Port Reporter Unlimited

Why I love "House Hunters"

2011-07-07T10:10:00.000-04:00

http://www.hgtv.com/house-hunters/show/index.html"House Hunters" is a reality TV show on HGTV. (I used to feel oh so superior to people who watched reality TV ... come on, you can't say you haven't felt that yourself.)

I love "House Hunters," "Property Virgins" and all those other shows about people looking for a house to buy not because I like the houses, but because I love watching the people.

I have always been a people watcher. I see the subtle changes in an expression, in a movement - and then I analyze it. To death. But that's not my point.

Recently, I saw an episode of "House Hunters International," which, as you would expect is people buying houses overseas. It's funny because some of the people are already living "overseas" (England, Australia) and I could make several observations about how non-U.S. families react to their son/daughter moving to another country as opposed to the pearl clutching that goes on in an American family ...

Anyway! There was a couple and the husband whose company sent him to work in Shanghai for a bit so he was bringing his family along: his wife and two children.

One place they saw was a palatial residence with a beautiful big yard outside the city. I should mention here that the guy had a housing allowance from his company.

As soon as they hit that house, the wife and kids lit up like a fireflies. Wife got all dreamy, kids were choosing bedrooms and husband said, "There are too many chandeliers in here. Who needs this many chandeliers?"

Uh-oh.

He then said it was too big. It was too far outside the city (he had a driver to drive him to work).

Wifey, with tears in her voice, asked him how many more times in their lives they would get to live in a beautiful mansion, rent-free.

No way was that man budging from his inexplicable unwillingness to make his wife really happy at no apparent expense or trouble to him.

When she realized he was not going to budge, her mouth went into a straight line and stayed there while she said, "I love you" and kissed him - and it was still in a line two months later after the show went back to check on them in the house the husband had chosen. I don't think he was getting much Shanghai Surprise, if you get my drift.

There have been, of course, reverse situations - ones in which the husband has made extraordinary sacrifices and gone to great expense because he realized he was uprooting his family and wanted them to be as happy/comfortable as possible.

"She's very sick"

2011-07-05T18:30:00.000-04:00

I'm so tired of hearing those words about my mother. People, I can see for myself that she's very sick. The thing is, as my sister points out on her blog, she's not ready to die (as in, pulling the plug on the dialysis).

For months now it has really disturbed, to say the least, me that there is really no place for my mom. If she were wealthy, we could afford quality care for her as she teeters on the brink.

Likewise if she were poor. MassHealth would provide for her care and there would be little, if any, problems.

Sadly for us, my parents are solidly middle class folk. That means that Michigan Blue Cross will pay for "rehab" but not nursing home "maintenance" care. Many people, I read, end up dying because they can no longer afford to live.

Even 20 or so years ago, she probably would have been allowed to slip away last January, when the renal failure was diagnosed. And don't even get me started on the cause of the renal failure. Just don't get me started.

None of us plans to ever be in his position ourselves. But who knows what our reality will be?

Guess what?

2011-07-05T17:56:00.000-04:00

Gloucester calls itself "The Port," too!

And they want a (controversial) hotel, only not on the water.

Aside from also being on the water, that's about where the similarities between Gloucester and Newburyport end.

I've been here - and I have cried 96 tears - for, what, 7 months now. I have a lot to say, but I'm saving it for later because it's sooooo hot. Sea breeze, baby, sea breeze!

The elusive Dr. Patel

2011-03-01T11:23:00.000-05:00

Well as many - or some - of you know, my mom nearly died several weeks ago. Being me, I have to turn this into a serio-comic blog post.

When my mom was admitted to Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester, I think it was Jan. 28, she appeared to be suffering from a GI bleed and possibly pneumonia.

A quick transfer to Beverly Hospital's CCU within hours confirmed those 2 diagnoses plus acute kidney failure. I don't remember when the 2 dissected aortic aneurysms, the (possibly septic) diverticulitis and the bleeding ulcer were detected, but I think the latter came at Mass General Hospital.

As my mom's health care proxy, I kept getting calls delivering bad news and asking for permission to perform various procedures, including putting a screen in her leg to stop an (existing) blood clot from traveling somewhere we don't want it to go, dialysis and some procedure to drain the confirmed abscess on her colon (the diverticulitis).

As it turned out, they put the drain in the wrong spot, and it was not draining anything.

Through all the days at Mass General, we kept hearing about Dr. Patel, the vascular surgeon who was going to tell us all about the 2 aneurysms, which to my mind were looming large. One of them is 7cm wide.

Long story short; we aren't sure that there is such a person as Dr. Patel.

It was like a Seinfeld episode. "Oh, he's just leaving, let me catch him! ... Oh, no, he's gone."

My mother, in a dialysis-crazed and nearly starving* moment, said she had seen a man she described as "a nice looking Indian doctor," but we're still not sure it was Dr. Patel since she also persisted in confusing one of the interns with my brother-in-law and consistently thought the dialysis technician (a woman) was my brother.

*They did not feed her solid food until they discovered the source of the bleed, which had stopped back in Beverly.

As we continued to wonder how one 80-yr.-old woman could have so very much wrong with her and still be here to talk to us, it became clear that Dr. Patel was never going to talk to us.

My mom was discharged to the Salem location of Spaulding Rehab Hospital - oh, sorry it's not a rehab hospital anymore, as were were firmly informed - and she's now back in what they call a skilled nursing facility; back in Beverly.

Because, you know, having 2 untreated aneurysms does not warrant being kept in the hospital if you're an 80-yr.-old. (Supposedly keeping her blood pressure down controls the aneurysms.)

Clinically, we are told, she is stable, although somehow she has pneumonia again.

And oh, yeah. Spaulding at the end of last week got a letter from MGH saying that Mom had likely been exposed to TB while she was there.

Parking, Malden style

2011-03-01T10:52:00.000-05:00

Well bless my soul, I can't believe I'm still around ... actually, I'm not around Newburyport and likely won't ever be again, but that's another story altogether ...

So, I'm down here in Malden, where the parking situation is pretty close to what Newburyport officials are proposing (or not proposing): that is, free on-street parking with time limits downtown, one free lot, etc. The only difference is - and forgive me if this is part of the plan - validation.

If you shop or eat or otherwise patronize enough businesses while downtown, you can erase your parking fee entirely through the validated parking scheme. Of course, I'm not sure how this would work w/a pay-and-display machine because you can't hand your validated ticket to a machine - and have it respond favorably.

(I've been downtown Malden w/my sister a few times now, and whereas the downtown Malden of my memory was a virtual ghost town, it's pretty bustling now. I don't know, but maybe it's that fabulous Asian restaurant w/the best sushi I've had in quite a while ... yum ...)

Anyway ... I'm not saying that Malden is Newburyport, or anything like Newburyport, because of course it's not. Like my opening paragraph, any reference to the multicultural aspects of Malden is another story altogether.

Is Facebook working for you and your 702 friends?

2011-01-21T13:01:00.000-05:00

Twice now in the last 3 weeks, I have noticed that some friends of mine on Facebook had missed wall posts that I and others had posted, of more or less an important nature. I also noticed that both of these people have 500+ "friends" on Facebook.

Pondering the meaning of the words "social networking," I wonder how either of these people - who seem to be relying on Facebook for the "networking" more than the "social" - are finding Facebook works for them.

I admit that part of my dismay is based on the fact that neither of these people - who are indeed what I would consider friends - have commented on the fact that my mother was rushed to the hospital and came very close to death over last weekend (we were advised to gather the grandchildren for their final goodbyes.)

One of them, a woman, sent me a series of texts yesterday morning that clearly showed she had no clue. She was making some banal inquiries as to where I was living now and about the status of my relationship with Mr. Y.

Yo, yo, where have you been, woman?

So ... I really have to wonder what benefit one can get from a Facebook with probably a few hundred status updates/hour whizzing by.

I sometimes find it hard to keep up with the status updates from my 198 or so "friends," but I do make the effort, every day.

Spreading yourself too thin seems to be the norm these days ... both of these people are looking for jobs and are not having a huge amount of success. I wonder if one or more of the Facebook posts they missed could have been about the job they could have secured?

It happens. I know I posted about at least one job, passing along information sent to me ... anyway, here's hoping everyone is warm, dry and reasonably happy.

And now on to the beach ...

2011-01-21T12:28:00.001-05:00

Yikes!

Even I did not think the Plum Island Foundation/Newbury would be so bold as to proceed with beach scraping sans the proper permits.

But, as Councillor Tom Jones always says, it's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission. And probably nothing will happen, punishment-wise, to the perps.

Just a few weeks ago, I was talking to someone whose parent owns a large home perched on the dune in Newbury. I was trying to make excuses for them - "but they probably did not know the environmental impact on having a house on the dune," or words to that effect.

"No, they knew," was his response.

Ah.

I was not quite sure if he was trying to say his parent did not care, or that he was defending the parent against the perceived label of ignorance. Whatever.

Read more here.

Time to get real and move on

2011-01-21T11:27:00.000-05:00

From my new perspective, here in Gloucester (where you have to pay to park everywhere that's a public spot, by the way), I find this whole paid parking debate kind of ... "namby pamby."

Just last week, Gloucester imposed a new law in the city:

Adopted by a council vote of 7-1, the new ordinance language is designed to "regulate the practice of shuffling cars from one metered space to the next throughout the workday."

A ban on the practice has been imposed within the downtown area from Main and Spring Streets to Tally's Corner, at Main and Washington Street.

The new ordinance language declares: "Once a meter expires, it shall be unlawful to park the car in another metered space within the area" on any day except Sundays and holidays between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

I've been in downtown Gloucester a few times now, and I don't find coughing up a couple of quarters to park to be too much for me to handle.

I think that this (Newburyport) City Council needs to be a bit more decisive and stop the endless meetings, information sessions and whatnot on every issue. There are plenty of opportunities for people to voice their opinions during the regular process for implementing plans and passing laws.

And you do NOT get to park for free in Gloucester, with a resident permit, except at the beach.

Life's a bitch, ain't it?

Oh, well, that's much better!

2010-12-29T19:13:00.000-05:00

WHDH is reporting that Richard Heartquist, husband of Ward 1 City Councillor Alison Heartquist, is now claiming he was not in the SUV that hit another vehicle because he was in the car of another woman, doing whatever.

Also there is a report in today's Daily News.

Drunken people often do stupid things. They need help.

My dressers!

2010-12-20T14:58:00.000-05:00

In this time of turmoil and distress (Is that any surprise to any of you?), I count the little things as blessings.

I refer, of course, to the dressers in my sister's house ... two of them, that used to be mine.

The white and gold one was in my bedroom when I was a teenager. It's in the upstairs bathroom here. My dresser!

The blue one my parents gave me after I moved into my own place, so many years ago. I gave it to my sister after I moved into a studio apt. in Boston and did not have room for it. It is in the bedroom that I am using. My dresser!

As I said, it's the little things ... the huge thing, of course, is that my sister (the one that lives in Gloucester) and my brother-in-law took me in after I fled Newburyport.

Oh Lordie!

2010-12-20T14:03:00.000-05:00

My sister just called me to tell me that this story was on the WBZ (radio) news ... it seems the name Heartquist is once again in the headlines. (I'm listening online, but I have not heard it.)

I'm not making any comment until I have all the facts ... you know how it is with me and the Ward 1 councillor ...

Have fun with this one, guys.

And another thing

2010-12-18T17:56:00.000-05:00

I went to the McDonald's around the corner here, on my way up to Newburyport.

I got my usual medium latte. When I lived in Newburyport, it was always a small latte at Dunkin' but hey, I need all the help I can get these days.

They gave it to me for *free*. I mean, they actually GAVE it to me.

Now that I have returned to the house, I see we got a whole page of coupons for stuff at McDonald's (excluding a Happy Meal, I note). The free latte coupon is for a small.

And I said to my brother-in-law, "Wow, I never got anything like this in Newburyport." He said they get them all the time.

Ah, Gloucester, I'm starting to really, really like you.

Happy Holidays from Gloucester

2010-12-18T17:23:00.000-05:00

I ran into Tom Salemi (and his older son) a little while ago, in downtown Newburyport.

As Madeline Kahn said of Sheriff Bart in "Blazing Saddles" - "What a nice guy."

And no, Tom and I had not been sharing schnitzen gruben.

We wished each other a Merry Christmas, and I wish you all the best for the holidays and thank the gods (or whatever you believe in) for small blessings.

Let it be ... and bless us all. Stay safe.

Ah, Christmas

2010-12-17T19:31:00.000-05:00

Earlier today, we had a home visit for my mom to see if she would be safe in her home if she were discharged from the rehab facility.

Thankfully, they found the house to be safe and only suggested minor alterations to allow her to get around the house better with her walker.

Then we got the call that her target discharge date is next Wed., Dec. 22.

Home for Christmas.

What a relief.

Does the US Practice "Diplomacy of Empire?": another Dose from Mr. Cook

2010-12-16T17:44:00.000-05:00

Love him and his organization, or hate them; no one can deny that Julian Assange and Wikileaks have rocked official Washington, and the global diplomatic world, to their respective cores.

