By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY, JAN. 8, 2014) — THE PLANET has an explanation for the confusion at the end of Monday’s “churchy” Inauguration Day activities. New council president Melissa Mazzeo seemed baffled when it came time to make a motion to adjourn the meeting. It appeared as if Jonathan Lothrop, Mazzeo’s newly minted vanquished, came to the rescue by providing counsel for implementing Agenda Item 15.

In itself, the incident amounts to a hill of squat, but as an indicator of Mazzeo’s ability to serve as council president, it has value. Her supporters and her critics strongly disagree on the councilwoman’s fitness to gavel in and gavel out the meetings.

Mazzeo later gave us her perspective “to clarify the ending of the meeting yesterday.”

She said she “had the agenda in front of me as well as the program. The program had the Taconic [High School] Chorus coming back in to sing a song before we adjourned,  so I was waiting to see them come through the door. No one informed me that that part of the program was scratched. When I realized they were not coming back in to sing, I asked for a motion to adjourn.

“If you remember at the last Inauguration ceremony,” Mazzeo continued, “President [Kevin] Sherman adjourned the meeting only to have a group of Boy Scouts come in the door and sing a number of songs. I was just trying to follow the program. I do know how to end a meeting; that is Demeter’s 101. If I didn’t know how to end a meeting, I definitely wouldn’t be sitting up there. It would have been helpful for someone to tell me that the chorus wasn’t singing, since some people where aware.”

We thank our Right Honorable Good Friend the councilwoman for this explanation while wondering who failed to inform her of the change and why? Was it to set her up? Was it a simple misunderstanding.

Ever ready with spade and shovel to dig, THE PLANET unearthed this little tidbit regarding the THS choir’s cancelation at the encore. A well-placed source source says it was Mayor Dan Bianchi‘s wife, Theresa, who engineered the blackout. The Taconic choir initially rehearsed a patriotic number and the Simon and Garfunkel song, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” They were to sing the first to open the meeting and the second to close it. They sang the first. They got the hook on the second.

The group had rehearsed both songs were set, until, according to our source, the choir received late notice from the mayor’s office that it would not be allowed to sing “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” It seems that the mayor’s wife thought the song was a swipe at the mayor’s performance in office! That would seem to explain the confusion at the end of the meeting. The agenda did list a closing song by the THS singers. The program did, according to Mazzeo.

THE PLANET understands how petty politics can be, especially in Podunk, but interpreting “Bridge Over Troubled Water” as a political swipe? One would need an electron microscope to get down to that Nixonian, sub-quarkian level.

Here are the lyrics of this tune:

“Bridge Over Troubled Water”

This is by no means great poetry, but as a pop song, not bad. We see in the song an uplifting expression of friendship and unconditional support. Paul Simon said of writing the song, “I have no idea where it came from. It came all of a sudden. It as one of the most shocking moments of my songwriting career. This is considerably better than I usually write.”

Simon wrote the tune in 1969 on a summer cottage he rented with Art Garfunkel on Blue Jay Way in Los Angeles. For trivia buffs, The Beatles’ George Harrison wrote “Blue Jay Way” from the “Magical Mystery Tour” album in the same cottage. In discussing “Bridge,” Simon made no mention of Dan Bianchi, who at the time was in the same class at Pittsfield High School as the redoubtable Dan Valenti, or of future Pittsfield politics.

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MORE ON THE BORING BROADSHEET’S WOES

THE PLANET heard from another of our colleagues from deep inside the newsroom at The Boring Broadsheet regarding the death of The North Adams Transcript and The Advocate.

We asked our source, The Insider, if management had said anything to the staff regarding the dramatic changes: “They told us nothing. We read it when it was posted online, just like everyone else.” Will there be loss of hours or jobs, we asked? The Insider said, “I would imagine the people who worked on The Advocate will suffer, but so far as I know no one else. Of course, as you know, we had an editor leave The Transcript  (Michael Foster), and this position won’t be replaced. This goes along with several other Transcript office positions (one receptionist, an ad seller and maybe others) that I happen to know were also not replaced.”

Does The Insider see the moves as a turn-around of BB‘s continuing decline into financial ill health?

“No, The Insider said. “One only need consider the precipitous decline in salaries and benefits over the past decade and more to gauge [the financial erosion]. I’d be curious to see the figures of how much management figures to save by ceasing ‘Script production. I’d also like to know whether the ‘Script reporters can expect to see a modest increase in pay, now that they are Eagle reporters. Otherwise, the paper will have this curious “North County reporters make roughly $3 less per hour” policy.

As for newsroom morale, The Insider described it as “perennially low. When people feel they are underpaid, their work under-appreciated, their responsibilities seemingly on a constant rise without a corresponding increase in pay (no raise has been given since 2008, company-wide — despite ample increases in responsibility for absolutely everyone), positivity is hard to come by. I can say that most people love the work of journalism — the varied day-to-day, the meeting people, the learning about new subjects — but they also, for the most part, hate the company. The reasons for this are too many to list.”

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I am just a poor boy though my story’s seldom told. I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises. All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest — Simon and Garfunkel, “The Boxer,” 1968.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

THIS