Waterfront story

Two freighters are in port today: Green Spring at the Martime International Terminal, and Sophie at the State Pier. I was walking past the vehicle exit of the State Pier, after going to look at the schooner Ernestina in the snow, when a beat-up blue van pulled up.

“Hey,” said the man driving the van, “You from that ship there?” cocking his head in the direction of Sophie.

I laughed and said, “Nope, not me.”

“Oh,” he said. He was about 60, with friendly blue eyes, and wearing a blue parka with that faintly greasy black patina that comes with hard work and long wear. “If you was from one of those ships, I was going to ask you what she’s carrying there. I used to be in the Merchant Marine, and I got curious. But now they got that up,” and he pointed to the chain link fence with the barbed wire at the top that encircles that part of the State Pier where the freight ships dock. “It’s prob’bly because of the longshoremen, they’ll steal you blind.”

He proceeded to tell me a few stories: one about longshoremen who stole from him (he showed me his state peddler’s license, which lets him sell watches and such things out of his van); another story about seeing a state cop stealing whiskey from a container that the longshoremen has broken open, “I saw him, taking it out. If I only had a camera! –I would have caught that #$%@! right there”; and then he told me one last story, saying, “You’re going to laugh your @#%$ off when you hear this.”

There used to be a Coast Guard base in New Bedford. Once in a while, at lunch time, he would stop by the Coast Guard cutters. The crews of the cutters would come out to buy their lunches from the lunch truck. “Then they would come over and buy watches and stuff off me.”

One day he pulled in and noticed there were a number of state police cars parked near the Coast Guard cutters, but he didn’t think anything of it. What he didn’t know was that there was a ship offshore dumping bales of marijuana into the ocean, and letting it drift into the harbor. The state police and the Coast Guard were watching and waiting to see who would run out and try to pick up those bales of marijuana floating out there. So he pulled up in his van, not knowing this was going on. He opened the back doors of the van, and shouted, “Hey, get your hot stuff here!”

“All of a sudden I had about a hundred guns pointed at me,” he said. “I went like this,” –he sinks down into his greasy blue parka and puts his hands up– “and I said, Whoa, whoa! They came over and a couple of them went through the whole van and saw that all I had was some things to sell, you know, all legal. When they got done I asked a trooper, What’s going on? He said, There’s this ship offshore dumping marijuana and letting it drift into the harbor. Another cop says to me, Next time, I guess you won’t say ‘Hot stuff to sell,’ will you? Jeez, I’m telling you….” He shook his head remembering it.

“The next time I came in to sell stuff to the guys in the Coast Guard, they all came out and started laughing at me,” he went on. “One of them says, ‘Ya got any hot stuff to sell?’ I said, no, no.”

Just then, the light turned green (for the third time). He put the van in gear, “Hey, nice talking with you. Take care, OK?” I told him to stay warm, and he drove off.

Say what?

My partner, Carol, is a freelance writer who has specialized in issues of ecological pollution prevention, particularly issues relating to water and wastewater. Which is my roundabout introduction before I tell people that her second book is titled Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine To Grow Plants. The process of Carol writing that book proved very interesting for me; I learned more about urine than I thought I wanted to know; and we now own an Internet urinal, a female urinal, prints of old toilets, and other artifacts relating to urine. So it is that I cannot help but let you know about an upcoming cultural event here in the greater New Bedford area:

Urinetown: The Musical. The UMass Dartmouth Theatre Company presents the New England collegiate premiere of the Tony-Winning 2001 musical hit. Directed and choregraphed by Terry Berliner. On the stage of the Main Auditorium, main campus of UMass Dartmouth (patrons may park in Lots 4 & 5). December 15-18, 2005, with performances on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm; Sunday matinee at 2pm. Tickets are available at the UMass Pass office, at Café Arpeggio in Downtown New Bedford, and by calling (508) 999-8167.

Be there. Aloha.

Wesley Clark weighs in

I don’t usually do politics on this blog, but the war in Iraq is so much a part of all our lives that you really can’t avoid it; it’s a part of our culture now, like it or not. I have not been impressed with the shrill exchanges between the Democrats and the Republicans regarding the war, but I was impressed by Gen. Wesley Clark’s recent op-ed piece in the New York Times. Clark disagrees with both President Bush and the Democrats positions on the war:

While the Bush administration and its critics escalated the debate last week over how long our troops should stay in Iraq, I was able to see the issue through the eyes of America’s friends in the Persian Gulf region. The Arab states agree on one thing: Iran is emerging as the big winner of the American invasion, and both President Bush’s new strategy and the Democratic responses to it dangerously miss the point. It’s a devastating critique. And, unfortunately, it is correct.

