Trade Deadline Nears
What if we could trade politicians?
This is the time of year when trade talks heat up in the world of Major League Baseball. The trade deadline is July 31st. Our own World Champion Red Sox may be making moves, and it is always difficult to say goodbye to players you may have grown to like but easy to say good riddance to those who were a burden or who didn’t hustle or come through for the team. Maybe Bill Mueller or Bronson Arroyo will have to be traded to shore up the shaky pitching staff. They would be missed. But maybe we can unload Manny Ramirez and his huge salary and lazy, disrespect for the game. His bat will be missed, but good riddance to your attitude, dude!
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could trade politicians the way MLB trades players.
We could send Dean Esserman to LA for Bill Bratton. That way Esserman could have the Bill Bratton type career he wants, and Bratton could bail out of LA where he is largely striking out. Esserman’s good at getting guns off the street, and I hear LA has guns galore to keep him busy, plus they have larger numbers of stats to manipulate. Bratton could come to Providence and concentrate on quality of life issues as he did in New York when he brought crime under control and made Manhattan livable again. That trade would be a win/win situation for both cities.
We could trade our Mayor, David Cicilline, for Martin O’Malley, the Mayor of Baltimore. Remember Prov Stat, where we were going to be able to assess the performance of City Departments; well that was the brainchild of O’Malley who called it City Stat in Baltimore, where it really works. O’Malley could come here and show us how Prov Stat should work. Cicilline could go to Baltimore where drug dealing and violent crime are out of control, and he would have no choice but to pay attention to it and to develop a “get tough on crime approach." After Baltimore, cleaning up Providence would be child’s play for O’Malley.
When he’s not mayoring, O’Malley plays and sings in an Irish Band. He could save us money by playing free concerts in Waterplace Park as part of his Mayoral duties. Why pay musicians when you can have one as Mayor?
Would you engineer a trade of Harold Metts for Bill Cosby. I would.
Would you package Fox and Jackson together for some good prospects and a politician to be named later?
As the trade deadline approaches I’m trying to trade myself, but not too surprisingly, I’m not getting any takers: who would have me and what could you get in return. Who would you trade and who would you want?
Ok, ok, guys, just kiddin’. We wouldn’t trade any of you guys for all the tea in China.
You just better get your On-Base-Percentage up there with the league leaders.
Posted at 10:13 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
Acadian Driftwood, Gypsy Tailwind
It was 250 years ago today. . .
It was on July 28th, 250 years ago that the English expelled the French Acadians from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, an area then called L’Acadie. The Acadians drifted down along the Eastern United States coast, settling where they could, till the remainder of them made it, eventually, to the bayous of Louisiana.
Today, I'm cookin' Cajun: let us celebrate the Acadians.
The music group “The Band” performed a beautiful song about this migration, written by their guitarist, Canadian songwriter Robbie Robertson, titled Acadian Driftwood. Here are the song's lyrics.
Acadian DriftwoodThe war was over and the spirit was broken,
The hills were smokin' as the men withdrew.
We stood on the cliffs, oh, and we watched the ships
Slowly sinking to their rendezvous.They signed a treaty and our homes were taken,
Loved ones forsaken, they didn't give a damn.
Trying to raise a family, end up the enemy,
Over what went down on the plains of Abraham.Acadian driftwood,
Gypsy tailwind,
They call my home
The land of snow,
Canadian cold front
Movin' in,
What a way to ride,
Oh, what a way to go.Then some returned to the motherland,
The high command had them cast away,
And some stayed on to finish what they started,
They never parted, they're just built that way.We had kin livin' south of the border,
They're a little older and they've been around.
They wrote a letter life is a whole lot better,
So pull up your stakes, children and come on down.Acadian driftwood,
Gypsy tailwind,
They call my home
The land of snow.
Canadian cold front
Movin' in,
What a way to ride,
Oh, what a way to go.Fifteen under zero when the day became a threat,
My clothes were wet and I was drenched to the bone.
Been out ice fishing, too much repetition
Make a man want to leave the only home he's known.Sailing out of the gulf headin' for Saint Pierre,
Nothin' to declare, all we had was gone.
Broke down along the coast, but what hurt the most,
When the people there said "You better keep movin' on."Acadian driftwood,
Gypsy tailwind,
They call my home
The land of snow.
Canadian cold front
Movin' in,
What a way to ride,
Oh, what a way to go.Everlasting summer filled with ill-content,
This government had us walkin' in chains.
