on. Also cynical are the career politicians whose true visions are of bigger jobs and fatter pensions as they plan, promote and promise but produce nothing. Accessories to cynicism are the political hacks and lackeys with big salaries who under their political handlers are endlessly engaged in much ado about nothing at taxpayer's expense.
Went to the Trade Show today. I have been to all of these fairs from the very start at the Marriott and then up to Chicopee in the Holiday Inn and now for many years at the Big E grounds in West Springfield. I went dressed goth in black cap with ARISE button in the middle, black shoes, jeans, jacket with political buttons over an orange correctional facility shirt. Arrived at the Big E at 9:59 and was aghast to be asked to fork over $5 for parking.
I heard this is the last year the Trade Show will be at the Big E. Next year it will be in the newly remodeled Springfield Civic Center. Parking will probably still be $5, but it will be a longer walk to and from parking than at the Big E.
Lots of freebies. The Springfield Republican had jumbo chocolate covered strawberries, free newspapers and white t-shirts imprinted with their logo. The Valley Advocate was in the show for the first time and had buttons reading, "I Get It Weekly." The Advocate booth was presided over by a woman who said she was from Hartford. They also had copies of the Advocate's advertising rate sheet, which I had never seen before. Channel 22 had a big double-booth with Sy Becker steering people into it. Channel 3 was there as well. Told Buendo at the Reminder booth that I have lately found big piles of their paper in trash cans. Buendo glad-handed me as he always does. I told the Hartford Courant how glad I was to see them and said the Springfield newspapers are just propaganda.
At the Hampden Savings Bank booth I spun the wheel and won a big Butterfingers candy bar. At the Mass Mutual exhibit I reached for a second free potato chip bag but the lady said just one! Spun a wheel at Holyoke Gas and Electric and won a little plastic shot glass. The Springfield Civic Center had a booth with postcards, brochures and destination Springfield stuff.
Russell Denver came up to me in an impeccably fitted suit and shook my hand with incredible politeness and said how nice it was to see me for the first time in a couple years. Actually, last year I left postcards for him at his office.
I venture to say the fair was perhaps a bit smaller than usual but it was overall of higher quality. Before leaving I told several Big E employees that $5 parking is too much.
Sunny, clear sky, calm, mild, 48 degrees.
Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of a true education. - Martin Luther King
The Valley Music Directory came out of 69 Long Plain Road in Amherst in 1987. While I was raking on the verge of Wilbraham Road somebody threw a little brown Seagrams VO bottle at me.
Efrem A. Gordon is the best lawyer in the city, period. He has two Harvard degrees and takes tough cases that help little people. Eugene B. Berman is another grand old man, the dean of Springfield bankruptcy lawyers.
I never found an English professor who was my kind of scholar, though Douglas Bush (1896–1983) was my kind of gentleman teacher. I had him for both Spencer and Milton at Harvard. I am the foremost authority in the world on legal poetry and anecdotes in the Common Law tradition. My practice is limited solely to research in law and literature and legal bibliography but especially legal poetry and anecdotes.
So the Pope's funeral was a very handsome spectacle. They even mentioned that the World Methodist somebody was there. Too bad the American delegation contained no American Catholics such as, for instance, Senator Kennedy. At one point I saw President Bush standing, shifting his weight from leg to leg, restless, a tomboy never taught proper behavior.
Eamon called to ask if I'd heard that Ryan is suing the museums. Eamon said that Linda Melconian had art on loan from the Quadrangle, the Mayor's Office had art on loan from the Quad, Superintendent Negroni had art on loan from the Quad. Does anybody know if it ever came back? Jack Hess says that the Science Building once had "a lot of Indian stuff piled up in the basement." Hess gave me the address of former Quad employee Melanie Solomon who "hated Carvalho because he didn't know what he was doing." Says that when they did the inventory in 2001 they "couldn't find half the stuff." When she sought information she was turned against as a troublemaker and boat rocker. I sent her a letter and postcards.
Hess claims the Concord Coach in the basement of the Connecticut Valley History Museum was "sawed apart and sold to a dealer named Martin" who sold it to somebody else. Bliss House had a replica of the Chapin statue in it and when the resident caretaker moved out it disappeared "along with a lot of other stuff." Collection of early 20th century art stamped Property of the City Library sold for $680,000 at Christies.
