August 20, 2011
2. Newblog2011: 08/20/11 Life In Boston
Despite what were perhaps meant to be overt threats by local government during my first week and a half in Boston, life here has been much less difficult than it was in Vermont as far as personal harassment goes. As I had thought would likely be the case, most people whom I pass by on the street have more fun, interesting or at least compelling things to do than to try to get on my nerves. Even when I first got here, I was only getting harassed by every 20th person or so if I were walking along the street. It’s been less often than that over the past week.
Even most of the homeless people in Boston seem to have more interesting things to do than to try to hassle me than many of the homeless people in Vermont did. The experience in Massachusetts that’s been the most like what I was going through in Vermont happened in the emergency shelter in Lynn, where I stayed for a few days. Lynn is a town that is a significant train-and-bus distance from Boston. The town is about twice the size of Burlington. I didn’t see much of it but the mostly unpleasant area of town around where the shelter was.
There are a few homeless women in Boston who seem to be obsessed with harassing me, and there have been some staff who have been especially obnoxious, but, as the saying goes “There’s one in every crowd.”
As far as being harassed at the Boston Public Library goes; my guess is that after my first, few days of using the computers there, some people with excess free time during the day started waiting around at the library in order to get a chance to harass me. You can also view pornography on some of the public access computers at that library. Perhaps, for some people, a day spent at the Boston Public Library waiting for me to show up so that they can try to hassle me is their idea of a good day.
In Vermont, there wasn’t much else going on except for this story. According to the U.S. Census Bureau number that I just saw on a Google search, the population of the entire state of Vermont was 621,760 in July, 2009. Also, Gannett is the dominant newspaper news source in Vermont. The Burlington Free Press and the Times Argus are by no means the only town newspapers in Vermont that are owned and operated by the Gannett Corporation. I don’t know of any independent and fully functioning TV stations in the Burlington area. Although it is neither large nor urban, Burlington is the largest city in Vermont, and tends to be considered the cultural center of the state. That means that the dominant TV news sources in Vermont are also the local outposts of corporations such as NBC and so on. Vermont Public Television is funded by businesses and by the government, as is the national Public Broadcasting Service.
The big harassers have a chokehold on the state of Vermont.
As far as Boston goes, the fact that my life is somewhat less terrible here than it was in Vermont doesn’t mean that all of the issues aren’t still very serious issues.
There are still governments, corporations, media and others who are trying to impose mass, male dominance and child molestation on the world.
Copyright L. Kochman August 20, 2011 @ 11:56 a.m.
2. Newblog2011: 08/20/11 Life In Boston
Despite what were perhaps meant to be overt threats by local government during my first week and a half in Boston, life here has been much less difficult than it was in Vermont as far as personal harassment goes. As I had thought would likely be the case, most people whom I pass by on the street have more fun, interesting or at least compelling things to do than to try to get on my nerves. Even when I first got here, I was only getting harassed by every 20th person or so if I were walking along the street. It’s been less often than that over the past week.
Even most of the homeless people in Boston seem to have more interesting things to do than to try to hassle me than many of the homeless people in Vermont did. The experience in Massachusetts that’s been the most like what I was going through in Vermont happened in the emergency shelter in Lynn, where I stayed for a few days. Lynn is a town that is a significant train-and-bus distance from Boston. The town is about twice the size of Burlington. I didn’t see much of it but the mostly unpleasant area of town around where the shelter was.
There are a few homeless women in Boston who seem to be obsessed with harassing me, and there have been some staff who have been especially obnoxious, but, as the saying goes “There’s one in every crowd.”
As far as being harassed at the Boston Public Library goes; my guess is that after my first, few days of using the computers there, some people with excess free time during the day started waiting around at the library in order to get a chance to harass me. You can also view pornography on some of the public access computers at that library. Perhaps, for some people, a day spent at the Boston Public Library waiting for me to show up so that they can try to hassle me is their idea of a good day.
In Vermont, there wasn’t much else going on except for this story. According to the U.S. Census Bureau number that I just saw on a Google search, the population of the entire state of Vermont was 621,760 in July, 2009. Also, Gannett is the dominant newspaper news source in Vermont. The Burlington Free Press and the Times Argus are by no means the only town newspapers in Vermont that are owned and operated by the Gannett Corporation. I don’t know of any independent and fully functioning TV stations in the Burlington area. Although it is neither large nor urban, Burlington is the largest city in Vermont, and tends to be considered the cultural center of the state. That means that the dominant TV news sources in Vermont are also the local outposts of corporations such as NBC and so on. Vermont Public Television is funded by businesses and by the government, as is the national Public Broadcasting Service.
The big harassers have a chokehold on the state of Vermont.
As far as Boston goes, the fact that my life is somewhat less terrible here than it was in Vermont doesn’t mean that all of the issues aren’t still very serious issues.
There are still governments, corporations, media and others who are trying to impose mass, male dominance and child molestation on the world.
Copyright L. Kochman August 20, 2011 @ 11:56 a.m.