This isn't my turf, this ain't my season,
Can't think of one good reason to remain.I've worked in the sugar fields up from New Orleans,
It was ever green up until the floods.
You could call it an omen, points you where you're goin',
Set my compass north, I got winter in my blood.Acadian driftwood,
Gypsy tailwind,
They call my home
The land of snow.
Canadian cold front,
Movin' in,
What a way to ride,
Oh, what a way to go.Sais tu, Acadie, j'ai le mal du pays
Ta neige, Acadie, fait des larmes au soleil
J'arrive Acadie
--
--
Last week in the Boston Globe I read William Fowler's essay about the role Massachusetts played the in Acadian expulsion, and I include it here for your interest.
A dark chapter in Mass. history
By William Fowler | July 23, 2005
IT IS TIME for Massachusetts to recognize a great wrong. Two hundred and fifty years ago this summer, Massachusetts helped launch a brutal campaign of ''ethnic cleansing" against the Acadians of modern day New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
In the early part of the 17th century hundreds of French peasant families migrated from France and settled in a region they called L'Acadie (modern day New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). These families diked and farmed the rich marshlands bordering the Bay of Fundy. Isolated from the principal French settlements in the Saint Lawrence River Valley, the Acadians evolved a distinct culture, one that drew heavily upon their native Micmac neighbors with whom they often intermarried.
Unfortunately for the Acadians, their homeland was contested ground as the world's two superpowers, France and England, struggled to dominate North America. In 1713, at the end of one of the many wars fought between these two nations, France ceded Acadia to England and with it sovereignty over the native Acadians. However, customs, language, and religion divided these people from their new English rulers. In neighboring Massachusetts, ministers and politicians railed against the Acadians. Venomous attacks on the ''perfidious" French filled newspapers while from their pulpits ministers damned the ''papists."
Behind the violent rhetoric venal land speculators, led by William Shirley, royal governor of the Massachusetts, schemed to seize Acadian lands. Nova Scotia's lieutenant governor, Charles Lawrence, along with Jonathan Belcher, chief justice of the colony, Robert Monckton, an army officer, and John Winslow of Marshfield, an officer in the Massachusetts militia, joined Shirley and laid plans to expel the Acadians and seize their lands.
At a meeting on July 28, 1755, Lawrence ordered Monckton ''to send all the French Inhabitants out of the Province." Monckton realized that he would have to move quickly before the Acadians discovered their fate. He turned to Winslow and the Massachusetts militia to help him.
On the morning of Aug. 6, 1755, Monckton summoned Winslow to his headquarters at Fort Cumberland near the northern end of the Bay of Fundy. He told Winslow that he planned to order all the male Acadians to the fort. Once they were inside, Winslow's men would surround and confine them. Unaware of their peril on Sunday, Aug. 10, more than 400 Acadian men entered the fort. All went according to plan. And as soon as the men were locked up, messengers were sent to their families telling them to report to the fort lest the men suffer. Those who fled would be hunted down and killed.
Less than a week later at the village of Grand Pre, Winslow pulled the same maneuver and several hundred more men were seized. Within weeks several thousand Acadians were taken up and the expulsion began. Thousands of Acadians were herded aboard transport vessels. Families were often separated and no one was told their destination. Some escaped and fled to French Canada, but most did not and they were shipped off to distant places including Louisiana where they became known as Cajuns. Nearly 10,000 Acadians died in this Grand Derangement.
Having successfully removed the Acadians Governor Lawrence published a proclamation in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia announcing that there was now ''a favourable Opportunity for the peopling and cultivating of the Lands vacated by the French." Over the next decade 10,000 Yankee farmers took up the ''vacated" lands.
In the early 1840s Horace Connolly, the rector of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Boston, heard the story of the expulsion from his Acadian housekeeper. He shared her tale with his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and in 1847 Longfellow published ''Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie." The epic poem begins ''This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks."
Although highly romanticized, ''Evangeline" helped keep the story of the Acadian expulsion alive. Over the last 250 years descendants of those Acadians who either eluded Winslow's troops or managed to return to their homes at a later time, have kept alive a vibrant Acadian culture in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Determined to gain an acknowledgement of the injustice done to their ancestors these modern Acadians brought pressure on the Canadian government. In December 2003, the governor general of Canada, on behalf of the queen, issued a royal proclamation acknowledging this ''dark chapter" and declared that henceforth July 28, the day on which the expulsion was ordered be every year observed as ''A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval," commencing on July 28, 2005."
This year marks the first commemoration in Canada. Perhaps on July 28 we, too, should take a moment to reflect on this dark chapter of our own history.
