ABOUT AMHERST

Present for my niece

2012-01-22T16:20:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving 2011 highlights and activities for kids around Amherst

2011-11-27T12:00:00.006-05:00

Five of six Carey siblings and families got together for Thanksgiving this year and to celebrate our youngest sister Maureen's 40th birthday.

There was quorum of Carey cousins.

My brother and sister-in-law would be the elder statesmen -- except for Brian and me.

A La Fiorentina (Springfield) birthday cake.

A great kids' activity: making marzipan figures. Almond paste from Deals and Steals, Northampton = $2.

Candlepin bowling at Shelburne Falls Bowling Alley.

We're thankful for technology, so we can stay in touch via smart-phone with Ana, who's in Mercedes, Texas for her grandparents' 55th wedding anniversary.

And talk to the relatives via Skpe.

Happy Holidays!

Hiking at the Notch

2011-11-24T21:29:00.004-05:00

The Notch is the first place that comes to mind to take a hike in Amherst, and my brother and I had a good 2-hour hike this week. But beware -- the trails are not marked as thoroughly as some casual hikers like me would like. No wonder the police get calls to rescue people there!

The Halloween snowstorm as seen from our Amherst backyard

2011-10-31T18:41:00.007-04:00

The night of the pre-Halloween snowstorm was so light because of all the snow you could take photos with the daylight setting. There was also a strange lightning which might have been transformers blowing up.

On Sunday, we learned that 100 percent of Amherst had lost power. We got it back at 5 a.m. on Monday, but 60 percent of Amherst residents still didn't have service this afternoon and almost nobody at work did. It seems towns in higher elevations didn't have as much tree damage and power loss, because the snow, although there was more of it was lighter. We lost a couple of arborvitae, and our neighbor's maple trees were damaged, but that was minor compared to all the trees that were down all over.
Saturday was beautiful and much of the 9 inches of snow in our yard melted as the day went on.

Our plastic Adirondack chairs looked overstuffed.

All the lilac trees were bent over but bounced back.

17th Annual Amherst Trivia Bee -- My office was the runner up!

2011-10-27T21:52:00.006-04:00

My office team came in second in the 17th Annual Amherst Trivia Bee 1st runners up -- Team NWDA Just-us/ Dave Sullivan, Mike McHale, Steve Greenbaum and Linda Pisano.

These are some of the members of my old team, The Daily Hampshire Gazette's. One year, we won.

Another year, we won the costume contest, when we dressed as Sarah Palin and friends.

State Rep. Ellen Story, the master of ceremonies, is always the best-dressed person at the bee, always in the same blue dress.

Here are the questions Team Just-us answered:
1) Caligula made a senator of whom? (His horse)
2 )What's the connection between the 21st and 18th amendments to the Constitution? (The 21st reveals the 18th, which is Prohibition)
3) Walter Ray Williams had the most career wins in what sport? (Bowling)
4) Brontophobia is a fear of what? (Thunder)
5) What was Scotty's first name in the original "Star Trek"? (Montgomery)
6) Heade üllatuste maa means "country of good surprises" and is the motto of what country? (Estonia)
7) what child star received 100,000 presents on her 8th birthday in 1936? (Shirley Temple)
8) Donald Kaufman, a fictional character was nominated for what honor? (an Oscar)
9) On May 3, 1809 Mary Kies became the first woman to be awarded what? (U.S. patent)
10) A recently discovered planet was given what comic book name by NASA? (Super Earth)
11) Entrepreneur Milton Levine invented what childhood science project?
(Ant farm)
12) From 1784-1811 Britain opposed a tax on what clothing item? (The hat)
13) Which U.S. president gave the first televised State of the Union address? (Truman)
14) What color does amethyst turn when heated? (Clear)
15) August is what invasive species awareness month? (Asian longhorn beetle)
FINAL ROUND
1) Atychiphobia is fear of what? (Failure)
2) In Welsh Arthurian legend what is the name of King Arthur's dagger? (Carawennan)
3) Harry Potter's character Luna Lovegood was a member of what Hogwarts house? (Ravenclaw)
4) Aerosmith's song "Walk This Way" was inspired by what movie" ("Young Frankenstein")
5) Who was the only U.S. president to remain a bachelor? (Buchanan)

A 15-year-old girl created this video for the Northwestern District Attorney's Office

2011-10-27T14:59:00.002-04:00

Fall pics

2011-10-22T21:05:00.012-04:00

Shelburne Falls
Bridge of Flowers
We'd never checked out the bowling alley in Shelburne Falls. It's beautiful.

Hawley road and cornfield

Flowers Brian brought home from the Hampshire College pick-your-own garden

2011-10-18T21:10:00.001-04:00

Who knew Brian was such a good flower arranger?

Beautiful Tiffany pitcher from Ana

2011-10-18T18:25:00.004-04:00

When I called Tiffany to order a pitcher etched with lilies of the valley, using the gift card Ana gave me, the salesperson told me it would arrive in a Tiffany blue box with a white bow.

Voila! Even prettier than I thought it would be.
Photos by Brian.

Message on a Northampton dumpster

2011-10-13T09:50:00.003-04:00

Brian meets one of his students at Occupy Wall Street - -NYC -- Oct. 10, 2011

2011-10-11T17:33:00.001-04:00

My moment in women's history: (Photos for my alma mater University of Vermont "pre-Title IX era" gathering in 2012

2011-10-08T12:42:00.008-04:00

Dug up some old photos today, because I got a letter from UVM saying "On June 23rd, 1972, when Title IX passed, all collegiate athletics experienced dramatic change. We would like to document the period before TItle IX was fully implemented at the University of Bermont so that UVM's pre-Title IX women's athletic history is not part of that forgotten past."

I never put together till now -- and almost certainly never would have, otherwise-- that I was on the swim team at a transitional moment in women's history!

UVM women's swim team on the road, Feb. 1977. My roommate Julie McFadden is bottom right. I am the idiot next to her pretending to bite Wendy Baldwin's leg. Next to me is Katherine Brewster. Our sweet coach -- Miss Walsh -- is back row left and second from the right back row is Meg Hutchins. Everyone else's name I have forgotten.

Julie McFadden on the left; Jenny Bunker on the right. I have forgotten the name of the girl in the middle, but I remember she was very nice.

Me in our UVM team swim suit when we swam against Mount Holyoke and my hometown friend Sarah Harrington who was going to Mount Holyoke. My sister Maureen in the bottom left corner and my mom and sister Kathy in the top right corner. According to Dad's painstaking notations on back it was Nov. 11, 1975 and besides UMV and Mount Holyoke, UNH and Williams College participated.

View from Mount Sugarloaf

2011-09-22T22:48:00.003-04:00

Brian and a grad school friend on Mount Sugarloaf in Deerfield

Fun things to do in the Valley: Kickboxing at The Studio, Hampshire College farm, Puffer's, eating at Sylvester's and, of course, texting on the iPad

2011-08-05T14:09:00.011-04:00

ABOUT AMHERST IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION: THANKS FOR STOPPING BY!!

What is Dravet syndrome?

2011-06-24T17:18:00.004-04:00

My niece Alexis (on right) has Dravet Syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy, that first manifested itself when she was just a few months old. My brother and sister-in-law have lived through countless episodes in which she was at death's door, gripped by catastrophic seizures.

Alexis is six now and has severe developmental delays, and yet she is always busy putting together puzzles and practicing her words and making good strides. She's the sweetest little girl EVER.

This summer there's a chance to win $250,000 for The Dravet Syndrome Foundation. You just have to sign into Facebook, go to http://www.vivint.com/givesbackproject/charity/45?ref=nf and click. You can vote once a day till the end of the contest in August.

If you would like to learn more about Dravet syndrome, you can read a story I wrote for Hampshire Life about a little girl with the condition in Northampton.

Thank you SO much if you can vote for funding!

Life in the dark: A Northampton couple's desperate attempt to save their daughter

By mcarey

Created 01/02/2009 - 6:27am

Kerim May, Gayla Berry and their 2-year-old daughter, Talia, live in the dark.

The lights in their Northampton townhouse are almost always off and if the couple takes their toddler out, it's usually at night.

Talia, who looks like a pixie -- petite, with liquid brown eyes -- is acutely sensitive to light. The briefest exposure to it can trigger a seizure which can range from a sudden momentary loss of consciousness to full-body convulsions.

She has Dravet syndrome, an extremely rare form of epilepsy with a cruel prognosis.

Children who survive the seizures during the most difficult years -- ages 2 through 5 -- have "a very poor" outlook in terms of mental development, says Dr. Blaise Bourgeois, director of the Division of Epilepsy & Clinical Neurophysiology at Boston Children's Hospital. "About 50 percent will have an IQ of less than 50 by the age of 10 years."

May, 39, and Berry, 40, live day to day trying to stay ahead of the escalating fear that the next major seizure Talia suffers will be a catastrophic one that could leave her with brain damage or even kill her.

"You don't know which one is going to require which medication, which one is going to require which kind of intervention," says Berry. "You always have to be alert and ready for any of the possibilities."

In addition to light, any change in routine, visual patterns or temperature can trigger a seizure as can illness and stress, and so the couple tries to maintain as controlled an environment as they can. They seldom have visitors and ask family members not to bring gifts for Talia to avoid exciting her.

They rarely go out together, and when they do take their daughter for a trip in the car, they tape sheets to the windows to keep the sun out. Sometimes, if she is having a good day, they take her to the park -- at night.

May often wishes a child neurologist would spend a weekend at his house. In his fantasy, the doctor would watch his child's every move as closely as he and his wife do, scrutinize the medication plan she is on, give them advice.

But that's not likely to happen. So, instead, May and Berry continue to consult specialists and other parents of children with Dravet syndrome, keep their own meticulous records, and read as much as they can find on the illness to piece together a plan to minimize their daughter's seizures. In this way they hope to beat the odds that she will end up mentally or physically impaired.

*****

First described in 1978 by the French neurologist Charlotte Dravet, the syndrome, also known as severe myoclonic epilepsy of infancy (SMEI), is a progressive childhood disorder characterized by severe epilepsy that does not respond well to treatment. With about 1 in 20,000-40,000 children born with the genetic mutation that causes it, Dravet syndrome is an "orphan disease" that is not yet understood, doctors say.

Talia began having seizures when she was several months old. A seizure is not an uncommon childhood reaction to a high fever. But for a child with Dravet syndrome, seizures keep happening, increasing in frequency and intensity. By the second year of life cognitive and developmental delays almost always become apparent, according to information supplied by the International Dravet Syndrome Epilepsy Action League (IDEA League), a parent advocacy group.

The child may lose the ability to talk and may develop ataxia, which causes him or her to walk like a drunk. There may be sleep and digestive disturbances, which Talia has had her whole life, orthopedic and behavior problems, autism.

Some children must be fed through gastric tubes, wear braces to support weak ankles and knees or use wheelchairs. Since a change in temperature either in the environment or caused by a fever can trigger a seizure, many families spend the entire summer indoors.

Dr. Linda Laux of Chicago, a neurologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, is one of the few neurologists in the world who specialize in Dravet syndrome. She says there is much to learn about the effects of Dravet's seizures and the way the disease progresses in children.

"It is still really unknown why they have this developmental plateau or regression, therefore it is unclear whether we can affect it," she says. "Our hope is we can."

As a result, the focus is on diagnosing children as early as possible, she says, and working aggressively both to control their seizures and to provide developmental and cognitive therapy aimed at maximizing their potential.

*****

Talia, whose seizures land her in the hospital about once a month, has so far met all of her developmental milestones -- walking, talking, thriving.

One late afternoon in October, she was having a good day as she sat at a child-size table eating peanut butter and chicken in the dusk. The living room smelled invitingly of roast chicken and vegetables; tightly drawn shades kept the brilliant fall day at bay. A backpack filled with things she would need if she had to be rushed to the hospital was propped near the front door, as always. Berry bustled about tending to her, preparing her food, her medicines, while May sat nearby, watching his daughter's eyes intently.

One or both of them is always watching Talia's eyes. That's where the signs of her seizures start. The attacks begin as small "absence" seizures, during which Talia appears to space out or freeze. Her head may jolt as if she is receiving electrical shocks.

If the absence seizures begin to multiply, Berry and May have to make quick decisions. Should they give her Ativan? A potent medication, it belongs to a group of drugs called benzodiazepines which may cause liver and kidney damage. But Ativan can also prevent the absence seizures from graduating to convulsive ones which can result in brain damage or even death.

"There are no right answers," says May. "There are probabilities. It's all trial and error."

Talia might be playing and laughing one moment, and then be stiff or writhing on the floor the next, with one parent rushing to give her medication while the other one dials 911.

Although controlling the seizures is regarded as the route to more normal cognitive development, doctors say studies show that most children with Dravet syndrome will have some cognitive delays anyway.

They're discouraging statistics, to be sure. "We are living with some denial," says May.

And they know that death can strike at any time. Just the other day, they learned via the Dravet parents group Web site (www.idea-league.org [1]) that a 4-year-old girl had suffered a fatal seizure.

"When Talia has a down day, it's like is this the start of the catastrophe?" asks May.

But this afternoon, Talia seems fine.

Berry joins her at the toy barnyard on the carpet where she is playing with a plastic pig. She loves animals, and her parents have assembled a collection of them. The space between the couch and the wall is a "secret passageway," three boxes form an obstacle course in the middle of the room and a play house made from a stove-size box is at the foot of the stairs. Berry and May try to make their small townhouse as interesting for their daughter as possible.

