adrian_turtle

Flashing Christmas lights are migraine triggers for me, and they are so very common. I just realized that there aren't any Christmas lights in this neighborhood. None. It's nice living here. Ok, it's not always visually peaceful. (Last year I didn't notice if there were Christmas lights, because there were so many flashing lights around trolley and road repairs.) But this year is wonderfully peaceful. Strangers on the street have wished me "Happy Holidays," quite a few times, and "Happy New Year" (twice, already!) and once "Gut Yontif."

Do any of you have experience with running a Little Free Library? There are lots of them around here, some of which seem to have regular circulation and others go empty or feral. I know a certain amount of curation is necessary to prevent them from getting packed solid with religious tracts or textbooks about Fortran. (ETA: I am peripherally involved with one now, and worry that we are taking too many books out of the box to keep in the house.)

It's not at all clear how much time and space the curation needs to maintain circulation. If the shelves are too empty, neighbors won't take any books, so the steward needs to have some books on hand to restock. And if the shelves are packed too full, neighbors won't donate, so the steward needs to remove a few books and either discard them or add them to the restocking pile. Obviously, people who don't like to throw books away tend to start LFLs. (Yes, it's a TOEFL prep book from 1970 when "he" was the generic 3rd person pronoun and nobody seems to want it, so maybe I should bring it into the house and put it out later. Maybe someone will want it someday!) Things could pile up.

It looks like it's not feasible to run a LFL without some stockpile to allow for overflow and refilling, but I worry that the stockpile will take over the building if we don't put some prior limits on it Unfortunately, I have no idea what limits are reasonable: the volume of the LFL itself? five times the volume? Any advice would be appreciated.

I live in Arlington, Massachusetts. I'll risk disclosing that, despite the security risks of telling the internet where I am, because there are more than 40,000 of us here. (Besides, a fair few of you who read my DW know my street address because I gave it to you.) We're having a local election tomorrow, and things are getting weird. Or maybe I'm just confused.

This town is what New York used to call a "streetcar suburb." The subway ends right outside one edge of town, and highways pick up along others. At the end of the 20th century, when I started paying attention, homes were relatively* inexpensive and the place was painfully white. There were a few restaurants (no bars. Repeat with loudspeaker: No Bars! The liquor stores just beyond each border rejoice.) A few little shops, some supermarkets, and a lot of houses. All that has been changing. The town issued a few liquor licenses, because they are so very profitable. The town has been gradually getting a bit more racially diverse, over the same years that I have been growing more aware of systemic racism and less patient with such gradual change. Meanwhile, homes have been getting a LOT more expensive. I stay in my apartment because the ceiling only leaks a little, and the stair railings usually stay in place, and such a useful bus stop is so nearby, and the rent is so much lower than the town's market rate. Little shops closed when their landlords doubled or tripled their rent, and so storefronts stayed empty for years.

We're having a local election tomorrow. Oh good! I want there to be more affordable housing. I want more mixed-use buildings. I don't want so many empty storefronts. I can vote for Town Meeting (which anyone outside New England would call a city council *eyeroll*) and Select Board (which allocates money for stuff) and the Arlington Housing Authority (which runs public housing.) At least it's obvious what the "School Committee" is supposed to be doing, even if you're not from here. Er...maybe it's not obvious to me what the school committee is supposed to be doing, because I don't have a kid in public school and have not been paying close attention. But maybe they could do something about that thing where Black students get in serious trouble more often than white ones for similar behavior? Or even acknowledge that racial disparities in achievement are important, even when everyone graduates? But I digress from housing.