William Fowler is director of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Boston Globe article
Posted at 12:01 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
Two Poems of Louise
Weekly Poetry Feature
Today we begin a new feature called the weekly Poetry Feature. If you wish to suggest poems for the new weekly poetry feature, type them up and send them in to John .
This week we feature two poems by Louise Gluck, who served as the country’s Poet Laureate for the year 2004. Louise won the Pulitzer prize in 1992, for her book Wild Irises. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The New Life
I slept the sleep of the just
later the sleep of the unborn
who come into the world
guilty of many crimes.
And what these crimes are
nobody knows at the beginning.
Only after many years does one know.
Only after long life is one prepared
to read the equation.
I begin now to perceive
the nature of my soul, the soul
I inhabit as punishment.
Inflexible, even in hunger.
I have been in my other lives
too hasty, too eager,
my haste a source of pain in the world.
Swaggering as a tyrant swaggers;
for all my amorousness,
cold at heart, in the manner of the superficial.
I slept the sleep of the just;
I lived the life of a criminal
slowly repaying an impossible debt.
And I died having answered for
one species of ruthlessness.
- -
- -
Fromaggio
The world
was whole because
it shattered. When it shattered
then we knew what it was.
It never healed itself.
But in the deep fissures, smaller worlds appeared:
it was a good thing that human beings made them;
human beings know what they need,
better than any god.
On Huron Avenue they became
a block of stores; they became
Fishmonger, Formaggio. Whatever
they were or sold, they were
alike in their function: they were
visions of safety. Like
a resting place. The sales people
were like parents; they appeared
to live there. On the whole,
kinder than parents.
Tributaries
feeding into a large river: I had
many lives. In the provisional world,
I stood where the fruit was,
flats of cherries, clementines,
under Hallie’s flowers.
I had many lives. Feeding
Into a river, the river
feeding into a great ocean. If the self
becomes invisible has it disappeared?
I thrived. I lived
not completely alone, alone
but not completely, strangers
surging around me.
That’s what the sea is:
We exist in secret.
I had lives before this, stems
of a spray of flowers: they became
one thing, held by a ribbon at the center, a ribbon
visible under the hand. Above the hand,
the branching future, stems
ending in flowers. And the gripped fist―
that would be the self in the present.
From Vita Nova, Louise Gluck: The Ecco Press
Posted at 11:25 AM | The Arts | Comments (0)
State Police Help Providence!
State Police Help!
“. . . an uptick in robberies on the East Side.”
“There will be six extra cruisers on the streets. A city patrol officer and a trooper will ride together in five of them, and in a sixth, a supervisor from each department will ride together.
“They will patrol Thursday through Saturday, from the early evening until 3 or 4 a.m.”
"We, in fact, are reaching out [to the public] when there is no crisis," said Esserman, . . .”
Mayor David N. Cicilline has approved the expenditure.
Read all about it in Projo: Troopers help patrol Providence
Is It Beginning to Sink In? The (non) crisis?
Kudos to the Mayor and the Governor for recognizing what we have known for a while: that crime in Providence has made us uneasy in our own homes and neighborhoods. And it is not just our neighborhood that has been suffering.
I’m sick of worrying each time I leave home that some criminals will try to break in to my house, or even worse, attempt a daytime break-in while my wife is home alone, like what happened on my street last week. I’m sick of worrying each night before I try to go to sleep, about my car being broken into.
Is this step, taken by Mayor Cicilline and Col. Esserman, a tacit admission that the City needs help policing its streets and protecting its citizenry? That crime has gotten out of hand and has seriously affected the quality of life in the City of Providence?
Hats off to the Mayor and the Chief for finally recognizing the [non] crisis.
I bet you that the up tick in robberies on the East Side refers to the spate of robberies and beatings in the Thayer Street area and not the robberies in Mt. Hope. But let’s hope that this rising tide lifts all boats and that the police put equal time and effort into Mt. Hope as they do in College Hill.
John Twomey
Posted at 12:09 AM | Issues | Comments (0)
14% TAX HIKE!
The spin is On
Over three years our Providence Property Tax will have increased by 14% when the latest tax hike goes into effect, according to a ProJo article in today’s paper. The city council approved the budget, which included the tax hike, by a vote of 11 to 4 and must vote one more time, this coming Monday, for final approval. Watch this space for an update on that vote.
The four members who opposed the nearly 2% tax hike for this year were council President John J. Lombardi, Councilwoman Balbina A. Young, and Councilmen Joseph DeLuca and Miguel C. Luna.
