To make meaing of our losses, we diminish the losses ot others and make future losses more likely. If you believe that war is a law of nature, our childrens future ceases to exist.

Rumors abound, but most are untrue.

There has not been a significant write-in campaign in a very long time and there has not been one since the computer system was purchased to “streamline” the tabulation of the Proportional Representation voting system that Cambridge alone of all U.S. cities uses. Voters express a list of preferences for City Council and School Committee. The software has to keep track of the preference list for each voter and transfer votes to the second choice if the first choice is elected and so on. This used to all be done by hand. It was quite a social event lasting four or more days. The computer changed all that. Until now. The ‘late campaign manager’ who missed the nomination paper deadline for Marj Decker, has unknowingly forced a partial return to the hand count system. Except that in this case, the Election Commission has to look at all the “Auxiliary Ballots” including write-ins that have no ambiguity at all.

The Election Commission released unofficial results last night. Normally, when there are 50 or 100 Auxiliary Ballots the Unofficial Results give a pretty good idea of what’s going on. But with over 3590 Auxiliary Ballots that is no longer true. Quota, the number of votes required to elect a City Councilor will be something under 1606. It would be possible for two people to be electd on Auxiliary Ballots alone. But it didn’t happen.

The Election Commission released the computer printout of the count of all the machine readable ballots including tranfers and a determination of elected vs. defeated. Above it, in small print, they placed suitable disclaimers. But, many people didn’t read them. They read the big print in the table including the words “Elected” and “Defeated’ which even 18 hours later are still not meaningful. But since you have been suitably warned, I can let you look at what the Election Commission posted.

There are remarks made within the “Cordon Zone” that get overheard and misinterpreted. Most of the write-ins are for Marj Decker. A single scanner was reprogrammed to count for Decker, ballots with her name in write-in position one.

At 4:30 P, Executive Director Marsha Weinerman announced that the count would go into Wednesday, but with 1000 of 3590 auxiliary ballots counted and the kinks worked out of the system, she is optimist that it won’t go into Thursday.

The polls are closed now. The ballot collecting machines are all at the Senior. So too are the “Auxiliary Ballot Boxes.”

My ballot which had two write-ins was rejected by the machine. It went into the Aux Box. In1999, there were so few write-ins, the Election Commission counted them on the spot. They ran the PR computer program. The results were announced at 10:00 P. This time there are too many. The Election Commission is going to start counting at 9:00 AM. Nothing will be known tonight.

Goodnight!

12:58P Give me a few minutes.

1:04P I’m thinking.

4:10P I had to go to a cosmology seminar to regain my composure – watching galaxy clusters collide. It’s peaceful in some ways. They mostly pass through each other, but the gas gets striped out of them. Black holes are very violent. They eat matter spiralling in to them and spit x-rays and radio waves out. Fortunately none of them are in our immediate neighborhood – the solar system. There’s a really big one at the center of the Milky Way, but it won’t eat us anytime soon. We have angular momentum. Nothing dissipates angular momentum in a serious way except gravitational radiation.¹

I don’t know if I can fully explain my title before the polls close. For now, let just indicate my choices for City Council:

1. Philip Fenstermacher

I will write myself in. No candidate has put forward a platform that seems to me truly progressive in terms of the cacophony of crises we face. I drew papers to get on the ballot, but got sick and had to go to the hospital. I was somewhat victimized by the false rumors about how a sticker campaign works, but if I had been serious I would have checked with the Election Commission. I have no campaign manager and no money. My platform most likely would have caused Glenn Koocher to brand me as unelectable – at best I don’t think Cambridge has ever elected a homeless person. It would be an honor to be the first. It is unlikely. I will get at least one vote and surely less than 50 which, by the rules of proportional representation, means I personally will not pass to the second round as a candidate. If by some miracle, I make it into later rounds, I will be cut from the bottom. If you want a protest gesture that won’t cost you anything, sticker me in.

