Wavemaker

StrawVoter Launch Will Give Real Time Public Opinion

The website's creator is Chatham's Matthew MacIver

A very close friend of mine has recently launched the beta version of a new opinion tracking website that could revolutionize our ability to determine public opinion on any given issue. From the website (launched TODAY!):

StrawVoter is a non-partisan digital polling tool for people who can't wait to know how political opinion is aligning on a daily basis around the country. It's a grassroots experiment for making detailed polling data available to the average voter.

From the website's creator, Chatham denizen Matthew MacIver:

The creation of StrawVoter was driven by an admittedly self-serving idea and two untested assumptions.

The idea: create a tool that would let me see detailed, demographically rich poll data at key moments in this turbulent political season. A web-enabled polling tool that, in exchange for answers to a few simple demographic questions, would give every participant - every StrawVoter - a summary of all such data collected in each Congressional district, each State, across the nation.

Why? Because I can't easily and cheaply get this information elsewhere. Of, of course, we're all bombarded by poll results - but they're highly aggregated, rarely provided in consistent time-series form, focused primarily on the issue of the hour and absolutely opaque when it comes to methodology.

And they often become the news by virtue of the context in which they're presented. Private polling often turns political leadership into political followership and then is used to recursively reinforce public opinion. Public polls by Fox and CNN have to be interpreted with the appropriate spin-discount-rate (your mileage may vary) - thank goodness for a free press.

But I wanted more raw detail presented in a value-free wrapper. StrawVoter is the result. It's a non-partisan hobby site. I generate no revenue from it (although I may defray expenses with some Google ads.) I want good commentary to share with the StrawVoter community, but I won't post rants or candidate missives. I want to post special polling questions derived from good feedback based on the data that lands here.

Will it work? The idea will be proven or not based on two basic premises.

The first is that many, many Americans want this type of insight, too. I'm marketing this virally and pin great hopes on the exponential power of social networks. We'll see if that works out. I'll be posting volume figures as time goes on.

The second is that most Strawvoters won't want to game the system by registering multiple times or filing faulty demographics. No-one has satisfactorily solved digital polling authentication (or for that matter mail ballot authentication) and I personally doubt that anyone will anytime soon. So, no, we can't check you against your precinct roll.

But we did what we could. We've placed CAPTCHA devices (courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University) on registration and voting pages to slow down the people who have no lives and may want to laboriously register and vote again and again. And although virtually all alpha testers thusfar first wanted to make an avatar from their demographics, they also soon realized that the results they wanted to see would be jeopardized by their flights of fancy. And, finally, given a set of samples of even modest size, we have the Central Limit Theorem working to our advantage.

So that's the story. Vote often, but only as yourself. Give me some good polling fodder, too. I'll expand StrawVoter as results and comments come in.

Enjoy the site.

Mathew MacIver
StrawVoter.com

So, there's only one thing to do - go register, send the link to everyone in your contacts list, and post it on your own blog!

2 comments »

Let's Have a Treasure Hunt!

County's missing art is fascinating and dismaying
Let's solve The Mystery of the Missing Artwork

I have been following Peter Robbins' series regarding the mystery of the missing artwork, and I must say, it is both fascinating and dismaying.

I met Peter Robbins when he worked for the late Sheriff Jerry Bowes, my mentor and patron in politics. Peter is, like many other trained investigators I know, inquisitive and persistent. I found his initial inquiry fascinating, but I could not understand why his inquiry met such resistance from the county administrator and Mary LeClair.

You'd have to have been blind not to have noticed and appreciated the artwork on the county hospital walls have known Mary for quite some time as well. She was Treasurer of the county for the entire length of my political career, and a popular and reliable leader of the Republican Party on the Cape. I would go so far as to say that only Jeanette Bowes was a more beloved figure to us young up-and-comers. What was apparent from Robbins' first article was that the two were, shall we say, not the best of friends. Why, I do not know -- or care. Now I note from Gadfly's missives that there is some sort of history with regard to a retirement dispute -- but I don't like to dwell on either rumor or past conflict.

I was a member of the Cape & Islands legislative delegation when the Barnstable County Hospital closed [correction: I learned from the FOX News report that the BCH didn't close until 1995 -- but closure had been talked about for years beforehand]. I am embarrassed now to say that during the six years I was a State Representative, I was only in the hospital once. But you'd have to have been blind not to have noticed -- and appreciated -- the artwork on the walls. Where it all went to seems to be an interesting  and legitimate question.

