The Top Left Corner

Top Left Corner: That’s right. This is the top left corner Episode 180. I’m your host, Jay Velázquez, and I do thank you for tuning in this Monday, May 8th, 2023, for what is bound to be a great show. This is part of our election coverage election for select board here in Williamstown, Massachusetts. We’ve actually kind of gotten Williamstown a short shrift when it comes to election coverage. But I guess, guess we have to change that. And this is part of that. We have a conversation with incumbent Andy Hogeland, who is going to spend a few moments, I guess about 45 minutes or so, discussing why you should give your vote to him for another term on the select board.

Top Left Corner: Also in the show notes, we have a short bio for Mr. Hogeland and photo if you need to know what he looks like. The bio is going to be a fairly condensed bio. I asked him to talk about his background in the show during the interview, and it’s pretty extensive. So I guess read, listen and decide for yourself. We have only one other interview and that’ll be coming up. And I guess what’s going to be part B of this episode with Stephanie Boyd, who declined to send an image or a bio, so I can’t show you what she looks like. But you can definitely Google her and I’m sure you’ll find a picture of her all over the place. We’ll be speaking with her next. I tried to ask the same basic questions and try to cover the same basic material for both candidates to make it as fair as possible. Obviously, it’s going to stray a little bit here and there, but we does what we can. The other two candidates, Paul Harsh, did not get in touch with me at all, did not respond to requests for an interview. And Andi Bryant responded to let me know that she was not running — this is when she wasn’t running — and was not interested in discussing things generally.

Now she is running but did not get ahold of me to to have this interview. She’s got about a five minute statement on Willinet and you can check that out if you like. But right now, let’s get to our conversation with Andy Hogeland right here on the Top Left Corner.

Don’t forget — Elections are only half the fun! The Town will meet at Mount Greylock Regional School, 1781 Cold Spring Road, on Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. to decide on a bunch of issues. Which issues? Why, they’re listed in this PDF of the Warrant we’ve so thoughtfully provided!

My name is Andy Hogeland, and I’m running for re-election to the Select Board. I have lived here with my wife Anne since 1994, and our three daughters attended WES and graduated from Mount Greylock. I practiced law for over 30 years, and have substantial experience serving in our town government. I have served on the Select Board for several years, including twice as Chair, and before that as Chair of the Finance Committee. I’ve chaired three committees where you can see the results: planning the new police station, making the Spruces a community resource, and chairing the high school building committee for its first five years. 

I am a member of state-wide organizations where I advocate for our interests in Boston. I am President of the Massachusetts Select Board Association (MSA), and am a member of the Governor’s Local Government Advisory Commission (LGAC). We meet regularly with the Lieutenant Governor and Cabinet officials.  In these roles, I speak up for the needs we share with other towns such as more funding for our schools and local road projects. If re-elected to the Select Board, I can continue my advocacy on Beacon Hill.

I am the Chair of the Affordable Housing Trust, and a former board member of the local Habitat for Humanity.  I believe that finding ways to make housing more affordable is one of our top priorities. 

For more information, please visit my website at andyhogeland.com

Andy Hogeland: Thank you for having me. And thank you for your interest.

Top Left Corner: Well, it is sort of a new era, I guess, for the town. And it is, I think, incumbent. It is It behooves people who who care about what’s going on here, who have op inions about what’s going on to to pay attention during this this season. Because I think that the next sort of phase of the town’s development is is really going to kick into high gear, not just for the new blood that may come onto the into the process, but also this is really the first sort of almost post-pandemic year. And I think that I can detect that there’s a lot more activity even now early in the season than I’ve seen in a couple of years. Why don’t you do this even though we’ve spoken before and and you’ve probably given me a rundown of your past before, just if you wouldn’t mind saying a little bit about how you came to this position. You know, what what interested you and what makes you think it’s worth pursuing another term?

Andy Hogeland: Sure. Of course. My wife Anne, and I moved to Williamstown in 1994, and I’ve been doing public service work here for, you know, almost half of that time over the years. And I think I kind of got that from my parents. They were both involved in local public service. It was kind of part of what was in the house, and it appeals to me. It’s a way to work on local problems with people we know. And if you actually work on a problem, you can see the result. It’s not like, you know, state or national politics where you can bang your head against the wall for long periods of time. It’s a it’s my version of think globally, act locally. So it’s kind of a nice match for me. I started in town government here on the Conservation Commission and the Planning Board, and since that time have been on the Finance Committee, including as chairman, Select Board, as chairman a couple of times, and a lot of special purpose committees on the high school building committee, the committee to make the SPRUCES a good resource for everybody and for finding the police station. So sort of a variety of things that interest me and I hope are productive for the town. And one of the one of the current parent efforts is we are reviewing the charter and co-chair, along with my colleague Jeff Johnson, undertaking the first comprehensive review of the charter since 1956. So kind of overdue, some would say, Wow, it’s for me, just interesting work to see how you can make government work every day. And the charter review makes you step several steps back and say, well, how should this government be structured in the first place?

Top Left Corner: You know, that’s that’s an issue that I think I’m going to have to follow because, yeah, most people don’t don’t think too, too much about the importance of of the charter and the fact that it is the, you know, the bedrock document and revisiting that. We’ll have to talk more about that. I want to hear I want to hear about that just just for now. How long is that expected to take?

Andy Hogeland: We started in September and the goal is to have it ready for town meeting in 2024. So a year from now.

Top Left Corner: Wow.

Andy Hogeland: So we’ve been we’ve been on schedule plowing through, you know, 3 or 5 issues every month. And these include issues like why do we have a strong town manager form of government? So our town meeting be open or representative? What board should be appointed or not appointed? Should we have two town meetings a year or just one? Should we have a recall provision? So a lot of sort of fundamental structural questions, many of which I think will be resolved by saying things are fine, but there are going to be some where we think we can maybe try something different. So stay tuned. Come back a year from now, we’ll do another story.

Top Left Corner: That’s Well, I’ll tell you, I mean, it’s it’s a big deal. Will the does the public have any input in this? I mean, obviously, you’re going to be talking about this during select board meetings. Are there any issues that you think are. So important that you would want the town to weigh in.

Andy Hogeland: Uh, we’re going to want to kind of weigh in on everything as we go along and also at the end. These are not Selectboard meetings. The Selectboard formed a charter review committee. So this is a separate group of seven people who have a lot of experience in in town government. And so our task is to spend the time from last September through next May putting together proposals as to what we think should change. So, okay, all of our meetings are open to the public. They’re all on Zoom. We are getting to the point where we’re going to plan to have some particular public forums, I guess, in the fall to say, here’s here’s our thoughts on ten or 15 or 20 issues. What do you think? Public. Wow. And then we’ll take that input back into consideration and come up with recommendations for town meeting, especially for your listeners, is that we put together a survey which went out with all of the tax bills, real estate tax bills, all landowners got it. I also went through a bunch of other addresses and came up with about 600 tenants which got mailed The survey and the survey is also online at the at the town’s webpage because that gives us, I think over around 3000 people we’ve asked their opinion of. So the results are still coming in, but we like to be able to plow through that data probably in a month or two from now.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, it sounds like some of the these items are are. Are instruments of town government that really do affect a change could really affect how things run. So I’m excited to learn more about that. Let’s let me ask a question. Since you are an incumbent and you’ve been through some you’ve sailed through some fairly choppy waters, municipal waters, during some some rough patches, there was the issue of the police department, the chief of police there was the town manager. Sort of friction. Why don’t you give us a sense of some of the things that you’ve learned, some of the nuggets of wisdom that you’ve picked up during those those those, you know, fairly fractious periods?

Andy Hogeland: Yeah. Well, I of downplayed them the nuggets. But I’ll tell you what I got two things come to mind. The first thing is eternally always the value of listening to people. When the police trauma first came to light in the middle of 2020, I guess it was it was a surprise to everybody. People were very upset with what they heard. And so a lot of the work for that first six or so months was listening to the concerns of the community, understanding what they wanted, listening to the police department to understand their view of things. And I think if you spend enough time trying to learn what’s on people’s minds and be committed to working collaboratively toward some good solution, that’s sort of one way that I always like to go. And the second lesson I think, is patience. There was a lot of outcry at the beginning for immediate action on a variety of things, and we kind of put our heads down to do the homework and do the investigation that needed to be done. The I organized that. The investigation gave us a better sense of what happened and what actually didn’t happen in many cases and helped us decide what should be the consequences. We then kind of buckled down again and went through several difficult personnel decisions. And I think the result is we’re coming out on the far end, far better off than we were before we went in.

Andy Hogeland: I think the confidence in the police department has been well restored. I really give a huge amount of credit to Chief Mike Ziemba for all the work he’s doing. I think we’re lucky to have the right person in the right position. At the time we needed someone to step in, so that’s been great. About a week or so ago, there was a celebration at the log about a partnership program which he initiated to develop better relationships with the community. And it was just really I can’t tell you how gratifying it was to me to see what had happened over the prior year in terms of people coming together, coming up with solutions for how the police can interact differently, what kind of wellness programs they needed, how they should do better outreach in the community. So it was a tough sailing for most of the year, but I think in the intervening almost two years, things have changed rapidly and I think much, much for the better. So yeah, so back to your questions. I think listening well and being patient and deliberative in terms of making sure you think things through and not not doing things that are a knee jerk reaction, I think no one’s ever accused me of being jerky on my knees too much in terms of doing things off the cuff. I think thoughtful, well-researched approach kind of is kind of how I built.

Top Left Corner: Would you say that the right level of transparency was was maintained throughout the processes?

Andy Hogeland: Uh, I would. It would have been nice to have been able to have been more transparent. But, you know, the, the challenge was and this was something we wrestled with is what can we say? What can’t we say was the crisis was brought about by litigation. Right. And in litigation, when you are a party to a case, you need to be careful what you say about the case because anything you say can be twisted or moved or used against you or used for you. So we’re trying to be careful of that. And also the people who were being accused both ways have privacy rights. So we couldn’t be open and carefree about what we said. We had to be careful and people would have preferred to have learned more sooner. But again, we took the deliberative approach and did a very comprehensive investigation. And I think that investigation left, I think no less. I can think of some no questions unanswered. So transparency came, I think, at the right time. It would have been nice to have done it more quickly. But given the constraints of litigation and privacy and personnel actions, you got to go through a minefield.

Top Left Corner: Now, it sounds like it. It sounds like there’s a lot that a lot of eggshells that you have to try not to step on on the on the way to getting through it. So I guess there are a number of things that are on the public’s mind. As I mentioned, in in our digital green room before the show started, there are three major issues that I’m going to be talking about because there are issues I’m going to be that I’m concerned with here in town and I’m going to be following in The Greylock Glass, and I’m sort of making sure that I ask the same questions, basically, of of all the candidates. And the first one is the issue of of land use going forward, of zoning, of lot sizes of multiple units on. On one parcel. There’s a lot of back and forth about that. There’s some misunderstandings about what has been proposed this. Is has caused some real hard feelings in certain quarters. Can you give me your take on this issue and where you think the town needs to go, what direction the town needs to go through if we’re to find a good a good, happy medium here?

Andy Hogeland: Uh, I think that anybody who wants to look at these issues needs to anchor in to kind of fundamental facts, which is we don’t have much available land in Williamstown. It looks rural, but a lot of that land is tied up because it’s owned by the state or it’s subject to different kind of restrictions or conservation restrictions. So it looks like a beautiful open space, which indeed it is, but a lot of it’s not available. So there’s a there’s a shortage of of land for any kind of development. And the second fact is, I think we need to do more all the time on making more housing available for people, housing which is affordable for all ranges of people. I think mistakenly think affordable housing means subsidized housing or really low income housing. I think we need housing which is affordable at a range of income levels. So between a shortage of land and a need for probably more land for housing. That’s the dilemma that we’re into. I’ve done, I think, a fair amount of work on making housing affordable. I was one of the directors of the local Habitat for Humanity chapter for four years until about a year ago. We spent a lot of time doing fundraising and permitting work on the two houses being built at the corner of Cole and Maple. So the result of that work is there’s going to be two families. One’s already there, the other there probably within the end of the year. Two families now own houses in Williamstown, which otherwise would not have happened. While I was also there, I negotiated with the Turner House for Veterans, which was a charity going out of business, negotiated an arrangement with them where we would get about half of their remaining assets and we would use it for housing projects for veterans that needed home repairs or mortgage assistance.

Andy Hogeland: And so there is now a Habitat for Humanity Veterans Home Program. And I’d say anybody who knows a veteran who needs home repairs, home assistance, please contact the northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity chapter to see if they can help you. So that’s been that’s one way to try to do housing. The other avenues on housing are I’m working on as part of the Williamstown Affordable Housing Trust. I’m chairman of that now the trust before my time purchased vacant lots and helped fund the construction of by habitat over those two houses at Cole and Maple. There is another project going to start, I hope, next year on Summer Street. And they also have housing programs which don’t require that kind of big capital investment. And these are mortgage assistance program. These give grants to prospective homeowners of Williamstown who are income qualified and help them with things like down payment or closing costs. So a lot of people at that income level can make the leap from paying a monthly rent to a monthly mortgage. But they don’t have the $15,000 or so to do down payments and closing costs. And that’s where the trust has stepped in. They had a parallel. And actually 21 families in Williamstown now have bought their first home because of this program. There’s a parallel program for emergency rental and mortgages, rental assistance, which has helped. And it’s up to 18 income qualified residents hurt by the pandemic maintain their rental apartments. So these are examples of where you can take funding and sprinkle the benefits out among a lot of Williamstown families. So I’m pretty happy with those.

Top Left Corner: Now, what specifically about the idea of reducing the frontage requirements and the ability to buy right build multi or multiple multi unit structures on one one parcel? What do you think the effects are going to be of that if that goes through? And and do you support that?

Andy Hogeland: Uh, I support all of them, but I think that the practical impact of them is really varied. You know, changing the allowable lot sizes in the general business district just means initially on a map, every lot can be smaller. But the problem is we’re talking about a built environment where the lots are occupied by houses and driveways and garages. So I think the the the changes that will be affected by changing the allowable lot size are going to be pretty marginal. Not to they’re fine, but they’re not. I think they’re very impactful. I think the the two proposed articles which might have more impact would be to allow either a three family house or a four family house to be built wherever you can build a single family house as long as your setbacks are right. And that probably does open up more opportunities for the creation of more housing. So it helps to solve that problem. So I’m in favor of that. I’m conscious that the bigger these multifamily structures are, the less automatically comfortable some of the neighbors might be. But I think these things can be designed tastefully. The setbacks are still going to be required. So I think it’s an experiment we should undertake because as I said for a while, we need more housing and this is a way to get it. And the last the last one which you didn’t ask about, just make sure it gets covered, is a proposal to allow manufactured homes formerly known as mobile homes to be put anywhere. You can put a single family house, I think, to create housing. That’s helpful. But I think that the neighborhood push back on that is probably going to be the subject of more discussion.

Top Left Corner: Sure. Sure. Well, I think it has been said by by some folks that they’re basically just glorified campers. Now, I have spoken with people who have quite a bit of experience with manufactured homes, and some of them basically have the same design. They have capes, they have bungalows, they have ranches. And the difference is that they’re assembled, they’re shipped in in chunks and pieces, and they’re put together on the, you know, on site. And they can have foundations, which is a misunderstanding. They can be placed on foundations. They don’t have to be on a slab. And some of them look, you know, indistinguishable from a stick built. Well, I mean, they are stick built, but they’re stick built in the factory. They’re indistinguishable from something that was that was erected, you know, on site. So I agree that there’s there’s a way that you can do it. And and I’m sure that. Most people have an understanding that we need. More housing that is, you know, accessible, I guess the biggest. The biggest fears that I’ve had because I do a lot of driving around. I’ve taken to doing Uber driving to pay for the GreylockGlass.com and the last year, six months or so. So I do a lot of driving and I do a lot of driving and places like the outskirts of Albany and Troy and Hartford and Boston and a lot of other places, Springfield. And I see a lot of farmland being turned into apartment farms. These are structures that look basically like houses. They don’t they’re not ugly. They’re just they’re just sort of popping up out of the ground with no actual sort of out of context. There’s no trees, there’s no, you know, landscaping. They’re just fields of these little two and three bedroom duplex and triplex houses that are apartments and farmland is being chewed up pretty quickly by some of these. I have been told that, in fact, that that can’t happen here in Williamstown, that farmland is not at stake in this in this change. Should it go through? Would you say that that’s accurate? Are we not worried about farmland being being turned into little, little McMansion fields?

Andy Hogeland: I wouldn’t phrase it as an absolute statement about nothing’s at risk or it’s all at risk. I think every lot in town, wherever it is, has a different constraint on it. Some farmland is it’s for farming and it’s preserved that way and you can’t do much else on it. Other farmland isn’t preserved. You can do other things on it. And there are fields out there that looks like a farm to you, but it actually may be someone’s big old backyard. So I think if we’re worried about where homes might be built, you’ve really got to do a more a deeper dive than just say, oh, it’s a big area. Must be a lot of houses or absolutely no houses can be there. I think also going back to your original part of your question on the on the manufactured home aspect is they 50 years ago they had a bad reputation. I don’t know why it came up that way, but we need to acknowledge that they were not deemed to be popular in some communities. I think people need a voting machine to do some research. Look at the things you’re looking at now. Open your eyes. Take a look what’s being made today. Look at what it looks like today and rethink the thoughts that maybe might have been made or true or not, 50 years ago. These things are different today. Take a look at them. And I think the other concern is people are looking at like, what are you talking about? Where these are large multi unit properties being chewed up. We’ve got ten, 20, 30, 40, 50. That’s not what this bylaw does. If unless I got it wrong. This file says you can put one of these wherever you could put a house. So you’re still subject to limitations on space? I think because of the past prejudice against that type of architecture. You’re going to have some of that coming through. Can’t argue with that. But I think all I can ask is people take a look at today’s version of these structures and see if you feel the same way.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. Yeah, I suppose the the fact of the matter is, you know, you’re right. We have a lot of land that’s tied up and others it’s has agricultural preservations or forest, you know, it’s under conservation restrictions. Some of it, as you said, is owned by the state. So yeah, there is I think that we’re still going to have the rural feel more or less the the thing that I hope is that because because these sort of local food movement was just a little bit behind the eight ball starting in the, you know, mid 90 seconds, early two, thousands long after farming had become unviable for a number of families. I feel like there’s a lot of folks who would love to be farming here, would love to have a stall on Saturday morning at the at the farmer’s market. We’d love to be able to have CSAs where they deliver food, you know, to local residents. It would be a shame if we lost. If we lost an opportunity for that sector to grow right, when people are most interested in it. And so I’m hoping that that, that that doesn’t happen.

Top Left Corner: Um, now. The question that I could talk about housing forever. I used to be a tax assessor and I could go on and on about various questions. But the fear that I have, too, is that. With so many people looking at the Berkshires as a great place to relocate, I don’t see any reason why without some form, without something to compel developers to make a certain amount of the housing affordable, I can’t see that new construction is necessarily going to be. Along the lines of affordability, you know, at least not affordability by by the by the standards that most people in the bottom 80% consider affordable. You know, we’ve got plenty of homes that are available that pop up on the market for, you know, a million plus. But I’m thinking about the homes that a family of four might be able to afford on a fairly, you know, lower middle class income. Do you have any concerns that the construction that’s coming down the pike, if and when it gets here, is just going to create homes for other more wealthy people?

Andy Hogeland: Well, I guess I go back to your premise about there’s not a way to force people to to build affordable housing as part of a project. That’s actually how we got most of our affordable housing in town is because you can force that there’s a state statute called 40 B, which essentially says that if you’re going to commit a certain percent of your units to affordable housing, which income qualified, affordable housing, you can bypass most zoning requirements. That’s how cable mills phase one came to being with 13 units in it. That’s how Highland Woods came into being with its 40 units. I think the 380 Cole Avenue is all affordable units. It’s about the same number. And they are able to do all that because 40 B lets developers build housing as long as a certain number or in some cases all of them are said as affordable. And in cable mills, they’re they have a phase three proposal which is going through the hoops now and it’s going to be 54 units and because of 40 B and the state regs, half of those are going to be designated to be affordable units for people at various levels of area median income. So that is how we do things. Well, it is the thrust is working on not working on, but supporting on Green River Road, which would be 16 units, four of which have to be affordable. And so there is there is a tool available to do that. Right? Right. They they take a developer. That’s what we’re usually missing. And what’s hard to find is a developer. If you can find a developer and give them some guarantee of land or financial support, people can make it happen. But putting a project together is not an easy thing to do. I like other programs where you’re basically helping first time homeowners or tenants, you know, find a way to have housing here without going through the expense of building one. But let me.

Top Left Corner: Ask you this. How is the how is the the range of affordability calculated that’s based on on housing stock locally, is it not?

Andy Hogeland: It’s based on area median income.

Top Left Corner: Area median income. So when we’re talking about when we’re talking about the cable mills, I mean, I’m at their Web store right now. They’re saying flats from the high 400,000 seconds, lofts from the low 500,000 townhomes from the mid 600,000. That doesn’t sound like affordable housing to me at all.

Andy Hogeland: Well, those units aren’t the affordable housing units. If you go deeper into the process and after the call, I can direct you to where to find the. There are 13 units in the first phase which are set aside for affordable buyers, affordable housing buyers, and those prices are down in the under 200 range. I think I’ll have to check the number, but they were constructed in a way that they had to be affordable first as rental units. Now they can be on the market as purchase units, but the affordability restrictions remain in effect. So they’re not the prices that you just quoted me. They’re much less than that. And I’m sorry, I can’t bring to mind the exact number, but that’s fine.

Top Left Corner: I’m just I’ve just heard from people also about the the Cole Street, the new Cole Street development, how you know, I think that they were saying that a one bedroom bedroom is around $1,000 and they’re paying for their heat and hot water as well. So, I mean, that’s that’s still pretty pricey. I mean, I’m just saying, one of the things that people say, the reason that we need affordable housing in part is because we don’t have the people to work in some of the jobs that are hard to fill because they pay her on minimum wage. You see what I’m saying? We’ve got these these tons of service jobs. No one is filling them because no one can afford to live around here. But coming up with a one bedroom apartment for 1000 $1,200 with heat and hot water, that’s not included. You can’t you can’t make minimum wage and afford those two things. Those two are not compatible. So I guess.

Andy Hogeland: That’s a challenge because there’s a fundamental reality that to build an apartment or pay an apartment or pay off a mortgage costs a certain amount of money. And the the tenants you’re talking about, even $1,000 are not paying the full cost of the whole thing. Right? There are subsidies or state grants and stuff that make up the difference between to get the rents lower and lower. Just it keeps running into development costs and the limitations of grants and funding to offset those development costs.

Top Left Corner: Um, well, I guess, I mean, that’s true. I mean, there’s I mean, my father was a homebuilder, so I know what it costs. I worked with him for a number of years. I know what it takes to to build housing. And I know that it’s it’s not getting any cheaper for the builders, for the developers.

Andy Hogeland: And by by way of comparison, I do a lot of state level stuff on this, which I do when I get to at some point. And you know, people are quoting Western mass development costs are about $500,000 per unit. Right. So, you know, unless you get substantial funding from some source. It’s hard to get the rents down to $1,000 a month for that.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. The next question that I’ve got next topic, I guess, is, is the issue of it’s partially related, but there’s there’s more to it is senior housing. A lot of people don’t know that the Highland woods. It’s not. Um, it’s not a government agency really, that runs it. It’s not the housing authority. Like, for example, in Shelburne Falls. In Shelburne Falls. That property, the senior housing there, is owned and operated by the housing authority. The housing authority must recognize a. A tenants association at Highland Woods at Proprietors Field. These are these are privately owned. There is no opportunity. For the seniors and some disabled living there to form a union, a tenants union and tenants organization and advocate for their for themselves. Um, this is a problem because so many people applauded when Highland Woods was constructed. Notrillionealizing that in some ways it’s, it’s it’s not desirable when you are a person who wants to have some say in your living, you know, for example, they’re able to change because once you’ve been there for a year, it turns to a month to month rental agreement, a month to month agreement that can be changed. You know, every 30 days. And the tenants there sign the the rental agreement saying that they accept that, you know, so in other words, they can say we don’t like.

Top Left Corner: We don’t like lawn furniture, we don’t like plants, we don’t like bird feeders. We don’t like. And month to month, these seniors and there’s a lot of them living in these units, these seniors have to put up with arbitrary and sometimes capricious rulings. And and I have heard from a few of them that they’re afraid to even open up their mouth for fear of retaliation. What what are we going to do going forward when the in the future, in the next 20 years, the population of Williamstown is expected to gray even further to make sure that seniors have a place to live that is not just affordable, but also protects their dignity, that acknowledges their lifelong contributions. I’m very the things that I’m hearing about what’s going on there just disgust me. There’s supposed to be a smoke free property, yet they built a smoking shelter on the property next to which you have to walk by. I mean, it’s just it’s a sham from what I understand. So. Can you can you comment about about the. About how seniors are going to figure into the town planning going forward. The town, for example, the 15 year plan. I mean, what what what kind of protections? What kind of. Respect are we going to be giving seniors in going forward?

Andy Hogeland: Well, it sounds like somebody’s complaining to you about Highland Woods or Ferris Field. I haven’t heard those complaints, so I can’t comment on them. So let’s catch up later on if you want, because, you know, I’ve not heard anything like that. So I’d have to get some information to find out how to assess it better. But on your broader question about seniors, anything before I leave that part of it is there there are different housing models in each of them comes with different housing benefits and detriments. We do have a housing authority, which probably also has rules and a tenants association. We have.

Top Left Corner: But it has. It has. It has. No, no, it doesn’t have any effect over the Highland Woods or the proprietors field. I didn’t say it did. There’s. Well, you’re saying there’s a tenants union. There’s no tenants union in William. In Williamstown.

Andy Hogeland: Well, in the Williamstown Housing Authority, not private field. There’s a tennis representative on the board of directors. So they’re represented there. That’s one different that’s a model of how housing works there. The model at Highland Woods Proprietors Field is different because it’s private, as you pointed out. And the model at any kind of other private thing is tenants. They’re kind of subject to a lease or at will. So there are different ways of providing. Houses come with different pluses and minuses on them. In terms of your broader question about seniors, you know, Highland Woods was designed for seniors. That’s kind of the target population to make sure that there’s a place for them. And that’s that’s allowed. And I think we should be happy that that was able to be built based on cooperation of a lot of people. The other thing which I would like your listeners to know about is on this year’s warrant for town meeting, there is an article on this which I initiated and drafted which would provide greater property tax relief to seniors. We have a property tax relief program here which was put in place decades ago. So it’s really outdated and it gives some very limited property tax relief to people over 70 with limited income and limited assets. The proposal, which is on the warrant, would be to lower the eligibility age to 65, increase the limits on assets and on income, and then make all of that tied to automatic increases in the CPI. So this is a way to try to get some relief to to those seniors.

Top Left Corner: I mean, that sounds great. That sounds super. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what the ratio of of seniors who own seniors who rent. I do know that I know a number of people who they place their property in their children’s name long before 65, you know, as a way of protecting it. I think that’s a great thing for those seniors who do own property. Do you have any number of, say, units that this is that this is going to affect in Williamstown, how many potential people this is going to? Impact.

Andy Hogeland: It’s a little bit hard now, under the current strictures of the program, there’s only six people take advantage of it. And this is what the. So the question is, how many more will you get if you lower the age and increase the limits? There is a national survey. The name of which I forget, but there’s a housing needs assessment on the. Affordable Housing Trust website, which contains acres of data, and that says that there are about 76. People in town over the age of 65 who are at or below the poverty level, which is about the level we’re talking about. So that would be another 70 people based on age, but an income. But it doesn’t say anything about what the assets are and doesn’t say whether they actually own a house or not. So the universe seems like it would be fewer than 70 people. But you know what? That’s what the state would let us do. So that’s what I’m proposing we do. That’s the best we can do under the. Wait a.

Top Left Corner: Minute. Wait a minute. I’m sorry. So you’re saying that there’s 76 people at or below the poverty level? Over 65 over 65? I mean, that could be largely accounted for by proprietors Field and Highland Woods. I mean, that could, you know, or and.

Andy Hogeland: Why I’m saying it’s an outside number because it doesn’t tell you because we don’t have data on whether which of those people own a home and which those people have more assets than. Sure.

Top Left Corner: So when you. So you authored this this. This initiative. Yes. And we know that there are six people currently who fall under the they own a house and they’re over 65, but we don’t know.

Top Left Corner: Over 70. But so so we don’t know then how many people between 65 and 70 own a home and would be affected by these. This this change.

Andy Hogeland: Right. But but because we we do have these estimates or numbers on how many people are 65 below poverty level. We know that it can’t be more than that number. Right. Because that number will go down. If you don’t own a home, it will go down if you have more assets than you’re allowed to have.

Top Left Corner: Okay. So but it could also be three people. Right. I mean, it could be three additional people. Who are own a home and our 65 to 70 and who meet the income criteria.

Andy Hogeland: It could be none. It could be three. It could be 50 or 60. Right. And another thing I would caution is. Uh, it’s not clear to me that everybody who’s eligible for any of these kinds of programs actually apply and take advantage of them.

Andy Hogeland: We might have low income seniors who don’t know about it, don’t want to take a handout from the government. So I think all we can do is the best we can, and that’s why people agree with this measure. I agree. It’d be nice to do a lot more, but for this particular avenue, these are the I’m pushing for the lowest age and the higher limits I’m allowed to push for sure.

Top Left Corner: It just it will be interesting to know. And as far as handouts go, I think that most seniors, when they get to that point and if they’re faced with having to stay in their home or sell it so they can pay the their entire life savings to, you know, facility, I think that chances are that the term handout isn’t really going to be isn’t going to apply. Um, you know, the.

Andy Hogeland: Different attitudes about that. I’m just saying, you know, we can’t assume that everybody who’s eligible is actually taking it for whatever reason.

Top Left Corner: I mean, we, you know, we know that there are people who don’t who qualify for SNAP benefits, who don’t don’t sign up for them, too. I mean, there’s plenty of reasons that people don’t don’t do that. And sometimes it’s because they don’t know that they could that they do qualify. So I guess, you know, I don’t I don’t want to say too, too long on the topic of seniors, but I have seen senior centers. I’ve lived in different parts of the country, different parts of the state. I’ve seen a lot of actually senior centers. And there are there are everything from just a little a little shack, a little little cottage that has a couple of tables and a chess board to really impressive facilities with latest state of the art exercise equipment, yoga classes, um, you know, various, you know, continuing education classes. Um, I think that our given, given the senior population that we have here in Williamstown and given the. The fact that it’s going to grow. I feel like the senior center that we have. Could be a bit more a bit more full featured. I mean, for example, it could have.

Andy Hogeland: I disagree because I could be it could be a lot more full feature, not just a bit. I think I think it’s it’s it’s an okay, fine facility. I think we could well use something which is much better than that.

Top Left Corner: Okay. Yeah. I always have to be careful how radical I sound, I guess. But, you know, the. The fact is. Seniors could have. I mean, we could start with things as simple as outdoor. There’s some really cool outdoor exercise equipment that’s it’s a permanent fixture. It helps in stretching, step by step exercises, balanced exercises. You can look it up. There’s some really cool outdoor exercise equipment that there’s room for. There’s room for over there. Certainly right now there is a common room, but there are never any tables and chairs out. So if you go there, there’s like there’s no. You know, unless there’s something going on, you’re not going to be comfortable, you’re not going to feel welcome going in there. I mean, it’s like it’s not like it’s the place that just, you know, people go and hang out. Now, there are you know, there are coffees and breakfasts and, you know, occasional things and speakers, but in terms of a place that you would hang out. I’m not seeing it. I’m just not seeing it. What can we do going forward to maybe take a look at what would improve that situation? Would you be in favor of doing at least a minimal sort of survey of of what features we could add?

Andy Hogeland: Yeah, I think there’s been starting a couple of years ago. There are growing conversations like the ones that you just had about can we do better for senior centers or even just a broader scale community center? Because we have a youth center, which is a really nice facility, but and the senior center, which is, I would say not quite as nice of a facility. So I think it’s a it’s a very good time to well, actually, it’s a bad time to ask a question, but it’s a good question to ask about what can we do to have better facilities. And the timing issue is, of course, we’re paying for a police station and a high school and a fire station. So, you know, coming up with capital funds for things like this, it’s a matter of timing. And I think this particular year is a bad time to pay for anything. But I think and but you know what? These things take years to put together. So starting that process now of analyzing what do we need, what do we want, where would it go? How would we pay for it? Starting those conversations now and I’m all in.

