Sunday in the Sixties

It was a warm November Sunday in Northampton with temps reaching well into the sixties. I was a wanderin' fool with my camera and the idiot glee that comes from an unexpectedly gorgeous day. Below, left to right, a local musical icon convergence in front of the Woodstar Cafe on Masonic Street with Michael Gregory, Roger Salloom's 93 year old mother, Roger Salloom.

Looking for deals in the discount CD rack at Turn It Up! (umm....pull 'em up).

I often see some unfamiliar street musicians on Saturdays and Sundays; weekend warriors compared to the 9 to 5 guys who are out there every day.

Here's Adam (and friend) with his guitar on the front porch of the notorious "house with the red door" on King Street. Adam is also a virtuoso of the saw. Only the red door's hinged edge is visible.

A colorful bunch about to become pedestrians.

And they're off!

If you want this worm, it's going to cost you.

This is local boxing coach Djata Bumpus of Pioneer Valley Boxing School who's been a fixture in town for years. But he's much more than just a boxer as you'll see on his blog Djatajabs. The purpose of his blog is "for people to be able to recognize and understand cultural and social developments in the United States, based upon the lifelong journey of an African American activist, educator, artist, and retired pro boxer."

Who's zoomin' who?

Local girls agree to be immortalized on the Nohodome.

Sweet job for someone.

Hmmm. Is the B.I.D. behind this? They painted all the lamp posts black but you'd think maybe there would be an attempt to match the color of cement when patching the sidewalk. This looks terrible, and right in front of the Hotel Northampton too.

There's a planet on the roof of the hotel...
...and on the front stairs.

Trying on jackets at Roz' Place on Bridge Street. Note the amazing vintage radio collection. Bakelite!

Not sure I can rock the Ramones look anymore despite my admittedly bad ass rock and roll lifestyle that has me up as late as 9PM most nights.

A delivery truck hit the marquee right after the other side was repaired for the same reason. Grrrrr! Knocked the lights out too so it just glows VIN.

A zen moment with Ani DiFranco who plays the Calvin tonight. My friend Katie is taking me and insisting I will enjoy myself.

Lions and Bonnie and Femmes

Gordon Gano (of Violent Femmes) and the Ryan Brothers with me and Sean from WRSI today after an in-studio performance. I am NOT shorter than Gordon. I'm hunched down so as not to obstruct Sean. In February of 1989 I was at a music biz baseball game in San Francisco and I hit, no lie, a grand slam off a Gordon Gano fastball. He said he remembered it well, still bears the scars, and that someone had just asked him about that 20 year's gone game a few days earlier! Why can't I get, just one strike....?


















This is obviously the Lion's Club represented by this old firetruck in today's Veteran's Day parade in Northampton, shot out my office window.





















Bonnie's ghost cart continues to runneth over.

A Bushel of What?

I read when I eat, a habit that began as a child reading every word on a cereal box, pupils fiercely dilated by sugar, hypnotized by that row of 25s in the nutritional info rectangle. Total and Special K had 100s. Quisp, well, I don't recall the vitamin and mineral percentages but it was shaped like little UFOs. "Vitamins" and "Minerals." The two words that perpetuated the ruse that this stuff was food. Do kids still save box tops or that magical childhood currency, the proof of purchase seal, that promised poorly constructed knock offs of real toys or licensed cartoon character figurines with lots of extra plastic left around the edges by the cheap molds? I never had the patience for those delayed gratification offers. If the toy was pictured on the box, it better damn well BE in the box. There were two kinds of families when I was growing up. The ones that allowed kids to empty out the cereal into a big bowl to claim the toy and the ones like mine that made us wait until the toy was birthed naturally during normal cereal usage rates. It was forbidden to conspicuously eat another bowl in one sitting just to get to the toy. I tried it once but it didn't come out on the second bowl pour and I just couldn't credibly ask my mother for a third in good conscience or health.

I was reading a copy of Edible Pioneer Valley this week while I ate dinner, learning all about eating local and healthy. I don't think the pizza I was eating from Pizza Amore on Green Street is what they mean by locally grown. But like going to the gym, eating right is on the list that I hope to get to before being instructed to do so by a doctor. To this end, I want to direct you to a locally grown cooking blog by Nicole Kutcher with lots of easy cooking recipes. A Bushel of What? "Nicole Kutcher lives with her husband and her dog in Easthampton, MA. She has no James Beard Awards, no culinary training, and no cookbooks published under her name. She does, however, like to eat." The latest post is a great (I bet) Curried Vegetable Soup recipe. She's "got one in the oven" herself as of late so forgive her any pickle and ice-cream based recipes that may pop up. Just click on the logo below.

I'm infected by awareness.

Do you ever feel like what you might really feel like doing is too unsophisticated to cop to? I am so distraught by Fox News and so much of what's in the "news" that shouldn't be news and even more distraught at what the real news, reported or not, appears to be. I'm angry that people like Glenn Beck have a cable network at their disposal, like a cockroach with a megaphone. I like Rachel Maddow because she fights back, but lately that's all she's able to do. The bullshit-storm, by design, is so strong that the sensible people have to waste their time defending themselves against assaults from the idiots who destroy and don't create. There's rarely a chance to do anything else. You can't have a civil conversation in the middle of a locust invasion without going blind and swallowing big gulps of exoskeleton. Is it wrong to want to just turn it off and live in a bubble of my immediate reality more often? I'm infected by global awareness, and probably only scraping the surface of the truth at that. My innate optimism feels feisty but naive and either dependent on oblivion or subject to serious and emotionally expensive re-evaluation and compromise.

Mommy, what makes men drum in the back of a parked truck in downtown Northampton on a Sunday evening?

And what makes a man videotape them? And what makes a man use the word videotape instead of whatever phrase describes shooting a movie with a digital camera? I slept until 3PM, well, 2PM, today and awoke to my door buzzer. Emily was returning the bag I'd left in her car last night containing a picture frame, an umbrella, and one warm can of Miller beer. The detritus of an evening of altered identities and mental states for morning-after forensic analysis.

I made a scrambled egg burrito and then headed to Northampton Coffee for a cappuccino and a lemonade at 5PM. I felt none of the usual guilt about sleeping away a Sunday, drunk with the heady luxury of that extra hour added to the day. This gift of an hour gives humans an illusory sense of power over time, as if we had any control. Sure, we invented these measures of time; minutes, hours, days, so we could have dentist appointments, and we can use our invention to pull this daylight savings time jazz, but sister this won't buy you time in the end. If your moment of death occurs right when the clocks go back, you don't get a reprive. Never mind the whole leap year racket. As the Beatles said, number nine, number nine, number nine. We're just monkeying with the instruments. Nevertheless, it's a great illusion and today felt long despite my scandalous sleep-in.


Usually I feel like I've robbed myself of life's precious and finite weekend hours. But lately I realize that I needn't see the weekend as separate from the work week because A. they frequently bleed together and B. why not just BE all the time wherever I am instead of framing some time as mine and some as "on the clock?" I've read about taking this approach with "waiting" in line or in traffic and it makes plenty of sense. Don't think of it as waiting. Don't focus on getting to the cashier and twitch and fidget. Try to be in line. BE in line. Look around. Listen to what people are saying. Monitor the culture. Gather some anecdotes. It makes me feel powerful not to allow a situation to get the best of me and look around at all the willing victims who have yet to reach CVS-line enlightenment. I think about elevators and stairs this way too. They are not merely a means to an end. If life is about the journey and not the destination, then what better metaphor is there than a staircase, an escalator, or an elevator? The epitome of a failure to grasp this idea is those ridiculous segueways (ala Paul Blart: Mall Cop) that rob us of our walking.

The video below evokes the concept of transport as its own reward (as well as offering a clever tool against obesity.)


Waiting rooms. The name already sets people up for annoyance. What is this need we have to divorce parts of our lives into chunks, half spent reminiscing, the other anticipating? Or doing too many things at once like George Costanza and his dream trifecta: eating, having sex, and watching television all in bed simultaneously. Jerry calls him "Caligula" after this incident. George says, " I flew too close to the sun on wings made of pastrami," and Jerry replies, "So, she didn't appreciate the erotic qualities of the salted cured meats?"




Personally, any moment on this planet that I'm not in pain, have no broken bones, I'm not in jail, I can breathe and scratch my elbow, etc., I am in a state of potential joy. The real test I guess would be keep my cool in an airplane that is going down. And really, what is life but that?

Richard Glaven and I used to paint houses for Joe Callahan in the '80s and when we'd finish and he'd assess our work he'd point to places on the house where we had missed a spot and say "Holiday!" He'd find another. "Holiday!" Pointing his finger at spots across the span of the house, "Holiday! Holiday! Holiday!" Richard made a point of answering Joe's critiques with meaningless non-sequiturs. "But Joe, it's different for domeheads." Joe would stare at the two of us, first Richard, then me, then Richard again and shake his head. He'd say, "Nevertheless...." We'd get back up on the ladders and paint over our little mini-vacations. Then we'd all go to Delano's for beers. I had a job as a short order cook at Delano's after college. It was my first employment coup with my English B.A. from UMass.


After Northampton Coffee I came home feeling ideal bio-chemically and inspired to create. This feeling doesn't happen often enough. It's a full moon so maybe I'm feeling a lunar tug on the tides of my creative juices. Sometimes it's the result of caffeine and is oft accompanied by a flurry of resolutions and the use of words like oft. I proclaim that I will get up at 7AM and go to the gym for the second time this year after buying a two-year membership last January. Then I'll go to Northampton Coffee or the Haymarket to read the paper, maybe scribble down some of the more promising fly-by thoughts, and go to work on time rather than sleeping until 9:45 and getting in at 10:30. Eric, if you're reading this, the times are purely hypothetical....

I tried to make some headway at my collage table but lost interest and, as always, I end up talking and writing about being creative rather than doing it. I love ideas and inspiration but wow does my discipline and follow-through suck.


The recycling bin is always interesting when you share a building with the TMNT's company Mirage. The renowned local enterprise was just bought by Nickelodeon.

Halloween in Northampton- Day into Night

Halloween in Downtown Northampton - Daytime

"You've got mail!"
Photo above taken on Pearl Street behind the nightclub. Speaking of guitars, I saw "It Might Get Loud" this week at the Pleasant Street Theatre. It seemed like the "summit" hadn't yielded as much magic as hoped so there's very little actual chat between Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White. What conversation exists is awkward and the jams are odd, especially The Band's "The Weight." How about asking Page to play "I Will Follow," Edge to attempt "Icky Thump," and Jack to try (obviously) "Hat's Off To (Roy) Harper?" The film is edited together into thematic and biographical parts. I was thoroughly engaged all the way through despite its shortcomings. It's fun to see Page in his record room using a turntable, the staircase where Bonham kicked off "When The Levee Breaks," the old new wave hairdos of U2, and hear the story of Jack and Meg's red and white peppermint motif and Jack's favorite song ("Grinnin' In Your Face" by Son House.) (Click to hear it!)
Above: The scene at Kathy's Diner; a place where hipsters and almost off the rails townies have always co-existed in a scrambled sort of harmony with Patsy Cline on the jukebox speaking to any generation within earshot. I used to eat there after a night of beer and music at Sheehans's when it was still the Red Lion Diner and that crazy ol' Big Mike(?) used to cook there. I pointed out a cockroach in my omelette to him once and he plucked it out and said, "there." Below: This is the flesh of a telephone pole.
I ran into John Allen after breakfast with Dave and he (Dave) took this photo. There may be an identical photo taken 25 years ago back when we were wee lads.
Alice and perhaps Sir Gawain on their way to meet the Mad Hatter and the Green Knight on an anachronistic double breakfast date at the Green Bean.
I must notify Sesame Street immediately about this find.
State Radio play the Calvin tonight and they played an acoustic set at NBO this morning prior to a 5K road race to benefit Darfur.
These two cats have both lost their way. Do you recognize either? Call the numbers below.
Written on the wall in the Thornes Market men's room.
Bonnie Ascher tributes continue. Below, the window of Yes Computers on Pleasant Street.
A sign seen around the Market Street neighborhood, here affixed to an angelic white "ghost-cart" outside of Roz's Place, inspired by Bonnie's vehicle of choice. This is a beautiful and inspired shrine in the tradition of "ghost bikes" for fallen cyclists. There is a website dedicated to these bikes and their pilots, but no ghost-cart site as of yet. Here is the site's page for dear Meg Sanders who lost her life on her bike at Smith College in 2005. Meg's ghost bike was leaning against a tree near the scene of the accident. Blake Goodman, a cyclist killed in Amherst recently, had his ghost bike vandalized. Who would do this? There is a reward offered by Blake's dad for info. Here is Larry Kelley's post about Blake's bike.
Here's Paul Shoul's photo of Bonnie, who did ride a bike on occasion which as you can see had a bin for bottles and cans strapped on the back. It's hanging inm the window of the fabulous vintage store RETRO GENIE. Click here to read the whole story of this picture.
Here is a delightful video shot in Northampton by World's Greatest Dad for their song "Jacqueline." Click the collage. This was shot around Market Street, Bonnie's 'hood.
Here's a short video clip I shot at the Iron Horse of Sup Pop band Dum Dum Girls who have a '60s girl group meets Jesus and Mary Chain magic that made me tingle all over. They opened for King Khan and the BBQ Show. P.S. Fuck Buttons tomorrow night (Sunday) is now at the Iron Horse, not Pearl Street.
I am Son Of Man by Magritte for Halloween.

