Why is this man smiling?

After a vigorous day mountain biking 20 of the 27 mile Acadia Park Loop Road and climbing a smaller mountain as a warm-up for Mount Cadillac, we drove to the scenic wonder known as “Thunder Hole” a cave-like crater bored into the side of a massive rock wall by the pounding of ocean waves.

And when the tide is just right, the combination of waves bouncing out of the large fissure combined with an incoming wave create a loud BOOM, like far off thunder.

Since it was almost 5:00 pm I figured it past business hours, so I pulled over at convenient parking spot reserved for tour buses located immediately behind ones reserved for handicapped parking.

A white mini-van with Virginia license plates pulls in front of me and parks in one of the three handicapped spots. Three precocious boys ages 4 to 8 tumble out of the car and the driver gets out almost as quickly.

He’s dressed like Washington bureaucrat on vacation and I think, “Yeah, you’re probably connected, so you can park anywhere.”

He bounds to the back of the van and pops the hatch like he’s done it a thousand times before, and drags out a wheelchair. Then he hustles to the sliding door, bear hugs his young daughter who looks to be twice as old as Kira, my 5-year-old (that I carry around less and less these days) and easily twice her weight.

Donna and Kira had sprinted ahead, so I hurried down the stone stairs to catch up. The next time I saw them, they too had descended the 100 granite steps to get out close to the churning waves. I then realized there was no elevator or chair assist. He had carried her the entire way, and they were holding each other as the waves performed.

Infrequently, a particularly strong incoming wave erupted into a geyser that splashed spectators--draped like laundry--over the iron fence. He had been smiling the entire time. As most folks shrieked at the sudden unexpected drenching, for the first time, safe in the arms of her dad, she smiled.

(Last night Amherst Town Meeting approved, with little comment, $80,000 to make the East Street School handicapped accessible.)

A view from the top

So Kira, my five-year old daughter, had two milestones on our brief getaway to Bar Harbor: She lost her first tooth and climbed her first mountain…fortunately the two were not interconnected.

Mount Cadillac rises 1,532 feet,the tallest mountain on Mt. Desert Island, home to Acadia National Park. About half the height of Mt. Greylock or a quarter of Mt Washington it is nevertheless challenging enough so that the majority of folks you encounter at the top got there by automobile.

Before starting out we assisted two women with horses move a cart around a locked gate on the carriage road by dragging and lifting the cart up a grassy incline and over a small boulder or two.

Kira and Donna were so enthralled with the horses that my wife forgot to pack water for our climb, and we didn’t notice until we had hiked for perhaps 15 minutes. Knowing water was available on the summit we decided to keep going, strait up.

The weather was virtually perfect on this late morning with the sun shining brightly in a cloudless sky, 72 degrees and low humidity.

But after about 45 minutes of steady climbing with sweat dripping freely from our brows I started to question in my own mind the decision not to return to the car for water. About then we came upon a small group of teens--three boys and three girls—sitting clustered comfortable in a shady area under a small pine tree.

One of them dropped a half-full water bottle and it rolled quickly down a rock outcropping and then cascaded out of sight. Just a stark reminder to pay close attention as we continued upward.

Kira never complained, even though she occasionally had to scamper on all fours when things got really steep. Donna or I would hold her hand for extended periods and on occasion I would give her a boost up to a safe perch with Donna then pulling from above.

As we neared the top a couple coming down marveled at Kira having made it that far. I said, “we’re bribing her with the hotel swimming pool” .

We made steady progress and arrived at the summit in about one hour and thirty-five minutes, heading strait for the cold water. On the way down we again encountered the half-dozen teenagers still heading towards the top. And way down near the bottom of the mountain, we found the bottle of water they had lost.

Sorry Kids (and parents)

So at tonight’s Town Meeting we learned the War Memorial Pool (you know, a Summer item) would not open until mid-July and the wading pool at Groff Park will not open at all. The town manager thinks it more important for the DPW to be tied up at Groff Park constructing a “comfort station,” polite term for a bathroom--you know the kind of thing most municipalities contract out to the private sector. Even though folks have gotten along just fine for the past two years with good old reliable sani-cans.

And the reason it is taking them so long to do the comfort station is because they were preoccupied constructing sidewalks in the downtown (another thing that could have been contracted out).

And the one thing EVERY municipal DPW lives for—filling potholes—will not happen until July 1’st, because they have no money for hot patch, no money for manpower (or women power) and no leadership from the Select board or Town Manager to get the job done.

Okay, on another less angry note. I’m leaving for Bar Harbor early this morning for a few days. Now I will find out if I’m addicted to this blog stuff or not.