2. Lawrence Adkins

An eloquent plain speaking African-American man from Riverside. If elected, I think he would probably revive the spirit of Saundra Graham. But he won’t be. He got 15% of quota on the first round in ‘97. He’ll survive into the second round. My vote will transfer to him. But he doesn’t have much money and his ‘97 performance was far behind the incumbents. It’s doubtful he’ll be seated. So.

3. Minka van Beuzkom

A woman from Central Square who has been active in the area especially in the areas of public health and environment. I don’t know if she ever followed on her threat to bring some of the rats that are infesting parts of Cambridge into the Sullivan Chamber, but I like the spirit. She pulled of a Toomey with her nomination papers. She gathered a full 100 signatures over 4th of July weekend – the sign of an dedicated organized core of support. The bad news is that she has 1/3 the money of Davis and Decker. The good news is she has almost as much money as Seidel. She has a good chance – not a sure thing.

4. Marj Decker has been the most stridently antiwar counselor, but she hasn’t solved the problem that has plagued the peace movement for as long as there has been one. How do you answer these two questions at the same time.

I. Who really benefits from war?
II. What did my daughter die for?

Nobody else has. I have ideas, but …

Marj is good on the potpourri of progressive issues. I do wish though that she wouldn’t talk to me as if she didn’t put her pants on one leg at a time.

Anyway, despite the gaff with her election papers, she’s an incumbant with a strong base and more money than anybody else! The only real question mark is, will people not want to write her in? I’m not counting her out. Despite any rumors to the contrary, a sticker candidate is treated the same as any other. You can vote them at any preference. If you like Marj to any degree, sticker her in!

5:48P It’s getting late so I must get sketchy. Besides if my vote hasn’t stuck by this point, I can’t find someone to give it to who both needs it and has a chance of being elected. Anyway.

5. Silvia Glick

6. Tom Stohlman

7. Kathy Podgers

———

¹You may occasionally come across the phrase ‘gravity waves’. This is the name that physicists of the last century assigned to waves propagating on the surface of water. Gravity provides the restoring force.

I was in Roxbury visiting Project HipHop. Deputy Director D’Mon Bills took me to coffee at nearby Haley House. I kind of deserted my host to get a snap of Boston Mayor Menino. Unfortunately, the lovely Dottie Wells, his steadfast publicist, had her back to me. She claimed she remembered me from the Firefighters rally outside the State of the City at the Strand. She’s a publicist.

That’s all very nice, but I didn’t see them at the Rally and March for Jobs and A Real Economic Recovery.

Whereas:

and the guy who’s always with the people:

Coming soon. Breaking news first.

If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

-An alleged¹ Ancient Chinese Proverb cited by Al Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture 2007.

We need to go far, quickly.

-Al Gore Nobel Peace Prize Lecture 2007.

We need to go farther, quicker than anybody thought.

-The guy by the door 2009 in response to 350.

A day of action, which will last for three days, begins tomorrow. Here in Cambridge, MIT students will gather in the Killian Court² with laptops form the 350 symbol. 12:00 Noon – 12:20 PM.

Students of the Amigos School 100 Putnam Ave. will be taking pledges from adults to walk, bike or take public transportation. The goal is a total of 350 miles.

¹I don’t know Al’s source for this Ancient Chinese Proverb. I will pose the question to Harvard’s own Di Yin Lu. If she tells me there is such an ACP, I’ll believe her. I am already indebted to her for making me aware of the Public Knowledge Project. I try to follow the Enclosure Movement on the Internet and responses to it, but I did not hear of PKP from the Berkman Center.

²Killian Court is in the shadow of the Great Dome on the River side of the Infinite Corridor.

Multiple camera crews were are in Harvard Square shooting for “The Town”. It is directed by and stars ben Affleck. I was told Ben was around, but I did not recognize him.¹ I think it more likely that what I saw was second unit stuff.

