Category: Uncategorized

Naming Conventions

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[Author: Bo Abrams]

My husband, the wonder-man Jim Dowd, was a naming savant. 

He named bands. He named blogs. He named bikes. 

From the day I met him I realized he had an uncanny sense of what would work and what wouldn’t in a name. 

As you might know, the trick is you can’t choose willy nilly (although he seemed to be able to) you have to have guidelines and rules. You have to be willing to free associate and at the same time be ready to cull what might be cherished. Even before Jim was naming things professionally, he instinctively understood constructs were necessary for success.

 

Before Rebecca was born Jim and I were pondering what we might name our soon to be offspring. We’d been calling the in utero creature Saugus, because place names are sexy!

But we needed a name for someone going to public school.

We chose these rules:

 

  1. You have to try it at the top of a resume. 
  2. You have to be able to yell it off the back porch easily.
  3. You have to be able to say it the same in Massachusetts as elsewhere.

(Because of the whole “In Boston you take the “R” off the Chair and put it on the Sofa” thing -it gets you Chayahs and sofers.)

 

All three have to work. 

For example, I worked at Carter Notch Hut in the White Mountains and I thought Carter would be a terrific name. Did I mention place names are sexy?

Anyway, It looked good at the top of a resume. Carter Dowd. It had a nice ring to it. Strong. Simple. Check one.

So Jim yelled it off the back deck into Lanes Cove. 

“CARTER” it carried. It soared.

Until the “In Boston you take the “R” off the Chair and put it on the Sofa” test. 

Total fail.

Sure enough when Rebecca was in kindergarten there was a boy in her class whose name was spelled  C A R T E R.

Through the entirety of elementary school not one person pronounced the R at the end of his name. EVAH.

 

Over the years, Jim’s regular rants and random titling of pets, cars, political campaigns, etc… fostered naming savvy in Treely and Rebecca, so much so, when they heard we were getting a kitten they immediately created a shared google Doc: 

They made one rule: No people names.

 

If you wonder how Jim lives on in his children I offer this:

 

Potential Kitten Names for the Kitten formerly known as Anderson

Lemon

Spoon

Spoo

Lemon Spoonful

Penguin

Dandelion (dandy for short)

Vegetables (veggies for short)

The Goat

Assweasel!

Alf

Lechuga

Mantequilla

ALL the TS Eliot cats

Bumblebee

Pyramus

The Wall

Tigger- only kidding 😉

Uncle Deadly

Colin Meloy 

Dirigible

Scallion

Zucchini (zukey) 

Wham!

Fingies (short for fingers)

Tequila

ÆëîLçæ

Mortimer

Cthulhu (short for Cthulhu Saves the World: Super Hyper Enhanced Championship Edition Alpha Diamond DX Plus Alpha FES HD – Premium Enhanced Game of the Year Collector’s Edition) 

Almond butter

Almond

Musk (short for Elon musk)

Elon (short for Elonian Armor from the game Guild Wars 2)

Bee

Ronald McDonald

Dick Turpin

Cat

Damn Cat

Cut that out!

Pedant

Mr. Meow

La la la Linoleum

—–

Also please note these clarifying questions: If this kitten has an honorific will it be Senator or The Honorable?

Answer: Senator

 

Question: Does the name need to be gender neutral?

Answer: Gender is a human construct

(not recounted here but there was also an extended pedantic discussion about if it’s not a person name how can it be gender based.)

 

Question: What about the name he was given by the foster family.

Answer in slightly pontificatory tone: Cats have more than one name. We can have that be his first name.

 

Question: Shall we tell everyone what we named the kitten?

Answer: Fuck No, Make them guess.

 

Anyway. Clam friends. Jim’s legacy lives.

 

 

 

Introducing Senator Anderson Lemon Zucchini Abrams Dowd

10 weeks old and weighing in at extremely adorable.

 

Zukey. For non resume purposes.