Why the official resistence? 

What I cannot understand is why either Mary or the county administrator would be inclined to resist at all an inquiry into this mystery. Perhaps the fact that Mr. Robbins is pursuing it leads Mary to assume that he is not really interested in the artwork as much as her. I didn't get that impression from his reporting, but if this is a personality conflict, it should not deter the county from doing the right thing.

This controversy should be stopped in its tracks, and it would be easy enough to do so.

This is not a question of "who took the paintings?" It is simply a question of "what happened to the paintings?"  There is a big difference. It is not an investigation of possible wrongdoing. It is, quite simply, a Treasure Hunt!

The theory was advanced that perhaps when the hospital was closing, people weren't that focussed on inventorying the chattels for storage -- as I recall, the closing of the hospital was quite a traumatic event for the county officials who were so dedicated to keeping it open. It really was a sad day. It is understandable that people might not have been focussed on the origin or value of the paintings, that they departed, willy nilly, in the hands of well-meaning, if oblivious, friends of the county hospital. It would be an understandable, and quite forgivable (if forgiveness is even required) oversight. If that is what even happened. Who knows? It wouldn't be the first -- or last -- time that a valuable work of art was mistaken for schlock and spent twenty years covered in an attic. Maybe they were carted off to the dump -- a considerably more disastrous fate to be sure, but after nearly 20 years, I would hope that assignment of culpability would be deemed irrelevant.

But at the end of the day, these paintings (wherever they may be) are part of the Cape's cultural heritage, and I would say that the current custodians of the county owe it to their constituents to initiate an orderly and respectful inquiry -- a Treasure Hunt, if you will.

There seem to be a group of knowledgeable and dedicated citizens involved in this initial inquiry. Why not provide them the imprimatur of authority to continue seeking information? Give them some help -- appoint other interested citizens to broaden the inquiry.

Make it a Cape community-wide effort to solve The Mystery of the Missing Artwork.

8 comments »

Romney's Troop Widrawal Comment Fair Game

Immediately following John McCain's victory over Mitt Romney in the Florida primary, some members of the rabid Nobody-But-Romney camp have focussed on the "lies" McCain unfairly leveled against Romney. As Romney himself alleged, McCain's assertion that Romnmey had expressed support for withdrawal dishonest.

One particularly rabid Romney accolyte at Red Mass Group expresses his outrage in no uncertain terms:

McCain disgusts me

I can't believe I'm having to say this about someone whom I've regarded as a hero lo these many years. But his outright lie accusing Mitt of endorsing a timetable for surrender makes it impossible for me to vote for him in November.
John McCain can go to hell.

Outright lie? Go to hell?

(First of all, one might gain insight into the commenter's ourage by his accusation that Romeny had been accused of endorsing a "timetable to surrender. This was not, nor ever had been, the charge.)

To the contrary, McCain's charge seized upon remarks of ambiguity and equivocation made by Romney on national television:

QUESTION: Iraq. John McCain is there in Baghdad right now. You have also been very vocal in supporting the president and the troop surge. Yet, the American public has lost faith in this war. Do you believe that there should be a timetable in withdrawing the troops?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, there's no question but that -- the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about. But those shouldn't be for public pronouncement. You don't want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you're going to be gone. You want to have a series of things you want to see accomplished in terms of the strength of the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police, and the leadership of the Iraqi government.

QUESTION: So, private. You wouldn't do it publicly? Because the president has said flat out that he will veto anything the Congress passes about a timetable for troop withdrawals. As president, would you do the same?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, of course. Can you imagine a setting where during the Second World War we said to the Germans, gee, if we haven't reached the Rhine by this date, why, we'll go home, or if we haven't gotten this accomplished we'll pull up and leave? You don't publish that to your enemy, or they just simply lie in wait until that time. So, of course, you have to work together to create timetables and milestones, but you don't do that with the opposition.

Do Romney's remarks constitute an unequivocal endorsement of troop withdrawal by a date certain? No, certainly not. But are they fairly read to reject any such suggestion? No, one cannot say that Romney's statements are a rejection of that either.

This is just another example of Mitt's over-coached approach to answering tough questions. Robin Roberts gave him an open invitation to give an unequivocal answer:

"Do you believe there should be a timetable in withdrawing the troops?"

