Swampscott Blog

Poll: Was McCain’s choice for VP a good one?

Posted on September 2, 2008 by George Derringer
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We asked last week what you thought about Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his vice-presidential running mate. This week, it’s only fair to ask what you think of John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin:

Drunk in court? Blame it on karaoke

Posted on August 30, 2008 by George Derringer
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We wish we had more time to find these stories from faraway places, but here’s one about a fellow who shows up in an Ocala, Fla., court to answer charges of OUI. He appears to be a little tipsy … Click here to read the story from the Ocala Star-Banner

Poll: Was Biden a good choice?

Posted on August 25, 2008 by George Derringer
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The suspense ended Friday night when Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois chose Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware as his running mate. Do you think he made a wise choice? Vote here in our unscientific poll.

Police officers vs. civilian flaggers

Posted on August 22, 2008 by George Derringer
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There’s going to be a public hearing on the question of whether Massachusetts really needs police officers at road construction sites or whether we can make do with civilians — which Gov. Deval Patrick has suggested. We thought we’d ask you:

Finding Olmsted everywhere

Posted on July 1, 2008 by George Derringer
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It’s hard to avoid thinking about Swampscott — this afternoon, I was reading New York Magazine and there it was: An article about Central Park, certainly a favorite place for anyone who ever lived in New York (or, like me, went to college there, although much of the park was not always safe way back then).

And our very own Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of the Swampscott Historic District which bears his name, appears in the subhead.

You can read the article — about the changes and conflicts in the park — at http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2008/47976/

Too bad Swampscott isn’t mentioned … oh, well

A baseball break at Fraser Field brings news of ‘Swampscott Day’

Posted on June 27, 2008 by George Derringer
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Sometimes everyone has to get away and my way to do that, at least in the summer, is to watch baseball, preferably in person.

Thursday night, I went to my third North Shore Navigators game at Fraser Field in Lynn. (It was the Navs’ seventh home game, so I’m batting close to .500.) Yes, I still miss the North Shore Spirit and all the craziness … er, I mean the between-innings entertainment … that the Spirit provided, but the Navigators impress me a little more each time I go to Fraser.

I ran into Swampscott’s own Phil Rosenfield on Thursday and found out that he’s planning “Swampscott Night” at the ball park on Saturday night, July 26, when the Navigators will host the Vermont Mountaineers. There will even be a fireworks display after the game that night.

You have to love any guy who is as much a baseball addict as Rosenfield – he played for the Swampscott Big Blue in high school, then played for both the Acton Red Sox and the Wayland Twins in the Greater Boston Senior League.

In 2005, he bought the Holyoke Giants in the New England Collegiate Baseball League, moving them to Fraser Field this summer while a new team and new owner took over in Holyoke.

If you’re a baseball fan, you’ll like the level of play in the NECBL. No, it’s not the big leagues but it’s good baseball. Thursday’s game featured an excellent diving stop by shortstop Chad Zurcher and an amazing throw for the out at first base, a towering home run by right fielder Mike Provencher, good pitching by Adam Herter and (credit where it’s due) an excellent running catch by Manchester Silkworms center fielder Joe Cotter. The Navs won 2-0 and are tied for first place in their division right now.

Then I got up early Friday morning to cover the Swampscott School Committee special meeting. I’d rather go to any baseball game but …

We’ll have more details at Wicked Local about Swampscott Night at the North Shore Navigators, of course, but you should know that Phil Rosenfield is a good guy and his team is pretty entertaining. Try it before Swampscott Night if you have a chance. For the schedule, visit www.nsnavs.com.

And no, this is not a free ad. I pay my way to the games and will continue to do so, just as I did at Spirit games. But it’s nice to know there’s a good strong Swampscott connection to the Navigators … it’s better that way. If you have some thoughts on this subject, please feel free to add a comment.

OK, so here’s the deal …

Posted on June 23, 2008 by George Derringer
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Folks: I’ve noticed that requiring registration to comment has REALLY cut down on the amount of lively debate on Wicked Local Swampscott. That’s a shame — and that was certainly not the intention of registration.

Just so everyone knows: (1) It is really easy to register. (2) Once registered, you are able to comment on stories on ANY of Wicked Local site at any time. (3) Although we ask for your name in the registration form, you later choose a screen name to use with your comments. (4) A real name is not required to register.

All we need is a valid e-mail address. You can attribute that valid e-mail to any name you please; no matter what, it will not be displayed with your comment.  So please . . . sign up, read and obey the ‘pool rules’ below, and jump back into the conversation!