"More dinner," Talia says, gaily jumping up and running back to the table. She wants to feed the pig and that provides an opening for Berry to suggest that Talia have a bit more peanut butter and chicken, too. Getting her to eat enough to maintain a healthy weight is a constant challenge, her parents say.

Talia takes a bite.

"It's amazing, the power of suggestion," says Berry, clearly pleased.

*****

May was in his basement one morning in mid-November, taking stock. He was surrounded by bicycles, exercise equipment, a couch, a computer and shelves of thick spiral notebooks filled with pages documenting Talia's daily medicines, as well as the number of attacks she has had. Some days she has dozens of absence seizures. There are doctors' reports of her hospital visits.

A little apologetically, he flips through hundreds of photos of Talia on the computer. The top of his daughter's head is wrapped like a mummy in some of them, as she is hooked up for a brain-wave scan. In others, she's wearing the tiny sunglasses she dons for the occasional trip outdoors. In one, she's sitting in an armchair with another little person who's a family friend.

May says that if he had realized his family would be spending so much time indoors, he would have bought a larger place. "I would have overextended and been one of those people who got a bad mortgage," he said.

In the inner recess of the basement, Berry has created an art studio for Talia, decorated with her watercolors. May plans to turn the area into an indoor playground for his daughter, although an observer might wonder where he would get the energy to do it.

He is senior regulatory counsel for ISO New England in Holyoke, and Berry is a teacher who is not working now so she can take care of Talia. They're an attractive, articulate couple, but it's apparent that living with Dravet syndrome is taking a toll. Like Talia, they're sallow and have circles under their eyes, especially Berry. A mountain bike enthusiast, she hardly ever gets to ride outside anymore, so she rides her bicycle on rollers in the basement.

Since Talia has always been a fitful sleeper, Berry and May say they are lucky if they get six hours of interrupted sleep a night. If May goes on a business trip and gets a full night of sleep in a hotel, it just makes him feel worse, he says. It's as though his body has gotten used to less sleep.

Living in the dark as they do, there's nothing differentiating the days and the nights, weekdays and weekends, May says. It's harder to do routine chores: Berry has taken to preparing meals with a flashlight.

Just keeping up with Talia's medications is a challenge. All told, she takes 19 doses a day of potent anti-seizure drugs, an appetite stimulant, something to help with her digestive difficulties, and vitamins. "Sometimes I feel like I chase her all day with an eye-dropper," says Berry.

Talia has a local pediatrician, Dr. David Steele, and has recently begun seeing Dr. Richard Morse, a child neurologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. Morse, who now has about a half dozen patients with Dravet syndrome, is optimistic that recent advances in understanding the condition will lead to better treatments.

"They're doing an incredible job," Morse said of Berry and May in a telephone interview, "really exhausting every avenue in terms of trying to help control the seizures and track her progress and development and preserve it.

"I think it's a wonderful testimony to what part of the team parents can play and how important it is to have a team when you're taking care of a person with epilepsy," Morse continued. "I can only provide some part, the family and other caretakers do most of the work and certainly do most of the suffering in terms of stressing out about this."

Berry and May never let Talia out of their sight or leave her alone with another person, so the two of them are never alone with each other.

To cope, they say, they try not to think too much about how they live.

"I think you function, but at the most basic level," says May. "It's hard to function at a competent level. Living like this while trying to deal with something so dire is rough."

They just keep their focus on controlling the factors that spark her seizures.

"Our big dilemma now is do we chase better seizure control? But the side effects can be dire and can stunt her development," says May. "Should we restructure her medications? Now we're thinking, she's a smart, happy kid, let's not mess with that. But you don't know if she's heading for a catastrophe."

They wonder sometimes whether they have the strength to continue on as they are.

"Honestly, I don't know how long we can hold out," says May. "We take turns being in a deep depression and being the stable one. The odds don't feel particularly good that we're going to live a carefree life at some point."

*****

One day in November Talia appeared to be doing so well that Berry decided to take her out to Amajoy, an infant therapy center on Main Street in Florence, to see Lenore Grubinger, who works on increasing children's strength through movement. Berry and May say Grubinger has helped Talia. It was the therapist who first suggested that they encourage Talia to draw and paint early.

The car trip, though, turned out to be harrowing as Berry, constantly checking on Talia in the rear-view mirror, noticed her daughter's head jerking with absence seizures.

Driving with Talia is one of the most difficult challenges, says Berry: "It's the place where I'm most uncomfortable being alone with her."

By the time they arrived at Amajoy, Talia looked dazed. But gently, by touching the child, Grubinger was able to bring her back to an alert state.

Parents say that because children with Dravet often seem healthy, those unfamiliar with the condition can underestimate its severity. They say it can be difficult to convince health-care gatekeepers that a child needs occupational and speech therapy.

Grubinger's treatment, which Berry and May pay for out of pocket, is just one of the therapies Talia has gotten since her diagnosis at 15 months of age. She is eligible for some state-subsidized and sliding-scale speech and developmental programs for children with special needs. She also receives acupuncture, which is not covered by insurance, but which Berry and May have pursued on their own. They say they are trying to do whatever they can to shore up Talia's skills in hopes of minimizing eventual cognitive impairment from her seizures.

"To be honest, it's always lurking around the corner," says Berry.

*****

Though early diagnosis is considered crucial, even some pediatric neurologists are not familiar with Dravet syndrome and don't recognize its particular seizures and the triggers associated with them. "I would say within pediatric neurology probably about half of people might recognize it," said Morse.

As a result children may be given certain anti-seizure medications that are now known to make the condition worse.

Talia had her first seizure at 9 months old, early in the morning while her parents were still sleeping. Berry woke up to hear her labored breathing. When she tried to wake her up, Berry found Talia unresponsive and partially paralyzed. Five minutes later, however, the infant seemed fine. They brought her to her pediatrician, who, they say, assured them the incident was a benign one. "And it did seem reasonable, even in retrospect," says Berry.

But Talia had a second seizure six weeks later and after a third seizure, say Berry and May, a doctor at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield put their child on an anti-seizure medication not recommended for children with Dravet syndrome.

Because Talia began waking up every half-hour during the night, the couple took her to Boston Children's Hospital for a sleep evaluation. As it turned out, Talia had a severe seizure in the hospital lobby. That, coupled with abnormal EEG results from the sleep study, prompted a doctor there to advise discontinuing the medication Talia was on and trying a different one. He also recommended genetic testing which showed a mutation in the SCN1A gene that contributes to up to 80 percent of reported cases of Dravet syndrome.

Following the diagnosis, Berry and May learned through their reading that children with Dravet syndrome are often sensitive to light. In fact, they say, they had noticed that Talia's seizures were more pronounced when she was outdoors. And so, last August they began staying inside. But, they say, they soon realized they should restrict the light indoors as well. They installed room-darkening shades behind the regular shades in the house. When they bring Talia to doctors' appointments, or anywhere else, they call ahead and ask that a darkened room be readied for her.

*****

Much of what Berry and May know about Dravet syndrome they have learned online and from other families they have met through the IDEA League, founded in 2005 by Dravet parent Joan Skluzacek of Afton, Minn.

"Even with the information, you're struggling," May says. "But the parents group is really a lifeline."

Skluzacek's experience was typical of many Dravet families. Her now 14-year-old son, Nick, was a talkative 2-year-old when he starting suffering severe seizures. He uses a wheelchair now and hasn't spoken a word since he was 6.

Besides compiling the most up-to-date information about the syndrome available, Skluzacek and other volunteers in the league provide an online forum for parents to trade information, advice and support, and another forum for professionals.

The league has also sponsored two international conferences attended by Charlotte Dravet as well as doctors, researchers and families from around the world.

May attended this year's conference, which was held in August in Chicago. He says he found it helpful but also emotionally difficult. While doctors and researchers discussed some of their most recent findings in a sprawling conference room at the Doubletree Inn, dozens of children played in separate rooms upstairs watched over by childcare professionals. In between sessions, children and their parents converged in the lobby. Some of the youngsters appeared to be faring well, others clearly were struggling.

Nick Skluzacek was there with his therapy dog, Ruby, a three-legged Hungarian pointer, who can sense when Nick is about to have a seizure. Ruby alerts his parents, even when they're asleep.

Dravet parents, like May and Berry, are eager to share their stories, hoping that increased exposure will lead to earlier diagnoses and more research. Their greatest wish, of course, is for a cure.

"We already know in the two-and-a-half to three years that the IDEA League has existed that we've been bringing down the age of diagnosis and older children are being retroactively diagnosed," Skluzacek said in an interview during a lunch break at the conference. "I think the key thing is getting the word out. If it's not misdiagnosed, it's undiagnosed. It's a worldwide syndrome."

About half of the families who contact the IDEA League now are referred by their physicians, Skluzacek said.

In one of the final presentations, several parents described their children's case histories in minute detail to a panel of physicians, including Dravet. To a person, they had lived through frightening seizures that brought their children close to death, intervals of comparative good health, and anxiety over which medications to use. Two of the three drugs to treat Dravet syndrome are not FDA approved, so there is the added financial burden for families in the United States who must pay the high prices for them, which can be $1,000 a month.

"It was a pretty sobering glimpse of what we might be in for," says May of the other parents' stories. "We still have hope now that Talia might skate around the edges of this. It was hard in that sense."

*****

A month later, May drove back to Chicago with his wife and daughter, risking three days on the road each way, to meet with Linda Laux, the Dravet specialist.

Laux was able to identify the specific kinds of seizures that Talia has, which is key to deciding which drug or combination of drugs is likely to be most effective.

"If you're not seeing someone who's expert in Dravet syndrome, you can almost be sure they're not being aggressive enough in the treatment," says May.

Laux and her colleagues see only children with intractable seizures, including over 60 children with Dravet syndrome. "Early recognition is really important ... and I think many more people are becoming much more aware of Dravet syndrome and so are definitely looking for it earlier in a child's life," she said in a telephone interview.

The discovery of the genetic origin of the syndrome in the last five or six years was a huge advance, says Dr. Morse, as was being able to get a handle on the physiology, which has to do with the charged particles moving in and out of the body's electrical cells.

While Laux, Morse and Bourgeois agree that reducing the number of convulsive seizures a child suffers is likely to have an impact on cognitive development, what doctors do not know for sure is to what extent children would suffer cognitive delays even under the best-case scenario Berry and May are striving to create. Morse says he attended a meeting of the American Epilepsy Society in Seattle in early December at which Charlotte Dravet said she believes that seizures play a big role in causing disabilities, but may not be the whole story.

Doctors are trying to figure out why some children have fewer cognitive development problems than others. Laux points to a 2006 study published by a team of Australian doctors which looked at adults with Dravet syndrome and found that while the majority had significant problems, a minority functioned at much closer to typical levels.

Still, Berry and May say they have hope. "When something is diagnosed it's defined by the worst-case scenario," says Berry. As time goes on, she says, she expects doctors will find that there is a wide spectrum of severity, as is the case with autism.

In recent weeks, Talia's seizures have gotten worse, but so far she continues to develop as a typical child her age. She turned 2 on Nov. 23. "Shiny New Shoes," a jazzy tune, is her current favorite song and she also likes folk tunes. She's got eclectic tastes. "She loves to hear us sing," Berry says. "She loves to giggle."

In Chicago, the family went to the zoo. "She was fascinated by the animals," May recalled of that happy visit. "But she was more fascinated by the little kids."

Berry and May say it helps to have supportive families and friends. Berry's family, which lives in the Hartford area, drops everything and comes to Northampton to help them in an emergency. And ISO, May's employer, is "pretty exceptional," he says, about allowing him to leave work to respond to an emergency. "As long as I get my work done, they're not so insistent that I get it done 9 to 5." Most of his colleagues have young kids. "They're very concerned," he says.

But it's hard for other people who have not lived with Dravet syndrome to understand it.

Berry knows why. She says even though she used to work with special needs students, she never really understood what it was like for the parents. "Unless you walk a mile in someone's shoes -- which you can't do -- you don't really know what their life is like."

Mary Carey is a Gazette reporter. She can be reached at mcarey@gazettenet.com.

Vote for my niece Alexis!

2011-06-14T17:30:00.007-04:00

From my brother Mike and sister-in-law Clare: Alexis is our beautiful six year old daughter. She has Dravet Syndrome. She has known too few days without seizures, which began when she was just three months old. She is severely developmentally

delayed. Please take the time to vote each day to give Alexis and all others whose lives are significantly impacted by their seizures and delays a chance to live a better life.

What would you do with $250,000?

We will fund cutting edge
research to find a cure for those with Dravet syndrome and with related forms of epilepsy.

What can you do to help?

VOTE each and everyday for the Dravet Syndrome Foundation.
It takes just a few clicks
of your mouse!

http://www.vivint.com/givesbackproject/charity/45

Brian pointed out recently that Osama bin Laden watching TV looked familiar

2011-05-22T19:38:00.009-04:00

Hester

2011-05-12T08:49:00.000-04:00

People at work

2011-05-07T18:20:00.002-04:00

Snapped this photo with my BlackBerry at a news conference outside Franklin-Hampshire Juvenile Court with local, state and national reporters listening in.

Polish butter lamb

2011-04-24T17:43:00.005-04:00

Easter butter lamb. I wish I'd had one of these at every Easter dinner, but I just found out about this Polish tradition when a co-worker posted a photo of one on her Facebook page. This is a mini one, which I sculpted from butter and then covered with butter curls made with a grater and curled with a paper clip. The eyes and nostrils are cloves; the greenery is mint from the garden and forsythia blossoms and the plate is Portmeiron, which my brother first encountered in England and introduced to the family. I got this one at TJ Maxx.