The script is a screen adaptation of a novel by Chuck Hogan, “Prince of Thieves.”

¹In addition to seeing him in the Littauer Center [North Yard edition] when he spoke in support of the Living Wage Campaign, I passed about a foot from him when he was shooting “Gone Baby Gone” in Uphams Corner^A in 2006. I didn’t stop to talk, I had to catch the bus.

^AThanks to bloggers and commentors at Universal Hub for straightening out the confusion of the New York Times. Cantaloni’s is not in South Boston. It is in Uphams Corner, Dorchester. As for the spelling of the bar’s name, there is no sign. It’s called whatever a particular long time resident tells you it is.

The Cambridge churches have been ahead of the City government for some time now. I caught the 350 bell ringing last year. Now:

First Church Welcomed Bill at 11:00 AM [Mp3 of the sermon]

And Memorial Church is ahead of official¹ Harvard:

Memorial Church Welcomed at Bill 2:00 PM

¹My way of saying ‘administration’ without being too pejorative. And the Late Larry wanted to move it out of the Yard.

²Oh My God! I thought Memorial Church was some flavor of Protestant. You know. Martin Luther, ‘priesthood of all believers’ and like that. But this, which Reverand Peter refers to as “10 feet above contradiction”, brings to mind time honored phrases like “papist idolatry.” Well at least they had the Onetarian guy from First Parish with his guitar. The First Church [UCC] guy was there too, but he don’t sing. There was another UCC guy from the Mass conference, but he didn’t sing either. Despite the recent schism between the Firsts, they got along amicably. This abrupt climate change thing must be big.

I have failed you.

-Richard Clarke 2001
-the guy by the door 2009

I forget to warn you that HONKFEST was coming. What is Honkfest¹? It is the Festival of Activist Street Bands. such as the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band:

Devoted followers of tgbtd will remember them from The State of the Union Rally in Davis Square.

Also in the line up is the Bread and Puppet Circus Band. They are an alternate incarnation of a group that I first experienced in college at the height of the Vietnam war - the Bread and Puppet Theater. They used to publish and propagate The Cheap Art Manifesto. I will have to ask them why it’s not on their own website.

Update: Open Media Boston has the after-action photo/video report.

¹Someone suggested to me that Honkfest is a conference at Harvard to which neither Professor Gates nor Officer Crowley were invited. Not so, in the current instance at least.

Democracy Now! traces it’s heritage to the Pacifica Foundaation which is an alternative to mainstream radio. In 2001 it morphed into a radio and TV broadcast. With the rise of streaming video DN! added it to its portfolio of distribution modes. Very recently, DN! has added the BitTorrent file sharing protocol to it’s portfolio. Because of the higher efrfective bandwidth of BitTorrent, the DN! torrent has a raster that is comparable to broadcast television. The stream that tracks the live broadcast at 8:00 AM Eastern and repeats shortly thereafter is much smaller. But you do have to wait for them to put the torrent together usually by 11:00 AM. Also, if the main site goes down, as happened recently, most of the clients/servers in the BitTorrent swarm stay online so that the protocol can still work. And the torrents live on a separate server so you can get the torrent here.

Next, DN! and Twitter.

He laid the mathematical foundation for modern computer science.

A lot was known about German positions prior to the Allied Landing in Normandy June 1944. The Allies had Ultra intelligence. Folks at Bletchley Park broke the German Enigma code.

Alan Turing had a lot to do with the success of that effort. But he was a homosexual. The British Government arrested him and chemically castrated him for it. British computer scientist John Graham-Cumming thinks it’s time for the British Government to apologize. His petition has been noticed by the BBC and CNN. Cameron Buckner thinks the world should be heard.

I am enthusiastic about this idea, but for one thing. You should not have to be a genius to be treated with dignity.

