Death from above

USS Arizona 12/7/41

"Some fine Sunday morning..." Colonel Billy Mitchell (1924)

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (12/7/41)

USS Arizona today

“With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.” (12/8/41)
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Amherst 12/7/2011

Amherst: "I get no respect"

The professor ignores Amherst, education capital of the world

So we had an important politician peruse the Happy Valley yesterday--Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren--and she never bothered to come calling on the People's Republic of Amherst, located only 7 miles away, snugly behind the tofu curtain.

Now yes, I suppose that would be like preaching to the choir--but let's face it, as much as they try to distance themselves from our little town, the city of Northampton is cut from the same, all natural, vegan fiber.

And what's up with Ms. Warren's glitzy wine-and-cheese $1,000 per (platinum) plate affair in Hamp? Oh she who fights against the economic inequality from fat cat Wall Street investors and claims to have spearheaded the Occupy movement (right after Al Gore invented the Internet) .

Not to many of us 99%ers can come up with $1,000 for a little bit of facetime. Although...skype is free.

Amherst Town Hall in a fog

Amherst Town Hall in a fog 12/5/11 7:45 AM

Yeah, that's a metaphor.

Busy weekend for AFD as well

Amherst Fire Department North Station located a beer can throw from UMass

Good thing the town situated North Station on the UMass border, as once again our emergency medical responders were overrun with ETOH (passed out drunk) calls that take up at least an hour of valuable ambulance time transporting them one at a time to the Cooley Dickinson Hospital.

UMass needs to rethink the significant reduction of their Health Services hours on weekends, as our fire department can't keep up with demand now. Once again we had the dangerous situation where all full-time professional members of AFD were tied up with ambulance calls and the entire town was dependent on the Student Call Force for fire protection (no offense intended to those dedicated volunteers, but that is simply unacceptable)

AFD weekend runs 1st weekend December (note number of ETOH calls)

Riot house of the weekend

202 College Street, Amherst

Amherst police could have used a couple of Texas Rangers this weekend as all available units were not enough to quell a "disturbance" (apparently UMass officials get queasy over the word "riot") at 202 College Street when a party of around fifty got out of control very early (3:47 AM) Saturday morning.

UMass police, naturally, were too busy to respond to our mutual aid call but Amherst College and Hadley PD each provided two units for back up and assisted with transporting the uncooperative perps to the Amherst Police Department jail, located only a half mile away.

One perp is charged with assault with a dangerous weapon as he struck an Amherst Police officer with a stick. And yes, most officers wear a bullet proof vest to protect their mid torso but the officer was struck below the belt. Ouch.

Arrested for "Riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest":

Zahir Ajam Delrosario, 130th St, Harlem, NY, age 23
Jose Picot, 111 Franklin St, Northampton, MA, age 27


Arrested for "Unlawful noise":

Eric Cameron, 202 College St, Amherst, MA, age 23
Stephen Halliday, 17 Katherine Rd, Rehoboth, MA, age 21

Property ownership card for 200/202 College Street

Jones Library aftershock

Jones Library 11/1/11 Closed after the Halloween weekend storm

Just when I thought the library had gone back to normal, meaning non controversial, there's this: On Wednesday Jones Library Trustees will discuss spending $10,000 to purchase a seismograph so Jones patrons can participate in the "Boston College Educational Seismology Project," and become one with earthquakes.

Currently the program has 33 participants--all of them schools located around Boston.

While I don't doubt the educational value of learning about earthquakes, I do question whether the library should be the lead agency in town to take on the project, since all the other participants are schools.

And then there's the matter of the $10,000 cover charge, plus potential time commitments from employees who could be shelving books. But hey, when your endowment stands at $7.85 million, perhaps $10,000 is mere chicken feed.

South Hadley: Repeat offender

South Hadley officials need the lesson in "respect"

So yeah, with my staunch Irish Catholic upbringing I understand the turn-the-other-cheek principle, and everybody deserves a second chance routine, but for God's sake can somebody remind Gus Sayer that a sweet, vulnerable child was pushed to the point of killing herself under his watch?!

Why NOW does a mother--concerned about her daughter being bullied in a school already internationally known for such things--have to turn to an Internet petition to get South Hadley officials to address the problem?

As I've said before, Gus Sayer, like school officials at Penn State, protected a pedophile for the good of the system. Well, that's a system that needs to change. Now!

#####################

UPDATE: Sunday morning

Jennifer kalvinek, Petition Organizer updated at change.org:

"We have gone past 4000 signatures. that is awsome !

Kevin Mccallister emailed me last night . he wanted me to stop the petition because he had too many signatures from people. they are listening! keep it up. LETS MAKE A DIFFERENCE!"