And easy to yell off the back porch. 

 

AOK – Champion of Human Rights?

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We’ve been presented with a Clamsplaining conundrum today. And we had to have a full group discussion in order to fully wrap our heads around it. We’re still a bit puzzled, so we’re going to open up the conversation and the problem to you all in Clam Nation.

Do we take the time to explain to the good people of Gloucester, that if you are a fan of Human Rights, you need to send a message today to the City Council, to prevent the appointment of Amanda Orlando Kesterson to the Human Rights Commission? Or, do we explain to that same woman, that this city commission she has applied to join, is in fact, responsible for ensuring the rights of ALL people (gay, straight, trans, cis, undocumented, women and their reproductive rights) are protected, and advanced?

We assume that the good people of Gloucester may need a heads up that the vote is this week, and that we are certain the city can find a person better suited to serving on this commission (or perhaps, couldn’t find a WORSE person). Please, send an email. Make a call.

Upon reflection, we actually don’t think it is possible that AOK understands the function of the Human Rights Commission, nor the responsibility that she would be tasked with. This is not a chance to debate the importance of “men’s rights”, or to affirm the notion of “reverse racism”.

BASICALLY THIS

Briefly, the Commission is tasked with ensuring that:

No person in our city shall be unlawfully discriminated against in matters of housing, employment, education, contracts, purchasing or public accommodations, on the basis of: age, ancestry, citizenship, color, disability, economic status, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender, military status, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation or source of income.

We feel it might be helpful to help Amanda understand that, by being appointed to this commission, she would be expected to be a loud voice in our community advocating for the right, and ABILITY of all people in Gloucester to live a life of freedom and liberty. The Commission does not debate IF people are worthy of basic rights, but rather, to provide support, insight, and advocacy for people when their rights are at risk.

Her letter asking for consideration to the city council suggests that she is unclear on this aspect of the position. She offers that she can’t know in advance what her positions will be on issues coming before the commission… there will not be debates about who deserves to be treated with equity, it should be pretty easy to say “if appointed, I commit wholeheartedly to offering the full spectrum of my gifts to ensure that human rights are protected, full stop”.

 Seeking political support from people who have fought hard AGAINST the ACTUAL RIGHTS OF OTHERS, IS, IN FACT demonstration of an inability to treat “ALL people with respect, kindness and understanding”.

 In nearby communities, Human Rights Commissions have led forums on Immigrant rights, and Sanctuary. Educational opportunities to enter into challenging dialogues around race, and support for those in our state recently targeted with the efforts to roll back civil rights protections for trans people. We hope and expect the same here in Gloucester.

IS A FRIEND OF JIM LYONS A FRIEND OF HUMAN RIGHTS?

 

It is fascinating to us, that in the same week that her appointment is to be reviewed, she held a fundraiser with Jim Lyons, arguably the most prominent ANTI-LGBTQ politician in the state, before he lost his seat in that liberal hotbed of Andover, he was particularly known for his championing of GAY CONVERSION THERAPY, and his efforts to prevent the state from providing civil rights protections for trans people in MA.

A Human Rights Commission is a sign of a community that cares about those on the margins, and specifically, members of a Human Rights Commission need to be capable of handling difficult and sometimes sensitive information. Members of a Human Rights Commission need to be people KNOWN for compassion, for commitment to those who don’t share the same privileges, and for being willing to step up and step forward for those whose rights are most at risk.

We have seen time and again, how Amanda has leveraged local politics to gain a voice at the state level, and even nationally. Little about her past performance suggests that she has the ability to

“increase mutual self-respect, harmonious intergroup relations and the peaceful enjoyment of life in our diverse community;”

We applaud her desire to stretch and grow in this new and unforeseen way, but until she has had a chance to demonstrate the ability to offer voice and advocacy for those already oppressed, we think her past actions, statements, and fundraisers (as long ago as 1/09/2020) suggest she is not an appropriate fit for this role in our community. And we’d urge Gloucester’s City Council to reject her appointment.

