[Rich, 03:06]
Some thoughts

What the heck was up with Brian Lavalle screeching at Ruderman and the Moderator after Ruderman made a joke about the rebuild likely overrunning its estimate? Very rude. As were many of the back-of-the-hall crowd, who often booed people they disagreed with. It's one thing to boo someone who is snarky or who takes a shot at someone. But booing someone for calmly and politely stating an opinion you happen to disagree with? Humph.

Anyone else notice the irony that by objecting to Jamieson's & Lewiton's request for five more minutes the objectors cost the meeting more than five minutes by forcing a vote on the matter? And I wonder if the joke was on them when J & L came out in favor of the rebuild, which I hazard a guess that many of the objectors were not expecting.

Well, I've been wrong a bunch of times so far on when I thought we'd finish, but I am confident we'll finish up on Monday. The only question is how long it'll go. We have a couple of trivial FinComm articles, the tabled 8 (zoning - stormwater) and 19 (noise regulation), and of course Iraq (70). If the first ones take us to the break, I wonder how many people will bother to come back from the break for 70. For that matter, I wonder how many people will show up Monday at all?

As for 70, I think the discussion will either be rather long or rather short and I actually lean towards short. If someone who wants to move the previous question manages to get near the front of the list, I think there will be a good chance people will vote to terminate debate to finally get the ATM over with. On the other hand, I can see there being lots of people who want to talk about it if no debate terminator is early on the list. A warning -- people who want it short should not get excited if they see me get up. I have something to say on it, though I promise that if I get to talk I'll be brief :-).

Speaking of terminating debate, I was amused when, after my motion, the Moderator said "Thank you." And then there were something like 30 responses when the Moderator called for a second.

Finally, for something probably only of interest to me, I discovered that a friend's father is a moderator (Westborough) and worked on the 3rd edition of Town Meeting Time and that his grandfather was also a moderator (Wenham) and worked on the 2nd edition of TMT. Ironically, then, my friend has never been able to participate in a town meeting as he has spent his entire adult life either in MA cities or out-of-state. I need to tell him he needs to get back in MA and start getting cracking on keeping the streaks alive.