Seven Days Blogs: 802 Online

New Year's videos

Hey, so we're trying this new thing tonight. Seven Days cordially invites you to post your New Year's Eve videos to our YouTube group. If you're not sure how to do it, there are instructions on the page I've linked.

Can't wait to see what we get.

I'm still officially on vacation — I'm back in the office Tuesday morning. In fact, though, I had planned to blog a bit more while I was away, like my friend Casey Rea, who posted amusing pictures of his trip to DC. But Ann-Elise and I both came down with the stomach flu the day after Christmas and the days haven't been quite as relaxing as I had hoped. Thankfully we're all better now, just in time for me to clean the house before I go back to work.

The Johnsmer/Siegelmans on NPR

Last summer, my friend Jules and I taped a 40-minute interview for the StoryCorps project when one of their mobile airstream trailer recording booths was in Burlington (photo of our recording session courtesy of Matthew Thorsen). I wrote about the experience in Seven Days, and an edited segment from the recording was on Vermont Public Radio.

Yesterday a producer from StoryCorps called to tell me that a different, re-edited segment will be aired on NPR next Friday, Dec. 29th, during the regular StoryCorps slot on Morning Edition. I think it airs between 8 and 9 a.m. Yay! We made the cut!

Tuesday Post-Deadline Linkdump

Hey, I'm done! I finished all my stories and turned everything in for the final two issues of 2006. So now all I've gotta do is clean my desk and organize my files. See how happy I am? That's Rick Woods, 7D general manager, behind me there. And yes, I made that sign by writing backwards.

The Seven Days office shuts down for a couple weeks at the end of the year, so I'm on vacation, which means I'll be posting a little less frequently than usual.

Here's an extra long linkdump, to make up for my impending absence. Items of note on Vermont blogs this week:

• Ann Zuccardy, owner of Vermont Shortbread — someone who had more to do than I did these past couple weeks.

• A different kind of Advent calendar, from Walter at Sugar Mountain Farm.

• Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report dissects the controversial White House Christmas holiday card.

• Got wi-fi at your library/cafe and looking for ways to promote it? Jessamyn has a suggestion.

• Outrageouschaos writes an outrageously funny/true post that begins, "I don't know when it happened, but I became an old lady." 

• Blogs cause trouble at church. I want to ask, "What happened?"

• From the "What the Hell?" Dept.: Amy Kirschner of Burlington Bread robs a bank with Laurence Fishburne ... in her dreams.

• Robb Kidd of Evolving Peace talks to the owner of a Take Back Vermont sign.

• More pithy observations from Caleb Daniloff, this time on the magic of public space.

• A sublime sketch diary, from the author of the  #1 book of 2006. 

Grading Journalism

I'd like to see somebody do this in Vermont — a professor and his students at Miami University analyzed the local TV and print news outlets and gave them grades (mostly bad ones).

Vermont YouTube of the Day

White Christmas? Doubtful at this point, it seems.

Vermont YouTube of the Day

An animated cartoon introducing Joe Destruction, Private Eye.

The Weekly Post

Meditations on winter from Maryellen Griffin, a farmer in South Peacham. Even though it doesn't feel like winter today.

Read her post by clicking on the link above, or by opening to the letters to the editor page of this week's Seven Days.

Vermont YouTube of the Day

This is my first attempt at posting a Seven Days-related video to YouTube. This is a video of Wolcott town lister Arlo Sterner.

I spent a day hanging out with Dave and Arlo in Wolcott, and had a great time wandering around, looking for ruins. The whole time, Arlo kept saying he wished he could tell me all of his stories about the people and things he's seen in his 80 years. I finally whipped out my camera and told him he a minute to tell me a story. And he did. 

For some reason, the picture and the audio don't quite seem to synch, but I think it's still worth sharing.

Tuesday Deadline Linkdump: The late edition

Yesterday, I started this post saying something like, "even crazy deadlines won't keep me from posting my linkdump!" But, of course, they did. So I'm a day late with this roundup of material culled from my list of Vermont blogs.

• Ann Zuccardy on responses to well-meaning people who give you suggestions about how to run your small business.

• An inside look at the Vermont auditor recount from Evolving Peace.

• Peter Freyne talks with Elizabeth Orr of Everyday Book Shop, the last independent new book retailer in downtown Burlington. Looks like she's contemplating retirement...

• Tom Evslin of Fractals of Change explores the networking/site counter functions of MyBlogLog.

• Lots of stuff happening at Vermont music blog False 45th. JDS from Latitude 44whatever has joined forces with Flatlander to offer a souped up version of the site. Right now, they're recapping 2006 in tunes.

• Cartoonist Alison Bechdel posts a picture of her mom, Helen Fontana Bechdel, wearing an Edwardian outfit for some kind of historical presentation. I link to it because I haven't seen many actual photos of AB's mom, though she's a main character in Alison's 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home. Incidentally, Fun Home was just named one of the top 10 books of the year by New York Magazine, and Salon calls it one of the best debuts of 2006 (not sure why, though, since Alison's been publishing book-length collections of her comics since the early 80's, and put out an autobiography in 1997). Full disclosure: Yes, I'm a friend of Alison's, but I was a fan first.

Life on deadline

It's double production time at Seven Days. That means that we're producing two issues this week instead of one, so we can take some time off for the holidays. That means more work than usual, on top of the already chaotic holiday scramble.

I used the special effects on my Mac Photobooth to help me illustrate my state of mind.