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By Rosalie Tirella

Spring is here! Sunny days! Warm nights. croquses jutting out of the grassy squares we Worcester three decker dwellers like to call our front and side yards. Winter is brutal in new England – it seems more and more brutal with each passing year. Chalk it up to our creaky joints or … the sad, sad fact that too often folks in Worcester are just plain rude, unfriendly. They carry a perpetual wintertime of the soul.

Twenty or so years ago it didn’t used to be this way!

I used to say the people of Worcester were “real,” gritty but decent; rough around the edges but always ready to lend a hand … nice. It was as if all the churches we belonged to, all the factories we worked at, all the ethnic social clubs we belonged to took the edge off our urban living, even poverty. Those days seem to have evaporated in the spring sun. I chalk it up to reality TV, and the culture of quasi-porn lots of Americans embrace as they listen to the filth spewed by radio hack Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, watch Paris Hilton and Snookie bare all (body and hollow soul!) on R-17 reality/cable TV shows …

I remember a former boyfriend wanted to take a photo of my breasts to carry around in his cell phone. I said NO WAY! His new girlfriend (a few weeks into the relationship) let him take a cell phone photo of her boobs (the boob) and they proudly sit on his cell phone today (not as the phone wall paper). He told me, “If I asked her to take out her tits in public, she would.”

Glad he’s found someone who “embodies” what it means to be an American in 2012.

So goes the whoring of America, which, I believe, leads to the anything goes attitude of America, which leads to the if anything goes, then we can be in your face rude and obnoxious. We can wear clothes that make us look like whores – we can even dress our little daughters in clothes that sexualize them because these are the outfits stores (taking the cue from Paris Hilton) sell these days.

So, for me, it no longer surprises to see people run red lights and give fellow drivers the finger while they cut folks off/break the law. It no longer shocks me to read about gun play in the middle of downtown Worcester, a downtown I used to love shopping in with my mom and two kid sisters in the 1960s/early 1970s. I accept the fact that Worcester/society has broken down. All the police details and all the community meetings where neighborhood activists declare that we will all take back our neighborhoods can’t put this Humpty Dumpty city back together again.

Still, there are a few glimmers of hope in Wormtown – Worcesterites who – despite the snow, sleet , rain, and undercurrent of selfishness – manage to be polite. Courteous at all (or most) times. Ready with a smile and a kind word. As sunny as spring – no matter how wintery Worcester gets. Even in May.

By Michael True

“If there are Seven Wonders of the World, the eighth is the Peace Abbey,” according to one of its benefactors.

Since Worcester admirers agree, a recent announcement that the Peace Abbey, based in Sherborn, may be closing was a sad moment hereabouts.

Founded and directed by Lewis Randa, with Meg Randa and Dot Walsh, the Abbey has flourished since Mother Teresa visited there in 1988. In time, it has become a significant memorial for peacemakers throughout history, a resource for education and action by activists resisting war and injustice, and a major conference center for peace studies faculty and students at neighboring schools, colleges and universities.

Dedicated to creating innovative models that empower individuals on the path of nonviolence and peacemaking, it has enriched the community far beyond its borders, with a steady stream of visitors from throughout the U.S. and foreign countries.

A public event, “Occupy for Change,” sponsored by the New England Peace Studies Association, was held Saturday. Although in a rather financially precarious position, the Abbey conference center and guesthouse will remain open for weddings, retreats, meditation, and other activities.

ORIGIN AND OUTREACH

Inspired by his participation in the Day of Prayer for World Peace during the UN International Year of Peace in 1986, at the Basilica of St. Francis, in Assisi, Lewis Randa brought back Prayers for Peace to the Life Experience School for special needs students, which he founded as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.

After Mother Teresa visited the school and students in 1988, the Abbey compound, in the town’s historical district, was expanded to include a guesthouse and multi-faith chapel, with artifacts of the world’s religions,

Central to the peace movement in New England, its programs have involved local citizens, volunteers and interns from Wellesley College, Andover Newton Theological School, Clark and Brandeis universities, among others. Abbey staff have taught peace studies courses at Stonehill College and in area schools, focusing on successful nonviolent movements around the world. Musical and theatrical events, and protests have also involved a community of talented and committed persons of all ages.

The nine-foot statue of Mohandas Gandhi is a focus point of the Pacifist Memorial surrounded by plaques with quotations from ninety peacemakers, from the Buddha to Dorothy Day. Well-known visitors over the past three decades include, Howard Zinn, Elise Boulding, Maya Angelou, and Father Daniel Berrigan. The 150 peacemakers honored by the Abbey with its Courage of Conscience Award include the late Stanley Kunitz, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

WORCESTER

Since it was initiated, Worcester residents have benefited from and contributed to the life and outreach of the Abbey in numerous ways. The New England Peace Studies Association, founded by Glen Gersmehl at Clark University in the 1980s, has its home base there, for regular meetings and annual conferences.