Standby for a genuinely astonding press release, supplanting this:

My leg became infected which required 4 days in the hospital on IV antibiotics. I then took oral antibiotics for 9 days. The rash did go down considerably, but new blotches appeared outside the originally infected area – all over my body infact. It seems I’m allergic to Bactrim. So I’m on immunosuppressants to get rid of the rash I got from the Bactrim. I have not been able to do much beyond minmal survival. I truly hate to disappoint my throng¹ of supporters especially those who are officers within the harvard administration.

*If you saw this post before, you have not lost your grip. It did say ‘Infant Mortality’.

¹Most people would say “throngs”, but my sense of self-importance, though large, is nonetheless finite.

I answer a question with a question. The Cambridge Chronicle asks, “Who Wants to Run for City Council?” I didn’t have my media consultant and make-up artist with me. I’ve worked on four other candidates campaigns. Three of them won. Only one of them do I regret. It was no one of the ones the won. I probably need to talk to the one that lost, but it will not be an easy conversation.

If I had been on top of my game, I would have hung out and caught the interview with Minka van Beuzekom. Most everybody is some sort of environmentalist nowadays. But the effectiveness of different approaches depends on political economy more than climate science. And even the wonderful folks at The International Forum on Globalization have given only passing notice of the fact that when America finally decides to go green, labor will do most of the work.

When I first met Steven Chu at his talk at MIT, he mentioned that, in dealing with the abrupt climate change crisis, there is a lot of room for conservation using existing technology. He then proceeded to ignore that wisdom, and talk about avenues for research. I chided him about this. He was then the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He was basically taking care of business.

This is important because conservation is something that can be done in the near term. The danger of a research dependent program is that might has the implication that the rest of us should wait for the experts. The experts may have answers for the long term, but we need to make it possible for there to be a long term. When Steven Chu appeared at Harvard he said a lot about research but he did mention that building energy use can be reduced 80%. That’s the way somebody who’s just gotten an honorary doctorate suggests there is more Harvard could do than research.

The HEET idea is one of a large number of things that are worth doing. It is definitely acting locally on a global issue and it is good economics. [Hopefully it will become more apparent that these are the same thing.] But it has a definite focus on a selected portion of Cambridge buildings .i.e. individual homes. We need to do all of Cambridge’s buildings, city, commercial, university. Lesley College will be very responsive, if they haven’t already. Harvard Administration will quote Ban Ki Moon, “global warming is the defining issue of our age.” But they will point to their tepid commission report,

Harvard University has committed to a GHG reduction goal of a 30 percent reduction from Fiscal Year 2006 levels by 2016, including growth.

Is this about the ‘defining issue of the age’ or a fad that might blow over in a decade?

From former Harvard Crimson President Bill McGibbon.

A primer for those not up on Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transexual matters. Here in Boston, a weeklong celebration of Pride culminated on June 13. In Providence, a weeklong celebration of Pride culminated on June 20. In New York, a weeklong celebration of Pride culminates today. Why? It all goes back to a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village – the Stonewall Inn – in the wee hours of the morning on June 28, 1969.

DemocracyNow! spent a large part of the hour on Friday on it.  |  Wikipedia has a very long article about it.

Update: June 28, 2009 Fort Worth, TX; Rainbow Lounge

“It felt so very Stonewall, but without the standing up for ourselves.”     -Robert H.

It’s been on the wires. Police claim that it was a routine Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission inspection but here are eyewitness accounts from LBGT  publication the Dallas Voice. Chad Gibson,  hospitalized for bleeding in his brain, has stabilized but will remain in the hospital. Further updates will appear in the Weblog of the Dallas Voice, Instant Tea.

It was the very beginning of my PhD from the edge of hell. We had just moved in to an apartment in Brooklyn. We had heard a commotion outside. “He’s got a gun!” Gilbert said. Not long after someone broke in through the airshaft window. It was little Michael, about 10 or 12, next door. When it got cold, we had no heat. It was less than the best of times.

A voice – a youthful voice – another Michael – more like 8 – it lifted me. Thanks Michael.

