keeping up

between work and dad's new pacemaker it's been a busy week. there are a couple weeks of the gauntlet left to go, but light at the end of the tunnel and frequent chances along the way to enjoy the ride.

friday, may 4th is the big one--peter lavender and the limbo souls are having their cd release party at the back page (broadcast live on wcap!)--and you can get a taste from the howl in lowell site, complete with an advance listen to one of the best tracks on the record.

also to be included in the next fortnight is an extended family wedding, some quality time with the #1 son, and, if we're extremely lucky, the re-acquisition of the long-lost family roland electric (full 88 and weighted!) family piano (long story, but the short version is that you don't want to get divorced) so that some MIDI adventures with the musical offspring can be undertaken. i'm having trouble deciding if the best part might be that, even through all this, i won't miss a single soccer game, or that i've got a shot at front-and-center for a van halen show. (worst case i'll have great seats and still have all the free beer i can drink while enjoying them, which is the proper way to enjoy any rock and roll show). maybe that it's rained enough to still make white water rafting on the concord a possibility...

so much from which to choose!

(i'll have it all, thank you)

it's happening

lowell has it all, and in no particular order:

food. i'm not sure even manhattan packs as much global variety of great food into the same sized-area as is enjoyed here in lowell. (just try finding lao anywhere else).

entertainment. from the LMA to the MRT to the tsongas to every little bar with an entertainment license there's something going on every day of the week. (howlinlowell.com, cometolowell.com and lowellafterdark.com all have calendars so there's no excuse to miss any of it).

sports. we've got professional baseball, we've got top-notch college hockey, we've even got a great semi-pro football team. (our golden gloves tournament is 65 years and going strong).

media. we've got both am and fm radio. we've got tv. we've got cutting edge webzines. (i'll even give a nod to our own local dinosaur, the lowell sun).

museums. we're a national park. we've got trolleys. we've got canal boats. we've got quilts. we've got textiles. we've even got one that revolves. (ok, i'm running out of energy to link everything--sorry!)

art galleries and studios. we've got western ave and brush art and all arts and the 119 and ayer lofts and i'm sure i'm missing another dozen or more.

the lists are as endless themselves as the items on each are as well.

so here's what's got me most excited:

i purposefully left off music. (it's a best for last thing). we have not one but TWO internationally renowned, award winning recording studios in town, and it's perhaps little coincidence that lowell is thus home to some incredibly talented musicians. (props to hot day at the zoo and d-tension, our most recent new england music awards recipients). so it becomes that a week from friday, peter lavender and the limbo souls release their latest recording, and they've chosen to do it right here in their home city. (that's big right there, but, wait, there's more!)

yes, they've chosen the back page as their venue, which is cool enough, but the opportunity is more than just to debut some great music in a great room. friday night's are also the night that wcap broadcasts live from kearney square as they say, so the party becomes not just for those who can make it out and squeeze into what is obviously going to be an SRO crowd, but for everyone in town with a radio, and, in fact, anyone in the world with a web browser. (everybody gets it, and 'cap gets it too).

if you can't get there, get by your radio or your web browser and still become a part of something special. i remember the king biscuit flour hour. i remember when music HAPPENED, and didn't just get a listen here and there. (i can tell you where i listened to sgt peppers the first time, as can most people my age or older, and i can tell you the world is missing something since). i can tell you i'm as excited for the little local version we have of all this as i've been for anything since i've moved to this town, and that includes the dropkick murphys and the mighty mighty bosstones playing lelacheur park.

tune in. get it. BE there. it's happening.

dog tv

the ap started it, and the lowell sun could not resist topping their tv page with it--some enterprising folks with perhaps just a little bit too much time and audio/visual equipment on their hands have launched an on-demand cable feature (only $4.99 per 8-hour offering with the guarantee of no reruns) called DogTV which is sweeping the nation of absentee dog owners as we speak.

