CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?

I am trying to like Chelmsford.  I like the City Manager–good guy.  Except for a koo-koo, pain in the ass neighbor, I mostly like the residents and business people I come across–nice folks.  I totally LOVE the customers who keep us growing–right now at a ridiculous 25%!. Drum Hill? Meh.  Town Center? It’s cute.  The Chelmsford Police?  Better now that the Chief was accomodating and asked his boys in blue to stop conducting “stake outs” in our parking lot.  Inspectional services in Chelsmford?  Well, except for an exception or two…it’s been one ball breaker after another!  
(When Tony Zagzou retired, it seems, the gloves came off)

But Chelsmford is not Lowell.  Maybe it’s just that Lowell has bigger fish to fry then to be all-up-in-the face of business people trying to survive in a challenged community, in a shitty economy.  But in Lowell, EVEN the historic people have exhibited compromise lately!  (Except for the Park Ranger…riding a bike…wearing all three: A helmet, Bermuda shorts, AND a gun–who confiscated the pot that happened to be in my gym bag (I was holding it for someone!) that happened to be on his train tracks, due to a story worth telling another time.  That guy? Whoa, No compromise.)

But back to Chelmsford.  Because in Chelsmsford, a business cannot put ANY KIND OF SIGN, FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME on their lawn.  Not “Open”.  Not “New Business”.  Not “Free Lunch to Veterans”.  Not “Jesus Saves”. (That’s a good thing)  No special permits. At moonstones we are being harrassed by the building inspector, who is being harrassed by the selectman, who is being harrassed by that neighbor I mentioned…why?  For promoting unity, culturalism and diversity–by displaying small flags of nations across the lawn.  Colorful, peaceful, love-motivated, blowing in the breeze on the green lawn we spend thousands on to keep beautiful–even though it is owned by the state.  Man, seriously?

Drama Break–Name that movie…

“This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the Capital, that is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness. But if it is a choice between (Chelmsford) and death, I choose death.”