A Public Notice and an Explanation

Because I don't get paid to blog, blogging has to be fun, which means I have to write about things that interest me. And although I want readers to write to me, as they occasionally do, the last thing Sphere is going to become is a community bulletin board -- the satisfaction level for me would simply be too low.

However a fellow in Shelton, Connecticut, whose name I think is Randy York, sent me an e-mail today and asked me to post a notice about a public meeting coming up in that town. After I disabused him of the notion that Sphere has a large readership, I told him that I'd post his notice for compensation, in the form of an e-mail from him to like-minded Shelton people telling them about Sphere and giving them the link. He told me he'd be happy to do so, and that his e-mail list included about 50 people. I asked him to cc me on the e-mail.

I expect that he's an honorable guy and that he'll keep his part of the bargain and that 50 people in and around Brass Valley will become potential Sphere readers. If anyone else would like to propose a similar deal, let's have it.

One point about his notice. In it, he refers to "Mayor Mark Lauretti's ... subdivision." If the mayor is proposing a 6-lot subdivision in his own city, that strikes me as an outrageous conflict. If Randy York wrote it that way because he's associating the mayor with the subdivision, that's a political characterization that I don't share, mainly because I know nothing of it. The last thing I want to do is disparage Mayor Lauretti, who until today I'd never heard of.

So here's his notice:

To all Concerned Citizens
The Housatonic River Watershed is Shelton's Greatest Natural Resource.
Please show your support for the River by attending the Public Hearing on
Shelton's Mayor Mark Lauretti's 6-lot Luxury subdivision on 550 River Road,
Thursday, February 3, 2005
Shelton City Hall Auditorium
7:00 PM
For more information, please email Randy at rakyork@aol.com
with 550 River Road in the subject line.

Update and Correction:
This is the kind of error that never used to happen in the newspaper business, because in the newspaper business you'd interview people either on the phone or in person and you could tell right away, generally, if the person you were interviewing was a man or a woman. Randy York, it turns out, is in reality Randy Ann York, which I couldn't determine from her e-mail. But she is honorable -- she got in touch with her 50 people and some of them have already read Sphere, thereby doubling or tripling my readers in a flash. Thanks, and sorry for the mistake.