Wonderful sunny warm day, very thin clouds way up. Pride is down to $2.11, Mobil is $2.15.
"The foundation of every state is the education of the youth." - Diogenes
As a child I won several Science Fair prizes for studying how bells of all sorts vibrate and making a set of tuned tubes. John Bordenuk was president of the Sixteen Acres Garden Center in Springfield in 1983. Wonderful piece on WFCR about Colin Powell and American values. I've always liked Powell.
I have 44 shares of Sears stock. The closing price yesterday was $1.38 per share. The lady who runs Edward's Bookstore downtown is good at self-promotion, but the best bookstores are at Eastfield Mall and the Holyoke Mall. Nader the Hatter has the material for a substantial hat museum, including hats, machinery and ephemera. It could be erected near the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Driving West on Wilbraham Road I noticed a nice new baseball cap lying in the road in front of WNEC. On the way back the cap had found its way into the gutter. I walked back from the Lewis & Clark lot and picked up the hat, surprisingly unsoiled, out of the gutter. The cap is white with eyes, mean-looking eyes, peering out of the front and back of it.
Left off some film at Walmart to be developed. While waiting I went to the snackbar and asked about getting a hot dog with mustard and onions. The woman running the place, who has terrible English, said the hot dogs were in the boiler so I sat down and read periodicals. Finally I asked about a half-hour later and she got the hot dogs but said they had no onions although they did have relish. But there was no relish either, even though there is relish in the picture over the serving area. Got my pictures 15 minutes early and took them over to show Ann Staniski, who was delighted.
Eamon got the number from Hess and called and spoke to Melanie Solomon, formerly of the Quadrangle, and described her as a "nice and most congenial lady." Sounds well educated. Told Eamon that the mismanagement of collections and personnel made public is only the tip of the iceberg, but they won't get any employees to talk because they like their jobs! Said she didn't get along with Joe Carvalho and said it's a terrible shame what happened and how "David Starr is always behind the scenes." She also thinks a lot of their records have been destroyed, and there are a lot of collections they can't account for.
Sunny, clear, rather breezy, 42 degrees at seven this morning.
My Social Security money, due the tenth, still hasn't arrived. Called and they said to expect it tomorrow.
There was significant radioactivity at Chapman Valve in the Orchard so now the people who worked there are eligible for compensation. In the 1940's they milled uranium for Brookhaven. A discussion on "Gandhi and Non-Violence Today" was held at Smith College's Neilson Library in 1983.
Trees all around the former Mulak Nursery have been cut down to the level of the fence nailed to them, looks like the place is no longer in use, in transition at least. Made lots of copies of my Smith and library articles at UPS. Had a brief chat with Brian Santaniello who says he has his PennyPincher printed at UPS.
Wrote to the Vatican proposing that Marin Luther be made a saint. At 1:57pm I called ARISE and got Michael Windberg who connected me to Michaelann Bewsee, who was friendly enough. She told me that confidentially they are engaging in discussions with the city to avoid a tent city like confrontation from developing. ARISE also had a big dinner honoring Kevin Noonan recently.
Eamon called and said Charlie Ryan is getting a lot of praise for taking on the library and museums. Eamon suspects there was a plan to get more money for the libraries by interrupting service at the Forest Park branch in hopes of causing an uproar, but somehow there was a revolt and rather than getting more money the city took the libraries. That left David Starr weeping and feeling double crossed.
Eamon also said that Councilor Bill Foley "has no education" and that the Santaniello's are close to organized crime. Eamon then spoke about the "Ireland Mentality" of Hungry Hill, which he described as "a battered, scarred and trapped mentality."
I'm one of the most widely read people, one of the broadest thinking and most committed to human values. I thumbed my nose at Robert Garde and my academic department when I left Wisconsin without a degree. Higher education is obsolete and needs to be completely re-thought. In the future only the largest learning institutions will exist and hundreds of traditional colleges and universities will be converted into housing, commercial and community centers and so on.
Heard a feature on WFCR today on how newspaper readership is declining. Today is the fiftieth anniversary of McDonald's and I dined with a coupon on hotcakes and sausage and a bottle of chocolate milk at the Allen Street McDonald's.