Correct answer (as McCain made clear enough): "No, I do not."

Issue over. If he wishes then to go on and explain the widely accepted notion of benchmarks for progress, he should do so. But by rejecting the opportunity to answer a yes-no question, he invited the scrutiny that allowed McCain to fairly (yes, fairly) make the charge he did.

Further parsing of the exchange does not rescue Romney from this conclusion: He carefully draws the distinction between private and public pronouncement of timetables -- but fails to make clear enough whether he opposes any deadline for withdrawal. His rejection of a troop withdrawal deadline was couched solely in terms of public announcements - hence his assurance that he would veto and Congressional troop withdrawal resolution:

Well, of course. Can you imagine a setting where during the Second World War we said to the Germans, gee, if we haven't reached the Rhine by this date, why, we'll go home, or if we haven't gotten this accomplished we'll pull up and leave? You don't publish that to your enemy, or they just simply lie in wait until that time.

Is it not a fair inference from Romney's response that he would not reject out-of-hand a private deadline? It is, because the basis for his twice-repeated response is the distinction between telegraphing one's plan and keeping it secret.

Romney's approach on this issue is in stark and dramatic contract to McCain, who, against all caution and circumspection as to how his marks could be (and were) twisted, had this exchange during a campaign stop prior to his victory in New Hamshire:

E.H.: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years --

McCain: Maybe a hundred. We've been in South Korea, we've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That'd be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it's fine with me, I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaida is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

Say what you wish about the position. You can't quarrel with the frankness of his language.

It is the difference between one with a firmly held principle and one with a firmly held script.

I'll take the former, because it's less likely to blow away when the wind blows.

Leave a comment »

Genuineness

6 comments »

On Hubris and Hyperbole

Every cynical observer of politics knows the old saying, "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." These days, you don't have to be a cynic to believe it.

When Mitt Romney first arrived on the political landscape in 1994 to run against Ted Kennedy, I thought that a guy who didn't smoke, drink, swear or have impure thoughts would be just what we needed to excise the warts of cynicism growing on America. I was none too happy when, in his debate against Kennedy he said he did not vote for Ronald Reagan or when he professed to being firmly pro-choice. But at the time I believed that personal honor, humility and intellectual honesty were gold standards that required vigorous burnishing if people were going to genuinely trust our government, and I thought Mitt was the guy that could do that.

But I confess, I am more convinced in Lord Acton's observation now that ever, in large measure because if a man of Romney's character can be so demonstrably tainted, then who is immune?

What Lord Acton actually said was this:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Great men are almost always bad men. This observation that a person's sense of morality lessens as his or her power increases is a parable told a thousand times in literature and history. Now it seems to be touching even the once untouchable.

When Mitt Romney professed his pro-choice beliefs in the 1990's, I believed him -- because he so convincingly told us how he came by them, campaigning with his pro-choice mother in Michigan. Surely a man then in his 50's, avowing his long-held political beliefs, could not be so facile a liar!

Yet recently we are told that his once-held beliefs were uprooted by a chance visit to a stem cell laboratory, where his newfound understanding of human biology opened his eyes to the miracle of life (or some such drivel). Why, he was so convincing that even callous old neanderthals like my father -- the sharpest knife in any drawer -- were taken in by him. "I believe his conversion is sincere," he professed to me. It is the only time in my life I felt that my father was more gullible than I.

Now we are treated to the evolution of his memory on the subject of Martin Luther King.

But first: Mitt tells Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he "wept with relief" when the Mormon church announced a 1978 revelation that the priesthood would no longer be denied to persons of African descent:

"I can remember when I heard about the change being made. I was driving home from - I think it was law school, but I was driving home - going through the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I heard it on the radio and I pulled over and literally wept. Even at this day it's emotional, and so it's very deep and fundamental in my, in my life and my most core beliefs that all people are children of God.."

Poignant story, for sure. Apparently he wasn't the only Mormon who heard the news while riding in his car. Here is what Marlin Jensen, the LDS church historian said in an interview in March of 2006:

Where were you when the revelation came about the black priesthood?

"Great question. I know right where I was. I was on 26th Street in Ogden, Utah, and I was in my car; I heard it on the car radio. ... I was absolutely thrilled, stunned, thrilled, elated, and have been equally elated with the way that has played out now in the intervening 20 or so years."

