A Case of Mistaken Identity in Amherst, Massachusetts

Hard Hat & Steel Tipped Shoes at Kendrick Place in Amherst

Two weeks ago, just a day after the police had removed an offending spider from the auto of a driver paralyzed with fear, Amherst’s finest confronted a second, thornier challenge.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette explains:

After getting a tip that the two escapees from a maximum security prison in New York might be walking on the streets of Amherst at 1:28 p.m. Thursday, several police officers spent about 25 minutes trying to identify the two men who were described by a woman as muscular, tattooed, and wearing dark shirts and shorts. Police said the men, found at a downtown coffee shop, were determined to be construction workers and not the escaped convicts serving life sentences at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.

With the termination of one convict and the capture of the other last weekend, some Amherstites will no doubt sleep more easily. But they still have their memories of mistaken identities past.

Perhaps the most poignant occurred in November of 2004, when then Town Meeting member Patricia Church, in a fit of pique, removed the Texas state flag from a pole in front of Town Hall. (She was protesting President Bush and his un-Amherstican policies.)  She soon found herself, however, with a lot of explaining to do—especially to Amherst’s Hispanic community. That’s because she had mistakenly pulled down the flag of Puerto Rico.

 Another random act of mistaken identity? Perhaps not quite.

Crosswalks to Bear in Northampton, Massachusetts

Path of Pride

A red, white, and blue crosswalk will not grace Northampton, Massachusetts’ main street on July 4^th.  Northampton, in fact, is a town in search of an approval process for such an initiative. Veteran’s Day seems like a more reasonable goal, observed board of public works chairman Terry Culhane during a June 25^th hearing on the matter.

The tricolor proposal by Northampton resident Katherine Osborne followed two months after the town’s rollout of the rainbow crosswalk pictured above, just in time for the city’s annual Pride Parade on May 3^rd. The crosswalk and the rainbow flag that it emulates, of course, are iconic symbols of the gay community, which helps give Northampton its Je ne sais quoi.  I prefer to view the symbol expansively to include once prideful heterosexuals like myself as well.

In any event, Northampton’s Bureau of Public Works gave the rainbow crosswalk fast-lane approval, the mayor and the city council president got on board, and the crosswalk’s chief advocate, Northamptonite Melinda Shaw, raised $1,700 to get it painted. Now apparently a permanent fixture, it debuted tutti frutti for the parade.

Still, some Northamptonites had misgivings. Had pride advocates received special treatment? Did the approval process lack sufficient procedural due diligence?  Stung by such consternation, members of the public works board confessed to having opened a Pandora’s Box. In that uncertain climate, Katherine Osborne’s patriotic crosswalk proposal was not the recipient of fast-track treatment. Instead, it awaits unresolved ground rules that may include aesthetic and other input from the City Council or the Arts Council.  

Pedestrian safety in disappearing ink

Vanilla Fudge. Meanwhile, a traditional vanilla crosswalk (see above) 200 feet up the street at a heavily traveled intersection continues to receive city government shunning a la Rodney Dangerfield. Northampton’s “disappearing ink” crosswalk may be the town’s longest crossing. It is undoubtedly among its most spectral. Pedestrians hit the street late because the cross light has no audio. And many seniors and others less than fleet of foot get stressed out in midstream when the light begins to switch over. The enterprise is an accident in waiting.

You’d think that Northampton’s burghers would be self-conscious given the cautionary reminder pictured below. It, in fact,  is easier to discern from the disappearing ink crosswalk than the d.i.c itself. It's a second crosswalk bordered by phosphorescent barrels topped with amber beacons resembling oversized pinball bumpers.  The town rolled them out in November of 2012, after Pallav Parakh, a physician, was run down by a 25-year-old in a pickup truck.

Northampton gets its priorities straight. . . via the rearview mirror.