One day over to Riverside I was sitting on a bench writing an essay when a couple of park officials came along and we struck up a conversation. At one point we discussed the Seuss Memorial at the Quad. They told me they had offered their expertise to Springfield in working up a Seuss monument that would have the excitement of a Riverside attraction, but nobody ever followed up with them.
I ask, why did we lock ourselves into these bronze monstrosities rather than considering other possibilities? At the least other ideas might have been suggested to Lark Grey Dimond-Cates to help her jazz up her designs. We should have put up one big glitzy wonderama!
I drove out at 1:08 and got the Valley Advocate and bought gas at Pride for $2.15 per gallon. They have the Advocate back at Lewis & Clark again, I saw the manager and thanked him.
Old Jim Dandy on Walnut is being refurbished. Present sign says Love at First Bite. The fine old residence at 387 Union Street is for sale again. Needs lots of fixing but nice view of cemetery out back. New large Pride station going in on the corner of E. Columbus and Union.
Arrived at the Basketball Hall of Fame for the Senior Life Enrichment Expo and the parking lot closest to the Hall was almost jam packed full, but I was able to find a space quite close. The plaza bricks are all white. The flagpoles are gone but Max's Restaurant is still open for business. Opposite the Columbus Avenue side of the door there is Stone Cold, a little ice cream shop.
So I went inside and thought I saw Frank Keough all dressed up scurrying down the corridor. No law firms were present, but lots of nice free pens, including one from Francine Kingsley of Granby who does Eamon's taxes for $40 bucks. Mayor's Office of Consumer Information had a table with a lot of Attorney General information and brochures from other agencies. Out of the Senior fair at 3:02.
They're thinking of hiring an outsider to run the Civic Center. Payroll is also being outsourced. That's where Anthony Ardolino's buddy M. Hutchison used to work. Now if only somehow Ardolino could be bounced from his hack teaching job at Holyoke Community College.
I'm a First Amendment lawyer substantially engaged in publishing scholarship on the relationship between law and the humanities. Once upon a time I knew quite a bit about education law, now it would take a couple of weeks full time in a law library for me to catch up. I am also into charitable gifts law which I know more about because I handle art law which involves gifts to libraries, museums and so on.
Springfield needs to reject political boss style governance and embrace a broad diversity of thinking and fresh ideas about our future in a never ending evolution underway on a continual basis. The goal is intellectual fermentation. Traditional positive attitudes are out and intellectual anarchy is in.
Dow down 191 points today, worst week in two years. IBM didn't meet expectations, people fear the economy may be slowing down.
Went to the Stop & Shop and got some dented can goods and a jug of OJ. Morning paper said that Stop & Shop's parent company lost 7 million dollars last year, which is bad because it would be awful if Big Y were the only grocer in town.
Left word on Wayne Phaneuf's answering machine that the story on the Germans was thin and the one on Swedes was really poor and the reporter should be told. Phaneuf went to Buckingham Junior High and I mentioned Elmer Hansen.
Jack Hess called and said of Juliette Tomlinson of the Quad, "I think she was as bad as the rest of them. When the Springfield Historical Society was founded Lawrence Wallace gave us a room in the Connecticut Valley History Museum but she fought us every day we walked in there. Lawrence Wallace had given us the room but she didn't want us in. She was an idiot. She sat herself in the back room on the second floor and locked the door. Wallace got rid of her and that was it."
Hess had kind words for Dorothy Mozley. She took all of Stark's paintings (small, very good paintings) to her house in Northampton. He says the Quad got the pictures returned, "The museum went after them and got them back." Jack's father was Frank W. Hess who was the President of the Connecticut Valley Mineral Club that got Leo Otis in at the Science Museum. Richard Stemberg of Chicopee was big in the Mineral Club.
Sunny, calm, 63 degrees. First dandelions coming in. Forsythia in bloom everywhere.
I always say that people having trouble with J. Wesley Miller are having trouble with themselves. Unfortunately, there are a few people around who are having a lot of trouble with themselves.
Springfield has a hideous Federal Building with a silly tinted glass "mural" that you can barely see. We have a silly new Federal Courthouse coming along. We have the ugliest County Courthouse in the Commonwealth. Monarch Place isn't all that good either.
