Building Community in a "Connected Age"

Governor Douglas has pledged to extend broadband and cell phone coverage to the entire state of Vermont by the year 2010.

That's a pretty ambitious goal. Who knows if we'll actually make it.

But let's say we do. What would a "connected" state look like? How will civic and community life change as more and more information goes online — and all Vermonters have the ability to access it quickly and easily?

Those are questions on the table at a day-long symposium on Thursday, May 29 — the official title is "Fulfilling Vermont's e-State Potential: Building Community in a 'Connected Age.'" The event is sponsored by the Snelling Center, and it's happening at Champlain College in Burlington.

Mama Mia!

If you ask a teenager what her parents do best, "embarrass me" might be one ready answer.

Now there's a website, Postcards From Yo Mama, where those mortified (or merely amused) by their maternal units can anonymously post wacky or overly earnest correspondence to brighten other peoples' days.

I must admit that I don't "get" all of the postings, but a few are quite hilarious. Here are two examples that made me laugh:

In other news, your father asked me this morning if he could borrow my nasal irrigator. I got very excited, thinking he was being pro-active in fighting the cold that’s got him sniffling non-stop already.  Turns out he just wanted to use the irrigator to inject jelly into the croissants he was baking. I could write a fucking book.

I’ve got to buckle down now and read this new script.

XXOO
MA

And:

Since some ‘older’ folks (i.e. your mother) read the web, you must bear with my ignorance on this question: is Puffy the same person as Sean Coombs?

Have fun perusing, and happy Friday!

Thoreau, the Deconstructionist

In these times of abundance we think ourselves clever or contrarian when we follow the path of least consumption. This is only because the default setting on American society has switched from "save" to "buy." But what is now considered frugal and savvy — mending zippers, selling scrap metal, salvaging building supplies — was once just common sense.

I was reminded of this recently, while reading Thoreau's Walden. In it, he is quite plainspoken about the preparations for his two-year-two-month-and-two-day experiment on the shore of Walden Pond. He borrows a friend's axe, clears a building site and uses the downed logs as the main structure for his dwelling. And then he buys a shanty from a simple married couple, because, in the words of the woman of the house, it has 'good boards overhead, good boards all around and good window.'

This is not the the way a seller usually talks about her house; the pieces being paramount to the whole. And that's because she knew Thoreau intended to deconstruct the shanty and use the pieces for his own cabin. After he pays for it, he says, "I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun." Further on in the book, the shanty materials appear in a somewhat boastful tally of the costs of the cabin, which totaled, "In all,.........$28.12"

Ed. note: For more tales of deconstruction, check out Kirk's story this week about Vermont's recycled building materials business.

Tricky Tinkle

So, I just made a visit to the Little Girls/Guys Room and much to my dismay, there was nary a piece of TP on the roll. Luckily, I had my cell phone in my pocket and I called the office. General Manager Rick Woods answered and became my knight in Charmin armor by delivering some TP to me.

Whoever did that: Shame, shame on you!

Delicious Dinkies!

Yesterday, Cathy walked by Ryan's desk and caught a glimpse of the Dinky Donuts ad that he was working on for the paper. This spurred a chain reaction that resulted in us ordering a sampler dozen and a bag of the Minis. You have to order them a day in advance, but they're delivered. Needless to say, I was more excited than usual to get to the office this morning.

We were all anxiously awaiting the delivery of the Dinkies, which arrived right around 9:40. It took great willpower to keep from diving in until after we took a few photos.

The Reviews

Maple Caramel: "The perfect amount of sweetness. Not too much maple, just a hint. Goes great with coffee. Reminded me of the beignets at Café Du Monde French Market in New Orleans." - Andrew

"Knocked my socks off!" -  Steve

Strawberry Homer: "It was the realest tasting strawberry I've every tasted. Trumps Dunkin Donuts." - Bridget

"I think it's going to kill me, that's what I think. It's like death on a napkin." - Rick

Chocolate Frosted: "Oh, I liked 'em!" - Cathy

"No better breakfast than chocolate." - Bridget

Minis: "More like a beignet... except granulated sugar instead of powdered." - Andrew

Don had the Boston Cream, but is currently unavailable for comment. Methinks he's gone to Donut Heaven...