Top Left Corner: That’s good to hear because I turn 55in a couple of months and AARP has been hammering me lately with the the don’t forget you’re going to be eligible now. So I of course, I’m thinking about my own senior my own sunset years there. Um, the last thing I really want to talk about here and I know we’ve gotten a little bit longer than I intended was. The issue of the climate and climate readiness. There are.

Top Left Corner: There is some work being done to assess the readiness. I know that the Berkshire Planning Commission is is doing some work in that area. I’m wondering, though, if we are taking the situation as serious and if we’re looking at as many angles as we should be thinking about, for example, all the people who are living in coastal areas, New York, Boston, who are moving are moving this way. I mean, they have said, I’ve met multiple couples who said after Hurricane Sandy, that was their decision to move to the Berkshires. And I think that if we have another couple of more hurricanes, for example, you’re going to be seeing a lot more influx this way. What is your assessment or just sort of your thoughts on Williamstown’s readiness for the various changes that are going to be coming down the pike due to climate change?

Andy Hogeland: Um, I feel pretty good about them. But the problem is, it’s. It’s such a huge threat which could arrive in various ways. It’s hard to know if we’re doing the right thing. So the town is doing things they’ve done. If you’ve read this a it’s called a municipal vulnerability assessment. They kind of go through all of the ways climate change might affect us. A lot of it’s geared towards roads and sewers and how those things need to be either constructed better or in a different location or culverts and bridges need work. So it’s really a public works view of how climate change would affect us. But it was a comprehensive plan that finished up not that long ago. So I’d encourage you and your listeners to take a look at that to see what the town has for ideas on it. I’m a select board member far from the coast. I can’t really opine too much on what coastal communities should or shouldn’t do. If you’re worried about people leaving coastal cities to move here, that gets us back to the housing discussion again. Where are they going to go and are they going to take all the high end houses and price everybody else out of the market?

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I’m aware of the the vulnerability assessment. And I think it’s it’s woefully inadequate. I really do. I think it does not address so very many of the things of the sort of direct and indirect pile on effects of climate change. I mean, you know, it doesn’t address things like what is going to happen to our local food systems. I mean, what we know right now is that the West Coast and the Midwest have been struggling to produce in the last decade. They’re being hit by droughts just as we are. Of course, they’re hitting a lot harder. They are being hit by torrential rains in the Midwest that are wiping out hundreds of square miles of corn, soybeans, other crops. And it’s driving up food prices. And I think that the pandemic showed us that we can have empty shelves in as little as two months. Right. So we’re not even talking about massive sort of things on a geologic scale as climate change, where we are already having we’ve got a shortage of nursing staff of medical personnel. Climate change is definitely going to drive those numbers even to a more stressed point. We’re talking about things like cooling centers. The heat is going to be going up and up and up. Air conditioning costs are going to be going because the electricity went up 60% last year. It’s going to go up 30% this year. A lot of people are going to choose not to run their air conditioners because they can’t afford it. And those are things like seniors. And right now, there is not a single cooling center, official cooling center other than the police department in Williamstown. So there’s all kinds of things that are. Not even being conceived of that. And I’m just throwing these things out there off the top of my head. Um, I just. I’m wondering if. If maybe we need to do better to look at some of the effects that are not just the size of our culverts, because to me, that is a 90 that is a 20th century way of looking at a real 21st century disaster coming down the pike.

Andy Hogeland: Well, I think the answer to the question, can we do better? The answer to that question is always yes. In almost any context. So, yeah, of course. And I agree. That’s why I said I think the vulnerability assessment is really based on a public works approach to things, which is a part of the story, but absolutely not the whole story. So you give the example of food uncertainty. That’s why we need to be preserving farmland around here and supporting the farmers so that they can grow crops. And that’s why so much of the farmland is preserved. You know, the rural lands just bought ten acres of farmland to keep it as farmland. You know, people seem to be ready to support that because it wasn’t it was particularly suitable for housing anyway, at least not for affordable housing, which is my primary concern. So yeah, I think the town has to do things on an array of issues. The MVP covers some of them, but I agree, not all of them.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I guess what what gets to me is that Williamstown is so perfectly situated to to mitigate and to plan for. Climate change in ways that that other communities just don’t have the luxury. I mean, we have a fairly good supply of water. We have a you know, we have we still have seasons, four of them at least for now. We have a lot of arable land. We have good quality, good quality land. And we have very an unusually thoughtful population and a population that is willing to work together to get over to get over various crises. I just I want to make sure that we don’t drop the ball. You know, we’re not a coastal community so we don’t have to worry about, you know, the seas, the sea coming and swallowing us up. There’s just all those other indirect things that can, you know, they can add up. Okay, well.

Andy Hogeland: Let’s not let’s not forget things that we are doing. I mean, there have been a couple of rounds of solar panel programs. The town has co sponsored. We just agreed to pay about $1.4 million extra for the fire department so that there could be solar panels on the roof there. There’s a lot of solar panels out at the landfill. So, you know, we’ve been doing parts for a long time. There’s electrical charging stations which are hadn’t been, you know, years ago. Right.

Andy Hogeland: So, no, I think, you know, I, I give us credit for doing what we’re doing. And if you if you want to say, yeah, we should do more, well, of course, you know, we can always do more, but let’s not let’s not pass by the things that people have done and how we’ve actually invested money in things like the solar program, the Charger program and that kind of thing.

Top Left Corner: Oh, for sure. For absolute sure. I tend to I tend to lean toward the doom and gloom and that’s, you know, not always conducive to to recognizing what we’ve what we should celebrate. So I will I’ll work on that. I’ll work on being a bit more of a a bit more of a banner that sort of waves for, for the good stuff because there’s plenty of it. I would like.

Andy Hogeland: Just, you know, there’s plenty of both. Yeah, that’s a reason to be worried and there’s a reason to be proud of what’s happened.

Top Left Corner: Well, let me give you a chance to sort of wrap up. I know I sort of drove this bus here, but I would like to give you an opportunity to let people know why, you know, why should they give you another term? I think personally, you’re you’re a brave man for for wanting to do it. I don’t know how you manage it. It’s a it’s a tough job. But why should the voters send you to that back to that seat for another term?

Andy Hogeland: Guess it kind of goes back to the beginning. I kind of believe in this kind of work. And I feel as though I have worked for this town for a while and the results have been productive. So it matches my personality. I’m interested in the topics, you know, some wisdom I got from someone long time ago was if you want to know what you want to do, try to figure out how do you spend your time? And I spend my time going back to, you know, town hall issues on a regular basis. I feel as though the amount of work I’ve done over the course of a lot of years gives me a lot of more experience than anybody else who’s running. And my particular interest is housing, which I think is one of the biggest issues for for us. I believe in local government. So I’m doing this charter review committee. I wrote the guide to the Select Board, which is available on the website. I did a lot of work on the air audit. I spent hours editing the manual, which I know is not exciting to anybody, but it’s something we needed to do in order to, um, you know, turn the page. When we have this, we have a shared manager arrangement with Adams North Adams. I made sure that the contract had in it they’d be working on diversity, equity and inclusiveness work.

Andy Hogeland: So all that and the other part that we haven’t touched on, which I think is important for people to understand because it’s invisible to them, is that for the last five years being a select board member has allowed me to be take on roles in two statewide organizations, which means I can advocate for our interest in Boston. This year I’m president of the Massachusetts Select Board Association. Like the name says it all, it’s the Association of Select Boards. And for several years I’ve been a member of the Governor’s Local Government Advisory Commission. And again, the name says it all. It’s a commission that advise the governor and local government governor on local government issues. And so for these, we meet with the lieutenant governor and cabinet officials for most months of the year, and I’ve used these positions to speak up for rural towns like Williamstown and for towns like us, like throughout the state. And these include topics like asking for more rural school aid because we are not funded adequately for that. So that’s where Mount Greylock I want. More transportation funding for regional schools like Mount Greylock. More funding for local road projects in this Chapter 90 program, which needs needs fixing. Part of the problem with that program is the formula is really biased towards communities with large populations and large jobs. So over the course of time that formula has been disadvantaging small towns like ours.

Andy Hogeland: So I’ve advocated for that for me to be changed. And a recent success is we’ve been advocating for several years for the creation of a director of rural affairs, which would be a point person in the administration to look out for small towns like us and just about to go. They agreed they would do that. So the job is not filled yet, but this would be someone who would look at state programs to make sure they’re fair to small towns. When you develop new programs, make sure they’re fair. Look at the formulas, you know, a variety of issues. It’s a big job for somebody. So I hope they find a competent person to do it. But for me, I like doing the local work. But this has given me the chance to do statewide work, which actually help our local towns, a lot of other local towns. So if I get reelected, of course I can continue to do both of those, serve directly, work on love on the Selectboard, but also using these other positions to do things for us and towns like us across the state. So it’s I feel really lucky to have been able to grow into this other universe. I think most people leave town don’t even know what I do, but it’s been actually a lot of time on it.

Top Left Corner: Well, clearly it takes a lot of dedication and a lot of hours. I don’t think anybody who doesn’t follow civic life understands just the kind of commitment and the kind of sacrifice, frankly, that that officials make. And so I know that a lot of people do, myself included, appreciate all that you’ve done so far. Where can people go to find out? Do you have a Facebook page? Do you have anything?

Andy Hogeland: There is a Facebook page under my name. I just I’ve never been on Facebook until like five days ago. So there’s not much there. There’s a there’s a two page flier which talks about me. The more informative place to go is Andy hoagland.com catchy title. I’m sure you appreciate that I do and that has there’s there’s ten parts to that which kind of go through everything I’m doing and doing so it includes housing good government transportation which you and I didn’t get a chance to really talk about.

Top Left Corner: Could spend the entire we could spend the entire hour on transportation. You and I. I’m sure you and I have similar feelings about it.

Andy Hogeland: I did a lot of work at the Spruces. I advocated persistently for the bike path, which is there. Happily, I was on another governor’s commission on the Future of Transportation where I was advocating for all kinds of things for Western Mass. There’s a northern tier rail service. I’m not on the committee, but I’m in the room. Yeah. Are you incur them to try to get rail passenger rail service through Greenfield and North Adams.

Top Left Corner: So that would be something else. Yeah.

Andy Hogeland: Well it’s it’s not a pipe dream and I think there’s a lot of attention being paid to the east west Rail, which will go from Springfield to Pittsfield. And that’s that’s great. But that’s billions of dollars in many, many years. I think we get rail service to North Adams in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the expense. Right. It wouldn’t be high speed, but you could get to Boston in a decent amount of time and have Wi-Fi on the train while you go. So I’m in favor of that one, but it’s really competing with East West Rail and that’s kind of a problem for me.

Top Left Corner: No, I think look, being able to like, you know, I drive in Boston, I don’t love it, but I can tell you that there are there are people who would be happy to spend, say, three hours on the train to go to Boston now that a lot of people are working in hybrid positions, they could work in Boston like three days a week and then work at home two days a week. And that would do worlds of good for our economy here because people would then be able to basically bring out-of-town money back to the to the area.

Andy Hogeland: Exactly. And part of my pitch to them is, well, first of all, it’s not just Western Mass. It’s also serves southern Vermont and southern New Hampshire. Right? So the ridership numbers need to pull in those populations. And it looked like in the first round they weren’t going to do that. The map just kind of stopped with the mass was the border. So that’s one thing. And the job commuting thing you talk about, you’re totally right. The other thing is, because we’re partly a tourist economy, the train service needs to be tweaked around. When will people want to come visit us?

Andy Hogeland: At Mass MoCA. Or the clerk or the theater festival or whatever else we have going on out here. Um, know they need to look at schedules, which would do kind of like what the brochure flier is doing. Yeah. A train not designed for commuting business purposes, but for entertainment purposes, for people to come here and for us to go to Boston for that. So yeah, it’s going to be a multi year thing and who knows where it’s going to go. But I like that you probably picked up. I like working on these issues. Know this is not for me, a job where I sit in a boardroom for 90 minutes once or twice a month. This is a lot of hours outside there.

Speaker3: No, and and and.

Top Left Corner: And I and I hope that people understand that they that their energies are needed. I mean, it isn’t just, you know, it isn’t just money that you that you, you know, are voting, you know, giving money to a campaign or voting. It’s sometimes it’s sometimes showing up at meetings, sometimes it’s writing letters, sometimes it is just spreading the word. I mean, honestly, just spreading the word, for example, about, you know, about, you know, commuter rail, commuter rail. But, you know, rail service, you know, people they don’t know. I talk to people all the time. They don’t even know what was achieved. You know, that in the area that that has, you know, like, for example, you know, the we’ve got train service to Pittsfield. It’s not great. But you know, some people don’t even realize that you can take a train down to the city. And so I feel like people need to just sort of be. They need to be cheerleaders for their own for their own area, because that is what keeps the enthusiasm going to work on the next project and the next project and the next project.

Andy Hogeland: I’m totally with you on that. That’s why I do this work. That’s why I love the state work, because it allows me to influence things in a broader scale than just within Northern Berkshires. So that’s good for me. Good for the town, I think, as well.

Top Left Corner: Well, I’m going to make sure I have your address, your web address in the show notes for this episode. Andy, I want to thank you so much for all this time. I think we went way over, but I appreciate it. And as I said, all my candidate guests. Good luck. And and we’ll talk to you after the election.

Andy Hogeland: I’m to just remind them of the elections on Tuesday May 9th.

Top Left Corner: All righty. Hey, Andy, have a good weekend. Take care.

Andy Hogeland: Take care. Bye.

The post Top Left Corner #180: Select Board Candidate Andy Hogeland appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

(Rough Transcript!)

We speak with Andrea Belair, co-owner of Belltower Records, in the NORAD Mill, North Adams

Hours:
Saturday: 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Sunday: 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Thursday: 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Friday: 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Phone: (413) 398-5569

Unknown Liberty, Grawlixes, Red Herrings

Unknown Liberty, Grawlixes, and Red Herrings play at the shop!
7:00 p.m. , $10, BYO

Greylock Glass: And with me on the line is Andrea Belair, co owner of Belltower Records. Andrea, it has been too long that we’ve been waiting to get you on. Thanks so much for joining us on the Top Left Corner.

Andrea Belair: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Greylock Glass: So let’s start with some of the basics before we get into the the juicy what’s coming up. Talk to us. You’re over at NORAD Mill. You’ve been there for how long?

Andrea Belair: About four and a half years, I think, or pretty close to five years, it seems.

Greylock Glass: Yeah, it seems like it’s been a while now. It has been. Were you ever were you did you have a place before that or is this the first shop of its kind that you and Wes have run?

Andrea Belair: Oh, we this is the first shop of its kind that we ran together. We actually it was an existing business before, um, Toonerville Trolley was located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Toonerville was around for about 40 years. So. So we took it on when the owner sort of retired and we purchased it from him and moved it a little bit over to North Adams and so, and changed it to Bell Tower. So Bell Tower Records. Mhm.

Greylock Glass: Now vinyl is a lot heavier to move than mp3’s. You actually have to put them in sturdy boxes and ship them over there. And I’ve moved my own record collection a number of times and I really don’t want to move it too often. How much of what you carry is vinyl.

Andrea Belair: Uh, probably around. Well, most of it’s vinyl. I mean, 85 to 80 5 to 90%. And it’s definitely, yeah. Heavy to move. It’s not something that’s very fun to do.

Greylock Glass: So no, but.

Andrea Belair: We have, we’ve moved a couple times and it’s, it’s never a but it is something you get better at planning.

Greylock Glass: I’m sure. I’m sure. Now here’s here’s the obvious question. You know, it’s 2023. And while it is certainly the case that vinyl has made a comeback in terms of sort of specialty printings pressings, you’ll have somebody who puts out a, you know, their their CD, but then they have a limited edition vinyl. But it’s not a huge market. What made you to decide that this was the time was right for for literal platters that you drop the needle on?

Andrea Belair: Well, we didn’t really it wasn’t necessarily our choosing timing. I mean, we had I had seen that Toonerville was going to be up for sale and we had sort of wanted to move back to western Massachusetts area. We were in New Haven, Connecticut, and, um, I’d been, you know, sort of missing the mountains and everything. I am from Western Mass originally. So and I wanted to be a little bit closer to family, that sort of thing. And so it just seemed like kind of a good time. I also was moving up for a job and not too far away, so we were thinking it might be just timely there. But both Wes and I have always sort of listened to vinyl, whether or not it was popular or, you know, um, it’s not something that necessarily they’re like people who collect it or people who listen to it. Um, probably have. For a long time, we were in the music community. We were touring, you know, and performing. So, so it was sort of always a part of something we did or were involved in. So it seemed like a natural extension. So it wasn’t really necessarily about, um, about whether or not it would do well. I mean, obviously we would hope that it would do okay. But, but yeah.

Greylock Glass: Well, let me ask you this. Now I have my own personal feelings and I won’t say what side of the argument they fall on, but there are people who claim that vinyl, if you have a pristine, you know, vinyl with no scratches, no scuffs, and you have a quality needle and quality sound system, that vinyl is a much warmer, richer sound. Do you believe that to be the case? And if so, why do you suppose that is?

Andrea Belair: Well, I mean, there can be a lot there are, you know, audio files or people who have a really quality stereo system. Um. And, you know, keep everything in pristine condition and that sort of what they do. And you really have to have sort of the means to be able to keep things in that condition and to, you know, we’ve moved a bunch. Our stereo systems are good, you know, but they they’re not the best. And for me, I. Prefer to have it as a delivery of content. You know, like I’m happy with a less expensive repress of something than like, the original, you know, because I’m probably going to destroy the original or it’s probably I just wouldn’t, you know, not destroy it, but it’s it would be a little harder. But in terms of sound, I do think that it that there is a difference in sound between vinyl and maybe something like Spotify or a MP3 streaming, right? For sure. I even I worked at a school and I even brought in a record player and a lot of the students were like amazed They’d never heard it, heard an album they love on a record before. And they were like, Wow. The difference I mean, there is a difference, you know.

Greylock Glass: I’ve always I’ve always thought so to be, you know, to, you know, I’ll come right out and admit that that has been my my feeling for a long time. And I know the audio files will give you technical explanations of why, as you said, an MP3 at 128kB per second, which is about what you get over the radio. It’s just not as it doesn’t have as full a range. That’s what I’ve been told anyway. And, and I think.

Andrea Belair: It’s the whole tactile experience too. I mean, would you prefer reading a book with pages and turning a page or, you know. Reading it on your phone. A book on your phone. Like it’s. Yeah, I can’t. I mean, there are a bunch of things that sort of can be applied to the experience. You know.

Greylock Glass: It’s really almost a ritual.

Andrea Belair: Yeah.

Greylock Glass: You know, you you get it out and you put it on the turntable and you you sort of inspect it. If you’ve got a record cleaner, you know, you let that roll a couple of couple of rotations and then you very carefully. Yeah, it’s almost like a sort of an incantation or some sort of magic magic act.

Andrea Belair: Yeah, but I would assume that something to do with the groove of the vinyl to actually. There’s a there is a difference in the sound that it creates. But who knows how much you can really tell?

Greylock Glass: Well, even if I’m even if I’m fooling myself, I’ll go on believing that because, yeah, I’m a curmudgeon and I like your I like your attitude that you you’re using the, the record to to play it. I mean you’re it is to be used just the way people did in 19 you know 50, 60, 70 into the 80 seconds. They just that was like you said, the delivery, the content delivery device I had I’ll admit I was kind of obsessive about my record collection. And I would buy Chrome like Maxell. I think it was Maxell Xl2 or Xl2 SS or something. And I would record I would play the record only once, and that was to record it. And then I wouldn’t touch the record again. And so I had a lot of very expensive, you know, high quality cassette tapes. And of course that was in the days when you could actually count on having a cassette player handy or we.

Andrea Belair: Love I love cassette cassette tapes myself, you know, my handy.

Greylock Glass: Is anything.

Andrea Belair: And so they’re durable. They’re like not not that expensive to produce I. Wish wish that cassette players would. And, you know, a lot of cassette players do hold up, you know.

Greylock Glass: Yeah. And when you make somebody a mix tape and you spend hours picking out just the right songs to follow one after the other, it’s I think it’s there’s more that you put into it than just slapping a Spotify playlist together although that’s nice to have too. But you know when you actually hand somebody a cassette tape and say, I recorded this for you.

Andrea Belair: Oh well of course.

Greylock Glass: Yeah. So the. The the shop and and I’ve been it and in it and it’s a cozy shop. It’s a very it’s got a really nice vibe. It’s got a very sort of retro vibe which I love. Of course. It kind of has to, I suppose, with, with vinyl all over the place. But what, what made you decide that the treadmill was a good place and has it worked out?

Andrea Belair: Well, I mean, again, it was just one of those things. They were under construction or they were undergoing construction. We, um, you know, took a look at the space. It had these really nice high ceilings and everything. And at the time. We moved. We were first on the third floor, now we’re on the first floor. But it was sort of under renovation. But you could see what they were doing on the floors that they’d already completed. And it looked really beautiful. And they have been great. You know, there are like, for example, restrooms. There’s like now there’s a cafe right there. So, um, it’s sort of very self-contained and very pleasant that way. And we have been lucky too, because sometimes we do have shows and everything there. We can even have them outside. So the courtyard space is really great to have shows. It’s really awesome when it’s warm enough or weather permitting.

Greylock Glass: So Right, right. No, that’s that’s it is a it is a an under-visited location. I think. I think more people need to just go in there and just sort of check out all the different shops. And like you said, the cafe there is now there. Um, I. I just find it to be a really, you know, a very welcoming space, I guess, is how I’d put it. Um, yeah. So the the. Shows since you broached that subject, which is kind of where I wanted to go. The shows have obviously started again now that people are sort of getting together for events. More or less. You really picked kind of a rough time to get started. I mean, it was before the pandemic, but not much before. So did you. Did you really have to kind of make decisions about whether or not you could keep it going or or did you manage to have enough sort of a trickle of of business coming in during the pandemic?

Andrea Belair: Oh, we were fine during the pandemic. We actually had kind of a backlog of what we did. We had to close, of course, the store, the shop location for a while, but we did find online, um, and West was actually delivering a little bit to doing, delivering to people locally in North Adams, which was kind of fun. But for him I think he kind of enjoyed, you know, with sort of contactless. Delivery, however you call it. But we did. We actually had a backlog of things like posters and everything that we had were part of what we purchased from Toonerville. Um, and so we, we sold a lot of that because it had just sort of been moving with us and we were keeping it in our basement in storage, these rolled up posters, some of which were really amazing, Um, but we’d never really been able to go through it. So we did actually, we were able to go through a lot of that back stock and sort of sell it online. Nice. I think probably, yeah. I mean, for better or worse, people were probably also stuck in their homes and like thinking about what to put on their walls. So, you know, it helped a little bit. I mean, it’s not the same at all, but. You know, we could have stuff at home like that.

Greylock Glass: Well, I mean, let’s face it. We a lot of us spend a lot more time at home than we ever had. And we’re listening to music and yeah, we’re looking and saying, well, yeah, you know, that wall. I didn’t really notice it because I haven’t been here much, but it’s looking a little bare. It could use something. So yeah, I can totally see how, you know, obviously nobody, nobody wants the pandemic to return for any reason, but there are certain businesses, I suppose, that are going to be less immediately impacted. The shows, of course. How long has it been since you’ve been doing shows again?

Andrea Belair: Um, well, let’s see. When we had the first one, I know when we first started having them again, um, we were having them only out exclusively outdoors for a while. We were requiring even masks and proof of vaccination if they were indoors. And sometimes that, um, we were doing that. But also that was a lot of times at the specific request of the musicians or people that were coming to the shows, they might have had some immune system issues. Sure. So sometimes that was actually a specific request and we just made sure that we actually did that to try to protect everyone attending. Um, but I don’t even remember when we started having them again. And, and we did require masks for a while. Now it’s optional. Um, but um, so yeah, I don’t remember specifically when they, when we started having them again.

Greylock Glass: Right. So it sounds like you sort of gradually, you know, getting back to, to a normal, a normal kind of. Yeah. You know, presentation. Now you, um, you said that you are, you and Wes are musicians as well. What is your history there and have you been playing?

Andrea Belair: Oh, I mean, I am not really actively playing now. Wes is in a band and. Right. And he it’s a, you know, they perform, they’re called Luxor Rentals. So, um, yeah. And he sometimes he plays mostly bass guitar. Um. But yeah, I’m not actively performing anything right now, but we both have experience as like touring and everything, so we sort of. Like to support that. Sure. Absolutely.

Greylock Glass: But yeah. What what kind of what is what is your I mean, obviously you’ve got a record, so you probably have plenty of genres that you love. But if you’re looking to cue up a record on a Friday night, you’re feeling kind of festive. What’s what’s your genre? What do you reach for?

Andrea Belair: Oh, it’s really hard. That’s really hard to say because for me it’s so it depends so much on like the season, my general emotion, you know, Friday night. I do. Um. I don’t know. A lot of times to what I really like to do is listen to something new. Right. So it’s hard to pin it down. Um. Because I’ll find myself listening to something that. That just comes across. I do listen to a lot of new artists on Bandcamp, you know. Um, so if there’s a new collaboration I was just looking at, I was just listening to one today. Tashi Dorji You know, these a lot of times it tends to be experimental, but on a Friday night. It might be more celebratory. It’s so hard to say. I knew it.

Greylock Glass: Was. I knew it was going to be an almost impossible question to answer. I should have.

Andrea Belair: Thought that that was coming and prepared.

Greylock Glass: More for it. No, I mean, the answer is you love music and and, you know, just like, you know, radio free Berkshires. I only have two shows that are new music shows that are genre based and even they are pretty loose. One of them, the Cornbread Cafe, is American Roots music, and that’s everything from gospel to blues to Dixieland to you name it. It’s if it’s in that that large tent of American roots music, you’re going to hear it. And indecent exposure is has been although I have to I have to narrow that down because it’s been everything from world music to experimental, you know, sort of, you know, noise noise, which is, you know, sometimes you’ll hear some experimental stuff, you know, right on the heels of some reggae, which does sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Yeah. But so it’s one of those things. I get it. I, I can’t really be pinned down hour by hour even sometimes what I’m in the mood for.

Andrea Belair: Yeah, well, a lot of times too, we get, like, some interesting collection that walks in and I’m like, That sounds really cool. Let me explore that. I want to listen to some of those artists like, so sometimes it’s not just internal circumstances, it’s just external something, you know?

Greylock Glass: I get it. Yeah.

Andrea Belair: Or that I heard I overheard in a shop that reminded me like, Oh yeah, I want to hear, you know.

Greylock Glass: So, yeah, no, I imagine it must be even kind of tough some days because you’ve got so many choices. Well, let’s switch gears and let’s talk about that live music you’ve got there. Go back to that, to that gear. You’ve got live music. You’ve got some shows coming up and they sound really great and and such a breath of fresh air. And now that people it is I think it’s is it spring finally does it seem like maybe has it.

Andrea Belair: I think technically it’s spring.

Greylock Glass: Technically I don’t know. Yeah it’s still. But the weather is getting a little warmer. People are starting to think about going outside. Certainly they’re going to want to be seeing shows in the courtyard whenever they can. Why don’t you give us a rundown of what you’ve got coming up? And we will include those dates in the show notes to this episode.

Andrea Belair: Sure. Well, we have really we’ve been actually doing a few really cool collaborations. Um, actually, April 22nd, which is a record store day, we’ll have it just happens to be Record Store Day. We have a show, um, that’s going to be in our shop, so in store and it’s a punk show. It’s with unknown liberty. Grawlix is there and they’re touring. They’re from upstate New York. I think the Hudson Valley and Albany region. And they’ll be playing with red herrings which who are based out of Western Mass. And so that’ll be a punk show. That’ll be really cool. Um, that’ll be in the shop May 6th. We actually are having one at a show at a chapel, the Stone Chapel at 39 Commercial Street in Adams, Massachusetts. Uh, so it’s being run there. Um, it’s the promoter we’re sort of working with is called they’re calling it the Dusk Chapel. Okay. So and that’s at that this really awesome stone church. It was Saint Mark’s Church in Adams, Massachusetts. And it’s really an amazing space to be able to host a show. So that’ll be sort of punk too. But more gothy or, you know, sort of we’ve been putting some shows there that are really interesting to sort of go.

Andrea Belair: It’ll have sort of more of a dark ish vibe that’s with a mirrored hell out of Boston, which Slap, which is a band out of New York City and Clock Serum, who’s a musician out of Amherst, Massachusetts. So that’ll be really exciting. Um, that’s May 6th. And then after that we have more. Yeah, hopefully in the courtyard we have some really cool ones. Josephine Foster and Grace Smith, actually. Stella Cola. Yeah. We’ll be playing May 13th. Um, and that I think will try to have outside. We’ll see how the weather is. So it’s one of those things. Sure. Um, we’ll be collaborating with the Clark Art Institute again to be doing regular shows there. And so we’ll be doing those outside at the Londoner Center at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, you know, very good. And yeah, so definitely I’ve been trying to keep these things updated on our website and. And on social media, and the clerk has been putting them as they go along. So, yeah.

Greylock Glass: And we’re going to make sure that they are in The Greylock Glass Events calendar. Yeah. You know, a lot of people don’t realize that they can add events themselves. I pay for this pro version of a calendar where people can add events themselves. I obviously have to approve them because naughty little people will do naughty little things on my calendar if I don’t keep an eye on them. But yeah, it’s you can add events. It’s perfectly completely free and I’ll make sure that we get these these dates on there as well. Andrea What’s the secret to putting on a good show?

Andrea Belair: I don’t know if there was a secret. I mean, I think since it’s helpful, like Wes and I were touring musicians, so sometimes, like I said, so sometimes. I don’t know that I try to be a good host because I know that touring can be hard. You know, so I try to like, give food, but I don’t know how much it helps, but I know that like it was always when we were touring. You can be really tired and really, you know, moving equipment in all day, driving, you know, 13 hours and then have to play a show. So like it can be really helpful to have someone say, here’s a. A nice, comfortable place to sleep or I don’t know. I mean, a lot of it’s hosting, but putting on a good show. I mean, we try to have a good vibe. We definitely try to have a diverse range of shows, like a lot of different kinds of music, but make people feel comfortable and welcome, you know? Yeah, if people can’t afford to pay, we have a small cover, but if they can’t afford to pay, we’re not going to say you can’t come in, you know, or whatever. But.

Greylock Glass: Well, that that sounds like actually a pretty good recipe. I know I have with different bands walked into venues that really sucked at being good hosts and you kind of wonder why they’re even in the business. And I walked into other places where the hospitality was was remarkable. And I’m like, Wow, you like, really care about the musicians. I know that’s one of the reasons I was really hoping that in North Adams that Halo would actually take off because they had I don’t know if they ever finished renovating it, but they had a green room upstairs, which was a really nice sort of lounge area. And they also had like a little apartment. So if the band or artist didn’t have a place or maybe couldn’t afford a place, they could stash them upstairs. And and that would have been, you know, the sort of hospitality that that, you know, you’re talking about making sure they felt welcome and so forth. But obviously, you’re one of the only games in town now because there’s not a lot of venues locally.

Andrea Belair: I know. Yeah, we’ve heard that a lot, you know, So that’s because it is sort of work to have these shows and everything. Um, but it’s worth it and we want to keep doing it. But yeah, we’ve definitely heard people say there’s really nowhere to play. There aren’t a lot of spaces in the Berkshires even so, or maybe at least not the northern.

Greylock Glass: Not south South County. If you want to hear like folky music, there’s all of that. I mean, you can get that. I mean, you can get that everywhere from the lion’s den at, you know, the Red Lion Inn to the barn or the Egremont barn to race Brook Lodge. There’s a ton of places in South County, but it’s a certain crowd and it’s yeah, you know, and it’s not a bad crowd. I mean, some great musicians play there, but it’s a certain crowd, you know, Not a lot of punk, not a lot of experimental. It was really now, I would say in South County, um, probably the foundry in West Stockbridge is, is the only thing that comes close to what you’re doing. And I don’t know if you’ve been there, but it’s it’s a fantastic venue. It’s a beleaguered venue because the town is stupid and doesn’t want to make it easy on on Amy Brentano who runs that. Um, but if you get a chance to go down there, please make sure you do because they I think, I think you and Amy would get along. You certainly have. Okay. Yeah. You have very similar outlooks on on how to treat the musicians that are coming into your space because she she likes to make them feel welcome as well. Um, so you’ve got some great shows coming up. Um, do me a favor. Tell me you said you’re still doing online sales, right? It’s not over because the pandemic, you’re still doing them, right?

Andrea Belair: Oh, yeah. Well, we we lift a lot of our stuff online anyway. So.

Greylock Glass: Nice. What’s. What’s the address? Where do you. Is it your website or, or do you use it on our website.