I cannot find a picture in the public domain of the Michael I remember. He was perfect the way he was. Or, if you must, he was perfect the way God made him.

Fanpop has a copyrighted image.

Update from DemocracyNow!

Amy¹ had commentary that brought insight to the discussion of Michael’s later life that I had not heard in the pop-fanzine coverage. A quote from James Baldwin that I would not dare to paraphrase. Margo Jefferson, Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic and Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University pointed to hints about gender, race, and art that may never be understood.² It is a challenge. I rise.

Mourning at the Apollo.

In my ten years in Harlem, hundreds of walks on 125th st., I never went to a show there. Scores of artists who later became famous played there early in their careers. Most of them were African-American. But there was also white Texas rocker Buddy Holly, “I’m surprised to see y’all too!”³

Amy interviewed folks gathered at the Apollo to remember Michael.

Fans mourning the death of Michael Jackson at the Apollo Theater this weekend, and tens of thousands of them were signing and giving—sending best wishes and condolences, long sheets of paper along 125th Street.

¹Democracy Now! anchor and executive producer Amy Goodman graduated from Harvard in 1985. She was an anthropology concentrator.
²Amy is sooo smart.

³According to the movie, The Buddy Holly Story at least. This is not listed among the inaccuracies of the movie.

He Who Has the Gold, Makes the Rules.

-The Wizard of Id.

It doesn’t have to be so.

-the guy by the door

The Crimson reported on the e-mails we all got. The Crimson reported some workers’ responses. The No Layoffs campaign was more demonstrative. More coverage at Open Media Boston.

Shared vs. Commodity Knowledge

Public libraries have a special place in a world which is, with a few notable exceptions, increasingly commoditizing knowledge. They are the way society arranges for copyrighted works to be shared by people who cannot otherwise afford them. It is an approximation to the idea that knowledge is free. But of course it isn’t. It must be paid for and managed.

The Watertown Free Public Library

Watertown has done a remarkable job. They have a spacious new building with ample stacks, computers, and pleasant staff. Clyde Younger and Anna Kuwabara are two members of the Board of Trustees running for re-election. If you go to the library you can see their record. I rest my case.

The Longfellow Park Latter Day Saints Chapel was destroyed by fire. Pictures of the early phase of the fire were posted almost in real time at a collaborative blog Faith-Promoting Rumor: exploring Mormon thought, culture, and texts .

Videos taken by J. Souza posted on YouTube by knowsaydo and a video by …posted by cambchron give a fairly complete narrative. My only contribution is to try to put them in sequence.

Smoke is pouring out of the steeple, but no flames are visible yet. A firefighter arrives pulling a line. A gentleman from the Quaker Meeting House offers refuge. [J. Souza]

Firefighters on the portion of the roof that would later collapse. [J. Souza]

Fire companies have lines going in the front door. A firefighter comes out to look through the front window. The roof collapses. He motions to firefighters inside. Out now! He goes in to get them. Firefighters with pikes and oxygen tanks emerge. [J. Souza]

The firefighters emerge pulling the lines from the building and set up to fight the fire through the windows. [J. Souza]

This has to be later when companies from neighboring municipalities have arrived. [J. Souza]

On scene interview with Cambridge Fire Department Chief Gerald Reardon. The fire is under control at this point. Interview with Grant Bennett LDS spokesman, “We’ll definitely rebuild.” Interview with parishoner Carolina Galvis. Footage of parishioners in a human chain moving recovered articles to the Quaker Meeting House.

KnowSayDo also has links to aerial photos of the day after by Chris Hirsch and Mathew Wall and interior shots by Hutchison on the Chapel Roof Collapses page. They are extensive. This one from Chris Hirsch is a good synopsis.

Rebuilding started today May 20, 2009:

It rained in Boston, but some stalwarts showed.

I’ll try to find some reportage from around the country.

