Local News

After receiving complaints from photographers who claimed they had been prevented from taking photographs at city ponds, pools, lakes, and beaches, ACLUM has asked the Worcester city manager to clarify the city's policy on public photography. Following several attempts to obtain information about the city's position, ACLUM today made a formal request under the state's Public Records Law seeking copies of any policy, memorandum or rule concerning photography in public places, including pools, ponds, lakes and beaches under the control of the Worcester Parks Department.

Do you like to cook? Do you like human beings? Do you prefer food to bombs? Come to Food Not Bombs! (Noon on Sundays at Stone Soup!) Our numbers are dwindling, plus we have a hankering for some new FNB faces. (More FNB-ers means more interesting, funny, quirky folks for us to know and hug!) We know it's cold outside but we can easily bundle up and huddle together and share the warmth while we share our hot meals with the community.

Be on TV! Stop by WCCA TV 13 on December 5th from 5pm-8pm and give a "holiday shout out" to your family and friends on WCCA TV Channel 13!

The "shout outs" will be seen throughout December.

We have begun a new business to help non-profits raise money, here it works:

• we find a struggling non profit that needs money
• we partner with them to buy a parcel of land at our expense
• we then apply to the City and State looking for grants to build low income housing using the non-profit as the front guy
• we then get letters of support from the politicians
• work with the city to get the appropriate variances, sidewalks/streets repaired by the city, permit/water/sewer fees waived
• eventually we get all of our funding of which 90% are grants, since the units must be rented to low to mod income peopler for 20 years, pay ourselves back for the land purchase as well as any other incurred expenses of course
• big ribbon cutting to announce the project
• we can move property into the non-profits name to get EPA grants that we do not have to pay back.
• big ribbon cutting when the project is done

We owe very little to the bank since most of the monies were grants, get all our up-front money as well as incurred expenses back, pay a mgmt company to handle the day to day problems, but here is the best part. We split the profits from the rentals with the non-profit 50/50!!!

It is a win for us since in the end, we have nothing invested in the project and get half the profit and the non-profit entity is happy since they have a new stream of income. On our way to the bank each month we garner awards as great humitarians, versus the greedy profit motivated developer.

Everyone wins!! Except the City of Worcester, but who is counting.

Accepting ideas for the name of our new company. Please note will even take monies from large corporations for naming rights.

Download the mp4 video directly (362 MB) or see other formats. A conversation with Thomas L. Doughton and B. Eugene McCarthy, co-editors of From Bondage to Belonging: The Worcester Slave Narratives. 52 Mason St, Worcester, Massachusetts. October 22, 2008.

Audio: Download the mp3 or see other formats.

More about this program.

The idea is that you probably have the equipment to make a TV show, or can borrow what you don't have. I'll show you how to get the best-quality video possible, how to edit it, how to put it online, and how to get it on WCCA TV13, Worcester's cable access station.

The WCCA "Quick Start" class will be about 2 hours long, and will be held Dec 8 at noon and 6:30pm, Dec 10 at noon and 6:30pm, Dec 11 at noon and 6:30pm, and Dec 12 at noon and 6:30pm.

To sign up, e-mail mike@wccatv.org. You must sign up at least 24 hours before your class.

Class materials cost $5. The class itself is free for WCCA members. We're asking an additional $5 donation for non-members. But if you sign up by Dec 5, the class is free!

• Teen Central

The phrase "too big to fail" has been bothering me intensely during this last several weeks of bailout news. The idea that a public corporation is too big to fail, that its failure would destroy the whole economy, is something that just seems oddly circular in its logic. Wouldn't a more succinct question be, "Why are they so big?" or "How big is big enough?"

Somewhere between enlightened self-interest and unbridled greed, there has to be a line drawn. There has to be a ceiling to this accrual of power, wherein the interests of the society at large supercedes the undue influence of narrower agendas. To operate upon the premise that there is only one ideological set of answers that come in a package for the "right" or the "left" seems much too simplistic.