Andrea Belair: We we put a lot of stuff on discogs. Our username is tuner t o r that’s inherited from toonerville trolley. So and so. Yeah, we list a lot of stuff on there. Um, if you can’t come in. Yeah. Well we also have A0I should mention we also have a label Bandcamp, half a million records that we press and tapes we, you know, and stuff keep that’s where we post it. But yeah, all of that is available on our website too. We have links, but half a million on our Bandcamp is our label site. So we do have a little label of our own.

Greylock Glass: Nice. See, I knew that it would just keep unfolding and unfolding and unfolding.

Andrea Belair: Yeah, I almost forgot that. And that’s important.

Greylock Glass: No, and that’s great. And I think the. Well, I should probably talk to you off the air. I was actually considering there’s a space in North Adams that was it was perfect because it used to have four studios, soundproofed studios and it’s available for sale for purchase. And I would love to buy it and do a recording studio there. Oh yeah, because we don’t really have much in this area either for recording studios.

Speaker3: Yeah.

Andrea Belair: And solid sound and stuff. You get a lot of mass. You get a lot of people coming through that potentially could, you know, use that space. Yeah.

Greylock Glass: Well, I you know, I just keep rolling and rolling the dice when I see that the Powerball is up above 500 million. You know, I don’t bother playing if it’s less than 500 million because I could spend that in a weekend. But. Okay. Well, but but good luck. Right. No, the I think that there is a true hunger for local music for more venues, different kinds of venues. And I’m just not sure what the obstacles are. Do you have any thoughts on on why it’s so hard to keep the venues open when so many people say that they want to go out to see music?

Andrea Belair: Well, as a yeah, as a venue. I mean, I don’t know, but there’s a lot that goes into it. Um, and it doesn’t we don’t charge much because all the money goes to the musicians when we have a show, you know. So, um, so it’s a lot of work and it’s we don’t take home anything. So, um, that would be hard for people to do, especially if they’re trying to rent, to rent a venue for a, a venue, you know?

Greylock Glass: Right, right.

Andrea Belair: A lot with licensing, you know, there are always concerns, noise concerns in areas that have, you know, a lot of these things. Um, if you have people, you know, if the community isn’t necessarily welcoming either some of the spaces people don’t want people coming in so to. Or they might feel private about their face and they don’t want loud noise and everything nearby. And that’s sort of understandable, you know.

Speaker3: Well, but.

Greylock Glass: West Stockbridge is is just that way. They have determined that they have to that Amy has to keep any events in the in the foundry under a ridiculously low threshold of decibels. Basically, I mean, it’s insane. And she. She’s allowed to do it to continue doing shows. But, you know, the community is not it doesn’t get the the fact that this is culture, too. Sure, it might not be the music that you listen to, but, you know, people are coming in and they’re paying to see it. And when they show up, they come to the restaurants, they get gas, they go shopping, they hit you know, they hit the little cutesy boutiques on on Main Street. And it brings it brings income in. And I sometimes forget or I sometimes think that they forget that, you know, the people were coming in to see music. They do other things, too. And it’s it’s a driver of an economy, just like theater, just like art. Just like dance. Um, so that’s my little soapbox that I get up on pretty regularly there. No, for sure. And I’m sure the people of West Stockbridge probably will run me out of town on a rail if they catch me there. But whatever. Um, the. So the. We didn’t say it, but the web address for Bell Tower Records is actually Bell Tower RECs. And spell that for me.

Andrea Belair: Blt o w e. Rr x.com.

Greylock Glass: X.com. And we’ll have a link. Yeah, we’ll have a link to the. To that in the show notes. But what we’re going to do is. We are going to try to get at least one of the musicians that you’re going to have in the next, well, really month here or Yeah, a little over a month. We’re going to try to get them on the horn as well and see what they have to say about their their shows coming up and what we hope to do. And I guess I’m announcing this for the first time is the our radio or online streaming radio component, Radio Free Berkshires is going to be starting a show. And I’m not sure what night it’s going to be, but it’s going to be only local musicians and it’s going to be if we can find an hour of local music to to put together, it’ll be an hour and that can be. That can be Massachusetts anywhere in Massachusetts or 100 mile radius. So that would that would include Albany. That would include certainly up into Vermont, down pretty much to even into the Connecticut border and and certainly the Hudson Valley.

Greylock Glass: So we’re going to be trying to get as much local music here. And that way people can hear these things. And when I can get them on the show before they’re here playing at Bell Tower Records, then people can get to sample what they what they sound like and and and hear their band’s story as well. So I’m looking forward to promoting some of your, your favorites. So if you have any favorite bands in the area, you just let me know and we’ll get in touch with them. Andrew it has been such a pleasure and I thank you so much for what you’re doing. I know running a small business is not an easy feat, and when you have your heart into it the way you and Wes do, I think that that is the sort of that’s the sort of endeavor that the town that the area really needs to get behind. So I’m really hoping that this is a continuous success and anything that Greylock Glass can do to help out, we definitely will.

Andrea Belair: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Greylock Glass: All right. Well, I’ll see you at that event and I’ll send you a link when the show is live. Till then, have a great week and stay warm.

Speaker3: You, too.

Greylock Glass: Thank you. Thanks.

Andrea Belair: Bye bye.

The post Top Left Corner #179: Happy Record Store Day, with Andrea Belair appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

FIND YOUR VOTING LOCATION at Vote.org

And this is Episode #178 of the Top Left Corner. I am your host Jay Velázquez, and I do thank you for tuning in as always. Today is Saturday, November 5, 2022 – at least that’s the day that I hit record on this episode. We have a very special guest on the show, Michael Lavery. He’s been on this show a couple times in the last several years, and we are always happy to have him back a member of the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow party, the Berkshires chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, a very deep thinker, and an all-around great guy. He is running this election to unseat Massachusetts State Representative, William “Smitty” Pignatelli, in the race for Berkshire 3rd district.

I like to have both contestants in the campaign on the show, but I’ve contacted Smitty number of times on different issues, and he’s never responded, so I figure, if he got in touch with me, fine. If he didn’t, fine. And he didn’t. We speak with Michael about some of the issues that have been on his mind for a long time in, including transparency and Beacon Hill the toxins in the water supply, and this time the push to decriminalize or legalize antigens — organic natural substances found in such plants as psilocybin mushrooms and peyote, increasingly of interest to the medical community after showing amazing promise treating major depression, PTSD, and other conditions.

As I mentioned at the top of the interview, Michael is a longtime supporter of the Greylock Glass, even before he ran his first campaign for the Beckett Select Board. I say this in the interest of transparency, because I want people to know who supports us, and be able to judge for themselves if we have an inappropriate bias in any direction. I only had one area of concern going into this interview, which was the question of how he can reconcile his antiwar stance with working for General Dynamics, and I pressed him on it.

Whether or not Michael does manage to defeat Smitty pig Natale on Tuesday, I’m sure that the very fact that he challenged and incumbent Democrat will cause some of his issues of concern to gain more widespread attention. Let’s go down to that interview with Michael livery here on the top of corner

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

Top Left Corner: And five, four, three, two. And with me on the line is Michael Lavery, Selectboard member in Beckett, Massachusetts. Michael, thanks so much for joining us again on the Top Left Corner.

Michael Lavery: Hi, Jason. Thank you for having me.

Top Left Corner: My pleasure. Well, in the in the interest of full disclosure, because we believe in transparency here at The Greylock Glass, Michael, you are a donor. You are a contributor to our continued operations, and we always are grateful for that.

Michael Lavery: Well, I appreciate your honesty and I pride myself on being truthful and transparent. And I also like to support local media that speaks truth to power. So I don’t mind contributing at all. I think it’s a good cause.

Top Left Corner: So yeah, I mean, I say that I would say that whether you were running for office or not, you are running for office. And we’ll talk about that. We’re running against Smitty Pignatelli for what is that area called? That district.

Michael Lavery: It’s called the third Berkshires. It was fourth Berkshires for a long time. But recently the Commonwealth had a census, which all states have every ten years in. The federal government does too, and concluding that the population was seen to have decreased. So they went from four districts down to three, and Smitty inherited one town from Paul. Mark Dalton Well, Smitty may inherit, you know, depends on who wins on Tuesday.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, no, I knew that it had changed. I could not remember exactly what it meant. So thank you. And, you know, it’s it’s a funny thing. We we have gotten a number of people moving into the Berkshires just the last 2 to 3 years, and that census data is from 2020.

Michael Lavery: Tis true to his true. Yeah. It would be a whole different story. We think a lot a lot of folks even moved in or have been building and living here more permanently than, you know, second, homeowners that don’t want to live in the city anymore and that sort of thing. So I think if it had been done after COVID instead of before, you’re right, we probably wouldn’t have lost a seat or might have even gained or something.

Top Left Corner: I really I mean, we’ll have to see if they do any supplemental, you know, supplemental accounts and see if that we won’t change it after the fact. But yeah, so we’ll we’ll talk. Yeah, I mean, it’s it would be great if if things could move as fast as the Internet does. I was listening to a discussion on breaking points with crystal ball and Slugger and Jedi on their YouTube channel, breaking points, and they were discussing how fast the election results come in. In Brazil. They’re just even from out in the sticks. And Brazil’s got some out in the sticks and they seem to have their act together. And as everything is, you know, computerized and it’s it’s funny, we like to think of ourselves as this as this beacon of technological prowess. And it’s just not always true.

Michael Lavery: Well, you got to ask yourself, is that intentional in terms of government and politics and things? I’ve often put my brain to work thinking about how to make this more democratic of a society and people feel so estranged from their government and to the point where they’re disaffected and they become apathetic. And if we had something like France or places where their telephone system had long ago, since the seventies and eighties been computerized, and initially it was for entertainment, but then they realized, hey, people, we can put like a poll on here and have them press a number and everybody in the whole country can vote on an issue. You know, we have encryption and two factor authentication and all that. I’m an anarchist in the sense of I believe that things can be run without having people at the top and not in a sense of chaos in the streets and that sort of thing. But I’m running for office because I think I have different and better use than than some folks who are currently in office. But, you know, I’m kind of a politician that wants to be there to make things better, but doesn’t necessarily want the job as a as a politician. And people how people think of the people down in the Washington, DC like they’re so politicians as a as an art or a practice or vile and disrespect for so.

Top Left Corner: Or a bad addiction. So yeah, you’re a reluctant power wielder. I get that. And I’ve always said because in my past life I ate one past life. I was a project manager in publishing, educational publishing, which is really kind of a it’s everything flying every which way all the time at high speeds. But I said I said, you know, really my job should be to put myself out of business. I should be trying to create systems that are that continuously improve, that become more efficient, that make my job obsolete. That would be the ultimate project manager who creates systems that make make it unnecessary to have a project manager. Does it ever happen? No, because you know people. But. But I think that politics should run the same way. The idea is that.

Michael Lavery: Can you imagine a utopia like that where we could vote just by our cell phone and not have a town meeting and be able to do things on the fly and not have people running in at the top?

Top Left Corner: Yes, I imagine that all the time. All the time, Michael. I imagine that it’s just it’s you know, we have the tech now, not that I believe that tech solves everything, but it could solve a lot of things. Yeah. I mean, the preamble states that we’re pushing towards a more perfect union, which suggests that even at that state, they knew that it was not going to be perfect and that it needs to improve. And I think that the problem is too many people are profiting from the squishy areas, those shadowy areas. There’s mushy areas where things are not efficient. And let’s talk let’s go right to that, because we’ve talked about this before. We’ve talked about transparency. We start out the show about transparency, but we’ve talked about transparency on Beacon Hill before and transparency and local government and local government. Give us your give us your sort of your stump speech on that and why you think it has been neglected for so long.

Michael Lavery: Well, there’s two big reasons why I think it’s important. One is that our our town governments are held to a higher standard than our state House government. I, as a select board member, have my votes recorded in the meeting minutes, and they’re published within weeks or months after they’re accepted in a second meeting and they’re published on the web on its website. So anybody can go through open meeting law, which is through the Attorney General’s office and find out how I voted. And that goes back however long we keep records. The House doesn’t have to do that at the subcommittee level and during the House, regular public sessions on the floor of the House. Not all votes are recorded for every motion or or bill. So that’s big. And. The second thing is we’ve been the Commonwealth for a huge, long number of time, a long length of time, and we’re one of the oldest democracies. And people look towards Massachusetts as being one of the best. We had gay marriage before any other states and we had a health care like Medicaid. Obamacare is modeled after Massachusetts, so why can’t we have an open government? We’re the fourth ranked worst transparent house in the whole United States. So that’s that’s the those are the two big reasons.

Top Left Corner: You’re your opponent in this state race, which is going to be decided on the next Tuesday. The age. He doesn’t share your views apparently based on his record.

Michael Lavery: It’s true. If there were two subcommittee bills, House bills that failed and they failed by a wide margin, many did vote against the act en masse. Changes to how the House would vote at the subcommittee level and the House at the admin floor voted. He voted against them twice. And it’s it’s boggles the mind. Like why? Why? Why? The simple things you’d think would pass easily would get knocked down. You know, technically somebody who’s a committee member and was the chair of a committee and had a bill that was coming before it that he put forth wouldn’t even have to vote for his own bill and nobody would know about it.

Top Left Corner: Right. No, it’s I think it’s it’s a shock. It is. It’s incomprehensible. But you did say you don’t understand why. But let’s play the let’s say, game. You know, who benefits?

Michael Lavery: If I didn’t have performance reviews at my job, that would be great. I could do whatever right.

Top Left Corner: And more to the point, you could tell. I mean, you could tell your boss had a phrase. You can tell your coworkers one thing’s one thing, and you could tell your boss another thing. I mean, and. And no one would have to know the wiser. You could, you know. In fact, you could. Well, let’s just bring it to the state house level. Let’s quit prevaricating around the Bush era. You could tell if you are a state legislator. You can tell your constituents that you’re going to go out there and you’re going to fight for them on this issue. But privately, you could be supporting the agenda of, say, some big business that is diametrically opposed to what the people want. So, yeah, you could vote for the big business interest and you could tell the people back home, gosh, you know, I fought for it and by gum I thought it would pass. Oh, well.

Michael Lavery: Absolutely. There’s no oversight and it’s a shame. We we deserve better as a populace and a. That would be a big change that I’d like to see happen to have it come forth again and be voted on.

Top Left Corner: Now news people vote differently. Newspaper folks, news, you know, journalists of all stripes, I think would like to see this change. Why have not more outlets made a fuss about it when these these issues come up?

Michael Lavery: I think the Globe did a good piece in our local paper. They may be more conservative than folks think, and they did a piece on it, I think, July of last year on the transparency after these two bills didn’t pass. So I think it’s out there, but it’s definitely not in the public’s eye or mind or being spoken about at the barber shop or the corner store.

Top Left Corner: You know, that’s got to change. And that is why I said, you know, news outlets of all stripes would like to see it because there are plenty of times that conservative leaning outlets would love to play the gotcha game with left leaning legislators and vice versa. It’s just it’s just in the public interest. You want to know what you’re buying when you walk into that voting booth. I guess you sort of like signing up to the carol is what they’re really more like today. You would love to think that you know what you’re signing on for. And too many times people feel like, you know, months or years later, like I don’t even know this person that I voted for. This isn’t the person I voted for. This is who they said they were. And it’s disgusting.

Michael Lavery: I’ve got to write Latin for.

Top Left Corner: Well. Buyer beware. Let the buyer beware. But the buyer can’t beware. And that’s what we’re talking about here. The buyer has no idea. You know, it’s like buying a car that has four wheels and it has a steering wheel and it has brakes. Okay, great. But you know, what are the how many horsepower? Yeah, we can’t tell you that. Okay. Does it have anti-lock brakes, airbags? No, we can’t tell you that. I mean, that’s really what it is. You’re basically, you know, you’re playing.

Michael Lavery: Well, welded shot, and we don’t give you a warranty. Write it. Work on it. Right. Yeah, It’s.

Top Left Corner: Terrible. I think we’re playing Russian roulette with our democracy. I mean, what the hell? So that’s. That’s kind of where we are. I guess there’s really.

Michael Lavery: Wish there were folks like you and myself that know about it and we could get the message out. So hopefully this reaches a lot of years today.

Top Left Corner: I hope so. I hope so. Well, tomorrow I’ll have to do some, you know, editing and so forth. And we’ll we’ll we’ll get it shiny and spiffy before we go.

Michael Lavery: Release like Jeopardy! Where where they say it’s Friday and it’s they were all filmed on the same day. Yeah. Yeah. Tuesday three months ago.

Top Left Corner: No, it’s, it’s. I know. But you know what? If somebody gets a hold of the the audio from this episode before it’s released, I probably won’t be able to sue anybody for big money, you know, like U2 did when their album was hacked. So let’s talk about a little other other things about you, things that we haven’t discussed. I mean, you hold some views that are you know, I don’t think they’re bold, but but some might. Now, you. You are a an engineer for General Dynamics Mission systems in Pittsfield, is that correct?

Michael Lavery: Yeah. I recently accepted a position to be closer to home and work in the Berkshires where I live. I was assigned to the Albany office in PricewaterhouseCoopers. I haven’t changed my what I’m doing as an engineer very much. I’m still doing computer work and it is tough for me as a Green Party member and anti-war sort of person. But I was in the Marine Corps and I did serve my country and I have a paper that says I did my job. So I don’t know. It was tough to reconcile that. But at the end of the day, these things are going to be around and there’s only two employers that can say their number one and number two, and that’s Berkshire Health Systems and General Dynamics. So at some point with a person of my caliber who’s been doing it and Linux in particular for 20 years, there’s only so many places that would employ me at the rate that I, I think I may.

Top Left Corner: Look, I get it. And we all have we all have contradictions. Lord knows your host, Jason Velasquez, a.k.a The Mongrel has a lot of contradictions himself. I do not see eye to eye with a lot of my lefty friends on many issues, and they they get very upset with me when we have conversations about things like the Second Amendment property owner rights. They’re like, How can you have these views? Well, I do. I’m sorry, I do. I grew up on a farm and I have a farm and there’s just certain realities.

Michael Lavery: No, you’re right. It’s true. We live in the Berkshires. There are bears and guns. Gun rights are a different thing. And lefties and liberals can own guns. And you know who’s to say If Pelosi’s husband had been armed, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten hit in the head with a hammer. I don’t know.

Top Left Corner: I have no idea what the heck. I don’t even know. We can. We can when we sort of start winding down and have and start getting silly. We can talk about that, too. But boy, that’s that’s a cluster bumble over there. So. So I understand that. I. Excuse me. I have. I have my issues with. With not so much with. I mean, I’m also not a pacifist. A lot of people think that I’m some sort of patchouli smelling hippie, some dirty hippie, and I’m not a pacifist, which confuses people. I do believe, you know, if somebody were to go after, you know, one of my kids or something, I’m going to knock him. I’m going to knock him into next week.

Michael Lavery: That’s just that’s just silly. So, you know, I think this war, endless war that we’ve had is a different matter. And we certainly need to protect our country if if attacked. But the the the. The monopoly in this huge industrial military industrial complex that has come about its way too much. We spend more than the next eight countries combined, I think was a recent statistic. Yeah, so there’s a better balance. There’s a quarter of the Department of Defense, which used to be called the War Department until that wasn’t a good PR look for them. A quarter of it is totally unaccounted for. It’s just black ops and NSA and hush money and nobody can account for it. So a lot of things need to change. But I agree we do need some type of war footing.

Top Left Corner: You kind of have to in this day and age. I mean, let’s face it, we are going to be fighting over water one day. We’re going to be fighting over food one day. And that food.

Michael Lavery: Yeah, there’ll be water wars.

Top Left Corner: And and I don’t want to be I don’t want to.

Michael Lavery: Be in the middle of migration. We’re already seeing it in the in this country. The folks down in Key West and the Keys where this hundred and 80 people died. They’re going to have to move. I mean, sure, they can’t rebuild.

Top Left Corner: We have expensive we have we have climate refugees.

Michael Lavery: We have to move inland.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, well, we have climate refugees here. I mean, a lot of people don’t understand that after Hurricane Sandy. I mean, these are people with whom I’ve spoken. There were New Yorkers who said no more. I’m not going to go through that again. And they sold what they had moved to the Berkshires and they wanted to move inland before it got too late or too expensive. And, you know, they’re climate refugees. They’re just very wealthy climate refugees. I mean, I know somebody who sold two apartments in Midtown. Can you imagine what selling two apartments in Midtown would get you? So.

Michael Lavery: Yeah, there’s no coincidence that the top two billionaires, Elon Musk and Amazon guy, are trying to get to Mars. I mean, they’re treating our economy, which is a throwaway society. They’re treating the planet like that, too. They’re like, well, once it’s run out of minerals and let’s just go to Mars and rape the planet there, there’s billionaires, there’s tech giants that have second homes with huge basements, bunkers that are prepping. And it’s not just the preppers you see on TV, on this funny shows where people make fun of them. It’s like super realistic and they see the models north of like Connecticut is going to be the only place anymore where it’ll be inhabitable.

Top Left Corner: Well, let’s talk about this a little bit, because this is one of the things that I’m trying to as you probably know, I’m trying to do some climate resiliency reporting and I feel it’s the most important thing in the world at the moment, because if you don’t have a climate, if you don’t have a planet, you don’t really have to worry about anything else. So here’s the question. You know, here we are in 2022 and a lot of people in the Berkshires are not paying attention to the climate crisis and they aren’t taking resiliency, preparedness and precautions against climate disruption seriously. What do you think Western Mass and specifically the Berkshires should be doing right now?

Michael Lavery: Massachusetts has something called MVP in its Massachusetts vulnerability program or project. It’s it’s funded by the state. And each town has had a period of time to sign up and get people to volunteer to to do the climate study and see where our vulnerabilities lie. And Beckett in particular, I’m familiar with the folks who worked on it, and we’re up high, but there are a lot of lakes and some of the outlying parts of the town are susceptible to flooding and culverts blowing out and roads getting washed out. So that’s one thing If you want to find out from your local town leaders if your town has taken part in the MVP program. We did get some funding for that. I don’t know what the state is going to do with the results of that study, but hopefully they’ll make it an earmarked program to. To cure these things. These hundred year storms are happening every four or five years, and you can’t use those terms anymore. So we have to think of new ways to talk about these things.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I think those programs are excellent. And I do have to find out from every town what their level of participation was. But the the things that I think the pandemic showed us are that we are. Affected by things that happen far, far away in more, more ways than we knew. I mean, when shipping. Was disrupted, logistics were disrupted when we weren’t able to source things that we need here in the Berkshires from places that, you know, we had them we saw things that Americans have not seen in generations. We saw empty shelves. Right. We saw places where there were there was no produce. There were no there was no fruit and vegetables in the produce section. And of course, there were just holes in all throughout the shelves. And Americans, I think we kind of pretended like there was, okay, well, this this is weird, but it’ll get better. And of course, it did get better for now mostly. But I think that the pandemic is small potatoes, if it should be compared to, say, three degrees Celsius rise, even even 2.5 degrees Celsius rise, you will see shortages of things that will blow your mind. And I think that whether or not the weather. Hits us hard. There are so many secondary and tertiary effects that nobody’s talking about. And to me, those are more those are more frightening than many. I think that it is not. Unlikely that there will be staggering incidents of crime, perhaps even crime that is literally survival crime. You know, absolutely. It’s not like you care that somebody steals a loaf of bread, but you do care if they hijack the entire truck that’s coming with all of the food into the Berkshires and they’re just, you know, gone. And people think that that’s Mad Max. But I think we’re so much closer than we’ve ever been to that in this country. Not that we can solve it.

Michael Lavery: But I think you’re right. We’ve seen bits of that or foreshadowing of it when, like you said, we did lose the supply chain for a while there with toilet paper and staples like bread and eggs and things. And it happened relatively quickly. It’s just a few different events where people make a run on the stores and then the stores can’t restock in time, and then that continues.

Top Left Corner: Talk to me about other things. I mean, I know that I don’t want to spend the entire hour on on the climate, because I will if you let me. And I’m a doer. So that’s kind of what it is. But there are there was a comment, I think it was who was it? Somebody wrote a piece on both you and Smitty Pignatelli, and there was a weird comment on it. I don’t know if it was Amanda or if it was oh, I don’t remember who wrote the piece, but there was a comment at the bottom saying that she didn’t think that you addressed the local issues enough and and I think you did pretty well. But if there are if there are local issues that you think are critical, I’d like to know what they are now so we can set the record straight, because I have heard you.

Michael Lavery: I appreciate it.

Top Left Corner: Socially. I mean, I’m just we’ve talked about local issues. Maybe they they don’t always translate. So what are some of the the priorities you think we should be thinking about?

Michael Lavery: Well, the piece you’re speaking of was Heather Bello, and then a letter to the editor and the eagle. So, yeah, I mean, they they are physical paper and they have to limit their. Byline. But the Berkshire Edge piece that came out a few days later was very much more nuanced. And that’s a digital paper like you’re of like we’re recording today. So I think that’s able to express my opinions and what I’ve done locally better. I certainly have done a lot for my town and I would do more for the district as a whole. I understand the hill towns, how little money we get compared to Pittsfield even, or Boston in regards to the roads in chapter nine funds, which is the term for how much money we get in the budget every year, is determined by how many people live in the town. And if there are any people commuting here for either work or just. Stores and things like businesses, but most towns don’t have any either of those two, and they have small populations. So that’s why we get the least amount of money. So that’s big. I’ve talked to our highway guy and he has to save up for three years to do one road with what we get from the state. And there’s no other creative ways to squeeze the money out to fix the road. So I know that plate and I know what I would do to try to help it, or at least make the people in eastern Mass aware of it if I was elected. I have done plenty of things for my town as a select board member.

Michael Lavery: We have EV parking spaces at town halls. There are no gas stations in Beckett, but there are four EV parking spaces. So people that come for the summer camps to drop their kids off from New York and New Jersey or wherever and have an electric car don’t have to worry. They can charge up. I have a new trail that’s used every day when it’s nice out, I go by there and I save the land and I got a grant to convert it from town land to a new hiking trail. So I’m out there. I’m doing things in politics. Things don’t always happen smooth or quickly or easily, but I’ve stuck with it and and gotten programs that I think are green and will it will help folks in the long run. There’s a wind project that I support from the Energy Committee in town, 15 kilowatt wind turbine for the town hall. So I just want folks to know that I do look out for local people. I’m not just thinking big picture about climate change, but I want to make everything that we do do going forward fit into that mindset. If you’re going to build a new building, why wouldn’t you put solar panels on top of it and make it green? So I think that covers a bit of a response that I would have written back as a letter to the Eagle to respond. But this is a better forum because I am. Don’t think they’ll get in it on time before the election.

Top Left Corner: Probably not. But this will be available tomorrow. So and hopefully people will get a chance to hear it. Naturally, I will put it on there on social media. So let’s talk a little bit about a subject that I I’ve been wanting to talk about, but I haven’t had on any guests who really seemed to be particularly concerned with the issue. You brought up the subject of antigens.

Michael Lavery: Yes.

Top Left Corner: And was.

Michael Lavery: That.

Top Left Corner: Antigens? I think that this is one of those things where enough people have said, can we take another look at these? That maybe. Yeah, maybe it is it is worth considering here in Massachusetts were the first did a lot of things. Maybe this is set to we want to give us a definition of what an antigen is.

Michael Lavery: Certainly so it’s a spiritual or ritual use drug. And it it usually has a previous use in prior centuries, like psilocybin or peyote. The Southwest I live I visit a friend in Arizona and they had medical cards even back in the early 1990s for folks to native folks to take part in rituals. So these these things have been used for centuries and and longer. Like shamans is the term you’d use, or witch doctors, I guess is kind of a loaded term. But they’ve recently, like you said, taken a a new look at them. Certain states are at least towns in states like Denver, Colorado. Most recently in Massachusetts, they’ve been decriminalized in four towns Cambridge, Southampton, East Hampton and Somerville. I might have gotten one of those Hamptons wrong, but you can Google it, and I’m proposing it for a town. Bylaws change in Becket, so Anthea Jones would be able to be studied, or at least people could grow them or use them for their own ritual purposes. They’re helpful for ADHD and. Other mental illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder and vets and that sort of thing.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and these are not. These are not quacks that are suggesting that they’re good for for mental health. Of the places that have reported on this. A Hopkins Medicine Dawg has an article about psychedelic treatments with psilocybin relieves major depression. The University of California. San Francisco Nature. Com Columbia Psychiatry dot org. Web M.D.. Magic mushrooms provide fast, long lasting depression relief. And the New England Journal of Medicine. So these are not these are mainstream people. These are not perpetually smelling dirty hippies like me. Go ahead.

Michael Lavery: Oh, absolutely. I want to help folks who could help and just start down that road. I did want to bring up the one thing locally that’s somebody concerned citizen in Housatonic. And I’ve been following the story of their water plight. The village is within the confines of Great Barrington and therefore the select board there has to rule, but they haven’t come to a conclusion on how to resolve the Housatonic water issue. And Smitty’s been buttonholed about it and he said he’d help, or he seemed to give those rumblings. But it’s still been years, and the family that took it over the Mercer family in the eighties has done very little to retrofit the pipes for modern times, and the water is full of manganese and other acetic acid that are carcinogens. So now I don’t know to how many pipe to the forefront.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. How many people are affected by this? Any thoughts?

Michael Lavery: I believe there are 800 hookups to that water feed and only 24 or 30 of them are not in Housatonic. There’s like a handful of families that are in Stockbridge or West Stockbridge, but about 800 that get that feed. And some of them only have tea colored water, but some it’s like brown like, you know, swamp water.

Top Left Corner: So this is been allowed to go on for a long, long time. Is there any concern for health, health effects?

Michael Lavery: There are there are two concerns. The manganese is one, and that’s there’s something called manganese ism. And if untreated or if it goes on long enough, it can wreck your health like Parkinson’s disease, very similar sort of symptoms. So that can even happen with showering and drinking. It, of course, is not recommended. So the town isn’t even providing a bottled water for these folks. They’re having to buy it on their own. And the Mercer Company, which is a private family owned company, Housatonic Waterworks, is not helping in that regard either. They’re only testing the water twice a year in Beckett. We had a problem with E.coli in one of the public town buildings that we have to test every day. I don’t know how the water works. Company is getting away from the DEP with these two major chemicals in the water and they’ve been cited for it. But all they have to do is test twice a year. It seems criminal. It seems like a Flint, Michigan, or Standing Rock situation. And I don’t know why it’s not all over the news.

Top Left Corner: Well, has it has it hit the news? I mean, I’m sure it must have been at least a couple of times in, you know, the Berkshire Edge or the the eagle. I mean, somebody must have said something about it.

Michael Lavery: Yeah. They’ve reported on the select boards, taking it up and largely not being able to do anything. It would be a huge budget. It will have to come before town, meaning for them to vote to take over the private water.

Top Left Corner: Okay. But they haven’t done an investigative piece on the subject itself.

Michael Lavery: Not that I’ve seen, not a thorough investigation where they speak to people in the house and see the water and write it up with photos and glossy.

Top Left Corner: 27 glossy photos and arrows on the back, you know? Exactly. Well, I just, you know, jeez, I mean, it’s water. It’s it’s one of the the.

Michael Lavery: Basic it’s.

Top Left Corner: Basic, for crying out loud. People shouldn’t have to worry about it. But developing a Parkinson’s, Parkinson’s disease like illness because they needed to take a shower, that’s insane. Anyway, I.

Michael Lavery: Can’t believe it’s gone on this long.

Top Left Corner: What else? What else do you.

Michael Lavery: I don’t know if there’s much else on my mind. I mean, I want to get out there that the. The election’s on Tuesday next week, but you can early vote, check your town’s website. You’ve already missed the mail in chance, but.

Top Left Corner: You can look it there.

Michael Lavery: Yeah. I mean, I can’t campaign every day. I have a 9 to 5 job, unlike my opponent. So all I have is social media and my weekends. So if you haven’t seen me, I’m sorry I am getting signs out there, but I might resonate with you. So please look me up on Michael Avery dot com. And do you see where I stand on the issues? There’s a number of articles and this will be up tomorrow. I’ll put a link on my page. So thank you for your time and consideration for vote for Michael Avery. Green Rainbow Party November 8th.

Top Left Corner: Like a cool, fresh breeze blowing through Beacon Hill. That’s what it’ll be like. Vote for Michael Avery. Scott. I know, right? He’s got. It’s got our endorsement. I don’t even have to write it. I think you’ve probably all figured it out. So get out there and, you know, believe it.

Michael Lavery: It is no dream.

Top Left Corner: Right. There you go. If you believe it’s no dream, there are other characters. There are other characters you could be voting for. No, there are other other races out there. You know, there’s the race for Richie Neal seat. Richie Neal is going up against Dean Martelly.

Michael Lavery: And, oh, I didn’t realize you had a competitor. That’s great. I’ll look him up.

