Time to upgrade Hadley’s public library
I am admittedly prejudiced in favor of public libraries. I lugged piles of book back and forth from my local library as a child, had my first job as a library page and was happy to find a charming local library just up the street when my family and I moved to Hadley 20-odd years ago.
But I believe the time has come for Hadley to replace its aging library building.
The second floor is inaccessible to the public and the basement level, where restrooms and nonfiction stacks are located, is reached by a dangerously narrow and steep staircase.
Library use and programming continue to grow rapidly, but there is often not suitable or sufficient space for meetings and programs.
The library trustees and town residents have created a plan for a new library building on the Hooker School site, now the site of the Hadley Senior Center (this proposal has encouraged the town to have a much-needed and overdue conversation about the space and services needed by Hadley seniors).
The proposed library plan is eligible for a grant from the state for 54 percent of the cost, allowing Hadley taxpayers to recoup some of the taxes we all pay. And a committee has been formed to raise funds privately through a capital campaign.
The Hadley library serves the entire community and offers programs for toddlers, elementary school-aged children, teens and adults.
It is a community meeting place and a source of information, education, and entertainment.
Please join me in voting for Articles 18 and 19 at Town Meeting on Thursday to invest in Hadley’s future and allow the town to apply for state funding for a new library for Hadley.
Robie Grant
Hadley
Jones expansion project needs wider review
I don’t believe the elected guardians of our town’s well-being have done their due diligence to protect our public assets. In particular I am writing about the project to enlarge and remodel our Jones Library, a landmark in the center of town.
The development that’s happening all over town, the continual push for ever more permissive zoning changes, the flurry of construction activity is encouraged by our planning department as part of our “Master Plan,” a blueprint for development that began as a participatory community activity but was greatly modified before it was written into our Zoning Bylaw.
It was never brought to Town Meeting but ratified by the Planning Board. The key word is “infill” – the imperative to use every shred and shard of valuable real estate in the town center for building.
But there are other principles written into that plan for historic preservation and preservation of greenways. From the plan’s Land Use chapter: “Amherst should preserve the historic character of its neighborhoods; ensure that new development complements historic buildings, and create an accessible, pedestrian-friendly environment. Emphasize preservation (historic areas of the downtown.”)
It also calls to emphasize “adaptive reuse,” particularly historic areas downtown. Public green spaces are significant assets to urban areas, particularly when they are well-loved and frequently used by community members.
Trustees and Select Board members have failed to protect one of our finest public assets. They have not considered any plans for “adaptive reuse” of the historic existing building.
There is a petition article coming before Town Meeting to preserve the gardens. The Select Board will ask Town Meeting to dismiss it. Select Board member Connie Kruger said she did not want to “constrain the design process at this stage.”
Select Board member Andrew Steinberg said, “the health and vitality of Amherst Center might be lost if the building project does not move forward.”
Austin Sarat, in a statement from Jones Library trustees on March 28, said to preserve the entirety of the garden “would unduly constrain the effort to provide the best possible Library to the people of Amherst.” The Trustees and the Select Board have not studied alternate plans nor, it seems, have they read the historic and greenway preservation imperatives of the Land Use section of the Master Plan while they extol infill.
And how do Select Board members Kruger and Steinberg and Jones trustee president Sarat know what will provide the “best possible library” or how the building project might affect the “health and vitality of Amherst Center?”
Let’s ask the leaders of our community to take a more balanced view of the facts that make up their decisions to destroy an irreplaceable asset in order to save it.
Molly Turner
Amherst
We have read recently about plans of the Jones Library in Amherst to expand the 48,000-square-foot library to some 65,000 square feet, or even to 110,000 square feet.
Why is the Jones Library acquiring this much additional space and spending millions of town money? Is somebody trying to compete with the Forbes?
If the Jones needs this much additional square footage, let’s start in the existing building and its poorly used or publicly inaccessible square feet. A creative architect can find or create a lot of square footage within the current footprint of the library. Remodel the third floor space and improve the flow in the upper floors. Rebuild the former second floor in what is now the adult fiction room. Install an elevator in the lobby that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and opens upper floors for public use.
Before we talk expansion, let’s get “in-pansion” ideas on the table. Possible library space already exists in the vacant large bank building next door, which would avoid massive construction on the Jones site. This would provide massive amounts of space, and probably has lots of ready-made office space.
The central space, viewable from the glass front door, could accommodate a second floor, or a small performance space, or a museum space. Could the vault be used as archival space for important papers in the Jones Special Collection? The space between the buildings could be filled with a street-level parking lot with a second, lower level in the back.
Given the amount of money the Jones is going to ask the town to provide, it’s time for the Jones to clearly state and justify the need for all this new space and for the public to evaluate these needs and creative options for meeting them.