There are so many stupid buildings that have gone up in Springfield over
the last 40 years: Courthouse, Civic Center, Baystate Waste, even the
bus terminal. The Sovereign Bank building is attractive because it has imagination and lines. Monarch has lines. Sullivan Tourist Information Center is a glass and cement box.
I folded up my winter cot and general winter picking up underway. One of the advantages of being back in the other room for the summer is that I get to use the old color TV that receives Channel 3 well. Unfortunately it does not have a remote control but I have decided that getting up and down to adjust the TV is about all the exercise I get and is good for me.
Jim Landers called and said he just got $1.75 per hour raise from STCC. I thanked him for the book he loaned me. Landers always calls me "Professor" and calls Eamon "Commissioner." Name of the firm panel over Michaelman Law Offices is gone. Ripped off by somebody angry at them?
Went to the Robin Huw Bowen Welsh Triple Harp Sanctuary Concert at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House on Porter Lake Drive. The place was well filled. I was in biker jacket with buttons and ARISE button cap and looked about right for a place populated with aging hip types with a few well-dressed folks. Durham Caldwell was there. No Lesniak. The Fellowship Hall was set up with a series of tables, including one with recordings by Bowen.
It was a nice concert and at half-time they served apple juice with lots of cinnamon in it, white cake with raisins and cookies with currants in them. The building appeared well-maintained although I didn't get to check the outside walkway which was rotting the last time I saw it. Very chubby lesbian lady in front of me dropped her knitting twice and behind me was a mother with two hyperactive kids who jumped and wiggled a lot. This wouldn't have gone on in the old days.
Afterward I dished out some copies of my article on Mary Waller, who was an old fashioned Universalist. I read their new booklet about their organ which mentions their regret over destroying their old downtown church and the Welsh material. They had a suggestion box by the church office and I left a note: "Sell everything you have and rebuild the Church of the Unity." They will always regret having ripped down their treasure.
Patriot's Day, lovely weather, dawning 52 degrees on the breezeway.
Einstein died 50 years ago today. In antique shop row along White, corner of Sumner is a new hat shop, The Brim and Crown.
Drug and alcohol use among students at Longmeadow High School still exceeds the national average, with 62% of students saying they got drunk in the past month and 29% saying they used marijuana. Given the number of high paying jobs for basketball players and other jocks, wouldn't doctors, lawyers, engineers and Latin teachers make better role models for our youth? Isn't turning Springfield into "Sports City" heading in precisely the wrong direction? Springfield is brain dead. Rest in Peace.
Fox 61 now has former Springfield sportscaster Rich Coppola. CBS had a story from Rome about all the "precious treasures" the Vatican holds but which "can never be sold" because the church holds them "in trust for humanity" and they are carried on the books at a value of one euro. Hit the Springfield Library people with that story!
Thursday I asked an employee at the Hall of Fame about leaks and he pointed to the Men's Room. When he understood what I was asking he said the leaks in the roof have been patched. Paper says yearly attendance projections have not been met.
The WNEC Law faculty have grown up together, a veritable country club of
60's types, and faculty have a tendency to look after their own.
Springfield has a substantial Jewish community that has supported WNEC
generously.
Paper today says that the children of Richard Neal and Sheriff Ashe found jobs on Frankie Keough's payroll. Rep. Cheryl Rivera worked there part time before running for office. Jennifer E. Murphy, an aide to Val Barsom and Mike Albano, was also hired by Keough. Board members included Joseph Dougherty, Juan Gerena, James Asselin and Cornell Lewis.
Funny put-down of Ardolino in the Cries & Whispers column in the paper:
"Although the recent alleged confrontation between abc40 reporter Jim Polito and former top mayoral aide Anthony Ardolino was intriguing enough, the real mystery lies in the Registry of Motor Vehicles information attached to the application for the criminal complaint Polito filed in Hampden District Court last week. According to Ardolino's license, he is 5 feet 10 inches tall. The question Cries and Whispers has: Was the registry employee blind, generous or was Ardolino standing on a crate?"
This became a warm but not unpleasant day.
Dandelions are coming out. When I was at WNEC Law School we had an honor code, and one day somebody submitted a letter in the school paper in which they inadvertently admitted to an honor code violation.
