Nicole was kind enough to get a group blogging project off the ground today, a tribute to our friend Jeff Barnard who’s too busy beating down some cancer these days to take pictures of bump installation crews. Seems like a decent excuse for taking a break from blogging, best I’ve been able to come up with has been ‘work’. But that’s just code for laziness. So until Jeff is ready to get back to snapping pics around town, we’re picking up the slack.
Here are my contributions for the day from this afternoons Worcester Out to Lunch concert.
If you squint just right with your left eye, you'll notice that we have T&G columnist extraordinaire, Dianne Williamson in the center of this shot shopping for produce at todays famers market. Cucumbers, I believe. Interesting factoid, Dianne whittles cucumbers into figurines representing local officials before eating them. Quite the thing.
Here we have the T&G's Shaun Sutner. While it's possible he's also shopping for produce, it's undeniable that judgement is being passed.
I actually like being called out by people when I’m wrong, being wrong about stuff is how we learn to be right. But nothing bugs me more than people who hold demonstrably false ideas, yet insist that theirs is the correct world view.
A few days ago there was a letter to the T&G concerning what the writer views as troublesome “stalkers” hanging around on the common, with the general premise of the letter being ‘we need more cops on the common’. I left a comment on the online version of the letter saying…
As a regular visitor to City Hall, I have to say this letter reads as though it was crafted by someone who hasn’t visited Worcester in decades. While it’s certianly not perfect on the common, the WPD officers assigned to the City Hall sub-station are doing an excellent job of keeping the area safe without being heavy handed.
To the author, you seem to know an awful lot about the lives of those you observe. Makes one wonder who the real stalker is.
Going back to the thread today, I find someone felt the need to correct me with the following…
Brenden Melican,
How long has it been since you’ve been downtown? The sub station closed.
Posted by typical know it all
Seriously, these are the people who keep me awake at night. So to the anonymous idiot person if you happen to be paying attention, the city closed the mall substation some time ago, correct. But now the WPD has a sub-station on the first floor of city hall, next to the elevator across from the info desk. Point being, the letter writer already has precisely what she’s requesting the city provide.
Via Tom Elia of the New Editor, here’s a list of the top 100 pensions of Illinois school administrators. The valuations represent the worth of the pension assuming the beneficiary retired at age 56 with a life expectancy of another 29 years. The average value of these pensions is $8.879,257.90. The number one pension goes to Neil C. Codell of Niles Township Community High School District (a suburban area just north of Chicago and just west of the lakefront). Mr. Codell’s salary is $885,327 and his estimated first-year pension is $601,978. The pension is valued at $26,661,604.
Whenever I hear debate over the appropriate salaries for public sector employees, I can’t help but feel we’re having the entirely wrong conversation. It’s pension liabilities that will eventually sink state and local government. It’s also where the real friction lies between public and private sector employees. Then there is the ultimate unknown, will existing pension systems hold up under the weight of a future that will likely include municipal bankruptcy?
Yesterday marked the 3rd anniversary of the murder of my good friend and Worcester native Joe Martin by a police officer while celebrating his 30th birthday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The officer, Joao Vicente Oliveira, was acquitted earlier this year, but in the wake of a disappointing trial, the Martin family has made it their mission to bring to light the staggering amount of police brutality in Brazil.
On May 5th Joseph’s aunt Elizabeth Martin testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Congressional Commission. She did a far better job explaining the severity of police abuse in Brazil than I could ever dream of and her words deserve to be heard. I’d also like to thank Jim Mcgovern, my Congressman and co-chair of the Tom Lantos Commission, for making Mrs Martins testimony possible.
Members of the American Antiquarian Society, Mass Cultural Council and Worcester Cultural Coalition were joined by Lt Gov Murray, State Rep Spellane and MassDevelopment for a ribbon cutting yesterday at the AAS’s newly renovated Fellows Residence at 9 Regent St, which will serve as much needed housing for visiting researchers. The Regent St project was supported through donations and a $300k matching grant from the Mass Cultural Facilities Fund, a program run jointly by the Mass Cultural Council and MassDevelopment.
Rep Spellane meets Mr BlurryCam
The home was originally constructed in 1909 by John S Hubbard and designed by Worcester architect Edward P Fitzgerald. It was built for and owned through 1941 by Dr Albert Richey, a WPI professor who was on the cutting edge of electric light rail design in the early 20th century. Much of the restoration of the home was guided by a collection of photographs made available by the Richey family.
Here’s a blurrycam shot of the acoustic set Worcester natives Four Year Strong performed in Elm Park yesterday before heading off for Europe, followed by a summer on the Warped Tour.
Thanks to the extra 200+ people who cam out for the show there was a brief moment where Elm Park actually looked like a real urban space.
When we bought our house some 5 years ago, we purchased a poppy plant that we figured would self seed and turn the yard into little Afghanistan (minus the endless war and heroin). Instead what we got was a groundhog twice the size of the black bear bagged off Moreland St last week. Every year as the poppy would start to grow, the little terrorist would show up and whittle it down to the crown in a matter of seconds. Well, this year the groundhog either moved on or went into rehab allowing the poppy to make it to bloom. It just opened last night, and here’s the finished product.
If anyone would like to come over and weed around it, feel free.
I’m not a big hockey fan. But when I heard from @4rilla and @DestWorcester that the UAF Nanooks were playing BC at the DCU Center today, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to share the single most absurd thing to come out of collegiate sports in recent memory.
Now you know what Kenda is thinking about as she paces back and forth all day.
I’ve thrown up a google map at this page where Worcester students, residents, business types and other civic minded awesome people with access to a computer can tag their location in the city and leave a little note as to why the Google Fiber for Communities project is important to them. Yes, Shrewsbury is doing the same thing; but we out number them 6 to 1 and could totally take them in a fight if we had too.
So if you’re up for a little digital community engagement, let’s use Googles own tools to show them we’re serious about the future in Worcester.
Listening to NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday, I caught Ben Berkowitz, the co-founder of seeclickfix.com talking about his company and how they plan to revolutionize the reporting of crime and grime issues to municipal agencies via smartphones. SCF uses the GPS on your smartphone to tag everything from potholes to prostitutes, ensures the city is aware of the problem, mashes all the data up in google maps and issues “Civic Points” for your efforts creating a sort of city wide competition.
Interested, I hopped on over to the site to poke around and it seems that not only have a handful of Worcesterites been using the site for about a year, but it looks like the Worcester DPW is already linked into the service and apparently receiving complaints and issuing work orders through the site. Which is excellent, but a little strange considering it was only last July that Councilor Rushton was requesting we create just such a service for Worcester. Guess we can skip the RFP on this one…
So if you like the idea of bugging municipal employees while on the go, seeclickfix.com currently has apps available for the iphone, blackberry and android.
Update: I threw a SCF widget up on this page so people could see how the local data looks in action.
