Should you need a lite, trite Christmas post graphic, I offer the attached of our everted “tree”.

Hil K

Hi everyone – sorry it’s taken me so long to put up pictures, but we have been so busy moving and we jut got our internet up in the new house.

Anyway, the riot was so crazy. I don’t really think we expected Umass to win the national title, we were the #3 team and Appalacian State was #1, but because of the riots following the Red Sox victory in 2004 there seemed to be a general concensus that current students wanted to do something even bigger. The riots took place in my section of campus, Southwest, where the towers are that house about half of all students who live oncampus – about 5,000 students. All during the day of the game there were extra police patrolling the campus and they even installed “riot lights” on the sides of the towers. which made it super bright at night.

When the game was over at 11:30 we looked out our window and saw people pouring out of the dorms into the quads below. It really didn’t seem to matter that we had lost. I went outside with my friends, but we stayed around the edges of the crowd, not wanting to get crushed in the big moshes. In the beginning of the riots people were cheering “Go Umass!” and it was as positive at atmosphere as a riot can be. Then, things started to go downhill.

The cops showed up around 11:45 in full swat gear. Nobody was really out of control at this point, but the police immediately began going to extreme measures to try to get everyone to leave. They started setting off flash bombs, which are so loud they make the whole ground shake and are so bright if you’re close to them you can’t see anything for a few seconds. They launched tear gas cans into the middle of the crowd, which sting your throat, lungs, and eyes and make you cough uncontrollably. Then, they started shooting rubber pellets out of what looked like paintball guns. Some of my friends got hit with those and they leave big bruises and really hurt. I managed to escape unscathed by those, but I inhaled a good amount of tear gas.

The riot then turned into an anti-police rally. Not that I am saying I support what my classmates were doing when they were lighting trees on fire, throwing rocks through windows, and throwing trashcans at the police, but i think the police responded inappropriately. They were shooting innocent onlookers and being overly-forceful. If they hadn’t been so harsh right off the bat, the students wouldn’t have responded in such a way and the whole situation wouldn’t have escalated so much.

It took the cops until 1:30am to dispurse the crowds. There were campus police, Amherst police, police on horseback, and state troopers called in to assist.

It was quite an experience to be a part of. My friends and I stayed right near the door of our building so we weren’t in too much danger of being shot at. I didn’t have my camera so I don’t have pictures, but there are many vidoes on UTube by students who were there.

This one I found is from the local news channel. Click on the “Watch the Video” link below the article.

This one was taken in front of my dining commons looking at my building. In the upper right-hand corner is my buliding. We were standing behind those bushes.

Here is the view from the tower next to mine.

Crazy, huh?

Eileen sent us a scrapbook of old photos taken at and near rakkity’s cabin in Gilsum. Here are two from her collection.

Gregory (Dan’s son), Dan and Eileen.

Eileen

Mike,

Last night Dominic and I had what may be (but maybe not) our last games. Dom started off by wiggling his right wrist under my face, saying, “My wrist isn’t quite back to normal. I can’t really bend this hand back as much as I used to.” That being said, we went on to split 4 very close games. No one got less than 11 points out of 15. Dom showed no sign of weakness.

Right at the end of the 4th, there was a knock on the door and there was Dom’s boss, Bob, and his son Jason. They wanted to play team racquetball, we said sure, and we warmed up a little. Jason was prone to smashing the ball as hard as he could, without finesse, but his reaction time was amazingly short. (Not surprising, him being half the ages of his doddering partners.) Bob, however, hit the ball carefully, favoring control over speed. He’s a veteran of league racquetball, and is a very tough player.

Not being used to the close quarters (after all, a court is a small place for 4 guys swinging racquets), one of my back swings swept off Bob’s googles, and another one tapped his nose lightly. No damage done, luckily, but instead of hovering behind me, he backed a little further away. Once when the ball was coming toward me with him in the way, I bumped into his left side, and swung my arm around his right side to hit the ball. He said, “Hinder!” and we had to replay that volley.

Lots of errant balls smashed into backsides, and there were many near collisions of moving bodies, and lots of “hinders”. Dom and I won the first game handily, and afterwards we stood around resting. Dominic looked at his “previously-used” right hand, and showed us his very red pinkie finger. He said, “I’m going to have to sit this game out and let my hand rest.”

So Bob, Jason and I played cut-throat. Bob really got into gear in this game, and beat Jason and me soundly (15-8-6). At the end, Dominic came back to the court, flexing his damaged hand. With a rueful grimace, he said that he wasn’t going to be able to play at all. The hand wasn’t feeling any better. So we said our goodbyes, and arranged for maybe, possibly, hopefully, one more game this coming Saturday. I shook Bob’s and Jason’s hands, and wished them a merry Christmas, and they wished me a wonderful life in Colorado.

Now it’s up to the gods to decide whether to heal Dom’s hand or not. Two days is a relatively short time for a bad finger to improve, so I’m thinking we may have played our last game.

