Now is the winter... in the summer

Beginning tomorrow evening at 7, Shakespeare in the Park presents "Richard III" in Green Hill Park's Memorial Grove Ampitheater.

For more information, go to the The Redfeather Theater website.

Mid Point

This is the mid-point in the summer, exactly half-way between July 4th and August 28th (the first day of public school).

This is the slowest time for the cab business, and for the majority of retail businesses in the city.

This is also the deepest point of hibernation for the school buses...

Ssshhhh!

Be very, very quiet...

The school buses are sleeping.

We wouldn't want to wake them up before it's time to go to school...

Another 27days before all the school buses wake up and the streets of Worcester suddenly come alive. Another 27 days of Worcester streets that have no traffic jams, no pile-ups at various intersections, and no flashing lights on big yellow school buses.

The freshmen college students will begin to filter into the city during the next few weeks. They'll be coming here for orientations and "Mom and Dad scrutiny" of the places they'll be entrusting their children to for the first time, in most cases, that they've lived outside their homes.

We'll also see the beginning of the shopping that has to be done by parents to prepare their kids for school. This is a very distinct up-turn in business, usually beginning about the middle of August.

Right now, however, at this mid-point that runs from this afternoon through tomorrow morning, we have the other half of summer to look forward to.

QVCC

The Quinsigamond Village Community Center had a band called "One Against The Other" play there saturday night (7-28). Somebody captured a number and posted it to YouTube...



If only I could have dealt with my teenage angst in this way when I was their age.

Instead, we played Beach Boys songs...

Grooving In - postscript

After I posted this picture in Grooving In and mentioned that the tripswitch for that light works really fast, it only took a little over a week for the timing on it to be changed.

Now it takes long enough to change a tire.

Of course, now those taxi drivers who like to "run up the meter" on their customers have yet another light in town that adds more money on the meter because of the ridiculously long wait. There's a whole list. There's the 50 cent lights, the 75 cent lights, and now this clever little adjustment for the U-Turn in back of the Galleria.

B.I.C. - 11

These guys were blocking the right-hand outbound lane of Shrewsbury Street, just before the light at Hill St, all day.

This shot's from early this afternoon.

Traffic comes out from the I-290 ramp, while two lanes of already frustrated traffic out of Washington Square is maneuvering for position, when everybody hits this one. It's a beaut.

I ought to lend the policeman the Wormtown Taxi scrote-cam so he can get some choice shots of idiot driving.

These guys are definitely in the lineup for being called a Bump Installation Crew...

This morning I took this shot of the hole.

It's a classic, middle of the lane, potential street surface ruiner.

It only remains to be seen whether they're there just to install another bump in the city's streets, or to do the kind of work that I praised on Grafton Street two weeks ago.

BUMPS!

At the intersection of North Ashland and Bowdoin this morning, I came upon this portable caution sign.

I drove through the intersection after seeing the sign and stopping, and then I got all the way across before I realized that something was very definitely amiss...

I backed up and took a picture of the sign and the road surface so that you will also be able to see that something is strangely amiss.


There is no bump.

A couple of blocks away at the intersection of Chestnut and Bowdoin, just a minute or two later, I encountered a second manifestation of this bizarre phenomenon.

As you can see, there's no bump here that would merit that big sign.

In this city, it would have to be an unusually BIG BUMP to merit calling attention to it with such an imposing piece of signage.

Anywhere else in the whole physical universe, a sign like this would be cause to hit the brakes and slow right down so that the suspension in the car isn't damaged. But in this city, a sign like that should be cause for coming to an immediate halt. In this city, it would indicate a vehicle swallowing hole in the road, a bump of such proportion that it would be unusual, standing apart in some way from the tens of thousands of other bumps in the roads all over the city that do not have warning signs.

It's pretty clear, as you can see, that the city uses these signs the way Emmanuel Goldstein would.

They are just basically messing with our heads.

If this keeps up, I expect to read the slogan, "A bumpy road is a smooth road," any day now.

Diners 101

After reading in last week's Diner Watch article in WoMag that the 101 was going to be resurrected at 322 Cambridge street, I've been meaning to go over there and take a picture.

This is what I found yesterday morning.

It'll be interesting to see how this fleshes out, or if I even got a picture of what I wanted... It looks like a diner style structure in front of that house-like structure... and it IS being worked on, like the article says...

I love diners.

I especially love those old, heavy, beat up coffee mugs. I've always associated those mugs with diners. The coffee just tastes better when it's served in one of them.

Lou Roc Diner has those kind of mugs. The fact that their house coffee is Superior brand Columbian Supremo makes it a double-whammy of diner car delight, in my opinion.

I went around yesterday and got shots of most of the other diners in town, but not the Lou Roc. ...it's only because I was too lazy to drive all the way up to the north end of town just to take a picture of what is now no longer an actual "diner car" diner.

But Lou Roc Diner is my wife's favorite breakfast spot, and the inside still has that "diner car" layout and ambiance.

On Quinsigamond Ave, at the intersection of Lafayette, you can see two of the city's more classic diners.

The Miss Worcester is at the beginning of Quinsigamond Ave, on the corner of Southbridge Street. I haven't had a chance to eat there since the re-birth of this iconic eatery, but a weekday lunch there is definitely on my agenda.

Some time in the not too distant future, I want to bring my wife to each one of the diners in town for breakfast, and find out what her discerning taste buds decide. Then I can report back here as to what we find.

I can eat just about anywhere, but Kathy's got taste buds that work.

Maybe I can get her to write the reviews...

The Corner Lunch sits just back from Quinsig ave, nestled into the junction of Lafayette and Lamartine, a short block away from the Miss Worcester. But if you stand on the opposite side of the intersection, you can see both of them.

When Ralph Moberly first refurbished and re-opened the Corner Lunch several years ago, Kathy and I went there for breakfast. The food was truly great, but we found the prices a bit steep for breakfast, and the rock music playing on the excellent sound system, although right up our alley, just didn't cut it for breakfast.

I expect that this has changed in the intervening years, though.

A few short blocks away is the Kenmore Diner, at Grafton and Franklin. The original diner was lost in the warehouse fire of 1999. It's since been rebuilt, though, and offers the ambience of the traditional diner once again.

Around the corner and thru Washington Square onto Shrewsbury Street are two more Worcester diner classics...

Although the Parkway no longer looks much like an original "diner car" diner, the inside is still up to par.

Across the street from the Parkway is the Boulevard.

This is the one that I got Kathy to go to for breakfast in my first attempt to "do the diners" for a series in the blog.

A couple of weeks ago, we went out on a Saturday morning, and came down Shrewsbury street to find a parking space right in front of the Boulevard Diner. What a stroke of luck, I thought...

It turned out that they were closed for vacation....

Then there's Ralph's Chadwick Square diner.

The last time I ate at Ralph's, it was with Peter Mancevice. That was back when Vinnie was the bartender there. I had a bowl of chili, only because I wasn't hungry enough to eat the other item on the menu, the hamburger.

Peter asked Vinnie if he had a particular piece of music he could play on the cassette player, and Vinnie commenced to reach under the counter and produce a vintage Walt Disney character lunchbox full of audio cassettes.

"Wow!" I burst out, "that's a real fine old lunchbox you've got there. I'll bet it's worth a few bucks."

Vinnie told us that he collects lunchboxes, and gave us a short exposition on the subject. When he was done, I jokingly said, "...and I'll bet you subscribe to Lunchbox Collector's Quarterly, too!"

To my utter amazement, he then reached under the counter and pulled out the latest issue with that exact name on the banner.

hmmm.... diners...

A Stellar Rant

Over on RadioBall.net, Brendan posted a GREAT rant yesterday. He's definitely hit the nail on the head with this one, while the rest of the town just continues to hit it's head on a nail...

Webcam Spotting

This morning I did something I've wanted to do for a while. I set up the computer to take a screencap every 15 seconds with the T&G webcam on the screen. Then I had my wife drive us downtown, park in front of City Hall, get out and use the camcorder to zoom in on the actual webcam while it's taking pictures of me doing it.



Here's the frame of me walking from the car, just after we pulled up at the curb in front of City Hall.



I probably should have picked a spot to stand that was in the sunlight. As it turned out, the spot I chose resulted only in some vaguely shadowed pixels that represent where I was standing, against that four foot high wall.



From where I did choose to stand, though, it was easy to spot the T&G webcam and zoom in for this shot.

Zonkaraz covers "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"

From the 12-30-06 rehearsal at Ralph's Blue Moon Cafe...

Battery Replacement

Darth Vader had his battery replaced yesterday.

Now we DO know the power of the dark side... it's just a freakin' battery.

Rumble, rumble...

Something woke me up from my catnap on the couch this afternoon...

It was the sound of thunder, and it was so close that it woke me up.

I've been following the drinking astronauts story over the last couple of days, and it looks like yet another big story with wobbly legs. One astronaut participated in the officially sanctioned Russian pre-launch rituals, a standard set by Yuri Gagarin over four decades ago, and the other one got sauced after a shuttle mission was scrubbed. In other words, there's no basis in fact for this story that everyone's running with on the Main$tream Media.

Typical of the M$M to sensationalize a rumor, and not bother with the facts.

Washington Square Update

Not that anyone who has to drive through Washington Square on a regular basis doesn't already know, but the work there is pinching traffic more and more. I took a series of four pictures this morning and made another composite panoramic view of the square...



Click on the picture for a larger image.

The one I made for a post at the end of May was done with pictures taken with the cellphone camera. Today I used the panasonic PV-GS70D Camcorder and grabbed the four frames that looked the best. Also, I took today's shots from in front of Union Station, at the middle of the elevated driveway. The previous ones were taken hastily from the cab as I sat down at the end of that driveway.

Before Wormtown - Pt 6

There was a lot going on in Grafton, MA between the summer of love in 1967 and the summer of unconsciousness in 1971. One of the places that I found myself at from time to time was a big farmhouse at the junction of Old Upton Road, Keith Hill Road, and Browns Road, a mile or so from where I lived on South Street.

That's where Jaime Pease lived. The time I remember best was a visit that lasted several hours, as Jaime and I kept finding various things to occupy our chemically enhanced states and short attention spans. The house and the barn held so many interesting spots and items of curiosa that it was a seemingly endless odyssey. And Jaime was always an atypically enthusiastic and resourceful host.

Our travels took us through the kitchen several times, however, where Jaime's father stood over the stove, stirring a slow-boiling mixture of water and oat bran in an attempt to invent a new type of cereal.

Jaime's Dad was one of the more interesting Dads in our neighborhood. An intellectually gifted and tireless entrepreneur, his descriptions of even the most mundane phenomena could hold a guy like me spellbound for as long he might care to continue. Consequently, each pass through the kitchen snagged my attention, somewhat to Jaime's annoyance. I remember the final swing through the kitchen, when Jaime's Dad attempted to expound some more on the merits of oat bran to me, but Jaime had had enough of it. "It's just HORSE FEED, fer cryin' out loud!" he countered, grabbing my arm and pulling at me to get me out of there before it turned into another lengthy exposition that I could hardly be impolite and leave in the middle of.

I vaguely remember that in grade school, Jaime had come to school in leotards one day. I never really got him. He was a kid in the crew that I grew up with, and he was one of the core group of people I emerged into adulthood with. But after the intense years that led us finally into the 7th decade of the 20th century, my contact with Jaime fell off to practically nothing.

I remember someone telling me that Jaime's band played a show at the Grafton High School auditorium one time, and Jaime announced all the songs with an English accent. Things like this just puzzled me. I'd scratch my head and say, "I just don't get it..."

But I always was more of a conservative type, growing up. I had wanted to join the Air Force and be a jet pilot, until that summer of love where everything in my head crashed into a half-decade long confusion of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll...

Jaime went on to make a name for himself in the pre-Wormtown music scene. Playing in well-remembered bands The Joneses, Buck, Johanna Wild, August, and finally The Raw, no-one can say that Jaime didn't live the life he wanted.

The picture is The Joneses circa 1970, right around the time I posted about in the last installment...

That's Jaime, second from the left, as I will always remember him.

Here's a tribute site to Jaime.

Danelectros - "Runaway"

From the 6-30-07 show at the Kelly Square Yacht club...

Aggravation of the Month

The award goes to... (drumroll) ...SOME Volvo drivers.

The world's safest car is driven by SOME people who really believe the hype. They bought the branding, they bought the car, and now they believe that they travel inside of a protective bubble wherein nothing can possibly harm them, no matter how badly they drive.

I was coming down Brattle Street this morning, for instance, doing the speed limit (behind another car that was doing the speed limit), which is 25 miles an hour. In my rear-view I saw a Volvo driver come whizzing up behind me out of nowhere, and proceed to tailgate me most of the way down the hill.

My first thought was that he was probably a resident of Holden, the "Count On Us To Care" town, where the women are strong, the men are gentle, and all the children are above average. But then I remembered that the logo for the Volvo is the sign of Mars, and the symbol for the male gender...

A subliminal message for the natively aggressive driver, no doubt.

I wouldn't buy a Volvo in a million years, but not because I don't like the symbol.

I'm a guy.

I would very much like to have that symbol on the front grill of my car.

But after Sixteen Candles, where Molly Ringwald's character offers the boy she's nuts about a ride by saying, "I'll pick you up my vulva... er, ah... Volvo..." Well, I just can't bring myself to covet the car.

A few years ago, a woman driving a Volvo station wagon went into road rage at me for failing to give up the right of way as she raced up from behind me on my left to pass me, in order to take a right that was about two inches in front of me. She tailgated me all the way up the on-ramp to I-290, and then at the end of the ramp she nailed it past me and into the middle lane of traffic, causing other cars to swerve out of the way. As luck would have it, a State Trooper saw the whole thing and pulled her over. As I came up to the scene at the side of the road, that's when I saw the "Baby On Board" sign in her back window, and the two OCCUPIED child seats in the back.

Granted, such insane behavior on the roads is done by drivers of all sorts of different brands of cars. But I have to say that I notice a lot more Volvo drivers seem to really believe that they can never get hurt while driving that particular brand.

Wormtown in the Morning

Mark, the bass player in Can't Kill Katie, got a ride home this morning in my cab, paid for by one of his friends. I gave him a little sticker



with the blog logo and the URL printed in bold letters underneath.

We had a nice chat. Even in the morning in Wormtown, it's all about the music...



Can't Kill Katie's myspace page

Dished Out And Dashed Off

Third time's the charm. I've been dished out in WoMag's Blog Log yet again this week. Of course, the post they picked to print had to be the one I got wrong. I had to post a correction the next day.

But, in typical print media fashion, they chose to run with the incorrect one.

And then there's the dots, which get dashed off in printed quotes to signify there was more, but they chose not to print it. The first ellipsis in the online version of the post is mine, however. The second ellipsis is theirs (at the end), signifying that there was more to the post. ...Impossible to tell the difference between the two in the Blog Log entry.

Of course, I tend to use them pretty recklessly...

Dots, dashes, or dishouts, notwithstanding, I like WoMag... in this week's issue, there's a good article about the "Big Bend" project connecting I-290 and Route 146, focusing on the disruption to Brosnihan Square neighborhood residents and businesses. Here's the link to the story online.

Zonkaraz - "Jack Frost"

From the 12-30-06 rehearsal at Ralph's Blue Moon Cafe...

Zonkaraz - "Earthbound Days"

From the 12-30-06 rehearsal at Ralph's Blue Moon Cafe...

100% Redundancy

It's been a while since this sort of thing became so commonplace that we don't even notice it anymore. It's called federal mandates that, if not obeyed by the state, risk the witholding of funding for other things.

Basically, extortion.

The one-way sign isn't enough for the gas-bags in the US Congress.

The signs are all around us, and we hardly even notice...

Pizza Pasta

I'm looking forward to this one opening soon at 105 Hamilton Street, cuz it's right on the way home from work...
There have been a few different businesses in this spot over the years, all of which I made a point of giving business to. I would rather be a customer of a local business than a chain from out of town. Local businesses are the base of our local economy. It's so much more important for local businesses to succeed in the long run.

The city government should be giving the gratuities such as TIF's and so forth to small business startups, not big money operations from out of town.

Worcester Love

This four minute video was uploaded to YouTube a couple of days ago. I think it's a very nicely done piece of work (by Andrea Ajemian and Kaz Gamble) about Worcester's Green Hill Park...

Danelectros - "Secret Agent Man"

From the show at Kelly Square Yacht Club on 6-30-07...

Biotech 101

The future of life sciences, something that Governor Deval Patrick wants the state to invest a billion dollars in support for, took a severe undercut to the chin about three weeks ago.

Maybe you missed it.

The core dogma underlying genetic theory has been seriously challenged. This comes under the heading of the "Everything You Know Is Wrong" department.

It takes much too long for basic scientific developments to reach public scrutiny, and this development is a whopper!

Townie View

In most college towns, the cultural divide between college students and townies can be pretty wide. It's similar to the divide between the natives and the visitors to any area. In New York City, for example, visitors are often refered to as "Tourons" and made fun of by those who never leave Manhattan.

The majority of us who have been living and breathing in Worcester for most, if not all of our lives, can easily remain completely unaware of the tens of thousands of students who live here during the school year. It's only during July and August of every year that the impact of their absence might impinge somewhat upon the awareness of most townies.

Indeed, the very birth of the word "Wormtown" may very well have sprung out from the vacuum being created by the spring exodus of students in 1978, when L.B. Worm took a look around and is alleged to have said, "This scene is so dead, maybe I should call it Wormtown."

The phenomenon of the annual spring evacuation is something that every retail business in town feels. It's the omen of the summer to come wherein the streets of Worcester look like a ghost town. If you don't believe me, watch the T&G webcam during the morning "rush hour" on any weekday during July and August.

Without the colleges, it would be like this all year 'round. Schools, in matters of cause and effect in Worcester, are the largest single category that exists.

As a townie in a college town, I find it interesting to see what Worcester looks like to the people who run the local college websites. I could find nothing about Worcester on QCC's website. But MCPH has this, Becker has that, WSC offers this look, Umass Medical School has this to show, and WPI offers a short take on us here.

Assumption has On The Move In Worcester, which gets us more into the spirit of things.

In the "student life" section of the Holy Cross website, there's Word On Worcester that has lots of content, and lots of positive things to say (watch the sub-menu changes on the left-hand side).

Clark University has "9 Ways to Become an Engaged Clarkie" with a dial over the columned "Discover Worcester" image on the right, and a 1 thru 9 selection widget. Number 8 ("Have Fun") is a slideshow.

Finally, there is the Colleges of Worcester Consortium offering. They've gotten a grant to produce an online video touting this college town we live in. I posted about this as soon as I heard about it.

The ETA for the online video is mid-August, so I'll be re-visiting this subject again.

Before Wormtown - Pt 5

Back around 1970 or so, Peter Abbott told me that he was going to study to be a mime. We were hanging out at the Grafton Common, where everybody hung out in those days. "A MIME???" I asked, in utter shock.

He was completely absorbed and excited about this, however, and my unwillingness to put any kind of a dent into a person's aspirations immediately shut off the stream of earnest dissuasion that I might have otherwise started pitching to him.

(I'm no fan of mimes. Especially street mimes... the ones that would follow you around like a mirror, back in those days. They'd do it just long enough to dredge up some unconscious negative reaction in some people, and then leave them with it for the rest of the day. This sort of thing persisted in our culture to the point where, in the 1991 film, "Scenes From A Mall" Woody Allen's character says, "...I know how you feel. I hate mimes, too...")

"I'm going to France and study under Marcel Marceau," Peter said, that unshakable grin of his beaming the message that this was, indeed, a very important milestone and success for him.

Well, I gave him as much support and well-wishing as I could muster up. It was obvious that this was the main event for him. I liked Peter a lot, he was one of the crew, and he was just a great guy.

I never saw much of Peter after that until I moved to Worcester after my divorce. He was living in a loft studio at 100 Grove Street in those days, subsisting on air, good vibes, and a little help from his friends. He'd do pop-ins around mealtimes, and my apartment was on his A-list.

One day he told me that he had gotten a job as a clown with one of the (if not THE) oldest circuses in the world... in Denmark, I think it was. For me, this was "deja-vu all over again," only this time I had had enough experience with Peter's ambitions to not even blurt out "A CLOWN???"

That was the last time I saw him. He went to Europe, and the time passed to the point where one morning I stepped outside onto the street in front of my apartment, and was immediately struck with the thought, "Where's Peter?" It was a very confusing moment, because I was sure that Peter was right there. I felt him, like he was just about to walk up behind me. And it was urgent, too. He had something to tell me...

I read the news the following day. He had passed away.

It's finally happened, I thought. The heart defect, or whatever it was, finally took its toll.

The most significant event in Peter's life, as far as I know, occured back in the late 1960's when he was given an in-depth horoscope. He came to me with this, after he had had a chance to digest what it said. He was in such a state! The horoscope had apparently said when, approximately, he was going to die, and it was not in old age. Peter was very knocked off-center with this, and we talked about it for quite some time. This wasn't the first time that Peter and I discussed the various questions of the universe, and life's mysteries. But it was hardly the last time, either.

The last time was that day outside of my apartment on Highland Street, and it only lasted a moment. Then he was gone.

I have no pictures of Peter, and I could find only one on the net here, taken when he was enjoying a moment with Tiny Stacy and Jacob Knight.

Zonkaraz - "Blues In Mind"

From the 12-30-06 rehearsal at Ralph's Blue Moon Cafe...

Diary of a Studio Owner

I've mentioned Gil Markle's website at least twice, but it bears mentioning again. The "media" section, which was written about in a part of this week's WoMag cover story, is why I'm posting about it again.

I spent some more time yesterday, perusing this online gold mine of audio and video from the days before and during Gil's stewardship of Long View Farm recording studio in North Brookfield.

For Zonkaraz fans, especially, there's a treasure chest of songs that include recordings made in Gil's first recording setup in his Paxton home studio, the precursor to Long View Farm, back in the early 1970's.

The media section of the website requires that you register with a valid e-mail address, but don't balk at that! It took only a minute when I did it, and this is not one of those "gotcha!" websites by any means. The purpose of this media library is to archive material that, should he have chosen never to do it, would easily have been lost forever to the ravages of time and the deterioration of magnetic tape. These are priceless recordings, digitized from the original studio masters, and now they're available for us to hear online.

Sometimes I Wonder

Sometimes I wonder
What I'm a-gonna do,
Cuz there ain't no cure
For the Wormtown Blues...

I read in the T&G today that people who have been dead for years continue to receive farm subsidies for not growing certain crops. The whole article is here.

I'd like to get paid for not growing something.

Maybe I could get paid for not growing marijuana? Or how about poppies? How about if I don't grow as much hair on my head as other people... can I get a subsidy for being bald?

The first paragraph in the T&G article pretty much says it all. "The Agriculture Department sent $1.1 billion in farm payments to more than 170,000 dead people over a seven year period, congressional investigators say."

But the real killer for me was a quote by the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is quoted as saying that it's "...NO LONGER tolerable to PERMIT billions of dollars" to be paid out like this...

If I had only known that such vast sums were available for easy pilferage, I could've retired a lot earlier.

Rosen Spotting - 4

I went through Kelly Square during Gary Rosen's campaigning activity there at least four times this morning. He's surely gotten sick of seeing my taxi go by, at this point.

Generally, I don't really like to get too heavily into politics anywhere...

I tend to lean to the right because I dress to the left. But I also side with the left when the right is wrong.

When it comes down to who I'll vote for in any election, though, the retired school teacher will get my vote before any lawyer does. And a retired school teacher who gets up early in the morning to stand in traffic like this wins my heart and mind over any of the other candidates who'll sleep in every morning until just before the election.

Here at the online home of the Wormtown Taxi, the score in the City Council campaign is now
Rosen: 4
Everybody else: 0.

Boycott Spotting - 2

This has now come under the heading of "Things that make you say, hmmmmm..."

Yesterday, I snapped a picture of a small protest being done outside of Walgreens at Park and Chandler, and then posted about it. What I didn't spot yesterday, though, was the small print on the "Boycott Walgreens" banner. Today, they were there again and I got close enough to squint and just barely make out a reference to the New England Regional Council of Carpenters on the banner.

Huh?

So, I jotted it down and when I got home I got online and did a Google search for the New England Regional Council of Carpenters. The very first hit on the list was "The New England Regional Council of Carpenters," oddly enough. This looked like it was going to be easy.

After perusing their website for several minutes, however, I could find no mention of Walgreens...

I did some more poking around and finally came up with a WoMag article from February that explains what their particular protest is all about.

Apparently, not only is Walgreens firing pharmicists for their eithical and moral refusal to dispense chemicals that, essentially, are used to induce abortions (according to the sources that I cited in yesterday's post), but Walgreens is also passively contributing to the hiring and exploitation of illegal immigrant labor in their new store construction projects (according to the sources cited in the WoMag article).

Plainly, this writer is completely out of the loop...

I had no idea about any of this until yesterday.

My only scruple with any drugstore is that they sell drugs. (You can get the gist of how my sensibilities run on that sort of thing here, where I usually do my in depth rants and musings.)

When I see a protest sign that says "Boycott" something, I really would like to know why. If I wasn't posting about Worcester, I wouldn't have bothered with this, and I'm pretty sure that the majority of people who drove by that "Boycott Walgreens" banner yesterday and today have no answer to the question of why they should boycott that particular drugstore, either.

I still haven't figured out what all those "Boycott Polar" signs were all about, from a few years ago...

I might suggest that a banner calling for a boycott of anything should also provide a short, readable, compelling and concise reason to do so. Something concise enough that it can be read by people driving by. Otherwise, why bother?

