After Tomorrow

Things will be quieting down here in New Hampshire (until November).

For me (and my neighbors here at the Endicott Hotel on Main St. Concord) that means figuratively and literally. Over the past several days (since the Iowa Caucus) the political supporters have been out on the streets like I've never experienced since I moved here in 1979.

The morning of the Iowa Caucus I was awakened by someone beating a snare drum out front. I assume it was a Ron Paul supporter as they were the only ones out that day. It was a frigid day but sunny, and the Paul faithful were out en masse here in Concord.
Since then it's been crazy and noisy, starting around 8 AM and lasting all day long. Horns honking, sometimes blaring all the way down Main Street, groups of supporters chanting or yelling, sometimes to cars going by, other times at each other.

As I said, I've never seen enthusiasm like this here in Concord before the primary, or before the general election. Despite the noise I think it's great to see so many (mostly younger) people out participating in the political process and working for their candidate.

Much of this enthusiasm is undoubtedly due to the unprecedented failure of President Bush and the torturous last seven years. The combination of an unnecessary war that many were fooled into supporting until the truth became evident, an unduly secretive and deceptive President and Vice President, seemingly endless scandals in the Republican party, and a Republican leadership that either looked the other way or was complicit in a plan to dominate and marginalize the opposing party. All the while rubber stamping everything the President asked for, whether legal or not.

With the price of oil and gasoline tripling, real estate in trouble, the NSA allowed to spy on Americans uncontrolled, billions of dollars spent in Iraq but unnaccounted for, New Orleans neglected, incompetant political appointees heading critical agencies, the Justice Department politicized, and much of the rest of the world now fearful and wondering how far down the road to crazytown Bush will drive the war wagon. Oh, and I almost forgot the disregard and obvious contempt for the Constitution, the Geneva Convention, and the rule of law in general as it pertains to Bush's imperial presidency, and the disdain for the poor and the social programs that help them, not to mention the neglect of the veterans that Bush needlessly sent into harms way. Is it any wonder that there is this massive call for change?

As I've heard others say, the President promised to unite the country, but it didn't happen the way he said it would (did anything?).
In the end he did succeed in uniting 80% of the country.... in opposition to him and his failed policies.

After all that has happened over the past seven years, why would any sane, caring person even consider voting for another Republican?

Now for those who need information on where to vote, registration information, absentee voting, etc. here's a link to the City of Concord's "Elections" web site.

Now VOTE !

Close Call For Nativity Display

Gusty winds brought down the Christmas Tree in front of the Concord, NH State House today somewhere between noon and 1 PM, narrowly missing the Nativity display. Luck, or divine intervention? I guess I'll leave that up to you.

The gusty winds we've been experiencing the past day or so were strong enough to snap the big pine tree off at the base.


This could be just the start of a stormy start to the week as the National Weather Service puts out this alert:

"[...]THIS STORM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE THE FIRST MAJOR WINTER STORM OF
THE SEASON FOR MUCH OF THE REGION. SNOW WILL SPREAD FROM SOUTHWEST
TO NORTHEAST SUNDAY NIGHT...WITH SNOW LASTING INTO TUESDAY AT MANY
LOCATIONS. SINCE THE END OF THIS EVENT IS STILL SEVERAL DAYS
AWAY...SOME UNCERTAINTY STILL EXISTS IN SNOWFALL TOTALS.
HOWEVER...THIS STORM DOES HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO PRODUCE GREATER
THAN A FOOT OF SNOW ACROSS MUCH OF THE REGION.[...]"

I don't know about you, but I'll be taking advantage of the new parking garage next door and parking under cover for the next few days.

New Parking Garage Elevators Out Of Action Again

Anyone who needed to use the elevators in the new parking garage either for convenience or necessity Sunday were out of luck. This isn't the first time I've noticed this condition. The last time I went to use them they were turned off also.

Personally, I parked on the top level and was only inconvenienced by having to take the stairs to the top level, but anyone in a wheelchair or with any other type of medical necessity wasn't able to. After I shot a couple of photos for this blog I went over to the Red River Theaters to see if the manager was aware of the situation. As she hurriedly came to speak with me she was obviously already on top of the situation and was in a rush to deal with it.

Now I don't know the reason for them being turned off this time. I would hope that there aren't maintenance issues already, they were just installed! I do know that along with some of the other issues I've read about in the Monitor having to do with the layout of the parking pay stations, the new theaters are already swimming upstream to gain some traction with patrons.
The theaters now need a nice comfortable restaurant in the ground floor space next door as soon as possible. What they don't need are elevators that are shut down and other problems that should have been foreseen in the design and planning process.

On a brighter note, there were lots of folks coming and going in the lobby of the theater and nice friendly employees to help them, and of course the wonderful smell of popcorn.

I'll be speaking to the parking people this week to ask a few questions and will posts back with the results. In the mean time go see a movie! Here's a couple of links to the S.N.O.B (Somewhat North of Boston) Film Festival including their MySpace page.

Welcome

Welcome to the first post of The Endicott Dispatch. The name refers to the building where I live which is a century old former hotel in downtown Concord New Hampshire.

I want to cover local topics ranging from what's happening inside and around the Endicott, to issues concerning the city of Concord and the state of New Hampshire.

I welcome comments as long as they're polite and relevant. Do to the scourge of 'comment SPAM' I have to use the challenge option to weed out automatic SPAM bots to the extent possible.

I also will be using "Jiglu" (at least initially) to help with 'tagging'. If you have any issues with it please let me know. And since I live solely on a single Social Security Disability payment each month I'm going to explore Google AdSense and possibly a PayPal [link] to help pay for things like my medications (and coffee, which currently is my substitute for the Ritalin/Concerta I can't afford because the drug company Novartis wants to pawn me off onto Medicare Part-D [which I can't afford). *See my blog post that includes more detail about the situation on this page.

I hope to produce an informative and entertaining blog that people will enjoy and support.
My thinking at this early stage is that some of the posts will be similar to a 'Letter to the Editor', and in my case that would be the local Concord Monitor newspaper.

This is my second 'real' blog. The other is called "Inside Tom's Brain" and is also hosted by Blogspot-Google. To this point it has been primarily political and media commentary with some personal issues posted every once in a great while. I, like I imagine many people, have started and basically abandoned several blogs over the years. You've seen it I'm sure, every large web portal wants you to start a blog on their site. Microsoft's "Live Spaces", the Opera browser site, your ISP offers a free web site, and the list goes on.

OK I admit it, I'm weak. It seemed like a good idea at the time, right? But especially for people like me with serious ADD, the last thing you need are more things you need to attend to. The internet is distracting enough. All I have to do is start reading the news or my daily email and I'm off on a tangent that continues to split further and further from what I'd originally intended (or needed) to do. So even for those without ADD I bet this sounds familiar. If the standards of all these sites allowed it and applications like Windows Live Writer could post to all of these disparate sites I'd be able to write the post once and if I wanted to then distribute that one post to all my blogs.

I must say though, that I haven't done an exhaustive search for applications of this type, and for all I know someone has developed just such an application. As far as the ones I've seen, some can distribute what I write to the major blog sites but not all.

So there it is, the traditional first post of a new blog, and as my mind has drifted and my attention span has been tested (I have the TV on also [with the sound off], and I stopped to write a post about Mika Brzezinski and MSNBC's "Morning Joe" for Inside Tom's Brain just now..) I think I should stop before I lose any more focus.

Thank you all for being here and please come back soon!