Now it is a rule of honor codes that if you know of an honor code violation and don't report it, you too are a violator. So by publishing the letter in the paper, the student placed the entire student body on notice as to their own honor code violation by not turning him in.
Therefore, I personally complained to the Honor Committee that every single student in the school, except myself, should be expelled and I should be graduated first in my class. Alas, law professors must eat, and the Dean announced that the current honor code wasn't working and suspended the whole thing until it could be overhauled.
The City will conclude this year with an enormous debt, says the Control Board. The way things are done around here is egos take precedence over professionalism.
The media are flooded with medical stuff. Buy this pill or that. Ask your physician if it's right for you, and don't do this or that. Now they tell us they have a new food pyramid, get thirty minutes of exercise a day, and fat isn't so bad for you after all, where just a short time ago we were told all the ways fat can shorten your life. Maybe it's a Social Security scheme to knock people off!
Abercrombie & Finch's "magalog" is great. I treasure the one on Britain with the Queen Elizabeth look a likes. I also like the way their firm is committed to unending change. I'm not that crazy about their clothing - although they do have orange jumpsuits - but I love their management/marketing philosophy.
I found some forms my parents completed on October 9, 1974 to have their Social Security payments direct deposited. I noticed it went through the East Longmeadow office of the then First Bank which had been Safe Deposit Bank and Trust and later became Shawmut and then Fleet and now Bank of America. Isn't it disgusting?
Today was the Stanton Auction. My postcards fetched a preposterous $2,300 either because the buyers didn't know what they were doing or because there were some boring local cards in there which they dearly wanted. The immense copper kettle Gram Wilson used for doing her laundry brought only $200. A figurine of a male gathering sheaves of wheat brought $250. I paid only $95 for it so I did okay. Later in and out of Coin Exchange, very little in the way of medals and tokens.
Earth Day, but bad weather kept President Bush from the park where he had planned to celebrate. Big celebration here is Sunday on the Amherst Common with over 60 booths, but rain is expected.
I am simultaneously a hippie and a copyright lawyer. However, I am a reactionary hippie by proposing that you never, absolutely never should rely upon electronic archives. Always insist upon getting a hard copy of everything you want to preserve permanently. Also insist on acid free archival bond. Support paperworkers!
From time immemorial there has been a house surrounded by tall evergreens which would not sell out to the Five Town Mall. Now it has been demolished and the land is being cleared. It was between Laser Car Wash and the somewhat steep road from Cooley into the Mall.
Called the Rotary Club and spoke to Jean the receptionist and said I'd been promised I would get a reply for request of membership information and told her I got none. Turns out the president is none other than Steve Clay of the Y who is "away" presently. Very interesting, it would appear he has been avoiding me.
WFCR had a piece by Karen Brown on local activists, but no mention of Eamon or Devine. Did include Yusuf Muhammad, Dora Robinson, Elizabeth Cardoza, Belle Rita Novack and Karen Powell. The 2006 Mass Democrats nominating convention will be in Worcester rather than at our new Civic Center. New York Times has a story about Republicans and depicts liberal Republicans with a tiny, tiny elephant amidst all the big ones.
Set about writing a letter and sending some postcards to the Springfield Conservatory of Music on Sumner Avenue and called Ann Staniski Flentje for information. Ann says she first studied at the Conservatory for only two weeks because her mother was angry that when the half hour was up the teacher would stop instantly and go on to the next student even if she was in the middle of a phrase.
In Junior High Ann studied for three years with Ben Kalman who "used to perform a lot for me, playing to inspire me." Of Charles Mackey the celebrated piano teacher she "did not have happy memories." She said he was terribly abusive and would always scream, "Ye gods and little fishes!" Said he "screamed, yelled and raged, I was terrified of him." She knew about his second wife. I told her that I remember that she bought recordings of the pieces she was learning and played along to the recordings. The idea for that came from Ben Kalman whose Music in the Round in the tower room of a building along Columbus Avenue near the old Peter Pan bus station was the best record shop in town in the 1950's.
