Death Star christened

About a month after it finally opened (a month behind schedule) the gigantic, gleaming $52 million recreation center received a formal unveiling this afternoon with Chancellor Holub and President Jack Wilson (neither of them dressed in work out clothes) doing the honors behind a podium in front of perhaps 85 dignitaries, while all around them a couple hundred students exercised inside and a half-dozen Grad students on the outside protesting a 300% fee increase for their membership.
Jack started his speech with an off-the-cuff joke about Grad students keeping in shape.

Since the center was financed by "student fees", undergrads work out free. Professors, Graduate Students and just plain old Alumni can join for anywhere from $125 to $200 per semester (up from a previous $40).

But these rates are comparably--if not slightly lower--to area private sector health clubs; well, except Planet Fitness but their rock bottom pricing is far from industry standard, although that still can't compete with "free".

Now you know why I call it the Death Star.


Nice to see the local building inspectors mess with everybody!

"Real Revolutions" indeed!

“In real revolutions things get worse before they get better. .. One of the bad things I think is going to happen is, I think civic corruption is just going to rise for towns and regions of under about half a million people. Which is to say, I think the old model of the newspaper is going to break faster than the hyperlocal civic reporting can come in its place.”

I commented to my online journalism discussion group that I hated to disagree with such a New Age Internet/Journalism Guru like Clay Shirky but, Citizen Journalists and Bloggers would indeed continue to shine a spotlight on civic government. After all, most City or Town Council's meet only once a week.

My Professor said we're both right. That in little old Western Massachusetts, Citizen Journalists could help to fill in the void, but almost everywhere else Mr. Shirky's scary prediction is on the mark.

And I could not agree more with my friends at the Springfield Republican: Nobody does investigative journalism better than newspapers.

Springfield Republican provides the perfect example

The making of a Merry Maple

As they have done seemingly forever, Shumway & Sons Landscaping (a venerable Amherst surname, in business seemingly forever) donate their time and expertise to decorate the official town of Amherst, errr, Holiday Tree.

And yes, now that a Commenter reminded me, the Merry Maple dates back to at least 1968 because--how could I forget?--Hollywood came calling that spring to film "Silent Night, Lonely Night" and turned the town common into a winter wonderland.

The ARHS glee club got to sing, errr, holiday carols around the tree and if indeed Shumway did the decorating, they probably got paid a decent amount that time. The Amherst College Archives & Special Collections even has a box of clippings covering the momentous event.

The Bully reports

Unique address marker

They're Baaaack...

Okay, now we can exude the Christmas spirit; the Amherst Pelham Boy Scouts have set up shop on Kendrick Park as they have done for 50+ years (waiting, mercifully, until the day after Thanksgiving ) to sell trees over the next month where profits pretty much cover their overhead for another year.

As some of you may remember, the Town Mangler wanted them banished from the premises and taxed them $1/tree two years ago. Like trying to "take over" the July 4 Parade so anti-war folks could march, not one of his smarter PR moves.

One of the first edicts issued (unanimously) by the Kendrick Park Study Committee stated the Boy Scouts should have free access to the site for as long as they wish.

Even the Bulletin, eventually, covered it

And another one gone...

So it was announced at a Wednesday staff meeting that Department Head Epi Bodhi, Director of the Amherst Health Department is retiring. Ms Bodhi will probably best be remembered for the caustic Smoking Ban in Bars battle, dubbed the "issue of the year" by the venerable Amherst Bulletin for 1999. The ban, barely, held making Amherst for a brief while the only town with such an ordinance that now is now a statewide law commonly accepted.

And as a sizably-paid town employee (unlike the actual Board of Health that's made up of volunteers) she had to traverse a minefield as her boss Town Manager Barry Del Castilho and the Select Board lead by Bryan Harvey and ever so vocal pro-smoking Czar Hill Boss (affectionately refereed to a "Boss Hill") sided with the ultra vocal bar owners.

Yeah, you would think Public Health would be above politics--but not in Amherst. In fact, town officials will probably now use her retirement as fodder for the upcoming Override by adding her position to the body count of employees cut due to budget constraints (although a few of those cut have simply shifted to grant funding.)

A Thanksgiving Story

(From the archives 11/21/07)

Only in Arlington would posing for the greatest illustrator in American history on assignment for media juggernaut The Saturday Evening Post pass for routine.

Richard (Dick) Hagelberg returned to the family dairy farm after surviving five years in the 9’th Army Air Corps, flying 65 treacherous daylight bombings missions over Europe, including D-Day.