R.I.P. Bonnie

I saw my neighbor Bonnie carted away with an oxygen tank in an ambulance this weekend out my window and an anonymous poster here on Nohodome told me she died this weekend. Anonymous said...Sad news in the hood.... Heard today that Bonnie passed away. She was a tough old gal and a good heart. October 26, 2009 4:39 PM. Bonnie, like Timmy Young, was a downtown fixture. She seemed to have worked out barter arrangements with assorted restaurants, bars, and stores whereby she would sweep in front of the store in exchange for a meal or a drink. When she drank, sometimes I would hear her wailing in the night from her apartment across Market Street from me. "Why God Why Me!!!" I heard once. I don't know how she paid for the apartment. Bonnie DiCarlo (different Bonnie) who used to work at the antique store told me she had money but chose to live the way she did. "She has a daughter." To the casual observer, she was a "shopping cart lady" rounding up bottles and cans. She worked hard, and I always respected her, especially contrasted with the guys under the bridge that sit on the sidewalk and beg daily. "Brutha spare change?" 365 days a year. Morning and night. Bonnie was enterprising. She was hellbent on sweeping up the town. I saw her cleaning along the curbs, sweeping up gravel and dirt that didn't really need to be swept up. I didn't know Bonnie but she is another in the long line of people who have carved out an existence on the edges of downtown Northampton, recognized by all, known by none.

Old Sunrise

This sunrise over Market Street out my window is two weeks old. I didn't remember taking it when I emptied my camera onto the computer and it appeared amidst the conscious shots. I forgot it like I would forget a dream. Look, I captured two ghosts on Hawley just past the crosswalk. I had to tweek it to get some contrast thus the robust gold tint. Robust is a popular word in business and politics lately, you noticed? Robust legislation, etc. You used to never hear it but it's everywhere now "Language is a virus," as Laurie Anderson said.
I used to live right on Main St. looking out over downtown. At 4 in the morning the streets and sidewalks are deserted. You can see how wide the street really is; the way it looks on the old pre-automobile postcards. A few cars linger...perhaps left by responsible folks who caught a ride home with a sober friend. These cars are the meter-people's first stop at 8AM. Gotcha! I wonder if horses and buggies were ever ticketed back in the old days. I can imagine someone contesting a citation. "The horse ate the damn ticket."

Lately I've adopted a more aggressive cherry-picking motif in my life. I find the good song or two on a record and rescue them from the rest. I put them with all the others on an iTunes playlist, currently called Wedding/Funeral Playlist. Mediocre songs can eat time alive. I also have no problem skipping chapters in a book if they're not holding me. In younger days I'd just stop reading the book for good. It applies to many situations. If I realize I'm not going to be able to finish a pizza (I hate leftover pizza, so a pie gets just one sitting) I don't just eat as many full slices as I can manage and then stop. I eat the good parts of each slice that have the pepperoni on them and leave a pile of scattered "pizza bones" as Bill Stepchew's son used to call them. And for the record, those dough tumors that bubble up on a pizza piss me off. They rob perfectly good acreage from the pie. When those damn bubbles are on a pizza, they shouldn't serve it, god dammit.
Here's a piece of a Franz Wright poem (Wheeling Motel). How persnickity is this? Like the pizza, I don't just pick the poems I like from the book, I pick the parts of the poem. "Egads" as my grandmother used to say.

Then the moon will rise
like the word reconciliation,
like Walt Whitman examining
the tear on a dead face.

Awesome. I also like this line from Daisy Fried's review of Wright's new book, also called Wheeling Motel, in the New York Times Book Review.

"Franz Wright is uningratiating, bumptiously witty, inexhaustibly joyless, and routinely surprising."

Bumptiously! And how about this one. When's the last time you saw the word cotton used as a verb?

"...those who are strenuously traditional or strenuously hipster won't cotton to Wheeling Motel."

I like the review better than the book I think. Hell, who needs books with robust reviews like Daisy's?

Book Sale at Troubadour Books in Hatfield this weekend

Troubadour Books, one of the best bookstores in the area, arguably in the country, is having a 35% off sale this weekend. Dave and I just drove out there and I picked up some beautiful art and photo books for Xmas presents. Bob Willig has been the man behind the counter for years now. Chris, who you may know from Pleasant Street Video also works there. Here's a great review of the store which is right on route 5 in Hatfield just shy of the Whately town line. There's no website which is just fine. There is a massive collection of modern poetry as well as 1000+ art and photography books. It's a store with no junk books. No filler. Every edition is a treasure of some sort. Free coffee and snacks from Trader Joe's and great music sets the mood for a good two hour browse.

Today Chris was playing Death Cab For Cutie and jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson. As I looked through some Ben Shahn illustrations I realized Death Cab derives a lot of inspiration from Elliot Smith, especially the vocals and arrangements. He was on my mind because my old friend Mary Lou Lord was commenting on Facebook last night about an old cassette she found of her and Elliot playing songs together in someone's living room. I wonder if that's something others might like to hear. I should ask her.

Notebooks

As much as I like to write, I have never had much follow through or patience. I like the concept of being a "writer" but I tend to wallow in the idea more often than doing the work that would make it a reality. I'm quite pleased with myself for actually maintaining this blog for two years now. If it wasn't public, I doubt I would have stuck with it. Nothing like blogs existed in the 70% of my life that was pre-internet. But what is the modern definition of a writer? It used to mean a novelist or newspaper columnist. Maybe all this time that I have aspired to be a writer, I've actually become one. I suppose being paid is a good indication of writerdom. My friend Dave doesn't get paid but he is among my favorite writers. I have all his old pre-internet letters and they would make a hilarious "collected letters" book. I wonder if the equivalent of "the collected letters of author name here" will be replaced by "The Collected e-mails, Tweets, and Facebook posts of author name here." What would Shakespeare's tweets have been like had the technology been there or Bukowsi's or Virgina Woolf's? I lost a thousand or so emails exchanged with an ex-girlfriend (due to old Yahoo mailbox limits) written during the two worst years (in hindsight) of my life. (See "cakewalk of pain" below). I know there were some answers in there that would shed some light on what the hell I thought I was doing, but I'll never see them again, perhaps for the best.
What I do have is dozens of notebooks I bought whenever I was finally going to sit down and start my writing life. True to form, each has maybe 20 pages filled, and the rest is blank. Why was it so important to start a new one after abandoning the previous one for a year or so? I just love a crisp new notebook and not some old used one that's already written in. Silly but true. Sometimes I'd just flip the old one over and upside down and start writing from the back. SO. I am now paging through some of them and I thought I'd share some of the more notable entries. They are mostly short phrases. I know this is somewhat vain, and disciplined writers (especially Stephen King, whose On Writing I'm reading now) would scold me for dumping these nuts and bolts out on the floor. I have no defense. At some point I should cull all the worthwhile stuff out and consolidate it. Much of the contents is captured thoughts for use in "the novel" or memoir that will probably never be written. If I can even decipher my atrocious handwriting (example below.) Some of this I have no recollection of writing at all and I can't figure out what I was getting at. Some of it isn't even interesting so just for fun and to tempt buried meaning, the illustrations I've included are random images I found by googling the various scribblings (or parts of them) that precede them. I'm addicted to juxtapositions.

Rough draft of a poem read at my sister's wedding. (Pic is random, not us)
My sister Sarah is the son my parents never had.
She's got a lot of sand in her, and guts and lily pads.
When I tried out for Little League I couldn't play the game,
But Sarah led the Lassie League to slow pitch softball fame.
I've loved her since the 60s when she was a little baby.
When she grew up and guys would ask, I'd say I'm not sure...maybe.
When she came out her stymied suitors voiced a knowing Doh!
They should have seen it all along, the girl was indigo.

Fragments:

Malignant magic

Yawning earth

Thimble rigging
Old blind visionaries

Top and bottom shelf of the soul

Living but no longer longing

Pegged by a cupcake
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3230/Robert-Crumb-The-Religious-Experience-of-Philip-K-DickSports is beer.
I feel like it's worse now. Everything is worse. Things aren't even things anymore. They've lost their very thingness. Things have to sell things now.
My cakewalk of pain

Look upon all circumstances with the gratitude of a pupil.

Why no bus baggage security or bag scans etc.?

Live neither in the present, past, or future but in the eternal.

How could I end it?

Amputees disarm me.

Taking potshots at the hotshots and the bigwigs at their shindigs, free trade organic torture, minty fresh bloodshed, universal wealthcare, trim the hedge funds, risk profile of a salad bar, anti-retroviral pro-biotic carcinogenic Tuscaloosa pancakes.

Look out baby that shit's about to quintuple and leave us surfing with the cannibals.

People who bought this title also bought: The Tipping Point, crack cocaine in a public park.

That's nonsense? Nonsense!

Does the face look uneven, does one arm drift down, does their speech sound slurred.

What can your body do to your body?

Duck Duck Goose is like Russian Roulette for kindergartners.

George Bush should be challenged to take the SAT test. If he said no, he'd look scared,and if he took it, well, we'd see. I'd bet he'd get 400s.

I want to see an iMac in the Oval Office.

Do presidents really work at the Oval Office desk like we would at our jobs? What's in the drawers. Does the White House place Staples orders? Do they ever make copies? Replace toner cartridges? I mean, what isn't delegated? Do they staple?
Nixon was a character in MAD magazine to me. McGovern was a sticker on our family's van.

How long have you been her?

Lazy Post. Foto-Funnies.

Crime Wave! Amherst Police Blotter (with and without comment)

CITIZEN ASSISTANCE

* 6:17 p.m. - A downtown resident told police that her neighbor has been placing caution tape and stakes around her vehicle and notes on the vehicle in an effort to prevent her from parking on grass outside her home. The neighbor said he was concerned the woman's vehicle is damaging the beauty of the neighborhood. Police warned the neighbor to call parking enforcement officials if the woman is parking her vehicle illegally.

LARCENY

* 6:38 p.m. - A UMass student who stole a pregnancy test kit from the CVS Pharmacy on North Pleasant Street was issued a trespass order by store management and advised to use services available to her at the UMass Infirmary. (Her boyfriend should have stolen some condoms.)

* 6:54 p.m. - A bicyclist who may have been struck by a vehicle at the intersection of Amity Street and Sunset Avenue flipped over the handlebars and landed on the ground, police said. (May have been? Was he a mime?)

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 16

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

* 3:57 a.m. - A homeless man sleeping inside an ATM on Amity Street was sent on his way. (He has no way to be sent on. Can we just be honest and say kicked out?)

* 1:31 p.m. - A baby was reported left alone in a vehicle parked in the Amity Street parking lot. When police got there, both parents came back to car and told police they were watching the baby from the area of the Amherst Cinema. (They were taking turns running in and out of the theatre.)

