Items for Groundhog Day

From now on, all tips from readers will be treated as anonymous unless the tipster requests otherwise.

My neighbor gets busted for pot: This is lousy news. Tuesday night, while my neighbor was helping win a basketball game and I was at a concert about the Wobblies, the cops were finding drugs in his house on Mason Court. When he got back from the game, they arrested him. From the T&G, Feb 1:

Doherty athlete faces drug charges
After game win, Yarnie arrested at his home
WORCESTER— Doherty Memorial High School senior point guard Daniel Yarnie told police officers he had a great game last night as they arrested him at his home after the game on marijuana charges.

Mr. Yarnie, 18, scored a team-high 15 points in Doherty’s 81-73 win against St. Peter-Marian Central Catholic High School. While he was guiding his team to victory, officers from the gang unit arrived at his house with a search warrant.

Police said they found a pound of marijuana in Mr. Yarnie’s bedroom at 4 Mason Court, along with $1,955 in cash, scales and packaging materials. Mr. Yarnie was arrested about 9:15 p.m., shortly after he arrived home.

He was charged with possession of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute. His mother and brother were at home at the time. They were not charged.

He was arraigned and released on personal recognizance.

The damn TV news was snooping around Mason Court yesterday, and my housemate talked to them:

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy remembers walking him to school as a little boy. “He’s not a bad kid. I don’t think there’s a mean bone in his body. His father died within the year and he’s had some misfortune,” Duffy [sic] says.
(CBS story with video clip)

If you haven’t already, check out “Worcester’s Mason Court” for a history of the neighborhood. And say a prayer for the Yarnies.

Telegram & Gazette: At first I was going to bitch about the T&G ignoring the local Chinese New Year’s celebrations (great photo for the front of Monday’s paper, guys).

But the big T&G story this week turned out to be the one that’s been all over the net, even Slashdot. The T&G (and the Boston Globe) wrapped the bundles of newspapers distributed in Worcester Sunday with recycled printouts containing up to 240,000 customers’ credit card numbers.

After being offered all sorts of perks, a couple weeks ago our household finally broke down and changed our T&G subscription over to electronic billing. Bad idea.

The local twist is that while the Boston Globe did the right thing and ran this as a front-page story, the T&G did not.

KNIT Worcester sign on Park Ave, photographed by Mike BenedettiWorcester Magazine: Articles about guys collecting cans in shopping carts, why the state should not endorse AA (I strongly disagree with this one), and a good overview of neighborhood groups opposing development and social service siting. It would be interesting to see a follow-up article interviewing people who support social service siting in their neighborhoods. This perspective has been heard in public hearings, but not so much in the press.
Photo: Sign on Park Avenue.

See also our brief overview of the siting issue.

Darfur: If you’re looking for an update, Nicholas Kristof has a new essay and the Holocaust Museum has a podcast with Eric Reeves (transcript). (Kristof: “it’s appalling that the publishing industry manages to respond more quickly to genocide than the UN and world leaders do.”)

Catholic Peace Fellowship: compares pharmacists who won’t distribute “morning-after pill” to conscientious objectors.

Bob Waldrop: has a blog. Bob is a Catholic Worker in Oklahoma City and is running for mayor there. DG points out that Catholic Worker Brian Terrell was once mayor of Maloy, Iowa.

Mike Radford:

Q. What is the heaviest state or territory?

A. If we’re allowed to go by ancient Roman orthography, WV = UUU = Unununium, atomic number 111. For party poopers, it’s Mt = Meitnerium, atomic number 109.

Unununium is now officially named roentgenium.

Bruce Sterling: from earlier in the month:

The American competitive advantage is the proven and repeated ability to invent new economies. We Americans suck at surrounding the oil wells with land-mines and demanding a check on everybody’s papers. That strategy doesn’t play to our strengths.

Richard M. Stallman: doesn’t mince words:

I forecast that the Bush regime will eventually be found to have committed nearly all the forms of evil that have ever been known or envisioned. It has rejected any and all limits on its actions, so its demand for power is now unchecked, and will spread like poison gas into every corner of the space of cruelty.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.