Kirby on the Loose

We Can All Breathe a little easier

2013-05-24T12:51:00.001-04:00

Railroad reconstruction starts in Northampton

All of us who live near the railroad can give a quiet cheer. It's not the worst stretch of railbed in the world, but they are shipping a lot of natural gas in these pressurized cars through Northampton these days and watching the daily ordinary rocking and rolling through town is enough to give anyone a hernia. This stretch of railbed through Northampton is better than it once was, but is still in bad condition. Ties rotting, spikes popping up or missing entirely. Everything sags when heavily loaded cars hit a bad section. Up til now freight trains have had to obey what I think is a ten mph speed limit. On Tuesday Pan Am railways, working its way south from Greenfield, arrived in Northampton. To read the full article, click here

Not a Great Place for a Detention Pond

2013-05-16T11:21:00.000-04:00

But that’s where these consulting engineers that the Department of Public Works hired want to put it, right in the middle of the playing fields at the Ryan Street School. Pretty much the whole infield. There were quite a few people scratching their heads when I showed the plans around out at the school department. It turns out they never shared their plans with the school system, and the Northampton DPW didn't send the school property people a copy. Back in the winter of 2011 three people from their engineering firm, paid a flying visit to Northampton to look at four areas of the city where we have persistent flooding problems. Their data became part of the 2012 Stormwater Study, and the project in the Ryan Road/ Austin Circle was tentatively scheduled for 2020/2021. The pricetag for dealing with this local flooding? $5.7 million. Not chickenfeed. Read the full article by clicking here.

Come Clean, DPW. Are you "green" or ain't you?

2013-05-08T12:59:00.001-04:00

There was an article in the Gazette the other day that these students for the Smith Engineering Department had recently developed a plan for the DPW for these two "green" type detention rain garden type deals. Great. I'd feel better about this if Ned Huntley, director of the Department of Public Works, hadn't shown me this 2006 study, done seven years ago, that the Engineering Department at Smith College had done for them on the feasibility of putting in a detention pond on Smith Vocational land to catch flood flows on Brougham Brook upstream, and keep it from flooding a big area near the high school in ten year storms. Their estimates of cost for the detention pond was a measly $100,000. It was a terrific idea, but the study just went into the file and stayed there.

Flood control projects and the maintenance of our storm water system seems to been at the bottom of the priority list for the Department of Public Works for some time. Instead of attending to the small stuff, the DPW hires CDM(Camp Dresser and McKee) a big consulting firm to study the problem and propose fixes. Total price tag for the fixes, almost $100 million. Click here to read the full article.

The "Best and Brightest" are leaving us

2013-04-29T11:27:00.003-04:00

Following my reporter's nose after seeing some postings on MassLive, I confirmed from our Chief of Police that that attrition rate among new and even experienced officers in Northampton is unacceptably high. Every year City Hall Wendy Mazza swears in a new crop of officers, "The best and brightest". They undergo our extensive field training program, get experience on the street, and then they leave. My mathematics gave me 42 new officers being sworn in over the last six years, and 18 of them had left. The Chief says he thinks the figure is 12.

I asked this one officer on the street why people are leaving. "Well," he said, "If you're not happy, you tend to look around to see if the grass is greener somewhere else. The pay down in Connecticut is much better, I hear."

Despite its new state of the art police station, despite a field training program that is probably the best in Western Massachusetts, the Northampton police department continues to spend a lot of money to train and supervise police that end up going to work elsewhere. Why? Read the full article by clicking here

Our Pumping Station, reconsidered

2013-04-25T12:12:00.000-04:00

Don't hit the arrow above, it doesn't work. The link in the full piece works. I'm rerunning this old piece, with some edits, on our pumping station. The other night I attended one of a continuing series of meetings of the Ad-Hoc Committee that is developing a formula for assessing costs of the storm water project designed by CDM. A number of the committee members visited the pumping facility. and got pretty much the same kind of demonstration that Fred Zimmich and I got last year. Except the first time the operator tried to start one of the big Sterlings, it wouldn't start on the first try. I guess they were impressed, as we were, how scary it is for the community to trust this antiquated facility if the Connecticut gets to flood stage. They don't make parts for these old Sterlings any more. I apologize for the film being rough and jumpy; I am just learning to use the camera. Thanks to Adam Cohen for loaning me it. I also owe the man that has been looking after this system since 1987 an apology for calling his engines "antiques". When all three are going full blast, you have to wear ear protection. Hear them roar by clicking this link.