Top Left Corner: You can look him up. You you can actually. Last week, I published a a lengthy interview with him as well.

Michael Lavery: Okay. I’ll definitely check it out.

Top Left Corner: And there are some folks who wondered, why did I interview somebody from the GOP? Listen. Listen to it. And you will understand it is one of my it will go down in history as one of my best. One of my best. So have fun listening to that. Michael, You know, break a leg. I guess we can say that this is the Berkshires. There’s more of this theater here. Yeah, you can say good luck. You can say break a leg.

Michael Lavery: Yeah, it’s a small community.

Top Left Corner: And regardless of how this goes, I know that you’re going to continue to work for the people of the community, and I know you’re going to continue to keep us informed and let us know what’s going on in your neck of the woods.

Michael Lavery: I live to serve. Thank you for your time and I appreciate it All you do for the community as well.

Top Left Corner: Thank you. Take care.

Michael Lavery: Take care.

And that’s our interview with Michael Lavery, candidate for state representative Berkshire third district. Remember, voting on Tuesday is just as important here in the midterm elections, as it is when the presidency is at stake. Early voting is still available in person in Massachusetts, contact your town Clerk if you need directions. If you need to know where to vote in person, use the link to Vote.org to locate your polling station by zip code.

That’s our show — hope you enjoyed it. We’ll talk again about something or other next week. Until then, Stay safe, be good to each other, and go easy on yourself.

The post Top Left Corner #178: NTRVW — Michael Lavery, Candidate for State Rep., Mass. 3rd Dist. appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

And this is Episode Number 177 of the Top Left Corner. I’m your host Jay Velázquez and I do thank you for tuning in as always. Today, at least the day I’m recording this, is Sunday, October 30, 2022, and what a glorious Sunday it is. Brought to you by our new sponsor, climate change, making sure that every November feels like August. Today’s show is truly a confluence of a bunch of great things. We have a couple of conversations that have been in the hopper for a while — One for a couple of weeks, one for over a year.

Thor Wickstrom • The Happy Curmudgeons • Tom Conklin • READY.gov • Ballot Questions

Our first guest is Thor Wickstrom, local painter I literally meant by the side of the road overlooking the view surrounding Green River Farms in Williamstown. I didn’t have any equip equipment with me but I did have my phone and I did my best to try to capture the artists thoughts on that particular stretch of scenery and the importance of open space. Cars went by. The wind picked up. And in the end, I thought that I had erased the conversation when I updated my phone. Fortunately nothing online ever really disappears, and I stumbled across it this week as I search for information about the farm now that it is on the block, so to speak. We learned that Green River Farms is now officially up for sale for approximately 2 1/2 million dollars, which is a piece more than most small farmers can possibly come up with.

Listing for Green River Farms at Burnham Gold Real Estate

The community is concerned about the possibility that the view, which is a quintessential New England landscape, could be marred forever if developers purchase the property and pull some or all of it out of the tax classification that is one way agricultural land is protected. Unlike placing land in indefinite conservation, chapter 61a can be reversed by paying back taxes — a pittance compared to the amount of money builders developers couldn’t realize with bulldozers and blueprints for a community of McMansions.

We speak next with local celebrity of the airwaves, The voice you know and love, Tom Conklin, who has been a fixture on the radio dial for quite some time. He is also the one of the principles of the local band the matchstick architects. We are going to be talking about his transition into professional voice work outside of radio on a full-time basis. He shares a number of tips, and explains a little bit about what it’s like to get a career going invoice work. I think you’ll find it as fascinating as I did. And I’m always a little wary about having him on an episode since his voice is so gold it shows me up every time.

We also have a song from a band I’ve been wanting to introduce you to for a while — the Happy Curmudgeons. Haling from the Detroit music scene, they’ve been nominated for a 2022 W.A.M. Award in the Best Americana category for their song “Rustic Glory.” Winners will be announced November 5. I don’t happen to have that tune available to share on the podcast, but I’ve embedded the Spotify link in the shownotes. I do, however, have a track off their 2019 LP Meant 2 Be, entitled “Scatterbrain”, which is a fair description of me these days. Let’s hear that track right now on the top Left Corner:

[music: track “Scatterbrain,” off 2019 LP Meant 2 Be]

And with me, by the side of Cold Spring Road, is local artist Thor Wickstrom.

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

Top Left Corner: So are you from the area?

Thor Wickstrom: Yeah, I live in North Adams. We’re sort of in two places. North Adams in New York.

Top Left Corner: Okay. Excellent. You are not alone. But that seems to be a very common theme. What draws you to this particular. There’s a lot of beautiful places in the world. What draws you to this particular place? Why did you have this view?

Thor Wickstrom: I’ve been paying this view. I said first painted in about 2003. So what’s that make? Almost ten years?

Top Left Corner: We’ll say ten here coming up here.

Thor Wickstrom: And just that’s just a place I come back to and I like to paint here.

Top Left Corner: What’s changed? What’s changed in 18 years?

Thor Wickstrom: Nothing. Well, the the orchard, they put these apple trees in oak and now it’s kind of gone to seed.

Top Left Corner: It looks like it has not been pruned in at least a couple of years. That is true. What are we listening to, by the way?

Thor Wickstrom: It sounds like Bach.

Top Left Corner: It does, doesn’t it? So the Berkshires then what about the Berkshires in the North Berkshires specifically?

Thor Wickstrom: That’s where I live. So it’s you know, this is this is half an hour and a half or 20 minutes from where I live in North Adams. So it’s I mean, it’s just I like to come here. I often go to Schnell Farms. I have a few favorite spots. I like these big views, lots of trees.

Top Left Corner: These big views are hard to find. I mean, they if you go to upstate New York, Vermont, but it seems like you have to go farther and farther away to get them because developers are hungry for them, never more so than now these days.

Thor Wickstrom: True.

Top Left Corner: Right. The there are a few organizations that try to preserve land, but ultimately it comes down to money. And I suppose that’s why I am interested in what you think about the fact that this farm well, this farm, especially Green River Farms, is for sale. You’ve been coming here painting it for 18 years. What what goes through your mind.

Thor Wickstrom: When you.

Actually had that? I believe that most of the land is part of the land trust.

Thor Wickstrom: But I don’t really know. You know, at least it has been like, Yeah.

Top Left Corner: I’ll have to find that out.

Thor Wickstrom: I really don’t know whether it’s.

Top Left Corner: Yes, it’s now conservation and there’s nothing they can do about it. Right. But the the fear of course.

Thor Wickstrom: Is.

Top Left Corner: Well I mean would you come back here if there were McMansions over and then that field, for example, I mean, would you would you continue to document this view or would it be shot for you?

Thor Wickstrom: Yeah, it’s a good question. I really can’t say. I mean, we just have to I, I play it all by ear, but yeah, I do like to paint. I also do a lot of cityscapes in New York and my. They do tend to to gravitate towards the old stuff and. You know, get it before it goes away.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. People like cityscapes, people like rural landscapes. Not a lot of market for suburban neighborhood paintings, I suppose.

Thor Wickstrom: I don’t know. I don’t. I don’t paint the suburbs a lot.

Top Left Corner: I’ve never seen a I’ve never seen like a retrospective of somebody’s work in the suburbs. You know, strip malls and so forth. But maybe there is, I don’t know. So when you when you look for a scene in in a cityscape, what are you looking for? That’s the same as this. And what’s different?

Thor Wickstrom: I mean, I’m attracted by artistic things. The shapes, big shapes, big, you know, things like that. I don’t. And it’s it’s a little hard to quantify. Hard to say. What am I trying to say? I’ve always been attracted by this view, especially this time of the evening. Look at that light.

Top Left Corner: This is what it is. And you’re doing a splendid job capturing it. I won’t take you because I know that the light is everything.

Thor Wickstrom: Well, I’m done for the day.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, we were probably about 15 minutes ago. Was. Yeah. Found out about New England. I like to take a picture of you, by the way.

Thor Wickstrom: Yeah, sure.

Top Left Corner: I’ll shut this off. Unless you have any other final thoughts on this view or. Or. Or the importance of preservation.

Thor Wickstrom: Or the importance of preservation. I mean, that’s. That’s for sure. I’ve worked closely with the Rural Lands Trust, and, you know, I respect those people, they do good work.

Mid-term Elections 2022; Ballot Questions

Descriptions of Ballot Questions provided by the Secretary of the Commonwealth

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

Top Left Corner: And with me on the line for Solopreneur Spotlight is Tom Conklin. Tom, good afternoon and thanks for being on the show.

Tom Conklin: Oh, thanks a lot, Jason. Happy to be here. I appreciate it.

Top Left Corner: Well, this is a segment that I really enjoy because it gives me the chance to showcase people who are doing basically what I’m doing. I’m kind of bootstrapping it and making my own way. And there are challenges to trying to be in business for yourself, to get, you know, to get things launched up and off the ground. And I like to make sure that we give people who have the the guts to do it a little bit of glory. You know, if you have guts, you should get at least a little bit of glory.

Tom Conklin: Right? Sure.

Top Left Corner: So you you as people are going to hear in if they haven’t already heard, you do have a silky smooth voice and it makes sense that you would put it to use professionally. You already have in a couple of different ways. You have been both a musician in Magic Matchstick Architects and you have been a radio personality. Give us a little bit of a history of how you got started in both.

Tom Conklin: Oh well, I guess I’ll start with the radio. So, you know, back in, I want to say 96 or so, somewhere around there. I got interested in radio. I don’t really know exactly what sparked it, but for some reason I wanted to do it. And I took a, you know, a course in Albany, and it just blossomed from there. You know, I actually got my first job at WBEZ in Pittsfield and actually been with the companies that have owned that station and all the other or the other stations that they now have for Jesus. I want to say about 25, 26 years. So so that’s the radio end of it. And I did news and some different air shifts and things like that. And, you know, it’s it was it was a career, I guess, you know, and and it’s time for that to end. But anyway, as far as the band goes, you know, we’ve been together, Darlene, as we’ve spoken together with Darlene before, her and I have worked together for, oh, gee, since 2010, I want to say. And, you know, we found our members over time and, you know, we’re still together today. This year has been a little slow, but, you know, coming off of COVID, you know, that’s that’s where we’re at. And hopefully next year we’ll be a little more active there. Hmm.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I hope that I hope the venues continue to to to well, to survive and thrive. And I hope that we get some new ones. I’d love to see a few new performance spaces open up because we’ve lost a few in the Berkshires. You know, we lost it was a Jay Allen’s on a North street in Pittsfield. Is that the name I’m thinking of?

Tom Conklin: I believe so.

Top Left Corner: And and of course, in North Adams for just a brief flash of flash of of gorgeous light there was Halo North Adams which was a great space in a cursed location you said was the crystal hard hat before that. Yeah but I really thought they were beating the curse for a while. They had a great brew in a home, not home brew, but microbrew in there. And they had lots of local acts and some some out of town acts. And it was. It had a good vibe to it.

Tom Conklin: Yeah, it seemed to, yeah.

Top Left Corner: I’m not sure what the ultimate death knell was there, but it is now closed and, and North Adams has not a lot, you know, of performance space. Tell me about the in radio though. I, I had once believed that that would be a career for me too. There was the Connecticut School of Broadcasting and just outside of Hartford. And and I was interested in going there. I toured. They gave me a sound check that said, hey, you should you should consider this. And but there were a lot of things that they discussed were disillusioning about radio. It wasn’t what I thought it was. It was not the radio of the sixties and the seventies. It was the radio of the eighties and the nineties. And a lot of things were becoming very corporate. Were there anything did you see any changes over your tenure in the in the biz that were maybe a little bit distressing or disillusioning?

Tom Conklin: Well, there certainly were a lot. Changes. That’s for sure. As far as the, you know, distressing or whatever, I think, you know, I knew what I was getting into when I was going into it. Radio typically is in a for lack of a better term, great paying gig, you know, unless, of course, you happen to hit it big and get very lucky. But. Local radio, not so much, but a lot of things have changed. You know, we went from splicing tape to recording everything digitally and and doing things, you know, editing digitally, which takes seconds as compared to, you know, minutes and hours. Sometimes when you’re dealing with tape and a lot of stuff, things become automated for a large part. Talent can now, you know, do remote broadcasts. So there’s really been a lot of changes in the radio business for sure.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, Yeah, I know. I always had this this notion that I could be the the holdout, you know, the Dr. Johnny Fever from from W care P playing the things that I thought people should hear and not necessarily the things that the algorithms thought they should hear. But I guess that’s why today I have I have my streaming station, which I don’t know if you know that, but the dial dot net, it’s 24 hour, seven day a week streaming station. And maybe in the green room after this, we can talk about getting you a spot on there because it’s, as you said, things have changed and they have changed so much that anybody who wants a radio station can actually have one and discover how much work they really are.

Tom Conklin: Sure.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. But the the great news is that there are a lot of options that come with the 21st century being that you can do things like. Use your voice to to do commercials, to do instructional videos, to do narrating voiceovers for for video, for documentaries. There’s so many things you can do with the voice today that you really you couldn’t do easily, at least not not even 20 years ago. Tell us about getting into voiceover work, voice, narration and how you did it and and maybe how you’re doing it differently than others do.

Tom Conklin: Well, I guess let me go backwards a little bit here. You know, you mentioned 20 years ago, and I’d say 20 years ago, it was a pretty good number and maybe even sooner than that where voiceover was basically done by getting jobs through your agent and going to studios and auditioning and and everything was done in somebody else’s studio. That’s changed with especially with COVID even before so many, many talents started doing their work out of their homes, building studios, getting whisper rooms and studio breaks to companies that make booths and things like that. So it’s really become a remote job. And as far as me getting into it, it was about 2006 when I first got interested and not so much because I didn’t like radio, but because I wanted to do some other things, you know, with my voice. And I knew they were out there. And, you know, of course, you watch television and listen to the radio, those commercials. And as you said, there’s all kinds of, you know, videos that you’ll see, especially on the Internet, explainers and corporate videos. And there’s just there’s so much. So I started to get interested in that. And of course, I did my research and step by step got involved in it. And when I started doing it, it was kind of a side hustle, turned into a part time kind of a gig, and it was really here and there over the years balancing, you know, my radio job, which took a lot of my time. But but now, you know, here I am and I’m kicking into full time mode and so far, so good. Loving it.

Top Left Corner: Now, what about the services? I know that there are a number of platforms where you can upload your demo reels, as it were, and you can upload, you know, six or seven different demonstrations of your voice talent. And basically you’re putting yourself on the on the market and people can get in touch with you if they like, if they think that your voice matches their project. Did you do any of that sort of that sort of seeking out clients that way, or has it always been through contacts that you’ve known?

Tom Conklin: Well, it’s you’re talking about pay to play sites, I think. And those are basically sites where you, as you said, you upload your demos, your voice samples and you start to get auditions. And of course, there’s a fee for all of that, most most sites anyway, that are paid to plays. That’s why they call it that. So yeah, you start getting auditions and you may get a few here and there, you may get a lot and you basically audition. The thing with those is you’re up against, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of talents, You know, depending on the level of the job, too, You might be up against, you know, the best talent in the country that are on those sites. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, those are I did get into those for a while. I don’t do that so much now, only because it’s it’s really a time killer, you know, I’d rather be putting my time into marketing myself and, you know, auditioning for companies that are looking for something specific. But it has its place. And I do do it a little bit here and there.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I suppose there are some that are I mean, I’ve seen some that are free, but then again, there’s kind of a you get what you pay for sort of thing, you know, the free, but they’re not really working that hard to get you any work. So as you said, you’re up against hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people and you hear them online. You hear them on the radio all day, every day. And you know, they’re good. I mean, that’s the wonderful thing about the Internet is that it really democratizes things if you have talent you can with and a little bit of luck you can get found. So it sounds sure it sounds to me like you are really leveraging people, you know, businesses, you know and probably I’m guest starting regionally or. Do have other. So you did some work for Boeing. So that’s not regional. That’s that’s an international brand.

Tom Conklin: Yeah, that was actually done through a casting site, but you know, a few years back. But yeah, the companies like that I reach out on to on my own basically through email marketing. You know, that’s, that’s the way that I do it. And I mean, there’s certainly a lot more to it than that. Of course, there’s social media and there’s all kinds of avenues, but I try to do.

Top Left Corner: My own work. You have a great website and I think that that is a huge that is a huge plus because when you send an email out to a potential client and you say, This is what I can do for you, they’re going to want to not necessarily talk to you right away. They’re going to want to hear something. They’re going to want to see that you’re that you’re for real, that you’re pro. Absolutely. And your website screams pro. And that’s just you know.

Tom Conklin: I appreciate that. Thanks.

Top Left Corner: Well, I mean, putting your you know, putting those samples right up there in front, you don’t have to search for them. They’re right there. This is what I do. Take a listen right now, right here, right now, and get in touch with me. And I think that’s definitely the way to go. And, of course, you know, having the background in radio, they know that you are a you are a known quantity and that you you know, you deliver you know, if you’ve been able to do it for, you know, like you said, two and a half decades, basically with with the same, you know, not accompanied by the same, you know, well sort of company, they know they can count on you. So tell us a little bit about some of the the challenges and some of the things that you have to do to get get ready to do a voiceover.

Tom Conklin: Okay, Just let me just go back forwards for one second. Sure. Just you did you mentioned regionally, locally, national, that type of thing. I just want to touch on that real quick, if that’s okay. Yeah, please. So. Certainly the local market is is something that, you know, a voice over may look to work in. Personally, I have not really done any work locally here. I do work with companies all over the United States and sometimes outside of the United States and just happened to not work with any local companies yet. I certainly am willing to do that if anybody wants to, for sure. But, you know, I have not so just wanted to say that now you were asking about challenges.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. Challenges to doing the voiceover work and getting ready to do to do the actual recording. What do you do to to get yourself your voice all that ready.

Tom Conklin: Well, as far as challenges go, every day is a challenge. I mean, you have to you have to have the mindset to get up and do what you need to do. And, you know, you got to get right in there and start to do the workings of that. Or every day, you know, usually starts the same way. I’ll get in, I’ll do some marketing. Do any auditions that are sitting in the box for heavy client work, take care of that. Maybe move on to some social media stuff later on in the day. But as far as getting ready and physically doing it, I mean, did you ask about the actual process of.

Top Left Corner: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, let’s say you’ve got a you’ve got a gig and they’ve given you a script and I assume this is how it works and you’re going to get ready to record it. What is the process that you go through?

Tom Conklin: Okay. So basically I would take the script, whether it’s an audition or an actual job and read it through a couple of times in my mind, first of all, and think about how I would present that if I were reading it, make some notes in my mind, and as I’m going, I’ll make some notes on the paper, I’ll do it. We call it marking up the script and obviously and that’s basically the way it begins. Do a dry read and then try to apply the different techniques that I have learned to bring the story to life, you know, to give it some authenticity and conversational, a conversational sound, rather, and then just launch it from there. A lot of times the first take is the is the best one, or you might do two or three or four or five.

Top Left Corner: Now what about things like having a nice cup of hot tea? Sort of clear the airwaves or, you know, taking a hot shower or not taking a hot shower to clear the pipes. Any of those sorts of physical sort of things that you do?

Tom Conklin: Well, definitely taking a shower just because, you know, gets you woken up and ready to go to work. And so without that, just kind of it’s hard to get into the rhythm of things, but that has nothing to do with the pipes. I do drink coffee first thing in the morning. A lot of people will tell you, our coaches sometimes will tell you it’s not a great thing to do because caffeine will constrict the larynx and think different things like that. And it’s just not the best thing. But, you know, it helps me, as you said, clear my throat, stay awake, keep awake and give me a little bit of a spark. So, you know, I’ve been a coffee drinker forever, so.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, well, I have I have allergies. So if I don’t take a nice hot shower, I just my voice is, you know, I’ve got a lot of a lot of a lot of phlegm, you know, I’ve got a lot of, you know, ick factor that I have to clear away.

Tom Conklin: I get you. It’s more of a mental thing for me. But.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, yeah. Now you say a take, sometimes a two for seven. I’m going to make a confession when I do the voiceovers for my podcasts, the intros, I write them out and two things happen. Number one, I sometimes and I’ve gotten a lot better at this over the last seven or eight years, but I sometimes write the narration and I think it’s going to sound okay, but then I actually speak it and there are phrases that are just impossible to get out sounding right. They’re just not, not unspeakable. Do you ever come across texts that you, you, you mark up and say, Dear client, can I change this that you’ve written that is almost impossible to get out. Can I change it to something that’s easier to say? And you make a suggestion, Does that ever happened?

Tom Conklin: Oh, yeah. I mean, you can make a suggestion here and there, obviously, as long as it doesn’t take away from, you know, what it’s trying to convey. I haven’t really done that so much, but you certainly can do that and making a suggestion because you think it might help their script. Certainly not a bad thing either. And. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Top Left Corner: Well, I was going to say that some things are conversational and some bits of copy really are meant to be read, you know, in your read to yourself, read in your mind, then they’re not really meant to be. You know, there’s just some writing that lends itself to to reading rather than speaking.

Tom Conklin: Yeah, well, generally for me, everything is conversational, but there is a place for an announcer type read. Of course, on occasion. But most things today people are looking for the conversational, authentic read. They want the the everyday guy reading it. They don’t want you putting on a voice. They just want you being yourself. That’s pretty much what it is. But what you’re talking about is the actual reading of the copy. And a lot of times, you know, when you’re reading something off a page, it’s it can come over as it’s pretty obvious I’m reading or it sounds like I’m reading, right? So you don’t want that obviously. So a technique there would be to to go off page or off book and it’s sort of it’s what actors do. In other words, you look at the line and you say the line to yourself and then don’t look at it while you’re saying it and just say it from from memory. Now, you can’t do that with big passages, obviously, but at the end of a script, if you have a tag or something like that, you can look at that and, you know, pretend you’re talking to to someone or whatever and just do it without reading it.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, yeah. There are some sentences that are full of compound complex dependent clauses and dependent clauses, and they’re like this, this, this, this sentence is, you know, is a quarter of a page that you never going to make that sound conversational unless you break it up, as you said, and you sort of go off off book and you try to find pauses and breaks where you can. What about what about. The you mentioned most most clients just want, you know, sort of every man, every woman, just conversational person. I do still hear some. Sort of characters in in commercials and so forth these days. I don’t know if you remember. You’re certainly of my vintage, so you’d remember it if it were here.

Tom Conklin: Good way to put it.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. No, we have to try to be polite and and kind when we can. There was a there was a place called Crazy Eddie’s. Yeah. Do you remember? Well, crazy.

Tom Conklin: In New York.

Top Left Corner: Oh, you did? Okay. Excellent. Crazy. Eddie. His prices are insane. You remember that?

Tom Conklin: That commercial we don’t recall? He didn’t end up in a good place. I think he got behind bars, didn’t he?

Top Left Corner: Oh, did he? Okay, that would be. That would explain maybe why he was always so jacked up about his commercials.

Tom Conklin: He got in trouble for something. I can’t remember about that.

Top Left Corner: But. But, you know, there was a lot of there were a lot of sort of characters that that people would do or ask you to do. Less. Less so these days. But do you ever do you see any of those much would you like to to to be hired to to do something kind of fun and kooky?

Tom Conklin: Well, there is certainly lots of that, actually. And, you know, it’s not really my expertise, character voices, but, you know, it is a big thing. And lots of people make very good money doing that. I leave that to them primarily. But, you know, some things I would definitely do. You know, I’ve thought about, you know, different genres when it comes to characters like some animation and video games, things like that. You know, they’re not all crazy voices, you know, especially video games. And there’s a lot of serious dialog these days and games.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, Yeah. Actually, my my kids think that I should do video game voices and cartoon voices.

Tom Conklin: Oh, right. Sure. I bet you could.

Top Left Corner: Because of the because I do a really good mob guy, you know, a crime boss or a thug voice. And they said, you know, if you can keep that thug voice going, you’d have work for the next 20 years because there’s always there’s always those flunkies. You know, there’s there’s sort of. What? What? What’s the word I’m looking for? I guess. Gangster types.

Tom Conklin: Sure. Yeah.

Top Left Corner: I don’t know about that, though, so you never know. But. How would you. How would you respond to something like that? I mean, that could be a a long term thing if you landed the right cartoon, you know?

Tom Conklin: Oh, for sure. That those are good gigs, if you can get them. Mostly if you’re talking about a major networks like, you know, the Cartoon Channel or something with Disney or something like that, Pixar, that kind of stuff. Those are definitely come from your agent. You get auditions for that kind of work and they’re hard to get. And usually something like that will go specifically to people who, you know, do that thing for a living. You’re not going to typically I’m not going to see that come from my agent. I have one agent now and, you know, I get, you know, commercials and narrations, things like that from them a lot a lot of national stuff, which is very hard to get, by the way. But yeah, I tend not to see a lot of that come by way. But yeah, I’ll try anything.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I have actually heard because I have two mid teenagers now and so I’ve watched a lot of cartoons, a lot of animation over the last decade. And you know, a lot of those voices are they’re just hopping from one project to the next. You can hear it, you can hear they’re doing a DC comics, you know, animation. You know, they have Batman one year and then you hear the same voice doing like a marvel, like a Spider-Man or something, a character. Sure. And so, you know that they have like you said, it’s not easy to break into. I’m guessing they probably have a certain number of slots and a certain number of known voice providers that they that they go to time and time again. But if I ever hear of anything, I will send I will send them your number.

Tom Conklin: Well, I appreciate that. You know, it’s funny, I do know several character actors that are brilliant and they get a lot of that work. I know one that does a lot of video games, in fact, too, that do a lot of video games. And they’re both very talented. And I’m sure that you’ve heard them. If you if you’re a kid, like I say, your kids play video games or whatever, I’m sure that they have heard their voices in there. There’s not like glory with it unless the kids read the credit at the end, but usually they don’t.

Top Left Corner: Well, you’d be surprised how into into the gory details. Some kids are with their they’re like, for example, my son Harvey is into Red Dead redemption and it’s it’s it’s a Western and it has this long story arc and it has a bunch of characters. And not only does it have the main characters, but there are all these just sort of random like people who live in this Wild West world. You know, you’re sort of just riding your horse from one town to the next. And so you stop in and there may be a saloon keeper, right? And it’s a voice. They had to, you know, and you’re you have the opportunity to ask lots of different questions. And the bar in the saloon keeper, the bar keeper will respond differently depending on your questions. That’s right. And so, you know, this probably several pages of of dialog that you have to record. So that’s not too bad.

Tom Conklin: No, no. And it’s fun stuff, too. You know, a lot of that, as I mentioned before, is now done from your home studio. But those guys, you still get in a room together. Yeah. And do it that way.

Top Left Corner: Now, I have heard I wish I had this. I, I wish I’d remembered this. There is a new bit of software. That allows you to feed into. Into it. Audio from one source and then it matches the sound. Of that sauce so that when you record your voice, it sounds like it’s in the same place. In other words, if if the if there’s a. A certain say. It’s supposed to be in a in a parking garage. Right. So they have the acoustics of the parking garage.

Tom Conklin: Oh, okay.

Top Left Corner: And so everybody who records into it, they sound like they’re in that same parking garage, if that makes sense.

Tom Conklin: Yeah. Yeah, it does. That’s interesting. I don’t think I know about that, but it’s.

Top Left Corner: It’s really new. It’s less. I mean, I heard it less than a year, about a less than a year ago when I. When I find it, I will shoot that, that name to you because I was I bookmarked it somewhere. Yeah. But that’s pretty cool. Which allows also, again, people to be working out of their home studios and it really eliminates that sort of awkward way. This doesn’t sound like it has the same qualities as this other thing.

Tom Conklin: Sure.

Top Left Corner: So anyway, well, I guess really the hope here is that that I had finished this interview before the bus came and the dog. That’s that’s the challenge. My home studio is it’s not soundproof. My dog will sleep all day, but she knows that at right about 238 to 242, the school bus is due.

Tom Conklin: Right. Well, I love dogs, so I don’t mind hearing the bark.

Top Left Corner: No, no, I don’t mind. It’s just it’s amazing how. How they can know. Oh, it’s time for the kids. Sure. Unfortunately, the kids are doing theater program after school, so she’s very sad. She has this job to do, But it’s it’s it’s moot. Yeah. So what about Lassie audiobooks? Um hum. I know that you did some reading. That Boeing commercial had some. There was a lot of there was a lot of reading for that. There was a lot of. Would you, would you consider doing an audiobook?

Tom Conklin: Audiobooks for me are challenging in a way that it’s long form audio. In other words, you’ve got to sit there for a couple of hours at a clip and keep the same pacing and the same tonalities going, and you really got to stay in focus and that you can’t get it all done in one shot. So you’ve got to come back later and make sure everything matches. That’s something I don’t do a lot of. You mentioned soundproof. Now, I don’t have a soundproof booth here. I do have a treated room which allows me to, you know, have have a dead space, which is what term we use for a room that’s not reflecting sound and but it’s not soundproof. So a lot of noise will still come from the outside. You know, in airplanes at the airports right down the street from me. So if a plane is flying over, over trucks going by for the mailman is walking by outside and the leaves, you know, I wait I wait a couple of minutes. And that’s just the way it works.

Top Left Corner: You and I, I think, should go in on a. On a complete, deadened, soundproof space that we could we could share the rent on that because. Well, it’s I’m on I’m on Cold Spring Road in Williamstown. That’s Route seven. Yeah. And so most of the time, like this time of day is wonderful. This is my schedule. A lot of interviews for this time because there’s no traffic. But in the summertime, on the weekends, for example, especially, you get the motorcycles coming through because this is like peak and this is peak. And once the leaves start changing, you start seeing motorcycles coming in the dozens. And if I want to record, I really have to record like 4:00 in the morning.

Tom Conklin: Yeah, that’s. Well, I used to get up every day and do that, but, you know, I don’t do that anymore. I’ve tacked on a couple, couple, 3 hours onto that now and I start my day around 730, 8:00.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, well, if you can do it, that’s. That’s great. But like I said, the, the traffic that I have to, I was on when I started the, you know, the Top Left Corner podcast on The Greylock Glass, I was actually on on White Oaks Road, which is basically a dead end where in the middle of nowhere. And it was wonderful. It was silent, but, but not anymore. So let’s, let’s just talk a little bit about the economics of it. I think it’s really probably the last piece to this to this this conversation. You say you have to be consistent. That is the same as any solopreneur. You say that you have to get up with the attitude that you’ve got to do what you gotta do. Any other advice for somebody who is doing not just voiceover, but, you know, sort of similar? It’s creative work. It’s it’s focused, very focused work. Any other any advice that you’d have for people who are looking to. Either take the plunge and take their job. You know, they’re maybe they’re, like you said, your hustle to make it a full time thing or, you know, part time into a full time thing.

Tom Conklin: I guess some advice I can give would be to start slowly to do your research. That’s the most important thing. Make sure it’s something you want to get into. You know, with voiceover, especially since you have to buy some equipment for that, you don’t want to make any giant purchases and then decide, Well, you know what? I don’t think I like this or whatever. So, yeah, start slow, do your research, get training, and whatever it is that you’re looking to do, whether it’s voiceover or another, any type of business where you’re going to have to spend a little money to get somewhere and that’s basically it. Take it slow.

Top Left Corner: What about and this is I know another level of complexity for you. Would you consider like, you know, you’re obviously you have a male voice. What if what if a client came to you and said, gosh, you know, we we love your professionalism. We we trust that you could get the job done. We really want a woman’s voice for this. Could you would you ever consider sort of becoming a a more full service studio where you offer other voices?

Tom Conklin: Okay. I thought you were going to ask me if I would if I was going to be able to do a woman’s voice.

Top Left Corner: I mean, I know the tech is getting better, but it’s not quite there yet. No.

Tom Conklin: Yeah, well, you’d be surprised. I mean, some people can do different genders and different ages, especially women have the ability. A lot of women have the ability to.

Top Left Corner: Do the boys.

Tom Conklin: Yeah. Yes, yes. Young boys specifically. You see a lot of that. But yeah, I mean, that would be something that, you know, I probably wouldn’t be considering anytime soon. But who knows? Down the road, you know, I work out of my home here, so and families around a lot. So I wouldn’t want to be bringing a lot of people in here. But, you know, if I had a studio that, you know, was outside of my home, I suppose that might be something. You know, I have collaborated with with different actors from time to time when I did a male female spot at one time with a friend of mine. So, yeah.

Top Left Corner: Just thinking, you know, if could it be that, you know, Tom Conklin voiceovers is, is a brand that offers, you know, all sorts of voices, ethnicities, ages. You know, I’m just saying.

Tom Conklin: You know, I’ve got I’ve got enough to deal with with just my voice and and, you know, not.

Top Left Corner: Looking to make a vocal empire.

Tom Conklin: Not really an empire.

