A Quick 5W for Fair Vote Lowell: Organization Meeting

What: Fair Vote Lowell Organization Meeting
Who: ANYONE interested, regardless of past or current involvement level with this initiative
When: Friday, 31 JUL, at 6:00 p.m.
Where: Saint Ann's Church, 8 Kirk Street
Why: To discuss strategies for gathering enough valid signatures to get the petition on the ballot

Best Point of Contact on this, or any other upcoming related events, would be Dr. Victoria Fahlberg -- vfalhberg@onelowell.net

'Yes Men', Sacha Baron-Cohen, and 'Gotcha' Entertainment

I did some work-related traveling this week, and I caught a snippet of the "Yes Men" movie (or show?), which features two merry pranksters who set up dummy websites, false identities, etc. in order to play pranks on evil corporations.

I came away very unimpressed, and even a bit disgusted.

One of their major pranks involved one of the Yes Men posing as a Dow lawyer, and setting up an interview with the BBC during which he announced that Dow would be offering a $12 billion settlement to survivors and family members of the 1984 Union Carbide chemical disaster in Bhopal, India. This announcement, and the follow-up from Dow that it was in fact a hoax, has been well-documented on the Internet.

And as you might imagine, it temporarily raised -- and then crushed -- the spirits of thousands of the poor people in Bhopal, India that the Yes Men claim to champion. Ditto for the spoof HUD announcement about the re-opening of a New Orleans housing project condemned after Hurricane Katrina.

Of course, the Yes Men spun that by saying they were really helping those people by pointing out world injustices...and then manipulated their own film by showing clips of people in Bhopal and New Orleans saying what a great thing the Yes Men had done.

Great for whom? Sounds like it was great for the Yes Men, but bad for HUD, bad for Dow, but more importantly, bad for the people of Bhopal and New Orleans.

A lot of this stuff seems to be going around. I haven't seen the new Sacha Baron-Cohen movie featuring "Bruno" (though I know I will at some point), but I did see enough of Borat to eventually get frustrated at the way Baron-Cohen continually sets up ridiculous situations in order to portray Americans as backwards, racist, ignorant pigs. It gets a bit tiresome, and I have no doubt that Baron-Cohen uses clever splicing to prove his *points* just as Michael Moore does in all of his films. (Most notably, and regrettably, when Moore *proves* that the U.S. news media portrays people of color as criminals by repeatedly looping in local news clips that refer to non-white suspects by race...does anyone not see right through that?)

In any event, I just want to come out and strongly show my opposition to any kind of "Gotcha" used for political purposes. It's underhanded, it's manipulative, and the people who do it would be the first to cry foul were the shoe on the other foot.

For the record, that's totally different from anonymous blog posts and comments, which has been a very hot topic lately in the local blogosphere. Being anonymous, with or without an identifiable handle, is a conscious choice that I respect (with the only caveat that anonymity could be easily compromised, even by someone meaning no harm). A 'Gotcha' would be something like one writer or commenter posing as another in order to prove some type of point --- it seems like that would scarily easy to do, as celebrities keep finding out via Twitter and Facebook impersonations and wild rumors that follow.

Location, Location, and Bridge Street

I had the chance to drop the car off today at CVS (336 Bridge) and walk home. Besides just being able to get out and enjoy the day, and the Folk Festival, I finally took advantage of the opportunity to check out L & I Clothing and Military Outlet on French Street, which I've passed by now a few times but never during normal business hours.

They're not a traditional Army-Navy Surplus Store. Instead, they're a 50/50 split civilian clothing store and military clothing/memorabilia store. Their prices seemed reasonable, and to answer the FIRST question I always ask myself when I see a new business downtown, they definitely fill a niche (I say that because as much as I'd root for another Irish-themed bar or beauty salon, I wouldn't stake my own fortunes on one).

Anyway, the big news I've got to report here is that they're going to be moving within the next couple of days to a bigger and better location -- the corner of Bridge and French. I hadn't even noticed the constabulary/private investigator storefront was gone until I asked L & I's owner (Staff Sergeant Glenn Morales, USMC, now on terminal leave but about to affiliate with a Reserve ordnance unit out of Devens) about it and confirmed that was the spot.

Seems like a huge improvement over being tucked away back on French where there isn't even a fraction of the foot or vehicle traffic you've got just a few yards away on Bridge. Legions of potential new customers who probably never knew that L & I existed (its name is about to slightly change, by the way, as 'Outlet' is replaced by 'Store') will now see the storefront and know that it's there.