Carl Erikson
Amherst
Amherst — save the
alley cat art
The juxtaposition of two articles in the Gazette brought to the fore the cultural dysphoria of Amherst, a town that loves art — that is, politically correct, sanctioned art — and yet is willing to arrest two budding artists, one a juvenile, so bold as to foist an alley cat on town sensibilities.
The fact that they were covering graffiti with art is above the point. This is Rene Theberge territory, the land of the Public Art Commission, and turf is turf, go find other blank walls to adorn. You’re busted!
It is after all, “an illustration” of a cat and as such it must go!
To quote an April 15 article, “Theberge said once the designation is in place, Amherst will receive money to buy signs” declaring a cultural district, presumably to promote public art in Amherst!
Here it is, free of charge, accept it as a gift and “Save the Alley Cat!”
Bob Rivard
Belchertown
Endangered species need aid
I am writing to correct some misinformation in a guest column by Rob Weir regarding the plan to use an island on Quabbin Reservoir as a refuge for the Massachusetts native endangered timber rattlesnakes.
Weir states that bald eagles repopulated the state without human assistance. This is not true. The eagle population in the state was decimated by the use of DDT at the beginning of the last century. Starting in 1982, the Department Fish and Game in conjunction with Quabbin Reservoir raised and released 41 eagles at Quabbin Reservoir. The method is called hacking. Eagles were collected from states with healthy populations when they were a few weeks old and were reared in cages on the shores of Quabbin then released. This allowed them to imprint Quabbin as their home.
The first eagles born in the state since early 1900s were hatched at Quabbin in 1989 from one of the first released pairs named by staff Betsy and Ross. This successful program repopulated the state with eagles and this spring we have seven nesting pairs at Quabbin alone.
Reappearing wildlife populations at Quabbin are monitored and nurtured. Quabbin is one of the few places in the state with breeding loons. To help them along Quabbin banned the use of lead weights for fishing and builds nesting platforms (rafts) to help the loons cope with changing water levels.
It seems to me that since human activity has greatly impacted wildlife populations, the least we can do is give them a helping hand when we can. Quabbin is the single largest area of protected land in the state. We have room to accommodate a few rattlesnakes, another native species almost eradicated due to human activity.
Bill Pula
Pelham
Rattlesnake project seeks to undo interference
Rob Weir is correct when he writes that, as the headline put it, “Rattlesnakes must make their own way in ecosystem, or not.” (Guest column, April 27).
The proposal to compensate for the depletion of rattlesnake breeding populations due to human activity is intended to do just that. The idea is to help rattlesnakes make their own way by boosting population density to levels that will allow them to maintain healthy populations.
One logical way to do that is to intervene by introducing additional rattlesnakes to the Quabbin ecosystem. The Quabbin ecosystem itself was created by a major intervention; damming the Swift River.
Most ecosystems, including those on the East Coast, have been modified by human intervention. American Indians were heavily involved in shaping the world they lived in, a point made abundantly clear in Amherst author Charles A. Mann’s excellent book “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.” State game officials have continuously played an important role in successfully managing wildlife populations including eagles, bears and moose.
While it’s true that attempts to compensate for the blocking of salmon migration routes to their upstream breeding habitats by restocking the rivers with hatchery-reared fish were unsuccessful, conservation biologists should not be faulted for at least trying to repair the damage from damming rivers.
They were merely trying to respond to our interference with the ecosystem by building the dams in the first place.
And I’m sure they knew that the dams would not “disappear.”
Guy Lanza
Amherst
Divesting is moral, financial imperative
In the 1980s, student-led protests to force universities to divest from companies doing business in South Africa helped bring about the end of an immoral apartheid regime.
The recent articles about student protests at UMass, Harvard and elsewhere to divest endowments from fossil fuel bring up another issue worth supporting.
Efforts are under way to get our state legislature to divest Massachusetts’ pension fund from fossil fuels, and instead invest in renewable energy.
For moral and environmental reasons, the state pension fund should not be invested in a product that promotes a non-sustainable future.
Fossil fuel emissions contribute to rising sea levels and increased frequency and severity of extreme weather.
The transportation and extraction of fossil fuels lead to earthquakes, pipeline explosions, oil spills and contaminated soil, water and air. Whatever financial returns we gain from these investments cannot make up for the harm we do to others, and ourselves, by promoting fossil fuel production through these means.
Beyond this moral imperative, however, it appears increasingly clear that investing in and promoting more fossil fuel production is no longer a good financial investment.
In just the last year, Massachusetts’ pension fund lost a half billion dollars on its fossil fuel investments, and the financial news predicts more losses ahead.
I urge readers to contact their state legislators and ask them to support divestment of the state pension fund from fossil fuels and to invest in renewable energy.
H.2372, which would create a divestment commission to report on the advisability of divesting by the end of this year, is the only remaining bill that provides a path to divestment.