Two people are running for one position on the Arlington Housing Authority. There are long waiting lists for apartments in housing projects and for subsidies (that recipients use to help pay landlords.) So many people need help there simply isn't enough to go around and the tangled mess of state regulations would be a real problem even if the local authority were run as well as possible. Is the local authority being run as well as possible? I doubt it. Is the challenger running for the office this spring likely to do better? THAT is the question.
The incumbent has been in this position for years. He's raised lots of money to supplement the state funds. He has an MBA and a day job in management. He set up partnerships with the police, with senior services and meals on wheels. 90% of tenants are satisfied with the job he's doing. Isn't that great?
I'd think so, but the challenger has dealt with the AHA from the other side (when she needed housing assistance, herself, and when she was assisting others over the last ten years.) She said residents and people needing help are treated without dignity or humanity, and the process is insufficiently transparent, which I don't doubt for a moment. She blamed systemic racism, and the local FB group promptly exploded with "How dare you call this admirable public servant a racist!" She complained about residents being afraid of retaliation if they spoke up about problems, which makes me think differently about the incumbent's 90% approval. Local advocacy group "Arlington Fights Racism" endorses her***. Isn't that great?

Then****, the challenger is accused of sharing an address with her campaign manager. Nobody mentions the scandalous possibility that she might be living with a woman she is not married to (because this is 2021 and this town is dead to propriety.) Nobody mentions that she might be renting a spare bedroom and bathroom in the basement, though the zoning board does not want to authorize that kind of arrangement. People are really outraged, because this is apparently evidence that she lives in Malden and her entire campaign is fraudulent.

Next, the campaign manager yelled at an AHA member over the phone and at home. (Not the one running for re-election. A different AHA member. The one who accused the challenger and her campaign manager of sharing an address.) "How dare you disclose that private information!" and "Your organization is as corrupt as the Mafia" may or may not be harassment, technically. The campaign is not making itself look good, much as I am uncomfortable with tone arguments as a general thing. The campaign manager was one of the leaders of AFR, and several candidates they had endorsed told the organization "Get off my side!"

Does anybody know more about this?
Comments screened unless you ask me to unscreen.


*relatively. Nothing anywhere near Boston is inexpensive.

**Campaigning tends to be very big on "I've lived in Arlington all my life," or "I've lived in Arlington for 30 years and have 3 children in Arlington schools," or "I've lived in Arlington all my life, and my parents and grandparents lived in Arlington." Clearly, voices for change.

***I like the idea of Arlington Fighting Racism, but have not made it to any meetings. I have heard them accused of being "too divisive" and "radical" and "they cause racism, themselves." Are they actually doing something objectionable, or are they just pissing off the same people who dislike Black Lives Matter and antifa? I have not made it to any meetings.

****I mean, now. After I would have mailed my ballot, if I were voting by mail.

I like public transit. I grew up in a car-based world, where the only way to communicate with other travelers was turn signals and flashing high beams, and those were dangerous. [1] I'm one of those people who smiles at strangers and says "good morning." When somebody asks the world at large, "why are we stopping?" or "when is the bus coming?" I answer. Even when that means talking with a child I don't know.

I try to be polite. I listen to many many fascinating conversations without saying anything at all. I don't want to be an intrusive creep. And when I hear an angry person with bad boundaries, I know I shouldn't get involved in their conversation.

Except last Wednesday, when I met Mr. Emphatic.

Wednesday afternoon I settled onto the bus home from Cambridge. I had one of the sideways seats I prefer, and Mr. Emphatic sat down next to me and started telling me how dangerous my phone was. At first I thought he meant kids-these-day-get-off-my-lawn, because people using their phones aren't doing whatever imaginary wholesome things he imagines, but he was talking about the mind control rays coming through the back. He told me I needed to get an insulating cover, to protect myself. See? SHE has an insulating cover on HER phone. (He pointed to the very young and very distracted preschool teacher on his other side. Her phone had a pink plastic cover, but she had no time to discuss how well it protected her brain from being taken over by mind control rays hackers sent up her arm, as she was busy herding a class of 3 year olds onto the bus.[2]) I thanked Mr. Emphatic for his concern and read "Cold Comfort Farm" with my head down. It's an ebook, and I was reading it on my phone with no cover.

Mr. Emphatic turned his attention to one of the little kids sitting across from us. "Is that a tattoo on your arm?" The kid presumably nodded, and he started talking about how tattoos were ugly. And how they got uglier as the woman's body under it got older. Ugly, ugly, ugly. I was trying to think of what to say[3], if I should say anything, when the whole conversation wound down to silence. Peeking out from under the brim of my hat, I couldn't tell if the three children on the opposite seats were feeling hurt or frightened or what. Or if they were ignoring him. Or if they just believed him quietly, without any fuss.