Opening the Kimono

I've read a lot of great blog posts and comments in the past few days about the relative merits of anonymity versus what I'll call "open kimono" blogging.

For the record, I would like to say that both have their merits. An example I gave in a LiL comment was the Federalist papers, but as commenters from Jack Mitchell to bloggers like Kad Barma have noted, anonymous political speech in this country is even older than that, and dates back to Benjamin Franklin's many pseudonyms and the anonymously-penned tracts that helped spark our Revolution.

I saw the Rita Mercier video clip on both Richard Howe and Left in Lowell and could sympathize to the degree that she felt some anonymous attacks were unfair. However, at the end of the day, the side I come down on says that being a public figure is a choice -- it comes with many great upsides in addition to the downside that is exposure to personal attack. I do believe that it can be noble and good, but I veer away when people get too sanctimonious about the 'personal sacrifice' stuff -- if it were really some great personal sacrifice where costs far outweighed benefits, you wouldn't have more than twice as many people competing for the number of spots available.

Another thing I would add, to echo multiple commenters, is that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Yes, bloggers and commenters may make up the city's chattering class. I've gotten to know many of them within the past year, and even count a few as personal friends. By and large, they're open-minded, intellectually-curious people who take kindly to real debate. It might make sense, then, for public officials or candidates to comment on blogs...or, as in the case of Jackie Doherty from the School Committee, they could take to writing one themselves. I don't know why anyone either holding or running for these offices isn't using Facebook, or Twitter, or the blogs, or whatever. That's all *free speech* in a pure, First Amendment sort of way, but more important perhaps for them, it doesn't come at a cost. It helps to enable entire candidacies that don't rely on money (i.e. Patrick Murphy).

For the record, I will respect anyone's right to blog and comment anonymously provided it doesn't involve unsubstantiated personal attack. In response, I'd ask that you respect that there are certain things those of us who don't blog anonymously might naturally be a little more hesitant to say -- I'll cite the Law of Conservation of Enemies referenced by Kilcullen in 'Accidental Guerrilla' here. I won't call you a coward, and if you don't call me a kiss-ass, we're good.

Also for the record:

I am the sole author of this blog. My name is Greg Page and I own a condo at 200 Market St.

I've known since 2006 (when I lived in Virginia Beach when not deployed) that I was going to fill a Civil Affairs position in the Massachusetts Army National Guard. I also knew that I wanted to move back to the Boston area as soon as possible -- I'd lived there for two college summers and the year after, loved it, and knew it was the only place I'd ever want to call home. I scoped out all the small cities in the area, found Lowell to be the absolute best in terms of layout, location, affordability, amenities, and future prospects (you can sense this place is on the up-and-up in a way that many other small cities of its kind aren't).

I took orders to get as close to the area as possible (Groton, CT was the best I could do...BRAC killed any chance of Devens) and for the past fifteen months have done a "mixed commute." That is, I'm back-and-forth quite a bit, though not daily, and have put an obscene number of miles on my odometer. Weekends, leave, holidays, and more weekdays than I'd want to count -- just ask anyone who works at the Starbucks off Exit 16 in Worcester or New Great Taste at Gorham/Central. Or just ask anyone who lives at my girlfriend's house who knows where the down-the-stairs lumbering on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 4 a.m. is coming from. The good news for me is the end of all this is nigh. I'm taking all of AUG as personal leave, have to go back to work again in SEP, but then detach from active Navy into Army Guard as of the first of OCT. Getting there steadily, one day at a time. Yes, there's been personal and financial cost, but much like Rita Mercier's cold dinners, its self-inflicted nature limits my right to complain.

Ratriey (in the picture next to me) and I were introduced by her aunt more than a year ago and will hopefully be engaged at some point next month. Will post when it happens.

I definitely get a rise out of being challenged over the name of this blog. I say that because I wasn't actually born in New England nor did I have the good sense to have parents who could've moved me here at a younger age. What's funny to me, however, is that people who would never do something as gauche as to question an immigrant's right to be 'American' -- those who would even get misty-eyed during a citizenship oath at Faneuil Hall -- sometimes have a hard time with the blog title. On top of that, I'd add two things...first, as someone who has gone (and will do so again, and soon) overseas wearing this country's uniform, I'll call myself whatever I like, thank you very much. I could get orders to Wright-Patterson tomorrow, step off the plane, call myself an Ohioan...and if you disagree, we need to talk in private! And lastly, it's the name of a blog and a place I love -- I don't think the New Yorker or the Atlantic pretend to represent entire cities or oceans, if you catch my drift.

