Fire in the hole!

What you don’t hear on this Saturday morning AFD training scene is the beep, beep, beeping of oxygen tanks signally their precious commodity is almost gone, or the awful crackling of fire consuming everything in its path. But the smell was almost the same –somehow different from a campfire or burning brush or even an old backyard chicken coop.

Perhaps it’s simply the rugs, curtains, paneling, books and all those everyday essentials that make a home a home, suddenly vaporized. Call it the essence of those who lived there--or God forbid--are still there when the beast comes calling.

Thank God for trained firefighters.

He looks familiar...

Yeah, Senator Kerry must be getting a tad spooked by his first primary challenge ever as a US Senator as he managed to find The Big E last night (his aides probably used Map Quest)

Why I don't show off

Not that he was showing off of course:

Bully the blogger

Bully version of bet (pretty clear to me)

My original version: even clearer

So retired professor Ackerman, obviously with lots of time on his hands, must have been one of those professors who let the grad students do all the research. If he had bothered d to read two paragraphs beyond the lead of Scott’s Merzbach's article from LAST YEAR he would have discovered the $10,000 challenge was in the form of a bet. One the town manager did not have the chutzpa to take.

And if he just stayed at the Select Board meeting for another half-hour he could have asked me directly about it since I was on the agenda for the 9/11 flag issue at 7:05 PM.

That would be the 5’th time I have attempted to make that kind of wager with a town official. The other times it related to Cherry Hill revenue prediction and if any of the officials taken those bet I would have won—or I should say local charities would have been enriched.

In fact if Mr. Ackerman, also an Amherst Bulletin columnists--so you would think he knows how to research and corroborate material--had read the online Amherst Bulletin version of the story, I added a comment where I would give the Town Manager two-to-one odds, or $20,000.

I guess maybe His Lordship the Select Board Chair set a strange precedent by publicly whipping and trying to silence my blog (so I must be doing something right). So now we get social activists trying to get the Select Board to collect on bets that were never taken. Only in Amherst.

By the dawns early light: 9/11...Remembered

Amherst Town Center 6:35 AM

CH. 3 TV covers the People's Republic on 9/11

Amherst Fire Dept 10:00 AM
Note what pilots refer to as "severe clear" blue sky.



Springfield Republican 9/11 editorial. Very well done!

9/11 Deja vu

Sorry this is a tad long and slightly rambling, but I knew acting Select Board Chair Alisa Brewer would allow me pretty much free reign. Had 'His Lordship' been there I would have honed it down to only three minutes.

The People's Republic WILL remember

The original page one story 9/11/01 was below the fold, but prominent enough to get the A.P.'s attention as it went out over the national wire around dawn. Here we are seven years later and it's above the fold. Go figure.


UPDATE: 10:30 Am: Love the photo the Republican website is now using. It's funny because this same photographer took a photo of my daughter Kira a couple weeks back at the Westfield fair that made the Front page of the Republican. And I instantly remembered him from this photo shoot from 4 or 5 years ago (but he did not remember me)

Today (7 years later) Front Page Spfld Republican article

9:45 PM

So with relatively little discussion the Select Board voted 2-1 with 1 absent (and 1 relocated to South Hadley) to allow the 29 commemorative flags to fly on 9/11 for the first time in five years.

Ms. Brewer sort of tried to make a deal with me (what the Hell am I the official flag spokesperson?) to accept His Lordship’s compromise allowing the flags to fly once every three years but I made no promises. My main goal was to get them up every 9/11, so at least they are guaranteed to fly this Thursday.

As expected Alisa Brewer and Stephanie O’Keeffe voted “yes” and Diana Stein voted “no”.

From Stephanie’s blog illuminating their Select Board packet for this evening:
• A written statement submitted by Gerry Weiss (who will not be present at the meeting) about the commemorative flag issue, recommending that they be displayed on September 11th every three years beginning this year, as a compromise measure reflecting the one-third of Town Meeting members (and the assumption that they represent one-third of the community) who voted to support urging the Select Board to display the flags annually on that date

Details of the Amherst Fire Department’s September 11th ceremony plans at Central Fire Station, involving assembling at 9:55 a.m., ringing a bell, lowering the flag to half staff, a minute of silence, prayer by a chaplain, “Amazing Grace” played by a piper, ringing a bell and raising the flag

an unprecedented historical tragedy