Students and faculty in the peace studies programs at Clark, Assumption, and Holy Cross gather there each semester, some helping with the Registry for Conscientious objectors, housed at the Abbey. A Clark student, Emily Luhrs, has prepared a Resource Packet on the significance and content of the Registry, available on the internet.

One of the memorial plaques honors peacemaker Annabel Wolfson, co-founder of the Inter-faith Center for Draft Information, Worcester. Joseph de- Rivera, emeritus professor, at Clark, is one of several Worcester benefactors who have helped to sustain the Abbey over the years.

STONEWALK

The Abbey’s staff and compatriots have engaged in a variety of events involving peacemakers over the years. They include major events in Boston involving well-known activists and STONEWALK, a series of pilgrimages across hundreds of miles in Asia an Western Europe, as well as United States.

Initially, the Abbey consecrated a Memorial for Unknown Civilians Killed in War in Sherborn on May 14, 1994. Calling attention to the 2,174 victims of war daily, none out of ten civilians and half of them children, the stone was placed on private grounds adjoining the town’ÿs Vetera’∞ÿs Memorial.

Then from 2000 to 2005, members and friends of the Abbey pulled a similar memorial stone on a caisson from Dublin to Belfast, in Ireland; from Liverpool to Coventry in England, and from Boston to New York City, and from Sherborn to Cambridge, and another to Arlington Cemetery, Washington D.C. Each journey highlighted the human cost of war, particularly victims and conscientious objectors, with a message of healing and remembrance.

During Stonewalk USA 2004, Bruce Nichols, described his experience, as he and others “propelled the stone on its journey toward a peaceful tomorrow.” It represented, he added, the many hearts silenced by the untimely intervention of conflict and war“_ Hearts full of hope and aspiration. Millions of hearts and their stories, now mostly unknown and lost when they were prematurely stilled.”

In 2005, the Japan pilgrimage included members of Families for Peaceful Tomorrow, relatives of residents killed in the September 2001 terrorist attacks. After flying to Tokyo, they walked 280 miles to mark the 60th anniversary of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Warmly welcomed by Japanese officials and the Hibakusha, survivors of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, who shared their goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and their message, “War is not the answer.”

In 2007, the Japanese built their own caisson and cut a stone with the same message to bring to Korea to apologize for the occupation and the war. Peace Abbey members joined this journey.

EMILY AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

The Abbey’ÿs commitment to animal rights was responsible for one of its most widely publicized activities. Having rescued a cowfrom the slaugherhouse the staff gave sanctuary to the animal until her death as a result of cancer.

Over the next two years, hundreds of visitors visited Emily the Cow and her barnyard buddies at the Abbey. She reserved a special greeting for the many children who came to have their picture taken. Howard Lyman, “the Mad Cowboy” and former Nationafarmers Union staff member paid homage to Emily while barnstorming across Massachusetts to educate people about Mad Cow Disease and the benefits of sustainable farming, with an appearance also at Tufts College of Veterinarian Science in North Grafton and on WCCA-TV 13, Worcester.

As he unveiled the Sacred Cow Animal Rights Memorial, Lewis Randa acknowledged the Life Experience School and the Peace Abbey’ÿs long dedication to animal rights. Today, a statue of Emiliy the Cow, by an internationally known Georgian sculptor, Lado Gudjabidze, stands near the bronze plaques honoring the world’ÿs pecemakers.

OCCUPY BOSTON

In the most recent initiative, in support of activists addressing injustice, the Abbey took the Gandhi to join hundreds of protestors at the Occupy Boston camp in Dewey Square, Boston. For nine weeks, it served as a focal point for the demonstration.

Fulfilling Lewis Randa’ÿs faith in the crowd, the unsupervised statue remained safe,“except for the temporary displacement of Gandhi’s eye glasses and a broken thu”b,∞± according to Wicked Local Dover-Sherborn newspaper. In addition, “Gandh’∞ÿs likeness was used to block the entrance to the nearby Goldman Sachs offices, which Randa regarded as a more appropriate place for the protest.”

FUTURE PLANS

The potential sale of the Peace Abbey comes at a time when it faces a large debt and a monthly payment of $3,000. According to Dot Walsh, program coordinator and chaplain, the Middlesex Savings Bank has been generous in extending various deadlines, since it was first put up for sale. Although the asking price for the total property is $999,000, buildings on the two-and-a half-acres, including the guest house, the conference center, and the barn can be purchased separately.

Recent plans suggest that University of Massachusetts, Boston, will be the beneficiary of artifacts, personal papers, conscientious objector files, and books, to be archived with its social justice collection. A peacemakers table, which serves as a focal point for an introductory ceremony for visitors to the Abbey, will be housed on the fifth floor of the library.

