Author: admin

I hear an ongoing chatter that online engagement is taking us away from “real” life. For a while you couldn’t turn on NPR without some fear-essay about how significant portions of our lives are increasingly being played out in the digital space. These warnings are always severe and begin with some horrible story about a couple in Korea or somewhere who neglected a child because they were playing a video game. I love NPR as much as the next thick-framed glasses pseudo-intellectual but…um…guys…seems like you’re stretching it on this one. Kids get left in casino parking lots all the time right here at home. People get addicted to weird stuff and just because some very sick parent abandons their kid to attend Stamp Expo 2014 is no reason to damn all philately to the deepest pit of Hell.

Not that kind of stamp

We all know the media has a weird obsession with ‘balance’ in stories that don’t have two equal sides: “We’re going to talk to an expert in the early career of The Beatles for the upcoming 50th anniversary of their first world tour and for counterpoint, a man who believes all reality is instead a construct created by Satan. Mr. Dick, we’ll start with you…” Yet for all the tongue clucking and finger wagging alongside their obsessive tweeting and attempt to get in on the digital revolution, the media seems to rarely if ever ask the question: “Hey, what things are things better now?”

You know what’s better? A lot of stuff. For one, people are less lonely. There are way fewer isolated folks now. That, friends, is a major fucking achievement. The media always seems to focus is on the terrible communities of the Internet, the crazy-ass women-hating sites like that weirdo murderer belonged to. Racists, fringe sexual groups, conspiracy theorists, Bronies. But never so much on the vast numbers of people who discover each other through a love of something totally obscure: Bridges in Poland. Pickling weird vegetables. Making little hats for ferrets. Each of these connections is a point of contact between actual humans.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book in 1976 called “Slapstick or Lonesome No More.” It’s not his best work, even he gave it a “C” later in life grading his own books. But the central conceit was excellent: The President of the United States decides to give everyone a new middle name. So I might be “James Chipmunk-13 Dowd.” The middle name is random, there are a few hundred of them, things like “Uranium” and “Oyster” and “Chickadee”.

Also had Juggalo on cover

The point of the novel was now that now that our society is so mobile and people have left traditional family villages where everyone takes care of each other, assigning random citizens the same middle name would make them a proxy for relations. If you meet another Chipmunk or Oyster if that’s your new middle name,  you’re supposed to say hello, agree to help water their plants when they go on vacation and lend them your lawnmower. If you have the same name and the numbers are close you’re considered an immediate relation so you should visit them in the hospital, lend them money you don’t expect to get back and say nice things at their funerals.

I am sad that Kurt V never got to see the full fledged Internet. He died during it’s early stages and is oft quoted as saying, “The Internet is proof that an infinite number of monkeys will not write Hamlet”, then it turns out he didn’t say that, but said he wished he did, which sort of sums up the problem. But I think he would have been pleased at the way things have turned out.

For all it’s foibles, we are less lonely now thanks to the Internet. I used to travel all over the world for work with just a shortwave radio and BBC World Service as my singular companion. Now I can be in one of those desperately long  midnight cab rides to a business hotel in a business park and I can see what  my wife, my kids, my family and friends are up to right from a device in my pocket. They can make me laugh, show me a funny thing, even follow-up on an argument we had and I’m no longer stuck in the suburbs of Columbus, Instead I’m part of a matrix of relationships that spreads all over the world.

I would prefer it if these guys only met online, actually

And that’s where it gets weird, I now have friends I’ve never met. We’ve been introduced through other people on the web. This has been going on for a long time. For instance a guy with the same name as mine out in California has a similar construct to his gmail address. Years ago he started emailing me with, “Hey man, you’re aunt is sending me pics of your kids. They are pretty great shots, I thought you’d want these.” We started a conversation and eventually friended each other on social media. At the time we both worked in medical devices and we ended up talking to each other about a few things. He’s cool.

