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InCity Feature

The Hunger issue

Help feed your neighbors

By William S. Coleman III

The words “Hunger in America” can attract the eye of any reader; could Worcester have a hunger crisis? There are many families in Worcester who do not have the basic food essentials in their house. Times are tough, and many folks are just getting by. If you can open your refrigerator and see the abundance of food, you are lucky.

Hunger in Worcester means more than just a few soup kitchens and food pantries providing bags of good quality food to single people and families in need. Hunger means that one has to hold back the pain, hurt or embarrassment of asking for food from a pantry or distant family member or friend.

Each night in Worcester someone goes to bed hungry. Be it the elderly living alone and depressed or a child who is hungry in a house with no food. There is a hunger crisis before our eyes in our community.

Continue reading The Hunger issue →

Green Island Grrrl

A tale of two cities (or: I’ve got the sucky sidewalk blues)

By Rosalie Tirella

Years ago, I lived on Dewey Street. It wasn’t a great time in my life, and my environment seemed to echo my dire straits – down to the beat-up street and sidewalk. Bumpty, bumpety, bumpety … bump. I got minor whiplash driving down Dewey Street back then.With all its potholes and patch-jobs and tornup sidewalk – especially the stretch from Oberlin Street to Chandler Street – I wondered how kids in the neighborhood safely walked to school (you had to spend a good deal of your trek on the street that lies behind Park Ave and skirts through Main South/Piedmont).To make matters worse, the dumpy street seemed to be an open invitation to slobs of every stripe. People threw away lots of trash on Dewey Street. One Christmas morning I awoke to a dumped sofa and soiled pampers on the sidewalk in front of the three-decker next door. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Well, here it is decades later and a drive down the same stretch of Dewey Street – no doubt named after Worcester’s famous Dewey’s – is still a depressing experience. Look at the photos I took! The street is still busted up, the sidewalk is still torn up and trash is king.

Continue reading A tale of two cities (or: I’ve got the sucky sidewalk blues) →

InCity Feature

Know your health insurance rights when switching jobs

By Steven R. Maher

Health insurance is a big issue when switching jobs. The story of Mike is instructive when dealing with insurance companies.

Mike (not his real name) started a new job in September 2007, moving from a large corporation to a larger corporation, both companies having the same health insurer. In his early fifties, Mike was in good health except for soreness in the arms brought on by aggressive weight lifting, which had been diagnosed prior to starting his new job. Mike started physical therapy for this condition shortly after his new employer’s health insurance kicked in. It was then that Mike received the letter.

Continue reading Know your health insurance rights when switching jobs →

InCity Feature

Going bananas in the new Worcester Courthouse!

By Jack Hoffman

Recently, I had to travel to Worcester to retrieve some probated documents. I thought it might be a great opportunity to see the new Courthouse, since it’s been awhile since I visited the old place down at Lincoln Square. And I could save a little on the legal bills.

I was told in advance I could park at the Centrum Parking lot – sorry, you know it’s been a long time. It’s now the DCU.

Continue reading Going bananas in the new Worcester Courthouse! →

Hoffman

Can’t we all just get along?

Rodney King and the four-letter word we don’t want to talk about

By Jack Hoffman

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the brilliance and eloquence articulated by Barack Obama in his recent speech on race – a speech, even acclaimed by many of his detracters. And criticized by those who for one reason or another never heard parts of the entire speech and already had some pre-conceived agenda. Oh, sure you can grab a line or two and have some questions about its meaning, but to actually change the political winds from a few outtakes out of thousands of sermons by a former pastor I find quite shallow.

Before the ink was dried, the speech was on the hate mongers script to define Obama’s credibility by comparing him with the incendiary remarks of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright: A potential president who showed us honesty, bravery, and courage on a hot and dangerous topic called race, but just as important he showed character and loyalty by not throwing someone under the wheels who had so much meaning in his life and thousands of others.

Continue reading Can’t we all just get along? →

InCity Feature

Worcester’s foreclosure crisis: what it can do to you, your extended family, your colleagues, your neighborhood and your city

By Worcester District 4 City Councilor Barbara G. Haller

Hardly a day goes by without a media story on the foreclosure crisis and its trickle down and up effects. The crisis is real and growing and many analysts are saying that it will easily be two years, and perhaps several more, before our economy restabilizes.