Top Left Corner: No, no, no, no. So that is that’s probably that’s probably good. I mean, you know, know what your your limitations are of what you feel like getting into. I just know that if a if a client if I were in your shoes and the client says, yeah, we were really thinking of a woman, my my instinct is I can I can find you one, I’ll get you one. But yeah, you have to know your, your limitations I suppose.

Tom Conklin: And, and you know, some voiceovers that will do that. And you know, they’ve done some casting and stuff like that. I generally don’t go out looking for someone to do something if they don’t want me, then, you know, they can, you know, unless I know somebody, somebody specific that fits the bill and I’ll leave that up to them to find them and I’ll give them a read anyway. You know who know? They say they want a woman, but they don’t know until they hear it.

Top Left Corner: That’s true. That’s true. Well, this is exciting. Obviously, we’re going to be putting a link to your website in the show notes to this.

Tom Conklin: I was to say, by the way, that website is Tom Conklin voice dot com.

Top Left Corner: Tom Coughlin voice dot com and we’ll put a link to that. And of course I think you’ve got your socials listed there too.

Tom Conklin: So everything’s there there’s, there’s a ton of ways to find me on every page of that website.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. No that’s, and that’s the way you got to do it these days. Make sure nobody has an excuse not to get in touch with you. So if you happen to have a business, I know that there are plenty of local businesses that do radio spots, not not as many as used to, but they’re still out there. And I hope that they hear this and I hope that they realize that they have an asset right here in the community that they can support and someone who does a heck of a good job, because I’ve heard your work and I’m impressed. I’m always impressed. So thank you. Stick around in the green room after this. But for now, take care and have a fantastic autumn.

Tom Conklin: Jason, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I really do appreciate.

And that’s our show for this week — we’ll have so much more for you next week on the Top Left Corner, and at The Greylock Glass, greylockglass.com the Berkshires Mightiest Alternative news thing. Until then stay safe, be good to each other, and go easy on yourself. Bye now.

The post Top Left Corner #177: NTRVW X2 — Local Artist, Thor Wickstrom on Green River Farms; Tom Conklin in our Solopreneur Spotlight appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

J. Velázquez: This is episode number 176 of the top left corner. I’m your host, Jay Velázquez. And as always, I do thank you for tuning in. Today is Sunday, October 23rd, 2022. At least that’s the date that this episode dropped. And we have a really fascinating conversation for you today. We have as our guest, Dean Martilly, candidate for First District of Massachusetts. That’s right. This is a Republican who’s going up against Richard Neal, who has been in that seat through the seat’s various transformations, including absorbing new territory for three decades now, something like that. It’s been a long, long time that Richie Neal has been warming that chair.

And this race, while in the Berkshires, may not seem to be contentious, I have heard from other areas of the district, from people out out that to the east of us. And it sounds like they have some pretty, pretty strong support out that way this campaign. So what we’ll do is it’s a long we had a much longer conversation than we intended, which happens, as you know, quite frequently in the Top Left Corner because we have such fascinating guests. So we’re going to get right to it after this word from the US Department of Veterans Affairs and the Ad Council.

Candidate Dean Martilli — website

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

Top Left Corner: And with me on the line is Dean Martilli, who is running for Berkshire First District Congressional District, Massachusetts. Dean Martilli, thanks so much for being on the Top Left Corner.

Dean Martilli: Thank you very much. Great to be with you.

Top Left Corner: So this is interesting. You know, you’re running against Richie Neal, who has faced some primary challengers in the past couple of elections, neither of which were successful and but not has not faced any significant challenges from the GOP for his seat, which he’s had for about 18 years now, I think maybe more. But what gave you the idea that this was the year that a Republican might be able to take on this entrenched fellow in this seat? What was what gave you the the signals?

Dean Martilli: Well, first of all, this will be 32 years for Richie Neal in Congress. I view him as a follower, not a leader. And he shows he demonstrates that every day. And doing Nancy Pelosi’s dirty work, whatever that is. And we can get into that later. But I was I was chief of staff for a Democrat, Patrick Kennedy, out of Rhode Island. And I went in and took over that that seat to help him out. He had some health issues, and I was trusted enough to go in and take the chief of staff position and run the entire operation, both the Rhode Island office, the D.C. office and the campaign. And we worked with Congressman Neal’s office. And what I saw and I know that I was working for a Kennedy this is in 2000. Our office is a lot busier than his office. We had so many meetings. We were conducting meetings out in the hallway in the Cannon Building. And so I just watched the way we did things, in the way he the way his office was doing things. And we were far more efficient and far better. And I’ll say that one of my proudest accomplishments that we did in that office, we were there, like I said, during 911, and I watched watching Washington transform. The good news then both parties, Democrat and Republican, came together and we went to fight terrorism. Today, that’s a lot different. But what we did as an office is we strategized that the country was broken after 911. What can we do to make change? And we increase the federal debt benefit uniformed officers retroactive to all those that were killed in 911 by 175,000. So prior to us doing that, the family only received 125,000. We increased that by more than double that was signed. It was passed through the House, through the Senate, and it was signed by President Bush and the anti-terrorism legislation. That’s a great accomplishment.

Top Left Corner: That’s that’s that is a great accomplishment. Let’s let’s kind of get back to the question of whether or not you think this is a time. Now. It is. It is. Many people have many criticisms of Richie Neal, but that does not suggest that you can beat him. The question was, what makes you think this is the elections cycle to take him on?

Dean Martilli: Yeah, well, I wasn’t finished with that. I kind of segway it out, but that if you recall, I was a Democrat and I changed over the years watching the party leave me. You just saw yesterday Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat congresswoman, also changed parties and now she’s a Republican. So the point is that the party changed. And I watched what was going on for for a number of years in Washington, in our country. And I have nothing to align with that, that that group which Richie Neal’s part of and I know that people are looking at and going out and campaigning and even before that, people are looking for a new direction. They’re looking for change and they’re looking for leadership. I knew from my experience in Washington that I could provide that I worked in Washington, and no one that ran against Congressman Neil ever worked in Washington on Capitol Hill. And I’ve got a lot of experience and all of my issues are exactly the opposite and I think more aligned with the everyday working person in the first District, which is most important to me.

Top Left Corner: Okay. That’s that’s that’s definitely that hits the question on the head. You know, the people in the first District now you have it’s a very diverse district. I mean, it’s a very large district for Massachusetts. It covers everything from Springfield all the way here into the Berkshires, which, you know, that’s that’s quite a lot of pluralism that you’ve got there. Do what kinds of surveys or polls or just sort of constituent investigation have you done that suggest that the folks of who are going to be hitting the polls are in line with with your worldview, with your perspective?

Dean Martilli: Well, you know, here’s the breakdown in this district and to to interject that the district goes further than Springfield. It goes out east to the Sturbridge area and all the way through. So it’s over 83 cities and towns, five different counties. The interesting thing is that although the Democrats in the district, they have about 170,000 registered voters, Republicans only have 65,000 registered voters. The this operation is going to come down to the unenrolled and or the independent, but they’re called unenrolled in Massachusetts. Right. 320,000 unenrolled voters. And that’s where I’m seeing the most movement. They tend to vote their mind. They they over the course of Ritchie Neal’s incumbency, they’ve tended to swing to the Democrat side. I don’t believe in anything we’ve seen that’s going to happen this time. Plus, the district has changed. It’s not rich. And, you know, came from an area in Springfield that was predominantly Irish, the Hungry Hill area. That’s changed dramatically. Even if you look at the representatives in the state house, they’re of Latin descent. So we we feel strongly that our message of of family and and the inflation rate and the cost of gasoline and everything else favors my message and that of the Republicans. And that’s how we’re going to beat Richie Neal.

Top Left Corner: I think I think you’ve hit a couple of things again, right on the head. The district has changed. Certainly. We saw it was a it was a primary race in the Berkshire district attorney’s race, but it might as well have been a Republican versus a Democrat. And we saw a progressive Democrat. Get unseated in this in this primary race in Berkshire County for for the DA’s position, which nobody would have suspected could happen even two years ago. So there’s definitely been a shift toward more conservative mindset, at least out this way. I’m sure it’s the same between especially, like you said, from Springfield out to Sturbridge. That’s that’s some pretty conservative country there. And you also are very correct in noting an astute in noting that Hispanic voters are not a monolith. They don’t all believe one thing. I think that was the big mistake that a lot of a lot of Democrats made in the last couple of elections, just assuming that Hispanics were going to turn out Democratic. And that is not the case. There are there’s a very strong, especially socially conservative. A strain in the in the electorate, the Hispanic electorate. So I think you’ve got a point there, though. I will say that this this election, I think, is really an if you’re old enough to remember, but or if you do remember, the George W, George H.W. Bush lost the election because he didn’t understand that, quote, it’s the economy, stupid, end quote. And that’s what this election is going to be about. Now, you point out that there’s a rise in gas prices. Inflation is going through the roof. There are a lot of factors that can be controlled and there’s a lot that cannot that are not really within the purview of Congress. What do you think you or really Congress can do to combat such things as gas prices, such things as inflation?

Dean Martilli: My intent to go to Washington is not sit around and worry about, oh, I got to be here for the rest of my life and vote, you know, to just ingratiate myself. No, it’s to when I when I was with Kennedy and we were running our campaign, I remember telling him over and over again because we’d get off on these crazy issues. No. Remember who sent you to Washington? Remember who you’re representing. Remember what your job is for them. So I will never forget that it’s the first District that sends Dean Martilli to D.C. to represent them there. The first thing on my mind every time and when you see what’s going on with this gas crisis, the administration, the Democrat Party, including Richie Neal, shuts down oil production. We were energy efficient. We were exporting energy. We were doing the great thing. You can’t run a country without energy. And so every single day when anyone from the first District goes, they see those gas prices going back up. President Biden is elected to draw down on the petroleum reserve that we have in this country to try to stabilize prices. That’s coming to an end. They’re skyrocketing back up to where they were. It’s ridiculous. It’s a self-inflicted wound by the administration. I will not stand for that. We have.

Top Left Corner: Got to push.

Dean Martilli: Back to produce our own.

Top Left Corner: Energy. I’ve got to I got to push back a little bit on that because Biden’s first year, drilling permitting, is a 34% increase over Trump’s. So he is permitting 34% more domestic drilling than Trump did. So I’m not I’m.

Dean Martilli: Not suppressing he’s suppressing the opportunity for companies in the United States to have leases to go and more exploration and more drilling. I don’t care what you’re telling you, it’s common sense. When President Trump was in office, gas prices were in the $2 range. And as soon as Biden got in, the first thing he did, day one was shut off the energy problem. And now it’s just like any the Democrat really, this.

Top Left Corner: Is a quarter of the year.

Dean Martilli: This is Rush on everything this.

Top Left Corner: I got I got I got a pushback here. This is according to the Bureau of Land Management. So I really it’s not they telling me this is according to government figures. Biden is is allowing 34% more drilling and has opened up vast swaths of of of ocean drilling as well. Something like 700,000 acres or whatnot. So, you know, I think that there are a lot of things that can be blamed on on Biden. I’m not sure that gas prices are necessarily on him. And when you do have Russia and Saudi Arabia turning the spigot off. I mean, they’re turning the big the big valve off that is going to decrease supply, which is going to increase price. I mean, that’s just that’s just simple market economics. If you have Saudi.

Dean Martilli: Arabia, I really I got to disagree with that standpoint. Saudi Arabia shot down Joe Biden because they have no respect for him, because he’s a weak leader. And China’s playing Biden like a patsy. And we’re into this green energy thing with China. But that doesn’t know what you say. Just use common sense. Why were the gas prices down when President Trump was president? Because he was in charge and the oil companies were able to do whatever they wanted under the guidelines of what the laws were in the United States. That thing was put away. They can print anything they want. Gas prices don’t rise incrementally after Biden gets in.

Top Left Corner: Wait, you’re saying that you don’t believe in that? You don’t believe in the principle of supply and demand.

Dean Martilli: I do believe in the princess, but they’re not telling you the truth.

Top Left Corner: So when Saudi Arabia. When Saudi Arabia. Excuse me, this is my show. This is my show.

Dean Martilli: On the Green New Deal. What’s the truth there?

Top Left Corner: That direction mostly didn’t go through. Very little of the Green New Deal actually went through. What I’m going to ask you is if you have less oil, Russia is producing less and Saudi Arabia is producing less, that means there’s less all over the world, which means that they can charge more because that because China needs it. Europe needs it. Asia needs it. Everybody in South Africa. Africa needs it. Everybody needs the oil. And when there’s less of it, the price is going to rise. That’s just. Look, I’m not an econ major, but I’m pretty sure that’s how things work. Let’s let’s move on to some other.

Dean Martilli: Platforms, playing a chess game with us. And when Biden’s in office, they’re going to win every day to Sunday. Biden can’t even stand on his own two feet and do anything. He’s got to have the Easter Bunny to save them during a kid’s program at the White House.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. But Biden is a he’s a he’s a he’s a puppet and he’s a he is a threadbare puppet, total puppet. But that doesn’t change the fact that the prices of gas are going up because the supply is going down. That’s just that’s just the fact and.

Dean Martilli: Right. You’re absolutely. Okay, fine. You’re right. The price is because what Russia doesn’t respect them, so they’re screwing us. Saudi Arabia doesn’t expect him, so he’s screwing us. So then he goes to Venezuela with his kneepads on begging for oil. We got our own oil. We don’t need that. He’s going up communist run countries. And then he’s pushing this Green New Deal, which is a total play in the communist China regime. And this is really killing our country. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m running. I’m not going to bow to China, Russia, any of these countries that are out outwardly attacking the United States, they’re making life miserable in our country and in the first District because they have no respect for the guy in the White House. And the guy I’m running against is the waterboy. If you ever saw that movie with Adam Sandler, The Waterboy for Nancy Pelosi, whatever she wants, he does. This is crazy.

Top Left Corner: I won’t I won’t disagree with that. I think that he’s got to go, you know, one way or the other. He’s got to go. And whether it’s you or somebody else, I think that at least the the water, you know, as you said, the water carrying has to stop for a lot of people. I mean, he carries the water for a lot of folks. You know, I, I think I’m not I can’t remember. But I think he has taken more money from and this is I have to check this from the pharmaceutical industry than anybody he is, you know, takes money from everybody, everybody. He’s you know, that’s that’s what he’s doing. So let’s let’s move on to, you know, the inflation food. There is a recession that it’s already started in Europe, which of course, is going to have a ripple effect on the United States. You know, we have we have come out of this pandemic or we’re coming out of this pandemic. It’s been rough. And and the jobs are still not paying what they could be paying. You know, in fact, it was the I think it was the head of the Federal Reserve who said that they want to make sure they keep wages down so that they can slow the economy down, which is to me, I think, you know, that kind of socks it to the working man and puts puts the weight of the recovery on our shoulders when we haven’t been keeping up with, you know, with the cost of living for 30 years now. But what can Congress do? Give me some examples of actual legislation that could be enacted that would help bring down the cost of living for Americans.

Dean Martilli: Well, let me let me just this is like a perfect segue into this. And if it’s going to take me a while to get there, but I promise I’ll get there quickly.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I’m here.

Dean Martilli: Yeah, it was passed $280 Billion that was geared toward semiconductors because we learned during the pandemic we couldn’t operate a lot of things without these semiconductors. So $280 Billion gets passed through Congress. Now, it was geared to for research and development and helping companies to make faster, quicker, smaller semiconductors to fit in everything. And to help help the country. Okay, fine. I love it. But the day before this gets signed by Congress or passed through Congress, Richie Neal and the Ways and Means Committee changed one piece of legislation to allow the semiconductor chips to be outside of the United States. So to answer your question, that’s that doesn’t align with me the spending getting the most out of your money. So now we invest the $280 billion and we allow these things to be made outside the country. The law gets passed, it’s on president or the legislation gets passed, gets on President Bush’s desk for signing. He isn’t around. He’s on vacation. He’s got to ride his bike like George McFly. And and then there’s the trip that comes up and Nancy Pelosi and some of the other Democratic legislators in in the House have an Asia trip and they end up in Taiwan. And Taiwan is the largest producer of semiconductors in the world. What a surprise. All the places to go in the world you end up in Taiwan.

Dean Martilli: Nancy Pelosi. Ritchie again. Ritchie Neal, change the thing for Nancy. Nancy’s on an Air Force jet in Taiwan, and then after she gets back, we find out that her son, Polly Jr, was also on the plane and he was MIA during the missing during the meetings in Taiwan. So. I tell you, You think that doesn’t lead to suspicion? It’s a government airplane. Speaker of the House. Kid in Taiwan. Just pass chips legislation. He’s got on all the controls that the money spent in the United States. Is that the best way to get the most out of your money that you’re investing in this country? I say absolutely not. And it begs the question of of underhanded, slippery things when you’ve already seen the pattern of Joe Biden and his family selling this country out to Russia, China, Ukraine, and the FBI can’t even figure out what’s going on, or maybe they do know what’s going on and they’re protecting the president because he’s demanding that. So that just gives you a perfect example how Washington isn’t working for the first District. Now, if I was involved in that, I’m going to tell you right now you knew the thing. You’re chairman of the Ways and Means. You know, this is coming up soon, maybe in a year, maybe in six months.

Dean Martilli: What do you do? You try to get a company that’s located somewhere else to expand the CHIP facility in Pittsfield or something. Why couldn’t they do that? And then when you get the legislation going, you already have a company with good paying jobs ready to go. And another area that we need to pass legislation is we need to we need to bring all these pharmaceuticals back into the United States and make them we are beholding the China. It came out there in the pandemic, 94 to 97% of all of our pharmaceuticals are made in China or somewhere else. They’re not made in our country have a conflict with a country like China. They could just cut off drugs that we need heart medication, antibiotics, whatever it is, they cut it off or they could start cheating on it. And it’s not as strong that it needs to be to kill a virus or an infection that you have. So we need to wake up, bring bring manufacturing back. I want manufacturing in the first District. I intend to work on that vehemently when I get elected. And I’ll never let things like this go by. That hurt our country, hurt people in the first District. And as you said before, the middle class, hardworking people are taking a beating and we’re allowing this to happen in Washington.

Top Left Corner: Well, I think I think a lot of people are going to that’s going to resonate with a lot of people for sure. You know, it’s it’s a funny thing. I it was the the early nineties, I was working for a disc drive manufacturer in Scotts Valley, California. I was out there for a couple of years and the the ax dropped one Friday. We all get called in individually into the boss’s office. We get our pink slips, they’re laying us off and they’re sending those jobs to Thailand. And and that was actually because the CEO of this company had just married the princess of Thailand. So that was really convenient for them.

Dean Martilli: But good for him. Bad for.

Top Left Corner: You. Good for him, you know? You know, I’m not going to get too far into it. But, you know, he was like 70 and she was like 21 or something. So whatever. But the not that I am saying that that’s a bad thing, but, you know, it was all very, very, very sus. So the thing here is since then people have been saying over and over, well, you know, those jobs aren’t coming back. And my question has always been, why not? We were able to send them overseas. Why can’t we bring them back? So there’s only one direction that planes and boats and stuff go. The only out there’s only an X, an off ramp. There’s no on ramps. So I think that yeah, that that message of bringing manufacturing back, it was a nonstarter until the pandemic and we started saying a holy crow. You mean to tell me that we can’t produce this stuff that we need now? I mean, the fact that there’s like only one I mean, not to get to crude here, but there’s only one company or a couple of companies that make toilet paper. I think there was the first thing that we found, right? It was the toilet paper that people freaked out about in the early days of the pandemic because there’s only one, one or two places that make it in this country. And, you know, you know, people want their heart medication, people want their antibiotics, but people want their toilet paper. So anyway, let’s I know I’ve called you on a day that you weren’t expecting, and I don’t want to take up too too much of your time. I do want to address a couple of things that you have in your press release that I, I, you know, I can see that they’re going to appeal to people, but I kind of want to just run these by you. You’re saying that we have reckless, open border policies. Explain that.

Dean Martilli: Oh, my gosh. That’s the world’s worst thing ever. We’re we’re really breaking the law and letting we’re not only are we breaking the law, but as working in Washington and working with Senator Kennedy’s office over a number of years in immigration issues, it was a procedure that people had to go through so many steps to get in here and that sometimes it was a little bit cumbersome. But you know what? When people went through the proper channels, they respected this country. They, they they they had to show up at certain times. They had to produce documents. They have to give reasons. They had to wait. And so it meant a lot to all these people that came into our country. They wanted to be citizens of the United States. They want to be proud of the flag. And now we make it like the K-Mart or the Walmart. You just come in, you go down aisle three and you just hop on board. You’re in here. You don’t even know who the people are coming. The government’s doing it right now.

Top Left Corner: Okay? So I get I get before we get too deep into this, what changes in in nationalization in you know, in the in the citizenship process have taken place?

Dean Martilli: What changes?

Top Left Corner: I mean, they still have to go to classes. They still have to go through background checks. They still have to go through the health checks.

Dean Martilli: They’re not doing anything.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I’m actually.

Dean Martilli: Doing the thing.

Top Left Corner: Actually, my son is actually my son is witnessing a a citizenship granting process today on a field trip of people who had to go through that entire process. And this has been a years long wait for them. They’ve had to go to classes, they’ve had to show up at meetings. They’ve had to prove all sorts of things. I mean, it has taken them years to get to this point. And they are proud they will be you know, they have passed their tests, which most Americans can’t pass, By the way, most people who just were born here went through the American public school systems cannot pass the citizenship test. So those people who do end up being naturalized citizens actually have a better grasp of how this country works than most of people who are born here. So I’m going to push back on that. But further, Joe Biden not only is not. A big fan of open borders, but he won’t even obey the law, which explicitly allows refugees to ask for asylum. The law says that that they can ask for asylum at US borders, even if it says whosoever arrives in United States, whether or not at a designated port of arrival, irrespective of legal status, may apply for asylum. Joe Biden says no. Joe Biden is using Title 42, which is basically it’s the Trump policy to immediately deport as many asylum seekers and border crossers as he can. Trump’s rate was about 62,000 per month of deportations. Biden’s rate so far is over 100,000 a month. So I’m not I’m not seeing I’m not seeing that we have open borders. In fact, Joe Biden is kicking out more people who cross than Trump did.

Dean Martilli: So where’s your where’s your how many people are your son witnessing taking this oath?

Top Left Corner: I don’t know how many. I know that there’s a group of them.

Dean Martilli: Okay. Where are those people that came through the border? Southern border.

Top Left Corner: I can I don’t know the specifics of the families that we’re talking about. I’m guessing probably some of them maybe some of them came from Asia. Maybe some of them came from Europe. I don’t know.

Dean Martilli: Jason. We’re talking about a very important area. You can’t guess. So my point is it’s not happening.

Top Left Corner: No, no, no, no. I said that they have they have to go through the same process that they always have.

Dean Martilli: Right. And I don’t think those people are the ones that are coming through the southern border because the rate we already the federal numbers for illegals, I’m calling them illegals because I don’t believe they’re coming in with all we don’t even have paperwork on these people. Let’s face it, we’re flying them. I can go on and on. But last year, 2 million plus came through the border. Whether and that’s not counting the guy aways this year here. We’ve already reached 2 million and we’re not done with the year. So in two years of Biden, that’s 4 million that we know of, not including the guy. Two ways that probably add another million. But after you go through three years, we will have let in the entire population of the state of Massachusetts and into this country. We don’t even know where they are now. I have been trying for a couple of days now, and I’m calling the governor’s office today because I want to know where the migrants that went on to Martha’s Vineyard, where they all ended up. I hear there was 50 some reports say they’re 49. I don’t know where they were. They final resting places, but they were put on the cape. They were in a military installation. They’re all gone now. Where did they go? And I think we deserve the right to know that. And I’m I’d like to know if a portion of them, all of them, if they’re in Massachusetts still or they’re somewhere else.

Dean Martilli: So it’s a big problem. And not only with individuals, it’s a big problem with drugs. And in your area, the people dying of fentanyl and drug overdoses is the highest it’s been forever. And I want to say that last year there were 62 reported in in the Pittsfield North Adams area, individuals that died from drug. We’ve already surpassed that. We’ll have to wait and see what the numbers come out. There’s no good reason that we’re allowing this much drugs to infiltrate into our country, killing our own citizens. And I think you’ll recall it was 107,000 drug overdoses died last year in the United States. We’re going to we’re going to really surpass that number. Isn’t that a great number to be proud of? But we also have human trafficking, prostitution. We’ve got the drug cartels in Mexico making millions of dollars every day. And and it’s it’s all uncalled for. It’s the current administration allowing this to happen. And so not only the value of the people that are coming in, like your sons probably witnessing, doing things the right way, It’s it’s giving a message that the leadership in Washington does not care about the working individual, don’t care about you. So we’re going to do what we want. We’re going to allow it to happen. And through that, the rise in crime, That’s another area that I almost forgot.

Top Left Corner: Well, let’s hang on. I don’t I don’t want I don’t want to leave this this area just yet if if you don’t mind. So it is true that 2021 saw the highest the Border Patrol calls them encounters. They recorded one 1.6 million encounters at the southern border, which is the highest level that they’ve seen. This is true. It it is a slightly more than the looks like 1998 or 1999 level. It dropped precipitously from throughout the early 2000 and the 2000 teens. And it shot up pretty much just in 2020 and 2021. So, yeah, certainly there’s been quite a few more than we’re used to seeing. However, this does not change the fact that Biden is also deporting more than any president, even more than Obama, who is called the deporter in chief. So I mean, I think that it is not that we have.

Dean Martilli: Jason he’s supporting more because it’s welcome wagon to come in and.

Top Left Corner: People it doesn’t make any sense that doesn’t make any sense why would he why would he have a welcome wagon only to deport them unless he owns the unless he owns the the trucks that ship him out of here.

Dean Martilli: His deportation numbers are minuscule compared to what’s going on. Maybe he’s just doing it. So it looks like you’re talking about it on a podcast or something. You know, it’s not. The fact of the matter is that people are coming in here and it’s crazy. And you’re. Will you also agree that he’s flown people and bus people during the early hours of the morning to locations that governors, mayors were not even told that they were arriving? Will you agree with that?

Top Left Corner: That’s that does seem to be the case. I’m not going to I’m not going to dispute that. I don’t know, you know, of the percentage of of these people who are coming in, how many were talking about whether or not this is a really significant proportion or not? I’m sure that the optics are pretty bad on that. I wouldn’t have done it. You wouldn’t have done it that way if you wanted to put, you know, undocumented immigrants into Maine or wherever, you would probably contact the governor and say, hey, you know, you’ve got some space at this military base. We need to put these people somewhere. Can we do that? That that’s, I think what any sensible person wouldn’t do. This is the Biden administration. So they’re not sensible. I’m not going to dispute that. So let me ask this one question that you’re going to get toward. You mentioned something about jobs. I have a friend who owns a an an orchard and he makes he makes cider. It’s hard cider. He’s got about 250 acres of apples. He’s paying I think he’s paying 12 bucks an hour this year in Massachusetts. You don’t even have to pay minimum wage for agricultural workers.

Top Left Corner: But he pays. He pays 12, 13 bucks an hour and he can’t find people. To take those jobs. He just cannot find people to pick apples. It’s pleasant, it’s lovely, it’s great. It’s outdoors. It’s the only picks when it’s sunny, it’s warm, It’s you know, it’s a great way to pick up some money. He can’t ever find anybody. He’ll even he’ll even transport you. He said, if you need a ride, I’ll come and get you. He cannot find Massachusetts, you know, people in his area. To come and and do agricultural work. It’s beneath it’s beneath us as Americans to do agricultural work. How are we going to solve that problem? Because, you know, we have America has enjoyed cheap produce prices forever since probably the Braceros program of the 1940s fifties. But there’s no way we can get Americans to pick produce at whatever whatever crap wages we pay these days. How are we going to solve that problem if we don’t have migrants? I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it is a problem. How would we how would we feed this country if it weren’t for these extremely shamefully paid people?

Dean Martilli: Well, the way it’s going now, you probably won’t have to worry about that with China and Bill Gates buying up all of the farm and agricultural land. So we’ll we’ll be speaking Mandarin and eating it with chopsticks in a little while. But to get back more serious, I don’t know your friend. I don’t know the operation over there. I think that people are out of the work in I mean, a lot of younger people are out of the work rhythm that built this country up to be great. What it was and it’s been tearing apart. And that that was the tremendous part of giveaways to have people sit at home and really not produce and feel good about themselves, but get drug addicted and lose everything because that we’re paying you to do that. So the work ethic has changed. I agree. We’ve got to get that back. It’s got to be you’ve got to be instilled in school that’s proud to be an American. And it’s not a bad thing whether you’re black, white, green or yellow. And the other thing is I think people are looking for jobs that if their outlook and that have good benefits, health care, which is through the roof and retirement 401. And everything else, which is another thing when you look at the Biden administration, people’s retirement or the seniors that are out there are losing money all the time on their investments. They’re going down the tubes. So I don’t know exactly what the answer is total, but I do know we need to change the schools.

Dean Martilli: We need to teach a curriculum. The people are proud to be here and they’re proud to be an American. We have to change the work ethic. You take pride in your work and that’s when this when this area, especially the first District, was robust and manufacturing and we’re building all kinds of things. They were built well. They were built with people working. We’d have three shifts going in factories. You had neighborhood bars open all hours of the night when the shift changed and people were close. You had tenement houses where families lived and family unity was a closeness. We’ve gotten away from all of that, and we’ve gotten away from good work in the United States. And that’s what I’m saying. We have to invest in the future through the school system. Forget about gender equity for people in or kids in first and second grade. It means nothing woke agendas and teaching them that this country is awful and that we have slavery and everything else. So, I mean, I got to just say that Nancy Pelosi’s depiction of the Venezuelan migrants that were in Martha’s Vineyard where we we need them to do the same thing, pick crops and everything else. That, to me is like a form of slavery and it’s really degrading. And for the speaker of the House to even make a comment like that is that she even understand what’s going on. I don’t think so.

Top Left Corner: I don’t think she does either. I mean, she’s the one who’s got the, you know, $25,000 refrigerator that’s stocked with gourmet ice cream. I mean, you know, I’m not saying that Pelosi has the answer, but I am saying that the question does need to be asked if we are to maintain and you are correct, is way too much agricultural land being being bought up by not just China, but even even even places like Great Britain, Companies are buying up American farmland, which is, I think, something that we need to focus on. But, you know, we’ve got to keep I mean, it’s foolishness. It is foolishness to sell your country.

Dean Martilli: Yeah.

Top Left Corner: And from the from the from the gut, from the inside out, I mean, from the center outward. That’s that’s insanity. You don’t you don’t let your country get owned by so much foreign investment. No.

Dean Martilli: And let me just say that the families and the people that work on farming it, they’re hardworking. They’re the the they’re the people that made this country great. They’re ours, that they work in the profit that they make, and the things that they do should be appreciated. And we’re we’re totally turning our back on them. We’re we’re more interested in funding a war in Ukraine that we let get out of hand than helping our farmers, helping the food supply. We had baby formula for I’ll call them the illegals, but we didn’t have it on the shelves in the United States and we didn’t see that coming. People aren’t doing their job in Washington. You got to be proactive. You got to look at what’s coming around and you’ve got to make serious decisions before things happen. You know, the fact that we let that get out of control and we blame everything, the two big blame you can. Blame Russia. Everything. We hear that for years and years and years are we can still blame Trump. He’s he’s still in the blame game. No, it’s decisions that need to be made. And you’re in charge. You make a decision and you move forward. And if you have the best interests segueing back to what I mentioned in the beginning, the most important people that you represent are the ones that elected you to go there. And if this president didn’t isn’t supporting the people, then move out of the way. And the same thing. What Rich Neil, he’s not doing his best to support the people that sent them there. He’s running from me since we have a news station here that wants to do a debate since September 30th and they can’t pin Richie Neal down. He doesn’t want to talk about, hey.

Top Left Corner: He ran, he hid, he ran away and hid from a bunch of school age school kids who wanted to ask him about the environment. So, I mean, if he can’t even talk to eight year olds, I doubt he’s going to talk to you. But I do want to push back on the the the the infant formula for illegals. You know, the law requires that if we have people detained, we have to we have to feed them. You cannot put people in cages and starve them to death. So the detained the detained infants were the ones who got the baby formula. And if you’re going not going to if you’re not going to feed them, then either turn them loose or put them on a plane and send them back somewhere. You just can’t deny that. You can’t just you can’t just deny them food. Yeah. I mean, you know. Yeah. So you did you did want to talk a little bit about the police. You talked about the crime getting out of hand. I’ve got a couple of points to make, but what what do you think Congress can do to Because we do have a the overall trend in crime has been down, but the trend in violent crime has been up lately, especially in in this district. So what can Congress do to to address that increase?