Coda: Residents of Northampton and nearby Amherst take pleasure in ridiculing one another's  loopiness.  In the interest of balance, here’s a July 4^th sendoff from a card-carrying Amherstite that will gratify Northamptonites. Her letter is apparently an annual 4th of July message to readers of The Daily Hampshire Gazette:

A Question for Vladimir Morales and Wig & Pen's Readers

On June 7th , Amherst’s Select Board voted unanimously to adopt a resolution that prohibits the town from selling or buying goods or services to or from Arizona. The resolution also encourages Amherst’s residents and businesses to do the same. Thus, the town has responded to Arizona’s notorious “immigration” law, which gives police extraordinary powers to demand proof of identification by birth certificate or visa from anyone whom they suspect might be an illegal immigrant. Wig & Pen considers the Arizona law to be despicable. This blog is ambivalent about Amherst’s response.

NOW, on behalf of Wig & Pen’s readers, this blog seeks clarification involving a specific incident from Vladimir Morales, the Amherst Town Meeting member who played a pivotal role in the Amherst resolution’s adoption.

To cut to the chase: On Wednesday evening, while walking through town, I passed by La Veracruzana, one of Amherst’s culinary and cultural jewels. Owned by community-minded Martin Carrera and operated (predominantly) by Latinos, the restaurant recently installed a flat-screen wall TV to air every game of the current World Cup tournament. So far; so good.

It must have been after 8 p.m.--after World Cup coverage—but right in the middle of the Red Sox-Arizona Diamondbacks game, whose progress was clearly evident on the restaurant’s wall screen TV. When I got home, after voicing my customary skepticism toward interleague play, I asked my 18-year-old son whether he viewed La Veracruzana’s airing of the game as a breach of the Town’s resolution. His characteristically upbeat response: The Red Sox whipped their asses. Didn't they? So it must have been a good thing.

So Vlad, was it a good thing, a bad thing, or some shade of grey?

Please elucidate  below or via ariel@som.umass.edu.

Thank You!

Amherst, Massachusetts Parking Sign Puzzler

It’s 9 p.m. on Sunday night. You’ve finished the Sunday Times crossword and double acrostic. Time for one more puzzle: When can you park on Amherst, Massachusetts streets with the above-pictured sign?

If you’re wavering, that’s just what the good people in Amherst town government who cooked up the signs, hoped you’d do. The signs are in residential neighborhoods just beyond the legions of parking meters in downtown Amherst. The signage police want you to be uncertain so that you’ll exorcise all doubts by moving your vehicle to those meters. (Amherst residents, of course, know the solution to our puzzler, so they won’t need to hedge like you.)

At the meters you’ll pay a quarter for 35 minutes of peace of mind. (If you’re willing to pay for it, you may buy up to two hours of grace at your meter.) Perhaps the town will get luckier and sock you with a $10 ticket for overstaying your welcome. Parking revenues, of course, are a necessary evil among today’s cash-strapped municipalities. But here’s an alternative moral to our cautionary tale: Signage Can Intentionally Deceive as Well as Edify!

And the solution to our puzzler: If you don’t have a residential parking permit (and you don’t!), you can park on Amherst streets with those Mensa-teasing signs from September 1 – May 31 on Mondays through Fridays from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. On the weekends, you can park there around the clock. From June 1 through August 31, park whenever you please.

Blaming the Victim

After an especially poignant dope slap, the inimitable Curley Howard would sometimes times protest:

I’m a victim of coicumstance!

Forcibly departed Amherst ex-superintendent Alberto Rodriguez will soon fade from the memory of most Amherstites, but one of his protestations deserves special treatment. It's worthy, I think, of Bartlett’s:

I'm a victim of transparency!

That was in response to the avid villagers who publicly rummaged through the news of his 40 days away from his $175,000 job between last August and the end of April.

When I last checked, transparency was a virtue--in the accountability of well-paid public servants, the financial records of publicly traded businesses, and the aspirations of aspiring water borders. Not that Mr. Rodriguez was a miscreant, but that he was, for the sake of the town, accountable--sooner rather than later.