InCity Times

12/21/2024

🎆My 10 New Year's Wishes for Worcester❤️. I'm praying that...
1.THIS TIME real reforms will happen at the Worcester Police Department. That the recent DOJ report's findings aren't covered up or fudged - that THIS TIME bad WPD cops who r**e, spit on people, slap their faces...break their arms...are held accountable in a court of law and, hopefully, fired from their City of Worcester taxpayer-funded jobs, if found guilty.

2. This winter - real City of Worcester Warming Centers for Worcester's homeless. Not just the city manager pretending that the two city public libraries and the Worcester Senior Center are open to the homeless...equipped to handle - or even welcoming of - our most vulnerable folks.

3. Establishing a SINGLE WOMEN'S City Homeless Shelter. Most homeless women fear being sexually assaulted at the city's SMOC shelters and risk their lives when outdoors alone.

4. Creating more affordable housing - get the Woo homeless people off Worcester streets and sidewalks and their friends and relatives' couches and give them tiny homes or studio apartments via the HUD voucher program in which to live. Warmth, safety, a sense of privacy. Is that too much to ask for, Worcester?

5. Connect with the feds and tell HUD: your voucher amounts $$ do not match sky high Worcester rents. Since it's a felony for a tenant and a landlord to make a side deal where the tenant pays the rent gap $ out of pocket (sometimes as low as $30 or as much as $200), the HUD voucher amounts need to increase SO POOR AND WORKING CLASS WORCESTER PEOPLE CAN SECURE AN APARTMENT in their city, Worcester.

6. Bring back the great youth clubhouses of my girlhood - WHEN THEY OFFERED KIDS ALL KINDS OF FUN, CREATIVE ARTS AND SPORTS OPPORTUNITIES for FREE: the Girls Club (we had two clubhouses back in the day), the Boys Club (also two clubhouses) and the SPORTS/REC Department at the Friendly House (once led by Director Tony Poti and other city jocks) offered poor city kids like me and my kid sisters, for a nominal fee or for free: gym, track, field hockey, boxing, arts and crafts, home economics, yoga, team sports, field trips to various Worcester County camps or state parks in the summertime, swimming lessons, roller skating, basketball, baseball ... The list goes on. There were no self-esteem or STEM classes at the old Girls Club - there was just FUN. And you healed and felt more confident thru participating in your clubhouse's fun activities. And if a kid confided to a coach or one of the junior assistants in a program - an adult he or she liked and trusted - well, then, that's when the one-on-one counseling happened, with program directors often connecting to the child's parents or guardians. It was all about strengthening kids mentally and physically THROUGH SPORTS AND RECREATION AND THE ARTS - not just hand-outs. Lots of us were underprivileged, but we were treated like curious, active young humans - not basket-cases who weren't capable of growing thru sports and the arts. Just like the kids of the West Side.

7. A real CLASSICAL HIGH SCHOOL for Worcester's best and brightest students - like the old Boston Latin. Let's not get all WOKE about this, Worcester! Let's just take the city's smartest kids and put them together in an elite, competitive, free, public WORCESTER high school where they're all expected to apply to Ivy League schools before graduation, get 800 on their SATs and work mightily to be the best. Yes, we have the Math Academy and Worcester Tech, but this high school could be about the language arts ...

8. Get the private colleges of Worcester to PILOT: or make MORE payments $$$ to the City of Worcester in Lieu of Taxes.

9. Hire MANY MORE MINORITY TEACHERS for the Worcester Public Schools so that our public schools reflect our majority-minority student body. There are hardly any Black or brown school teachers in the Worcester Public Schools - check out the recess lines outside our elementary schools in the afternoon: all kids of color and they're led by white teachers. (The white teachers are often Irish ladies who were political hires - women whose moms or dads or aunties taught in the Worcester Public Schools or whose husbands were the city's mayor or one of the city councilors and they got in to the system because they were mega-connected.) The WPS school superintendent this year was touting her hiring of more people of color for our schools - Black janitors. This just doesn't cut it.

