Rosalie’s Blog

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

By Rosalie Tirella

The T & G is running a story: play, by play … how the terrorist’s body ‘was snuck’ out of Worcester. Let’s put the bad grammar aside. Let’s talk about the T & G’s fetishizing the body of the terrorist.

And it is also time to say: Shame on Peter Stefan of Main South’s Graham Putney and Mahoney Funeral Home for blabbing to anyone who puts a mic under his 66 year old nose. That’s what he told The New York Times reporter – that he was 66. Ha! More like 80 and counting! But this is what you get from a guy who is a deluded wannabe, a guy who schleped a film about himself to the SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL this past year. Deluded does not begin to describe the man, when it comes to his dreams of being a film auteur.

We have kept mum about all this until now. Out of respect for the bombing victims and their families … . But we have known Stefan for almost 10 years, a good egg. But for almost a decade I have heard his stories about his music ‘career,’ the morbid cable TV reality shows he guest-starred on, his dreams of driving one of his caskets around town to promote sober driving, his movie scripts that he had written for himself. Hell, he was the panelist who never called in sick when we had OUR little TV show, Straight Talk. We have got to let go of this guy – a guy who, on a very weird level, mixes death and show biz. Worcester’s very own Barnum and Bailey circus ring leader.

That’s why Stefan refused to tell Bronny Kush of the T & G his real age. He couldn’t lie, like he did to the Times, cuz Kush knows what he looks like. But like Woo’s own Norma Desmond, Stefan was/is hoping to make his glorious come-back to the Silver Screen. Wait, unlike the main character in Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD, Stefan was never famous, never an old has been.

Which makes him an old NEVER WAS.

Let this go, Worcester. Do not indulge our own Norma Desmond.

And the screen fades to black …

WUMB 91.9 FM

Been listening to it since yesterday, while driving around town. Fabulous! Heard Lucinda Williams today, singing one of my favorite songs from her wonderful album,  ”Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”! How cool it that? The station, run out of the University of Massachusetts /Boston campus, seems to favor rootsy rock, blues, folk with some bite (yesterday they dedicated a show to Robert Johnson!!!). DJs very knowledgeable! Check them out! Here is Lucinda singing one of my favorite songs off Car Wheels! Buy it today! – R. Tirella

… Bill Randell could use this letter! … Billy, or anyone in town, PLEASE feel free to print out and USE! Mail this letter out to Claude Dorman (Wonderland blogger) 38 Sever St., Worcester, MA 01609. If Dorman has enough folks taking him to court, mailing out lets to the DA, he may have to continue to hire his lawyer – some guy from Spencer that Paul Collyer says looks like a mob guy – to defend him. Let’s make Dorman, a notorious cheap-skate, spend $$$. – “Rose”

Here is the letter:

District Attorney Joseph. E. Early
225 Main Street
Worcester, MA 01608

Police Chief Gary Gemme
9-11 Lincoln Square
Worcester, MA 01608

Dear Sirs:

Recently a Worcester man used, without my permission, my business email address to send out emails in my name to a number of Worcester city officials. I believe that the individual who did this was Claude Dorman of 38 Sever St., Worcester, MA.

This is not the first time Mr. Dorman has used my business email to send out negative email about me. I have consulted with an attorney and have been advised that Mr. Dorman has violated Mass. Gen. L. c. 266 Section 37E regarding identity fraud. This statute defines “pose” in the context of identity crime as “to falsely represent oneself, either directly or indirectly, as another person or persons.”

Mr. Dorman in doing this has caused me both financial and emotional harm. I request that me Dorman be charged with violating Mass. Gen. L. c. 266 Section 37E.

Sincerely yours,

name

CC: Claude Dorman
**************

Claude Dorman, outside the Worcester Courthouse this past March. It was Dorman vs. Paulie Collyer.

… to bad rubbish! Terrorist body spirited out of Worcester, buried in some secret spot and is now (happily) food for the worms.

It was OK, very human, for we Worcesterites to have a collective freak out over the body, symbol of what Bruce Sprinsteen, on his NEBRASKA album called, ‘just an evil in the world.’

On to slots, people!!!!!! On to slots.

Thanks to WPD Chief Gary Gemme for being the only public official to really lead on the issue. Sometimes we need our city leaders to LEAD on city issues. Gemme has also come out against the proposed slots parlor in a very public and strong way. What can we say? The guy has the courage to speak his soul. He has integrity.

Wish we could say the same for our other city leaders … City Manager Mike O’Brien mum on the topic, and Mayor Joe Petty at a loss for words. As usual. Who voted this non-leader into office? We did! And, as usual, City Clerk David Rushford has his fingers in the pie.

- R. Tirella