With only a mere fraction of the 250,000 US diplomatic cables in Wikileak's possession released, one can only wonder, and perhaps worry, about what will come next.

Does Julian Assange possess a "Poison Pill" of information that could, as some have alleged, bring down the US financial and banking systems, or ignite what would, indeed, be a global conflict?

Not one for conspiracy theories, I must confess I wonder if he does because of the intensity of the US government's efforts to shut Assange up and and Wikileak's down.

To date, despite all the uproar,most of what has been released is not particularly earth shattering or dangerous, although it has proven terribly embarrassing to the United States and will, no doubt, make the always tough of job of diplomacy that much tougher.

Think about it, was anyone surprised that a US diplomat sent a cable to a colleague in which he or she opined that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is "loco"? Chavez is loco. He holds some delusion that he is the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar, destined to reunite all of Latin America under a Bolivarian/Socialist banner and his leadership.

Was anyone really surprised the Sunni king of Saudi Arabia confided in a US diplomat that he would be pleased if the US took military action against the Shiite mullahs in Iran? Any one who pays attention to Middle Eastern affairs was not, of that one can be certain.

The revealing of such conversations is embarrassing, but the fact they occurred was no real surprise at all.

But some revelations were deeply troubling and could do long term damage to both America's financial interests, security, and credibility on the world stage.

Here in Latin America, several diplomatic cables regarding US policies in the region have frustrated many and deepened suspicions that Obama's policies are simply a repeat of GW Bush's.

One such cable released by Wikileaks was sent to the administration by the US ambassador in Honduras when President Jose Manuel Zelaya was forcibly sent into exile in Costa Rica by the country's military.

That diplomatic cable made clear that what had transpired was, indeed, a coup-d-etat and, under US law, the administration was required to suspend all foreign and economic aid to Honduras .

The administration did not heed its own diplomat's counsel.

Zelaya was in a legal battle with the country's Supreme Court over his attempt to mount a popular referendum to amend the constitution so he could seek a second term. That legal battle, many believe, was used as a ruse by the Honduran oligarchy, and its international corporate sponsors, like Dole, Chiquita, and Monsanto, to remove Zelaya because they were angry he had raised the country's minimum wage, along with taxes on the wealthy and corporations to increase funding for public education and the nation's health care system.

Just as they do with the Honduran oligarchy, international corporations like those mentioned above wield great financial and political influence among America's own oligarchy, namely the bipartisan political class inside the Beltway. As a result, the coup against the democratically elected Zelaya was allowed to stand.

Another cable released by Wikileaks revealed a senior US official calling for the "isolation", "neutralization", and "marginalization" of numerous democratically elected Latin leaders for their refusal to sign the US brokered agreement at last year's UN climate summit in Copenhagen - an agreement many, if not most, environmental organizations view as deeply flawed.

One such leader is Rafael Correa, the Harvard educated president of Ecuador.

Many had long suspected US involvement in the October coup attempt against Correa because of lingering US anger at his refusal in 2007 to renew the lease on a large air base the US military used to stage anti drug trafficking operations in neighboring Colombia. The release by Wikileaks of the climate summit cable has only deepened those suspicions.

So, why is all this relevant for a regional blog like the port reporter unltd. and its readers? Well, I guess it's because I believe, or want to believe, that most Americans, and certainly most on the North Shore, do not want the United States to be perceived by the rest of the world as a nation that practices, as Bolivian President Evo Morales said in an interview at the climate summit in Cancun last week, the "...diplomacy of Empire".

Sadly, the Wikileaks revelations are only serving to reinforce the perception that that is the case in the eyes of growing numbers of people around the world.

And that, certainly, cannot bode well for future of the US or the world.

Michael Cook
PV de Limon, CR
& Gloucester, MA

The 'horror' of paid parking, Gloucester style

2010-12-15T20:20:00.001-05:00

I went shopping in downtown Gloucester today - and horrors! I had to pay 50 cents to park for an hour (which is exactly how much time I took shopping).

Actually, I had to problem w/putting my 2 quarters in the meter and then bustling off to support two local businesses by making purchases.

Gloucester is kind of how Newburyport was when I moved there - lots of little artsy shops with one-of-a-kind items and two neat indie bookstores I discovered.

Hey, I guess Newburyport still has all that!

Bring out your dogs

2010-12-14T21:31:00.000-05:00

I do have to note that there was a meeting of some standing committee or the other (Neighborhood & City Services, perhaps?) before the City Council meeting last night.

City Council chambers was full. Arriving late, I had to stand in the doorway.

For the City Council meeting - and to be fair the word spread pretty quickly that paid parking would not be brought out of committee - the place was medium-full.

Anything involving dogs, however, seems to bring people out in droves. Not being a dog owner (although I did once own a dog), I don't get it.

I do miss my cat, though.

Thanks, Tom Salemi, for turning on the "Bring out your ..." light in my head.

The strange case of Mark Moquin

2010-12-14T11:43:00.002-05:00

Mr. Moquin was up for re-appointment to the Newburyport Housing Authority. He apparently ran afoul of someone in City Hall in between the writing of the letter to the City Council requesting re-appointment, and last night.

Ward 1 Councillor Allison Heartquist first requested that the appointment be heard in one reading, which requires suspension of the Council's rules, and then stood up and made some vague references to "inappropriate actions" and emails denouncing un-named persons in City Hall.

I guess emails denouncing someone are "inappropriate actions" - you know, unless there was some basis for it. I'm not saying there were not inappropriate actions; I just want to know what they were!

I wrote down that Heartquist said he was disrespectful of the mayor and the mayor's staff. She read from a prepared statement that had been folded up into a neat tidy, and very small, rectangle.

Then Ward 5 Councillor Brian Derrivan got up and echoed Heartquist's sentiments, adding something about criticizing siblings (I can only speculate that this had something to do with the re-appointment of one Jane Bagley Holaday to the Commission on Disability).

It reminded me of the time - was it 2 years ago? - that Building Inspector Gary Calderwood's appointment was up for discussion before the Council, and Mayor Holaday (then an at-large councillor) suggested the council put off voting on the appointment until they could hear Calderwood's rebuttal to the criticisms leveled at him.

The Council, if I am remembering correctly, ignored Holaday's suggestion and approved the appointment. I mean, obviously they did re-appoint Calderwood.

It was all very bizarre, given that Moquin was there at the meeting, as was Calderwood when he was up for re-appointment.

Moquin was an honoree at a YWCA breakfast in March.

Only Barry Connell (At-large) voted in favor of the re-appointment, with Council President Tom O'Brien and Greg Earls (Ward 2) excusing themselves from the discussion/vote.

Council postpones vote on paid parking

2010-12-13T22:36:00.000-05:00

Read about it here.

Tea Party caucus spends a billion on earmarks

2010-12-13T11:44:00.003-05:00

According to a little blurb in (the printed version of) The Week, the 52 current members of Congress' Tea Party Caucus, which vows to cut federal spending, requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at over $1 billion over the last fiscal year. NationalJournal.com was cited as the source, but I can't find where they printed that ...

I did, however, find this - an article describing how Repubs are backing off a ban on earmarks because apparently they failed to realize what the word "moratorium" means.

Republicans Learn What the Word 'Ban' Means "When congressional Republicans backed a two-year earmark moratorium in a wave of post-election enthusiasm," writes Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason, "apparently they didn't understand that banning earmarks would entail not having any more earmarks."

You gotta love it, right? Am I right?

Denounce religious extremism - in all its forms: M. Cook's sporadic dose

2010-12-12T14:33:00.002-05:00

Man, was I ever naive - not to mention wrong.

When I left the position of director of AIDS services at HES more than a decade ago, I really thought the worst of the fight for gay civil rights was behind us.

Ironically, one of the reasons I thought that was because of the AIDS epidemic itself.

As devastating as the epidemic was to gay men of my generation, it also forced the opening of countless thousands of closet doors, and the building of bridges within families and communities , as families and communities began to recognize and accept the gay men and lesbians within their midst.

That recognition and acceptance played a critical role in prevention efforts that helped stop AIDS from becoming a far more wide spread sexually transmitted disease in the United States, as we feared it might become in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

The gay community's response to the AIDS epidemic was a collective profile in personal and political courage that served as a model for other communities and prevention programs targeting other diseases.

But, with all that, it's become increasingly clear the rights of gay Americans are perhaps in greater jeopardy today than they have been since 1978, when Dan White, the San Francisco city supervisor who, literally, got away with committing a double homicide because one of his victims, fellow city supervisor Harvey Milk, was gay.

I'm writing this right after attempts in the Senate to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" went narrowly down to defeat.

The forces of anti-gay bigotry and ignorance prevailed- at least for now.

What is unsettling is those forces seem to be gaining strength in the United States today.

In the last week, as I've kept abreast of news in the States via my laptop, it's gays who are increasingly being blamed for almost every issue confronting the nation today.

Whether it's the Wikileaks controversy or the economy, bigoted voices in the US are trying to make gays responsible for most, if not all, of what ails the US today.

It might all be comical if it were not so ugly and dangerous.

In addition, a few days before DADT fell three votes short of being repealed, Rachel Maddow had the Ugandan politician who is the driving force behind that country's "kill the gays bill" on her show.

What is fascinating, not to mention frightening, is the fact this man is also a member of "The Family," a secretive, right wing, Washington based, international, Christian fundamentalist/political organization that includes many GOP and Tea Party congressman and senators in its membership, many of whom cheat on their wives while rooming together at a notorious townhouse on "C Street," commonly referred to inside the Beltway as the "born again frat house."

Interestingly, all this happened the same week Gloucester's own Jim Munn wrote a compelling column for the Gloucester Times in which he reminded us that all religions of the world, including Christianity, have been known to resort to violent and brutal tactics in attempts to impose their particular theology on others.

Needless to say, the GDT blog thread in response to Jim's column lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree, mostly with comments expressing contempt for Jim's observations and outrage at his suggestion that Christian extremists have used violent means to advance their interpretations of Scripture.

But the truth is they have, time and again.

How many physicians have been gunned down, how many women's health clinics have been bombed, and innocent people killed in recent years by Christian extremists in the United States who believed just as fervently that they were carrying out their God's will as the equally monstrous extremists who carried out the attacks of 9-11 believed they were carrying out Allah's will?

The number of victims is irrelevant, murder carried out in the name of religious extremism is a particularly vile crime.

And today, as I write this, there are so called Christians in the United States, some of them sitting members within our government and powerful members of the Republican Party, who are welcoming and embracing a man from Uganda who is working to impose life prison sentences, and to even execute, members of that country's gay community - all in the name of Christ and Christianity.

If that isn't violence being carried out in the name of religion, will someone please tell me what is?

As I said, it all might be funny if it was not all so frightening.

Thanks Jim Munn for a spot on column, and all your years of dedication to Fishtown and its youth.

Michael Cook
Puerto Viejo de Limon, CR
& Gloucester, MA

Hello, Gloucester

2010-12-11T13:08:00.003-05:00

I've been staying here in Gloucester for just over 2 weeks now.

As Mr. Cook has said many times, things are different here. The city does not seem as tightly-wound as Newburyport, although it is not as pretty, in the conventional sense. I like the perceived (by me) atmosphere of hard-working people trying to make a go of things in what have been tough times for some while now.

I had to drive all over the place to find a gas station that was open at 5:30 p.m., which was kind of trippy.

But now I know where it is ....

I have not gone down to the water yet - it's far more accessible here - but now that it's balmy outside, I may drive on over. My downfall will be the McDonald's that is just around the corner, and of course the tub of Quality Street (English candies) on the dining room table.

My 80 y.o. mom is in a rehab facility here in town, not even a mile from her home. We are hoping she will be home for Christmas. That's not exactly the reason I found myself here in Gloucester, but it's good enough for now.

(Set proper boundaries, people.)

I hope that I'll still be reporting on Newburyport, as I have been, and etc., etc., etc.

"Concern, but not alarm"

2010-12-06T09:53:00.006-05:00

I hate to say it, but .... there ya go. The beach nourishment appears to be not as effective as it was hoped it would be.

Is that phrased diplomatically enough?

Estimates of the loss range from less than 10 percent to as much as a third of the approximately 120,000 cubic yards of sand deposited along 2,500 feet of shoreline in October by a dredging company under contract to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (Daily News)

I like the disparity in the estimates of loss. My old pal Newbury Selectman Vincent Russo says 10% and Conservation Agent Doug Packer says as much as 30%.

But this is my favorite quote, from PITA President Ron Barrett: "I think it will last the winter," he said. "It all depends on how many storms we have."

I like Ron - he returns my phone calls - but ... Ummm, wasn't it supposed to last 5 years, or so?

The story does not reference how much the project cost us taxpayers ($5.5 mil). Of course, some of that was for dredging the channel alone.

Further, the "concern, but not alarm" was expressed by a resident, not anyone "official."

I bet plenty of people are alarmed.