The Mayor claims the tax hike will raise an additional 2.4 million dollars.
Hmmn, remember those huge pay raises the Mayor gave to Carol Grant and others in his administration a while back, all the while claiming that there will be no tax hike this year? Balbina Young had something to say about that. In her ProJo article in Friday’s paper, Cathleen F. Crowley quotes Councilwoman Young: “Councilwoman Young said she voted against the budget because of the tax increase and because some administrators were getting raises she didn't think they deserved.”
Hmmn, I wonder if any of that tax hike money will be used to get tough on crime and the criminals who prey on taxpayers.
"We've raised taxes for the last couple of years, but we are not giving anything back to the neighborhoods," Crowley quotes Councilman Luna, one of the 4 in opposition to the tax hike.
The Crowley article stated: “Mayor David N. Cicilline's administration said the tax increase, which would raise an additional $2.4 million, would allow the city to fully finance the School Department's $300-million budget.” But Crowley went on to quote Councilman Luna as saying: "It's like trying to inflate a tire that has a hole in it", “[but] Luna said the schools are draining too much from the city.”
In her article Crowley stated: “Councilman DeLuca said he voted against the budget because of the tax increase and because it included $600,000 to cover new positions. He also said the budget relied on revenue the city may not receive any time soon. For example, the budget includes $4.4 million in revenue from the sale of the Fogarty Building and the old police station, but there is no guarantee that those buildings will be sold in the coming year.”
“DeLuca estimated that the budget contained $20 million in "iffy" revenue.”
In one example of masterful spin control by Councilwoman Carol A. Romano , Crowley stated, then quoted Romano: “Councilwoman Carol A. Romano, like Cicilline, blamed the General Assembly for the tax increase. ‘The City of Providence did not raise taxes,’ Romano said. ‘It was the State of Rhode Island that forced us to raise these taxes because of the school funding they didn't give us.’
Spin it however, whatever, it still adds up to a 14% (fourteen percent) hike in our property taxes over the last three years.
Meanwhile, assaults and robberies on College Hill, home invasions, car break-ins, and drug dealing in Mt. Hope and shootings on the South Side and Smith Hill.
Will this tax hike help protect the taxpayers, the electorate, and the citizenry?
I hereby authorize this administration to use my property taxes to help fight crime and strengthen law enforcement.
John Twomey
Posted at 12:26 PM | Issues | Comments (0)
Go Get Hugged!
Good News Feature of the Week
Sri Mata Amritanandamayi & huggees -- Pat Greenhouse/Globe staff
Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, (her followers call her Amma or Mother in Sanskrit) a world class hugger, will be in Marlborough, Massachusetts for 3 days and she is expected to give out an estimated 10,000 hugs.
People lined up beginning yesterday as she doled out 500 hugs in one and a half hours. Her followers claim a healing benefit from her hugs. So if you’re in need of a hug, head to Marlborough country. Get thee healed.
If you want to read more check out this link: Healing of hugs draws thousands
I think I might hug a tall cold one or two tonight then if I get approval I might look for a full length body hug from my better half.
If you think humor has healing powers check out this link: BushGirl .
Posted at 04:27 PM | Community | Comments (0)
The Big Lie of Crime Stats
How the Big Lie Lies
Crime stats lie. They get right up in your face and lie. But the numbers themselves don’t offend: they simply get used and abused by someone or some organization who usually wishes to put a positive spin on those numbers.
How do they lie? Say you go to the fridge to get some chocolate ice cream and discover just a tiny tablespoon in the bottom of the box, so you turn to your pie-eyed, all innocent looking ten year old, the one with chocolate ringing their mouth, and ask, “Did you eat all the ice cream?”. “No, no, I didn’t eat all the ice cream.” says the ten year old, speaking with all the weight and conviction of truth.
Well, technically that is not a lie, since a lonely tablespoon of ice cream still remains in the box, but it is not the whole story either. It is a partial truth or a “spin” on the truth. It is a manipulation of the facts so that they appear to tell the story that the speaker wants you to hear. So it is with crime stats.
Statistics are easily manipulated to mislead the public.
I bring this up because I read a Boston Globe article titled Major Crime down 13%, through the first 5 months of the year, and that drew a chuckle from me because I understand the spin, and I fully expect to read or hear the same kind of spin coming out of our City Hall sometime in the not so distant future.
Once you get past the headline with the big bold Major crime down 13%, you get into the nitty-gritty of the stats, which community leaders living in crime ridden areas of Boston greeted with derision.