The Clam has introduced me to even more people I might never have found. Some neighbors, some fellow travelers in snark and love of our crazy little burgh. Ive found it’s weird to meet people you’ve been communicating with online for weeks finally in the flesh. It’s like, “Oh, hello. Nice to finally be in the presence of the flesh machine your brain is carried around in. Does it drink coffee?” And even weirder is saying “goodbye” to people you are online all the time with. I had lunch with some guys in Boston last week who I’m collaborating with on a project with. When our meeting was over we all knew we’d be back online messaging and editing the work we’re up to.

So it was odd to say, “Goodbye”. Even “See ya’ later” was wrong because as soon as I got on the train I knew we’d all be pinging each other with follow-ups. I wanted to say, “Adios to your meat- sack…” And what’s even weirder is that it used to be the primary reason for an in-person meeting was because conference calls and sharing documents are inefficient. Now, for the kind of work many of us are doing, not being able to share and collaborate on documents in real time is a limitation. Meat meetings are slower, less is accomplished and hard to schedule and get to.

Please fill my containment unit with espresso

Welcome to the future.

As a society we’ve crossed a certain threshold.  Even KT and I, during the rare times we meet in a coffee shop to work on The Clam, sit laptop lid to laptop lid and communicate through our machines. This is going to only expand as things like virtual reality get better. Some balk at the idea of seeing the Louvre through VR, but you wouldn’t balk at a disabled kid being able to experience some of the wonders of the world tha he or she might otherwise not be able to, right? That means the technology will advance for the rest of us. In a way, because we all need air, positive atmospheric pressure, food water and bathrooms, we are all disabled compared to other sensing entities.  Soon, in our living rooms wearing our goggles and connected to the network, we will all stand on Mars. Sending vulnerable human astronauts is inefficient and difficult. They die like goldfish in a dorm room tank. Sending sensors is something we’re already doing and when they die we don’t feel guilt, we just build better ones.

I run into objections disguised as philosophy. Will a trip to Disneyworld ‘count’ if it’s not experienced in ‘reality’? I counter with, Isn’t Disney already virtual experience? You have virtual castles, countries, characters. Going to Disney is an early attempt at virtual reality that few people seem to balk at. Why does it have to be inefficient? Isn’t virtual Orlando easier to get to, doesn’t use fewer resources and can’t I better ensure the kids are going to get quality time with Esla using VR? What’s the difference?

For those who feel like something essentially human is being taken away, allow me to relate an experience: My son loves Minecraft, a creative online game where and a million other people build things and where thousands of people create and maintain ‘worlds’ using the game’s software which they keep on servers with their own rules. The boy and a friend (having a ‘virtual playdate’ from their own houses) were on one of these worlds and they ransacked and wrecked a ‘house’ someone had ‘built’. This is allowed on some servers, it was not on this one. They were banned from the server for life.

He was heartbroken, and incredibly guilty and sorry. So I found the moderator of the server and had my son write a letter to the owner. In it he offered to return the ‘stuff’ (all virtual) he’d taken and to help rebuild the damaged ‘structure’ (which also does not exist in the physical world). He as as contrite and ashamed as if he’d thrown a rock through a neighbor’s window. The moderator, who by his language I assumed was an older teen, agreed on those conditions and gave him a stern talking-to about following the rules of servers and how upset the person whose ‘house’ was damaged became after discovering it had been pillaged.

How I assume it looked online

How is that different from learning the same lessons in the ‘real’ world? What was lost? The ‘real’ rock? The ‘real’ window? And it’s not like he doesn’t play outside in real life, he does. We’re going to the beach this afternoon to splash around with some fellow meatsacks and to have the human amusement experience of watching me repeatedly fail to attain an upright position on the standing paddleboard. We will eat cupcakes and play guitars. Kids will play in the sand. Water will go up noses. All of this is good and it will be a long, long time before you can do that on a computer, which is fine by me.

