Saturday, May 21, 2016

A Room For Miss Emily

Dickinson Homestead:  Centerpiece for the Dickinson Historic District

Throughout history -- from whale oil lamps to modern electric LEDs -- there's no greater power on earth than the bond between a parent and a child, a special luminescence that shines brightly generation in and generation out, regardless of what fancy name you give to each succeeding generation.

At the sacred Dickinson Homestead Museum a tangible display of that special relationship between a father and his gifted daughter will soon see the light of day after 100 years of storage, to allow exotic plants to grow in spite of winter's icy grasp.




A small glass enclosed conservatory that Edward Dickinson built for both Emily and Lavinia will be meticulously reconstructed in its original location jutting off the southeast portion of the beautiful brick building -- perhaps the first of its kind in Amherst.


 Click to enlarge/read
 Pretty safe bet this will gain a "Certificate of appropriateness"

Edward Dickinson also demonstrated his love of family by ensuring after being "called back" they would spend eternity, forever, together.

 Note worn spot in front of Miss Emily
Amherst Town Meeting just approved $190K (with Amherst College providing matching funds) for a sophisticated fire suppression system for The Evergreens next door

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

so the town just put up a couple hundred K for fire suppression (on her brother's house) and now they've the money for this addition, which will probably cost close to what we allocated. Never again will I vote CPA $ for them

Larry Kelley said...

All of the funds for this are from private donations.

Anonymous said...

and private donations can't be used for fire suppression?

Larry Kelley said...

The CPA money is only covering half the fire suppression system (it's a very sophisticated system). The other half is coming from private donations (Amherst College).

Anonymous said...

Why can't the owner of the property, Amherst college, with its 2 billion dollar endowment pay for its own fire suppression?

Larry Kelley said...

Good point. I'm not arguing they shouldn't.

But half a loaf is better than none.

Anonymous said...

Larry, how can you or the rest of town meeting even talk about how sophisticated a building system is when you honestly have no background on the subject. Honestly, that's as bad as Ed's expertise. If looks like any good shit salesman could sell you anything.

Larry Kelley said...

Because I interview experts I trust. Ones I know by name.

Anonymouse said...

A fire suppression system makes one less building AFD has to cover. It makes more service available for the rest of the town. Can you imagine what would be left of those antique houses after the fire department went through there with axes and high power hoses? There would be an ugly black how for the next 100 years. Why can't we, for just a minute, act like we even care about other people?

As far as the endowment goes, it goes up and down. During the downturn, they "lost" millions and had to start selling financial assets to pay for recurring expenses, a very bad way to operate an endowment. One could say, why can't Amherst, with its $2 Billion property-base, afford its half of the cost of fire protection for our crown jewel?

What was it the Tin Man said?

Anonymous said...

Does the town of Amherst OWN this jewel? If amherst college is so cash strapped that it can't pay for fire suppression in its own properties, maybe there is a problem?

Anonymous said...

Why do I have to care about other people 7:51PM? When you get a little older and wiser, you will find you better take care of your own and not a rich college's expenses. This is not why I pay taxes.

Anonymous said...

Righttttttttttttttttt..........

because somehow 2B of invested CASH returning an income is the same as a 2B property base that belongs to the citizens who are paying taxes on it.

Oh. OK. Sure.

Anonymous said...

AC has $2billion because self-righteous fools pay their operating expenses. Why not ask idiots to spend tax money instead of paying for it themselves. Sounds like a pretty smart bunch of people running AC. To bad town meeting is spending ours.