10. Put the TEETH back into the City of Worcester Apartment Registry. When the leaders at Worcester's Building and Health Code Dept on Meade Street are making $100,000 and $125,000 salaries, don't expect them to rock the boat. So when all the Worcester landlords and slumlords clamored for changes in the new registry - such as no or very low fees or exemptions for live-in landlords - the City department heads on Meade Street immediately caved. This means many of Worcester's 100+-year-old three deckers will remain unhealthy, dangerous places in which to live - for the poorest of the poor. And many Worcester families will be stuck in fire traps. And when there's another fire in the dead of winter and the City of Worcester loses yet another WFD fireman or -woman to the flames - usually they're middle-aged men, married and with young kids - all the city makeshift shrines with those hideous gas station roses and plushie teddy bears, all those nighttime vigils with candles will mean s**t. They will not bring back the dead Worcester firefighter - often just a good bloke who LOVED his job and his kids more than anything - to his shattered family and grieving buddies.

- Rose 🌹

12/21/2024

This morning remembering some Worcesterites ❤️ who made every day Christmas🎄:
-🌹

12/20/2024

🐾Dog park in the snow☃️; now it's nap-time (for Birdy and Lilac - I'm making spag🍝 sauce for the weekend):
- 🌹

12/20/2024

Another pedestrian hit by a car in Worcester! It never ends in Worcester, does it? People mowed down by cars. Pedestrians losing their lives or seriously injured due to sp*edster drivers. One young girl was hit by a car near UMass Medical Center - she was in a coma for a month. The suffering. All the devasted families and communities - in Worcester due to horrific drivers. Worcester: dismissive of its homeless crisis, one of the most expensive and least livable cities in the Commonwealth ...

# # # # #

Downtown Worcester, CECELIA file photo:

12/20/2024

❤️🎄🎶

NEW Album “Bing Crosby’s Christmas Gems” – Out October 27th: https://bio.to/BingCrosbysChristmasGems "Bing Crosby's Christmas Gems" album brings together rar...

12/19/2024

Birdy has come a long way in six days! He's housebroken, almost sits. Good with Lilac. Great💕with Cece!🐈‍⬛ Walks better on leash. Likes the dog park but, in true Mountain Feist fashion, longs to be free, racing through the woods, on the hunt for squirrels. Mountain Feists are squirrel-hunting dogs from the South. They're one of the oldest dog "breeds" in America, possibly the oldest - the gritty little hunting dog leading this country's first settlers, especially the poor ones, to their next meal. Hound and terrier make a feist; they're more utilitarian than gorgeous. But because they're so low-maintenance (short, rough coat, very healthy and built beautifully) they were a blessing to the first Americans who had much to do, many challenges to overcome. And there was their brave little feist! helping them survive! Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln and William Faulkner all mention the "fyce"/feist in their writings. Faulkner especially praises the courage of the little feist in his novella, THE BEAR, one of my favorite books. In the book, the small dog relentlessly pursues the gigantic, fierce old bear the men and boy have been hunting season after season. He's braver than the bigger hounds and mutts he's hunting with - so courageous, even after the bear slashes him with one swipe of his huge claw. The tough little dog is still unafraid! And the owner must pick him up and carry him off the hunt so he can clean and stitch up his wound. Birdy's part of American history! He's obsessed with squirrels! He got loose once here and "climbed" a tree in front of our building after he chased the squirrel up it. Feists don't really climb trees - they run up the tree trunk super fast, over and over again, showing the hunter exactly where the squirrel is hiding. It was cool to see my working dog in full bloom - doing what he was bred to do. Feists are lean, muscular dogs, with powerful hindquarters. To see Birdy display his working breed's beauty with such tenacity and grace was a gift. And, best of all, he came to me when I called to him! ❤️🐾🐿️

- 🌹

12/18/2024

Busy day...sleepy time🐾🐾❤️

12/18/2024

🏘️REMEMBERING MAIN SOUTH'S BILLY BREAULT💙
I went thru my InCity Times stash last night, rifled thru hundreds of back issues of ICT that I've stored in an old Christmas Tree Shoppe hope chest - I was looking for the Billy Breault photos and stories that we published on Billy over the years. Billy died in November and is being buried this week. I was looking for memories of this supreme Main South rabble rouser, this always colorful character who made the City a better place. ... Memories of Billy's big handle bar mustache, his commanding ways with a City Council microphone when he was "on," his bullhorn-blared manifestos to Worcester slumlords during his early morning pickets outside their tony suburban homes - all the sound and fury and the action and the fist pounding and the pleas...of a good man. Of a solid working-class guy trying to reclaim his beloved Worcester working-class neighborhood - Main South - when no one, especially the folks at City Hall, gave a s**t.

