So this is what it looks like...

It often felt like it would never come, but it looks like North Adams' "Mayor for Life," John Barrett III, has finally met his match after 26 years. During the years that I covered North Adams for the Eagle, and spoke to the Mayor almost daily, I often wondered what the end would look like. I especially thought about this after getting one of those hair-dryer treatments when he didn't like a story I'd written, or was forced to bite my tongue and report some unpleasantness about the Harriman and West Airport, or the Hoosac Water Quality District. I had it on extremely good authority that he was already planning his post-City Hall future, but I figured he would go out on his own terms. After all, he hadn't seen a real fight since the 90s, and the dead-end grumblers and sincere proponents of change never seemed to outnumber his base of seniors and lifelong city residents whose kids could have been in one of his grade school classes way back when he was a school-teacher. One of the great things about local politics is how real and raw it is. There is no polling, no big media machines, no legions of consultants (thought there was a little of everything in this race -- I was astonished to see ads for the candidates during a Celtics game last week). It is face to face and personal, and it is impossible to predict. All you can do is listen to the local wiseguys and feel like you're watching baseball before sabermetrics. Watching this campaign through the year, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Nothing would have surprised me, except, perhaps, the size of Dick Alcombright's margin. I'd have predicted it would have been way closer.

Superpower blues

In a piece for The Boston Globe, I compare the state of civil society here and in Russia.