Documented Record of Selective Coverage by the Greenfield Recorder & Daily Hampshire Gazette

Poor Joan! Had years to correct the record, finally her son had to do it in court testimony

There is a test for institutional bias that does not require intent. It requires only a consistent pattern of what gets covered and what does not, applied over time to the same subjects. By that test, the Greenfield Recorder and the Daily Hampshire Gazette — both owned by Newspapers of New England, based in Concord, New Hampshire — have a documented pattern of selective coverage involving the Shelburne Police Department, the people who assaulted me on November 30, 2025, and the federal civil rights case that validates the most serious institutional complaint I have been making for six years.

What follows is not an accusation of malice. It is a record of what was covered, what was not, when I notified these publications directly, and what the pattern looks like when placed in a single document. The record includes the Editor-in-Chief's own words, published in her own column, in the same edition as the first front-page article about me — words that define a standard her paper has not applied to its coverage of my case.

I am not antisemitic. I am anti-semantic.

I oppose the way the accusation of "antisemitism" is deployed as a semantic weapon — a preemptive label that substitutes for evidence, shuts down examination, and protects specific individuals from accountability. Once the word is spoken, the actual record often becomes irrelevant. The label does the work. The inquiry stops.

This is not a theoretical complaint. It happened to me.

Sorensen & Hoberman
Semantic bigots

NIGGERLIPS: What They Called Me First

Before anyone called me a Grand Wizard, they called me

NIGGERLIPS.

I was a kid in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, in a neighborhood where nobody escaped ridicule. Everyone had a nickname. The gauntlet was universal and merciless — that was the culture of the place, and in some ways it was democratic. But the slurs that stick are the ones attached to things you cannot change. Buck teeth. A pronounced overbite. Lips that were larger than the suburban norm and accentuated by the dental situation. These were the features I was born with, inherited from whatever confluence of German immigrant genetics produced my family in western New York.

Niggerlips. The word arrived early and lodged itself permanently — not because I accepted what it implied about me, but because it taught me something specific about how contempt works. The slur didn't require the target to be Black. It required only a physical feature that could be associated with Blackness and then weaponized. The cruelty was not about race in any coherent sense. It was about designation — the assignment of a category to a person based on something they could not control, followed by the social enforcement of that category through repetition.

An Open Letter to Rev. Kate Stevens, the Leadership of Trinity Church, and the Institutional Leaders Who Have Said Nothing

To Rev. Kate Stevens:

You wrote in the Greenfield Recorder on June 20, 2020: "We need to listen; we need to learn the real United States history and hear all the stories that have not been told."

I am writing to offer you the opportunity to do exactly that.

John & Kate: not a fucking peep from them about
their friends destroying my reputation and career with lies.

You know me. You officiated the wedding of Julie and Dave — people I care about. We have been in the same rooms, at the same tables, in this valley. You know the kind of person I am, or you did.

Training Day in Greenfield: Public Performance vs. Private Practice June 12, 2026

On the same day I was measuring tire lines and documenting what appears to be another stay-away order violation by Brook Batteau, the Northwestern District Attorney's Office was hosting a training at Greenfield Community College titled "

Learning ‘the individual red flags’: DA’s office holds training for law enforcement, EMS personnel"

The Recorder ran a glowing piece. Deputy Commissioner Daniel Batiste lectured on strangulation, intimate partner violence, and human trafficking. EMS and law enforcement were urged to take victims seriously, recognize subtle signs, avoid minimization, and provide wrap-around support. They talked about icebergs, raspy voices mistaken for asthma, coercion on 911 calls, and the need to hold offenders accountable.

It sounded excellent on paper. Progressive. Trauma-informed. Evidence-based.

And it landed like a lead balloon against the six-year reality of my own case sitting in their docket.

Richard Wright's Black Boy: Symbolic Conversion and the Automatic Category

Symbolic Conversion and the Automatic Category: A Theoretical Integration

I. The Problem of the Framework That Forgets Its Own Origins

Richard Wright's Black Boy is not primarily a book about racism. It is a book about perception — specifically about what happens when a society develops a framework for seeing a group of people so complete and so automatic that it stops being able to see the individuals within that group.

