Hey there! We wanted to give you the early heads-up, as a powerful Nor'easter is targeting us for Monday and Tuesday.
AS FOR NOW, it looks like a rain event in SE Massachusetts. However, long-range forecasts have a way of changing. Our last blizzard started off as a forecast of "six inches of snow over two days" before evolving into the snow machine which eventually visited us.
This storm looks notable for three reasons:
RAIN.... We're looking at 1-3 inches of rain. .10" of rain is a good soaking, while 3" gets up near Tropical Storm territory. No one has said snow for our area, and I want to stress that before stating that- depending on how fluffy it is- 3" of rain would equate to a couple of feet of snow.
COASTAL FLOODING... Winds along the coast will approach 50 mph, more than enough to push an angry sea towards your beach house. One thing that you have going for you? Low astronomical tides. Duxbury Beach, where we hope to embed ourselves for the storm, has a piddling 9 foot tide lined up for Tuesday morning, as opposed to the 11.4 flood tide that they got during the new moon on the 12th. Tuesday morning looks to be the height of the storm, for now anyways.
LENGTH... This looks like one of those 3 tide storms, which is why relatively weak nor'easters often inflict damage similar to a more powerful tropical systems. The ocean always wins, and it generally wins by attrition. "Attrition" is one of those flighty terms, which can mean anything that a journalist needs it to, but the basic idea is that a series of strong tides will wear down a beach through erosion. I'm not 100% sure exactly how long this storm will drop NE winds on the coast, so some of those storm tides may have winds that don't help the waves directly towards the beach.
This is more of a Heads Up than a detailed forecast. We'll be back with an update as the storm gets closer.
We're just sending out a quick reminder that the Salvation Army is out in your town, collecting money to help less fortunate souls during the holiday season.
You can help out by pitching in to their kettles, which are located all over the area. You'll have trouble getting into a supermarket without crossing one of our people. The kettles will be out until early afternoon, Christmas Eve.
The Salvation Army was founded in London's East End in 1865 by former Methodist minister William Booth. It is a church, of the Christian Protestant variety. They ministered unto the poor of London's worst slums, slowly growing in numbers and abilities.
Booth soon had a lot of volunteers helping him, to the extent that he joked of it in a memo as a "volunteer army." Somebody with a good sense of marketing crossed out "volunteer" and drew in "Salvation." Voila! What would grow into one of the world's most powerful charities had a name.
Deciding that there were too many slogans on the sign, one Kettle Master made it more subtle by adding Trump-like levels of gold tinsel and some nice Made In China battery-powered colored lighting.
If you get into it deep enough, you are assigned a military rank. You have to be ordained, which means that I don't have a rank and am technically a Salvationist. I consider myself to be like a Blackwater operative (or, if you prefer something less sinister, a USO volunteer) in this Army.
The Salvation Army started off ministering to undesirables like addicts, drunks and prostitutes. They soon grew beyond that, and are now a common helping hand to any sort of person or family in need.
They crossed the pond to the US soon enough, and their reputation was helped along by their tireless efforts here during the Galveston Hurricane, the San Francisco Earthquake and both World Wars.
The Army has 25,000 volunteers working in the US, many of whom are ringing bells and standing by their kettles. They have operating costs of about $2 billion a year, and serve 32 million people in the USA alone. They are the second largest charity in the US, and hold rankings ranging from A to A- in various charity watchdog groups. They famously had a CEO with a salary of $13,500 for quite some time, while people at other prominent charities were taking home millions per year.
My kettle, which rocks hard like heavy metal...
I work for the Hyannis Corps, which serves all of Cape Cod. The highest ranks that I know there are a Lieutenant and a Major. I offered to accept a rank of Admiral and annex Cape Cod Bay for them, but that whole Ordination thing came up and it was decided in a High Council meeting that I was best left on the kettle in my Blackwater role... Santa's bag man, God's collection agent.
I love the work, even on the coldest nights. I spend most of the year up to no good, so it's nice to be doing God's work (albeit often with Satan's methods) for 6 weeks a year. It never hurts to inch your way up the Nice list in the month before Santa heads out with the goods. I'm not wealthy enough to donate Wealth to charity, so I instead donate my Health.
Most importantly, it means that I'm sort of on Santa's team. I serve in the lowest position that he offers, and only know Saint Nick on a nodding basis. I can get word to him if need be, a fact that I sometimes share with children who donate to my kettle.
I worked in Sagamore at the Christmas Tree Shop for 4 years before the CTS stopped allowing the Army access to their various storefronts. Since then, I have locked down the Stop & Shop on Route 132 in Hyannis. The Army likes to get one person in the same spot over the years, so S&S is my turf.
I'm a very aggressive greeter, and try to wish every single person well. If you've gone there this Christmas season, I have probably said Hello to you. As you can see in my pictures, no expense was spared in decorating my kettle. Many people have told me that they were about to go see the lights of Paris, but the vague Eiffel Tower shape of my garishly-lit kettle stand made that expensive voyage wholly unnecessary. (Editor's Note: No one said that).
I work in any weather. I did that freezing day last week, for instance. I'm not like someone else who works out in the cold, like a roofer, busting his/her ass and working up a sweat. I literally just stand there, unless some funk is on the radio and I'm doing the Twist or the Smurf or the Robot or the Watusi or the Time Warp or the Crank Dat or the Crip Walk... all of which look the same when I do them.
