“The Westford Rotary holds its 2010 Blues ‘n Brews Festival on Saturday, August 21st at the Nashoba Ski Area in Westford, Massachusetts. Learn more at www.bluesnbrews.com”
Originally posted by mbeek6
Smokehouse Lightning
August 24th, 2010
“The Mosque” near Ground Zero: battle of the heart, head and gut by Marjorie Arons-Barron
The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.
Sorting out my feelings about the so-called “Mosque” near Ground Zero has been an odyssey of heart, gut and head. The journey has not been easy.
Some 9/11 survivors are genuinely aghast at the location of this proposed Islamic community center. There’s precedent for this reaction. When Carmelite nuns sought to establish a convent near Auschwitz, protests led Pope John Paul II to intervene. No matter how well intentioned the nuns were, the juxtaposition was deemed too hurtful. And I’m not sure that the Imam establishing the New York Islamic center, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, who, with his wife, has a strong record of interfaith activities, is necessarily as well-intentioned as those Carmelite nuns. After all, has he not partially blamed the United States for the attack on 9/11? More significantly, hasn’t he refused to identify Hamas as a terrorist organization?
Tell me again why we’re in Afghanistan? Why are we still taking off our shoes in airports and spending billions on Homeland Security? Haven’t
respected intelligence sources made clear that we should expect another 9/11 attack? Hasn’t there been a common theme to most of the plots uncovered in recent years? Sure, anyone can cherry-pick the Koran, the way someone can cherry-pick the Bible, for threatening quotations. But, as the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) regularly makes clear, there is indeed a frequent disconnect between what is said to Arabic versus English speaking audiences on the very same points.
What are we to make of the history [Jerusalem, Istanbul, Cordoba] of Muslims building mosques on special sites of their vanquished enemies as a sign of victory? Even if there are many Muslims in lower Manhattan who deserve a facility and there are already two store-front mosques in the neighborhood, this is the one that has offended so many victims of the 9/11 attack. If a symbolically important constituency is going to feel real pain, and a purpose of the proposed community center building itself is to build bridges to non-Muslim Americans, why not just build it somewhere else nearby, even if the developers have the right to build it there?
read more »
August 23rd, 2010
Tewksbury’s Carey On Fox 25 News Zip Trips
Fox 25 News has a popular segment on its morning edition called Zip Trips. Zip Trips sends Fox 25 on-air personalities to various small towns to interview locals. Most recently popular commentator, VB visited Tewksbury where he interviewed former Town Treasurer and Town Historian Warren Carey.
In the video below VB and Carey play “Tewksbury Trivia”. This is a funny segment.
August 22nd, 2010
August 15, 2010 (I stepped on my Kindle edition) by Jack Neary
The following entry is being cross posted from local playwright, Jack Neary’s own blog, Shards.
I stepped on my Kindle.
This is one of the main things you should not do with your Kindle. Step on it. When you step on it, it stops being a Kindle. The only thing it’s really good for after you step on it is throwing it at librarians. Because it would be really ironic. Other than that, though, a stepped-on Kindle is useless.
I’ve stepped on a few books in my life, and the books remained readable. Not the Kindle. They don’t tell you that when you buy the Kindle. They don’t say, “Hey, you can’t step on this thing, you know.” If they had said that, I probably would have stepped on it anyway, because who thinks he’s ever gonna step on his Kindle? Not me, baby. I had gotten into the habit of placing my Kindle on the floor beside my bed (because my night stand, which is a stool, can hold only my radio alarm clock, my reading glasses, and my iPhone), and I was diligently leaning up and over my bed to put my DVDs in alphabetical order…What, you don’t have your DVDs in alphabetical order? What’s the matter with you?…and after I had squeezed MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935) between THE MUSIC MAN (1962) and MY COUSIN VINNY (1992), I leaned back to admire my assiduousness and heard a tiny little “crack,” which was my Kindle turning into a large coaster. read more »
August 22nd, 2010
Down-ballot Auditor’s Race Deserves Our Attention by Marjorie Arons-Barron
The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.
Say the word “auditor,” and you probably think sweaty palms, sleepless nights and maybe a nervous tic. But the race for state auditor has nothing directly to do with your tax returns or individual finances. The words “state auditor” should, if the job is done right, be reassuring for every taxpayer in the Commonwealth.
It’s the job of the auditor to oversee how money is spent by government entities and contractors, to make sure they’re following the letter of the
law. Joe DeNucci has been auditor since 1987 and is retiring. Now Suzanne Bump, a former state representative (1985-93 ) and former Secretary of the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (under Deval Patrick) is running to succeed him.(DeNucci has endorsed her.) She says she wants to take the office to the next step – to go beyond financial auditing to performance auditing, and actually improve how systems work. Now there’s a novel idea.