There are many contributing factors – predatory lending, greed, denial, small margins for making ends meet, quickly escalating costs of living (property taxes, gasoline, heating fuel, insurance, health costs, and just about everything else we pay for). The other side of the coin is that there are some opportunities too as property values sink to more affordable prices – but buyer beware, as there are often liens, code violations, and financing traps associated with these properties.

Continue reading Worcester’s foreclosure crisis: what it can do to you, your extended family, your colleagues, your neighborhood and your city →

Hoffman

It’s all over now

By Jack Hoffman

I know the following might piss some of my loyal women readers including my editor and publisher. Hillary you have got to get out of this race now. You are endangering any chance the Democrats might have in recapturing the White House.

In the words of the infamous sportscaster Len Berman, lets roll the video back two weeks before the March 4th elections. The media buzz at that time was, including the words of Billy, was Hillary had to win Ohio and Texas to continue her candidacy. The polls at that time were showing Obama with a high single digit lead in Texas and he was closing in on Hillary’s margin in Ohio. In order to stop the Obama momentum it was decided that a change within the campaign had to be made. So added to the vernacular of the Karl Rove negative political thinking was “kitchen sink politics” throw whatever you can out there and see how it flies.

It first began with a photo of Obama dressed in a native Kenyan outfit, something that is customary that all foreign dignitaries usually wear- the why is obvious- a subliminal message to keep the Muslim rumors alive.

Continue reading It’s all over now →

Green Island Grrrl

I love a parade!

By Rosalie Tirella

So there I was at Worcester’s Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, with the boyfriend and trusty dog, Bailey, when it hit me: this is the real Worcester, the Worcester I love. Worcester, the place where I was born; Worcester the place where I will most likely die. Home, sweet home! Home to me and the people I’ve met and known throughout the years. People who will pass before my mind’s eye when I am 85 years old and sweetly reminiscing in my Lazy Boy, somewhere in one of the Webster Square “tower” apartments: my neighbors, my friends’ children, former colleagues at old jobs, community volunteers, even a nemesis or two. They are all part of my life – part of me! To honor, love, respect (and sometimes diss). To have and to hold (sometimes a tad too tightly). ‘Till death do us part!

My life felt perfect on that brittle sunny day, the day we Worcesterites choose to celebrate St. Paddy’s Day (always a week before the real date, in deference to Worcester politicians who want to schmooze in/be a part of the Boston celebration). There was a melding of my heart and aluminumsided three-deckers. Because on parade were a city’s – my city’s! – aspirations and history. All decked out in Kelley green boas, bow ties, beads and baubles!

Continue reading I love a parade! →

InCity Letters, Uncategorized

Fur: The gold standard of cruelty

By Paula Moore

Anna Wintour feels our pain.

In the September issue of Vogue magazine, Wintour informs us that she and her fellow editors are taking this recession very, very seriously and have edited “the collections with value for money in mind.”

We’re then treated to a two-page article on Fendi’s new gold fur—24K-gold bars are pressurized into a mist and infused into fur coats and shawls. “You can sport part of your financial portfolio, and your financial adviser will be pleased to see you so prominently into gold and out of bad stocks,” the writer gushes. One coat in the collection costs $100,000.

If we needed any more proof that fur-loving fashionistas are out of touch with the rest of the population, this is it. By now, most of us know that there is no kind way to rip the skin off animals’ backs, and we’re not buying it—at any price.

Continue reading Fur: The gold standard of cruelty →

Green Island Grrrl

Casinos in Worcester? Don’t bet on it!

It’s all about dumping on Worcester’s older neighborhoods. Department of Public Works and Parks head honcho Robert Moylan reopens the Quinsigamond Village dump after Worcester decides it needs to have more landfill space. Moylan reopens/increases the size of the dump after the City of Worcester promised Quinsig Village residents that the city would never reopen the landfill – that it would honor the wishes of neighborhood residents who worked like mad in the ‘80s to get the dump closed – for good. Moylan reopened it after hundreds of residents signed a petition against the dump and presented it to the city – a petition which the city mysteriously has no record of. (Should we check the dump?!) So now the expanded landfill is with us – bigger and better, I am told. So new and improved that it has even won an award!

My question to City Fathers/Mothers: Why can’t we give the AWARD-winning dump to the west side – or perhaps relocate it down the street from Robert Moylan’s home?

Continue reading Casinos in Worcester? Don’t bet on it! →