I have also developed an almost preternatural ability to flip my bell in the air, have it rotate at a high speed 10-20 times, and catch it by the handle. This ability is useless in any other position than Kettle Lord, but I swear that I'm like a f***ing samurai with that bell. It helps to keep me from freezing.
The key to withstanding cold like that is to dress in layers. I start off in clothes that fit me snugly, then continue to buy up several sizes that fit over the previous layers. I end up looking like a very cold and bulky defensive tackle.
Here's what I was wearing last Thursday. I had to spread it out on the floor to get the proper perspective.
I wasn't nude when that picture was taken, either, so the total (for those of you keeping score at home) is two hoodies (bonus: the UMASS one has Belichick-style cutoff sleeves), two t-shirts, a turtleneck, a Bruins sweater, a ski vest, a ski jacket, a knockoff Cah-hahhhhht jacket, duck boots, thermal socks, two pairs of sweatpants and two pairs of wind pants. I was also rocking the only Infinity Scarf owned and worn by a heterosexual man, although a teenage girl passing by my kettle had to show me how to put it on properly, before there was a David Carradine-style asphyxiation incident.
I had gloves, too. I gave them to some homeless dude when I was leaving the kettle for the night. I'd have given him my jacket, too, but it is very difficult finding 4XL in stores.
The Hyannis Corps has me at the Stop & Shop. If you fear that I may be too handsome, you can also donate at the AC Moore, Shaw's, Star and the Cape Cod Mall Food Court.... all in Hyannis.
Let's end with something cute.... here's Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott celebrating a touchdown by leaping into a Salvation Army kettle. They say that donations are up 60% since he did that.
Well, we get our first accumulating snow of the year. I saw flakes a few times earlier this season, but this is the first snow to stick south/east of Plymouth. I include mainland Bourne and mainland Sandwich in my Cape Cod first snowfall geography, as I consider these regions to be a Latvia sort of buffer zone between Cape Cod and the real world. Snowfall is 35% of the joke in any White Florida references you see aimed at Cape Cod. These pics were taken from Capeside Bourne, where the Trowbridge Tavern is.
My car, cold-chillin'. This snow should change to rain on Cape Cod, and temperatures will actually crack 50 today for most of the area. This is good, because I have 9 hours of Salvation Army bellringing today in Hyannis, and was none-too-pleased with that 27 degree, 35 mph gusts nonsense I stood outside in on Saturday.
In case you're wondering, the first snow of 2015 for Cape Cod was December 29th, and the first snow of 2014 for Cape Cod was November 2nd. For years before that, we'd need the Cape Cod TODAY archives, and that's someone else's problem, player.
Up until tomorrow (AFTER dinner time), turkeys will be very nervous. By Friday, they will be downright uppity.
Photographers, even bad ones, operate like apex predators do when stalking herds. Isolate one away from the pack and get him when you can.
You vegetarians out there might enjoy yesterday's article about cranberries. We may do a second version of that, we have a veritable pile of cranberry bog pics.
S'up?
If the water used to flood the bog was instead vodka, this would actually be a pretty good Cape Codder drink for Godzilla.
November is pushing it as far as leaf-peeping goes on the South Coast of Masschusetts. You can only really do it if you haven't had a nor'easter to tear the leaf cover down. Most everything is turning brown by now, but foliage works in strange ways, and differences in sun exposure can set trees in the same area off at different times. We'll seek out the good stuff for you.
We'd like to welcome our new shutterbug, Joeyna. She was all over Marion and Rochester for us, at about the same time that I myself was out rolling South Coast Style. Between us, we got enough shots for a decent article. Mine (Stephen) are the blurrier ones. Joeyna, as you can see, has an affinity for shady lanes.
If you see a car stopped in the middle of the road aiming camera up into the trees, you may have just crossed paths with a Cranberry County Magazine photographer. We walk among you, although we sometimes take the SUV.
If you ever see me in the comments being snarky to someone, understand that Cranberry County Magazine's main office is about three of those farm stand structures put together, and CCM doesn't have those cool orange trees. Never take me seriously, I don't.
I like to think that trees are sentient, and that they view Leaf Drop the same way that a stand-up comic utilizes the Mic Drop. "Hope that you enjoyed the show, people. Come back, same time next year." (leaf drop)
A lot of people consider Buzzards Bay to either be the end of the pre-Cape South Coast, or the Cape's mainland buffer zone. It's the South Coast today, because we have a few shots of the Bourne Bridge, shot from the Trowbridge Tavern deck, aiming towards Buzzards Bay. At least one of the CCM camera clickers started their trip from the Trow, and perhaps both.
Motherf***ers be hatin' on the shutterbugs, putting up stone walls and ADT between us and the pretty trees. If you need a barometer to measure the intelligence of the CCM staff by, know that Abdullah thinks that ADT is what the hyper kid in the high school claass has, while Stacey (who is French, and may somehow hear things with that same zuh zuh zuh accent she speaks with) thinks that it's the drug that they give you when you get the AIDS. Either way, dude shoulda let us in his yard to shoot his trees.
Dammmmmmmn..... stuffed at the goal line! It'd be cool of we jacked this guy's gate, went down his driveway, and- instead of a mansion- there was some shabby single-wide trailer home. Some people throw all their money into the house, other throw it all into the driveway.
My crappy camera in poor light, fired off of the Trowbridge Tavern deck. This is why most of my shots are close-ups, and why I hire the Joeynas of the world.
