By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 2013) — In our dissection of the school department budget process [see Friday’s PLANET], we presented this quote from and THE PLANET‘s analysis of Pittsfield’s outgoing interim school supt. Gordon Noseworthy:

Noseworthy spoke the usual inane bromides in discussing the budget: “We need a vision of excellence with a long-term approach to education.”

What does that babble mean? The school department “needs” “a vision of excellence?” It “needs” “a long-term approach?” I thought those were already in place? Read your own school propaganda, Mr. Super, and you’ll see lots of talk from previous years about “vision” and “excellence” and lots of other buzz words that mean crap and have an equal redolence. Your statement contradicts what your department contends.

The quote reveals volumes in exposing the rhetorical dead-man’s float school department officials use to justify their annual gouging of taxpayers. Note what The Nose says about “vision, excellence, and a long-term approach to education.” He says, “We [the school department and the city] need them.”

“We need them.” That can only mean the city doesn’t presently have them. Amazing, given the nearly bone billion dollars given to the school department in the past 15 years. The Nose’s admission, inadvertent as is might have been, proves that the school department has, these hundreds of millions of dollars later, still no clue on a direction (“vision”) or strategy strategy (“long-term approach”).

If the Nose had the chance to take these words back, we guess he would. Unfortunately, there is no “rewind” button on the reel-to-reel tape of his ersatz uttering. He said it, and there it is. The words amount to an actual admission that most everything up to now in that department has been [PICK ANY OF  THE FOLLOWING YOU THINK MAY APPLY]:

* False

* Fake

* Fraudulent

* Forged

* Feigned

* Spurious

* Counterfeit

* Pseudo

* Sham

* Pretended

* Pretensed

* Contrived

* Affected

* Insincere

* Inauthentic

* A put-on

* All of the above

* None of the above

The Nose also proves THE PLANET’s prescience, since that has been our overall message ever since it became clear that Ed Reform in the state has been all about rewarding the special interests, cheating “The Children,” and robbing taxpayers. We wonder how or if this comment will come into play on Wednesday or Thursday of this week in City Council chambers.

On Wednesday at 6 p.m. in chambers, the school committee takes up the school budget. On Thursday, it’s the city council’s chance. Keep your eyes on Our Right Honorable Good Friend, councilor Clairmont. Got that, Lady Behnke?

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HANDING OFF TO McSUPER, A.K.A., “JAKE LITE”

Meanwhile, in the great relay-race to the taxpayer’s wallet, The Nose will be handing off the baton to Jason P. McCandless, ex super of the Lee School Department. Wouldn’t you know it, that McCandless’ nickname is “Jake.” Just a coincidence or another sign that The End Times are nigh?

When Pittsfield finally got rid of the previous Jake, Jake Eberwein III, who landed on his feet at MCLA in what we guess had to be a pre-arranged deal engineered by school prez Dr. Mary Grant, it took the Pittsfield school committee two tries, a lotta money, and a bunch of candidates before picking … another Jake. By the way, you remember Mary Grant. More likely, you don’t. She won herself a prestigious spot on that most do-nothing of boards, the PEDA board, where for the length of her tenure, she attended only one meeting. She was more rarely present in PEDA meetings seen than palm trees in the Antarctic. She got her name on the letterhead, though, and a new line for her resume.

THE PLANET can’t imagine why the PSD hired another “Jake.” Let’s guess. Rhymes with “fake,” perhaps? We can also choose from “ache, bake, Blake (maybe he was an English major), break, cake, crake, drake, flake, lake, make, quake, rake, sake, shake (as in “down”), slake, snake, spake, stake, steak, take, wake, awake, backache, bespake, betake, cornflake, daybreak, keepsake, earache, earthquake, forsake, heartbreak, mandrake, mistake, namesake, opaque, outbreak, partake, retake, snowflake, sweepstake, toothache, bellyache, johnnycake, overtake, patty-cake, and undertake.

With each new super or mayor for that matter, the proper thing is to say, “Let’s give him a chance.” The city, however, has been burned so many times by that approach that now THE PLANET proposes for Jake Lite (or McSuper) a  “Guilty until proven innocent” stance. Let’s assume the guy’s going to come in having already had the secret-handshakes, the masonic rites, and the “talking to” (in tongues, of course) by the GOB. In other words, let’s assume he’s going to come in with the mission of first perpetuating the status quo and second adding to the Money Grab (bottom line, that means he will grow the school budget, add to staff, and look the other way when the next $9,000 theft of prom money occurs).

Should this approach be incorrect, we shall be pleasantly surprised.

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SUNS OPEN UP SEASON TWO

THE PLANET wishes great success to the Pittsfield Suns of the collegiate Futures League. The organization looks to build off the success of last’s years initial campaign. The team managed to squeeze seven soaked innings in for Opening Night this Thursday of last week, a game that ended in a 3-3 tie.

Earlier in the day, we stopped by Beloved Wahconah Park, and as usual, the city maintenance crew had the field in wonderful shape. There’s something about a well-groomed ball field sitting under an early June sun that speaks of a mystery to be.

We gazed at the reddish-brown dirt of the infield, a form of clay, and saw a plane of smoothness begging for a pair of spikes to leaves its tracks, marking that A Ballplayer had been there. We went back in memory to our own playing days, of countless innings enjoyed on lazy summer afternoons, when at Deming Park we would at times actually have to wait to get a field on which to play. We hears echoes of our first major league game, a 1958 doubleheader at Yankee Stadium with our dad, brothers, and Uncle Joe. We remember looking down on the infield from our perch in the first-base-side grandstand, the diamond in a blue haze that seemed to announce the importance of the play.

Generations of the playing fix the stands’ dissolving hold, even now, in our memory.

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“Thus I pacified psyche and kissed her, / And tempted her out of her gloom — / And conquered her scruples and gloom.” — Edgar Allan Poe, from “Ulalume: A Ballad”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.