ANIMAL COMPLAINTS

* 10:07 p.m. - A skunk which got its head stuck in a bottle was heard wandering around a Fearing Street yard. (Honey, does that sound like a skunk with its head stuck in a bottle to you?)

TRAFFIC

* 6:46 p.m. - A man crawling across North Pleasant Street was warned about his behavior. (But then they realized it was actually a very large escaped baby!)

THURSDAY, SEPT. 17

DISTURBANCES

* 5:02 a.m. - Police kept the peace at a South Amherst home where a man was being loud and refused to quiet down. The man was fine after his wife convinced him to resume taking his medication.

ANIMAL COMPLAINTS

* 8:16 a.m. - A squirrel was found inside a janitor's closet at the pre-school on Spring Street. The squirrel seemingly fled, but the animal got back inside the building at 11:37 a.m. (That looks like fleeing Dave, but things aren't always what they seem.)

FRIDAY, SEPT. 18

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

* 9:24 a.m. - A homeless man located with his belongings in a South Prospect Street yard was sent on his way. The man told police he had slept in a box overnight. (But the box was gone when he woke up. Even the homeless are facing foreclosure on their boxes.)
DISTURBANCES

* 10:46 a.m. - A woman kicked a vehicle passing the corner of College Street and Boltwood Avenue when it didn't stop for a pedestrian. (Damn right!)


ASSAULTS

* 12:17 a.m. - A man suffered a cut to his ear, but refused treatment, after being struck with a bottle while walking on Phillips Street. (He initially agreed to treatment for the cut to his ear but, after being struck with the bottle, refused it. Mind your commas.)

NOISE COMPLAINTS

* 10:54 p.m. and 11:50 p.m. - Police cleared out a party with 75 people at a Northampton Road location and a party with 10 people at a South East Street home. (Well, now we know where the better parties are likely to be.)

SATURDAY, SEPT. 19

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

* 7:23 p.m. - A man sitting in a lawn chair at the Kellogg Avenue entrance to the parking garage trying to charge people $5 to park there was warned to stop the activity. The man had not collected any money. (Freelance toll collection is frowned upon.)

ANIMAL COMPLAINTS

* 5:32 p.m. - A moose successfully crossed Route 116 near the Sunderland town line. At 6:50 a.m. the following day, a moose was seen near the Department of Public Works barn on South Pleasant Street. (Same moose? Must have taken a bus.)

SUNDAY, SEPT. 20

ASSAULTS

* 1:55 a.m. - A Sunset Avenue man told police his novelty hat was stolen during a fight in which he was assaulted.
Thanks to the Amherst Bulletin.

Northampton State Hospital Photo Galleries

I found the postcard above at the monthly stamp and postcard show at the WWII Club on Conz St. when I went to vote a couple Tuesdays ago. Then I came upon a fantastic website with several photo galleries of the old Northampton Lunatic Asylum here. Sample image of the estate's morgue below.

"The morgue lies in the back of the central administration part of the hospital, and is oddly located underneath the cafeteria if my perception was correct.

The hospital did have a burial ground, and was used from 1856 until 1920. After 1920, patients without families would be used as medical school cadavers. At least 181 people are still resting here, and since there are no grave markers, the grave site was actually rediscovered by archeologists after it closed shortly after a similar burial site was recognized at Danvers State Aylum."

Recent Odds and Sods

Mural detail from wall of Food For Thought Books in Amherst.
Same mural, different detail
Budget cuts have resulted in some DIY style funerals.
Local band World's Greatest Dad execute an extremely clever promotional stunt with a clear sticker placed across the masthead of the display copy of the Valley Advocate, conveniently their Big Music Issue. WGD opens for Mumiy Troll, "the Rolling Stones of Russia" at Pearl Street in October.
Found art, Hallway, 245 Main Street
Jordan brightens up Jakes.
Louie Falcetti's button hits a little too close to home.
ADK at Lookstock, man.
The Unusual Suspects.
Brendan and Tim execute the exploding knucks at Mountain Park in August. We'll miss you Timmy.
The GDP is fine in Norhampton. Gross Domestic Poetry anyway.
North End, Boston, Festival of St. So and So.
North End, Boston. Festival of Saint Whats-his-name.

North End, Boston. Saturday Night Fever.

A Speech to the Garden Club of America

A Speech to the Garden Club of America by Wendell Berry

(With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes that are worse.
But I must add I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion through the air,
Burning the world in fact to rise much higher
Than we should go. The world may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit
Of temporary progress, digging up
An antique dark-held luster to corrupt
The present light with smokes and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter comprehension.
Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify
The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens
By going back to school, this time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the summer day.
By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all living things,
Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.

Hungry Ghost Sixth Annual Wonder Not! Bread Festival and Parade

It's a gorgeous day in Northampton. Every year The Hungry Ghost bakery has a harvest festival on their lawn, commencing with a parade around the block. Your roving Nohodome reporter was there.
The baker feeds the hungry ghost.
Jonathan Stevens, owner of the Hungry Ghost, led the band, sheet music clipped to sax. Jonathan also plays guitar and shares a love of the UK singer/songwriter Roy Harper with me.
No time to loaf! Let's get this party started.Valley citizenry.
Ghost and bread become one.
I believe this is the moon.Here comes the sun, doo doo doo doo doo.
And I say, it's all right. Sunning outside La Veracruzana......where I ran into Karen Andrade and her son.

Bugs, Breakfast, Beefheart

Dave and I discovered this guy (or gal....or both) on the wall of the laundry room this morning on the way to Jake's for our weekly Saturday breakfast. We're like two old men. I read my Gazette. He reads his Post. We quip and chuckle. I imagine if this keeps up we will be the two old men at breakfast in 20 years or so. When I saw the bug, I got that light quivery feeling, like my veins are shaking. Just stay in the basement whateveripede.
Dan Manson and Steve Vogel conceive the windows and many of the displays at Faces on Main Street. These Musca domestica mannequins are reminiscent of the madness on display at Dan's annual Pumpkin Party which is not a public event but feels like it. I used to program the music at Faces. I think now it's a collaboration of all the employees. I think they got rid of me because of my assertion that Captain Beefheart suited the 15-25 female demo. I stand by my belief.

Rescued from the Archives of Oblivion: Anthony More "Judy Get Down"

I was writing a radio commercial to run on WRSI-The River for the Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright "Loud and Rich" concert at the Calvin on 10/6 and used "That's My Daughter" as one of the Loudon songs, which is actually a Peter Blegvad song and was also in the movie Knocked Up. Blegvad is a deft and literate lyricist whose lyrics frequently feature word games, literary references and complex and extended rhyme schemes. He was in The Golden Palominos on some of their best albums. The Palominos were a collaborative of sorts, congregated by drummer Anton Feir, and included Jack Bruce, Michael Stipe, Matthew Sweet, Syd Straw, John Lydon, and so many more. GREAT albums. Before that, Blegvad was also in the avant-pop bands Slapp Happy and Henry Cow and showed up in the Recommended Records stable frequently. His 80's solo albums were often collaborations with Andy Partridge of XTC and contain some great songs. I used to play "Lonely Too" on my radio show Terpsichorean Cacophony on WMUA at UMass in the mid-80s. Blegvad is also a cartoonist. From 1992 to 1999, The Independent ran Blegvad's strangely surreal, comic strip, Leviathan, which blended some of the most interesting elements of Krazy Kat with a coming-of-age-esque story akin to Calvin and Hobbes.

Now, to diverge (almost) entirely from Peter and get to the song that inspired this post, here's a YouTube post of Anthony More's "Judy Get Down." Anthony was in Slapp Happy with Peter. My old pal Jay McCoy (who ran Grape Street Records in the Stop & Shop plaza in Hadley) turned me onto this song when I was still in high school. It's a pip.


Oh why not. Here's Loudon doing "That's My Daughter." A classic already.


Finally, here's a link to a baffling website called Amateur that Peter Blegvad is somehow involved with. For a quarter of a century, the folks at Amateur have been quietly engaged in the exploration and mapping of a territory which can be described both by what it is not: ("not science, not philosophy, not art, not literature") - and by what it is: (here the word 'weird' comes to mind, and 'preposterous'). Take, for instance, Amateur's obsession with 'numinous objects.' These, the website helpfully explains, are objects 'charged' with sufficient 'immanence' to "rip a rent in the fabric of normal awareness." The Amateur website catalogues and grades the numinosity of hundreds of objects, ranging from "a yolk of leather in a tobacco egg" to, in fact, a common doorbell.

Up on the Roof. Down on the Couch.

Okay, I've taken enough heat for leaving up the roof photos and not posting since 8/18 to break my blogfast. What was the catalyst for the hiatus? I can't say for sure but I have a theory. I've been watching too much television. I have never been much of a TV watcher. Sure, as a kid I was loyal to sundry Partridges, Bradys, and Kotters, but I've never just "watched TV;" flipped it on, disengaged my muscles, unsnapped my pants. I can name almost all the shows that I collectively gave over several hundred hours of my life to without any trouble. Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Nanny and the Professor, 6M Dollar Man, Little House OTP, Buffy, The Wire, Daily Show, Homicide, Oz, Beavis and Butthead, Seinfeld, Simpsons, MTV's 120 Minutes, Mad About You, some Sopranos and Sex and the City, and now Lost, Dexter, Mad Men, and Nurse Jackie. That's pretty much it. But only recently have I watched shows all at once, in season-loads, sometimes five epsiodes in one sitting. The characters populate my brain much more insidiously without a week between episodes to clear the palate. I feel a sense of gluttony when a cliffhanger is unhung in a matter of seconds.

Then again I'm in awe of the quality of these shows and their ability to maintain the intensity and writing of a too-notch film over a few years time (90 episodes in the case of Lost.) It's a new art-form in storytelling, or at least a dramatic improvement in the history of the serial. The themes are more complex and the gradual relaxing of censorship has brought a level of reality to TV that was unthinkable in the past. If a Hill Street Blues fan was teleported from the past and shown an episode of The Wire, he'd be carted off on a gurney in shock. And how about the references to 14" strap-on dildos that have popped up recently on both Weeds and Dexter? Laura Petrie didn't even share her bed with Rob.

So these TV shows have been taking up a lot of what was my blogging time. My now not so new girlfriend also bears some of the blame for luring me from my Mac. The life to writing-about-life ratio tilted in season three of Life in the Nohodome. I guess I could have done some summer re-runs. I did actually record my post about graveyards from earlier this year to air on a new show on WHMP-AM sometime soon.

From a Rooftop in Northampton

It looks almost like a city from up here.

Crime Wave! Amherst Police Blotter (with comment)

This post is technically a re-run, for long-time readers.

TUESDAY, FEB. 10

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

* 12:40 a.m. - A homeless man with with an open container of vodka on Kellogg Avenue was advised to dump out the beverage. "Can I dump it out down my throat?"

* 6:06 p.m. - Police provided advice to staff at a mental health home in Amherst where a client had thrown dishes around a room. "Wear hard hats."

* 10:40 p.m. - Three college-age men who yelled obscenities at police officers outside a Main Street restaurant were advised to calm down. "But not in those words."

* 1:12 a.m. - A vehicle backed into a second vehicle at the corner of East Pleasant and Triangle streets, causing minor damage and no personal injuries, police said. The driver told police the accident happened after he backed the vehicle up to avoid a pedestrian who had approached the vehicle with the intent to fight with the people inside. "Amherst pedestrians take their right of way quite seriously."

THURSDAY, FEB. 12

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

10:47 p.m. - Police called for tows of three vehicles parked illegally on Hobart Lane. "It's an isolated incident. They won't tow us again."

* 11:56 p.m. - A woman was heard screaming in the area of Railroad Street. Police found party-goers loitering on the street, but all denied hearing any screaming. "They did eventually acknowledge some yelling."

CITIZEN ASSISTANCE

* 12:24 p.m. - Police are investigating incidents in which an Amherst woman has repeatedly received calls and answering machine messages from a man asking her to meet for breakfast or lunch "G-Rated Obscene Phone Calls- You want to go to breakfast? I know you do. You like breakfast don't you?"

