BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION SEPT. 6-8, 2019) — Calling to mind E.B. White’s brilliant essay “Once More to the Lake,” THE PLANET has taken flight, this one to a lake district so remote that a couple of the bodies of water aren’t even on a map. […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY SEPT. 4, 2019) — “And the beat goes on.” Yesterday, at 3:29 a.m., gunshots were heard at Daniels Avenue and Union Street. Police “recovered evidence of a shooting” there, according to Pittsfield police Lt. John Soules. Officer Lupisella spotted a Jeep Cherokee driven […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, LABOR DAY, 2019) — Can we all take a breath for a moment? The recent spade of mayhem, murder, and violence has the city of Pittsfield on edge. Meanwhile, its top officials tell everyone that everything’s A-OK. Choose to believe what you will, but […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION AUG. 30-SEPT. 1, 2019) — The murder of Stephanie Olivieri, coupled with the “Tyjaye and Zyir Shoot-O-Rama” (T & Z, two of the finest courtesy of JIV and your Pittsfield Public Schools), piled onto the savage beating and stabbing of two […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY AUG. 28, 2019) — Thirty-six years ago today, THE PLANET produced a pair of concerts at the Boys’ Club in Pittsfield starring “King of the One Liners” Henny Youngman. Not since then has Pittsfield been the site of so many yuks in so […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY AUG. 26, 2019) — If Dan Valenti were moderating tonight’s mayoral debate, he’d do it PLANET style: Roving moderator with hand-held mic 90 minutes Candidates on bar stools and not behind desks or podiums, each holding a wireless mic, no notes or time […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION AUG. 23-5, 2019) — In 1997, China finally won back Hong Kong from Britain, returning to the great Pacific Rim nation what England had stolen from it in the mid-19th century at the end of the first so-called Opium War. That […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY AUG. 21, 2019) — Early this week, THE PLANET exchanged queries and responses with the Melissa Mazzeo for Mayor campaign concerning Monday’s post. After that, we heard from the candidate herself. We relayed a question that’s been brought up on this board and […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY AUG. 19, 2019) — Not if but when. National and local campaigns have an inverse relationship. Nationally, as we learned the day after Donald Trump became president, campaigns never end. If you’re serious about national office, you become a full-time huckster wheezling endlessly […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION AUG. 16-18, 2019) — The 50th anniversary of the Woodstock festival praise be has been thrust upon us. You may have heard about it. Many of you might also know that a band from Pittsfield, Mass., The Quarry, played the most […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY AUG. 14, 2019) — As we approach late summer and early fall, THE PLANET will be sharing periodic coverage of Campaign ’19. In this semi-annual dog-and-pony show, the corner office (four years), council, city clerk, and school committee will be up for grabs. […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY AUG. 12, 2019) — THE PLANET‘s not buying the “suicide” of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, he of the billionaire lifestyle and friends among the crème de la creeps. Officials found Epstein “unresponsive” in his cell at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Facility. The shocker […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION AUG. 9-11, 2019) — THE PLANET deliberately introduced the previous column (“Shoot Everybody”) with a reference to the “unnecessary” bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We did so to counter the prevailing view that contemporary circumstance justified Truman’s decision to drop the […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY AUG. 7, 2019) — The 74th anniversary+1 of the day of the United States needlessly dropping an A bomb at Hiroshima (prefacing an even more heinous “event” three days later at Nagasaki), instantly vaporizing half a million innocent civilians, seems a precipitous time […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY AUG. 5, 2019) — Pop-pop-pop-pop-poppoppopopopop. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thumpthumpthumpthump. And just like that, in just 12 hours and an action-time of maybe five minutes in the United States of Amnesia, 29 innocent people were gunned down and 52 shot and wounded. Pop, pop … fizz, fizz […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION, AUG. 2-4, 2019) — A formal welcome to August and the weekend. THE PLANET‘s review of a play’s out-of-state production was served, as most readers realized, with the “comments” feature suspended. This produced several reactions, mostly good, with several contacting us […]