Quite a coincidence, isn't it?

Now we are presented with another instance that raises the eyebrows -- and curiously pertains to a similar subject - civil rights.

Romney is facing questions regarding statements he has made in the past regarding his family's involvement with Martin Luther King.

Mitt has apparently repeated numerous times that his father, Goerge Romney, then Governor of Michigan, "marched with King" at a civil rights march in Detroit. He has said publicly on several occasions that he "saw my father march" with Rev. King.

And according to the Globe story, Romney stated in an interview with the Boston herald in 1978, "My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit."

How does Mitt choose to explain this to us?

Romney said his father had told him he had marched with King and that he had been using the word "saw" in a "figurative sense."

"If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I've described," Romney told reporters in Iowa. "It's a figure of speech and very familiar, and it's very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort."

I suppose it is only fair to Romney that he did indeed point to sources that reported (incorrectly) that his father had marched with King in Grosse Pointe. And it is clear that Mitt's father was indeed a strong supporter of civil rights. And there is this generous observation given by Clayborne Carson, director of the King Project at Stanford:

He said he often jokes that if all the people who say they marched on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma in 1965 had actually been there, the bridge would have collapsed.

"I think it's partly the desire of everyone that supported the civil rights cause to say it was not just rhetorical support but an active support," Carson said. "To say you supported civil rights and to say you never marched is just not the way you want to remember your past. So, I think easily I could imagine where 'I supported the march' became 'I was actually at the march.' "

But in the business of choosing a President, "my father supported the civil rights movement" cannot become "I marched with Martin Luther King." The fact that he said that back in 1978 might have been a warning that "squeaky clean" does not prevent hyperbole, or to be less charitable, prevarication.

And his propensity is not confined to such heady issues as civil rights, as we have seen. How can Romney explain how a foray into the rabbit patch when he was 15 and an outing in a fenced game preserve in Georgia last year are the equivalent of being a hunter all his life?

Is this propensity for embellishment unique to those who are lured to politics? Is it impossible in politics today to avoid the hyperbole that turns fact into fiction, genuineness into fraudulence? Or is it the human nature in all of us to make more of our life experiences than exist in dull fact?

It is disappointing indeed, but I have come to my decision on who to support in this Presidential campaign based almost exclusively on who I think will be most straightforward and honest in his dialogue with us. Only time will tell if he turns out to be a storyteller as well.

17 comments »

Where Fiscal Discipline Is a Pipe Dream

In a Boston Globe op-ed, Lovett C. Peters, the founding chairman of the Pioneer Institute (what the Boston Globe would refer to as "a conservative think tank"), offers up a clear-eyed assessment of the Commonwealth's fiscal health and what measures are necessary to restore it. In many other locations of this country his suggestions would be regarded seriously. Here in Massachusetts, however, Peters' recommendations will receive as much consideration as any other idea coming out of a "conservative think tank:" None. I herein examine his observations and offer my own more jaded view of the status quo. First, Peters sets the table nicely by ticking off the baseline facts to support the imposition of fiscal discipline:

• Anticipated FY '08 budget deficit of $1.3 billion.
• Proposed $2 billion to "repair crumbling state colleges."
• Proposed $1 billion for biotech industry.
• Proposed $1.4 billion for commuter rail to New Bedford.
• Uncosted universal early childhood education, longer school day and free community college for all Commonwealth residents (including illegals).

Getting vertigo yet?

(Can we just save some time and cross off the biotech and commuter rail numbers? Please? The hottest venture capital sector in the country hardly needs taxpayer support; and the MBTA is in no shape to be larding another $21 million to its annual operating deficit.)

Then, in what has to be one of the singularly greatest uses of irony ever to appear on the Boston Globe editorial page (which is saying a lot), Peters quotes Sal DiMasi saying to a business group, "I like to say, 'What about efficiencies and cutting costs?'"

That Sal, what a card. Funny, the only thing I've known him to say is "you're away." So let's just kill that baby in its crib right now. Sal DiMasi's appetite for "cutting costs" could be measured at 4:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.

But let's humor ourselves a bit longer while we examine Mr. Peters's eminently sensible recommendations:

1. Get public employee benefits under control.

Excellent idea. Elsewhere the idea that a person can collect his pension before his retirement age is a quaint notion. Here it is firmly embedded in state collective bargaining agreements. Ridiculous. Elsewhere, public employees pay at least 25% of their health insurance costs. Here it's 15% (up from 10%!).