"Who benefits?" and "Follow the Money" are phrases that mean much more to my view in the search for answers to what's presently going on than any "too big to fail" excuse for bailing out profit making public corporations. This wide scale debacle simply can't be laid upon the carpet and analyzed as some sort of problem that nobody could've possibly foreseen, that nobody could've done anything to prevent, or that serious violations of trust haven't been taking place on a regular basis for years.

People have definitely crossed the line between enlightened self-interest and unbridled greed. Our society needs new rules to keep that kind of thing in check, but it really has nothing to do with the size of CEOs' paychecks. It has much more to do with the idea that a business can actually accrue so much power and wealth that it becomes "too big to fail" while the people who run it are completely free to do whatever the hell they want... to the utter detriment of the society at large.

Update: The Ponzi Scheme at CitiBank, in today's NY Post.

Now that Deval Patrick and John Kerry aren't even being talked about for Obama's cabinet, we gotta find some sort of connection to Massachusetts.

The sunday Observer, sister to the daily Guardian in the United Kingdom, was first published on this date in 1791. It is the world's oldest newspaper.

The Los Angeles Times, America's second largest metropolitan daily newspaper, was first published on this date in 1881 under the banner of The Los Angeles Daily Times.

On this date in 1952, the first Burger King opened in Miami, Florida.

On this date in 1971, someone wielding a flare gun at a Frank Zappa concert at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland set the place on fire... the incident would be noted in the Deep Purple song, "Smoke on the Water." Oddly enough, Frank passed away exactly 22 years later, to the day.

Marisa Tomei, Jeff Bridges, Dennis Wilson, Freddy "Boom-Boom" Cannon, Charles Keating, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and Jesse Burkett were all born on this date.

And last year on this date, Worcester apparently ran out of sand...

You know, back in the day?say 2003, someone started a thread on Wormtown.org?s bulletin board about what it was that made him happy to live in Wormtown. With the negativity that often floats around these bulletin boards, this was a welcomed change. Because of it, every time that this time of year rolls around I put aside my complaints and take stock in the things that make it great to live here. One of those things is a constant flow of interesting local Compact Discs that...

I just noticed something interesting about the design/function of the Telegram and Gazette website. On the top of each comment page for a story they have a ‘bread crumb’ link designed to take you back to the story that particular comment page is a child of. It looks like this:

What’s interesting is that link is actually a script that tells your browser to go back one page in its history. So if I link to a comment page on the T&G directly and you then click that link, instead of going to the T&G story it relates to, as you would expect, it takes you back here to RadioBall. Kinda nice bug feature for a little site like mine. I enjoy pointing out how ridiculous the T&G commenters are but don’t necessarily like loosing the traffic.

Try it here:
link to a T&G comment page

For what it’s worth I’m seeing this behavior in Safari on a Mac, your mileage may vary.

Why is Barack Obama pimping coffee mugs via his election mailing list? If this is any indication of how change will be defined in 2009 these mugs may come in handy for collecting your daily shoelace soup from the bread/work line.

I for one am eagerly awaiting the 2010 presidential flatware collection.

link

Slogans suck. I think we’ve come to a consensus on that. While this renewed cry to declare Worcester “No place for hate” is a nice sentiment, simply declaring something does not make it so. Neither does a half-assed and half-done mural, for the record.
More interesting than the meaningless declaration of a non-existent reality is this gem from Gemme (do I win something for that pun?) regarding the rather disgusting incident that prompted the re-declaration.

“Inexplicably, at the time of this offense, the prime suspect (Mr. Polydores) was out on bail awaiting trial in Superior Court for gun and drug offenses. His bail in those cases has now been revoked, and he is currently awaiting trial,” Chief Gemme said.

Really? That’s inexplicable? Seems to me an idiot out on bail for multiple drug/firearms violations is perfectly explicable. What’s inexplicable is how these two cretins manage to breathe without swallowing their own tongues, but I would not expect the Chief to have an answer for that anthropological riddle. Not only is bail on a gun charge explicable, it’s expected. To the point where DA Early should have been embarrassed to show his face at this event.

link

*update*
Only took about an hour for the T&G website to magically transform into a nice place for hate. Never would have seen that coming.