Most of the 13% decrease came in only 2 areas, Vehicle Theft, and Larceny. Larceny includes theft not fear inducing, such as car radio thefts.
Murders stayed the same, did not go down, but the headline did not read “Murder rate stays the same for period as City fails to reduce murder rate for another year!": that also would have been an accurate headline.
Rapes went down by a total of 5. No mention of how rapes usually go unreported
But the real news is that Burglary, thefts from residences, increased by 7% and that Robbery, often involving the use of force, jumped by 8%.
The Globe could have used a headline that read, "Home Invasions and Robberies up 15%", and that would have been just as accurate as "Major crime down 13%", but it would have given the reader a much different impression. Manipulation!
But all that involves manipulating the numbers. The numbers gathered themselves lie, because they are not accurate. How do crime stats deceive us?
Many crimes go unreported, and some are under-reported, such as rapes, robberies, theft from motor vehicles, and assaults.
If the police do not generate an incident report number the crime does not make the stats. Say you report an incident of vandalism and property damage, and the police who come and view the damage say “we will keep an eye on your property if we can and try to catch the perps.” But unless you ask for an incident report number, they usually will not offer you one, and they usually won’t write one up and submit it. So that crime will never be used to calculate the crime stats. It’s like it never happened.
Now in whose interest would it be to encourage police to write a minimum number of incident reports?
Some crimes are miscategorized, put in a less serious category. Another manipulation.
A GCCC member had a stolen car abandoned in her drive and had to pay to have it towed. It was never reported stolen, yet she was a victim of crime: will she show up in the crime stats? No.
So the next time this City Administration trots out its Good News Crime Stats, have a good laugh.
Just look around you and what you see and hear is what you get: Car thefts, drug dealing, home invasions.
I’m hearing that this administration is soft on crime for various reasons having to do with politics. They should be protecting the electorate not pandering to criminals for political gain. I don’t think it ever pays politically to be soft on crime. Look at what happened to Mike Dukakis, he lost a presidential election on the issue.
This City Administration needs to empower the police to do their job and protect the citizenry from criminals. No more political pandering. Get tough!
John Twomey
Posted at 11:20 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
Bold Daytime Forced Entry Attempt by Three Masked Intruders Thwarted
A bold daytime break in attempt took place this afternoon around 4:00pm at 14 Locust Street, a SouthLawn unit. Three young, masked men attempted a forced entry through the back door of the building. The tenant came to the door and called the police and building management who arrived there in minutes. The perpetrators ran away past the public garden and towards the Knowles and Abbott street area. The police have no idea who they were, they said. The tenant could give no description beyond the fact that they were masked.
Crack heads and junkies committ petty crime to support their habit. When will the people of Mt. Hope say enough is enough and divest themselves of their investement in the drug business.
When will our City government say enough is enough, let's stop these criminals from running roughshod over our decent taxpaying citizens.
Posted at 04:58 PM | Politics | Comments (2)
Good Job Dist. 8!
Our District 8 Community Police do a good job.
Has anyone else noticed what a good job our Disctrict 8 Community Police have been doing?
Kudos to Lt. Schiavulli and all the men and women of the District 8 Substation. Keep up the good work.
Let's give a real big round of cyber-applause to our Rookies who walk the beat in Mt. Hope. I hear nothing but good things about them.
Maybe they should be issued bikes. Would they be able to cover more ground on bikes? Would they be more effective, less predictable on bikes? If you think so, put a bug in Lt. Schiavulli's ear about putting our foot guys on bikes.
In Today's ProJo
Interesting piece in today's ProJo, Loiterers move on to drug charges that tells how police use the loitering/blocking sidewalk ordinance to combat street level drug dealers. In this case the technique lead to an arrest and the confiscation of drugs.
This is somehting we did not hear about a few years ago, and it shows that the City Administration and the Police Department are listening to citizens concerns and begining to address the quality of life issues, like street level drug dealing, that the electorate wants addressed.
John Twomey
Posted at 11:07 AM | Issues | Comments (0)
Summer Get-A-Way Day
CASIMIR PULASKI MEMORIAl STATE PARK
One day last week, one of those perfect summer days, Irene and I knocked off around 4:00pm, loaded Molly and Sterling into the old FourRunner and headed out for the “territories” i.e. anyplace west of Providence. We headed north on 146 then south on 102, stopping several times along the way, then hit Route 44, the Putnam Pike and drove almost to the Connecticut border, before we pulled into the Pulaski State Park Beach. There we took a walk around a beautiful pond and did some bird watching.