A little while later, he started telling one of the little girls how terrible it was that he could look up her skirt. I don't remember his exact words, but the first thing he said wasn't that awful...if a woman had said it to another grown woman, it could have been useful information, not an attack. (A whisper about a wardrobe malfunction can be a courtesy.) But it feels different when a man is talking to a little girl so emphatically. He didn't just give her the bit of information, for her to use or not. He escalated quickly from "Here is useful information," to "This is a terrible mistake," to "How dare you make this mistake?" The child's legs were short enough to make it difficult to sit modestly on that bench, in that skirt. And as he scolded her about how wrong it was for her to sit with her legs out, she scooted back and drew her knees up to her chin. This, of course, exposed even more of her legs. He kept badgering her, going on about how terrible it was that he could see all the way up.

I finally told him to leave the kid alone. He argued with me. He didn't slink off, ashamed at being called out for bullying a 3-year-old. He argued with me, saying she wasn't listening to him, and it was really important that he teach her to sit properly and keep her legs covered. Somebody a few rows away turned around and told him he shouldn't be looking up a little girl's dress no matter what she was wearing. (I was very relieved to have an ally.) I tried to explain that he was being intrusive and inappropriate. She's just a little kid, you can't talk to her like that. Children are supposed to learn some things from their parents and teachers, not from strangers yelling at them. She'll learn to manage skirts when she's ready, and it wasn't really any of his business. No, being able to see her legs did not make it his business. No, she wasn't my daughter. No, my children weren't on the bus at all [4]. No, I would not appreciate his "help" at all, if he ever saw a daughter of mine with her skirt up like that--I would want him to leave my children alone.

The woman a few rows away was getting angrier, telling him he should just move where he wasn't looking up the skirt of somebody who was practically a baby. The little girl was chewing on the end of her hair solemnly. I couldn't tell if she was listening to us. In between arguing with the other person about it being the child's fault he was looking between her legs, he argued with me about his moral obligation to teach the child to behave modestly. And that I had no right to stop him, especially because the child was not mine, and I was not taking on the responsibility of teaching her to sit modestly.[5] It was horribly uncomfortable. I wanted to interfere. (I WAS interfering. I mean, I wanted to feel confident that it was right for me to interfere.) And yet my whole argument was that he should not be interfering with this child. That a decent person, even a halfway decent person, would stop intruding on this child even if the intrusion was intended to teach her something useful.

I'm glad I said something. The preschool teacher thanked me, after Mr. Emphatic flounced off. I don't know why she didn't say anything to him. Or to the child when he was there. Or even to the child after he left. I'm glad I said something, but I keep thinking I should have handled it better. I should have spoken up sooner. I should have stood up and gotten between them, so he wasn't looking up her dress for the whole argument. I shouldn't have kept telling him, "Don't say that to her because she's just a little kid." I don't want him thinking the bodies of teenage girls are fair game. Worse, I don't want the preschoolers growing up to think that.



1. When I learned to drive, I heard a lot of conflicting information about what it meant to flash high beams. Warning, there's a police car ahead; Warning, there's a moose ahead; You forgot to turn on your headlights; Pull over at the next intersection or my accomplice will kill you; Pull over at the next intersection AND my accomplice will kill you...

2. You've probably seen outings like this. All the kids in bright matching shirts over their clothes, with the name and phone number of the preschool to make it easy to find and return strays.

3. Leave her alone? He wasn't talking directly to any of the kids. People can do what they want with their own bodies--it's not their job to look exactly the way you prefer for their whole lives? Do 3 year olds even understand that? Stop that, you're scaring them? Was he scaring them enough to break the "none of my business" barrier? They looked unsettled, but none of them were crying, and their teacher didn't seem to think they needed rescue.

4. As most of you know, I have no children of my own. This didn't seem the time to say so. Nor to say that if I ever did have a 3-year-old daughter, I would put pants on her.

