Mike loved the Dragon Sorcerer, and interviews author Asa Needle.

The City Council and other city employees got raises this week. If Charter cable provides your internet service, they’re now selling info about your browsing habits to an ad company. (Related: how to encrypt your Gmail e-mail.)

Mike reads the InCity Times.

There was a hearing about Planned Parenthood changing its Worcester location. Critics of PP, including local blogger JayG, come off looking like nuts in press coverage; this is possibly their own fault.

Worcester CORI-reform activists are walking to Boston next week. The feds say the county jail has problems; Brendan expands upon his blog post on the subject. Mike is going to DC next week to ask the Chinese and Sudanese governments to stop supporting genocide in Darfur. WCCA is holding (and broadcasting live) a public meeting on an impending funding crisis at the station. “To this date, we have no contract with the City, and no real assurances for the continuity of WCCA’s future.”

We talk more about Charter recording information about users’ internet habits, and finish with an explanation of Tor from the audiobook of Cory Doctorow’s great young adult novel Little Brother.

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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).

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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.

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My bad photos.

Read comments about Tom Lewis.

Leave a comment about Tom Lewis.

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

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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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.

Meanwhile, at the Orange County Catholic Worker
OC Register:

The increase in homeless families in our local armories prompted CHAT-H public health nurse Paul Leon to create a new model program called Families and Children of Tomorrow, targeting children in what he says will be a first-of-its-kind model focusing exclusively on emergency shelter services for the homeless.

Launched yesterday to coordinate with the closure of the armories, the model program is helping five families initially and is housed in the newly remodeled Orange County Catholic Worker’s Isaiah House in Santa Ana, which re-opened yesterday.

From the hiding-your-light-under-a-bushel dept.
Why did the pope avoid addressing the Iraq War? I’ve seen essentially nothing about the fact that the pope failed to mention the war, despite many Catholics asking him to do so.

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton:

In 1991 John Paul II repeated the cry of Paul the VI in an encyclical letter, condemning the 1991 Iraq war. After that war there were over 12 years of sanctions that brought about the death of 1.5 million Iraqis, half of whom were children. This invasion has brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands more and made refugee or displaced 4 million. We’ve had thousands of U.S. soldiers killed, even more veterans commit suicide and tens of thousands of casualties. That’s why John Paul II condemned the 1991 war and pleaded that the second one not start.

Catholic Worker Frank Cordaro:

On birth control and abortion the Pope tells Catholics: you have to agree with me. But with the Vatican’s stated stance on this war — that they are against it — isn’t backed up. The Pope and the U.S. Bishops have got to let U.S. Catholics in the military, who agree with Pope John Paul II that the war in Iraq is unjust, know that the Catholic Church will support them as conscientious objectors.

The Transgender Emergency Fund, previously announced on 508, has a fundraiser Saturday night at the Hotel Vernon. The Antiquarian Society has settled its feud with neighbors; Brendan and Mike don’t like the precedent that has been set. Brendan says people like his idea of a green grid for North Main Street, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.

Worcester Magazine’s best-of issue hands awards to both Alec Lopez of the Dive Bar and a runner-up to Happy Birthday Mike Leslie.

Brendan and Mike talk for a really long time about Gary Rosen and Kate Toomey’s hair. The powers-that-be are proposing new regulations on scrap dealers that Mike doesn’t think will solve the problem of metal theft. Brendan likes Rosalie Tirella’s article on sidewalks in the InCity Times.

This article about skateboarding in Sterling provides almost no information.

Brendan will start appearing on Mike Messina’s radio show Monday nights.

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1990 photo of Tom from the magazine Inside Worcester.