The drug houses, the pimp-mobiles, the shooting galleries, the busted three decker windows, the used he**in syringes outside elementary schools - this was some of the stuff in Main South Billy railed against year after year after year. Inner-city blight just staring Billy in the face brazenly - right outside his Hathaway Street house! BILLY WAS PI**ED! So he made noise! For decades. Until things got better, until city leaders and the city police department started redirecting their attention to Main South and some of Worcester's toughest streets. Billy's streets. The respect began to flow, thanks to the "Marshall of Main South" - Billy Breault.

Yes, Billy passed away at the ripe old age of 80, but I was still saddened to learn that he had died - several months after the love of his life, Wendy, had died. I imagine that he just couldn't go on without Wendy. They did everything together. Together they started the Main South Public Safety Alliance - out of their three decker - often with Billy and Wendy the only attendees. But the name sounded fancy and that was just phase 1 of the Billy onslaught on urban inner-city decay and deviltry. There were his ubiquitous crime watch meetings with a Worcester cop getting an earful, there were his press conferences - usually held with his pal, a feisty and visibly outraged District 4 City Councilor Barbara Haller (deceased) and a stoic, serious as hell former State Rep John Fresolo (alive and well) and a muckle-mouthed grinning goofily but sharp as a whip Green Island "mayor" Lorraine Laurie. Their press conferences were often held outside the drug house that needed to be shut down, the pimp in his car that needed to be outed, the blasted-out three decker windows that Barb and Billy brazenly walked to and around, the collecting of used syringes and throwing them on council floor, and, of course, the tours thru the shooting galleries with their urine-stained mattresses and piles of human s**t and used syringes courtesy of the he**in addicts who were camping out there. Who had claimed an abandoned three decker as their own.

Worcester's only wet shelter - the PIP - on Charlton Street was another curse on Main South, according to Billy and Barb Haller. They loved PIP Executive Director Buddy Brousseau, but they still picketed his building, a homeless shelter that cared for and welcomed drug addicts and alcoholics. Billy and Barb got Buddy's perspective, but they still worked mightily to shut it down. To save their neighborhood, they insisted.

Billy was an old school Worcesterite: Catholic, high school grad, church goer, maintenance worker at Holy Cross college for years - a job he was proud of and loved, once telling me that in case of nuclear holocaust his side of Worcester would be evacuated to the "Cross," where we'd all be safe.

Billy once helped me deliver InCity Tines when my car died and I needed help with delivery. He drove me around in his pristine Ford, and I ran out of his car dropping off ICTs all over Worcester. He seemed p*eved but he was there for me. The Green Island Grrrl who was mostly on the same page with him.

Billy did community activism with grit and creativity - and LOVE. People in Worcester may have disagreed with Billy but, unlike today, there was never any hatred towards him ... or toxic scream fests in the middle of City Council meetings like there is now. People didn't shove black paint on an activist's face. Folks weren't vilified for their perspective. More often there were patient smiles, a nod of the head, a roll of the eyes or a look of exasperation. But never hatred, like there is today.

Occasionally Billy Breault crossed the line but always for Worcester's inner-city neighborhoods. Occasionally he'd make some Billy Breault disbelievers smirk condescendingly at his press conferences or his kitchen table crime meetings with Wendy, but Billy was bullheaded. He didn't care if people laughed at him. He knew he was ... loved. By his fellow citizens, the Worcester City Council, the City Manager, his supporters - and his detractors. Loved for Billy being Billy.

Billy joins the ranks of Worcester's late great inner-city community activists: Lorraine Laurie, D 4 Councilor Barbara Haller, D 4 City Councilor Jan Nadeau, Green Island gals Gloria Markowski and Dolores Marcelonos. People who first dared to face down the crime and grime, the first to tame down - let's face it - Worcester's ghettos. And while we all may have sometimes disagreed with their stances, we always knew they had Worcester's older, often neglected neighborhoods best interests at heart. And we loved them for it.