I need to work on my Level Horizon photography technique, but it's hard to level the camera and steer the car and twist the Game Green and watch out for kids and stuff like that. Also, this guy might, like, uhm, live on a hill or something.
Joeyna is newer to street photography than I am, and doesn't yet know that people just love it when obscure regional website photographers pull the car up onto their lawn so as to cut the power lines out of their Big Yellowsh Tree picture... or she's considerably smarter than me, and is therefore much less likely to get rocked in the lip by some justifiably angry homeowner.
We apologize to this gentleman for not getting to his house before the Leaf Drop, because it looks like he has a pretty cool Fall Foliage setup happening in his yard. We got you marked, player, and we'll be back next October. Bet your bottom dollar.
This is J at work. I went further inland than she did, making it to Halifax and Taunton and New Beddy during my loop. This was a Saturday drive assignment for me, and I was listening to WUMD's 9AM-2PM reggae show on 89.3 FM. The strength of WUMD's broadcast signal sort of guided my vehicle.
I love red trees, even when they grow in yards that are on a brutally sloped hill. You know how it is out in the sticks, dog.
A) Nice farmer's porch, and B) whoever has the upstairs bedroom must be on at least a nodding acquaintance basis with whatever squirrels and birds use that tree. It must be like the old Stephen Wright bit... "Hey, Tweety, how ya doin? I'm just having breakfast... want some eggs? Ooops, my bad."
It's like following the yellow brick road, just upside down.
Either the trip ended back up at the Trowbridge Tavern, or we're throwing a bone to the better photographers reading this article who looked at the first Bourne Bridge shot and said something along the lines of "Zoom in less with that shoddy camera, Stephen!"
Massachusetts voters are being asked whether or not to legalize the recreational use and sale of marijuana. You have no doubt seen the commercials from both sides. We thought that today would be a good time to drop some knowledge on the matter.
- Marijuana is the least harmful drug out there that is used recreationally, incuding legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco.
- Alcohol, which is legal and regulated, is a far greater killer of Americans than marijuana, both suddenly (overdoses and accidents) and long-term. Alcohol kills about 15,000 Americans a year just in OUI accidents.
- Much of the fight against the end of marijuana persecution is being paid for by both Big Al (alcohol suppliers and distributors) and Little Al (bars, retail alcohol stores), in a direct effort to avoid losing market shares for their far more dangerous product to a less harmful alternative like marijuana.
- The same can also be said about Big Pharma, who are to blame for the Oxycontin plague killing our children right now. They want the status quo, with doctors pushing their pills onto people who will get hooked and turn to heroin when their prescriptions run out... while US soldiers are dying in a mountain hell defending Afghan poppy fields.
- You are in far more danger of a drug-related death from visiting a doctor (and his/her hook-you-on-painkillers prescription pad) just once with a broken bone than you are from a lifetime spent making weekly visits to the den of even the most shadowy purveyor of black market marijuana.
- Every instant that a Massachusetts cop spends focusing on marijuana (and even in decriminalized Massachusetts, cops spend countless hours pursuing the black market marijuana trade, and rabidly consider anything more than a sandwich bag full of the stuff to be a crime worthy of a murderer's jail time) is an instant that he/she is not pursuing far more dangerous and harmful criminal activity.
- Police are safer in a world with legalized marijuana. They will be freed from the raids which get them shot by drug dealers. They will lower their number of citizen confrontations, which also gets them (and some citizens) shot.
- While some cops will tell you that maarijuana should stay illegal, you have to remember that they have worked their whole lives as the foot soldiers in the failed War On Drugs, and consider the fact that people are voting to legalize weed as disrespect to their brave (if misdirected) efforts. It ends up as an Us vs Them scenario where it is almost impossible to expect a balanced view.
- Even then, and even with intense inter-profession pressure for law enforcement people to be anti-pot, it is sort of funny to see the main pro-marijuana commercials on TV featuring calm policemen speaking about the benefits of legalized marijuana, while the main anti-marijuana commercial is a ridiculous paranoid fantasy production.
- Note that the commercial that I speak of, the one where the sheltered soccer mom awakes to a world with legalized marijuana, is contemptible. The only scenario shown that doesn't exist already is the daughter grabbing for the edibles (from a window in a shop that she wouldn't be allowed into), and the son buying weed legally from a licensed, regulated purveyor. The increase in crime inference is a lie exposed by states where marijuana is leglized. The man shown in the commercial billowing smokestack-style clouds of smoke would most likely be doing so with weed being either legal or illegal.
- What the commercial doesn't show is Mom drinkng bottle of wine and backing the car over the daughter, hubby drinking a 12 pack and smacking Mom, the son getting post-concussion syndrome from organized sports and becoming hooked on the pain medication that the doctors provide him, the cops- freed from pursuing harmless weed- chasing actual dangerous criminals, and the pot shop paying taxes that pour money into the schools and law enforcement apparatus of the town that they serve.
- Weed shops will take the sale of marijuana out of the hands of a drug dealer who would happily sell it to a child and put the sale of marijuana into the hands of a licensed, regulated businessman who will then diffuse tax money into the community. A child would be persona non grata in a weed shop, a potential business-wrecking failure.
- I can only speak for Buzzards Bay, but if I could take one of those several dozen empty stores on Main Street and replace it with a guaranteed winner of a business sporting a pre-existing and sizable in-town client base... you'd better come up with a better argument than some 1930s Reefer Madness nonsense when telling me why not.