–rakkity

Mike,

Don’t put this on your blog calendar please, but it looks like the last racquetball game between Patrick & me (and also the first since breaking my shoulder ligaments) will occur on Jan 3, 2007. That’s the first day the UMd gym re-opens and the last day before we pack up the Penske truck, so we are locked firmly into that date.

The last one or two rakkity-dominator games will be this week. I’m reminding the Dom right now, as he returns from a trip.

Stay tuned.

–rakkity

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On another subject: Now that I have X11 on my mini, I have also installed xv and the gimp. And they work! So I don’t feel quite so crippled now, and finally, the Mac OS is living up to my expectations. The next test will be to see if I can get a gui interface going between the UMd linux machines and my mini. With a slow connection, it won’t be useful, but if it works at all, it bodes well for Colorado, where I will have a fast connection, come hell or high water!

Ed

Fine Art (QT) and not as finely rendered the youtube version.

Michael,

For the blog…

While Hilary remained unscathed, she did have her first experience with pepper and flash bombs. She took photos and they will go right in her baby book next to the pictures of first steps. There is still a spot in there for her first arrest report.

Jen

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

As most of you have heard, this past Friday night, following the televised NCAA Division I Football Finals, students surged into the Southwest residential area of campus and engaged in extreme uncivil behavior, resulting in damage to property and injury to members of the police force. At the end of this letter, you will find a link to the press release which was distributed related to this event.

While the majority of our students possess the maturity and academic focus appropriate – and required – for a successful career at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a cohort of approximately 200 students actively engaged in the violence and destruction on December 15th. These students do not have a place on this campus.

I am writing to each of you today to assure you that those students who participated in this riotous behavior will be held accountable for their actions. Following due process, consequences may include loss of fall semester academic record; loss of the fall cost of attendance; permanent documentation of discharge in their file; and expulsion from the University. Where appropriate, students will also be charged with the full replacement cost for destruction of University property.

I am also writing to you, as I have in the past, to ask for your continued help in communicating with your son or daughter. Specifically, please emphasize to your student that while he or she may not have actively engaged in the violent and destructive behavior witnessed last Friday night, the additional presence of students as bystanders exacerbates the situation in two ways: 1) students who are participating in destructive behavior are fueled by the attention of student bystanders and 2) campus law enforcement attempts to apprehend the offenders and mitigate the duration and intensity of the behavior is stymied by the presence of hundreds of bystanders. I appreciate your partnership in discussing these points with your son or daughter.

Again, I write to you knowing that most of our students have been focused on finals and preparing for a well-earned winter break. I did, however, want to touch base with each of you and assure you that we will continue to address any instances of uncivil and destructive behavior swiftly and definitively.

Sincerely,

Michael Gargano, Ed.D.
Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life

Debbie,

I’m almost but not quite done, and I won’t be finished until tomorrow.

Okay, here’s the Quicktime version.

Southwest is late – again – but this time hirsute Matthew arrives in a much better mood.

Hi you!

I was thinking about how I hadn’t seen the blog in a while, so I was catching up on it instead of writing my paper about the cultural genocide of Native Americans and saw that people were posting stories! So I thought I’d send a funny story about life here. In the heart of America. Mmmm. Yum. It’s for you and Diane or the blog, whichever you choose. But do tell Diane and Susan (is she there yet?!!!) I say hi if you don’t feel like posting this! (Don’t feel obligated to do so!)

So, this past week I was really fairly sick. It was a cough and throat sickness for the most part, so when I coughed it sounded like a lung was coming up. It was super attractive, let me tell you. So Saturday night I worked on my art project for a while and then my friends and I went to the “Dance through the Decades”, where you were supposed to dress up as different periods (1920s through 2000s) and they played different types of music at different times. (I was the 1950s, Joannah was the 1960s, and Sara-Alicia was the 1980s). After we came back we stayed up a little bit more, and then went to our respective rooms to sleep. My roommate, Cate, rarely sleeps in the room (she’s dating a football player boy thing who lives on the other side of campus) so I got ready for bed and crawled in around 2:30 or 3am, super excited about sleeping for a while until I had to do my art project all day Sunday.

Around 4am, someone else waltzes into the doorway. It is DEFINITELY not my skinny, tall, beautiful roommate. It’s Farah, our “vertical roommate”, as we call him, since he and his roommate Nile live directly below us. Cate and I are on the third, and top, floor, so him and Nile are on the second floor. Farah’s looking around the (dark) room and is still standing in the doorway.

“Hey Farah. What’s up? Do you need something?” He looks down at me all curled up in my bed, steps back a little and goes “O MY GOD HILARY! I AM SO SORRY.” “Mmm. What happened?”

“I TOTALLY thought this was my room. This isn’t my room? Wait, am I on the third floor then? I definitely thought I was on the second floor. O my goodness.”

“No no, that’s totally fine. That’s hilarious.”

