A Mexican standoff

Helen Thelen , Stephanie O'Keeffe, Alisa Brewer, Kevin Joy. Friday

So the trials and tribulations of the July 4’th Parade in the People’s Republic of Amherst is starting to resemble an old Buck Rogers movie serial with every week a new cliffhanger ending to the ongoing sad saga.

At last week's Select Board meeting (out of nowhere) former Lordship Gerry Weiss issued a public “plea” for the private Parade Committee to relent “just this year” and allow “free speech” in the Parade line of march so that the town could allow Police and Fire vehicles so that retiring police chief Charlie Scherpa and Fire Chief Keith Hoyle could lead the parade as Grand Marshals.

I asked the previous week: why can’t the town—just this year--allow the Parade Committee their First Amendment right (upheld by a 9-0 Supreme Court decision) to decide "what not to say" and allow town equipment so that two retiring chiefs with over 75 years of service could be publicly thanked by the people--especially children--in the community?

On Friday Princess Stephanie and Alisa Brewer (one shy of a Select board quorum) came to the VFW to press the issue with the July 4’th Parade Committee. No shots fired, but no treaty signed.

Interestingly last Monday Alisa Brewer said the town’s 250’th Parade Committee had created a superb float that would be in the Hadley 350’th Parade this coming Saturday and the Amherst July 4’th Parade.

Hmmm…even if the float is built with all volunteer labor and donated materials it is still town property. But town officials are allowing this vehicle in the July 4’th Parade even though enforcing a ban on police and fire vehicles unless the Committee surrenders their principals?

Oh, I forgot: the town’s 250’ th Parade is being held to a totally different set of standards than is the private July 4’th Parade.

What so proudly we hailed...

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Marx
To: amherstac@aol.com
Sent: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 2:29 pm
Subject: Your majestic American flag on Chapel Hill

Dear Larry,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I believe that it is important for the College to honor courageous Americans in accordance with state and federal edicts. We have been working to improve our observance of proper flag protocol, as I see you noted on Memorial day. I have asked staff in the Public Affairs office to subscribe to the state listserve you mention. They will also conduct further research into all federal guidelines regarding display of the flag and be sure to act in accordance with them.

Thanks again for writing, and best wishes for an enjoyable summer.

Yours,
Tony Marx

From: amherstac@aol.com
To: marx@amherst.edu
Sent: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 3:06 pm
Subject: Re: Your majestic American flag on Chapel Hill

Hey Tony,

Thanks! I and plenty of other caring Amherst residents will applaud this. That particular flag is so majestic and so well placed...

And yeah, you did great on Memorial Day (W-A-Y better than the town of Amherst.)

All you really need do is to subscribe to the state listserve as it covers both Federal and Governor ordered lowerings. And Suzzette--the person in charge--honestly cares.

Thanks again (you too have a great summer)

Larry

PS: The next official Federal lowering is 9/11 (and I believe you lost some alumni that awful day.)

Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 3:09 PM
To: Anthony Marx; sh.events@state.ma.us
Subject: Your majestic American flag on Chapel Hill

Hey Tony,

So Wednesday was one of those state-wide local edicts issued by our Governor to fly the flag at half-staff, commemorating the ultimate sacrifice of Massachusetts resident Explosive Ordinance Disposalman John Trahan, age 22--and with that "job description" you can imagine how he died (at least it was quick.)

But today is Peace Officers' Day--and the President of the United States has ordered all flags to half-staff to commemorate those men and women in blue who have also given up their "last measure of devotion" to keep us safe.

Your flag on Chapel Hill is the most prominent in Amherst. Could you maybe please (since the College tends to bring it down to half-staff for employees) subscribe to the Mass state listserve for those rare occasions when the Governor orders it down, and also observe the Federal ones as well (also rare) for flag protocol? Memorial Day is coming up.

Top be perfectly honest, it's kind of embarrassing.

Larry Kelley


Memorial Day 2009
I should also note the main town American flag in town center stayed down at half-staff for an entire week. Amherst College got theirs back up around 10 minutes after noon on Memorial Day (protocol calls for it to return to full-staff at noon, and lots of folks keep it at half-staff till dusk, like all the other Federal remembrances.)

Do as I say! (not as I do)

So let me get this strait: the Town Mangler wants anybody and everybody to march in the private July 4’th Parade committee line of march (no matter their message) but the official town of Amherst 250’th Parade Committee can control participants “In order to maintain the quality of the Parade” ” and that participating units must be “honoring the objectives of the Parade Committee in presenting the Parade.”

Hmmm…kind of like the July 4’Th Parade Committee trying to promote a good old-fashioned Rockwell kind of affair (including town police and fire equipment—especially with both Chiefs retiring this summer) celebrating and commemorating the birth of our great nation.

Click to enlarge/read

The emperor has new clothes

22 Snell Street

So that whooshing sound you hear and the glare reflecting off bright white siding is the look and sound of local tax dollars evaporating.