- Rose 🌹

12/17/2024

Jamie's🎄Christmas 🍏Crumble🍎🍐

Now, this is a game-changer!! Take your crumble game to the next level with Jamie's hack to amp up your topping. This is one of our most searched for recipes...

12/17/2024

🎄Goodwill for ALL🐴 This Holiday Season!🐆🐑🐏🐂🐄🐒🐩🐪🐺🐻🦅🦓🐬🐧🦌
🎄By Jennifer O’Connor☃️
When I was a kid, going to the mall for our family’s annual Christmas shopping trip was an event. We looked forward to it every year. But the joy of those outings came to an end when one year, a horse who was hauling shoppers around the icy parking lot in a carriage stumbled and collapsed. Heaving and wide-eyed, the horse was in obvious distress. But despite the outcry of passersby, including me, the driver whipped her back to her feet. I left, sobbing, and wrote my first letter to the editor of the local newspaper, condemning this abuse. How are these cruel holiday promotions still happening a half-century later?

Busy parking lots and city streets are no place for horses, yet some malls and community associations still offer holiday horse-drawn carriage rides. Caught up in the chaos, the operators of these rides often allow horses few breaks to rest or catch their breath. The horses can end up overworked, exhausted, hungry and thirsty. During an annual holiday festival in Missouri, one horse was harnessed to a carriage so overloaded that he was twice unable to pull the rig up a hill. Local animal control agencies are also overburdened and don’t have the resources to closely monitor these kinds of displays and enforce compliance with anti-cruelty laws.

Horses are extremely sensitive to loud noises and unexpected sounds — like the blaring of a horn or amplified Christmas music. Horses and humans have been seriously hurt — some fatally — when horses have become startled and run amok or when impatient drivers have plowed right into them. Two horses pulling a carriage during a neighborhood Christmas light display in Minnesota got scared and took off running for a mile with 15 passengers aboard, most of whom were children. The carriage eventually crashed, and the driver later died of his injuries.

Reindeer don’t belong in shopping malls, either, but some stores still haul in these animals for cheesy photo ops. Unlike Dasher and Dancer, reindeer are not domesticated and easily become stressed when dragged around and put on public display. Reindeer don’t enjoy being petted or harnessed or forced to “pull” sleighs. These large, strong animals tend to be skittish and unpredictable — and nothing ruins a shopping trip faster than a runaway, terrified animal with sharp antlers.

And isn’t forcing animals to participate in crèches and holiday shows the antithesis of the spirit of the season? Over the years, camels, sheep and donkeys used as props in Nativity scenes and other holiday displays have been beaten, mauled, attacked by dogs and killed by cruel people. Others, frightened and confused, have broken away from the displays, only to be hit and killed by cars. North Carolina law enforcement officers spent 16 hours chasing down two calves who escaped a live Nativity event in 2022. A year earlier, a Kentucky medical center canceled its live-animal Nativity scene after a man was filmed violently punching a camel.

Crèches using animals aren’t even an accurate representation. Pope Benedict’s biography of Jesus Christ points out that, contrary to popular belief, there were no oxen, camels, donkeys or animals of any kind in the manger.

Times and sensibilities change. We know animals have wants and needs — and rights. We can easily extend goodwill to all by shunning any display in which animals are forced to perform or “entertain.” At the holidays and always, let’s leave animals in peace.

PETA exposes animals suffering in laboratories, in the food industry, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry.

12/16/2024

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN - TAKE EXECUTIVE ACTION NOW TO STOP THE AMERICAN CARNAGE! Donald Trump will do nothing to curb gun violence in America once he's in the White House!

- R

Three people, including a child, are dead and seven others injured after a shooting Monday at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison.

12/16/2024

Giving Lilac and Birdy's relationship time to develop🐾🐾🌲We all - Cece🐈‍⬛ included! - slept on my bed last night🌙. Cozy and warm - definitely a two-dog night!🌃🐈‍⬛🙂🐾🐾🐾

- R🌹

12/15/2024

❤️ Preacher Joyce:

God is speaking and He will bring it back to you again and again working to get your attention to listen to Him.– – – – – – –Follow Joyce:WEBSITE: https://jo...