Gloucester Clam Review: Phoebe Potts’ Too Fat for China

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I know we don’t typically do local reviews here, but hear me out on this one. It’s worth changing the rules for.

I was recently lucky enough to snag a ticket the world premier of Phoebe Potts’ one-woman show, Too Fat for China. A poignant and deeply funny look at the difficult road of adoption after infertility, the show just finished up its limited 2-week run at the Gloucester Stage Company. It debuted on November 23rd, National Adoption Day, and proceeded to sell out the two Saturday shows. It’s not hard to see why it was an instant hit. If you don’t know Phoebe, she’s an amazing storyteller and a genuinely funny woman. She was recently handed the Gloucester Writer’s Center Fish Tales Storyteller-In-Residence baton from our own late, great Jim Dowd. 

Phoebe, who had previously turned her infertility struggles into a brilliant graphic novel called “Good Eggs”, starts her story out by learning who the Mafia was (a close-knit family who would throw you in the East River) while growing up in a pre-Gentrification Brooklyn brownstone. 

She weaves that background story of growing up in the Jewish Faith, her courtship and marriage to her husband Jeff, and the titular issue, her weight gain, into the adoption tale. 

While her fertility doctors explained that her weight wasn’t impacting her ability to conceive, it disqualified her from a Chinese adoption as at 5’3” and 160ish lbs, she would have been at too high a BMI to adopt. 

She explains the judgement involved in adoption -judgement of finances, relationships, medical history, and so many other things we’d rather keep private. And Phoebe admits she’s not immune to judgment of others – including the way they dress, even though she’s aware she “presents as an after-school pottery teacher from the Shire.”

Phoebe’s years-long, winding adoption story, peppered with heartbreaking failure along the way, is compelling and wonderful, as much as it is painful and unfair. All the while, Phoebe must face that every adoption process is rife with racism – from the cost differences in domestic adoption between gender and race, to the nurse in a Cincinnati hospital admonishing a black birth mother in front of her for not loving her baby, to the phenomena of Americans adopting internationally and removing a child from its own country.  She must as come to terms that she comes from great privilege even though she is struggling to get the one thing she wants – a goddamn tiny baby. 

Of course, I’m not one to spoil an ending, but if you’ve ever met Phoebe, you’ve also met her gem of a son, Lemi – so of course, she finally succeeds in adoption. She ends her show with her son’s homecoming, kicking off her shoes and belting out her own version of Etta James’ At Last, while photos of her son as a baby, in a Frankfurt airport, with his exhausted and beaming new parents.

With Phoebe’s storytelling and standup prowess, it’s easy to see why Too Fat for China got a standing ovation from a sold-out crowd. Our only hope is that this sweet and introspective narrative can get the wider showing it deserves.

The Gloucester Clam Presents: TurkeyPalooza 2019!

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Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that increased housing prices both statewide and across Cape Ann, coupled with stagnant wages and increasing income inequality, has really put pressure on many of our friends and neighbors here. This year, with a lot of wallets tightening and some at the breaking point, more families have asked the Open Door for help to put food on the table for Thanksgiving. As a result of this increased need, the lovely folks at the Open Door asked us to rally our amazing, snarky community for a great cause- to make sure no family is left out this year. They’re hoping to raise a total of $10k through a group of individual community members who will use their magical powers to raise money.

We want to do our part as a community of helpful nerds and raise $1000 – enough for 32 baskets.

That’s 32 families that don’t have to choose between a Thanksgiving meal and paying their rent on time. That’s about 200 people, give or take, who will enjoy their day with the people they love without the stress involved with budgeting for a Thanksgiving meal.