Guest post: A little checking may save you thousands of dollars

2010-11-28T13:01:00.002-05:00

Well, the City Council went ahead and adopted the Stretch Code. This will initially have little impact on the average building owner until you attempt to do an improvement project that will require a building permit. Then it will cost you many additional dollars compared to a standard building code to attain the new green standards. Fortunately for most of us, we’re an historic city and many thousands of our homes are designated historic and are exempt from this punitive measure.

Unless of course, you don’t know if your home is historic or not.

Even then, if your home is inside the Newburyport Historic District, it is not necessarily an historic building! The information as to which structures are included is tucked away in the National Register’s Inventory Listing. A listing that is not posted on the City’s website. To find out often requires journeying down to the Library’s archives and painfully digging about. Don’t ask for the copy in the Planning Office, it’s missing pages out of it!

But It is now, in complete form, digitally available at www.newburyporthistoricdistrict.org.

Your home is historic and exempt if it contributes to the National Register of Historic Places. Therefore a designation in the Inventory of a “C” for contributing or “MC” minor contributing puts you in the exempt status.

But let’s say you do due diligence, check out the online listing and you find the code ‘INT’ next to your home. This designation means that your structure is not a contributing building toward the National Register. Yet, you may still be exempt.

There is a sliding scale on the Inventory. It is now 2010 and according to the preface of the listing, the cutoff date for the report in 1984 was 1930. It says, “Finally, those structures built after 1930 have been designated as intrusions [INT]; included in this last category are a number of buildings which may be re-considered as contributing structures once they achieve the age of fifty years.”

Therefore, any buildings that have this designation and are between 1930 to 1960 as the date of construction, need to have their owners appear before the Historical Commission for reconsideration and change of status.

I assure you, there are many City Hall employees who are not aware of the nuances involved in historic house categorizing. If you are still unsure of your building’s history after checking the listing, appeal to the Historical Commission.

As for the building inspector, he has indicated that he will explore other requests for exemptions in accordance with the Massachusetts State 780 CMR 7th edition, Chapter 93 for certain homes older than five years old.

Remember though, the time-honored warning, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” This time, willful ignorance of your historic building’s status may still cost you thousands.

Even at the presently enacted building code, historic homes are often exempt from some restrictions.

So take my word, do some research and be prepared before seeing the building inspector.

Jerry A. Mullins
Newburyport, MA

From Gillian: Sorry, Jerry, about how long it took me to post this.

Thanksgiving, el Caribe Sur, and Paradise Lost - Your Sporadic Dose from Mr. Cook

2010-11-27T16:11:00.001-05:00

After several days of pretty steady rain, Thanksgiving morning arrived here on the Caribbean with brilliant blue skies and a soft on shore breeze.

A symphony, some call it a cacophony, of bellowing howler monkeys, chortling toucans, crowing roosters, and, of course, the neighborhood barking dogs, rousted me from a sound sleep minutes after the sun came up.

With my dogs in tow, including Harry S. Truman, my new miniature Schnauzer pup whose dad is the Costa Rican grand champion, I headed out for my early morning constitutional on the beach from Playa Cocles to Punta Uva.

Almost every step of the way, I kept thinking how grateful and blessed I am to have had the opportunity to call this little piece of paradise home for, when I add all the months up in total, seven of the last eleven years.

The walk was an appropriate way to start what Americans have long viewed as a day to reflect on the bounties the United States has bestowed on so many of its citizens, even if it has yet to live up to the ideal of "...liberty and justice for all".

But it was much more than that. The walk was also an opportunity to reflect on the challenges all of us face, regardless of our race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, religion, or sexual orientation, as we move into an era of diminishing natural resources, climate change, global warming, nuclear proliferation, and a growing income gap between those with and those without that threatens the social and political stability of virtually every country on the planet, including the United States.

At one point, as the dogs and I rested at our favorite lagoon in Playa Chiquita, I found myself wondering if the Rubicon might not already have been crossed, if the tipping point has not been tipped or, to quote NY Times columnist Tom Friedman from his book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded", we have not run out of time to "manage the unavoidable and avoid the unmanageable" in relation to the many serious issues and challenges facing us as a species today.

The signs that we have are everywhere, yet very few people seem to be paying much attention, or even to genuinely care.

I am always struck that so many people, especially those who profess loyalty to all things "green", just don't seem to get all that is really at stake.

A pet peeve of mine is the growing number of faux green ex-pats moving here who claim to be protectors of the environment and lovers of nature, while driving gas guzzling, emissions spewing Status Utility Vehicles and clear cutting everything in sight to build US style McMansions for retiring, faux green, American baby boomers- all with "green" technology of course.

I mean, come on. Can we talk disconnect from reality here or what, folks?

About ten days before Thanksgiving, a walk to the beach in Playa Chiquita and Punta Uva was an exercise in absolute misery because swarms of mosquitoes were everywhere.

In eleven years, I'd not experienced anything like it.

But it was a friend, a retiree from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, who pointed out to me that the intense mosquito infestation was no doubt tied to the amount of rapid deforestation going on here in the name of economic and real estate development - all of it "green", of course.

Deforestation results in the destruction of large amounts of bird habitat. Birds are one of the most important predators in terms of keeping insect populations, including mosquitos, in check.

Destruction of bird habit by clear cutting means fewer birds to eat the bugs, including mosquitos, so clear cutting means more bugs to bite us and spread disease, with mosquitoes topping the list.

But that's just one piece of an important jig saw puzzle too few people are paying genuine attention to, not just here on el Caribe Sur, but all over the world.

The sad irony for me is that some of the worst offenders of this failure to pay attention are the very people who claim to care so much about their Mother Earth, so long as that caring doesn't stand in the way of them making money, even if it is at Mother Earth's expense.

But, with all that, as the dogs and I continued on our way toward Punta Uva, I remained deeply grateful for having had the opportunity to come to know this magical place when I did because, as magical as it still is in many ways, not unlike what Plum Island was when I was a kid, that magic is in grave danger of being lost, not just for a little while, but forever - kind of like Plum Island.

Michael Cook
Puerto Viejo/Playa Cocles
& Gloucester, MA, USA

"Beach Bummer"

2010-11-16T19:25:00.004-05:00

It's comforting to know that even the big ole news outlets mess up ... the video in this report on Channel 7 is of the beach nourishment on the Newbury beach, not the Newburyport beach ... and I think it was $75,000, but that was with the city's match ...

Loved the title "Beach Bummer," though. Someone's been watching "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

Read more here, from the Daily News.

Paid parking (meeting) on Nov. 4

2010-11-02T15:40:00.004-04:00

There's a meeting of the City Council (a meeting of the whole) to talk paid parking and it's this Thursday at 7:30 p.m., in City Council Chambers.

The parking consultant will be there to answer questions.

Save me from Hawaii!

2010-11-02T14:57:00.004-04:00

I'm swiping a concept started on Television Without Pity, a site I used to read regularly. Back then, the recaps of the TV shows were highly amusing ....

Anyway!

We have been watching Hawaii Five-O, the remake.

And so I say, save me from Hawaii.

In every episode so far, something fairly anxiety-inducing has happened to some hapless tourist, or more frequently, a family of tourists, mostly parents and young boy.

What's up with that?

And how did the crazy dude take all the tourists on a tour of the aircraft carrier hostage without taking the tour guide as well?

These and other questions are answered much more humorously than I could ever do it, right here.

Oh, and yeah, Boomer (aka Grace Park) hopefully will get a clue sometime soon.

She's a Cylon, you know ...

Be lean, but not necessarily mean

2010-10-22T10:32:00.003-04:00

I just got this brief story via the Daily Business Update from the Boston Globe ... three Maine newspapers are eliminating online reader comments.

MaineToday Media CEO Richard Connor said what was aimed as a public forum for civil discourse devolved into "a forum for vile, crude, insensitive, and vicious postings." In his words, "No story subject seems safe from hurtful and vulgar comments."

It's nice (in a way) to know that it's not just here ... although I sort of knew that already. Anonymity seems to bring out the worst in people. I'm sure there's some kind of cultural phenomenon aspect to this that I could ramble on about, but I won't.

This time.

But do they take fils?

2010-10-19T17:30:00.004-04:00

So, a reader sent me this link .... he asserts, I assume in jest, that this (selling parking meters to a foreign entity) might be the solution to all of Newburyport's financial woes.

The blog post from the the Atlantic Wire screams out the headline "Why Does Abu Dhabi Own All of Chicago's Parking Meters?" This is the first paragraph:

The city of Chicago has 36,000 parking meters. In 2008, it sold them on a 75 year lease for over one billion dollars. The buyers were led by Morgan Stanley. But as Matt Taibbi reports in his forthcoming book Griftopia, previewed in Rolling Stone, the state-owned investment arm of Abu Dhabi ended up owning a large share -- possibility a controlling majority -- in Chicago's parking meter system.

I'm not entirely sure that the words "lease" and "sale" are interchangeable, but ... oh, well.

And since Newburyport is buying only 6 (I believe) pay-and-display kiosks, the city could hardly reap a huge payday from the move ... but, hey, I have contacts in Kuwait!

Methinks the author of that blog was trying to stir up trouble ... something I try never to do ...

Not everything works, everywhere

2010-10-15T12:08:00.003-04:00

Add this to the Karp-related stuff that's been in the media of late.

I see over on Newburyport Posts that Mr. S. is touting NRA plans to possibly develop the land they are in charge of ... wowzie. Well, that was the NRA's primary purpose.

(For those of you non-residents, NRA stands for Newburyport Redevelopment Authority, not the National Rifle Association ... although it might be very exciting if the latter were trying to develop something here ...)

Just a note because although I was told this by Mayor Donna Holaday, I don't think I've written in anywhere ... Karp & Co. can't make a hotel work in their business plan because it could not sustain itself over the winter.

Just a thought - not everything works, everywhere.

I was at a meeting the other day where people were talking about Plymouth, MA, and its parking plan. They only have paid parking for 9 months of the year, but they make substantial money from parking.

But then, they have the Rock.

Walking about looking at historic buildings, boating and walking on the beach are summer activities and all told, you can do Newburyport in a day.

Now Boston ... as someone who was a frequent tourist to Boston before I moved there, places like Gloucester and Newburyport were day trips.

Landfill on TV

2010-10-14T18:14:00.002-04:00

This was on WBZ/Channel 4 today ...

http://wbztv.com/local/newburyport.landfill.smell.2.1961697.html

The manager of New Ventures, Bill Thibault, says the residents' claims are exaggerated. He says he's just as eager to get the capping project done as everyone else.

He says if the state gives him the go-ahead, he could have the work done by spring 2011.

The stink has prompted neighbors to file a class action lawsuit against New Ventures.

My sister said it was on the TV news this morning.

Paid parking (meeting)

2010-10-08T13:11:00.003-04:00

I see (or saw) that you paid heed to my last post and flew down to City Hall at 6 p.m. last night to attend ... oh, wait, that was the line outside Park Lunch.

Silly people.

Anyway, I in jest told Mr. Y upon returning from the meeting that soon there will be a (paid) parking permit based on eye color. I said that soon, there would be a special permit for people with blue eyes.

This turned out to be a mistake because, of course, Mr. Y has eyes of this very color. He insisted that this particular permit should be free and went on to name several other special interest groups that should be able to park downtown for free.

Some of them he doesn't even belong to.

Ah, well, at some point I'll write a serious story on the meeting ... which, of course, Mr. Y did not attend, either.

Yikes.

Parking

2010-10-07T12:18:00.002-04:00

There is a meeting tonight, somewhere ... I think it's at 6 p.m. and it's about paid parking.

People, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to attend these committee meetings if you care about an issue. By the time it gets to the full City Council, it's pretty much too late to voice your opinion.

The issues are examined in the committee meetings ...

So tonight (Thursday), 6 p.m. in City Council chambers.

If you care.

Your weekly dose by Michael Cook

2010-10-06T08:59:00.001-04:00

And people wonder why there are those in other countries who view the United States' often self righteous perception of itself with cynicism and contempt.

To those who wonder, wonder no more.

I took some heat earlier this summer by pointing out in a couple of different columns the hypocrisy of the United States lecturing Mexico about its war against the drug cartels, while in the US very few acknowledge our role in fueling the war vis-a-vis the huge domestic demand for drugs, the profits that demand generates, and our lax gun laws. That demand, those profits, and lax gun laws allow the murderous cartels, and their surrogates in the US, easy access to highly sophisticated weaponry that they then ship south to their waiting "armies".

The United States' hypocrisy about the drug war may be lost on many Americans in the US, but it is not lost on millions of other Americans from other countries in our shared hemisphere.

Sadly, I suspect a news story that broke in early October will only serve to heighten those non-US Americans' cynicism towards the United States and reinforce the notion that the United States is a nation that often preaches one thing while practicing another.

The story I'm referring to involves the horrifying revelations that, between 1946 and 1948, American doctors from the National Institutes of Health deliberately infected at least 700, in the Latin press the number is said to be 1500, Guatemalan male prison inmates, psychiatric patients, and soldiers with syphilis in an experiment to test the efficacy of penicillin.

US taxpayers' money was used to pay prostitutes known to have syphilis to have sex with the men. If such sexual contact did not result in infection, the bacteria was poured into scrapes made by researchers on the mens' faces, arms, penises, and, according to records recently uncovered by a medical history professor from Wellesley College while researching another topic at the University of Pittsburgh's library, was even directly injected via spinal puncture.