Burlington Blogger Interviews David Sirota

Burlington blogger and former City Councilor Haik Bedrosian interviewed writer David Sirota last Friday. Sirota is coming to Vermont on May 27 and sent an email around to local bloggers, hoping to drum up some publicity .

The interview is pure Haik. Informative, semi-serious but also sorta half-assed — in an endearing way. I'm never quite sure if he's joking. An excerpt:

HB: What's your job?
DS: I'm a political columnist and I write books.
HB: Oh. What paper do you write for?
DS: My column runs in 40 papers including the Denver Post, The Seattle Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
HB: Yeah. I did't [sic] really do my homework for this interview. I mean, I used to hear you on the Al Franken show. Ma-ma-ma-ma-my-my-my Sirota. We can't get Air America on the radio in Burlington anymore. Hey! Do you know Rachel Maddow?
DS: I'm on her show all the time.

Read more at BurlingtonPol.

May Day Musings

Last Thursday, May 1, thousands of workers from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in Los Angeles stopped working in protest of the Iraq War. The strike, according to Democracy Now!, was the largest since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"It’s astonishing and wildly encouraging that a West Coast labor union would show more guts and determination than the U.S. Congress," wrote a Los Angeles writer on the web newsletter CounterPunch, "in publicly defying a Republican administration."

Meanwhile, back in the only state president Bush hasn't visited, the Vermont AFL-CIO issued a statement of support for the striking West Coast workers. And on Saturday, May 3, the Old Labor Hall in Barre filled up a for a lecture by Amy and David Goodman.

Amy is the acclaimed host of labor-friendly Democracy Now! Her brother, a Waterbury resident, is a freelance journalist who's married to Democratic House Rep Sue Minter. Amy and David are now touring the country in support of their third co-written book, Standing Up to the Madness, which documents the work of unlikely citizen activists.

Like, for instance, Connecticut librarians who take on the Patriot Act.

Where Have You Gone, Kurt Vonnegut?

I was happy to read this weekend in the Times Book Review that a collection of previously unpublished writings by Kurt Vonnegut has just come out. I can’t get enough Vonnegut — he’s got an inimitable way of satirizing the absurdity of real life by creating his own absurd world of fiction. He and Orwell are the ones I think of when I listen to the news in the morning and get struck by truth-is-stranger-than-fiction quality of some of the stories. I jotted down a few such stories that I heard on Morning Edition last week, all in the same day:

1. “Adventure capitalists” have secured a 50-year lease of one of Baghdad’s public parks, and plan to construct a Disney-like theme park, replete with a water park wherein cartoon images are displayed in the mist created by the fountains. This is in a city that has less than 6 hours of electricity per day, and where car bombs and random violence have become as commonplace as jaywalkers in New York City. To their credit, the plucky financiers pull no punches about their motives: they readily admit that they only care about building up the community infrastructure to the extent that it makes them richer.

2. Army hospitals are struggling to stop overdoses by injured veterans of the Iraq war. Reportedly, vets are being drugged into a near-comatose state for much of their day, with a cocktail of up to 11 different medications. This is happening in what the Army calls “Warrior Transition Units.” One poor warrior at Fort Knox was left in his room for two days or more — unconscious — and was found dead when someone finally decided to check on him.

3. Endurance specialist David Blaine broke a world record by holding his breath underwater for more than 17 minutes on the Oprah Winfrey Show. “When he broke the record, with a half minute to spare, he said he accomplished a life-long dream.”

4. Many Americans are finding themselves “upside down” in car debt, i.e., their car is worth less than the amount they owe on their auto loan. They have no choice but to continue making the payments, or pay thousands of dollars to just get out from underneath the onerous obligation.

Kat Clear and her WHOOPSIE! Grrls

We are trying out a new video feature at Seven Days called 7Dtv. Different video correspondents will be traipsing around Vermont looking for hot breaking news. Or, in this case, hot pink heels like the ones Kat Clear was wearing at her art opening Friday night at the Flynndog. Check out the video:

You can also watch this video on YouTube.

Don't Mess With the Model Horse Hobbyists!