The complete piece is posted on the Securing America blog, along with questions for Clark, and Clark’s responses to those questions.

There’s a cultural point in all this, too: it feels to me as if Americans of all political persuasions are increasingly isolating themselves from how other countries perceive America. I cannot think that’s a good thing. I believe Gen. Clark offers us a useful new, non-isolationist, direction for American discussions of our place in the world.

I also note in passing that religious liberals have a long history of a bias towards taking an international perspective, which is part of our religious understanding that all human beings are linked beyond the narrow confines of national identity. We used to call it “world brotherhood”; now we call it “the interconnected web.”

Thanks to first cousin once removed Abbie for the link to Securing America.

Snow, sort of

Yesterday, the three of us who work in the church office got to talking. “It’s going to snow tomorrow.” “How much do you think we’ll get?” “It’s supposed to be a big storm, maybe 7 to 10 inches.” Then Linda, who has lived around here most of her life, said to me, “There’s one thing you’ll find out about this little corner of the world. Half the time, the snow misses us.” Claudette, who has also lived around here pretty much all her life, nodded sagely. Linda went on, “Like Lakeville will get clobbered, and we’ll get nothing.” Lakeville is the town just north of New Bedford.

This morning when I got up, the sky was dark grey and it was snowing madly. By the time I got dressed and got out the door, the snow had mostly stopped. When I walked home for lunch, there was perhaps two or three inches of snow on the ground; the sky was blue, the sun was out.

So that’s what we’re doing here…

As I noted on November 9, Seth Goodin is my favorite marketing guru at the moment, and now I’ve started reading his blog. In a post from November 30 titled “Welcome to the Hobby Economy,” Goodin tells us why he keeps a blog:

Economists don’t know what to do about it.

It’s hard to measure, hard to quantify and a little odd to explain.

More and more people are spending more and more time (and money) on pursuits that have no payoff other than satisfaction.

“Why should you have a blog?” they ask. “How are you going to make any money?”…

Of course, economists don’t really worry about this. They understand perfectly well that economics is able to easily explain that human beings pursue things that satisfy them.

“Hobby economy” sounds a little pejorative. Still, I think it’s a good concept that could also be applied to religion. Most human beings pursue religion because it satisfies them. You don’t have to make money at it. I happen to make money doing religion (although if I went back to sales, I could make a lot more money than I do now), but I do things like keep this blog, which brings in no money at all.

When we think about marketing religion, all too often we only think about hiring an ad agency and developing a major media campaign. That’s thinking of religion in terms of the business model of marketing. If we start thinking about religion in terms of the hobby economy, how would we do marketing? We’d invite people to join the regular meetings of our hobby group. We’d do things like keep a blog to promote our hobby, or have conferences to entice new people into our hobby. Any time anyone asked about our hobby we’d talk about it with passion and enthusiasm.

Not that we should abandon the ad agencies and the major media campaigns. Not that religion really fits into the “hobby economy” model. But it’s getting me thinking about marketing in new ways….

Christmas gifts

It’s “Holiday Shops Days” in downtown New Bedford this weekend, with an antique fire engine carrying Santa Claus, rides in horse-drawn carriage, tree-lighting in front of the Public Library, people singing carols outside our building, marching bands going up and down the downtown streets, sleigh bells jingling.

I’ve been sitting here in our apartment enjoying the festive sounds outside our windoww while I’m paying bills. I just opened up the year-end appeal from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and found the enclosed:

Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act of 2005

As a point of information to donors considering philanthropic gifts to humanitarian agencies and other organizations… you may be interested in knowing about a recent tax relief act that affects philanthropic giving.

President Bush has signed into law a measure that allows donors to deduct qualified charitable gifts in amounts up to 100% of their Adjusted Gross Income. This temporarily suspends the current limitation of 50% of Adjusted Gross Income….

OK, I doubt that many readers of this blog are able to donate 100% of their adjusted gross income to charities providing services to Gulf Coast relief. But if there are such people reading this blog, I just wanted to let you know that you might want to talk with your financial advisors about whether you’re able to benefit from increased giving this year. There is still a great need for Gulf Coast Relief. Remember, too, that if you want to donate to the Gulf Coast Relief Fund of the Unitarian Universalist Association, a minimum of 95% of those donations will go directly to services (i.e., the fund has very low administrative costs).

