The pipes, the pipes are calling...

So besides hosting our 10th and 20th business founding anniversary party and the occasional visits I made earlier on while still a full-time Umass student, my most vividly memory about Charlie's Bar in downtown Amherst was the strategic role it played in the most heated political engagement of my entire career--the 'smoking ban in bars' battle.

Owner Rich Slobody was a long-time friend and one of my very first karate students joining up the day we opened in 1982. Rich is an experienced savvy businessman but also a law-an-order kind of guy who may grumble about the rules but follows them to the letter. He was also at the time a volunteer duly authorized Hampshire County deputy sheriff under my favorite cousin Sheriff Bob Garvey.

So in 1998 when the Amherst Health Department extended the smoking ban to bars and all Hell was breaking loose, Charlie's instantly conformed--the only bar in town to do so. Other bar owners carried on like that scene in Frankenstein where the villagers boisterously head toward the castle with pitchforks and torches in hand.

I instantly wrote an Amherst Bulletin column (one of many) in support of the ban and as a result was already receiving threatening Anon phone calls and a note written on a napkin left under the windshield wiper of my car.

At the time Dr. Valerie Steinberg was Board of Health chair and she had the typical small-frame runners physique. I made it a point to attend all the public meetings sitting in the front row in case things got physical, which in a few cases it almost did. The smell of alcohol and heated rhetoric makes for a disconcerting combination.

Town Meeting initially passed overwhelmingly an advisory article supporting the ban, but Town Manager Barry Del Castilho was less than enthusiastic and Select Board vice chair Hill Boss, a smoker, was downright rude.

Meanwhile Charlie's became the target of a boycott. Charlies's was the kind of bar you may start or finish a night of bar hopping rather than settle in for the night, so if you had other bars along the way suggesting they should be shunned for the good of the industry--it had impact.

Rich reported a loss of $10,000 that first summer because of a steep decline in patronage.

Another barowner filed a Town Meeting advisory article declaring the Board of Health ban went "too far" and variances should be allowed. The Select Board supported the article. After an hour of heated debate, it failed by almost 2-1. At that point even the wishy-washy Select Board came around.

And the Board of Health started playing hardball: issuing fines and pulling food permits which automatically voided the alcohol licenses issued by the Select Board. The resistance crumbled.

Rich sold the bar a few years ago and can't remember the last time I was there. But I'll always remember those gloomy dark days when the ban was besieged from all sides and it looked like the bullies would win. Charlie's was the only bright light.

And now they're--like all those clouds of smoking ban acrimony--just a memory.

With a little regret

So yeah, venerable Amherst Town Meeting--250 years plus--commences this evening and for only the second time since 1991 I will not be present.

After being elected with 3 or 4 write-in votes in 91' I took a brief hiatus during the 2004 Mayor/Council Charter battle (to replace Town Meeting) but have been an active participant ever since.

Not that I think I've made a difference per say. I always figured myself as the "loyal opposition," saying or doing things that lots of people think but don't have the guts to state publicly.

Stan Gawle, about the only other conservative in town, also resigned his Town Meeting position (I simply did not run for reelection) after the $1.68 million Override passed rather handily, also concerned that he was just whistling in the wind.

So Town Meeting will drone on over the next month or two without two fiscally conservative watchdogs--an endangered species in that body now bordering on extinction.

Fleeting Fame

So apparently Wikipedia doesn't set very high hurdles for inclusion as a "historical" or just plain "notable" figure living in town as none other than Andrew Churchill (no relation to Winston) just made both lists, with his only cited claim to fame that he served on the School Committee until 2010.

No mention of course that under his watch the School Committee convinced Amherst Town Meeting to purchase two portable classrooms for Mark's Meadow Elementary School (where he had a child attending) for $215,000 that were never actually used for classrooms and will be auctioned as "surplus" at great loss.

Or that he rubber stamped the hiring of interim co-superintendents Alton Sprague and his wife Helen Vivian for $125,000 saying ""The Vivian/Sprague team really seemed to understand what we need in an interim superintendent - keep the trains running, keep communications open with the community, keep moving forward on our existing goals, and set things up well for the permanent superintendent next year."

The Co-Supers flew the coop four months early due to medical issues yet still collected full pay for the entire one-year contract. And as for keeping "communications open with the community" Mr. Sprague brusquely rejected the suggestion of an on-line suggestion box saying that in his 40 years of education experience "nothing good has come from a suggestion box."

During the School Committee vote on the suggestion box issue Mr. Decisive distinguished himself by voting No, but admitted: "I guess I'm going to vote against it, even though I support it, even though that's lame."