Scenes from Winter '11

2011-01-30T12:40:00.007-05:00

Red-bellied woodpecker at the bird feeder. On the plus side, it's been a great winter for seeing backyard birds.
There's snow everywhere and more predicted for Wednesday.
Hester's paws kept sinking through the fluffy snow the day of the big storm.
THAT was an unpleasant foray.
Might as well stay inside for awhilee.
Cabin fever.

A local treasure: Storyteller Bob Flaherty

2011-01-24T23:05:00.001-05:00

Can't wait to see my former Daily Hampshire Gazette co-worker Bob Flaherty tell stories at the Northampton Center for the Arts, Sat. Jan. 29 at 7:30.

27th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast

2011-01-17T13:11:00.013-05:00

Rhonda Anderson Gordon and The Rev. Carlos Anderson. Rhonda gave a moving and heartfelt speech about her late mother, Norma Jean Anderson, a pillar of the community in whose name an award is now given. The great sixth grade teacher Roger Wallace was the recipient this year, an apt choice!

Theresa Cooper-Gordon and Rhonda. Theresa was an organizer of the breakfast, an Amherst institution. Besides Rhonda's speech, there was a classic speech by the legendary anti-war activist Frances Crowe, about what she thinks MKL would focus on today and a very good speech by state Sen. Stan Rosenberg.

Northwestern District Attorney Dave Sullivan and Amherst Police Chief Scott Livingstone served breakfast.

Shutterbug Reynolds Winslow took photos.

About Amherst survey

2010-12-21T17:54:00.003-05:00

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
I'm going to change About Amherst from a blog to a website, and I think it should be more focused -- but on what? If anyone has any ideas, I'd greatly appreciate hearing them. Some of my thoughts:
1) Bugs and other Amherst creatures with insights from About Amherst's entomologist and ecologist, aka Brian.
2) Inns and hotels I've visited and interesting places to go near and far from Amherst
3) Life of Hester (seen above)
4) Amherst, but in a more organized way

Let me know, THANKS!

Bugs, doormats and adorable kids

2010-09-21T16:06:00.011-04:00

It's been awhile since I've posted a question for About Amherst's resident entomologist. Nancy, of Northampton, sent these fine photos, inquiring about the bugs on the milkweed.

Says the resident entomologist: " It is a 'milkweed bug' (no kidding). They suck oil from the seeds and are warning-colored as being toxic from feeding on milkweed, like monarch butterflies etc. I don't actually see them that often. You can buy milkweed bugs for school projects but those are lab strains that can be raised on sunflower seeds. "

"The little ones are 'oleander aphids' that are actually common feeding on milkweed (I found many with a class just yesterday) and also toxic and so colored and so on... Cool!"
Saw this funny doormat at the Cummington Fair.
And this one,

It was so great to see my far-flung siblings and kids this summer.

Six weeks later

2010-09-16T12:47:00.012-04:00

Dave Sullivan wins the Democratic primary election with 67 percent of the vote and is the presumed new Northwestern district attorney.

I used the multi-media skills I learned from blogging to help Dave with his campaign for district attorney, and what an exhilarating experience it has been. I came on in May, but Dave campaigned for 20 months, knocked on thousands of doors and recruited dozens and dozens of volunteers. It seems like everybody I talked to throughout the summer had met Dave somewhere.

As one local political analyst described it -- correctly, I think -- it was a campaign people will look back at for years to come as a model.

My analysis is that Dave was an exceptionally hard worker; treated everyone, including his opponent, as he would want to be treated himself, never took a thing for granted and never cut corners.

A humble and intelligent service-oriented person, Dave is willing to take advice, has high standards, an unusually good memory and good judgment. He asked pretty much everybody he met to become involved with his campaign and thanked them continually.

Something I learned from him is that there's no substitute for preparation. He researched everything he might be called upon to discuss, consulted experts and learned from them, always bringing to the process his own moral vision. He BECAME a candidate who voters could visualize taking the office to another level.

In between May and Election Day, my nieces came to visit for a few days. We didn't get to the Montague Book Mill or either zipline, but we DID 1) take a ride on the Lady Bea, 2) go to Puffer's Pond at dusk every night 3) go to Antonio's, 4) shop for vintage clothes at the new Goodwill on University Drive, 5) Have "high tea" at Chandler's Tavern and "bubble tea" downtown 6) Pick our own flowers at Hampshire College 7) go to the Amherst AND the Greenfield Farmer's Market 8) attend the free Fiddler's Festival in Greenfield's Energy Park, 9) visit Mount Sugarloaf and 10) go the Magic Wings. (We did go to the Bridge of Flowers, another must-do on Brian's and my tour, with Brian's brother and wife and my friends Susan and Jessica.)
Eventually, all of my siblings but Eddie, who we saw earlier this summer, got to Amherst.
Eddie and son William
And to top it all off, my daughter Ana (on right, with cousin Meghan) came to town!

Goodbye July: What I did this month

2010-07-29T17:29:00.009-04:00

Seagull on the roof of the Eastland Park Hotel in Portland, Maine, where Brian and I got away from the heat for a while.

Back about 40 years ago, I remember my mom would exclaim about the heat that "It must be 80 degrees in the shade." I used to marvel at that when I lived in Texas for 10 years and the temperatures didn't dip below 100 for days sometimes. This July, my mom's expression has come to seem quaint again. Goodbye, July!
Kayaking in Bar Harbor, Maine, a great destination to which we had never been. The Obama family was there the weekend before.
Me after I fell into Bar Harbor -- NOT. This is a painting from the wonderful Portland Art Museum, a ticket to which allows you to walk into an adjoining house with great old-fashioned wallpaper and furniture.

The Icelandic-Swedish actess Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book and movie series. We saw the first two installments at Amherst Cinema, and while they're gory and disturbing, I love Rapace as Lisbeth Salander. They're also dark and chilly. We also loved "Winter's Bone" and, surprisingly "Cyrus." Not a bad movie summer, so far!
I went swimming at Puffer's Pond twice.
Biked on the Norwottuck Hike and Bike trail.

And visited the Hampshire College Farm. Don't you love this mobile chicken house?

See you in August!

Bugs and more

2010-07-05T12:14:00.012-04:00

It's been awhile since I've posted bug photos and AboutAmherst's resident entomologist's analysis. He keeps getting questions -- from our friend Alison about this cave cricket, for instance, but I've been focusing on cute creatures instead.

Like this possibly incompetent -- or overly confident -- watch-cat in a Shelburne Falls bookstore.

Brian advises doing nothing about cave crickets, which like to hide under things in dark, cold places. But I noticed a blogging exterminator, who casts a colder eye on cave crickets and their ilk, suggests building homemade traps for them with a shoebox and sticky paper.
Diana, our artist friend from Ohio, sent this charming photo. Says Brian: "It's a squash vine borer. They are neat, as a moth that mimics wasps. The larvae can damage or kill a squash plant but usually are not common enough to be a big problem, not usually worth trying to control."

Although a person could cut them out of the stems where they bore, if you just have a small number of plants, he said.
Ewweeee! is it hot here in Amherst! Our thermometer says it's 100 degrees, although that's a bit of an exaggeration; the official temperature here is 98! Yesterday, it reached 97 and the record for the day here was 96 in 1949, according to weather.com.

Brian and I are dreaming of taking a vacation in Iceland this summer!

I have something like this in mind -- an 1883 Montreal ice palace.

In the meantime, we've been visiting some of our favorite summer spots, such as the Shelburne Falls Bridge of Flowers.

And getting around to some classic parades. I particularly liked this guy, who marched in Chesterfield's parade, an Amherst performance mime named Christopher Yerlig.

And then there were these two clowns at the Amherst parade -- JUST KIDDING, they're my friends Nick Grabbe and Larry Kelley.

You know you're from western Mass... ETC

2010-06-15T15:55:00.012-04:00

Django Reinhardt-style guitarists at Amherst Cinema Thursday night. Brian and I had a great time going to the annual Taste of Amherst on the common then to see "Swing," an enchanting 2002 movie about a French boy who spends a summer among gypsies. The guitarists played for a half hour before the showing -- making for a perfect night out for Brian, who loves live music and me who likes movies! Now, Amherst Cinema is seeking a wine and beer license, so they can serve wine and beer.

Formidable! (which means GREAT! in French, I think.)

My former co-workers Bonnie, Sherry Wilson, Phyllis Lehrer and Patty at the Taste, an Amherst institution without a doubt. It'll be going on through the weekend.
Alex, a star of the teaching English as a foreign language program I participated in last summer in Thailand in a photo by Nuyen Thanh Trung. Alex, who is from England, and her boyfriend did not return home after the program; they got jobs teaching English in Hanoi instead. It seems Alex has been getting some great modeling gigs there too.

I'm staying home this summer and, among other things, working on the Dave Sullivan for District Attorney campaign. Dave's a great guy, who I met through my high school lab partner. As I have written here before, I was so, so touched that Dave came to my dad's funeral. He's going to take the Office of District Attorney to a whole new level!

I just love the following list of questions aimed at western Massachusetts residents and/or natives, although I agree with my grade school friend Cindy that they're kind of skewed east of where we came from, i.e. Pittsfield. In the tradition of the great blogger Tom Devine, from whose blog I borrowed these, I've added my own answers. Got any suggestions for more?

You know you are from Western Mass when...

You're driving 75 on 91 and the idiot from Connecticut behind you is
flashing his lights to pass.

Locals may remember when the problem of out-of-staters trying to get through Massachusetts as fast as they could on the way to skiing in Vermont contributed to some serious accidents on Route 91 near Greenfield, where road construction was causing confusion at the time.

The fact that Routes 5 and 10 are basically the same doesn't confuse you.

This does confuse me, but I don't drive a lot.

You are not afraid of the East Longmeadow rotary.
I'm afraid of all rotaries -- and the "Chicopee curve" on Route 91.

You actually stop for pedestrians in crosswalks....at least in
Northampton.

Yes. And UMass.

You know how to pronounce the names of towns like Bernardston, Athol,
Charlemont, Amherst, Palmer and Holyoke.

Yup.

You have driven to New York State or Brattleboro, Vermont when you
were 18 to buy beer. (Some of us made this trip much younger!)

No. The drinking age was 18 when I was that age.

You know that the "Calvin Coolidge" is a bridge.
Connecting Hadley and Northampton.

You know what they sell at "packies."

Beer!

You prayed that the Patriots would move to Hartford.

Somehow, I never got sucked into the sports culture.

You laugh at all of the other New England states, especially Connecticut.

I don't quite get this one.

You know at least one American Legion (or Polish Club) where you can get served after last call.

Never frequented the places.

You can't comprehend how anyone can find their way around Boston.

Don't much care for the place.

You have gone to at least one party at UMass.

I live a block away but I don't get around to many parties.

You give directions by always referring to where places used to be,
i.e., "It's in West Springfield across from where Abdow's used to be."

I'm from Pittsfield.

Colleges are used as landmarks for direction, i.e., "From Mt. Holyoke go past Hampshire College until you reach Amherst. Go straight through the lights to UMass."

I can see how this would be useful.

You believe that Bobby Orr is the greatest athlete that ever lived.

No.

You know at least one guy named Stan, Rene, or Sully.

Definitely.

You know that all directions for getting to Westfield start with
"You go to the Purple Onion.....".

I've only been to Westfield once that I can remember.

You laughed at the kids down south because they never get snow days.

I was never aware of kids down south.

You truly believe that the Memorial Bridge reconstruction project
was the biggest traffic nightmare this state has ever seen.

Doesn't ring a bell.

You know that the Honeypot is a section of Hadley, not a serving
container.

No.

You have never been to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

True. I had never been to the Norman Rockwell Museum either and I used to work at the Red Lion Inn.

You cried when they closed Mountain Park. (It's closed?)

Not exactly but it was definitely a landmark in my imagination.

You know where Ware is.

Yup. Been there.

You know that there is a bigger difference between Longmeadow and
East Longmeadow than just a compass direction.

I gather that East Longmeadow is much more upscale?

When someone from the Eastern portion of the state calls UMass,
"ZooMass" and you take it as a compliment.

No.

You know that people who call Northampton, "NoHo" are not from 'Hamp'.

Hamp is for old-timers and people who identify with the working class aspect of the city and NoHo is for newcomers.

You're happy the Red Sox won the world series in your lifetime to
get even with all of the Yankee fans that you have to work with.

I could -- or couldn't -- care less about baseball.

You know that springtime means fresh native asparagus.

Right.

You know that a "T" is something you wear, not ride to work on.

Or a T-bar at Bousquet's Ski Area.

You take your life in your own hands crossing any local bridge
because all of the state's highway funding has been diverted to the Big Dig.

I guess.

You know that Hadley is where the buffalo roam, and that it is next
to the People's Republic of Amherst.

Yes.

You are proud to drink Northampton Ale and think that the rest of
New England (or the world) owes The Brewery a debt of gratitude for
inventing the micro-brew pub.

Who put this one in?

You think St. Patrick's Day is better than Christmas and you know
where the world's second largest St. Patty's Day parade is held (hint:
NOT Boston).

Holyoke is the answer.

You go to the Berkshires, instead of "down the Cape."

Yes.

You know that the best Italian pizza joints are all owned by Greeks.

What about Antonio's in Amherst?

You went to Old Sturbridge Village, Old Deerfield (or both) on a
grammar school field trip.

Sturbridge Village.

You know that Wilbraham is the home of Friendly's.