Dean Martilli: Well, first of all, the people listening to your segment here, Jason, what they can do is, is vote people in. They’re going to represent their best interests in Congress. I’d be one of them. And then the other thing is, we have watched since the the George Floyd operation that that poor individual was killed in a situation not that he he was should be canonized in sainthood. He had a pretty sketchy background, but nonetheless, that thing took off. And we watched the COVID keep people home and people couldn’t miss watching on television or reading the newspapers of the violence that was going on in our country. So, number one, we let violence out of control. We have Vas all over this country sponsored by groups that don’t want they don’t want control of law enforcement. And I’m talking about George Soros. So let me say this. All of those all of that funding that’s coming from organizations like George Soros that are supporting people to get in office, whether they’re judges or attorneys, district attorneys, to go in there and let things go crazy. We have to eliminate the supply chain to feed money into these candidates that are going to allow mayhem to happen on our streets. So then why.

Top Left Corner: Does George wait? What Where does George Soros want? Chaos and mayhem on the streets.

Dean Martilli: He’s been doing it for years. But I wise words. What good does that do? He doesn’t because he doesn’t like the US Constitution and he doesn’t like our country. I mean, it’s clearly. Why else would you do that? And time and time again, you can you can name people all over the country. But anyway, so then the current administration allows the defunding of police that the police are the problem and we have to take police off the streets. We watch riots where people burn down federal buildings, police stations, torched police cars. And this is like prime TV. And isn’t this great that all this craziness is going on? People are getting killed? I think we lost something like 32 individuals that are just killed in these these riots that we allowed. And we make it like there’s a big undertaking to take over the country. We watched pallets of bricks being put out so rioters could throw these at people, throw them at police, break windows and everything else. Then we reduce our laws. We make it more difficult on police to apprehend people or put them away. They’re out on no cash bails and things like this. So we create a situation where the police are the enemy and that that’s definitely not the case. I support the police. I think we should spend more money on police. Okay. What would you what would you say education.

Top Left Corner: How would you respond to the fact that Biden just put out the Save America plan, which allocates $13 billion to hire 100,000 police officers around the country over the next five years, which would be to 2000 per state.

Dean Martilli: Been in office almost two years, and he’s downgraded police today. If you look at the news, five police officers were shot serving warrants, five today.

Top Left Corner: Right today. But how is that how is that how is that how is that?

Dean Martilli: Biden said.

Top Left Corner: But how is that Biden’s fault?

Dean Martilli: It’s made the police the enemy and that’s got to get turned around the police.

Top Left Corner: What what has the Biden administration done specifically to make the police the enemy?

Dean Martilli: I was just explaining to you about the riots.

Top Left Corner: But how has Biden how has the Biden administration encouraged that? And I ask this because Biden in the 1990s, Biden was the architect of the Three Strikes You’re Out program. He was the architect of welfare, almost the destruction of the welfare system. He has never been anything but a solidly law and order guy. And with this $13 Billion and 100,000 police officers he’s really that’s pretty much his game. I mean he’s he’s never varied on that. I don’t see I don’t see anything he’s ever done that that he weakened any any police anywhere.

Dean Martilli: So what is he do? All right. Let’s go back let’s go back to square one. When the COVID lockdown happened and George Floyd was killed, did you see a lot of crime on television?

Top Left Corner: I saw a lot of civil disobedience which got out of hand. I saw building some buildings burned. Yeah, I saw police department burnt. I think that that is a really complex situation because most of these these occurrences were in places that had a history of unexplained police involved shootings and neighborhoods that were tired of being overpoliced. And I think that, you know, that’s that’s such an in-depth topic. I just want to stick to the things that we have numbers for. I mean, I mean, we have numbers for a lot of things. Would you would you you’ve heard of the Cato Institute, right?

Dean Martilli: Well, I’m going to just go on record right now. I support the police and I believe that the police have been downgraded by this administration. And what the administration, if they’re doing anything and I didn’t see any legislation passed yet on the police force. What they’re doing is they’re backtracking because all they do is lie to you. And the administration allowed all of this to go on. And again, five officers in two different cities were shot today, just today, because there’s no respect for the police department and the administration allowed it to get out of hand. So if you’re listening to this right now, Dean Martilli is pro-police and I will defend the police when I go to Washington and the current congressman doesn’t care.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if if Richie Neil does care personally, I just know that there has been a lot of find.

Dean Martilli: And if you can find them, ask him.

Top Left Corner: Well, I know that there’s been a lot of this backlash against this alleged defund the police movement, but the Cato Institute, which is in no way a liberal snowflake organization, they are about as conservative and libertarian as you can get. They have a report that says practically since the first week in office, this is a quote, President Joe Biden has faced repeated criticisms from Republicans and some Democrats. Oh, wait, no, no, no. Sorry, Not the Cato Institute. This is Bloomberg News. While a few major cities like New York and Los Angeles have made large, high profile cuts, more than half the cities in this country increased spending or kept it unchanged as a percentage of their discretionary spending based on a CityLab analysis of 34 of the largest 50 US cities. Police budgets, along with total spending, have been an upward on an upward trajectory for the last decade. Take Boston, which spent 315.8 million on police in 2012. In 2017, the city’s general fund spent 375.5. So that’s up $60 Million. And by fiscal 2020, this city spending was 414 million. So it’s not basically there’s just there has not been. Nothing has been defunded, pretty much. There are some cities such as Oakland, California, where the council voted to cut the department’s total budget by $14 million and allocate that toward other civilian departments, such as they’ve piloted a new mental health related 911 call and social work to deal with things that the police themselves say they don’t want to deal with.

Top Left Corner: So in many of the cities where there was any any cut whatsoever, they are taking away responsibilities that the police themselves say they don’t want to be dealing with psychotics or, you know, people who have, you know, are having episodes. So they’re taking them. You don’t want to deal with that. We’re going to give it to somebody else. There’s just really hasn’t been any evidence that defund the police defunded anything. So, I mean, I’m just looking at the numbers, not from some, you know, progressive liberal think tank, but from pretty conservative sources that say, yeah, it didn’t happen. Whether or not the police are respected, that’s a big question. I think their reputation has suffered a lot with the rise of cell phones and cell phone cameras where people are recording police either killing or beating people. I think that that probably would do more good if they stop beating and killing people rather than just make arrests. That would probably increase respect for the police departments a lot more than just giving them money. So that’s just that’s a thought there. I mean, you know, these are the numbers. It’s not it’s not a squishy feeling.

Dean Martilli: Again, we weren’t prepared to do this today. You call me a day early. I was gracious enough to host you. I don’t have I don’t know the questions you were going to ask me. I don’t have numbers in front of me, but I’m going to tell you, the police forces have been defunded throughout this country. The squad congresswomen have been out front against police departments sending saying that social workers could go to answer clouds. But I’m going to tell you what happened to me just today. Quarter seven, I’m out dropping my cleaning off to where I go on Riverdale Street here in West Springfield, Mass. And the woman that’s always there had the door locked and she was standing behind it. And when I went to go to the door, she came out and she said, Did you see a guy here when when you came? And I go, No, no. She goes, Maybe he might be behind the building. So I went and I walked through and there wasn’t. And I said, What happened? She goes, Oh, a guy was trying to get in here. He startled me and I don’t. And she’s in there by herself. The other two businesses don’t open until 8:00, and she was afraid for her life. So who’s she in the car with? The social worker.

Dean Martilli: But I’m saying that this stuff is getting prevalent all over the place and where her or her business is is right in an area that the state dumps a lot of the illegals and people on welfare and everything else. Times are getting tougher, money is getting more difficult and this woman’s vulnerable. Being in her cleaners by herself with that hour of the morning with a purse, money, car keys or car out front. So all I’m saying is crime. Crime is on the rise. People need police. Police should be taken in reverence to keep law and order in this country. It’s not happening. You can tell me any numbers you want. It’s it’s a sad day when we break down the police and what’s happening in the country. We’re breaking down the family, we’re breaking down religion, we’re breaking down the police law and order. And we’re we’re getting in bed with China because they’re buying us out. It’s a recipe for disaster. It’s communism on the way. The current administration is a totalitarian, totalitarian form of government with all these presidential mandates. It’s not going through the proper channels. People are elected to Congress. They should be looking out for the people and their district. It’s not happening. And so that’s it in a nutshell right there.

Top Left Corner: Well, you have been gracious and I and I do thank you for taking this phone call today. I have only asked. I have only asked about things that you mentioned in your press release dated October 6th. So I anything that I asked a question about was part of your platform. So there shouldn’t be any any question that’s related to that that you don’t have an answer for and you did answer them. And I think a lot of people are going to they’re going to like I said, it’s going to resonate with a lot of people. So I will give you the last word. You are going up against Richie Neal, if you want to take this last couple of minutes and just say why it is that you think that you deserve people’s vote above Richie Neal, I’ll just take it away.

Dean Martilli: Richie Neal’s been in office for 32 years, and he is a follower. He is not doing anything proactive to take care of the people that are in the First District. Dean Markley will represent the people in the First District. I will bring good jobs, manufacturing bent on getting pharmaceuticals made in our district. I think it’s an easy transition when we have the largest biotech industry out east in the in Massachusetts. I’m for energy independence for the southern border being closed through a four strong military. Peace through strength. I do not favor government, government medical mandates where their people are losing jobs because they don’t get the job. On on a vaccine, you can’t even call it that because it didn’t go through the proper channels. People shouldn’t lose their jobs for that. For strong policing, support the police. I support the Second Amendment. So and I’m a pro-life candidate. So my my position is totally in opposition to Congressman Neal. I’ve been waiting to debate him on the issues He has refused to debate because he knows that the policies that he, Nancy Pelosi and President Biden, are enforcing are leading to the demise of this country. And I won’t stand for that. I’ll support you. I’ve worked in Washington and I would appreciate your your vote. We’ve got mail in voting coming up this week. And the the election is on the eighth of next month, November. And I would appreciate if you’d vote for Dean Martilli and that’s voting for yourself. Thank you very much.

Top Left Corner: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve never been able to get Richie Neal to respond to a single email of mine either. So if you can get him on that stage, I think people would pay would pay to see that. I’d like to see that, that’s for sure.

Dean Martilli: I wish maybe we got to put it in one of those those fight cages. You know, just.

Top Left Corner: I would love to see that. I would love to see that. And anything, you know, we’ll get an announcer the whole the whole jab, the whole thing there. So I wish every candidate good luck and I wish you good luck. And if you do get elected, we will all, I’m sure, be hoping that you are successful and bringing jobs back not just to this country, but to Massachusetts and in the Northeast as a whole. And we hope that you have a great autumn 2022. We look forward to talking to you again. Thank you, Mr. Martilli.

Dean Martilli: Jason, thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be with you. Thanks.

The post Top Left Corner #176: NTRVW — Dean Martilli, U.S. House candidate, 1st Dist. of Mass. appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Welcome, brothers and sisters!

This is episode number 175 of the Top Left Corner. I’m your host, Jay Velázquez, and I do thank you for tuning in. This show was released Thursday, October 20th, 2022. And it is a I don’t know if it’s a plus-size show, but it’s definitely a jam packed show. We have a very special guest, sort of semi local musician, a singer songwriter. Eliza Edens is going to be with us for almost the entire hour. And in fact, any of that hour that isn’t taken up with our conversation will be taken up with two songs. That’s right. You heard it. Two songs, not just one, but two that Eliza has graciously allowed us to share with you, dear listeners. So it is going to be a special treat.

Connect with Eliza Edens
Website
Bandcamp
Facebook

Eliza is performing to a sold out show to a sold out venue tomorrow night, which is the 21st at the Five Corners Cafe on Cold Spring Road. That’s Route 7, just south of Williamstown. And unfortunately, it didn’t even occur to me to ask because I haven’t had a haven’t had a lot of live shows in the last couple of years. But I didn’t I did not ask if I could get a couple of tickets to give away as sort of a contest because they are at capacity now. However, hopefully this interview will make up for that and of course, links to her brand new full length release will become the flowers is is in the show notes so you can listen on Bandcamp if you like. And if you go into the show, I encourage you to listen before you go so you can hear the hear the words first. Although if you’ve got a good ear, maybe you’ll be able to catch enough.

Just I love knowing kind of the words before I go into a show, but that’s just me. But again, tomorrow night, I think Doors open at six, show begins at seven at the Five Corners Cafe in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Not to be missed. If you have tickets. If you don’t have tickets, maybe, who knows? Maybe somebody you know will have to beg off and we’ll give them to you. You might get lucky. So if we’re going to fit this entire. Show in with these two tunes. I should probably stop talking and I will write and we will get to that interview with Eliza right after these words from FEMA and the Ad Council.

(click to expand)

Released October 14, 2022

All songs & lyrics by Eliza Edens
Recorded & mixed by Dex Wolfe
Produced by Pat Keen & Dex Wolfe
Additional production by Eliza Edens & Shane Leonard
Additional production by Matt Bedrosian on “I Needed You”
Additional songwriting on “I Needed You” & “Westlawn Cemetery” by Dex Wolfe
Additional bass arranging on “How” by Nate Sabat
Mastered by Huntley Miller
Photography by Matt Gaillet
Design & layout by Elena Foraker
Recorded in February, July & September 2021 in Minneapolis, MN

The Band:
Eliza Edens on Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Aux Percussion (1, 7)
Pat Keen on Upright & Electric Bass, Synth, Backing Vocals (9), Acoustic Guitar (7)
Shane Leonard on Drums, Aux Percussion, Fiddle (2), Keys (3), Backing Vocals (6), Programming
Dex Wolfe on Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar (7), Lap Steel, Aux Percussion (7), Backing Vocals (9), Programming

CD RELEASE PARTY
When: Friday, October 21, 2022; Doors at 6:00 p.m., Show at 7:00 p.m.
Where: The Store at Five Corners, 4 New Ashford Road (Route 7), Williamstown, Mass.
Tickets: SOLD OUT

(click to expand)

(from Eliza Eden’s official bio)

On Eliza Edens’ sophomore album We’ll Become the Flowers, she seeks to understand what happens after the end. Whether grappling with heartache or a loved one’s mortality, the Brooklyn-based songwriter reimagines endings not as finite events but as devotional experiences that give way to new beginnings. Edens takes inspiration from folk luminaries such as Nick Drake, Karen Dalton and Elizabeth Cotten, sowing her compositions with introspection born from her own grief. What emerges is a glowing collection of songs that serve as a map through tumult, toward hope.

Edens sings and writes with an equally tender reverie as in her 2020 debut album Time Away From Time. But where We’ll Become the Flowers diverges, is in its narrative vulnerability. Each song is bursting: with sorrow, with anger, with the miracle of existence. “I wrote this album out of emotional necessity,” Edens says. “I had just gone through a breakup. And around the same time, my mother was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease. I was spending a lot of my time trying to understand what it means to watch the hopeful person who raised me seem to slowly fade away before my eyes.” As the pandemic loomed, Edens turned to music: “This project was a rope I used to pull myself out of misery, to view the despair I was feeling from a different angle. It was also my escape.”

After a successful crowdfunding campaign, Edens recorded We’ll Become the Flowers during a two-week session in July 2021 in a Minneapolis attic. She worked with her trusted friends and collaborators – co-producer and bassist Pat Keen, audio engineer and guitarist Dexter Wolfe, and drummer Shane Leonard. Going into each session, they envisioned an atmosphere of experimentation which led them to reconceptualize many of Edens’ songs. “I Needed You,” for example, changed from “a glum breakup waltz” into “a song that’s feeling good about feeling bad,” Edens says, recalling Leonard’s words after he suggested changing the time signature.

In We’ll Become the Flowers, Edens’ voice rings out sweet yet sorrowful; playful yet certain; hers is a voice capable of embodying emotion in all its complexity. When Edens asks, in the record’s opener, “How do I get there?” she stretches out the last word as if to emphasize its infinite possibilities. Yet Edens never remains in the abstract; instead, she takes us along on her emotional journey, speaking honestly, intimately, and specifically about her process: “I tried to start by weeding through the trauma in my bones,” she sings in the next verse of “How.” “To rearrange the memories / Forgive and not keep score.” In “Tom and Jerry,” Edens’ songwriting becomes more whimsical. “Oh it’s getting so hard to choose / And I’m chewing on all the alternate routes,” Edens sings, using a playful rhyme with alliterative echo.

In “I Needed You,” Edens uses the repetition of her hook to convey how her feelings toward her former lover have shifted over time. The first time she sings, “I needed you,” her voice is steeped in nostalgia, romanticizing the lover’s “flannel shirt and calming words.” But the final time Edens sings, “I needed you,” her tone has shifted: she’s harsher, irreverent even – and as if in response to remembering how much she thought she needed them, she breaks into laughter. But Edens’ conviction as a songwriter comes across most clearly in “For the Song.” “And when the rage comes around,” she sings, “And every critic’s tearing up her ground / The truth becomes power.” In this last phrase, her voice is as direct and unwavering as her words.

Creating We’ll Become the Flowers started as a way for Edens to plant her grief. What took root, however, is a series of offerings. These come in the form of scenes that are both familiar yet deeply personal to Edens: singing loudly on the highway, wandering a graveyard, dancing in the wilderness, watching her mother plant flowers, wishing to create her own shine, reminding herself that the only seed worth planting is hope. Through Edens’ words, we glimpse the possibility of change, of forgiveness, of acceptance and, in numinous spurts, joy. If we see Edens’ album as a conversation—between Edens and herself and between Edens and the listener—then the conversation opens with a question that she poses in the first song, “But how do I get there?” In the album’s denouement, “Julia,” Edens returns to this question, changed, and with a final offering: “The pen is in your hand,” she reminds us. “And the key is in your certainty.”

Top Left Corner: And with me on the line via Skype is Eliza Edens. Eliza, thank you so much for being on the Top Left Corner.

Eliza Edens: Yeah, great to be here, Jason. Thanks so much for having me.

Top Left Corner: So, you know, I have to say, I had an inside line on getting your your latest release. And, you know, it was it was like like I had connections in the family, you could almost say. But I finished listening to We’ll Become the Flowers, which just dropped like the 14th or something like that.

Eliza Edens: Mm hmm. Yeah, October 14th.

Top Left Corner: And I, I actually immediately got out my my reporter’s notebook and started taking notes, and I never do that. So I’ve got a lot I want to ask about, and I’m sure that there’s a lot you can tell us about. First of all, this is deeply, deeply personal album, I can tell. And if there’s any place you don’t want to go, it’s like too personal. It’s like just for you. Just, you know, just say, Hey, that’s too personal, buddy. Back off. I’ll be okay with that.

Eliza Edens: Yeah, definitely appreciate that.

Top Left Corner: Well, you know, it’s, you know, sometimes just because you’re an artist and you put things out into the world doesn’t mean that people have to understand exactly what you mean. You know, it’s it’s it’s not your job as an artist to to explain things to everybody. So that’s my take on it. So let’s first start with the obvious. Your previous full length release was back in 2020, I think it was in April, pretty much as the world was shutting down and everything went crazy. And this album and that was time, “Time Away from Time.” Back in 2020, this one “We’ll Become the Flowers” is a very. Different. It’s got a very different feel to it. How much would you say the pandemic contributed to the evolution of your art?

Eliza Edens: Well, with the absence of shows, I was sort of looking for a way to still play music, obviously. And I, I sort of used the time to work on my guitar playing. I started taking lessons from a friend on Zoom, and he is a really incredible finger style guitar player like Delta Blues kind of stuff, Elizabeth Cotton and John Fahey, and he taught me some of those songs. So that sort of, I guess, evolved the guitar style a bit in comparison in comparing the two albums. Right. And then I guess in general, I just sort of wanted I started writing songs with a band more in mind in the songwriting process, so there was just more space for. Other instruments and grooves and experimentation in these songs as compared to the last. The songs on “Time Away from Time,” which are were really were not written with like a rhythm section in mind. And yeah so I think that’s the guitar lessons trying to work on my craft and the fact that there was a lot of time for that. While there were no shows happening.

Top Left Corner: Right.

Eliza Edens: And then just, yeah, just sort of evolving and changing as a songwriter.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I, you know. And time away from time is a very it is a very. Commendable debut release. As a singer songwriter, I can definitely hear the the beginnings of. Of you trying some of the things that ended up appearing on We’ll Become the Flowers, the the first album. A lot of arpeggiated in the guitar work less of that this time around. More different styles of of of as you said you know finger finger style playing and yeah the compositions in this new album We’ll Become the Flowers They’re more fleshed out I guess. And now that now that I hear your explanation of the fact that you were thinking about in a fuller instrumentation, that makes total sense, and I really admire that you made such good use of that time thinking about, okay, I’ve got an indefinite amount of time, what can I do with it? What was it like taking taking guitar lessons online? Because I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing because I suck and I’d like to get even even half as good as you were on the first album.

Eliza Edens: Oh, yeah. Well, it’s funny cause I also teach guitar lessons online, so I’m on both ends of the both sides of the screen, I guess. I mean, this is a friend of mine who I had met in person before we knew each other. So it wasn’t too. I mean, of course it’s always better to take lessons in person is my opinion, but especially when you’re talking about technique and that kind of stuff. But. It was definitely it was still super helpful and we would get to a lot of like holding the guitar up very close to the computer screen so you can see exactly what a picking pattern is or something like that.

Top Left Corner: Huh? That’s interesting. Well, I’m not afraid of it. It’s with my schedule. It’s probably the best way to get started. And I actually have a I actually have a fellow that I interviewed several years ago who’s a hard rocker, but he teaches all kinds of guitar and he has been needling me. When are you going to start? When are you going to start? When you can start? Because you know, he’s going to give me X number of lessons at no cost. So I’m thinking, why not? I guess maybe it’s just fear. Maybe it’s just fear of doing that new thing the.

Eliza Edens: Way a good teacher will help you get over that. Over the fear through that. Yes.

Top Left Corner: I suppose there’s always going to be a little bit, no matter who you are, no matter.

Eliza Edens: How far along.

Top Left Corner: I was going to say along the journey, and that’s a question that I’m going to I’m going to ask about. But first, I wanted to know, did you do any house concerts during the pandemic? Lake. Virtual house. Virtual house, Counselor.

Eliza Edens: Oh. Let’s see. I. Gosh, I might have done. I was a finalist during the Kerrville Folk Festival virtually in May of 2020. So I probably played some things related to that online.

Top Left Corner: I know you’ve played physically at Club Passim, and I know they did. They did some virtual stuff as well during the pandemic. I don’t know if you were part of that, but I did.

Eliza Edens: I did camp their campfire festival. Oh, cool. Yes, a couple of times during the pandemic. They’re really wonderful people and great room, Great venue.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about this. This album will become the Flowers, which is not a. An eponymous title. It’s actually a verse in the song in one of the songs. It’s a verse in West Lawn. I think it is. And West Lawn Cemetery. Yeah. The the. You’re not at all hiding the fact that this is a massive relationship. Implosion. Composition. This is reasonably autobiographical. Somewhat half.

Eliza Edens: The song or the album?

Top Left Corner: Well, the whole album, it’s I think the liner notes, it says it’s definitely about a breakup or your and the aftermath. How much is is a direct lift from life and how much was sort of a variation on that theme?

Eliza Edens: Yeah, I mean, it’s a lot of it’s pretty autobiographical, but there’s, of course, details change in service of making the songs better. I think the phrase goes, Gosh, what is it? Something of something about like a good story. I’m not going to remember it.

Top Left Corner: I know the one I mean, though.

Eliza Edens: Doesn’t always tell the truth.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, yeah. And yeah. And the truth isn’t always. Yeah, we’re going to find that and I’ll put it in the show notes because you know it. I know it. We’ll put it in the show notes. Yeah. So here’s my thing. I’ve tried to and I’ve long since put my, my poetry journal in a hole in the ground where it belongs because I’m not a lyricist, but I have tried after a breakup and what I if I were to go back and look at those those attempts at capturing it in verse, I would not I would not have the success that you did. What are some of the benefits and what are some of the challenges to trying to distill those emotions into verse so close, so close to the actual events?

Eliza Edens: Yeah. Um, I took this songwriting workshop about a year ago from a really brilliant songwriter who I really respect and admire named Courtney Marie Andrews. Maybe you’ve heard of her and she had some choice words about that. She she said that when you. When you are going through a grieving experience or just some sort of like moving to a new place or just some sort of massive change in your life to really allow yourself to feel all the feelings associated with those that change and to really pour into the art you’re making at the time can sort of I mean, it’s healing for yourself in that way to emotionally process what’s going on. But at the same time, it sort of imprints those songs with some sort of special energy that is only sort of present in that time of sort of change and things possibly going awry. And I think that I mean, for one, like I just I just needed to write these songs to feel better and at the time and I think, um, yeah, they definitely do have that kind of imprint, the imprint of that time period on them. Like what I was thinking about how I was. How I played guitar, how I sang, how I thought about melodies. Yeah, I think. There’s something special about really applying to your applying yourself to your art in times of sort of massive life upheaval, because those are sort of like those like fissure points in our lives are when a lot of emotions sort of present themselves.

Top Left Corner: They kind of bubble up like the lava at the bottom of a volcanic fissure. Yeah, And you have to be know, you have to allow yourself maybe even force yourself to be vulnerable in a way that a lot of people would pay any amount of money to not have to be that vulnerable.

Eliza Edens: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. But that’s also what what causes people to connect with songs.

Top Left Corner: So yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And I’m writing writing because I write more prose obviously than poetry. But I have been told by writing coaches that you should never hold off on releasing an idea into the wild because you’re afraid that it won’t come again. You know that you won’t have another great idea like that again. The reason that you will have a great idea is that you release one and you make room in your brain for the next one to come down the pike. And I wonder if there’s a connection to that, that once you release those. Emotions or you distill them or channel them into words and melodies and harmonies. I wonder if that’s what allows you to progress as a songwriter. Maybe a little bit. I’m just throwing that out there.

Eliza Edens: Yeah, definitely. I agree with you. I think personally with just sort of thinking about my progression so far, I definitely once you sort of externalize something and you feel you can feel a sense of detachment from. The songs and the stories behind them and the sort of lived experiences, you can reflect on it and then be like, These are the things that I like about these songs and how they how we recorded them, how, how it all turned out. And these are the things that I want to work on. Or maybe I want to try something new or expand in a certain way or taper back in other ways. I think, yeah, there is something to be said for finishing a project which is a hard finish line to get to sometimes, but is very worth it because it can provide you with that. Yeah. Externalizing all this work that you’ve put into something and sharing it publicly with the world and then yeah, having more space in your iPhone voice Memos app for all the new weird songs that you write. Perfect, right?

Top Left Corner: Perfectly said, perfectly said. And I hope that when people go and buy this, this album, “We’ll Become the Flowers” at Bandcamp. The link to which will be in the show notes that they will read those liner notes and see just how big of a project this was. And maybe they’ll go back and look at the liner notes from your first release and see that this this really is a labor of love, not just heartache, but you’re sort of reclaiming yourself a lot in this. In this album, there’s a lot of. How should I say it? You you suggested that we play for the audience. I needed you. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, I think, I think that’s the perfect song to play. It weaves between, like, sort of a bluesy breezy. Sort of feeling. But there’s this sort of tension in there, and it’s a punctuated tension. It’s a song that’s really about measured misery. Misery is my note there. Measured misery. And it’s. What do you mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is that. You’re kind of at this. Sort of. What the fuck just happened here? Stage. It sounds like, you know, you still kind of there’s a, there’s a level of, of of analysis that’s still going on. And it’s almost even though you’re singing to somebody, it’s less of an accusation. The way it comes across is more of like an an. More of expository writing, more of an analysis like, let’s see what just happened here, because this is what it seems like to me. And and boy, wow, I didn’t see that coming. Almost as if it was too like the pain had not all fully clobbered you yet. And that might not be your headspace or your heart space when you wrote it. But when I say measured misery, I mean I mean just that that there was a certain element of of dissection to it. Did that at all. Does that does that ring true for you or is it my my take here?

Eliza Edens: Yeah, I think some of that song is just sort of is is definitely the the muck of like emotionally processing situation but. Yeah. And sort of rummaging through all the details. That song I want to share because I’m just so proud of how it turned out production wise. And it was very much like that song in particular was very much a very collaborative effort when we were recording it, because when I brought it in, it was sort of this. Sort of waltz, and it was in a different time signature. It was like, I don’t want a simple house implement that The the one, two, three was different. It didn’t really have a groove to it. And then the drummer that we were working with, Shane Leonard, who you really incredible drummer and producer, was like, You should change the time signature of this and it’ll have like more of a kick to it. And rather than just being like a sort of a sad. Breakup Waltz. It will be one of those songs that sort of has. Sad lyrics, but has sort of this underground energy coming up from the rhythm section, which I think sort of gives it that sort of more breezy, mellow energy.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, it’s almost a contemplative. It’s contemplated without being moribund. Morose. Well, let’s listen to that right now here on the Top Left Corner.

[song: “I Needed You,” from Eliza Edens’ 2022 release, We’ll Become the Flowers]

“I Needed You,” from Eliza Edens. Yeah I absolutely can can hear that that collaboration that you’re talking about there and and that I think really speaks to what you were saying before about how you really open the doors for more pieces, more instrumentation on this album, which I just found to be so, so textured, so complex in places. There’s a lot of acoustic that comes that blends really seamlessly with synthetic sounds. Tell me about that a little bit. There’s a lot less of that. On your first album. How did you decide to bring in the it’s not a derogatory term, but the synthetic instrumentation?

Eliza Edens: Yeah, you’re talking about like more synth, like electronic kind of sound.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, you didn’t overdo them, but what was your decision on bringing them in?

Eliza Edens: Yeah, I mean, a lot of the a lot of the production decisions were sort of collaborative, but probably more of the ideas for synthetic electronic sounds came from my co-producers Dexter Wolf and Pat Quinn, who are have just for years and years and years since they were teenagers, been recording music and playing around and experimenting with song making and recording. And I think. Like their. We just want it to be experimental and just sort of play around with different sounds. The idea to have those like really sub bassy electronic drums on West Lawn Cemetery was an idea that at first I was really sort of opposed to because the guitar part for that is something that I, I just didn’t think they meshed like that, that guitar part and those electronic drums. But after sort of listening to it and just sort of experimenting and giving, giving myself permission to just let go of my grasp on my music a little bit, which I think is necessary when you’re working with people in this way. I really sort of loved how it gave this like low frequency depth to the song and you really like feel you feel it more like in your body, like the, like more it’s like, it’s like a heartbeat almost. And it sort of supports the guitar part in a cool way. Yeah, I think so much of acoustic like Roots rock is really just electric bass or upright bass, drums, guitar and guitar and more guitars. And I think just adding some synthetic sounds just adds some. Elements of freshness to the whole sonic palette.

Top Left Corner: Yeah.

Eliza Edens: So I think that’s sort of where we were going.

Top Left Corner: And in the digital green room where we were talking before, we we switched on the microphones. We were talking a little bit about how you’re really straddling the line between, you know, some very solid American roots singer songwriter persona. And then there’s also this sort of indie alternative feel to it. And when I first approached you about being on a podcast, in addition to the Top Left Corner, I was thinking indecent exposure, which is sort of my eclectic indie alternative show. But listening to it, I feel like it’s it tilts, you know, like 60% into the Cornbread Café, American roots. Do you do you find yourself. Scratching your head and wondering exactly where you fit in.

Eliza Edens: Definitely every day. I yeah, I have a strong I’ve developed like a strong love for Americana music and country songwriting. I really love Townes Van Zandt. I love Lucinda Williams, Blaze Foley, but I also really love a lot of alternative music. And I grew up listening to the Beatles and I like sort of the. Original alternative band just wanting to go in every direction sonically. So I think, yeah, I think I do sort of straddle that. That line of experimentation and alternative sounds combined with more traditional folk music.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, keep it up. I mean, keep them guessing that that would be my, my advice to you. Don’t, don’t feel like you’ve got to fit in. At least you’ll always have a home with one or more of my podcasts if you if you. But there’s a few things that I. A couple of other notes that I made. One of them is, is that your use of language has really, really gotten sophisticated in the between the first album and this one. And I liked the first album. I have such a fear of listening to sophomore efforts. I have this total dread because I want them to be as good as the first. And sadly, a lot of them aren’t, you know? And it’s sometimes it’s it’s a matter of the timing or them getting bad advice from the producer or whatever. But your second effort is, is just such you know, you can just see it plotted, you know, the points on the graph and you can see this is where Eliza experimented with this and this is where she became really adept at that. I told you I was going to lavished praise on you and here it is. So but but I think that really the sophistication I mean, we’ve been talking a lot about, you know, the composition, but I think the lyrics, the composition would not be carried as far without some really great poetry. I mean, when I was listening, I was thinking, okay, so I’m hearing the poetry that smacks of a of like a Jackson Browne or a Joni Mitchell, you know, a lot of analogy, a lot of really clever, unexpected turns of phrase. You didn’t have a lot of a lot of lyrics that I could predict, which I love. Not to say that there aren’t some, you know, old hackneyed expressions that you have to throw in there once in a while.