This idea has about as much chance of being taken seriously as Dennis Kucinich's UFO claims. In fact, I'll bet there are some people who read Mr. Peters'editorial this morning and asked themselves, "what planet is he from?"

The bottom line is inescapable and irremediable: the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a wholly owned subsidiary of the public employee unions. Without a hostile takeover, they'll be telling Sal DiMasi what to do before he gets to the second tee.

2. Eliminate mandatory union contracts in public construction.

See above. Peters tells us that only 20% of Massachusetts construction workers choose to join a union, even though 100% of public construction projects are done at the (euphemistically named) prevailing wage. The cost is about $120 million for every $1 billion spent. Wow, that adds up fast! Where are the cities and towns who have to pay this tab? They're sitting over there in the corner with their hands in their pockets, waiting for more local aid. Where is Sal DiMasi? Putting out on two.

3. Eliminate Police traffic details.

Question: If such a vast majority of citizens in this state understand what a ridiculous waste of money this is, why does eliminating it never get past first base? See above. When you get that telephone call from the Police Benevolent Association, tell them you already gave, and gave, and gave.

Riddle: What do Mitt Romney and Deval Patrick have in common? They both publicly proposed eliminating police details and then ran and hid.

4. Privatize the Mass Pike. This idea is far too cutting edge for us. Heck, Chicago only got $1.8 billion for its toll highway, that's not even real money. Besides, there isn't any way that Sal is going to give away all those "jobs." And given the insidious Pacheco Law (imagine how fatuous and vain you have to be to want your name attached to a law that squanders your constituents' money), a law that privatizes the second biggest public trough in the state would be tied up in court until the Segway becomes an accepted mode of urban transportation in Boston.

5. Privatize the Lottery. The third biggest public trough? Next thing, you're going to want to take over the MBTA! Another Pacheco nightmare, too.

I admire and respect Mr. Lovett C. Peters, and I am thankful that the Pioneer Institute does the work that it does. That it has so few adherents in positions of power is lamentable -- in fact downright disgusting. But this is Massachusetts, after all, which stands before the nation as the paradigm of entrenched one-party rule.

7 comments »

Frank Zappa, Soldiers' Porn and Vilnius

My friends at Wizbang recent posted a piece about the effort of one censorious individual to deny American soldiers their Penthouses. The post's author, Jay Tea, mischievously entitled the post "Insert Frank Zappa Song Title Here," and being a dedicated fan of the man that Andres Segovia called "the greatest composer of the 20th century," I immediately deduced that the correct answer to Jay's clever riddle was "Titties 'N' Beer," (from Baby Snakes, 1983). But I got carried away in my comment when I could not resist the temptation to comb the Zappa discography for other Zappa songs that aptly applied to contemporary matters.

My comment was followed by yet another riddle from one "epador," asking the location of the only city park dedicated to the man.

"Must be Palmdale," I reflexively thought. Palmdale, of course, is the Los Angeles exurb on the edge of the Mojave Desert where Zappa spent his teen years, during which the Doo-Wop music of the day infused his early musical genius. His affection for the community inspired the 1974 number Village of the Sun (Roxy & Elsewhere, 1974), a song that suggests his fondest memories of the city are the ubiquity of turkey farmers and the blistering sandstorms that "take the paint off your car and wreck your windshield too."

But I was wrong! Frank Zappa's hometown, in fact, pay no homage whasoever to the man. Feh.

Being the Zappophile that I am, my curiosity led me to the correct answer to epador's quiz.
There is, in fact, a bronze statue of Frank Zappa located in a private park in Vilnius, Lithuania. And its origin is a story demonstrably worthy of the man.

In 2002, Rolling Stone Magazine told the story:

It goes like this: In the early Nineties, a determined group of Zappa-admiring friends gathered regularly in a local cafe to swap records. Communist rule, which suppressed American culture, had recently collapsed, opening the doors for Lithuanian music lovers to get their hands on previously inaccessible Western albums.

