By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2012) — THE PLANET, in its search for stringers, stingers, and strongers to cover arts and baseball this summer, has turned up one writer. We would like more. If you would like to cover topics in these two areas, if you know something about that which you propose to cover, and you have writing ability, we would be interested.

Have You Got ‘The Beat’?

Oh, and you must also be willing to “level in print,” which is a way of invoking unflinching honesty. Whether a performance lifts one up to the angels or stinks out the joint, you must be have the critical faculties to know the difference and to say so directly.

* Arts coverage include theater, dance, fine art (painting and sculpture), music, and the like. Venues will be all the major theaters and performance outlets.

* Baseball coverage will be the beat writer covering the Pittsfield Suns in their inaugural season at Beloved Wahconah Park. This is the Suns debut in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League. The franchise is run by the respected Goldklang Group, which also runs the short season Single A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, the Lowell Spinners.

Writers receive media passes for free admission to all events, a byline in THE PLANET, and a small honorarium.

Writers can apply by e-mail @ danvalenti@verizon.net or snail mail to Dan Valenti, Europolis Management, PO Box 1268, Stockbridge, MA 01262. Send a cover letter and your C.V.

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MEMORIAL TRIBUTE OR BOOZE CRUISE?

The pre-Memorial day trip by 25 Pittsfield fire fighters was characterized by Fire fighters union president Tim Bartini and Lt. Dan Amuso as a trip to the 911 memorial, to pay homage fallen brethren. To hear their version, the troops had figurative milk and cookies on the way down, behaved like altar boys in the solemnity of the World Trade Center, and on the way back they prayed the Rosary.

Or …

We heard from another source, which makes two now, one who was on the bus and upset by what he saw. He tells “some” us the firemen ventured down to the site of the former WTC  to pay respects and also to hit the bars down in that area.

Bartini says there was one case of beer going down. We have two sources who say there were at least six. Amuso admits to the men having a beer or two. Our sources say counting the beers going down, the pounding away at the pubs, and the well-fueled drinking going back, many on the bus “were bombed.” The behavior of the men on the way back was described as raucous, raunchy, loud, and disgusting. There were allegedly cries of “Let’s see your tits,” directed at NYC women pedestrians.

Not everyone aboard was amused.

Is This How the City of Pittsfield Should be Represented?

THE PLANET has no objection to guys having fun, for we have had our share. But these men were traveling as members of the department, in their dress uniforms, if Bartini and Amuso can be believed, representing the city of Pittsfield. These guys were calling cards for every person who lives in Pittsfield. How many citizens would be happy with, “Let’s see your tits?”

We aren’t endorsing either version of the bus trip. We shall leave that up to our wise readers, who knowthe behavior of “bands of brothers” when they are on their own, drinking, and sans women.

Their behavior calls to mind the “boy’s club” fraternity atmosphere engaged in by the Secret Service patrons of prostitutes. The scandal that erupted in Cartegena, upon further investigation, seems typical of a “boys will be boys” culture and mentality when you let guys on the loose, on the road. No wives or girlfriends were invited on the firemen’s booze bus to NYC.

THE PLANET has no problem with “boys being boys,” but when the men are on “on duty,” as public servants, that’s where we draw the line. Did Bartini and Amuso level with us? We could  dig that, but when they give us jive talk, they aren’t doing it to THE PLANET. They’re doing it to the thousands of readers we represent, playing them for fools by trying to smoke their fun in the somber cloak of 911 stretches credulity beyond its limits.

As even non-firemen know, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

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PLANET, NEW BCC PRESIDENT, ELLEN KENNEDY, FETED AT RECOGNITION DINNER

On Thursday, May 24, THE PROFESSOR and MRS. PLANET found ourselves at Wahconah Country Club for the annual Berkshire Community College employee recognition dinner. We were one of the honorees, being cited for our 20 years as a member of the English Department faculty. Our table included MRS. PLANET, Jackie Koldys, Barkat Curtain, Christina Barrett, and others.

The crowd feted outgoing BCC President Paul Raverta and welcomed presumptive President Ellen Kennedy, who made a gracious speech to open the evening. THE PLANET will not forget that in our invitation letter inviting us to be honored, a form letter with a specific fields for name and years of service filled in, Ellen Kennedy included a warm, personal note.