to dogtv's credit, they are not just mailing this in. they're cognizent of dog's special visual (blue and yellow, though not red and green) and auditory (higher sensitivity, especially to higher frequencies) peculiarities, and the sights and sounds are tailored accordingly. (no sudden loud noises, etc.) but in all of this it amazes me that no one is seeing the overwhelming irony:

dogs, like humans, are genetically programmed to be both responsive to and dependent upon direct human social and emotional interaction. yes, some breeds more than others, but overall they, just like we, all crave both direct human attention and direct human approval, and they clearly despair without it. (i.e. acting out, misbehaving, relieving bodily needs at inappropriate times and inappropriate places, ripping into things that they shouldn't including home garbage and food storage areas, destroyings things by gnawing, chewing, knocking over and dragging about, and ad infinitum and if you have kids you know what i'm talking about).  yes, too much television and too little emotional support damages our kids--so why shouldn't we turn that neglect next upon our dogs?

yes, what we're really talking about here is a $5/day guilt reliever for people who buy/adopt dogs without any undestanding of or respect for the responsibility, and no real intention to do the RIGHT thing for their dog instead of just the convenient thing.

doggy day-care? dog tv? if you regularly need it, you don't really need or deserve a dog.  if i had a nickel for every person who has told me how much they adore their dogs and would do anything for them while they were anywhere but with them i could retire tomorrow.

stabby shooteyville

a friend whose move to the "jam" district had been greeted by murder at the transitional living center awhile back christened that/her neighborhood "stabby shooteyville", and who can argue with that. i know at least half a dozen folks who now have habit to call it that way, including myself. yet last night, while we were debating amongst ourselves downtown if the downtown (the jam thing is all the way across the pawtucket canal--how can that be downtown?) had been successful in usurping the title given recent weeks' violence, we have to find out via rob mills' police line blog a few hours later that the lower highlands is still not willing to concede third or even second place in the stabby shooteyville naming sweepstakes. (preliminary story here).

let's all hope centralville is not feeling competitive.

i'm an urban pacifist. i think that people ought to be able to pursue their elbow-to-elbow bliss without fear for life, limb and/or property. (last night's trash can fire over in the acre, though less destructive in human terms, is no encouraging sign either). despite or maybe even because of all this, lowell remains a remarkable and remarkably peaceful convergence of language and lifestyle and culture, and it's time to double down on continuing to make it that way.

yesterday was downtown clean-up day. even though it's going to be a long, hot summer, (memorial day is still well over a month away and the soccer fields are already seared and the dust and grit is already well under our collective collars) every day can be neighborhood clean-up day if we make it that way.

let's get to work.

whip it good

i'm not normally inclined to buy things off of predominantly purple and pink websites, but the exception to prove the rule is easywhip.com's. on that site can be found the whip-it whipped cream dispenser (1 pint all metal anodized aluminum model, of course) and the timeless and historic culmination of all the confectioner's arts.

my grandmother ran the ice cream stand at the family dairy in addition to bookkeeping and everything else that needed doing while my grandfather was working from 4am to 5pm every day of the week except sunday (when he took a 3-hour break for church and sunday dinner), and from the perspective of any child, or any sensible grown up for that matter, the epicenter of all the magic was the pretty anodized aluminum whipped cream dispenser maids all in a row atop the four banks of 12-bin freezers for the 48 flavors of icy creamy brilliance.

brilliance.

among the treasures troved in and from the ancestral basement, rescued by the kid with patience and vision, are countless cases of "whippets" brand chargers, still in their original packaging, patiently waiting for their time to top perfection. no, i never have ever in my life squandered this little piece of providence's bounty by wasting the precious potential as did so many other addle-brained college kids. (i'm given to understand some who worked in such establishments would surreptitiously work off the dispensers directly as they served, but i'll tell you right now such would be a hanging offense in any creamery i might some day run). i've saved each and every one of the little charges--by rough count about 250--and i've finally seen the day when they've begun to be used to fulfill their destiny.

a full half pint of heavy cream from shaw farm in dracut from the 1 quart glass bottle. check.
two tablespoons of real cane sugar. check.
two teaspoons of real vanilla extract. check.
one 1 pint all metal anodized aluminum whipped cream dispenser (linked above). check.
one whippet charge from the original 1960's era package. check.
combine all ingredients and screw mechanism to charge. check.
shake vigorously five times up and down--no more and no less. five times. it's a rule. check.
dispense over a virgin scoop from one half gallon of black raspberry kimball farms ice cream using the original heirloom shore craft ice cream scoop. check.

