From New Hampshire Gazette Last of four parts The renovated barn at the Montague Farm, as seen this month.  Credit: CAROL LOLLIS The second week of August is still high summer in New England. But up in the hills of Montague, Massachusetts, not quite 20 miles south of the Vermont border, it’s not uncommon to see the reddening of maple leaves, the first hints of death of the natural year. On Aug. 11, 1968, when Marshall Bloom returned to the Pioneer Valley, America was tearing

From New Hampshire Gazette Third of four parts A story Marshall Bloom wrote for the Amherst Student newspaper.  Credit: AMHERST COLLEGE ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS   In early 1964, the spring of Marshall Bloom’s sophomore year at Amherst College, a new battleground for civil rights was taking shape in the nation’s oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida. A quaint community with plenty of Florida schlock, St. Augustine was settled by the Spanish in 1565, decades before Jamest

From Daily Hampshire Gazette Second of four parts President John F. Kennedy arrived at Amherst College by helicopter.  Credit: AMHERST COLLEGE ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS When the life force known as Marshall Irving Bloom arrived in the Pioneer Valley from Denver, it was, technically speaking, the 1960s. It just didn’t feel like it. Back in September 1962 at Amherst College, hair was short. Many students hadn’t heard of marijuana. The No. 1 song in America was “Sherry” s

From Daily Hampshire Gazette PAUL BLOOM First of four parts Paul Bloom was mortified. His graduation from Amherst College, just the day before, represented the greatest achievement of his young life. But now, on June 4, 1966, he looked incredulously at the front page of The New York Times and thought his shining future was about to crash. Criticizing Amherst? Publicly protesting against the U.S. government? He would never do that. Bloom had absorbed two commandments from his