A Ray of Hope

 Sunset Avenue:  A Street On The Brink

Six years ago in testimony before our Zoning Board on a hearing to allow a house to become a fraternity, neighbors described Phillips Street, the street contiguous with our number one employer UMass, as being at a "tipping point", with almost half the homes on the street owned by absentee landlords renting mostly to students.

Today eight-out-of-nine houses are non owner occupied, and Phillips Street is the slum capital of Amherst.

So I hate it when residents of nearby Lincoln Avenue and Sunset Avenue describe their bucolic residential neighborhood as being at a "tipping point," which indeed they are.  And I fear that they too will go the way of Phillips Street.

While enforcement of nuisance house bylaws is only one component of the "safe and healthy neighborhood" initiative, it is a vital one.  And I firmly believe it is making a difference.

But everyone needs to do their part.  As with the war on terror: if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

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Dear Resident of Sunset Avenue,

I graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in May 2012. While a student at UMass I lived at 164 Sunset Avenue during the fall of 2011. 

I am writing to you to apologize for my role in the public disruptions that came from my house last fall, and the ensuing problems they may have caused you and your family.

To give you some background, I moved into 164 Sunset Avenue because it was the most affordable off-campus living option I could find at the time ($350/month). As someone who financed their own education, I did not have many economically feasible options for off-campus housing. 

Moreover, as someone who did not own a car, the house’s location and its proximity to campus was appealing to me. Unfortunately, I only knew one resident in the house before I moved in, and I soon learned that it was a “party house.”

My decision to move into this house still pains me to this day. Most notably, because of the night I was arrested. On this night, I was in my bedroom in the basement watching a movie with a friend. Upstairs, my roommates had company (as they usually did) and were playing loud music.

While in my bedroom I heard a knock at the backdoor. This person turned out to be a police officer. He asked me if I lived in the house, to which I responded yes. He then requested that I step outside to speak to him. I obliged, not entirely sure of what was going on. Immediately, he arrested me for a noise violation.

After my arrest, I was so worried that I could again get in trouble for something my roommates did that I slept on a friend’s futon for the remainder of the semester, in order to avoid any possible future problems. When the fall semester I ended, I immediately found someone to sublet my room to, and I finished my senior year in a dorm on campus. 

I am writing to you over a year after the incident occurred because time passed has provided time for reflection. Despite not playing an active role in the partying that came from my house, I did not play an active role in stopping it. Perhaps if I did, I would not have been arrested, and you would have had a quieter street.

Moreover, as a resident of 164 Sunset I was equally responsible for what took place inside my house, and because of this I owe you and your family an apology.
 
I hope you accept this letter of apology on behalf of my roommates and I, and I wish you the best as Amherst Police continue their crackdown on rowdiness. As someone who lived on Sunset Avenue I know how difficult it can be.

Hopefully, my letter of apology offers some kind of solace or at the very least an empathetic perspective from a former UMass student.

Regards,

Former Resident of 164 Sunset Avenue

164 Sunset Avenue, in the shadow of UMass

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Surprise!

Billy Blanks surprised by a hook kick 

They say surprise is the secret to humor, or at least the Facebook meme says it, and some of them are pretty funny.  But I'm even more certain that surprise is a key component for victory in combat. 

Pearl Harbor, and our payback six months later at The Battle of Midway, Israeli liberation of hostages at Entebbe, or the unsurpassed devastation inflicted on our country that clear blue 9/11 morning, all relied on the element of surprise.

I was always known on the karate circuit as a strategic counter fighter -- letting my opponent make the first move and then catch them on the way in -- although the more derogatory term used by the blood and guts fighters was "runner".  But I could stand my ground or blitz with the best of them when necessary.

In the opening seconds of my match with Billy Blanks, fighting for the division title, I hit him with a clean quick uncharacteristically offensive hook kick, which was sort of like waving a red flag in front of an already angry bull.

So for the next few minutes I revert back to my counter offensive style and catch him a few times to the body (although the judges missed it, the sidekicks still probably hurt enough to get him thinking about protecting his body). Thus setting up the coming-full-circle final move.

The exact same kick I scored with in the opening seconds of the match.

Art vs Signage

"Signs for wayfinding" on bike path bridge over downtown Northampton

Little White House, Hampshire College front yard

Free At Last

As an added attraction to shop local on "Small Business Saturday" the town is offering free parking throughout the downtown.  And since the schools are not in session on Saturday, shopkeepers do not have to worry about students and employees of the University of Massachusetts, our number one employer, parking in the downtown and hopping a PVTA bus to school.

And most small businesses train their staff not take up prime parking spots.

So hopefully the downtown parking lots will fill up with shoppers in a good mood to spend money.  A dollar spent in the local economy returns many times over vs the one spent at national chain stores at the nearby Mall (and they always have free parking).

Now if we could just get the Chamber of Commerce or Business Improvement District to rent or borrow a large electronic flashing sign and plant it in the downtown to inform shoppers of the good news.

A Roof Over Their Heads

 AFD Central Station is getting a new roof

Town Meeting approved $186,00 last spring for repairs to Amherst Fire Department Central Station top to bottom:  The leaky roof and crumbling apparatus floor.

Still, the station is too old and too cramped for a modern day fire department with the call volume of AFD. Six years ago the Fire Station Study Commission came up with three scenarios for the town to seriously consider to address this public safety issue and virtually all three options included building a new station.

One concept would sell Central Station to help finance the new South Amherst fire station, the other two scenarios would keep Central after multi-million dollar renovations.

A $10 million line item for a new fire station briefly appeared last spring in preliminary budget paperwork, but never made it into the pipeline for serious discussion.

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49 Years

My dad was only 49 years old when he passed away suddenly in the dead of night the second week of September,  49 years ago.  He had come home from a job uncharacteristically early that day, a mid-week school day, after whacking his head particularly hard while working in cramped dark quarters -- rather routine conditions for a plumber.  He died from a cerebral hemorrhage.
 
Forty nine years ago today, as he rode in an open car down a Dallas street before a huge throng of adoring fans, President John F. Kennedy was fired upon in sudden spectacular fashion.  Television news was still relatively new compared to radio and newspapers, with the Internet not yet even born.

But television came into its own during those dark days. The urgent initial reports from numerous eyewitnesses confirmed that the President had been grievously wounded in the head.  One CBS reporter in Dallas quoted a surgeon from Parkland Hospital who was in tears saying the president was gone, but the reporter still dutifully used the word "unconfirmed". 

Walter Cronkite, the must trusted man in America, confirmed the horrible, shocking truth that seemed to momentarily stun even him, a consummate professional.   And for next few days tearful Americans huddled in front of their grainy, black-and-white televisions, sharing their grief.

Even now, 49 years later, I can still remember the anguish.  The overpowering anguish.

1945: A Historic Thanksgiving

Mother and Son Peeling Potatoes Saturday Evening Post cover, Nov 24, 1945

Original concept Rockwell abandoned because it was "too sad"

One of the more beloved Norman Rockwell prints would not nearly be as memorable -- especially on this festive family holiday -- if he had used the original concept of posing his Arlington, Vermont neighbor in a wheelchair looking deadly serious.

Dick Hagelberg had beaten the onerous odds, surviving 65 daylight bombing missions over Germany without suffering a scratch.  Perhaps why the happier pose, sitting beside his mother, resonated with Rockwell ... and soon thereafter, the entire nation.  

The Back Story