West of 495

Channel 4 reports a turkey flew into a Bellingham man's living-room window. It died, but he buried it instead of saving it for Thanksgiving.

Franklin Matters reports the Franklin Federated Church was trying to collect all those boxes for a program at Boston Medical Center for little kids who need extra nutritional help.

The Massachusetts Court of Appeals today rejected former state Rep. Marie Parente's bid to have her pension increased based on the estimated value of her state-provided parking space on Beacon Hill and her per-diem payments for traveling to and from her home in Milford.

The MBTA reports that commuters on the Worcester, Fitchburg and Haverhill lines should expect delays tomorrow morning due to storm damage.

Richard Beaubien captured the beginnings of the storm in Bolton this afternoon.

Copyright Richard Beaubien. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Channel 5 reporter Cheryl Fiandaca just made the first on-air snowball of the season, out in Ashburnham - after, of course, kneeling to pick up some snow. OK, it looked more like an iceball than a snowball, which is probably why she didn't throw it at the cameraman.

Steve Berry reports his Verizon 4G wireless works as advertised when he's in a 4G coverage area, but that the problem is that his commute takes him into 3G territory and that's a problem:

When the 4G signal is low and a 3G is available, the device switches modes. This drops the existing connection and 3G takes 20-30 seconds to activate. If you happen to come back into a 4G area (signal level above the 3G value), it switches modes again taking another 30 seconds to establish an active link. In the 1 hour Worcester to Boston route, I used to lose 3G connectivity twice and lose about 2 minutes while the SSLVPN and MiFi resynchronized. Since moving to the 4G, I lose 30 minutes of the 1 hour commute due to continuous mode changes.

There is no ability to force the unit into 3G or 4G only mode. There is no standard for setting up a new connection before dropping an existing connection.

Cambridge, Mass. — Tickets are on sale now for George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Stickball Productions’ world premiere stage adaptation of the quintessential Boston crime novel. The production runs Dec. 8–Jan. 15 at Oberon in Harvard Square, for tickets, visit www.thefriendsofeddiecoyle.com

It is the winter of ‘69 in Boston and Eddie Coyle is a bottom of the barrel hood attempting to stay alive and out of jail among his “friends” – cops, bartenders, radical hippies, bank robbers, hit men and informants. Weeks away from a prison sentence for trucking stolen booze, Eddie’s making a few bucks supplying the guns for a rash of brazen bank heists, while looking to tip someone in for a kind word to the judge.

George V. Higgins’ classic novel has been called the “best crime novel ever written” by Elmore Leonard, and literary scholars have compared his unforgiving and realistic depiction of Boston’s underworld with the works of Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Balzac. Through dialogue quintessentially Bostonian, and the most poignant homage to Bobby Orr and the ’69-’70 Boston Bruins in literature, The Friends of Eddie Coyle has set the bar for Boston crime stories for nearly 40 years.

She's just not ready to answer her kids' inevitable questions about sodomy:

I can't even go to normal places without having to sit silently and tolerate immorality. We all know what would happen if I asked two men or two women to stop displaying, right in front of me and my children, that they live in sodomy.

Via Towleroad and Wicked Gay Blog.

Although some may have some delays, the T says.

Updated Monday morning

The Worcester Tornadoes are supposed to be playing their final homestand this weekend.

The MetroWest Daily News reports an East Boston man who allegedly posted a Craigslist ad looking for women with troubled pasts for a documentary he claimed to be making is charged with raping a woman who answered the ad, in a Motel 6 on Rte. 9.

Unclear from the story is how or why the woman first reported the crime by flagging down a police officer in Roslindale.

Apparently, there's not a lot to do in July in Northborough, the MetroWest Daily News reports:

As officers responded to the report, police received a call about a motorcycle that had crashed into a pole on Crestwood Drive, Sgt. James Scesny said. But instead of a motorcycle, officers arrived to find a snowmobile by the side of the road and Sikora lying in the road.