But the difference from 30 years ago is we will post pictures on social media. Friends and family from all over the world will comment and post images of their own, we will send our connections out and bring others in. People who can’t join will be texted. Cupcake recipes will be shared. Alternate lyrics for ‘Tangled up in Blue” will be posted. Our small gathering will radiate out past the seawall at Niles to the far corners of human inhabitance.

We have built our own Chipmunks.

My job as city wildlife correspondent for the Gloucester Clam is rewarding, but it’s sometimes a tough endeavor. The stories can be emotionally difficult to write, but it’s so necessary to expose them to our readership. 

It’s a common, but depressing sight: they congregate along fences and alleyways, tending to appear mostly at night. They are abandoned with no second thought by the humans that purchased them years ago. They have been replaced, many times because adults, or even children, didn’t like them anymore. Their age betrayed them. Sometimes, they are left outside the doors of their former owners with a sign reading “Free!”

Even worse, many are unceremoniously dumped in empty fields, behind dumpsters, or at construction sites, because it’s easier for the former owners than dealing with them humanely.

Near the train, two mattresses team up for warmth.

They tend to be seen in pairs, as if teaming up helps them survive in the harsh outdoors without any shelter. On occasion, residents report seeing four or five, of different sizes and ages, all together.

The problems they face on the streets are staggering. Exposure to the elements leaves them ragged, soaked, and stinking. They can be separated from their mates. Eventually, most are tagged, picked up by the city and destroyed.

The phenomenon is not new. This issue has always been ingrained in city culture across the globe. But here, in Gloucester, it is a troubling sign of the times.

A teenage mattress begins a tough life on the streets.

I took to the streets to find out why this was happening, since they cannot speak for themselves. I felt it was my duty as a journalist to make their stories heard.

Downtown, near the train station, several were amassed in front of an overgrown side yard, along with weatherbeaten bookcases and particle board computer desks that had been set out for trash some weeks before. Morning commuters passed by hurriedly with earbuds in and phones out, ignoring them, like they did not exist. In fact, when I stopped to speak with several people, they admitted they were so common they just blended into the scenery.

(STAY TUNED NEXT WEEK FOR PART 2 OF OUR SERIES)

Today’s post is by awesome guest Clam poster Adam Kuhlmann, who is clearly awesome at this and needs to do it more. 

Wanton Seagulls and Other Enduring Charms of Good Harbor

During our first six years in Gloucester, my wife and I lived in a rental apartment with large windows but no habitable access to the out-of-doors.  At first we didn’t really sense our state of deprivation.  But soon, every time we walked through town, our eyes lingered over balconies garlanded with petunias and porches accented by Adirondack chairs. How we envied one ancient Italian woman, who tended her herbs on a deck so spacious that an eternity passed as she shuffled its length with her battered watering can.  Trapped inside our brick bunker throughout one sunny summer after another, we couldn’t help but hope she would lean too heavily on a moldering post, pitch headlong, and, with her dying breath, surrender her apartment to us.

Fortunately, we had one refuge, a place where our yen for fresh air was satisfied and our jealousy was soothed: Good Harbor Beach.  Here, we could show up at noon on a sultry Saturday, slip past the “Lot Full” sign, wave to the fluorescent shirt at the fee station, and claim our sandy parcel of Gloucester’s great outdoors.  After we had basked for hours in the sun and spume, it hardly mattered that dusk sent us back to our stuffy one-bedroom cell.  Our every idle moment was spent at the beach.

This spring my wife and I moved, and our new rental has outdoor space of embarrassingly ample proportions.  We eat most of our meals on one deck and drink most of our drinks on another.  Sometimes, I must stifle the urge to kick my own privileged ass for living here.  But despite our easy access to sunshine, we still find ourselves packing beach chairs into the trunk and heading to Good Harbor.  Only now, a few months into beach season, am I starting to understand why.