* 7:19 p.m. - A decapitated rabbit was left on the front porch of a Winston Court home. Police said it was unclear if the rabbit had been left there by a person or a wild animal. "Or perhaps Glenn Close."

* 9:08 p.m. - Police spoke to a South East Street girl on behalf of her parents on the laws surrounding the use of pepper spray. "It's not for use on teachers, parents, and boyfriends."


DISTURBANCES

* 12:40 a.m. - A man called from his West Street home seeking assistance in dealing with two people who entered his home and began bothering him. Police determined there were no intruders in the home and that the people the man had seen were on his television screen. "Officers Reed and Malloy of the crime drama Adam-12 were on-screen when the police arrived. The man looked up at the Amherst officers when they arrived and said, NOW I'm REALLY getting annoyed."

* 1:56 a.m. - Police sent a man on his way who was banging on windows at Pi Kappa Alpha on North Pleasant Street. "No more Tappa Tappa Tappa, buddy."

BREAK-INS

* 2:08 p.m. and 2:12 p.m. - Two unlocked vehicles parked on Memorial Drive were reported entered. Sunglasses were stolen from one vehicle, while an iPod was missing from the other vehicle. "Officers noted a whistling man in shades and an iPod walking up Memorial Drive shortly thereafter but their shift was almost done and they said, "Did you see anything? Nope. Did you? I didn't see shit."

* 10:53 p.m. - A window on the front porch to a Fearing Street home was smashed out, but no entry appeared to have been gained to the residence. "Robbers remorse."

* 12:33 a.m. - Four vehicles parked illegally on Hobart Lane were towed. "God dammit! Well, they wouldn't dare tow us a third time."

* 7:41 p.m. - Police stopped a vehicle on Main Street in which debris was being thrown out the sunroof. A small amount of marijuana and an open bottle of gin were seized from the people inside the vehicle. "These were also thrown out of the sunroof but the car was no longer in motion so they were easily seized."

* 12:37 p.m. - A missing 14-year-old Amherst girl was located safely at The Boulders. The girl earlier in February had been missing and was found in Lowell. "Officers requested that the girl keep it somewhat local if she is to go missing again. "We aren't driving to Hingham to retrieve your ass."

* 3:26 p.m. - A sick skunk on South Sunset Avenue was destroyed by police.

NOISE COMPLAINTS

* 1:42 a.m. and 7:21 p.m. - Police issued verbal warnings to Puffton Village and Brandywine Apartments residents playing loud music. "Less cowbell."

MONDAY, FEB. 16

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

* 11:39 p.m. - Police took a report of a door slamming and a person screaming in the area of Main Street. "It was later determined to be an Edward Gorey cartoon."

CITIZEN ASSISTANCE

* 1:10 a.m. - A woman reported that a bouncer at a downtown bar used racial epithets toward her. Police determined the woman was intoxicated and had been belligerent toward staff at the bar after being told she had to leave because it was closing time. "She failed a sobriety test, unable to pronounce "epithet."

* 2:10 a.m. - Police responded to the corner of North Pleasant Street and Massachusetts Avenue where a heavily intoxicated woman was on the ground. Her friends told police they would get her back to her dorm room. "...within a few days."

* 2:23 a.m. and 3:18 a.m. - Police called for the tows of vehicles parked on Hobart Lane. "Son of a BITCH!"

* 7:42 p.m. - Police were unable to locate a man crawling in the middle of Main Street. "They did however replace on open man-hole cover."

* 10:44 p.m. - A person who set off fireworks in a Sacco Drive driveway was not located by police. "But inexplicable bone fragments and tattered clothing were collected."

CITIZEN ASSISTANCE

* 4:56 p.m. - A man came into the police station demanding that a boot be removed from his vehicle that had been placed on it for unpaid parking tickets. Police advised the man to settle his bill and the boot would be removed. Instead, the man said he wanted to file a vandalism complaint against parking enforcement officials. "There was a moment of silence and then uncontolled laughter. The scene froze and the credits rolled."

* 6:37 p.m. - Police spoke to a man at the police station who reported ongoing disputes with another man over a former girlfriend. "They advised him that "former" was the operative term, and to get on with his life."

* 1:31 a.m. - A vehicle parked on the sidewalk on South Prospect Street was issued a ticket.

DISTURBANCES

* 12:58 p.m. - A 13-year-old girl throwing a temper tantrum at an Amherst home had calmed down when police got there. "I want an Oompa Loompa NOWWWWWW!"

* 3:41 p.m. - A Mill Hollow Apartments resident told police his neighbor punched him a week earlier. Police are looking into the incident. "To do: Pay bills, dry cleaning, call police about punch."

* 6:38 p.m. - An intoxicated man was removed from a bathroom in a downtown restaurant and brought to his brother's South Amherst residence. Two days later at 9:35 p.m., the same man was found on the floor of another downtown restaurant and was sent on his way. "The mayor's vacation ends next week."

* 5:43 a.m. - A man screaming on Sunset Court was located with his hands duct-taped together and chocolate syrup poured over him. Police determined the man was a victim of a prank by his friends. "The police topped him with Cool Whip, put a cherry on his head, and left."

* 7:52 a.m. - An employee causing problems at the Center for Extended Care was removed before police got there. "Their care does not extend indefinitely."

BREAK-INS

* 9:33 a.m. - The rear door to an Allen Street home was forced open, but it was unclear if anything is missing since the homeowners are vacationing in Arizona. "Had they been in Delaware, more could have been determined."

* 12:55 p.m. - Police were unable to locate a possum running in circles on North Whitney Street. "There were however several running zig-zag patterns that were advised to be on there way."

MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENTS

* 12:03 a.m. - A vehicle went off West Street over an embankment after the driver, who was talking on his cell phone, told police he thought he could navigate the vehicle through a snowbank, police said. The vehicle had to be towed after the driver and a passerby tried to pull the vehicle out using nylon straps, police said. "Now let me get this straight..."

* 6:54 p.m. - An Agawam woman told police that her former boyfriend, who lives in Amherst, had posted nude photos of her on his MySpace page. Police determined no crime had been committed because the woman had willingly given the pictures to the man. "They requested the web address just to be sure."

DISTURBANCES

* 12:41 a.m. - People on Fearing Street arguing over a jacket were calmed down. "But then they got into it over the snow pants and police had to intervene."

* 1:31 a.m. - Sisters arguing over the care of a drunken roommate at The Griggs apartments on Amity Street were advised of their options. "A. Don't call us again. B. Don't call us again."

4:52 p.m. - A man who tried to steal condoms and juice from Big Y Supermarket was identified and issued a trespass order. "A juice-balloon attack thwarted!"

11:34 p.m. - A verbal warning was issued by police to North Pleasant Street residents playing loud music and running up stairs. Two hours later police returned to the same home to issue a second warning about stomping on the floor. "...and just to save us any more trips, this also means no hopping, pogo-sticking, dragging furniture around, bouncing balls, skateboarding, kick-boxing, ballet, bikram yoga..."

11:14 a.m. - A vehicle spun out on the Route 116 bypass, but police determined the accident had occurred in Hadley and referred the matter to their department. "Well, it started in Amherst and ended up in Hadley."

7:34 p.m. - A Canterbury Lane resident told police someone shot six red paintballs at the home from a vehicle that just passed by. The incident may be part of an ongoing dispute between two people over a girl. Police are investigating. The following day at 11:04 a.m. and 11:43 a.m., Summerfield Road and White Pine Road residents reported their homes were also struck with paintballs. "What kind of girl's heart can be won with a paintball victory?"


2:38 a.m. - Two men involved in an ongoing altercation were reported at the Hess gas station. One working there allegedly rang up the other man's order slowly and the customer, in retaliation, flicked a piece of paper at the other man. "When police arrived, they witnessed the customer blow a straw wrapper at the cashier who had given him his change in pennies and was slowly inserting items one by one into a bag and then rearranging them over and over again. The officers drew rubber bands and threatened to use them if the men continued their altercation."

1:13 a.m. - Police issued a verbal warning to Carriage Lane residents where a live band was playing. "No more Styx or Journey!"

1:22 p.m. - The back door was found open at a Whippletree Lane home. The door appeared to have been blown open by wind, as all stereo and electronic equipment was still inside. "The wind did, however, make off with the silverware and some jewelry as well as some Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Kansas CD's."

11 a.m. - A vehicle went off Henry Street through several cement posts and down a 10-foot embankment, where it flipped over and ended up close to the railroad tracks, police said. The driver was not injured but the vehicle was towed. "In fact, many stuntmen call Western Massachusetts home."

12:16 p.m. - A Wells, Maine resident told police he is concerned that his former wife, who has custody of their two children, plans to enroll the girls in Amherst schools. "Over my dead body will my daughters be exposed to The Vagina Monologues or be called freshpersons!"

12:57 a.m. - Police stopped a vehicle with a license-plate light out on College Street and issued the driver a warning for the offense. The same vehicle was stopped again at 10:53 p.m. on South Pleasant Street, and another verbal warning was issued. "The police followed him and sure enough, he was still in violation a mile later and they pulled him over and issued him another warning."

5:09 a.m. - An Aspen Chase Apartments woman reported three male intruders in her home. It was unclear if anyone had entered, as the apartment was empty when police got there. At 6:13 a.m., the woman called back to say people were banging on windows, but there no evidence of anyone in the area or footprints left in the snow. "Finally she admitted that she was lonely and asked the officers to join her for tea and crumpets, which they did."
7:15 p.m. - A woman who locked herself inside a bathroom at a downtown restaurant was gone when police got there. "There were. however. two tiny shoes floating in the toilet and a bottle with a DRINK ME label on it."

10:20 p.m. - Police spoke to North Amherst parents of a teenage girl who refuses to come home and comply with the rules of the house. The mother told police she may file assault charges against her daughter to get her to follow the rules. "The police looked at each other and then at the woman. They stood quietly staring at her with their mouths slightly open for some time. They looked at each other again. Then back at her. They shook their heads and left without a word."

11:08 a.m. - A Mill Hollow Apartments woman complained her neighbors were repeatedly opening and closing the closet doors and making excessive noise. Police said there was no evidence of any unusual activity. At 8:44 p.m., the woman called back asking police to check on her neighbors, but police advised her they wouldn't respond if there was no noise. Police did go back to the location again at 11:11 p.m. and found residents watching a television and making sandwiches. The noise was not considered excessive. "It's that chunky peanut butter. It makes so much more noise than the smooth stuff when you spread it."
4:52 p.m. - Police were unable to locate a pickup truck operating at a slow rate of speed on West Street. "So they spun the arrow on the board and went off looking for a cowboy in drag on a moped operating at the speed limit."

4:51 p.m. - A man running in the parking lot of the Center of Extended Care on University Drive who has an active trespass to stay off the property was not located. He had previously gone into the building without permission and began to shave himself. "From head to toe?"

10:42 p.m. - Seven people talking loudly, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol outside Southpoint Apartments were not located by police. "So they spun the arrow on the board and went off looking for three meter maids playing hackey-sack in an empty swimming pool at Rolling Green."

11:51 a.m. - A minor two-car accident with no personal injuries occurred in the Survival Center parking lot, police said. "Thank goodness it wasn't at the Perish Center."

4:35 p.m. - Police issued a verbal warning to the driver of a vehicle that failed to stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk on Triangle Street near Kellogg Avenue. The pedestrian was also advised to use more common sense when crossing the street. "Both the pedestrian and driver were back on their cell-phones by this time and did not hear the police advice."

4:39 p.m. - A driver placed an inspection sticker on a vehicle after it was stopped on Triangle Street for being operated with an expired inspection sticker. "Procrastination is a disease."

2:10 p.m. - A North Amherst resident reported receiving an insulting phone call from someone related to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza. "Police suggested that in the spirit of the confict, the resident call the person back 100 times."

* 9:21 a.m. - A North Amherst woman reported getting a letter from a former tenant who wrote that karma would pay her back for what she had done to him. She refused to obtain a restraining order and told police she would be leaving the country for about two months. "Can you flee karma?"

* 10:49 p.m. - Police determined a woman screaming at Aspen Chase Apartments was just having difficulties with the holidays. "We all know the feeling."