Common Cause Massachusetts is hosting a Redistricting Olympics this summer. We will be taking citizen drawn Congressional, State House, and State Senate maps all summer, evaluating them, declaring a winner, giving out prizes and submitting the winning maps to the MA Legislative Redistricting Committee for consideration.

The purpose of the redistricting Olympics is threefold: to educate the public about the steps in the redistricting process, to initiate public participation in the political arena, and to pressure the legislature to draw the districts so that the citizens are appropriately represented.

Help show the legislature that redistricting is about our interests, not theirs. By participating in our redistricting Olympics and learning how to draw your own fair districts, you can acquire the tools you need to expose attempts by public officials to politicize the state’s new legislative maps.

For more information check out and/or email us at .

Participate in our democracy!

State Police report a woman out for a walk with her four grandchildren got lost in Purgatory Chasm in Sutton today. Fortunately, she was able to avoid eternal damnation by using her cell phone to call 911:

A command post was established along Route 146 in Sutton as Troopers from the Millbury Barracks took up strategic locations along the fence line that separates the forest from the highway. By utilizing the cruiser sirens, Troopers were able to direct the family to safety. While Troopers awaited fence cutting tools, one of the four children collapsed. Troopers scaled the fence and provided first aid. In the interim, the grandmother also collapsed. First aid was provided to her and care of all parties was turned over to responding EMTs. All five were transported to the U Mass Hospital Lake Street in Worcester and treated for dehydration and abrasions.

Representative John Binienda:

“The idea of the badge by lobbyists to me, I kind of find that revolting,” [...] “Hitler during the concentration camps tattooed all of the Jewish people so he would know who was Jew and who wasn’t, and that’s something that I just don’t go along with.”

For those who don't know: Godwin's law.

(Source)

Jeremy Reiner (WHDH) tweeted this link an hour ago:
http://earthsky.org/earth/massachusetts-tornado-left-a-track-visible-from-space

Summary after the break.

NSFW (language):

In Brimfield.

H/t Anon².

Richard Beaubien watched the storms to the north and south of his home in Bolton.

Copyright Richard Beaubien. Posted in the Universal Hub pool in Flickr.

UPDATE: State now confirms 4 deaths. Also, some looting in Springfield; National Guard will help patrol the city tomorrow.

Gov. Patrick calls up 1,000 National Guardsmen, says one confirmed fatality in West Springfield (person in car that overturned), urges people to stay off the roads, calls on school officials in tornado-hit to cancel school tomorrow.

Summer's here.

Train stuck on a switch in Worcester wreaking all kinds of havoc. Jim White reports from down the line in Westboro:

Three trains' worth of people on the platform in Westboro from two cancelled trains. Blah. Guess I'll head to Riverside.

Maybe it's the uranium in their tap water.

Madfilkentist chronicles his three-hour, 45-minute ride from Porter to Fitchburg last night - a trip that normally takes an hour and 20 minutes:

The next stop was Waltham. Before we reached it, the train was stopped for an unusually long time. Finally we were told there were mechanical problems that were being looked at. The lights went out for about ten minutes as all power was cut so the mechanic could look under the train. They came back on again, but there was still no motion. Finally we were told that the next train would hook up to ours and push us.

The double-sized train proceeded at a slow pace. At South Acton, we were all herded off the train. It went back in the direction of Boston and presumably pulled onto a side track somewhere, and around 8:25 a third train, which had been following behind us, took us all on.

Frozen syrup, anyone?Our own Polar Beverages is suing Pepsi to try to make it rename a new line of frozen sludge drinks called "Polar Shock."

In a lawsuit filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Polar charges the name will make people think it had something to do with the stuff, which is now offered at BU's Agganis Arena.

Polar argues that, in addition to basic trademark issues, the new brand will harm Polar's reputation by unfairly associating it with slush laden with high-fructose corn syrup when, in fact, Polar is now promoting some of its products as "Fizzically Fit." In the complaint, Polar notes it sponsored the "Fizzically Fit Summer Tour of 2010," featuring Ayla Brown: