u/bobledrew

Hi there:

I’ve been given a pair of binoculars by a loved one.

They are “Zenit” brand 7x50, say “made in the USSR”, and have a serial number of n7421925.

The case is black leather with a chrome clasp, and inside are two sets of additional lenses — a yellow / amber pair, and a very dark pair (which I surmise might be for observing the sun or eclipses, but I haven’t tried yet!).

Initial googles suggest these are made in Japan, but this is not an area I have any expertise in, so happy to get feedback from folks here.

Image gallery here: https://imgur.com/gallery/zenit-7x50-ZPTlqSt

The text of the letter as published in Today’s Northumberland:

“I am once again forced to defend myself against libelous statements. Statements that have no basis in fact at all. Statements that are outright lies designed to affect a specific election result.

Cobourg Police Board Chair and current Cobourg Council member and Deputy Mayoral Candidate Adam Bureau slandered my name at the most recent CPS board meeting yesterday by saying: “Still people are released again and again. We see individuals arrested dozens of times in a matter of months. Yet some, including our mayor, would have you believe this is solely a police failure.” Said Bureau

Mr. Bureau’s personal antipathies against me aside; the policing position he is attributing to me is unbecoming of both a Police Board Chair and most certainly a supposed Council colleague.

I have never referenced anything close to this absurd statement. To my knowledge I have always praised the rank-and-file members of our Towns force from the day I was elected to today.

Mr. Bureau please show where I have ever said that the drug issues or more laughably bail issues are the “failings” of the men and women who so honorably serve our community every day. Please provide one scintilla of proof of that statement.

So, for Mr. Bureau to make such a preposterous and uncalled for statement fewer than 6 months from an election I find the timing questionable at the very least. Mr. Bureau has chaired dozens of meetings of the Cobourg Police Board without maligning my name.

I simply am not Mr. Bureau’s choice to be Mayor. These feeble attacks are designed to give his chosen Candidate and perceived running mate an advantage by trying to make the Members of the Force and their extended families and greater Cobourg community at large think I don’t support them. Patently false.

This is about petty personal vengeance – this is about trying to punish me and hurt my election chances pure and simple. Mr. Bureau can try and cloak himself in heroic sanctimony all he wants but facts are facts. These personal attacks are directly, as always, for my stance against the normalization of criminal drug activity particularly in our town parks and public spaces. Pure and simple.

Any issues I have had; have always centered very squarely around the Board of the Cobourg Police, certain members in particular. Not any members of the Force themselves.

I won’t ask for an apology or even a retraction as I do not believe Mr. Bureau is capable of that kind of magnanimity. However, I will say to the general public, I am calling on Mr. Bureau to provide any evidence where I have ever directly denigrated our men and women who serve our Town.

I can and do have significantly serious concerns about specific decisions taken by certain memembers of this board specifically around, as example, both Beatty and Bureau’s aligned efforts as joint Cobourg Councilors and Cobourg Police Board Members to foist a shocking 20.5%Police Budget increase on the backs of Cobourg citizens. Their action in this regard is not supposition on my part but it is fully a matter of the public record.

I recently sent an email that included Mr. Bureau that was in praise of Prime Minister Carney and his government’s changes around bail reform legislation. It is my sincere hope that these legislative changes around bail will begin to put an end to Mr. Bureau’s referenced concern around multi-arrest releases.

I would ask Mr. Bureau to not make public pronouncements attributed to me that he cannot verify as truth.

I was also recently misguidedly attacked in the form of a letter signed by 5 advocate agencies. These signatories included and of particular note both Greenwood Coalition and Transition House. This letter; rife with Advocates typical arrogant condescension’s; attempts to conflate the terms housing and human rights and public parks as somehow having anything to do with one another. There are no enshrinements that are codified regarding housing as a human right as it connects to specifically public parks. The opposite is true.

This also has far more to do with my motions to have all criminal drug positive park language every word removed from our proposed Parks Master Plan. Mr. Bureau knows full well the public’s feelings on this issue, but he also knows he has the current safety of running unopposed for Deputy Mayor in the next term of Council.

I very much look forward to the passing of newly announced Provincial legislation by Ontario’s Solicitor General Michael Kerzner designed specifically for all Police Boards in Ontario; Cobourg’s included that will compel and direct potential rogue Boards and their Board Members to follow not their own ideological positions but Provincial laws (particularly such as Bill 6) will be coming into law in the near future. I will have far, far more to say about the actual motives behind these unprecedented and coordinated personal attacks at the appropriate time over the course of the election

On a very personal note, what frankly upsets me about Mr. Bureau’s public insinuations is that I am actually the immensely proud son of one of the most respected retired police officers in this Province. I know what it means to be a proud officer’s son, what it means Mr. Bureau, to actually know what personal sacrifices officers make every day on behalf of a calling far greater than themselves and far more noble than most can ever conceive.

I now fully understand why at this very same meeting in question yesterday long-time Cobourg Police Board Provincial Appointee and community pillar Dr. Ron Kerr called for Mr. Bureau’s resignation from the Board.

Lucas Cleveland
Mayor of Cobourg

Just read the ‘manifesto’ of a young man who (EDIT following updated information) killed a Montreal police officer and wounded another before being shot by police, while a bystander was caught in the gunfire and shot to death by a police officer. I’m not going to link to it here because it doesn’t deserve wide readership.

The saddest part of all is that this lost young man’s pathetic manifesto resembles nothing so much as a Harold Lauder rant. I find it deeply unsettling that so many young man are being indoctrinated by people like Andrew Tate and his ‘manosphere’ ilk and that unhappy, lonely young men are ending up engaging in violence and deeply antisocial behaviour.

A group of five social services agencies working in Cobourg have written an open letter to the town’s mayor. Mayor Cleveland has been deeply critical of elements of a draft plan for the town’s Parks and Recreation strategy. His objections:

* that there’s language in the draft plan recognizing that housing is a human right
* that the plan recommends installing sharps containers in parks
* that the plan recognizes that encampments may occur in public spaces

The letter is signed by representatives of Northumberland United Way, Northumberland Community Legal Centre, Rebound Child and Youth Services, Greenwood Coalition and Transition House. The text of the letter:

An open letter to Mayor Cleveland and the citizens of Cobourg
From social service agencies serving people experiencing homelessness

Dear Mayor Cleveland,

We write as organizations that work every day – on the ground, in our community – with the people your statement describes as a threat to Cobourg’s future. We ask you, and all residents, to consider a different perspective: one grounded not in ideology, but in law, in evidence, and in the lived reality of our most vulnerable neighbours.

Housing is a human right – this is Canadian law, not advocacy language

You describe the phrase “housing is a human right” as inflammatory and ideological. We must respectfully but firmly correct that characterization.
Canada is a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which enshrines the right to adequate housing. More directly, in 2019, the Government of Canada passed the National Housing Strategy Act, which enshrined housing as a fundamental human right in federal statute.
This is not social services advocacy language.

Our shelters are full. So where do people go?
You ask, implicitly, why unhoused people are in our parks. We will answer that directly: because there is nowhere else for them to go.

Cobourg’s emergency shelter capacity is consistently at or beyond its limits. On any given night, there are people in this community who have sought shelter access and been turned away – not by choice, not by preference, but because the beds simply do not exist.

When a person cannot access a shelter, they do not disappear. They sleep somewhere. For many of our unhoused neighbours, that somewhere is a park.

The Parks Master Plan acknowledges this reality honestly. You have criticized it for doing so. But a plan that ignores where vulnerable people actually are is not a plan – it is a wish.

Our unhoused neighbours belong in this plan
Cobourg’s parks are public spaces – for all members of the public.

People experiencing homelessness are members of this community. They pay taxes when they can, they have families here, they have histories here. Many of them grew up in this town.

The Parks Master Plan includes them not to turn parks into campgrounds, as you suggest, but because any responsible stewardship of public space must account for all the people who use it.

The section you quote – explaining why some individuals choose parks over shelters – is not advocacy. It is an accurate, research-supported description of why people make the choices they do.

Understanding this is not capitulation. It is competent planning.

On syringe disposal and public health
Safe syringe disposal bins are a public health measure – recommended by public health agencies, used successfully across Ontario, and designed to protect everyone who uses parks, including children.

Their presence does not encourage drug use. It reduces the risk of discarded needles in public spaces.

If your goal is safer parks, this measure serves that goal. Opposing it on ideological grounds means accepting more needles on the ground in Victoria Park.

On the Safer Municipalities Act
You cite Ontario’s Safer Municipalities Act as reason to reject this plan.

We note that legislation compelling encampment clearances does not create housing. It relocates suffering.

Communities across Ontario and Canada that have used enforcement-only approaches have not reduced homelessness – they have displaced it, often at enormous cost to taxpayers, and often temporarily.

Cobourg experienced this firsthand.

The plan before Council is an attempt to think more carefully about what comes next. Dismissing it entirely returns us to the same cycle.

What we are asking for
We are not asking Cobourg to become a laboratory.

We are asking Council to adopt a parks plan that honestly reflects the community it serves – all of it.

We welcome the removal of any language that genuinely conflicts with provincial law. We do not accept the removal of factual public health recommendations, or the erasure of our unhoused neighbours from a planning document simply because their existence is uncomfortable.

There is no simple solution to our current housing and homelessness crisis. We know it will only be through working together as a community that we will be able to make headway toward a Cobourg where everyone is cared for and safe.

We invite Mayor Cleveland, and any member of Council, to meet with our Homelessness Leadership Table to discuss the next steps in this important journey.

I’m in the “progressive lenses” era. I wear glasses most of the time, but my current setup for cycling is single-vision daily-wear contacts plus folding readers when I need it plus cycling sunglasses.

I’m considering getting a pair of prescription sunglasses. For those who use multi focal lenses, do you:

* get a multi focal pair of cycling sunglasses?
* get a single-vision pair of cycling sunglasses and carry along readers for when you need them?
* something else?

Are there pitfalls or issues around getting prescription cycling sunglasses I should know before spending?

I’ve often wondered what the back story behind this large and vacant facility is. Now I know. I wasn’t here for the discussions about this being a rehab, but it sure is a shame to see a large building that could house a lot of medical services just sitting vacant.

I just started a reread of The Dead Zone and noticed a signficant reference to 19. Won’t go into detail for fear of ‘spoiling.’

Made me wonder what the earliest 19 in King’s body of work is. Gonna have to through some references and early works!

I’d like to experiment with replacing the nib in one of my Go pens. Looking for an F or an EF.

A few years ago, my stub-nib TWSBI GO broke. I mourned it. But I didn't replace it right away. And being a weird cheap bastard, I also didn't throw it away.

Then last year, I was in Toronto and went to WonderPens, as is my wont. I bought myself a spanking new 1.1 stub TWSBI and order was restored to the world.

Last week, the new one broke in exactly the same way: the cap came off the spring and, I thought, the threads were stripped. No matter what I tried, it wouldn't catch.

"Maybe I can use it as a plunger-fill," I thought, and went to Google. At which point I found out that the end-cap threads COUNTER CLOCKWISE. So now I have two 1.1 stub TWSBI GOs in working order.

The end.

Well worth the watch.