The statue of Gandhi, a bronze statue of Emily the cow, and Conscientious Objectors Hill of Remembrance will be retained at the present site. Meanwhile, a physician affiliated with the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Worcester, has expressed interested in exploring the relationship between nonviolence and healing, in courses and programs on peacemaking, health and well being.

Whatever its future manifestation, the Peace Abbey will undoubtedly continue its imaginative witness and faithful commitment to building a peace culture and cultivating a just social order.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17797693

MORE STORIES OF INTEREST:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/23/bad-apple-employ-more-us-workers

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-korea-food-aid-20120422,0,6084547.story

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-army-ptsd-20120425,0,6997498.story

… I did graduate at the top of my highschool class (was awefully shy about it), and I got all A’s in high school and junior high (kinda shy about that, too). I lunch with my junior high school English teacher every few months. She would be glad to sit down with Claude and set him straight. And no, I did not offer BHS years of InCity Times, though I did give them 20 or so copies of the ICT issue in which my Burnocat story ran.

For the record: The Worcester Public Library keeps copies, I know that. Periodically, the librarians there will give me a buzz to ask for a missing issue of InCity Times for their archives. I am always flattered that they call – and are making InCity Times a piece of Worcester History. And, for the record, every year, we give the past 24 issues of ICTimes – 1 year of ICTs – to the Worcester Historical Museum.

Wow. Claude, you are one screwed up person. Are you tampering with city-school records now? Why are you filled with such self-loathing?

- R. Tirella

By Parlee Jones

Peace, Worcester People! I am delighted to write this article about a friend of mine who has one of those jobs that is so very important, but at the same time, nobody really notices. Anyone who has traveled along Elm and West Streets first thing in the morning or in the afternoon when school is letting out has probably seen my friend Helen Sakovich. You may not notice her, but she is noticing you. She is making sure you see the kids crossing the street. She is making sure the children get to Elm Park Community School and back home again in safety. She has been there for 25 years making sure the children of our community make it to and from school daily.

A little history. Helen grew up on Greenwood Street where her dad built a home for her mom as a wedding gift. She remained there until her 20’s. Her mom Eva was born here and dad Jack was from Belarus, Russia. Her dad passed away when she was twelve and her mom raised 4 children in the home built from love. Helen’s sisters are Annie and Sonia, they are the lights of her life. Her brother Dmitri passed away in 1984. Her parents were married for 14 years when Jack passed away.

Helen was raised in a home of love and her parents were kind. Helen went to Quinsigamond grammar school and Grafton Street Junior High School. She graduated from North High in the Class of ’69, “the real North” as she calls it. When I asked her if any teachers stand out from back then, she says she remembers Mrs. Sherrin from the 5th grade in 1958. Helen’s one pride and joy is her daughter Andrea Lynne who turns 40 this July.

Helen started working as the cross guard at Elm and West on September 21, 1987. Keeping Helen company all these years on the corners of Hogg Square is the monument to Pvt. Robert H. Hogg who was born on September 2, 1883 and killed in battle in Chavignon, France on March 18, 1918. I looked for more information on this person, but could not find it.

When asked why she has stayed so long in this job, Helen says that she loved this job from the beginning. She enjoys watching the kids growing up from year to year. “It’s nice to watch the kids start off in kindergarten and then to see them on their way to sixth grade graduation. I’ve seen a lot of children in this neighborhood.” “My job fulfills me, I love children.”

Helen has also seen her kids who have grown up now come back with their own children, some attending the same school as their parents and still living in the same neighborhood. “In the last week I must have seen 10 kids that have grown come back with their kids.” Sometimes the kids that have grown up will come back and say hi. Thanking her for kind words in the morning and afternoon.

She is very protective of her children. Down to the point where she has asked a dad for ID because she had only seen the child with mom and she did not know who he was when the child was going to get in his car. Dad was appreciative after Helen told him, she was just looking out for his child’s best interest.

“When summer comes I miss my job. I start counting down the days once they start showing the back to school commercials. I have had all cultures of kids and I love it. If you love what you do it’s easy. I love children.” “Another thing I enjoy is watching the moms walking the little ones to school on the first day. Sometimes the moms are crying and sometimes the kids are crying.”

“Elm Park is one of the greatest schools. The staff at Elm Park is incredible. Teachers, volunteers and administration. I have seen them come and go for the past 25 years.“ “Ruth Ann Melanson was my longest boss. She is an incredible woman.” Two teachers ~ Mrs. Menard who was at Elm Park Community School for thirty seven years and Mrs. Debra Dennison who was there about just as long are role models for Helen. “They were major reasons that I stayed. I saw the love they had and the thirst they had to want to teach the kids. I learned from them how to be patient, and take time with people.” Helen says it takes an angel to teach these kids. She doesn’t realize that she is an angel. A guardian angel that continues to make sure children make it to and from Elm Park Community School safely.