Storking the Bridge
I was lucky enough to capture a Stork (or is it an Egret?) with my digital camera; once on a rock, then Molly scared him away, but we saw him again on the bridge.
Fishin'Blues
You can walk from Rhode Island to Connecticut over this wooden bridge.
From One State to Another
This Park is quite large and worth exploring at length. The fastest route from Providence would be Rt. 6 West to 295, North to Rt. 44 West. The park is about 15 miles from Rt. 295, so give yourself 30 to 45 minutes to get there from Providence.
Posted at 10:42 AM | Community | Comments (0)
Customer Service Training: Why not Police Dispatchers
Metro Digest: From the Metro Edition of the Providence Journal, 7-12-05.
A long overdue move to provide customer service training to city employees is underway. According to the Journal, Mayor Cicilline said that the goal was to improve interpersonal skills and skill in dealing with difficult situations in order to deliver better service. The DPW, Tax Collector’s Office, and the ONS were among the departments participating.
The public applauds this move to recognize a long overdue and needed correction.
However, the Police Dispatchers remain the city personnel who exhibit the direst need for customer service training. The way some of them speak to the public is an insult and embarrassment to the City of Providence.
They still try to give the impression that they are police officers when in fact they are civilians who answer the phone and pass the calls on to the police department.
Essentially they function as an in-bound tele-marketing operation, much as a customer service center does for any private business operation. No private sector company would tolerate the level of rudeness and ineptitude exhibited on a daily basis by some of these dispatchers.
And if you think we are unhappy with these dispatchers, you should speak with some of the police officers who have to deal with them as part of their job.
I hesitate to paint them all with the same broad brush, for I’ve spoken with some who are top notch professionals, but all in all the department needs a serious overhaul.
The taxpayers of Providence deserve courtesy and respect when dealing with City Employees.
John Twomey
Posted at 09:31 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
Then it was Clean
Unmask this man.
Mystery Man Who Cleaned Up
Using powerful scanners employing face recognition technology, accessing the no-fly lists, extensive local and federal background checks, internet searches, and the Interpol data base it was finally determined that the mysterious man who apeared on Saturday morning to clean up our neighborhood was none other than our own Matt Stone, who also organized the cleanUp last month. Thanks Matt.
Posted at 10:13 AM | Issues | Comments (1)
Broken Fence Fixed!!!!!
An Astonishing* Success for the City and For Mt. Hope.
Thanks to McMahon, Murphy, Jackson, and Pontarelli.
This is what a fixed fence looks like.
A nicely repaired fence.
I knew once the job was assigned to Bob McMahon, Deputy Superintendent of the Parks Department, that it would get done and get done in a timely fashion. Thank you Mr. McMahon.
Another Angle
A big hearty thanks also to the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services: thanks Rita Murphy and David Pontarelli of the ONS. Thanks to Councilman Kevin Jackson for facilitating movement on our request.
We began asking for this fence to be repaired around two years ago. That is astonishing.* It kind of fell in a grey area of departmental responsibilities. But now it is fixed, and it has been established whose responsibility it is to maintain the fence. That’s success in more than one area.
Of course it’s a five (count’em) Exclamation Point Headline!
From Across the Street
And of course the fence won’t stay unbroken forever, or will it have a longer span of unbroken longevity this time. Keep and eye out for our fence. Hopefully no stolen cars will hit it or smash it down during a police chase.
Now we need to organize a little clean-up behind the fence to show the city we appreciate their getting around to addressing our request. Calling Matt Stone, calling Matt Stone. We need your clean-up organizing skills. Should not take much time to pick up a little litter.
John Twomey
Oh, bitter, bitter is the brew for those who try and fail and surrender, but sweet, sweet is the heady taste of success through continued perseverance.
Ancient Proverb.
Posted at 04:12 PM | Issues | Comments (3)
Question on MT. Hope Area?
Hello all,
I was so happy when I came across this website. I am a 24 year old woman and I just recently rented an apartment on Rochambeau Ave in the Mt. Hope area of Providence. I was all excited about moving in there and being on my own with another friend of mine. My mother didn't see it the same way. She says Mt. Hope is an awful area to live in and very dangerous. It did not seem that way to me at all when I looked around the neighborhoods. Should I be worried? Should I back out of my lease? I just need some advice and hopefully some things to say to my mom to convince her it is a good place to live. please help me out here!
