Lassie come home!

Okay folks, anybody from outside Amherst just keep moving along…as the cops at an accident scene say: “Nothing to see here.”

BUT: if you live around my old Amherst stomping ground—High Street, Gray Street, Main Street (otherwise known as “Crow Hill”, where the Irish hung out) could you keep an eye-or-two out for this pooch?

She’s an “indoor dog” with medical problems and her owner has terminal cancer (No, I’m not writing a screenplay here--oftentimes truth is stranger than fiction)

Call Amherst PD at 259-3000 (and please hurry as the police will have their hands full later this evening with noise/party/riot situations).

Drive Fast and Die! (only in Amherst)

Police with guns would certainly drive home the theme. So all the residents of Lincoln Avenue need do to slow down traffic is leave lots of food outdoors to attract the bears that in turn will attract lots of police with guns.

And then we can expand the marketing concept to address rowdy late night partying in the immediate neighborhoods around Umass: "Party Fast and Die!" Hobart Lane (non-student) residents should leave out lots of food to attract the bears…

9/13/07

In my Umass journalism class twenty-five years ago (taught by a Springfield Union News reporter) I was taught that editors “never apologize and never explain.” Her other favorite saying was “Don’t mess with people who buy ink by the barrel.”

In today’s Daily Hampshire Gazette, editor in chief Jim Foudy, in a rare appearance in ink, came as close to an apology as a veteran editor ever comes for their idiotic placement of the 9/11-conspiracy story that dominated the Front Page on the anniversary of that awful Tuesday morning.

And based on the volume of flack they so deservedly received, it’s clear that their other story that day about the significance of 9/11 fading in folks memory also missed the mark.

The Gazette should simply have run this comic strip to apologize:
http://www.beetlebailey.com/images/flag.swf

9/12/07

So before ‘The Day After’ concludes I wanted to post this addendum--my last concerning 9/11…well, at least until next year.

After snapping this photo today at Big Y, my favorite grocery store, I stopped in to get food for home and paper supplies for the athletic club and reluctantly mentioned to my favorite bagger (a long-time Amherst resident) that the flag should probably come back up to full staff.

In a reverent tone the cashier related to me that yesterday, on 9/11, at 8:46 am they observed a Moment of Silence in the store (chain-wide I’m sure.) Just another reason I love the Big Y.

And yesterday in Amherst town center, standing in the rain holding an American flag (although not nearly as large as the one at Big Y) at about THAT very moment I had already received about a half-dozen positive responses from drivers, when I received my first negative—the middle finger.

Yikes! About then I thought if I finished my two-hour observance with a 10-1 positive response ratio, that would be fine. Another idiot (with tie-dye t-shirt, anti-Bush, anti-war bumper stickers on his Volvo) pulled over to complain I should not be exposing an American flag to the rain. Yeah, like he was coming from a position of reverence.

All in all the thumbs up, car horn beeps, or smiling waves numbered 46 and the negatives (middle finger and the yahoo who complained about the flag in the rain) amounted to only three.

Not bad, not bad at all. There’s definitely hope for the People’s Republic of Amherst after all.

9/11/07: Some remembered

I’m glad it rained today, that way nobody could discern the tears as a group of Amherst firefighters came to attention and saluted the flag hanging limply at half-staff as a bagpiper played “Amazing Grace”.

I took time out of my vigil in town center marking the two hours of the attack to attend the somber ceremony at Central Station--also attended by the Town Manager and only one of five Select board members.

No, it was not Anne Awad who told Town Meeting on May 16’th (the night they decided against flying flags on 9/11) how she considered having the main town flag at half staff sent a powerful enough signal, and reverently reported having brought the flag down to that symbolic position with her very own hands.

But as of 10:30 this morning (the end of the attack), the town flag was still at full staff. And so it goes in the People’s Republic of Amherst.

And to the Republic for which it stands...

One American's response to Osama Big Laudanum

Anytime, anyplace you despicable, vain coward. No AK-47's, no blades, no grenades. Just us two: mano e mano. Your cave or mine.