Green Island Grrrl

By Rosalie Tirella

… write a toxic blog post and attribute it to my pal Harry Tembenis? Because city councilor candidate Peter Kush may not run for office because he has gotten a thumping from us and others. Because Woo now knows he is associated with psychopathic Wonderland blog/Claude Dorman. And because he knows he is in for a grueling campaign, knows we will continue to clobber him over the head with the truth, if he does turn in enough signatures this Tuesday to have his name on the ballot this fall. And Claude, Woo’s biggest perv/creep, has inserted himself into Kush’s election campaign, the last thing Kush needs. Now you see why Kush may decide to sit this dance out? But I am getting ahead of myself. First, all about Harry and Claude/Will WW…

Harry hates Claude and worked hard, like others, to ‘out’ Dorman a few years ago. This after Dorman, writing as Will WW, congratulated Harry on the death of his little boy. Harry’s son was autistic. His death devastated Harry and his wife. Perfect time for Will WW – Claude Dorman of 38 Sever St. – to thank God for putting an end to Harry’s efforts to procreate. No more Harry genes in the world, Claude/Will WW wrote gleefully on his blog that isn’t even read any more because it is so negative, hateful … . BRUTAL. SICK. Harry consulted a lawyer, but Claude let go of his vile story line, so Harry let go.

Harry is the sweetest guy! He and Paulie are pals. Harry would never write a post for Claude’s blog and never say those things about Paulie – and me. You see, Harry, is my pal, too. We talk over the phone every couple of weeks, send each other emails … .

Dorman is acting out because his protege, city councilor candidate Peter Kush, may not run for office. May not want to have to explain to the public, the voters, why he wants to represent Wusta after sliming his fair city in his notorious blog, STUCK IN COW. COW stands for City of Worcester. Kush ran his website, in which he dissed everything Worcester, while he was EMPLOYED by the City of Worcester! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

Kush was a regular on Claude’s blog, posting horrible things about city leaders, such as politicians who hired him to do consulting for them. Gave Kush money only for Kush to turn around and post, as THE COUNT, derogatory comments about them.

He was and is a mini me version of Claude WILL WW Dorman. A Will WW in training.

Paul Collyer is correct when he says Worcester needs Peter Kush like it needs a hole in its heart. He, and lot of folks feel Worcester voters need to know where this pointless kid, this nasty kid, is coming from. A dishonorable place. We agree …

… and will continue to vet Peter Kush. He is running for public office, he is now a public figure. This makes him fair game, right up there with Rush and Weiner and the Clintons … and even Claude Dorman.

REMEMBER WHAT TRUMAN SAID, PETER: If you can’t stand the heat – AND INCITY TIMES WILL KEEP THE BURNER FLAME ON HIGH THE ENTIRE ELECTION CYCLE – stay out of the kitchen!

… equally athletic and brilliant Ginger Rogers?! – R. Tirella

By Rosalie Tirella

City Councilor at Large Konstantina Lukes is spot on when she says the city needs to do something about Bell Pond. Fill it, so it doesn’t run so deep so fast. Build a wall, so folks only have five feet of water to paddle around in, instead of experiencing a sudden drop. Get the local colleges’ engineering students to, as a class project, make like civil or mechanical engineers and design, build something to STOP MORE FOLKS FROM DROWNING.

Just like the boy who recently lost his life in Bell Pond after going in over his head. He didn’t know how to swim and the innocuous looking body of water has a big drop after several yards of low, not over your head water. If you can’t swim a drop, even down to eight feet, can scare you, panic you, kill you. As City Councilor Ric Rushton, who wisely is pushing for the WPSchools to re-institute swimming lessons for all WPS students – I learned how to swim through the mandatory swim program at the old Prov Junior High – said after attending the boy’s wake, the pain in the room was palpable. The grief the boys’ loved ones were experiencing was all encompassing. Relatives and friends drowning in heart-break.

Rushton, like Lukes, is also spot on when he said: We need the city schools’ phys ed programs to start teaching all our kids to swim. Again. Like I said, I learned to swim at the old Providence Street Junior High. Every week for two or so months we students would either bus or walk down – I forget – to the Girls Club, the Winthrop House branch, which was down the street. The Girls Club had a great, big, beautiful, hyper-chlorinated swimming pool. We all had to wear the clean bathing suits the Girls Club provided us kids – dark blue, heavy cotton one piece nightmares. It was so much fun! Ugly bathing suits, nice swimming instructors who taught us how to float, do the front crawl, back stroke, side stroke. We swam laps. The instructors watched us, critiqued us, and at the end of our course, we had to take a test, show our instructors we knew the strokes. We even got little report cards, with strokes that we could do checked off. I think we Providence Street Junior High students did this for two years.

Fantastic. The public schools at their best.

Every year, as soon as it warms up, the city seems to lose a person to Bell Pond. Tragedy, after tragedy … My mom used to tell me of friends who drowned in Bell Pond when she was a kid. My grandfather lost one of his chums to Bell Pond. City folks, many of them immigrants, who see a cute little pond in the middle of the inner city and say … Ahhh, what a delightful way to cool off… I’ll just take a qick dip, I’ll just horse around with my pals… Then tragedy strikes. We have other city ponds but none of them are in such an unforgiving, HOT, drug-ridden urban environment. Of course, the pond looks positively pristine, lovely, refreshing … .

