Thank you!

Dear Anonymous from 4:05 today,

Thank you for your comment, which I am holding pending further investigation and probable story writing for the Newburyport Current (can't scoop myself).

Thank you!

It's, like, the rave

I was, like, reading this here letter to the editor in the Daily News called "Expressions better left unsaid."

Here it is, in full:

Call me old-fashioned, call me critical and you can even call me ridiculous, but one thing that I pride myself on is speaking the English language correctly.

What has happened to the way that we speak? I am referring to two expressions that have become so prevalent in our society that it annoys the heck out of me.

The first one is using the word "like" in the wrong context and using it too frequently. I hear people everyday saying, "I'm 'like'" or "He's 'like'" in just about every sentence that's spoken. Where did that come from? Is this the right way to talk? Not for me. It sounds very juvenile and just shouldn't be said, in my opinion.

The other expression that I hear that absolutely drives me up a wall is the word "goes" and the singular of goes, that being "go." When a person is describing a conversation that one has had with another, such as, "I was talking to so and so the other day," they always say, "He 'goes'" or "She 'goes,'" instead of saying it the correct way, that being he or she "said" or he or she "said to me" or the singular "I go."

We all live in an imperfect world, that is a fact; however, I would hope that we can learn to speak the way we we're taught in school, and those two aforementioned expressions, I feel certain, were not the correct way to speak.

People commenting online point out the typing (or other) gaffe in the last paragraph (in red), but hey ... my pet peeve is extraneous apostrophes!

I remember the first time I noticed someone saying "like" every other word. It was an interview with Greg Hawkes, keyboardist for the pop group The Cars. It struck me as very odd (I believe I was still living in Michigan, or had just moved out here).

Actually, I still think it's odd. Why add extra, unnecessary words into your sentences, man?

I find myself saying it, all the time. I'm trying to stop cuz it's, like, weird.

Nipple Mania v. Facebook

Check out this young man, who is waging a war (of sorts) with Facebook over the site's policy of not allowing photos that include nipples.

Only women's nipples, of course.

So he made an artistic rendering of himself, made totally with small photos of his nips, and used it as his profile pic on Facebook.

He's even got a vid on iReport, which is accessible through CNN.com.

Strangely enough, most of the comments on his blog support the ban on (women's) nipples.

I agree. EWWWW, nipples! How gross!

Good grief.

Although there is one interesting comment, in which a reader asks, "Why did Michelangelo give Adam a Belly button?"

Think about it.

Another snow storm?

"Good fertile storm breeding ground" is how Matt Noyes is describing the area (in the midwest, of course) from whence the storm is coming - TONIGHT.

Oh sleet and freezing rain, too.

Does 2-4" constitute a "snow storm?"

It's just a weather event!

Was she really a brat?

I was re-reading To Kill A Mockingbird over the weekend.

I had failed to do so during last year's The Big Read; in fact, having read it, I wonder if I had previously read it at all. This is how movies based on books skew your brain.

On The Big Read website, it says Scout is "bratty." I think the character is profoundly interesting - but then, I always did like bratty kids better than goody-two-shoes ones (being one of the latter myself).

My copy, obtained used at Jabberwocky, is obviously a cast off from last year's program. I would rather have the book in hardcover, but I can't see myself ever casting this paperback off to the shelves of the used book room.

Reading the story sort of reminded me of Newburyport, or any other small town with a history you could name.

And in that, I saw the value of a relatively insular community, where everyone knows your name, indignities are avoided, and hostilities simmer down after a while.

Well, if the hostilities are felt by a decent, reasonable person, that is.

Oh, well ... social strata aside, I was amazed at how parent-child relationships have changed and how children used to be able to roam about the neighborhood without fear ... oh, wait. But that was an isolated incident.

Nowadays one would be startled if a child called his/her father "sir." And I rarely see children roaming around unchaperoned, even though *wow* if I were a kid, I'd sure want to be out on the marsh, down on the Refuge, out on the water ... without parental oversight.

How can you hear the call of a loon (the bird) if you've got an iPod hooked to your person?

I can remember lying in a field of tall grass, just staring up at the sky, for long periods of time. I never went swimming by myself when I was little, but we went sledding, explored the woods (not too far, though - I was, and still am, scared of woods), climbed trees, and basically spent most of the day outside.

A great work of social commentary (although last summer, my neighbor wanted to kill one of our neighborhood mockingbirds because it was carrying on all night).

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." - Atticus Finch

Let them eat cake

I was just perusing the Daily News website and came across this story from today about Rep. Costello and Sen. Baddour spending $49,000 on food and stuff in the last 2 years.

Picking up the $49,000 food tab: Baddour, Costello run up big bills at restaurants

It's said that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

That's an idea that both state Sen. Steven Baddour and state Rep. Michael Costello embrace.

Between them, they spent $49,000 on food during the past two-year election cycle. Their food choices ranged from high-end steak houses like Ruth's Chris, to popular neighborhood eateries like Shadi's in Baddour's native Methuen.

Both insist the money they spent on food is all about politics, rewarding supporters and winning alliances.

Kind of snarky, huh? Just when I had posted about news stories not being like blogs!

What I want to know is, what is the source for this information? I'm not saying it ain't true - I just want to know where the info came from. Basic reporting stuff ...

Hey, I saw Mike Costello eating lunch in a fine establishment in town a couple of months ago - it was Angie's! (For those of you who don't live here, Angie's is a .... ummmmm ... local diner place. Vinyl booths and the like.)

I guess coming from the corporate world, I don't have a personal gripe with this.

When I worked in Boston, I rarely was taken to Subway for work-related lunches. Hell, even when I worked in Newburyport, "work lunches" were never at Angie's and dinners were always at places like Glenn's, Ten Center or Mission Oak Grill when it was that Kiwi place.

You know, places I don't go when I have to pay for myself! I know, it's taxpayer money. But when some CEO takes his cronies out to lunch, we pay for that, too. Now if these guys were getting free food ...

Not making excuses, but I was in Boston's Back Bay a few months ago and I noticed a definite lower number of moderately-priced eateries from when I lived there. *sigh*

That's part of why I moved away ... but I do miss the city sometimes.

Virus alert

Funny how when someone says "virus" now, I immediately assume (usually correctly) that they refer to a computer virus.


Apparently there's a new one going around that has a subject line referring to an acceptance speech by Obama.


http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/obamaspeech.asp

Hooray!

And not a moment too soon ... the Rte. 1A bridge re-opens on Monday, according to this story in the Daily News.

I can't wait ... wow, my weekly trips to Gloucester shortened by at least 15 minutes and the trip down/over will be interesting again to boot.

I'm psyched.

Now if we could just get the Hines Bridge fixed ...

Circling the drain

I found this interesting post on the website of The Ann Arbor (MI) chronicle. It's a column about the Ann Arbor News, a daily newspaper.

This section here could relate to any daily newspaper (and does):

The publisher of the Detroit News, Jonathan Wolman, was in town in early December as part of a panel discussion titled “The First Amendment, Freedom of the Press and the Future of Journalism,” held at the Ford Library. As partners in The Ann Arbor Chronicle, my husband and I have a deeply vested interest in exploring this topic – it’s our future, too.

Based on what the panelists had to say, that future involves a tumult of technology – news delivered via Twitter, video, podcasts, blogs, live-blogging, social networks like Facebook and others methods yet to be invented. These different forms require attention – someone has to file a Tweet, shoot and edit video, record the podcast, get these things into some kind of presentable form and post them on whatever platform they’re using. Often, that someone has evolved to be the reporter. That doesn’t include time spent doing what the job originally entailed: Preparing, researching, reporting, writing, editing, rewriting and, god forbid, just working the beat.

With fewer people employed at news organizations, each person is asked to do more of these things. At some point, something’s got to give. Vincent Duffy, news director at Michigan Radio, said at the Ford Library forum that typically what gets shorter shrift is attention to the story itself.

Technology is also behind the news in other ways. All of the panelists said they factored in website traffic – specifically, what stories online drew the most readers – when deciding what to cover next. They all looked at that data as part of their daily news meetings, when editors discuss how to allocate their staff resources, what kind of “play” a story will get or whether it’s worth covering at all.

I guess this could be seen as the democratization of media – readers are essentially voting on what they’re most interested in, be it Britney or bailouts. But it also seems like an abdication of responsibility, when newsroom leaders throw up their hands and say, “Hey – we wanted to cover the war in Iraq, but our readers were clamoring for cute puppy stories.” It’s happening at a time when newsrooms need more leadership and vision, not less.

I guess I wish that I could have made this blog a real site for news (actually, there's no guessing involved), but that is economically not feasible (it takes too much time to verify everything when I'm not being compensated for the time). I wish all the stuff that is going on in Newburyport got better coverage and maybe The Liberator does indeed fill that gap.

It's very sad that people don't want to read a paper anymore, but I've said it here before and I'll say it again - the printed news is too dry and people want emotion. Not emotion by the reporter, but emotion from the reporter (as in, conveying it).

It's not enough to say "neighbors of the landfill have reported health effects they attribute to the former dump site," or words to that effect. But that is all that is said.

There's a reason why reality shows and blogs are so popular while newspapers are failing. Blogs are reality shows; newspapers are stuck in some era that I suspect is fairly recent. I have copies of old newspapers and you can feel the thrust of an emotional story.

It probably coincides with people writing for newspapers being labeled "journalists." Blogs are journals in every sense of the word; newspapers are not.

What I always find interesting is how, when a newspaper (and I lay the blame there because there are - or were - people called fact checkers) makes a mistake, very rarely is there a complaint by the person of whom the paper has run afoul. Everyone seems to expect mistakes.

Now isn't that just sad?

Landfill: a 'thank you' to a Port resident

A comment from an anonymous reader in Everett:

I just wanted to leave a note to thank a Newburyport resident, Gloria Braunhardt for a lovely letter to the Editor in the City of Everett’s Leader Herald newspaper, informing the residents of Everett of just a bit of what’s been happening in Newburyport. We have not seen anything like that in our newspapers, all we hear is propaganda from the DeMaria administration. Week after week, they try and paint Wood Waste as being angels and the saviors of Everett. Mr. Thibeault has been paying to have these propaganda articles in the newspapers however, when an Alderman disputes what he says, and writes his own article, Mr. Thibeault just opens his wallet and has to have the last word, and keep repeating himself, of how great he is. Many, many people in Everett can see that Mr. Thiebault did not write these articles, they are the exact replica wording and formatting of the Mayor DeMaria’s Chief of Staff, so it’s blatantly obvious that the city of Everett is in trouble. Thank you Ms. Braunhardt, if you read this blog.

Of course, I cannot find said letter on the paper's website ... because there does not seem to be one!

But I do see over on Tom Salemi's blog that the landfill is kicking butt (his words) in his poll of big stories of 2008.