Kennedy has been part of the BCC community for four years. She has become well known and well respected in the college community. After seeing her warmth, her charm, and her sincerity on display at the dinner, we have no doubt she shall be well loved as well. We commend the Board of Trustees for their exemplary actions in selecting the next president of one of the county’s most vital institutions.

For our legion of critics, detractors, and sour pusses, you will be pleased to note that Dan Valenti came in for a good roasting in a power point presentation. They nailed us pretty good, and we loved every minute of it.

Such Fondness in Our Hearts for BCC

This writer has been associated with BCC for every decade of its existence. We took our first two college classes there in Fall 1969, a course in Western Civ from Bob Morrell and a math course taught by Art Phinney, where we  We built an academic record at BCC, and transferred to Union College in Schenectady, where we won high honors. From there, graduate school, culminating in a Master of Arts degree in journalism from the finest J School in the county, the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. 

After a five year career as a newspaperman and a stint in the English Department at Le Moyne College, we returned to the Berkshires in 1980. In 1981, we taught our first course at BCC. Our present affiliation, going back two decades, has brought with it the ebb and flow of a multitude of faces — learners with various degrees of motivation, ability, and work ethic. Each of them has taught “The Professor” so much more than he taught them.

Next week, with the Summer 2012 semester, we begin our 21st year. It has been a labor of love. We thank our beloved BCC for providing the opportunity.

Godspeed, Ellen Kennedy.

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THERE ARE PARADES AND THERE ARE PARADES

We enjoyed immensely one of the year’s great, sweet, unpretentious treats: the Stockbridge Memorial Day Parade. Not this is what a hometown parade should be: Simple, eye-to-eye, breathable, and full of more warmth, good will, charm, and innocence than a Norman Rockwell painting.

With MRS. PLANET and our weekend guest Lisa,  we ventured downtown. There was a young boy selling lemonade and popcorn from a sidewalk stand, doing great business because few could resist the cuteness. If this was in Pittsfield, the kid would have been busted, cuffed, and carted off for vending without a license.

Friends, Foods, and Festivity

Downtown, about 10 minutes before showtime, we ran into many dear friends, including Nancy Fitzpatrick, David Scribner (on assignment for the Berkshire Record), Tom Stokes, Lilian Bender, and the redoubtable Mary Flynn, at 94, still the heart and soul of the town.

The parade took less than 10 minutes, including the pause at the Civil War Monument on Pine Street and Prospect Hill Road. Retired judge Jim McElroy, a deacon at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Stockbridge, read the invocation, followed by a soul stirring rendition of Taps.

The parade finished at the Clock Tower, in front of the old town hall, where Stockbridge fed all who wanted to eat.

How unlike Pittsfield, with its pretension, its bombast, and its tackiness of the Fourth of July Parade. How it’s possible to spend $85,000 to $90,000 on a cheesy tedium, an impersonal conga line of excess, we don’t know, but we can ask the parade organizers. What a waste of $90,000. When the Boring Broadsheet reported how the fund-raising for the parade this year is down, we took that as a good news story.

We hope that Peter Marchetti will do as he had said after he lost for mayor. We hope he has pulled out of the Parade Committee for 2012. Last year, the Fourth Parade was an embarrassment to the city. It went on forever, and the lowlifes were in full attendance. You could tell by the mountains of trash they left in their wake.

The way to save the Pittsfield Fourth of July Parade is to:

* Fire the entire committee

* Hold reapplications for volunteer.

* Select a staff that knows what it’s doing and that realizes that a “hometown” Pittsfield Fourth of July Parade will have no paid talent, no Macy’s hot air balloons, but every bit of the home town warmth and talent we saw today in Stockbridge.

* Simplify, simplify, simplify.

THE PLANET recommends the Parade Committee scrap all plan,  adopt a budget of $5,000, recruit all homegrown and volunteers marchers and end the parade at Beloved Wahconah Park, where people can get free eats. Make it Community Event rather than the production of a closed-group of “volunteers” who have scorn for new ideas and who are too stupid to see the appeal of a classic, small, unpretentious, and truly Hometown parade.

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LET IT NEVER BE SAID THAT OUR ROOMS ARE GLOOMY AND NARROW IS OUR BED. SAY, RATHER, THAT WE OPEN TO THE THE LIGHT, AND TO SLEEP, WE REST UPON NIGHT.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.