Our new apartment is home to many seagulls that, by and large, comport themselves like normal birds.  That is, they squawk, they shit, and they fly away when we shout or feint at them.  Good Harbor, on the other hand, is home to many seagulls that behave in quite extraordinary ways, generally in their never-ending search for junk food.  These are birds that do not think twice about touching down in your lap to steal a French fry, or clambering inside a giant tote to locate a stray Wheat Thin.  Last week I was taken aback by a gull whose snow-white head was speckled with bright orange.  I thought I might be glimpsing a new subspecies until I spotted a toddler on a nearby blanket, mewling over a bag of Cheetos that had been butterflied and eviscerated like a trout.  Quite honestly, the tot was lucky.  Good Harbor seagulls are normally solitary, territorial creatures, unless they are cooperating to carry off a fully loaded cooler or a child clutching a basket of chicken fingers to his chest.

And visitors to Good Harbor interact with these birds in surprising ways.  Once, I watched as a mother encouraged her son to feed the remains of their fried lunch to a few gulls.  Mother and son whooped as a growing flock of birds fought over clam strips.  When the boy had nothing left, the mother rifled through her backpack, tore open a bag of potato chips, and scattered them in a ring around their blanket.  More birds arrived, and soon every gull on the beach was crapping wantonly onto mother and son.  The dazed look in their eyes suggested this may have been the first time either had understood the concept of cause and effect.

At Good Harbor, you never know who is going to park their beach blanket next to yours: a jointly lobotomized family like this one or possibly an Amish clan, on hand to get their Vitamin D through the chinks in their woolens and neck beards. Last summer, I watched a muscular young man in neon trunks wheel a large cooler to a spot on the hard sand.  He opened the lid and retrieved a Coors Light.  Then, fiddling with something inside, he unleashed a thunder of bass music through a single subwoofer that peeked out of the plastic capsule, turning the cooler into an angry, rapping Cyclops. This appeared to be some type of signal, because a coterie of similarly fit young individuals converged.  The men began flinging the women into the air like rag dolls, if rag dolls could pike their bottoms gracefully and keep their toes pointed at all times.  We had been enveloped in a veritable flash mob of cheerleaders.  But it is a testament to the seasoned Good Harbor beachgoer that no one gasped, filmed the scene, or even looked particularly entertained.  Over the years, we’ve seen all sorts of things.

Ill-fitting or just ill-conceived bathing suits are another source of interest.  While I believe that people of all shapes and sizes should enjoy the beach in whatever style of suit they want, I do take notice when form totally undermines function. For instance, while baggy board shorts are de rigueur for gentlemen at Good Harbor, it is not altogether uncommon to see a man wearing a suit whose inseam measurement is typically reserved for people with the surname Bird or Duke. This is all well and good—why should only women be owners of tanned thighs?  But recently I saw such a man reclined horizontally in a beach chair, knees splayed akimbo, and his chicken was completely out of the barn.  It lolled alongside his leg, subject to the elements and the muffled gasps of onlookers.  What is the purpose of a bathing suit, after all, if not to maintain fundamental standards of decency and SPF protection?

As pleasant as it is to sit on the deck at my apartment, I would have experienced none of these things from its quiet confines.  Good Harbor offers novelty, variety, incongruity, and spontaneity.  From year to year its contours change as storms erode or mass the sand; from hour to hour its dimensions fluctuate as the tide goes in or out.  In a sense, the beach renders me like one of its stalwart band of treasure-hunters, who arrive late in the day to sweep the beach with their metal detectors.  As I sit beneath a striped umbrella, a good novel flopped pointlessly in my lap, my eyes scan the crowds for those nuggets of human tragedy and comedy that are hiding in plain sight.

Given the reception that my first travel piece received (“I found the post to be full of utter horse shit” being my favorite reaction) I thought I’d do another one, this time a two parter featuring my travels to Britain. I’ve been to the UK twice, the first time when I married my husband, and the second when we went back to visit his family. Obviously, this makes me familiar enough with the country to write a travel piece.

It’ll also probably be my last travel bit, as I’ve never been anywhere else interesting. Unless you count going to Toronto for a soccer tournament when I was 15, but I actually remember nothing interesting from that trip, other than accidentally putting a girl in the hospital during a game. Sorry, random girl from Bath, NY (I’m not sorry). So, part one will be various observations and tips, in case you choose to make the jaunt. In list form, of course.

1. Geography. My time there was mostly split between two places; Bristol and Cornwall. Both are in what is vaguely referred to as “West country” but for those of you not familiar with the UK, I’ll just say that like most of the country, neither of those places are London, nor are they anywhere near Downton Abbey.
2.  Things are pretty familiar but at the same time just different enough to let you know you’re in an entirely foreign country. One case in point: faucets. It has never occurred to anyone in Britain to have one faucet, shared by both hot and cold water. Instead, they have two separate faucets so that you can enjoy the sensation of having the skin peeled from one hand by boiling hot water while the other becomes rigid with frostbite as you try in vain to somehow splash the two streams together while washing your hands in a tiny British bathroom.

3. Cars drive on the opposite side of the road in The UK. Duh, Brooke, you might say. Everyone knows this. I knew it, too, but that didn’t stop me from looking in the wrong direction when crossing the road, and almost getting run over by a very annoyed Bristol driver. Roads in general are nutty in Britain, even more so as you head into the country. The roads in Cornwall are literally four thousand year old cart paths, walled with six foot high solid granite hedgerows on either side. And now you know why anything larger than a Peugeot is considered a tank.

4. Coffee in the UK is broken. Be warned that there is no half & half or creamer of any kind for coffee. They just put plain milk in it, like a bunch of heathens. I discovered this when I ordered a coffee at Starbucks and asked where the half & half was. The barista stared at me as if I had ordered in Klingon. I finally solved the issue by keeping a pint of cream and whole milk in the fridge, and making my own damned half & half. Most of their coffee is instant, anyway.

5. British food in general gets a very undeservedly bad rap. Yes, things like Spotted Dick exist, but I’m fairly sure that no one actually eats it. It exists solely to provide entertainment to bemused tourists who take pictures of the same 12 cans that have sat on the shelf since before the war. British food is actually very heavy on local sourcing, fresh, and seasonal, which is a great idea. We could stand to do a lot more of that here in the States. Those millions of sheep that you’ll pass by on the train, laying around in the field and being goddamned adorable, are the same ones who wind up on your dinner plate. The Brits are very big on animal welfare as well, so at the markets there are loads of options for local, small farm, humanely raised meat and dairy.

6. Speaking of lamb: INDIAN FOOD. You all know this is an issue for us here at The Clam. I will freely admit that I ate as much curry as I could possibly handle because I knew I couldn’t get it here. I’m fairly certain that I ate at least two entire sheep during my time there and you know what? I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Indian food is now pretty much the national dish of Britain. Probably something to do with their rather unsavory colonial past. Or maybe because it’s so goddamned delicious, and makes for excellent drunk food. I speak from experience on this one.

7. Foods which just make Americans question what the hell the British are thinking. You will come across things with really weird names, like mushy peas, clotted cream, and bangers. Just eat them. If you come across a dish called Pork Faggots, don’t question it. Just eat it. It’s a meatball made from pork meat, liver, kidneys, and probably some other bits, too. BUT IT’S GOOD. As for the unfortunate name, I’m sure there’s some reason but I didn’t think that entering the words PORK and FAGGOT into Google would end in anything but regret. 8.

8. Britain is not exactly all quaint pastoral beauty and cosmopolitan charm. We picture rolling green farmland and fashionable cities, with Tardises and Cumberbatches on every corner. Sadly, this is not the case, and there were no Cumberbatches to be seen. Know what there are plenty of? Chavs, “massage parlors”, and trash on the street. The first time I visited, I was treated to a view of the massage parlor opposite my husband’s apartment building for the duration of my stay in Bristol.

