508 is a show about Worcester. This week’s panelists are Cha-Cha Connor, Brendan Melican, and Bruce Russell.
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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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I heard your pod cast. Thank you for playing it and getting it some exposure. I would love to talk to you more about what was said because I think you only have 1/2 the story. The story gets much more interesting and in depth. I was looking to do some acting not modeling and what has unfolded is more than what you spoke about. I would love to share with you why I did this and the effect it had. My experience was very similar to many at her organization. When I decided to check them out as I was instructed to, there wasn’t much info out there so I posted an add asking for info and was amazed at the responses that I had received from people with similar experiences.Please contact me so you can get what is really going on and why I published this blog.
Things don’t seem to have changed much. I’d love to discuss this with Marc Reese. Is there some way you can put us in contact?