Author: Mike

Tom Lewis in the blogs

Long-time Worcester resident Tom Lewis was out of town this weekend, up in Maine to protest a new Aegis destroyer coming out of Bath Iron Works. But that didn’t keep him from appearing all over the blogosphere.

Linking to a Catholic Free Press article, Defend the Faith notes that Tom and Fran Warner, who both have artwork in the ARTSWorcester Biennial, have covered their work to protest Planned Parenthood holding a fundraiser in the gallery.

Michael Iafrate remembers the recent 39th anniversary of the Catonville Nine, in which nine Catholic activists napalmed draft records, by quoting Tom’s testimony from the subsequent trial:

I wasn’t concerned with the law
I wasn’t even thinking about the law
I was thinking of what those records meant
I wasn’t concerned with the law
I was concerned with the lives
of innocent people

Rock over London,
Rock on Worcester,
Tom Lewis — the freshmaker.

Tom Lewis, Harry Duchesne, Michael Boover at the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast
Tom Lewis, Harry Duchesne, Michael Boover at the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast, 2006

The Snow Ghost tapes a show! and other items

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Snow Ghost Community Show tapes first episode
We’ve been talking about it for months. We’ve been planning for weeks. And now it can be told: the first episode of the Snow Ghost Community Show has been posted. In this episode, we talk about the Three Stooges with Catholic Worker Scott Schaeffer-Duffy. (If you have comments, please post them at the WCCA blog post.)

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Saint Kermit live #4: Wal-Mart

This week, the discussion begins with honeybees (here’s the article I mention) and Bill Richardson’s ad choices. We then talk with Shannon Senior, one of the leaders of the campaign against a proposed Worcester Wal-Mart.

Hosts: me, Janine Duffy, Jim Henderson.

Recording with TalkShoe continues to be fun and challenging. My controls died about halfway through this episode, and there’s a long silence at the end when I restarted the controls so I could click “Terminate episode.”

[Download the mp3]

Coffee in Worcester: Courtyard Cafe

Pie and Coffee: Courtyard Cafe. We’ve been talking about going there for a long, long time.

Bruce: And we finally did it.

P: And you feel a sense of accomplishment?

B: Oh yeah. The first thing I noticed when I walked in there, the funny thing about it is like, and this goes back way before, it’s like every time I used to do errands for Joe, Elwood Adams and stuff like that—

P: —back when you used to run errands at Java Joe’s?

B: Yeah. And I would go by there or, it goes back even farther than that. I have to back up a little bit. I used to go to Al Bum’s a lot, up on Highland Street, and I used to go by that coffee place a lot, the Courtyard. And I never found an apparition to go in there until . . . .
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Items

WoMag interviews Corey Dolgon
Corey DolgonAllen Fletcher interviews Worcester State sociology prof Corey Dolgon on the socio-economic vibe of the city. If you like this, you might want to listen to an interview I did with him last year.

I had a little bit over-romanticized some of this post- industrialism in that it really wasn’t a post World War II de-industrialization, as much as it was like other New England towns, a kind of post World War I de-industrialization, and that Worcester has been struggling with these issues for a much longer time.

Plenty interviews OKC Catholic Worker Bob Waldrop
A nice article about Bob (who sometimes contributes to Pie and Coffee). Food co-op people take note:

Waldrop is the founder of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative (OFC), a monthly buying club that connects Oklahoma customers with Oklahoma farmers. The first month it existed, the cooperative generated $3,500 from 60 members. Fewer than four years later the April 2007 order stood at nearly $36,500. That’s a lot of local food and a lot of money in farmers’ pockets, and OFC board members expect that number to nearly double by the end of the year.

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Scott Schaeffer-Duffy: Darfur and the necessity defense

Today I talked with Catholic Worker Scott Schaeffer-Duffy, who’s been appealing the conviction of seven protestors who in 2005 blocked the Sudanese embassy in Washington, DC, to protest the Darfur genocide.

All of the briefs and motions have been filed, and with luck there will be “oral argument” of the appeal this summer. Scott talks about why he thinks his group is not guilty, and how he’ll convince the judges of that.

For more info, see Darfur Genocide on Trial.

You can download the mp3 (3MB) or see other formats. You can also subscribe (RSS) to the podcast.

defendants rejoice at being free to go
May 25, 2005: Tom Lewis, Harry Duchesne, Brian Kavanagh, Liz Fallon, Brenna Cussen, Ken Hannaford-Ricardi, and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy are happy to be outside after a day in D.C. Superior Court.

Support your local junk shoppe

digipog-hbmleyes.gifHBML, Worcester’s best visionary junk shoppe, is running low on cash. If you live in Worcester, perhaps you would like to visit them at 420 Pleasant St. If you live elsewhere, perhaps you would like to PayPal them $30 in exchange for a bunch of posters.

You know what they say about your neighborhood junk shoppe: use it or lose it.

Pie and Coffee accepts no advertising or donations, but at this point our daily readership is high enough that I feel like we should be using that untapped commercial potential for something.

Worcester Wal-Mart opposition gains traction

Holy cow, Shannon! Good job!

T&G: Appeal stalls planned Wal-Mart: Quinsigamond Village abutters fault officials:

A group of abutters has temporarily put the brakes on the planned Wal-Mart Supercenter in Quinsigamond Village.

Three abutters to the “Worcester Crossing” shopping center development, to be built on 44 acres along the Blackstone River, have filed an administrative appeal with the Zoning Board of Appeals, claiming the Planning Board did not adhere to the city’s site plan review standards when it approved the first phase of the project in March.

Maybe this will buy some time. That’s just what the opposition needs. The fact that any effort has “put the brakes” on this thing at this point is a big surprise.

Video: Shannon Senior and John Harvey talk Wal-Mart.

Monks win! and other items

An e-mail exchange:

Mike: I love this city, I gotta say.

Adam: I gotta say it does not surprise me that you’ve settled in a city that is years from a gentrification bubble. Any chump can talk about how much they love, say, Savannah or Santa Fe, but it takes a Mike Benedetti to love Worcester.

Teresian Carmelites win land battle!
This story has everything I love—Roman Catholicism, contemplative prayer, a $15 billion corporate villain, renewable energy, the works of mercy, and cable access TV. WCCA has the scoop.
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Olympia CW closing?
Maybe so. When I visited them in 2003, the people doing the day-to-day work were short-time volunteers, with a non-profit corporation providing continuity. Most Catholic Worker communities don’t start that way, but several of them have ended up like that. If I get my act together, I’ll phone Olympia and find out what the story is.

Ukes at the Ship Room
This Saturday night: cheap beer and tiny guitars.