The Amherst July 4th Parade Committee is looking forward to the longest, largest line of march since reviving the grand tradition almost exactly nine years ago. More police, fire, and military hardware will roll through town center than at any time in Amherst's 252 year history.Bring the kids, flags and good cheer. It's gonna be glorious!
3:00 PM starting on South Pleasant Street near Amherst College Orr Rink and ambles directly through town center all the way to Triangle Street
If ten years ago in July was before 9/11/01 and the first parade was held the summer after the attacks...
ReplyDeleteIt is a bit confusing. It is the 10th time we have put on the Parade, but not the tenth time since 9/11.
ReplyDelete1st in 2002 (1st since 1976)
2nd in 2003
3rd in 2004
4th in 2005
5th in 2006
6th in 2007
7th in 2008
8th in 2009
9th in 2010
10th in 2011
Is it my imagination, or is there a whole lot less nonsense in town than there used to be?
ReplyDeleteYep. Change in command at Town Hall has been a good thing in oh so many ways.
ReplyDeletemaybe less nonsense, maybe more. Amherst College seems to have more power again.
ReplyDeleteIf ten years ago in July was before 9/11/01 and the first parade was held the summer after the attacks...
ReplyDeleteThe mistake you are making is not counting both the first parade and this parade, and forgetting that it will only be 366 days (and not a full two years) between this one and the last one.
Look at it this way: On January 1, 2012, how many parades will there have been (10) and *then* you can do your 2012-10 = 2002.
Of course, as a UM student, I can no longer stomach July 4th celebrations in Amherst (nor even display the flag in that cesspool) and will instead be watching a bigger parade elsewhere...
Amherst, the DDR of the New Millennium...
Is it my imagination, or is there a whole lot less nonsense in town than there used to be?
ReplyDeleteNo, you folks got together and fought back, so now they are going after the UM students.
And I know everyone is going to complain about the 0.1% who do bad things, but then the same thing is true of other populations. Anyone remember the principal who liked little boys a bit too much?
Jesus, Ed, don't you ever give it a rest?
ReplyDeleteNow I understand why you seem forever stuck here: for you, life without a grievance is no life at all. And Amherst gives you so many reasons to complain and to feel put upon.
God bless America.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a nice parade. (If you were there, I was one of the people handing out leaflets for our upcoming Hampshire Shakespeare show.) It's really hard to recall what all the fuss was about before. The political content, besides "hooray for our military, police, firefighters, etc." if you count that, was the presence of three officeholders (Olver, Story, Rosenberg) and a candidate (for Register of Deeds, IIRC), a group of about six "Veterans for Peace" (I don't have an opinion as to whether they were veterans -- this was an issue in the past), and the League of Women Voters who jointly celebrated their proud history and held signs for their current positions. (The league studies issues and reaches positions by consensus, which naturally leads to pretty much exclusively "liberal" positions.)
ReplyDeleteLarry, thanks for your work over the years helping to make this parade happen, and thanks to this year's crew who ran it very well.
Ed just go away far, far away! you a just a disgruntled little person. know one even listens to you anymore because you have exhausted yourself with your bellows of nonsense. You will never graduate so just transfer to another University with a new audience you can ore to death! Go ahead have your temper tantrum as you always predictably do!
ReplyDeleteI hope you got a picture of Bucket Man and his band, the best addition to the parade this year!
ReplyDeleteA splendid parade. However, I missed the group of aging harpies who for years used to try to spoil the parades with anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-US theater - black costumes, skeletons, fake pouches with big dollar signs on them, a red wagon full of toy missiles, Dick Cheney in effigy, etc.
ReplyDeleteWhere have all the protesters gone, long time passing?
Is war suddenly cool again, in Amherst?
Ed just go away far, far away! you a just a disgruntled little person.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes you think I haven't, you schmuck. I got to see a lovely fireworks display where nothing went off under 1000 feet (unlike the 'take your life in your hands' Amherst display where everything is on the verge of a complete explosion.
I will be back -- for the bank auctions of the McMansions in 2-3 years when the bottom falls out -- I will be very happy to bid $1.01 for the right to bulldoze each and every one...
And as to your parade, I remember when you actually had Republicans in it.
Where have all the protesters gone, long time passing?
ReplyDeleteThey won. They won and went home.