Thanks to the landscaped Friendly's sign you see from the highway.

You actually believe that the Oxbow Marina is "The Boat Mall of the
Northeast."

Never heard this.

You know that Westhampton is a drytown.

What?

You know where the town of Enfield, MA is located.

Underwater, right?

You know that the Pike is free from Ludlow to New York.

Yes.

You know that Ludlow is 90% Portuguese and Hadley is 90% Polish.

I think 90 percent could be high.

You know at least one person who works at Yankee Candle and can get you a discount!

I'd rather just enjoy the exhibits around Christmastime.

You know that the potholes in Shelburne Falls are not in the roads.

One of the very top western Mass. destinations!

If the restroom in your elementary school was called "the basement," even if it was on the 3rd floor.

Good one!

You used to read the Valley Advocate.

Yeah.

You remember Riverside Amusement Park.

I remember hearing about it. Where was it?

You've snuck into the Exposition

What?

Arlo Guthrie is your neighbor.

Yeah.

You've been snowed on in Goshen...in June.

Something like this.

You avoid "The Flats

Not if you participate in the annual Holyoke St. Patrick's Day 10K road race.

You're glad you live in Western MA.

Yes.
Hester guarding the groundhog's hole leading under the porch.

California snorkeling etc

2010-06-08T13:37:00.006-04:00

I'm in a race against time! I'm in an airplane and I've bought wifi service for $9.95 but my battery is so low -- d'oh! -- I must cut to the chase.

I've been visiting my daughter Ana in Los Angeles, where we went to the Olympic Korean spa, two great thrift shops, ate at French, Cuban and Italian restaurants and took the Catalina Express to Catalina Island, a place I highly recommend. Here's Ana sitting by one of the two harbors.

With the other one, it is known as Two Harbors, a tiny community on the less populated side of the island. Brian and I first visited the more populated side known as Avalon several years ago and since then Catalina has been one of my favorite destinations.

I've been regaling my Facebook friends with tales of Ana's and my exploits snorkeling there, but if you haven't read about it there, we saw a sea hare, octopus, maybe a leopard shark, a HUGE school of mackerel, which consisted of thousands if not millions of glistening fish swimming around like they were in a ballet (I saw an IMAX film about these huge groups of mackerel to which I would link if I didn't only have 8 percent of my battery power left.), lots of Garabaldi, the California state fish -- and a sea lion swam right up to us and scared us!
Here we are hiking the next day after our underwater adventure. Suffice it to say as my battery power runs down, we got back to Los Angeles no worse for our close encounter with the sea lion and went to the Korean spa, a wonderful tradition I've written about before in which you walk around naked amid lots of saunas and several different kinds of soaking pools; and if you opt for a scrub, a Korean woman in a utilitarian black bikini rubs you very hard with a rough cloth, until your skin feels as soft as putty.

That and some wonderful food and fun in thrift shops were the highlights of my California vacation.

The end.
By Mary Carey

Excercise and blogging etc.

2010-05-25T18:32:00.013-04:00

Brian on one of the Amherst College Sanctuary trails. We discovered that the trails meander around and cross the Norwottuck Rail Trail, where we like to run. These sanctuary trails make our 4 -5 mile jogs more varied, although I should mention that I haven't been running as much lately.

Poppy attack

Now, I'm into Body Step, Body Pump and Zumba, three of the group exercise classes at the Leading Edge gym, which is less than a swimming pool's length from our back door. Every time I try a new approach to exercise and/or dieting, I think it's THE ONE, but I've learned more from and have stayed enthusiastic about these classes than I have with anything other than running and swimming.

Among other things I've tried were Body for Life, a program I understood poorly but which convinced me of the merits of interval training; the South Beach diet, through which I learned how carbohydrates affect your appetite and The Body Tailor, personal trainers who worked in the same building as I did on University Drive. They got me thinking more about the importance of weight training.

I only discovered recently, though, how shockingly little I knew about which muscles are where, good nutrition and other highly relevant information, when I studied for -- and passed (!) -- the written and practical exams for group exercise fitness instructor certification.
ANYway, I'm pretty sure there is a correlation between walking/running or otherwise observing the world at a pace more slowly than is done in a car -- and blogging, which I've been doing less of lately too. And so I've been out of the loop with respect to the (interesting) tomfoolery concerning whether elected public officials should have blogs, a discussion avidly reported by Only in the Republic of Amherst Larry Kelley.
Someone protesting Larry and his blog at a July 4 parade a few years back

Various school committee officials have sought advice from the district attorney about whether a local school committee member's blog (Catherine Sanderson's) violates the Open Meeting Law. It stipulates that a quorum of members of an elected body may not meet outside public view to discuss substantive matters except under certain circumstances -- to discuss a lawsuit, for instance.

The letter writers fear that a quorum of school committee members could be discussing something substantive on her blog and the public wouldn't realize it, because the school committee members could be posting anonymously or under pseudonyms only they recognize.

Me, trying to follow Catherines instructions.

(She teaches a group exercise class at Leading Edge.)

I guess they COULD do that -- carry on a discussion under pseudonyms -- cleverly placing their comments amid those by unwitting blogreaders, reaching decisions and then quickly enacting them in public view without further discussion. It seems like it would be more trouble than it's worth, though, and I think clever blog readers would be able to figure out what was going on pretty easily. Plus, the comments probably could be traced back to the scheming public officials' IP addresses.

In any case, I'll be interested to see how it pans -- or peters -- out.

Hester!

Day trips

2010-05-10T22:14:00.012-04:00

A rare virtual sighting of my son Nicky, who belongs to a new generation of young people who are very careful posting information online. (My daughter Ana, who lives in Los Angeles, is more inclined to post photos and enjoy looking at other people's photos, like I am.)

In the spirit of Mothers Day, Nicky said I could post this pic of us at People's Pint, my choice for a Mothers Day dinner.

Earlier in the day, my brother Billy headed back to Washington D.C. on the to-be-discontinued Amtrak train that stops in Amherst, after a week-long visit. Among other destinations, we went back to Pittsfield, our hometown.

My mom's and dad's grave in St. Joseph's Cemetery in Pittsfield, with one of my dad's favorite Latin expressions on it, "Ad astra" (to the stars). We were surprised to see this smaller marker near it, apparently placed by a veterans organization -- or maybe the United States government?
We visited the grave with our Russian friend Ella and then had lunch at JAE'S Spice, a new incarnation of the former Spice restaurant on North Street, in Pittsfield. JAE'S Spice is jointly run, I learned, by the former Spice owners and Korean restaurateur Jae Chung and features Japanese/Korean/Thai/American fusion cuisine. Ella and I got the teriyaki lunchbox, which included some delicious beet salad, a green papaya slaw (I think that's what it was), miso soup, an eggroll and potato salad, among other things. The dessert, a lemon mousse cake, was also delicious. Thumbs up!
On Thursday, we spent the day with our sister Maureen and her adorable family in New York State.
Evangeline is one of the smiliest seven-month-olds around.
Then, it was on to South Kent, Connecticut, where we had lunch at the very good Fife'n Drum with our Uncle Al and Aunt Barbara.

In Kent, we visited the grave of our late beloved aunt, also named Barbara, in Sacred Heart Cemetery. I love this giant chicken marking someone's grave there.
All aboard!

A step back in time at Strawberry Banke

2010-05-02T13:16:00.022-04:00

Brian and I went on a mini-vacation to Portsmouth, N. H., a locale Brian picked because he wanted to tour a bio-mass plant there. Portsmouth is really a fabulous place, with a population of only about 20,000; cheek-to-jowl with Kittery, Maine and with a bustling downtown and nightlife.

We were not able to visit the plant this time, but we stayed at a great place, the Portsmouth Harbor Inn and Spa, which is actually in Kittery; went to two breweries, Red Hook and Portsmouth (run by the people who originally opened the Northampton Brewery) and -- my favorite thing -- visited Strawberry Banke, a "living museum" of Portsmouth history.

The museum, which is comparable, I guess to Sturbridge Village, a destination I haven't visited since I was in sixth grade, consists of 42 buildings, most of them homes on their original foundations and in various stages of being restored to their original look. They range in period from the mid-1600's to the mid-1950's, the latter being MY favorite era.

I like antiques and ye olde stuff, but I really like vintage stuff, such as Depression-era glass and other 50's furniture and dishware, including items that are on the edge of transformation from being just old and dated-looking to retro. So Strawberry Banke was a little slice of retro heaven!

We had an excellent, no-nonsense tour guide named Polly who showed us around and then left the group to their own devices. There were role-players in period dress, including this lady outside the 40's-era corner store.

There was a Victory garden and a great exhibit of posters promoting home vegetable gardens and running a tight ship at home as being patriotic in war time. (I thought I would annotate the following suggestions for women the way my blogging mentor Tom Devine annotates stuff over at his blog.)

I don't know if I'm THAT kind of wife, but I'm TRYing.

I think I failed to sense Ana's and Nicky's shock at various things and now they're both huge horror movie buffs.

I would have to say I'm unfailingly polite to service people having been a waitress myself.

I'm all about ATTRACTIVE leftovers.

I usually avoid cooking things that have drippings, except for bacon in the microwave. Can you believe they used to save the drippings for use in weapon-making? That's what they mean by "the dealer" here.

Joining whole-heartedly in some community projects is on my to-do list.

No comment.

There was also a wonderful Victorian children's garden with beautiful little details like this tiny mermaid.

I liked how some things looked a little bit unkempt and also how some of the exhibits throughout the grounds said "please touch." Strawberry Banke, I salute you!

Me and Dad in Jersey City.

Springtime in Amherst (and beyond)

2010-04-25T23:15:00.011-04:00

Phyllis Lehrer at the Farmers Market, which is back in business for the summer.
Brian and I spent a couple of days in Martha's Vineyard, where neither of us had ever been despite me being a Massachusetts native. It's quite a sleepy place off-season.
The most interesting thing about the fabled island, I thought, is the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association, a centuries-old neighborhood established by Methodists in Oak Bluffs.
You have to walk your bikes among the many charming gingerbread-style houses.
Main Street, Edgartown.

We had a great pair of visitors to journalism class seen here with Eddie, one of the students -- Mary Serreze, my former co-worker, now the publisher of Northampton Media and web developer April Francis. You can read about them at the class blog.

A most beautiful time of year.

My nephew Matt caught a fish!
Hester in the sun.

Easter 2010 assorted photos

2010-04-04T22:44:00.008-04:00

Cal Strong, my cousin Dave's father-in-law and a former Mr. Connecticut, photo courtesy Dave's wife Shannon Strong, a champion "lumberjill."

Love this photo from a wonderful collection on Flickr posted by one one of my Facebook friends today.

And this one from the same collection.

Last summer's backyard bunny.

Another tale of turning 50

2010-04-02T21:24:00.013-04:00

My brother Billy turns 2 in 1962.

Forty-eight years later, five of six Carey siblings gathered at the Gideon Putnam Hotel, in Saratoga Springs to celebrate Billy turning 50. Here he is with the youngest two partygoers, our niece Evangeline and nephew Matt. It was a good choice of a place, since we all love water and water really is the focus of many of the hotels there. Most of us signed up for the therapeutic baths, in which you sit in your own deep tub of effervescent green mineral water in a 1930's-era clinical-style room for 40 minutes. It goes by fast! Then you can take a eucalyptus sauna and nap in the relaxation room.

You can also drink some of the effervescent mineral water. It tastes like medicine, but I can imagine you could get to like it with some lemon.

The Gideon Putnam, a Historic Hotel of America, is an elegant place and the grounds, which are part of a state park, are impressive, the only problem we encountered was that the hotel was hosting a crowded convention of the New York Press Association. the trade organization for weekly community newspapers in the state. There were reporters everywhere and hardly anywhere to sit and eat breakfast. As Billy used to work at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield and I was at the Daily Hampshire Gazette for 15 years, we felt a sense of kinship with our fellow scribes. I wondered whether the humble looking reporters recognized that I until recently was one of them.

We had dinner at a Saratoga neighborhood Indian restaurant, which was excellent.

Billy and Lena.

Forty-eight years later.

A promise I made in Sicily

2010-03-24T12:17:00.017-04:00

Some of the UMass students at Segesta, one of the Greek temples we visited on our 10-day trip to Sicily. With its rolling hills, steep cliffs, varied architecture and above all its warm people, it really exceeded my expectations. And the students were model travelers. I learned from looking at their photos that you really do get better shots if you're bold and friendly -- and have a high-powered camera.

From our passionate tourguide Rosa -- Sorry, this photo of her with me at a Greek theater in Taormina at the base of Mount Etna doesn't capture her beauty or style --I learned that Sicily is the sixth biggest island in the world, with a population of about 6 million and that it was conquered by many peoples from the ancient Greeks and Romans, Arabs and some group called the Swabian, to name a few. Lemons, limes, almonds, olives and other crops grow well in the Mount Etna lava-enriched soil and agriculture is its main industry.
I saw that the beautiful landscape is dotted all over with energy-producing windmills. Rosa said there has been no opposition to them.
I learned how to brine green olives and that black olives are the same olives but are mature and sundried with salt. The green olives you put in a jar with 2 parts water, 1 part salt, garlic, lemon and orange and wild fennel and tamp them down with a coiled young olive branch; seal the jar and store them till green mold begins developing on the branch.

I met some of the friendliest people ever in the mountainous town of Castelbuono, where sanitation workers lead donkeys down the narrow cobblestone streets to collect the garbage and manna grows on trees.