Only in Amherst: Pothole Alley.

If I lived on Hulst Road I would engage in civil disobedience to draw attention to the moonscape that once was a road. Unsafe for cyclist (I almost crashed), unsafe for cars, or even pedestrians.

Somebody should collect the hubcaps and dump them on the Town Manager's desk.


Stan Gawle, founder of the Amherst Taxpayers for Responsible Change has a great letter in this week's Amherst Bulletin:

To The Editor,

The Town of Amherst is projected to collect $1.4 million in motor vehicle exise taxes this year.Yet our Town Officials have declared a pothole fixing moratorium until July 1st because we ran out of monies to patch potholes, I recently took a ride to visit some friends in South Amherst. As I entered their street, I was impressed with the amount, variety and depth of the potholes. The road appeared to have been a receipient of a B-52 carpet bombing run. A caring resident had even gone so far as to paint circles around some of them.

I am nominating Hulst Rd. as the worst maintained road in Amherst. It is yet another example of the Town's failure to provide basic core services while wasting tax dollars on non-essentials like Leisure Services. If the Town can put off its basic responsibilities, so can we.

I encourage the residents of Hulst Rd. and other neglected streets, as well as other sympathetic taxpayers, to take the first step and not pay their exise and property taxes until the day they are due.

Stanley Gawle

Town Officials Can't Take The Heat

Feeling scorched, Town Meeting revisited the shameful pool closing decision and reversed course—the pools will open. Unfortunately no such luck with the money pit Golf Course. And that too, is only going to get hotter.

Last night for the first time in memory Cherry Hill came up early in the meeting…first no less.

Since the Town Manager had stated many times publicly and privately that he wanted to give Cherry Hill one year to ascertain the effectiveness of this new management ‘surge’ (with only a one-quarter time LSSE bureaucrat in command perhaps ‘drip’ is a better description) I honestly thought Town Meeting might agree to hold him to his word.

My motion was to give them $150,000--more than enough money to get from July 1’st to fall/winter closing (giving new management fifteen months total), and then do a mid-year analysis and see if the surge is working. If not, put it out to bid or put a bullet in its head (fade to black).

Select person Hwei-Ling Greeney and, twice now, prosecutor Rich Morse have tried to get a strait answer number out of the Town Manager to use as a benchmark for success or failure. He simply refuses to go there.

On May 31 Mr. Shaffer told the Select board Cherry Hill had generated $174,412. Interestingly the math challenged Ms. Awad warned him to be careful with his figures.

According to the Comptroller Cherry Hill is a few thousand under his figure (that, amazingly he described as "up almost 10%") and last year was at $167,897 or only about 3% less than current. So factoring in inflation, they are exactly where they were a year ago with only June remaining in the Fiscal Year.

And with a rainy June thus far they will be lucky to hit the same $28,771 from last year. But even with a 10% surge that still only closes June with $31,648 and a Fiscal year total just under $205,000 or less than last year’s revenue goal of $206,903.

With the FY07 budget as approved by Town Meeting Cherry Hill requires $224,000 to break even. Last week the Finance Committee used an emergency$16,400 transfer from the Reserve Fund cover budget overruns. So $19,000 in revenues shortfalls combined with $16,400 in budget overruns comes to losses of over $35,000… when we could have privatized the White Elephant for a positive $35,000.

Last year Cherry Hill lost $59,649, a 20% greater subsidy than the War Memorial Pool. Next year will be worse. “When will they ever learn? When will they…ever learn.”

From: Aldrich, Sonia
To: amherstac@aol.com
Cc: Shaffer, Larry
Sent: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:57 am
Subject: RE: Cherry Hill

Larry,

We won’t have the May revenues finalized until the end of the week. The funds are in the bank just the allocations have not been completed…..busy time of year. The total recorded to date for May is $37,581.21 and year-to-date $171,399.80.

Sonia


Hey Sonia,
So about how much more could it be for May? A few thousand, or ten thousand?
Larry

To: amherstac@aol.com
Cc: Shaffer, Larry
Sent: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:00 pm
Subject: RE: Cherry Hill

A couple days, a few hundred maybe a thousand.
Sonia

Uncharted territory at that.

Darn! I grudgingly have to award Larry Jackson (those damn movie producers) the premiere line in Nick Grabbe’s Front-page Gazette article ‘Activism goes with Territory’.

Said the sagacious former Hollywood Honcho: “The community seems to go to great lengths to not do or say anything that will offend anybody—unless that person is a Republican.”

I would have used “Conservative” rather than “Republican,” although most folks—especially in Amherst—think they are interchangeable. If I ever switched to Republican, however, my staunch Irish-Catholic mother would broadcast a banshee wail from beyond the grave.

