A coward dies a 1,000 deaths...

So after twenty years of enduring the "purest form of Democracy" in the People's Republic, one of the many things that drove me crazy about Amherst Town Meeting is fairly apparent here if you turn up the volume.

After twenty minutes in wasted preaching Town Meeting comes to a voice vote on Article 14, "Bring the War Dollars Home." Notice how surprisingly competitive the "No" vote initially sounds?

Yet when it came time to stand and be counted, more than a few of the "No" voters played it safe and stayed seated.

Also note the official 74-32 vote does not add up to a quorum (128); and even with the ten or 15 "No" voters who abstained during the standing count (and counting the Moderator and Town Manager) they would still be shy the total amount required.

Notice too, at the very last second, a Town Meeting member questions the quorum to longtime Czar--I mean Moderator--Harrison Gregg, who simply shrugs it off.

But if that same member had used a "point of order" to question a quorum five minutes earlier, Town Meeting would need to quit for the night or get the constable to go out and beat the bushes to bring a bunch of them back to the room.

Fred Hartwell gets the line of the night. Speaking against the naive resolution (while predicting it would pass 3-1) he sagaciously pointed out: "Ironically, this vote only has significance if it should fail."

All the ingredients...

3:30 PM

So the temperature is in the mid-60s with nary a cloud in the sky. Two out of three (and the 3rd does not have a football team) of our local institutions of higher education--Umass and Amherst College--have home games today.

For Amherst College it's the 125th contest against arch-rival Williams College and this weekend is officially "Homecoming" while for Umass, a chance to bump off Delaware currently considered number 1 in the nation.

And Umass students do not require much of an excuse to party hardy, especially when the weather is nice this late in the fall.

The Amherst Police Department incident logs should make for interesting reading come Monday morning.

Atkins Corner road project inches forward

Baltazar Contractors Inc. out of Ludlow, Mass is the low bidder at $6,006,220. The Town has $7 million in Other People's Money to get the job done. And the state--who is overseeing the project--will accept or reject the bid over the next 30 days.

Since the highway realignment project has been talked about since World War 2 ended, what's another 30 days?

If the bid is accepted the project--that includes two roundabouts--will take two years to complete.

With the twitch of a finger

So you know you're getting old when a vivid memory exceeds the reach of the online union news archives, which only reach back to 1988. Twenty five years ago I was in the middle of a UMass journalism course--'News Reporting and Writing'--taught by a Springfield Union News reporter, who would get the assignment to cover the local news event of the decade.

I'm not sure if it was just the stunning nature of the tragedy or her writing skills sketching the funeral scene; but the front page feature brought tears to my eyes as I'm sure it did many, many readers back in the days when newspapers were as widely read as Facebook is today.

Two young Springfield police officers--Alain Beauregard and Michael Schiavina--pull over a vehicle on a rather routine stop and approach it, like cops are trained to do, from both sides. The 18 year old driver Eduardo “Crazy Eddie” Ortiz, 18, cut them both down with a 357 magnum handgun.

The violent deaths of two officers simply doing their jobs set off an emotional groundswell I had not seen since November 22, 1963. The somber funeral procession along streets they had previously protected, flanked by thousands of brother and sister officers was something to see, but certainly the kind of thing you hope never to see again.

The Springfield Republican reports (25 years later)

Amherst reinforces reputation

Amherst Town Meeting voted to pull the rug out from underneath our military in the field last night by supporting a "Bring the war dollars home" resolution, and since they also torpedoed the zoning change allowing for common sense development, the town is going to need to get money from somewhere besides overburdened property owners, who just last year approved a Proposition 2.5 Override.

The zoning defeat was simply a preemptive attack on The Gateway Project--a coalition between Umass, the Amherst Redevelopment Authority and the town that did not of course hinge on the zoning vote last night, but certainly was painted that way by NIMBY Town Meeting members.

Kind of like marching a herd of sheep through an enemy mine field to discover where the dangerous items are hidden. Unfortunately, by the time the Gateway Project goes before Town Meeting for a zoning vote, all the mines will be replanted--and then some.

Since the two-thirds required super majority only failed by a few votes (96-62) it would be interesting to calculate what a difference it could have made if the Conflict of Interest law applied to Town Meeting.

Pissing off a Umass Collegian columnist

Veterans Day: Umass remembers, and the Springfield Republican reports

A Prize Lecture

Two time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten spoke this evening at the Umass Student Union to a good sized crowd of perhaps 125, mostly students, almost all of whom will find it much harder to follow the same path Weingarten used to win that most coveted award in journalism, namely, finding a job writing or editing for a newspaper.

Weingarten doesn't normally do the speaking circuit but came as a favor to old print buddy, and current acting director of the Umass Journalism program Maddie Blais, herself a Pulitzer Prize winner.

His first Pulitzer in 2008 came for an event he staged in the Washington Metro where he observed, recorded and interpreted how a busy crowd on their way to work reacted (or didn't) to the virtuoso performance of violinist Joshua Bell, dressed like a common street musician playing for food.

I guess if he really wanted to get a reaction he should used The Flying Wallendas.

The second Pulitzer coming this year, I find far more impressive and something (unlike staging a street theatre event) I could never do: interview 13 parents who lost a child because they had left them in the car on a hot day.

His harrowing piece, aptly titled "Fatal Distraction", won over the Pulitzer Prize Committee but not so much the online commenters who reacted to the Washington Post feature article. Weingarten reported that about two-thirds of them were angry with him for portraying the parents in a sympathetic light rather than pillorying them.

In spite of technical problems with the overhead projector Weingarten kept the crowds interest, telling stories--mostly funny--of days gone by.

Maddie Blais does the intro.

The Daily Collegian reports

This one's for you Spc. Jonathan M. Curtis

Sometime soon Amherst Town Meeting will discuss "Bring the war dollars home" resolution recently endorsed by our Sister People's Republic, Northampton.

The article, placed on the warrant by Ruth Hook who also created a bit of a buzz last year with the Welcoming Gitmo Detainees to Amherst resolution, failed this time to get the endorsement of the illustrious Select Board who voted 4-1 to "not take a position".

Best summed up by rookie member, and history professor during his day job, Jim Wald who said: "I think there are better things to do with our time." Indeed.

But, Town Meeting will pontificate for over an hour then pass it rather handily, thus demonstrating how out-of-touch somebody is in town government.

Scary thing is these people are also in charge of a $60 million budget.