Riss Nardelli
"I've worked too hard and too long to let anything stand in the way of my goals. I will not let my teammates down and I will not let myself down." ~ Mia Hamm
Posted at 11:57 AM | Community | Comments (4)
Book Review.....by Shabnam Hashemi
"Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
This is a book about a girl named Sara, in search of the legacy of her mother who was killed in a tragic accident when Sara was four. She lives with an emotionally detached father, and feels totally unloved. She finds her way to a place, where she was sure her mother had been, and it is there where she finds love and connection. The place where she ends up is owned by three sisters who are beekeepers. The book masterfully makes inferences to the lives of people from the way the bees live. The beehive operates on an extremely disciplined and organized system, with every bee having a purpose, and yet contributing to a greater scheme.
As I was reading the book, it occurred to me that we can follow their leads in our own communities, and oh what a bliss that would be. In a way, I think we are on the right path in our little community with our neighborhood organization, and we just need to persevere!! I, for one, am glad to be a part of it.
Shabnam Hashemi
Posted at 11:37 AM | The Arts | Comments (2)
Another Stolen Car
FYI
Another stolen car abandoned in Mt. Hope.
This time it was abandoned in the middle of Locust Street heading south right before the intersection of Camp Street.
Around 10:00pm a flat-bed tow-truck backed onto Locust Street with yellow lights flashing and winched the stolen car up onto the bed of the truck.
So, Jen, another half block and they could have blocked in my driveway with a stolen car.
Just another night in Mt. Hope.
Another daily reminder that we don't live in Pollyannaville.
John
Hooray: Independence Day
Posted at 09:20 PM | Issues | Comments (0)
Mayor's Entourage Walks Camp Street
From a Third Floor Window
I spied Mayor Cicilline, Chief Dean Esserman, Director of ONS Rita Murphy, Councilman Kevin Jackson, Lt. Schiavulli, and unidentified others walking down Camp Street toward Jenkins Street and back.
What a hot sweaty day to be walking Camp Street.
My guess as to what brought this motely parade out on such a dismal day is that, although according to the Providence Journal, the Mayor's office had no comment on Ms. Baver's letter that was published in the Letters to the Editor section on the back page of the Metro Edition section of Friday's paper, the Mayor did wish to make a statement.
Although why he was walking this section of Camp Street remains a mystery when Ms. Baver's letter clearly indicted the section of Camp Street that lies between Rochambeau and Cypress, especially the section between Grand View and Cypress, as being problematic.
Whatever. I guess Ms. Baver's letter got the Mayor's attention, and if he takes her plea to heart, that can only be a good thing. City officials need to hear from Mt. Hope citizens.
I urge other Mt. Hope residents and especially GCCC members to write to the Mayor and to Pro Jo and support Ellen's courage in speaking out about the problems in Mt. Hope.
It will be interesting to learn Mayor Cicilline's and Councilman Jackson's response.
Will they deny that Mt. Hope has a problem with drug dealing?
Will they deny that there has been a rash of car break-ins and home invasions?
Will they claim that Camp Street is a lovely street with no urban blight in the block where the Men's Pride banner hangs and the Ministry's cast-offs block the sidewalk?
I hope that it will not be the usual stonewalling, denial of obvious facts, the pandering to political correctness that is traditionally used to cover up inaction.
I hope it will not be business as usual.
We live in a new Mt. Hope and the old rhetoric will not be acceptable to Mt. Hope's current electorate.
This is a time for action.
Irene Twomey
Posted at 09:10 PM | Politics | Comments (2)
Should we GET the LEAD OUT?
On Getting Out the Lead
I am a new resident of Mt. Hope, but have been a homeowner for a long time. When my daughter was very young, we lived in Massachusetts, where lead laws were quite firm, so I did not have to worry. I am currently in nursing school, and through one of our projects I got involved in studying the issue of childhood Lead poisoning. Lead is found in soil, water, paint dust, and other sources, and is damaging to every organ of the body but specifically damaging to the brain development of young children.
Lead paint was used in painting houses prior to 1978. Lead poisoning is more prevalent in older homes, which have not been kept up. It was disturbing to see the Rhode Island statistics for Lead poisoning. Even though the rates have increased in the past 10 years, they are still twice as high as the national rate. The rates are even higher in core cities (where children's poverty level are above 15%) like Central Falls, Newport, Pawtucket, Providence, West Warwick, and Woonsocket.
The Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Law of 1991 allowed for screening of children under 6, and treating the significantly poisoned children.
