Holy Crap: Local Media Covers a Peaceful Protest

You know the oil spill is recognized as a disastrously bad man-made disaster when even the local media is covering protests against it.

Lynn: High Crime Rates Not Acceptable

Lynn obviously has serious work to do, with the 3rd highest crime rate in the state, 106th in the entire country. Living right next door most of my life, I've always had a vested interest in the city. It's impacted me for the better - my family owned a business there for around 20 years. It's also produced the absolute low point of my entire life thus far, when my then 18 year old cousin was shot down in the city by a concealed handgun, becoming just another statistic.

Mayor Chip Clancy says he hasn't heard outcries about high crime rates at any recent neighborhood meetings. I'd like to know what neighborhoods those meetings are in. Lynn, like most cities, has its safe areas as well as its dangerous ones. While there may not be any outcry in Ward 1, that doesn't mean there aren't people who are literally crying. At least six families are crying about someone who was robbed from their lives forever in Lynn this year.

Lynn can't become a prosperous city again until it figures out how to tackle its crime problem, how to get community members involved and how to mitigate and prevent the underlying problems that fuel violent crime. It's no easy task and will take some time, but the city has got to realize it has a serious problem on its hand - that there is that outcry, even if it's only bubbling at the surface.

Today's Headlines: Police Details, Russia, Lowell and P-Town

Today's headlines from around the state:

• Governor Patrick's standing up to police unions on the costly and unnecessary police detail system. "Governor Deval Patrick is planning to release new regulations this morning that will take on powerful police unions by limiting construction details on nearly all state-owned roads, say several people who were briefed on the regulations." More specifics in the link.
• OMG straight people go to P-Town too? Seriously, this story is just lame and recycled. Besides, if people want a bohemian atmosphere, with local art and restaurants, why not go to somewhere far cooler like Northampton? No Cape traffic, larger selection, cheaper and far more authentic.
• The Russian/Georgian war stops. Hopefully. Russia humiliated Georgia. Apparently, that's mission accomplished for Russia and its newfound efforts to maintain its regional hegemony.
• DeLeo "legislator of the year." Really?
• Things look bleak at the Tsongas arena in Lowell, where the Dem State Convention was held. Big public projects often don't make their money back. In many ways, they're not supposed to. The Tsongas arena is no exception. States and cities would do well to study the pros and cons of these sorts of projects before they build them, and consider whether money that could go into a certain project could be spent elsewhere, more effectively, in an effort to create jobs and revitalize an area. The Tsongas arena is certainly beautiful and seems worth it, but at the very least it isn't attracting the type of demand it deserves.

The Item's Progress 2007: Some Good News

Having written a large research paper on Lynn, Massachusetts, I've come to know a great deal about the city - especially the Downtown area. One of the fascinating things about Downtown Lynn, beside the fact that it used to be *the* place in the North Shore to do shopping... and is now empty... is the fact that it sits right next to Lynn's waterfront. The waterfront, interestingly enough, is so ill-used as to be truly astounding. However, finally, there's been some progress on that front. Pun intended. Of course.

Every year, the Lynn Item creates a "Progress" issue, detailing all the important developments for the city of Lynn over the past year. Some years, the news isn't all that great - and you can tell they're really reaching. Some years, it's pretty exciting. I've read almost all of them since, well, probably when the Item started them - looking the clippings up in the Lynn Public Library for the purposes of said paper. One of the most promising years, when Downtown Lynn was going to get a big mall, was also one of the saddest: it was the year a huge swath of the Downtown area went into flames, becoming national news. The fire took weeks to die - literally. The hopes and dreams of a city sort of died, at least for a long time, with the old, empty shoe factories.

This year's Progress Issue is one of the good ones: for once, things really are looking up. The development in Lynn isn't dependent on a tech industry, like it was the year the bubble burst. It isn't dependent on anything, really, because it looks like it's full steam ahead.

And why shouldn't it be? Downtown Lynn is a twenty minute drive from Downtown Boston. Or, you could take the train... and it'd be 15 minutes. If they ever manage to extend the Blue Line, which will eventually happen (whether that's in my lifetime, though, is up for debate)... it'd be even better (though, decidedly not faster). There's lots of new housing going in the area, mainly 1 bedroom condos geared for the young, professional and artistic types, but it's fairly cheap and an interesting investment. Many of those condos offer beach views, or a quick watch to the beach, in historic Diamond District... think of it, you'd get to live in an old mansion, albeit a small portion of it.

If everything pans out, Lynn could be really on the right track again - a place it hasn't been since the 70s, if that. However, like I've said, there have been many good issues of the Item's Progress before - and sadly, Lynn hasn't progressed all that much. But the future is bright. Crime is down. A new school is up. New development is in - and the price is right. There are just too many good things going for that city, including a great location and intelligent, hard working base, for it to stay down. Maybe this will be the year the tipping point is reached and the City of Sin gets a few moments of heaven? Read the report and gauge for yourself.

Better Web Designs for Local Papers

I'm very happy to report the general improvement of a bunch of the local papers, which probably isn't a coincidence (considering their mega-owners).

New Bedford's paper has had a great website for a while, but now I have to say I've liked the general improvement in the other two local papers I read on a regular basis: the Lynn Item and Swamspcott Reporter. The Reporter is a part of the huge collection of local weeklies - owned by the Herald, if I'm not mistaken - which is also true of the Lynn Item, though they have their own printing services and are fairly independent in terms of both content and publishing. The best part of the Item's paper are the comments - a lot of people are leaving them, which makes these stories much, much more interesting. Also, kudos for the amount of content the Item is now leaving - which was paltry on its old website.