Eliza Edens: But but.

Top Left Corner: You know, but yours really, you know, took me by surprise quite a number of times. I think you said in Jimmy, come back, nobody to behold. And it was sort of sung in a way that made me feel like it was a double entendre. Nobody to behold is nobody to see, but nobody to hold also. And I’d know if you meant that or not. And then in the sung to see through you change from you sort of blend from to see through, then to see it through. And I’m wondering if if you can tell us about what are you seeing through? What are you seeing it through in that tune?

Eliza Edens: Yeah. I think. Yeah, that song is.

Top Left Corner: Kind of.

Eliza Edens: Dark. I sort of. It’s a pretty dark song. Yeah. I wrote that in, like, the depths of depths of winter, actually, sort of thinking about this Joni Joni Mitchell song, Urge for going. How she’s sort of like preparing to like she’s talking about how all the leaves are falling down. I don’t know. I haven’t listened to that song in a minute, but yeah, I was sort of in that same headspace. It’s like another winter in New York, too. And to see through, I think. It’s just sort of like it’s a song a little bit about meditation, actually, like letting the idea of just like letting your thoughts pass rather than engaging in them. And to see through, I think it’s just sort of. Um. It’s like resiliency. That’s sort of what I was sort of going forward that.

Top Left Corner: Well, as Northeasterners, whether it’s New England or New York, I guess we’re born and raised having to to to find that resiliency within ourselves. But the New York thing does kind of kind of remind me. It was sort of the last big question that I wanted to throw out there. And we can connect it to both Joni Mitchell and say, Simon and Garfunkel, who I hear a little bit of strains of of SAG from time to time in this album. And I wonder if that has to do with the New York folk sound that still must permeate in the sidewalks and the buildings and in the street lamps. What is it like being sort of having one foot in Brooklyn and one foot in the Berkshires or or in rural settings?

Eliza Edens: I think the fact that I grew up in a very rural setting made me want to really deeply experience living in the giant.

Top Left Corner: City.

Eliza Edens: Because like when I would grow up and I would like I went to this summer camp over the years when I was in high school and and worked there between summers and college. And there would always be these like cool New York City kids there who I just felt like you just I think you just grow up faster when you live in New York. And I was just always so curious about what life was like here. And every fall in high school, the high school choir, we would have to sell a bunch of cheesecakes to fundraise, to go to see a play on Broadway for the day. And we would go down to New York City. And I was just always so like, I don’t know, puppy. I’d just been in New York where there’s just so much happening and so much going on. And it was just culture shock. And I, I just really wanted to experience that. But it is a very it’s a very intense place. And it’s I don’t know, as someone who grew up in the woods and grew up playing in a brook and my back yard and going on hikes and stuff, I don’t know how long that I’ll be able to stay here because I feel like I was calibrated at birth to be in the woods. But it’s definitely it’s definitely fun and there’s just so many fascinating and talented and interesting people here to meet and hang out with and work with and spend time with, so.

Top Left Corner: Sure, sure. Yeah. Do you do you get to hit any of the the folk venues in New York? I know that it’s got a really long tradition, but obviously since since the pandemic hit, I don’t know that many of them have been open for two years. But do you find there to be a pretty solid folk scene and singer songwriter scene where you are?

Eliza Edens: Yeah, definitely. In Red Hook and in Brooklyn, there’s this place called the Jalopy Theater, and they are a pretty folk centric venue. There’s a tavern and then a theater next door, and they they do like lessons as well. And I think they have a small record label label and they’re very yeah, it’s a very community based venue. Um, and then there’s another and I think, gosh, they’ve been around for maybe, I don’t know, since 2003, I’m not sure. And then there’s another venue close to where I live. Called the Music Parlor, which is run by an artist. And it’s just a very great listening room and is great for folk music, but it’s sort of a very eclectic there’s jazz, there’s two sometimes and all sorts of stuff. So it’s very artist friendly. And then, yeah, there’s Rockwood Music Hall in Lower Manhattan, which is great to have. There’s always new, new spots.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I’ve always wanted to go to the The Bitter End on Bleecker Street, which is maybe maybe cliche in itself, but they still have a lot of a lot of great new acts coming through. So you never know who is going to show up there that you’re going to be hearing about later. But yeah, I think that, you know, it’s so easy to forget how much folk and singer songwriter comes out of urban areas. It’s not all you know, it’s not all, you know, with your bare feet in the grass, you know, with your dipping your toes in the in the stream. And then last thing sort of a. On a sorrowful note, you dedicate both both albums to many people, including your mom, and you talk a little bit about your mom and. On this album you sing about it in and the fact that she’s going through a life change that is not part of your breakup. But it’s happening in tandem with with those those emotions. And I’m wondering if you felt like talking about that at all and how the the two. Deeply emotional happenings, events maybe played off of each other if they did. If they didn’t.

Eliza Edens: Yeah, definitely. I think. Yeah. My mom has always been the most supportive person with music. With my music. And yeah, even when I started taking piano lessons when I was a kid. And I think the fact that there’s sort of these multiple griefs that were happening at the same time really sort of. Shocked me in a way, and sort of led to the urgency of making this album. Just sort of realizing that life isn’t a guarantee and things. Things can happen that change your relationships all the time. And so really. Going for it and making it count is what I wanted to do with these songs. So yeah.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I can understand that there does. Come a certain age and it’s different for every every child and every parent. When you have to think about those things that you don’t think about when you’re ten or 12 or even 16. And yeah, life, life kind of comes at you full force sometimes and rarely when you’re ready to take on anything more. It’s a good thing that our hearts are as flexible as they are and resilient as they are, because I have no idea how I would have made it through the pandemic if it weren’t for the the resiliency of of of spirit that that I’ve managed to, I guess, earn through fire and ice. So you have a show coming up. I know you had your your New York release party on the 14th. You’re going to be here in the Berkshires at the newly reopened iconic Five Corners cafe, which is the perfect place, probably not to cram 100 plus people, but certainly certainly 50 or 60 easy. And if the fire marshal doesn’t show up, probably 75. Yeah. No, no, we didn’t say that. What? Tell us about the event. Tell us about your feelings coming up and playing. As far as I know, that has not been a live music venue in my memory anyway.

Eliza Edens: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, yeah, we’re playing there on, I guess Friday the 21st is the date and I believe it’s, I think it’s sold out because there’s 49% capacity and my parents went all over town hanging up posters. So, um, they were very excited about the show. Um, but yeah, I actually haven’t seen the new space. I don’t know if it’s redone. Um.

Top Left Corner: Not much.

Eliza Edens: Maybe you can speak to that. Yeah. Okay. It’s bad. Yeah, but, um. Yeah, it should be really fun. And the venue owner or the Five Corner’s owner, Corey is very excited to host us, and, um, I think it should be a lot of fun. And there’s Carl Mullin’s new project is going to open. They’re called collect calls. Yeah. So we’re going to pack a whole band and a bunch of people in there and. And have some fun.

Top Left Corner: That’s fantastic. Yeah, is great. He, he, in addition to being a great musician himself and a good songwriter, he has done a lot to drive the local music scene forward here in North County in the Berkshires, by hosting his own barn concerts, which have attracted a great number of fans and some superior artists to to that loft. And it’s a lot of fun, you know, hanging out on the grass afterward. So, yes, So this is Friday, the 21st, I want to say. I’m going to get it wrong If I said I want to say it’s 7:00, but do you happen to know?

Eliza Edens: Yeah, I think it’s door six show at seven.

Top Left Corner: Okay, well, you know what? Let’s say 5:00 in order a sandwich and have a and have a glass of wine and then you’ll.

Eliza Edens: Short Five Corners.

Top Left Corner: The storied Five Corners. It is on Cold Spring Road, which is Route seven, probably about maybe three, three miles before you get to the village. Obviously, we’re telling this to people who already have tickets because it’s sold out. There’s nothing we can do about that. But you never know. You know, somebody might get get them as a gift or something. If I had thought about it, I would have I would have asked you for some some contest, some giveaway tickets the next time around. You know, I. I’ve known I’ve known your dad, Bill, actually, he was one of the first people to welcome me to Williamstown, so. Yeah. Yeah, actually, no, I started The Greylock Glass in January of 2015, and I didn’t know really that many people around. And he called me, and I’m not even sure how he got my phone number, but he called me and said, Who are you and what are you doing? Basically? And then because, you know, he’s kind of the, you know, the journalism scholar in town. Yeah. And so that that, you know, we’ve been buds ever since. And I actually just met your mom.

Top Left Corner: When I picked up this this CD. And she’s just the loveliest person. Oh, she’s so sweet. I just wanted to. I just wanted to take her home. I really did. So I’m glad to. I’m glad to. To have that inside. Like I said, that that family connection and getting the goods here. Well, as again, again, I’m going to say this is a must, must listen to album. In fact, sometimes I like to not know the songs before I go to a release party. I like to sort of have every single note and every single word strike me new. I’m not I don’t think I feel the same way about this one. I think if I were to go to the show, I would want to go to Bandcamp, buy the album, listen to it a couple of times, and really absorb the lyrics so that when you go to the show, you can just you can just focus on taking it in, you know, being into the whole experience. Do you recommend that people at least listen to it on Bandcamp?

Eliza Edens: Um, if they want. I mean, it’s like everyone experiences and digests music in such different ways. We’re all, we all process information so differently. So if.

Top Left Corner: It’s true, that’s.

Eliza Edens: Your calling.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I know. I just. I want to make sure that because I’ve listened to the album twice now, back to front, to back straight through. And I just love every single word. You don’t have a you don’t have a an off word. You also don’t have any gratuitous key changes. Your key changes are all justifiable. You don’t do anything just because. And I just want everyone to to really get that sense of it. So again, lavish praise. I, I know that you’re probably going to want to take a break before going into the studio again, but have you already started gathering nuts for your next project?

Eliza Edens: Yeah, I actually did an artist residency in Colorado about a year ago in August 2021, so I wrote a bunch of new songs right after recording this album and was writing a lot last fall, but I haven’t really been writing much since this winter. So I mean, I have a whole nother collection of songs that’s like. Sort of more sad acoustic guitar, alternate tuning land breakup songs. But I kind of want to move in in a new direction. Just I want to play more sort of embodied rock and roll, honestly, and have a little more fun onstage.

Top Left Corner: Okay, well, maybe you can throw maybe can throw out some bonus like EPS in in between the albums and whatever the case, however you do it, I do hope that you will let the Cornbread Cafe know so that we can we can promote and and get the word out. And Eliza Edens, I want to thank you so much. You suggested hang on before you go. You suggested that we we take it we take us home with the title track off “Time Away from Time.” So we’re going to do that. Eliza, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to the Top Left Corner and I hope we’ll see you soon.

Eliza Edens: Of course. Thank you so much for having me.

J. Velazquez: Huh? So it’s it’s a good thing that my voice was in better shape for the interview. Right? Because it’s pretty rough right now. I don’t know if I could have gotten gotten through again, a fascinating person, a trooper. I can’t even begin to describe my appreciation for for the artistry and poetry that are contained in this new release will become the flowers. It’s just it’s you know, I had hoped for good things and it’s easily two, three times as better than I had hoped in this album. I really love it. I’m going to be listening to it for weeks and weeks and weeks. So anyway, that’s our show for the week. Actually, I’ve got another one coming up tomorrow with that promised interview with Dean Martelly, candidate for Congress, first Berkshire County. But this, I felt, was more important anyway. Stay safe. Be good to each other. Go easy on yourself by now.

The post Top Left Corner #175: Eliza Edens — “We’ll Become the Flowers” appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

We speak with Courtney Giraldi of Pittsfield Cell Tower Concerned Citizens about the current state of play in the battle over responsible, safe cell tower placement in Berkshire County.

Tuesday, October 18, 2022, 6:00 p.m.

Hybrid Meeting

1. Form A: 279 Under Mountain Rd
2. Wireless: Discuss mapping work conducted by the Town’s consultant, Isotrope LLC; discuss location preferences and draft bylaw language to prepare for a Special Town Meeting in November (tentative date is 11/17); discuss wireless bylaw content.
3. Approval of Minutes
   • October 11

• July 26, August 9, September 13 pending completion

1. Adjourn

A meeting packet is available on the Town of Lenox Planning Board webpage. It will be available no later than Monday, October 17th: https://www.townoflenox.com/planning-board

Join on your computer, mobile app or room device

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 261 976 838 034
Passcode: LhMF2o

Download Teams | Join on the web

Town Hall

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

The post Top Left Corner #174: Lenox residents, officials not on same wavelength about cell towers. appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Editor’s Note: The Greylock Glass pays to have rough transcripts of interviews produced. We attempt to remain as faithful as possible to the speakers’ original meaning, and apologize for any errors of transcription. That said, even the imperfect transcription we perform is costly. Please support us financially by becoming a member or making a one-time contribution to help us continue to provide this service.

Top Left Corner: This is the top left corner at The Greylock Glass. And this is Episode #173 of the Top Left Corner right here on The Greylock Glass GreylockGlass.com the Berkshires’ mightiest independent alternative news thing. I’m your host, Jay Velázquez, and I do thank you for tuning in today. At least the day that I hit record on this episode is Tuesday, October 4th, 2022. And it is another great show. It is a part deux. It’s a continuation of episode 172 in which we spoke with Larry Parnass, the Berkshire Eagle’s managing editor for Innovation, who discussed the issue of source confidentiality as it pertains to the investigation that he has been has been ongoing, that he’s been in charge of into clergy abuse that went on during the 1960s and has resulted in. A court case, John Doe versus Roman Catholic Bishop of Springfield, a Corporation, Sole and others. And the situation is somewhat resolved because I’ll give you a spoiler. The court order that we’ve been expecting came down today, just a few hours ago, and we’ll talk a little bit about that. But basically the situation is this. As you heard in episode 172, the Diocese of Springfield, in an effort to…Well, I guess protect itself. Defend itself. At least that’s the theory. They tried to compel Larry Parnass to turn over all of his notes, any documents that might be related to the investigation that he’s done. The judge originally and this is Karen Goodwin, justice of the Superior Court, Hampton County, said no, everything.

Top Left Corner: No way, Jose. That would be I think she called it a classic fishing expedition and said maybe she’d consider a certain amount of stuff that that Mr. Parnass could be compelled to surrender. Big mess. People have been sitting on pins and needles. It is a case that has been watched. I know personally know of at least one college professor that is teaching this to their students right now as the case sort of unfolds. In any event, the the part deux was already planned. I had interviewed a local journalism scholar, Bill Densmore. He’s a friend of mine, and he has a lot of great things to say, but a lot of insights that he brings to the table from his years of of both doing journalism and teaching it. So this is a very great to have him on the show, even though just a few hours ago, the court order, the memorandum and order on motion for reconsideration has been returned. Judge Goodwin heard Larry Panos basically appeal his request that certain elements of the original decision be revisited. And she did so. And I’m going to I’m going to play for you the spoken version of that. Of that that memo and order. I’m not going to speak it. I’m going to let my lovely and charming automated vocal assistant do that for me. But we’re going to hear that right after this message from. FEMA on emergency preparedness. And then we’ll hear from Bill Densmore himself.

FEMA PSA: If you can plan barbecues and weddings, you can plan to protect yourself from a natural disaster. Sign up for local alerts. Prepare an emergency kit and make a family communications plan. Get started at ready.gov/plan brought to you by FEMA and the Ad Council.

Court order from Judge Karen L. Goodwin: John Doe versus Roman Catholic Bishop of Springfield, a corporation, Soul and others. Memorandum and Order on Motion for Reconsideration. Berkshire Eagle managing editor Larry Parnass has moved for reconsideration of the Court’s July 29, 2022 order, allowing in part and denying his party the defendant’s motion to compel Parnass to provide documents and testimony. The court’s order limited the area of inquiry and provided what it thought was a mechanism for Parnass to protect the identity of confidential sources. Parnass machine asserts one He cannot produce documents or provide testimony about information provided by confidential sources without revealing their identities and to the court did not properly weigh the defendant’s need for the information against the harm disclosure would pose to the free flow of information. On the latter point, Parnass specifically faulted the court for not requiring the defendants to establish that they had exhausted all other sources of information.

Court order from Judge Karen L. Goodwin: Addressing the second point first, Parnass argues that the defendants have not shown they sought the requested information from the many witnesses, John Doe statements to Kevin Murphy and a review board. While the court agrees that the defendants have not made such a showing, Massachusetts law does not require that they do so. See Dow Jones and Company versus Superior Court 364. Massachusetts 317 320 1973. See also can be versus American Medical Response No.18 CV 30050 MGM 2019 Wll 1118103 DD Massachusetts 2019 Noting that the Supreme Court has rejected an automatic requirement that non confidential sources be exhausted. The court conducted the necessary balancing test in its initial order.

Court order from Judge Karen L. Goodwin: Parnass argument on the first point, however, has caused the court to rethink its order as to information from confidential sources. In light of Parnass affidavit stating that he cannot protect the identities of confidential sources simply by redacting their names. The court revises its order to apply only to non confidential sources in the event the defendants wish to press their motion as to confidential sources, they will be required to demonstrate their efforts to obtain the information directly from those attending the meetings with Kevin Murphy and or the Review Board.

Court order from Judge Karen L. Goodwin: Further looking ahead toward the trial, the court is open to requiring that parties disclose whether any of the individuals identified as trial witnesses were confidential sources, and if so, to produce the information those sources provided to him. In summary, the court revises its July 29, 2022 order to reflect it as compelling only information provided by non confidential sources as to what they told Parnass about DOE statements to Murphy and or the Review Board.

Court order from Judge Karen L. Goodwin: Karen L. Goodwin, Justice of the Superior Court, dated October 3rd, 2022.

Top Left Corner: And with me on the line is Bill Densmore, who is known throughout Berkshire County as a scholar of journalism and someone who knows the local scene. The local news seemed pretty darn well. Thanks so much for being on the show, Bill.

Bill Densmore: Glad to be here.

Top Left Corner: Now, let’s before we dive too too much into the conversation at hand. For those people who don’t know you, give us a little bit of a rundown of your background in journalism and and how you came to to. Well, I guess at the very least become a consultant for the eagle as as they sort of transitioned from a sort of venture capitalist company back into an independent entity.

Bill Densmore: Right. Well, I I’m now a member of the editorial advisory board of the of the Eagle, and that’s a great vantage point to follow what our local paper is doing. And in the briefest way I can think of possible us might. As to my background, I was editor of the UMass (The University of Massachusetts Amherst) Daily when I went there a long, long time ago and then worked for the Associated Press trade publishers. My wife and I together owned and published The Advocate News weekly for the Berkshires in southwestern Vermont for nine years in the eighties and early nineties. And mostly since then, I’ve been doing research on the future and sustainability of journalism for UMass, for the Rentals Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, and working with a nonprofit that I set up with some other people called the Information Trust Exchange Governing Association. What that is, is another story, but not relevant necessarily to this conversation.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Well, hopefully we get a chance to talk about that one day because and you’ve mentioned it to me before, and it’s it’s there’s some exciting developments in journalism. I know that you have you have done a lot of research into nonprofit journalism, which is an interesting and exciting development that more, more entities are pursuing because it seems to be a way for them to survive. So let’s set let’s talk a little bit about the history of of this story. This goes back to at least as early as 2019, when Larry Parnass began as part of a sort of eagle eye investigative function. He began looking into claims of clergy abuse within the Springfield Diocese. Were you paying attention at that time?

Bill Densmore: Only. Only as much as a casual reader might have?

Top Left Corner: Sure. Well, it’s not that. It’s not certainly not. The first case that made a lot of news. Boston was probably the the the what put the issue into national attention, I would say, because there’s just so much and continues to be so much that comes out there really damaged the Catholic Church across the United States when revelations of you know at first many of the people involved in trying to cover it up suggested that if it happened at all, it was just very rare or very, you know, occasional. But come to find out, it wasn’t rare, it wasn’t occasional. There really was a tremendously broad and and painful history of clergy taking advantage of young people in their flocks. When you come to an issue that is this personal and this painful, it is not any surprise that some people don’t want their identities known. So maybe from a general standpoint, Bill, what is common practice when it comes to working with a source who wants to remain anonymous? What is what what are some standard things that a journalist would try to do?

Bill Densmore: Well, I haven’t been. I tell people I’m somewhat of a journalist on sabbatical because I haven’t been in a newsroom cranking out stories for many years. But I also did it for many years before that. And I don’t think the basic issues have changed over the 40 years or so that I’ve been doing journalism. It’s it’s the case that sometimes people will tell you. More. Stuff about a story if you promise them some kind of anonymity. And that anonymity could be. A I. You’re giving me permission to use the. The. Information you’re giving me, but I can’t associate it with your name or even hint who gave me the information. In other words, I’m going to have to use the information unattributed and just call it a source. That’s the most aggressive form of of shielding the source. Then it could be just I’m going to be able to say that I talk to you, but I can’t quote you directly. And sometimes politicians will do that because they really don’t want to be hung on specific words. And and there’s all kinds of negotiated arrangements in between those that a journalist might work out with a source. And my understanding, just from what I’ve read of the accounts in the eagle of this situation is that a particular individual was promised anonymity and would not it was promised by the newspaper in the person of Larry Parnass, but acting on behalf of the newspaper, presumably he was the source was promised that he wouldn’t be named or otherwise identified in any story that was written.

Bill Densmore: And so that sets up always and and fairly frequently, actually some a challenge between a private citizen who brings a libel lawsuit or a public official who or prosecutor brings a case or a prosecutor, as in this case, who has got another case going related to the priest abuse issues and the prosecutor or the defendant’s lawyer or the plaintiff’s lawyer. I can’t remember which it is in this case feels that they can get a better picture of the situation involving their client or they’re the accused by. Learning the identity of the person that Larry Parnass spoke to and. So it’s just routine for lawyers to want that information and to seek it. Then you get this conflict based in. Precedents around the First Amendment. And the question is what what happens next? What yields does the reporter have to give up? You have to reveal the identity of their source. Does the person who’s seeking that source his name, figure out another way to get the information they need to manage their court case? Or does something in the middle happen? And a lot of times what happens in the middle historically is the source will decide to allow the reporter.

Bill Densmore: To be unbound ethically from the promise the reporter gave so that the reporters are released from that obligation of confidentiality. And then the reporter can say, Oh, well, it was so-and-so, and then deported reporters off the hook because the lawyer who’s wanted that person’s name now knows their name and they go and talk to them or subpoena them or do whatever they’re going to do to manage their case. If the source is unwilling to release the reporter, which is probably the case at the moment. Now in the Eagle, Larry Parnass matter. Then you have this clash of competing values around the right of somebody to get all the the. Data they need to defend themselves in a case. Right. And the reporter’s moral and ethical obligation to respect and maintain the promise they made. And I don’t know yet what’s going to happen. I mean, I don’t know what’s going to happen in this case just yet. I mean, it’s going to have to be negotiations behind the scenes probably, or the judge may eventually rule that that testimony of the unnamed source is not necessary for the trial. And then that becomes a matter for sorting out some day when the case is heard on appeal.

Top Left Corner: Well, Heather Bellah wrote last week in The Eagle that a judge, Karen Goodwin, who had originally called the diocese. Seeking everything that Larry Parnass had a fishing expedition. I think it was a complete fishing expedition or a classic fishing expedition, she said, because they wanted everything. I mean, they wanted notes. They wanted probably phone records. I mean, they wanted just everything. And that obviously would have been damaging to to the story for sure. This and the lawyer, you were correct. His name is McDonough. I think it’s Michael McDonough said that. Yes. In fact, it’s all we care about. Just making sure that. That. The source that the statements made by the source to Larry Parnass are consistent with the statements that the source made to the dioceses when that person reported this this abuse. So the diocese claims that there they are excuse me, that the the according to Heather’s Heather Bella’s work, quote, the diocese found the John Doe’s allegations against two other priest credible and have been supportive and paid for his therapy. Mcdonough said So I don’t know they know who this person is. So it’s not a matter of not knowing who it is. It’s a matter of. I guess, basically subpoenaing them and putting them on the hot seat, which is precisely what this person is trying to avoid, a very public exposure. Now, there are a lot of reasons why people might not want to admit that they have been a victim of clergy abuse. It could be that it’s simply too painful. It could be that they have a very public position that they feel would be threatened if the word were to get out. It could be any number of reasons. And at the moment in Massachusetts, there is there is no so called shield law that allows a reporter source confidentiality protections. What can you tell us about what shield laws typically do or don’t do to help preserve this confidentiality?

Bill Densmore: I I’m probably not experienced enough in the law to answer that in in a way that would be trustworthy information, I’m afraid. I just don’t I just haven’t kept up with the with the status of shield laws. There was a time when I was fairly up to date on that, but I’m not now.

Top Left Corner: Well, I’m sure that we can probably find somebody at UMass. They often are very, very keen on speaking to these issues. If you can get the right person on the line. They actually have a great reporter sourcebook that they that they publish or they used to publish anyway, whenever you needed that. So I’ll try to find that. But in general, I know that states have different versions of of shield laws and it is essentially just it is a is a it is a preemptive protection so that it is not the assumption that you will be providing information from your notes or from your hard drive or whatever it is. The assumption going into any one of these sort of court cases that the all of the the information is protected and that it would take a very extreme need for that to be overturned. So I think it’s basically the opposite of what we have now here. You don’t you shouldn’t expect any any protections, but you may get them. Whereas when there’s a shield law in place, the expectation is that you have a privilege.

Bill Densmore: Well, it seems to me, as I’ve observed these cases over the years, that. Justice usually gets done in the sense that a lot of cases where there is a prominent. In case where this conflict arises. The judges or the judge or judges in the case find a way to navigate or thread the needle that respects the interests of the public and the lawyer who’s looking for the information. That’s usually what happens. I mean, there there are reporters, though, who’ve gone to jail for. Relatively short periods of time because they would refuse to reveal a source. And it’s important to defer that they have done that and defended that principle that we extend to. Priests and lawyers and doctors in terms of confidentiality and at least. Most people think it’s a reasonable privilege to extend to journalists as well.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. You know, one thing that I find interesting about this, this situation is that there’s something in the Catholic Church called the seal of confession. Which is the absolute duty of priests or anybody who happens to hear a confession not to disclose anything that was said. So I find it to be more than a little dose of irony in this, given that the Catholic Church sort of created the idea of of of, you know, sort of attorney client privilege, if you will.

Bill Densmore: Yeah, that’s intriguing. Intriguing observation. And also it certainly is awkward for. For the for for the church to be involved in this particular aspect of the controversy. Yeah. Because it it makes it. Uh. Seen as if the church doesn’t respect confidentiality.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I think that.

Bill Densmore: But it’s also, on the other hand, the church is trying to defend itself and is entitled to defend itself against. Allegations that aren’t yet proved. And so it’s there’s an argument that it’s reasonable for them to start a process of discovery by asking for the kitchen sink and and acknowledge the need to narrow that scope as time goes on. And it’s a little clearer what they really need. And that’s why it seemed like the judge is gets that and is trying to manage that process of figuring out what’s really needed. And maybe at the end of the day, all the parties will agree, well, maybe we don’t really need all this stuff from Mr. Parnass as the legal reporter. And, you know, maybe there’s some way. That. That some of that information can be sourced out somehow without breaking a confidentiality.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Well, what are the what are the potential threats that you can imagine to the ongoing journalistic investigation of the.

Bill Densmore: Well, I guess I just thinking of my own experience in journalism when I was probably really active for ten or 15 years, I would say that there were many stories I wrote where having the ability to promise somebody. Anonymity helped get a story that wouldn’t otherwise have been as rich or deep. I’m not sure. I can only offhand remember maybe one story now. Where? Which I wrote, where the promise of confidentiality was essential to being able to write the story at all. But I think a lot of times background just really helps to flesh out a story and make it meaningful and analytical and just plain more true than if you have to just go with only the public record all the time. I find actually the promise of anonymity to a source often would allow you to discover a story that needed to be written, and you could end up writing the story without having to rely on that original tip at all. But it was essential to getting the story started and a person aggrieved by that story. Might never even know how you got the tip that led you to the story.

Top Left Corner: Right.

Bill Densmore: Right. So it never comes It never comes up as an issue.

Top Left Corner: Not anything that’s going to cause a court case. Yeah.

Bill Densmore: Right. So that’s a hugely important. Feature of the feeling of being able to promise anonymity and having the source have a reasonable expectation that it’s that promise can be kept. If the source, if the court cases start going in the direction of revealing sources routinely, then that promise becomes a canard. You can’t really make that promise anymore because nobody will believe you.

Top Left Corner: That’s the threat. That’s the real danger. I know myself, I have I have started with the promise of anonymity to a source. And then later the person said, You know what? Just use my name. Just use my name. Because there’s no way that I mean, the things that I have to tell you. Only I know. And if you publish them, they’re going to know it’s me anyway. So just go ahead and use my name and let the chips fall where they may. And that, you know, that can happen too. And I always hope that the person makes that decision with full knowledge of the possible repercussions. Because I tell people, you know, if if what you tell me is going to jeopardize your your safety or your welfare, you know, just consider the possibilities seriously and solemnly. And then I had a story that I was working on in 2020 in North Adams, that required that the person that I actually have, not somebody on record, but somebody who would at least be attributed anonymously and this person wouldn’t even do that. I couldn’t write the story. I couldn’t write the story because they said they don’t even want to have a you know, they just said, here, I’m giving you all this on background. And I said, I already had that background. You know, what you have is actually very specific. And they they, for whatever reason, decided that it was too much of a threat to their job. And I couldn’t write that story. And it took me on. I’ll tell you, boy, did it take me off And I might well wait.

Bill Densmore: The terms were that they weren’t willing to even let you use the information.

Top Left Corner: Correct.

Bill Densmore: From them. Correct. I see.

Top Left Corner: So with with with the unnamed source.

Bill Densmore: I in your case, you couldn’t find another way to get that story from another source on better.

Top Left Corner: Terms. I could not and could not, not in any kind of a timely fashion. So, you know, if if you have time to work on things, sometimes you can. But if it’s a case that you’re writing something that that’s time sensitive, that anonymity. And I think that ultimately, ultimately I think that the person’s faith that. That I would go to bat for them, that I would truly keep them anonymous. I think that there was they they did not have that faith and that that saddened me because, A, it wasn’t anything that I would have gone to jail for, I mean, if I had. But B, just the idea that when I say my word is my bond, I would love people to be able to respect that. And unfortunately, I don’t think that faith in the media is as bad as the reports say it is, but it isn’t good. People’s trust in the media is not great right now in journalism. And so that might be another thing. If this if this sort of, like you said, it becomes routine to just overturn this this confidentiality, then, yeah, no one’s going to trust the the media to keep them safe. Mm hmm. Yeah. In the context of this case, the other thing that I find interesting is that you have a hugely. Powerful apparatus that is. And that is backing. This judge, judge the late Bishop Christopher J. Weldon, who is the person of interest here? They are doing this because they have the resources, They have the institutional clout to to try to force this issue. In the case of Larry Parnass, you have the eagle sort of in the in his corner in the ring, I assume. What is the what is the role that the Eagle is playing now?

Bill Densmore: I don’t I don’t have any personal knowledge of that. I think. Typically. Journalism organizations will have libel insurance that permits them to tap the libel coverage to defend a reporter who is fighting a request for confidential information. So I would suppose that’s the case with the Eagle, but I don’t know anything about that.

Top Left Corner: There’s a member of the advisory committee. Would you advise them to support Larry’s? Larry Parnass, his refusal to turn over any documents?

Bill Densmore: I would expect any news organization to do that if as a as a testament to their trust in their reporter and. The expectation that the rules were followed. I mean, there are there are many news organizations that tell their reporters, look, you can’t promise confidentiality to somebody without checking with your editor first. And so I don’t know. I have no idea. And I don’t believe it’s been discussed in an advisory board meeting. I don’t know what the policy of the Eagle is on that score.

Top Left Corner: Well, Larry certainly has a long history in journalism as well. Mm hmm. He was at the helm of the Daily Hampshire Gazette before he was at the Eagle. Brought on specifically to lead the investigative wing of their editorial staff. I think that we can trust that if there were rules to be followed, he would follow them because he’s. He’s a pro through and through. In this instance? I don’t know. What the typical and there’s probably no typical, but I don’t know what he could be looking at if he’s in contempt of court and refuses to turn over the documents. Do you have any any idea of what people have served, how many, you know, months, years or what?

Bill Densmore: Well, in the few cases where an accommodation hasn’t been reached or the request hasn’t just been dropped, I think it’s it’s typically days not not not months. I mean, you have one has the feeling that the judiciary feels that if the reporter is asked to produce something in the report or refuses, that there has to be jail time to make a make a case, to make an example of the reporter, if that’s where the judge has come down. It’s in other words, it’s it’s more. Demonstrative and punitive. And that doesn’t require long.