It is unknown whether all the US researchers' Guatemalan guinea pigs ever received adequate treatment with penicillin to be cured, or if they, like their African American counterparts at Tuskegee, Alabama, were allowed to languish with inadequate treatment and suffer the horrific, long term agony of tertiary syphilis.

When the grisly story broke, our Secretaries of Health and Human Services and State, Kathleen Sebelius and Hillary Clinton respectively, moved quickly to condemn the research study as "unethical".

As I read the account of their denunciations on line from San Jose, I found myself saying to myself, "Unethical!? Ah, Hil and Kate, this isn't just 'unethical', this is criminal."

But it was over coffee with my friend Ana in a cafe in San Jose this morning that I realized just how much potential damage the Guatemalan story might do to our relations in Latin America, at a time when China, Russia, and even Iran, are expanding their economic and strategic influence in the region.

Ana, a University of Michigan educated woman from Costa Rica's upper classes who, if she lived in the US, would, no doubt, be a Republican in the tradition of my maternal grandparents, was not just appalled by the report, she was angry.

The revelations about what happened in Guatemala in the 1940's are but the latest example of the United States' very checkered past here in Latin America.

In El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in the 1980's, the Reagan-Bush junta aligned itself with and enabled forces that carried out horrific attacks against indigenous Mayan Indians, members of the Catholic clergy who dared to challenge the right wing, fascist regimes backed by the Reagan-Bush White House, and even collaborated with Colombian drug cartels, as evidenced by Oliver North's use of a plane provided by Pablo Escobar to deliver weapons to the right wing Contras in Nicaragua that had been purchased with funds generated by the illegal sale of missiles to the ayatollahs in Iran by the Reagan-Bush uber patriots.

US Americans may have long forgotten this sordid history, if they were ever aware of it at all, but equally American people of Latin descent have not.

I've been emaling friends in Gloucester and Newburyport to urge them to contact Senators Kerry and Brown, Congressman Tierney, State Representatives Ann Margaret Ferrante and Harriet Stanley, along with State Senators Bruce Tarr and Mike Costello, to express their outrage at the fact the United States, at the same time it was trying German scientists and doctors for their crimes against humanity, vis a vis using human beings as laboratory rats, was doing the very same thing to their fellow Americans in Guatemala.

I urged them to demand our state and national representatives call for a full investigation into this horror film that is our nation's ugly reality.

I did so because I love both the United States and Latin America. I did so because I firmly believe if we Americans from the United States don't take an honest inventory in relation to the often vile things we have done to our fellow Americans in countries south of our border, the influence and power of countries like China, Russia, and Iran will only grow in Latin America, and such a development is in the interest of no American, whether born north or south of the Rio Grande.

Michael Cook
Puerto Viejo de Limon
Costa Rica & Gloucester, MA

New cell phone law goes into effect tomorrow

2010-09-29T13:06:00.001-04:00

The following is a summary of the new law regarding cell phone use while driving, which will go into effect tomorrow. Thanks to Chase & Lunt Insurance for the info.

Sending or Reading Electronic Messages
Operators cannot use any mobile electronic device to write, send, or read an electronic message (including text messages, emails, instant messages, or accessing the Internet) while operating a vehicle. This law applies to drivers of all ages.

Violation Penalties (for all ages):

1st offense - $100 fine
2nd offense - $250 fine
3rd or subsequent offense - $500 fine

Mobile Phone Usage by Operators Under 18
Operators under the age of 18 cannot use any mobile electronic device for any reason while operating a motor vehicle. The only exception is for reporting an emergency.

Violation Penalties:

1st offense - $100 fine, 60-day license suspension, and a required attitudinal retraining course
2nd offense - $250 fine, 180-day license suspension
3rd or subsequent offense - $500 fine, one-year suspension

Unsafe or Impeded Operation Due to the Use of a Mobile Phone
Operators over the age of 18 can use mobile telephones for calls as long as one hand remains on the steering wheel at all times. However, the use of a mobile telephone must not interfere with driving and can’t be used for texting.

Violation Penalties (for all ages):

1st offense - $35 fine
2nd offense (within 12 months) - $75 fine
3rd offense (within 12 months) - $150 fine

NOTE: It is not a violation if the vehicle is parked in an area of the road not meant for driving.

Negligent Operation and Injury from Mobile Phone Use

Personal injury or property damage caused by negligent operation of a motor vehicle is a criminal offense. If you crashed because you were using a mobile electronic device, you will face criminal charges. In addition to the criminal charges, you will face loss of license as described below.

Violation Penalties:
Junior Operators (under 18 years of age)

1st offense – 180-day suspension
2nd or subsequent offense (within three years) – One-year suspension

18 Years or Older

1st offense – 60-day suspension
2nd or subsequent offense (within three years) – One-year suspension

Source: www.massagent.com

Schools seek tech help

2010-09-28T18:24:00.000-04:00

Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Marc Kerble, is seeking Newburyport community members who have a range of technology expertise to serve on a Technology Ad Hoc Committee, along with representation from the School Committee, school teaching staff and administration. The Committee’s charge will be to gather evidence about the Newburyport Schools’ state of technology programs that enhance instruction and also an inventory of hardware and the infrastructure to run various programs and platforms. The Committee will provide the Superintendent with information, and recommendations for his entry report to the School Committee and the community at large. The Ad Hoc Committee will consist of 12-13 people. Committee members should be available to complete work outside of team meetings. The schedule for the four Ad Hoc Committee meetings is as follows:

Thursdays, October 7, October 21, November 4, and November 18 from 4:15-5:45 PM

If you wish to be considered to serve on this committee, please contact the Superintendent by September 29, at: mkerble@newburyport.k12.ma.us

The scoop on the accident

2010-09-28T11:45:00.004-04:00

So ... I'm driving along this street in Malden, on the way to my sister's house ... Glenwood St., to be exact. A straight shot with only 2 stops, at its beginning and at its end.

I noticed this green SUV stopped at a stop sign on a side street, on the right. He was stopped, but then he decided to GO.

So I hit him.

After impact, I noticed that he was yelling at me (which seemed strange to me, given the circumstances).

We pulled off Glenwood, and he jumped out of his SUV and screamed, "You hit me!"

I replied that yes, I had hit him, but only because he had pulled out in front of me.

He informed me - in angry tones - that he had stopped, looked both ways, and had not seen me coming. He claimed that I had "materialized" out of nowhere. He kept saying that.

(My dad said I should have replied, "Yes, I do that.")

Well, Mr. Y, who was in my car, had to intervene, but the guy (a postal worker all dressed up in his postal duds) did not want to discuss things with Mr. Y, who kept insisting that it was HIM (the other driver) who had the obligation to stop, not I, and that claiming he had not seen me (and therefore it was my fault) was not a valid argument.

Then the guy who had been driving behind me showed up at my window and backed up everything - and the other driver started arguing with HIM about how he had not seen me, I'd materialized, etc.

I have to remember to tell Scottie not to beam me down again when there's the possibility that someone will pull out in front of me because they didn't see me.

I only got some scrapes on my front right fender, which match the scrapes on my left front fender from where someone side swiped my car while it was parked in front of the house.

And thus, my semi-crappy year continues. I have to say "semi" because, so far, I have not been injured or killed. Just my kitty was injured/died or killed.

Welcome (me) to the South End

2010-09-28T10:47:00.002-04:00

Blogger really should have subtitles, so I could have added, "A canoe or kayak on every vehicle."

Not only has my car been hit twice since I moved so it looks even junkier than it did before, it also really stands out because it does not have a boat perched on the top of it.

What's the deal with this? It's too much trouble to take the boat/canoe down, so people drive around with it still affixed to the car/SUV?

I lived out on the island for 6 yrs. and I never saw so many small craft as I do zipping down the streets of the South End.

The second hit on my car is worth of a separate post because it was so funny, in retrospect. Maybe in another few weeks ...

They're not off the hook, yet!

2010-08-27T16:53:00.002-04:00

OK, so I heard about this story via someone who lives in Rowley, and then we all called it up on an iTouch, and it is all so ... er, fishy?

The woman in question slugged her chum with some chum, apparently, going, as one person put it, "From fishwivery to floundering."

The woman will be appearing in the dock (in maritime court, the same person asked?) to answer for slapping her gal pal with a (frozen) piece of fish.

Alexa R. Kovach, 28, 31 Pleasant St., Rowley, and Donna L. St. Pierre, 54, 37 Summer St., Rowley, were issued summonses Saturday at 3:14 p.m. on a charge of assault and battery. Kovach was also charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon — a frozen fish filet — which Kovach used to hit St. Pierre, according to Rowley police Chief Robert Barker.

What we want to know is, how much more fish does it take before it becomes a deadly weapon?

Asked if he ever heard of anyone using a frozen fish filet as a dangerous weapon, Barker said: "Actually, I have not."

I have to say - Rowley hasn't given me much fodder for fun in a while, so it's nice to know that things are still on an even keel down there - and, of course, that the scales of justice are intact in our neighboring town.

Yikes! Correction to post on NH

2010-08-17T15:43:00.001-04:00

So ... I kinda stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts here in Newburyport today and found out that the cost of an iced latte went up, apparently.

NH is cheaper.

So sorry, NH.

Shame on me for not doing my research.

Kerble to be interviewed on PortMedia

2010-08-17T15:42:00.000-04:00

Dr. Marc J. Kerble, the new Superintendent of Newburyport Public Schools, will appear in an interview on the town’s community access channel PortMedia.

The program will air on public channel 10 in Newburyport at the following times:

· Friday, August 20, 6:30 p.m.

· Saturday, August 21, 1:30 p.m.

· Sunday, August 22, 11:30 a.m.

· Monday, August 23, 9:30 a.m.

Spending time in NH

2010-08-16T16:05:00.002-04:00

So ... I've been spending a significant amount of time in New Hampshire recently.

In the course of my travels, I stopped in at a Dunkin' Donuts.

Huh? My iced latte is more expensive than it is in MA?

It was only pennies, but you get a few hundred thousand people and ... well, you do the math. I'm not sure about why (I asked, but of course the clerk had no clue). Perhaps because it was a location that is on the way to Hampton Beach.

On the bright side, I can still get cigs for $2 less a pack than they are here in MA ... but do I have to report supporting my bad habit to the MA Dept. of Revenue?

Did people enjoy the sales tax holiday?

I guess it's just what we needed

2010-08-14T01:43:00.002-04:00

This story was in today's Washington Post.

Fans of John P. Marquand should be happy. And Richard Simkins, owner of The Grog ... and the Maritime Museum ...

Nice piece.

Your weekly dose by Michael Cook

2010-08-14T01:40:00.000-04:00

As I read Daniel Potoki's recent column in the Daily News celebrating the success he and his friends believe they achieved by gathering in support of the Fire House Center's production of "The Laramie Project" in opposition to what people feared would be an appearance by members of the cult led by Fred Phelps, known as the Westboro Baptist Church, all I could think was, "Mr. Potoki must be very young."

As much as I abhor all that Phelps and his cult stand for, well meaning people like Mr. Potoki played right into Fred Phelps' hands.

The Westboro Baptist Church is a fringe group, even within the most anti-gay elements of the fundamentalist Right.

The fact Phelps and his cultists have picketed the funerals of brave young Americans who have died in our misguided wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because Phelps believes America has become too accepting of gay people, sent even the most anti-gay bigots within the Religious Right into retreat.

They understood the wacky tactics of Fred Phelps and his followers undermined their equally bigoted, anti-gay agenda.

This is all rather ironic for me.

I'm a fifty three year old gay man who came out of the closet long before doing so was either safe or fashionable.

In the 1990's, as the director of AIDS services at a large, regional non-profit organization, I frequently found myself engaged in bizarre political battles that were as much about "morality" as they were sound public health policy.

Those battles, on two different occasions, resulted in me receiving death threats, one of which was deemed so credible my former boss actually asked me to leave Gloucester and my home for a few days until the authorities could determine the true nature of the threat.

One threat, because it came through the mail postmarked Connecticut, required the Gloucester police to actually contact the FBI.

Those years and those battles taught me a lot.

The first lesson was, "You never back down from a bunch of bullies and bigots. If you do, they will ride rough shod over you for ever."

But another lesson learned, and one perhaps even more important than the one above, was to always pick your battles carefully.

Three summers ago I was living in Provincetown when Fred Phelps and his cult members decided to descend upon America's "gay hometown" in all their bigoted splendor.

When the news of their coming broke, community leaders, activists, and ordinary citizens came together to discuss how best to respond.

Amid the voicing of many opinions, in ways that were often heated and passionate, a consensus emerged that the best way to handle Fred Phelps and his cult followers was to just ignore them.

Word went out throughout the community to do just that.

The cultists arrived, took their appointed place on the green across from Town Hall on Bradford Street, were subsequently ignored and, within a day, they were gone.

Fred Phelps and his followers thrive on attention, publicity, and confrontation. They depend on it to maintain the illusion that they are some kind of legitimate force with which to be reckoned.