Freelance writer Alice Levitt went to the "Everything Equine" horse show last weekend and wrote about it for our column, Scene@, that appears in the Calendar section of the newspaper. Scene@ is a short little feature — 350 words or less. It's basically a first-person "being there" piece, so it has more "attitude" than a news story would. 

Well, the model horse hobbyists Alice mentioned in her write-up thought that she put a little too much attitude in her account. One of them started a thread at modelhorseblab.com called
"A good example of Ignorance towards this hobby (or any hobby really)"
 
There are 9 pages of angry replies, including one that ends thusly: "She's still a bitter dried up inside she-snake and woe to her if she steps foot in our barn." Whoa, Nelly!

Consequently, the "Everything Equine" Scene@ is the 6th most popular item on our website this week, and climbing. (Photo from the horse show by Matthew Thorsen.)

It's Not What You Think...

It's a cake! My sister Monica made it. Here's the recipe. I'm the resident Crazy Cat Lady here at Seven Days (I have six... but I don't wear kitty sweatshirts and crap... yet...), so I think I need to bring one of these in to gross everybody out.

Here's a photo of a pretty cake that my sister made. Hopefully it will make up for the gag factor of the first one.

Very Short List

Every now and then the title of the daily e-mail from Very Short List urges me to not hit delete. Today's culture du jour is about a project on Library Thing called "I See Dead People's Books," a growing list of the books found in the libraries of famous dead folks.

There's something appealing about picturing yourself in, say, F. Scott Fitzgerald's library and craning your neck sideways to see what he's been reading. This website is no substitute for such an experience, but, like the bottom-trawling that internet browsing has become these days, there's a chance to net a tasty morsel.

Al's Last Trip

Could we ever know — is it even worth contemplating — what impact the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who died yesterday at 102, had on human affairs?

On April 16, 1943, in his lab at Sandoz Corp. in Basel, Hoffman absorbed a small amount of LSD-25, a substance he had isolated in 1938 while researching the potential pharmaceutical properties of the ergot fungus. A few days later, he ingested 250 mg of LSD-25. He went home and lay down and, as he described the experience, "sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination."

In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away. This was, altogether, a remarkable experience . . . .

No kidding.

In 1954, Oscar Janiger, an LA psychiatrist, began a series of controlled studies, eventually dosing more than 950 people, from all walks of life, age 18 to 81. Janiger's aim was simply to see how different people reacted to LSD. What he found was that the substance had a profound effect on creativity and spirituality.

Janiger's research was shut down in 1962 by the U.S. government, which eventually led Sandoz to cease production of LSD.  The drug, which was a legal experimental psychiatric treatment until 1966, has been manufactured illegally ever since, although the CIA didn't have any trouble getting its hands on it.

LSD never really went away, and in fact was pretty popular again in the 1990s. That resurgence came to an end with the arrest of two chemists, William Pickard and Clyde Apperson. The Drug Enforcement Agency estimated that the availability of LSD dropped by 95 percent. Pickard was sentenced In November 2003 to life without parole, and Apperson got 30 years with no possibility of early release.

Hoffman was scheduled to speak at the World Psychedelic Forum, in Basel, in March, but poor health kept him away.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

(VT) Yankee Doodle Doldrums

Earlier this month, Christian Parenti, a contributing editor at The Nation, gave a lecture at the University of Vermont. I think the talk was ostensibly about climate change, but who knows? Parenti spent most of the time talking about other stuff, and I couldn't follow his thesis.

In a May 12 Nation cover story  (that magazine is a little preemptive), Parenti offers a much clearer argument — this time, on the nuclear power industry. In short, he says that, despite the best efforts of the Bush administration, nuclear's heyday is up. To illustrate his point, Parenti points out that Warren Buffet's MidAmerican Nuclear Energy Company recently decided not to built a new nuclear plant in Idaho because it wouldn't be profitable, even with federal subsidies.