Helen has no plans to retire. Again, she says that she “loves to see the kids on the first day of school with their little bow ties and pretty shoes. Some clinging to mom and some running from mom.” She truly enjoys seeing the loving moms cry as they leave their babies for the first time. “I love to see the looks on their faces.”

I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Helen Sakovich at Abby’s House. She has been a friend of Abby’s House since 1996 when Abby’s was helping a friend of Helen’s named Cheryl. (Went to 5th grade together.) She joined Cheryl at the women’s center and has been coming ever since. Helen says “Abby’s gives not only with their heart but the body, mind and soul. Volunteers and staff. It’s like an energizer bunny. Also a refuge for me. On days when I was feeling down I could go to Abby’s and come out feeling better.” Helen says Abby’s is an incredible place filled with love and patience.
“Helen has a big heart! She remembers kindness and moves past the negative.

There’s never a day Helen misses a visit at Abby’s and she takes time to say more than “hello”. Women who’ve been part of our staff or who have been long time volunteers know Helen. She has always pitched in to help. In the Women’s Center, Helen talks to everyone, spreading good will, a good word and a very good attitude. Besides devotion to her “kids” at her Elm Street corner, Abby’s is definitely part of Helen’s daily routine.” Annette Rafferty says of Helen.

Tess remembers Helen from over on Elm Street from around that 1996 date when she was driving and went a little too close to the cross-walk. Helen gave her a stern look. A little later that day, Tess ran into Helen again in the Women’s Center. “Ah, you again!” A mutual laugh and they have known each other ever since. But Tess makes sure she stops where she should around all schools!

Helen is a true Worcesterite. “I love Worcester, I have been here all my life. It’s been good to me.” “My favorite thing about Worcester is my cross-walk and soul music.” Marvin Gaye is a favorite, along with the Stylistics, (who will be at the African American Juneteenth Festival this June 23rd at Institute Park.) Other Worcester fav’s include Great Wall Chinese food downtown and Hoy Toy, 30 years ago. “When I was 18 and down town was down town, people would say Merry Christmas and mean it. I remember the Denholm’s windows. Worcester has always been good to me!” Helen wants to shout out her best friend, Sandra Smith-Silverman. A friend who has always been there for Helen and Helen will always be there for her.

I look forward to seeing Helen on her weekly visit to Abby’s. I also love seeing her doing one of her favorite things, crossing the kids from the Elm Park Community School on her corner at Elm and West. It’s one of the things that make Worcester home. The comfort of knowing she is there. Helen pulls no punches. She tells it like it is. And she is a piece of the fabric that makes up Worcester.

EISENHOWER: THE WHITE HOUSE YEARS

By Jim Newton

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” – President Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his Farewell Address to the nation, January 17, 1961.

The older I get, the more I like Ike.

Jim Newton has written a masterpiece about Eisenhower’s years in the White House, in a book destined to be a classic. When we compare Eisenhower’s careful, balanced approach to the domestic and foreign policy of George W. Bush, Eisenhower’s greatness shines out.

Like George Washington, Eisenhower’s Presidency was the personification of restraint. Eisenhower sought “balance” in everything he did.

Deficit hawk

Eisenhower was the first “”deficit hawk” of modern history. When he took over the Presidency January 1953 the country was facing a $9.9 billion shortfall. In this he faced the opposition of Senator Robert Taft Jr., a Bush like asshole who wanted to cut taxes while there was still a deficit, with a war raging in Korea.

Taft, who had opposed Eisenhower in the 1952 Republican primaries, “blew up” in 1953 when Eisenhower’s first budget proposed cutting the deficit in half without reducing taxes. Taft complained “that it would allow no tax cuts..and suggested that it would doom the party in the 1954 elections” A stunned Eisenhower in reply said the country had financial commitments due to Korea and other security issues, adding: “The nation’s military security will take first priority in my calculations.”

The two core men in Eisenhower’s cabinet were Attorney General Herbert Brownell and Treasury Secretary George Humphrey.

“If you’re going to live a good life,” Newton quotes Humphrey as saying, ”you’ve got to live within your income.”

“Through his time in office he [Humphrey] insisted that the government do just that,” writes Newton. “He fought profligate spending, irritating liberals, and imprudent tax cuts, to the annoyance of conservatives.”

The economy boomed after Eisenhower eliminated the deficit, just as it boomed in the late 1990s after President William J. Clinton balanced the budget. The 1950s were later to be remembered as a golden age, “Happy Days” when peace and prosperity reigned.

Kansas upbringing

Newton briefly traced Eisenhower’s life before be became President in 1953. He credited much of Eisenhower’s personality – the restraint, the conservatism, the values – to Ike’s Kansas upbringing in a large family. He goes on to detail how Eisenhower befriended George Marshall after joining the army, rose to lead the allied invasion of North Africa in 1942, and supervised the June 6, 1944 D-Day landings in France. All these experiences formed and shaped the Eisenhower who became President.

