John F. Sendelbach
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Thursday, February 5, 2026
My Turn: Time to Modernize — and Democratize — Bridge of Flowers Governance
My Turn: Time to Modernize — and Democratize — Bridge of Flowers GovernanceBy John F. Sendelbach
Shelburne Falls
The Bridge of Flowers is one of Western Massachusetts’s most beloved public treasures: a 400-foot living garden that draws tens of thousands of visitors each year, supports local tourism, and embodies the region’s history and natural beauty. Yet the way this public asset is governed remains stuck in the past.
For decades, the Bridge of Flowers has been managed by a subcommittee of a private membership organization. There are no public elections, no term limits, no open meetings, and no formal mechanisms for public input. Decisions affecting a publicly owned landmark are made by a small, self-perpetuating group operating largely behind closed doors. Meeting minutes, when they exist, are not readily accessible. Records of key deliberations are effectively unavailable.
This is not modern stewardship of a public resource. A garden of this scale and prominence does not require an insular volunteer structure exercising unchecked authority. A professional, part-time steward — funded by grants, accountable to the Fire District that owns the bridge, and selected through an open process — would provide better oversight, transparency, and continuity. Alternatively, the Fire District could bring management in-house or establish an open advisory board with rotating membership, public meetings, and clear accountability.The risks of the current structure are not theoretical. Recent examples under long-term leadership highlight the need for change.
At the August 2025 ribbon-cutting ceremony — a once-in-a-generation event following a $3.2 million renovation — the absence of a basic PA system meant speeches were drowned out by street noise. Hundreds gathered to celebrate, yet speakers who had worked hard on their remarks were demoralized, knowing their words could not be heard. It was an avoidable failure that diminished a major community moment.
Even more concerning were horticultural decisions during the renovation. The use of 100% organic matter as planting soil is a fundamental error for a garden of this stature, leading to compaction, poor drainage, and long-term plant decline. As a Cornell graduate in floriculture and ornamental horticulture with four decades of experience in landscape design and build, I can say this is not a matter of opinion — it contradicts established best practices. Now embedded beneath irrigation systems and infrastructure, correcting it would require a costly and disruptive overhaul — likely at taxpayer expense — with no apparent plan or funding in place.
This is not about any single incident. It is about structural design flaws: private control of a public asset, entrenched leadership without term limits, absence of transparency requirements, and no meaningful accountability to the community the bridge serves. When governance lacks basic democratic safeguards, even well-intentioned volunteers can make decisions that appear arbitrary or biased — and the public has no effective way to correct course.
Reform is overdue. Dissolve the current subcommittee and replace it with a modern, inclusive model. Hire a professional steward accountable to the Fire District. Require open meetings, published minutes, term limits, and clear pathways for public participation. Return the dedicated volunteers to their true passion — caring for the plants — while professionalizing governance. The bridge belongs to everyone — not to a private group.
As someone who contributed to the bridge for years, including the River Bench and Pothole Fountain, (with the Black Stones memorial added to my design by mason Paul Forth to represent his mixed-race children and promote inclusion), I also have a forward-looking proposal: the Ghost Frame Trolley Trellis. Inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s steel “ghost structure” in Philadelphia, it would be an exact-scale trellis replica of the historic trolleys that once crossed the bridge — placed partway across for shade and visual impact. Vines (morning glories for quick coverage, then perennials) would create a living historical feature tied directly to the valley’s transportation heritage. It would be grant-fundable, low-maintenance, and a distinctive draw for visitors.
The Bridge of Flowers deserves governance as thoughtful and forward-looking as the garden itself. Transparency, professionalism, and public accountability are not radical ideas — they are the minimum standards for managing a shared civic treasure.
John F. Sendelbach is a Shelburne Falls artist, horticulturist, and former contributor to the Bridge of Flowers.
Friday, January 23, 2026
Kalliope Jones: The Performative "ever-heightening anti-solipsistic sophistication" LOL
How a Band's Delusional self-inflicted Philosophy Inverted Into Family Violence
Kalliope Jones, the Western Massachusetts trio featuring Alouette Batteau, brands itself with a phrase so pretentious it demands scrutiny: "ever-heightening anti-solipsistic sophistication...representative of wisdom beyond their years." This philosophical flourish—appearing verbatim across their promotional materials—claims to reject solipsism's ultimate self-centeredness in favor of recognizing other minds as real, autonomous, and morally considerable.
The irony is that this exact language papers over a documented five-year pattern of behavior by Batteau's family that exemplifies the opposite: a hermetically sealed reality where contrary evidence is systematically ignored, victims are recast as aggressors, and "collaboration" means coordinated defamation.
