WorcesterFirst.org has some action items for people concerned about Wal-Mart’s plans to move into Worcester.
Category: General
Just, you know, stuff. And things. Things and stuff. Yeah, basically that’s it.
Looking back at Beyond Broadcast
I’m attending Beyond Broadcast again this year. I wrote up some notes last year after the conference. Funny how the stuff I wrote about isn’t the stuff that stuck with me. Might as well look back at those notes anyway.
- Public Radio Exchange is still around, though I haven’t thought about it since last year’s conference. On the other hand, last year I got to meet the people behind Radio Open Source, which didn’t seem to merit a mention at the time, but which is now the model I point to when public access TV producers ask me how to connect their blogs to their shows.
- Digital Bicycle seems moribund.
- Echo Chamber Project is still in action. I hope the documentary gets finished soon.
- I’ve built a test Indymedia site on Drupal 5.0, and am waiting for a server where the production site can live.
- The best way to post video to the web is on the Internet Archive. So when formatting video for the web, the real question is: what does the Archive want? Answer: MPEG-2s. At my TV station, we’ve downloaded suitably-licensed DVD-quality MPEG-2s from the Archive for later broadcast, which accomplishes most of what Digital Bicycle set out to do.
- Holmes Wilson/Dan Gillmor/drinking with WGBH: I don’t think Holmes will be there this year, but Dan Gillmor is back and talking about the future of public access TV, a subject close to my heart. He’s blogged some of his thoughts here.
My readers know more than I do.
From this follows that when readers can share their knowledge without the pro journalist as intermediary, the pro journalist must reinvent the job.
Sometime when I’m drunk, ask me to explain my corollary:
My readers drink more than I do.
Shadow of Wal-Mart falls on Worcester
I regret that the time has come to tag a post both “Worcester” and “Wal-Mart.”
A 209,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter is part of a shopping center planned on 44 acres in Quinsigamond Village where U.S. Steel once operated foundries along the Blackstone River.
I consider myself to be the single biggest proponent of hard core, blood thirsty capitalism this side of Iowa, but Wal-Mart still manages to make me ill.
I’ll be blogging this issue over at Worcester Activist.
IKEA USA to Start Charging for Plastic Bags
Single-use bags will be 5 cents; the charge for multi-use bags will drop from 99 cents to 59 cents. Good!
The act of seeing with one’s own eyes
I stopped drinking coffee cold turkey yesterday. I didn’t feel bad, but I think my concentration suffered. I wrote two blog posts, both of them traditionally bloggy summaries of others’ work, and neither very accurate or pithy.
One of the ideas I had when starting this group blog was to combine the personalist philosophy with the personal; rather than commenting on news reported by others, I would write about my own firsthand experiences. Rather quickly this blog descended into traditional meta-news blogging as well. After all, another idea behind this blog was to have fun, and meta-news blogging is fun.
But a day like yesterday points up a problem with meta-news blogging. I might write a bad post about my own experiences, but I’m not likely to be inaccurate about them. Yesterday I blogged about two things I have no firsthand experience of, and so a mild deficit of reading comprehension led to both bad and inaccurate blogging. (I’ve been following the Cirignano stuff behind the scenes, but I wasn’t there for the original incident. I have zero firsthand knowledge of WoMag, and as mentioned yesterday it’s only moving further to the periphery of my awareness.)
Think not that I have learned my lesson: in the coming days, this space will feature several pieces that feature not only meta-news, but also meta-analysis. If this scares you, consult Allen Levine’s floating head for solace.
Post title taken from Stan Brakhage.
Another “Dumping” of a Hospital Patient on LA’s Skid Row
For a while now there’s been something of an outcry against L.A.-are hospitals, police departments, etc. for the practice of “dumping” those without an address on Skid Row. The latest incident was particularly egregious, as it involved the dumping of a paraplegic with a colostomy bag in the gutter without even a wheelchair, in front of two dozen witnesses. The driver of the van from Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center then took the time to reapply her makeup and perfume before driving away. More details in today’s paper.
R.I.P., Rep. Robert F. Drinan, S.J. (D-Mass.)
You can learn a lot reading the news obituaries in the paper. This morning, I found out about Robert F. Drinan, a Jesuit who became the first Catholic priest elected to Congress. The prospect of a priest in office is an interesting one, but apparently the Vatican didn’t think it was such a good idea and asked him (and other priests) to step down by 1980. It sounds like he was a strong voice against war, but the paper notes cryptically that he was a “moderate” on abortion. Of course, a great number of Protestant ministers hold elected office in the U.S., but as a priest is supposed to take orders from the Vatican, that could create personal or church/state conflicts. Do any of you in Massachusetts know more about Father Drinan?
The rest of the story
There was a column in yesterday’s paper about the public meeting regarding the Worcester Youth Center’s executive director using the n-word when dealing with youths.
The author mentions that Youth Center board of directors president Allen Fletcher rambled on about race for awhile, alienating many of those present, and then left.
What the author doesn’t mention is that, immediately before walking out of the meeting, Mr. Fletcher got into an argument with another person about what he (Mr. Fletcher) considered a racist (anti-white) incident at the Youth Center. (I got the impression there was a lot of background here, none of which I am privy to.) So it was even more dramatic than the column describes.
Also, to be fair to the members of the board who spoke after Mr. Fletcher, I had the impression that they leapt to his defense in spite of his comments, not because they necessarily agreed with what he said.
In any case, while this incident was the most memorable part of the night, it wasn’t the most important. It’s disappointing that the columnist gives two sentences to the comments of the non-board members at the meeting. Because that was what touched my heart. I am proud to live in the same city as these folks.
You don’t need me to tell you what they think. You can watch the uncut video of some interviews taped after the meeting. Bits of this were also part of the latest Worcester Indymedia news video.
Lest this post be too negative, here are three nice things: Drupal 5 is out, I started a page on playing with Worcester’s webcams, and my roommate insists I link to Faith Browser. So there you go.
Items
Media: The Globe and T&G are cutting jobs. Michael Ball considers this. Worcester Indymedia debuts a video newscast about the Thursday Lincoln Square peace vigil and a community meeting in response to a controversy at the Youth Center.
Church: The Diocese of Worcester has reportedly cut its annual deficit by 90% in the past three years. I know nothing about the backstory here. In other news, at least one Vatican official digs Oscar Wilde:
Our role is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people’s consciences and to tackle what today is the No 1 enemy of religion — indifference.
City: “Back Alleys Become Commons.” I’ve seen some of this in Worcester, and would like to see more. Over at WCCA, two new videos: the latest performance from teen guitarist Desiree Bassett, and a report from another peace vigil. Finally, it’s been suggested that someone compile a list of Worcester residents not running for Mayor. The web seems an obvious place for this. Suggestions?
Nothing? Check!
On the first working day after an insulting blog post about the Barbara Haller website appeared on the lynne4district4 blog, the Haller website was revised! How’s that for service?
Here’s a classic from the old site:
Note that even though the last five entries are blanks, Haller gets a green check for each, and “Lynn Simond” (perhaps a veiled reference to opponent Lynne Simonds) gets a red cross. Nihilism represent!
Not that Simonds’s website, or any sitting councilor’s website, is much better. The only good one I know of is Joff Smith’s.
Three questions:
- Any reason a city councilor needs more than a one page site? (I mean heck, 37signals itself is technically a one-page site, with each product or blog getting its own site.)
- Any reason a campaign needs to post a site with a bunch of “under construction” pages? You could always post a one-pager, then post the other pages after they are constructed.
- Any reason someone running for the Council needs a website at all?