Newton skillfully deals with the underside of Eisenhower’s Presidency:

· Foremost among Eisenhower’s failings was his inability to understand and vigorously promote African American civil rights. Newton shows how Eisenhower appointed closet liberals as judges, such as Earl Warren, whose legal rulings made much of the civil rights advances possible.

· The overthrow of governments in Guatemala and Iran, left both countries with legacies that haunted future American Presidents for decades.

· The failure to confront right wing demagogue Joseph McCarthy.

· The promotion of Richard M. Nixon’s political career. Eisenhower did try to get Nixon to step down as Vice President in 1956, but had to keep him on to satisfy “the conservative base”.

Waging peace

But history is judging Eisenhower in a new light, from the perspective of the American experience in the fifty years after he left office. Eisenhower is now seen as a man who kept the country at peace. As Newton concluded: “Dwight Eisenhower left his nation freer, more prosperous and more fair. Peace was not given to him; he won it.”

This book review began with a quote from Eisenhower’s farewell address about the military industrial complex. Newton singles this out for as Eisenhower’s most prescient prediction. He notes the ascendancy of Dick Cheney to the Vice President after presiding over defense contractor Halliburton: “[I]raq ballooned into a war longer and costlier than World War II; by the time the last combat brigade left Iraq in 2010, the war had killed more than forty-four hundred soldiers and drained the national treasury of more than $750 billion, much of it spent on private contractors – one Halliburton division alone, KBR, was paid more than $1 billion for its work from 2002 to 2004; overall, private contractors were paid as much government money as the initial estimates for fighting the entire war.”

Newton has written a compact, highly readable and sensible book about one of the great Presidents of our time.

 By Rosalie Tirella

I am heartbroken. Levon Helm gone. A piece of America gone. A piece of my youth gone.

Like the old medicine men you used to see in the John Ford movies, like John Wayne and John Ford themselves – guys who knew the Native Americans they used in their movies -  The Band were connected to the America of William Faulkner and Mark Twain – pristine, wild, violent, so so young America. I used to feel I was tapping into a world I would have loved to have come of age in whenever I listened to The Band or watched a John Ford movie, a world of: rustic living, majestic mountains, wolves in your back yard, high flying, seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurs; do-it-yourselfers of all stripes, traveling preachers, scrawny dogs, scrawny kids, too too short lives, spirit-breaking hard work/exploitation of  everything that wasn’t white or male. Violence. Utter serenity via the natural world. Horses as modes of transportation. Lovely HORSES! Feisty mustangs!

When I listen to The Band, I feel all that … .

I saw Band singer and sometimes songwriter Rick Danko right here in Worcester – in the building that is now the Palladium. God, I was young. Danko was beautiful.

All the ”boys” in The Band were beautiful, especially: Robby Robertson (chief songwriter, who, thankfully, Helm reconcilled with on his death bed), Danko who died in his home outside Woodstock, New York, in the mid 1990s, and of course Helm, who left us yesterday, to continue his journey as his wife so soulfully put it. The Band members were wonderfully skinny, wore flared blue jeans and velvet suit coats with embroidered vests. None of the short hair Nazi cuts of today. All the guys of the 1970s wore they hair beautifully:  longish, cut below the ear, heavy bangs that brushed against their eyebrows. Yes, I was boy crazy. So was everyother heterosexual girl back then. The men – starting with The Band, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison all the way down to your high school home room buddies, were so wonderful looking. Utterly beautiful. 

Soul, honky tonk, blues, country … . I play my old Band albums, Music from the Big Pink, The Band (I know I have another one or two lying around the house) and their songs just make you ache. They are poetry, but better than poetry because the evocative lyrics come with amazing melodies. And The Band is playing the songs – actually recreating the songs everytime they got up to play.

I love to sing along with Helm. I wail, too, when he sings ”The Night They drove ol’ Dixie Down … .” I will play and replay my Band records this weekend.

A few months ago I watched (for the 1oth time) The Last Waltz – a movie that showcases all the musicians that we Baby Boomers were marinated in! Joni Mitchel, Neil Young, Bob Dylan … . The musicians who came out to celebrate The Band’s goodbye performance (they split up) were also the stars of  this Martin Scorsese movie. The music in The Last Waltz was the muscial soundtrack of my teens and twenties, artists that I, like all my peers, just took for granted. Their excellence was just part of our collective unconscious. When the movie came out, I saw it at the old cinemas in the old Worcester Center. I still remember the poster – the silhouette of the guys playing.

I want to see that movie this weekend. I want to see and listen to all those groovy, one-of-a-kind (for the most part) American poets.

RIP Levon. Your music/songs – YOU – are immortal.

***********************

Enjoy these links to great pics and NYT story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/arts/music/levon-helm-drummer-and-singer-dies-at-71.html?_r=1

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/04/18/arts/20120418HELM.html

… Dorman’s brother. A little birdy told us (because he went mano a mano with him in court) that Claude (writing as Will WW on Worcester Wonderland) looks like this, except a few years younger. Ick. Claude admited he was Will WW in court, but no one took a photo of him outside the courthouse. Our huge mistake!

