Today I am more mobile than I’ve been in years. I dragged my old 1997 Avalon to the third mechanic I could find, this one in Amherst, figuring that this was the final straw before I gave it to the American Lung Association. But — I drove away with an inspection sticker, and a still-beaming check engine light. Then I got my scooter, a very unreliable Taiwanese model, to run as well. Nice to have my fleet again at full strength.
I heard Larry Kelley on WHMP this morning, talking with Bill Dwight about many topics, among them the silly Fourth of July parade brouhaha, and then about the selectperson he helped convince to resign from office. While I agree that Anne Awad should have been more forthcoming about where she actually lives (she bought a house in South Hadley but maintains she still lives in Amherst), I still think Larry lost much of his dignity when he drove over to her new house and shot a photo of her walking on her lawn.
He says that he was on a public road, well, yes, but I think that any citizen, selectboard member or otherwise, would feel kind of violated having a blog writer shoot her photo and post it that same day. I mean, I get the point, Larry, but using the words ‘locked and loaded’ in Amherst is considered violent hate speech. I just think that he goes too far, and since these jobs pay $300 a year, and require a lot of time from each citizen who decides to run, it scares people from wanting to perform the job in the future.
The results he gets can’t be worth all of the bad press. As one of the editors at the Gazette told me, when you go after someone’s family, as he did against the Town Manager’s wife, you have probably gone too far.
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Actually I drove over to her house in South Hadley that she NOW admits IS her house, home, domicile,on Memorial Day weekend (A Friday–and it was raining otherwise I would have ridden my bike and taken a side trip up Mt. Skinner) in order to take a shot of her house for my my blog.I was a little surprised to see her gardening in the front yard. The house is WAY up a steep hill, about 150 yards from the public road I was on (I used the full 5x magnification of my Kodak camera). I never even left the car and shot the photo out of the side window. And to this day have never gone back.She claimed in a Letter To the Editor of the Amherst Bulletin (a newspaper you once worked for) that they did not realize a “Homestead” declaration means you are making that home your “primary residence,” so they immediately rescinded that Homestead on the South Hadley home and took out another back on their up-for-sale Amherst condo (half the valuation and half the size of the South Hadley home).A check of the Secretary of State records shows that to be false.
Larry you miss my point, which has nothing to do with how far away you were. You seem to be slightly oblivious to how hard you are coming down in a small town full of people who are sensitive, sometimes admittedly beyond reason. But if you choose to live there it seems like a good idea to be a bit more civil, and I am not sure what my once working for the Bulletin has to do with anything.
You got a BIG kick out of my photo of Gerry Weiss’s late model auto all covered in goofy bumper stickers. I was standing in a public road but his driveway and front door were only about 20 yards from that public road and obviously he was home at that moment.Neither he nor anyone else accused me of “stalking” when I published that photo about a half hour after taking it. Amherst is not a small town. It’s for all intents and purposes a city. And you know damn well that if I were a liberal blogger (but then I would only get half the hits I’m now getting) who took out a conservative City Councilor with this investigative journalism I would be hailed as a hero.I just assume that if you once worked for the Bulletin some of the ‘who, what, when, where, why’ stuff would have rubbed off. Or if you watched TV during the 60’s that famous line “Just the facts ma’m.”
By the way, I worked in advertising, we didn’t ask those questions. But on a much more important note (emphasis here) good luck with your new daughter in China!