I was naughty and went to Bob Lobster for fish & chips yesterday.
The last 2 times I've been in there, there have been literally hoards of people there. That's good!
My only complaint is, you seem to get less fish in the fish & chips these days. I used to get 2 meals out of one order a year ago.
That, I hear, is how restaurants are dealing with the economic crunch - not by raising prices drastically, but by reducing portions.
That being said, it's still damn tasty fish & chips. And why should I expect to get 2 meals anyway?
Monday, August 4, 2008
Is my garden a Chapter 21-E site?
I read with interest this story in this week's Current, about recycling sludge from the sewer plant.
“We’ve been using green-related technology since 1997, when it comes to our sludge,” said Public Services Director Brendan O’Regan this week. “It’s called a beneficial reuse byproduct … taking our sludge and seeing what can be done to use it in a more environmentally friendly manner...”
“We bring [the sludge] down to Ipswich, and a private company mixes it with leaf and yard waste,” explained O’Regan. “It stays in a pile for a certain number of days, and the heat generated kills the bacteria in the sludge, then the composted material is essentially a compost that you can use for anything. It’s safe enough to plant vegetables for human consumption. It’s called a Class A biosolid.”
And whether they know it or not, Newburyport residents have been scooping up this former-sludge compost for years, picking up loads of it from the Crow Lane landfill, where it is offered free.
OK, well, let's forgive the writer the misstep about compost being available at the landfill (it's actually available at the recycling center on Crow Lane, since the landfill is privately owned).
Only 10 years ago, [writes M. Renee Buckley] the city’s sludge had a much different fate; it was trucked to the landfill and buried.
Okee doke then.
Wasn't the landfill classified as a Chapter 21-E site (oil and/or hazardous waste) because of this same sewer sludge? Or is it no longer laden with heavy metals?
I've got a good amount of that city compost in my yard ...
“We’ve been using green-related technology since 1997, when it comes to our sludge,” said Public Services Director Brendan O’Regan this week. “It’s called a beneficial reuse byproduct … taking our sludge and seeing what can be done to use it in a more environmentally friendly manner...”
“We bring [the sludge] down to Ipswich, and a private company mixes it with leaf and yard waste,” explained O’Regan. “It stays in a pile for a certain number of days, and the heat generated kills the bacteria in the sludge, then the composted material is essentially a compost that you can use for anything. It’s safe enough to plant vegetables for human consumption. It’s called a Class A biosolid.”
And whether they know it or not, Newburyport residents have been scooping up this former-sludge compost for years, picking up loads of it from the Crow Lane landfill, where it is offered free.
OK, well, let's forgive the writer the misstep about compost being available at the landfill (it's actually available at the recycling center on Crow Lane, since the landfill is privately owned).
Only 10 years ago, [writes M. Renee Buckley] the city’s sludge had a much different fate; it was trucked to the landfill and buried.
Okee doke then.
Wasn't the landfill classified as a Chapter 21-E site (oil and/or hazardous waste) because of this same sewer sludge? Or is it no longer laden with heavy metals?
I've got a good amount of that city compost in my yard ...
Barbados+snake=news
Awww, the world's tiniest snake has been found, on Barbados. It was slithering beneath a rock near a patch of Barbados forest, says the AP report.
It's so little (it can curl up on a quarter) and cute - and not venomous.
Well, I always thought Barbados was snake-free, seeing as how European settlers brought in the mongoose (see photo) from India, and they ate all the snakes.
It is alternately said that the settlers brought the mongoose in to kill the rats that were invading the sugar cane, but unfortunately, things did not work out as planned - the mongoose sleeps by night and the rat, well, it eats by night - and that the mongoose was brought in to kill the snakes (which is what I've always heard).
Just think how those rotten Europeans came along and de-forested all of Barbados, ruining it for everyone ("everyone" in that case being the Caribs, who were wiped out through slavery and disease - the tribe is described here as "ruthless cannibals")!
Anyway, I can just barely remember a mongoose that was terrorizing baby goats at the house in which my mother had an apartment, just before we came to the U.S.
According to a Barbados info site, found here, a fun fact is that a mongoose never crosses the road unless someone is watching ...
Demographic inversion
Over on Flint Expatriates, Gordie Young has an interesting post about demographic inversion.
This is where the affluent are returning to live downtown rather than fleeing to the suburbs. The article upon which the post is based is from The New Republic.
I don't know if I agree totally with what the author of the article is saying, but it does make one pause. Newburyport is not as large as the cities cited, but we are due for a demographic inversion, right? (If one has not already taken place.)
... Demographic inversions of one sort or another are occurring in urban pockets scattered all across America, many of them in seemingly unlikely places. Charlotte, North Carolina, is in the midst of a downtown building boom dominated by new mixed-use high-rise buildings, with office space on the bottom and condos or rental units above. Even at a moment of economic weakness, the condos are still selling briskly.
But back to my question from 2 paragraphs ago. The people who are moving into these condos in the paragraph above work in the city where they live.
Gordie Young proposes that it's possible this trend could spread to smaller cities, but Newburyport is a pretty small city.
This is where the affluent are returning to live downtown rather than fleeing to the suburbs. The article upon which the post is based is from The New Republic.
I don't know if I agree totally with what the author of the article is saying, but it does make one pause. Newburyport is not as large as the cities cited, but we are due for a demographic inversion, right? (If one has not already taken place.)
... Demographic inversions of one sort or another are occurring in urban pockets scattered all across America, many of them in seemingly unlikely places. Charlotte, North Carolina, is in the midst of a downtown building boom dominated by new mixed-use high-rise buildings, with office space on the bottom and condos or rental units above. Even at a moment of economic weakness, the condos are still selling briskly.
But back to my question from 2 paragraphs ago. The people who are moving into these condos in the paragraph above work in the city where they live.
Gordie Young proposes that it's possible this trend could spread to smaller cities, but Newburyport is a pretty small city.
Don't rain on MY parade
Oh *yawn* it's 11:15 a.m., and there's nothing good upon which to comment.
This blogging thing is starting to wear on me.
So ... I guess I'll comment on an issue that has raised a few hackles over on the Daily News website: chairs set out well in advance of the Yankee Homecoming ending parade.
I noticed this the other day as I was spinning along High St., in the Jetta. I thought, "Wow, that's really early for trash collection," which on PI is Monday morning.
It looks crappy, especially considering the aesthetic nature of historic High St.
One person who comments on the letter says that the chairs are set out for elderly/handicapped people. I'm all for everyone being able to view the parade, if they so desire.
But remember the days when people saw an elderly person, or a child, struggling to see a parade, and they let them through to the front? Helped them carry chairs, helped get them settled in?
Whatever the offenses to personal taste and aesthetics, apparently it is not illegal to put furniture along a street for days and even tie a string of chairs together with rope.
It's ugly, but I guess it's necessary.
This blogging thing is starting to wear on me.
So ... I guess I'll comment on an issue that has raised a few hackles over on the Daily News website: chairs set out well in advance of the Yankee Homecoming ending parade.
I noticed this the other day as I was spinning along High St., in the Jetta. I thought, "Wow, that's really early for trash collection," which on PI is Monday morning.
It looks crappy, especially considering the aesthetic nature of historic High St.
One person who comments on the letter says that the chairs are set out for elderly/handicapped people. I'm all for everyone being able to view the parade, if they so desire.
But remember the days when people saw an elderly person, or a child, struggling to see a parade, and they let them through to the front? Helped them carry chairs, helped get them settled in?
Whatever the offenses to personal taste and aesthetics, apparently it is not illegal to put furniture along a street for days and even tie a string of chairs together with rope.
It's ugly, but I guess it's necessary.
Friday, August 1, 2008
The waterfront ... but when?
A reader sent me these (undated) photos of Newburyport Harbor in the hopes that someone out there in "Blog World" knows when sail powered freighters stopped making deliveries to Newburyport. (click on images to enlarge)
Memories, like the cobwebs in my mind
Misty watercolor memories ... this song came out in the mid-80s, on Flint's FM rock station, WWCK (105.5, and the reason I stopped listening to the radio for about 5 years). Note the highway sign for Port Huron - it's where Stephen Tait will be living and working.
Video courtesy of YouTube.
Hold that cosmo
I think I must have a bunch of drafts sitting in my list of posts, because my blog archive says I have a mere 492 posts.
So thanks those of you who congratulated me on 500, but I was being premature. And somewhat oblivious, it seems. But I had written 500 (and more, if you count the ones that never made it online), at the time I was mixing the drinks ...
For someone who used to train others on how to use software products, I'm kind of bumbling through this Blogger thing. I even used to write the user manuals for software produced in-house!
That job, by the way, was the last one I held in Michigan, before I moved to Massachusetts. Once I got out here, I needed a degree in computer science to do what I'd been doing at good old Mott Community College with my little degree in English.
So thanks those of you who congratulated me on 500, but I was being premature. And somewhat oblivious, it seems. But I had written 500 (and more, if you count the ones that never made it online), at the time I was mixing the drinks ...
For someone who used to train others on how to use software products, I'm kind of bumbling through this Blogger thing. I even used to write the user manuals for software produced in-house!
That job, by the way, was the last one I held in Michigan, before I moved to Massachusetts. Once I got out here, I needed a degree in computer science to do what I'd been doing at good old Mott Community College with my little degree in English.
Our house
I heard that our old house in Flint (well, one of three) is boarded up and abandoned.