Vincenzo, a Castelbuono shopkeeper, eating dried manna, a maple sugar-like sweet made from the sap of Sicilian ash trees. It's reputed to aid with digestion and help you lose weight!

I did a lot of other things, but the most fun of all was accompanying Rosa, seen here, to Semplicemente Donna, a hair salon in Giardini Naxos. Salvo Mandracchia, the maestro, doesn't ask clients what kind of hairstyle they have in mind, he tells them what kind they need. Both he and Rosa agreed I needed a cut and color.

The last thing I did in Sicily was give Rosa my word that I will never go gray again. D'oh!

Greetings from Sicily

2010-03-17T17:13:00.006-04:00

I'm in Sicily with the annual UMass- Hartford Art School painting, writing and photography class. There are 44 people altogether in our group and we're traveling all around the island on a bus which has been quite an unusual experience for me. The scenery is spectacular, the people are friendly -- Rosa, our vivacious Sicilian tour guide compared it to the "deep, deep South" -- the desserts are spectacular. More later!

Our guide Rosa and students Sahar and Sarah at dinner. The students are making the most of the trip!

Mario, our bus driver, who knows a lot about native plants picks some wild fennel.

Mario driving the bus.

Some memories

2010-02-22T19:01:00.018-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about Maia McDermott, who died in a one-car crash Saturday night in Boylston. She was in my journalism class for two semesters and really stood out as a student who reached out to form a personal connection with other students and with me.

When I think of her, I see her sitting in the computer lab with a couple of other girls in the class working on assignments for the class blog and seemingly having fun doing it. Here's a snippet from one of their posts offering a charming window on UMass:

"All the North Face ladies, all the North Face ladies, now put your hands up.

It’s been said over and over again: girls at UMASS all dress the same. Zipped-up North Face fleeces warm every cold neck. Fur-filled Ugg boots are slipped over every pair of socks. And thin, black, spandex pants cover every set of legs. From head to toe it’s all the same.

Well, so what?

To all of you North Face haters out there, have you ever tried on a fleece jacket? Aside from their fashionableness, they are actually downright practical. For one, they are undeniably comfortable. There is no lining on the inside to prevent the warm fleece from touching your body and the waist and wrists bands are elastic to they keep out the wind. A fleece is light enough for spring days, yet most girls buy theirs large enough to fit additional clothing underneath for cooler days.

Uggs, a girl’s best friend. Sure they can be a little pricey, but you get more for your dollar. Not only are they warm, comfortable and durable, but they are very versatile. Ugg boots, with their variety of colors and designs, are among the few types of footwear that girls at UMASS would wear to class as well as on a Friday or Saturday night.

And now, spandex pants. Light and airy, spandex provides physical comfort. They do not cut you off at the waist, nor do they tear from dragging on the ground. Also, they too are multipurpose. You can wear them to the gym, to class, to bed and even out to a party. Oh, and don’t forget, they fit nicely into those lovely little Ugg boots."

Maia worked really hard on her pieces, submitting them with revisions more times than was required. She was warm and welcoming to tentative students. I know she juggled a full schedule, as I often saw her working at Arizona Pizza with her characteristic smile and bubbly, earnest presence.

Here's a quite canny paragraph she wrote about her hometown of Clinton.

By 2009, the population is just shy of 15,000 citizens. Which may seem like alot, but the experience of walking down will make you think differently. Halfof the town is related one another, more than half of the town are Clintonians, which is defined by having at least three generations raised in Clinton. Eventhough it is a very active, condensed town and seems to have the personality of a mini city, the people treat it as if it is a farm town with three families in it. Almost everyone knows more than half of the town which can both beneficial and not.

I wish her family well.

From one of the collections in the many vintage and antique hutches at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge.

Brian and I won an overnight stay there in a silent auction at an Amherst Cinema fundraiser last year headlined by Kathleen Turner. I was a waitress for several months at the Red Lion after graduating from college in 1979, but I had never gotten very far beyond the dining room and kitchen. It's really a treasure of a hotel with an amazing collection of old china, antique furniture and local memorabilia. There's also a resident cat named Simon, who I looked for but couldn't find. I highly recommend checking the hotel out.

Red Lion Inn (on right) as depicted by Norman Rockwell.
Little lady collection.
The mini-chair collection.
Our charming bedroom.
Year-round heated pool and hot tub as seen from our window.
An elf in the hot tub.
Speaking of blasts from the past, Brian and I went to see David Bromberg at the Iron Horse last night. Here's a little video I took of him singing an old class, "I Won't Be Your Fool No More." I love how during his improvisation along the lines of how hell will have frozen over before he plays the fool again, he says, Congress will have passed the "goddam health" bill before he'll be the fool again. It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0uWchJSFzs

Sylvester's peanut butter hot chocolate

2010-02-10T18:27:00.007-05:00

The future of journalism

2010-02-01T19:22:00.011-05:00

I turned around at the end of a talk I attended with my journalism class today, and I saw this inspiring scene -- the students interviewing each other so they can write about audience members' reaction to it.

I hope they found the talk by John Nichols and Robert McChesney as rousing as I did. The two are co-founders of Free Press, a Northampton- and Washington D.C.- based pro-democracy organization, and authors of the new book "The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again."

Their premise is that journalism that helps citizens govern themselves is a "public good" that should be subsidized with our tax dollars -- just like it traditionally had been when the Founding Fathers were around and is now in many other countries considered relative bastions of democracy. (Here, advertisers had underwritten the news for the last 150 years or so, but, these days, they're taking their message directly to their target audience -- on Facebook, for instance.)

A typical reaction to McChesney's and Nichols' argument is that government subsidies will inevitably lead to "Pol Pot, death camps and gulags." But, in fact, before the emergence of advertiser-subsidized news, the Post Office underwrote the news by distributing it for free. If the federal government similarly funded journalism now the way it did in the 1840's, it would amount to $30 billion a year.

In McChesney's and Nichols' view, all the other ideas floated for underwriting serious reporting -- paywalls, NPR-style fundraising etc. -- will only get us to the "10 yard line -- and it's the wrong 10 yard line."

Some of their ideas:

-- Journalism doesn't have to be "for profit."

-- There could be an Americorps for reporters graduating from college much as there is one for teachers

-- Dramatically expand funding for public local media, which are already reporting the news to the extent they can on shoestring budgets.

--Increase funding for student media.
Brian pointed out this barred owl when we were running on the Norwottuck Rail Trail recently.
A lot has happened since I posted to AboutAmherst last. For one, Republican Scott Brown was elected to succeed Ted Kennedy as our U.S. senator. I'm promoting Matt Damon on my Facebook page to run against Brown in 2012 when Kennedy's term would have ended. I'm hearing that people would like Matt to campaign door-to-door and pledge to work to make robo-calls illegal.
In other news, I am training to become a fitness instructor -- Well, it doesn't look like I'm going to get a reporter's job, until McChesney and Nichols convince the country that news is a public good worth spending our tax dollars on, does it? And my siblings have been sending me some great photos of my nieces. Here's Olivia, of Fort Lauderdale.
And Evangeline, the queen of make-believe.

Note to Martha

2010-01-18T15:21:00.007-05:00

Mitt Romney (right) and son frolicking on a dock in the 2002 campaign commercial called "Ann," after his wife. It was an effective commercial that introduced Romney and his good looking family to Massachusetts. I thought it was hilarious and kind of exhilarating, actually, that he could be seen in his bathing suit in the ad. Romney went on that year to beat the Democratic contender, Shannon O'Brien from Easthampton, who I, a political reporter at the Daily Hampshire Gazette at the time, was convinced would win.

Shannon, who was state treasurer at the time, was very charismatic and down to earth. She grew up in a political family and her father Ed was one of the most supportive and nicest people I ever interviewed. I covered Shannon's victory party when she was elected state treasurer and I remember Ted and Vicky Kennedy sitting on the stage with her and that the two of them were SO bubbly and clearly excited about her winning.

I mention it now, because Massachusetts is in the political spotlight now, according to the New York Times, because another western Massachusetts Democrat appears to be struggling, Martha Coakley who is running to fill Ted Kennedy's United States Senate seat. Coincidentally, as I write, I just got an automated call from Vicky Kennedy in support of Coakley. I and many, many people have complained that we've gotten TOO many such calls about this election. I, for one, will always be interested in hearing from Vicky Kennedy. I'm NOT so much interested in hearing from all the other people who I've gotten robocalls from and who I've never even heard of!

Just an observation: We've noticed that Coakley's advertisements have not been very personal and have not humanized her the way Romney's did him. She's from my neck of the Massachusetts woods, but I don't even know if she's married, has kids, any hobbies or anything that would make me feel connected to her other than that she obviously shares some of my values.

My sister Maureen and her baby Evangeline. We need to see Martha holding a baby! And, Martha, can you put a stop to the robocalls?

Washington D.C. -Baltimore- Philadelphia

2010-01-08T12:48:00.027-05:00

Anemones at the Baltimore Aquarium, a place I highly recommend. Brian and I visited Wednesday, as part of our 5-day-long trip to Washington D.C. and back. We were going to drive cross-country but scaled back to Washington-Baltimore-Philadelphia. It turned out to be an inadvertently water-themed trip.

First stop: Washington, D.C., to visit my brother Bill and wife Lena (seen here). We had a therapeutic sauna in the basement of their condominium complex then visited the National Museum of Natural History, so Brian could finally experience the insect zoo there, a stop I had been instrumental in seeing that we avoided on past trips to D.C. There we saw a 3-D movie about the Wild Coast of South Africa, where huge schools of swimming sardines attract all sorts of ocean and terrestrial, that is to say human, predators.

Billy and Brian at the insect zoo.

The museum is full of skeletons, ranging from tiny in size to huge.

And the famous Hope Diamond is there.

Then, using our new GPS, we went to Baltimore to see my friend Ellie, who I met in Thailand this summer. She spent another five months traveling around Asia before staying with her father in Maryland for a month. Next, she's thinking of joining the Peace Corps! But before she's off to her next adventure, we went to the Baltimore Aquarium and then to lunch, where she showed a couple of inlanders how to eat oysters. (I was a wimp and declined to actually eat them, although I paid close attention in case I ever do.)

There's a small, enchanting exhibit at the aquarium now called Jellies Invasion, featuring beautiful, translucent jellyfish in dramatically lit tanks. After we toured the aquarium, which includes a wonderful arboretum on the top floor, we watched a dolphin show and a 4-D movie with special effects like wind, splashes of water and something that felt like beans hitting your feet.

Late afternoon in downtown Baltimore. Next stop: Philadelphia.

Philadelphia City Hall, topped off by William Penn, the city's founder.

We went to the
Reading Terminal Market, a very good example of an indoors farmers market, which we like to visit wherever we go.

Turduckens for sale.

Pretty produce.

Brian got his shoes shined -- just $3 -- then we decided to take a 90 minute-bus tour for $25 each -- We got the "senior discount" -- Oh God, we're in our early 50's!

We learned that our vivacious tour guide Aaron grew up in Queens, used to have a girlfriend in Pelham and is going to library science school in Philadelphia.

Patti Labelle mural in the neighborhood she grew up in. Aaron told us the world class mural arts program in Philadelphia was started to help counter graffiti and that graffiti artists caught in the act are pressed into service painting the murals of which there are some 3,000 or more!

Neighborhood mural.

Mural detail.

Another mural detail.

We discovered The Latham Hotel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, by reading a travel book in one of the stores at a Jersey Turnpike rest stop. It was an extremely unassuming place with great amenities for $118 a night plus taxes. Sadly for me, it didn't tout any of its amenities, so while we discovered the free wireless access I didn't realize there was a beautiful fitness center full of windows until it was too late to work out. D'oh!

I imagine this dresser would be in the Federal style what with the golden eagle.

The view standing across the street from The Latham looking left.

Continuing the water theme, we tried the signature waterwheel-shaped dessert at Water Works restaurant in the old waterworks on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. Afterwards we visited the water works museum below, which reminded me of going to the fish elevator in Holyoke which is open to the public every Mother's Day through Father's Day.
We learned in Philadelphia, by the way, that the former was the invention of Anna Jarvis, of the City of Brotherly Love, who swore at her mother's grave in 1905 that she would create a day to honor mothers, living and dead.
Next stop: Amherst!

Holiday tales

2009-12-26T16:54:00.012-05:00

Christmas night we went to see "Avatar" in 3D at Cinemark in Hadley. Trouble is, if your vision is not 100 percent, the glasses may not work, we discovered. Nicky, who hasn't filled his new glasses prescription, and Brian couldn't see the 3D effects. I'd have to give "Avatar" a thumbs up, although I usually don't like fantasy or action movies. The 3D forest scenes are enchanting.

Christmas Eve with friends before we did a little salsa dancing.

Lucy, our instructor, (seen here) teaches salsa on Tuesdays at Dance Northampton.

Who's that under the tree?

Paul and many other people, no doubt, got a Snuggy.

Tiger Woods walking through the tall grass at Chicago O'Hare on our long journey home from Boise. The pre-holiday snowstorm closed Dulles International Airport in D.C. where we were to have flown on Saturday. Happy holidays all!

Greetings from Colorado

2009-12-20T13:45:00.007-05:00

We're wrapping up our trip to Boise -- I think -- in a few hours, when we fly out of Denver, where we've been since Saturday. Many eastbound passengers like us have had to make other arrangements after Dulles airport, where we were headed, and others closed due to snow. Luckily for us, Brian's childhood friend Jeff Jefferson and wife Carol live outside Denver with their Newfoundland dog and three cats.