* 2:23 a.m. - A person who jiggled the knob to a Kellogg Avenue home but didn't gain entry was not located by police. "The dread Amherst Knob Jiggler strikes again!"

* 1 p.m. - More than $3,000 worth of lottery tickets were reported missing from a North Amherst convenience store. Police said there is no evidence the tickets were stolen. "Given that the floor behind the register was covered with a layer of ticket scratch dust."

* 3:25 a.m. - A motion light came on at Cherry Hill Golf Course. Everything appeared to be secure at the location. "Gophers!"

* 12:26 a.m. - Police spoke to a North Amherst resident who was upset about noise her neighbors were making and told police she would take care of the problem in a violent way. The woman was calmed down and told police she was just joking. "She said she probably wouldn't know how to use a flame-thrower if she had one anyway."
* 8:47 p.m. - A man hanging out outside the Cushman Market and Cafe was determined to be enjoying a walk and talking on his cell phone. "This sort of enjoyment of life always looks vaguely criminal."

* 12:50 p.m. - A Cushman resident told police his son entered his car and stole $7 in change. The father said he would handle the matter on his own. "The kid was trying to get bus fare to escape his INSANE FATHER."

* 8:05 p.m. - People playing loud music at a birthday party on Pomeroy Lane agreed to turn it down. At 9:43 p.m., police returned to the location after bongo drums were heard playing. Police determined the noise was not excessive. "The bongo-meter doesn't lie."

* 8:08 a.m. - Police were unable to locate a man who yelled at employees at a downtown restaurant and then sat inside his truck and continued staring at the employees for several minutes. "Is that dude still out there? Should we call the cops or get the bat?"

* 10:54 p.m. - Three small bags of marijuana were confiscated from people inside a vehicle stopped on North Pleasant Street. "A peat moss sized bag in the trunk was fortunately not detected."

* 11:25 p.m. - Police determined people throwing food on cars at a College Street parking lot were members of a college lacrosse team goofing off. "So that's an alibi?"

* 2:23 p.m. - A West Street woman told police a man entered her home, took her phone and then replaced it with another phone. Police said there is no evidence such an incident occurred. "But is there any evidence that it didn't occur?"

* 8:56 a.m. - A North East Street resident reported a possum got inside the chicken coop. "Possums will be possums."

* 12:56 a.m. - A man and woman arguing outside the downtown bars told police they were having relationship issues. They were advised of their rights to obtain restraining orders and sent on their way. "Hey who needs couples therapy with nuanced advice like this from cops?"

* 1:27 a.m. - A young woman seen streaking on Rolling Green Drive was not found by police. "Despite their arrival at the scene within 30 seconds of the call."

* 2:48 a.m. - Two men running with ladders on North Pleasant Street near Phillips Street were gone when police got there. "An hour later two homes were robbed with the burglars inexplicably gaining access through second story windows."

* 9:05 p.m. - Police determined that a Taylor Street woman's complaints about neighbors snowblowing snow onto her house and windows were not legitimate. Strong gusts of wind were determined to be responsible for the snow hitting her house. "Allegations that neighbors were shining bright lights into her house were determined to be caused by the sun."

No comment necessary:

* 2:35 a.m. - Police were unable to locate people talking loudly at The Brook after a woman reported the noise. The woman filing the complaint was heard inside her apartment talking to herself, but refused to come to the door.

* 11:55 p.m. - A customer threw beer at employees at Rafter's Sports Bar & Restaurant after being confronted about refilling a beer on his own by going behind the bar. The customer calmed down and agreed to pay the bill.

* 7:52 p.m. - A Chestnut Court Apartments woman told police her house was shaking. Police officers got there and determined there was no shaking, and that the woman was likely experiencing the effects of having been inside a car most of the day.

* 4:25 p.m. - A woman called police to report she would be making a film with college friends at Puftfon Village in which a toy gun would be used. Police advised them not to do so.

* 12:35 a.m. - A teenage boy became out of control at a Southpoint Apartments home after watching a television program.

* 4:16 p.m. - Police were unable to locate a white goat wandering in the middle of South East Street near the South Amherst Town Common. Two days later at 9:47 a.m., the goat was reported wandering in the area of the South Amherst alternative high school.

* 1:02 a.m. - Police determined a man who alleged he was being assaulted at a North Pleasant Street location was actually refusing to take his prescribed medication.

* 10:51 p.m. - Police responded to a Main Street apartment for a report of non-stop laughing by the residents that was annoying neighbors. While the person reporting thought the neighbors might be using drugs, police determined that they just watching a marathon of Jim Carrey movies.

* 11:09 a.m. - A raccoon found beneath a tree on Farmington Road was not ill.

* 7:41 a.m. - Police were contacted after an intoxicated man entered an unlocked Echo Village Apartments home and passed out on the floor. Police determined the man had been a prior tenant and issued him a trespass notice after the residents asked that he not be arrested.

Johnny has the answers in Harvard Square

New Collage

Now that I have given this to its intended recipient, I can post it for the proletariat. Click for higher resolution version.

Sleeping, dying, or faking.

Sister Emily and son Theo (yes, named after Epstein.) Emily is visiting Northampton from Boston, seeing our friends Naomi and Chris. Naomi's daughter Stella's quotes include: "When people's eyes are closed, they're either sleeping, dying, or faking." --Stella, age 4 - "I pee in the ground and bury it." --Stella, age 5 - Emily went to Harvard Divinity School and of course has parlayed that into... a wardrobe consulting business called Closet Smarts. She helps me thin the wayward herd of clothing that is my closet for free, and shows me combinations I never conceived of.
Main Street moment with cigarette, umbrella, and cellphone.
"Rock."
A delightful office visit from Llama provides a mid afternoon lift.

Mt. Tom and Mountain Park Photo Documentary

Click here or watch the embedded video above. The loud rock music dissipates quickly and Mr. Schwobe gives a pretty remarkable history of Holyoke and Northampton, with the mountain inbetween. It's low budget, or should I say hand-made!

More Sidewalk Sales and Downtown Weekend

South Carolina's kids rock band Lunch Money performed at 2PM Sunday as part of the Iron Horse's new matinee kids concert series; The No Nap Happy Hour, co-presented with the enthusiasm and kids music know-how of Bill Childs of the Spare The Rock, Spoil The Child program which airs Saturday mornings on WRSI The River. Here they are below before the show doing an impromptu gig on the sidewalk. Lunch Money's songs deal with childhood's deeper issues such as cookies as big as your head, grilled cheese, and getting dizzy (the cheapest ride in town.) The next show is on Sunday August 23rd with Justin Roberts and the Not Ready For Naptime Players, who's song "Pop Fly" is a hit (no pun intended) to my ears regardless of the target demo. Watch the video!

The Dynamite Records guys. I should have gotten their names. Lots of great vinyl in their basement!

The OTHER Morrissey. Used to play the Iron Horse all the time. Fantastic songwriter who also wrote a great novel called Edson.
Rock and.....bun?
Don Dixon (along with Mitch Easter) produced a lot of the great '80s american bands like REM and the dB's. He married singer Marti Jones, formerly of Color Me Gone before she made some fine solo albums. Don made a record or two of his own as well. This one contained the song Preying Mantis which was played constantly on WRSI for a while in the late 80s. I still hear it once in a while.

When Beatlemania hit, dozens of imposter bands tried to dupe the fans, hoping they would be so manic and foaming in the record store that they wouldn't notice they were buying bogus Beatles records.


Live music on the steps of the First Church, sponsored by Florence Savings Bank. These shots are of Northampton's incomparable Primate Fiasco.

My route home up and over the new bikepath and railroad tracks. My friend Gabriella and I pass each other here frequently and both confessed recently that we go this way because passing under the bridge and being asked for spare change by that relentless man is oddly stressful.
Scotland's emotionally dramatic and guitarishly lush Frightened Rabbit at the Iron Horse on Saturday night. They recall some of the old New Zealand bands of the 80s on the Flying Nun label like The Chills, The Verlaines, The Clean, and The Bats.

Mr. Bubble.

Poetry reading and slam in the basement of Thornes made possible by C3's Storefront Art program.

Noel Buscemi's incredible collection of ephemera, Paper Tigers, is my favorite part of the weekend.Sylvia.

Northampton Sidewalk Sales in Pictures

Ben and Jerry's Redeemed

After I sent my customer complaint to Ben & Jerry's (original post a few posts down) about the absence of most of the ingredients listed on the pint, I opened the second pint, same flavor (Triple Caramel Chunk) and it was LOADED with all the caramel goodness that I could desire. It was as if the first pint had sacrificed its caramel so that the second pint could thrive. There's a societal or religious metaphor here somewhere. I realized that the ability of an ice cream manufacturer to load each pint with a consistent quantity of caramel, fudge, nuts, or what have you, is a real challenge. Even with aggressive blending, there are obviously some areas of the ice cream vat that don't house as much stuff, and if that area is packed into the pint, it's short-changed. Conversely, some areas are dense-packed and they result in the super-loaded pints. My suspicions were confirmed when I received the letter below and a coupon for a free pint. Thanks Ben, Jerry, and the whole crew. You done me right.

Pint two, below, sufficiently stocked.
The nice letter from Ben and Jerry's: (Click to read)

Wave of Miscellany!

The Dirty Truth, Thursday night. Lightning and thunder outside. Oxblood red walls. The music is loud...indiscernible....annoying. She sat alone. The light from her cell phone illuminated her face.
I imagined if I was closer, being able to read the text, reflected backwards but legible on her forehead: IT'S OVER. I'd walk over and say, "You look like you could use a drink and a shoulder to lean on." She'd say, "actually my boyfriend just texted me that his movie's over and he's on his way to meet me, so scram chump".
Roz's Place casts a neon glow on Bridge Street. Lately the staff has been hula-hooping out front to music from a boom-box on an extension chord out the door. They're getting good. I mean, no Ms. Sass but let's be realistic. Tim sometimes fixes up sweet old bikes and sells them out front for $60 or so. I bought a few. I keep them locked around town so there's always a bike nearby. I sometimes go into a trance and buy shirts there that I realize later are way too weird for me. In the store, in those surroundings, they seem normal. A gallery of shirts is below the hooper, who I hope doesn't mind the photos. I should have asked. I've played with the exposures a bit so the art hopefully trumps the candids.

The little pattern on the pocket is a tiki god but by the time you get close enough to see it and realize this is probably a hip lounge shirt you've already been hit with the Star Trek meets hospital johnny look triggered by the green stripe down the front that covers the buttons.

In your 20s, Hawaiian shirts are ironic and irreverent. When you're a middle-aged man, it's just a bad habit unless you're a Jimmy Buffet fan in which case you have bigger problems than fashion. Worst case scenario, a gut beneath a Hawaiian shirt. I think the shirts actually hasten the growth of the gut.

This one has the full Brady Bunch collar and a Charlie Brown on LSD optical illusion where the pattern shimmys and shivers before your very eyes.

Plus it's made out of some kind of porous mosquito netting that makes my nipples nervous.

Maybe they had some extra material after they made the curtains.

One sign says 11'. The other says 11'-0". Why the two different representations of the same height? My theory is the 11' sign was the original and when that didn't stop truckers they put one that said 11' right on the damn bridge and when THAT didn't work, they probably tried to get inside the truckers minds and what they found was "well, it's probably a few inches more than 11' and they're just being overly cautious and I can make it through at 11'5 or so no problem I bet breaker breaker 10-4 good buddy...." CRUNCH. So the new sign says 11' 0". Eleven feet and how many inches? NO inches. NONE. ZERO inches. It only goes to 11. And so it remains and still it happens on occasion. It's awesome too. Don't we all secrety love public mishaps?

The Unbearable Email of Being. A Father/Son Dialogue.