That’s for putting Paulie’s head in a garbage can and pasting my face and Billy and Harry’s faces all over your toxic blog.

***************************

Oh, and readers, if you received an email from Bill re: me, disregard. It’s only Claude (again) stealing people’s identity/cyber stalking, you know the routine by now.

This is classic Claude Dorman. Wriing as Will WW on his Worcester Wonderland blog:

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Got a Sneaky Feeking?

By Worcester Wonderland blogger Claude Dorman (aka Will WW), 38 Sever St. Worcester:

“There’s plenty of interesting information about the anonymity issue on the Electronic Frontier Foundation site.

“Seems some of you are quite surprised to find out that you’re being tracked when you visit Worcester Wonderland. Why? You all do it. Some even parade their stats like medals.

“Otta tell ya I’ve got some pretty snazzy software and scripts that yield tons of technical info on visitors – goes beyond simple logging scripts, even read serial numbers. Something pretty hard to mask. I even put Hot Flash Cookies on your drive. Really pesky critters. Can’t get rid of em easily. Some stuff goes deeper. But that’s top secret. Scary eh? Not really. Imagine what the US Gov uses? Now that’s really scary.

“… And please don’t go doing any meltdowns here, all your comments are stored, even if you think you deleted them yourself. They just might come back to haunt you. Wouldn’t be pretty for your precious reputations. I got some good ones from former blogging buddy aka Harry Tembenis, who did the meltdown of all meltdowns. Got all that recorded. Interesting reading.

“And then there’s Brendan Melican’s meltdown – a psychopath masquerading as a sociopath. Talk about vile. Whew! All his comments were recorded. Heck of a collection. Maybe I oughta post the really vile ones.

“Welcome to Wusta!”

***********************

When is Claude moving? Here is his 38 Sever St., Worcester, home. He is hoping to sell it. We are trying to help Claude realize his dream … . 

http://www.massrealty.com/worcester/worcester/home/38-Sever-St,-Worcester,-MA-01609/71364362

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Claude-mobile

Here’s a photo of Will WW/Claude Dorman’s car (which, since court, he has taken to moving all over Sever/William streets). (After he installed MORE cameras on/in his home to monitor it.)

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How did Worcester get stuck with a guy who lies, defames, stalks, harasses people he simply disagrees with/is a tad envious of?

From the Womag piece on Worcester Wonderland blogger, Claude Dorman, (aka Will WW):

… “By 2008 it had turned personal, the writer [Worcester Wonderland blogger Claude Dorman] focusing on other bloggers, politicians and those both in the public and not-so-public realm. The blogger’s bio summed up the tone of many of his postings: “This is a blog about being amused and bemused with a city of 181,042 boring people with an exaggerated sense of self-worth. It’s really too bad they don’t have a sense of humor, it would make life bearable here.”

“I’ve just never encountered anybody who has that much interest in me,” says Paul Collyer, who found his personal life and business ventures – particularly his NOLA Festival – often the target of Will W.W.’s blog posts.

“It wasn’t just the content that riled up his targets (to the point where some, including Collyer, put out a “bounty” to unmask Will W.W.’s identity in 2011), but the anonymity of it.

” “Not content with writing about others on his own page, Will W.W. began posting insulting comments on other blogs.

“ … Tembenis, for instance, still smolders over an insulting Worcester Wonderland post that used images from an article about a Rutland horseback riding trail named in honor of his son, Elias, who died at seven years old. The post generated 22 comments, mostly derogatory towards Tembenis, and including this from Will W.W.: “Thankfully Mother Nature had the wisdom to prevent his kind from propagating.”

“That in essence shows how deranged this individual is. He posts outright lies about people and also slanders and libels, too, all in the name of being able to do so ‘anonymously,’” Tembenis adds.

…

“Throughout the four and a half years of this, Will W.W. took the protection of his identity a step further than a fake name: he also scrambled his computer’s IP address – the line of numbers that can identify a computer’s location and Internet provider – making it difficult for even the most tech-savvy sleuths to figure out who or where he was.

” … Dorman, who changed his phone number after his ties to Worcester Wonderland came out, had no comment.

“Dorman has a history of targeting others anonymously, even appearing in a Worcester Magazine article in 2007 for ousting a rival member of a neighborhood association, Robert Bourassa, by using pseudonymous online threats and postings to attack his business and personal reputation (“Neighbor to Neighbor Disfavor: A grudge sparks a change of leadership in the Elm Park Association,” May 17, 2007).