12/15/2024

WELLESLEY CHRISTMAS
Breakfast with my "pups" and Cece🐈‍⬛. Feeding my Birdy three or four times a day...smaller portions but, in total, he's getting quite a bit more dog food than Lilac, who, like me, is chubby and needs to lose weight! Plus, Birdy gets bits of scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, cheddar cheese and toast ... and little dog biscuits. The dog kibble is high protein; hopefully, he'll bulk up a bit for the coldest winter days. I don't like to see skinny dogs, and he's a real working dog. I bet he's expending double the energy of Lilac just standing in front of our glass front door, looking out onto the hoary grass and watching all the scampering squirrels. And dying for a romp around the trees in pursuit of those same squirrels or, better yet, catching one of the rabbits that lives under the big bush in the middle of the field.

So, yesterday, mindful that I've got to get out to the woods or dog park or somewhere with the dogs DAILY because Birdy is so high energy, I chose as our "somewhere" Downtown Wellesley. During everyone's Christmas shopping sprees. Big mistake. All the Wellesley shoppers and tourists going in and out of all the specialty stores with their terrific names and looking so put together, so beautiful, as always. Parking is free for the holidays, so I parked my jalopy amidst all the Mercedes, Audi's, Lexus's, Volvo's and sporty Cadillacs that were lined up like Santa's reindeers, ready to spirit home all sorts of amazing Christmas gifts. I had about 8 bucks to my name, so I said, to hell with your pocketbook, Rose, no one here is going to steal it - and you can't afford to buy anything on this street anyways - not even the tiniest Christmas bauble! Not even a slice of pizza at the pizzeria! But, I was feeling optimistic, so I labeled my impecunious situation "unencumbered," and got out of my car and opened my passenger doors and clipped on Birdy's lead, then Lilac's. WHOMP! My dogs were OUT! In Downtown Wellesley! And THEY WERE ... WILD! I mean, I looked at this tornado of leashes and dogs and heard my heavy breathing and thought to myself: Are these whirlwinds my dogs?! Is this the dog walking situation at 63 years of age?! Should I have gone the pug route?! Lilac and Jett always walked together down Woo's Greenwood Street so beautifully - Lilac on the outside, Jett inside, following her lead. Best buds. IN TANDEM. Happy to be out in their neighborhood together! People would stop to pat their heads and admire them. Not so yesterday, with Birdy, who barely tolerates Lilac and maybe likes me...My Shepherd mix gave Lilac a fierce growl the day before, pounced on her and nipped at her neck to teach her a lesson after Lilac had the temerity to reach under Birdy's private parts to retrieve a dog biscuit that I had thrown to Birdy but that he was uninterested in. So the doggy biscuit just sat there, three inches from Birdy's p***s and Lilac grabbed it - fast - and ate it - fast! Birdy was furious! I had to make him back down and scold him! So my two dogs aren't exactly simpatico, even though Lilac, my pushy but angel dog, wants to play with Birdy and be pals the way she was with Jett.

So... yesterday ...no coordination between my two dogs during our ridiculous, sloppy Wellesley promenade - before lots of impeccably dressed, super intelligent and articulate Wellesley people doing their holiday shopping at lots of expensive shops in the middle of their tony Boston suburb. Birdy is sniffing and lunging to the right, Lilac, picking up Bird's bad habit, is sniffing and lunging to the left - and finding all the town's yum yums: the town cupcake shop, the Italian grocery specialty store, the pizzeria, the candy shoppe, the Thai place...and greeting all the pretty people with a pushy butt under their noses and her soft brown eyes beseeching: pat me! hug me! love me! I'm Lilac! The good p*eps of Wellesley accommodate her and say to me, in the middle of all the canine chaos, "What a sweet dog!" I say, thank you, but, really, I'm nervous, holding tight to the leashes and hoping Birdy, who looks annoyed and afraid and is backing away, doesn't do anything unpredictable. But this is the only way to socialize a dog and get him or her to the point where he or she can go anywhere with you. With small baby steps, Birdy is learning the ropes and is already calming down and occasionally wagging her tail.

Still! We're a circus! In the middle of well-heeled Wellesley, my dogs refuse to heel! I scold them and work with them in the middle of everybody: No, Lilac! Slow down, Birdy! before we cross the tree-lined streets looking ridiculous - a sight for all to see: the old lady in the crosswalk wearing the too tight knit skirt with her two mutts running circles around her.