Jim: Sometimes, like right now, I feel like I don't have a single real connection with another person. I'm alone at the end of a day and I center myself, usually with some music I know well, and it dawns on me that every exchange is a show, a charade. Being with people is like seeing how long I can hold my breath underwater before I have to come up for air. And I can hold my breath for a long time. My underwater dance is well rehearsed after 45 years. But I'm always somehow relieved when the contact is over; when I re-surface, sometimes okay, sometimes with the bends, into my natural state. Alone. Can the two states be integrated? Can I be the Jim I know so well alone but in the company of others? Or is the Jim I know the product of these interactions that can feel so unnatural sometimes. Maybe the unnatural superficial feeling is natural. I feel like I'm in a dance where people and their words try to fit together into a conversation. Their bodies try to fit into a feeling of home. I am never relaxed. Though sometimes I'm numb which can feel like peace of a sort but I fear that I am tricking even myself into thinking these relationships of mine have substance. Maybe I don't have anyone that I'm really close to at all. There's an actual feeling that swells in my chest sometimes that feels like it contains the truth. Has it trapped. And I can almost always swallow it away. Especially as I've gotten older. The only time it bursts is once or twice a year when I cry uncontrollably for about 5 minutes, usually because of a song, or after the last beat of a movie. Always alone. How can I know if I'm living right? Maybe this is the normal feeling of living alone, with no human immersion. Maybe if I did have a family, with inescapable intimacy, I would be making the opposite observation. I thrive on my solitude. I walk around and groove on being a creature of earth. The fewer obligations, the more free and relaxed I feel. But solitude is weird. What is a real human connection? It gets scary sometimes.

Bob: That is how I felt when I lived alone. I suspect it is our real state of mind, who we really are. When we have family or close circles of friends, the public world they create around us distracts us from our private existence. Alone, we are immersed in the loud stream of consciousness that is utterly about us alone. We need social, external 'noise' to get us out of ourselves. But that doesn't change what's inside or what our real state is. When the anthropologists tell us man is a social creature, one who can go mad in solitude (hence, the deadly power of solitary confinement), they're saying that the true disconnection that we feel is real and potentially deadly. We are alone. You are not crazy, you are correct. And that's what being alone is sometimes so great: because it is the truth. Writers are alone, if they're any good, especially when they write. When they're not writing and just walking around in the world, they feel less stressed but also less real. What's really interesting is the widespread effort to fight this truth. The whole tradition of the social novel; institutions like marriage, 'teams,' church, nation, etc. You can see the truth bubbling along in the nineteenth century in romantic poetry, then coming to the fore in the modern novel where individual characters and their consciousnesses become the center of the story. Great stuff. What's behind it is probably the fact that the human consciousness has evolved to the point where it doubles back on itself. The fall of man is sometimes characterized as the fall into consciousness, meaning self-consciousness: we create a self, etc. etc.

Jim: Wow. Right. The doubling back part. I know you've read a lot of books on the subject and I've dabbled. The more I think about it the harder it is to participate fully in society. I'm always there and above "there" at the same time. Like a camera two with me as the cameraman trained on me. This happens when I'm alone as well. Ultra-awareness. Maybe this is what the Buddhists are onto. Ditching the self. But not in those words :-) The 'state' sure depends a lot on the institutions and people's faith in them. That's what makes it a state. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but what an insane goal in the first place; to organize individuals into one defined entity beyond the scale of the immediate tribe.

Bob: Yes. They talk about 'bare attention,' meaning attending to something without thinking about the process of attending, taking the attending self out of the experience. It's probably a good way to feel more at ease in the world but it's also a trick you're playing on the truth about ourselves, a drugging of the consciousness. We are who and what we are and I'd rather be that, have all my switches turned on. Less peaceful but more real, more here, more alive, more authentic, etc. etc.

A Friend, a third voice : As one who has cultivated solitude for many years in the absence of any social faculties, this resonates with me. And with my sizable entourage of companions, confidants, aides and sycophants, VISIBLE ONLY TO ME. Interestingly I have been reading more medieval history and it is frequently pointed out that privacy and solitude (and by extension, a sense of the private self) are very recent concepts, that there was no such thing as alone-time then save for royalty and perhaps shepherds.

Bob: Which makes the monasteries interesting to think about. Monks sought out solitude but not to get closer to themselves but to get closer to God: for them 'bare attention' was getting them closer to God. Paying too much attention to self was alienating them from God. So in a way they were also unwittingly a part of the conspiracy to hide the truth. It must have been harder, since they had very little social world to distract them from self, just the brothers. And when they practiced vows of silence...man that just made it all harder. Your friend is right: the emergence of the self and private experience and individual identity really is the essence of the rise of modern culture. Who benefits from this most? Who gets the collection plate bounty that The Church used to get? Shrinks, writers of self-help books, Oprah. Neuroticism is the sign that you're okay, that you get it. Happiness is the new illness...or error.

Where it began...

Wacky Packages. One of my first obsessions as a kid in the '70s. These bubble gum stickers with parodies of products coincided with my discovery of Mad Magazine, George Carlin, and Cheech and Chong. My brain was soft clay. This explains why I am the way I am.For the most part.

Teens Don't Twitter

Tech blogger Bob Cringely's blog I, Cringely, is funny and ever more relevant. These days "tech bloggers" are among the most astute monitors of culture and communication. Here's a recent post that struck me as interesting as I stick my toes into the Twitter waters and figure out how it applies to promoting live music.

Rodney, an artist/poet/landscaper who also happens to be my wife’s old boyfriend, got his mobile phone bill the other day and was shocked to see that Echo, his 16 year-old daughter, had the month before sent or received more than 14,000 SMS text messages from her mobile phone. Yes, Echo has unlimited texting, but among her friends this behavior isn’t unusual and it says a lot about how media habits — good and bad — are changing in our culture. Continued.

Ben & Jerry's Triple Caramel Chunk is a Bullshit Flavor

Being a fan of Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche and even more so their Caramel Cone I knew I was taking a risk with this Ben & Jerry's Triple Caramel Chunk but it was two for six bucks and damn, it had the word triple in it. The top says: Caramel Ice Cream with a Swirl of Caramel & Fudge Covered Caramel Chunks. That's some no nonsense talk for ice cream. It says the word caramel three times. So I bought two, even though I could have bought just one for three bucks. But I was so convinced of the awesomeness that I figured hell I'll get two. It's gotta be deadly shit. Haagen Dazs always has a picture of the ice cream on the label. They're good people. Been around since the '20s. Most people think it's a foreign company. Nope. It was started by a kid in the Bronx who gave it a "wordly" name. Ben & Jerry's Ice Creams have no photo of their product. Just some zany cartoons and upside down cows and shit. This one had animated swirls and chunks cavorting in a caramel psycho swirl. Crazy Vermont stoners. I should have known better. Besides I hate Phish. The band and the "phood." Phooey.

So I open up the Triple Caramel Chunk, excited to get a look at this Caramel Ice Cream with a Swirl of Caramel & Fudge Covered Caramel Chunks. I thought it was a bad sign when the first thing I saw was all white. Okay. Maybe the action starts beneath the surface. But no. This ice cream is a lie. First of all, if that's caramel ice cream, then I've been mistaken all these years in thinking that caramel is a rich, sweet, viscuous substance that is the heroin of sweets. Apparently Ben and Jerry's thinks it is somewhat vanilla but leans Elmer's glue. Where were the swirls of caramel? I looked at the container again. Ohhhhhhh.... "a swirl of caramel." Yeah I see it. It's about an inch long. Okay. Oh shit what's that... it looks like a roach. It must be a fudge covered caramel chunk! Then why does it taste like semi-sweet ass?

Hello! Anybody home? Are you the caramel ice cream? I'm looking for a swirl of caramel & fudge covered caramel chunks I heard lived here. Nope. Not in here. Move along now. Nothing to see.

Truth in packaging.

Daily Downtown Detritus

New emergency exit going in at the Toasted Owl.
Unicycle locked on Pleasant Street. I wonder if you could equip one of these things with the obligatory Northampton milk crate.
Not too shabby a line-up at the Calvin this summer! Avetts were playing the Horse just last year. Tracy hasn't been around in 5 years.

New photo exhibit at the Dirty Truth by Nick Meyer.

The Swivel Propellers on the Forward Car of British Rigid Airship # R33

I'm cleaning my email box, the modern equivalent of going through old cardboard boxes of letters and other packrattia. I found some scans from my copy of Janet's Pocket Book of Airships plus a memorable email that I sent to a friend on December 16th, 2007. It's a rambler.

12/16/07: Hey what's up? Todd Rundgren was frustrating last night. Pointlessly loud for the Calvin Theatre. And he had no piano. It was like Gallagher with no melons. I mean, Gallagher can do a decent show sans melons but why? Why toy with a fan's expectations with such a conspicuous, nearly hostile omission? How much disrespect will a long-running fan take before they stand up for themselves and consider the years that they've dedicated and say, "enough is enough, Todd!" A girl I once pined for with no dignity told me that she had tried something like this cruelty endurance experiment on me. I forgot how pathetic it got. But I recall accidentally stumbling on "self-respect" in the dictionary while looking up "self-immolation."

At the Calvin show, Todd had a blunt four piece rock and roll band, conjuring his subcutaneous Ted Nugent at the expense of a crucial inner Beatle or two. Give me Todd in the studio over Todd live any day. Pictured above is my favorite Todd Rundgren album, "Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren" from 1971. I love isolated tracks from his other albums but this is a the full monty. 1971 saw landmark albums from the late bloomers of the '60s and dozens of brilliant debuts from those who would go on to to define the '70s.

Joni Mitchell's Blue, John Lennon's Imagine, Badfinger's Straight Up (produced by Todd), Bowie's Hunky Dory, Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story, Don McLean's American Pie, Carole King's Tapestry, Ry Cooder's Into The Purple Valley, (begrudgingly) Loggins & Messina's Sittin' In. Nick Drake's debut. John Prine's debut. Jonathan Edwards debut. Never mind Zep 4, Who's Next, Sticky Fingers, and Meddle. The Kinks released the sublime Muswell Hillbillies. The Raspberries and Big Star were emerging. Songs were getting much more sophisicated, poetic, literary, wise, witty. It was a good time to be a pop fan with a hungry heart, an FM radio, and a good local record store.

Here's a pretty complete list (click) of the epic year of music that was 1971.

After a wave of imitators right through the '60s, much of the music of 1971 departed from the Beatles sound. As the fabs wound down as a group, they were going solo in thrilling ways. Todd's album did not shy away from Beatle-esque production and this certainly set it apart from so many of the other of the day. While the'70s spawned saw some of the best melodic pop albums ever, that period was not very friendly to the sound. As a teenager, like so many, I somehow missed "Runt..." Hey, I was 8! It was buried beneath all the others. Discovering the album (and Todd) years later along with Nick Drake and Roy Harper was like finding buried treasure. Missing links. Unknown children.

There are only a small stack of albums that I consider nearly flawless from top to bottom. There's nary a stiff on this fully realized album as it ebbs and swells with psychedelic, baroque, pop, and folk. I've often found myself ignoring the lyrics (not for lack of content!) and up to my neck in pop goosebumps from the music alone. As for the noose, the album may be a sort of rock operatic suicide note, the last frame of which is the hanging that may be about to happen to the "author" on the cover.

I think of the thousands of albums released in the 35 years since and "Runt..." remains as strong and seminal as ever. Pop balladeers who finally hear it are then stuck with it. Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright, for better or worse. Once they heard it they had the paradoxical experience of loving it while wishing they'd never heard it at all. But of course Ben and Rufus had heard it...if not from the source, then in the musc of others who had. Todd, like so many of the artists lucky and inspired enough to be making music at the fertile beginnings of the pop timeline, helped develop and combine the very elements that the rest would have to use to make their own music forever thereafter. The Periodic Table of Pop. Sure the Beatles were oxygen but Todd was mercury and what of his stylistic peers like Elton John? A young Tom Waits? David Bowie? Chameleons all, watching and listening to each other changing backdrops and wardrobes to set them apart. Waits the barroom romantic with gutter bravado, Elton the introverted poet whose songs were often about men, Todd, the bizarre and magnetic wizard whose albums the secretly beautiful art room girls carried under their arms around school as a signal, along with notebooks with "Todd is Godd" srawled across the cover. Rundgren went on making music that was more technically and instrumentally ambitious but to me this pure and poignant album hits the spot every time. Note: this was the last album for which his backup band, Runt, shared credit. Runt alumni Hunt and Tony Sales (yes, Soupy's kids) resurfaced in David Bowie's band Tin Machine nearly two decades later. Reeves Gabrels, an awesome guitaist, completed the quartet. A damn shitty record it was too.