5. I am not responsible for this child, or no more responsible for her than for anybody (given that we are all of us responsible for each other.) But I don't care whether or not she learns to sit like a proper and modest young lady with her knees together. I care whether or not she learns to be ashamed of her body. I care whether or not she learns her body belongs to her, instead of whoever might like to look at her.

Last month, my neighborhood was digging out after a snowstorm. Sometimes it takes me a while to think things through. It might have been the last snowstorm, or the one before that--I lose track. I don't have a car, so I have the privilege of not digging out. On the other hand, I need to spend a lot of time standing around in the snow waiting for buses.

The bus stop nearest my apartment is on a medium-sized street that had been fairly well plowed. The tiny residential street directly across that street was less well plowed, and the car parked nearest the corner was having trouble getting out. One person was struggling through the snow to put a little more kitty litter behind a wheel, then motioning to the driver (a child?), who rocked the car forwards a bit before it slipped back.

The guy next to me at the bus stop pointed and laughed. "She's doing everything wrong. Some people have no clue how to deal with snow." He had his phone out, and I couldn't reach mine without unzipping my coat and taking off my mittens, so I asked him when the next bus would be. 4 minutes. He had been waiting more than 40 minutes, with two buses simply not showing up. He told me about "watching that idiot across the street all that time," spinning the wheels and digging the car deeper, making the problem worse by trying to drive before clearing enough snow from the appropriate places, putting dirt under the wrong wheel.

As I said above, sometimes it takes me a while to think things through. I can't shovel or push without doing myself an injury. I didn't know what I could yell (over the wind, across the street, over the engine noise) that would be heard as useful information rather than hostile or mocking. With 10 minutes, I could go over and explain...but 2 minutes wasn't enough time to cross the road and get back. I was still trying to figure out what to do when I saw the bus coming over the hill, and thus failed to do anything.

There are clues to dealing with winter storms. The most important is that we help each other. (Even more important than things like "wear a hat and good boots" and "stay hydrated.")
http://commodorified.livejournal.com/465640.html#t4384232
Knowing which corner of the car to push on is secondary. Tertiary.

It's kind of shocking to realize the ten years in this apartment is more time than I've ever lived in one place. I don't think of myself as moving around all that much. But here I am.

Or not. My landlord is raising the rent in April, and it's really not feasible for me to stay here. (It would have been financially prudent for me to leave last year, but I was afraid to give up the class tokens then.) Now I live in a familiar neighborhood, right next to a supermarket and a drugstore and a library and a reliable* bus. My apartment has thin walls, no A/C, and a dishwasher that doesn't work...but I have privacy. In addition to my books and clothes and desk, I have room for my living room furniture and enough kitchen stuff to have half a dozen people for dinner.

Obviously, I'd like to keep all my stuff. And live near the T. And still have laundry in the building. And not pay more than $1000/month. If you know of such an unlikely place, please do let me know. But I think my plausible options are:

1) A studio apartment near a red line stop. I don't like the idea of giving up so much stuff. It feels like a loss of possibilities, or acknowledging that the possibilities are lost. But it might be the way to get affordable access to groceries, laundry, transit, community...which are more important than furnishings.

2) A smaller 1 bedroom apartment than I have now, in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Any advice on what neighborhood is likely to be good? (Medford Square? Malden Center? Union Square?) I want to be near a supermarket and a library. Coffee shops fit my lifestyle better than bars. If I'm not near a subway stop, I want buses that run well into the evening. Beyond that, I'm afraid of being isolated, without the social energy to make new connections in a new neighborhood.

3) Sharing a house or large apartment. With the right person, and the right space, this could work out really well, but I have no idea how to find that right person. It seems like most of my friends are no longer interested in house sharing on this scale, thinking of it as something to do when you're starting out and haven't established a family or career yet. It's scary to consider moving in with a stranger. And even thinking about what I want** in a house-sharing situation makes me feel like an unreasonable fussbudget that nobody would want to live with.


*Every 10 or 20 minutes, depending on time of day. Runs from a little before 5am until a little after 1am. This is painfully different from places where the last bus comes at 6:45pm, even if it comes exactly at 6:45 on schedule.