Relational Aggression, Symbolic Conversion, and Institutional Adoption: A Six-Year Case Study of Reputational Stigmatization in a Small Community

Relational aggression — harm inflicted through damage to reputation, relationships, and social standing rather than direct physical confrontation — can escalate from interpersonal conflict into sustained institutional destruction when initial designations achieve broad social and institutional adoption. While research on misogyny is extensive and well-institutionalized, parallel processes involving hostility toward men as a category remain significantly under-theorized and under-measured, particularly in their indirect, relational, and institutional forms. This review synthesizes conceptual foundations from relational aggression theory, status degradation ceremonies, network transmission models, and moral licensing. It identifies critical gaps in the literature: limited longitudinal multi-source case studies, inadequate measurement tools for targeted and institutional hostility, and insufficient analysis of how false or exaggerated accusations become embedded in police, media, and civic institutions. A richly documented six-year community conflict in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts serves as a high-resolution forensic case study mapping the full trajectory from social designation through network amplification to institutional adoption, resulting in documented physiological, economic, and social harm.

Another Anonymous Complaint, Another Non-Event: The Building Inspector Stopped By

Two days ago I finally fired up the circular saw and started putting the final sheeting on the walls in the new office at the shop. It was the first real noise I've made out here — nothing crazy, just normal construction sounds while I button up the space for Mohawk Repair Institute and the native plant nursery.

Apparently that was enough to trigger a complaint. Or complaints — plural. The inspector told me "they" called it in but wouldn't give names. Classic.

The Designation Machine

Here is one of the obese hags, self proclaimed "proud antifa member", seemingly grooming children at a sexually oriented "parade".

According to the documented archive, I have been called:

Grand Wizard. Nazi. KKK member. Racist. Racist bigot. Transphobic. Anti-LGBTQ. Sexist. Woman hater. Unhinged. Toxic. Conspiracy theorist. Stalker. Harasser. Dangerous. Disruptor. Menace to the community. Asshat. Heartless bag of flesh. Fragile masculinity. Hateful.

These dehumanizing designations were applied by approximately 210 documented commenters across three platforms over three days in June 2020.  They were never corrected by a single official from any institution invloved in my demolition. The cops, the select boards, the DA, the 4 judges i was forced to appear before...not a single person has given ONE SINGLE FUCK about my life.

The Pride Expansion: From Private Right to Public Institution

SEXUALIZED CHILD GROOMING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Adults possess an absolute right to live their private lives, define their relationships, and express their identities in whatever consenting manner they choose. That is not the subject of this argument.

The subject of this argument is the public spectacle that has emerged to replace the private right.
The conclusion is simple: Normalcy does not require a parade. It does not require a month-long calendar of state-sanctioned celebrations, it does not require the endorsement of multinational corporations, and it certainly does not require the participation of children as an audience or a prop.

Emotional Impact of 6 years of low information lunatics stealing my life & career

VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT: June 2020 ~ June 2026

When I subsequently reported Alouette Batteau's March 23, 2026 public Instagram post — captioned "this one goes out to my stalker" with the lyric overlay "I never wished so much to k1ll a man with my bare hands," published while her parents were on bail for assaulting me — Chief Bardwell responded in writing that it appeared to be "part of a musical performance"

6th anniversary of psychopathic harrassment: Bonfire of the Vanities: Shelburne Falls Edition

HOW THE GREENFIELD RECORDER ACCIDENTALLY PUBLISHED EXHIBIT A IN A FIVE-YEAR PERJURY BONFIRE 😡

The irony cuts like a cold chisel through wet clay. You flip open the Greenfield Recorder on March 2, 2026, and the headline lands like a punchline nobody asked for: “It’s art and community.”
Above the fold, full color, the photo dominates: Kate Hennessey—arms wide, face lit by bonfire glow—standing beside Brook Batteau in the heart of the Art Garden’s 10th annual Winter HooPla. Reed Sparrow’s crows dangle overhead with their painted pleas to “resist” and “keep loving.” A kraken of light attacks a glowing ship. Butterfly puppets flutter. The railyard in Shelburne Falls transformed into a winter wonderland, vacant of people oohing and aahing, volunteers serving hot chocolate, positive notes projected on studio walls, love declared stronger than hate. And there she is, quoted dead center: “Every year the HooPla gets a little bigger and a little brighter,” says Hennessey, “the keeper of the flame.”🔥