This would be the one with the ghostly happenings, but I don't think that's why it would be boarded up.
This was the house we moved to from Clio, a town about 15 miles north of Flint, and where I grew up from age 7 to 17.
But when I Google the address of the house, it comes up as the residence of someone who is listed in the University of Michigan e-yearbook as a 1959 grad. Now there's a coincidence.
I once was told that the houses in that neighborhood were all built by General Motors, for sale to its workers. The houses on the corners, which were larger and more elaborately styled, were where the managers lived. Ours was on the corner of Milbourne Ave. and Copeman Blvd.
The ghost aside, that was a nice house - until anything and everything would be stolen from the yard, the garage, the cars ... in which case, one was never sure if the shadow you saw out the kitchen window was a spectral presence or someone cruising the yard for something to snitch.
I remember once being at my grandfather's house, in England, and answering the door to my uncle's knock. I opened the door a crack and peered out.
"C'mon, Gill," my uncle said. "You're not in Flint now."
You got used to it, just like I'm used to living here now. But things change, and thieves don't go where there's nothing worth stealing and/or nobody worth mugging.
My sense of safety on Plum Island might be very misguided indeed.
This would be the one with the ghostly happenings, but I don't think that's why it would be boarded up.
This was the house we moved to from Clio, a town about 15 miles north of Flint, and where I grew up from age 7 to 17.
But when I Google the address of the house, it comes up as the residence of someone who is listed in the University of Michigan e-yearbook as a 1959 grad. Now there's a coincidence.
I once was told that the houses in that neighborhood were all built by General Motors, for sale to its workers. The houses on the corners, which were larger and more elaborately styled, were where the managers lived. Ours was on the corner of Milbourne Ave. and Copeman Blvd.
The ghost aside, that was a nice house - until anything and everything would be stolen from the yard, the garage, the cars ... in which case, one was never sure if the shadow you saw out the kitchen window was a spectral presence or someone cruising the yard for something to snitch.
I remember once being at my grandfather's house, in England, and answering the door to my uncle's knock. I opened the door a crack and peered out.
"C'mon, Gill," my uncle said. "You're not in Flint now."
You got used to it, just like I'm used to living here now. But things change, and thieves don't go where there's nothing worth stealing and/or nobody worth mugging.
My sense of safety on Plum Island might be very misguided indeed.
You hang up first; no you hang up first ...
I was just thinking about emails and comments on blogs, and why and when they stop. I mean, when the exchange stops.
Say you're in an email 'discussion' with someone, going back and forth. Suddenly the person on the other end does not respond to your last email.
What does that mean?
When you're speaking to someone on the phone, and you get weary of the conversation (or more often you have to go the the bathroom - or a combination of the two), you can say, "I've gotta go! The cat's on fire!" or something like that.
But with an email exchange, you theoretically could go and spend a penny, put the cat out and administer first aid, or whatever and still pick up the thread of the discourse.
It could go on forever. So inevitably, one person stops replying. How does the other person feel? Relieved? Offended?
I think speaking to a person is much more satisfactory, even though if it's time to end it, you might have to get creative with an excuse. Or you can be like one of my ex-bosses, who would just stand up to announce he was exiting the discussion, or announce lunch was over, sans explanation.
You can't see another person's eyes glazing over via email or blog comment. You also can't see the other person, pressing "Send/Receive," waiting for your reply to their last email, or checking comments on a blog to see if someone responded to what they wrote.
More isolation, less human contact.
I was talking to a couple of people the other day and we were speculating about whether people expressed their condolences via email. Is there an emoticon for "sorry your grandmother died?"
And then there's the e-card. Geesh, don't get me started!
Say you're in an email 'discussion' with someone, going back and forth. Suddenly the person on the other end does not respond to your last email.
What does that mean?
When you're speaking to someone on the phone, and you get weary of the conversation (or more often you have to go the the bathroom - or a combination of the two), you can say, "I've gotta go! The cat's on fire!" or something like that.
But with an email exchange, you theoretically could go and spend a penny, put the cat out and administer first aid, or whatever and still pick up the thread of the discourse.
It could go on forever. So inevitably, one person stops replying. How does the other person feel? Relieved? Offended?
I think speaking to a person is much more satisfactory, even though if it's time to end it, you might have to get creative with an excuse. Or you can be like one of my ex-bosses, who would just stand up to announce he was exiting the discussion, or announce lunch was over, sans explanation.
You can't see another person's eyes glazing over via email or blog comment. You also can't see the other person, pressing "Send/Receive," waiting for your reply to their last email, or checking comments on a blog to see if someone responded to what they wrote.
More isolation, less human contact.
I was talking to a couple of people the other day and we were speculating about whether people expressed their condolences via email. Is there an emoticon for "sorry your grandmother died?"
And then there's the e-card. Geesh, don't get me started!
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