The 2015 Blueprint
The pattern emerged early. At fourteen, Alouette participated in Kalliope Jones's response to losing a 2015 Battle of the Bands competition. After placing third, the band posted their score sheet online, claiming a judge's feedback ("use the sultry to draw in the crowd") was sexist harassment of minors. The post went viral. Media outlets amplified it uncritically. The judge—a volunteer—requested anonymity "for fear of retaliation."
Bruce Shallcross, the fair's general manager, pushed back, calling it "publicity-driven" and noting the band had "taken the term out of context." His defense of the volunteer judge went nowhere. The narrative had been set: brave teen girls vs. sexist establishment. Kalliope Jones gained national press. The judge disappeared into protective silence.
What got lost was nuance. Whether "sultry" was misspelled "soulful" or genuinely inappropriate became irrelevant once the viral machine engaged. What mattered was that a family-approved public call-out, amplified by social media, could wreck someone's reputation while elevating the accusers to heroes—all without serious institutional pushback.
This was the template.
From Viral Shaming to Criminal Charges
Fast-forward to June 2020. At a Black Lives Matter protest in Shelburne Falls, John Sendelbach filmed from a public sidewalk. Alouette Batteau edited footage, avoiding prior audio and context, and distributed it online with inflammatory framing. The result: a petition with 600+ signatures, social media pile-ons threatening to "throw him off the bridge," calls to destroy his business, and a coordinated campaign that ultimately succeeded—his gallery closed, his studios lost, his reputation in ruins.
The progression from 2015 is clear: same mechanics (viral amplification, edited narrative, institutional abdication), but with escalating stakes. Where the judge could hide in anonymity, Sendelbach—a named local business owner—had nowhere to go.
Over the next five years, Alouette's mother Katherine Hennessey filed at least eight false police reports against Sendelbach. She submitted two worn affidavits for harassment prevention orders, each riddled with demonstrable falsehoods. Court documents show her claims systematically contradicted by video evidence, witness testimony, and contemporaneous recordings:
- She claimed Sendelbach chased her; video shows her approaching him
- She claimed he shouted threats; transcripts reveal silence or banal exchanges
- She claimed terror requiring a frog mask for disguise; footage shows her calmly confronting him face-to-face, showing no fear that she claimed.
- She recycled identical incidents already dismissed by two prior courts, violating collateral estoppel
Two lie riddled hearings. Zero perjury charges. The system enabled it.
November 30, 2025: When Narrative Meets Reality
The philosophical bankruptcy of "anti-solipsistic sophistication" crystallized on November 30, 2025, when Katherine Hennessey and Henry Batteau were arrested for assault and battery at Floodwater Brewing in Buckland, Massachusetts.
According to arrest records, they physically attacked Sendelbach—punching him over thirty times combined, destroying his phone by throwing it into the Deerfield River—while he filmed from a public sidewalk. Hours earlier, Hennessey had trespassed on his property in an apparent stalking run. The assault triggered an atrial fibrillation episode that took Sendelbach two weeks to recover from.
These are criminal charges now, not competing narratives. Personal weapons: hands and fists. The same family that spent five years painting Sendelbach as a dangerous, violent threat finally enacted the violence they had projected onto him.
This is textbook DARVO: Deny the offense, Attack the victim, Reverse Victim and Offender. And it's the antithesis of anti-solipsism. True recognition of other minds means acknowledging their reality—their evidence, their perspective, their autonomous existence. The Hennessey-Batteau pattern shows the opposite: a closed loop where only their version counts, where videos and witnesses are irrelevant, where a man filming legally becomes a monster while his attackers remain sympathetic.
The Solipsism of Self-Declared Sophistication
Anti-solipsism requires intellectual humility: the recognition that you might be wrong, that others' perceptions have validity, that reality resists your preferred narrative. It's the opposite of the 2015 response, where a judge's clarification ("I meant soulful") was dismissed as irrelevant. It's the opposite of removing counter-evidence from social media the day after losing a court hearing. It's the opposite of recycling dismissed allegations until you find a sympathetic judge.
The cruelest irony is that Kalliope Jones's music apparently explores "confession and collaboration," weaving "unique songwriting styles into a fusion that fabricates the fibers of cosmological being." But in the real world, the "collaboration" looks like family members coordinating false reports. The "confession" looks like perjured affidavits. And the "fusion" is a tight-knit Western Massachusetts social scene where mob dynamics can destroy a man's livelihood before he gets a fair hearing.