Meanwhile back to the present and the lobby of the Calvin Theatre, I felt the need to apologize to a mom and dad shaking their heads and leaving the hard rockin' Rundgren show early with their 12 or 13 year old in tow. They told me they had brought their son up from Hartford promising him a little musical history lesson and some great music. They should have just given him a few early Todd albums. It made me sad to witness a courageous and well intentioned family rock-outing miss the mark. I don't think many parents of the 1950s and 1960s tried to get their kids excited about crooners, big bands, and MOR balladeers. Probably because they themselves weren't feverish about their era's popular music; the decidedly well-behaved and tamely titled tabulatures of the "hit parade."

This scene surely plays out every night somewhere. Parents of the "rock age" try to connect with their kids through music; plunk them down at a concert and hope that Rundgren (or Donovan or The Who or The Stooges or Judy Collins or Chris Hillman or Mick Taylor or Al Green or NRBQ) will convey enough of the spirit and authenticity that each generation finds in their own youth (and believes is missing from the next) so that mom and dad can be understood or at least seen as cool, if fleetingly. I was at a Turtles concert in Los Angeles in 1998 and Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (aka Flo and Eddie) performed those stupendous underrated Turtles songs and at one point shouted, "Hey kids! Look how stupid your parents look!" Precious moments in humble self-mockery. You see a lot of punk parents too, hoping to connect their kids' Green Day love to some first generation Buzzcocks, Clash, Ramones, Jam, Husker Du, etc. And then there are those sad dads without taste or a clue who kill their sons with the endless shitstorm of vapid merch and music from KISS.

I think I was more upset for this family than they were for themselves. I often feel (or imagine) other people's pain much more than my own. I can field and process my own shit but don't make me watch an injustice. Especially if it's happening to animals of course, or kind and well-intentioned people looking for some meaningful human connections. I wanted to yell at Todd. He knows exactly what so many of his fans want but baely throws a bone and goes so far as to mock them for wanting to hear the classics. "Okayyyyyyy" he scowls and in his best McCain dismissal of Obama. "I'll play that one." But then it's not even "Hello It's Me" he plays but the lesser "I Saw the Light."

I wish he'd do a solo acoustic tour with just guitar and piano like Jackson Browne did! I heard rumors he'll be playingh The Hermit of Mink Hollow or maybe it was A Wizard A True Star in its entirety in a few cities. Note: since this Calvin gig, Todd brought his band back to town for an intimate Iron Horse show (photo above) and proceeded to play to the bleachers again with amp knobs wound well past 11. While not the living room concert of my dreams, it was a great show and he played ferocious guitar. He began the show but taking in the view of the Iron Horse from the stage and saying, "Thanks for joining us here in our quaint party loft, friends."

Yesterday I found myself with what must have looked like a deliberate hipster cred kit, walking home with my Patti Smith record under my arm, not in a bag. I picked up Horses on vinyl for 5 bucks at Turn It Up! (Their exclamation point.) Yes, a 33 1/3 RPM Long Playing record album with "Gloria" starting side one and "Kimberly" side two. Boom flip boom done. As opposed to one continuous digital faucet of Patti with a bonus live version of "My Generation" to incentivize the purchase of the CD. Two sides. A chance to inhale and exhale and actually go to the turntable, flip the LP, and drop the needle onto a new chapter. A new beginning. Plus, of course, the 1 foot square album cover, visible and identifiable from as far as 80 feet away if you know what you're loooking for.

Albums used to be sequenced to flow with this side two phenomenion in mind. This Who can forget Zep 4's one-two punch. Side 1, track 1; "Black Dog." Side 2, track 1; "Misty Mountain Hop." Never mind the Beatles' white album double LP with four side-lead off tracks (USSR, Martha, Birthday, Revolution 1). The album reconfigured to a 2CD set, divided the four sides into two. But you couldn't de-seed your weed in a double CD brothers and sisters.

Unless I'd just bought it, I was usually content with listening to side one of most records, moving onto something else. Back then, I'd heard only "Trampled Underfoot" off of Zep's Physical Graffitti so playing those four sides in one sitting was a given for everyone the day it came out. There was just radio. No online music to screen before plunking down your allowance...3 weeks worth for that double album set which did not dissapoint, musically or graphically, as it echoed the die-cut windows of Zep 3 though a bit darker. Some albums only had one good side. Or one that was clearly stronger ayway. CDs demand upwards of 80 minutes of uninterrupted music by the same artist. That's asking a lot of the listener. After 80 minutes of Lemmy, a metal-head cookie monster with a smokers hack and vocal chords battle scarred from wailing essentially the same song for 40 years, I'm suddenly not in the mood to hear any more Motorhead for a good long while. Jeez. Even Joni Mitchell's early beauties can wear you down emotionally in one sitting. Take it easy on yourself.

But even these issues are becoming archaic in the age of single track downloads and shuffle. Some people are too young to remember that it started out this way. The star-making machinery of pop music was a singles factory in the beginning. Albums were usually just a compilation of the singles, often with filler material if the band wasn't as chart friendly and consistently prolific as the Beatles. The Kinks' and Stones' earlier "albums" had some relatively weak material gluing it all together. The albums were the last step of the era's sales cycle which was first and foremost about selling 45s. But that all changed with the advent of FM, LSD, TM, THC, Rolling Stone magazine, and record stores staffed by music freaks who, like FM DJ's, were the era's hippest and most envied middlemen...aside from the musicians themselves.

It was now taking more than three minutes for career-oriented artists (vs. one- or two-hit wonders) to realize their older, wiser, and "expanded" visions. The Beatles and Beach Boys nailed it, as did so many more as the golden age of the long-playing album bloomed and boomed. Even R&B icon Marvin Gaye embarked on Here, My Dear. Made to fund his divorce from Anna Gordy, Gaye had originally planned a quickly recorded album, low on quality, to spite his one time muse, since the judge had written the order into the divorce settlement. The original critical response to Here, My Dear seemed to reinforce that view, as Gaye's popularity waned spectacularly in the late 70's. Indeed, it had been an incredible fall from the heights of the "What's Going On" era. This is latter day Marvin Gaye, the tracks built up over hours of improvisation, the lyrics refined to a ferocious honesty which is wonderfully conveyed in the haunting vocal performance. Marvin Gaye had better known albums, had many bigger hits, and also had other personal traumas which provided his motivation. Whatever, listening to this album brings you to the heart of the man, crying out for his love, knowing it was lost and being able to do nothing about it. The scope of the albums of the late '60s and '70s mirrored the complexity of the artist's lives as the young hitmakers grew into adults with all attendant complexities. Many albums were as subsantial as books with respect to cultural impact, and were treated as such editorially as the era of the rock critic blossomed and reviewers joined the DJs and store clerks in the assembly line of cool.

And fittingly we come back to cool; the epoxy of rock. So there I was walking down the street in Northampton with my Patti Smith vinyl, held so it looked casual (and visble) enough to draw looks of envy from people who wondered if they would ever be as cool and interesting as I obviously was. Never mind the additional renegade bad boy magnetism suggested by the video I rented, A Junkie's Christmas, a claymation film set to a William Burroughs short story tucked under my arm on top of Patti but not obscuring the cover. Never mind the maverick steam-punk renaissance man implications of "Jane's Pocket Book of Airships" that I got for 3 dollars, filled with dirigibles and blimps and zeppelins and their technical specifications. I'm surprised I wasn't hit on by a Hampshire chick or called out for pushing the limits of plausible hip accesorization. I'm surprised I didn't slip on the ice and fall on my ass trying to nail the proper strut for such a fascinating man.

I am trying to find a Bjork poster for Noah, my nephew who turns 6 on Xmas. He has evolved from Abba to Madonna and now arrived at Bjork. It's time to start warming up the Bowie for next year lest he veer into Jonas Brothers territory. Holy Freaking Christ I won't allow it. I cannot find a Bjork poster. When I was the poster buyer at Faces I always had some Bjork on hand. Two different ones in fact. Yesterday I discovered the new poster guy had opted not to carry it...or the two Iggys or the two Bowies. Okay, maybe we only sold a few copies a year of each but you have to give the people what they OUGHT to want, not what they want, dammit. The store needed merely stock these posters to send a signal to the ever vigilant hipsters that the store had a clue. Sometimes just carrying the Patti Smith record under your arms is enough. I mean, how many different Johnny Depp posters can Faces reasonably carry? Seven at last count. So maybe I will have to do a Bjork collage. I'm going to feel like a closeted high school teen decorating his locker with my paste and scissors and Bjork cut outs. And Mod Podge of course. High gloss.

Keeping The Lovin' Local

Boston Weekend

The original Cities Service sign was built in 1940 and replaced with the CITGO sign when the company changed its name in 1965.
In 1979, at the urging of then Governor Edward J. King, CITGO turned off the sign as a symbol of energy conservation, even though it used only $60 per week worth of power. The sign remained off for four long years.
CITGO decided to dismantle the deteriorating sign, but when the work crew arrived, defenders of the sign stopped the demolition. Once again the people of Boston made a difference. Backers of the sign claimed the sign was an excellent example of urban neon art and 'as Boston as baked beans.' The group fought and asked the Boston landmarks commission to declare it a landmark.
Boston mothers played an important role in the protest. At one time, the sign was visible from the maternity ward at Beth Israel Hospital, where mothers-to-be timed their contractions by its pulsing flash in the evening sky.
Crab feast at Sarah and Carrie's house in Watertown.
Patty and I at Fenway Park on Monday. Lousy game; a shut out, but a great time.


These guys have been in business for decades, their wish apparently still unrealized.
Assorted California Job Cases at my sister Sarah's house. "Thanks to the publication of stories in Family Circle, Good Housekeeping and other magazines, which pictured California type-cases displaying knick-knacks, the popularity of the case zoomed. At the height of their popularity they were selling as high at $30 each. One scrapper cried when he told of burning up over 10,000 of them before they returned to popularity."
My mom was the initiator of this shadow box tradition in my family. Looking for assorted miniatueres to fit the slots that formerly housed metal type adds an ongoing mission to our travels on earth. Here's my latest, still in progress.

The Creation Museum in Kentucky

In a museum that thousands upon thousands of children will visit every year, dinosaurs and people co-exist and the planet is 6000 years old.

The New York Times covers a field trip by a group of paleontologists to the "museum" whose slogan is "Prepare to Believe."

Here is the New York Times story that marked its opening.

The Creation Museum website.



Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen (R) Says Earth is 6,000 Years Old

Louis CK. My Kid SUCKS at hide-and-seek. (NSFW)

Recent Shorpy Photo Archive highlights

Above: Before steroids. "World Series, Griffith Stadium, 1925." The headline when it was all over: PIRATES MAKE NATS WALK PLANK. National Photo Co. Click pic (including all below) for full size. Courtey the amazing Shorpy Photo Archive.

Above: Checking out his unit. "December 1941. Enlisting in the Marines. Recruiting office, San Francisco." Nitrate negative by John Collier, Office of War Information.

Above: Before Facebook....or TV. Washington, D.C., circa 1927. "Thomas R. Shipp group, Hamilton Hotel. Atwater Kent standing by radio." National Photo Co. safety negative.

Above: Walk Like An Egyptian. "Madame Lubouska, National American Ballet, 1924." The Russian dancer Desiree Lubowska, whose claim to fame seems to have been the popularization of "Egyptian" poses around 1915. National Photo glass negative.

Above: Zeppelin's first U.S. Tour "Graf Zeppelin over Capitol." The German airship on its visit to Washington in October 1928. National Photo Co. Collection glass negative.


Above: 9/11...1933. September 11, 1933. "New York City views. Looking north from the Empire State Building." 5x7 safety negative by Samuel H. Gottscho.

How To Kiss by Allegra Mira

One of my other projects is Drive-By Poets. It's a public poetry postering project in Northampton, but it has an on-line presence too. Check it out.

