Today: social service siting, Mason Court, wild animals, Catholic ninjas.
Task Force Report Hearing
There’s a hearing this afternoon at City Hall on the Mayor’s Task Force on Social Service Program Siting report.
I have two general problems with the report.
First, it doesn’t have a plan for getting beyond the current hostility between social service agencies and neighborhood groups.
Second, it provides no incentive for social service agencies to follow the “best practices” it outlines for siting social service programs.
The City can’t require agencies to follow such guidelines for fear of discrimination and violating federal law. So there’s no “stick.”
At the same time, the City isn’t doing anything to encourage agencies to follow the siting guidelines. And given the climate of hostility, an agency actually has an incentive to be less than transparent when considering a program site. After all, if you’re going to have to battle with the neighbors anyway, why tip your hand before you have to? (The guidelines would be great for preserving goodwill between homeowners and agencies, but there’s no goodwill at present.)
So there’s no “carrot,” either.
(There won’t be any social service siting news here for a month or two, as I’m leaving to hike across West Virginia on the American Discovery Trail (Harpers Ferry to Parkersburg.) Pray for a warm December. And check back often for exciting posts from our other contributors.)
Mason Court in the news
Who is on the front page of today’s T&G, and above the fold no less? Justin Sasse, showing off his bedroom in his house on Mason Court. An upcoming article here will give the history of Mason Court, historically a multi-racial street, and still with more ethnic diversity per square yard than any other little street in the city.
Wild animals
A day after Buck Paxton decried the vole epidemic on the West Side, the T&G described a fisher boom in the city. None of these invaders dare enter Worcester’s cutting-edge Piedmont neighborhood, where hard-working stray cats like Sweet William, the Duke of Mason Court, keep the streets safe.
File under: “shuriken & birettas“
After Dyspeptic Mutterings wrote this:
Of all the saints of the Catholic Reformation, St. Robert Bellarmine has struck me as the one who is most like a ninja
Speculative Catholic drew this:
I saw it at YOU DUPED ME LORD.
…and…
Here is a nice photo of Thomas Merton, the Berrigan brothers, and an unidentified man.
I’ll never forget my first run in with a Fisher Cat in the woods near Boynton Park while mountain biking. It was like a big mean ferret on steroids, only bigger and meaner than any juiced up ferret I’ve ever met. As soon as I saw it standing in the middle of the trail I turned to head back the way I came. About a minuet down the trail a nice little old lady walking her absurdly small dog came along headed right towards the hell beast. I tried explaining the horrible death her beloved Pomeranian would experience if she continued in her chosen direction only to be met with a look of confusion by both woman and dog.
As far as I know the two of them were never seen again, although I had never seen them before so it’s a hard bit to qualify.
That is a beautiful picture of Thomas Merton et al. I thought those times and the years that followed were going to be the bridge to the future, up until about 1978 or so. I can remember when we were pregnant with out first daughter, gitana and hitchhiking from San Diego to Tucson to see my sister. We ended up sleeping out in a field there but the highlight of the trip was an expedition to UA and hearing Father Dan talk and verbally fight off the ranchers with their sixshooters and university kids. It was pretty vicious feeling. Must have been about 1974. Are we like on the verge of another political reformation? One can hope!