Left In Lowell

Via MassMarrier, I read the Bay Windows interview with Governor Patrick and his daughter, who has come publicly out as a lesbian. What was her mother’s reaction? Relief that she wasn’t coming to them with a bad grade. That’s how it should be for every teen.

The Governor and his wife have spent a lot of time trying to keep their girls out of the limelight, but decided on the interview before any hurtful “gotcha” news could be posted. Best wishes to Katherine, and to her older, straight sister Sarah, who, as Patrick says, did not have to have an interview just to come out as straight. Maybe someday, a gay person will be afforded the same courtesy.

I just love the last quote from the Governor:

“You know, I can still - because we live in Massachusetts - I can still imagine what Katherine’s wedding is going to be like.” Lowering his voice, he adds, “How much it’s gonna cost.”

And how can anyone be so heartless as to want to deny her that?

Since this topic, what is a blog, and what it means to be anonymous, and where do journalistic standards come in, has been getting some pixelspace lately on LiL, I found Ryan’s commentary over at Below Boston, “Some Serious Netroots Reform,” particularly apt and timely.

First, Ryan outlines a similar idea that I have:

But in Ritchie’s case, as I suggested in the diary, his only serious mistake was to confuse blogging with commenting. Unfortunately, it’s an all-too common situation.

As someone with some experience in local campaigns, I hear time and time again people talking about comments on WickedLocal and other community papers as “the blogs.” It’s a dangerous precedent that must be kept in check, immediately.

It’s easy to see where the confusion grows: most of the population’s never been to a blog; people just think any online commentary is simply ‘blogging.’ It would be nice if we could chalk this up to one big confusion, but by allowing this misunderstanding to take place, the reputation of blogs as useful tools is being sullied, all the while the real culprits are free from actually fixing the problem.

Follow me after the break, it’s a long post… (more…)

The Sun reports on the trash collection proposal by the CM, expected revenues from which appear in the new budget. While I really applaud the direction this conversation has taken, I wonder, does it go far enough?

The plan has residents (those not in condos, anyway) paying $125/year, a modest $25 increase (hey, not much more than the last few years’ increase in that tank of gas I got this morning - $44 for a 10.7 gallon fill up!). This will entitle residents to one 65-gallon trash bin full of trash per week. But I wonder, why not pay per bag for all of the trash you put at the curb, reduce or eliminate the per-year fee (just make sure the per-bag fee covers the difference), and really truly encourage recycling, and real PAYT?

Maybe this half-step measure is getting us partway so we can consider the further incentive-development of total PAYT. Perhaps we will have to revisit going whole hog. As Lynch notes, “even under the new system, and with a 25 percent citywide recycling rate between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2009 — the second half of the fiscal year — there still will be a deficit of nearly $2.5 million next year.”

For our household, I could put two, sometimes three weeks’ trash into a 65 gallon bin. (By the way, are we going to have to get uniform bins now so no one sneaks in a bigger bin?) Then again, I already recycle everything and compost my food scraps, so I know that our trash stream is much smaller, even for our two-person household, than it would be otherwise. Perhaps limiting trash to a 65-gallon bin is incentive enough for most average households in the city.

So how much trash do you produce, and what are your thoughts on the proposal, which only goes partway towards PAYT, but in my opinion, at least heads in the right direction?