Holy Cross College - $544 million WPI - $354 million Clark University - $230 million Assumption College - $55 million Becker College and other Worcester colleges - $83 million

On my way home from work this afternoon, they were setting up for the 5pm memorial dedication and ceremony at the new Franklin Street Fire Station.

There's an article about it today in the paper.

This will be the first anniversary marking the passing of the 6 firefighters at that site since the new station opened.

Check out item number 9.39 item C from last night City Council. The sume of 100,000 of unused NRSA funds being transferred to Main South NRSA (Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Area) for 93 Grand Street.

Paul, myself and others (Laurel from Banknorth--President, Andy from Serrato Sign, Rich Kazarian and Artie Mooradian) had been doing alot of work on the Chandler NRSA and have had several successes:

• Facades on Chandler/Pleasant (Suney's, Bahnan, Alan's Lock, Roland's Office) to name a few think there have been 7 in all
• Helped people with home improvements up to 15,000
• working on Assumption coming to MLK
• Video camera systems for businesses
• clean up crews on Chandler Street during the summer
• amongst other projects

In other words, we have achieved some level of success and it is too bad that $100,000 was not transfered to projects like these. Instead it was transferred to 93 Grand Street. What is 93 Grand Street?

You guessed it Worcester's number 1 growth industry--more low income housing. In Worcester all roads lead to more low income housing.

The trouble with Left Turn Monkeys is that they'll make a left turn just about anywhere... even where left turns are prohibited.

The light turns green, and no matter whether you honk or yell at these idiots, they just don't get it.

Mostly, the Left Turn Monkeys pick legitimate places for left turns, but they don't leave enough room for anyone behind them to get by when the light turns green. But when a Left Turn Monkey hangs you up at a green light to make a left turn where no left turn is allowed... it can be exasperating. Especially when it keeps happening more and more often.

Let's just say that this one at Harrington Corner this morning was not an unusual example.

Other hilarious shreds can be found here.

Now that temperatures are dipping down below freezing, this is where the buzz saws are going to start meeting the tree bark.

There seems to be some level of contentious debate amongst city, state, and federal officials on how to best go about this harvesting of infested trees, here in Worcester.

Where, on the one hand, the feds seem to be leaning towards wiping out 20,000 trees this fall, our local guys, on the other hand, are more interested in saving any trees that might not be infested at all. The real poser in all of this is, "What's the cost of erring on the side of caution?"

Well, I'm glad that I don't have to decide. It's bad enough that there are now 4,500 trees that are definitely identified as having been made into homes for the Asian Longhorned Beetle. But I do tend to think that chopping down another 15,500 trees for "suspicion" might just give the word "overkill" its most accurate usage ever.

There's an interesting article at Worcester IndyMedia from yesterday about police harassment of livery vehicles. Whoever "pdm99" is (attributed author of the article), they might want to consider going out to the end of Prescott Street and interviewing taxi drivers at Red Cab during shift change between 3 and 4 pm some weekday, asking them only one question: "What do you think of livery cabs?"

Even if they interviewed only those drivers who speak some variant of Spanish, they'd end up with enough material to write a completely different article.

But I wouldn't argue with the article's main theme, that the WPD might be harassing livery cabs, or that they might be doing so with way too much zeal. My main quibble would be the article's author having, quite obviously, no slightest familiarity with the legal and business cost elements of the taxi vs livery issue in this city.

For instance, they say in the article, "The Ecuadoran and Dominican drivers, who each purchase their own Lincoln Continental livery vehicles, licenses and insurance, invest on average $10,000 to operate." If it only cost ten grand to put a taxicab on the road in Worcester, I'd have put at least three of them on the road, myself, long before this. Sheesh! Just the annual insurance premium for a taxicab in Worcester, all by itself, is more than ten freakin' grand!

There's a lot more to the livery vs taxicab issue in Worcester. But no matter how much Juan Gomez, et al, would like to marry this issue to any other Latino issues in the city, issues that are real and important, this just isn't one of them.