Bump has the right concept for running the office and the experience to implement her ideas. The problem is that half the people in the Commonwealth don’t have a clue what the Auditor does and, of those who do, many probably don’t care. State Auditor is at the bottom of the ballot, the most obscure of any statewide office. And yet arguably it’s one of the most important.
It’s not just a matter of, as former Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp used to say, making sure the “gazintas equal the gazoutas”– making sure that government doesn’t spend more than it takes in. Performance audits look for inefficiencies. They look for ways to do things better. They could, in a Bump example, recommend changes of the state’s health law, which has people bouncing from Mass Connector if they’re working to something else if they lose their job and on to MassHealth when unemployment benefits run out and back to MassHealth or another insurer if they regain employment. The Auditor’s office could provide a roadmap to continuity and an end to administrative fragmentation that serves neither the consumer or the fiscal needs of the Commonwealth.
So, too, performance auditing could help rationalize our system of multiple economic development and workforce development agencies, something Bump worked on as State Secretary. And it could include an analysis of the efficacy of tax incentives and the costs and benefits of potential outsourcing proposals. read more »
August 22nd, 2010
Salem’s Chinese House
My family took a stay-cation day trip to Salem last Thursday, visiting the Peabody Essex Museum, our favorite place in a city that we go to once or twice a year. I’d never seen the Yin Yu Tang house, but my wife had been inside several times. This 200-year-old house from southeastern China was dismantled and shipped east to the Museum where it was rebuilt exactly as it stood in the village of Huang Cun, near Shanghai. Eight generations of the Huang family lived in the house. The house came to Salem through a cultural partnership formed between regional officials in China and the Peabody Essex, which is a world-class museum less than an hour from Lowell. Here’s the link for more information about the house.
The whole Museum experience there is an exercise in obtaining perspective on our daily experience. You have to work your mind around the notion that the Massachusetts coast was a gateway to the Pacific and Asia. The Museum was established in 1799 by wealthy merchants from Salem’s maritime trade. The PEM is “the country’s oldest continuously operating museum.” Lucky for downtown Salem to have such a draw. Still, I wouldn’t trade downtown Lowell for Salem’s even though the ocean is right there.
The PEM, Salem National Park sites, and Witch Trials Memorial are well worth the drive to the North Shore. While you are there, make time for breakfast or lunch at Brothers Restaurant & Deli at 283 Derby St.
August 13th, 2010
Pakistan flood challenges compassion fatigue and local politics by Marjorie Arons-Barron
The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.
ABC news calls the Pakistani flooding “the worst floods in memory.” Fourteen million homeless. Six million children affected. Sixteen percent of the country under water due to two weeks of monsoon rains, which have created literally hundreds of lakes, some the size of the state of Delaware.
It’s hard to get one’s mind around the scope of the disaster, and some may not even be inclined to try. After all, the Pakistani government has been duplicitous with us, taking our aid but providing cover to our enemies.
There’s not enough food, medicine, drinkable water, shelter, relief workers. The United States has pledged $71 million, and the United Nations has pledged to round up $459 million in emergency aid. Meanwhile, the militant Islamists damn foreign aid as a tool of subjugation. And the corrupt Pakistani government, which has failed to move proactively to build dams to combat previous monsoons, is failing again to meet the current challenge, in effect ceding the game to terrorist groups who will use the opportunity to win the hearts and minds of struggling disaster victims in the water-logged nation. If the government doesn’t serve the people and extremist charities use, asAsia Pacific News put it, “soft power” to win over disaster victims, it will ratchet up the attraction of extremist groups in this nuclear nation, and we will all be the worse for it.
The Christian Science Monitor raises the specter that the failure of local government to help in the tragedy will wreck the possibility of meaningful democratic government in Pakistan.
Providing aid to Pakistan is far more complicated than providing aid to Haiti, where at least the sometimes disjointed NGO’s were not fighting each other militarily or even Indonesia after the tsunami where the Aceh Islamic separatists worked cooperatively with international aid groups.
Recent stories by National Public Radio have highlighted this complexity in Pakistan. Take for example the Swat Valley, “where residents were still trying to recover from a major battle between Taliban militants and the army last spring that caused widespread destruction and drove nearly 2 million people from their homes.” The floods are piling misery upon misery in an unspeakable way.