- A vote for Legalization immediately takes about a quarter to a half million of our harmless citizens from Outlaw status to the status of respectable, revenue generating lawful citizens. This vote will also inflict immense damage on the actual harmful drug people, the guys running and selling it.
- If legalized marijuana is not overtaxed, it will indeed slaughter the black market. Overtaxed, it will generate a black market.
- A legalized marijuana society with a mortally wounded black market will make it much more difficult for children to acquire marijuana.
- Home-grown weed, not subject to taxes, will generate income for the state via sales of gardening materials. It's a piddling sum, granted... but it is more than we take in under the status quo, with people potentially facing years in prison for growing marijuana in-home.
- You are in far greater danger of being killed in a mass shooting by someone really into alt-right conspiracy or religion than you are by someone who has been driven to kill by his marijuana use. Marijuana has a mellowing effect, and her users are more likely to kill a box of Pop Tarts than they are to kill everyone in an elementary school.
- States with legalized marijuana yield interesting stats on weed and driving. 66% of road fatalities involving marijuana also involve alcohol, with alcohol being the far more likely culprit for the crash. A lesser % involve other, harder drugs. Of the remainder, Causality becomes an issue. Was the weed responsible for the crash? It's a tough sell in a snowy, mountainous state like Colorado. It's also a tough sell when the stats consider a stoner driver stopped at a red light who is then plowed into and killed by a drunk driver to be a "road death with marijuana present in the bloodstream."
- The fun part about the weed/driving stats is that, once you eliminate the drunks and the blizzard deaths, you have a number of deaths in the teens/single digits, from among a population of 10 million or so. Any insurance agent will tell you what the pro-persecution commercials won't tell you... the driver with weed in his blood is statistically less likely to get into a fatal road accident than a guy without weed is. We're not saying that the stoned driver is safer, as stats can vary year to year and a stoner bus accident could raise the % in a given period. We're just saying that the present information doesn't suggest that persecution is warranted.
- Legalized marijuana will pour millions and eventually billions into the state's coffers, money which can be used for better schools, better roads, better (and, via legalization, more efficient/useful) police... just a better life in general, and that's just for the non-smokers. It will be a considerably better life for the hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts smokers who are currently Outlaws under these Jim Crow-era laws.
- Understand that an anti-legalization vote wont make marijuana go away. It was out there before, and usage is widespread. It will just keep smokers in the black market, untaxed, unregulated, pursued endlessly by costly and mis-utilized police squads.
- If your views on marijuana have evolved past the colored people water fountain-era paranoid fantasies about armies of zombie stoners stumbling down Main Street, and if you accept that millions of people are already smoking it nationwide, you will basically see this ballot question as a vote on whether marijuana should be regulated and taxed.
- If legalization is batted down, don't goof on your local stoner too hard. The general effects he will suffer include "Not being able to buy it in a store" and "Not being able to grow it at home," moves that will feed the black market that awaits the stoner if his legal persecution is voted for. The modus operandi of the stoner will just continue as it was... untaxed, unregulated and persecuted by a costly legal system.
- Just don't complain to the stoner when the information presented in your daughter's aging History books cuts off at the Nancy Reagan era, or when a cop gets shot in a town which couldn't afford to properly armor him. We were offering tax dollars to pay for those things, but you chose to Just Say No.
- The stoners are tired of persecution, and they number in the hundreds of thousands in Massachusetts. They aren't going anywhere, no matter how you vote. The police have better things to do, as do the courts. The towns and state need the tax revenue. You're choosing between legal, regulated, taxed marijuana on one side and our police fighting a losing battle against both the black market and hundreds of thousands of harmless citizens on the other side. Get off of Mary Warner's back.
It's time to evolve, my friends. Stop the persecution of harmless marijuana smokers. We urge you to vote for the legalization of marijuana in Massachusetts.
We headed out to Duxbury Beach to check out the King Tide. A king tide is when the moon, sun and Earth align. It increases gravitational pull on the ocean, and produces some of the higher tides of the year. We hit town as the king tide was receding... it was only 11.8 feet today, down from 12.8 Wednesday. It'll be down to 10.1 soon.
A tide two feet above normal would be trouble if it went down as a storm hit, which is why October is the start of Nor'easter season. However, Duxbury was No Problemo today. They probably had some spray come over the wall and they did have a Coastal Flood Advisory, but no damage was done today.
Massachusetts is now in the full grip of Creepy Clown hysteria. You don't have to go on Facebook very long to see that there is most likely a clown working your area. It's only October 4th, so it's probably going to get creepier and creepier until Halloween.
Reports of clowns, some of which are hoaxes, are turning up in New Bedford, Brockton, Wareham, Rehoboth (RPD is denying it), Agawam, Weymouth, Plymouth and God knows where else. Merrimack College was actually locked down after a report (that later turned out to be false) concerning an armed clown roaming the campus. There are too many sightings, too far apart, for it to be the work of one clown.
It speaks of a Clown-spiracy.
Clowns run the gamut from friendly ones like Bozo to sad ones like Pagliacci to scary fictional ones like Pennywise to outright IRL serial killers like John Wayne Gacy. You could bump into WWE personality Doink the Clown, although I think the wrestler who played him is dead. They can even be a Juggalo, who are followers of the Insane Clown Posse. You have no way of knowing which type you're meeting, although if you meet one on a side street at 1 AM, he's probably not out looking for Mayor McCheese.