When I spoke with California-based "peak oil" expert Richard Heinberg on April 18, he had this to say in response to my question about nuclear energy:

SEVEN DAYS: The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is a hot-button topic. Some oppose nuclear power outright, while others claim it’s cleaner than coal.
RICHARD HEINBERG: Well, nuclear power is inherently limited by the supply of uranium, which is another non-renewable resource. The best study we have on future uranium supply . . . concludes that global uranium supplies will peak, even in the best case scenario, before 2050. So if we continue operating our current fleet of 103 nuclear power stations in this country, we’ll be able to keep them running through most of this century with gradually increasing costs . . . If that’s the case, why not just invest directly in wind and solar now and bypass nuclear?

Interestingly, the most-discussed nuclear plant in Parenti's Nation piece is Vermont Yankee. He writes that Yankee's recent 20-percent power uprate is one of the largest nationwide in the last decade-- not a good sign, notes Parenti, in light of last summer's cooling-tower collapse at the facility.

"One of these days a plant will blow," said Diana Sidebotham, a Putney activist, in Parenti's cover story.

Before he leaves, they let the intern speak

It's my last day as an intern and someone suggested I might have a bit to say here. This didn't happen until after being given a thank you gift so I think that makes it a bribe, but fortunately I'm not above such things.

I've only been here for one semester and in ways it was an experiment. Could the people and the office behind a fun, cool, alternative newspaper actually be interesting or would it turn me off from wanting to be involved in that scene? The answer, which lets me continue to imagine a certain future for myself, is, for the most part yes. Much like science class, the experiment wasn't entirely fun. The work itself was mundane, the greatest strain came in finding a new way to move my wrist while still hitting the same keys over and over. Inputting events, videos, and links, throughout the day is not, surprisingly, interesting. So, the work as an intern, not my ideal. But once again, I'm not above things like mundane work to get involved with something better.

What made the whole thing worthwhile was that the people are fun, funny, helpful, and sometimes most importantly, acknowledged the work was boring while being grateful. I've worked at a movie theater for a few summers, and it makes a difference when people don't assume you are content with simple repetitive tasks. Dan Bolles gave me advice on writing reviews, I learned some level of functionality with website stuff, and I got to enjoy (suffer?) the rambling and active humor of the sales department, the last place I had expected such fun. If I had guessed beforehand, I would have ventured their laughter would center around inside jokes involving sale-pitches and bad puns.

In general I discovered that there is the possibility of a post-college life that is not filled with boring despair; that I can continue doing most of the things I enjoy now while replacing classes and work I pay for with work that pays me.

Between right now and that moment is, of course, the horror of finding a job that pays enough for me to have a roof of some sort and edible food. I expect, however, that this pleasant post is enough a bribe of my own to conjure a worthwhile recomendation.

Vermont: The "Social Capital Capital"?

Last weekend, while I watched soldiers parade through downtown St. Albans during the annual Vermont Maple Festival, I experienced a mushy moment. Militaristic fanfare aside, I thought, this is a really nice, wholesome, inspiring community event. I had just eaten a corn dog and a maple-glazed donut, watched Jim Douglas and Anthony Pollina shimmy down Main Street, and clapped for an elementary-school marching band. It felt so . . . American, but in a mostly good way.

Returning to Church Street that afternoon, I was struck by a funny contrast. Compared with downtown St. Albans, downtown Burlington is more cosmopolitan, and its sidewalk strollers more ethnically diverse. Yet, if Church Street feels like a large city in a good way, it also feels more anonymous — in a bad way.

Indeed, Church Street sometimes affects me in a similar way, albeit to a smaller degree, that New York City does: I'm excited by the diversity of faces passing by, but also disheartened by a lack of neighborliness, a preponderance of chain stores, etcetera.

Last night, I went to hear Harvard prof Robert Putnam address these very issues in a packed lecture hall at the University of Vermont. Putnam is an all-star sociologist who researches "social capital" — a fancy term for "neighborliness." In 2000, he wrote the landmark Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, which warns that Americans are becoming more and more disconnected from each other. In other words, he worries that our "social capital" is declining.

Benny Lava for Everyone

This has got to be the funniest music video of all time — even without the "translation!" Only from the land of Bollywood . . .

Free Press = Fruit Loops?