The Battle for Apartment 309

2013-04-16T11:25:00.000-04:00

The Sanctuary of the "Church of Us" Expands.

At the March meeting of the Northampton Housing Authority, I asked its director, Jon Hite, what was happening with Apartment 309, the apartment directly above that of the monk Samana. A stony-faced Hite said the woman in it had asked for a transfer. "And who will be the next tenant?"

" The top person on the waiting list."

To many of us at that meeting, we knew who the top person on that waiting list was going to be. The rules gave people over 62 priority, but we assumed that some reason would be found to jump Samana's loyal personal assistant and nun, Sacred Little, to the top of the list. Jon Hite calls all the shots at the authority, and Samana had already been telling people that Sacred Little would be spending more time in the building. It was a done deal.

Life is hard for the people that live over Samana's head. Two previous tenants had begged to be transferred. There is the piercing sound of his flute playing, and his hyper-sensitivity to noise. Now aided and abetted by NHA staff, a systematic campaign of harassment had succeeded in driving out the poor woman who used to live in 309; a campaign that may have been linked to a mysterious break-into a resident's apartment where nothing was stolen except a file of his marked NHA/Hite. In that file were allegations that the Executive Director of the Authority, Jon Hite, had committed sexual harassment. The alleged victim? Sacred Little.

Having a devotee living overhead is a dream that Samana has nourished for some time. Someone who walks very silently, and someone who can be there around the clock to tend to his needs. Tenants have seen a sketch by Samana of a spiral staircase that he would need if and when a devotee was living overhead. So here is the crazy story It's a bit untidy, because I am adding links as I have time. Click here for The Battle for apartment 309

“Do you know who I am?”

2013-04-03T17:28:00.001-04:00

Former reporter David Reid falls afoul of City's HR administrator

Police and people who hand out parking tickets dread hearing that phrase. It means that you have run into a person who seems to feel that their station in life gives them some kind of immunity against the routine aggravations of life.

It was about noontime on Saturday January 19th. The woman sitting in the car at the curb in front of the A.P.E. gallery was not pleased when David Reid, then a parking enforcement officer (PEO) for the City of Northampton, asked her to buy a ticket in the nearby machine or move her car.

David didn’t recognize her.

“I’m Glenda Stoddard of Human Services,” she said. She said that she was waiting for her husband who was down in Brueggers getting coffee.

David said that she still had to buy a picket or move her car. Glenda Stoddard is fairly high up in the pecking order in the city. As Director of Human Resources, she advises department heads on hiring and firing and grievance procedures. She told me that she was trying to get some change out of her purse, and David kept talking to her. Read the full story here.

Rocky road ahead for Section 8 ?

2013-03-20T13:14:00.002-04:00

HUD cuts $216,000 from Franklin County Section 8 programs, all PHAs hit.

Yes, its arrived. The Big S. At their regular meeting of the Northampton Housing Authority last week, their executive director and board of directors grappled with the Sequestration, the modern equivalent of the Doomsday Machine parodied in the Stanley Kubrick film from 1964, Dr. Strangelove, Yes, decided the deciders, we’ll sequester ourselves, listen to no one, and make it completely automatic and so awful everyone will come to their senses. And just as the huge thermonuclear device in Dr. Strangelove failed to bring everyone to their senses and ended up demolishing the world, the Sequestration device seems to be demolishing thoughtful governance. Click here to read the full article on HUD's cut in their popular Section 8 program that enables low income people to live in private housing.

The Mayor looks into the Crystal Ball

2013-03-12T22:06:00.001-04:00

And Sees a World of Trouble?

Today the Mayor made the first of a series of "town hall" meetings at the Senior Center where he looked into the future of our finances. Using a fast-paced Power Point presentation loaded with data, he outlined to about thirty of us citizens the state of Northampton's finances. Revenues coming in from the state are static or declining, there are unfunded mandates from federal and state agencies for improvements in education and flood control. Health insurance costs are increasing dramatically. The shoe has yet to drop in terms of a new firefighter contract. In 2003, we were paying 6 million for health coverage , ten years later the cost is $10 million; the bill in 2014 will jump another million. " Our finance team had a conference call with one of the rating agencies," he said, "They walked through all of our finances. If we fail to keep our reserves growing over the coming years we could loose our AA2 rating."