Clowns scare us in ways that other circus performers don't. I have seen not one report of, say, an acrobat or a lion tamer roaming the streets of Brockton. Maybe it's the face paint, maybe it's the capering, maybe it's the frozen deathly rictus... either way, I'm down with the clown like the guy in Repo Man felt about cops... "I ain't got nothin' against no cop.. I just like it better when they aren't around."
Folklorist/cryptozoologist Loren Coleman is largely responsible for both publicizing the 1981 cases in Massachusetts where clowns tried to lure children into cars, and for keeping the concept of RL creepy clowns in the public eye. He's been saying that the phenomena is coming back, and everyone laughed.... but the only one laughing now is Loren Coleman.
Keep in mind that many of these clown sightings are going down in the Bridgewater Triangle, which is another theory of Coleman's.
So, it's just early October, and the creepy clowns are out in full force. The clown craze is already larger than life, so it's not going away. That leaves you with the question of "Well, what can I do about it?"
Here are some tips that just may save you from a ghastly death at the gloved hands of a Killer Clown.
- Dress like a clown. I say this because I'm using Zombie Apocalypse Logic... you never see Zombies fighting each other. They have some instinct that makes one walk right past the other. Maybe clowns are like that... or maybe you and Pennywise can have a turf dispute. OK, maybe this idea sucks.
- Watch out for little cars. Clowns like to pack themselves into small cars like hybrids or VW Beetles. There's no comic value to fitting 12 clowns into a H2 or a Chevy Suburban. Sh*t, I've done that a few times. If you're on a dark side street and hear laughter or bicycle horns coming from a Toyota Yarris... well, you're probably already dead.
- If a clown chases you, try to run in areas with narrow paths. Clowns tend to wear big shoes, you see... there's no shame in surviving a clown chase only because Ronald got his foot snagged under a tree limb. You'd think that a guy with size 16 feet would have better Huge Shoes jokes, but I'm a bit under the weather this morning and have very little in the tank.
- In the Six Day War, the Israelis gained a war-winning advantage by staging a pre-emptive assault on the rival nation's air forces. Before the war was an hour old, the Sons of David owned the skies, and Syria/Egypt/Jordan/whoever suffered mightily for it. Do not be afraid of launching a pre-emptive strike against the clowns. Make-up stores, joke shops, even a circus.... you just have to know what to look for, and not be afraid to kill.
- Clown weaponry tends to lean towards the absurd. You notice that The Joker rarely kills with a gun. In fact, if a clown pulls a gun on you, it will most likely have that little BANG! flag pop out of it. At worst, it shoots out a boxing glove. Also be wary of lapel flowers that spray acid, 30000 volt electric joy buzzer handshakes, crowbars, and weapons that have "guaranteed to level Gotham City" written on the box.
- Girl clowns are always sexy, but the sex appeal is just a clown trick. Girl clowns may act like they love you, but their heart belongs to whatever clown first got them to put on the make-up. Harley Quinn always goes back to the Joker, even though Batman is worth a billion dollars and is built like a Greek God. Harley usually tries to do Batman in, rather than do Batman up.
- Every police department in town is going to issue warnings that the Clown Fear is just mass hysteria and that you shouldn't worry yourself over it. Don't believe them. Many of these warnings will actually be put out by the clowns themselves, in order to lure innocents into Fairhaven or Rehoboth or wherever the cops say "Don't Worry" the most. It's a lot like Thoreau once wrote... "The more vehemently that he spoke of his honor, the more closely that I watched the silverware." I only half-remember the quote, but the point is what matters.
- If you do decide to kill a clown without a trial, don't forget to Double Tap them. I can't tell you how many horror movies I've seen where someone knocks over Michael Myers, thinks he's dead, and then gets an axe to the dome about one murderer sit-up later. Don't go out like a sucker.
- In the same vein, remember that- should you take out a gun- a clown who runs is definitely an evil clown. A clown who begs for his life is a really sneaky evil clown.
- With "clown" sure to be among the top Hallowen costumes this year, it will be very easy for true Evil Clowns to mix in among the trick-or-treaters. Always know how many kids are in your trick-or-treating groups, and if you come up with one extra when you count heads, be wary. Also, if you go out with 4 little children and- at some point- the kid who was dressed as a Minion is now dressed as an evil clown... well, you're probably already dead. These odds go up if the clown-child is the newly-discovered fifth kid, and he's now six foot four.
- Legend has it that once a man kills while dressed as a clown, he can never get the make-up off. It's sort of what happened to Lady MacBeth. Killer Clowns can only look human again by taking out even more make-up. So, if you see an otherwise normal person with a touch of pure white on his skin, you should probably kill him first and wonder if he just ate a powdered sugar donut later.
- There are no Black, Asian or Latino clowns. Clownery (?) is like hockey to these people. If you see a black guy dressed as a clown, he's probably Canadian and doesn't count.
Massachusetts is expected to feel some effects from Tropical Storm Hermine. As it stands right now, we should be getting it on Labor Day.
We'll do some forecasting in our next article, but today we want to point out a pair of unique weather milestones that you may see Monday.
1) This is the second Tropical Storm Hermine we've had to deal with. A minimal-strength Tropical Storm Hermine came ashore in New Bedford back in 2004.
and
2) We'll be getting a Holiday Storm.
Green Harbor, MA
Storms are always bad things (although we could use the rain), but they are worse when they fall on a holiday. Plans go awry, travel becomes dangerous, and what should be a festive event instead becomes arduous and perhaps even deadly.
