Left In Lowell

Sorry for the lack of posting, I’m trying to manage 2-3 people on 3 or more projects at once…including myself…not that I am complaining about having work, mind you, but it puts a crimp in my blogging lifestyle.

Have you headed out to the polls? What are you seeing? I’ve been hearing about very low turnout. Make sure you get out to vote, and when you do, vote Mike Capuano!

If you’re still undecided ahead of Tuesday’s election, Mike Capuano is coming to Lowell tomorrow night, at the Olympia Restaurant on 457 Market Street from 5:30pm – 6:30pm. This is a good chance to meet Mike. As most people know, I’ve endorsed Capuano in the primary.

The primary is this Tuesday, Dec 8, so you had better get out to vote, too!

Is there a controversy regarding Lowell’s Christmas/Holiday lights? I am not talking about the secular versus religious issue but the one about the new lights in downtown Lowell.

There has been some talk on WCAP’s morning show, Dennis Shaughnessey had an article in yesterdays’ Lowell Sun quoting Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jeanne Osborn , “”The thinking [upgrading the lights] was that we wanted to refresh the look of the downtown, but I think our understanding was that it would be done little by little…A mixture of the old and new.”

And then we had this discussion during last week’s City Council meeting:

The wreaths that were hung on the Victorian lights as well as along the downtown streets were fine but there is nothing wrong with some upgradign and change. What bothered me the most about the old Christmas decoration was how long the DPW left them hanging?
Many, many weeks after Christmas had come and gone.

Those new nets with the hint of mauve mixed in with the silver lights look nice. We just need a few more. Some of the businesses have really done a nice job with their store front and others, well they are not yet in the spirit of the season.

But I figure that if the quality of holiday lights in downtown Lowell is the major municipal issue this week, we must be a pretty good shape.

This was too good not to link to. It’s gone viral today with no less than three people [in my acquaintance] linking to it by email or Facebook.

Yes, sometimes being a web designer is hell.

Update: And you have to see this crazy stuff! Awesome!

Thanks Jack for the link. City Councilor Rita Mercier and City-Councilor Elect Patrick Murphy have co-signed and issued a letter endorsing Senate Candidate Michael Capuano. They join a number of poltically-active Lowellians, including Lynne, who are supporting the Congressman.

Speaking of Lynne’s endorsement, Capuano has a long list of newspaper endorsements on his web site but he has also added the list of bloggers who have endorsed him. I am not sure if I have seen this on a candidate’s web site before.

As for Capuano, if Murphy and Mercier can get some of their supporters to come out and vote on Tuesday, he has an excellent chance of carrying this City.

Scott Brown encourages people to break Mass General Laws. That ought to win him some strong support!

Republican Scott Brown’s campaign for U.S. Senate has hit upon a new strategy: lock voters in by getting as many of them as possible to vote absentee — and by encouraging them to get their friends to do the same.
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Looks like a clever strategy. You get people locked in before they change their mind, or forget to show up on election day. But you’d never know from Brown’s website or emails that, actually, you can’t vote absentee in Massachusetts unless you are unable to vote in person on election day.

And that’s the problem with Brown’s strategy: it’s illegal.
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Now, the Brownies might argue that it’s not their job to ensure that voters comply with election laws, and that they expect voters to read and abide by the restrictions in the absentee voter application. But that’s clearly not good enough. None of the exhortations on Brown’s website or in his emails even mention that you’re ineligible to vote absentee unless you’re unable to vote in person on election day. To the contrary, a reasonable reading of Brown’s materials is that — as the website itself says — “As a supporter of Scott Brown, you don’t have to wait until January 19th to vote for Scott Brown. You can Vote Absentee, and, you can recruit fellow supporters to request the Absentee application.” Not a word about being physically unable to vote in person.

View the actual screenshot of the campaign website page encouraging people to do this at BMG.

I’m also with David, that I actually do support better absentee ballot laws and that anyone for any reason should be able to do it. However, you cannot, and I would never tell ANYone that they could, just in order to win an election.

Talk about becoming less relevant. Ah well.

Nothing to link to anymore, folks, move along, move along.

Update: There’s a highly distinct possibility their site has just blown up on the home page and on other pages - after clicking on a weather link, I got to a page that had the familiar menu and lead here to the local page. That’s some blow up though, if so.

This, my friends, is what they call a not-graceful degradation of a website when your CSS dies a horrible death.

For a bit I thought (as did others who emailed me) that the Sun went full-subscription wall (as the only prominent newsy links at the top was the “e-edition” link along with the mobile). Perhaps this is not the case, we’ll see what happens…if they are transitioning, that would be a bad thing for the paper.

This disgusting display of stupidity (not to mention sexism, do we ever read this sort of crap about male candidates??) is rightly taken down by David at BMG. Calling a serious candidate for higher office a “babe”?? And it gets worse.

All the layoffs at the Globe and this is who they kept? No wonder the paper is going bankrupt. What a piece of garbage.

Coakley may be third out of four candidates for my vote, but she doesn’t deserve this chauvinist treatment. If I were a subscriber to the Globe, I’d be canceling it. My god, is this really the state of the media??