I previously wrote about the great things the Open Door does.  They serve nearly 1 in 6 residents, most of whom are employed and not making enough. A lot of the people served by the Open Door only use it when necessary, and less than they are allowed by the pantry’s guidelines. Open Door does a lot of heavy lifting in our community, and they’re what I call a “safety trampoline” – they help families bounce back into self-sufficiency as quickly as they can. A “safety net”  is great terminology – it catches those falling through the cracks. But a trampoline is what gets them back where they were before they fell.

 

boing boing boing

Here, use this as a visual interpetation of my theory.

 

Here’s a little personal story about what that safety trampoline can mean.

Not even 5 years ago, when I was going through a divorce, my rent was $1500 and my monthly freelance clients averaged $1700. Because I was a freelancer with varying income and had filed taxes with my ex-husband previously, the state turned myself and my two kids down for SNAP benefits, even though we were income-eligible. I was lucky to have some savings, but it was a pretty trying time for us and we barely made it. Thankfully, the Open Door was there of us, and in 2015, I was one of those families getting a Thanksgiving  basket to cook an amazing meal for my boys with leftovers for days. When I went to the Open Door for help, it felt like the community truly cared about us. I was able to instead use that grocery money to cover my rent, to pay my bills, and to worry about a little less that week.

In the time since, I’ve been lucky enough to do better and become a middle-class homeowner (I have a basement fridge! And an icemaker! And a car with BLUETOOTH!).  This happened mostly through chance, and a little through hard work, networking, and austerity budgeting. The safety trampoline worked well for me. But I will forever be thankful to the Open Door for getting us through what I often refer to as the Crap Year. A Crap Year can happen to anyone, regardless of their background, education level, employment status, or family size.

I remember that feeling, that people in this city cared, and I want other families in this city to feel the same way. So here we are, just a dumb blog that swears a lot, asking you for help to accomplish this goal.

Here’s the link to make a donation.

Even a small donation will go a long way to helping us meet our fundraising goal for The Open Door — and we’ll be making the holidays so much brighter for our neighbors in need. Every $30 provides a basket, so whether you give $10 or $100, we’ll be helping local families set their holiday tables.

Thank you!

Your The Clam Voting Guide – 2019 Salem City Elections

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Good morning, Clam Nation! As you know, we’ve got connections here in our Top Secret Gloucester Clam Underground Lair to people all over Essex County, including Salem and Beverly! Our reach is just, wow. Since we know a lot of our readers live down the line and the Clam is all about togetherness, we decided to lock our Gloucester Clam Actual Politician™ into the basement (even more underground, we’re not sure he’s getting enough air but we’ll check later), and we want to prove to you that we’ve been paying attention. We let Josh give us some info on people but we then proceeded to at least partly ignore him. So wrapping up the grand Clamback, below are our Clamdorsements in the Salem City Council and School Committee elections, because you guys are no fun and only make your mayor run every four years instead of two.

In the City Council race, they’re super polarized right now. A bunch of the Councilors have gotten the reputation of being total mayor suckups. A bunch more have gotten the reputation of being totally against her. We like Driscoll up here in Gloucester – if Salem gets tired of her feel free to send her our way. We like Sefatia too (hell, we love her), but competition would be nice. Anyhow, in Salem they’ve been fighting over zoning and all kinds of crap all year, and the Councilors from Wards 4 and 6 give each other death stares every meeting. We’ve seen video. It’s bad. And this writer deals with toddlers all day, that’s nothing compared to this crew. We’d like to fix it, so here’s our picks (Clam choices in Bold).

City Council At-Large:

Vote them out. All of them. At least, all three incumbents that are on the ballot (Sargent, Milo, and Dominguez – Tom Furey is stepping down after a long career as an elected official without having used email once). That leaves us five non-incumbents to pick from, and they’re a good lot pretty much. Here’s our four top ones.

Conrad Prosniewski (that’s a frigging mouthful) is a recently retired police captain. Everyone in Salem loves him, he’s gonna win. Vote for him anyway, he’s a good guy. Conrad isn’t on any particular side and that’s healthy, we think. Progressives love him, conservatives love him.