Tropical Storm Hermine may become the storm for Labor Day. "Labor Day Low" is a good and accurate name for it, although it's not really that catchy.
That may be a good thing. As bad as Hermine may be for your golf outings and cookouts, it doesn't look to be a storm that will rank well historically. It will be very much like a nor'easter, especially in terms of duration and intensity. It may not really deserve a cooler name, unless it intensifies or makes a direct landfall.
Duxbury, MA
Hurricane Earl in 2010 just missed being a Labor Day storm, passing on Saturday, September 4th. Earl missed Cape Cod, but still did some damage. One Yarmouth motel had an 85% decrease in rentals, despite dropping their price from $135 to $85.
A blizzard in 1969 struck western Massachusetts on the day after Christmas, but it didn't hit our reading area. We have a few other near-misses, and I don't know dates of other religions well enough to tell you if there was a Passover nor'easter or a Ramadan blizzard.
The longshot chance for a worthy Holiday Storm status application would be if Hermine bopped around just south of us for 3 days. "72 Hours Of Labor" or something like that would be a sweet headline.
You can't have a lame storm holding a holiday name. Every storm I'll be listing below was a Doozy. They wrecked shop, and no one would contest their ownership of a certain day. "The Arbor Day Sunshower" isn't really going to impress future weather historians.
Several storms in Massachusetts history have sort of placed their claim on certain holidays. Hermine is close to staking one for Labor Day, but that is just one of the many holidays that we celebrate in Massachusetts.
Here are a few other notable holiday storms. Blizzards are represented harder than hurricanes because A) winter is longer and B) August, a prime month for summer storms, has no holidays.
Duxbury Beach, MA
The Halloween Gale
This was the worst holiday storm. Technically, the height of it was on Devil's Night. However, nor'easters are the gift that keeps giving, and the Perfect Storm laid into us for 8-10 tides.
She should have been Hurricane Henri, but the National Weather Service felt that naming the storm would have some adverse publicity thing that might endanger someone.
There was no landfall with this hurricane, but it inflicted ridiculous coastal damage onto eastern Massachusetts. I was trapped in a waterfront house on Duxbury Beach for this worst part of this one. If they had the internet back then, I would be YouTube Famous, as waves were breaking on top of the two story house I was in.
It was close as I've come to being killed, and I was, at various points in my life, a bouncer, a night-shift gas station attendant, a guy getting a tour of a nuclear power plant, a graveyard shift night auditor at a drug hotel, a lifelong drug user, a Boston schoolteacher and someone who has A) had a shotgun pointed in his face during an armed robbery, B) had more than one episode in his life where he fought more than one person at once, C) suffered two electrocutions.
The April Fool's Day Blizzard
Sandwich, MA
April snow in Massachusetts isn't that unusual, but 28 inches of it in a day is a bit notable. 1997 gave us that.
This storm also had the coastal flooding component. Winds reached hurricane force along the Massachusetts coast.
I also caught this one from Duxbury. This was before the neighborhood was built up, so i had the only fireplace on my street.... which means that I had a dozen neighbors laying on my floor in front of it once the power went out.
It's also the event where I had an Australian nanny from the neighborhood call me during the height of the storm and ask "When does the Army come and take all the snow away?"
The Groundhog Day Blizzard
There are several contenders for this title, but we'll use the recent one from 2015 because I have pictures of it.
This was very nearly the Super Bowl Blizzard, as it nearly struck on the day that the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks for the Lombardi Trophy. It came the day after instead, and everyone blamed Punxsatawney Phil.
This could have very easily been the Malcolm Butler Blizzard, as at least one blizzard I can think of (the infamous Lindsay storm, named after a poor-responding NYC mayor) is named for a minor celebrity. Barry White should have had his own blizzard, IMHO.
This was from that winter where it snowed every 3 days and we had a blizzard every Monday. I could probably find the snowfall totals in our archives, but they matter very little. We had meters of snow on the ground before the blizzard, and whatever powder this storm dropped was akin to getting a glass of water and pouring it into a lake.
I wasn't in Pennsylvania for this storm... but if I was,and if that little groundhog stuck his head up out of his little hidey-hole, I would have kicked it.
Ocean Bluff, MA
The Inauguration Day Blizzard
I'm not sure if Abe Lincoln or Will McKinley had snowstorms on the day that they took office, but it is definitely a bad thing if they did. JFK's ascension into the Presidency was marked by a now-ominous snowstorm back in his native state.
"It's like raaaaaaaaaaaaainnnn on your wedding day...."
20 inches of snow fell across Massachusetts, and even JFK got some snow on the ol' Chowderhead down in DC.
The Ash Wednesday Storm
OK, we're pushing it now. I also think that I may be missing a Columbus Day hurricane, an Easter blizzard or a Thanksgiving nor'easter.
Ah, well... maybe some old-timers can help us out in the Comments section.
This was a furious nor'easter that did damage up most of the mid-Atlantic and New England coastline in 1962.
Granted, there's a Presidential campaign going on and we're fighting ISIL in the Middle East, but there are other important things that we have to discuss today.
Somewhere in your town, there is a Skill Crane. If your town doesn't have one, the place that you go shopping does. They're ubiquitous.
A skill crane (aka Claw Crane, Giant Claw and Big Grab) looks simple and innocuous, but it is actually steeped in history and has been the subject of some legal debate.
During the construction of the Panama Canal, the public became fascinated with pictures of steam shovels used to dig the vast trench. For a nation that was 45 years removed from having slaves, Irish or coolies doing that sort of work, a steam shovel was a pretty neat thing. This was pre-Internet, kids.