Paukstys, thirty-seven, and his friends sought to spread their love of Zappa, who was all but unknown to Lithuania's 3 million citizens. But with no personal connection to the American legend, the club resorted to bluffing its way into the limelight by creating two bogus Zappa exhibits at a local art gallery. The first featured letters supposedly written by Zappa to his Lithuanian admirers. Widespread reaction in Vilnius inspired a second exhibit titled "Memorial Objects of Frank Zappa," featuring clocks, knives, pens and clothes claimed to have been owned by Zappa. But none of the items had traveled further than Paukstys' apartment.

The made-up exhibitions were a massive hit with the Lithuanian public, most of whom -- due to the political situation -- readily embraced anything American. When local journalists inquired about the exhibitions, Paukstys promptly fabricated his widely published story about his brush with Zappa.

"We just needed a story," says dry-humored, mild-mannered Paukstys. "We never saw Zappa, but nobody ever saw God, and they still go to church," says partner-in-crime Vytautas Kernagis, a respected Lithuania musician. "Lithuania is a nation of mythology, legends and fairy tales. Everything is mystified. People believe really quickly, and one of the myths is that independence is good for everyone, with no exceptions. That's why, in such an environment, the Zappa seeds were so successfully planted."

Paukstys tested the phenomenon's limits by proposing a Vilnius-based Zappa statue to the city council. He accumulated more than 300 signatures from bandwagon Zappa fans and offered to privately finance the project. The cash-strapped state deemed it absurd, but nonetheless approved the measure.

To many, the Zappa project symbolized a chance for Lithuania to distance itself from Russia while boasting its Western aspirations. Thanks to concerts and donated art works sold for cash, the Club raised nearly $3,000. Konstantinas Bogdanas, the most renowned Lithuanian sculptor who made his living casting portraits of Vladimir Lenin, donated his skills. The owner of a big business construction company installed the 4.2-meter high bronze bust in exchange for a bottle of liquor.

The only detour came when the original plan to plant the monument near a city art school incited outrage from school administrators, who feared a statue of Zappa, known for his anti-establishment lyrics, would corrupt its students. So Paukstys proposed a new site, and today a somber, pony-tailed Zappa rests in a peaceful park, just a thirty-second walk from one of the city's main drags. Thanks to a French art club, a Zappa portrait looks on the statue from an the adjacent wall.

Zappa surely would have appreciated the irony of the statue's opening ceremony, when a military orchestra played his tunes. The company that owns the rights to Zappa's songs in the country donated the entire oeuvre and heaps of books on the skilled guitarist to the fan club. All of this authentic paraphernalia was housed in an art gallery, but since some collectibles soon disappeared, Paukstys now stores the materials at home.

Today, the statue is mainly a tourist attraction and a site for radio stations to do remote broadcasts. "It was a bluff and it turned into an art," says Kernagis.

Thank you, epador, for providing me with this most edifying Sunday morning divergence.

12 comments »

The Perils of Doing Your Own Landscaping

All of my neighbors have landscaping contractors.

For a few years I did my own yard work, purely for the exercise and sense of personal accomplishment. But last Spring I decided to move up. This decision was prompted by the breakdown of my lawnmower and the concerted refusal of all landscaping companies to do my spring clean-up without a "season long commitment." I considered filing a complaint with the Justice Department's Anti-trust Division, but calculated that paying a class action lawyer would be more expensive than getting my lawn mowed.

So, after many days of repeatedly leaving voicemails, I found a landscape company willing to do my "spring clean-up" and season-long maintenance.

As I soon despairingly discovered, the spring clean-up amounted to two guys blowing everything into my woods for $450.

Then in mid-April, two guys in their 20's (my new "landscape consultants") showed up to mow my lawn. The problem was that, as it was April in New England, the grass hadn't begun to grow yet. I told them to go away and come back when they weren't wasting gas.

The next day the owner called. He explained that his clients (not customers, clients) must accept a weekly mowing schedule throughout the growing season, which runs from April 15th to October 15th, so he can "afford to keep a full staff busy" throughout the year. If I could not agree to this, he would have to "decline to service me." He assured me that, just as with the spring clean-up conspiracy, all of his competitors do the same.

Oh.

Well, I said, how about he spread the cost of the next three weeks (at $55 each) over the growing season on top of the quoted price, because I was not confident that I could stand the sight and sound of his landscape associates riding around on my property for no useful reason.

That would be "a book keeping issue," he said.

So I asked him to charge me for the visits, but not to show up for three weeks.

He could do that, he said.

