Foolish youth

When I lived at 917 23rd St in Canton, Ohio, I read an article (maybe in Boys Life) about how to make soap. It seemed as if all the ingredients were easily available, except for hickory wood ash. (Or perhaps another type of wood. I forget).

I figured I could use the ash from the house incinerator. After all, ash is ash, right?

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What a soggy mess. Nothing soap-like about it.

Adventures in Baking

Marcia does the baking in this house. And for good reason.

I got home first, so I started making the cobbler recipe she had left out on the counter thoughtfully. First I followed the recipe carefully – measuring out the 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour (plus three tablespoons!), 1/3 cup oatmeal, and putting them in to the bowl. Then I got to the part about the berries, and saw that some of those ingredients were supposed to be mixed with the berries, and some were for the topping. So I had to chuck the whole mess in the bin and start over.

So this time I got the berries out of their special berry container in the refrigerator that I remember Marcia saying were pre-measured, added them to the bowl to toss with the requisite flour and sugar, and then put them into the pie plate I had greased with Crisco and wax paper. Well, to my mind they looked a little skimpy, barely covering the bottom, so I called Marcia, who was visiting a friend.

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She said, yes I measured them as four cups – they’re in the corning ware bowl in the fridge. Urk. I had grabbed the wrong container! So I grabbed the correct container, dumped a bunch of the berries into the pie pan until it looked full enough, and then dumped the topping mixture over them to hide the fact that the top layer of berries were certainly not ‘tossed’ with anything except perhaps my frantic sweat.

It’s cooking now. I’ll have to let you know….

List of Things that Indicate that Things are Getting Better

  • It may be called global warming to some, but its practical impact so far has been a lot less shoveling and more days that I’m not as cold as I should be living in New England, with less snow shoveling. I realize it may be short-sighted, and there may be bad consequences for the future, but right now it’s all positive.
  • tvs are thinner, lighter, bigger and cheaper.
  • And how about the stuff you can watch on those TVs! Cable channels, plus Hulu, Netflix, Amazon! Never before have we had so many shows and movies at our beck and call! With special buttons on the remote control!
  • It is vastly easier to organize a meeting because of the near ubiquity of email and voice mail. Never mind free programs like Doodle. If you serve on a committee or a group, those things have made meetings so much easier to organize!
  • Weed is readily available, better, and more reliably excellent quality.
  • Vape pens are amazing. Your own wife won’t even know if you catch a buzz while watching TV next to her!
  • Remember how hard it was to learn the lyrics of a song? Having to play each part of a song over and over again? No longer! All on-line.
  • Salad packs. All those weird-o leaves you’d never buy on your own, because they’d go bad, all together to form the base of a salad.
  • Beer. At least in my lifetime. Not sure how good pre-prohibition beers were, but beer lately is wonderfully flavorful, much better than the beer of the 1980s.
  • Tarps, or tarpaulins(?). They use to be expensive, heavy, and God help you if you put them away wet! now they’re indestructible and dirt cheap!
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Things that suck more:

Political advertisements on tv

Hi-def crappy food adverts like KFC, the images that essentially make everyone fatter by wanting it. Pizza ads too.

Everyone’s fatter.

Network TV shows are less intelligent. Or maybe that’s always been so.

Democrats and Republicans don’t get much done and are rude to each other.

Covid19 is all around us

At first, it was new and exciting. According to a previous post by me, starting around March 13 it absolutely dominated the news. When did the NBA cancel the season? That’s the time when you knew it was real. And then the whole planet shut down. Or at least the part I hear about.

Now I’m sick of it. Everyone’s sick of it, I imagine. Although there are damn few opportunities to ask someone how they’re doing in a way where you expect a thoughtful answer.

It’s a real blessing not to be in a position to have to make decisions that affect people’s lives via public policy. I try to be hesitant to blame people for not controlling this thing earlier. Those are tough decisions you have to make. Like aiming at your leg and trying to pull the trigger. The time for working up a lather over who fucked up is October, anyhow. Otherwise people are going to get sick of hearing it and it won’t impact the election. I figure there are things that should have been done. I hope historians are able to delineate them. In the meantime, pretend you’re on the front lines deciding about when to open things back up.

How will we go about it? Some states announced that, effective today, certain things are opening back up. Bowling alleys and hairdressers, among them, IIRC. I don’t know the details. Are the rules voluntary? Do members of these professions have an oversight group or trade council advising them on re-opening procedures?

If I wasn’t plagued with crippling ADHD and could focus for more than two minutes, I’d get to work on policies and procedures to open things to recover from the pandemic. After all, I sent an email to Peter Lowett at Devens telling him how he can keep Devens Disc Golf open via a few simple procedures! (It didn’t work).

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If you open up bowling alleys, you’d have to ban those damp towels that people shared to moisten their hands. I never used them, but they must have transmitted more bacteria and viruses than anything I can think of. But then how do you keep people apart? You have eight people in a small space, most of them old, for each league game. OK, then, no leagues, maximum number of people per lane? If you’ve been inside Putnam Lanes, our local candlepin bowling alley, you can visualize the difficulty.

Golf I can imagine. Each person has to have their own cart. You’d hope that golf courses would do it without a price increase (which seems a little onerous I suppose). If you’re within a threshold distance, no putting. Owners could put a chalk circle ten feet (?) from the cup.

How do you do restaurants? Move the tables ten feet apart? I sure hope we get to sit down and enjoy a meal at a restaurant soon. Take out Styrofoam containers just don’t cut it for me. But how do you do it? What policies do restaurants have to put into place to safely open? Who on Charlie Baker’s staff is working to develop these policies and procedures?

I’m tired of people bitching about how people fucked up. Save it for October. What do we do next? That’s where our energies should be focused. Are people in zoom sessions talking about this stuff? You can bet they’ll be complaining about stuff when other people make decisions!

Covid19 Update

The Covid19 Virus has now killed over 1,000,000 people world-wide! But influenza kills 3-5 million people world-wide every year. I guess the big deal is, it spreads easily, there’s no cure, no proven treatment, and no vaccine.

They predict 100,000-250,000 deaths in the US before it’s over. How many deaths do they now project world-wide? They don’t mention that on American TV. Or I don’t remember hearing it.

People are freaked the freak out. Was it like this before we had vaccines against polio, measles, whooping cough, the flu? Or was it just a matter of life and chance? People must have been terrified in 1919 during the so-called Spanish Flu. I guess a simple old-newspaper search would reveal that. Oh wait! The Library isn’t open!

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We live in interesting times. If I didn’t have disc golf I’d go nuts. Marcia is already going crazy with all this isolation. And she likes isolation!

The Army Corps of Engineers closed Buffumville disc golf. Are Barre Falls and Tully Lake next? If so, Coggshall will close. Aargh!

Covid 19

Some thoughts on the Coronavirus:

  • No one is talking about the rate of flu going down. With the heightened awareness of virus transmission and people washing their hands and keeping their distance, and so many public gatherings being cancelled, shouldn’t the flu rate plummet? And so therefore the death rate, attributed to 3-5 million cases and 290,000 – 600,000 deaths per year worldwide, at least according to wikipedia? How many of those people are we saving by this apparent sudden and radical change in our collective behavior?
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  • This Covid19 stuff is absolutely dominating the news to an extent I don’t remember seeing. What other crap is going on that people or nations are getting away with while our attention is diverted?
  • Are they really going to close libraries, which are such an important place for people, especially the poor schmoes who can’t afford Internet and a computer and printer at their home, or who don’t have a home. Doing your taxes, copying forms, applying for jobs, reading the paper, checking your Facebook – these are important to people, and if you close Libraries, you’re screwing over people who can’t replicate those experiences at home. Give us some sanitizing wipes for the keyboards and mouses for god’s sake, but leave us open.
  • How about every agency and entity and store and company and event and gathering and just about every agglomeration of more than two people issuing statements about their response to the Covid 19 threat? And how many of those use the phrase “with an abundance of caution…”? And carefully wording how they are cleaning surfaces all while trying to avoid giving the impression that, up to now, they never cleaned those same surfaces!
  • I will put things in the calendar on my phone even if I can’t go to them i.e two things scheduled for the same time. This weekend I had a bunch of overlapping stuff scheduled, thinking I maybe could go to some if I took a notion. Every single one has been cancelled. I bought a ticket last night to Partner’s Pub St. Patrick’s Day corned beef meal on Tuesday, March 17. It’ll be the only event in town!

I waited too long for Nostalgia

I found an old box in my attic full of letters I had received during my first year at Bungalow Ranger Station in the Clearwater National Forest, Idaho, which would have been June-September, 1969. I turned 18 that summer, and I got a lot of cards from people. I also got many, many letters from various girl friends, particularly Peggy Fry.

I can’t help but wonder how often I wrote back, and whether the content in my letters to her was suitably ardor-filled. She sure did express how much she missed me over and over and over with letters, cards, cute little books and the like. I honestly can’t remember how I felt about her at the time. I didn’t re-read all of them, (there are a LOT!) but I read a few where she heard that I was growing my hair out, and she was repelled by the idea of me with long hair, so our relationship was clearly doomed, as I was letting my freak flag fly at the time. As I recall she was very attractive and very nice. I heard she died in child birth a few years later. She sure said nice things about me! Thanks, Peggy.

I also got letters from a Linda. She apparently missed me a lot, and wrote me twice. I have no memory of a Linda I had a relationship with. Dan thought Linda Rosenthal maybe? As I vaguely recall, she was Dan’s girlfriend, not mine! I suspect it was a different Linda. Thanks for writing me, Linda.

Most surprising were the letters from Michelle Follen. She declared she loved me and wanted to have my babies in one of them. I hope I was appropriately flattered at the time. I am now. Whatever happened to Michele Follen? She was between Freshman and Sophmore year, so she must have been quite young at the time – 14? 15?

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Bill and Queenie sent me a letter. Who are Bill and Queenie? Friends of my parents, I presume. I tried calling my sister, but she can’t remember shit either!

My brother Dan sent me a letter that I thoughtfully scanned and sent it to him. It was the best of all the letters, clearly, because he included two WHLO top 40 lists and a WINW top 20 list, and a crazy cool Sony tape recorder catalog. Rob Skelley sent me two letters. One had at least a joint worth of marijuana shake still in the bottom of the letter! I showed the weed to Marcia and threw it away. I should have smoked it for old times sake! How in hell it survived all this time, through my many dry periods, (or made it past postal inspectors) is a question for the ages.

I should have looked at this box years ago! Then maybe I would have remembered some of these people. And maybe that weed would have been more palatable.

My Retirement Decade

It’s been 10 years since I was asked to leave the employ of the City of Fitchburg. Beers For Good is having its annual meeting Sunday, and I’m going to bring a cake with ten candles to celebrate. I’m not sure if celebrate is the right word. Reminisce, maybe.

I never moved away from Fitchburg, and I tried to stay involved in making the city a better place. Readers of my blog (all none of you) know many of the efforts I made post-dismissal, and know that I ran for City Council in 2012. Reading back through this crap, I think to my self “Oh my God who cares about all this stuff?” It sure seemed important at the time. (I’m not sure why the traffic signals at the Upper Common were so important to me, and I had forgotten that I was on the verge of issuing a notice to proceed to the traffic engineers that fateful day.)

If Lisa Wong had just said to me “I don’t like the job you’re doing, and I want you to find another job”, I could have dealt with that. But she was so terrible about dealing with people. I remember the way she handled Dan Curley. She wanted to fire him for ages, and talked to me all the time about it, but couldn’t bring herself to tell him! And when she did fire him, it was done so ham-handedly. And when she did it to me, it was so brutal. I think I talked about it in an earlier blog post.

I wonder how Lisa Wong is doing in Winchester MA, where she’s now Town Manager. That’s where Ann Wirtanen, the former Fitchburg Library Director, works as their library director. Ann Wirtanen alienated virtually everyone she came into contact with, and was the director when Lisa cut their budget by 80%. They deserve each other!

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One of Lisa Wong’ s early projects was to emulate the City of Marlborough (I think it was Marlborough) by having each department put a cost per unit of output that they accomplished. We took turns taking bus trips down to meetings where we’d learn how they do it. Everyone hated it, and enormous staff resources were devoted to trying to accommodate her, and then it was suddenly dropped like a hot potato.

And then the Building Department was put under the Community Development Office, and all their employees had to move out of their third floor space that they had occupied for eons. It was horribly disruptive and was quickly reversed. Others may remember it better.

There were other “brain farts” that escape me right now. That woman was cray cray, and those years were difficult. The last ten years have been much better, if a little more austere.

Retirement. Nice work if you can get it!

Friends who died in 2019 – the year that sucked!

picture of me, Dan and Reed
David, Dan and Reed Rickman

In July of 2019, my dear friend Reed Rickman died. He was my entry to New York City stuff, and to Jewish stuff, and to the infrastructure industry. He was a really generous guy, who took twelve of his friends, including my brother Dan, my friend Trevor, and a bunch of our Studebaker friends, to Cuba a few years ago. Dammit that hurt. Still does.

Rob and David
Rob Skelley and David Streb

Then in September Rob Skelley died. We were best friends since sixth grade or thereabouts. We used to smoke a lot of weed together, and listen to music. He turned me on to Queen back in the day, and he was a good guitarist. He lived in his mom’s house in Canton Ohio all his life, and I loved him. I can’t help thinking I should have moved in with him to help him out in his final months. That might have been weird, but it was a big house, and I could have tidied up while i was there. Go hug your best friend before it’s too late!

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Marcia Ladd and Mary Vielhaber

In December Mary Vielhaber died. She was very close to Marcia, and a great friend to me as well. She was our excuse to go the theater in Chelsea Michigan and to visit Ann Arbor. I like ’em erudite, and she was erudite!

Good riddance to 2019! 2019 blew.

The latest on the Riverfront Park Stage and a little on the Music Festival – updated Aug 4, 2020

Back in 2013 Beers For Good decided that the beneficiary for the proceeds of the brewers festival would be a stage for Riverfront Park. We were tired of spending $1,700 per year on a stage for our Nashua River Brewers Festival each year, and thought that a permanent stage would be a great thing for the city. The Fitchburg Parks Board and the mayor all agreed.

We raised over $12,000 that year, and put it into an account at the Community Foundation dedicated toward a stage. A call was put out to form a stage committee that could direct the project. A number of people from the community heeded that call. David and Robin Streb, Liz Murphy, and Jon Giannetti, former Mayor Mary Whitney, and some Fitchburg State University officials were part of that group. After a few meetings, the committee went dormant and has been dormant for years.

Some money was paid from the stage fund to Haynes, Leineck and Smith Architects for conceptual plans, and some money was paid to a company called River Hydraulics to address the challenges of building a stage in a flood control project area. The hydraulic engineer met with the Building Commissioner and determined that we could, in fact, build a stage in the proposed location. Of course, we didn’t actually try to get any permits, as we only had conceptual plans. This was 2013. And there things languished.

A total of $8,388 remain in the stage fund at this writing, which is now under the control of the Riverfront Parks and Trails Fund Advisory Committee (RPTFAC), a sort of friends group for parks and trails along the river, consisting of representatives from the Mayor’s Office, the Conservation Commission, and the Fitchburg Greenway Committee.

In 2019, there was talk of a new effort to build a Riverfront Park stage. Monica McNamara moved back into town and got a small group together to build a stage at Riverfront park, apparently unaware of previous efforts to build a stage, and of the existence of a fund to do so. She approached the city’s Recreation Department, who happen to be represented on the RPTFAC by its Director, Nate LaRose.

The Recreation Department had discussed holding music festivals for years, and Monica’s interest may have kick-started the “Festivals by the River”, a series of three music festivals with different themes designed to raise money for the stage and other needs of Riverfront Park.

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The first, originally entitled Mardis Gras (but for some reason changed to ‘Folk Festival’ a few weeks before it happened) was presented July 13, 2019. It had three good bands, a professional stage and sound system, and very few people. Beers For Good was asked to sell beer and wine for the event, to generate additional funds for the cause. That didn’t exactly work out due to the lack of customers.

The second music event, A Taste of Steampunk, on August 28, was another good show, featuring pretty cool bands and a bunch of extra stuff like people dancing with fire and people walking around in strange costumes, many or all of whom were being paid to do so! A spectacular failure if you go by the attendees, but a spectacularly good show for those in attendance, especially if you were seated up front and didn’t have to see that there were very few people behind you.

Beers For Good didn’t attend the third event, a Latin festival, as members were out of town and we barely broke even on the first two events. The weather was poor for that third event, and attendance is said to have been even worse than the first two events.

The River Front Parks and Trails Fund Advisory Committee, when approached by the Recreation Department, said that they would front money to help with the deposits necessary for an event of this type. All proceeds, then will go into our fund. The series is said to be a fundraiser to help build a stage at Riverfront Park. Stay tuned, as I need to find out where we are on this. Because, you see, I am the President of the Riverfront Park and Trails Fund Advisory Committee, along with Nate LaRose, Michael O’Hara, and Mary Whitney, and a player to be named later by the Greenway Committee.

Update – I don’t see that any money was taken from the stage account for the poorly attended music festival events, and I’m not sure why.

On July 30, 2020, Tom Skwierawski, the Executive Director of Community Development, contacted Paul Lieneck, the architect who prepared the concept design for the stage in 2013, to provide a price for the preparation of construction design plans. Tom had contacted Nate LaRose, a member of the Riverfront Parks and Trails Fund Advisory Committee, about the availability of funds for that purpose. We did a quick telephone poll and got approval from Mary Whitney, Bill Stanwood, Michael O’Hara and Nate to proceed up to the amount in the Stage Fund. I told Tom that if he authorized Paul to proceed, then we would pay the invoice, as I surmised that the bidding process for the design of a public building may be onerous.