Ironically, with no doubt the best of intentions, the Daily News, the Current, the young people who gathered in a show of support and solidarity with gay men and lesbians at the Firehouse, and Mr. Potoki with his column, gave Fred Phelps much more attention and "air time" than he could ever have received if those same people had simply followed Provincetown's example and treated Phelps and his followers as they should always be treated - as people to be ignored and pitied rather than people to be confronted, feared, or rewarded with free publicity they do not deserve.

Now, I sincerely appreciate the show of support for gay people the demonstrators displayed, and I was moved that so many young people would take the time to stand in opposition to the kind of bigotry and hatred espoused by the likes of Fred Phelps and his followers.

But I would urge all those good people, especially those young people, if you truly do care about the rights and equality of gay men and women, to be sure you are registered to vote and that you do vote in November.

Here's why.

The Republican/Tea Party candidate running against John Tierney in the 6th Congressional District race, Bill Hudak, has publicly stated, and had posted on his website, that issues pertaining to people's civil rights should be put to popular votes.

He, of course, was referring to the issue of marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, but such a stand also reveals a lot about how Mr. Hudak feels about civil rights in general, and it is a troubling stand indeed.

In addition, the GOP candidate for governor, Charlie Baker, has come out publicly in opposition to legislation at the State House that would make it illegal to discriminate against transgendered people, much as it is now illegal to discriminate based on a person's race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or because of a disability.

Ironically, when Charlie Baker was CEO of one of the state's largest health insurance providers, he supported and implemented just such an anti-discrimination policy in that organization. But today as a candidate, no doubt trying to woo what I call the "New Right/Tea Party" crowd that has emerged within the GOP, Charlie Baker has endorsed allowing public discrimination against transgendered people to continue with his opposition to a bill that seeks to do for all transgendered people in Massachusetts what Charlie Baker once did for his transgendered employees.

Go figure.

Anyway, this essay was not meant to, in any way, disparage the efforts of those people who gathered to offset the bigotry promoted by the likes of Fred Phelps and others on the American Right.

But it was meant to urge those same people to pick their fights carefully, and one way to do that, and not just in relation to gay rights, is to pay close attention to the stands and positions being put forth by those who are seeking real political power in our state and in this country today.

Educating yourselves about those matters, when all is said and done, is far more important than standing up to a fringe figure like Fred Phelps and his cultists who, in the bigger scheme of things, really are more to be pitied and ignored than they are feared or confronted.

Michael Cook
Gloucester
&
PV de Limon, Costa Rica
formerly of Nbpt

Mayor sets policy for paying legal bills

2010-08-10T14:17:00.002-04:00

Mayor Donna Holaday last night sent notification to the City Council of her policy on paying legal bills because of the current "disconnect" in paying these bills.

All legal bills will now be received and time stamped by the Mayor's Office and will be entered into a new database ... bills will be tracked, as will the checks issued by the departments ... after two weeks, if no payment has been received by Kopelman & Paige (the city solicitor), the database will identify the check as delinquent.

"The goal of this policy is that it will create synergy among the departments required to participate in the payment process. It will also create accountability and will give the Mayor's Office the ability to quickly and easily identify."

(There was no reporter from the Daily News at last night's City Council meeting. What else do you want to know about?)

Twenty-six minutes!

2010-08-09T23:47:00.002-04:00

That's how long the City Council took to come to a vote on dog poop. Twenty-six minutes.

The long and short of it is that they reduced the fines to $50, $75 & $100 from whatever they had originally proposed.

And then the discussion started about the part in the ordinance that says you can't dump your doggie's dump into a public barrel.

Twenty-six minutes later they decided to drop all language about where to dump the waste - because it kinda ruins the whole tourist vibe if you're forced to take doggie doo-doo home with you when you leave our fair city - and that was that.

As Councillor Barry Connell noted, the Council only took about 4 minutes to discuss a bond order of $18,500,000 for improvements to the water processing plant.

Ah, well ... I still get to step in poop because no one is going to enforce this out here on the island.

I've been out of touch

2010-08-08T21:47:00.002-04:00

Hey there, my cat is gone, my mother is in the hospital (same week as cat disappeared) and in general I'm out of touch.

Of course, I always WAS somewhat out of touch anyway ...

But thank you all for your concern!

And hey, if I recall correctly, there were some legal bills that came floating in at the last moment at the end of FY09 ... from the mayor's office. It has happened before, and I'm sure it will happen again.

Let's not bicker and argue and who killed who.

Lyons likes Hudson

2010-07-19T12:01:00.001-04:00

Here's a story from the MetroWest Daily News about our former Superintendent of Schools, Kevin Lyons.

New principal for Brown School

2010-07-14T09:59:00.001-04:00

Amy Sullivan has been selected as the next principal of the George W. Brown Elementary School.

Sullivan has been a principal for the past nine years for the Peabody Public Schools and the Scituate Public Schools. She has taught grades 1-4 for the Cambridge Public School System and the St. John the Evangelist School. She received her Master of Education degree from Harvard University and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Curry College.

Sullivan recently moved to Newburyport and is now a resident of the city.

(That's all the press release says.)

What can it all mean?

2010-07-13T22:57:00.003-04:00

I was standing at the meat counter in a local market recently and there was a tray of short cut steaks with only 2 pieces of meat left on it.

It reminded me of what the owner of Fowle's Market told me recently - that people don't buy the last of any food on a tray, in a bin, or anywhere else.

It's just human nature, I guess; except I bought both pieces and remarked that I was doing so because nobody else was going to do it ... (the guy behind the counter had apparently never noticed this trend in his customers).

So you have to wonder what this means, if it means anything, along with why the Fowle's guy's wine sales went up after he bought wine racks (as opposed to having the wine on shelves).

Do I need a diagnostic manual to decipher this bizarre behavior? Obviously, I'm no good at marketing ...

And finally ...

2010-07-12T22:41:00.003-04:00

There were these transfers before the City Council tonight that involved transferring money to pay a settlement of $44,873.07 to former DPS Director Brendan O'Regan.

If you recall, he was removed from his position a while back by Mayor Donna Holaday.

The settlement is being paid out of funds from DPS - 40% from water, 40% from sewer and 20% from DPW/Highway.

The Council was very slick about swiftly approving all 3 transfers, but us reporter types were alert to the situation.

On another note, the water and sewer depts. combined have about $1 million in reserve funds!

Don't ask; or do ask and I'll do my best to explain.

Next City Council meeting

2010-07-12T22:37:00.002-04:00

Ah ... I remember last year trying to park for the second July meeting of the City Council, which was during Yankee Homecoming.

I had to park all the way up by Kelley School ... which cost me about 5 mins. of walking, if that.

So the next City Council meeting will be on July 22, which is when the mayor has called a meeting with the Council for 7:30 p.m. about water (don't know what about water, yet).

All because of Yankee Homecoming!

Streetlight meeting (CORRECTED)

2010-07-12T22:15:00.005-04:00

Tonight Ward 3 City Councillor Bob Cronin announced a meeting of the Public Safety standing committee for 7 p.m. on July 21.

The meeting will be in City Council Chambers and it is posted as a Committee-of-the-Whole (meaning the whole Council can be there).

Cronin told me (and DN reporter Katie Farrell Lovett) that the city pays a flat fee to National Grid for use of the streetlights.

So if one or two are not working, the city still pays the fee for it/them until someone lets National Grid know it's not working.

Along the same lines, Councillor Ari Herzog put forth an ordinance based on one in Gloucester about setting standards for "outdoor illumination of streets and public ways, property used for commercial and industrial uses and multi-family dwellings."

This relates to those "dark sky" lights, which EAC Chairman Mike Strauss said could be implemented as outdoor lights are replaced. Read this for more information about dark sky lights in Gloucester.

Your weekly dose: Yeah, I do like living in Gloucester

2010-07-12T11:23:00.000-04:00

On a recent visit to the Clipper City to have lunch and a couple of beers with friends at a popular local establishment, one of my friends asked me, almost incredulously, "Do you really like spending this summer in Gloucester more than you did summers here in Newburyport?"

When I answered, "Yes", I thought my friend was going to lose part of his lunch.

He could not believe I could possibly prefer living in, as he put it, "...a dirty old city like Gloucester to a beautiful town like Newburyport."

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Newburyport. I have long standing ties to the community, although I have to say I think the Clipper City had a lot more genuine charm and character when it was not quite the perfectly manicured, almost Stepford-esque movie set that it is today. Newburyport was far more authentic when it had a little more Gloucester and a lot less Nantucket ambience to it.

And knowing many genuine long time locals, and many others, including artists, writers, and musicians, who moved to Newburyport thirty five and forty years ago as "not quite urban pioneers" because, if the truth be told, it was a place they could afford to live, I know I am not alone in that sentiment.

But it is about much more than just aesthetics and nouveau, upscale trendiness. Gloucester has one big quality in great quantity that people love to claim they celebrate in Newburyport, even though, in reality, they have virtually none of it..

The quality I am referring to is diversity.

Gloucester is chock full of it, ethnically, racially, linguistically, and socio-economically.

Newburyport, despite its proclamations celebrating tolerance and diversity and being a "No Place for Hate" community, is, overall, one of the most most racially non-diverse and lily white communities I have ever lived in.

I mean, it's pretty easy to celebrate tolerance and embrace diversity when most everyone in a community looks pretty much alike, speaks the same language, has frosted blonde "bob" cuts, and wears madras shorts and Topsiders .

It's far more difficult to do so when a community is genuinely diverse and struggling with all that that means, both in positive and negative ways, as Gloucester is today.

In the twelve years since I sold my house in the Lanesville section of Gloucester, for example,the number of Latino immigrants in the city has grown significantly.

I see that as something that will, long term, enrich the city, culturally and economically, much the same way the arrival of Italian and Portuguese immigrants did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

My sublet for the summer is located in the heart of downtown - just steps from the harbor front, Pavilion Beach, and a quick ten minute bike ride to Good Harbor. Not a bad location, and it is made even better because on a walk through the neighborhood with my dog, I know I will encounter a truly diverse community.

When I shop at the downtown Shaw's near my house, I am as likely to hear Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish spoken as I am English.

A stroll down Main Street into the East End guarantees I'll hear Luciano Pavarotti belting out some Puccini in Italian on the outside speakers at Virgilio's bakery. Can you imagine what would happen in Newburyport if, say, Agave, the Port Tavern, or Oeganos pumped Mexican, Irish, or Italian music out onto the street in an attempt to bring some cultural diversity to town?

Perish the thought!

A block from my apartment is an incredible Brazilian grocery store, and my new neighbors in the apartment on the first floor of the house I live in are a young Guatemalan couple who are celebrating the birth of their first baby - a boy.

The husband and young father, Diego, is a sous chef at the restaurant I work in. This young man has a work ethic few native born Americans could ever match and his commitment to his family is more than admirable, it is inspiring.

So, yeah, to answer my friend's question, "I am enjoying living again in Gloucester. It's not that it's 'better' than Newburyport. It's just 'different' and, frankly, it is a more honest and real community that is far more representative of the new America emerging in the early 21st century than Newburyport could ever claim to be, at least at this point in time."

Michael Cook
Gloucester &
Puerto Viejo de Limon, Costa Rica

formerly of Newburyport

Just wondering

2010-07-11T21:58:00.001-04:00

I'm wondering why our trash out here on PI was not picked up last week ... anyone?

Read it and weep (or not)

2010-07-11T20:52:00.002-04:00

I admit it - I am guilty of some of the things described in this story from the Globe about the power of information.

In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?
Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

I don't expect this to change anyone's mind, but here's more ...

What’s going on? How can we have things so wrong, and be so sure that we’re right? Part of the answer lies in the way our brains are wired. Generally, people tend to seek consistency. There is a substantial body of psychological research showing that people tend to interpret information with an eye toward reinforcing their preexisting views. If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t. This is known as “motivated reasoning.” Whether or not the consistent information is accurate, we might accept it as fact, as confirmation of our beliefs. This makes us more confident in said beliefs, and even less likely to entertain facts that contradict them.

There are just some opinions to which I hold firm, but I do try to get my facts straight.

Message from Republican town committees

2010-07-11T20:46:00.001-04:00

The Groveland and West Newbury Republican Town Committees will co-host a “Meet the Candidates Night” on Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 7:00 pm at Stripers Grille and Inn located at 175 Bridge Road in Salisbury, MA.

The featured speaker will be Bill Campbell, Candidate for Massachusetts Secretary of State. William C. Campbell (www.billcampbell2010.com) was appointed City Clerk of Woburn, Massachusetts in 1997. He was appointed as the first Massachusetts Local Election Official of the United States Election Assistance Commission Standards Board in February 2003 and served until June 2009. He served as past Vice Chair and was the first Secretary of the nine member Executive Board, served as Chair of the By-Laws Committee and served as Chair of the Resolutions Committee. Mr. Campbell is a member of the New England Association of City and Town Clerks, the Middlesex City and Town Clerks Association and The Election Center. He has B.A. from Boston College in economics and sociology, a J.D. from University of Bridgeport School of Law and is a graduate of Woburn Senior High School.