It was Sunday. I wouldn’t have know about my sin, but for Amy.

More to come.

Attorney Barry Wilson and Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner at Moakley Court House.

Attorney John McNeil, Assistant to U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Michael Sullivan, argued for a ‘protective order’ against Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner. If granted, the order will forbid Turner to publically rebut evidence and insinuations of evidence previously released to the press by the FBI. Attorney Barry Wilson characterized this as “closing the barn door after the horse is gone.”

U.S. Attorney Sullivan’s Record: A history of prosecutorial misconduct?

“The egregious failure of the government to disclose plainly material exculpatory evidence in this case extends a dismal history of intentional and inadvertent violations of the government’s duties to disclose in cases assigned to this court,” Chief Judge for Massachusetts Max Wolf Jan. 21, 2009.

Turner pointed to the recent rebuke of U.S. Attorney Micheal Sullivan by Chief Judge for Massachusetts Max Wolf.  While focussed on a single case, the judge mentioned nine other cases. Turner asked the press, “Where were you?”

[Previously on 'the guy by the door' Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark Joins Chuck Turner Denounces Political Targeting by Federal Attorney Sullivan.]

Turner had more. I’ll give links when I find them. They are not easy to find.

“You are as responsible for the corruption of the justice system as the U.S. attorney is,” Turner told reporters before leaving to chants of “Chuck! Chuck!”

At least as far back as the Harvard Living Wage Campaign, Boston City Councilor and Harvard Alum (’62) Chuck Turner has stood for Harvard Labor. Since his arrest on corruption charges the key prosecution witness is “no longer cooperating.” [See next post.]

The Boston Globe wrote the following:

“‘Chuck is naive,’ Wilburn said in an interview at the Globe. ‘The only thing I said to him was, ‘Take your wife out to dinner.’ It’s conceivable that it could have been a gift or a campaign contribution.’

“He went on to further distinguish between the two cases, saying: ‘Dianne [Wilkerson] is a thief. Chuck isn’t. Dianne knew better. Chuck is a victim of circumstance.’”

Jack Pramas¹ of Open Media Boston has more.

The Support Chuck Turner website announced a teach-in Tuesday February 24, 6:30 – 8:00 PM Cafeteria Roxbury Community College Student Center. About 100 people attended. It was a Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Honkie Holdover Hippie crowd. Charles Clemons, co-founder of Boston’s only Black owned radio station Touch 106.1 FM announced his Walk for Power. Chuck was characteristically electric. Lady Enchantress performed her song Changes [Video on her site].

¹Jack quite properly includes a full disclosure of his relationship with Chuck. My own is nowhere near as extensive. I will just tell one brief story.

We had gathered at Faneuil Hall to confront the government scientists and PR hacks^I about the proposed construction of a Bio Safety Level 4 Lab in Boston’s South End neighborhood. After the gummint made its presentation there was a public testimony. People lined up to get to the microphone. It was a racially mixed crowd, but unified in opposition to the lab. Nonetheless, the black people ended up at the back of the bus – except for State Representative Gloria Fox who went first. Chuck Turner was in the back of the line with his constituents. The gummint had a young under assistant twit in charge of trying to limit public testimony constantly cutting people off. I worried that they would close the place down before Chuck had a chance to speak. Claire Allen, co-chair of Safety Net, thought it would be OK to try to move Chuck up the line, but Gloria told me, “He won’t come. He won’t leave his constituents.” He finally did speak with fire the under assistant twit had no hope of putting out.

^IIt was very hard to tell the difference between the scientists and the PR hacks.

Doctors from the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School gave free consultations to students¹ to improve the quality of their sleep. WGBH staff gave out free “Got Sleep?” T shirt’s and staffers from the University Health Service Wellness Center gave Free backrubs ¹. I’m told they plan to take this show on the road throughout the University, but in the meantime, their website is:

http://understandingsleep.org/

¹at least one staff member participated.