Soon enough the grass grew and my two expensive consultants arrived. One guy on a Big Riding Machine went so fast that he tore up turf at every sharp turn, and the weed whacker guy did his trimming like he was a contestant in Amazing Race. I tried once to get his attention so I could explain that I did not want the carefully cultivated moss adorning my rock outcroppings to be destroyed. These, I patiently hollered to my ear-muffed friend, were not "WEEDS TO BE WHACKED!!!!"

I think I hurt his feelings. Or maybe he just didn't hear me. Anyway, he seemed to frown, adjusted his headphones, gave me a "thumbs up" and moved on.

The job was done in fifteen minutes. One-half man-hour, fifty-five dollars.

I did some math and decided to get a new self-propelling, mulching mower of my own. Each weekend, I dutifully mowed my lawn in a nice neat geometric pattern, while listening to the Red Sox game on these new headphones I got for the occasion ($43.75 from Sharper Image). And my dinner guests told me the moss looked great.

In the fall, I found that the conspiracy against fall clean-up was for real. So, for $22 a day, I rented this mondo 2 cycle engine blower with shoulder straps that blows the leaves just as far into the woods as my expensive landscaper's model. It was kind of loud, so I had to go with the professional grade industrial ear mufflers with AM/FM bands ($122.99 from Dominic's Supply) so I could make out the Patriots football games. Also, it blew most of the rock moss into the next town.

That's okay, because I think the rocks look better without the moss. And all my new tools fit beautifully into the new utility shed that I got at Home Depot on special for $1399. Sure, it took me a week to assemble, so I missed a mowing. I'm saving so much money, I'm going to buy a snow blower.

6 comments »

A Cape Cod Treasure

[ed. note: thinking about the Cape Cod Commission's consideration of artistic landscapes as DRIs got me to thinking of turn-of-the-century novelist Joseph Lincoln. This is taken from my Wavemaker archive]

 My grandfather, a first generation French-Canadian immigrant (and who became one of the very first federal tax lawyers in Boston), was an eccentric character, inscrutable and silent, prone to raising prize-winning Chrysanthemums in the greenhouse of his classic old home in Chestnut Hill. He was also a voracious reader and a collector of books.

When my grandfather died, my father took custody of the voluminous contents of his library. The complete works of Kipling, Twain, Stevenson and every other significant author, most bound in leather or cloth, were contained in the grand mahogany bookcases of the library in a house, built originally in the early 1800's, where I spent my childhood. And yet, as close as I was to those books, I never read one of them.

Over the course of years, my father handed off the collection to my brothers and me, parceling it out to us in accordance with his assessment of our particular affinities. Because I was, at the time, residing on Cape Cod, I was given an extensive collection of books about Cape Cod.

Part of that collection included the complete works of Joseph C. Lincoln.

Lincoln was born in 1870 in Brewster, Massachusetts, son of a sea captain who had run away to sea at fourteen and died in the harness of his full-rigged ship the year Joseph was born. Having spent his youth on the Cape, he went off to Boston at the urging of family friends to become a banker. After some experience in business and banking houses, Mr. Lincoln decided that as a banker or bookkeeper he would not, nor did he desire to, shine. Eventually, he would turn to writing, and produce a series of 55 books (novels and ballads) about Cape Cod life and people, including titles such as The Woman-Haters: A Yarn of Eastboro Twin-lights (1925), Keziah Coffin (1910) and Cap'n Eri : a Story of the Coast (1904).

I share this because I have nearly completed reading the entire collection, and I promise you that when I have finished it, I shall begin again with the first (Cap'n Eri).

I commend to you anything of Joseph Lincoln's work that you are able to get your hands on. I suggest perhaps the Parnassus Book Service on OKH in Yarmouthport.

Here are some links to learn more about Joseph Lincoln and his works. Have fun:

http://capecodhistory.us/Lincoln.htm#bios

http://capecodhistory.us/Garland-Lincoln/Kilmer1917.html (interview with Joyce Kilmer)

http://capecodhistory.us/Garland-Lincoln/Haeselbarth1913.html (Book News Monthly, 1913)

Leave a comment »

The Monster we have created

It’s called bureaucratic sprawl

Back in 1989 when the leaders of the Cape's towns were gathering in support of the establishment of the Cape Cod Commission, one of the few reservations expressed was the fear that the Commission would expand its regulatory authority into individual town affairs, thereby invading their autonomy. This fear has come to pass.
A story in Friday’s Boston Globe begins as follows:

After listening to impassioned pleas from a handful of Truro residents and preservationists, the Cape Cod Commission took the unusual step last night of voting to examine a controversial plan to build a 6,500-square-foot mansion in the hills of South Truro.