heaven on earth.

i'm too delirious to do the math on the number of gallons of whipped cream in store, but anyone who wants to take a hit straight from the all metal anodized aluminum whipped cream dispenser is welcome to get in line.

yes, i am an addict.

supporting the troops

i'm perpetually confused, disgusted and discouraged by the vitriol aimed at the POTUS by so many hare-brained and hair-triggered rightie nut jobs over barry's perceived slights to the US military. here we have, if anything, even more of a gung-ho cowboy pro-armed forces president than the previous, (the only nobel peace prizer to say it with tomahawks, conduct four illegal--ie non-congressionally-initiated--foreign wars--iraq, afghanistan, libya and yemen--and on top of all that cheerfully run multiple covert assassination campaigns against both us and non-us citizens while his attorney general argues that it's all perfectly legal as long as the president says so), whose only apparent flaw in a doctor strangelove context is that he's simultaneously presided over a bankrupting of the treasury (again, just more and "better" at being dubya than dubya) that's had its consequent pinch on military spending. or, to say it another way, to be all that dubya was and more, just ain't enough for some folks.

so this week we're in the midst of an embarrassing-to-both-us-and-to-the-president fuck-up committed by no one else but military personnel, albeit about whom, according to the hare-brained and hair-triggered rightie nut jobs, we're all supposed to be so supportive without qualification or limit. (seems there was a little pajama party in a cartegena "zona del tolerancia" where the tolerance, unfortunately, could not be extended for not paying the bill at the end of the party, and here we have it).

so what's the president's supposed anti-military stance?

why, the president unequivocally stands behind the military (who have betrayed him in this one tiny and not significantly significant case, by the way) and insists that he has full confidence in the secret service and their armed services personnel regardless.

good for the POTUS.

i have confidence, too.

this is a team effort. our armed forces do yeoman's work each and every day. today, thanks to supposed lefty chickens like niki tsongas, barry o, and others, and NOT the previous cowboy administration who threw them into harms way, we have things like armored humvees and body-armored soldiers where once we had our men and women riding around ostensibly naked to IED's and enemy snipers in places destabilized by a supposedly right rightie commander in chief in the first place.

no, barry ain't perfect. it was dubya's timetable to leave iraq he used, and he's certainly done very little to improve the morass into which our men and women in uniform have been thrown to toil and lose their lives and limbs.

but he ain't what the hare-brained and hair-triggered rightie nut jobs say he is by any stretch of a reasonable imagination, and folks gotta get some perspective on that. this stuff in columbia is, in a real sense, boys being boys, (and i don't mean that in a dismissive or to-be-taken-lightly sense, but, rather, in a juvenile delinquents being juvenilely delinquent sense), and it's gotta get cleaned up in-house exactly as the president is insisting it be.

the us armed forces? i'm with the commander in chief: they're awesome. end of sentence. no qualification. awesome.

more dinosaur BS from the lowell sun

i'm a rob mills junkie. his police line blog and as-it-happens coverage of developing news stories is tops in the merrimack valley. not sure why the local rag deserves a talent like that given the abuse they heap upon professional journalists while hack bloviators like the loco-emotive get all the prime column inches and money, but, hey, it is what it is.

i'm also a facebook user, so when a facebook account for rob's columns was created, i "joined" it and looked forward to receiving all the latest stuff right there were i also get my moment-by-moment music schedule fix.

all good, right?

nah, it's the lowell sun--you know there's a catch.

the tools they use to push out their content online are so stone-age that recipients of such cannot, no matter how much they might prefer, opt out of notification for every single inane and insignificant comment added by the hoi polloi to each one of the main stories. so, not only do you get instant notification of the story as it breaks, you also get instant notification whenever mr or ms commenter gets the inclination to comment.

the result?

my facebook news feed is buried under a raft of pointless and useless comment notifications, and the ostensible result is that i no longer really "see" the original post trees anymore for the forest of comments that surround them.

ugh.

what a bunch of clowns.

back to RSS...

cat people

got one in college, so you know i don't know much about what goes on down there, but the latest rumor is the plan for the new communal apartment for next fall to include a resident feline.

apples sometimes roll some distance from their trees.

don't get me wrong--i can count two felines among the creatures who have loved and have been loved by me best. (zig-man and bag-man were and are the greatest--i love you, men). but give up a shot at instant college road trip nirvana for filling the water bowl and emptying the little box?

that's not college, that's middle age.

word

'cap gets it. mike flynn's coffee break has it. d-tension in studio.

click the link. be entertained. in d's words: "you know what i've done".

and the birthday bash is on this friday night at the old court featuring carl johnson's tri, and kevin stevenson's unholy three, and d, the man, himself. (all featured artists, as mike flynn is apt to point out, in the award winning collection "young angel midnight" available downtown at places like brew'd awakenings).

be there!

the university of facebook

in college it was pretty simple--you walked into the dorm common room, figured out the prevailing plan, and then went and had your fun, 24 hours a day. (ok, you studied a little too, but that's the point).

today, a friend came up with the brilliant idea to have a little game of ultimate frisbee tonight at 6:30, and put it out on facebook so all the other folks chilling (or attempting) could decide to get up off the couch and go have some fun.

i had the time of my life in college. i like that facebook and other social networking widgets give us grown-ups a shot at living life the same way.

and if you think you could design a better day for a little sundown ultimate frisbee, (best part being that the bugs aren't even out yet), then be my guest, i'm all for it.

until then, today will do.

now where did i put my bandana?

happy Patriot's Day

the national park service yahoos in concord have cancelled the reenactment at the bridge, but they swear it's not because they're pinching pennies in a difficult budget situation, even though they separately talk about how much money it saves not to be running the big reenactment, and how rough their budget situation remains. (we can do the math, but wouldn't it be nice if all the "patriots" in this country swearing up and down how much they love our troops and all that would notice and/or care about and/or do something about this?)

bernie's funding the pools this summer (kudos to the city manager for that--every kid deserves a splash every summer) so why can't somebody at the park service spring for a few nerds with muskets marching around for an hour down in concord?

fail.

serendipity

last night was a last-minute whim to catch kaitlin dibble singing about her rightly wrong kind of easy down in somerville at sally o'briens, the impetus for which included promise of a 9:30pm set that would get everyone home early, which is no small consideration for weeknight adventurism. first of all, beside the beer that was immediately purchased for me by one of the well-represented lowell contingent traveling for the treat, i have to say there is nothing quite like walking into a place for the first time, and seeing such a large number of friendly and familiar faces.

but before i can tell you about kaitlin's set, which was, as you could have predicted, not quite as early as 9:30pm because she is, like all her ilk, running on musician time, and we all know how that goes, i have to tell you about the opening set i had serendipitous fortune to see while waiting for the next. it was by what i'm led to believe is 4/5ths of the kristen ford band, including in addition to kristen on guitar and lead vocals, ariel bernstein on drums, kara kulpa on violin, and kirsten lamb on upright double bass. love.

i was in turns awestruck by each of the players--talent is such an awesome thing to experience--and finally satisfied that kirsten lamb was my favorite. i could not have been alone, because to the question "is the mix ok?" i was not the only one asking for the bass to be turned up, please. her fingers were flying so deftly that even just the sight of it was satisfying. such a fluent and fluid and effortless player... yet kara kulpa was no less a match on her violin, from compellingly articulate pizzicatos to solos that sang as true as any human voice... and ariel's backing to the entire ensemble thus became clear to be the bedrock beauty that it is... and kristen is such a natural frontman/woman, with an energy and joy to her playing and singing that is infectious, and a voice that can carry all and soar.

so imagine my joy this morning to learn via google that kristen and the band are appearing at the 119 gallery this sunday evening at 8pm.

serendipity.

joy.

you should have a look.

edited to add a link to a live show recording from passim earlier this year--it's dirty, but you can hear in it what i heard last night. hope you enjoy.