**I want to actually share the common space, not just take turns walking through it to our bedrooms. I want somebody who is ok with that, and also ok with me taking big chunks of alone-time. I don't want to live with a dog, a cat, a smoker, or a drinker. I don't want tv in common space. I want people who can be careful about when and where they apply perfume and nail polish. In short: aaargh.

As you've probably heard, Sarah Palin visited Boston recently, and said something silly about Paul Revere. That's not very surprising. Lots of people visit Boston*, and most of them say silly things at some point. The remarkable thing is that so many people seemed to take her seriously.

Dichroic made an insightful post about different kinds of mistakes:
http://dichroic.dreamwidth.org/196242.html
I think it was partly inspired by Palin's mistake, and partly by the responses to it among ideologues who really want to be on Palin's side.
(ETA: I meant to link to this post. http://dichroic.dreamwidth.org/196469.html Not the poem. It's hard to discuss mistakes without making more.)

It reminded me of a local mistake about Paul Revere. Near the border of Lexington, there's a mural of Revere's ride on a brick wall, between Mass Ave and the Minuteman Bikeway. (I think the wall belongs to the MBTA, but I'm not sure.) It's not a brilliant mural, but it's lively and colorful, and horse and rider have plausible numbers and arrangements of limbs. They both look tired yet excited, running hard. Revere is shouting--I think he's waving his hat. I walked past that mural hundreds of times before it occurred to me that it faces the wrong way.

I don't know how many murals there are of Paul Revere's ride, where the orientation doesn't matter. This one is along the path he actually rode, and it shows him riding towards Boston. For many years, I was so thoroughly non-visual, it didn't occur to me to think about it. Last year, I started reading chemistry textbooks out loud and describing the diagrams...that pushed me to think about how visual information might be useful and important, and made me start noticing misleading visual information.



*The city encourages it. So do I! All you nice people from away should come visit!

I live in an apartment building with really terrible sound insulation. Street noise bothers me, though I'm really pretty high above the street. Sometimes I wish I couldn't hear so much of what the next-door neighbor was watching on tv, or the neighbor across the hall pleading tearfully with her boyfriend. I don't know how much of my feeling about the matter is generally being averse to conflict, and how much is a sense that addressing these particular noise problems would be too much of an imposition...the next-door neighbor shouldn't need to find another way to deal with hearing problems, not for my sake. And however much I think the neighbor across the hall should be in a more peaceful romantic relationship, it would be icky for her to be thinking about MY happiness while negotiating it. Overhearing neighbors can be uncomfortable, but the advantages of cheap apartment living are worth it to me.

My new neighbor downstairs is distressed by how much noise I make. It's not music or conversation that bothers her. It's that I "walk so heavily." I don't wear shoes in the apartment, nor do I run or dance here. It's just that every time I put a foot down on my floor (thinking about going across the room, or mindlessly pacing while talking on the phone) it comes through to her ceiling as if I were stomping.

She seems very averse to conflict, herself. I could tell it was hard for her to bring herself to talk to me about the problem--she could only do it when she found the situation completely intolerable.* She spent a lot of time defending against the idea that it was inappropriate for her to talk to me about being disturbed by noise.** She also checked with other people, to make sure her distress was not unreasonable.*** Visitors to her apartment have been shocked by the impact of my footfalls, and wondered how anyone could live that way. She asked my neighbor across the hall, who hears me thumping around and agreed that it's incredibly loud.

The neighbor is so distressed that she says she will break her lease if I won't walk more quietly. I apologized for disturbing her, and said that I truly did not want to do so in the future, but I wasn't sure how to avoid it. I told her I already don't wear shoes in the apartment, which would be the most obvious remedy. I asked what she would suggest. She said it was simply a matter of putting my feet down more gently, and that a person with any consideration would do so. I know carpeting muffles downwards transfer of sound, but I don't want to get it because vacuuming is such a strain for my hand and shoulder.

Her next step is to notify the landlord--actually, the management company that owns the building. She expects they will order me to stop disturbing her, because her lease gives her the right to the quiet enjoyment of her apartment. The way I walk back and forth over her bedroom at 8am, or over her kitchen at 7:30pm, is making that untenable. I have no idea if the management will value her lease more than mine.

