BY DAN VALENTI Last Call, Gents. (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, March 23, 2011) — First, the barkeep announces “Last call” for Peter Marchetti, Paul Capitanio, Uncle Gerry Lee, and Jonothan Lothrop for compliance on our Three Top Questions survey. Each has until midnight tonight to go on record stating their views on PCBs, Hill 78, and […]
BY DAN VALENTI (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, March 22, 2011) — Food. We need it to live. Many of us love it past the point of need. Food is the sun that had to shine on the planets. It’s a the soil that nurtured the seeds. Food is rain, wind, and weather. What we eat is a […]
BY DAN VALENTI In a corrected score to our recent poll of city councilors on three of the most important questions facing the city (PCBs and industrial toxins, Hill 78, and unfunded liabilities), The Planet stands at 7-4 as Ward 1 councilor Christine Yon posted the following on our website: 03/20 at 5:29 pm CHRISTINE […]
BY DAN VALENTI Today, we present the views of city councilors on the three “show stopping” questions that should, and will, if common sense and wise care have anything to do with it, become enormously important in municipal Campaign 2011. To recap and as a continuation of the discussions initiated on and by The Planet, […]
BY DAN VALENTI In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, and to move briefly away from the flotsam and jetsam of local perfidy, hostile takeovers, and the thumb-pumpkins of politics, The Planet asked our food consultant, Chef Pierre Francois De la Soda, to submit an appropriate recipe. The recipe is real (no joke), and tonight, in […]
BY DAN VALENTI (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MARCH 16, 2011) — The plot thickens like gobs of gorilla glue in the subarctic regarding the hostile annexing by The Machine of the Westside Farm Project (WFP) from the hands of grassroots gardeners. The move, which sources say is the brainchild of Department of Community Development Czarina Deanna […]
BY DAN VALENTI (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, March 15, 2011) — The Boring Broadsheet is forever living up to its name, though once it a while it presents a story that actually would qualify as fitting for a real newspaper. The Planet refers to Dick Lindsay’s informative piece on the continuing riff-tiff between the Pittsfield School […]
BY DAN VALENTI Pittsfield is Poisoned FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE (MARCH 14, 2011) — Alone among local media, The Planet has driven the recent and urgent discussion on industrial poisons in Pittsfield. Ironically, this came about as the result of a development that, at first, appeared to have nothing to do with PCBs, mercury, and the […]
BY DAN VALENTI Toxins, Hill 78, and Unfunded Liabilities: Planet Puts Councilors on the Spot First things first, as my sequential numeraries insist: Today, The Planet sent the following e-mail to 11 city councilors: MY RIGHT HONORABLE GOOD FRIENDS For www.planetvalenti.com, I am looking for on-the-record positions on the following issues. I invite your written […]
BY DAN VALENTI Quake a Reminder for All of Us First, The Planet has to say a word about the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and resultant tsunami that has devastated northern Japan. The scope of this tragedy cannot be comprehended, except by metaphor. In the early moments after such an event, it is impossible to get […]
BY DAN VALENTI ‘People Will Continue to Get Sick and Die’ Today, The Planet presents this remarkable story on PCBs. We call it “remarkable” for the way it explains what’s at stake for Pittsfield and Berkshire County in as concise, coherent, and complete a treatment as we have to date seen. Guest writer Dave Martindale […]
BY DAN VALENTI Ruberto PEDA Bound? The Planet has yet to master bi- and tri-location, but we have something even better: our network of spies. They were at the City Council meeting last night, the CEDS meeting earlier in the day, in various offices at city hall, in the municipal departments, in many places downtown, […]
BY DAN VALENTI In its draft document assessing Berkshire County’s strengths and weaknesses, the CEDS (community economic development strategy) committee produced a work that reveals the following: From 1970 to 2009, the population of the United States grew 51.01%. In Massachusetts, the population grew 15.90%. Berkshire County, however, experienced a 13.46% drop. The county’s two […]
BY DAN VALENTI On Jan. 21, 2011, the Berkshire Chamber of Commerce sent a “Key Legislative Alert” e-mail to its members. The “red-phone bulletin” tried to drum up support for a “low-impact solution that still meets EPA health standards” regarding the polluted Housatonic River. This seemingly innocuous letter hides much and reveals more. HIDDEN This […]
BY DAN VALENTI What is a question? Ah, The Planet just played with your mind. We just wrote a linguistic tautology, putting a query in the form of a question? In much of Eastern philosophy and thought, answers ride questions only when the questions stop. Questions serve as horses that gallop unsaddled. Only when question […]
BY DAN VALENTI The poisoning of Pittsfield by General Electric ranks among the great socially sanctioned “crimes” in U.S. history. Of course, little if any of the process was against the law, and “crime” is nothing but a legal concept varying among cultures. In Pittsfield, GE manufactured transformers, electrical equipment, plastics, and other products in […]