also edited to add, how could i have been so blind and/or stupid! of course!!! kirsten lamb is the beautiful double bass of the goodtime string band as well. (her new shorter haircut is my excuse). i knew i loved that woman.

punctuation

ok, i'm lazy with capitalization here as an affectation, but i hope my readers can successfully discern my sincere devotion to punctuation even so. if not, please indulge me this opportunity to make it crystal clear: learning to spell, gram (see what i did there?) and punctuate are three of the most important building blocks any person can have towards success in almost any worthwhile endeavor, with music and visual arts being two possible exceptions, though, even so, anyone entering into a professional contract in either of those two named professions better have a decent grasp of same, or the prescience to hire someone who does, or bad things will, indeed, ensue.

anyway, if you don't already have your copy of "eats, shoots & leaves" by lynne truss, you're well-advised to rectify your grammatical recklessness at your earliest convenience, but this, as it always seems to be around here, isn't about that...

patriot's day (APOSTROPHE ESS) is next monday, and with all due respect to the profound tragedy of september 11th, 2001, let me once again invite invective and ridicule to say that there is hardly anything "patriot" about being killed in a terrorist attack, or even heroically thwarting one as the passengers aboard united 93 were able to do. even words like "supreme valor" and "ultimate sacrifice" and "unrivaled heroism" are all far short of sufficient, yet "patriot" is so much of a malapropism as to invite missing the major point for the mislabeling of a minor one. september 11th doesn't deserve to be called "patriot" day--it deserves to be called so much else and more. dubya demeaned and did a disservice to all involved. call them who and what they are, but, puh-leeeze, can we desist from mislabeling it and them "patriot"?

monday the 16th of april 2012, we commemorate the events of tuesday the 18th and wednesday the 19th of april, 1775, and the PATRIOTs (capital letters for emphasis) who fired the first shots necessary for the tumultuous birth of our great nation. the day that belongs to them is most deservedly noted by the possessive apostrophe, and is properly written, spoken and observed as "patriot's day". full stop. there is no other.

yet, somehow, some overzealous idealogue(s) has/have attempted to demean and diminish the acts and sacrifices of that first day in the military founding of our great nation to muddy the commemorative waters with a misguided appellation that rankles me even to type it.

"patriot day"?

bullshit.

why trample that line at all? why??? was it to thumb a nose at the pride of massachusetts by stealing the lion's portion of our proudest name? (i wonder). was it out of sheer ignorance the original name was forgotten? (i would not doubt). is there some other explanation?

for my part, my holiday request is in at work, and i will plan to be in lexington at 6am as i have not been in far too long, and concord at 9am.

something remarkable happened in the history of the world RIGHT HERE in middlesex county. i'll never, i dearly hope, forget the apostrophe, or the greater point of patriotism.

what's important to you?

giving downtownies a good name

had a ball last night at furey's, with arte k and friends filling the bill with three sets of musical goodness. the guy i was sitting next to at the bar asked what kind of music to expect before everything started around 9, and i had barely finished the "n" of "arte does a lot of his own stuff and everything else from tom waits to leonard cohen" when arte launched into his all-his-own but classic cohen even so version of "everybody knows". it was so goo-oo-ooooood. so good. so good the place turned all ears to the band (ever sat in a bar where everybody had their backs to the bartender the music in the other direction was so good?) and it just kept getting better and better. (steve esposito's version of "angel from montgomery" to close the second set got the biggest reaction of the night, but it was all pretty raucous and highly appreciative all the way through). carl johnson ripped it up, (the way he and the band do jeff beck's "cause we've ended as lovers" is nothing short of astonishing), and stephe clements had the brushes and sticks and everything else singing right along like he was born to play with these guys.

the place was packed, and even the even a little bit more than vague smell of not the cleanest bar in the city couldn't discourage everyone from having a great time. (the collection of beautiful women all coming in smelling like vanilla and pheremones from the party they were coming from didn't hurt a bit). no, i didn't get a chance to order a burger, but there are always more chances for that, aren't there.

giving downtownies a bad name

in this week's the column column, sun editors vastly improve on their dismal record of inaccuracy over the past weeks, and actually accurately portray the protagonists in their chosen subjects, (as far as my experience and knowledge would know, anyway), and this time most of all in the license commission meeting results related to the fortunato's debacle.