That sentence alone is worth pausing over. When a “handful” of Truro residents plea impassionately, a regional land use agency votes to involve itself in the construction of one single family home.

How does this happen?

The house to be built is on a portion of what is known as “the Hopper landscape” – a swath of Truro’s seacoast that Hopper had the benefit of contemplating during the twilight of his career. Does this fact alone justify that it be treated differently than another 9 acre parcel of property (and we must pause here again – the proposal is for one single family home on a 9 acre parcel of land, 6 of which the owners have offered to put into conservation).

How does this regional planning commission assert jurisdiction over one single family house?

It’s called bureaucratic sprawl.

The commission, which rarely reviews proposals for developing single-family houses, voted seven to four to review Kline's proposed house, which they said could have "a development of regional impact" designation and deserves closer scrutiny.

How the commission could possibly have come to that conclusion requires several boundless leaps of – well, certainly not logic.

The Commission’s own regulations provide that a municipality has no authority to make a “discretionary referral” of such a project to the CommissionThe enabling legislation from which the Commission derives its jurisdiction and powers provides that the Commission may regulate a “development of regional impact,” and defines that term as “a development which, because of its magnitude or the magnitude of its impact on the natural or built environment, is likely to present development issues significant to or affecting more than one municipality, and which conforms to the criteria established in the applicable standards and criteria for developments of regional impact pursuant to section twelve.” (emphasis added.) That is the principal factor involved – the development is likely to have an impact in more than one town. This was a very wise nod to municipal autonomy -- the commission would not become involved in issues that affected the interests of a single town.

Breaking their own regulations

Furthermore, the Commission’s own regulations provide that a municipality has no authority to make a “discretionary referral” of such a project to the Commission:

“One single-family dwelling shall not be considered to have significant impacts on the values and purposes protected by the Act outside the Municipality in which it is located and may not be referred to the Commission pursuant to Section 2(b)(i) above unless that dwelling has been determined by the Massachusetts Historical Commission to be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. This provision shall apply to all new construction, repair, change, alteration or extension of a single-family dwelling or an accessory structure, septic system or water well relative thereto.” Enabling Regulations Governing Review of Developments of Regional Impact, Barnstable County Ordinance 90-12, Section 2(b)(ii).

Finally, there is nothing in the Commission’s own regulations which suggest that it has the discretionary authority to deem something a DRI on an ad hoc basis (when one considers the possibility, such a limitless grant of power approaches sheer lunacy).

So, if the municipality lacks the authority to make a “discretionary referral” to the Commission and the Commission lacks the jurisdiction to do so on its own, how does the Commission now vote to review the project?

It would appear possible that the Commission has determined that the “Hopper landscape” has some historical significance, in which case they would purport to shoehorn the notion of a “historical landscape” into the statutory language that applies to historical structures and districts (which is otherwise not relevant here). Lacking anything specific upon which to hang its hat, here is the explanation from the Commission’s staff person:

“Agency staff recommended that the commission review the Kline home as a development of regional impact because of the cultural, historic and natural significance of the area.”

One would hope that regulatory authority would be based upon something less ephemeral, like a regulation.

It is a breathtaking notion that, upon the recommendation of a staff member, any portion of the Cape’s landscape could be deemed an “historical landscape” and therefore subject to some new regulatory rubric where none currently exists. It is one thing for the Commission to have jurisdiction over alteration of dwellings within historical districts – this authority was written into the Act originally. But what exactly is an “historical landscape” or a “cultural landscape?” If one includes the landscapes described in vivid detail in hundreds of novels published during the past century (Joseph Lincoln’s forty novels come to mind), one surmises that virtually every corner of Cape Cod might qualify. Why would Edward Hopper’s personal choice be the limit?

If the commission desires to extend its jurisdiction to cover the building of one home under any circumstances, then it should draft amendments to the Barnstable County Ordinances and amend the Commission Act. In that fashion, the communities and their representatives can all become involved in the debate over what is, and isn’t, an appropriate exercise in regional planning.

16 comments »