Let’s get coal divestment started and ensure that the composition of the commission has a balanced makeup.
Elaine Fronhofer
Amherst
Students should
dry out on campuses
On April 15, my husband was a patient in the ER at Cooley Dickinson Hospital. In one aspect it was a positive experience due to the talents of the staff assigned to his care.
They were professional and empathetic and kept me informed about his care. The downside was the wait. We arrived at 4:30 p.m. and were not finished up until 11 p.m.
I understand the wait for situations that are a greater emergency. One of the admissions was a student who was brought in from one of the local colleges because he had partaken of too much alcohol. He was on a stretcher in the “inner sanctum” sleeping it off.
This is happening frequently. I was a patient in the ER and was forced to wait while stretchers were taken up by students who had had too much to drink.
I understand the severity of alcohol intoxication but I also think the colleges should be able to prove 24-hour clinics on their campuses to deal with these individuals who usually only need watching and an IV for hydration.
If the colleges are going to allow drinking on campuses they should be ready for the consequence of taking care of thse individuals. I’m sure all local colleges have had instances of this use of the local ER.
If an adult is able to attend college they should act like adults and be responsible for their actions. If colleges are going to permit this behavior they should take responsibility for their “children.”
Susan B. Allan
Belchertown
Julius Lester’s April 22 piece on President Obama’s interactions with the families at Sandy Hook brought tears and underscored the reasons I continue to admire our president. Both of Professor Lester’s columns mirrored discussions I’ve been having for some time with friends and family.
We are outraged, saddened and disgusted with the way our president has been treated by the media and the Republicans (and yes, some Democrats) during his terms of office.
We, too, love this good person and agree that he is a man of compassion, integrity, intellect, and prudent action.
He has withstood with grace the unrelenting insults and attacks that have been ill-informed at best and vicious, ignorant, and hateful at worst.
Professor Lester is right on the mark: Columnist Jay Fleitman and others are entitled to their own informed opinions but not their own “facts” any more than are the rest of us. The president has been criticized and reviled at every turn and still maintains his dignity and sense of humor while the current crop of Republicans and some media spokespeople have diminished themselves, their professions and their party by their behavior.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s lyrics from “South Pacific” keep floating in my head: “you have to be taught to hate and fear … you have to be carefully taught ….”
Who is teaching this fear and hatred? Why are we allowing it? Perhaps we’d better look elsewhere for edification than the 24-hour news cycle and start thinking, reading and listening more critically and thoughtfully.
Let’s start to talk to rather than past each other and find the common threads that hold us and our country together.
Judith Eiseman
Pelham
UMass protesters
deserve our support
How wonderful to read the Gazette’s excellent editorial, “UMass must lead in fossil fuel divestment.”
We know how much this means to the students involved in the call for an effective response. On occasions over the last six months we have had the privilege of getting to know some of them personally.
In every case we have found them to be remarkably knowledgeable and responsible. These are our future leaders, and they need our respect and support now. With thanks for all you do.
Shirley and Rudy Nelson
Amherst
Questioning
fluoridation not lunacy
I’d be the first to admit that I enjoy a regular dose of Bruce Watson’s wry humor, but in his recent March Madness column in the Bulletin, I think he reaches too far in an effort to fill his piece with examples of certifiable “lunatic” causes. I refer specifically to the issue of fluoridation.
I was part of a small group of people who met a number of times with Amherst’s Board of Health about this issue in the spring of 2014. Sadly, the group disbanded after a few months because of procedural differences, but the experience was illuminating because it gave me a chance to reconnect with a topic I hadn’t paid much attention to for quite a while.
I won’t try to present the evidence here, but suffice it to say that considerable data has accumulated in the decades since Amherst began fluoridating its water to suggest that this practice is neither completely safe nor particularly effective. The problem now is that acceptance of fluoridation has become so entrenched that it’s difficult for anyone to take a fresh look at it.
After all, how can anyone question fluoridation when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls it “one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.”
Yet, ample evidence to the contrary is there. And if the nation ever decides that fluoridation was a mistake, do you think the federal government will be in the vanguard of that movement or one of the last to acknowledge it?
The latter seems likely to me, and I would prefer not to wait for los federales to have its epiphany.
What is incontrovertible is that fluoride, even in relatively small doses, is a toxin. It might be useful in carefully controlled settings, such as dental clinics. However, I submit that the burden of proof lies with cities and towns that choose to fluoridate their water to prove that what they are doing is justified by current science, not outdated thinking from several decades ago.
Watson lumps skeptics of fluoridation — in the same paragraph, no less — together with creationists, who I would agree exemplify head-in-the-sand thinking when it comes to acknowledging the fruits of scientific progress.
Ironically, though, the same charge could be leveled against Watson, who, I would argue, is perpetuating dogma rather than staying open to what science has to say on this important topic.
Jonathan Evans
Amherst