Last week, Burlington's CCTV Channel 17 taped another episode of its Media Literacy Series. This one features Burlington Free Press environmental reporter Candy Page, Seven Days Staff Writer Ken Picard  and Champlain College professor Craig Chevrier. Chevrier teaches a class called "Social Responsibility in Media." His bio on the CCTV website says he serves as Vice President for the activist group Action Coalition for Media Education, although he's not listed as such on the ACME website. (UPDATE: Chevrier is the veep — and the secretary! — of the Vermont chapter of ACME).

The podcast is an hour long, and some of the questions are less than exciting (i.e. "Where do you get the photos that appear in your paper?") But it's worth listening to, if only to hear Chevrier accuse Page and the Free Press of being "Fruit Loops." The exchange happens about halfway through the podcast.

Says Chevrier, "The news is a product, for most news outlets. They need to sell it, and they need to make a profit on it. I equate the mainstream popular press, or the corporate press, to Fruit Loops, or Cheez Whiz. Nabisco or Kraft sell that stuff, they make money on it. Is it nutritious? No. It possibly does more harm to you than it does good..."

He goes on a for another few sentences, then Page interrupts. She sounds pissed.

"So are you saying that the Free Press is Fruit Loops?" she demands. "That my work is Fruit Loops? That it doesn't have any nutritional content?"

Chevrier responds, "I'm saying on the whole, yes, I think the Free Press is the journalistic equivalent of Fruit Loops."

"I cannot disagree more," says Page. "I think that is insulting, it's inaccurate, and it's an attack on the work that I've spent the last 30 years doing." 

Ok, I'm a frequent critic of the Free Press, but I gotta say, Candy Page is no Fruit Loop. In my mind, she epitomizes what's right about the Free Press, not what's wrong with it.

Richardson to Douglas: Find Nick Garza

From an unsourced story by KOB-TV, in Albuquerque: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's office plans to ask Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas to "step up" the search for Nick Garza, the Middlebury College student missing since Feb. 5. Garza, a freshman, was raised in Albuquerque, and his friends and family there have been closely following the search efforts.

As Seven Days reported last month, Nick's family, who are living on the Middlebury campus, has reached out to Douglas, a Middlebury grad and a resident of the town. Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs told us then that the governor is ready to help, but has not received any specific requests for assistance from the Middlebury Police Department.

I've put in a call to Gibbs to find out whether Richardson has been in touch with Douglas yet. We''ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, if you're willing and able, the Garza family needs your help Saturday. They have organized a search of areas near the Middlebury campus. Volunteers, who must be at least 18 and in good health, will gather at Middlebury College’s Kenyon Arena, on South Main Street, at 9 a.m. If you're interested, email Nick's family at nickgarza.search@gmail.com.

 The search will be led by the missing persons consultant, Gary Peterson, a former broadcast investigative reporter in Minneapolis.

Down in the Hole in America

The New York Times: "The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prison population . . . . Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries."

The Times reports that the U.S. has the highest number of prisoners per 100,000 population — 751 — in the world. That's compared to Japan, 63; Germany, 88 and England, 151. Even Russia and China stick fewer people in jail cells than the United States. And no one imposes longer prison sentences than American judges.

According to the Times' experts, a number of factors help explain the country's "extraordinary incarceration rate: higher levels of violent crime, harsher sentencing laws, a legacy of racial turmoil, a special fervor in combating illegal drugs, the American temperament, and the lack of a social safety net. Even democracy plays a role, as judges — many of whom are elected, another American anomaly — yield to populist demands for tough justice."

The Times story doesn't dig into two related issues: the conditions in American prisons; and who benefits when the answer to every anti-social act is a jail cell.

Seven Days readers are probably familiar with Paul Wright, an ex-con from Brattleboro who has become a fierce advocate for U.S. prisoners. Wright started up Prison Legal News in 1990, and has documented dozens of cases of prisoner abuse and exploitation. In January, PLN reported (subscription required) that Vermont leads the country in the percentage of prisoners who take anti-psychotic medications.

Check out Ken Picard's fascinating March 2007 profile of Wright here.

Wright and PLN just published a new anthology, called Prison Profiteers: Who Profits from Mass Incarceration, that examines the $185 billion taxpayers spend locking people up in America. The book looks at the private prison companies, investment banks, churches, medical corporations and other industries and individuals that benefit from the prison business.