I mean, the people whose business at any particular drugstore would actually have an impact if they went elsewhere in droves are the VERY PEOPLE that will, in all likelihood, see that "Boycott Walgreens" banner, immediately not think of any reason to do so, and end up having a NEGATIVE REACTION to the protest!

Consequently, I felt that I should do a rant about this, because I do feel that a boycott of Walgreens for both the pharmacists' AND the carpenters' issues deserve the exposure. But sheesh! If yer gonna try to get the word out to the public, guys, ...those banners just preach to the choir.

Bus Face-Off

The Worcester Buses are something that we take for granted. They're the modern extension of earlier days when public transportation was considered a necessary municipal service. Back then, municipalities built infrastructure for the long term by laying tracks and running electric-powered trolleys.
Today, we have what has evolved from that... a semi-privatized nightmare based on ideology, competition, and the added burden of turning a profit.

That's why the bus drivers have a union.

If they didn't, the bus drivers in the city would be paid minimum wage and no benefits, or less (if the company could figure out a way to get away with it). A fleet of city buses needs to have drivers who aren't exhausted (from having to work a second job) and who aren't so poor that they have to live on the street.

The viability of the public transportation system needn't be predicated upon how much the drivers get paid. Unfortunately, the only thing that makes public transportation unviable these days is the fact that the country is being run by hooligans from the oil industry, and fuel costs threaten the viability of just about everything.

Meanwhile, the bus company in Worcester has been, ostensibly, bargaining with the bargaining unit on the new contract. An article in the T&G on June 12th seemed to indicate that they were bargaining in earnest. Then the end of the contract came up and it was extended 30 days according to (the last entry in) the T&G Digest section June 30th. Since then, things seem to have only gotten worse, according this report from July 13th.

The last time the bus drivers went on strike, I was working in dispatch answering the phones. It was completely overwhelming.

After the strike was over, I managed to talk to a few bus drivers over the next few months. The thing that struck me as being the most egregious "working condition", one that the last strike never resolved, was the fact that bus drivers do not have access to bathroom facilities.

Think about this for a moment.

Work out the logisitics of driving busloads of people on a tight schedule and HOW a driver is supposed to be able to relieve themselves when nature calls.

This may be a socially frowned upon subject to deal with in public, but going to the bathroom is an activity that everybody engages in every day. Most of us don't consider it a problem as to when, where, or how this can be done during working hours.

If you broach this subject with a bus driver in the city of Worcester, however, you'll find that the subject isn't taboo, and that it's one of the many persisting labor relations problems they face on the job every day.

Basically, you can boycott Wal-Mart because products are made in overseas sweatshops all you want, but until you find out the working conditions and anti-union bias that people driving buses right here in Worcester are earnestly attempting to deal with RIGHT NOW... you just haven't stepped up to the plate.

Support the bus drivers!

Zonkaraz - "Willy Mountain"

From the 12-30-06 rehearsal at Ralph's Blue Moon Cafe...

Infrastructure

This all began out of sheer boredom. Idle time abounds during July and August, so aside from reading the paper, doing all the puzzles, and pondering the universe, I'll whip out the cellphone camera and take all sorts of pictures. It's usually pictures of mundane things.... Like a street sign, a noteworthy bit of graffiti, or even something as mundane as traffic.

Today, I got a picture of a fire hydrant.

This fire hydrant was right nearby, so I pulled up next to it and snapped the picture early this afternoon while I was waiting for my next fare.

Like anything else, fire hydrants have enthusiasts. Consequently, it only took a few minutes to get info on the manufacturing company that made most (if not all) of the familiar looking old fire hydrants in town.

R. D. Wood Company of Philadelphia, PA, is the name imprinted on the top tier of these hydrants. The R. D. Wood Company was bought out by the Kennedy Valve Companyof Elmira, NY, around 1963.

I can understand why R. D. Wood went out of business, though... no repeat customers. Unlike lightbulbs, fire hydrants apparently live longer than people do.

I wonder how many more of this style the DPW has in stock?

While finding all this out after work today, I also came across some more recent designs for fire hydrants from the vonRoll Hydro company in Switzerland.

This is so "next week" isn't it?

After all, why does a fire hydrant have to look like it belongs in a boiler room?

Photoblogged and Bloglogged

Last week garnered two notable inclusions for Wormtown Taxi. One was having been added to the "Around the World with Daily Photoblogs old and new". The other is our second dishout in the WoMag Bloglog in the issue that came out on 7-19-07.

That same issue's cover story is about Gil Markle's project to put his collection of audio, recollections, etc. online. If you haven't visited Gil's website, then you haven't re-lived...

Boycott Spotting

I saw Gary Rosen setting up at the corner of Chandler and Park this morning. I came upon this so unexpectedly that all I could do was toot and wave. The next time I came up to that intersection, about an hour and a half later, I had the cellphone camera primed and ready...

No Gary Rosen.

But there was the "Boycott Walgreen's" folks, camped out on the corner and ready for the photo-op.

At issue with Walgreen's is the dispensing of "Plan-B", the morning after pill, by pharmacists who are anti-abortion advocates. Pharmicists employed by Walgreen's are required to dispense the drug. A recent article in WorldNetDaily explains how far this issue has gone in the last two years.

