Hole You Could Lose a Baby in

Here's a sinkhole on Mattoon Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, a block from where I live. I pass by this scary-looking hole at least four times a day....on foot, thankfully. As a pedestrian, I can stay on the sidewalk and don't have to go anywhere near the asphalt.

An orange construction barrel has been covering the hole, leaving just enough room on the one-way street for a car to get by. This arrangement is an excellent system as long as the barrel remains in place. Unfortunately, April showers have also brought some high winds, and the flimsy barrel doesn't always stay where it belongs. I myself have replaced it over the hole at least six times in the past couple of weeks. I'd wager that many people who drive past don't know exactly why the barrel's been there, and might not automatically avoid the spot it usually occupies if it was blown over. They--and their suspensions--would be in for a bad surprise!

At last night's quarterly meeting of the Mattoon Street Historic Preservation Association, I learned that the street is slated to be paved "sometime before the end of the summer." The pothole situation on the street has been noted, and needs to be addressed before September's Mattoon Street Art Festival, which brings thousands of people to the neighborhood. Last year, at least one festival attendee twisted an ankle while strolling the street.

No plans to make the repair of the sinkhole before the major repaving project seem to be afoot, however. Meanwhile, we've always got the barrel. I guess it's no worse or different than the rest of the country's approach to crumbling infrastructure.

Festival of Flowers

The Springfield Museums' wildly popular monthly series "Culture and Cocktails" always has seasonal themes, but this month's could not have been better planned. March this year came in like a lion and went out like a lion. Winter lingered so long in Massachusetts that I seriously wondered whether spring would ever come. The last two days of March brought bitter cold, snow, sleet, and Arctic winds, and then suddenly this week it's April, the sun is out, the air is soft, and the crocuses are up. And the Museum is having a Festival of Flowers. 

Local florists and garden clubs were invited to submit floral arrangements inspired by various works in the museums. The arrangements are scattered throughout the four museums, placed near the pieces that sparked them. Patrons can pick up a diagram identifying the locations and then it's like a scavenger hunt, roaming around the Quadrangle looking for all of them.

My favorite is the arrangement by Sherry Williams of the Springfield Garden Club, interpreting a glass and bronze Tiffany Studios lamp from 1910. She's spot-on, not only with the colors and the form of the lamp, but with the overall feel of the piece. What amuses me the most is that the lamp is botanically inspired, with its base in the form of a trunk and leaves, and she's taken it back to the original plants. Plus it's pretty and I could totally picture it in my house.

The design team at Flowers, Flowers! took over the entire Blake Court in the Museum of Fine Arts, and did a bang-up job. The interpretation of Herman Herzog's "View of Niagara Falls in Moonlight" has huge cascades of white flowers, frothy moss and a beautiful palette of greys and greens. The interpretation of Joseph Whiting Stock's "The Fisherman with His Dog" is very large, like the painting itself, with a dangly exotic flower to represent the fishing rod and line, and a mirror so that you see yourself as the fisherman. Very whimsical. The interpretation of "Evening at Low Tide, Manomet" has rocks, seaweed, and tight chrysanthemums which look like some form of sea life. Gorgeous.

In the French Impressionist Gallery, Tara Northway Ostrosky had the courage to tackle the Degas, "Rehearsal Before the Ballet," with success I might add. The gorgeous pink parrot tulips, delphiniums, Queen Anne's lace, plum blossoms, combined with sage green leaves,
are the essence of spring.

Stop Winter!

Here's a street sign a couple of blocks from my house. It's at the corner of Spring and Winter Streets--but notice that Spring seems to be missing. Global climate disruption, polar vortex, Arctic amplification...whatever the cause, it looks like, in my neighborhood anyway, it's going to be all winter, all the time from now on.

Amy Lowell

Biography is not my favorite genre, but nevertheless two particular biographies have endeared themselves to me. One is a two-volume work by Eve Curie about her mother, Marie, and the other is S. Foster Damon's 1935 Amy Lowell. I read these in junior high school for book reports. The former is two thick volumes, translated from the French, and the latter a hefty 773 pages. Spend that much time learning about someone's life and you are bound to come away with an appreciation.