We ate Carol's outstanding holiday food and visited the Rocky Mountains, where we saw the Stanley Hotel, in Estes Park, the inspiration for Stephen King's "The Shining." The classic Stanley Kubrick version of the movie was shot at a different hotel the Timberline lodge in Mount Hood, Oregon in 1980, but King didn't approve of it and produced a 1996 version set at the Stanley Hotel.

Before leaving Boise, we had met up with Dan Guild, a longtime family friend from Pittsfield, who owns a great pizzeria called Casanova. I highly recommend it if you're ever in Boise. We got the Idahoan, which has sausage, hot peppers and potatoes and another pizza with figs, blue cheese and pineapple.

Dan said a lot of Easterners come into Casanova, including Billy Buckner, a former pro baseball player. According to Wikipedia, Buckner's playing career "lasted over twenty years and he accumulated over 2,700 career hits. However, despite his productive career, he has gained infamy for his crucial fielding error during Game Six of the 1986 World Series, a play that has since been prominently entrenched into American sports lore."
I wonder if Tiger Woods will similarly be remembered for his Thanksgiving fender bender and what happened next.
Isn't this a cute gargoyle-in-a-suitcase in the Denver airport?

Not quite lost in Boise

2009-12-17T23:24:00.001-05:00

Brian and I went for a hike in back of my brother's house in Boise today. It was about 36 degrees and sunny.

Brian did some bird watching along the way and saw some goldfinches, magpies and a kestrel.

When we got to the top of the hill, Table Rock, where a large cross looks over Boise, fog started rising up from the valley.

It made for some otherworldly scenery.

And then the sun started to set and we couldn't see the trail. We joked about some movies we have seen about people getting lost. The one that is never far from my mind at times like these is "Blair Witch Project" about the would-be filmmakers who get horribly lost in the woods and end up walking in circles for days.

We also discussed "Open Water," about the couple who get left behind on a group snorkeling trip. The boyfriend makes a few bad choices and let's just say things don't end well. And of course "Gerry," by my favorite director Gus Van Sant, about two friends who get lost hiking in the desert, although they're only a few hundred yards from their car at the (bitter) end.
Long story short, Brian and I got back to Mike's house without too much ado.

We're visiting Mike's family, including the most recent addition to the extended family, Alanis, seen here with her mom Clare.

More later!

Snow day

2009-12-09T21:12:00.002-05:00

First snow day of the season today.

The snow turned to rain and by the time I went to the last journalism class of the semester, there was thunder and lightning.

Students seemed to be in high spirits.

And our friend Ramari's wife Sabita and son Ruchon have arrived from Nepal. Just in time to enjoy the snow!

Who won the cookies?

2009-12-03T14:41:00.000-05:00

I won Amherst Bulletin columnist Phyllis Lehrer's annual postcard contest for having been the one whose card was sent from the farthest point from the place we don't pronounce the "h." My wonderful trip to Thailand this summer just keeps giving. Here I am with my prized cookies -- seven different kinds -- in front of Town Hall. (You can see my "going gray" hair is really going.)

The day has gone gray too, but it was 66 degrees earlier, as noted on the Amherst Cinema marquee.

An excellent day to eat cookies and read the last batch of papers from journalism class. The semester wraps up next week. And thank God the primary election for U.S. senator to succeed the great Ted Kennedy finally transpires on Tuesday. NEVER have I received so many automated calls -- from the Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano and Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca campaigns. Enough already!!! I'm tempted not to vote at all in protest.

Some Thanksgiving snapshots and the yarsagumba

2009-11-29T13:30:00.003-05:00

This year we were joined by our three Nepalese friends, Bikram, Ganandra and Ramari, who told us some fascinating stories about their homeland, including about the yarsagumba, a combination caterpillar-fungus known as the "Himalayan Viagra," said to cure sciatica and other ailments.

As it says at Weird and Funny World:

"Just earlier to the rainy season, spores of cordyceps fungus infect these Himalayan caterpillars that live on moist grass and hollow soil. After the fungus buries itself in the caterpillar’s body, it works its way out through the insect’s head. The parasite gets the energy from the caterpillar. The fungus parasite gets so much into the body of the caterpillars’ that it drains all the energy from the insect and ultimately it dies."

Back to Thanksgiving. Cora and Zena played classical music and Russian folk songs (at least I think they were) on the organ Brian and company found for free on Craigslist.

We visited my sister Maureen on Saturday.

Evangeline, the Queen of Make Believe (as it says in the Los Lobos song).

Megan and Alina.

My brother Billy and wife Lena.

Journalism class fun etc.

2009-11-19T17:40:00.003-05:00

One of our most engaging guests ever came to journalism class yesterday -- Amherst Police Capt. Jennifer Gundersen. Students barraged her with questions and her answers were way more informative and sometimes entertaining than I expected them to be.
"Great transparency," Julian, our Hampshire College student, commented at one point.
A Westwood, Mass. native, Gundersen said she wanted to be a police officer because she likes to be "in the know on things." She picked Amherst, because she likes interacting with people and she wanted to feel like part of a community, she said. She's been here for about 15 years, having begun when she was 24.
Gundersen is second in command of the department of 45 officers, six of whom are women, or about 10 percent which higher than the East Coast average, she said, but lower than on the West Coast. The homeless are a particular interest of hers and she's trying to get a warming station established in town. She encouraged students to lock their doors and not to drive drunk. Police receive at least one report a day of break-ins, in which the thieves just walked inside and helped themselves to laptop computers and other expensive items. About 140-150 people are arrested for operating under the influence in Amherst every year.
One of the worst experiences for Amherst police is when young people start throwing beer bottles at them when officers approach large, unruly parties, Gundersen said. "Everyone we can put our hands on will probably go to jail," she said, adding, "We do recognize that this is the minority of people who will do something like that."
A surprising thing she told us is that public urination is becoming a problem and it's not just men, anymore. D'oh! I hope this can be nipped in the bud.

Sunderland sky.

I love old-fashioned postcards like this one. I wonder if my siblings would mind if I dressed up my little nieces and nephews and tried to recreate postcards like it.

My newest niece, Alanis, of Boise, Idaho, born Monday!

Rez, the owner of Moti, a new Mideastern restaurant in town, and his dad. I'm going to be writing a review for MassLive next week. In the meantime, I highly recommend the rose-water lemonade!

My favorite vegetable, the romanesco cauliflower, and the state of journalism etc.

2009-11-05T11:14:00.016-05:00

Brian brought my favorite vegetable, the romanesco cauliflower (or broccoli, if you prefer) home from the Hampshire College farm, Tuesday. It was already dark, so I couldn't get a great photo of it. As I suspected, Hester was very interested. I still recall the first time I saw one, a miniature version, in a Korean supermarket in Los Angeles full of similarly bizarre items. Its spirals are said to be a fine example of the Fibonnacci sequence, and/or a fractal form. (See "Fractal Food: Self-Similarity on the Supermarket Shelf")

Close-up

I love it for its looks, but it also tastes delicious -- more refined than broccoli and tastes fresher and greener than cauliflower. I put it in a big pot with about an inch of water and steamed it whole before somewhat reluctantly dismantling it and putting it in a spinach salad.

Steve Fox, the UMass journalism department's go-to multimedia guru came to class yesterday and underscored my own cheerleading about what an exciting, if financially uncertain, time it is for young people to be in journalism these days. "It's not overstating it to say the profession is going through a revolution right now," he told them. As for the big wigs telling everybody else what's news, how to cover it and where to get it, good luck! "The Alpha telling the masses what's important -- that role is gone." The commenter/reader, photographer, videographer are all in it together and teamwork is key, he said. "The era of the lone, crusading journalist has come and gone."
Steve repeated this several times like a mantra: "The death of print does not mean the death of journalism."

The much-anticipated new recreation center at UMass is open, and it looks like it's packed!

As I sit waiting for the penultimate episode of Mad Men, Season 3

2009-11-01T17:50:00.003-05:00

I thought I'd post some pics. Full moon over the Norwottuck Rail trail late this afternoon.

My beautiful sister Maureen and baby Evangeline, born Oct. 13 in a photo by my brother-in-law Marc.

I love this photo by Marc of Meghan, Evangeline and Matt. (I think they're going to call her Angie.)

I sent them a basket with these chocolate mice which have totally captured my imagination although I've never seen them in the, um, flesh.

We went to Tony and Penny's, a Portuguese restaurant in Ludlow, on the recommendation of my blogging friend Tony and this pot of rice with seafood (for about $18) was the largest meal I have ever gotten at any restaurant anywhere -- bar none.

Other people's adventures

2009-10-31T12:37:00.010-04:00

This is my friend Ellie, 49, a world traveler I met on my teaching English as a foreign language course in Thailand, this summer. While I came home after the course ended and am now a volunteer ESL tutor through the Jones Library, many of my classmates went on to exotic locales to teach. When I met Ellie in Thailand, she had just completed an intense, month-long yoga teacher certification course. She's also a registered nurse and had spent a year in Malaysia and a year in England working for a health care-related company. After our ESL course, she traveled to Japan, Taiwan (where she experienced a typhoon) and China and then I lost touch with her for a month when I think she was in India and beyond. Here, she is learning to surf in Bali.
Another friend I met in Thailand is romance writer Sue Swift, 54. Her next stop was China, where she plans to remain until July teaching Kindergarteners. I asked her if she is learning a lot about teaching English as a foreign language and she wrote "I'm learning more about how small children learn than anything else."

I'm plotting to do something adventurous like my role models Ellie and Sue this summer, but I don't know what it will be. Meanwhile, here are some of the last of the fall photos, I suspect. The red, red tree is on Sunset Avenue.
The yellow ones are on Strong Street.
And this is last weekend on the Norwottuck Rail Trail.
Don and Betty Draper of "Mad Men." Tomorrow is Season 3's penultimate episode. Some of the chatterers at the Slate chat group I check in with think it's going to involve the assassination of JFK. In anticipation, my fellow "Mad Men" fans have been recalling where they were when they heard the terrible news. I remember talking about it excitedly at Sacred Heart School, in Pittsfield -- I would have been 6 -- and an anguished nun telling us to stop it.
I see this year's First Night New Year's celebration poster is a view of Northampton by local artist Randall Diehl.

Creature Feature

2009-10-22T15:12:00.007-04:00

Thought a bug and other creature post was in order, as a lot of my Facebook friends and UMass students have been receiving unwanted visits from these Asian ladybugs the past few days. They're known as Halloween bugs, according to About Amherst's entomologist, because this is about the time when they usually descend on people's home looking for a place to hibernate. They're a "minor agricultural pest" in some places, I learned at Wikipedia's excellent Asian ladybug page. I vacuumed up dozens of them a couple of days ago, but this is not advised as they secrete a smelly chemical that can cause the vacuum cleaner to smell. D'oh.

This brazen character was eating all the bird food this morning.

The noyve.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law Marc sent this snake photo yesterday for Brian to ID and Brian in turn, sent it to his friend Bart, a bug and snake man, who said it's No it is definitely a "juvenile black rat snake." Says Bart, "The pattern on the bottom and the keel scales which are barely discernible give it away."

On another note, I had a delicious lunch with Ana's friends Jeff and Carla at Miss Saigon today which I plann to write about soon at MassLive.

Snapshots around town

2009-10-20T22:02:00.007-04:00

Another beautiful day after a freezing cold weekend with snow. I got a video of Hester checking out the snowflakes --on Oct.16! I thought it was quite newsworthy at the time, but it turned out some of the neighboring towns at higher elevations got enough snow to accumulate and they were sledding in some places in New York state. Snapped this photo of the Wildwood pond today and turned it upside down.

Hester checking out the early snowflakes.

Ripples in the pond.

I see a new seafood restaurant is planned downtown. I like the light blue storefront.

Ran into Bill Elsasser today who is still cleaning up the streets. Here is he is front of Jones Library where I met with Bikram of Nepal who told me about a very interesting holiday Hindus observed on Monday: Bhai Dooj, which celebrates the bond between brothers and sisters. Why don't we have a holiday like this?

Two of my three brothers.

Evangeline

2009-10-15T10:16:00.015-04:00

My sister Maureen had a baby early Tuesday morning outside Poughkeepsie in Rip Van Winkle country. I joined the family on Sunday, when she began having labor pains. Here she is at lunch on Sunday with son Matt and daughter Meghan.
Meghan plays with her pony in the playroom.
On Monday, we pick up some Halloween teeth at a gift shop in nearby New Paltz.
Time to go to the hospital that evening.
Maureen hopes it's not too early and she doesn't have to come back. Six hours later she delivers Evangeline. Meghan picked the name in advance inspired by the kind scullery maid played by Kelly MacDonald in the movie "Nanny McPhee."
Evangeline's namesake. Here's what it says about the name at the site ThinkBabyNames.com, which also tracks the popularity of names. Evangeline's heyday seems to have been in the 1920's although it trending upward again.
ev(a)-nge-line\ is pronounced ee-van-ja-LEEN. It is of Greek origin, and its meaning is "good news." From "evangel," the term for the Gospels. Literary: title of a 1848 poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

And of course there is the Los Lobos' song Evangeline, "the queen of make-believe."

While Maureen, husband Marc and Evangeline wind down following the big event at the hospital, Meghan goes off to school and my brother Billy, young Matt and I check out the brand new Hudson River Walkway, the world's tallest pedestrian bridge.
It reminded me a little of the time Brian and I biked over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Then it's off to meet the newest addition to the family.
Evangeline!