My first step will have to wait until I can overcome my anxiety enough to get out of my chair. (This is not any more fun than being too depressed to move. Maybe less, in some ways.) While I was writing this, I was thirsty, and didn't get up for a drink because it would be too noisy. I wanted to call S, but I didn't think I could talk to him without pacing, so I didn't.



*She first brought the subject up a week ago. Redbird answered the door, and handled most of the conversation. At the time, I got the impression that the neighbor was distressed because we were talking in the kitchen and clattering dishes so early that particular morning (she said 5, but we had been up at 7.)

**Last week, I tried to reassure the neighbor that it was OK to talk to me if she had a problem with something I was doing, that I wanted to know if there was something I could fix. Meanwhile, Redbird was defensive about the accusation that we had been making noise at 5am (when we'd both been sound asleep), and the neighbor was reacting to that defensiveness. At the same confused time, the neighbor was trying to make a comprehensive defense of the idea that it wasn't unreasonable or mean to talk to me about horribly disruptive noise I was making...so defensive she couldn't hear, "Yes, of course, thank you for telling me. We really do have to go now, we need to get to South Station," as anything but dismissive.

***Knowing that LOTS of people think my walk is intolerably bad is really disturbing. I mean, I understand why she checked with them. I might have done the same thing. But I still feel like people are ganging up on me.

I was walking down Mass Ave when I saw a commotion in a gas station parking lot. I could tell a couple of people were shouting at each other, but they were on the other side of the pumps so I couldn't see them very clearly. It sounded like a fight starting to spiral out of control, and I wanted to run away. There were a handful of other people in the parking lot, but they seemed to be backing away as shouting escalated to slaps and pushing. I'm not sure what happened next, but I heard what sounded like a scream of serious pain.

( Details may be triggery ) And I called 911. When the conflict started and other observers walked away, I don't know if one of them called 911. One thing about cell phones is that you can report a situation of interest to the police, quite close to other people who need not have any idea you're doing it.

I heard the boy screaming as the man pulled him behind a nearby house. He shouted, "Somebody please help me!" and "That's not my dad!" just it says to do in the "Stranger Danger" pamphlets the local little girls bring home from school. It was wrenching to know he believed I had backed down and didn't want to help him. (But of course my comfort is not the point.) I was a block away when the police car pulled up. I don't know what happened next.

Similar businesses tend to congregate together. Zoning restrictions can keep shops away from houses and put them with other shops, or put factories with other factories, but I'm talking about something on a different scale. There are a lot of Armenian grocers in Watertown, a lot of finance offices downtown, a lot of kosher bakers in Brookline. Sometimes it's obvious when and how a neighborhood is changing. I was worried about Arlington having so many empty storefronts and places to rent. I was worried about so much of the good business space being used by banks. (What does a bank gain from having multiple branches of a bank in such a small town? What do they gain that makes it a good use of those storefronts that shut down at 4pm?) Now I'm growing less worried and more confused, as the town seems to have a lot of new businesses.

It was only when I paid attention from the sidewalk that I noticed how many of the new businesses along Mass Ave are massage therapists. Waterhouse Wellness, Innovative Bodywork, Common Sense Massage, and some of the signs with "chiropractic and massage" or "reiki and massage" look they're aiming for a therapeutic experience. Massage Envy and Body Tune look more like they advertise recreational massage, though for all I know the massage is the same and they just sell different ambiance. The unfortunately named Golden Water Massage only has a sign with their name, as do many other less memorable places. I thought about walking down Mass Ave with a notebook to collect all the names of new massage places, but I didn't have time today, and it's supposed to snow tomorrow.

Is this new, or did I just not notice before? Is Arlington a really good place for massage therapists to set up offices? ("Just steps from the bikeway! Limp over for some revitalizing sports massage!" Probably not that.) I know some places are hotspots for infectious diseases, or even for food poisoning, but is it remotely plausible for Arlington to have more musculoskeletal problems than other towns?