In the range from prime to junk, we are in the middle. The free-spending years under Clare have taken their toll.

Here is the link to the full article on our finances.

Notes from Row 28

2013-02-10T18:48:00.000-05:00

If you keep your elbows in and breathe shallowly from the upper diaphragm, one can type messages to the outside world in case something happens. The three of us in row 28, seats C, D, and E, are doing what can be done in our 32" wide space. We have about 13 cubic feet to frolic in. We keep our elbows in like orphanage children. The man to my left is studying a forbidding looking technical manual on a software program, the woman on my right is listening to a device that might be an I-Phone or a Sanyo. She rolls the messages up and down, and clicks on what interests her. A few minutes ago she managed the difficult feat of eating a sandwich she had smuggled on board. I have a sandwich, too, but when I jammed my backpack under the seat in front of me, I did not hit the pause button, I did not relax and take my own sweet time and let the rest of the rabble around me fume. Now I am stuck with a difficult and nearly impossible logistics task to pull the back-pack out.

" Do you need anything in it before you put it away?" my wife would have said if she were along on this expedition.

But I am by myself and subject to my tendency to rush.

The engineers and managers and airline people who designed this Boeing 737 didn't reckon with the graying of America. More old guys with prostrate related anxieties every year. Three closet-sized bathrooms for 132 people. But we are adaptable complaisant people here in row 28. We are group 3 people, not the Platinum, Gold, and Preferred people that proudly marched into the plane first, took their spaces and crammed their overhead bins. We're back of the bus people. We visit the bathroom just before boarding, we move very little, we don't talk to our neighbors, we hold our water, keep our seat belts fastened all the time, watch the warning videotapes on the overhead TV screens and accept with resignation the smallish ½ glasses of non-spring water that passes for service on this six hour flight.

Row 28 wonders who makes these decisions on what constitutes a livable environment for travelers. I interviewed the waitees in line for the bathroom. "Number crunchers," said one of my grey-haired hawk-nosed peers, number four in the line, "Guys who only care is cutting costs."

An old friend of mine was part of a group of people who designed one of the first aircraft control systems for the FAA. The FAA wanted to find out how many planes one controller could handle. They created a working model of an aircraft control facility. The planes the controllers handled were not real, but blips generated by the testers and people pretending to be pilots asking for help, acknowledging instructions, etc. They'd put one plane up on the scope, the controller would direct it to the runway, then a second plane, then a third, and so on. Eventually their scopes would get pretty crowded, and the controller would screw up. When there was a mid-air collision or the planes got too close together or some flight would get forgotten about, there would be a flash, and the screen would go blank. Sometimes the controllers would be so involved in the test that they would forget that it wasn't real and freak out. There were casualties among the people being tested. One guy screamed, "Oh My God, I've killed all those people."

When it was all over with, the FAA had the data it needed to say: "We can design a system with "X" number of controllers handling "Y" amount of traffic. For an airport with "Z" traffic, we need to have this many consoles." The bosses of this operation never thought too much about the long term impact of the research. Of things that would happen later to the people working in these high-pressured positions like the ill-fated NAFTA strike, employee burnout, about alcoholism, failed marriages, and other types of collateral damage.

Our enduring images about the romance of travel come from the Pratt and Whitney era, when Rick said goodbye to Ilsa and her husband on the tarmac while the guys packed their bags down below, when people had just a short stretch of steps to walk up to get into Trimotor, and the Captain came back to say hi; when you could catch a glimpse of the informed action up front, all the switch throwing and muttered orders. There were no TSA people wanding us.

I spent most of this afternoon at the Philadelphia International Airport (PIA). It has been deemed one of the three worst airports in the United States. After spending four hours navigating its pens and shutes and corrals, I can say that it might be an okay place to shuttle cows around. For human beings, it's not great. Confusion, fear, and anxiety everywhere. Airports, like large grocery and department stores, want to keep us in their grips as long as possible. The milk and cheese way at the back, the airport destinations that always seem to be at the end of the long spokes. Along the way, shop after shop with lucrative leases and hefty margins, bottles of water at $2.75 plus.