Personally I started in music by taking clarinet lessons with Al Strohman, the grand old man of Springfield bandsters, in a little room in the back of his shop. I liked him and the instrument but being raised by Mother to be a wimp the switch to violin was natural. At the Springfield Conservatory I studied with Mae Hinckley, who had a butch haircut and was a reporter for the society page. Next I got Florence Duval Smith of Northampton, who I didn't like so I switched to Maurice Freedman and stayed with him until I went to college. Ruth Eckberg, the top singing teacher in the city taught there, and Eamon had sessions with her. Lessons were one dollar a week.
Rained all afternoon. High in the 40's. Mobil in the Acres is $2.17.
This is National TV Turnoff Week.
George D. Miller died in April 1994. My uncle Manuel Southworth Miller lived from 1908 until December 1993. Fred Olmstead was born in June 1920 and died in January 1994. I used to call the straight line between Johnson's Bookstore and the City Library "Miller's Alley" because I used to park at the Quadrangle, go to the library and then walk down to Johnson's all the time.
In 1961 I was the editor of the Colby Bugle, an unofficial organ of a group of undergraduate students at Colby College. Our motto was, "So Little Boy Blue Can Blow His Horn." Critics called it The Colby Bungle.
Arrived at the Boston Road Big Y at 10:54 and there were lots of empty spaces in their lot. Store had only a few customers rattling around in it, I got the eggs I'd forgotten to get last night. Went to the liquor store at Northgate and got 24 bottles of Bristol Creme for $155, normally $175 but they gave me a discount for supporting the defeat of the baseball stadium Albano wanted to build there.
Lakeside is now Tequila's but I can't tell whether it is open or not. Stopped into Pam's Paperbacks. It is clean and well-lighted but not really a used book store despite the four or five Valley Advocate Best Used Bookstore awards in the window.
Eamon called and is recommending me for membership in the National Association of Scholars. He noted that Mayor Ryan in the past has called zero based budgeting a "sham" but that is what the Control Board is going to do; justify everything by the dollar value of the benefits it provides. Councilor Dominic Sarno says he may run for mayor in 2007, but not this year. Ryan still the only announced candidate.
Morning paper says Burke is looking for a superintendent job in Florida. East Longmeadow School Superintendent Costa, whose English I have corrected on previous occasions, has an essay on the school budget proposed for Town Meeting in the current Reminder and it is flawless. No doubt somebody cleaned it up.
Dear Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly,
Sexual abuse pedophilia involving priests and children is certainly the worst kind of mortal sin, but it is a criminal act as well, and priests involved in these despicable acts should be arrested, prosecuted and if found guilty, sent to prison where they belong. I write to you about something worse; the murder of altar boy Daniel Croteau back in 1972, and this crime was improperly investigated by former District Attorney Matthew J. Ryan and covered up by Bishops McGuire, Duprey and present District Attorney for Hampden County William Bennett.
If ever there were a criminal case which should be reopened and thoroughly investigated, it is this murder case involving Father Richard Lavigne and altar boy Daniel Croteau. It's absolutely reprehensible how this dastardly murder could have been swept under the carpet. The hierarchy in the Springfield Diocese spent over two million dollars defending the well-known pedophile priest Richard Lavigne, who has a far worse record of pedophilia than Father Shanley in Boston.
Unfortunately, the Catholic Church has a long history of strange activities involving priests, monsignors, bishops and cardinals, and all of it has been conveniently covered up to protect the institution/business organization. There is a very long history of homosexuality and pedophilia among priests in the Springfield Diocese as they go along to get along, keeping the lid on while thousands upon thousands of children's lives have been destroyed.
Eamon T. O'Sullivan.
Clear blue sky with sun 54 degrees this morning.
I speak the truth. There are people in Springfield who hate me for it, but there are others who love me for it as well.
We need a device that makes it possible to microwave a frozen dinner in a car. Finding new innovations is the unending challenge. We must seize the day and reclaim it from insignificance. We must recognize that creativity can come from unexpected sources.
I was up in the middle of the night putting the finishing touches on organizing Father's Monarch papers. I didn't realize they promoted Max Anderson and Charlie Hunt ahead of Father. It must have been a source of sadness to him which he silently bore without talking about it. Later on when they made him chief underwriter he was still under Charlie Hunt who was very much his inferior. Father went along to get along.