Also in attendance will be Rob McCarthy, Candidate for U.S. Congress in the 6^th Congressional District, and Robert Finneran, Candidate for State Representative of the 2^nd Essex District (which includes Groveland, Newbury, West Newbury, Georgetown Precinct 1, Haverhill Ward 4 Precinct 3, Haverhill Ward 7 Precincts 1 and 3, Merrimac, Rowley).

The public is welcome to attend this free event. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear the Candidates’ positions and to ask questions.

“I am excited to be teaming up with the West Newbury Republican Town Committee,” said Leigh Ann Berry, Chairman of the Groveland Republican Town Committee. “I am certain that our partnership will flourish, and we can continue to provide exposure to all state and national Candidates leading up to November and beyond.”

Please contact Leigh Ann Berry, Groveland Republican Town Committee Chairman, at grovelandgop@comcast.net or 781-710-8096 for more information.

Gillian: Is this the same Robert Finneran, of sub shop fame?

Introducing Newburyport.com

2010-07-08T21:53:00.002-04:00

Wow, this guy has re-launched this website ...

I've really tried to stay out of the advertising scramble with Newburyport Business, but I wish this guy (Elliot) the best!

I am excited to announce the relaunch of Newburyport.com this past week, a domain name I bought a couple of years ago, which now resembles Lowell.com. If I can get this new site to earn as much as Lowell.com, the ROI will be less than 2 years. My team will be managing the sales, and I will be spending next weekend in Newburyport, a ...great summer vacation spot on the Massachusetts North Shore." (Elliotsblog.com)

PSA: Iraq/Afghanistan Veterans Convention

2010-07-08T21:06:00.000-04:00

Greetings!

My name is Chad Freeman, and I am the Programs and Events Coordinator for the VFW Post 1093, out of Ipswich, MA. We are currently putting together our second annual Iraq/Afghanistan Veterans Convention, set for Saturday July 24, 2010. The event brings together various organizations and groups to provide an excellent forum of information for recently returned OIF/OEF veterans in the area.

The event will be held at our VFW Post in Ipswich, MA from about 9am to 5pm, and food/drinks will be provided. Speakers will include Rep. Brad Hill, the Home Base Program, Veterans Upward Bound, OIF/OEF Veterans of MA, Operation Troop Support, the There and Back Again Program, and others.

Yikes

2010-07-06T13:16:00.003-04:00

I don't know what happened to all the comments I just posted ... but Dick, the jets were pretty low ...

On streetlights

2010-07-05T16:52:00.002-04:00

Yesterday a woman showed me the large area on her lower leg that was injured when she fell on a city sidewalk.

She was asking me when the public hearing on turning off some city streetlights might happen.

She's not for this at all.

This morning I was walking down Prospect St. around the corner from Lime St. There's this really beautiful big tree there, but its roots have heaved up the sidewalk. I'm just saying ...

Anyway, when there is a public hearing, it will be very interesting. The lady from yesterday will be there, with her leg as exhibit #1.

Holy crap!

2010-07-05T11:09:00.002-04:00

This is the way to win over a man ... arrange to have 4 fighter jets fly over your house while he's there ...

Nah, seriously though, what were the odds that last night Mr. Y and I would both be at windows in my house when 4 fighter jets flew over Plum Island?

I think we simultaneously screamed, "Holy shit!"

They came right over the house! Mr. Y said they were only about 500 feet above the ground. After they flew over the house (in tight formation), they banked left at the river.

I think they were the same 4 jets that flew over the Esplanade for the Pops concert ... (oh, of course they were) ... it was awesome.

A strange day in la-la land

2010-06-29T16:55:00.004-04:00

I had 2 interesting things happen to me today:

1. I got an email from Bank of America telling me I was overdrawn on my checking account! What a shock! Well, it was, since I hardly use that account very much anymore and I knew (I knew, I'm telling you) that I was not overdrawn.

As it turns out, Bank of America decided to start charging me a monthly fee out of the clear blue sky (probably because I'm not using the account). I asked the customer service woman when I was informed about this policy. She said, "When you opened the account."

I asked her, "You mean in 1985?"

YAH

She took the fee off the account and advised me that to avoid such an event happening in the future, I should deposit $2,000 into the account post haste and not let my balance fall below said $2,000.

I laughed. Then I told her that as soon as my automatic payment to my car insurance goes through next week, I'd be canceling the account.

She seemed stunned that I would consider such a thing, even after I told her I had another account at another bank in town that does not charge me one penny in monthly fees. That bank is open 7 days/week until 6 p.m., I informed her.

She started spouting some psycho-babble, and I had to wonder: do they go to some kind of special training to learn that?

Yikes!

2. I tried to order something through Amazon.com, only to discover Amazon.com is not working today. At first I was told everything would be fine in one half hour, but after one-half hour, I was told everything would be fine in 24 hrs.

Well, after all the trouble I've been having with Newburyport Business, this bizarre turn of events made me feel a little better.

I curse Bank of America and the Internet, I tell you, I really do!

And a certain policeman in a certain seaside town north of here who made a circus event out of the fact that my front license plate was stolen about 3 yrs. ago and is still listed as stolen.

When will these police understand that, if I also have the back plate and my registration, I probably am the owner of the vehicle?

Must get new plates ... I consulted w/Marshal Howard at last night's City Council meeting, and he agrees ...

Doggie doo and city parks

2010-06-24T13:54:00.002-04:00

I only just got clued into this whole debacle the other day, but now there's a meeting at 6 p.m. tonight (Thurs.) at Atwood Park because people are tired of doggie doo!

Once again, the comments on the Daily News site are very entertaining (I haven't had a chance to really read many, lately).

Anyway ... a reader sent me this link about Atwood Park. I thought when I first went on there that the link was to something about moving the park ... hmmmmm ....

Anyway, have fun!

PSA

2010-06-22T07:33:00.001-04:00

The ROOF OVER HEAD COLLABORATIVE, or ROOF as it is commonly referred, is planning a general meeting June 30 at the Unitarian Church Hall, on Pleasant St.,at 7:30 p.m.

Speakers:
Ed Cameron, Associate Director of Housing Services, Community Teamwork Inc., and Ward 4 City Councilor will discuss the groups plan to move ahead to house local homeless people.

(Note from me: Are we absolutely sure he's the Ward 4 councillor?)

Norma Beit, Chairperson, ROOF OVER HEAD COLLABORATIVE

Refreshments and discussion will follow the presentation.

ROOF, a tax deductible organization, plans to help reduce homelessness in the Amesbury, Newburyport and Salisbury area by acquiring residential properties that will serve as transitional homes for homeless families. The properties will be managed by local service organizations that work with homeless families. ROOF'S focus is homeless families, notably the children who are so traumatically impacted by homelessness. ROOF was established in September 2009 by area residents concerned about the growing leevel of homelessness in our communities.

PLEASE PLAN TO ATTEND! THE MEETING IS OPEN TO ALL!

"...his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity"

2010-06-22T07:07:00.003-04:00

Mr. T sent me this link to an "Opinionator" column in the NY Times.

He thought that maybe it would pique my interest and yeah, it did. It explains a lot, does it not? Stupidity keeps stupid people from ever recognizing that they are stupid. It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Dunning and Kruger argued in their paper, “When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the erroneous impression they are doing just fine.” It became known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect — our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence. But just how prevalent is this effect?

Not only that, but if you look up the Dunning-Kruger effect, it's even more startling. This is from Wikipedia:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."^[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the perverse situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."

Which is a logical sort of way takes me back to my old friend in Michigan, the one who was the only person I ever met who admitted that she wasn't very smart. She apparently does not suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Interesting reading.

Check this out

2010-06-16T22:29:00.002-04:00

An interesting tidbit from Forbes.com.

It's really, really hard to click on Suffolk County ... but it's worth the effort, if you're interested in comparisons.

Thank you, masked reader, for sending me the link.

And on a more personal note

2010-06-15T23:21:00.002-04:00

I fell down twice at the community garden and hurt my knee both times.

Did I tell you about the first time? -- I fell down the hill and twisted my left knee and it was all swollen, but that was a while ago now.

Then I slipped on the ramp coming out of the shed in the rain and hurt the same knee again, only not quite as bad ... or badly ...

Anyway, since I was wearing the same pair of rubber shoes both times, the shoes are now history. I loved my pink Crocs so kept wearing them in spite of the tread being worn down and them getting all dirty from the garden ...

And, oh, the graphic display on my laptop went wonky again, but thanks to a certain Mr. Y (I would have made him "X," but I thought it would be confusing with the former blogger), it's all fixed. He fixed it in less time than the duration of yesterday night's City Council meeting (I know this because I dropped it off before the meeting, and it was fixed before the meeting was over since I believe I arrived back at his house before the meeting was over).

*sigh*

Tardy posts

2010-06-15T23:09:00.003-04:00

I know, I know, I have not been good at posting stuff as of late.

Chalk it up to ... ah, heck, whatever you like.

Someone sent me this link, yikes a while ago now. It's about a wind turbine and turbine noise in Falmouth, MA.

I'm not really a big fan of the Boston Herald, but it's an interesting story, especially in light of our pending new planning director, Andrew Port. I'll be speaking with him more tomorrow, hopefully.

He seems to be very nice and capable - and he mentioned wind turbines in his Monday "meet-and-greet" with (some) city councillors.

PSA: Support Operation Troop Support

2010-06-14T08:39:00.000-04:00

The Newburyport Republican Committee will be conducting a donation drive to benefit Operation Troop Support.

The drive will be held Saturday June 26th at the Market Basket on Storey Ave in Newburyport from 9am-3pm.

Operation Troop Support is an organization based in Danvers, MA, that sends care packages to our troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A list of suggested donation items can be found on their website: operationtroopsupport.org.

For more information please contact Paul Breau @ paul_breau@yahoo.com

National Grid says "no sale"

2010-06-09T21:57:00.003-04:00

I heard a rumor that National Grid was selling its substation on Water Street to Marriott and that there was going to be a hotel built on the site.

National Grid almost laughed me out off the phone ... well, I exaggerate, but it was close!

Of course, people/companies often deny stuff that comes to fruition ...

Flies in my house!

2010-06-08T10:11:00.001-04:00

I hate flies in my house ...

Message from Sen. Tarr re: beach scraping

2010-06-08T10:08:00.003-04:00

To: Interested Parties

From: Senator Bruce Tarr

Re: Meeting to Address Beach Scraping Report

Since elements of the recently developed report of available information on beach scraping have become known and/or publicized, the need to address this report in a focused meeting dedicated to this subject has become clear. Thus, that meeting will occur as follows:

Date: Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Place: PITA Hall, PI

This meeting will be an opportunity for all of us to discuss the report with such state officials as Deerin Babb-Brott and Undersecretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Philip Griffiths. It is important that we confront any issues with the report directly, rather than allow them to fester and predominate over the many other issues we must deal with (dredging project, etc.) in a timely fashion.

We must also place the report into context, and understand that it does not constitute a ruling on the scraping project we have proposed, but is rather a compilation of scientific information that can and will be used to evaluate our proposal, and potentially aid in its design and approval criteria.

In order to ensure informed and engaging public discussion on these subjects, I am attaching to this memo a copy of the report, and the Town of Newbury has posted this report on its web site also.

My goal is for us to engage fully in discussing and understanding this report for what it is, and to have the meeting with a clear sense of direction about how we are going to proceed on this topic of beach scraping. Doing so is not only important to the success of any possible scraping project, but also to being able to move ahead with the critical “204” dredging project without unnecessary distraction.

I urge all interested parties to attend and participate in this meeting, and to be prepared to discuss how we might proceed in the collaborative way that has brought us so far on the beach.

Cynthia L. Lewis

Director of Intergovernmental Relations and Special Projects

Office of Senator Bruce E. Tarr

"Media in the Port" (round 2)

2010-06-03T08:11:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow morning ... 9 a.m. .... live on Comcast cable access ... me, Will Courtney, Sarah Hayden, Pete Falconi and Kim Gobbi.

Think you can do anything?

2010-05-30T09:51:00.002-04:00

I've been reading with interest the back and forth about Tea Party movements and unqualified people running for office and all that blather ...

When did it become OK for under qualified people to think they can do anything - and what's worse, for other people to think that's alright?

You can't do anything - you can do what you're good at and you should stick to that.

The point of elected officials is that you sort of pick one who you know is smart, who is aligned with you in most ways, and who you think/hope will make the right decision because in most cases, you don't know what the hell is really going on yourself.

This whole 24-hr. news cycle/citizen journalist movement has made "experts" out of everyone, so everyone thinks they can be an elected official, or they know someone who can be, or FoxNews told them this person can be ... whatever.

Get over it.

There are people out there who are smarter than you are. Picking one to vote for who is of average intelligence just because you are is stupid.

To every thing ...

2010-05-26T08:35:00.003-04:00

According to NECN, the rescue effort has been called off and the search for Marina Kohn, missing on the Merrimack River, is now a recovery effort. So that explains why the helicopter is gone, I guess.