first of all kudos to all involved in enforcing city regulations related to the sale of alcohol at this establishment--from the board of health (penultimate marks for being the first agency to find teeth among its powers and do the right thing and shut the place down for their many offenses) to the building inspector to the license commission itself, but most of all to the city of lowell police department for being first on the scene and ensuring both public safety as well as the evidence necessary for the license commission to take its appropriate action. well done.

but, second of all, a loud and "yeah, i'm talking about you, dayne lamb" raspberry for the public comments entered at the hearing complaining about the city board's "kabuki theater" intended to enable the "well-connected" building owner to find a replacement tenant. we all heard the profanity and the idiocy of the comments when they were first made, so let me take my opportunity based on the sun's accurate summary of them to tell you what a significant (majority?) portion of the rest of downtown really thinks about your narrow-minded, selfish and self-defeating comments:

OF COURSE the board is acting to provide a "loophole" that would enable transfer of the restaurant liquor license to a succeeding restaurant. in fact, if they hadn't, they'd be guilty of the worst sort of economic and social tyranny, and screwing the entire downtown for the offense of a single business owner who is already, as we've seen by the proceeding, getting his. congratulations and commendations to the license commission for taking the opportunity to do so. THANK YOU to the license commission for taking the opportunity to do so. it's the sort of stewardship of our city and our social fabric that is sorely needed around here, to vitalize the downtown (how many decades have to pass before the "re" part is nonsense?) and make it prosperous and positive for all who share it. and that, mr. lamb, means more than just the "NIMBY" selfishness you so shamefully represented as standing for the rest of us here downtown.

kathleen marcin, president of the downtown neighborhood association, said it far better when she respectfully and without profanity observed her hopes to "bring back a strong anchor to one of the best corners in the city". ABSOLUTELY.

real downtownies, REAL downtownies, want a vibrant and well-patronized restaurant in that space. in fact, our biggest complaint with forunato's over all these years was not the ugly bang with which they went out, but the far sadder whimpering ennui of poor food and poorer service that bedeviled that corner for far too long.

i can't wait for the license to be transferred. i can't wait for corey belanger to move into the dubliner space, and i can't wait to find out who will put their own money, sweat and toil on the line to try to make something again of that, yes, would-be best corner in the city that fortunato's wasted for far too long.

and, seriously, some people living down here are everything the rest of the city accuses them to be, though far far far far fewer than the rest of the city realizes them to be, because these few yapping maws insist on getting up in public and embarrassing the rest of us. i cringed to see it. and i cringe again to be reminded of it.

here's hoping better points of view will begin to be better heard.

database deadlock

relational database programmers are already becoming dinosaurs (it's all about in-memory data storage these days) but we still fear the ultimate software bogeyman (no, not the BSOD anymore--everything's mobile these days and nobody but we dinosaurs still mash on PC's) the database deadlock.

yes, the DD is more than just a cup size--it's an unfortunate situation where one part of a software process is holding onto one piece of data while waiting to update another, while a simultaneous process is holding onto the other futilely trying to get ahold of the first. deadlock.

and so it is that the many lobes of my friday night brain struggle with the deadlock of A) daughter night, fast food cheeseburgers and supernatural reruns amidst wii battles, B) howl in lowell night, the best arts and nightlife journalists in the city, and peter lavender and his limbo souls amidst centro on market street, and C) fight or flight, donny mchale and his clean (no lie!) shirts, the subprime lenders, (corey b, phil t and jared always always always bring it), fiesta melon and bucky fereke amidst the glory that is the worthen house cafe. (i am buying my university of worthen street wardrobe this weekend, yes i am, five years late but never too).

those who know me know the deadlock is never deadly when daughter anything is part of the option list, but supernatural is over by 10, and she's often preferred to be home in bed shortly thereafter so to be able to get 14 hours instead of 12 before noon on saturday when she may or may not choose to keep sleeping. which leaves howling with the limbos at centro vs limboing with the howlers at the worthen to bedevil my inner whatever passes for processes.