Here's the latest poem. Allegra Mira is in New York now but lived in Northampton until recently. She is among my favorite poets and also happens to be a friend; a nice combination.

How to kiss

You had to learn to ask

to find a way

to ask, but not with words:

Indirectly and usually

not aloud

was how you asked.

If the person said yes, you’d

know because suddenly you’d

be doing it:

Mixing streams that connected

parts inside of you,

like an internal

marionette, your lips

suddenly strung

to your crotch,

skin to your heart – Oh

how the kisses pulled

in new ways, Oh

how the kisses changed

everything. How high

the stakes became,

by which I mean the losses,

by which I mean

those who you wanted

but could not have – sometimes

because the asking went wrong,

sometimes

because you spoke different languages.

But remember those

times when it worked out:

How you got the asking

right, how perfectly indirect

by which I mean, direct

you were, how directly

understood, directly accepted,

How the moment before this kiss

a faith --

Remember the strings’ quake,

tangle, remember

remember

And how for weeks

you were knotted inside

How

did we ever walk

when we were like that,

and Do we ever come

untangled?

World Premiere: Learning to ride a two wheeler with Zack and Alex in Florence, Massachusetts

Learning to ride a two wheeler with Zack and Alex

After a Brief Hiatus

I've been sans internet all week so I'll break the ice with a few photos and then get back into the groove this week. Below, my friend Craig Sandler and I would skip school back in the late '70s and go play the Nugent machine at the UMass Snack Bar. Dropping a quarter in triggered the Cat Scratch Fever riff. Photo by David. This may be 1980 or 1981 actually.
Below; self-portrait of Hilary Emerson Lay, former manager of The Guild in Northampton; now a book store manager in Marblehead.
Random shot of your host.
Anastasia, Eve, and Ceilidh at Oliver and Anastasia's house-warming BBQ Sunday evening. Anastasia made incredible southwestern style burgers and killer cole slaw and key lime pie.
Group shot.
Matt and Jena.Eve in the hammock.

The Longest Day of the Year

I snapped this while riding my bike up Center Street on Sunday (this is not the same as texting on the T!), during that stunning early evening light that everyone must have noticed; the sky darkened by rainclouds but the sun shining through illuminating the darkness from below. It was the longest day of the year. The days start getting shorter now, but it'll happen slow, and the summer has just begun. Enjoy every sandwich.
Below, candid of teen on cell phone. PVTA Bus # 43, 4:15 Sunday afternoon, on the way back to Northampton after seeing "The Hangover" with Dave at the Hampshire Mall (his review), where we used to go to the movies as long ago as 1977. I remember being in Pip Von Hummel's brown Impala downing Miller High Life in the mall parking lot on a crisp October night and hearing WCCC announce that Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane had gone down. Elvis had died that summer. I wasn't particularly moved by either passing. But Keith Moon, John Bonham, and John Lennon hit home for me. No one noticed that Nick Drake died in 1974. We didn't know of him. Who did? And now who doesn't?
People are getting creative about transportation. A motorized bicycle and a cargo tricycle. You can convert your bike with a kit.There may be someone who can sell you this kit locally, or do it for you. I'm pretty sure you need a driver's license but not insurance. Like a moped or scooter.
Good and Fresh. Bueneo y Sano is healthy but a bit bland for my taste. Locally you have yo go to La Veracruzana for something closer to real Mexican food vs. Bueno's fusion. La V is also really pumped about Sonia Sotomayor's nomination and have a a newpaper photo in the window. They're also very nice about letting me put posters in the window sometimes, like The New York Doll's poster thats up now plugging this Thursday's gig at Pearl Street. They cater for us at IHEG a lot too.
"Okay honey. I'll get you an iPhone but you have to give me lessons."
A man may smile and bid you hail, Yet wish you to the devil; But when a good dog wags his tail,
You know he's on the level.
Letter from a street musician to the Gazette:

Street musician argues that the rules are too difficult

Sunday, June 21, 2009

To the editor:

The city of Northampton is waging a war on the very people that give it its unique culture and mystique. These people, the street musicians like myself, have had to deal with increasingly strict regulations and an extraordinarily inconvenient method of obtaining a permit.

Most of these people are honest individuals who make their living providing Northampton with the bohemian atmosphere that it is known for, and are unjustly being discriminated against for no crimes of their own.

Today, myself and another musician attained a street musicians permit at the department of public works in Florence. After taking the long walk from downtown to get there, we were told that the $25 fee is not payable by cash, only by check or money order. Most street musicians are poor artists who do not possess checking accounts or vehicles. The fee is understandable, but couldn't they sell permits at city hall for cash?

Furthermore, Northampton business owners are pressuring the city to put unreasonable regulations on street musicians. We are no longer allowed to play after 9 p.m., no longer allowed to play in the same spot for more than two hours, and the regulations about where we can stand have become increasingly strict.

Business owners seem to assume that street musicians scare away potential customers, but I would argue that many people come to Northampton for the downtown bohemian culture that the businesses seek to destroy. Very few people dislike music, and if the customers of Northampton truly did not like our music, they would probably not be willing to pay for it. If anything, I think that the business owners of Northampton should be happy that we provide the streets with entertainment so that more people will come to their stores. --Nicholas Canby

Local Burger urges. Matt observes that the burgers taste saltier of late. I think he's right. What's up local burger? Ease up on the sodium. Pepper maybe. But remember, tigers hate cinnamon. It's worth getting the grass fed beef, and on the weekend they have a dry aged beef that tops them all. If you don't ask, they default to the Angus. How am I suddenly the beef buff? This place has gotten me recklessly carnivorous of late.
Advert from November 1955 Seventeen Magazine, retouched by me to simplify, beautify, and eliminate reference to product, a bra with "petal lift."
Really? In Northampton? Who would think it?
Unknown soul exchange.
How odd. The person walking by my window (at 2AM) is whistling in perfect time to the Fleet Foxes song "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" that I'm playing quietly 3 floors up from the street.

At Joe's Pizza tonight, it was Beth, Paul, Wylie and special guest appearances by Jen Snyder and Lance Posner. We were seated at the big table in the far back that shares only one other table with that room which means whoever's at the small table is inescapably subjected to the party of as many as eigth's conversation. Ir 's sorta like the "kid's table" at a family gathering. Anyway, we were talking about how great Shelburne Falls is and Wylie made a....dismissive.. comment about Turner's Falls. When the two ladies at the table left, Jen caught a sideways glance and picked up on one of them saying, "well, let's go back home to TURNER'S FALLS now, shall we?" Hey, I've got nothing against T Falls. You''ll have to talk to Wylie.

Pictures of my father Bob Neill and me, and song lyrics by Leo Kottke

Jack Gets Up (from My Father's Face)

Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed
And you crawl out of bed and you crawl out of bed
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed
And you look at the moon where the window is
And the stars shine, and the stars shine, and the stars shine
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

And way down below in the sun belt
And the telephones, and the telephone, and the telephones
And you look out the moon where the window is
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed
And some of us breathe in the brown ground
Where the worms clown, where the worms clown, where the worms clown
Way down below in the sun belt
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

And every night when you lay down
You fall flat, you fall flat, you fall flat
Some of us breathe in the brown ground
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

So we're asleep in the same dream
In the snort fort, the snort fort, the snort fort
And every night when you lay down
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed
Santa Claus modified snow peas
On the sun roofs, on the sun roofs, on the sun roofs
So we're asleep in the same dream
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

If you look in the mirror it's your father's face
And the thin grin, the thin grin, the thin grin
It's Santa Claus pulling up snow peas
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

And there's tears in the bank and the credit card
In the back yard, in the back yard, in the back yard
If you look in the mirror it's your father's face
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed
And once in a while when the wind blows
And the heart winds, and the heart winds, and the heart winds
There's tears in the bank and a credit card
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

But there's lint in the pocket and a breath mint
Or a car key, or a car key, or a car key
Once in a while when the wind blows
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

And your kid has a face like a walnut
From the ice cream, from the ice cream, from the ice cream
But there's lint in the pocket and a breath mint
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed
Everyday in the morning when you get up and you crawl out of bed

"Salute Dad - Builder of our children's future." A classic piece of papa-ganda (circa 1948) from the hallowed walls of Jake's in Northampton

"Good citizenship begins at home."
More wall wonderment at Jake's by renowned local artist....help me here.

TONIGHT: Best Damn Poetry Show in Western Mass Part II - Plus assorted unrelated downtown photos

Bonnie makes her rounds last night on the mean streets of Northampton.
I just ran into my friend Jeremy from MEF who asked if I was going to the poetry event tonight. I haven't been paying as much attention to poetry lately with a new girlfriend and an ever busier job that I love. It's easier to write poems when I'm wracked with self-pity as opposed to generally digging my scene. I have been most remiss about my Drive-By Poets project, leaving those newspaper boxes un-poemed and free to be plundered by local flyer...ers. I started Drive-By Poets when I was less satisfactorily engaged with the world, and I have to make sure I don't let it languish. I will try to do one a week from now on. Rachael, Diane, Amanda, and Hannah all walked by, separately, as Jeremy and I were catching up. This town is shrinking, socially, ever-smaller like a.... skin around a fine pork sausage. NOTE: I've returned from the event, at least the open mic part (how egocentric for me to read and run!) and I'm including two photos, below. It was fun to finally meet Lori Desrosiers and discover that she's my buddy Gabby Hernandez's mom!
But THEN Kevin (above), who I met at the Forbes Poetry Reading I hosted in October, tapped me on the shoulder as I was unlocking my bike, and tipped me to an event TONIGHT that I thought you should know about:

Best Damn Poetry Show in Western Mass part II
Saturday, JUNE 20th 6:30-9pm
Third Floor of Thorne's Marketplace 150 Main St. Northampton
6:30-7:30 Spoken Word Open Mic (bring your poems!!!)
7:30 - 8PM Musical Interlude provided by Hartt Conservatory graduate group "Little Ugly"
8-9PM Brain meltingly good poetry provided by Ryk McIntyre & James Lindsey

Ryk McIntyre is a co-host at The Cantab Slam in Cambridge, MA and GotPoetry Live! in Providence, RI. He tours often and has opened for Leon Redbone, Andrei Codrescu and Jim Carroll. Ryk has performed at venues such as Boston's ICA, New York's New School and Lollapalooza 1994. He writes regularly for gotpoetry.com.

James Lindsay is 25 years old and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He writes poetry and reads it aloud when the situation calls for it. More often than not, those situations occur at Boston's own Cantab Lounge. He is an ordained reverend and a one-time champion of Roxbury Crossing's world-famous Champions of Pizza competition. He has heard many good things about you and is looking forward to meeting you.

Then head over to The Basement for monthly comedy night at 8PM with Louie Falcetti!

A wedding in downtown Northampton on a gray Saturday.
A vintage limo awaits to whisk a new bride and groom off to road test their vows....
....as others are whisked away to their own destinies.
"Thank you God for Roz's Place."
And another communique to God...."God Bless The Freaks" reads the bumpersticker on this hand-painted PT Cruiser
...with window tassles and tye-dyed seats. A mobile hippy brothel?
Live music last night at La Veracruzana
The new back patio of Mosaic Cafe on Masonic. Review to follow!
The Silverscape clock seems to display obscure constellations or perhaps Braille lately.
Jeremy told me my blog crashes his state of the art Blackberry so I'm trying to load lower resolution photos for snappier Nohodoming. I don't want to be accused of being a "slow loader."

Susanne's Summer Solstice Soiree in Shelburne

Falls that is. Swimming pools. Movie stars. Well...not exactly. Thursday night I broke free of the Nohodome for a few hours to attend a delightful gathering with some old friends and new in Susanne's lovely home right above town in Shelburne Falls. I can't believe I'd never been through this lovely, small New England town before. Were it not for the weather, I would have experienced my third fire dance by Solana as well. If anyone can help tag the photos below, that would be swell.






Downtown Shelburne FallsThe Bridge of Flowers (an older photo from a postcard) and a recent view.
The glacial "potholes" are a great place to soak in the summertime.
Jesus...my edgy blog is turning into Yankee Magazine.

Two more vintage Northampton postcards