When I was young, the nephew of our neighbor drowned in the lake we lived on (he was visiting), in Michigan ... he was about 18, I think. He went fishing in a rowboat and a sudden thunderstorm capsized the boat.

He could not swim.

When I was a little girl in Barbados, I spent most of my life in the ocean, but we lived on the calm, Caribbean side of the island. As macsurf said in this comment to another post and as sds said last night, you need to have respect and understand what you're up against.

I think that no amount of signs will help. I think you need to have grown up around the water and have been told and told and told ... and even then, you can still be a victim.

I don't usually pray, but I will say a little prayer for Marina Kohn, just in case ...

First thing this morning

2010-05-26T07:23:00.000-04:00

Check it out

2010-05-25T21:40:00.001-04:00

ROOF Over Head has a blog ... guess who made it? Not hard to guess, since my name is right there ....

Oh ... no ...

2010-05-25T19:01:00.001-04:00

Coast Guard plane ... helicopter ... sirens. I think something bad has happened.

Extreme green

2010-05-24T12:37:00.003-04:00

Check out Mary Baker Eaton's blog post about the proposed street light turnoff. It's quite enlightening (pun intended).

I see on the Excel spreadsheet she links to that the EAC is recommending that all the street lights on this end of Old Point Road (you know, where I live) be shut off. I wonder if they realize how dark it is out here at night? I always thought we needed more lights out here, not fewer ...

YIKES!

Spinning May 18: M. Cook (sorry it took so long to post)

2010-05-22T08:05:00.000-04:00

Well, May, 18's political primary races didn't disappoint.

The question pundits and prognosticators of all political persuasions are now asking is, "What does it all mean for November?"

May, 18 was a very bad day for incumbents and for the establishments of the two political parties - especially the entrenched Republican establishment.

Rand Paul's GOP primary victory over Trey Grayson, the handpicked candidate of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who also had the very public backing of GOP heavy hitters like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, was the political "shot heard 'round the world" in many ways.

No doubt it has put the fear of God into the GOP establishment, as it struggles with how best to manage the increasingly right wing, almost neo-fascist, Tea Party tiger the GOP establishment created, and whose back it believed it could ride.

Rand Paul's primary victory over Grayson by almost twenty five points was, indeed, impressive. It has, as one would expect, sent Tea Partiers into a euphoric swoon.

But, the fact remains, what happened on May, 18 in Kentucky, as impressive was it was, was just a primary election , with a very small percentage of Kentucky's eligible GOP voters even bothering to go to the polls.

The GOP in Kentucky is badly split, with 53% of GOP Grayson voters holding a "highly negative" view of Rand Paul, and 43% of those voters emphatically stating, according to a Public Policy Polling survey, they will not vote for him in November.

That, despite all the Tea Partiers' morning after euphoria, is not a good omen in terms of the GOP holding on to the seat now held by retiring GOP Senator Jim Bunning, especially when one considers that registered Democrats and independents outnumber registered Republicans in Kentucky by a significant margin.

For Kentucky Democrats, the surprisingly high primary voter turn out has bolstered optimism that a reenergized base will help propel the Democratic nominee, Jack Conway, to the Senate. Many Democratic strategists in the state expect Rand Paul's often extreme, right wing, rhetoric to keep the base energized, pull in many of the state's independents, and, at the very least, keep those Republicans who dislike and distrust Paul home, come the second Tuesday in November.

We shall see. We shall see.

The Republican and Tea Party belief, it's almost an article of faith, that November will bring a routing of the Democrats hit another snag on the 18th when Mark Critz, a Democrat, defeated the GOP candidate, Tim Burns, in the special election held to fill the seat held by the late Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha.

Many people thought Burns would capture Murtha's seat, given the district went for John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008, and has always been more of a "Reagan Democrat" stronghold than a "Kennedy Democrat" one.

But Critz defeated Burns by eight percentage points in a district many, if not most, pundits predicted would flip to the Republicans.

In Arkansas and Pennsylvania's Democratic Senate primaries, one incumbent, Arlen Specter, was rousted by a Democratic challenger, Representative Joe Sestak, who ran to Specter's left on most issues; and in Arkansas, Lt.Gov. Bill Halter, held incumbent Senator Blanche Lincoln to less than fifty percent of the primary vote, thus forcing a run off election on June, 8.

Like Sestak in Pennsylvania, Halter ran to the left/liberal side of the centrist Lincoln and mobilized a significant level of support from the base of the Arkansas Democratic party.

The races in Arkansas and Pennyslvania are fueling optimism that the Democratic base will be far more enaged and mobilized in November than it has historically been in mid-term elections.

Again, we shall see.

But back to the question in the second sentence of this column regarding what May, 18 means in terms of November.

The honest answer is, "Nobody really knows."

But we do know a few things.

The first is that the party controlling the White House, especially if it also controls one or both Houses of the Legislative Branch, almost always loses seats in a mid term election.

That's why all the talk about a rout come November brings on a big yawn from me. I fully expect the Democrats to lose some seats. It is, after all, the historical norm.

Will they lose their majority in one or both Houses? It's too early to say, but I'm predicting the answer is "probably not".

The other thing we know is, despite Rand Paul's upset victory in Kentucky, the Tea Party, when all is said and done, represents only a very small sliver of the electorate. A sliver that is overwhelmingly white and that, at least within some of its factions, is displaying increasingly right wing, racist, nastily xenophobic, and sundry other nasty traits that have a way, once people look at the whole phenomenon a little more closely, of turning many people off, especially independents and more moderate Republicans off.

I suspect, given the number of Republicans in Kentucky who hold negative views of Rand Paul and, at least indirectly, the Tea Party movement he personifies, we will see similar numbers emerge across the nation as the election season heats up and more and more Americans take a closer look at the Tea Party phenomenon and the candidates it fields.

But still,no one really has any idea what all this will mean, and how it will play out come November.

But one thing is certain. 2010 promises to be one of the most interesting and volatile mid-term election cycles we have seen in a very long time.

Michael Cook
Gloucester, MA

Anonymous comments & etc.

2010-05-19T08:10:00.004-04:00

One of these days on "Media in the Port" (the PortMedia round table thing I'm doing now), we're going to talk about anonymous comments. At least I hope so.

It's kind of interesting to me that people don't want others to know who they are. Aren't you guys proud of your thoughts, your positions ... yourselves?

Then again, since I know who some people are even though they don't use their real names because they have either written to me or told me* ... and you may know who they are. If you don't, ask (them, that is ... I'm not sure what blog etiquette says about bloggers "outing" people).

* A couple of months ago, I met a man who told me that I probably knew him better as "anonymous."

Fan mail from some flounder

2010-05-18T09:30:00.002-04:00

Ah, just when I was taking my fishing pole down from the rafters for its yearly cleaning, I hear about this.

Locals are enjoying the start of an early season for fishing, but most anglers' understanding of a new federal law requiring saltwater recreational fishermen to register with the federal government for the first time is tangled, at best.
Under rules set forth by the The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, anglers across the country must register for a permit this year in order to do any saltwater fishing. Previously, there was no license or permit required for saltwater fishing in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. (Daily News)

No, no, no I say. It's OK to make people register to fish, but another fee (the fee part starts next year)? You all know how I feel about fees on things that have the most impact on poor people ... which in most senses includes me.

Next the government will be telling me I need a paid permit to garden because home gardens are increasing in popularity due to the high cost of pesticide-laden veggies - and the government needs to keep track of soybean production or something.

Lay off the poor people.

Thanks Tom Salemi

2010-05-17T22:52:00.002-04:00

What was it, 2 years ago that I had an email exchange with Tom Salemi, and I told him that I was restless (or something) because I had left the Current and had not outlet for my news.

"Start a blog," he wrote.

I did and here it is. I love it; every day I love it because it has brought me to such wonderful people and brought wonderful people to me ...

So thanks Tom Salemi.

Mercury is in retrograde, Google and love

2010-05-17T07:14:00.003-04:00

Well, folks, last week was another week from hell.

For those of you that don't already know, my brother-in-law's 41-yr.-old sister was found dead in bed on Mother's Day morning. Our families are quite close, and of course I'm very close to my brother-in-law (not to mention my sister and niece and nephew).

We were all very shaken, and although with help from Bluehost we identified the malicious code in the index file of the website, nothing was done last week ....

On the other hand, it was also a week of near bliss, comfort and fulfillment, so what can I say (except for "Yikes! What a roller coaster!")?

Newburyport Business will be back soon; Google just has to clear it for landing.

This has been an exercise in ... well, in how much Google controls everything. Even though Newburyport Business itself was not putting any malicious software anywhere, there was some code that had been inserted into the files that was (?was it?) redirecting people to another site that might have been.

Might have been.

Google has shut down that site, so I'm really not clear on why it had to shut down Newburyport Business as well ... but, hey, who am I to question Google?

My website was like one of those little fish that gets caught in the net while people are fishing for the big guys.

But you know what? There has been a lot of loss involved in this whole process, but there has also been gain.

I implore everyone again to watch yourselves on the Internet ... and make sure you have good anti-virus software ... and tell the people you love that you love them when you have the chance, because you just don't know when they will be taken away from you.

A little website means nothing when you think about the grand scheme of things.

Your weekly dose: The Tea Party and the 17th Amendment

2010-05-17T07:13:00.001-04:00

I just have to ask, "How has the movement known as the "Tea Party" (A.) managed to grab so much media attention, and (B.) how, given the fact it is based on little more than misdirected anger and whacky conspiracy theories, not to mention ignorance and fear, has it transformed the once great and honorable party of Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, Henry Cabot Lodge, Margaret Chase Smith, Edward Brooke, and William Weld , into the party of Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and, more locally, Bill Hudak?"

It truly boggles the thinking person's mind; be one a Republican, a Democrat, a genuine conservative, a liberal, or an independent.

Thankfully, I think more and more intelligent Republicans and independents are asking those questions, especially since it's come to light that the Tea Party, rather than expanding citizen participation in our democratic processes, is actually trying to limit it.

They are doing so by calling for repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution that, in 1913, took the power of electing US Senators away from often corrupt state legislatures and gave it directly to the registered voters in each state.

The amendment greatly expanded voter participation, strengthened democratic processes, and gave power back to the people.

There's a strange irony in the Tea Party, a movement that calls itself "grass roots", and an advocate of taking the government "back" on the "people's" behalf, championing a cause that will do just the opposite.

But then, this movement is full of "strange ironies".

It is a movement based on the belief President Obama is an impostor president.

It is a movement that believes health care reform will bring a new, Nazi like Holocaust to America.

Its members, in one of the most disrespectful displays I've ever seen relating to the Holocaust, used actual photographs of Hitler's victims at their rally on Capitol Hill last September to score cheap political points against the health reform legislation wending its way through the halls of Congress.

The Tea Party's de facto leader, Sarah Palin, a woman who can't seem to decide if she is a good Christian woman or a leather dominatrix in the making (twice, in the last few weeks, she's showed up at political events dressed in some kinky looking leather outfits), revved up the Tea Partiers' paranoia with claims that Obama was looking to euthanize people like her little Down Syndrome son Trig, not to mention Grandma and Grandpa - and most of the Tea Partiers seem to have swallowed the lie, hook line and sinker.

Sarah's other half, no not Todd, Michelle Bachmann; the right wing, looney tune, congresswoman from Minnesota, drove the Tea Partiers' paranoia into overdrive when she urged them to break the law by refusing to fill out the census.

Why? Because Bachmann claimed the census was really a tool devised by Obamamaniacs to identify the impostor president's political opponents so that they could, at a later date, be rounded and up and sent to domestic Guantanamos run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Funny thing though, when one of her aides clued her in that if people in her district listened to her and didn't fill out their census forms, her district and, hence, her job, might be eliminated, bats in her belfry Bachmann became a born again champion of filling out the census.

More locally, the Tea Party is represented by none other than Bill Hudak, the apparent GOP nominee for the 6th district congressional seat held by Democrat John Tierney.

Hudak is an admitted "Birther", in that he, like most of the Mad Hatters of the Tea Party, believes Barack Obama is an impostor president.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Hudak had life size cut outs of then Senator Barack Obama dressed as Osama bin laden on the front lawn of his home in tony Boxford.

He has publicly stated he believes issues pertaining to people's civil rights should be put to popular votes, but won't answer if that applies retroactively to things like Brown v. Board of Education, the 1960's Voting and Civil Rights Acts, woman's suffrage, or the right of interracial couples to marry.

He's a piece of work, this Bill Hudak. But he is our local Tea Party candidate for Congress. It makes me feel badly for the many decent and intelligent Republicans I know who reside in the sixth district.

A lot of this might be funny if it weren't for the fact that, not too far below the surface of the Tea Party movement, there is a level of racism, xenophobia, and homophobia, not to mention rhetoric that comes perilously close to inciting violence, that should concern all intelligent and reasonable Americans, regardless of party affiliation or political philosophy.

It's all so ironic. The Tea Party claims it cares about people's freedoms and is working to defend them but, the record shows, and the call to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment proves, its intent, if its members were to ever gain real political power, is to do just the opposite.

