Pie and Coffee

508 is a show about Worcester. This week’s panelists are Cha-Cha Connor, Brendan Melican, and Bruce Russell.

The show begins with an excerpt from Fr. Bernie Gilgun’s homily at the memorial mass for Tom Lewis.

Cha-Cha was part of a Real Solutions press conference this week looking to change people’s attitudes towards “sex workers” and “drug users,” among others. Real Solutions has asked the City Manager for information about the state of rooming houses and “SROs” in Worcester over the past decade.

The license commission suspended the city license for a gun range and will allow alcohol to be served at an event at Green Hill Park. City Councilor Joff Smith has suggested the city start a lottery.

“Renegade blogger” Marc Reece had a bad experience with Karon Shea Modeling and started a blog about it. Mike ties this to some of the ideas in Clay Shirky’s great new book Here Comes Everybody.

Jeff Barnard and Jordan Levy have criticized some of the recommendations the Research Bureau made about the city’s finances. Mr. Levy’s blog now has an RSS feed.

Jeff:

They recommend that the city sell, among other things, the airport. . . . the city’s been trying to sell the airport since the beginning of time . . . They’ll probably recommend in some future report that the empty mall on Front Street should be redeveloped . . . .

We experiment with reading Mr. Levy’s blog aloud.

Brendan: You, Mike Benedetti, just fixed everything that’s wrong with Jordan Levy.

Mike: As Muhammad Ali said of someone else, he’s “too old and too ugly to be the champion. Look at me! I’m pretty!”

The Telegram & Gazette spammed Mike this week. Jeff Barnard pointed out that blogging for the T&G is a rip-off. This week’s best online discussion threads include this one about school funding and this one about WRTA funding.

Fitchburg is cutting library services.

Papamoka and Wormtown Taxi posted some interesting info about groceries. Mike encourages you to hike the Massachusetts Midstate Trail and read his thru-hiker’s guide (PDF).

mp3 link, other formats, feed, low-fi versions

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This is a recording of a homily by Father Bernie Gilgun, from his weekly Mass at the Mustard Seed in Worcester, Massachusetts. He talks about the Lavallees’ wedding anniversary and the Ascention.

You can download the mp3 or see other formats. You can also subscribe (RSS) to the podcast.

The Mustard Seed was beyond packed for Tom Lewis’s memorial mass, with a crowd of 30 lingering outside the doorways hoping for a glimpse of the events.

Father Bernie Gilgun celebrated the mass. (Deacon Walter Doyle assisted.) Here’s Fr Bernie’s homily:

In Psalm 137, and also in the book of Proverbs, we are told, truly told, “The memory of the just is blessed.” If you wanna be blessed, don’t forget Tom Lewis! “The memory of the just is blessed.” You wanna be blessed? Remember this just man! He carried high and proud the banner of peace and justice in this community, perhaps like no other. Like a one-man revolution.

Download the mp3 or see more formats.

My bad photos.

Read comments about Tom Lewis.

Leave a comment about Tom Lewis.

508 is a show about Worcester. This week’s panel includes Brendan Melican.

You wouldn’t know it from reading the Telegram & Gazette, but, as at other papers, their circulation is still dropping. The news could be worse. Mike notes a goofy headline. (Brendan mentions the 2-headed kitten in Milbury and a T&G column that made it to Fark.)

We have an exclusive interview with two of the kids behind the play The Dragon Sorcerer, which will be performed in Worcester May 9 and 10.

I already have my tickets

Mike summarizes this week’s InCity Times and praises Annie’s Clark Brunch.

We listen to Gary Rosen speak about the possible decriminalization of marijuana in Massachusetts.

Brendan:

Next fall marijuana will be decriminalized in the state of Massachusetts. There’s no doubt about it . . . . All the Billy Breaults in the world are not going to stand in the way of this happening. There’s just too much public support out there.

Brendan shares his thoughts on the resolution of the strip club zoning issue.

We finish the show with an excerpt from the audiobook of Cory Doctorow’s new young adult novel Little Brother. Mike is going to buy a copy for a teen he knows who likes civil liberties and dislikes The Man.

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We won’t share this list with others.

On May 1, 1933, the first issue of The Catholic Worker went on sale in Manhattan’s Union Square for a penny a copy.

Dorothy Day, from that issue:

It’s time there was a Catholic paper printed for the unemployed.

The fundamental aim of most radical sheets is the conversion of its readers to radicalism and atheism.

Is it not possible to be radical and not atheist?

Is it not possible to protest, to expose, to complain, to point out abuses and demand reforms without desiring the overthrow of religion?

In an attempt to popularize and make known the encyclicals of the Popes in regard to social justice and the program put forth by the Church for the “reconstruction of the social order,” this news sheet, The Catholic Worker, is started.

[…]

This first number of The Catholic Worker was planned, written and edited in the kitchen of a tenement on Fifteenth Street, on subway platforms, on the “L,” the ferry. There is no editorial office, no overhead in the way of telephone or electricity, no salaries paid.

The money for the printing of the first issue was raised by begging small contributions from friends. A colored priest in Newark sent us ten dollars and the prayers of his congregation. A colored sister in New Jersey, garbed also in holy poverty, sent us a dollar. Another kindly and generous friend sent twenty-five. The rest of it the editors squeezed out of their own earnings, and at that they were using money necessary to pay milk bills, gas bills, electric light bills.

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Join a nonviolent march, in Washington, DC, from the Chinese to the Sudanese Embassy on Tuesday, May 20th from 9 AM – noon. Despite international criticism, China remains the largest economic and military supporter of the government of Sudan which is widely held as responsible for the deaths or displacement of over a million civilians in Darfur. Because of China’s purchases of Sudanese oil and through China’s sales of arms to the Sudanese government, international efforts to end the bloodshed in Darfur and establish security for its people have largely failed. So long as the Sudanese regime is propped up by China, the killing in Darfur will continue.

