Month: February 2015

Not this one.

“A Grove Street man was reported dumping cat litter onto Grove Street from a second-floor apartment. When officers spoke to him at 11 a.m. Wednesday, the man agreed to stop dumping the litter in the street and instead throw it into a garbage bag.”

“A 21-year-old Gloucester man who was subdued by pepper spray after allegedly assaulting three police officers and a taxicab driver over the weekend while wearing only his underwear is facing multiple charges.”

“Gloucester police arrested a man in connection with a past assault during which the victim said he lost his front tooth, which was found on the ground afterward. The victim told police that the incident occurred on Rogers Street after a “difference of opinion.” “(The victim’s) mouth was bloody and had an apparent missing front tooth that he was able to find on the ground,” the police report states. “He also reported that a few other teeth were loose enough to move around with his tongue.”

“A disturbance reported at a Washington Street restaurant at 7:03 p.m. Thursday turned out to be a man talking loudly on his cell phone “trying to get someone to pay for his food,” according to police.”

“Police responded to a disturbance at a restaurant on Main Street at 12:45 p.m. Saturday. An officer on the scene reported that there was a “man face down in (a) pizza pie.”

somehow relevant.

Apparently, a patron of the Minglewood bar on Rogers Street was “making fun of” another man for wearing overalls, prompting the fight. Police responded to around 4:30 p.m. for an apparent fight. Upon arrival, Officer David D’Angelo spoke with a man who “had dried blood on his face,” according to D’Angelo’s report. This man said he had been punched in the face twice by the man wearing overalls after the two “exchanged words and profanities.” D’Angelo then caught up with the other man involved, who said the other was “making fun of him for wearing overalls.” The bartender on scene told police that the man not wearing overalls approached the overall wearer “aggressively, using threatening language.” He apparently got close to the overall wearer and that’s when he was allegedly punched.”

“Police responded to Goodwin Road for a resident reporting that a neighbor was throwing potatoes at his house. Upon arrival, the resident said “that it had been an ongoing problem as his house has been bombarded with potatoes in the past.” The resident added that it appeared to be three youths throwing the tuberous crop this time. Police went over to the neighbor’s house and the residents said “it would not happen again.”

A Gloucester man may have been seen stumbling down Pleasant Street on Thursday, but he was certainly able to run when police asked to speak with him, leading to his arrest on an active warrant.

[Today’s Guest Blogger is Adam Kuhlmann, who has previously written other amazing guest pieces like Wanton Seagulls and Other Enduring Charms of Good Harbor and A Survival Guide to Running in Gloucester.]

While no one would ever mistake me for a tough guy, I like to think of myself as not altogether delicate. I take my whiskey neat. I run for long distances. I teach seventh grade, and in eleven years in the classroom I’ve used only one sick day—this despite the fact that, as far as disease vectors go, middle school children are second only to Victorian-era water pumps. But I have a confession, one that would shame my German forebears, who fought in foxholes and worked the railroads and engaged in all sorts of genuine hard-assery. The recent stretch of frigid temperatures and unrelenting snowfall has left me broken.

Yes, I mean physically. Last week, after a particularly grueling session with the snow shovel, I found that an obscure muscle in my left buttock had seized up. Apparently, this muscle is attached to other fibers and tendons in the leg and low back, which triggered a cascade of painful spasms. By the time I sought the comfort of my bed that night, I was forced to scrabble through my apartment on all fours. My wife told me that, stripped to my underwear, I looked like Gollum, a creature whose Vitamin D levels also matched my own. The next morning, for the first time in my life, I made an appointment with a massage therapist. She was a pleasant young woman—strong of grip and briskly competent, but not especially tactful. While she kneaded my ass like a 2-lb French boule, I asked her whether she’d tended to many other injured snow shovelers. “Oh, yes,” she laughed. Then, a beat later, she added, “But they were all quite a bit older than you.”

The Arctic weather has also taken a psychic toll. I’m an outdoors person. Generally, I approach winter as an opportunity to ensconce myself in down and roam about on snowshoes or cross-country skis. So when school is cancelled and I get trapped in a house that—with drifts gradually eclipsing the windows—has become a claustrophobic den of ice, I grow a little antsy. I can only read for so long. Cleaning the house proves a better distraction, but I’m not sure the wall plates of my electrical outlets need more than two coats of polish. When the storms finally break, I emerge like a hibernating bear, gulping fresh air and squinting at the dazzling whiteness of the world. Yet as much as I’d like to plunge into the muffled trails of Ravenswood or Dogtown, there is scarcely enough time to clear the driveway and wait in line at Market Basket before the next storm strikes. If winter is indeed an old man, why doesn’t he need a longer refractory period?

Here I am complaining about being cooped up, and I don’t even have kids. Yesterday, as I panted against my snow shovel, I watched a fellow my age trundle down the street carrying a toddler in his arms. Following at his heels were what appeared to be three pastel-colored trash bags—but what, upon closer inspection, turned out to be additional children under the age of eight. My God, I thought. This man had been responsible not only for feeding and cleaning his brood, but also for entertaining them—indoors—for three straight days. Sure, the first grader can be assigned to monitor carbon monoxide levels in the basement, but how do you occupy a four-year-old for that long?