Churchill was also chair of the Amherst School Committee when the Regional Committee hired Alberto Rodriguez at 20% over the previous Superintendent and he too lasted only 8 months, but is still collecting his generous salary with checks being mailed to Florida.

And no mention that Andy co-writes a bland, milktoast, snoozer of a column for the venerable Amherst Bulletin--although that column has recently been axed.

Since the standards to inclusion now seem somewhat diminished, I'll just nominate my own person, Bill Elsasser. At least his paranoid schizophrenia has no agenda.



Wikipedia reports about all things Amherst

Amherst's Immigration policy

Amherst Town Meeting will discuss and no doubt pass a slew of warrant articles that increase fines for three ordinances aimed squarely at college students, our transient "visitors" that doubles the population for nine months out of the year and are oftentimes derided by locals for their criminal activities--mainly partying.

But these by-laws (noise, keg license and open container) will raise not a peep of protest--especially compared to the ruckus we are now seeing over the controversial Arizona law simply allowing local cops to enforce federal Immigration policy.

Minorities are more of a PC cause than college students. Maybe because the liberal elite figure college kids are young, smart and independent. And those damn independents don't always vote the party line.

If the Democrats come riding to the rescue on their white horses maybe minorities would be thankful enough to vote Democratic as a thank you. Even though it's the taxpayers who provide all the expensive enticements.

The price of glory

"Horrific," said the Physicians Assistant when she first glanced at the x-ray of my knee. But, after all these years, I kinda knew that.

After a leisurely cross country skiing trek around the Hickory Ridge Golf Course last December a few days after Christmas I drove home and suddenly realized I could barely walk from the car. My left knee felt like somebody inserted an egg scrambler and turned it on high.

She pointed to a ghostly aberration on the film and said it looked to be a 25-30 year old injury. "35" I said, remembering vividly the exact moment it occurred.

In the summer of '75 I was still an up and coming black belt fighter on the New England regional karate tournament circuit. At the time I had only earned a brown belt but tournament promoters did not require verification for whatever division you entered--as long as you paid the entry fee. And I wanted the experience.

The 'New Hampshire State Karate Championships' seemed like a relatively low-key event as karate tournaments go. Much to my surprise, top-rated Wildcat Molina, a bald headed, scary looking, Puerto Rican fighter from New York City had showed up and chewed his way through the middleweight division.

And point karate (kind of like fencing, where judges decide at every clash if a blow was cleanly landed but in so doing momentarily stop the match) was just then transitioning to full contact karate which was scored like boxing in that whoever did the most damage to his opponent wins.

I had won my division and Molina his after four or five fights from a field of perhaps 30 black belts per class--each contest two minutes where the most points wins. But the Grand Champion match between us two divisional winners would be two three-minute rounds continuous full contact. And for me that was a first.

Molina was a typical New York fighter in that he relied on a powerful rear hand strait punch from a pigeon toed stance with hips and shoulders at a 45 degree angle to the opponent. I always stayed completely sideways so my lead side was closer and could deliver kicks and punches faster and more efficiently, although not quite as powerful.

Relying on this reach advantage I used nothing but kicks and lots of them. He kept pressing forward trying to get within reach for that one all-powerful knock out punch. As round two came to a close he was more frustrated than ever and as the timekeeper announced "ten seconds" he started to lung forward as I launched a fear fueled sidekick with all I had and then some...it missed. I felt the knee pop.

I had taken a year off from Umass to train full time, so with no insurance I couldn't afford to see a specialist. The knee hurt for a few months and I hobbled around with a limp that became less and less pronounced over time, but apparently never went away.

The next year I attained #1 in New England and would hold that ranking for six consecutive years. When I first had hip replacement surgery six years ago the Doctor asked if I had ever injured my left knee as it had a permanent bend making the left leg shorter than the right.

So now I'm off to the Cooley Dickinson Hospital joint replacement center to take care of some very old unfinished business...




Notice this was my right leg

Rite of Spring

Amherst Youth Soccer has begun.

And for those too young for the game, Fort River School has a great public playground where little Sis can keep occupied.

To Hell with Babe Ruth--and all religion too

So Comedy Central has allowed South Park to have fun with Christianity over the years--Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and an American flag springs to mind-- but God forbid they mention Muhammad.

Will the cowardly quitter of a corporate CEO now become an equal opportunity censor as long as the group complaining threatens violence?

And of course the irony weighs heavier than Muhammad's mountain: the beyond-bullying threat emanates from a radical extremest website based in New York where the World Trade Center Twin Towers once stood tall and proud, like a beacon of American entrepreneurial spirit.

Freedom of speech is a precious, delicate thing. If not protected at every opportunity and defended against all threats, it loses its lifeblood--one drop at a time. And then we are all lost.

Free Speech is good enough for these Radical Muslims