This busy shopping district in Wellesley really is something. It's right out of a Hallmark Christmas TV movie: the "set" teeming with smiling, healthy looking people, casually but impeccably dressed ... and white. Many are walking with their gal pals or husbands, relaxed walking with an easy grace, the types who go to the post office and mail out about 60 Christmas cards and then say to the postmaster: Now, for the ones going out of the country! You imagine these people have friends in Paris! Your mailing out your 30 dollar store Christmas cards last week now seems like ... small potatoes. Fitzgerald was right when he said, "Rich people are different from you and me"! Still, they've all been so nice to me! So polite and intelligent and thoughtful about what they're telling me. Especially the middle-aged and older Wellesley women - they're the epitome of classy! The opposite of the many screaming, dysfunctional harpies of Worcester. Women who hated women. Women who barely liked their kids!

And the Wellesley dogs! They too are downtown and, unlike my little gang, are well behaved, some adorably dressed for wintertime. I saw one small dog in a puffy dog jacket! Here you see poodles and Portuguese water dogs and golden retrievers ... purebreds or a beautiful mix now and then. Nothing like my mutts that look like the rescues they are, complete with the emotional baggage of a cur - just like their vagabond Mommy!

A few of the shoppe owners here went all out and did up their entrances so they look GORGEOUS AND ARTISTIC - to the hilt! Not garish but something out of a Hallmark TV movie. One front door to one shoppe was a HUGE GLITTERY SILVER CHRISTMAS BALL! - and you walk thru the ornament to enter the store! Another front entrance was framed by six or seven real Christmas trees, different heights, lush and, I imagine, so fragrant! They were wrapped in garlands of red Christmas balls, and the balls were small to HUMONGOUS. Wreaths, too! My two dogs were making a bee line for these store entrance ways. Pulling me, straining to sniff the firs and, in the case of Birdy, take a whiz on one of the gorgeous Christmas trees. As we barreled down the street, me yanking them, them rugged and rude, I thought: these beautiful store entry ways are GOING DOWN! MY GOD! ... BIRDY, LILAC, NO! I tugged the caravan around just in time and headed towards the expansive grounds before Wellesley Town Hall. They were still crazy - out in the field! Wrapping their leads around me ...me untangling the mess and thinking: This is an unmitigated disaster! Yet, I was deliriously happy! I felt like a kid again! It felt like ... Christmas!

- R🌹

12/14/2024

❤️❤️❤️❤️🙂

12/14/2024

Birdy woke me up with one TREMENDOUS bark at 7 a.m. I mean it echoed thru the apartment! And one Birdy bark was all it took to get me scrambling for my robe. Was this the meek little boy I met in the parking lot last week, too shy to let me pat him?! Was this the dog too leery of others to sn**ch a dog biscuit from my hand's palm? I saw my new dog standing expectantly by the foot of my bed this a.m: looking me straight in the eyes, paws firmly planted on the rug, SERIOUS. With Lilac standing sheepishly behind him. I imagine Lilac first trotted to my bed wanting me to get up to go out to p*e but just stared at my snoring corpse...she is very polite. Birdy put oomph to her wish. He is the most alpha dog I've ever owned. Very strong-willed. High prey drive. Quite the pull on his lead. They said he was half German shepherd and hound mix when I first considered adopting him. I look at his not so handsome face and stroke his rough gritty cheeks: I see a deprived pup, a dog who is ravenous when I feed him (got that special squiggly dog bowl), constrained indoors. Not trotting thru woods or playing in a dog park. His former owner said, "I want him to have a better life." ... I look at my Birdy and see loyalty and tentativeness. I see mountain feist, but his style is not high-spirited a la feist. He's from Texas, so I still believe there's feist there, but he definitely feels more German shepherd dog than anything else.
Here's too keeping my door open late into the night 🌃!
🐾❤️ P.s. Birdy did a big💩 p**p and p*e this morning, along w Lilac. Hallelujah! My smart dog is housebroken!

- 🌹

12/13/2024

Meet my dog #2 - just got him today. I named him "Birdy" because he's sensitive, delicate and, when he jumps up, he's airborne for a few seconds! He's very smart, very skinny, afraid in the dog park but curious and happy trotting along side Lilac in the patch of woods right outside my house.

- 🌹

12/12/2024

Such a piece of s**t: