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“Apparently, there’s an entire region of Massachusetts between Worcester and the Berkshires,” Globe staff writer Billy Baker wrote Thursday, Oct. 29.
“If I knew this I forgot it, probably because Pioneer Valley sounds like a made-up marketing name to avoid saying Connecticut. Watch as I forget it again. Boom. Forgotten.”
Baker wrote his article after referring to Cummington, in another story, as being in the foothills of the Berkshires. The town is actually part of the Pioneer Valley.
Apparently, he received a lot of angry reader feedback from the Western part of the state and wrote the Thursday piece, "What's West Of Worcester, Anyway?," as a back-handed apology:
“I apologize to the people of the Berkshires, and to the good folks of Cummington for associating them with those awful people,” Baker wrote.
Maybe Western Mass, aka the Pioneer Valley, and the Berkshires (which includes informal South, Central, and North counties, too), are touchy about how we’re addressed by Boston or anyone else. (Remember when economic developers hired a marketing firm to rebrand us as West Mass?) It comes down to the simple fact that Boston doesn’t know us like that. We’re not on friendly enough terms where you can slip up a name and we’re going to let it slide.
We know you don’t know anything about Western Mass, Boston.
It’s obvious every time you come to one of our Town Halls and get lost on the way.
It’s clear when you want to “start” conversations on issues like school funding reform and transportation infrastructure - things that we’ve been working on in the western part of the state for decades.
Some of us are still a bit salty about how much money we had to pay for the Big Dig quagmire.
Some are still irked that we flooded four of our towns to create the Quabbin Reservoir to supply the metro area with water.
Trust me when I say, we get it, Boston, you don’t know what’s west of Worcester. We've been here since the 1600s, but whatever - we're still going to head to the city for Sox games, concerts, business, etc.
But since you don’t know us like that, when you do mix up our regional titles and communities, don't blame us for it or issue a faux apology. Own up to the disrespect or just forget about it - that should be wicked easy to remember.
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