Sunday, Interrupted

I like to maintain the illusion that I'm in control, that when I plan to utilize my weekend in a certain way, it will work out the way I want it to. Take this past weekend, for example. Saturday went pretty much as planned, and Sunday was going along pretty well, too. Then I heard my wife upstairs, wailing in pain...

The shed in our back yard, which houses all the yard/garden/outdoor stuff, now has a hive of guardian yellowjackets. Who needs a lock on your shed when even the keyholder can't get near the door?

Poor Kathy! She's so banged up from the fall she took, running away from the yellowjackets!

New Math

We bought a bag of kitty litter this morning.

If it wasn't for the fact that my wife insists that this is the brand to buy, I'd refuse to buy it just on general principle.

This sort of marketing weasel logic makes me feel very tired.

More Space

I took this picture as I was coming out of the South Plaza this morning. It's going up on Grafton Street between Baldwin and Caspar, but there's no sign indicating what it might end up being used for.

It's just another mystery project, I guess, like the one at Stafford and Heard which has progressed now to the pouring of a foundation, but no sign in evidence other than the one for the construction company doing the work.

It's possible that both of those projects are similar to the building that went up next to the Greendale post office. When that one was nearing completion, a sign went up that said "space for lease." Now there's a sign for a "coming soon" tanning salon there.

Lotsa money being spent on construction in this city...

Zonkaraz - Goin' Fishin'

From 12-30-06 at Ralph's Blue Moon Cafe...

Forbidden Microphone

Bob Crowley had done a post a few days ago on his Microphonium blog about the Telefunken MD 418-4 microphone that I've been meaning to collect some vaguely related images for.

This is a shot of Leslie Nielson holding a movie prop microphone in the film, "Forbidden Planet". The film was made in 1956, back before Nielson discovered greater success as a comic actor. But that microphone, which was a prop made for the film, always intrigued me.

Basically, it was a hand-held that, when the actor pressed a button, illuminated the clear plastic head. The style of the prop microphone was very close to a real microphone that had been used by amateur radio operators for years, and manufactured by Astatic.

The D-104 had a venerable history and was one of the most often seen microphones for two-way radio over the years. This is probably why the 1956 prop guys designed the "futuristic" version for spaceship C57D's intercom and radio systems to look like a D-104. At least, that's what I've always speculated...

I wonder whatever happened to those prop microphones that were made for the movie? They made at least two of them. One had a clip holder on the wall of the control room, and the pilot's console had a clip holder for one on the desk. Both were used during the first ten minutes of the film a number of times.

If you've got any sort of interest in sound engineering, by the way, Bob Crowley's Microphonium blog needs to be added into your online "favorites" list. Bob is an absolutely brilliant inventor, and in collaboration with Hugh Tripp, has built up a line of top performing microphones using cutting edge technology.

Based in Ashland, MA, Crowley & Tripp may not be strictly on-topic for the Wormtown Taxi blog, but that's right in my back yard as far as operating amateur radio is concerned.

ORH

"ORH" is the FAA's three-letter commercial service airport code for Worcester Airport.

This is how ORH looked from above whenever it was that the Google Maps satellite shot was taken for this hybrid satellite/map picture.

As a cab driver in the city of Worcester, I like to mention from time to time that there's nothing going on up there at the Worcester Airport. Until the "improvements" were made, however, there WAS something happening there, and we could get good fares out of that place.

Nowadays, if a cab gets a call at the airport, the first reaction is "huh?..."

Unfortunately, there's nothing going on inside that building.

It's a big empty space.

It's a demonstration of "build it and they will leave." It's a pretty darn stupid idea to kick out tenants, build a new building, then invite the tenants back at twice the rent.

Can you imagine how it would look if it was a casino, and the landing field was a "free parking" lot? Yesterday's poll question in the T&G was whether people were in favor of legalizing gambling in this state, and the results on this morning's front page didn't surprise me at all... a huge "YES!"

Of course, "casino" and "free parking" are antithetical to the basic PLAN for Worcester's future.

B.I.C. - 10

They've been working on this one on Hamilton Street (between Pilgrim and Fairmont) for a couple of days, now.

This is the first decent shot I've gotten of it.

It's a tricky spot to take a single picture. People coming in the opposite direction are usually accelerating by the time they reach this spot, because Hamilton is a four lane street. Since the worksite is just down from the top of the hill, they don't see it until the last minute... especially if they're trying to outrun somebody from the light at Plantation.

The shots I've tried to take with the cellphone camera haven't come out, because the best spot to take the shot is the same place where some idiot coming over the hill in the opposite direction could very easily make it my last photo attempt.

Today I used the scrote-cam, and grabbed a single frame afterwards.

Rosen - 3

Rosen-spotting is just too easy.

The only city council candidate I ever see out there braving the elements this early in the campaign season is Gary Rosen.

This morning, I managed to do a drive-by shooting with the pocket camera...



Of course, the video is very short. So I pulled a couple of still frames out for those who never click on the embedded videos...

Earlier Rosen-spotting posts are here and here.

The Clocks Are Ticking

Online clocks... an interesting bit of trivia to know about.

The official National Institute of Standards clock is a good place to start.

The Polar Clock begs the question, "why?" While the Human Clock appears to beg it even more...