Addendum: I’ve put this notice at the end of a few stories which I KNOW would have drawn comments a while back. I’m hoping the comments you will post will be respectful, but it’s OK to disagree. Honest! Everyone should also feel free to comment on any other story as well, again obeying what somebody dubbed the ‘pool rules,’ which are nothing more than common courtesy and good sense.

By the way, the Harbor Festival — a unique event because it combines so many organizations and activities in one place on one day — was again the result of a lot of hard work by a lot of people, none of whom makes a nickel from it. My thanks to you all!

Comments return: Have fun!

Posted on June 11, 2008 by George Derringer
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As I noted last night, the commenting feature is back. If you get a little lost in the (now required) registration process, check the story to the left on the Home Page. Have fun but be good. We hate the role of Big Brother and can’t imagine anyone would want that job …

Comments to return here this week!

Posted on June 10, 2008 by George Derringer
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Well, the computer geeks have told me that a “user registration” process will be available on Wicked Local Swampscott later this week, probably tomorrow (Wednesday, June 11), and that means we will be able to restore the “comments” feature at the end of stories on the site.

I see this as good news because I think comments, even intelligent anonymous comments, serve the public interest. As we have already seen, they certainly CAPTURE public interest. But things got out of hand three times, as noted in the blog entry just before this one, and I just didn’t have time to keep up with deleting the vile, mean, nasty and slanderous things anonymous posters wrote. Open debate is a wonderful thing; name-calling and insults are not wonderful things.

I don’t know all the details but I am assured it will be possible to block habitual offenders and their computers.

For the record, I’m probably going to be cautious and enable commenting only some stories, perhaps everything on the Home Page and News page, at first, just to see how it goes. I welcome your ideas, but please be thoughtful.

My plan is to base this week’s editorial, both in print and online, on the details of getting comments back. Cross your fingers and check back later this week. One thing I can assure you: my own comments will remain under my own name, as they are here and on every other site in which I participate on the Internet. And for most of those sites, I had to register and then confirm my e-mail address; I suspect the Wicked Local Swampscott process will be similar.

Let’s talk about comments

Posted on June 5, 2008 by George Derringer
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Let’s talk about the “Comments” feature which used to be part of Wicked Local Swampscott, as a recent blog contributor mentioned.

As my colleague at the Marblehead Reporter wrote in an editorial over there this week, and I quote:

— “’All the news that’s fit to print’ has morphed into ‘all the news we had time to write while not chasing down scandalous reader comments on our Web site.’

Progress, indeed.

That’s a slight exaggeration, of course, but we here at the (Marblehead) Reporter are struggling right along with our colleagues from coast to coast with our new role as moderator of a discussion featuring folks who have given themselves clever and not-so-clever nicknames like ‘Concerned Citizen’ and ‘Townie.’” —

It seems the troubles that plagued Wicked Local Swampscott are migrating northward and at least a partial solution is coming; everyone, including me, will have to register with a valid e-mail address in order to post comments.

When that happens, commenting will return to Wicked Local Swampscott.

Until then, however, I simply don’t have the time to monitor all the comments and like several colleagues, also noted in the Marblehead editorial, I just plain turned off the commenting feature entirely.

Amazingly, in many places, this feature works very well without requiring registration or any other oversight. Swampscott and Saugus, for examples, are not among those places.

To be sure, 99 percent of the comments we had for several months were intelligent or at least not violations of the “pool rules” added in a last-ditch effort to keep commenting alive. Comments are a very useful tool for community building and sometimes even tipping me to a good story.

Here, however, we had people posting insults on obituaries (“Good thing he’s dead …) and weddings (you don’t want to know).

Mentions of the Police Department and the Little League, especially, brought tons of insults and scandalous comments, but almost anything seemed to be fair game for a small number of people who couldn’t wait to post insults, defame people they don’t know and bring down anything good anybody in Swampscott tries to do.

Then, if I actually happened not to be near a computer to see the “abuse reports” generated by those comments quickly enough, my phone would start ringing. Anytime. Any place. And I’d have to rush to a computer and try to fix things.

That got old very quickly.

Even then, I tried two more times to allow comments on at least SOME stories. The first time, it took less than two hours before the offenses returned. It lasted a little longer the second time, but the insults were even more ferocious.

Bottom line? I love commenting. I comment on other sites and blogs myself. I have to register on most of them and I use my real name. But I just don’t have time to be a combined chaperone and police officer to enforce the “pool rules.”

Is it really that difficult to disagree without rancor? Is it so hard to avoid four-letter words?

It must be, judging by the evidence, for too many people. Until I can get a handle on the comments by blocking them from habitual offenders, Wicked Local Swampscott will remain pretty much comment-free.

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