Fantastic foliage etc

2009-10-08T21:23:00.013-04:00

I'm still deeply involved in old "Mad Men" episodes, while outside the trees are breaking loose with the whole array of fall colors.

Has anyone noticed, as Brian has, that the weather and the weather people's forecasts of it haven't been a close match lately? We saw this unusual cloud driving "the back way" from Amherst to Northampton Sunday. Yesterday, it was supposed to rain all day and be windy in the afternoon. We did get some wind but it turned sunny instead.

Here's Brian and my former co-workers, garden writer Sherry Wilson and Phyllis Lehrer at the Three County Fairgrounds in Northampton, where the annual celebration of local agriculture called "Eat the View" was held Friday night. It's a fundraiser for the group Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), which Brian helped get off the ground by co-writing a successful application for a W. K. Kellogg Foundation grant in 1993. CISA has made quite an impact with its Support a Local Hero campaign promoting local farmers.

Now, Brian is going to help me write about our adventures eating out for a MassLive blog. I posted my first entry today in which I ask people to recommend restaurants for us to visit so I can write about it. Let me know if you think of anything!

Wildwood pond.

A classic fall day.

Strong Street

Phyllis retires

2009-10-01T19:50:00.012-04:00

Me, Judy Harris, the incomparable Phyllis Lehrer and Bonnie Wells at a gathering at the Amherst Bulletin office on University Drive in honor of Phyllis's retirement from the Bulletin and Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Phyllis, who turns 69 this month, is a legend in Amherst, where she's been a fixture at and has documented just about every major event you can think of. I don't know how many hundreds of people she has profiled in her weekly "Page 2er" over the years or how many births, birthdays, deaths, graduations and other milestones she's noted in her popular column, "The Lehrer Report," which she'll continue to write. (I aspire to be this year's winner of a generous batch of homemade cookies for having sent her a postcard from the farthest point from Amherst. Thailand, where I went this summer is almost as far as you can get from here, Phyllis.)

Tons of people turned out to wish Phyllis well. Here, publisher Jim Foudy is standing in her cubicle.

Phyllis has been a mentor for me not only because I admired the no-nonsense, impartial way she covered a story, but also because of the way she has been such a stalwart of the community. She belongs to the League of Women Voters, where she got her start in journalism reporting on meetings. She's a member of the Amherst Club, the Thursday Club (I had never heard of it either until she told me about the South Amherst club a while ago) and three book groups! She's a St. Brigid's communicant, a Sunset Farm farmer, who sells produce at the Amherst Farmers Market; a regular theater and concert goer and who knows what else.

Everywhere you go with Phyllis, somebody knows her.

But the thing that really makes her like no one else is the way she always saves some of the cookies or brownies or whatever other refreshments are available wherever she goes to share with everyone back at the office, especially Scott Merzbach, the Bulletin's beloved Amherst police reporter.

I'm pretty sure that's not going to stop.

The field I used to walk through to get to work and where I'd sometimes see Phyllis picking vegetables for the farmers market.
It's that beautiful time of year again.

Snapshots of Amherst's 250th anniversary parade

2009-09-27T19:54:00.024-04:00

My former co-worker Phyllis Lehrer who retires from the Daily Hampshire Gazette this week after some 30 years! Here she is representing Amherst's agricultural past and present.
It wasn't the greatest weather for a parade, but it wasn't too bad either, although it seems the rain may have prevented the vaunted Budweiser Clydesdale horses from running through town.

Select Board and town float

Don't we have a great chairwoman of the Select Board?

Select Board members marching.

Amherst swimmers

I love old cars.

There were tons of farm implements, a staple of Amherst parades.

I never knew Robin could walk on stilts!

A cute train with kids in customized barrels. I guess some of the kids dropped out before they got to the center of town.

Mr. Minuteman, the UMass mascot.

An out-of-town contingent from Lincoln, I think. Waltham was there too.

Lots and lots of candy was exchanged!

Selectwoman Alisa Brewer

Daily Hampshire Gazette photographer Kevin Gutting took this photo of Brian and me. I love Kevin's photography.

UMass students Mark and Sara.

Amherst icons "Mr. Baseball" Stan Ziomek and Steve Puffer.

Amherst's animal welfare officer, Carol Hepburn and her little pony.

U.S. Rep. John Olver

A sweet float.

Anthony!

2009-09-22T10:21:00.014-04:00

Sacred Heart School's sixth grade class of 1969, Pittsfield.

Amherst celebrates its 250th birthday with an-all-stops-pulled-out parade tomorrow, beginning at 1 p.m. in front of Amherst College. I'd be there, even if the Budweiser Clydesdale horses weren't part of the lineup. I've seen them racing through Galveston, Texas in a parade and it was spectacular, although the idea of them galloping down the streets of Amherst makes me nervous.
It promises to be an eventful weekend, as the Red Sox are playing their chief nemeses, the Yankees, which never fails to make baseball fans edgy around here. Parents of UMass students got an email with a pretty good description of what can happen. "Most students do not actively engage in destructive behavior," it reads, in part, "but it is common for students to gather at the scene and watch as their peers endanger others and destroy University property. Unfortunately, students who are 'just standing around' are actively contributing to the problem: their presence provides an audience which spurs on the aggressive action by their peers, and this congregating impedes the efforts of law enforcement to protect students and the property of the Commonwealth." Here's hoping everyone stays mellow.
I didn't wait for the parade to take a trip down memory lane. I've been immersed in the past ever since Brian got me the first season of the TV show Mad Men for my birthday last week.

The eldest three of six Carey siblings in Waltham Sunday.

And the same three of us, in the same order, with Eddie, who came next, looking on.
Now in its third season, Mad Men, for those who haven't seen it, is a mesmerizing drama set in 1960, the year John F. Kennedy was elected, a pivotal moment in U.S. history we see playing out in the background. In the foreground are the mad men, a bunch of maddeningly sexist and racist good old boys working in advertising during the golden age of that enterprise. Being a lifelong fan of the look of that era, I can't get enough of the costumes and sets.

Speaking of nostalgia for a bygone era, I've been thinking about Anthony from the famous 1971 Prince spaghetti commercial lately. I wonder how many other people developed a fascination for cultures where the members of vast extended families all live under the same roof from watching that commercial. Now, THAT was a brilliant ad. UPDATE: O'Reilly alerted me to a link to a recent Boston Globe story about the actor who played Anthony. His name was really Anthony and some ad men discovered him in Boston's North End. He was paid about $1,500 total from the commercial. Says the Globe: "That commercial, the award-winning “Wednesday Is Prince Spaghetti Day” spot that ran nationally for 13 years, would become a symbol of Boston’s North End. Its famous opening scene – an Italian woman leaning out of a window on Powers Court, yelling for her son (“Anthony! Anthony!”) to come home and eat spaghetti -- made his first name a part of American pop culture, like 'Stella!' in 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Adrian!' in 'Rocky.'"

Also in the vein of the golden past, my best friend Mary from sixth grade who I've only seen briefly twice since we graduated from high school, spent yesterday afternoon in Westfield.

Mary on the far left, me on the right in the photo from our sixth grade party.

Stanley Park, Westfield, a fine destination.

Meanwhile, back in 2009, we had some Hampshire College Farm-grown vegetables for dinner.

And I ran into state Rep. Ellen Story after she got a flu shot.
See you at the parade!

Better than the previous post

2009-09-17T15:54:00.022-04:00

University Drive corn, since cut down.
I've gotten quite a lot of negative feedback about the last post on skin ailments. Sorry, but thanks for all your suggestions! My rash is less severe on the whole and I think and hope I can rule out scabies. It may be I've got "contact dermatitis" from brushing up against some foliage or being bitten by bugs while painting our house.

I won't post any photos of my feet other than this one in which I inadvertently caught them while focusing on these Hampshire College Farm vegetables on the way to the broiler.

It's that wonderful time of year just before the leaves turn color and it starts getting cold.

Snapped this pic of a beaver swimming in the pond off the Norwottuck bike trail a few evenings ago.

So this is the beginning of a planned time-lapse presentation of my hair growing gray. I'm not going to dye it anymore or at least that's my current plan. Probably won't be doing any more Sarah Palin imitations. I guess I finally got sick of her, anyway, after the "death panels" debacle.
As I'm turning 52 in a couple of days, I thought I'd re-read my 2007 series of posts on reaching 50. I wrote about "time going by inexplicably fast" and wanting to take "a long vacation to some dusty place that time has forgotten." Well, I kind of did that after I got laid off in May and went to Thailand to take a certificate course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. We stayed at the British International School, where alcohol and cigarettes were forbidden on campus. In a sense, it was a throwback in time.

Sometimes when I was in Thailand I really did feel like the character from the Paul Simon song "You can call me Al" I started to identify with as I approached 50. He's walking down a strange street in a strange country where he doesn't know know the language and has "no currency." He's got some unlikely role model who ducks back down an alley and he asks himself, "What if I die here?" He looks up a little while later, though, and notices there are "angels in the architecture." That song never gets old.

What with my hair, my high cholesterol, occasional dizziness and rash, I feel like I'm stuck together with paper clips and chewing gum , sometimes. Other times, I feel -- FANTASTIC.

Itchy and strange

2009-09-13T12:26:00.011-04:00

I'm sure this shot of me with some skin ailment will resonate with my brothers and sisters. We all grew up seeing grisly photos like this on the covers of medical magazines that my dad used to fall asleep every night reading at the kitchen table. I and some others of us Careys grew up to be extremely susceptible to poison ivy. It's the number one reason people visit the dermatologist, according to Jon Sachs, an expert on the subject I once consulted for a UMass Magazine article I wrote about the worst case I ever had of it.

If only I'd had a digital camera then, I could have taken a picture of my leg when it was swollen twice its normal size and covered with painful blisters. My dad, who was a country doctor his whole life, said it was the worst poison ivy rash he'd ever seen, which made me feel a little better at the time. It was MUCH more gruesome than the examples in this "Skin Rash Hall of Fame" from Sachs's EXCELLENT Web site "What Poison Ivy Looks Like."

Actually, this person from the Hall of Fame has a more appalling case. Compared to my Mother of All Poison Ivy Incident of 2002, the rash I have now -- so far -- is relatively easy to live with. Makes me think it might not be poison ivy, but another more insidious but rarer affliction I haven't suffered with since about 1986. That would be scabies, which my dad diagnosed over the phone that year then went on to endure himself after contracting it at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, where he worked. Also called "the seven-year itch," it's a condition caused by a microscopically-sized eight-legged mite, that burrows into and can lay eggs in a host's skin. A hallmark of scabies is its "relentlessness," according to the reader-friendly site, emedicine health.

Scabies mite pic from emedicine health. While nothing really helps ease the effects of poison ivy, I've found, although I've tried calamine lotion, jewel weed and traditional Ban roll-on, as recommended, it gets better in about a month. Scabies, by contast, get worse as time goes on, which is one of the ways you know it is scabies There are some pretty heavy duty anti-parasitic creams to treat it, and they work as I recall. Hope I'm not going down THAT path, the scabies path, again, though.

Warning: Don't look at the dermatologist's scabies gallery (above) too closely if you are squeamish. THESE are the types of photos that used to be on the cover of my dad's medical magazines. Now, I wonder about the editors of those magazines. What goes through their minds?

If anyone's still reading, thought I'd include this pic of a caterpillar my sister Maureen sent me. It stung my nephew, but is not dangerous according to AboutAmherst's entomologist, who recommends against handling caterpillars in general. I thought this was one of the most unusual-looking caterpillars I'd ever seen, until I found a display of the "15 Most Alien Looking Caterpillars on Earth" at the site Environmental Graffiti.

Very strange.

Painting the house: the long-in-coming update

2009-09-06T19:43:00.014-04:00

Well! I see over a week has gone by and we're still painting the house. Thanks to Brian, who looks up everything online from consumer reports on paint to whether you paint the windows at the same time you paint the sills (No.), we're doing a good job, I think. The ever-vigilant Hester has made sure no wild animal steals up behind us and smudges our fine brushwork.

As the ingenious Tony has commented here, painting a house is a pretty all-consuming activity, but I have found once I get outside and begin the work, it's quite satisfying. I've enjoyed being outside in our neighborhood, where there is a pretty constant hum of activity as kids and dogs run around the cul-de-sac.

Thanks to Hester no one has tried anything funny.

Meanwhile, Brian and I went to a fun barbecue at my former co-workers Anna-Maria and Jim's house on Sunday. There were about a dozen or more people there, most of them in the news business, and about half had recently lost there jobs like you-know-who. We traded anecdotes about looking for journalism jobs. To qualify for unemployment benefits, you have to apply for three jobs a week, but all of my fellow laid-off news people said they apply for at least three a DAY and it seems most would-be employers do not see fit to acknowledge that they even received an application. These are the times we're living in, as they say.

Anna-Maria and Jim's adorable daughter.

I am very lucky to have a part-time job teaching journalism at UMass where I hope to employ some of the new teaching skills I learned in Thailand this summer. I am also tutoring Bikram, a wonderful English language learner from Nepal, through the ESL program at Jones Library. I highly recommend the experience! Training begins Sept. 17 for new volunteers.

A map outside the ESL director Lynne Weintraub's office in the library basement shows all the countries immigrants in the program come from.

Here's a tip: check out Marty Klein's fantastic "scanography," which I've discovered through Facebook. This is his scanned photo of Romanesco broccoli/cauliflower, my favorite vegetable.

Painting the house

2009-08-31T16:03:00.016-04:00

We're really painting our house now after much deliberation about whether we could do it ourselves. Here's Brian working on the high parts. I've been working on the low parts since I'm afraid of heights.