I love blogging just as I'm sure all bloggers do. It's provided a great albeit unintended way of staying in touch with friends. Besides giving me a public forum to post my thoughts to whoever might care to read them, it's making for a great personal way to *capture* the experience I'm having in the way that a journal would. Also, as Paul Marion wrote earlier this week, blogging gives writers and readers a virtual way to stay in touch with home city, whether that means you're out in Alaska (Tom Sexton), or Huachuca, Fayette-Nam, Afghanistan...or even old Rotten Groton.

I would love to support myself through writing, but the death of print media is going to make that harder and harder for people to do. Blogging may not pay the bills, but it's the next best thing. In the meantime, thanks to any and all who read this, those who link to it, and especially to those who comment.

Also, I am a tea-swilling Anglophile prone to calling people 'mate.'

Those Slim Manhattanites

I just caught a NY Times headline that said Manhattanites are the slimmest among residents of any county in New York State.

Most of the article dealt with the culture of fitness among the wealthy and people's motivations to stay slim or look good. Thankfully, though, the very first explanation given was the one that I think hits the nail squarely on the head -- people who live in Manhattan walk a lot. Owning a car there is prohibitively expensive, and walking is just an easier, better way to get around.

On National Start Walking Day, Richard Howe posted a Bill Maher video clip with a great rant about American diet culture. Maher was lampooning those drug company commercials that always start with, "When diet and exercise don't work..." Maher's well-delivered response was that "Diet and exercise DO WORK!!"

My next entry is going to be based on some thoughts that have swirled around since the blogosphere was set ablaze by Rita Mercier's comments at the last City Council meeting. One of them is going to be why I moved to Lowell, and specifically to Downtown Lowell. As Kathleen Marcin said in a Sun interview a few months ago, and as I'm sure many others have before and will since, one of the greatest things about Downtown is parking your car on Friday afternoon and not starting it again until Monday morning.

I love walking, I'm neutral on driving, but I hate parking. I'll always prefer a nice walk to a drive just like I'll always hit zero for a live operator and always prefer a real breeze to a sealed-off blast of A/C.

I may not be a fan of most Manhattanites' political persuasions or attitudes about whether New York is or isn't the center of the universe.

But there's one thing they seem to be getting right that, unfortunately, most of this country is still getting wrong.

If 7-11 is 200 yards away from your house, try walking instead of driving. Although each trip is just one small thing, the cumulative effect can apparently have a significant long-term impact on your state of well-being.

Know Thy Neighbor

First, I wish to refer you to two excellent posts over at Choosing a Soundtrack regarding the recent spat between Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and an officer from the Cambridge PD. From a non-ideological point of view, its author rightly calls out where BOTH sides may have acted foolishly (I say 'may' because none of us were there).

There will no doubt be endless blog posts, journal submissions, Ph.D. thesis proposals, and talk show call-ins regarding this situation and its deeper meaning for America. But last night on NECN, I heard something that cut through all of that, was truly non-racial and seems unassailable from a logical point of view:

Maybe we should get to know our neighbors better.

Admittedly, Cambridge is a transient city with a high student and young professional population, so in some ways that's just much easier said than done. But at the same time, it does have its long-term residential core, of which Gates could be counted as a member (he's been on the Harvard faculty for many years now). The lady who was walking her dog in the neighborhood apparently had no idea who he was.

On the one hand, that woman deserves a lot of credit -- if it appeared someone was breaking into my house (even if that someone was me!) I would WANT someone to call the police if they were even slightly in doubt as to what was happening. The caller also did something a lot more honorable than the Queens residents who basically witnessed the Kitty Genovese murder back in 1964 and just stood and watched while no one reported it.

But on the other hand, the frustration of not knowing neighbors and the demise of social capital is an almost-universal lament in modern America. Besides the apparent two-way shamefulness of what happened between Gates and Crowley (Why was Gates belligerent, and why couldn't Crowley have just left him after ID'ing him as the owner?), it's also sad that the caller didn't know Dr. Gates, and didn't feel comfortable enough to ask the suspected perpetrators (at least one of whom was an aging man with a diminutive frame) as to what was going on.

Robert Forrant Op-Ed

Here is a link to Robert Forrant's Lowell Sun op-ed about the State of the City (present and possible future).