The National Debt Clock has to be manually refreshed if you want to see it change, since live updating would probably use up all available bandwidth on the web.

Here's the World Population Clock.

The Cost of War in Iraq clock is so versatile that you can even break down the running cost of the war to each state, and then further into each town in that state. When I checked just now, it looked like the cost of the war in Iraq for Worcester will hit 241 million dollars sometime before tomorrow morning. It makes the City's budget deficit look puny in comparison, doesn't it?

Another Cost of War in Iraq clock appears to be about forty billion dollars behind the first one, revealing the "truthiness" of online anything.

Then there's the War On Drugs clock, which I find interesting because it says that about 1-1/2 million people are arrested for drug offenses every year, but less than one percent of those arrested go to jail. Fifty billion dollars a year is spent on the "War on Drugs" which works out to it costing about 45 million dollars to put each one of those one percenters in jail.

If you want to know the statistical probability of when you'll die, The Death Clock will tell you.

Here's a Digital Doomsday Clock, a digital indicator of the threat to cyber-rights.

And here's the latest update on the Doomsday Clock:


What has any of this to do with Wormtown or Worcester? Well, I think it's time that somebody established a "CitySquare clock" to count the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years that have passed since the project was supposed to have started. But then I realized that WoMag keeps us updated on a regular basis.

But we still need a clock, and now after all these years of wondering when an appropriate statement could be made with this image ... I believe I've found it.

Danelectros: "Lawdy, Miss Clawdy"

From the 6-30-07 show at the Kelly Square Yacht Club...

Zonkaraz - "California"

From 12-30-06 at Ralph's Blue Moon Cafe...

BUMP!

Driving back into Worcester on West Boylston Street this morning, I came upon a lane closure that I figured would probably be a Bump Installation Crew. But I was too late. The hole in the road had just been paved over, and the crew was gone.

All that was left was a policeman, a bunch of cones, and the fresh pavement left to cool...

...and one of the more intriguing pieces of temporary signage that I've seen lately.

It's the piece of plywood leaning up against the telephone pole, just to the right of center in the picture. All of the red on the plywood spells out the word "BUMP" but it's on the order of a rorschach test to make it out, due to the funny resolution of the cellphone camera. (You can get a larger image by clicking on the picture.)

I could see this sign from a half a mile away, and I really couldn't believe it. This should be the official "Welcome to Wistah" sign...

I'm sure there's a story behind this, but I sure can't figure it out.

B.I.C. - 9

There've been so many Bump Installation Crews around town this season, that's it's really getting difficult to keep track... This should actually be number 10, since a reader e-mailed me and pointed out that I had two different number 7's. But, since number 5 turned out to deserve a retraction, I suppose we're back on track.

This morning, I spotted this crew in front of the Shell station on Grove Street.

I didn't have a chance to get back to that area all day, and I had a passenger in the cab when I took this shot, so further details will have to wait.

B.I.C. - 5b

Well, here's the picture...

And here's the post to retract the moniker of Bump Installation Crew from the guys I posted about here, and here.

These guys did a GREAT job of restoring the road surface after digging a trench all the way across Grafton Street in front the work site of the "coming soon" Walgreen's.

I can't feel any slightest bump when I drive in either direction over where the road was dug up. These guys deserve recognition for demonstrating how this is done. Not only did they do a job that's up to par, they did it quickly and efficiently. There was only one day (July 11th) of the inbound lanes being closed, and only one day (July 12th) of the outbound lanes being closed.

THAT is a stellar performance, as far as I'm concerned!

PHR

A few miles away in Cambridge, Physicians for Human Rights published this press release yesterday. (The press release references a groundbreaking report in the current issue of Vanity Fair.)

Zonkaraz - "Steppin' Out"

From 12-30-06 rehearsal at Ralph's Blue Moon Cafe...

Grooving In

After posting about the traffic light trip switches on MLK street yesterday, I got an e-mail from a reader asking me what I was talking about. "Please 'splain," they asked.

Just behind the stop line, there are thin grooves cut into the pavement with copper wires buried in them, and covered with either tar or rubber. These wires form loops which are fed electricity to produce a magnetic field. When a car is in that magnetic field, they can sense the change it produces in the magnetic field. When that happens, the traffic light is "tripped."

If you look for them, you'll soon learn which ones are "tripped" and which ones simply run on timers. Worcester's intersections have an abundance of trip-switch controlled traffic lights.

This is why it's worth noting that they paint "stop lines" at most intersections. They're painted on the street to let people know exactly where they should stop if it's a trip-switch controlled traffic light. If you stop way before the stop line, or go beyond the stop line, then your car may not trip the switch.

Here, for example, is a car I came upon while scouting around for pictures on this subject. They had been sitting there waiting for the left turn signal to change for much longer than it would take for the trip switch to work. I only had a couple of seconds to take the picture, because I know this trip switch changes the light in a very short time, and I had tripped it when I pulled up behind them.

A notable spot where people seem to think they paint those lines in the road for decoration is in front of the DCU, outbound on Foster.

I can't count the number of times I've driven past there and seen some space shot sitting there waiting to take a left, but they're way past the stop line.

This trip switch takes a long time, too, so the wait is long at that spot to begin with. It'll take forever, though, if you're the only one there and you've gone past the stop line.