Top Left Corner: Yeah, I suppose. I suppose that’s the case. I guess the the one that I was thinking of that made such attention. It was back in 2005, I believe The New York Times is Judith Miller, investigative reporter for The Times that she declared. Actually, it wasn’t contempt of court that she was defying the law by refusing to divulge the name of a source. And. I don’t know how long she spent. A suitable jail. Well, I don’t. I don’t know. I should have looked this up ahead of time because it hadn’t occurred to me. But yeah. So it is not as if a a judge is necessarily going to be cowed by the clout of the organization, either if they’re run to jail near times reporters, they’re certainly willing to jail anybody.

Bill Densmore: It depends on the it would depend on the judge’s own interpretation of their role in this picture. I mean, some judges would just not want to be there. In in the position of doing that for their own personal reasons. Yeah. The opposite.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. And I suppose there has to be some weighing in of the public good of the facts of the case as well. I’m sure there are going to be a case that is potentially affects, you know, thousands of children is going to be way differently than just, some say corporate confidentiality, confidentiality laws that were breached or non-disclosure agreements that were broken. So, yeah, I guess there’s there’s going to be a lot of play. Do you think that we need in this state, at the very minimum, a shield law that presumes the the sanctity of reporter source privilege?

Bill Densmore: I when I was a practicing journalist, I was not particularly enthusiastic about shield laws because I think the minute you start to write a law in this area, then you you may create situations. Where a disclosure is required, which in negotiations with a law might not have happened. In other words, defining in precise terms the metes and bounds of what’s privileged and what isn’t. May produce more broken promises than rather than less. Hmm.

Top Left Corner: I can. I can see how that might happen. I can, indeed. Yeah. And I don’t know. You know, I know probably. You know, you said that you’re not a First Amendment specialist, and I certainly am not. But I may have to find one because I’m sure that each state has a slightly different version. And I wonder if there are any models that do find a good middle ground you could call.

Bill Densmore: I mean, I can give you offline a suggestion of someone to call.

Top Left Corner: All right. Excellent. Well, in the digital greenroom, please do. Yeah, well, we’ll be watching this soon, because I do know that Judge Judge Goodwin is going to be rendering her decision about whether or not to provide greater protection for Larry Parnass or not within the next probably few days to a week. Mm hmm. So I’ve tried to reach out to the Eagle, and they are, I think, probably talking with their lawyers as to whether or not they can speak on the issue. The answer is probably they’re not. I’m guessing. Well, it.

Bill Densmore: Would be wise. Probably not to.

Top Left Corner: Probably not. Yeah. All right. Well, Bill Densmore, again, thank you so much. It has been too long. And I will I will speak to you in the digital greenroom after we hang up. But for now, do you have any projects, any links that I should be putting in the show notes?

Bill Densmore: Not on this subject, I don’t think, no.

Top Left Corner: Does this generally generate you can put.

Bill Densmore: Put in https://itega.org/ which leads to a background on the information trust exchange governing association.

Top Left Corner: Excellent. Well, we’ll do that. And that way people can find out what you’re working on in that area. All right. And until then, have a great autumn. Thank you so much. And there it is. As Larry Pernice told me, that it’s largely in the Eagles favor. I don’t think that the elements that would have made it a complete victory are probably on the table anymore and be very challenging, at least what I assume to say to the judge, No, we’d like you to go back in there and think about this a little bit more. Judge No, I don’t I don’t think we’re going to get that. But there it is. So some sort of justice has been has been achieved. And hopefully we’ll get to talk to Larry at some point and find out just just exactly how he and the eagle feel about this, this ruling. I don’t happen to know. Oh, yes, I do. We have on our next show, episode 174, we have a special guest, Tom Conklin, who has been in radio for quite a number of years. And if he has managed to preserve one thing out of all those years in the crazy world of radio, it is a golden voice. He has just such a wonderful speaking voice and he has created his own his own business. It started being sort of a part time gig, sort of a side hustle, and now it is his main thing. He’s doing those voice overs, commercials, all sorts of reading of, you know, explaining videos, really great stuff. And it’s an interesting world because there’s more and more and more of that sort of work available. And he he tells you tells it like it is. So we’ll hear from Tom Coughlin on his voice, voice service and and who knows what else was sneak in there. Till next time, Stay safe. Be good to each other. Go easy on yourself.

Composite image of the Berkshire Eagle building in Pittsfield, Mass. (left, photo by Joseph A. , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) and St. Michael’s Cathedral, Springfied, Mass. (photo by John Phelan, (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0); collage created by Jason Velázquez, including filters to produce the effect of an ink illustration.

The post Top Left Corner #173: Bill Densmore on protecting source identity appeared first on The Greylock Glass.

Top Left Corner: This is the top left corner at The Greylock Glass. And this is Episode # 172 of the Top Left Corner right here on The Greylock Glass — GreylockGlass.com, the Berkshires’ mightiest independent alternative news thing. I’m your host, Jay Velazquez. And as always, I thank you for tuning in. Welcome to the show, which was first aired, streamed, dropped. However you want to say it. Sunday, October 2nd, 2022. And this is an important show. It really is. We are discussing an issue that is near and dear to my heart, and near and dear to the hearts of anyone who values journalism, investigative journalism, local media, and the freedom that we enjoy here in this country, at least at the moment, to report on sticky issues.

The issue at hand began with reporting, investigative reporting done by Larry Parnass, who is the managing editor for innovation at the Berkshire Eagle, into the allegations of clergy assault on a young boy in the 1960s. This allegation obviously comes on the heels of other such revelations within the Catholic Church. And it was. It was very difficult for a lot of people to to deal with in the very beginning because once the first person spoke up, it turned out that there were a lot of people who had a lot to say as well. This. Particular individual is now deceased. Its bishop, Bishop Christopher J. Weldon and the Springfield Diocese, which has responsibility for this matter, hired a retired judge, Peter Velis, to investigate the allegations and to find out whether or not they were believable and.

Top Left Corner: It turns out that that the former judge, Judge Willis, found out that, yes, in fact, these were, quote, unequivocally credible and quote, that the bishop sexually molested him repeatedly. This is the unnamed victim in the early 1960s in group assaults joined by other clergy. And. We’ll talk a little bit more about the facts of the case with Larry Parnass, but not to too much really, because you can get that that reporting at the Berkshire Eagle. And I encourage you to follow the link in the show notes to the the earliest one report. And then you can sort of, you know, hopscotch up to today. But the issue that we’re talking about is not the facts of the case. The issue is that the Springfield diocese is is vehemently, vigorously trying to compel Larry Parnas to turn over his notes, recordings, conversations, anything that is that pertains to this to this case and to his investigation. It is shocking to think that what that would mean. And it’s it’s pretty clear that when Larry Parnass responded, he told the court that he cannot produce the requested information while protecting the identity of a confidential source. Forcing him to do this might also give future whistleblowers pause. And that’s really important because there is a potential for, you know, if he turns things over to the court so that they become public record, a lot of people in the future might be a lot less likely to speak with journalists.

Top Left Corner: And that is where things start crumbling when it comes to the importance of a free press. So, you know, the diocese claims that the information is critical to determine the consistency of the plaintiff’s statements about his abusers. And the diocese rejects claims that a source’s privacy is a consideration in this case. So very different sides, polar opposites of the issue. And the judge who is hearing this, Judge Karen L Goodwin. Is going to be making her decision very, very soon. Initially, when they sort everything, Judge Goodwin said that it was a classic fishing fishing expedition by the diocese and she narrowed the scope of the diocese requests to Parness and centered on just certain certain materials, certain kinds of information and. The Eagle has asked their attorney to ask the judge to reconsider the the court order that she may issue, that he turned over the information. It’s really it’s really we’re on pins and needles here. Frankly, we’re on the edge of our seats because if Judge Goodwin says you’ve got to turn over A, B and C, that leaves us in an uncomfortable position of having to decide whether to. Provide those materials or whether to to dig in his heels. So let us we’re going to go to that conversation in just a moment. But first, we’re going to have a very short message from FEMA on emergency preparedness.

FEMA PSA: If you can plan barbecues and weddings, you can plan to protect yourself from a natural disaster. Sign up for local alerts, prepare an emergency kit, and make a family communications plan. Get started at ready.gov/plan; brought to you by FEMA and the Ad Council.

Top Left Corner: And with me on the line is Larry Parnass, the Managing Editor for innovation at the Berkshire Eagle. Larry, thank you so much for being on the Top Left Corner.

Larry Parnass: Oh, you’re welcome, Jason. It’s nice to be with you.

Top Left Corner: The the subject today, I and I should say, I wish the circumstances were different because this is this is a tough, sticky situation to be in. No reporter wants to find him or herself in the crosshairs of a of a court order. And so this is I realize this is probably not the easiest time for you. Are you hanging in there?

Larry Parnass: I am, yeah. Yeah. We have very good legal representation. And, you know, this is a foundational principle of journalism protecting confidential sources. So I haven’t had to go through this at the Eagle. And here it is. So we’re dealing with it. But thanks. Thanks for your thanks for your concern.

Top Left Corner: You were the editor in chief at the Daily Hampshire Gazette prior to the Eagle.

Larry Parnass: Yep. I was the editor in chief there for six years, but spent quite a lot of my career in in the North Hampton area with the Gazette. So I’ve been doing journalism in western Massachusetts since 1988.

Top Left Corner: That’s that’s a little while. Yeah. You should probably have a pretty good handle on this this side of the state here by now. The and the thing is, we don’t exist. I mean, for those people who are listening east of, say, you know, Shelburne Falls, we’re out here, we still part of Massachusetts, we’re not independent sovereign state, somewhere between Massachusetts and New York. But, you know, there it is. Did you ever in your time at the at the Gazette, did you ever encounter anything similar to this?

Larry Parnass: Nope. No, I’ve we’ve had court issues before and lawsuits over coverage, which we you know, you always defend vigorously. But this is the first time this is the first time that that in my reporting that I’ve been asked to turn over not only documents but submit myself for a deposition. And the you know, the the the topic here is the diocese is defending a lawsuit filed in early 2021 by a man who alleges he was. Raped by clergy in the early 1960s. That represents about half of the counts in the civil lawsuit. And then between 2014 and the time of the lawsuit claims that the diocese acted to defame him and do other torturous, torturous acts, meaning things that injured him through its handling of his reporting of that clergy abuse, notably involving a long standing former bishop for the diocese, the Springfield Diocese. Christopher Weldon. So that’s that’s the that’s the that’s the nature of what this is about. Of the diocese. Just to fill your listeners in a little bit more. The diocese asked us in March to provide a long list of documents and to be subject through deposition to a long list of of issues and things related to this lawsuit. Anything pretty much anything and everything. That’s the language they use that relates to this complaint and and our reporting on it. It was the Eagles reporting in 2019 that led former Bishop Rozanski to commission an outside review of the whole situation by a retired judge. And then a year later when that report came in, then to acknowledge that this man had had been his, that his complaint had been not properly attended to by the diocese, and that the initial assaults when he was a 9 to 11 year old altar boy in the community of Chicopee, Mass. Right. That he had undergone that pretty horrific.

Top Left Corner: Yeah. Abuse. I did want to I did I was I’m glad that you went to went there because the fact is of the matter is. Well, I won’t say that it’s not disputed in any way, shape or form, because, you know, but this was Judge Peter Velis, who was hired as an independent investigator or as independent as possible. And his his findings from his investigation said that. That they were credible. These claims of abuse were believable. There were some terminology that they used, but essentially that the diocese does not have a problem believing these accounts, that that’s not an issue. In fact, they are so shaken by it, they’ve removed the bishop’s name from that of a hospital. They’re moving his or they’ve moved his remains from a place of honor in the cemetery to a simple, just standard gravestone. No, no, ornate, monumental motion. So the facts of the matter are not really the issue here. The issue for them and and what we’re waiting on on this is Judge Karen L. Goodwin, who’s going to be making a decision on what she thinks should be turned over, if anything. She originally called this, according to your reporting, a classic fishing expedition by the diocese, which is not unusual for attorneys to just basically ask for the kitchen sink. Everything and the kitchen sink when they’re when they’re looking for this. And part of it is a is just a it is it’s warfare. It’s basically legalistic warfare. It takes up resources, it takes up time. It’s sort of psychologically, you know, distressing. And so that’s just sort of what they do as lawyers. Do you think that the diocese has any. Understanding, shall we say, of the the monumental nature of what they’re asking for by asking for pretty much everything.

Larry Parnass: There. The Diocese is, in my view, is entitled to mount a vigorous defense. You know, we would all we would all expect that if we were the subject of a lawsuit. You get good counsel and they do everything they can to find cracks in the case that’s been waged against you in court. So I don’t think personally, I don’t I don’t fault them for that. You know, the issue that comes up is in Massachusetts, while Massachusetts doesn’t have a blanket shield law that bars requests like this for reporters to provide information on an issue for which a reporter has granted a confidential assurance to a source, it’s because there’s no shield law. It’s done by case law. But the case law is extensive. And there there have to be there are in these other cases that have been, you know, come before. There’s a lot of guidance on when a request like this should be considered by the court to be to be allowable. So just to catch people up from March. An attorney for the Eagle fought this subpoena and deposition request. And then in late July, Judge Goodwin pretty sharply narrowed the list of documents and the topics for deposition that she would that she would allow. Right. That that was she ruled without having any hearing on that. And the Eagles attorney, Jeff Pyle, went back to the court and said, you know, with all respect, we think that there’s some issues that haven’t been properly considered here. And he moved to have the subpoena and the deposition request quashed entirely. And then just a week ago, Goodwin held a virtual hearing on this. And both the both Pyle and the attorney for the plaintiff and importantly, the attorney. Attorneys for the diocese were able to speak to this. They they say that they that they need and have a right to this material. And Jeff Pyle, speaking for the Eagle, says that based on the case law, that they haven’t done enough to show that this is discoverable, Right?

Top Left Corner: Yeah. The fact that Massachusetts has no version of of a shield law and they differ slightly from state to states in places where they exist with the shield law exists. But I was actually surprised to find out that Massachusetts does not have its own version of that. But then again, you know, we fall down a bit here in the Commonwealth and a number of issues that, you know, pertain to protections of information. So I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised. The thing that’s interesting to me is that the. The the diocese lawyers claim that they need this. What did they say? They need this to verify. That the claims of the of the plaintiff were consistent with what this victim reported to the diocese. I guess. Explain. I mean, and I realize that this is I’m not exactly sure and I’m not even just this isn’t rhetorical. This is I’m really not sure what they mean by this is why they need these. What’s your understanding of of their explanation?

Larry Parnass: I, I prefer to answer that sort of in the, you know, in the generic sense of if you know, if if an attorney is making that kind of argument, what they would likely be seeking is information that would challenge the, you know, the integrity or the authenticity of what the complaint says and, you know, what the plaintiff is saying. So if if you know, if the defense counsel can find out that a plaintiff and again, I’m not speaking of this plaintiff, but can find out that a plaintiff provided inconsistent accounts. Then when this case goes to a jury, as it will, then that could raise questions about whether the complaint, you know, holds water.

Top Left Corner: Sure. Sure. Now, I think that. It still sounds a little bit like a fishing expedition to me, but I suppose I can. I can see the logic, even if it’s a little thin, given that their own investigation done by, as I said, a judge, retired Judge Peter Ellis, really came up with with, you know, the idea that these were very credible accusations. One of the things.

Larry Parnass: Just on that point, if I could just jump in that, you know. All’s fair in love, war and litigation, I guess because in some in a recent motion, the diocese is pushing back on this notion that the apology that Bishop Rozanski offered to this plaintiff, who wasn’t a plaintiff at that point, former altar boy. Right. The apology and the the description, as in the Ellis report, is unequivocally credible allegation. So the diocese is prepared to argue that, okay, apologies aren’t admissible and even an unequivocally credible account. What that establishes is that there’s a belief that it is a credible account. And they they even hit the all caps button on their motion on this one. They say it’s not necessarily the truth. Hmm. So two years after. Here’s just an observation. Two years after the Ellis report came out and this apology was made by Bishop Rozanski as the church worked to heal, heal and repair its public image and confidence and trust. About that time in that year, they were also going all over the diocese, having parish meetings and asking people to speak out and listen. Two. So two years later now, after all of those efforts to show that they are listening to survivors of clergy abuse in the context of this high stakes litigation with, you know, a potentially very high jury monetary award, they’re saying we are not stipulating that that Bishop Weldon raped this altar boy.

Top Left Corner: Hmm. Okay. Well, I mean, and I think it is you know, it’s not just a fine point. I think it’s it’s very important premise that they are appending. Because you’ll notice actually, I know you’ve noticed listeners will notice that if you think about the sorts of apologies that are offered by any institutions, whether it’s, you know, corporation or an organization of any kind, the things that are said during the apology are often things like, you know, we we regret the pain that this person is going through or, you know, we we feel, you know, what a remorse that there’s that this person is undergoing one of these emotions they don’t apologize for for facts. They typically express, you know, sympathy without apologizing. And I was told by a lawyer years ago, never apologize. If you get into a like an automobile accident, don’t step out of the car and apologize because apology equals confession in a court of law. And they’re suggesting that this is not I mean, I’m sure there’s no legal necessarily standpoint, but they’re suggesting that that time honored. The premise is not valid anymore, which I think is preposterous.

Larry Parnass: Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. I’m sure people are thinking of all of the all the MeToo cases involving prominent people in all kinds of businesses. And, you know, those are the ones that often. The survivors are successful in having them removed from their positions because they work for companies that have to maintain an image, a positive image. And so, yes, but the whole crisis communications field in in you know, in media and public relations, they you know, they’re working overtime, just as you’re saying, to craft these supposed apologies. And again, I’m not speaking about the diocese here, but just in general, that that walk a really fine line between acknowledging responsibility and showing sympathy kind of in a you know, in a in a, you know, vague form.

Top Left Corner: Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. Yeah. So pun intended there. So the I think this is it’s it’s it’s it just makes me feel icky to listen to some of the language that they use. I mean, this this is a Bishop Rozanski saying I want to quote, I want to apologize for the chronic mishandling of this case time and time again since 2014. Now, if I were an organization, an institution, and I was wondering how many other people are out there who maybe would have similar stories to this to this victim? I would potentially hold listening sessions just to see who I might need to pay off quietly so that it doesn’t come to court. That’s I’m not saying that the church that the diocese has done that, but that would be a really good strategy to try to, you know, come up with out-of-court settlements for anybody who does come forward. So anyway. Well, go ahead.

Larry Parnass: Yep. There were there were so many just within the diocese here. There were I mean, this Springfield diocese, which covers the four western counties of Massachusetts, their list of credibly accused clergy is now in the neighborhood of 60, 66 zero and A and about half of them served in Berkshire County.

Top Left Corner: Oh, my.

Larry Parnass: God. At some point, you know, it’s it’s traditional and customary for priests to move around a lot.

Top Left Corner: Sure.

Larry Parnass: And as the as the Globe’s investigations, but almost 20 years ago now showed, that was part of a strategy to move priests who had who had been identified as abusers. Mm hmm.

Top Left Corner: Mm hmm. Yeah. School systems tend have tended to work in the same way that promoting people up and out of being in a position to cause harm as easily or or, you know, just quietly suggesting they find another district to work in. It’s it’s it’s a it’s an amazing thing that the people who are most vulnerable often find their predators are within arm’s reach. It’s it’s astounding.

Larry Parnass: Well, Jason, you just mentioned about paying people off that I know that has kind of a tone to it. But the in point of fact, there have been dioceses all around the country and world that have reached settlement agreements with survivors of clergy abuse. And they then very typically have. Have provisions that that forbid any disclosure, you know, do not. Right. Do not right. So that that has happened. And in in the Springfield Diocese, there was a whole rash of them. Oh, by 15, 17 years ago, after Bishop Dupree was found to have been an abuser. There were there were a couple of local a couple of law firms in the Pioneer Valley that really made it a specialty to represent clergy abuse survivors. So you’re right that very often these kinds of accounts and experiences don’t reach the public. They’re not they’re not they’re not publicized.

Top Left Corner: And I think that. That brings us around to the reason why it’s so important that. Judge Karen Goodwin. Come down on the right side of the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment here, because there are so many opportunities to lock the truth up in a steel box that the more the more opportunities that the press has to to bring to light these cases and the facts of these cases, the more the more protection, frankly, communities have. You said that. This is a quote I think might have been an Ms.. Bellows investigation or piece. Quote, The order harms also harms my ability to engage in investigative reporting with non confidential sources that you said in an affidavit filed earlier. If I’m required to comply with the order, I believe that the content that the potential source is in the future will be less likely to speak with me for fear of entanglement in litigation. Just give us a little bit of a discussion on what you mean by that.

Larry Parnass: Well, that was that that that part of the affidavit was, I think, a little bit of a pile on by our attorney to just really help sound the notes of concern and alarm with Judge Goodwin. You know, it’s primarily, you know, the thing that would be devastating to my to my work as a reporter in in Berkshire County would be for me to be known as someone who, having made a assurance of confidentiality, then of. Succumb to a court to court pressure to break that confidentiality. So that’s that’s really what’s at stake here. And. I think both in that affidavit, which our attorney helped me prepare and in his arguments last week to Judge Goodwin, he he makes I thought he made a strong case that that this is that this has a terribly chilling effect on Eagle on eagle journalism in general, but particularly investigative journalism, where we where we need to be able to be trusted when we tell people that we in the course of our reporting, that we don’t have to identify them. And I. Being an editor for a long time. And I, I really am very judicious and in the stories I work on with reporters, we’re very careful about what warrants someone being unnamed as a source, because I think for many readers that rightly raises questions about is this genuine? Is this real? I mean, so you have somebody telling you something and without a name.

Larry Parnass: Okay, So it’s got a question mark near it. Yeah. And, you know, one fundamental thing is we don’t ever allow and most responsible journalists don’t allow people to make to say things critical of named individuals on an anonymous basis. Now, that’s just not fair. The maybe there’s a cut out there for people who are whistleblowers who are identifying something that is an imminent public threat or public safety issue. But, you know, from most of the time in a you know, in community journalism, we don’t have to wrestle with these things. People are kind of just out there telling their stories and good reporters finding fresh angles on things that people care about. But, you know, here we are awaiting this decision and we don’t know yet what we’ll do if we are held to the judge’s initial ruling on this. And, Jason, it’s very rare for judges to on motions of reconsideration, which is what this is, to change their minds. Yeah, very rare.

Top Left Corner: It’s very rare. It’s almost a courtesy. Yeah. No, I. I think that there have been. Well, there’s there’s a lot there’s a lot wrapped up in what you just said. First of all, I think that it is a feather in the Eagles cap that you continue to maintain those standards of of sourcing. I find. Well, you and I are both old enough to remember when that applied across the board in journalism. I find it much more common that local news sources uphold those standards of making sure that you don’t have anonymous sources. Whereas in the national media, it seems that that has just just about been tossed out the window. Anonymous sourcing goes on with things that don’t even have a particular, you know, real sensitivity to them.

Larry Parnass: But particularly in Washington.

Top Left Corner: Well, yes, especially. Yeah. Especially Washington and surrounding Wall Street.

Larry Parnass: So that’s yeah.

Top Left Corner: The the thing that I you know, it’s probably you know, I can do this for you since it’s not my story, but I think the public should understand that when. When a reporter shows up at your door, at a person’s door, the inclination in almost every regard and every case is don’t talk to reporters, You know, just never talk to reporters. It is. Part of our job. We’re not stenographers. We are in so many ways, you know, we are confessors, We are therapists where any, you know, any number of things in the process of of. Helping somebody tell these stories because most people are averse to it. And of course, everybody wants the spotlight to shine on their neighbor. But most people don’t want the spotlight to shine on them and and to get people to report even on some very simple things can be challenging. So when it comes down to a really. As keep using the word sensitive, a sensitive issue such as abuse you’re asking the source to trust. Trust, a virtual stranger with some really delicate history. Personal history. Talk just a little bit about in general the way. A journalist approaches a delicate situation like that.

Larry Parnass: Well, I can I can tell you how I try to approach it in cases like this. It’s really important. One of the journalist’s principles, even the Society of Professional Journalists, one pager on ethics is do not do any harm inadvertently to people who you’re reporting about. Just be mindful of that. And when it comes to cases of of survivors of of any kind of violence, but and including sexual violence, it’s important for people to be told by reporters exactly how the information will be used, what control they have or don’t have over it once they begin to share their story. And and in my in in my practice, I could share one case we reported about a year ago, August of last year on the the abuse that a woman who lives in Cheshire, Sherry Yasin, suffered at the hands of a family friend who was a priest. And she as of last year, she had been waiting 20 years since she first reported this abuse by this priest to be acknowledged as credible by the diocese. That only happened this month. So in talking to Sherry and I, she’s public about this. And so that’s why I use her name. She I felt that she needed to hear from from the eagle that we were there to to understand her experience, to share it with our audiences. But along the way to make sure that she was okay at every step with what she was saying, and that if she wanted to take something back and not have us not allow us to use it as a detail, I’m I’m open to talking about that. Right. So I, I think that all boils down to maybe that sounds more complicated than it is, really. It’s just in the transaction between the reporter and the source. It has to be open and it has to be. The negotiation has to be on a fair playing field and people have to. People need to be able to have control over how their story is being told. Right.

Top Left Corner: And an element of the Hippocratic Oath thrown in for good measure.

Larry Parnass: I think so.

Top Left Corner: So, you know, that’s those are some excellent standards. And I hope that our listeners who find themselves on. That side of the notebook or microphone. I hope that they remember that they have. You know, they have rights, that they have privileges, that they can do a lot of good. With by sharing information without necessarily putting themselves in harm’s way. But this brings us around quite nicely, I think, although I should say first, one of the things that I find so. Distressingly I distressingly ironic. I use the phrase confessor that sometimes it feels that you as a as a reporter, are a person’s confessor. Because once some people start talking, they just open up. It’s astounding at what once, once the floodgates are open, what comes out. But the the thing that I find so distressingly ironic is that it was the Catholic Church that pioneered the idea of privilege between priests and and their their, you know, their flock. The idea of confidentiality in confession, the idea that that’s sacrosanct, the idea of what was told. So to me, the idea that they would be going after a sort of an equivalent relationship in journalism is smacks of of hypocrisy that only only the legal profession could could make happen. But that’s just my own little editorializing there. But it does bring us back around to the question of what’s at stake if this goes forward. If. The amount of materials that the judge, Judge Goodwin, is is suggesting be turned over. What’s at stake, both locally in this case and what you already touched on, I realize, but also just as a precedent setter, what’s at stake?

Larry Parnass: Yeah, I’m not sure. I mean, I’m not sure about the precedent. I mean, there’s all kinds of case law on this and, you know, actually. In some instances, say in the past five years in Massachusetts, some news organizations have just responded to subpoenas and haven’t even thought. So, I mean, there’s been plenty of bad precedent, I think. Hmm. I don’t know. I think I. That may come clear to me in time.

Top Left Corner: Sure. Yeah. No, nobody has a crystal ball. I realize that. It does seem to me, though, that. Every time you know, that door is pried open a little further, that issues of privacy, issues of confidentiality. Journalism has a has a weaker position each time. And that’s, to me, the big fear. I mean, when when we talk about this confidentiality, it’s rooted in the First Amendment, which says that Congress shall make no law concerning the freedom of the press. And part of that freedom has been interpreted for, well, not as long as people would think, actually, but certainly the last 75 years or so to 100 years, that freedom has included the freedom to be unmolested by either frivolous or vindictive attacks from, you know, subjects of journalism and the Fifth Amendment, which, you know, prevents a person from being forced to turn over incriminating evidence against oneself. And these are not just conveniences. They’re enshrined in the Constitution. So to me, there’s there’s a lot of stake, even if it’s not specifically this case. But the collection of these sorts of cases represent, I think, an existential threat to to the nature of our work. Yeah.

Larry Parnass: You know, the backdrop for that partly, Jason, is the fewer and fewer people talk to reporters. There are a lot of news deserts in the country. And when I was saying about when you interview someone who’s been through personal trauma, you need to be sensitive and you need to explain the process. And that’s increasingly necessary because fewer people know how new stories are are made. What what are their building blocks? What is the role of an interview? And how do reporters and their editors check facts? It’s it’s really. It’s just getting thinner and thinner. Nationally, on in terms of community journalism, I think the Berkshires are lucky to still have news organizations that are, you know, aggressively reporting local news. And there are there are counties that don’t have regular online or in print or hybrid news. News organizations hustling around and talking to people.

Top Left Corner: Yeah.

Larry Parnass: And, you know and yeah. And on that, you know, on the question of what do people know about what reporters do and how should reporters act? How do they build trust and how do they win over sources? And and again, trust is a fundamental factor here in this in this issue. Before Judge Goodwin, as we talked about before, I think even if a reporter in Berkshire County is not talking about a particularly sensitive issue, they they do you know, they do God’s work for the fourth estate if they help. If they represent themselves professionally and that in the telling of stories, they do the very hard work to explain context. They listen hard, they check facts and they get it right. And that builds credibility and trust in the news organization. And I, I think we do that every day. But it is something that I talked to reporters about working to get the story right and and find the right stories to tell and do it in a way that people think, if not for the Berkshire Eagle, what what would we not what would what do we know about our our area? And can I trust this organization? And the more you build that goodwill and faith and trust, the better you are, better able you are to do your work. That’s really, really important. And this this is this whole thing with Goodwin in the subpoena and the diocese. It’s kind of a sideshow to that part of it, but it’s related in that we we need people to be able to trust that we do what we say.

Top Left Corner: Now. You. You are. I couldn’t have said it better. Everything you just said. It was really well phrased. People, they. Whether they know it or not. Local journalists working tirelessly to protect them and to inform them. And sometimes the work doesn’t. The effort doesn’t always result in. And sometimes what seems like a good value, a good bang for your buck when it comes to the amount of resources that a news organization has to spend sometimes just to get a really small story out there.

Larry Parnass: That’s true.

Top Left Corner: Is true. You got it. You’ve got to pay people. Most of us don’t like to work for free. And and even if you send a reporter out and he or she comes back, you know, maybe, you know, not completely empty handed, but, hey, you know, there’s not much of a story there. So what do you want me to do, Chief? Well, you know, you still got to pay that reporter for that time. But here’s my question to you. Other reporters have you know, journalists have gone to the mat over this issue I’m thinking about. Judith Miller was famous back in 2005 or so for, you know, going to jail to protect her source. Are you. Are you considering your options? Is that one of your options of just flatly refusing?

Larry Parnass: We’re not at that point yet, but I would be. I have I have very grave concerns about doing what what we’re being asked to do right now. So I’m very I’m very hopeful that Judge Goodwin will take to heart the arguments that Jeff Pyle presented last week.

Top Left Corner: Let me ask you this.

Larry Parnass: I you know, I mean, I also don’t want to be melodramatic about it, but I mean, I’ve been doing this work for a long time. And it feels like to me that personally, I’m not speaking for the ego here, that personally, for me, it would be very hard to comply with the subpoena.

Top Left Corner: Kind of. What the hell does it all mean? If this is. This is where I am in my career. No. Yeah, No, I get it. Let me ask you this. Do you have a. Do you have an adequate support network whereby if you chose, if the situation arose, that you had to choose in a jail time or whatnot, do you have an adequate support network that you think could sustain you, at least emotionally, psychologically?

Larry Parnass: Time will tell. The Eagle is a tremendous organization and has spared no expense to mount a legal challenge here. So I’ve got tremendous support from from the eagle. And the eagle believes in this fight. Publisher Fred Rotberg believes in this fight. My direct editor, Kevin Moran, believes in it. So I feel, yes, there’s there’s people who who have my back legally on this.

Top Left Corner: Well, Larry Parness, I appreciate the work that you’re doing. I appreciate the commitment of the eagle to to stand on the right side of this issue. And I wish you the best of luck. I know that this decision could come really any moment. And I wish you the best of luck when it does. Thanks for talking to us.

Larry Parnass: Thank you. Thank you. Great to be with you. And I appreciate your interest and concern.

Top Left Corner: Well, that was my conversation with Larry Parness of the Berkshire Eagle. We are all, as I said earlier, holding our breath to find out what happens. We will be speaking tomorrow with. Well, I already spoke to him, but I’m, you know, pressing the audio with Bill Densmore, who is a journalism scholar and a journalist himself. He’s from Williamstown and he has some thoughts on the issue. And we’ll talk to him in episode 173. Until then, stay safe, be good to each other and go easy on yourself.

The post Top Left Corner #172: The Eagle’s Larry Parnass on protection of confidential sources appeared first on The Greylock Glass.