” “The malicious, unwarranted and slanderous attacks on my business and personal reputation by Claude Dorman under the guise of various identities and the lies he has spread have devastated my contracting business, forcing me to close and putting me in a severe financial hardship,” Bourassa wrote in a letter to members of the Lincoln Estates – Elm Park Neighborhood Association before his final meeting. “As such, I can no longer afford to remain where I live.”

“Before stepping down, however, Bourassa filed a lawsuit against Dorman and his wife, Kunigunde Cigan, in February 2008, citing criminal harassment, stalking, attempted extortion, false use of names or organizations and violations of right to peace and privacy, among others.

” “Defendants have engaged in a now twenty month long campaign of harassment of Plaintiff and Plaintiff’s businesses,” read the complaint. “There is no question the course of action, no doubt the intent, no question the harm.”

“Elsewhere in the complaint, Bourassa provided claims that Dorman used various IP addresses to flag Bourassa’s web design and contractor business advertisements on Craigslist – 673 times for 164 ads – causing them all to be removed. He also charged Dorman for creating the elmparkneighbors.net website (to closely mimic the neighborhood association’s elmparkneighbors.org), where he posted Bourassa’s financial and personal information – some of it obtained, Bourassa charged, by intercepting his mail. Dorman used fake names to send harassing and threatening emails to Bourassa through the websites he managed and posted poor reviews of his businesses on websites and online forums.

” ” … Collyer says he and other targets of Will W.W. are entertaining the idea of a lawsuit, especially since there’s worn ground after Bourassa’s complaint.

“They’ve gone out of their way to hurt my festival,” says Collyer.

” “Dorman has really gone out of his way to financially hurt people,” Collyer says …

” … Collyer says he hasn’t crossed the same line that Dorman has.

“That thing [the alter ego Claude-Dorman website, which has since been taken down] has been up for four or five days,” he says, comparing that to four and half years of Worcester Wonderland.

” “It shows we are dealing with evil cats and one who has a history of this type of harassment going back years,” he adds. “This is no longer about opinion and discussion, it is about harassment against many.”

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Go away, Claude.

By Rosalie Tirella

I seem to have grown more patriotic with age. I remember when I played apathetic American years ago, as a dopey kid: sorta standing, shoulders slouched, of course, kinda placing a very limp hand over my heart during the Pledge of Allegiance as it blared over the loud speaker at home room in Burncoat Senior High School. I was 17 then, a cool graduating senior. I did my best to look bored with the whole deal – too cool (it was 1979!) to feel the love for old America, too dopey to understand the idea of America, too immature to get down on my knees (like my grandmother would) and thank God for America.

I remember a few years later, when I was 19, and the Vietnam War had wound down but there was still a draft. I told my mother, if young women were to be callled up: I would never fight. I would high tail it to Canada.

I had never really seen my mom look ashamed of me; she never berated me either. This time was different – she was actually mad at her favorite daughter. “Rosalie,” she said in a stern tone of voice I had never heard before, “you wouldn’t die for your country?” Then, my 40-something year-old mom, a woman way past her prime from raising three kids alone and working 60 hours a week at a minimum wage crap job in an inner-city Worcester neighborhood, said with iron-clad pride: “I would fight for my country! I would die for my country!”

I didn’t get her.

All I knew is that if the Soviet Union had bombed us that second, my mother would have run to city hall, kitchen carving knife in hand, and demanded: WHERE CAN I ENLIST?!

Today at age 85, my mother was/is part of the World War II/Great Depression generaton – the group of folks newscaster Tom Brokow has dubbed: THE GREATEST GENERATION. And they were/are! Tough as nails, my mother is. My uncles and aunts the same – all determined, industrious people who always were/are honest, decent, polite and ready to help a person when the chips are down. They believe: we are in this thing together. We all rise together/fall together. We are Americans! They always sing the National Anthem, too. Know it by heart! They sing it loud and proud at baseball games and other public events. My mom, even with her dementia, hums the pre-game “Star Spangled Banner” when she watches her beloved Red Sox on TV.

My grand parents were just as patriotic as my mom. I remember my feisty old grandma from Poland used to tell people she loathed – like my ne’er do well, peripatatic father – “You no like this country? You no love this country?! Then get the hell out! Get the hell out!” Then she would turn to my father and show him her chunky round butt (swaddled in her flannel housecoat) and whack it hard. Her poverty-wracked life in America had swept the niceties away. Still, for my “Bapy,” it was church every day (back then immigrants like my grandmother attended Mass every day!) and America all the way!

Now? Well, now it is a completely different story. I don’t know if it’s reimagining my mother, my immigrant grandparents or almost 11 years of publishing and writing for my own paper – InCityTimes – but I am absolutely besotted with America! Cuckoo over the very idea! I adore my country’s fab history! It’s music. Its painters. Its national parks. Its great presidents (FDR, TR, Lincoln, Washington, Kennedy!). And lately … its grand musicals of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s.