luckily, the saturday choice is far easier--it's arte k at fureys. furey's burgers. pitchers of pabst. goodness.

john, john, john... where do i begin?

folks reading here for any length of time know what i think of the loco-emotive and his thrice-weekly theft of my subscription dollars (the sun subscription is up again this month--well over $200 and, yeah, you gotta ask yourself for what?) and his pointless, groundless, and endless whining about anything and everything democrat. (interspersed with occassional self-serving, self-promoting and self-abusing nonsense about the fact that he once held an actual job in journalism once, many years ago, though, as "white will run" will attest, he was such a horse's ass at it that the objects of his various mis-democratic-anthropies could rarely resist being dragged down into the ignoramus muck and mire with him--where, as aphorisms would have it, lucas was in prime position to beat them with experience).

so today, unlike kevin white's classic wink and a smile, john kerry decides, inexplicably, to give the loco-moronic a rejoinder most definitely devoid of humor and dark sarcasm, and it's hard to know where to begin.

the facts are pretty straightforward--when certain (democrat) legislators fulfill their legally-specified duties to recommend and appoint citizens for particular government jobs of sufficiently high standing, they are consistently accused by the loco-pathetic of graft and corruption regardless of fact or reason. (to wit, in kerry's rejoinder, it's pointed out that boy scout scotty brown uses the same process attributed to kerry as nigh-on treasonous). this both ignores the fact that many if not most of these appointments are reasonable decisions well within the reasonable expectations of their office, as well as the fact that sauce being good for goose and gander, it's hard to understand why the loco-emotive's column inches aren't more evenly distributed with equal-opportunity nonsense about racketeers from both parties. (the bit about lucas mistaking a federal position for a state one even though he supposedly has decades of job experience that ought to know the difference is just gravy).

but we all know none of this is going to be changed, and nor will it ever.

the mistake, mr. kerry, if i might be so bold as to point it out, is in having any sort of response at all. (i should know--i make that mistake all too often).

for myself, i am willing to endure the ridicule of my friends for even glancing at the tripe, (and ridicule they do), because i'm a private citizen of absolutely zero public importance, and the worst i'm doing is proving my own private ineptitude. observing that you are a sitting senior senator, we should hope the bar might be set a little bit higher, and you would be able to resist dignifying the nonsense with any sort of response at all.

we all know he's a complete horse's ass. but now some folks who don't quite know you completely think that you are too for having entered into a paper-based argument with his bloviations. and that, unlike disagreement with your federal job recommendations, is on you.

in case you, like the sun, missed it...

thanks to greg page for his comment on my preceding/succeeding post. it turns out the "mystery" of the pericles bust being moved inside city hall leads to a custodian following someone's suggestion to move the bust in preparation for a reception last december. (before, if anyone has a calendar, mr murphy was ever selected and installed as our mayor as a matter of fact).

anyone care to wager on the chances that the sun prints a story apologizing for their erroneous and irresponsibly hypothesized story from last weekend, and then investigating who, exactly, is actually to "blame" for relocating a bust three months ago among the previous administration and then making some sort of conspiracy out of that?

no, i didn't think so...

not even journalism

the sun had a whiny editorial the other day, crowing about their "watchdog" role on behalf of the people of this fair city, and how unnamed city hall folks were purportedly in opposition to them in that tireless pursuit of public information. (they also went on to claim that they were doing this not just for the lowellians, but for a dozen surrounding community residents, too.

sounds good, right?

so today i'm reading for the second day in a row about a $373,000 state grant for an initiative conceived and implemented right here in the great and fair city of lowell, representing a unanimous cooperative effort between the city manager, the city council, and the various cities agencies (police, fire, etc.). (this time from the blog of the office of the city manager, yesterday it was from the office of the city mayor, via his aide, greg page). the story goes into some detail on how the city's "lowellstat" program has been selected to "lead the development of a common performance indicator system for several Massachusetts cities and towns" (amesbury, somerville, woburn and worcester) and how lowell is leading the state (this grant represents almost fully 10% of governor patrick's community innovation challenge grant program across the entire commonwealth, and was chosen competitively ahead of $20M in other proposals) in pursuit of better local government. is this true? watchdogs, please tell us!!!

