Labor Day in a College Town

 

Town center 1:20 AM this morning

Last night into early this morning seemed to be the busiest time this Labor Day weekend for Amherst public safety personnel.  With all hands on deck APD managed to keep things under control, with no major disruptions -- aka Blarney Blowout -- to report.

 133 Fearing Street, Sunday morning

Around 10:00 PM the alcohol related arrests began -- open container, underage drinking (usually in combination) -- in and around the immediate neighboring streets to our UMass flagship:  Fearing, Phillips, Alan streets, Nutting and Lincoln Avenues, Hobart Lane, Meadow Street and with assist from UMass Police Department,  all along North Pleasant Street.

These early interventions send the message that law and order will be maintained.




Amherst Fire Department, on the other hand, was pushed to the breaking point.  Around midnight, just after dispatch issued a call for two off duty personnel to come in for station coverage.

Northampton Fire Department had to respond for a call to a high rise Southwest dorm for a female with a head injury.

At the time all five of our ambulances were tied up -- the majority of them dealing with passed out drunk students.  Late Sunday into early Monday morning AFD responded to UMass for a total of 11 emergency medical calls -- seven of them for ETOH students.



Over the course of the evening I passed by the scene of a young person down (usually female) with concerned friends trying to help them up at least a half-dozen times.  Particularly concerning because a young woman died last year after falling and hitting her head while staggering down Fearing Street with friends. 

The previous night APD and AFD responded to 45 Phillips Street for a young woman passed out in the yard.  She was only seventeen. 


127 E. Pleasant St. around midnight "First and last party of the semester."

A Casualty Of Confrontation

Stop The Retreat: A movement in the weeds

So for the Anons who questioned the combative headline in my first ever guest post (probably my last) in the war over "The Retreat" -- high end housing for college students, our #1 demographic -- I offer the following sad Facebook exchange:

Hey, if the national media can cite Facebook as attribution for an alleged 11-year-old's taunting of President Obama over the supposedly imminent attack on Syria, I don't feel bad using Facebook here. 

The Amherst Bulletin, obviously still clinging to its long retired role as supreme gatekeeper, allowed NIMBY opponent Jack Hirsch two columns attacking "The Retreat", the second one where he took on Mr. Grabbe by name.

When Mr. Grabbe asked editor Larry Parnass for the right to respond he was turned down because the editor-in-chief wanted to give Mr. Hirsch "the last word."

 

(outnumbered) Nick Grabbe invoking 1st Amendment rights at 7/29 Select Board meeting

Okay, fair enough (not really) I suppose -- except in this week's Bulletin they publish another attack on "The Retreat" and again Mr. Grabbe is mentioned by name, with an almost snarky like quality you expect to find on a blog rather than staid old fashioned print newspaper.

Yes as President Truman once observed the public arena can be an uncomfortably warm kitchen, but in Amherst it's more like one-room commercial pizza joint on a hot, humid late-August afternoon.

Amherst:  where even the h is silent.  And now you know why.

Welcome Back Students!

 164 Sunset Avenue, 12:45 PM Friday (must be liquid lunch)

Well, maybe not these particular students.  Or this particular address. 

Labor Day Remembered

Commemorative flags fly over downtown Amherst

So yes, the commemorative flags went up this morning -- not to greet returning students as they flock by the thousands back to our formerly bucolic little "college town" -- but to remember the struggles of the post industrial age labor movement in America.

Or, since people died in that sometimes violent struggle, perhaps I should use the word "commemorate."

On the night of September 10, 2001 during the two-hour Select Board discussion of when the flags could fly, one SB member did take note, however, of how "nice" the flags would look on a late summer weekend as the town greets the other half of the population that will reside here for the next nine months.

What the Select Board of today fails to grasp is the delicacy of timing.

Between now and 9/11 so many simple things -- even just the weather -- can trip memories of twelve years ago: any late summer morning with the sun shining high and bright with a "severe clear" blue sky for a background, will do it.

Or the bells of St. Brigid's Church calling the faithful to Sunday morning sermon, just as on THAT Tuesday morning the bells suddenly began to ring and it seemed like they would never stop.

The commemorative flags did return to their perch, at half staff, that awful morning.  It seemed to bring comfort to the traumatized, as it should.

And should again.

Springfield Republican reports

A Very Simple Request (Denied)

 

Amherst Select Board meeting 8/26/13

For the second time in less than a year the Amherst Select Board refused to allow the 29 commemorative American flags to fly in the downtown to remember the horror of 9/11, and commemorate the innocent lives taken that awful day.

Watchdog Wire takes up the fight

 

Pendragon is from Amherst.  Shocked, shocked I say

First Day Eve

 

School Superintendent Maria Geryk welcomes crowd, Marta Guevara waits to translate into Espanol

A good sized crowd turned out on the town common late this afternoon for the 4th annual "First Day" back to school party celebration, a pep rally for students, family and school staff.

Parents are certainly in the mood to celebrate.

 Crowd listens to the Middle School Choir

The event was rescheduled to an earlier start time in response to the EEE mosquito paranoia which proved fortuitous as angry skies started threatening almost as soon as the event started at 5:00 PM and opened up into a downpour around 6:00 PM cutting the event short by a half hour.

Certainly not a harbinger of stormy things to come.

Wildwood Principal Nick Yaffe is excited about tomorrow

 

Mark Jackson, Amherst Regional High School Principal

Sam The Minuteman works the crowd

A Grim Reminder

 Ghost Bike to commemorate the death of Livingston Pangburn

Over the next few days thousands of college students will stream past this memorial, erected soon after Amherst College graduation day last May 26th, when a tragedy occurred around 4:00 PM on a busy Sunday afternoon.

The cycle of being a college town means the two busiest weekends of the year are when our institutes of higher education go on hiatus for the summer via graduations,  and now when they reopen for the start of the fall semester.

Hampshire College will be shy one gifted student, Livingston Pangburn, age 22, most recently from nearby Granby. 

He was descending a somewhat steep hill heading east on College Street when a panel truck heading west took a left into the Amherst College east entrance.

 Amherst College East Entrance, College Street looking east

A fatal collision resulted.

According to a recent email response from Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Pepyne:  "The  investigation of this accident has not been completed.  The Mass. State Police Collision and Accident Reconstruction (CARS) team generally takes three to four months to complete an investigation."

I've noticed, however, with these tragic fatal accidents that the longer it takes the less likely charges will be brought against the driver.

Either way, it doesn't bring back Liv Pangburn.