Amherst Club Notes –January 26, 2010

 Guest: Betty Sharpe, guest of Jacquie Price. Betty is the author of Amherst A to Z.

 Announcements: Bobbye Hertzbach is moving to Silver Spring, MD to be near children and grandchildren.

Phyllis has more tickets, and needs more help cleaning up after the Love Notes party.

June Gordon has shingles

Ruth Miller is ill

Rut Hooke: there will be a Haiti benefit concert on Saturday, 7 p.m. at Grace Church.

Jim Scott reminded us of sales of Love Notes tix.

Vivienne circulated sign-up sheets of the party. There were pix of the gift exchange on the back table.

 Speaker: Assoc. Prof. Joseph Krupcznski of the Architecture and Design Program (new at UMass).

He has started an Outreach design Center to give students real projects to work on.

The first project was the Skinner Coffee House Building in Holyoke. It had been started by the Skinner daughters in 1910 as a lace for working women, and subsequently had served as a community center for various immigrant groups. Having stood vacant for years, the Mayor wanted to tear it down. The Design group did a lot of research and came up with plans to renovate the building, but the Mayor had it torn down anyway.

The next project, also in Holyoke is a combination farm and farm store, restaurant, and meeting place for the Latino community (mostly Puerto Rican). It seems to be moving along.

The plans for the Skinner project are on the UMass web site under ‘scholar works.’  Put in his name to get to the files.

Irv and Doris on the raffles.

Reported by Sara Berger