hard deadlines

By a 4-2 vote along party lines, the Portsmouth Town Council chose Newport attorney Donato Andre D'Andrea as the new Town solicitor at last night's session, Town Clerk Kathy Viera-Beaudoin said this afternoon. Independent Karen Gleason was absent, and Democrats Canario and Seveney were the negative votes on the appointment, which came in open session.

No assistant solicitor was appointed, Viera-Beaudoin said, but the current town prosecutor, Cort Chappell, was unanimously approved to continue in that role.

The Sakonnet Times has the story up online here.

Raed Karrar's t-shirt.

Two Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staffers and airline JetBlue have paid a civil settlement of $240K to passenger Raed Jarrar, who was initially denied boarding a flight in 2006 because of Arabic writing on his shirt, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said today.

According to the ACLU, on August 12, 2006, Jarrar was waiting to board a JetBlue flight from New York to his home in Oakland, California, when he was approached by two TSA officials. One of them told Jarrar that he needed to remove his shirt because other passengers were not comfortable with the Arabic script, telling him that wearing a shirt with Arabic writing on it to an airport was like “wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating, ‘I am a robber.’”

The settlement, reached late last month and delivered to Jarrar on Friday, was a "victory for free speech," said ACLU attorney Aden Fine. "This settlement should send a clear message to all TSA officials and airlines that they cannot discriminate against passengers based on their race or the ethnic content of their speech," Fine said in a statement.

Just to be clear. This was not about anyone actually, oh, being a terrorist. Or carrying weapons. Jarrar's shirt said, "We will not be silent" in English and Arabic. Compare his experience to the writer from the Atlantic who was waved past a bored TSA checker with a Hezbollah flag. Even after convincing Jarrar to cover up his shirt in order to allow him to board, they literally moved his seat to the back of the plane.

This was kabuki-level security theatre — and racial profiling.

Read more at the ACLU. (And hey, while you're there, why not become a member?)

Bill Gerlach over at Sustainable Sakonnet, who has long been an advocate of alternative energy in Tiverton, has a nice post up about the soon-to-be-installed Wind Turbine Generator here in Portsmouth.

It would now be easy to criticize the Tiverton establishment for its lack of action. But the truth is it takes a LOT of work to explore – never mind build -- one of these things (I know, I've tried to kick-start a group). Based on what I know, talk of exploration has been on again, off again for several years. It needs to be made a priority by some entity within town government and the charge made to move forward.
— via Sustainable Sakonnet

If I were a citizen in Tiverton and wanted some real change, I know where I'd start...

We in Portsmouth are extraordinarily lucky to have the folks on the Portsmouth Economic Development Committee (PEDC) with the vision and drive to push this process along in our town. Progress updates on the turbine, slated for installation at the end of the month, available on the PEDC Sustainable Energy site.

All of Rhode Island's thoughts are with the family and friends of Senator Pell at this sad time. He was a great public servant and a champion of the arts and education.

Read the Projo story, Wikipedia entry.

According to a Prudence Island resident, a coyote attacked a girl, about 8 years old, in her back yard last night. The resident reported that the girl was dragged by the coyote but escaped without being injured or bitten. Portsmouth police and wildlife officials were notified, the resident said.

Have not been able to confirm this with other sources familiar with PI. If you live on the island, feel free to sound off in the comments.

Coyote attacks on humans are relatively rare, although there was a widely reported series earlier this year in Southern California. A search of the Providence Journal and Sakonnet Times archives turned up no recent incidents here in Rhode Island.

The Narragansett Bay Coyote Study tracks coyote populations in our area, but attempts to reach them by phone this afternoon were unsuccessful.

Boyd's Lane and Park Ave.

If you're out driving in Portsmouth, take care. Visibility is poor and braking is sloppy even on the main roads at this point. The side streets here in IP have accumulations of at least two inches.

First and foremost, I want to say thank you. It's readers like you who make this blog worthwhile, whether you're reading, posting comments, sending me tips by e-mail, or saying hi in the Clements parking lot. Your support keeps me believing that there's a role for localblogging in Portsmouth. Thank you. Hope you are all having a great holiday season, and best wishes for an even better 2009.

And now, the news. Based on readership numbers, here are the Top 10 stories of 2008. Not surprisingly, they skewed to the political.
If you want to drill down, you can see all of the year's blog posts here, sorted by readership.

And a few words about metrics. This year, hard deadlines received 35,341 visits (reading sessions) up from 28,127 in 2007. There were 57,323 page views, or individual pages served, up from 55,558 last year. The most important number, in my opinion, is the average number of unique visitors per month (as measured by Google Analytics), which jumped from 916 to 1,215 year-on-year, a 30% increase.

In 2008, I posted 120,433 words, which any writer can tell you is pretty good output. That's about a novel's worth of copy. There were 344 blog posts (up slightly from 323 in 2007) for an average of about 350 words — roughly, one page of text — per post.