Yet the mental strain is more than mere cabin fever. My brain is not its normal, free-ranging self. Just as mounds of snow have encroached on our roadways, giving streets the feel of a luge track, I have grown narrow in my interests and outlook. All I think about is snow. The browser history on my laptop is clogged with weather sites—and not just the typical clips from weather.com, in which paunchy white guys straddle plow mounds to add visual interest to their shouty reporting. I’m talking about esoteric shit from NOAA. One of my favorites, titled “Probabilistic Winter Precipitation Guidance,” allows me to watch colorful blobs of data crawl over maps of New England—and to remember why AP Statistics handed my ass to me in a wicker basket. In the evenings, I try to set aside the charts and graphs and relax with a glass of wine. But my thoughts curdle with anxiety as I await a call from my principal, bearing the fate of tomorrow’s school day. When the phone does ring, his recorded voice sounds tired, defeated. Primed by my hours of statistical study, I can’t help but compute the exact likelihood that he is currently fielding an irate call from a parent desperate to be rid of her children.

After several iterations of this same routine, I’ve found that commiserating with others does offer some relief. Yesterday, I helped a friend to excavate her heating vents, conveniently located at ground level. As we waded to our navels in one particularly majestic drift, she shouted to me above the swirling wind, “What about Canadians? Is this just their life?” “I guess so,” I said, my mouth filling with needles of snow. But Canadians signed up for this. Knowing it was a devil’s bargain, they accepted brutal winters in exchange for immaculately kept public spaces and deeply polite neighbors. Gloucesterites have signed no such contract. Yes, I know it’s the North. And, yes, I know there are plenty of perks to living here—among them, beaches, art, food, and the old-timer who looks like Santa. But the plagues of empty nip bottles and dysfunctional urban planning should be more than enough to keep from spoiling us. We don’t need 70 inches of snow to justify our charmed existence.

So, considering the unfairness of it all, I’ve been pretty impressed by our city’s resilience. Of course, there have been acts of wanton dickishness, like the private contractor who plows the snow from the driveway across the street directly into my own. But, for the most part, I have witnessed patience, generosity, and good cheer. I have a neighbor named Gary who owns a candy-apple red riding snowblower. It is the size of an industrial corn harvester, and where he stores it is a complete mystery. Wearing a smart matching red snowsuit and knit cap, he works his way from house to house, aiding the shovelers in their efforts. At first, the self-reliant side of me got a little puckered by Gary’s altruism, and I would try to finish before he pulled up alongside my place, flashing a grin beneath his trim, unironic mustache. But lately I’ve taken to sleeping in and flagging him down like those little guys standing by the gates at the airport.

I’ve also been impressed by the creativity of other neighbors, such as the gentleman in the adjacent house who has elected to clear his driveway with nothing more than the spade and pickaxe of your average gold prospector. Another resourceful fellow uses his battered Dodge truck. It’s not that the vehicle is fitted with a plow. Rather, he simply guns the engine until the cumulative heat of friction and exhaust melts the surrounding snow. Then, he slams the truck repeatedly forward and reverse, creating an ever-widening aperture. After an hour or so, he has successfully extricated himself, and he can proceed to Flanagan’s for more diesel.

More than anything, it’s this can-do Gloucester spirit that has ushered me through the darkest moments. Well, that and Maker’s Mark. And ibuprofen. But while I can’t claim to welcome the weatherman’s announcement that—unbelievably—more snow is on the way, neither do I feel irrevocably compelled to sink an icicle into his heart. Like me, he seems pretty tired. Alongside the burden of giving everyone around Boston the bad news, he probably has his own driveway to shovel.

Rand, smoking

110 year old philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand perished in a snowstorm that covered much of the Northeast this week. Thought to have died in 1982, it was revealed she simply faked her own death to avoid paying debts on the successful treatment of her lung cancer which ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, her being philisopically opposed to Medicare.

Having escaped to East Gloucester to live under an assumed name, she was known for loudly rejecting help from neighbors. “Do not condescend to me with charity,” she shouted at Bob D’Palazola who just recently tried to remove snow from her driveway with his snowblower as he had for many elderly neighbors on the street.

“I thought she was nuts,” said the plumber and good Samaritan, “Considering how much she smokes there is no way she should be out there shoveling herself. I tried to get her reconsider but she started yelling about how indebtedness corrupting the fiber of the soul of man and I’m like screw it, Ill just go do my brother-in-laws house.”

D’Palazola after giving up on the woman he correctly referred to as a “Batshit crazy Russian lady”.

Other neighbors were shunned by the centenarian objectivist when they attempted to bring gifts of fresh baked cinnamon buns and hot cocoa during a “senior wellness check” organized by residents. Mary Ellen Katzen, a local volunteer, claimed to have been berated at Rand’s door. “She started yelling about how the strong owe nothing to the weak and I was just like, ‘have some cinnamon buns’ but she  batted them away told me to blow them into brass coins and spread them at the winds for the poor of spirit. What does that even mean?”

Rand’s long and eventful life was ended by an hit-and-run with a snowplow as she attempted to shuffle down to the Richdale for cigarettes. The as-yet-unidentified truck most likely belonged to an unlicensed plow company and was reported by witnesses to have a Gadsden flag sticker on the back windshield.

Also an out of date inspection sticker

Rand is survived by several hundred thousand lonely men in fedoras.