02-26-08 Trash Delivery

I gotta tell ya: this post over on Volcano Boy today is right up my rant'n'raving alley!

It all began one winter when I was snowblowing my driveway and suddenly a blizzard of shredded newspaper came flying out the chute! That spring, I had an interesting day's work, wherein the papier mache all over my yard had finally dried sufficiently to collect and dispose of.

The next point in this saga occured a couple of years later when I discovered a soggy old newspaper lying out there beside my shed, underneath the picnic table. Loosely enfolded in an unsealed plastic bag, it wasn't too hard to get rid of. But it reminded me of the papier mache blizzard...

The third time was the charm, however, when I started finding free samples of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette tossed into various random spots in my yard. At that point, I wrote an e-mail to the T&G complaining of the litter, and cc'd it to everyone I could find on their website that might stand some chance of actually being able to put a stop to it.

To make a long story only slightly shorter, I ended up in a back and forth e-mail exchange with Bruce Bennett, then publisher of the T&G, wherein (among many other things) I insisted that getting a "free newspaper" carelessly tossed into my yard was nothing more than unlawful littering. Anybody else, I pointed out, would AT LEAST make an effort to ensure that the advertising material was either lodged inside my storm door, tucked into the door handle, or otherwise secured against blowing all over my yard. Many of these types of advertising materials that I've received over the years are even prepared specifically to be hung on a doorknob, for instance. But apparently, the T&G felt it was perfectly okay to do their own unique style of "drive-by littering".

I even had phone messages from this guy on my answering machine during this interchange.

The one thing I wanted was for this littering to stop. But for some bizarre reason, it turned into a long and increasingly frustrating exchange that escalated into my condemning the entire newspaper industry, and the T&G in particular, for laboring under the delusion that their product was so valuable that anybody would simply JUMP at the chance to get a free copy! The guy actually thought that this refuse, carelessly tossed into my yard, represented a gift of great value!

HA!

But my ill will towards the T&G actually goes back much further than that. We once subscribed to the T&G. For a few years, the delivery service was good. Then it started getting erratic. Some days, we wouldn't get the paper. It happened more and more often as time went on. But the end of the subscription came to us one day in the form of a man at my door one morning who, for all the world, was the spitting image of Charles Manson. He claimed that he was the newspaper deliver guy, and that we hadn't paid him for several weeks.

My immediate response to him was, "Well, that's it, then. My subscription to the paper ends here. Do not set foot on my property again, or I'll call the police." And I just stood there looking at him for several seconds until he turned around and walked away.

So... that's the extent of my emotional baggage as regards the T&G. It's just the result of a series of minor, but negative experiences. Objectively, I think the paper is sorta-kinda okay. It has one glaring problem, though. It's not locally owned.

If the T&G was still locally owned, at least we'd know whose side they're on. The out of town corporations that have owned the T&G since the Stoddard name disappeared have merely been like vampires... and the lifeblood of our local city daily has slowly, carefully and artfully, been sucked out ever since. The only thing that keeps this paper alive is the local talent. I admire them greatly for their literary talent and their tenacity for hanging on in that milieu of having an out of town corporation, at the core merely a collection of beady-eyed accountants, demanding a ransom for their souls in ever increasing increments, day after day, week after week, year after year.

One can never fully understand what an abusive relationship is until one has completely separated oneself from it.

Blink and Youll Miss It

Scott Zoback left the following comment on my Wormttowntaxi post "Mini-Demolition":

We ran an article on this last year. Here it is:

Blink and you'll miss it; a dull, faded wooden structure at the corner of Temple and Harding streets, overwhelmed by the Heywood Building and other nearby old brick factories that are now gentrified into lofts, condos and restaurants.

Once, the Buckley Store was something special: A historical marker on the site details the structure's history as a convenience store of sorts. It's a rare example of wooden buildings from that time period, and a representation of the neighborhood's immigrant legacy when the Blackstone Canal ran where Harding Street is now.

But now the building, once a potential target for historic restoration, is slated for demolition.

"At this point, it looks like the building will come down," says Preservation Worcester's Deborah Packard.

The building dates to about 1870, when Irish immigrant Cornelius Buckley built a grocery store on the ground floor and a house upstairs for his family. The building survived in that form until the 1920s. The historic marker details occupants during the 19th and early 20th century of "Jewish, French Canadian, and Lithuanian [descent] that reflect the changing ethnic make-up of the city during that period."

The building's owner, John Giangregorio, purchased the building in 2004, with the plan of historically renovating the property. Giangregorio and Packard say that funding options for historic renovations were looked at, but as there were no tenants in the building, the options (such as TIF and faaade renovation funding) are "not really applicable," says Giangregorio.

It's obvious the building is in need of a drastic makeover to be reusable. The structure is sagging a little, and it obviously hasn't been used as anything commercial in ages. Add to that the car that crashed through a wall several months ago, and it is clear a lot of work is needed.

And now, city officials say that the building has code violations, and have ordered that the building be demolished.

City Director of Code Enforcement Joseph Mikielian says that once he gets an application for demolition from Giangregorio, he will move to have the building taken down as soon as possible.

Still, Giangregorio sounds like a landlord who would like to have done something more than a demolition.

"The city must reconcile a policy of historic renovation with code requirements," he says. "I don't think it's a secret that older properties would be in need of repairs."

Preservationist Packard seems resigned to the building's fate.

"It's a charming building we'd love to see stay in that neighborhood, but that doesn't seem possible considering the [condition] and the order to take the building down," she says.

"It hasn't been properly taken care of [over time]. It's almost beyond saving."

Giangregorio is clear that he wishes he had more options to restore the building before it was cited for code violations. "I'd like to see the city be more sensitive to historic structures."

Another Audio Test

This test is to see if a different MP3 encoder eliminates the clicks and pops that I ended up with on the previous test file. I used a different song, entitled "Baby Boomer".