The airport is about a mile long. From the long building that parallels the parking areas and railroad link, you got gates on seven spokes averaging between 900 and a 1,000 feet long. We came in on F 12, I think, had to catch a slow-moving bus that took us to the A-B-C building, then find B 17, then the powers that be flashed the delayed sign, and we all walked over to A21 and waited another hour. I logged about a mile and a quarter. All of us were loaded up like camels, dragging bags and kids, trying to decode the immense arrival/departure boards. A mile battered with visions of missed connections and a destination counter closed, your plane backing away. Hub and spoke works for cargo, doesn't work for nursing homes or airports.

Imagine, instead, Philadelphia International as a people friendly place, a two storied bus station that you enter through a security screening area. At each gate upstairs await electric double-decker shuttle buses that come and go, changing their destination signs as they service different flights. You stow your bags under the bus, keep your carry-ons. Inside there's a little coffee bar. When departure time arrives, the bus backs out and drives out on the tarmac. All your spoke buildings are gone. Out there is your plane. Bus backs in, a hydraulically actuated connector extends and mates with the aircraft door, and ergo, you're there. Sit down, and look down and watch your bags going on board. Ready for takeoff. Dream away, Kirby.

Memories of Pro Brush

2013-01-27T21:40:00.004-05:00

My first sustained exposure to factory work was in the seventies. After college. I worked in a shop in Waltham turning out industrial vacuum cleaners, then did a short stretch at Pro Brush in Florence. The first day at work you had to check in at the nurses’ office, and while I was there this guy came running in with a blood-soaked towel wrapped around his arm. He unwrapped it, the blood gushed out of a tear in his arm, and he was rushed into the back room for stitches.

Here I was, looking at a pool of his blood on the floor and listening to the yelling in the next room. I was at the Rubicon. Wait for a job that fitted my sophisticated talents, or take this one. Click here to read more.

Don't Worry

2013-01-16T17:43:00.002-05:00

During our time in California, KOTL will be publishing some fiction of mine. I understand that friends in Northampton are worried about us now that California is suffering a so-called cold snap. I saw a kid walking to school this morning bundled up in this great furry hoodie. Now that night-time temperatures in the San Diego are in the low fifties, everyone is pressing the panic button. Never mind that the sun is out this morning, and here in this desert-by-the-sea climate, rain evaporates before it reaches the ground, and by eight-thirty it is warm enough to walk around in a light sweater. So we're bearing up. We'll be back in the beginning of March. Here's a link to Jimmy Kimmel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6t-EjrtD3U

The limits of Telekenesis

2013-01-11T19:26:00.000-05:00

A Short Story

I wondered whether to go to bed early and consider the day a dead loss, or muster the intestinal fortitude to make myself some dinner. I was sitting there staring at the distant refrigerator, trying out my telekenesis abilities. As hard as I stared at the door to the refrigerator, it stayed put. My x-ray vision told me that inside, some three-day old hamburger was turning a sinister shade of grey and was starting to perspire and the little red potatoes in there were getting as soft as marshmallows. If I had had a woman around here there would be flowers in the vacant vases, and someone to talk to or not talk to about how my day had gone. The hamburger would be a nice healthy artificial red, and the potatoes would long since be boiled and turned into potato salad. But women don’t want to hear how your days were unless you are engaged in something respectable like lawyering. If you have nothing to talk about except things that aides have to deal with every day like blood and bowel movements and bad language and creepy co-workers, forget it. Go talk to the wall or get a dog to chat with.

I guess I am in a bad mood. Maybe a cup of coffee would get me going, kick up my idle a bit. Get me ready to work. Then I could cook that hamburger, do some studying for my anatomy exam, and then maybe check in on what’s on TV. I was just starting to break out of my paralysis when my new blue phone rang. I listened to it for a minute before I picked it up. Read the full story by clicking here

Musical Chairs

2013-01-04T11:55:00.001-05:00

Chapter 14

The Fall Guys

The FBI came to Northampton in force in 1990, spending many hours following the paper trails out from the County Registry of Deeds into the offices of people of the leading players in the Northampton area. Lawyers, doctors, politicians, developers, and many friends of Mike Smith. The FBI and FDIC investigators were armed with information from the 1989 FDIC audit. Many prominent Northampton people who had been major players were close to panic with all the FBI attention, the frequent articles in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and the anger of many prominent stockholders, who had been left holding worthless stock.

