Gripes for a Wednesday Afternoon
Oct 2 – Sometimes during the day-to-day business of alerting people to what’s coming up at City Hall or trying to inform voters about the candidates in the upcoming election, there are some things that deserve comment that don’t necessarily fit comfortably in any specific category. I guess these would have to simply be called Gripes. So… at the risk of offending a few people, here are a few Gripes for a Wednesday Afternoon:
1) I’m getting kind of sick of reading letters submitted to the Cambridge Chronicle (and elsewhere) that are OBVIOUSLY generated by people associated with current political campaigns. If the campaign staff and workers of a particular candidate want to place a political advertisement in a local paper, shouldn’t they pay the going rate and include the phrase "Paid Political Advertisement"?
2) Has anyone taken notice of the fact that the parking skills of Cambridge car drivers have plummeted lately? The law requires that cars not be parked more than a foot from the curb, yet I routinely see cars parked several feet from the curb. When was the last time a parking control officer tagged a vehicle for parking like an idiot? Dishonorable mention goes to those drivers who don’t understand the meaning of the word "parallel" in the phrase "parallel parking".
3) A special award should be issued to all of the novice cyclists on Hubway bikes now occupying the street like molecules in a hot gas. Not a day goes by without encountering at least one of these characters either drifting across a busy street without looking or careening wrong-way down a bike lane.
4) Tonight I’ll be attending yet another "Net Zero" event. It amazes me how quickly some local activists who never paid any attention to environmental concerns suddenly "got religion" on global warming when they realized it could potentially be used to block new commercial and residential development in Cambridge.
Perhaps I should make this a regular Wednesday "Hump Day" tradition. Anyone else have some gripes? – Robert Winters