Family friend Daniel Holmberg, is originally from Newton. A relief worker for some 20 years, he now heads the Pakistan mission for NGOAction Against Hunger (ACF). He worries that the international reaction may be nowhere what is needed because individual donors just move from one disaster to another. This, though the Pakistan disaster is said to eclipse the 2004 Tsunami and the Haiti earthquake put together, in terms of the number of people made homeless.
In an interview in France24 , Dan said, “Certain disasters such as the Haiti earthquake captured world attention. It is difficult to gauge the media coverage of the flooding, and I hope that Pakistan’s global image right now will not prejudice its people’s desperate needs.”
PIC
Dan sent the photos shown in this posting, which appeared in the Guardian. This young man has run relief operations in the worst hell-holes in the world, in wartime Iraq, in the Sudan. There is an air of frustration and urgency in his tone that should spur others to action.
It is very clear that if well-intentioned governments and institutions don’t respond, militant Islamists used to relying on terror to cow populations will step in to fill the void and use the opportunity to sow dissension for generations to come.
- Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below
August 13th, 2010
Net Neutrality in Danger
Its time for the public to wake up and start fighting for the concept of Net Neutrality.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…
That’s how the country’s most sacred document, the “Declaration of Independence” reads.
Unfortunately, the time has come when we need a similar statement protecting the Internet…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all “information” is created equal and should be treated as such.
Call the document “The Declaration of Net Neutrality”.
I don’t mean to be melodramatic but I believe a monumental, intellectual challenge looms ahead concerning the flow of information on the Internet. At risk is the concept of Net Neutrality or “equality” of information.
Last week Google and Verizon struck a deal to create a system where “some information is more equal than other” (excuse the Orwellian reference). In other words the agreement between Verizon and Google would allow certain pieces of information to travel to an Internet user faster IF its creator “pays a higher fee”. This agreement threatens to destroy Net Neutrality.
Check out this quote from web guru Tim Berners-Lee:
Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies can control what I access for commercial reasons. In China, companies could control what users access for political reasons. Freedom of connection with any application to any party is the fundamental social basis of the Internet.
Bravo Tim! You’ve stated the dangers of eliminating Net Neutrality perfectly.
YES even without Net Neutrality you WILL still have access to all information, but premium providers (those are the ones that pay a fee) will send their information to you faster, hence influencing where you go to get information.
Look at it this way…lets say you are heading out to eat with your wife. You pull into a restaurant and the hostess tells you the wait is 45 minutes…you’re too hungry to wait 45 minutes so you get back in the car and drive across the street to another restaurant…the wait there is only 5 minutes. Where do you eat? Its a no brainer…you eat where the food is provided faster.
Think this is a stretch? Ask yourself…how many times have you “X” out of a site because it was taking too long to load…see, I’m right.
But there is still hope that the federal government will step in and void this dangerous agreement between Google and Verizon preserving the idea of equality…as it did back in 1776.
August 12th, 2010
Worthen House Fans – Pulley System
This video was originally post by 1teacherman. Here is the YouTube description:
The Worthen House, Lowell, MA. One of four intact pulley driven fan systems and the only one still in its original building.
August 11th, 2010
Mayor Levi
Ok, so you’re Sarah Palin and you hear that your daughter Bristol’s boyfriend/ex-boyfriend/ fiance/ex-fiance Levi Johnston is planning on running for your old job…Mayor of Wasilla, tell me, what the heck goes through your head (if anything). Me? If I was Palin, I’d be thinking…”this pain in the ass is like a bad penny…I just can’t get rid of him”.
But the former candidate for Vice President (turned money hound) has much more to consider.
Come with me…Lets imagine we are inside Sarah’s head and can hear what she might be thinking about Levi Johnston’s entrance into the political arena…
“What do I do?… Do I endorse the little SOB or not? After all he is the father of my grandson. If I don’t endorse him, when my grandson Tripp grows up how do I explain that I wouldn’t support his father for Mayor? It’ll send him to a shrink for sure… And Todd and I, we’re hoping little Tripp turns out just like his grand-daddy, a musher and a BP Oil worker…you betcha.
But there is another side to this complicated situation. I could endorse Levi…geez, he almost has his high school diploma now. And he’s cute and look where being cute got me. And he does cute things (right eye wink)
I remember when Bristol and Levi were first palling around together and he had Bristol’s name tattooed on his fingers….I thought it was so romantic. Todd never did that for me.
And when you think about it, if Levi did win Mayor and continued on, this just might be the start of a political dynasty like the Bush family.
This decision is a tough one. Do I endorse or not?…maybe I’ll ask John McCain for advise. He always makes wise decisions. You betcha.”
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