Yes Amherst College, the #1 landowner in town, is taking yet more property off the tax rolls. Last year they paid Amherst $330,000 (or about the tuition of 6 0r 7 students out of 1,648) mostly due to 44 houses they own and rent to professors, thus making them the largest single taxpayer in town (they also pay taxes on the Lord Jeff Inn and, unlike the town's Cherry Hill Golf Course, their more successful Amherst Golf Course.)

However, they recently purchased the Fiber Arts Building in town center for $2.3 million--but since it was only valued at $1 million the loss of tax revenue is $16,000. And with these two houses now going off the tax rolls that will be an additional drain of $15,500.

Not to mention they are using them for commercial office space which if owned by a private individual doing that extensive expensive amount of renovation work could almost double the valuation. And if Barry Roberts can’t lease the business space they are abandoning in the downtown, he can always request abatement from the assessor.

Yeah I know, Amherst College “donated” $100,000 last year to the town. Yippee. That does not even cover the $120,000 in fire and ambulance costs the taxpayers incurred servicing them.

Meanwhile the Lord Jeff Inn sits forlornly like blight on the downtown because Amherst College nixed/postponed the renovation project. That too cost Amherst tax money because--unlike the Umass Campus Center Hotel--the historic Lord Jeff did collect the 4% local hotel/motel tax and last year that amounted to $40,000 (plus the state is talking about raising it to 6% to help out local communities.)

So come on President Marx, I know the endowment took a hit and decreased to only $1 billion. But with Amherst public schools implementing devastating cuts, our award winning public safety departments stretched to the breaking point and state aid drying up like the War Memorial Pool, it’s time to for Amherst College to step up.
14 Hitchcock Street



The Bully Reports:
Fiber Arts Building dead in downtown center

Deadbeat Umass Hotel

Spring

In Amherst, it matters.

UPDATE 10:40 PM

The Gazette and Republican (and a few TV stations) covered today's court hearing. And as I just said on Gazettenet feedback: if that pretty boy, over paid attorney had the audacity to come up to me in a public setting and offer his condolences after his client had run over, say, my daughter--I would have kicked him upside his pretty boy head.

The Republican Reports:

Original Post: Sometime this afternoon (it all starts to blend)

So my Anon commenter reminded me why “religion” had anything to do with the local media coverage of the sorry saga of 33-year-old Misty Bassi and her exceedingly tragic interaction with 75- year-old Parvin Niroomand (both Amherst residents) on that fateful Memorial Day sunny morning on a normally busy but--at the time--almost abandoned roadway, specifically designed for heavy traffic.

Ms. Niroomand piloted a 4,000-pound car, Misty was navigating a 20-pound bicycle; and the collision was head-on because Ms. Niroomand went well over the centerline of the roadway into the other lane (and beyond). Misty is now ashes.

Since Tommy Devine, the local blogesphere guru, is now doing a retrospective—bringing into Blogger, stuff he published many years ago on a pioneering website about to vaporize—it reminded me of why "religion” matters in the People’s Republic of Amherst.

Even a complete neophyte knows that if the roles had been reversed: had 33-year-old Misty Bassi shredded Parvin Niroomand with an automobile then fled the scene; and the Gazette discovered that Ms Bassi patronized the “pagan club” at Umass and Ms. Niroomand was a devout “Muslim,” you can bet they would never have published a puff piece extolling the virtues of Ms. Bassi days before the funeral.

Amherst sponsored Pro-Muslim Rally one month after 9/11

A tale of two articles (one day apart)

Long-time newspapers folks—those who claim to have ink in their veins—will confirm that headlines are critical, a good lead paragraph extremely important, and then the rest of the information presented in clear, easy to read prose with a closing paragraph that wraps it all up nicely.

And editors who do layout will also verify the critical importance (echoed by real estate agents) concerning "location, location, location".

The Daily Hampshire Gazette has come under withering fire yet again. Remember that non-critical front page article about the award winning Umass professor who subscribes to the whacked theory that 9/11 was an inside job published on, you know, 9/11?

This time it's for an overly sympathetic puff piece on 75- year old Parvin Niroomand, the driver who ran down cyclist Misty Bassi, 33, on a bright clear Memorial Day morning and fled the scene.

Now obviously had the driver been a white college age male who drove back to his Frat House with blood on the cracked windshield, the Gazette would not have done that. In fact, Amherst PD probably would have arrested such a perp on the spot rather issuing a “summons to appear in court.”

But the driver was a woman, senior citizen and a Muslim--any one of which would not have tripped such a PC sympathetic response, but when you combine them…

Nick Grabbe called me yesterday afternoon for a slight correction: the Gazette had run his initial nicely written sympathetic background article on Misty Bassi the day before the puff piece on her killer, but unfortunately editors chose to combine it with Scott Merzbach’s top of the front page article about the older woman getting charged (but not arrested) for hit and run.

Mr. Grabbe’s prose did not even start until page B-8 so many, many readers probably never saw it.

Regardless, the front page puff piece on a driver who crushes a cyclist and then runs strait home was completely inappropriate and probably approved by the same editor who combined two stories that should have stood alone the day before and buried the important one on page 8.

Thus the (deserved) public stoning.