Sylvia's Journal

Our daughter Sita is on the board of the Lighthouse Collective. It began as a pioneering self‑directed learning center (in Holyoke, MA in 2015) and was originally known as LightHouse Personalized Education for Teens. Last night was their annual fundraiser. Sita has been leading the preparations for the event and invited us. We decided to make it a long weekend in Western MA and reserved a hotel because her home was already full.. We had not been in this part of the state for a long time. It was a fun outing that did not require standing in TSA lines. True, there were some traffic jams on our way westwards, but that is more manageable than the current airport chaos.

The evening started with a dinner buffet, drinks and wonderful music from a group called the José Gonzalez and Criollo Classico Trio. The noise was too loud to mingling, as the program indicated, so I enjoyed sitting at a table right in front of the musicians and enjoy the dinner. Gonzalez is apparently a well known Puerto Rican musician and that brought back memories to my recent stay there. Apparently there is a sizeable Puerto Rican community in Holyoke.

We then moved to an adjacent venue for the speechifying, awards and fundraising. It was all very uplifting and motivating and encouraging in these dark days where we get little of such lifts when we learn about the shenanigans at the highest levels of our government. We heard a father talk about how is son, who had been given up by the school system, found his voice and passions at the school. We heard from a student who is about to graduate who had been a mental wreck after COVID. She also found her voice and interests she could not have imagined during her mental depression.

I was so proud of my daughter being involved in this school. It is exactly her kind of school. Her son, our grandson, went to the school last year but that did not work out since he was too young and had difficulty with the self-starting and self-motivating aspects of the school,. Besides there were no other kids his age, and for a kid who is just starting middle school, high school kids are just light years ahead in their development.

We are staying in a typical western MA motel that is part of a group of motels built alongside the river. Riverview is a bit of a misnomer since we are looking out on a dumpster that is blocking our view. We call these hotels Patel Motels because they are always seem to be owned by members of the Indian patel clan. And indeed, when I checked in, a young Indian woman handed me the keys. I did not ask her yet whether her name was Patel. It seems that the mid range hospitality business sector in this part of the state is dominated by Indian who also happened to have the Patel family name. We recently watched a very funny movie (Meet the Patels) about an Indian-American man who is about to turn 30 and gets help from his parents and extended family to start looking for a wife in the traditional Indian way.There are many references in the movie to the various branches of the Patels across India.