Soon, this fascination inspired some brilliant human to make machines that featured a big claw dropping into a vat of candy and getting a sweet for the person who dropped a coin in it. Someone else threw in a few flashing lights, some bells, some whistles....Voila! The modern Skill Crane was born.
Known as an Erie Crane, a Panama Claw and the Iron Claw (this was pre-Von Erichs, and the Iron Claw crane may have inspired VE patriarch Fritz when naming his family's signature finishing move), the skill crane started working itself into any place with tourists. A version known as the you'd-better-pronounce-that-carefully "Miami Digger" began to appear at carnivals, and soon became the most popular kind of claw crane.
The machines stayed popular through the years. The NFL even took the step of loading machines with little team footballs, just to get the free advertising among a vulnerable demographic.
Skill Cranes then went to that next level in the 1980s, following right on the heels of the arcade video game craze. They had a prominent presence among Pizza Hut restaurants. By the 1990s, they were in K-Marts, Wal-Marts and perhaps every arcade operating.
Skill cranes tend to be stuffed with plush toys/stuffed animals these days, rather than the shelf life-having candy prizes. There are many varieties of both cranes and prizes. Most have a joystick with a drop button, and you have a 30 second timer.
You most likely know this already, unless you're like Amish or something. I can still learn you up, though... I am a skill crane expert. I won the 1986 Maine Crane championships, scooping a Higgs boson particle in the finals to defeat the former champ, Elmer "Glue" Carew.
There are several things that I can tell you to both help you win, and to help you win with honor.
1) If there are children waiting to play, let them go first. It's a kids game, remember... and besides, the little suckers might loosen up some toys for you to win afterwards. Kids have more of a toy-level view of the game, and sometimes miss things that a taller player will notice instantly.
2) If the machine plays some annoying song and is in any setting other than an arcade... don't bother the patrons and staff.
3) Skill matters very little, as you have no way of knowing what tension you need to apply to pry loose a prize. Some attorneys have advised claw machine companies to not use the word Skill when naming their machines, as it could present future legal trouble. Regulations vary from state to state, with many states treating the crane as a form of gambling. Cranes are illegal in Canada unless you A) win every time, or B) get multiple turns for your money.
4) While there is more prestige in snagging a high-profile stuffed animal like Scooby Doo and so forth, they are generally harder to get. A few Scoobies can offset a lot of lesser-known or generic stuffed animals as far as Presentation goes, and the guy stuffing the crane doesn't want to give up high profile characters without a fight. He is also motivated by the fact that a Batman toy costs more than a generic toy.
5) If the character that you're after has feet, make sure you can see them. Otherwise, even if you get the Kung Fu Panda by the head, his feet will pull him back in when they hit another plush toy.
6) While it's tempting to try to grab Alf by the head, it's better to get one hook under his throat and one under his arm. This may tip Alf, making him easier to grab in the event of you needing a second crack at him.
7) Never go for items near the glass. It prevents tipping, which is as important as grabbing in Crane work. For the same reason, never go for items right near the chute that winning prizes are dropped down. You don't want to be fighting any sort of barrier when contesting ownership of Wolverine.
8) Never be afraid to give the machine a little bump before you play. It may loosen up some items, and it may even knock one into the chute if you do it right. Just don't do it after you put your money in, it may have a TILT failsafe seen in pinball machines.
9) Several brands of crane have joysticks that can only be moved towards you once, and to a side once. Avoid these, unless the prizes are irresistible. As you should know by now, the Man plays dirty.
10) If you win the prize and you're an adult, it should play out like catching a foul ball at Fenway... hold up the prize, get some adulation, and then toss it over to the nearest kid. I just yesterday gave up Tom Cat from Tom & Jerry to a sweet-looking little girl at Papa Gino's in Wareham, where I was abusing that Skill Crane like Joan Collins.
OK, it's a misleading headline, and I did it on purpose.
Sometimes we headline-generating types try to assume the viewpoint of the common man who doesn't have a job which requires that he think about sharks for long periods of time. It's easier and more practical than having me try to write from the viewpoint of an actual expert who studied Marine Biology and has hours in the field. It also sets up a straw man for me to knock down.
This is important, because my last paying work as a writer where I wasn't my own boss was as a "Fantasy Football Consultant." You'll notice that, when the shark ate up that kid in Jaws, nobody was clamoring for Chief Brody to call in the Fantasy Football Consultant. Keep that in mind as I flesh out my theories for you.
Sharks are not "all over the South Shore," and it's not a case of them just being around "these days." Only the question mark at the end of the headline saves it from being an outright Lie.
Sharks pre-date humans in Massachusetts. The Wampanoags- who, whatever their faults may have been when dealing with the English, were much more environmentally reasonable than the Palefaces- never really developed Swimming as a mass hobby. There may have been several reasons for that, but a top contender would be "the English hadn't fished Cape Cod Bay to exhaustion yet, and the larger fish stocks drew in both seals and their toothy predators."
Swimming didn't even catch on with Mr. White until a few hundred years ago, and it wasn't feasible to travel from inland to the beaches until the Industrial Revolution brought about trains and so forth. It wasn't long after the English pushed inland from the coast that a majority of people in America bore young who lived and died without even once thinking about a shark. Until the release of Jaws in the 1970s, the only sea-villains in entertainment were Pirates, Leviathans, U-Boats and the mighty White Whale.