No where can you see America at her finest – her feistiest, her most idealistic, her most artistic and talented – than in American musicals. The melodies, the lyrics, the choreographers, the dancers … all Americans! All American! All first rate! We really were number one back then! In brains, in heart, in spirit! The world looked upon us as a free, brassy, brilliant one of a kind miracle. Buy/rent/watch on TCM the following movies and you’ll see what I mean: “Top Hat/anything starring Fred Astaire,” “An American in Paris,” “Singing in the Rain/anything Gene Kelley,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Oaklahoma,” “South Pacific,” “Gi Gi,” “Show Boat,” “Calamity Jane,” “West Side Story,” “White Christmas,” “Going My Way,” “Guys and Dolls.”

Last night, in honor of Patriot’s Day, I watched the classic American musical “Yankee Doodle Dandy” starring the one and only classic American actor James Cagney! Fantastic!

There he is, James Cagney, a movie tough guy who is no Fred Astaire and can’t even carry a tune (he kinda half speaks/sings the songs), dancing to and singing classic American songs written by another classic American – song writer George Cohan … and he’s brilliant! Cagney’s performance makes you wanna stand up and cheer for our “Grand Old Flag.” And you believe we can lick Hitler because we won’t stop fighting “Til It’s Over, Over There!”!

All these great songs, celebrations of America, written to get us marching and singing. But not progaganda – garbage that was forced from the pen, lies to seduce the masses. These are American love songs written by guys like Cohen, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart. Guys who were maybe considered part of America’s underbelly: Italian Americans and Jews whose parents came from Europe. Life was tough but there were opportunities for the industrious and talented! Look old woman from Italy! Your son has grown up to be frank Capra! Where would American musicals and movies be without first generation Americans like Frank Capra, Irving Berlin and George Cohan?

No where!

But I digress. LIke I said, in the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, Cagney is no Fred Astaire; he can’t really dance or even sing! But he is mesmerizing! Ebullient! When you see Cagney strut down the stage and sing/speak Cohan’s songs, you are uplifted! You are bathed in pure spirit, pure American showmanship! And then the topper: as part of the finale, when Cagney as Cohan plays FDR in a skit, and the camera pans in for a close up Cagney/George Cohan looks squarely into the lens and basically tells Adoph Hitler to shove it!

I loved it! And so did the WW II audiences who first saw it! They got up to their feet in movie theatres all over the country and cheered! Here they were in the middle of World War II, up against EVIL incarnate and little tough thug james Cagney – with a hardscrabbe American background like my mom’s and grandma’s – is telling them: We’ll cream Hitler! We will be a free country – forever!

Only in America!

And FDR, Franklin Delano Roosvelt, the president Cagney/Cohan portrays in the skit? Well, my mom still finds it hard to believe her hero was in a wheelchair all those years. Sure, she tells me, everyone knew FDR had had polio, but … he couldn’t walk?! She still doesn’t quite believe the facts. And By God, if you watch, “Yankee Dodle Dandy” (Cagney/Cohan tells his life story to FDR during a visit with the president to receive the Congressinal Medal of Honor) FDR danced across America. Few folks (accept Eleanor!) could keep up!

It is so important to know our history! To tap into our American idealism and remember how great we really are! It just takes hard work, a bit of selflessness, a lot of joy! Watch “Yankke Doodle Dandy” or any Fred Astaire flick or any American musical, and you’ll see just how fantastic America is/YOU are!

Happy Patriot’s Day!

Anyone (anybody with dough,of course), please, please, please, please, PUH-LEAZE buy the home of Worcester’s biggest liar/creep: Claude Dorman. For years he has made the lives of Worcesterites … creepy via his website, Worcester Wonderland. Writing anonymously as Will WW, Claude has falsely accused people of sexual crimes, alcoholism, etc. We, the good people of Worcester, want Claude OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT!

If you buy Claude’s home, we will work to furnish one room with lovely furniture! Absolutely free!

If you have a dog, we will try to build your canine companion a lovely DOG HOUSE!

Because Claude Dorman has been outed, he is in Worcester’s Dog House – and wants to leave!

Go with God, as my Grandma used to say.

How did such a low-life (Claude/Will WW) get to live in a great house like this? A low-life who hated his next door neighbors, waged war on the little college across the way, set up cameras to safeguard his home/spy on his neighbors. He didn’t even recycle! The entire Elm Park neighborhood rejoices at old Claude Dorman’s eventual departure. They will all, like the Munchkins of Munchkin Land, finally Come Out, Come Out.

The Wicked Witch of the West Side will be gone!

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Please! Worcester needs a nice person living at 38 Sever St. We Munchkins have suffered for so long!

Yes, the price is inflated, but if you offer Claude Dorman cash (via a lower price tag) I am certain Claude will take the money and RUN!

Here are the stats:

Price :$345,900

Bedrooms : 4

Baths: 2.5

Home Type: Single Family

Style : Victorian

Address: 38 Sever St Worcester, MA 01609