hello? lowell sun?

if well over a quarter of a million dollars are awarded in a forest of city successes, does anybody hear?

no, we hear about plaster pericles being moved from one credenza to another, and how the mayor sucks, and how the city manager sucks, and how, basically, everyone involved in running this city sucks, (at least until they retire--there was a huge spread on judge chernoff's retirement), except, of course, the tireless and unreproachable watchdogs over there at the lowell sun who are sparing no effort or expense to keep us informed...

puh-leeeeeeze.

best i can tell, a few doughty, resourceful and indefatigable reporters pour heart and soul into their work, though having no hope through lack of numbers and resources of covering even a fraction of what's out there, and then the hit squad of sun editors work as hard as they can to butcher the headlines and the spin and the presentation of those pieces, while throwing in a few AP stories around the edges, and they call it a "paper". fewer and fewer people subscribe every year, yet they want to compare themselves to the utter absence of an alternative to claim to us (and to themselves) that they're doing a good job. did you know that barely half the folks in town cite the city's only newspaper as their news source about it? i read about it in the sun! (only their spin was that since fewer listen to local radio, that that's still ok).

really?

american car manufacturers circa 1972 behaved a lot like this.

my thought is that, the moment a local paper is read by fewer than half the local citizens, the slippery slope steepens, and the end only accelerates.

local news? mcfly?

do you get it YET???

callow journalism

i thought last week's factually-nigh-on-impossible assertion in the sun's "the column" space (proved false in follow-up commentary) would be tough to top, but this week's guttersnipe attempt to make much political ado about things that are not political is a jaw-dropper.

apparently someone has shifted a bust of pericles an entire 20 feet inside city hall, and the sun's editors now would prefer us to believe that an intentional insult has been lobbed at an entire nation and its progeny. "some attendees", like "the entire statehouse delegation" last week, are unnamed, and if guess can be made from the circumstances surrounding this opportunity for forensic investigation can be believed, absolute bullshit as well. though if any son or daughter of greece would like to weigh in here on the possible substance behind the nonsense printed in the sun, please feel free to contribute.

it would seem that, according to the lowell sun, "the greek community" had determined in some past year that they should run the mayor's reception room decorating committee, and add a bust of pericles to one particular spot in the room so that he and father george could have a perennial staring contest over their shared love of democracy. (or something like that). the imprimatur of some anonymous city hall employee to relocate this bust to the mayor's office itself has, reportedly by the sun, made certain greek citizens "angry", and the funniest part to me so far is that it took an entire week for the sun's torch and pitchfork division to catch on to the scandal.

nevermind that even according to the sun itself that the mayor himself thinks enough of pericles to have quoted him in his first address to the city. nevermind that, at least to one man's way of looking at things, a place in the mayor's office itself would seem to carry even greater honor than a spot in his reception room, though fair enough for there to be disagreement about that in cases of public usage of the reception room. but, most of all, can anybody defend the phrase "rightful place" in any way shape or form?

rightful place???

the american flag has a rightful place. beyond that, i'm having a hard time feeling it for much else, though i'm sure our city has plenty of traditions of which i'm unaware, as i had been about pericles' mug up until this week. (though i'm still not sure i'm aware of exactly what the protocol here is supposed to be). but, seriously, is this what passes for news and/or scandal these days???

hey lowell sun--mayor's aide greg page in his blog linked a sunday piece in the boston globe about a state grant award to our fair city, greeks included, in recognition of our city's achievements in data driven performance management which named lowell as the lead city in the commonwealth in this regard. didja think maybe, just maybe, that might have been worth a column inch or two?

or didja just want to waste our time and subscription money inventing nonsense to bust the mayor's balls about a bust so you could continue your editorial hissy-fit against him for yet another week?

i used to let out of town visitors to my place see the sun lying around my apartment, and endure the ridicule, just so i could try to tell them it was not so bad. after this weekend's experience, i'm not doing that anymore. (long story involving a very dear old college friend, and, yeah, i'm embarrassed).