We live in a little Cape originally conceived by then-builder Dave Keenan, seen (on left) in this Gazette photo by Carol Lollis in front of the Cape he lived in on Shays Street. A house with a storied recent history, Dave acquired it with the understanding that he would pay the back taxes and fix it up. That never panned out over 10 or more years, through a series of hitches, misunderstandings and mischief, although Dave or someone seems to have done some work on it since this photo was taken.

Dave told me he had in mind Sears kit houses (example above), which really captured my imagination, for the houses on our street, which is named after his dad Charles. Sometimes all of the materials needed to build the kit house yourself would come in a big crate by train, as I understand it. As it turned out, the Valley Community Development Corporation -- not Dave -- eventually completed construction of our and several of our neighbors' houses about 13 years ago.

Reading about the kit houses online, I came across some great Web sites like
RetroRenovation.com, where I found the photo above. Hard to believe I only recently began watching the show "Mad Men," which takes place in lush retro settings like this.

Can't say for sure how much Brian is enjoying painting, but it is giving me so much confidence I'm thinking we can tackle some more home improvement projects when we finish this one!

Ted Kennedy in the Valley

2009-08-26T12:28:00.019-04:00

My sister-in-law's sister Alison Czelusniak posted this sweet photo on Facebook today of herself as a young girl with Ted Kennedy, marching in the Holyoke Saint Pat's parade, 1987. I have two photos of me and Kennedy that are among my most treasured material possessions.
Reading the comments on his obituary in the New York Times online, I see that many other people feel the way I did about him, like there's been a death in the family. Kennedy was the same age as my late father, and before my dad died two years ago, I liked to look at photos of Kennedy, looking so sincere and robust, and think that he would live for a very long time. By extension, I would think wishfully, so would my dad, a country doctor, who loved that Kennedy was a proponent of universal health care.

My brother Billy and me in Hyannis Port, 2004, a high point of my reporting career. I probably saw Kennedy speak a half dozen times or so at very unglamorous occasions, and he always performed as if he were trying to lead some troops to victory. The University of Massachusetts has him to thank, I would say, for securing the funds to build its slick new Life Sciences Center, at the groundbreaking for which I saw him give one of his animated, unpretentious pep speeches. Once, when I got to sit in the balcony at a Senate hearing I was struck by how industrious he seemed to be. Whenever he spoke at Democratic state conventions, the crowd went crazy.

Springfield Republican photo of Kennedy plane crash in Southampton, 1964. Kennedy, of course, was a real survivor and one of the things he survived was a plane crash in an apple orchard that killed the pilot and a Kennedy aide, in nearby Southampton. (The plane had run out of gas!)
Ten years ago, following the death of JFK Jr in a plane crash, I interviewed people who remembered the earlier crash for a Gazette story. I was surprised to see that the interview I remember the most didn't make the final cut. It was with a nurse who was working at Cooley Dickinson Hospital when Kennedy was brought in. She said he and his then-wife Joan, who invited all the nurses to a tea party, were wonderful. But the hospital staff thought his brother Bobby was arrogant when he told all the doctors and nurses in the Emergency Room that he would be in charge of Ted's care.
A woman named Bertha Pease, who was 85 when I talked to her, recalled all the people who walked by her house to the crash site, saying, "All I could think of was the throngs of people the Bible talks about marching by."

Springfield Republican photo of Kennedy following the 1964 plane crash in Southampton.

In the New York Times obituary, it says Kennedy used the six months he was hospitalized, "suspended immobile in a frame that resembled a waffle iron" -- not at Cooley Dickinson from which he was transferred after three weeks -- to "develop his positions on immigration, health care and civil rights." It proved to be a pivotal time for him. "'I never thought the time was lost,' he said later. 'I had a lot of hours to think about what was important and what was not and about what I wanted to do with my life.'”
And what a remarkable legacy he's left!

Your place for ideas about what to do with visitors to Amherst

2009-08-24T15:51:00.021-04:00

Farm implement-crab at the Hampshire College farm.Last week. I reported on some fun places to bring visiting kids. This week, Brian and I got a chance to show off our tour guide skills as his brother David and wife Marion were in town. David prepped our house for painting and the intrepid Brian and I are going to begin painting it later this week. (I'll report back to you, of course, on how that goes.) Saturday, we checked out the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls and The People's Pint in Greenfield. Rained the whole time. Sunday, we toured the Hampshire College farm, saw the National Yiddish Book Center, got cider donuts at Atkins Market, went to the Summit House in Hadley to see the iconic view of the Connecticut River Valley and ate a dinner I made from Amherst Farmers Market produce. Monday, the trio returned to the Yiddish Book Center (the blogger was tutoring her first ESL student). Then we saw ancient dinosaur tracks along the Connecticut River and had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants ever, The Student Prince, in Springfield.

Annual photo of my former co-worker, the incomparable Phyllis Lehrer at the Farmers Market.

This struck me as a classic Amherst scene: a young guy at the Farmers Market with a chalk message, reading, "What's up? Let's talk single payer." I'm all for it!

Across the street, Al Gore makes a pitch from the Dumpster behind Hastings.

Next stop: Shelburne Falls Bridge of Flowers. Mist on the Deerfield River as seen from the bridge, said to be the only flower-covered bridge like it in the country.

These dahlias (?) looked like underwater creatures in the rain.

Pouring housebrewed ginger ale at The People's Pint in Greenfield , where we warmed up after a good soaking. I'd put their ginger ale floats on a list of must-try beverages in the Valley.

Sunday. More rain. Marion at the Yiddish Book Center while storm clouds gather over Mount Norwottuck. We almost left the Hampshire campus without checking out the center but it turned out to be a highlight of the visit for Marion.

Then some of the nationally acclaimed cider donuts at Atkins Market across the street before heading to the Summit House on Mount Holyoke in Hadley.

View from the Summit House.

Alas, it was also raining in 1836 when the painter Thomas Cole painted the famous and influential "View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm -- The Oxbow."

Brian points out a dinosaur track off Route 5 in Holyoke on Monday. Looks like a giant chicken print.

Corkscrews in the amazing collection at The Student Prince, one of "21 legendary restaurants you must visit," according to Gourmet Magazine -- and me. Speaking of legendary, pioneering blogger Tom Devine's late father was a bartender there.

Today, UMass, which is literally a stone's throw away from the house (if you have a good arm), begins testing its new outdoor warning system with eight sirens, including one at the nearby stadium I mentioned in the last post, that can broadcast tone and voice alerts. We're all supposed to get reverse-911 calls to let us know when it begins. More later!

Amherst poets etc.

2009-08-20T12:56:00.016-04:00

Figuring it was time to take some more pictures around Amherst, I checked out Emily Dickinson's garden, which I believe the curators have planted with what the Dickinsons themselves had in their garden. I see the Dickinsons and/or the curators favor(ed) the low-maintenance garden solution phlox.

Also in Emily's garden - -some kind of inverted lily.

Franklin Loew's grave in Wildwood Cemetery.

It was another Amherst poet I was thinking of on today's jog, though -- the late Deborah Digges who lived on the street next to mine. She is believed to have committed suicide on Good Friday by jumping from the nearby Warren McGuirk stadium. I thought of her because I saw an Open House sign at the bottom of her street, which might be her house, for all I know, and because one of her poems was in this week's New Yorker, a pretty haunting one titled "The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart." Digges writes about the heart as if it were a deserted house with atmospheric movie effects like candles, fluttering sheet music, crucifixes and cobwebs.
I only learned by reading her obituary that the late Franklin Leow, whose grave I had taken a photo of a couple of years ago, was her husband. He was a pioneering veterinarian and college dean and president. They married in 2000 and he died of cancer in 2003, something that must have been a contributing factor -- if she did, in fact, commit suicide. I'd read that her son doesn't think she would have taken her own life, suggesting she may have fallen off the stadium, where she exercised.
(Update: A reader sent me this fascinating quote from a decade-old New York Times review of Digges' first memoir:

"In her final chapter she takes a glider lesson and turning on an axis over the
Pacific imagines herself falling toward home. Midway through the book she
meditates on mankind's fear of falling. The worst trauma of her childhood was
falling through the ice of her pond and nearly drowning. Falling has been a near
obsession with her. But always in this book of striking scenes and images she is
falling into life.")

Digges reading her poetry in California a month before she died.
I was struck by a quote the New York Times used in her obituary about growing up one of 10 children in Missouri. "You might say I’d had a very long childhood, a childhood I couldn’t help but confuse with my brothers’ and sisters'," Digges said. I've had the same experience of not being able to remember whether something happened to me or a sibling.
I must have crossed paths with Digges on Amity Street, which is on my jogging route and where she likely would have walked her dog, and I think I have a memory of exchanging greetings with her, but it's the kind of untrustworthy memory she alludes to in the NYT quote.

Further along my jogging route, I see that Newberry Comics has a good collection of posters advertising coming local events as well as the fake newspaper article Selectwoman Stephanie O'Keeffe recently mentioned on Facebook. It encourages people to donate to the Amherst Preservation Society. Trouble is, I don't think there is one -- at least by that name.

Why that's my fellow blogger Kelsey Flynn and her dog Willa! Details about the performance at August-Company.com.
Speaking of The New Yorker, which I've got plenty of time to read lately, there's a great story by David Sedaris, "Laugh Kookaburra," in which he describes a visit to Australia and muses on the perennial subject of his family. Sedaris meets a woman who is some kind of time management expert there and she tells him about the four-burner stove way of looking at your life. I don't want to give anything away, so I'll just say I love this line: " Cut off your family, and how would you know who you are? "

Four of six Carey siblings were at my niece's and nephew's recent birthday party.

Ana, via Skype, in Cuernevaca, Mexico. I love Skype!

Movie review: "Julie and Julia" and what's coming to Amherst Cinema

2009-08-18T13:22:00.012-04:00

"Julie and Julia" blogger Julie Powell photographed by Ken Lambert of the Seattle Times, as posted on her blog.
It was a packed house on a Monday night at Cinemark for "Julie and Julia" about Julia Child and Julie Powell who blogged about cooking all her recipes. There was applause at the end, in part, I think, because there are a local ties to the story, what with Powell having gone to Amherst College and Child having gone to Smith and lived in Cambridge. I also felt connected to the movie as it's about a blogger, played by Amy Adams, who I love, although that was the part I liked least about the movie. The screenplay is by Nora Ephron, whose book about getting older "I Feel Bad About My Neck" is the book I most often recommend to people.

I wasn't personally inspired by Julia Child's book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," the way Julie Powell was. "Diet for a Small Planet," which I remember as largely being about the benefits of combining beans and rice for maximum protein, would be the one cookbook that made a lasting impression on me, I would say.
Still, it was an at times quite moving and consistently feel-good movie, despite the parts about Julie Powell being not very satisfactory. The character is not well fleshed out; she seems self-absorbed and always either giddy or depressive. The Julia Child/Meryl Streep character, on the other hand, is absorbing at the same time it's over-the-top. Streep has gotten generally positive reviews but some critics found the characterization too broad, and I guess it is.

There did seem to be quite a few sight gags involving chicken carcasses.
Child, who is portrayed as relentlessly positive, although maybe a little self-absorbed too, apparently was unimpressed with Julie Powell's blog, which causes the Powell character in the movie to have one of her frequent meltdowns. In her blog, Powell recently noted that a lot of people have asked her if it was true that the blog irritated Child. "Julia, I think, from what I gather," Powell writes, "was less irritated than simply uninterested." Oh well, not everybody likes blogs.
This from Amherst Cinema about some coming events:

The Zero Hour Film Series presents VIRUS
AT Pleasant Street Theater
27 Pleasant Street, Downtown Northampton
Saturday August 22, Midnight
Special Admission: $3

TAKING WOODSTOCK with special guest Tom Monte
At Amherst Cinema
28 Amity Street, Amherst
Monday August 31, 7pm
Regular ticket prices
Tom Monte is the co-author of the book on which the film is based. Tom will introduce the film, lead a Q&A session following the film, and sign books in the lobby. Books will be available for purchase in the lobby.

Hello, dog days

2009-08-14T19:20:00.013-04:00

The latest installment of the Swiss exercise ball series. Now we are using it as a large soccer ball.
The weather since I've been back has certainly earned the description "dog days," derived, I recently learned, from ancient myth. As explained at the first site Google turned up: The dog refers to Sirius, the largest or alpha star (actually, it is two stars) in the constellation Canis Major. Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky (under the right conditions, it can even be seen by the naked eye in daylight), which it dominates in summer when it rises and sets with the sun. Ancient cultures believed therefore that the star increases the sun's heat, thus scorching the earth. For this reason, the Egyptians named the star after "Sothis."

My sister Maureen, niece Megan (in a mask she dug up in the basement) and nephew Matt were in town. Looking for a place to get cool, we went to Look Park in Northampton.

The Look Park spray park, an attraction our town manager was interested in replicating in Amherst, if I remember correctly. It's not swimming, but it seems like a reasonable recreation option.

We also checked out the Look Park train which got pretty high marks from Meghan and Matt.

As did the little zoo, where the biggest hits were the turkeys, chickens and -- the newest addition there, these Himalayan goats.

Brian liked the bumper boats but the 10-minute boatride goes by pretty slowly.

Late lunch at Miss Florence Diner. Can someone advise me about what to do with my hair? There will be a prize.

Maureen was very happy with her mocha shake.

You don't even have to leave the house to have fun if you have a MacBook and lively company -- if you don't mind the hot, muggy weather!