Personal Notes

Pausing During a Sunny Lunch

By Justin Katz | May 13, 2010 |

It’s been a rough week. On top of the bite of local politics and the demand on one’s time that being a political insurgent tends to make in the midst of important events, the workdays have been less and less pleasant for the past couple of weeks. My employer is attempting to make up for…

UPDATED: Two Tiverton-Related Notes

By Justin Katz | March 12, 2010 |

UPDATE: I was able to restore the lost post 1. The post to which I linked on the Tiverton Citizens for Change blog was accidentally deleted, this morning. My time is way too limited to reconstruct it, and I apologize for any confusion. 2. The Tiverton Budget Committee voted last night to put a level-funded…

No Comparison of Need

By Justin Katz | January 13, 2010 |

I couldn’t but scale back my pitch during my call to Matt Allen, knowing that he’d subsequently be speaking with a representative of the Red Cross concerning the dire need for money to help the people of Haiti. Simply put, there’s no comparison to be found in everyday life to this sort of catastrophe: Haitians…

Merry Christmas!!!

By Marc Comtois | December 24, 2009 |

Merry Christmas to all Anchor Rising contributors, commenters and readers–the whole Anchor Rising Family! Thanks for the intellectual “gifts” you give every day. Now take a day off and enjoy Christmas with your families!

A Pre-Old School Jersey Boy

By Justin Katz | December 19, 2009 |

Shortly after commenter BobN mentioned Guido Beach in response to my post on reality TV, I came across this related post by Ed Driscoll. Driscoll points the way to this early/mid-’90s video about Wildwood, New Jersey, which as it happens was the specific site of my own early-’90s Jersey Shore romps. It’s all coming back…

Random Mutterings

By Marc Comtois | December 3, 2009 |

Having some kind of head cold nastiness for the better part of a week has left me more befuddled than usual and less able to focus thanks to various apothecary concoctions. Here’s what I’ve been muttering about…. Apparently, Gen. Treasurer Frank Caprio is going to campaign as a right-of-center progressive. Tiger Woods has garnered a…

Thankfulness, To and For

By Justin Katz | November 26, 2009 |

“What are you thankful for?” is a tough question. It’s sort of an annual version of “how are you doing?” One isn’t supposed to embark on an extended dissertation on the profundities of life, but it somehow feels as if a packaged response diminishes the courtesy of the question. “What are you thankful for?” “Oh,…

Thanks and Violence

By Justin Katz | November 22, 2009 |

At the tail end of Friday night’s Violent Roundtable on the Matt Allen Show (the podcast of which may be found here), Matt asked Andrew, Marc, and I what we’re thankful for. I’ve always found that to be a tough question, binding me up in considerations of appropriate pithiness. Back during the dark days of…

A Matter to Resolve as Professional Growth

By Justin Katz | October 5, 2009 |

A couple of weeks ago, a professional television journalist in Rhode Island suggested that I should pay some attention to the audio for my video blogs, especially that which I’ve collected from public meetings. I agreed of course — could not reasonably do otherwise — but there’s a difficulty that bloggers face in other ways.…

Easy Come, Easy Go on Saturdays

By Justin Katz | September 19, 2009 |

Working periodic Saturdays has its good points and its bad points. On the one hand, it provides earned income beyond what’s accounted in one’s long-term budget. On the other hand, it takes away time on which one comes to rely for other purposes. With those mixed feelings, I worked my way to the jobsite on…