The books were not my own; they were checked out of the Forest Park branch of the public library. That branch was right across the street from my junior high school, and probably the place I spent the most time in my childhood, after home and school. At least until I went to high school--at that point it was probably home, school, and the downtown branch of the library. That main branch was across the street from my high school.

 One of the perks of my current location is its proximity to the downtown branch of that same library. If anyone had told me in the 1950s or 1960s that I would go away to college, live on three different continents, and end up two blocks from my old high school and library, I would have had difficulty believing it. But that's what happened. And anyone who knows this blog knows my appreciation for the free shelf in that downtown library.

So imagine my pleasure a while back at finding a copy of Amy Lowell's biography on said free shelf. My pleasure turned to amazement when I realized it was the self-same copy I had checked out probably in 1961, discarded by the Forest Park branch. Now it's a treasured addition to my own library. As the King of France says to King Lear, "Be it lawful I take up what's cast away."

Today is the 140th birthday of Amy Lowell, Massachusetts socialite and poetess, critic and translator, friend and rival of Ezra Pound, cigar-smoking antifeminist beloved of current feminists. She was born in Brookline, buried in Cambridge. I think I'll celebrate her birthday tonight by re-reading her biography.

GGGG

Today was the third annual Author Fair at the Springfield Central Library. I LOVE walking a block or two to a nice event that doesn't cost anything....it's one of the perks of living downtown. (I've only filled my gas tank once since September!) So over I went.

The beautiful library rotunda was filled with tables, behind which sat local authors with copies of their books, their business cards, and whatever other items they wanted to display. Randy Purinton had articles and research materials pertinent to his Civil-War-era non-fiction book, It Hasteth Away, Husein Muhammad had rocks painted to look like the ones in his children's book The Man, Blanche Jackson-Hill had lollipops and Monopoly money for Straight to the Point Financing, Gerry Garner had beautiful bonsai.

Ms. Garner--GGGG, she calls herself, for Great-Grandmother Gerry Garner--was so vivacious and interesting, I talked to her for over half an hour. Her book, Generations Build the Future: Positives Needed Now! is a collection of life lessons from people across the age spectrum. (I feel I'm not doing the book justice by my description, but I've yet to read it!)

Gerry Garner recently started a group for authors, and I intend to join it. I'm hoping some of her energy will rub off on me. She's trim, petite, old enough to be a great-grandmother, but incredibly vigorous. She really packs a lot in a small package. Come to think of it, kind of like her bonsai.

I Hate Balloons

Somebody had a party, and this is what's left. A mess. I hate balloons more than I can say. They're tacky. They're scary when they burst in your face. They can kill. (Balloons cause more choking deaths than any other toy.) And even if you have bad taste and don't care about your own kids, careless disposal--as illustrated in this photo--poses dangers to wildlife. Birds get tangled in the strings and ingest the latex. Whales and other marine animals eat the latex, too. And as festive as a bunch of balloons is supposed to be, there's nothing more pathetic than a pile of deflated balloons stuck to a rusty fence. Yuck and double yuck.

Sign of Spring: Snowdrops

Saw spring flowers outside for the first time this year, in the Rice's side yard. The last time I wrote about snowdrops, I had just gotten back from Lyon. March 30, 2006. I said about all I have to say on the subject back then. Good luck sign for me.

Park Update

One thing I've learned from studying demographics and statistics is that interpreting trends can be dangerous. If it was 80 degrees the day before yesterday, 81 degrees yesterday, and 82 today, I might conclude that by December 31 it will be 215 degrees, with no relief in sight. But of course that's ridiculous. Looking at a much larger stretch of the graph, we see that temperatures cycle up and then down again, over and over. The further we step back, the larger the context, the more accurate a prediction we can make about the weather, or the population, or anything else.

That's one of the reassurances I'm always giving the doom-and-gloom people. Sometimes it seems that most everyone I know believes that everything is getting worse--the economy, the environment, the educational system, teenagers' taste in music, you name it. Oh, and the world is going to end in 2012. I'm pretty cranky myself these days, and could probably use some of my own advice to just chill.

This morning I walked around the block with the dog, circumventing Armoury Common Park in the process. I was delighted to notice a young man wearing a bright red t-shirt (think: gang color) and lots of gold bling--a kid I know to be homeless and on drugs--industriously picking up trash all over the park and neatly bussing it in the cans. He caught my eye and gave me a cheery wave.

This evening I walked around the block with my dog, circumventing Armoury Common Park in the process. The park was empty and tranquil, as it should have been at that late hour, the gates closed with big chains and padlocks near the sign that reads, "Park closed at dusk."

What's going on? Are the park denizens taking stewardship of their own space? Are the police actually patrolling? Has a park ranger put this overlooked little space on notice? Is the apartment management once again abiding by the maintenance covenant struck in 1977 between the city and themselves?

I don't know. And I'm not foolishly idealistic. But the sight of my gangsta homie picking up litter has lifted my spirits all day.

Messy Park

Armoury Common is a jewel-like pocket park on the corner of Spring and Pearl Streets in Springfield. It dates from the 70s, when the area was rehabbed with lots of HUD money. In an attempt to attract working people to downtown, a group of apartment buildings were renovated, tennis courts were added, and this park was built. The gentrification didn't quite stick. The apartments started accepting Section 8, the tennis courts became basketball courts, and the park got rather run down.

Two years ago, probably because a new federal courthouse was being built nearby, the park was completely renovated. I was happy to see that the original design elements (cobblestones, river rocks, gilded amillary sundial, funky old-fashioned streetlamps and benches) were kept. In Springfield, you always have to worry that stone- and brickwork will be demolished and replaced by concrete. But in this case, the original vision was adhered to.

New sod was laid, some bushes were planted, and a new irrigation system was put in to water the whole business. The pump in the fountain was repaired and actually turned on. The river rock basin was repaired, and the sundial removed, regilded, and replaced. A statue which had been languishing in a closed park was relocated here. When the work was complete, the mayor and assorted bigwigs showed up for a ribbon-cutting.

I've got my own ideas about what should have been done to this park (it's purposely not kid-friendly, for starters), but the effort was certainly better than nothing. Unfortunately, the space is rapidly going to hell again. And why wouldn't it? This park has a bunch of posted rules, but no enforcement. It's never locked or patrolled by park rangers, police, or Armoury Commons staff. The shady corners make it a perfect haven for drinking and drugging. Nobody in her right mind would take a lunch break here or bring kids to play.

Here's a photo of the corner of the park nearest to me. This was taken about four hours after a park employee cleaned up the entire area. There are two trash barrels within fifteen feet of this spot.

Dirty Street

Here's my street a couple of hours after the city "cleaned" it. Two big street sweepers came down one side of Salem, one behind the other, then came back and went down the other side. So why does the street look so crappy?

Salem is one way, with parking on the even side only. Therefore, the cars drive way over to the left, and debris tends to be blown over to the right, where it lodges under cars and settles. The sweepers came early in the morning when my side of the street was lined solid with cars. They could get way over to one side--but that side was clean anyway. When they made the other pass, they had to keep to the middle of the street--but that was clean anyway. Therefore, they picked up practically nothing.

By mid-morning, there wasn't a car on the block, as you can see. The foreground is clean because that's in front of my house and I went out and cleaned it myself with a broom. It took me a couple of hours to dig out all the mud and wet leaves and bag them.

I don't understand why the city bothers to use resources if they don't plan intelligently. This operation was a waste of manpower and gasoline. Why not arrange for cars to be off the street before cleaning? Kind of like throwing everybody out of the family room before you vacuum it? If a housewife can figure that out, somebody at the DPW ought to be able to as well.

Culture and Cocktails: Mardi Gras

I've been attending the "Culture and Cocktails" events monthly at the Springfield Museums. October was Oktoberfest at the Wood Museum of Springfield History, November was Sushi and Sake at the George Walter Vincent Smith, January was a Science Carnival at the Science Museum, and February was Wine and Chocolate at the Museum of Fine Arts.

So we've come full circle, and yesterday's event was at the Wood Museum again. Springfield's newest museum has got a great foyer, designed beautifully by our own Steven Jablonski for just this sort of event. You can eat, drink, view the displays, bump into lots of friends, and then walk around and see the entire museum--all for $5.

In October, local brewers had stations all around for dispensing information and samples--lots of samples. The Student Prince and Fort Restaurant dished out red cabbage and sausages at one end of the room. Mountains of Liptauer cheese spread, crackers, and assorted other cheeses were available as palate-cleansers between beers. In the back room, homebrewers were hosting a competition. When you got tired of the microbrews, you could wander over, sample the homebrews, and vote for your favorite. You could learn about Highland Brewing Company (Dr. Suess's family's business, which once stood on State Street where MassMutual is now). Or you could visit Storrowton's booth, where costumed reenactors were explaining how hard cider was made back in the day (and offering samples). I don't even like beer, and I wobbled home. Imagine if I'd been trying harder!

This month, the theme was Mardi Gras. The bar was cash, but there was loads of Cajun food, loads of beads, and music by The Primate Fiasco, a band whose music eludes labels but is sometimes called "psychedelic Dixieland." I had heard them outdoors next to a fire-breathing dragon a couple of years ago at one of Richard Richardson's over-the-top parties. Different vibe, both great times.

Things Found on the Street Recently

I live downtown and I walk a lot. What I mostly see on the street is litter--things thrown down intentionally. Like empty Newport packs, Vienna sausage cans, ripped-up lottery tickets, and cigarette butts. Once in a while, though, I spot a tiny toy, a piece of broken jewelry, or some change. I like to bring these found objects home. Recently I have collected 52 cents, two marbles, a plastic lizard, an aurora borealis crystal dragonfly on a chain, two studs (one jewelled, and one sterling silver and engraved "Please return to Tiffany & Co., New York--probably a knockoff). Also one big red paper clip.

Is there anybody who doesn't know what you can do with one red paper clip??? Kyle McDonald uptraded his several times and ended up with a house! And wrote a book, got on TV, met a bunch of movie stars, and so on and on. (Here's his blog on the subject: http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/.) Kyle set his goal of a house before he began. First he got a fish pen, then he used it to get a doorknob, then a Coleman stove, a generator, an "instant party," a snowmobile, a van, a recording contract, a year in Phoenix, an afternoon with Alice Cooper, a KISS snowglobe, a movie role, and finally: a house.

And he only had one red paper clip. Look at all the stuff I've got!

Ridiculous Amounts of Snow

Every winter I find myself comparing the piddly current snowfalls with the epic snows of my childhood. I reminisce about struggling into woolen leggings with zippers, wading knee-deep through the unshoveled sidewalks of elderly neighbors to get to school, digging tunnels and igloos into the mountainous drifts on either side of the driveway. Once it started to snow in December, you could never really see the ground again until March. The drifts kept getting higher and higher, the streets narrower and narrower. I have a photo of myself one Easter, shivering on the front sidewalk in pastel spring suit and patent-leather shoes, dwarfed by towering mounds of snow to the right and to the left.

Well, this is that snow. There's my house from the back, glimpsed beyond the park, and there's my poor car huddled in the driveway, trapped behind a snowbank that won't melt till June. Où sont les neiges d'antan? They're right here, and I can't wait till I have again consigned them to memory.

Artist Square Group Gallery in Tower Square

When I was a kid growing up in the Forest Park neighborhood of Springfield, "downtown" was a magical word. Thursday evenings my mother would sometimes take my sister and me on the bus to Forbes and Wallace (the big department store), Peerless, Brigham's, Johnson's Bookstore...even the bank was exciting, marble and imposing, with a guard who would slip us each a Hershey's kiss while our mother was at the teller's window. Dinner on the twirly stools in the Meridian cafeteria, or the very proper Top o' the Town restaurant, then home on the Dickinson or Dickinson/Elwood bus to inspect our treasures. On other occasions, I discovered the Canton Restaurant, the Capitol, Bijou, and Paramount Theaters, the Christian Science Reading Room, the Nuttie Goodie Tea Room, and Symphony Hall.

Then I grew up and moved away, the malls came, and downtown sort of died. Forbes, Steigers, and many of the smaller, elegant brick buildings were torn down. All the theaters closed. Kennedy Fried Chicken, Subway and Sneaker World moved in. Plenty of people worked downtown, but then fled home. Restaurants and shops couldn't lure very many of them back.

Now I'm back in Springfield, living right downtown, and witnessing a bit of a renaissance. The Falcons hockey team, the MassMutual Center, and Symphony Hall provide entertainment and culture. Looks like the Paramount/Hippodrome is reopening. Theodore's has great no-cover live blues and rock shows, plus great food...even my recent visitor from Mississippi gave it two thumbs up.And the art scene just got a boost with Tracy Woods's new venture, Artist Square Group Gallery in Tower Square, opening soon.

I was down there today and Tracy was setting up with photographer friend Morocco Flowers helping out. Several artists have signed on, others have shown interest but not yet signed a contract, and there's room for a few more. Artists in all media are welcome. The gallery has a great location, upstairs across from the food court and next to non-profit Valley Photo Center's gallery.

Tower Square Management Team has pitched in to help, and law firm Bacon Wilson, P.C. donated services, too. The governor is championing this venture, as well he should. There's plenty of art being produced in Springfield and all throughout the Pioneer Valley, as well as a bigger market for it than most people realize.

Tower Square's food court is mobbed at lunchtime, but pretty much deserted the rest of the day. A number of storefronts are empty, and it's a shame. The one place everybody can get to with public transportation is downtown. Tower Square is a nice, convenient space and is underutilized. The Artist Square gallery will give people one more reason to visit.

Pet Peeve: Road Salt

It's December in New England, and so far we've had one piddly little dusting of snow.

The DPW was out in full force as though we had had a major blizzard, dumping road salt. Industrious maintenance workers from the church on one side of me and the apartments on the other did the same to the sidewalks. The next day, roads and sidewalks were still white, but not from snow!

I'm not sure which deicer was being put down. There's sodium chloride (plain old salt), calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, and potassium chloride. They vary in how damaging they are to concrete, to aluminum, to vegetation, and to animals (people included!). But they're all some degree of bad.

All of these salts leach into groundwater, kill trees and other plants, prevent lakes from freezing, and harm aquatic life. They etch the bricks in the historic district around my house, get tracked into homes, damage carpets, and hurt the paws of Taz and other animals. Maintenance crews couldn't be bothered to wield a shovel any more; they're out with trucks and blowers making a racket and packing down as much snow as they push away.

Around my house, we shovel carefully (no snowblowers here) and sprinkle a little sand if we have to. It's no messier than salt, and completely natural. We don't make a racket, we don't spend a lot of money, we get plenty of exercise, AND we do a better job. Wake up, lazy people!

The Unveiling of Teatro Vida

Art is good, maybe the best thing there is. Having several museums full of it within a block is pretty cool. The only thing better than easy accessibility to art hanging on the wall of a museum would be world-class art hanging on your own walls--but budget constraints make that option impossible for most. Even if you could afford it, the hassle would make it almost not worth the bother. Some lucky folks, though, get to treat the museum from time to time like their own homes, and without any expense or fuss.

Tonight friend Alma and I went to one of those lovely receptions at the Museum of Fine Arts that makes me feel like I'm in my own living room. The Blake Court, with its monstrous painting "Historical Monument of the American Republic" by Erastus Salisbury Field dominating a whole wall, was reserved for the reception. In a corner of the gallery, lovely Lorena Garay played classical, Spanish and Latin guitar. In another corner, a table was heaped with bright fruits, cheeses, and other appetizers. A bar was set up under Field's masterpiece. Smartly uniformed servers threaded their way through the crowd with trays of hot amuse-gueule.

My new best friend Magdalena Gomez had invited me to this "unveiling" of her latest venture, Teatro Vida. All the bigwigs who had donated money to her program were there, plus a good cross-section of the arty types in town, with strong representation from the Latino community. Alma found somebody to talk antiques and set design with, and I wandered around sipping my wine, taking notes and amassing quotes for an article I'm writing on Magdalena's venture.

Magdalena's from New York City. She moved to the Valley years ago and loves it here. From Springfield, New York is only three hours away, so you can get there pretty much any time you want. And sometimes you might want to: for an opera at the Met, for example. But six days out of seven, Springfield suits just fine. A lovely evening like this makes me think I've got the best of all possible worlds.

Lopped-off Lamppost

I've been keeping an eye on this broken lamppost at the end of my street. Over three months ago, the whole top section was knocked askew, presumably by a truck backing up around the corner. It stayed like that for a while, then was festooned with yellow caution tape. At a point, the broken section was taken off. No repair in sight.

The attractive retro-looking lampposts were put in by the city, unlike those on Mattoon Street, which residents paid for privately. It's therefore the city's responsibility to repair them. In Springfield, that can be a death sentence.

They say the new federal court house at the end of the block will be finished in May. Is that the deadline for getting everything in the neighborhood spiffed up? At this rate, May is sounding good.

Biodegradable

Photographed on Mattoon Street, one year ago and today.
I've been charting the progress of the plastic bag in the tree....

Music for a Victorian Home

House concert for the lucky Mattunes ticketholders today; beaglesitting for me. Since last spring, neighbors Greg and Maggie Tucker have been hosting a series of concerts in their Victorian row house on Mattoon Street. Sometimes I attend, and sometimes I just keep Mr. Lucky and Miss Rose out of the vicinity of the music. They're not purebreds, but they have enough beagle in them to bay incessantly even if they're sequestered up on the third floor. With forty strangers in the house, music, and the smells of a gourmet luncheon wafting up the stairs, believe me, they'd bay.

This concert was a bit of a change from the norm: it was a Valentine's Day tea, held at two homes. Music was of the type which might have been heard in these homes when they were new--before TV and computers, when people in neighborhoods like ours frequently gathered together around a piano for entertainment. Goodies were served in both homes, and paintings from three area artists were on view.

Concertgoers began at Larry Picard's place just up the street from the Tuckers. Larry's got the lower two floors of a gracious row house. Paintings of Cynthia Picard, lovely and arresting botanicals, plus a few by Doug Fortin in a more surrealist style, could be viewed while enjoying tea and savories. Larry, who's the organist for South Congregational Church in Springfield, played the piano for this segment. Then the crowd moved to Maggie's for more tea and sweets and more music, this time Larry and Maggie playing two pianos/four hands. Maggie was showcasing paintings of Gina Beavers.

Gina Beavers is a local favorite; she used to live on Mattoon Street before defecting to what she calls "mini-Mattoon" in Holyoke. Most of her work is commissioned, and it's a rare house in this neighborhood which doesn't have one of her paintings in it somewhere. This one is Greg and Maggie's portrait, which usually hangs in their bedroom (can you say "romantic"?), but was rehung in the front parlor for this occasion. That's Gina herself seated to the right.

Next month's house concert is classical guitar and tapas. For that one, Taz can be in charge of babysitting the beagles. I don't want to miss it.

Mardi Gras Poet

I don't always attend the monthly open mic poetry sessions at the downtown library (way too many extra-curricular activities around here for any one person to pursue), but I couldn't resist today's. A one-hour publishing panel kicked it off; I already know what's involved in publishing a book, but I wanted to meet the panelists, especially James Kates, co-director of the Boston-based non-profit literary publishing house, Zephyr Press.

Kates, Springfield author Barbara Ann Gowan, and Florence Poets Society member Thomas "Twilite" Clark summarized their experiences and fielded questions, then sat back and listened to the poetry. Tommy Twilite went back up to the mic and recited a pretty good poem, Crystal Senter Brown, who's the host, always does a few poems and is pretty cool, but I especially liked this young man making his poetic début with us.

Originally from New Orleans, he recited a poem he'd written about Mardi Gras, then cheerily flung a few strings of beads into the audience. He stumbled partway through his recitation, which momentarily flustered him, but he didn't give up. A deep breath and he backed up a bit, restarted his stanza and finished swimmingly. The audience was encouraging and enthusiastic.

And that's what I like so much about open mic poetry. Where else is a teenaged African-American kid going to get props from blue-haired ladies, ponytailed Vietnam vets, timid WASP-y housewives, middle-aged women on disability, Latino single mothers, and gruff old white guys? Poetry...the great civilizer.