In the last bitter days before the bank collapsed, Dick Covell came to give a soothing speech before the Lions club. He was greeted with frosty silence, and one of the members took his Heritage stock certificates and distributed them to the people at his table to use as placemats. To read the full article, click here

2013-01-02T19:21:00.000-05:00

The limits of Telekenesis

Inside Cahill

2012-12-20T15:10:00.000-05:00

About a month ago I shot this video at the same time I wrote the post on Cahill Apartments,
for th is piece click here . It features some inside shots of the community building, a couple short interviews of tenants, and some shots of common bathroom problems with ventilation ducts and black mold. As one tenant told me, "Subsidized housing should not be substandard housing."

Thinking about the murders in Connecticut woke us both up

2012-12-16T22:40:00.002-05:00

the other morning about 3:30 California time, 6:30 east coast time. You wonder where it's going to stop and the answer seems to be that it won't stop. It's too late for us. We don't have a president who can come out and say to the American people, let's all turn these damn things in. He doesn't say that because he knows we won't do it. We are too smart and selfish for our own good. We don't trust government to protect us. . We think that the problems are out there, when the problems are often right here, in us, in our anger, our fear, our need to control others. The gun that went to Iraq and came back or was bought ten years ago sits in the drawer. It's always going to work, long after the reasons that someone bought it have evaporated.

A gun is unlimited power that can put fear into the hearts of people who you think are oppressing you or disrespecting you. There's a young person ready to snap and here is a gun,both at the ready. The gun keyed up by springs and levers. Pull the trigger and all of sudden you have blunt force traveling 2600 feet per second. A device that can settle all your scores with the world out there and then be used to end your pain and free us from consequences.

This is what we have given our young people, violent video games and millions of guns and an industry and a lobby that enshrines their possession as a holy right. Guns that can fufil today's ultimate adolescent dream, a quick transition from the video game to the real thing, from play to real life and real death. The suicide that ends most of these outbursts seems to be the real emotional payoff for both the Iraqi suicide bomber, and the boys in black. You never need to grow up and have to grapple with the world of consequences. Someone else will clean up.

Its the late teens and the early twenties that is often the flash point, when kids with fragile impulse control and unhappy families go haywire, when you can't talk about what's wrong, when drugs and alcohol and anger and despair can get the better of you. A gun is an answer, but young people don't need answers, they need time, time to master fears and reach out to others and learn the delicate arts of assertion and self-control. You have to learn how to mediate and moderate impulses, develop a sense of perspective, and come to peace with who you are. You need time to grow up. It's nice to have a president with a tear in his eye, but it would be nicer to have a president who would seize the moment with fire in his eyes and lead a drive to turn in these guns and fight for meaningful gun control.

The door 's locked and I'm home in my pajamas and bathrobe.

2012-12-10T15:14:00.000-05:00

The sign on the wall next to the door on apartment 105 at the Salvo House invites you to drop in and meet John McKemmie, NHA's Mixed Population Coordinator. A nice friendly sign. But John never seems to be there. About a month and a half ago I went down to Salvo House looking for him, but the door was always locked and there was no answer when I rapped on the door. Six times in one week, never there. I asked the people sitting out front and none of them had seen hims for some time. “Look,” said one woman as she got on the elevator, “If you find that guy, let me know where he is. I want to talk to him.” So knowing where he lived, I went down to Springfield. I had business down there anyway. Read the full article by clicking here.

In Memoriam to Mac and Cheryl

2012-12-06T23:35:00.003-05:00

Here is where Mac Weinberg died, next to his couch. His ghost still inhabits his old second floor apartment at 35 Fruit Street, even though he has been dead three months. The family who lives there now has to look every day at the stains that his death burnt into the floor. I’ve been told that when the late afternoon sun slants through the window, you can see his facial profile clearly in the floor. When they moved this non-English speaking couple into the apartment after a hasty cleanup, they saw the stains. One of the maintenance people allegedly told them to throw a rug over them. They evidently didn’t think it was a big deal. Maybe not a big deal to people who wouldn't complain. To read the full article , click here

The End of Building Three

2012-11-24T12:26:00.001-05:00

and a hidden memorial

The next time you are out on the hiking trail on the old State Hospital grounds, keep an eye open for a bench under two Japanese-looking trees on a hilltop. Sit there for awhile and look at the field below. Down there are thousands of people lying in unmarked graves; the Immigrants, the insane, the unlucky, the street people of their time. The people there vanished, almost without a trace, and so are the last buildings that made up the State Hospital. The north employees home was demolished last week. read about it: click here