9. The UK has a pretty entrenched drinking culture There are pubs pretty much one every corner. I won’t make an in depth critique of the “lad culture” here, but know this: Any British person, even a seven year old child, could drink any Gloucesterman under the table, and sing a cheery folk song while doing it. However, one great thing about Britain’s centuries of drinking culture is the pub names. They’re interesting, weird, and evocative of centuries of history. We need more names like these.I’ll end my rambling story with a quick list of my favorites, because I know you people love ‘em.

1. The Bucket of Blood (my personal favorite)
2. The George and Pilgrim
3. The Barley Mow
4. The White Hart
5. The Stag and Hounds
6. The Royal Navy Volunteer (site of my wedding reception)
7. The Bay Mare

Next time, I’ll tell you about Bristol, Cornwall, and why you should never call a Cornishman English.

Okay, Clampadres. I’m currently sipping moscato out of a glass that gives me a graph of the Dow-Jones Industrial Average from 1958-1968. Man, when US Steel rescinded the price boost in 1962, shit started sliding downhill. Damn. But anyway, when I’ve got this cup full of the cheapest wine money can buy, I’m in full-on Business Writing Mode. And since there’s more rumblings in the Market Basket world, I’m here to explain what’s going on to you.  

Remember last week, when the CEO team of James Gooch and Felicia Thornton decided that ending the two-week boycott of Market Basket would happen by… firing everyone involved and hiring a new workforce?

The deadline was yesterday. But instead of returning to their jobs, workers were still protesting – going from “a couple guys on the corner” to “a couple more guys and an actual tent for shade, and better signs”. Customers were still staying away. The honking was constant in front of the Danvers store, where I stopped to chat up a few of the folks out front. They had heard what others had heard – something was up, and whatever was going to happen, it was going to happen soon.

The Gloucester Clam approves of this hilarious double entendre.

I asked the young workers, all under the age of 30, if they were worried they’d lose their jobs. They all answered with a resounding “NO!” which I had a hard time hearing, because of all the godforsaken honking. Then the workers pointed out another oddity, a sign of how widespread this protest has become – a customer had been showing up every day and protesting with them. “We ask her to hang out by the road with us, but she’s more comfortable on one of the benches.”

It wasn’t even funny how many people honked. Not sure why the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.

Most major media outlets have been reporting that Arthur T Demoulas has offered to take back the CEO job for the interim, to figure out an option for selling the company. Keep in mind, he wasn’t just the former CEO – he still remains a large stakeholder, although a minority one thanks to the lawsuits of the 90s. The tanking sales because of the boycotts affects his future just like the rest of the board. But, the long-running animosity in the family seems likely too deep-seated to save the company at this point.

Not to mention the obvious embarrassment of failure for Gooch and Thornton and the rest of the board. Bringing Artie T back is just as bad as Gooch’s failures at Radio Shack and Sears. Why did they hire Gooch in the first place? Were they out of white guys that only fucked up one company? Can we talk about how fucking asinine it is that you can fuck up two companies and be hired for a third (that hadn’t yet been fucked up) as a fucking CEO, but if some poor kid flipping burgers fucks up twice society has no goddamn sympathy for him? Oh my god I cannot with this shit. Fuck.

Meanwhile at the Gloucester Crossing Market Basket, one of the remaining bakery workers was told by regional management to expect the return of all employees, managers, and customers within the next few days. The workers I spoke to in Danvers had heard the same rumor. But is it actually at all likely that they’ll just hire back a guy they fired last month?

At this point, what other choice do they have? The boycott is working. And in the end, that’s remarkable enough by itself – has a more effective boycott been carried out in America in recent history? Usually a boycott is a half-assed attempt by a small majority of workers or customers, is forgotten about in two days, and barely gets the point across. This? This is CRIPPLING.

If the board and the management had any goddamn sense, they’d reinstate the guy – for sure, this would be an ego blow because firing Arthur T failed, but it’d save the company, thousands of jobs, their supply chain, and in the end, their own pocketbooks.

Or will they take every economics and business strategy book ever written, put them in a pile on their boardroom table, douse them with Ouzo and their own tears, and light them on fire?

Stay tuned, motherfuckers.