Coastal people tended to work the seas, and sharks were just by-catch to them. While they undoubtedly saw and perhaps even feared sharks, it was only something to worry about if the ship sank or if the Captain made you walk the plank. Remember, most of the time that man has taken to the seas was well before radios, distress calls and search planes. If your ship sank, you died, and you didn't make it back to shore to tell everyone how sharks ate the rest of the crew.
Sharks were in Cape Cod Bay long before 2010. If I remember to put it in, you can see a pic of the big Great White that was caught a few miles off of Duxbury in the 1930s. Two of the three fatal shark attacks in Massachusetts history happened off Scituate and in Boston Harbor. They went down in the 1800s and 1700s, respectively.
In between then and now, a few strange things happened. The waters off of Massachusetts, which were the first ones to be overfished by Europeans, had their fish stocks drop to very low levels. This was felt up the food chain, through the seals and right to Great White Sharks.
Cape Cod had a bounty on seals for a while, and this drove their numbers down markedly. Low seal totals meant that sharks brought their game elsewhere.
This happened as many areas of formerly isolated Massachusetts coastline were brought under development. It also coincided with the emergence of Beaching as the go-to summer activity. People began to develop formerly empty sections of Duxbury, Plymouth and what have you.
Fish stocks were plummeting, and reached all-time lows by the 1990s. The government intervened, catch limits and keeper sizes went into effect for both commercial and recreational fishermen, and fish gradually started coming back to our waters. This brought back the seals, who began showing up in notable numbers on Cape Cod around the turn of the century.
That's generally a good thing, nature-wise. However, it only took a few years for the sharks to figure out where the seals went, and they began arriving off the shores of Cape Cod in numbers that couldn't helped but be noticed.
It didn't take long for the sharks and seals to grow in number to where Suburbanization became necessary. You could see a seal sunning himself on Duxbury Beach in the 1970s, but it was an unusual thing. It became much less unusual after the century turned.
Likewise, only so many sharks can cruise a particular area. Monomoy, the primary seal and shark hangout, soon spread her apex predator bounty to Orleans, Wellfleet and Truro. Unlike Monomoy, these are towns with people going to the beach. Truro, not Monomoy, caught the first two shark attacks of the modern era.
We know by shark tagging that the Great Whites summer here, and then head to Dixie for the winter.... regular snowbirds, they are. They sort of follow the Gulf Stream back up here every summer. To a shark moving north along the US coast, Cape Cod is going to be sort of a roadbock. The seals keep them hanging around once they get here. Competition moves them up along the Cape.
Once they hit Provincetown, they have a decision to make. North equals open sea, East equals open sea and West equals the lovely curved shoreline of Cape Cod Bay. For a fish that primarily eats shore-hugging seals, there's really no debate.
Seals and then sharks have rounded the corner and are now occupying Cape Cod Bay. It's ironic, because one of the selling points of South Shore beaches is "no Cape traffic."
It's more of a trickle than a flood, which makes a lie of the "all over the South Shore" part of the headline. You can learn a lot by judging the results found when sharks are tagged. Monomoy, which is sort of the seals' capitol city, had 14000 shark detection buoy pingings last summer. Duxbury and Plymouth combined for about 200.
Granted, Dr. Gregory Skomal (the shark-tagging guy) focuses his efforts out on Monomoy. I don't think he has ever been tagging in Cape Cod Bay. The South Shore does have shark buoys, however, and these buoys show that sharks are coming from Cape Cod to the beaches of the South Shore. Plymouth was the site of the last shark attack in Massachusetts.
Two bad factors ("bad" for people on the South Shore who are afraid of sharks) kick in at this point.
1) There is nothing to stop the sharks and seals from populating Cape Cod Bay
and
2) It's actually a pretty cool place for seals (and the sharks who eat them) to hang out.
Other than carnivore whales and larger Great Whites, the list of creatures willing to f*ck with a Great White Shark is a small one. Not many of these creatures (Orcas and the like) end up in Cape Cod Bay. The only regular inhabitant of Cape Cod Bay who could kill them is a human. They have a free hand in this town, as the former Sheriff of Lago once said.
The South Shore also has long stretches of uninhabited or sparsely inhabited beach. Duxbury Beach is mostly uninhabited. Plymouth has a lot of coastal housing perched on towering sand cliffs, making it hard for those residents to just trot down to the beach. Seals can come ashore on either spot without much concern over human interaction... I mean, it's tough to sun yourself properly when people keep trying to get you to bounce a ball on your nose, yaknowwhati'msayin'?
Both species could easily get to likin' it here... and there's no reason for them to leave.
The South Shore is populated by people who aren't used to sharks being off of their coasts. I am no superhero type at all, but as a child of the 1970s on Duxbury Beach, I would have saw no threat at all in jumping off of a boat where people had been fishing with big bloody mackerel chunks all day and swimming 100 yards to shore. Even in my 30s, I'd have guessed that Smoking would be the one thing that would kill me over a long swim from a boat to shore.
That is no longer the case. If you view summer as 100 days, like Cape Cod does, Plymouth and Duxbury's numbers show that there was a shark off of each beach every day of last summer... and those were only the ones they got tags into off Monomoy. Perhaps only Poseidon, God and Aquaman know how many Great White Sharks are actually in Cape Cod Bay.
While the threat of a shark attack is still minor if not minuscule, the threat is much greater than it was 40 years ago. The risk is little... but little things mean a lot in a game where the loser is Devoured.