Seventy-four days earlier—December 1, 2025—she sat in a lawyer’s office or at her kitchen table and swore under oath in a Harassment Prevention Order affidavit that my presence in Shelburne Falls had made public life intolerable. She claimed terror so profound she wore a giant papier-mâché frog mask to a November 22 public art event because she “suspected Mr. Sendelbach might show up … and didn’t want him to recognize me.” She described running from me, stopping only to avoid being alone with me, dialing police because I was “unhinged.” She said seeing my car in a parking lot made her “choose to drive away rather than interact.” The town, in her sworn words, had become a place she could barely navigate.🐸

COMMENT ARCHIVE — FULL QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

IN MARCH 2023 CATHERINE HENNESSEY TOLD ME "I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF IT". THEN CALLED ME DELUSIONAL FOR THINKING SHE DID.  HERE IS THE LIST OF COMMENTS ANALYSIS ACROSS SEVERAL THREADS. SHE IS THE MOST PROLIFIC AND NEGATIVELY IMPACTING PARTICIPANT.  MORE BEHAVIORAL PROJECTION FROM THE PSYCHOPATH.  THESE ARE THE COMMENTS AND COMMENTORS YOU ALL SUPPORTED AS THEY WRECKED MY LIFE.

COMMENT ARCHIVE — FULL QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

All Platforms, June 6 / June 29 / Recorder June 11, 2020

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TOTAL SCOPE

210 unique commenters across three platforms and three dates. The data below covers all of them ranked by total word output, with key notes where relevant.

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TOP TIER — Primary Voices (500+ words total)

#	Commenter	June 6	June 29	Recorder	Total Comments	Total Words
1	Katie Hennessey	20 comments	5 comments	—	25	1,429
2	Jackie Kidd	19 comments	—	—	19	1,158
3	Richard Adams	—	—	28 comments	28	986
4	Steve William Lindsey	7 comments	—	22 comments	29	1,009
5	Bianca Rose	3 comments	3 comments	16 comments	22	668
6	Sunny Hunter	7 comments	—	—	7	443

John Madocks Believes in God and Demons: Clown Car Keeps Unloading

Six years ago it started with a fourteen-minute edited clip on the Iron Bridge. One confrontation. One petition. One laminated sign installed three feet from permanent work I had built for this community. I hoped it would burn itself out. Instead it turned into a clown car. Every time I look closer at one of the people who climbed in, more clowns come tumbling out. The original cast has grown to thirty named participants in a documented six-year campaign — committee members, newspaper editors, police officials, spiritual diagnosticians, novelists, business owners, academics, and an ever-expanding supporting chorus who all decided they knew exactly who I was based on the same fourteen-second fragment. None of them needed the full record. The designation was enough.

The Gnome and the Stones: Burning Man, Thirty Feet of Kitsch, and What Local Media Still Refuses to See

GNOME AND THE STONES

By John F. Sendelbach · Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts · 2026

On June 2, 2026, Western Mass News ran a glowing profile of a Hampshire County artist planning to bring a thirty-foot wooden garden gnome with pyrotechnics shooting flames from its hat and mouth to the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The project recently became one of seventy-five installations selected to receive a $16,000 honorarium grant from the Burning Man organization to help transport the finished structure. The artist is building part of it on family properties in Shelburne Falls.

His name is Ezra Livingston.

For readers of this archive, that name requires no elaboration. For readers arriving here fresh, the relevant context is documented elsewhere at johnsendelbach.com and will surface naturally by the end of this essay. What I want to say at the outset, plainly and without qualification, is this: Ezra Livingston is by any fair accounting one of the more genuinely creative people in this valley. A 1999 UMass Amherst graduate with a documented track record of installations at Burning Man since 2016 — La Victrola, Shrine of the Macabre, Andas the Turtle — he is a working artist with real skills and real ambition. This essay is not an attack on him.