The Gateway scam is perhaps the best example -- land that was used for student housing for nearly a century, which UMass acquired and intended to use for badly needed graduate housing (Read OLDER, MOSTLY FOREIGN-BORN people in their 30's and 40's) is now going to instead be used to (a) further milk the cash out of the UM undergrads and (b) house folk other than UM Grad students....
The bubble is going to burst, and I will be there for the sheriff's sale...
Ahh, and Ed has his temper tantrum I bet his face is beat red and he pounding the keys as hard as he can. Hey Ed, I hear the University of Pheonix id having a fire sale on diploma's. Maybe by the time you retire you might graduate LMAO!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI love that visual of a beet-red faced Ed pounding his keys in anger!!! Makes me want to goad him even more.
ReplyDeletePoor pitiful Ed. May we all have pity on the poor lad as we hope and pray he'll just go away.
Ed, for literally years I've been reading your prognostications of impending doom on this blog -- everything from lawsuits bankrupting the town, to UMass students rising up en masse in violent revolt against their oppressors, to house values evaporating. But I've lost track of which of your horrible predictions have come to pass. Would you please remind me?
ReplyDeleteYou watch Ed will end up as one of those people standing on a corner with a sign preaching the end is near, LOL!!!!
ReplyDeleteThere are only two words in the English language appropriate to respond to the Cowardly Anonymous Schmucks who like to attack me, the second is "You" and the first isn't exactly "Fire Truck" but shares some of the same letters.
ReplyDeleteThere are children reading this, and I am an educator, you schmucks...
"Fire Truck You!"
Ed
Ed you are not an educator and never will be an educator. Your a life time student and always will be we see them in this area all the time. Time to face reality my freind, easy on the keyboard it never did anything to you LOL!!!
ReplyDeleteEd you are not an educator and never will be an educator.
ReplyDeleteSo that teaching certificate is a figment of my imagination?
Larry -- whatever happened to the reason you were going to moderate this was to end personal attacks on others? And what is your new email, I have something you want to see...
"Your a life time student and always will be we see them in this area all the time."
ReplyDeleteFirst the grammar -- 'your' is a possessive, as in "your cesspool of a town."
Second, it says a lot about both Amherst & UMass -- the roadblocks that are thrown up in front of students to preclude progress. In my case, that including having a committee chair who was dead for seven years -- yes, it took seven years for UM to give me a living person to replace the deceased one.
This is why I do not believe this town will survive this decade. There are way too many seats in colleges and way too few students and way too little money -- and way too many people talking about the bubble bursting....
But you can instead call me names, you of the grammar incompetence, hiding behind Anonymous status....
Email is still the same:
ReplyDeleteamherstac@aol.com
The town will not survive the decade.
ReplyDeleteHmmm.....
There seems to be some kind of deeply personal trouble being projected on us here. Could Ed's comments be a cry for help? How do we reach out to him?
A man needs our help and he's commenting here. Wouldn't it be a shame if we just read him and did nothing?
Is Ed our Kitty Genovese? Sarcasm needs a font but so does emotional crisis.
Could Ed's comments be a cry for help? How do we reach out to him?
ReplyDeleteI do truly hope that people realize that Google has the originating IP addresses for all posts, and that this information can be subpoenaed.
And that then would give me grounds to subpoena not only the computer itself for a full forensic exam, but also all of the ISP archival backups of ALL the accounts of any ISP (not just OIT) that the IP address ever connected to (eg GMail).
Boys 'n' Girls, you are f****** with the wrong Boy Scout here....
0ne other thing -- I make an economic prediction that Amherst will be belly-up in a decade. I make this based on my evaluation of the higher education industry (UM is a business), demographics, employers needs and priorities, cultural and social trends, etc.
ReplyDeleteChallenge my data if you wish -- census data of 8-18 year old children is hard fact, as is the declining enrollment of the local elementary schools, the baby boomlet is over and that is a fact.
Other things involve interpretation of facts, much like Global Warming does -- yet I don't see anyone doing anything more than just questioning the conclusions of the folks across campus.
But when I say that I believe that the local economy is going to implode, this becomes calls for people to express concern about my mental health.
This, children, is textbook fascism. Anyone who disagrees with you is crazy -- and such was the mentality of the National Socialists as well.
Great company to be in -- the Nazis. And are you proud to their intellectual bedmates?