I’m obviously laughing my ass off.

How can you not when someone mistakes your room on the third floor for his room on the second floor?! As I’m laughing, I start coughing. And then the “lung-coming-out-of-chest” noise occurs. Which just starts Farah apologizing more.

“Hilary, oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. You’re sick! I woke you up and you’re sick! Go back to sleep.”

“Goodnight Farah! Hope you make it to your room!” Needless to say I was SO EXCITED about seeing him the next day. I started imagining the endless tormenting I would unleash upon him. Mwa haha.

So, the next day around dinnertime I’m in the Oberlin cafe (DeCafe) and I see Farah and his roommate Nile. And just start laughing. And he comes over and laughs a little bit, and then apologizes some more. “Hilary, oh man, that was crazy. I opened the door, and I was taking out my wallet from my pocket, ready to take off my pants and go to sleep, and I look around the room and I’m thinking ‘Hmm, Nile rearranged the room…’ and then I look a little more and I thought ‘And there’s a lot of pink on his side…’ and then you said something and… I’m just so sorry.”

Life is hilarious. My friend Sara-Alicia and I are preparing for sometime when we go downstairs and surprise him and Nile. It’ll be fabulous.

Miss you guys! Take care and I’ll see you SOOOOO SOOOOOOON!!!!! I get back around Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on several factors.

Other than my Farah story, life is good, in case you were wondering. Schooly school is nice. I have a bunch of essays to write as finals, but no exams, which is a real relief. I’d rather have a 10-15 page paper about Native Americans (I have two papers on Native Americans, one for my Native American Identity class and one for Human Rights) than have a test. No doubt. And I just had this HUGE art project due on Monday. I only had a week a half to do it, and I made a full body cast of my friend Joannah. Using plaster impregnated gauze. We did pieces of her at a time – top of leg, bottom of leg, back, chest, top of arms, bottom of arms, etc, etc. It took forever. And then my other best friend Sara-Alicia helped me put together all the pieces and cover the life-size creation in newspaper clippings and flyers from the School of the Americas protest. We set her up with her ankles (no feet) attached to cinderblocks, and she was pulling on cinderblocks with a rope as well. It was an endeavor for me and all my friends. I was at the art studio 10 hours Sunday, and Sara-Alicia was there for 8. I couldn’t have done it without her and Joannah and some friends who came over for a plastering party where we just plastered for about 3 hours. It was intense. But I love how it turned out, and my class seemed to like it a lot too, so that’s good.

I have to go now, since Sara-Alicia and I are going to the viewing of 5 minute movies made my a cinema class. Much much much love! I’ll take pictures of my art project FOR SURE and send them to you, since it was quite a task.

Love you! Take care of yourselves! See you soon!

HilB

My painting of the kitchen was going along swimmingly, and the walls that were finished looked good, if I do say so myself. We had just had new Silestone counters, oak cabinets, lights, and a new window put in, and except for the unpainted walls, everything was fresh and bright. Each workday morning I would get up a half hour early and paint about 50 square feet. I had been doing this for a week, and cleaning up completely afterwards before Beth rose. Then one morning at breakfast, Beth suddenly noticed. “That wall looks better than the other one”, she remarked over her coffee, “Have you been painting?” I admitted the sneaky deed, and pointed out the one wall and part of the ceiling that I needed to do. 

The next morning, I got up early as usual, and went down to the kitchen. Not planning to surprise Beth anymore, I had left the half-full gallon of paint on the counter, where it sat with its lid on, resting on a couple of sheets of newspaper. I spread some newspapers out on the floor and counters under the part of the ceiling I was going to paint that morning. Rather than stir up the paint, I decided to turn the can upside down and let it mix by itself while I toasted a bagel. I flipped over the can, and had just barely leaned over towards the toaster oven, when I realized the paint can’s lid wasn’t seated in the can. Paint was gushing out from under the can onto the newspaper, and waves of paint were now streaming towards the bare parts of the counter, aiming for the floor. Our new, precious oak floor! I envisioned creamy latex paint all over the oak, flowing in under the stove and the refrigerator, where it would take days to clean it out.

“Beth will kill me”, I thought. as I grabbed for the now almost empty can and managed to set it upright, while staunching the flows with newspapers from other parts of the counter.

Beth chose that moment to pad blearily into the kitchen. I shouted, “Newspaper! More newspaper!”. Like Florence Nightingale throwing a tourniquet on a war casualty, Beth jumped into the fray. Working together we absorbed the half gallon of spreading paint with bunches of newspaper, flopping them into the kitchen trash can. It took about a half hour to clean up the counter, but, thanks to a week’s worth of the Washington Post, we had managed to confine the flow to a few horizontal square feet, and somehow none of of the half gallon dripped on the floor. 

And Beth didn’t kill me. In fact she was very nice about the whole thing, and didn’t make me grovel or hire a competent painter.

–rakkity