I’m just happy the headline editor didn’t steal the name of my blog, although Regional school committee member Michael Hussin whines about the often-used phrase (usually accompanied by a rolling of the eyes) “Only in Amherst.”

But then, Mr. Hussin was a BIG supporter of the school allowing ‘The Vagina Monologues’ and was in fact the only Committee member who spoke publicly in favor of it.

And Mr. Hussin also acted as the Regional School Committee’s (toothless) attack dog, assailing the Pioneer Valley Chinese Charter Immersion School, the only proposal of ten to receive a Department of Education charter this year.

Fortunately Hussin shoots from the hip; and he’s a lousy shot.

I’m sure somebody will accuse me of racism for stating Amherst “takes minority opinions a little too seriously.” Mr. Grabbe left out my illustration: The ‘West Side Story’ fiasco happened because of the actions of ONE 17-year-old Puerto Rican girl who collected 288 signatures (out of 1,600) on a petition circulated at the High School decrying the play as “racist”.

About a year earlier another Senior (white male, so nobody took it seriously) collected 300 signatures on a petition demanding the right to leave school premises during the day so students could smoke, presumably cigarettes. So much for the judgment of High School kids signing petitions.

In a 4-1 closed door School Committee meeting in 1948 my mom (back when her maiden name was Connors) was fired from her job at the Amity Street School where she taught for two years resulting in a firestorm (even covered by the Boston papers) with mobs of concerned citizens attending School Committee meetings and writing Letters To The Editor to voice their outrage at her dismissal.

Nobody raised the issue of her Irish heritage, but many folks thought it had a lot to do with the firing.

Kevin Joy, who revived the July 4’th Parade in 2002, and I hosted an overnight Irish Wake on the town common with a replica of the Twin Towers on the eve of First Anniversary of 9/11, a woman later complained to the Bulletin: “Irish storytellers tales are compilations of the vernacular of the tragic. This keeps the tap flowing and the bottle caps flying.”

As a teenager Emily Dickinson whimsically wrote to her brother requesting he come home and deal with all the Irish that had washed ashore and flowed inland to Amherst (for work on the railroad) suggesting, “To kill some—there are so many now, there is no room for the Americans.”

Forty years later, after retreating into a literary world where the Irish exclusively and faithfully served her, Miss Emily requested in writing a simple funeral with six Irish pallbearers and my great, great Grandfather Tom Kelley—even though he had only one arm—acting as the Chief pallbearer.

Recently the Select Board voted unanimously to fly the Rainbow Flag in front of Town Hall for a week to commemorate the Third Anniversary of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling allowing gay marriage. Only moments later, they unanimously took “no position” on my request to fly 29 commemorative flags in the downtown to mourn 9/11.

And earlier this week Town Meeting resoundingly defeated my Special Town Meeting Warrant Article (requested by 200 Amherst taxpayers) to reissue a Request For Proposals to privatize the always ailing Cherry Hill Golf Course.

Last year practically the identical article proposed by Irv Rhodes (and only requiring ten Amherst taxpayers signatures) passed Town Meeting by a vote of 72-62. Irv Rhodes is black.

As Stephanie would say, Hmmmm.

Hey Kids: No Pool For YOU!

Only in Amherst would Town Meeting vote to continue squandering ten$ of thousand$ of tax dollar$ on a Golf Course that attracts mostly white, middle-aged males from outside Amherst and then vote to kill the War Memorial Pool that, conversely, attracts mainly Amherst children--many low income and ethnically diverse.

And I do mean kill! Because if the War Memorial Pool does not open this summer for the first time in over 50 years, the infrastructure damage caused by deterioration of components requiring moving water could be fatal.

Last year Town Meeting, over the Finance Committee’s objection, supported privatizing Cherry Hill; last night Town Meeting overwhelming voted against essentially the same measure and this time it had the unanimous support of the Finance Committee.

Town Meeting is supposed to control the purse strings, but every year they pass a Cherry Hill budget built on wishful thinking and outright lies, requiring year-end infusions of copious amounts of cash.

Immediately before the Cherry Hill privatization debacle, Town Meeting voted to increase the Finance Committee’s Reserve Fund because the $50,000 emergency account was completely tapped out, with Cherry Hill budget overruns absorbing $16,500.

Last week the Town Manager told the Select board there was no money until July 1 for pothole maintenance because the DPW budget was depleted.

No money for potholes, no money for the War Memorial and kids wading pools, but endless amounts for golf.

Now I know my background music for the YouTube upload: “No it isn’t very pretty what a town without pity….cannnn doooo.”