Even those of us who can’t give 100% of your adjusted gross income in charitable donations should consider giving a gift to Gulf Coast Relief. There are lots of people along the Gulf Coast who could still use that kind of Christmas gift. Carol and I are planning our year-end giving right now, and we plan to give generously to Gulf Coast Relief.

Spicy Lime

Update, Feb. 11, 2006: This post continues to get a fair number of hits. Until Spicy Lime gets their own Web site, here’s some basic info:

Located at 522 Pleasant Streeet in downtown New Bedford — Head south on Route 18, at the second set of lights after I-195 turn right onto Union St. (across from ferry terminal), turn left at the fourth traffic light onto Sixth St., then first left, and first left again onto one-way Pleasant St. Spicy Lime is on your left, and parking is usually very easy.

Their phone number is 508-992-3330. Hours: Mon-Fri 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., every day for dinner, 5:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

The original post, below, has info about the menu….

When we first moved to downtown New Bedford, I felt it was missing something important. Downtown Geneva, Illinois, where we lived last year had a good cheap Thai restaurant. And the Rock Ridge neighborhood of Oakland, where we lived the year before, had a good cheap sushi restaurant within walking distance. When we eat out, we tend to prefer good cheap Asian food. When we moved here, downtown New Bedford had only one Chinese restaurant, which friends warned us away from: friends don’t let friends eat bad greasy MSG-laden Asian food.

Downtown New Bedford now has Spicy Lime Thai restaurant, which opened a couple of weeks ago at 522 Pleasant St., near Union St. It’s relatively cheap, with a $5.95 lunch special and most dinner dishes priced at $8.95. And it’s pretty good. What more could I ask?

For dinner tonight, we started with spring rolls: taro root, some kind of dark mushroom, and bean thread in a yummy deep-fried roll. Carol had basil seafood soup, with shrimp, fish, and mussels in a light broth swimming with basil leaves, lemongrass, other spices (the only turnoff for me was that they put tomato in it). I had pad se-ew; I almost always have pad se-ew at Thai resturants; this is the third time I’ve had Spicy Lime’s pad se-ew, and the waitress even said, “You had that last time, didn’t you?” Good thick stir-fried rice noodles, not too greasy, with broccoli, zucchini, and carrots; not exactly Asian vegetables, but good nonetheless.

It’s not fancy, but we liked what we ate. The ingredients were fresh, the cook has a nice way with the herbs and spices. The tables are crowded together in a small room with minimal decor, but it feels friendly. The staff is still working on their timing (be sure you order an appetizer because chances are you will wait a while for your meal), but they’re getting better.

I think Spicy Lime fills a void in the downtown resturant scene at dinner time. The other bars and restaurants have their niches. The waterfront bars get the people who just want to drink, Minerva’s pizza gets people who want fast food, Freestone’s draws the white yup-scale crowd, The Main Event seems to draw the hip Portugese yup-scale crowd, Cafe Arpeggio the academics and scruffy singer-songwriters; but Spicy Lime seems to be the place for the cultural creatives: gallery owners, artists, downtown residents, students from the art school.

For “dog people”

Some of us are cat people, and like LitterBox Cam. But I know some of you out there are dog people. For you, the place to go might be the Daily Oliver, with daily pictures of Oliver the Weimeraner. Best part of this blog: the comments from dog lovers around the world.

Comparisons with William Wegman’s photography may seem inevitable, but are not really warranted. It’s a blog, not postmodernly ironic fine art photography.

However, differences between the Daily Oliver and LitterBox Cam might reveal some differences between dog lovers and cat lovers. Dog lovers want lots of interaction with other dog lovers, so dog lover Web sites allow comments. Cat lovers are more individualistic and don’t even notice the absence of a comment feature. The cat lovers have a Web site where you can click on the Web cam image to create a small remote window that you can place in a corner of your screen, where the cats can come and go as they please while you do your work on the computer. The dog lovers have a Web site that only comes when you call it. Yes, I have pushed this far enough, so I will stop.

Server switch

By now, the host of this site, Deerfield Hosting, should have completed the switch to the new server. If you posted a comment in the past couple of days, it probably got lost during the switch and you will have to post it again. (By the way, both Carol and I are quite pleased with Deerfield Hosting — excellent customer support, good price, almost no down time.)