Mayor goes outside for new Economic Development Director

2012-11-13T12:25:00.000-05:00

At a city hall press conference this morning, the mayor announced that Terence J Masterson of Irvington New York was his choice to be our new economic development director. Masterson will take a pay cut to come to Northampton, The quality of life in the Northampton area drew him, as well as the chance to live closer to family members. The new position pays $62,000, his former position paid in the neighborhood of $70,000. His administrative assistant at the Cayuga Economic Development Agency (CEDA) in Auburn New York said that he will be missed. CEDA is funded by the private business community. For the last two years he has been working on a plan for a comprehensive economic development strategy for Cayuga County. He has a MA and a MPA (Masters in Public Administration) from Pace University.

The announcement capped a year-long effort by the Mayor and his staff to restructure his office and create a full time fully funded position in economic development at city hall. The former director, Terry Anderson, had many administrative duties at city hall as well; this announcement seems to mean that ecconomic development will be his only work. The five member selection committee drew on submissions from two dozen applicants, some of them from the local area. His qualifications seem to this reporter to be very strong, including creating a $750,000 small business Revolving Loan Fund, four year years doing economic development work for the Westchester Partnership, and serving as Deputy Mayor for Irvington-on Hudson. Click here for his bio. He seems to like the challenge of starting new efforts.

I asked him about the dead spots we got here in town, most of which seem to have brownfields issues, and he said part of the challenge of turning properties back to productive use, like the Northampton Honda site, is making sure that the regulatory agencies like MEPA don’t just see these places as “just another site on the pile” and “make sure that the project is on the top of their laundry list.” The biggest part of his job he felt would be in retention, in making sure that the industries and small busineses we have stay here, and are able to expand. He felt that the intellectual capital we have here in our colleges and universities is our strongest attraction for new industry to locate here. He starts December 5, and is looking for an apartment.

As I told the mayor later, I was impressed that a nationwide search ended up choosing a well-qualified outsider, somewhat of a rare occasion in this town. With all the new construction underway on King Street, we might be headed in the right direction now.

Terry Masterson

Division of the Spoils: Chapter Nineteen of the Fall Guys

2012-11-05T15:50:00.002-05:00

"The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and had probably fewer windows than the Chrysler Building."

"Farewell My Lovely"

Raymond Chandler

The major players in the story of the fall of the Heritage Bank hold down the strong points around here. Their forts are up there, on top of the hills, lying behind walls of Goshen stone and expansive lawns. They look south toward Mount Holyoke and north toward Vermont, and if you triangulated them all, from Ashfield to Williamsburg to Florence, the lines might all intersect at some significant point. And they might not, too. I don't know how many windows there are in Peter Laird's big house in Ashfield. Maybe if I had time I could walk all the way around and tell you. Read The Division of the Spoils

With friends like these, who needs enemies? One Mayor is Enough.

2012-10-31T10:37:00.000-04:00

Yes, I've changed my mind, after Barry Roth talked to me, and I looked at the fine print of what is in the proposed Charter Change.

To read the full article, click here.

Retaliation Has Begun!

2012-10-28T23:12:00.000-04:00

Elaine Fortier, then Vice Chair of the MacDonald House Tenants Union, speaks out on the Samana affair.

A fairly short extract from the last Northampton Housing Authority meeting. The guy in the black and white T-shirt is Jon Hite, the Executive Director, the man at the head of the table is Joseph De Fazio, Chair of the Board of Directors, the man sitting next to Hite is John Andrulis, I think. Toward the close of the meeting, Samana objects to the meeting being videotaped, Hite says its an open meeting and I have a right to be there.

The Church of Us strikes back

2012-10-16T21:47:00.000-04:00

The afternoon it started. I visited a resident of the MacDonald House, and as I pulled away from the parking lot, a woman was taking my picture. Ok, I said,to myself, a little unsettling, but that is her right. That evening my wife and I went to a history talk at Forbes Library. When we came home about nine-fifteen, my wife noticed two calls on the answering machine. She played the tape and on it was about the ugliest foul-mouthed rant I have heard in some time. Literary criticism of my writing in sexual terms and some veiled threats. The phone rang again, and it was her. I listened for a while and then hung up. I called the police, and they came right over. One in plainclothes, one in uniform. When they came through the door the phone was ringing again.

I looked at the uniformed guy,

“May I?” he asked.

“Go right ahead,” I said.

Read the full article here