Shark costume

SHARKS FOR PROSNIEWSKI IS SUCH A SALEM KIND OF THING

Alice Merkl ran for office a year ago, losing closely a race for Southern Essex Register of Deeds, a job you’ve never heard of. She’s slumming with this race, but we like her a lot. Super progressive, empathic, and for years has been an active volunteer all over the community on top of her work teaching music. It’s also a lot of fun in Salem when we have majorly progressive people on the City Council because it makes Facebook explode with annoyed conservatives.

In that same vein, we like Jeff Cohen. He ran for City Council two years ago, and came in last. This time maybe he’ll do better. He is the kind of progressive who needs you to know how progressive he is, and how the rest of us aren’t doing it right. Jeff, we’ll have you know that we’ve got people here in the Lair who were out manning the barricades when you were in diapers, and make you look like a right-winger. We give Josh shit all the time for not being progressive enough for us. But he’s fun, plus he’ll also make conservative heads explode. They think Jeff’s a left-wing terrorist. We also like his environmental focus. So we like him, despite crapping all over him here.

And our last pick, but nowhere near our fourth one (more like 1A with Conrad) is Ty Hapworth. Ty checks all the freaking boxes there are. He’s a Army vet living in a beautiful downtown home and married to his high school sweetheart, with a fancy executive job at Microsoft doing something Josh tried to explain to us but it made our heads hurt. And the Housewives of Salem thirst for him. Dude probably ought to run for Governor instead but we think he can’t handle the pay cut.

Ty Hapworth

THE DUDE IS MEME WORTHY

The Clam choices: Hapworth, Prosniewski, Merkl, and Cohen. Some of Team Clam likes George McCabe, too – and if you switched one of your votes to him we won’t hunt you down.

Then there’s the Ward races in Salem. Always interesting, always weird.

Ward 1 features a contest between 6-term Councillor Bob McCarthy and long-time activist James Willis. The Clam endorses McCarthy, though Willis is perfectly fine. The two are almost identical on every issue, our pick is mainly because of experience and entertainment value, Bob turns so red when he’s talking to fools that we worry a bit. You can even see it on the 480p cable access. Even though Willis has been generally a supporter of Mayor Kim, a lot of the people that hate Driscoll are backing Willis because Bob has a long track record of supporting her, too. And with us throwing so many of them out, we need to keep a couple of the better ones around.

Ward 2 has a theoretically unopposed candidate in Christine Madore, who is smart, technocratic, a little too process-driven, and does a good job overall. At the beginning of October the Federal Street crew who religiously oppose Mayor Kim at every turn put forward Federal Street housewife, anti-Driscoll activist, frequently ousted volunteer, and occasional jazz singer Stacia Kraft as a write-in candidate with a massive coordinated effort and a float in the Halloween Parade. It’s ridiculous, but in Salem shit like that happens. Be jealous, North Shore, be jealous. Madore hasn’t given us any particular reason to get rid of her but when the local John Birchers and angry neighborhood activists line up behind Kraft and don tinfoil, that’s a reason to keep Madore as well.

Ward 3

WARD 3, BASICALLY

In Ward 3, there’s an open seat. Incumbent Lisa Peterson won her seat in 2017, decided the City Council was a hot mess (she’s not wrong), and quit to run for Congress instead. You’ll see her next year. Meanwhile, her hand-chosen successor Patti Morsillo is running against local Steak & Eggs guy Bob Camire. Bob doesn’t believe in email (they were almost done with candidates like that when Furey retired) and thinks liberals are ruining Salem. Vote Morsillo.