There are, obviously, no life guards stationed there – off season or off hours. The safe swimming area IS roped off, but people pay it no mind when they are feeling full of themselves. Maybe signs could help. There are no multi-lingual signs stating how deep the water is. Maybe placing a sign that literally shows how deep the water is, sort of like the old carny signs you’d see outside amusement park rides, would help.

But we agree with Lukes, who says: FILL IT UP. BUILD A WALL. GET THE LOCAL COLLEGE KIDs, with our DPW’s leadership, to design some kind of barrier, etc. And we agree with Rushton: OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS SHOULD BE GIVING STUDENTS SWIMMING LESSONS DURING GYM TIME.

I know I do! … We should be teaching these great American movie musicals in our schools! The Great American songbook, Tin Pan Alley – all American kids should know how rich America’s musical history is – even if they don’t go on to college! We should teach this history in our high schools. Plant the seed …  TODAY … – R. Tirella

By Rosalie Tirella

Three cheers! Massachusetts may create a new rule for folks on food stamps – the SNAP program, as it’s called today. Soon poorer folks who have a SNAP card to pay for their groceries may not be able to spend their federal/state benefit on soda. You know Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, etc. I say HOORAY to this development!

The SNAP program is a government program that is all about keeping poorer families, struggling families, healthy and strong. Why should tax payer money be used to subsidize soneone’s stupidity? Or ignorance? Or thoughtless parenting? People need to be more mindful of what they are putting into their bodies and do the best they can with the resources they have.

My Polish and Italian immigrant grandparents were poor, but their families ate so well! Gardens supplied fresh veggies. Everything was made from scratch. My mom used to love to tell me stories about how she and her dad, my Grandpa, used to leave their Green Island tenement to go mushroom and berry picking in the wilds of Worcester. My grandpa even kept rabbits on the back porch which he butchered for my granny to make into stew. That is until the Worcester Board of Health shut his little operation down! My relatives were people of the earth, in the Old Country. They knew good food when they saw it. They knew how to grow it, nurture it, prepare it, even, sadly, slaughter it.

If you are a parent or guardian and you want to feed your family food that will keep them alert, capable, etc, you buy milk, low sugar cranberry or orange juice, V-8 (low salt), even. But for Christ’s sake you don’t feed them Dr. Pepper!

We won’t go into the fact that 90% of the stuff you buy at the grocery store is already pumped up with enough sugar for millions of sugar rushes. Why make things worse with a can of soda?

We can hope to educate families on SNAP, but that’s a process we may not have time for, seeing every other person in America seems obese/pre-diabetic/diabetic and/or suffering from the sclorosis of some vital organ. Depressing.

I have seen four year olds with cavities galore because their parents put soda or sweet juice in their milk bottles. By sucking on that thing, all day, the little ones’ teeth were exposed to sugar, the #1 cause of tooth decay, FOR HOURS ON END. My heart broke when a friend, who fed her little son juice in his baby bottle, told me her little sweetie had to go to the dentist to have many of his baby teeth filled with silver. Cavities that were causing pain for her little cutie.

Kids need fresh fruits and veggies and whole grains and eggs and other kinds of protein to grow. Grow their brains, as well as their bodies.

Poor people are born behind the eight ball. By making it easier for them to buy more good food, and less bad food, ie soda pop, the state of MA is improving lives, using public money for the public good.

… First day there wasn’t a mom to visit! Did a ton of stuff to distract myself! … Wrote about my Mom, who died last summer, in this issue of InCity Times.  … Yesterday, I would have visited her – brought one of her favorite movies, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, to the little studio apartment she shared with her two very spoiled cats (now my two very spoiled cats!!). I would have made some low-fat microwave popcorn for the both of us and together we would have watched the beautiful Audrey Hepburn and cried at the happy ending.  My mom, a hopeless romantic despite her real life experiences, and an animal lover, always, always teared up while watching the final scene. … Don’t want to give away the plot, if you haven’t seen this excellent movie. I like it better than the Truman Capote novella. – Rosalie Tirella

Depressing. Click here to take a look: http://www.worcestercasino.com/

To get your FREE defeat slots lawn sign today,  gimme a buzz at 508.963.8386.  - R. T.

When we were young we adored Sean Connery as 007. Today, more Betty Friedan (no! make that Gloria Steinem!) than Octopussy, we love to watch Connery in MARNIE, a great Hitchcock flick, and THE UNTOUCHABLES, another very good movie, with an excellent performance by Connery. We do, however, adore these dustjackets, specially created over the years for Ian Fleming’s first James Bond book, CASINO ROYALE.  Big guns aside, we love this swinging sixties cover! To see more art, click here! - R. Tirella

… Meeting at City Hall, Main Street. The whacky antics begin at 7 p.m. There will be lots of slots talk – especially how to mitigate the crime that comes with slots. After WPD Chief Gemme released his withering report on slots and crime, City Manager Mike O’Brien (who, we believe, really really really wants slots for Green Island) needs to come back strong to defeat … common sense.

- R. Tirella

Click here for agenda!

I won’t be going to the cinemaplex (cinemaplexes - what depressing places! A movie theater for downtown Woo!) to see the new GREAT GATSBY movie. Robert Redford’s turn as old Jay did it for me in the 1970s – and still floats my boat. Click here  to see other photos from some great Redford films. I have seen seven out of the 10. Can’t believe I missed three! – R. Tirella