Michael Cook
2 Willow Street
Gloucester, MA

O'Regan gone

2010-05-11T14:22:00.003-04:00

Mayor Donna Holaday told me earlier that the City Council last night supported her in removing Brendan O'Regan from his position as DPS director. Tony Furnari is now acting director.

More to come ... I think ...

Past as prologue, Palin, Obama and all things "green" - Your Weekly Dose

2010-05-10T00:03:00.002-04:00

I'm generally not a big fan of Keith Olbermann even though I often agree with his politics. I just find him a little too "Limbaughesque" in the style department some times.

But I have to admit I loved him showing a tape recently on "Countdown" of Sarah Palin leading her groupies, barely a fortnight before the Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster, in chants of "Drill baby drill, not stall baby stall", while she assured her groveling groupies that deep sea drilling for oil was perfectly safe.

Olbermann lost me, however, when, after repeatedly showing the tape, he said, "That woman is an idiot."

The tape made that reality about Palin crystal clear to anyone with half a brain. There was really no need for Olbermann's additional commentary. It made him seem, well, "Limbaughesque".

But anyway, here we are facing a man made marine disaster of likely unprecedented proportions that isn't just about the greed of big oil companies. It's about our own selfishness, stupidity, ongoing love affair with things like Status Utility Vehicles, and our deep denial of the dangers our continued dependence on oil, be it foreign or domestic, poses to both the global environment and our national security.

I don't care if people view themselves as faux green Obama-maniacs fretting about climate change and global warming while driving their Range Rovers and Denalis on some of greater Newburtport's best maintained roads; or science denying Dodge Ram, monster pickup truck driving, rednecks who sport stickers on their bumpers with slogans like, "My Wife Yes, My Dog Maybe, My Gun - NEVER!"; the truth is most Americans, across the board, have yet to grasp what's really at stake here - both in terms of the environment and our long term economic and national security.

As much as I may have enjoyed watching Olbermann lampoon Palin for her sophomoric "Drill baby drill" pep rally, I was also well aware President Obama had recently announced that he would allow new drilling leases to be issued to oil companies in numerous coastal regions of the country.

Now, I expect Sarah Palin to do and say stupid things. It is, after all, par for her course.

But when I heard a man as intelligent as President Obama reopen the door to increased off shore oil drilling, in direct contradiction to a promise he'd made on the campaign trail, my heart sank.

That announcement was not a profile in political courage. It was a profile in political expediency.

If Barack Obama was truly a leader, he would not have called for his own version of "drill baby drill", or tried to do a half hearted Sarah Palin/Dick Cheney imitation on energy.

He would have called the American people to action. He would have told us the truth; we are not going to drill ourselves to economic, energy, environmental, or national security.

He would have spoken the word to which no American politician dares give voice - SACRIFICE.

He would have told Americans that our choice is not "to drill or not to drill". The choice before us is whether we are going to continue on the path we have been on for more than a century. A path that has led us to this precarious place in terms of not only our economic and strategic security, but also our environmental and ecological security.

The clock, as they, say is ticking and, thus far, very few Americans have showed any real signs that they grasp what's actually at stake.

I see and hear it all the time, from Costa Rica to Cape Cod. More and more people are talking "green" but they aren't walking "green" - not by a long shot.

Most Americans, regardless of party affiliation or political ideology, are living proof of NY Times columnist Tom Friedman's assertion in his compelling book, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded", that people are for more interested in a "green party" than they are a genuine "green revolution".

Being "green" is all the rage. It's the new cause celebre in America, but not much else.

That's truly tragic because we are running out of time, quicker than most people realize, to, as Friedman put it in "Hot, Flat, and Crowded", "...manage the unavoidable and avoid the unmanageable..." in terms of both climate change and global biodiversity loss.

As the disaster in the Gulf continues to wreak its havoc, perhaps one positive to come out of it will be an awakening, a true awakening, especially among those who claim to care about all things green, that the time has come for a genuine "green revolution", not just a hip and trendy "green party".

However, with past often being prologue, I, sadly, am not holding my breath.

Michael Cook

2010-05-07T07:39:00.002-04:00

I have a story in today's Current about the parking garage. I think it's got some facts that are not well known ... in any case, I don't think there ever will be a parking garage.

My hair is still wet ...

2010-05-07T07:33:00.003-04:00

I'm heading off, in a bit, to do the live broadcast on PortMedia with Will Courtney of the Daily News, Kim Gobbi of Newburyport Today and Pete Falconi of WNBP.

We're going to be talking about the "new media" and tossing a few tables around the studio. OK, that second part might be an exaggeration ...

It's at 9 a.m. on Comcast cable channel 10 and will stream live on PortMedia's website (and will be taped for re-broadcast throughout the week).

I'm sure it will be a hoot. Our meeting a couple of weeks ago certainly was ...

Another warning

2010-05-07T07:27:00.002-04:00

Two people I know in the last 3 days or so have had some sort of electronic device stolen from their cars.

Both of the cars were left unlocked. This is something I'm guilty of myself, but then, I have no portable electronic devices that I carry around with me.

The second person told me yesterday that when she called the police, they told her she was the third person that day who had called in such a report. She lives on Lime St.

Which is kind of funny, in a small way, because earlier yesterday, a native was telling me that people used to call Lime St. "Slime St."

Late comments on DPS director

2010-05-07T07:18:00.003-04:00

Well, I see that the mayor has essentially fired DPS Director Brendan O'Regan.

I've got to say ... that I don't really have a problem with this.

Comments

2010-05-05T22:33:00.001-04:00

New rules (should be the same as the old rules):

Going forward, no one calls anyone else names or otherwise defames another person in a comment unless they do it under their own name.

Your weekly dose: Michael Cook

2010-05-05T10:50:00.002-04:00

I recently reread Lewis Carroll's, "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland" and its sequel, "Through the Looking Glass".

As I did so, I couldn't help but think if Carroll were alive today, the movement known as the "Tea Partiers" would no doubt serve as inspiration for another sequel to those classic works of political and social satire.

After all, today's Tea Partiers, much like the denizens of Carroll's rabbit hole, live in a parallel universe behind a political looking glass that is as much fantasy and fiction as anything Alice encountered on her journey through "Wonderland."

Let's take a look at just how distorted the Tea Partiers' "behind the looking glass" thinking really is.

Of course to do so begs the question, "Where to begin?"

Let's start with the "Birther" conspiracy. You know, the one many Tea Partiers still cling to that says Barack Obama is an illegitimate president because he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and his presidency is the direct result of an international plot hatched on the day Obama was born in some far off, Muslim land by Osama bin Laden's grandfather, or some other evil and nefarious Islamic potentate.

I do believe Bill Hudak, the Tea Party's candidate for congress here in the 6th, is a big subscriber to some variation of that meme.

I have little doubt if today's Tea Partiers had been alive in the 1930's they would have believed, and revered, the Detroit based, nationally syndicated, Nazi apologist, anti-Semitic, Catholic priest, radio shock jock, by the name of Father Coughlin, who revved up that era's Tea Partiers with bogus claims FDR's real name was "Rosenfeld," and that he was an agent of Jewish, Socialist, bankers in Europe determined to destroy America and her capitalist and Christian traditions.

Anyway, on to the next "through the looking glass" Tea Party delusion.

Let's see. How about them there "death panels" Sarah Palin got the Tea Partiers all fired up about?

The Carrollesque irony in Palin's "death panels" meme is the concept that led Palin to lie to her followers and tell them health care reform would result in Obama appointed bureaucrats deciding whether to euthanize or spare little Trig Palin, not to mention Nana and Grandpa, actually has its origins in the fundamentalist Christian administration of George Walker Bush.

The "death panel" meme is the direct result of efforts by both the Bush and Obama administrations to make important "end of life" legal and medical planning something for which Medicare would pay. GW Bush saw it as important for lower income seniors who might not have the financial means to pay for such services out of pocket .

But in the parallel, "behind the looking glass", universe of Sister Sarah Palin and her Tea Party groupies, that benevolent policy aim mutated into an attempt by Obama to carry out an American Holocaust.

Oh, and lest I forget. How about Sister Sarah's Minnesota twin, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, exhorting her own Tea Party groupies to break the law and not fill out the Census because it was all part of a plan to identify critics of Obama so they could be later rounded up and placed in domestic versions of Guantanamo where God only knows what horrific fate would await them.

Funny thing though, once Bachmann realized if Minnesotans did not fill out their Census forms her own congressional district, and hence her job, might be eliminated; filling out the Census became a patriotic, almost sacred, duty for her Tea Party constituents to fulfill.

The list of such Tea Party and Palinesque "behind the looking glass" lunacy just goes on and on. It might all be funny if the implications for the nation, perhaps even the world, were not so frightening if people who believe such things, like Bill Hudak here in the 6th, actually obtain real political power in the coming election cycle.

I can assure any and everyone reading this the world is watching, and many people around the globe are aghast that people like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and a movement like the Tea Party, seem, at least on the surface, to be the driving forces in American politics today.

We in Gloucester and Newburyport may not be able to do much about what will unfold on the national scene come next November, but we sure as heck can do something about what will happen here. We can make sure John Tierney, as long as the Republicans can't or won't field a better, more viable candidate than a Tea Party conspiracy theorist like Bill Hudak, is returned to Washington to represent the 6th district for another two years.

Not to do so is so unacceptable that it, truly, borders on the unpatriotic.

Michael Cook

Ernie Harwell

2010-05-05T08:07:00.003-04:00

I have to take a moment on here to mark the passing of a legend, radio voice of the Detroit Tigers, Ernie Harwell.

For years, I listened to Mr. Harwell doing the play-by-play for the Detroit Tigers, on the radio. He was the voice of the Tigers for 42 years, so I guess I was a listener for most of them ... in my car, at work ...

One time my sister and I were driving back from Michigan, and we were able to pick up a baseball game on the car radio around the call letters of WJR (the "Great Voice of the Great Lakes"). I think we were in PA. We knew it was a Tigers game because we recognized the voice immediately.

Here's a video from ESPN.

Ernie died yesterday at the age of 92 - a good run.

Parking garage

2010-05-05T06:57:00.003-04:00

According to Councillor Ari Herzog (via Facebook), there will be an order on the City Council agenda on Monday to site a parking garage on Titcomb Street.

As you I'm sure all know, the City Council has to approve a site, but not a plan (as in, they don't get to say "I want option 1, or option 1A"). There is a deadline to all this planning and that deadline is May 15.

I'm writing a story about this garage for this week's Current so I'm not going to say a whole lot here.

But I will say that some $500,000 of taxpayer money has been spent on this already. That's how much the site study cost (or that's the last figure I had).

It kind of boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Beware

2010-05-04T07:19:00.003-04:00

With all the recent difficulties I have been experiencing with Newburyport Business, and the attendant anxiety, I have been noticing more and more how accustomed people are to things not working and/or the possibility of a real threat.

And accepting it.

Nobody but me seems to think that my website being hacked is a big deal. Someone wrote to me about how common it is, and how often people don't even know their site has been hacked. I certainly would not have noticed, on my own.

Then I think of sites such as Facebook, which frequently does not work for whatever reason. People get their accounts hacked on there all the time, yet everyone goes back (including me).

A while ago, a friend of mine was so horrified that her account had been hacked and she had inadvertently infected her "friends" that she canceled her account. Now I see that she is back.

What does this all mean?

I stopped doing online banking a while ago (that's what it means to me). There is nothing on this laptop that would be of interest to any hacker, unless they were looking for news stories about Newburyport, or perhaps looking for some fairly bad attempts at memoir writing.

Nobody seems to particularly care that going onto Newburyport Business could potentially lead to bad things (there is no malware on the site itself, but the site has been hacked and points readers to another site that logic would tell you is not safe).

Someone said the other day that they ignore virus warnings when going on a site, including Newburyport Business. A couple of other people said they also ignored the warnings.

Scary.

Well, all I can say is, I was the person most on there, and I don't seem to have picked up anything - but that does not mean that someone else did not, or could not. I take that seriously.

Then again I say, I have nothing of interest to a hacker.

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

2010-05-03T10:01:00.003-04:00

Yikes! I hobbled* into Dick's Variety here on the island yesterday to buy a gallon of water.

They were out of gallon jugs of water. NECN is reporting that the water down there south of us is still not safe for drinking or cooking.

Heck, people, my mother and sister/brother-in-law go through this every year in Gloucester. Boil order, boil order, boil order.

I suggest that these people boil their water and stop coming here to buy up our jugs of water! We've got our own problems. Geesh.

Dunkin' Donuts - oh, no! say it ain't so - and other purveyors of coffee had to close, as some other businesses also have no water to wash lettuce, make ice, etc. On the other hand, businesses that make ice are doing quite well.

* I am hobbling because I fell down a hill at the community garden yesterday morning and sprained my left knee. The knee is about the size of a grapefruit. Good thing I don't have to depress a pedal in my car to engage a clutch, huh? You know what comes next ... "Oh, wait ..."

Grezzo closed?

2010-04-30T14:42:00.002-04:00

Grezzo looks pretty much closed to me ... walked by around lunchtime and no activity whatsoever. So I guess Ari is vindicated.