Please gather with us at midday at the Chinese Embassy, 2201 Wisconsin Ave., NW, to hold signs which say, “China’s Support for Sudan is an Olympic Mistake” and “STOP THE GENOCIDE IN DARFUR NOW.” Some of these signs have enlarged photos of victims in Darfur. We will have a limited number of t-shirts available with the same message for those who wish to join the rally and 1.3 mile march to the Sudanese Embassy at 2210 Massachusetts Ave. NW.

Please contact us now for details and for information about rides from Massachusetts (leaving at noon on May 19th), as well as about lodging in Washington, DC for the night of the 19th. With the Olympics less than 100 days away, the media and Chinese government are paying greater attention to the Darfur issue. For the sake of those Darfurians whose lives are still risk, please consider spending a half a day in the nation’s capital. RSVP ASAP!

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy
Saints Francis & Therese Catholic Worker
52 Mason Street, Worcester, MA 01610
508 753-3588
theresecw@gmail.com

Nationally, newspaper circulation is down 3.5% in the past 6 months:

Print circulation continues on its steep downward slide, the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed this morning in releasing the latest numbers for some of the country’s largest dailies in the six-month period ending March 31, 2008. When a full analysis appears it is expected to find, according to sources, the biggest dip yet, about 3.5% daily and 4.5 for Sunday.

Worcester Telegram and Gazette daily circulation was 84,754 at this time last year. Worcester Magazine reports it’s now 81,437, a drop of about 4%.

This is not good, but it’s been worse: the past 2 reporting periods had T&G circulation dropping at 2 times faster and 5 times faster than the national average.

I get the first paragraphs of T&G articles via RSS, and I gotta say I found the first paragraph of Dianne Williamson’s Sunday column insulting enough that I didn’t bother to read the article (until this morning).

As most of you know— or maybe you don’t, because you’re watching “American Idol” rather than reading this newspaper — the news business is in trouble.

“[Y]ou’re watching ‘American Idol’ rather than reading this newspaper”? I know this is supposed to be a joke, but I wonder whether it’s also a sign of the disconnect between journalists and readers. Are people no longer subscribing because they’re watching TV, or because they’ve found more useful sources of news and advertising? What’s a better “risk factor” for someone canceling a T&G subscription in 2008, that person’s public engagement, or that person’s age?

What I would like to see the T&G do, speaking as a life-long newspaper fan: take their website seriously, so that I get value by lingering there, rather than wanting to head elsewhere after skimming the headlines.

Brendan Melican:

What may be my biggest frustration where local business is concerned, is watching good business go bad and suffer simply because the owners didn’t want to learn new tricks.

Forbes:

In one sense, circulation data can understate the newspaper industry’s financial challenges. Declining circulation can affect how much a newspaper charges for print advertising, its biggest and most lucrative source of revenue.

But print advertising has been sinking faster than circulation as the slowing economy and new Internet ad platforms like Craigslist have decimated newspaper classified ads, particularly for the help wanted, real estate and automotive categories.

Also: Thoughts from Worcester’s Jeff Barnard, thoughts from Joel Achenbach.

Update: The T&G ran a wire service article on this, but didn’t list their own #s.

This is a recording of a homily by Father Bernie Gilgun, from his weekly Mass at the Mustard Seed in Worcester, Massachusetts. Mostly about the pope’s recent US visit.

You can download the mp3 (4.8MB) or see other formats. You can also subscribe (RSS) to the podcast.

I’m experimenting with new recording equipment, which did a bad job this week, but which I think will lead to good results.

508 is a show about Worcester. Today’s panel includes Brendan Melican and (briefly) Bruce Russell.

A Worcester county court officer is being investigated for leaking info to crooks; a Barre police officer who shot a dog in the leg is back to work. Worcester Peace Works has submitted an antiwar/PILOT resolution to the City Council.

We talk about how City Councilor Rick Rushton has bucked some of his political patrons by becoming an Obama delegate. Brendan explains state taxes to Mike. Brendan complains about the schools. Mike describes the Transgender Emergency Fund fundraiser. We speculate about the whole Volcanoboy/Worcesterite web forum transition, which seems to be a work in progress. (Nice to see Worcesterite is running Drupal, in my opinion the least-bad CMS out there.)

Bruce kinda promises to be at Art Attack on May 1 if any listeners want a photo with him; the event would be a nice beginning to a night on the town, which you could end with some of the Turtle Boy shows at area bars.

Of course, we also talk about guns.

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We won’t share this list with others.

Peace in our time
“When will the governments realize? It’s got to be funky, sexy ladies.”
–Flight of the Conchords, from their “blondes not bombs” peace proposal

Dan McKanan interview about the Catholic Worker movement
Here’s an interview with Dan McKanan, author of Touching the World and The Catholic Worker After Dorothy, about the Catholic Worker movement. I think everything he says about the CW is dead on. I can’t find a page about this anywhere, but here’s the mp3: Link

Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke
Interview with Christopher Lydon about his new WWII book. I love Baker, Lydon, and anything that seriously considers that war might be bad. So I’m looking forward to reading the book and hearing the interview.

Dorothy Day, the editor of the Catholic Worker, wrote an editorial called “Our Stand.” “As in the Ethiopian war, the Spanish war, the Japanese and Chinese war, the Russian-Finnish war — so in the present war we stand unalterably opposed to the use of war as a means of saving ‘Christianity,’ ‘civilization,’ ‘democracy.’” She urged a nonviolent opposition to injustice and servitude: She called it the Folly of the Cross.

“Where’s the Business Model for News, People?”
Jay Rosen’s latest meditation on the press. Short answer: There doesn’t seem to be one.
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