The Lead Hazard Mitigation Law of 2004 was designed to prevent lead poisoning in children and pregnant women. It requires that owners of rental properties built before 1978 get a certificate of conformance, give tenants information about lead hazards, respond to tenants concerns, and keep the certificate current. They are required to attend a 3 hour class, inspect their property for lead hazard, and fix the hazards found during the inspection. They will in turn receive tax credit for inspecting and keeping the property lead
safe.
This bill was supposed to take effect on July 1, 2005. An amended version of the bill was passed on June 30th, exempting properties where the elderly or college students live (along with other exemptions), and will now take effect on November 1.
Whether homeowners or tenants, it is important to keep in mind that this is a very preventable problem, which gone untreated, has devastating implications, not only for the health of our children, but for the cost of our healthcare.
Shabnam Hashemi
Posted at 04:27 PM | Issues | Comments (0)
Rude Awakening: The Hidden Cost of Drug Dealing
Daily Reminder
I was reminded again this morning of the hidden cost of drug dealing to the honest citizens of Mt. Hope. I woke up to find that a car had been abandoned in the parking area of our home. After confirming with the other owner in the building that the car did not belong to a guest of hers, we called the police.
Blocked in Jenny -- Photo by Josh
After two calls and approximately two and one half hours of waiting, an officer finally showed up, only to inform us that the car was not "stolen" and we had to pay to have it towed. The car was unregistered, and the VIN was traced to an auto body shop in Quincy, Mass. The Mass dealer plates that were still on the car had been cancelled. But because the car had not been reported stolen, there was nothing that the police could do because it was on private property.
Anyone want to guess why it was abandoned behind our house in the middle of the night? Stolen? Joyriding? Coming to buy or sell drugs? In any case, we are out the $100 to have the vehicle removed so that we could get to our cars. Another example of one of the hidden costs of having drug dealing in the neighborhood.
Jen
Posted at 04:08 PM | Issues | Comments (0)
Pro Jo Editorials = Two of a Kind -- Does Mayor Get It?
Brussat & Baver in Thursday's and Friday's Providence Journal
Interesting stuff on this weeks Providence Journal’s editorial pages concerning two different neighborhoods facing similar issues, and our City Officials (i.e. the Cicilline administration) still don’t get it: on Thursday a commentary titled, Downtown’s droogs: Book’em!, by David Brussat, of the Journal’s Editorial Board and on Friday, a Letter to the Editor, by Ellen Baver, a property tax paying citizen of Mt. Hope and a proud GCCC member.
The point Brussat’s Pro Jo Commentary makes is that the downtown area, while being pushed as a high end residential district called “Downcity”, suffers from lax enforcement of the law and the city ordinances that make for a good quality of life for residents. Rowdiness is the rule and drunken louts ruin the quality of life for residents who are expected to pay beyond half a million bucks to live in beautiful “Downcity”.
Brussat uses many words to make his case elegantly, but one quote boils it down nicely, “. . . it is the job of City Hall to make sure that the police have the authority, the will, and the power to do the job.”
Ms Baver’s letter, addressed to Mayor Cicilline, takes us on a walk down seedy Camp Street with her and her kids, past the addicts and dealers and garbage, to Billy Taylor Park where her young children ask about the “Drug Mural” on the retaining wall there.
She asks, “Why are good, tax paying homeowners being victimized by home and car break-ins and having to live in fear in their own homes and neighborhood? We feel like hostages to addicts, dealers, thieves and other criminals. Drive a few blocks away, to any other East Side neighborhood, and everything is clean and quiet.”
Ms. Baver goes on to question the understanding of Mt. Hope residents that the City has an unwritten hands-off directive for Mt. Hope drug dealing, containing it and its attendant crime to the Mt. Hope neighborhood. Bravo, Ellen Baver.
Both of these editorials deal with the same issue. City officials failure to get tough on the criminals, louts, and “droogs” who negatively affect the quality of life for residents and thus ruin entire city neighborhoods.
What is it the Cicilline administration does not get? Just this. That property tax paying residents are fed up with the Cicilline administration’s pandering to nefarious forces instead of protecting the interests of the property tax paying citizens who shoulder the burden of the City’s finances and who make up the strong backbone of the city’s character.
It seems that the Mayor is so worried about losing a single vote by being strong on crime and quality of life issues that he is willing to lose property tax paying voters en masse.
I like both these pieces and I intend to write to the Journal to voice my support for both Brussat’s and Baver’s point of view and just to throw in my two cents.
John Twomey
Posted at 11:10 AM | Politics | Comments (6)