Gary J. Plant called this morning and had some stuff for sale. Has the only known photo of Frank Ball the violin maker who worked at the Springfield Armory. I said Hess might be interested. He also had a lot of Bibles published in Polish but I explained that they are of no interest.
Hess called me later and laughed about how Plant had come out there and wanted $200 for the Frank Ball picture but he and Plant made a deal: Plant went to CVS and made a reproduction of the photo and Hess gave him $20 for it.
School Committeeman Thomas Ashe has announced he is running for mayor. Was on TV a day or two ago and sounds like an idiot. Eamon arranged an interview with the FBI for Will Rice and Art Gingras but they "chickened out."
Donald Trump says always focus on the goal, it's the sidetracking that kills you. Never forget Zonker's line: If you apply for a job you run the risk of getting hired!
Bush was on TV talking about our use of energy saying, "The math has changed." Pardon, but the math never changes! Congress has made promises it cannot keep, how about canceling wars we cannot afford?
The latest ARISE newsletter has the following open letter to Rep. Rivera:
Dear Cheryl Rivera,
I undertake to personally assume that you are disinterested in the forthcoming subject of homelessness. In other words, where in thunder are you, in your personal, analytical stance on homelessness?
We the homeless, have cried out to you for whatever tidbit of an idea you may have within your grasp.
Cheryl, just an idea - please?
Thank you,
Bruce and the rest of us.
P.S. You've got relatives out here.
It was overcast every bit of the day and drizzly much of the time.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker
The typical PHD in Shakespeare has never performed Shakespeare. Football player Frank Webster has won over a million for brain damage as a player - there goes assumption of risk. Ruth Kennedy was on the radio begging for support for WFCR. She is their marketing director. This is Breast Cancer Survivor Day and Susan Strempek Shea was on as a survivor.
Springfield should create a museum celebrating the joys of sex. Puritanism is dead and sex is a major theme of modern art and literature. Between Provincetown, Northampton and New York is the Queer Triangle of the East. We should establish an archive and museum of queer culture.
In 1961, my Uncle gave me $10 (a nice, crisp bill) for Christmas, which I spent at Johnson's on the 1945 book English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century 1600 - 1660 by Douglas Bush. Three Decembers later I would be taking a course with the very same learned author, Douglas Bush.
Youth groups doing spring clean-up today and I saw young people along Bradley Road at several spots and also in the dingle across from the Acres Friendly's. Over to McDonald's and had a steak, cheese and egg bagel sandwich with a dollar off coupon - cost $1.36. There was a long line for the last day of their coupon specials and a long line when I departed. I decided to get a paper although as usual there was little in it. Up State Street and along Sunrise Terrace there are wire signs saying "Stop the Chicopee Jail."
Salem Street Baptist Church has nice bushes flourishing in front of it, the first year their bushes were not properly watered and died. The present ones are in good shape. I arrived at the Quadrangle parking lot at 10:50 just as eight buses of kids were arriving from Granby. That's five hundred dollars a bus. So I went to the library and the tall Forest Park guy was on duty and there were 12 people using computers. Neither of the two photocopy machines were operative. When I left the Quad was jammed with little elementary school kids.
A few weeks ago Ashe said he wouldn't run for mayor but now he just said he will. Tom Ashe is considered a credible candidate to beat Ryan for mayor because Ashe's mother was a Lacey and this is Lacey country. Deezer Sullivan says Ashe calls him all the time and thinks that the city medical contract is rigged because Mary T. left Springfield and worked for Cigna and then came back to her fancy financial job and we gave them the contract. Also said there is supposed to be two Republicans on the Election Commission and Ryan has zero Republicans so everything they've done is illegal. Ryan is known to be in fine health but the health of Mrs. Ryan is in doubt and Ashe may know something. Years ago City Solicitor John Quirk told Eamon "watch out when you're dealing with Ryan" because he is sneaky and deceptive.
A poll indicates a great deal of support for P. Nicolai's tax repeal. Override was to improve police protection and schools and they haven't gotten better so the attitude is let's take our money back! Mayor Ryan was on 57's The State We're In and spoke very well. Says the Control Board members are getting along as a team, and making a number of improvements, corrections and changes. Then the Control Board can go back to the legislature and say this is the best we can do, and we still need so many millions to straighten things out, and Ryan expects to get it.