At twenty-two, claiming "wisdom beyond your years" is forgivable youthful grandiosity. At twenty-eight (Alouette's approximate age now), with your mother and stepfather facing criminal assault charges rooted in a campaign you helped ignite, it becomes something darker: a philosophy wielded as brand identity while its substance is systematically violated.
What Anti-Solipsism Actually Requires
Real anti-solipsistic sophistication would mean:
- Acknowledging contrary evidence exists. Not editing video to remove exculpatory audio. Not ignoring witness statements that contradict your claims.
- Engaging with your target as a real person. Not treating him as an NPC in your social justice drama. Not dehumanizing him until physical violence feels justified.
- Accepting institutional findings when they go against you. Not re-filing identical dismissed claims shopping for a different judge. Not claiming "no justice" when courts credit video evidence over your story.
- Taking responsibility for amplification's consequences. Not boosting a 2020 mob that threatened bridge-throwing, then watching your family attempt the violence that mob ideated.
The judge in 2015 got anonymity and fear. Sendelbach got five years of systematic destruction, culminating in his attackers' arrests. Both learned the same lesson: once the Hennessey-Batteau amplification machine engages, facts become optional and targets become acceptable casualties.
Conclusion: The Cost of Performative Philosophy
Kalliope Jones will likely continue playing folk festivals, their bio intact, their "anti-solipsistic sophistication" a charming quirk for fans who don't know the backstory. The November 30 arrests will probably stay local, unpublicized, while the band's narrative momentum carries them forward.
But the philosophical term they chose reveals everything. Solipsism is seductive precisely because it's easy—your mind, your world, your rules. True sophistication is harder: it requires letting reality surprise you, hurt you, humble you. It requires recognizing that the person you've cast as villain might have videos that tell a different story. It requires admitting that "wisdom beyond your years" isn't self-declared—it's earned through accountability.
The Hennessey-Batteau family had five years to demonstrate anti-solipsistic sophistication. Instead, they showed us what happens when a group decides their shared reality trumps all external evidence: viral destruction, institutional capture, perjury with impunity, and ultimately, criminal violence.
That's not sophistication. That's a cautionary tale dressed up in indie-rock press copy.
And somewhere, a volunteer judge from 2015 probably recognizes the pattern.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Catherine Hennessey = alt right pepe the frog impersonator = KKK simulator

' I was actually wearing a giant paper mache frog mask because I suspected that Mr Sendelbach might show up to the exhibit and I didn't want him to recognize me. " ~Catherine Hennessey, official court testimony Dec 1, 2025, on the day she lied about a dozen times to the judge....after he read the charges being brought on her and Broken Boat. She tried to get a HPO on me to cover the asault and battery they committed the night before. This is peak priveledge, and a cynical way to handle legal matters, lie after lie after lie lie by hennessey. She lies on the fly....evidenced by the hearing transcript. That's multiple felonies....all under the guise of hiding as Pepe the Frog.
As we all know, wearing a frog mask is the best way to hide. LOL.
As early as 2015, a number of Pepe variants were created by Internet trolls to associate the character with the alt-right movement. Some of the variants produced by this had Nazi Germany, Ku Klux Klan, or white power skinhead themes.
~~~~~
Pepe began as Matt Furie's 2005 laidback comic character ("Feels good man"), spreading innocently on 4chan and Reddit. By 2014–2015, alt-right users weaponized it with Nazi variants, swastikas, and racist caricatures, earning Anti-Defamation League hate-symbol status in 2016 after Trump's retweet of a Pepe caricature. It became a tool for coded bigotry—hiding malice behind "ironic" humor while signaling in-group supremacy.
Hennessey, who leveraged BLM rhetoric to frame Sendelbach as a "racist disruptor," appeared in a frog mask during another provocation: blocking public space with Floodwater Brewing's truck, then mocking him derisively and walking away. The parallel is stark—the mask anonymizes harassment, much like Pepe's alt-right use or the Klan's hoods enabled exclusionary violence under plausible deniability.
Hennessey's deployment launders aggression through absurdist theater, reproducing exclusionary contempt while claiming moral superiority.
The irony unmasks her pattern: beneath progressive camouflage lies the same remorseless dynamic—five years of false reports, perjury, assault—now costumed as "art." The frog didn't hide intent; it broadcast the continuity of radical exclusion she claims to oppose. In Shelburne Falls, where institutions once ignored burning crosses and now overlook serial inversions, the mask becomes prophecy: the klavern croaks on.
Thursday, November 27, 2025
A Comprehensive and Rigorous Reconstruction: The Indigenous History of New England, 6000 BC – 1700 AD
REVEAL AND HEAL...A WORK IN PROGRESS