WE LOVE THIS PICTURE OF CAMIRE THOUGH

Ward 4 has more weirdness. Firefighter Tim Flynn won an open seat in 2017 and since then has been the guy to throw red meat to Salem’s MAGA crowd (yes, even Salem has them). The dude is a walking Blue Lives Matter meme. We’d link you his hot mess of a Facebook page but you’ll tear your hair out. While he continues his war on liberalism, development, taxes, and the No Place for Hate Committee in Salem he’s also dealing with his challenger Michael Cusick. Michael is a really smart retiree who’s pitch seems to be “if you’re going to put a generic white guy in office, it should be a smart one”. We agree. Vote for Cusick. Even if Flynn loses, you’ll see more of him – the last conservative white guy with a buzzcut and a government day job to lose an election came back to run for mayor next time out. Of course, he lost, it was in 2017.

Hannibal Meme

BASICALLY TIM FLYNN ONLINE MINUS THE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE

Ward 5, Oh well. You’re stuck with Josh Turiel again because he’s unopposed for real (in contrast to the fake unopposed in Ward 2). He told us he’s quitting after this term, so at least you’ve got that to look forward to. We’re stuck with him and at some point have to let him start posting here again. We’ll text you your new password the day after this posts, ok Josh?

Josh

HE DOESNT REALLY NEED A PHOTO BUT THIS ONE IS SO DORKY WE HAD TO

Ward 6 is another open seat. Three-term Councillor Beth Gerard is quitting to spend more time with her cats and less time looking across the aisle at her mortal enemy Flynn. We don’t blame her, and we’re not sure which is the mongoose and which is the snake. The Mack Park Neighborhood Association has united to put forward two-time retread candidate Jerry Ryan as their choice. Jerry was Ward 4 Councilor for a while at the beginning of the decade before running at-large in 2013 and losing. After a term off, he ran again in 2015 and won a at-large seat, only to lose it again in 2017. Having changed addresses in the meantime, now he just can’t stay away and is running for the open Ward 6 seat. We’ve heard about the Mack Park crew, and their endorsement means a big NOPE for us. Fortunately, his opponent that the Clam endorses is Megan Riccardi, who is a political rookie, tech industry pro, and super smart. A bunch of us Clams have met her and you want her elected. Truth.

Ward 7 is Salem’s buffer with Swampscott. And it’s represented by Steve Dibble, who is (in his telling) the most important man in the universe and planted every tree in Salem. He also (if you ask him) wrote the zoning code, teaches chess, and is a blowhard to end all blowhards. Four years of him has been Dunning-Krueger come to life. Andy Varela is his opponent, the owner of Maitland Mountain Farm (pickle experts, not everything experts) – and Andy is everything that Steve thinks he, himself is. Varela is young, dynamic, runs a growing business, and has a perspective shaped by not being a Salem lifer. We like what he brings to the table, plus he has the advantage of not being Steve Dibble. When we have Clam board meetings and Dibble’s name comes up, our Salem members’ eyes twitch.

Pickles

THESE PICKLES WILL CHANGE YOUR DAMN LIFE

Salem School Committee has three seats up for election this year. One of them is open as incumbent Kristine Wilson didn’t run for a second term. Incumbents Jim Fleming and Mary Manning are running for reelection, and Manning is OK, we guess. Fleming, just nope. He’s tied way too much into the whole “neighborhood groups that exist to fight anything Kimmy does” crowd and we’re tired of that crap.

The two we do endorse fully are Beth Anne Cornell and Kristin Pangallo. They’re both college professors (Cornell at Wentworth and Pangallo at Salem State) who have kids in the Salem Schools – and right now there are ZERO parents on the School Committee. Fixing that with college professors WHO ARE ALSO PARENTS seems like a good idea to us.

Also running are Donna Fritz, who is also a Salem parent and a member of the PTO at Witchcraft Heights Elementary, and Jennifer Brown, who attended one debate, confused a rubric with a Rubik’s Cube, and hasn’t appeared at an event, debate, or responded to any media since. So nope. But vote for up to three candidates, and so long as none of them are Fleming or Brown you’re OK with Manning or Fritz. Just pick one of those two.