One summer morning he sat beside his 51-year-old mother Saara (Finnish spelling) for an hour of modeling; and two generations later, the scene still resonates.

Rockwell desperately recruited the Hagelberg’s at deadline. Initially they refused, but acquiesced when he offered them each $15. After publication, as he often did with models, Rockwell offered to gift Dick the original painting. He respectfully refused.

Last year Rockwell’s ‘Homecoming Marine’ sold at auction for $9.2 million and ‘Breaking Home Ties’ (a farmer sitting on the running board of a pick up truck with his son dressed in Sunday best clothes heading off to college) brought an astonishing $15.4 million.

Rockwell’s 1943 ‘Freedom from Want’, an extended family gathering around a sumptuous turkey dinner, would prove more popular than the minimalist “Thanksgiving, 1945: A mother and son peeling potatoes.”

But the earlier Post cover had a distinct advantage.



Part of Rockwell’s public relations war effort, the epic series of illustrations based on FDR’s 1941 State of the Union speech, ‘The Four Freedoms’ heartened a battered America still reeling from Pearl Harbor’s infamy.

The US Government originally rebuffed Rockwell’s sponsorship proposal so he settled on his regular employer, The Saturday Evening Post. The blockbuster results appeared over four consecutive weekly covers from February 20 to March 13, 1943.

‘Freedom From Want” hit the stands on March 6, 1943, so unlike ‘A mother and son peeling potatoes’ that appeared on November 24’th, 1945, it was not simply a seasonal Thanksgiving tribute.

The Office of War Information printed and distributed millions of full-color reproductions of the ‘The Four Freedoms’ and sponsored the originals on a War Bond Tour of major cities that raised $130 million.

Americans adored ‘Freedom from want’; but with Europe in ruins our struggling and beaten allies didn’t want a reminder that America’s heartland escaped war’s devastation.

For his Thanksgiving, 1945 cover Rockwell journeyed to Maine for a change in scenery, starting work in mid-August--the day Japan surrendered.

Rockwell drafted a 16-year-old boy for the veteran and a friend’s wife acted as his mother. When the illustrator returned to his Arlington studio he couldn’t make it work—the young man didn’t exude the stress of war.

Rockwell recruited two more locals but once again didn’t like the results, considering it too staged. Fortuitously, Dick, recently returned from battle, arrived to deliver milk fresh from the nearby Hagelberg farm. The illustrator had his subjects.

Rockwell originally posed Dick in a wheelchair striking a pensive pose imitating Rodan’s ‘The Thinker’, but decided it was too sad. The selected scene is still slightly incongruous, as Dick is performing one of the military’s more despised chores—KP duty—yet he radiates contentment.

Saara Hagelberg’s loving expression—the look only a mother can give—to a son who survived the ravages of a conflict that had claimed so many sons, personifies Thanksgiving.

Rockwell rejoiced: this time the handsome young man had weathered the misery of war; this time his real mother sits by his side.

So why refuse to accept the original painting? Rockwell, as he often did with models, took liberties with Saara adding twenty pounds and twenty years to her appearance. In fact, Hallmark later used her Thanksgiving image for an “I love you Grandma” card.

The dutiful son knew his mother—although proud of the overall result—was mad.

Saara Hagelberg died of cancer only two years later, a few months before the birth of her first grandchild. By then a priest had purchased the painting and he donated it to an American Legion Post in Winchendon, Massachusetts.

A Rockwell Museum expert rediscovered Thanksgiving, 1945 in the late 1970’s; aghast it hung in a smoke filled building with no fire suppression. The Museum borrowed it, where it remains to this day.

In 1988 the Hagelberg family returned from Stockbridge, Massachusetts disappointed the painting was not on display.

In an apology letter curator Maureen Hart Hennessey explained, “The museum has almost 500 paintings in its collection and can only exhibit 40-50 at one time. We also rotate paintings for conservation reasons to help preserve them for future generations.”

A few weeks later the Hagelberg’s enjoyed a private showing.

In 1993 Dick Hagelberg, after helping build a home for his daughter Nancy high on a hill overlooking the family farm that he also built, succumbed to cancer. His wife Olga, a proud WW2 Marine veteran, still lives in that home in Arlington, Vermont.



And lately, even around Thanksgiving, she briefly struggles…but then vividly recalls—keeping alive those magnificent memories.

Sad Update